Politics
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Virginia Heffernan: When Trump cries 'antifa,' it's an obvious excuse to tear gas his enemies
President Donald Trump is using one of his favorite canards again: antifa.
He is threatening to label the anti-fascist cause a terrorist organization. It isn't, and he can't, but he and his lieutenants, Attorney General William Barr and Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, are still trying to brand the George Floyd protests with that scare word.
This ...Read more
Editorial: Mattis told the truth about Trump. Why won't more Republicans?
It's impossible to exaggerate the significance of former Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis' decision to speak out against President Donald Trump's attempt to use the U.S. military to advance a political agenda at a time of national trauma.
Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general, largely has kept a low public profile since resigning in 2018 ...Read more
Commentary: In wake of George Floyd death, TV turns to conversations about race
NBC's Lester Holt and "Sesame Street's" Big Bird. CNN's Van Jones and PBS' Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Charlayne Hunter-Gault. Television is helping in a major way to drive a national conversation about race in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of police on May 25.
With its status as still the most important ...Read more
Martin Schram: It's time to paint our next 'American Gothic'
"American Gothic," the iconic portrait that became the face of America in a time of crisis, is touring the world, once again.
But this "American Gothic" is Donald Trump's new one, not Grant Wood's Depression-era masterpiece. And the reviews the new American Gothic is getting -- overseas and back in the USA -- are hardly rave. Rage is more like ...Read more
Commentary: Confederate monuments institutionalize racism. Take them all down. Now
A racist civic sculpture celebrating white supremacy was taken down off its pedestal on Tuesday in Alexandria, Va. The action, dramatic and long overdue, represents a sliver of light piercing the current gloom.
The bronze figure of a lone Confederate soldier, positioned to face due south, had stood for 131 years in the city's historic core, ...Read more
Trudy Rubin: From Tiananmen Square to Lafayette Square, Trump's love of military undermines democracy
On June 4, 1989, exactly 41 years ago, China's military shot, killed and arrested thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
Tens of thousands of Hong Kong protesters came out with candles on Thursday in memory of the massacre, despite a Beijing-backed ban on their rally.
Yet Donald Trump, then a 43-year-old real ...Read more
Editorial: Respond strongly to China on Hong Kong
"Hide our strength, bide our time," said Deng Xiaoping, China's former leader. Xi Jinping, China's current president, seems to believe the opposite.
Shaking off his failures that let an outbreak in Wuhan become a global coronavirus pandemic, Xi is quickening the crackdown on Hong Kong by championing a new national security law that would allow ...Read more
Editorial: Small towns are hurting: The $3 trillion in coronavirus aid isn't heading to hometown America
The coronavirus is wreaking havoc in small towns and cities across America. Once again, the federal government ignored citizens living outside the big cities. The $3 trillion in coronavirus aid isn't heading to hometown America, but to large municipalities.
Direct relief was targeted only to communities of 500,000 people or more. That leaves ...Read more
Editorial: A very abbreviated history of police officers killing black people
George Floyd, Jamar Clark, Philando Castile. Reading the names of African Americans killed by police in or near Minneapolis alone can boggle the mind, and of course these are only the names that made the national news. Like high-profile police killings in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Texas, the Southeast, the Northwest, the East ...Read more
Commentary: Trump's rejection of WHO and other global pacts leaves America on its own
President Donald Trump's announcement last week that he would terminate U.S. membership in the World Health Organization is but the latest in a long list of decisions he has made to walk away from international institutions and agreements.
From his first days in office, Trump has maintained that putting America first meant dumping trade accords...Read more
Will Bunch: No end in sight, can George Floyd protests become a peaceful American revolution?
Even if you tear it down, they will come. Just 13 hours earlier, a giant crane -- deus ex machina, indeed -- had airlifted the 2,000-pound likeness of Philadelphia's nightstick-wielding ex-mayor and top cop Frank Rizzo from its 21-year command post at the Municipal Services Building. The stench of brutal and oppressive policing still hung thick ...Read more
Editorial: When the powerful say nothing in the face of injustice, they are giving their consent
This week, The Atlantic published a stunning critique of President Donald Trump by retired Gen. Jim "Mad Dog" Mattis warning against a militarized response to the nationwide civil rights protests of recent days and calling the president a threat to the Constitution. "Never did I dream," he wrote, that troops would be called on to "violate the ...Read more
George Skelton: After George Floyd's death, we need action: Fire bad cops now
California schools chief Tony Thurmond reacted instinctively when his car was pulled over by a highway patrolman. Thurmond is black. The officer was white.
"I put my hands on the dashboard," Thurmond told me. "My heart was pounding out of my chest."
Why was he pulled over?
"The officer never said. I don't think we were speeding."
The "why" ...Read more
Mary McNamara: Nostalgia fuels racism and injustice. Don't fall under its spell again
It's only June but I think it's safe to say that 2020 will go down in history as one terrible, horrible, unrelievedly crazy year. A pandemic, more than 100,000 Americans dead in three months, hospitals overrun, businesses closed, record unemployment, massive protests over racist police brutality -- in some places turned violent by looters, ...Read more
Editorial: Donald Trump cares about his convention, not North Carolina's health. Good riddance
For those who've long wanted Charlotte, N.C., to rid itself of the 2020 Republican National Convention, Donald Trump's tweets on it Tuesday were a strong reminder why.
The president packed a lot of wrong into a handful of words. He said North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper refused to guarantee Republicans "use of the Spectrum Arena," which was untrue...Read more
Commentary: There can be no getting along without reform
For decades, video cameras have captured incidents of police brutality involving people of color. Yet despite this documented record of cruelty, our criminal justice system has failed to bring justice and accountability to victims and policymakers have failed to end racial injustice across America.
Now, in the midst of protests over the police ...Read more
Francis Wilkinson: Tom Cotton declares his candidacy for 2024
Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas launched his 2024 presidential campaign Wednesday. His op-ed in the New York Times has created a blizzard of protest both within the nation's most elite liberal newspaper (for publishing it) and beyond (for what it says). Both debates are valid. However, his column is best understood as a marker: Cotton is ...Read more
Cass R. Sunstein: 'Union' is crucial word in Mattis' Trump denunciation
What pushed former Defense Secretary James Mattis over the edge, to denounce President Donald Trump, in the strongest possible terms?
Only the former general knows for sure, but a clue is provided by the title of his statement: "In Union There Is Strength."
Another clue is provided by the most important words in his text: "Donald Trump is the ...Read more
Commentary: Evangelicals can't bridge racial divides with reconciliation overtures alone
Evangelical leaders hesitated to criticize President Donald Trump after he ordered police and military authorities to use tear gas and rubber bullets to remove peaceful protesters from Lafayette Park near the White House so he could get his picture taken in front of nearby St. John's Episcopal Church.
Trump's purpose in creating the photo op ...Read more
Commentary: There can be no getting along without reform
For decades, video cameras have captured incidents of police brutality involving people of color. Yet despite this documented record of cruelty, our criminal justice system has failed to bring justice and accountability to victims and policymakers have failed to end racial injustice across America.
Now, in the midst of protests over the police ...Read more
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