As summer dawned and the Fourth of July holiday approached, I learned I won't be allowed to visit my son and daughter-in-law in New York or my sister and her family in Massachusetts unless I first self-isolate there for two weeks. Tack that onto the driving time and there goes the whole vacation.

You're out of luck, too, if you're considering a...Read more

If there's a cruel way to handle an immigration issue, the nation can rest assured that the Trump administration will find it.

The latest chapter in President Trump's book, "How to Close Down a Nation to Foreigners" (and no, that's not a real book), is a pending order that international students enrolled in U.S. colleges must attend in-person ...Read more

On Monday the Supreme Court gladdened the hearts of cellphone users by ruling that a 1991 federal law outlawing most robocalls could largely remain on the books. But it struck down a 2015 amendment that made an exception for calls seeking to collect debts owed to or guaranteed by the federal government.

The carveout, the majority concluded, was...Read more

American sports are changing, and the Kansas City Chiefs are on the clock.

Last week, the NFL's Washington Redskins announced plans to reconsider the team's name, a decision that will almost certainly lead to a new name by the start of the football season. A few days later, the Cleveland Indians of Major League Baseball said they would think ...Read more

President Donald Trump's proposal for a "National Garden of American Heroes," is a ludicrous, transparently political stunt. It's also his latest, ill-considered salvo against modern art and architecture.

Back when the 45th president was a real estate developer, he dressed his skyscrapers in glitzy glass and metal. But ever since he moved into ...Read more

Christopher Columbus did not set out to prove that the world was round (educated people had proven the flat-Earthers wrong centuries earlier). He was not the first European to cross the Atlantic (that title goes to Norse Viking Leif Eriksson). And he never, ever -- not once -- set foot on what is today the United States of America; he didn't ...Read more

Weeks before the 1996 general election, operatives at the Republican National Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee urged GOP campaigns to adopt a last-minute, new strategy.

As New York Times reporter Adam Clymer wrote, they urged "their party's Congressional candidates to cut loose from Bob Dole and press voters to maintain...Read more

Looking back on it now, Barack Obama had it all wrong in 2004.

"There is not a liberal America and a conservative America," the Illinois state senator proclaimed in his keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention. "There is the United States of America!"

How quaintly aspirational that sentiment seems today.

As anyone who has been ...Read more

As concern over the impact of COVID-19 on prison populations began to mount, the federal Bureau of Prisons implemented a ban in March that prohibits lawyers from visiting their incarcerated clients. However justifiable the ban may be, it compounds the challenges lawyers face representing those held in custody, a crucial tool lawyers rely on to ...Read more

For months, President Donald Trump's Justice Department has hinted that it intends to crack down on Silicon Valley. It recently took a big step closer as senior antitrust officials met with their state counterparts to plot out a case against Alphabet Inc.'s Google. Quite what they plan to argue isn't yet clear. But as the final months of Trump's...Read more

The recent spike in U.S. COVID-19 infections has mercifully been accompanied by a declining death count. There were days in the spring when the country had half the number cases but twice as many deaths. Now, at least, the U.S. is testing more widely.

And even though death is a lagging indicator, and the numbers are likely to catch up to some ...Read more

Online schooling has failed. American schools need to reopen in the fall.

It has now become obvious that the steady diet of online instruction put in place for the coronavirus pandemic not only has hurt kids academically and increased absenteeism, but has contributed to anxiety and depression and probably even aggravated health problems such as...Read more

When demonstrators took to the streets to protest the death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, the cause was just but the worry was real: Were the marches going to lead to massive new outbreaks of coronavirus just as most of the nation had flattened the curve?

At the same time, newly reopened bars, restaurants and ...Read more

It's unfortunately beyond the power of the Supreme Court to abolish the electoral college, a hopelessly antiquated and unfair way to choose the president. But in a unanimous ruling Monday, the court at least prevented the system from becoming even less democratic.

Acting on cases from Washington and Colorado, the justices held that states may ...Read more

It's almost always an advantage to have a seat at the table.

In March, as Congress wrestled with the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic and debated the contours of what would soon become the largest economic bailout in U.S. history, four legislators pushed hard to make sure that franchise operators received special treatment.

They wrote a letter...Read more

WASHINGTON -- At Gettysburg, where the bloodiest and most decisive battle of the Civil War occurred, no fewer than 1,320 monuments are scattered across the rolling Pennsylvania landscape. Some memorialize Union generals and their men; others remember Confederates.

One is especially poignant: the Maryland monument, which lists both Union and ...Read more

Congressional Republicans put out a clear message recently: Face masks are OK. You should wear one.

The concerted effort, reluctantly joined by President Donald Trump, should ease the partisan tension, if not end it, over face masks in the battle to stem the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

Hopefully, that will do the same for the larger ...Read more

As much as Facebook deserves a comeuppance for its years of egregious behavior, the social media company probably won't suffer long-term from the July ad boycott.

Nor change its shameful ways.

It's disgraceful that CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg's company divides America, threatens our democracy and gives the tech industry a black eye. His ...Read more