The language of Section 212(e) of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. §1182(f), contains a sweeping authorization of presidential discretion to suspend and restrict alien entry into the United States. Senator Pat McCarran (D-NV) first introduced the subsection in 1950 as part of the omnibus immigration bill drafted by his Judiciary Committee’s immigration subcommittee. The specific origins of the language and the original intent behind the subsection remain missing pieces in the extensive scholarly literature on the 1952 INA and legislative history as explored by the courts. This article reveals that the subcommittee modeled the subsection on the sixth proviso of the 1917 Immigration Act, the May 1918 Wartime Measure, and a selective interpretation of Supreme Court precedent. The article reveals further that the original intent behind the subsection was to close perceived loopholes in existing law enabling entry by displaced persons and Communist governmental officials.

In 1969, a public debate between President Nixon and Congress took place during the legislative passage of the National Environmental Policy Act and centered on two very different and competing conceptions of how presidential advice should be organized in the Executive Office of the President. It focused on the proposed establishment of the Council on Environmental Quality. The outcome of the ensuing battle represented a complete victory for congressional interests against the expressed wishes of the president. The nature of the debate has been overlooked in the literature on the presidency, but it highlights fundamental issues about agency design and presidential control of the institutional presidency. It also highlights broader concerns about the degree of congressional involvement in shaping the Executive Office of the President.

It is common for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be considered one of the most conservative religious groups in the United States. What is less well understood is as to when the relationship between Mormonism and American conservatism began. While some historians point to the social upheavals in the 1960s and 1970s as the glue that united Mormons and conservatives, the connection began decades earlier during the Great Depression. Leaders of the Mormon Church interpreted Roosevelt’s New Deal as the fulfillment of eschatological prophecy. Envisioning themselves saving America and the Constitution at the world’s end, Mormon authorities established their own welfare program to inspire Latter-day Saints and Americans in general to eschew the New Deal. Anti–New Dealers used the Mormon welfare plan to construct a conservative ideology. Accordingly, Mormons are essential elements in the formation of a political movement that revolutionized the United States.

From the 1950s through the 1970s, American policymakers engaged in an extensive campaign against illegal gambling in an effort to turn the tide in the government’s crusade against organized crime. At the grassroots, however, voters endorsed a different form of state expansion to beat back the mob menace. Between 1963 and 1977, fourteen northeastern and Rust Belt states enacted the first government-run lotteries in the twentieth-century United States on the belief that legalized gambling would undercut the mob’s gambling profits. While gambling opponents pointed to Las Vegas as proof that organized crime would flourish following legalization, supporters argued that illegal gambling was already pervasive, so the state may as well profit from this irrepressible activity. The history of gambling legalization challenges narratives on the popularity of law-and-order politics and offers a new perspective on crime policy in the post–World War II period.