Florida Republican officials were offended by a comedian’s racist and distasteful “joke” about Puerto Rico at Donald Trump’s rally in New York City on Sunday.

Miami’s U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar said she was “disgusted” by Tony Hinchcliffe’s words, calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” U.S. Rep. Carlos ...Read more

Every morning when I walk to the park across from my apartment in Mexico City, I am reminded of an unspeakable tragedy that has befallen my country for decades. Steps away from my front door is a small plaque reminding passersby that the building beside my own, now a government human rights office, was once the headquarters of the Mexican secret...Read more

One thing about getting older is that increasing loss is the lay of all the land. Loss of nimble limbs, incremental hearing loss, cataracts (of course). Loss of friends, of family, of famous icons we grew up alongside. It’s such a steady, relentless beat. It doesn’t (yet) take away the dance, but it changes the steps, forcing the dancer to ...Read more

Sometimes data can be misleading, and other times, confusing. Both appear to be true today as government data shows the economy has added many jobs over the last year, but few workers. How is that possible?

Specifically, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy added more than 2.4 million new jobs from September 2023 to ...Read more

The majority of Latinos in the United States experiencing homelessness are invisible. They aren’t living in shelters or on the streets but are instead “doubled up” — staying temporarily with friends or family due to economic hardship. This form of homelessness is the most common, yet it remains undercounted and, therefore, under-...Read more

I have more than once in my writing been accused of the opposite errors in the same article. A few columns ago, some readers called me a fascist and the like and a couple other readers called me a leftist, for them as bad a word as fascist, and all of them seemed very angry.

They were both wrong, I think because a certain kind of mind assumes ...Read more

Does anyone really believe that thwarting Vice President Kamala Harris' quest for the presidency would be good for Palestinians?

Sure, it might feel good for a moment to "punish" Harris for the Biden administration's unqualified support of Israel. The Israeli armed forces have inflicted untold misery on the civilian population of Gaza in ...Read more

The case for federally funded, universally accessible child care is simple: The private market can’t deliver it adequately or affordably to meet the needs of families.

The pushback from policymakers is that it’s too expensive an investment for the government to make, especially in an era of trillion-dollar budget deficits. The child care ...Read more

Americans are blessed to have the First Amendment, with its prohibitions against government abridging freedom of speech and of the press.

Yet, freedom comes with responsibility. Our rampant polling may fill Americans’ hunger to know what might happen before we vote, but it’s a significant contributor to the deterioration of our democracy. ...Read more

With days before the 2024 election, pollsters are working overtime to determine the state of what appears to be a very tight race. Throughout modern history, polls have played an essential role in the election process, providing real-time information that helps voters and candidates. However, in recent years, polls have come under increased ...Read more

Opinion editor’s note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Minnesota Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.

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Even amid an increasingly coarse culture, let alone campaign, the words from a series of speakers at the Trump campaign rally on Sunday night at New York’s Madison Square Garden ...Read more

"Well, Felix, this elects me."

The speaker was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was at home in Albany with his friend and adviser Felix Frankfurter, monitoring radio reports of a political disaster unfolding in Herbert Hoover's Washington.

It was 1932. Hoover had dispatched the military to break up a camp of World War I veterans who had massed ...Read more

In 2016 and 2020 Donald Trump lost the popular election by several million votes. But in 2016 he won in the Electoral College with slim majorities in several toss-up states. That is the only way he can win the looming election, a contest all the polls show is too close to call. Once again, it is entirely possible that we will elect a president ...Read more

Donald Trump’s outrageous claims about immigrants, election fraud and more seem absurd to many of us, especially on the left — outright fabrications that no reasonable person could believe. But new research conducted with our colleagues reveals something unsettling: Gullibility and delusion are not confined to Trump’s supporters, opposers ...Read more

Scrolling through Twitter one day very early in the COVID-19 pandemic, I saw a tweet that struck me as equal parts mirthless and true. “Things will be fine, eventually, in thousands of years, for rocks,” quipped comedian Donni Saphire. It reminded me of a saying my mother used to trot out when I was growing up, whenever I got exercised by ...Read more

The Joe Biden era is officially over.

It ended on Oct. 24, 2024 in Clarkston, Ga. It was there, in front of a raucous campaign crowd that featured actor Samuel L. Jackson, rock star Bruce Springsteen and directors Spike Lee and Tyler Perry, that former President Barack Obama officially passed the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris, the ...Read more

Donald Trump’s closing campaign rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday was a stunningly racist display where speakers mocked Latinos, Jews and Palestinians, likened the event to a “Nazi rally” and called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” It was capped by a 78-minute speech in which the former president repeatedly attacked ...Read more

We judge presidential candidates on so many extraneous criteria: the style and color of their clothes, their hair, their height; whether they laugh or smile or scowl.

The legendary food writer M.F.K. Fisher wrote, “First we eat. Then we do everything else.” In that spirit, I think it’s our patriotic duty to add how and where Kamala Harris...Read more