There are good reasons for Democrats to be upbeat about their chances of netting at least three Senate seats in the fall, which, combined with a Joe Biden presidential victory, would flip the chamber.

But while Democrats are on the offense in more states than a year ago, they haven't quite locked down the four overall takeovers they need. (Or ...Read more

For two weeks, we waited for the pandemic police to come.

In mid-July, my wife and I headed on vacation to a rustic cabin her father built 65 years ago on a small lake north of Toronto.

Most Americans can't visit Canada these days. Because of the coronavirus threat, both countries have closed their borders to nonessential traffic.

But my ...Read more

Former Vice President Joe Biden is taking some heat for postponing the announcement of his choice of a running mate, a decision he once suggested would be made at the beginning of this month but now could be more than a week away.

The impatience among his fellow Democrats isn't all that surprising. Although vice presidential nominees typically ...Read more

As if the Lebanese haven't suffered enough. For months, they have been caught between an economic meltdown, crumbling public services and a surging pandemic. Now they must count the dead and survey the extensive damage to their capital after two giant explosions on Tuesday.

The blasts, especially the second, were so huge they were reportedly ...Read more

The two biggest events of 2020 have exposed a frightening fact: A passing grade in civics class wasn't a prerequisite for many of our political leaders to get elected to public office. Their embarrassing ignorance about the roles of state and local governments versus the federal government when it comes to handling riots and pandemics shows that...Read more

A yearning for the open road and open air of western South Dakota is understandable during this year of quarantine. But it doesn't take a medical degree to understand that allowing 250,000 or more motorcyclists to jam into the small city of Sturgis during an out-of-control COVID-19 pandemic is downright reckless.

And yet no one in a position of...Read more

Aug. 6 and 9 are the 75th anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The decisions to drop those bombs have been questioned for three-quarters of a century and will be debated for years to come. Some argue that the United States should issue a formal apology to Japan for the bombings (and for the firebombing of Tokyo and ...Read more

No one likes to wait, but the current public COVID-19 test turnaround times make reopening our school systems unimaginable.

Like many Americans, my friend and I are both waiting for a CVS "MinuteClinic" COVID test result. I am a doctor; she is a teacher. I live in Connecticut; she lives in Washington, D.C. The projected wait time for both of us...Read more

In case you missed it, Donald Trump's new target is one of America's oldest and most necessary institutions -- the U.S. Postal Service.

It doesn't matter that Trump and most of his adult family members and top aides vote by mail. He is convinced that during the COVID-19 pandemic, if millions of Americans vote by mail, he ultimately would lose ...Read more

In the first half of 2020, gun purchases by African Americans increased by 58% over the same period last year. That's a bigger increase than any other group, according to a study by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearm industry's trade organization.

I'm not surprised. I'm one of the Black people who bought a gun for the first ...Read more

As a pro-democracy activist in Hong Kong, I have publicly opposed the draconian new national security law imposed on the city by the Beijing government in June. Precisely because I oppose that law, the government of Hong Kong has ruled that I do not qualify to run for a seat on the Hong Kong Legislative Council, the city's legislature.

The new ...Read more

Seventy-five years ago, on Aug. 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on a second Japanese city, Nagasaki.

Experts estimate that more than 200,000 people lost their lives and hundreds of thousands were injured or exposed and survived. Generations later, ...Read more

Most California schools are a week or two away from the start of the school year, which will be conducted online for at least 80% of them. Yet many are still trying to hammer out agreements with their teachers unions about what the school day will look like. How many minutes of live instruction will students receive? How many minutes of recorded...Read more

If the coronavirus hadn't turned our lives upside down, right about now, thousands of vacationers would be taking cruises to Alaska to admire all the spectacular scenery our northernmost state has to offer. Unfortunately, most cruise liners also offer dog-sledding tours as an offshore excursion option. While the Alaska cruise industry will ...Read more

Elon Musk was entitled to be elated when he welcomed two NASA astronauts back to Earth on Sunday. His company, SpaceX, had blasted them into space and then brought them safely home 63 days later. The entire mission was a marvel of engineering and a milestone for American enterprise. In its current mood of exhaustion and discord, the country ...Read more

Fidel Castro has risen from his oversized, corn-kernel-shaped tomb in Santa Ifigenia Cemetery to play a role in another American presidential election.

This time, Castro's ghost looms over Democrat Joe Biden's all-female short list of candidates for vice president.

"The passing of the comandante en jefe is a great loss to the people of Cuba," ...Read more

When Louis DeJoy became postmaster general in May, he was the first person in more than 20 years to run the U.S. Postal Service who had never worked there. His predecessor, Megan Brennan, had spent her entire career with the service, originally as a mail carrier.

On the other hand, DeJoy, an accountant, founded and sold a company, New Breed ...Read more