The year is 2021. Watches record our steps, cars park themselves, helicopters fly on Mars. Yet, despite all of these advancements, when it comes to human decency, the nation still reeks of the Dark Ages.

This week the House is expected to vote on the Equality Act, a bill that would make it illegal to discriminate based on someone's sexual ...Read more

After four years of the Trump administration running roughshod over evenhanded, apolitical law enforcement at the Department of Justice, there is an understandable desire to strengthen constraints on the presidency through legislation or regulation. A former White House counsel and a former assistant attorney general, Bob Bauer and Jack ...Read more

As Congress advances a COVID-19 relief package that calls for a $15 national minimum wage by 2025, I am aware that some people think that being poor is a personal choice, or something that reflects personal failings. It isn’t and it doesn’t.

I’m a coal miner’s daughter — no one has to teach me about hard work. My four siblings and I ...Read more

The Biden administration's decision this week to reopen a detention center in Texas for unaccompanied teenaged minors drew outrage from immigrant rights advocates, including U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who denounced the move as Trumpism revisited, or at the least extended. It's not that simple.

To be sure, resurrecting the 66-...Read more

President Joe Biden’s top legislative priority goes by two names: “COVID relief” and “stimulus.” The two terms help reporters and politicians avoid repetition, but they also point to the two main purposes the bill is supposed to serve.

It would, among other things, send $1,400 checks to most households. That can be defended as relief:...Read more

For several years now, some gun manufacturers have been exploiting a loophole in federal regulations to evade a range of gun control measures by selling firearms in pieces to be assembled later by consumers, including people barred from owning a gun. It's a preposterous situation, and the Biden administration should either address it through ...Read more

It's almost dead. And when we finally kill it off for good, it will be an epic day for our country.

I'm not talking about the Republican Party. Its survival will be up to its voters, or former voters.

And I'm not talking about the political death of the defendant whom the Senate just acquitted. Now that the trial is over, there's even more ...Read more

In announcing that the Biden administration was resuming efforts to put abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, “It’s important that our … money reflect the history and diversity of our country.”

While liberals bask in the blinding glow of superficial identity politics, patting themselves...Read more

Harriet Tubman was a conductor on the Underground Railroad, with a record of never losing a single passenger on the road to freedom from slavery. She aided the Civil War effort as a Union spy, scout, cook and battlefield nurse, and in 1863 she led an armed raid that freed 700 slaves in South Carolina — making her the first woman ever to lead ...Read more

The USDA has now announced that there’s “no credible evidence” that people can get COVID-19 from touching packages in the grocery store. At first blush, this sounds like a breakthrough — but there was no evidence of this in the spring of 2020 either.

Throughout the pandemic, there’s been a tendency to play up unlikely risks, and not ...Read more

The pure, utter wildness of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will overwhelm you. When I was there one June, I watched thousands of caribou migrating purposefully to their birthing grounds on the refuge's coastal plain. The Porcupine caribou herd had once again traversed 400 miles to reach this incomparable place — remote, pristine, rich ...Read more

Human beings are deeply social, and that's not surprising. But this fact has taken on new urgency as we struggle to reach herd immunity in the face of new, more transmissible forms of COVID-19. One fear that public health officials have repeatedly articulated is vaccine hesitancy — that despite the availability of safe vaccines, not enough ...Read more

People were bundled against the chill last weekend as they arrived at the Venice Family Clinic. The clinic had set up six white vaccination tents in its ground-floor parking lot, but they and the small propane heaters set up for warmth were weak foils against the wind that whipped through the open structure.

Still, everyone was pretty cheerful....Read more

President Joe Biden’s ability to bring together the two parties in Congress is already being tested. But the good news is that on at least one issue — climate change — the fate of the president’s ambitions does not rest primarily with his ability to unite Congress, but with his ability to support and expand ongoing work in the rest of ...Read more

The stock market applauded Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s testimony to Congress on Tuesday, rebounding on his assurance that an increase in interest rates is nowhere in sight. Powell’s message was well-grounded as well as reassuring — but there’s no disguising the challenges that lie ahead for monetary policy.

Investors were ...Read more

"Everyone you meet here would be happy to kill you," Officer Murphy told me. "That's what you have to remember."

It was my first night as a patrol officer, and Murphy was showing me the ropes.

"Everyone? You think even the little old ladies here want to kill me?" I asked.

Murphy gave me a tight smile. "All right, almost everyone. But you have...Read more

As a media critic, I have developed a pretty high tolerance for hypocrisy. But not when seeing Republican Sens. Ted Cruz, of Texas, and Josh Hawley, of Missouri, Tuesday questioning law enforcement authorities about Capitol security and choices they made before and during an insurrection. An attack which was fueled by a lie that the two senators...Read more

In the last several weeks, President Joe Biden has reversed — or put on hold — many of the Trump administration’s immigration and border security policies. No one doubts that the new team is scouring the field, looking for other Trump administration policies and initiatives to cancel. But surely fighting the scourge of human trafficking is...Read more

Somebody in Heidi Cruz’s close circle of friends is a snitch. And, according to her husband, Sen. Ted Cruz, she’s “pretty pissed” about it.

His description was a lot harsher. Appearing Tuesday on the conservative podcast “Ruthless,” the senator referred to such blabbermouths as “a-------.”

It’s hard to find common ground with...Read more

Somebody in Heidi Cruz’s close circle of friends is a snitch. And, according to her husband, Sen. Ted Cruz, she’s “pretty pissed” about it.

His description was a lot harsher. Appearing Tuesday on the conservative podcast “Ruthless,” the senator referred to such blabbermouths as “a-------.”

It’s hard to find common ground with...Read more