FORT WORTH, Texas -- What was on Gov. Greg Abbott's mind when he decided that Texas would opt out of resettling international refugees in 2020?

My guess is that it wasn't his faith.

The state's Catholic Conference of Bishops was quick to remind Abbott, a practicing Roman Catholic, that "an essential aspect of our faith is to welcome the ...Read more

When Elizabeth Warren aimed her character assassination at Bernie Sanders in the seventh Democratic presidential debate, she may have thought she'd won a round. And maybe she did.

But the real winner was that old red baiter, the late Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin.

Everything that man said and did was a lie (to borrow a description from another ...Read more

Although foreign policy has hardly figured in the Democratic primaries, the impeachment trial reminds us it's time to look at which Trump opponent would make the best commander in chief.

Almost any candidate would be preferable to a president who disgraces his office by trying to blackmail a foreign leader into investigating his Democratic ...Read more

You almost felt sorry for them, the six Democratic presidential candidates having their last debate before the Iowa caucuses. The subject of President Donald Trump's razzle-dazzle, historically stunning economy came up. What were they to do? Concede its accomplishments? Demonstrate ignorance? Mouth falsehoods? Or respectably indulge in fine-...Read more

President Donald Trump has come up with a new solution for the Middle East, a region that has embroiled the United States for decades in conflict and war. "I think that NATO should be expanded, and we should include the Middle East," he told reporters last week. "And we can come home, or largely come home and use NATO." He even had a name for it...Read more

Illinois began allowing recreational cannabis sales on New Year's Day, and the experience has been enough to induce the sort of giddiness users have been known to exhibit.

Long lines confirmed a lot of pent-up demand for legal weed, and sales the first week amounted to $12.9 million -- higher than (um, in excess of, we mean) the first week's ...Read more

Actress Zoe Kazan created a stir at a television industry publicity event by candidly responding to a question about her grandfather, the distinguished director Elia Kazan, and his decision in testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee to name eight others who had been Communist Party members with him.

Elia Kazan's action in ...Read more

New data released Wednesday -- ironically, by the climate-change-denying Trump administration -- show that the last decade was the hottest since such recordkeeping began in 1880, and that 2019 was the world's second-warmest year in that same period. (The hottest was in 2016.)

This news is less a surprise than it is an affirmation of the known: ...Read more

It might just be America's greatest moral panic since the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s. On Jan. 1, a law passed last year by lawmakers in New York state that aimed to end one of the most pernicious inequities of the mass-incarceration era -- bail rules that locked up those accused but not convicted of minor and often nonviolent crimes for ...Read more

As the impeachment of President Donald Trump moves to what Republicans are calling a trial in the Senate, members of his party are poised to bury evidence of his corruption and acquit him. This is not because they are personally loyal to the president; several GOP senators have previously acknowledged that he is unfit for office. It is because ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- I circle around UCLA's Moore Hall for the third time. Security officers block each entrance. Police in riot gear patrol the streets. Metal fences wall off the building from protesters, and barricades separate protesters on the left from those on the right. Everyone prepares for Donald Trump Jr.'s arrival to promote his new book, "...Read more

When the anti-Trump Republicans of the Lincoln Project crafted their first digital ad, they didn't go after college-educated East Coast urbanites or suburban soccer moms. Instead, they targeted some of the most passionate and some say, inexplicable of the president's supporters: Evangelical Christians.

Since Trump first burst on the political ...Read more

It doesn't take a candidate of color on a debate stage to raise issues of justice and inequality. But that has been the way it has worked out, mostly.

For example, it was exhilarating for many when then-candidate Julian Castro said in a Democratic debate, "Police violence is also gun violence," while naming Atatiana Jefferson, killed in her ...Read more

Here we go again. The Justice Department and Apple are waging yet another battle over the contents of an alleged terrorist's iPhone. And once again, Apple is taking the right position, while the government is prioritizing its short-term needs over the long-term security of consumers worldwide.

At issue are two older iPhones belonging to ...Read more

Patients, seniors, doctors, hospitals, state lawmakers and voters are owed a swift answer from the U.S. Supreme Court about whether the Affordable Care Act will survive the latest legal challenge to its existence. The court needs to remove the uncertainty hovering ominously over this landmark measure, one whose sprawling web of assistance ...Read more

What family of a 35-year-old man wouldn't welcome the news that he intended to leave home and make his own way in the world with his wife and son?

What family, or group of friends and peers, would begrudge such a young man seeking a better life for his family and a more meaningful vocation for himself?

Prince Harry, sixth in line for the ...Read more

To many African Americans, Meghan Markle is simply black. So are Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, Halle Berry, August Wilson, Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.

It doesn't matter that one of their parents happened to be white or another ethnicity. African Americans are an embracing culture. If you have some of our blood running through ...Read more

In a rebuke of historic proportions, the House of Representatives on Wednesday transmitted to the Senate two articles of impeachment, both arising from President Trump's outrageous attempt to strong-arm Ukraine into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden. Trump is only the third president to be impeached.

Now it falls to the Senate to ...Read more