A Review of 2025 at Year’s End
Tuesday, December 23 2025
Amid Christmas grocery shopping, Clay reflects on the year that was.
- Published in Features
America at 250: Our Stuck Constitution
Monday, December 22 2025
Clay has debated constitutional scholars and historical impersonators in and out of costume across the United States; addressed 27 state legislatures; Supreme Court summer conferences; and humanities conferences across America. After reading Jill Lepore’s new book, We the People, and following the third of four weekly online classroom sessions, he stepped back to write this week’s essay.
- Published in Features
The End of Camelot at Last
Tuesday, November 25 2025
Clay contemplates the enduring JFK Camelot myth and our longing for a Kennedyesque savior to restore constitutional order, norms, and mutual respect in our current state of the republic.
- Published in Features
Jefferson and Slavery: Ken Burns on MS-NOW
Tuesday, November 25 2025
Clay considers Ken Burns' recent portrayal of Thomas Jefferson in a recent interview, where Burns suggests the Declaration's "all men are created equal" applied only to propertied white males, urging a more nuanced look at Jefferson's universal ideals, racial suspicions, and his own contradictions as a slaveholder.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
America at 250: The Racial Divide
Monday, November 17 2025
Last week, I spoke at a symposium on race and the American Revolution. This essay is the result of my deliberations for that event and is one in a series of essays I’m writing reflecting on a range of issues as America approaches its 250th birthday.
- Published in Features
The Wrecking Ball Presidency
Tuesday, November 04 2025
The demolition of the East Wing of the White House is a clear metaphor for our “CEO” president.
- Published in Features
The World of Error in a Galaxy of Facts
Tuesday, October 28 2025
Clay ponders the “Truth Taser.” The best invention since the Veg-O-Matic?
- Published in Features
Visiting Meriwether Lewis’ Grave on the Natchez — The End of the Trail
Monday, October 20 2025
Completing a year following the Lewis and Clark Trail, Clay visits the lonely gravesite where the 35-year-old Meriwether Lewis is buried.
- Published in Features
Humor on Trial in an Age of Disruption
Monday, September 22 2025
Free speech and the future in context.
- Published in Features
My Montana Summer
Monday, August 11 2025
Clay Jenkinson reports on his month-long adventure crisscrossing Montana in the long-since-passed footsteps of Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road