"The N.F.L. Needs More Than a Song," we were reminded Wednesday by the headline above an on-point guest op-ed column in The New York Times by former pro football wide receiver Donte Stallworth.

He was making an important point: The National Football League needs to do far more to address Black concerns than just end its half-century of look-the...Read more

In ruling 7 to 2 that two teachers at Catholic schools couldn't challenge their dismissals under civil rights laws, the Supreme Court on Wednesday rightly focused on the fact the teachers were "entrusted with the responsibility of instructing students in the faith." Thus they were covered by a "ministerial exception" to civil rights laws ...Read more

The Supreme Court took two cautious, balanced steps Thursday to clarify something that was obvious to everyone but President Trump and his lawyers: The president can't dodge investigations into his conduct, even while in office.

But the rulings were so cautious and so balanced that the justices didn't resolve the battles Congress and ...Read more

At the Democratic National Convention in 2016, First Lady Michelle Obama famously compared her party's campaign practices to those of Donald Trump's Republicans by saying, "When they go low, we go high." As admirable as that strategy is, it proved a loser in the November general election to the down and dirty words and tactics of Trump, the king...Read more

Mary Trump's book about her Uncle Donald is dark. Right from the get-go, when it begins with this feel-good epigraph from "Les Miserables": If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed.

Already notorious, "Too Much and Never Enough" is Donald Trump's story, written by his niece, a clinical psychologist and Trump family dissident. It'...Read more

Fighting COVID-19 has been hard enough, but fighting the state for a straight answer on numbers to gauge the past and current spike of new cases has been utterly exhausting. Floridians deserve better.

The latest battle is getting Gov. DeSantis' office to release complete daily hospitalization data for all 67 counties. It's amazing that this is ...Read more

Why aren't critics of pandemic reopenings talking about California in the same breath as some other states? And what does that say about combating Covid-19?

The pundits always single out Florida. Or Texas. Or Arizona. Or all three. Consider Paul Krugman's column on Monday. Krugman, one of the liberal stalwarts on the New York Times's op-ed page...Read more

The Supreme Court just gave its blessing to a wide range of companies refusing to offer their female employees health insurance that covers birth control, even when they could do so without compromising their religious or moral beliefs.

The losers in Wednesday's decision are the millions of women whom Congress intended to protect through the ...Read more

When China imposed a draconian new security law on Hong Kong last week, I grabbed my phone to call some young pro-democracy activists I'd met there in November.

Then I put the phone down because I realized that the old Hong Kong, where free speech and rule of law were allowed despite it being part of China, was over. It was ended by a new ...Read more

Under intense pressure from mostly Black community organizers, some local governments are responding to demands to defund the police and divest from law enforcement. The push to reduce police budgets and reliance on police intervention in noncriminal matters has been accompanied by calls to invest in more resources for people and communities.

...Read more

President Donald Trump this week began demanding that schools open in the fall. It's a successor to his demand last spring that the economy reopen full throttle, and it looks like it will be similarly ignored.

Both are excellent goals, of course. Lots of experts, from pediatricians to economists, stress the importance of students returning to ...Read more

"Religious discrimination." It's an accusation we hear with increasing frequency. Indeed, discrimination on the basis of religion is one of the few common concerns our divided society has left. But even here, political polarization has left its mark.

As conservatives use it, "religious discrimination" carries a meaning that is largely lost on ...Read more

"I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear."

My old UCLA coach, John Wooden, used to quote that Walt Whitman poem often, and I've been hearing its echoes on the streets lately. The people out protesting systemic racism and vowing change are "singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs" about the America that could be -- that ...Read more

President Trump wants to have it both ways: He is pressuring U.S. public schools to reopen, citing nations such as Germany, Denmark and France that have led the way, while insisting that our schools don't need the kind of money that those countries have spent on safely reopening.

Trump seems to think he can ignore the serious surges of COVID-19...Read more

The decision on how and when to reopen schools was hard enough before President Trump this week injected politics into the issue.

Staying in character with another simplistic, bombastic declaration that ignores the nuances of the coronavirus, he tweeted Monday that "SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL."

Nevermind that COVID-19 cases continue to ...Read more

The novel coronavirus pandemic poses a severe challenge to elected leaders that far exceeds any headaches posed by budget crises or corruption scandals. With projections now showing 208,000 Americans dead by Election Day of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, every pandemic decision is fraught with dire public health implications.

This ...Read more

My son, who is nearly 17 years old and Black, is afraid to go outside.

"Mom, I am a Black guy wearing a mask in Oakland," he told me. "I am going to be killed."

Even before the COVID-19 outbreak, my 19-year-old daughter was afraid to ride the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. "Mom," she explained, "they kill Black girls on BART."

She was ...Read more

Long before current market volatility, state and local pension debt posed a risk somewhere between a ticking time bomb and a crate of nitroglycerin. An explosion is coming eventually, and any major shock, whether related to COVID-19 or the next recession down the road, could set it off. As USA Today reported recently: "Before (the coronavirus) ...Read more

Does President Donald Trump want to deport everyone who is not an American citizen?

Sometimes it seems that way. His administration recently announced that it may send home international students at colleges and universities that choose online learning in the fall, in an effort to reduce the risks associated with the coronavirus pandemic.

The ...Read more

The Supreme Court has decided, 7-2, that teachers in Catholic elementary schools are not covered by employment discrimination law. This is a highly important expansion of religious exemptions from government regulation.

The Supreme Court had already given religious institutions an exemption for so-called "ministerial" employees. It has now gone...Read more