Lockean principles of liberty and individual freedoms propelled the American colonists to revolt against British dominion and establish a constitutional republic. Unlike ancient republics, usually empires or monarchies, the Founding Fathers, determined to be governed by their consent instead of the divine right of an absolute ruler, set forth a written covenant to structure their government and safeguard those liberties. Conflicting views of republican democracy led to factionalism, separatism and ultimately, war. Using the war power, the victorious North would embark upon an even more liberal project to reunite the war-torn nation, expand citizenship and individual rights to more of the nation's inhabitants and set the stage for the vast expansion of rights in the 20th Century.

Understanding elections now requires an understanding of how Mexican immigrants participate in politics. Mexican immigrants are a growing demographic in the United States. Latinos have started to sway elections. As the largest Latino bloc, Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants have the power to evoke change. Mexican immigrants’ role in politics continues to grow in importance as the Latino voting bloc continues to grow. This study focuses on Mexican immigrants and their mobilization in the United States. It discusses the motivations of Mexican immigrants to organize and mobilize in the United States, regardless of their status. The researcher discusses Mexican immigrant mobilization in the United States, evaluates prior research on immigrant mobilization, and identifies the research's shortcomings. The literature review indicates that regardless of status in the United States, Mexican immigrants will organize and mobilize to defend, protect, and improve their livelihoods in America.

The Supreme Court often makes rulings which are counter to majoritarian public opinion, and often applies the ideologies of judicial activism and judicial restraint in its decision making process. But does one of these ideologies more often result in majoritarian decisions in terms of public opinion? The following pages will commit to an in-depth study of the impact that both of these judicial practices has on the likelihood of majoritarian decisions and analyzes what the findings say about common debates surrounding the United States Supreme Court.

This thesis explores the role of religion in politics, specifically focusing on the Christian Right movement in the United States. Through an analysis of the Christian Coalition, Faith and Freedom Coalition, and Alliance Defending Freedom, this research examines how these organizations use religion to influence political policy and mobilize voters. The findings suggest that the Christian Right is not using religion in the way the Founding Fathers intended, which raises concerns about the erosion of democratic values and the loss of trust in government. Ultimately, this study highlights the need to reexamine the relationship between religion and politics in the United States.

On January 5, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on the outbreak of pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan, China. Two weeks later, a 35-year-old Washington resident checked into a local urgent care clinic with a 4-day cough and fever. Laboratory testing would confirm this individual as the first case of the novel coronavirus in the U.S., and on January 20, 2020, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported this case to the public. In the days and weeks to follow, Twitter, a social media platform with 450 million active monthly users as of 2020, provided many American residents the opportunity to share their thoughts on the developing pandemic online. Social media sites like Twitter are a prominent source of discourse surrounding contemporary political issues, allowing for direct communication between users in real-time. As more population centers around the world gain access to the internet, most democratic discussion, both nationally and internationally, will take place in online spaces. The activity of elected officials as private citizens in these online spaces is often overlooked. I find the ability of publics—which philosopher John Dewey defines as groups of people with shared needs—to communicate effectively and monitor the interests of political elites online to be lacking. To best align the interests of officials and citizens, and achieve transparency between publics and elected officials, we need an efficient way to measure and record these interests. Through this thesis, I found that natural language processing methods like sentiment analyses can provide an effective means of gauging the attitudes of politicians towards contemporary issues.

Former NFL player Colin Kaepernick began protesting during the national anthem in 2016. This research addresses the impacts that Kaepernick and his protests had on himself, the NFL, and the issues he was protesting. The research finds that Kaepernick was blackballed out of the NFL and that hundreds of other NFL players joined him in protest, which caused the league to ban the action before eventually becoming more political as a league. Additionally, the protests brought greater awareness to the issues and prompted some to become more politically active. In addition to providing a new framework for researching examples of politics in sports, this project concludes that athlete-activists can sacrifice themselves to provide more freedom for future athletes to be activists.

This research project explores how relevant the Anti-Federalists critiques of the judicial branch are in today's public opinion. Wanting to find out which demographics voiced the Anti-Federalists critiques of the judicial branch, a survey was conducted to determine whether there is a relationship between party affiliation and gender and support of the Supreme Court. Based on the research, the conclusion was drawn that the concerns of the Federalists are widespread and not specific to a political party or gender.