At a time America urgently needs a great president to unite the people, its president is intent on driving them apart.

Congress must fill the leadership void and prevent President Donald Trump from worsening the current unrest, trampling the Constitution and irreparably harming the nation.

During this grave crisis, when cities, states and the ...Read more

I am a proud American, and I am having trouble breathing in the country I love.

Even though the Declaration of Independence stated that Americans have the unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, these are realities for some yet remain out of reach for far too many.

As the father of two black teenage boys, I had "the ...Read more

Before a violent Friday night, a peaceful evening vigil for George Floyd seemed to accomplish exactly what was needed.

Against the setting sun over a shimmering Des Moines River, it answered an anguish shared across the country. People got a chance to speak their fears and pain and be heard. And they did, in haunting lines like these:

"To ...Read more

All across America, families are experiencing an alarming increase in the need for food.

Even before the pandemic hit, hunger was part of the daily lives of some 37 million Americans, including 11 million children. That's according to statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for 2018 and reported by Feeding America, the nation'...Read more

President Donald Trump was never a mayor or a governor. He's never served on a police force or in any branch of the military. He never tried to end a riot or apprehend a looter while protecting anyone's constitutional rights.

But that shortage of relevant experience didn't stop him from telling the nation's governors how they should halt ...Read more

I kept thinking how jarringly, beautifully blue the sky was -- an odd setting for a day where anguish, fear, and rage spilled onto Philadelphia's streets over the death of George Floyd, a Minneapolis man killed at the hands of police.

As anger again erupted into chaos in the city Monday, I volunteered to cover the protesters and the police, and...Read more

You don't have to be religious to be offended by President Donald Trump's decision to stage a photo op in front of St. John's Episcopal Church. Trump holding a Bible outside the historic "church of the presidents" was just as grotesque as his previous forays into public professions of religiosity.

Remember his claim that "nothing beats the ...Read more

Former Vice President Joe Biden went to a church in Delaware on Monday to listen to voices of protest, then gave a speech on Tuesday in Philadelphia about what has happened in the country since George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis. Both appearances told us a lot about what a Biden presidency would look like.

Awhile ago, I called Barack Obama'...Read more

"No recording allowed! Stop recording now!"

It took a moment to register that the bullhorn admonishment was directed at me. I'd just parked my car and walked up to the edge of Oz Park near Lincoln Park High School in Chicago, where a couple hundred young people were gathered on a hill for the start of a march downtown to protest the killing of ...Read more

I've been searching for something hopeful to latch on to in the week since we watched George Floyd dying on a Minneapolis street, handcuffed and pinned to the ground by a policeman's knee.

But each ray of light I could find wound up with a troubling dark side.

I was encouraged when all four officers involved in Floyd's death were immediately ...Read more

Does the destruction of buildings matter when black Americans are being brazenly murdered in cold blood by police and vigilantes?

That's the question that has been raging on the streets of Philadelphia, and across my architecture-centric social media feeds, over the last few days as a dark cloud of smoke spiraled up from Center City. What ...Read more

If you have awakened from a comfortable sleep wondering how we as a nation got here, it is clearly time for deeper reflection. With the video documenting George Floyd's death after more than eight minutes beneath a Minneapolis police officer's knee, the veil has at least for now been lifted from the plague of police violence that too many ...Read more

Recently, an Ohio man was feeling ill. Thinking a nap might help, he lay down. But soon, he was awakened by a scratchy tongue licking his face and paws pressing against his chest: It was Bear, the feisty longhaired black cat he had adopted from an animal shelter just over a year earlier.

According to a post by the shelter, "Bear knew something ...Read more

Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or the rights of the people to peaceably assemble or "to petition the government for a redress of grievances." These crucial First Amendment protections also limit state government action, thanks to the 14th Amendment, and embody essential values that created and have sustained this ...Read more

On Monday evening, National Guard units accompanied by other federal law enforcement detachments fired rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades and tear gas canisters into crowds demonstrating across the street from the White House against police killings of unarmed black people.

This was done evidently at the behest of the Trump administration so ...Read more

At a hastily arranged Rose Garden press conference on Monday, President Donald Trump announced his intention to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to send federal troops into the states unless governors were able to "dominate" protesters using National Guard soldiers. Then, after the Secret Service fired tear gas and rubber bullets at what ...Read more

President Donald Trump, for better or worse, could be the most unfiltered president in the nation's history. His public comments often meander and crisscross and, within a span of seconds, contradict themselves. Then there's his Twitter feed, a sandblaster through which he spews a torrent of insults, innuendo and outright lies attacking critics ...Read more