How do we ensure that the world has access to the COVID-19 vaccines needed to prevent more variants like the latest omicron strain from emerging?

One disturbingly common response to calls from the World Health Organization and others to increase the availability of doses in emerging economies is to suggest supply isn’t really the problem, but...Read more

The media have been awash in hand-wringing stories from reporters and columnists concerning 2020 census data showing a decline in the rate of population growth from 2010. A major newspaper editorial with the headline “A quickening U.S. baby bust” went so far as to opine that such “demographic stagnation” may lead to “diminished ...Read more

We have repeatedly criticized Missouri Gov. Mike Parson and Attorney General Eric Schmitt for working so long and hard to keep an innocent man in prison.

So now that Kevin Strickland is free, after serving more than 42 years for a triple murder he did not commit, it’s beautiful to be reminded that there are also lots of good people out there,...Read more

Finally.

A couple of decades have passed since the girls and women abused by billionaire Jeffrey Epstein went unheard and unheeded.

It’s been 10 years since his accusers began a campaign to reopen the case against him.

Three years ago, the Miami Herald published its series, Perversion of Justice, that led New York prosecutors to start ...Read more

Long ago, in a United States that now seems far, far away, the coming-to-America story of Saule Omarova would be hailed as a stirring endorsement of our nation as a beacon for democracy-seekers. Born in 1966 under the Communist dictatorship of the USSR, and raised under her Kazakh grandmother who’d lost the rest of her family to Stalinist ...Read more

Redistricting is one of the most underestimated of political topics.

But in battleground states like Florida, it’s one of the issues threatening the sacred democratic process of electing our leaders. You know, the crux of why we call ourselves free people. Or should I say, STILL claim to call ourselves free people?

Floridians need to pay ...Read more

Drug overdoses, which gained attention in recent years as a “white problem,” are now more common among Black Americans.

In 2020, drug overdose death rates among Black Americans overtook those of white Americans for the first time since the 1990s, according to our recent analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ...Read more

Generosity connects human beings. It is a powerful core value we share across ideologies and identities. It’s how we relate to our community, family and intrinsic sense of belonging. My wife, Luz, and I have taught it to our kids, Lin-Manuel, Luz and Miguel — the spirit of generosity from our community in Puerto Rico to the streets of ...Read more

The multiple guilty verdicts last Wednesday against three white Georgia men who cornered and murdered a Black jogger marked a refreshing turn of justice. A jury drew a much-needed line between stand-your-ground laws and gun-carrying vigilantes who have been emboldened to go on human hunting sprees. The nearly all-white jury decided that spurious...Read more

A judge has ordered that two lawyers who filed a lawsuit advancing former President Donald Trump’s false claims of mass voter fraud must pay almost $187,000 in legal fees to the defendants. This is an appropriate sanction for abuse of the legal system in service to a toxic lie. Other lawyers who promoted this attempted coup against democracy ...Read more

I spent my teens in a rural area of upstate New York in the 1970s. We watched a lot of PBS. At Christmastime, the local PBS station ran the 1951 version of “A Christmas Carol” starring Alistair Sim over and over again. I watched it every time.

Originally released as “Scrooge,” the film was directed by Brian Desmond-Hurst and written by ...Read more

In October, an Iranian militia group calling themselves the “Allies of Syria” launched five suicide drones at the only publicly acknowledged U.S. base in Syria, Al Tanf, home to more than 200 troops. Thanks largely to a timely warning from Israel, there were no casualties.

Noting that the attack was “coordinated and deliberate” Central ...Read more

Consider the array of civil and human rights protected by Supreme Court landmark rulings in the last century: Public schools cannot be racially segregated. A person of one race has the right to marry someone of another race. A person has the right to marry someone of the same sex. And a woman has a right to a legal abortion.

Today, all but one ...Read more

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the liberal Democrat from Massachusetts, described him as a “dangerous man” who “failed as a leader” at the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Donald Trump called him “clueless” and an “enemy” of the U.S. when he refused to cave into the then-president’s self-serving demands to overheat the economy.

Yes, Jerome “...Read more

As if living in space weren’t difficult enough.

The Russian military recently tested a direct-ascent antisatellite, or ASAT, missile on an old Soviet orbital, Cosmos 1408. The resulting cloud of debris — numbering 1,500 individual pieces so far — sent astronauts aboard the International Space Station scrambling for safety as the wreckage ...Read more

The idea of “abolishing” or “defunding” the police has always struck me as risky, to say the least, and not very well thought through. It has the potential to cause at least as many problems as it solves.

So when some school districts actually decided give it a try, I worried they might come to regret it sooner rather than later.

Which...Read more

The problem with using the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserves to drive down fuel prices is it's a temporary solution that, absent a cohesive long-term energy strategy, won't change the cost trajectory.

President Joe Biden last Tuesday ordered the release of 50 million barrels from the 605 million-barrel oil reserve with the expressed goal of...Read more

In hearing the guilty verdicts of those who murdered Ahmaud Arbery, I felt a sense of relief that justice was done in a case where the evidence was so clear that the defendants were guilty. Yet that reaction, which I am sure was shared by many, reveals a great deal about our country’s history in cases dealing with race — and about a ...Read more

Chicago journalist Ben Joravsky called me a “son of Chicago,” and I am. Inside and out. A love for this city is part of my heritage. My father, Mike Royko, served as a voice for Chicagoans through his newspaper column for 30-plus years. We lost his voice 24 years ago. I still feel the need for that voice for Chicagoans. Someone to speak out ...Read more

At least we’re learning. Remember when the early reaction to the outbreak of a deadly virus in Wuhan was to discourage people from changing their travel plans?

South Africa’s government didn’t sit on information about a new worrying variant of SARS-CoV-2, which the World Health Organization has dubbed omicron. It didn’t downplay it. On ...Read more