We knew that the Trump administration's policy of separating migrant children from their parents as a deterrent to others who might seek asylum in the United States was inhumane, poorly planned and disastrously executed. Now a new government report reveals that the pubic didn't know the half of it.

The incompetence is astounding.

Under a July ...Read more

One of President Donald Trump's first misguided actions in office was to reinstate an antiabortion policy known colloquially as the "global gag rule." Under the rule, any foreign nongovernmental organization receiving U.S. aid for healthcare must agree not to spend any of its other funds -- the money it does not receive from Washington -- on ...Read more

It's been almost two years since Donald J. Trump took the oath of office and began producing a remarkable string of lies, half-truths and insults.

So it's interesting that Sunday, we can mark the halfway point of his first term -- and rest assured this country is perfectly capable of electing him to a second one -- by seeing the liar-in-chief ...Read more

In my mind's eye, former Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker was chuckling softly and flexing his fingers Tuesday morning as he prepared to hit send on a tweet mocking a tax proposal recently floated by newly elected Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

In an interview that aired Jan. 6 on CBS' "60 Minutes," Ocasio-...Read more

Several months before Donald Trump rolled down an escalator in Trump Tower in 2015 to announce his presidential bid, a contractor showed up at the building to collect a payment from the Trump Organization. Michael Cohen, Trump's personal attorney at the time, gave the guy $12,000 to $13,000 – in cash – stuffed inside a Walmart bag.

Because ...Read more

Speaking at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore recently, feminist icon Gloria Steinem came across like a really hip great aunt, a smart, interesting woman who's lived a rich, layered life -- a life worthy of reflection and, on some scale, reverence, whether you subscribe to her politics or not.

She studied in India in her 20s; co-founded ...Read more

Britain's holiday from history was supposed to end this week. After three years of bitter debate, Prime Minister Theresa May hoped Parliament would back the agreement for Britain's withdrawal from the European Union that she painstakingly negotiated over the past 18 months. On Tuesday, however, Parliament voted 2-to-1 against her deal, a ...Read more

Donald Trump's presidency encourages a kind of policy sloth. Because Trump knows practically nothing about policies, including his own, and lies about them regularly, there is little to be gained from debating him publicly or negotiating with him privately. If Democratic leaders do work out an agreement with the White House, it's liable to be ...Read more

Hell hath no fury like a fixer scorned.

As President Donald Trump was settling in for the night at the White House Thursday, Buzzfeed News reported a blockbuster allegation by two unnamed law-enforcement sources: that Trump had instructed his onetime lawyer and hush-money bag man, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress in mid-2017 about a tower ...Read more

The federal government shutdown is taking a steadily increasing toll on the quality of life in America. Trash is strewn across national parks. Lines are growing at airports as unpaid Transportation Security Agency officers choose to stay home. Some 800,000 government workers have to rely on their savings and credit cards to pay for the basics of...Read more

The longer the shutdown continues -- it's entering its fifth week, with no end in sight -- the tougher it is for the roughly 800,000 unpaid federal workers and an estimated half a million unpaid federal contractors to make ends meet. Yet those of us who are still collecting wages in the private sector are being hurt too, and to a much greater ...Read more

The deaths of four Americans in a suicide bombing in Syria this week is not necessarily an argument against President Donald Trump's plan to withdraw 2,000 U.S. troops from that country. Even if the attack were orchestrated by Islamic State, which has claimed responsibility, it's the sort of terrorist incident that sadly will continue to be a ...Read more

Three present and former members of the Chicago Police Department stood trial alongside an unindicted co-conspirator: the code of silence that exists within the force to protect rogue officers.

On Thursday, a Cook County judge acquitted former Detective David March, former Officer Joseph Walsh and Officer Thomas Gaffney on all charges related ...Read more

The news that the FBI opened an investigation in 2017 as to whether President Donald Trump was actually working for the Russians shouldn't have come as a shocker.

No public evidence has yet emerged from the FBI probe or from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation that the president took orders from the Kremlin. And Trump has been ...Read more

When the threats of sea-level rise are discussed, many assume that those at risk are South Floridians who live on the coast, that those of us who live away from the water need not worry. Beware that false comfort. We are all in danger.

We've all seen the rising water in Miami Beach. Below the surface of our lives are perils many of us do not ...Read more

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely

The world offers itself to your imagination,

Calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting

When news of Mary Oliver's death came Thursday, those lines from her poem "Wild Geese" rose out of my memory like startled birds, and they've been fluttering around my brain ever since.

Oliver was a poet, ...Read more

In 2015, a student tweeted about an extra credit activity in my psychology course, igniting a discussion about the "tragedy of the commons" -- the idea that when masses of people engage in excessive consumption, it can have catastrophic environmental consequences, such as climate change. In light of the House and Senate's recently proposed ...Read more

California's new governor, Gavin Newsom, wants it understood that he's not declaring war on Big Pharma, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.

Yes, he wants to give Medi-Cal more power to negotiate drug prices and, yes, he wants to make those prices significantly lower.

But Newsom was surprisingly candid when we spoke Wednesday about...Read more

Could the burgeoning number of independent voters in California constitute the basis for a third party, to compete with the Democrats and the Republicans?

I regularly get calls from national political reporters asking for reaction to this prospect, and now some state-based pundits are suggesting California's penchant for innovation will change ...Read more