Why did we go to war in Afghanistan 20 years ago?

Because of Sept. 11, 2001.

The United States was attacked on its own soil — by four al-Qaida piloted planes crashing into the Twin Towers in New York City, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pa., diverted from its target of the U.S. Capitol — for the first time since Pearl Harbor.

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A month ago, which now seems more like a year ago, Ipsos released the findings of a poll gauging public opinion on defunding the police.

When asked about acting on one interpretation of that controversial phrase — abolishing the police — only 11% of Americans supported doing it. When asked about the other interpretation — redistributing ...Read more

The most enlightening thing ever written about Bernie Madoff, the prodigiously corrupt financier who died in prison Wednesday, was a jailhouse interview he gave to Steve Fishman for New York magazine in 2011.

Madoff, then kicking off his 150-year sentence for orchestrating a Ponzi scheme that lost clients some $65 billion, sounded contrite. But...Read more

When President Joe Biden announced last week that the United States would withdraw its last troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, he cast the decision as closing the book on a 20-year conflict. "It's time to end the forever war," he said.

But the battle for Afghanistan began long before American troops arrived in 2001, and won't end when the ...Read more

By appointing a commission to study changes to the Supreme Court, President Joe Biden has alarmed the opponents of court-packing while disappointing the supporters.

Mitch McConnell, the Kentuckian who leads Senate Republicans, said the establishment of the commission is “a direct assault on our nation’s independent judiciary and yet another...Read more

In his first news conference since being elected, President Joe Biden had strong words for the voter-suppression bills sweeping through state legislatures, calling them “sick” and “pernicious.” He was right, but he also knows strong words won’t be enough. So the White House is supporting federal legislation to stem this tide: the For ...Read more

While COVID-19 has dominated our public health discussions over the last year, we have failed to adequately address another deadly epidemic.

This epidemic affects more than 300 people every day in the United States and has a fatality rate of about 30%. It claims the lives of more than 3,000 American children and teens per year.

This uniquely ...Read more

President Joe Biden's decision to withdraw all remaining U.S. troops from Afghanistan represents a major shift in U.S. counterterrorism strategy. The withdrawal is calendar-based rather than conditions-based, which means the U.S. is withdrawing from Afghanistan not because conditions on the ground are conducive to peace and stability but because...Read more

An ongoing crisis at the border, a health care system in shambles, and endless wars – Democrats and Republicans both struggle with finding solutions to these real, pressing problems.

Maybe it’s time to seriously consider building a third party, an organization with a fresh perspective that could break the stranglehold that our two dominant ...Read more

The "gag rule" is over.

The centerpiece of the Trump administration's attack on women's reproductive health was its 2019 rule banning abortion referrals, requiring coercive anti-abortion counseling for pregnant patients and imposing stringent financial standards for clinics offering federally funded reproductive .

This policy, known by ...Read more

Full disclosure: I like trains.

In fact, I wouldn’t have minded if America had not taken such a sharp turn in the mid-20th century away from public transportation — such as trains and buses — toward the private ownership of automobiles.

It was a national choice. Eventually nearly everyone was on board. In the 1950s, President Dwight ...Read more

After the prior administration got itself in hot borscht for, even before taking office, all but assuring Russia that there would be no lasting penalties for 2016 election interference, Joe Biden is setting a better precedent and imposing harsh sanctions. It’s good that Vladimir Putin’s government will finally pay a steep economic price for ...Read more

Joe Biden ran to be a president for all Americans, and this includes young people who were critical contributors to his victory last November.

Young people have the power to influence presidential elections, but whether they influence presidencies is another matter entirely. Biden ran on promises that matter to young people. But, after less ...Read more

Having won the greatest landslide before or since (98.5% of the electoral votes, all but Vermont’s and Maine’s) and carried the biggest congressional majorities ever, Franklin Roosevelt in 1937 proposed a possible expansion of the U.S. Supreme Court, whose rulings had been frustrating parts of his New Deal. Even though the GOP had shriveled ...Read more

The story is distinctly American. Eight people killed and at least five others wounded in a mass shooting at a FedEx work site near the Indianapolis airport.

Again.

Since the beginning of the year, there have been at least 147 mass shootings in these United States, in which 176 people died and 579 people were wounded. Five of them took place ...Read more

What on Earth makes Caitlyn Jenner believe she's qualified to be governor of California?

She's an Olympic gold-medal-winning decathlete, a former spokesperson for Wheaties; she posed for the cover of Playgirl magazine, has appeared in all sorts of TV shows including "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," and is an activist on behalf of transgender ...Read more

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves' quiet declaration of April as Confederate Heritage Month in his state is a stinging reminder of how hard it is for all Americans to put away our collective racist legacy.

Reeves signed the proclamation earlier this month without fanfare, and its existence was virtually unknown until the Sons of Confederate Veterans...Read more

CHICAGO – We have seen police needlessly kill people before — but rarely a child.

I don’t know what anyone else sees when they watch the video of a Chicago police officer shooting 13-year-old Adam Toledo in the chest. But when I look at it, I see a brown baby who will never have the chance to grow up and become a man.

I mourn for him and...Read more

A constitutional right to an abortion means a right to have one for any reason. That should also mean a woman can elect to tell her doctor — or not — why she wants an abortion.

But that's not what is happening in Ohio, where the state Legislature in 2017 passed a ban on doctors performing abortions when they know the woman is seeking one ...Read more

Americans have learned the hard way that we must be wary when our presidents deliver feel-good messages about what has been accomplished in a war-torn region.

Too often, our presidents have proclaimed a “mission accomplished,” but then take actions that diminish what they accomplished and inadvertently turn the final result into a mission ...Read more