This was the week when despairing global leaders -- with an urgency unlike anything since World War II -- looked to the modern era's Leader of the Free World hoping to find leadership, resources and maybe even an inspiring way to win our war against a rampaging pandemic.

But no. The present occupant of the office once called the free world's ...Read more

If Joe Biden is counting on African American votes to win the White House in November, he may want to reboot his outreach strategy.

During a radio interview Friday morning with Charlamagne tha God on the nationally syndicated, "The Breakfast Club," Biden said that "if you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain'...Read more

I am not a great fan of true-crime docuseries. I believe their ability to draw large audiences for premium cable and streaming services has resulted in making it harder for nonfiction filmmakers to get funding for productions dealing with less sensational, more complicated stories about such matters as growing economic disparity, racism and ...Read more

If there is a silver lining to the flawed U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic, it is this: The relatively high number of new cases being diagnosed daily -- upward of 20,000 -- will make it easier to test new vaccines.

To determine whether a vaccine prevents disease, the study's subjects need to be exposed to the pathogen as it circulates ...Read more

Information is still emerging about the case of Ahmaud Arbery -- the unarmed 25-year-old slain in a quiet Georgia street -- but what is known is disturbing. Two men eventually arrested in the killing told police that Arbery was running down the road, and that they thought he was a burglar and shot him in self-defense. Before state officials ...Read more

President Donald Trump is preparing to exit his second arms-control treaty with Russia since taking the oath of office, and the opposition is already in high dudgeon. "This is insane," tweeted former CIA director Michael Hayden. "Another shortsighted Trump move to abandon a treaty that includes many close allies," tweeted Samantha Power, former ...Read more

Another virus is infecting the world in the wake of COVID-19 and it is hitting the United States with particular virulence.

A plague of conspiracy theories is attacking scientific facts about the pandemic, and replacing them with fake theories that will undermine efforts to tame it. Social media permits such misinformation to spread online, ...Read more

They don't know what they are doing. That's what President Barack Obama said about U.S. leaders in charge of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. He was giving online speeches at commencement events around the country with discomforting rhetoric, but was nicer than usual. He mentioned no names.

The suspicion is that he mostly had President ...Read more

There's a powerful case to be made that the coronavirus crisis -- with its mounting evidence that earlier and more aggressive U.S. intervention in March could have saved thousands of lives -- isn't the first or only time that people have died needlessly because of Donald Trump's unfitness for the presidency.

For more than two years, civilians ...Read more

In the early days of the stay-at-home orders, one of the arguments used to press for a quick and nearly full reopening of the country was that COVID-19 wasn't that dangerous. Why be so upset about the novel coronavirus, some critics asked, when flu kills more people? That talking point was squashed when, within three months of the pandemic's ...Read more

Florida's senior U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio should make the most of his talents as "Trump whisperer." He could help elevate the country's stature in the eyes of a disappointed world.

This week, Republican leaders tapped Rubio to be acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, one of the most powerful committees in Congress.

His predecessor...Read more

Fight for someone you don't know. Health care is a human right. Billionaires should not exist. People over profit. Not me, us.

To Bernie Sanders, these sayings weren't just applause lines or bumper stickers. They're his life's work.

With his campaign suspended, the Vermont senator's presidential ambitions appear to have ended. Yet as a global ...Read more

Needless to say, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to predict how historians will write about contemporary political figures. However, it sure seems that some, if not most historians, have a proclivity to rewrite history when it comes to certain leaders with whom they share common political views. Case in point, Che Guevara is almost ...Read more

The Trump administration -- which has made a signature achievement of eluding accountability for all manner of lawless and corrupt conduct -- is headed for a high-stakes showdown with a federal judge who has some very powerful cards to play.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan presides over the case of President Donald Trump's fired national ...Read more

Are the United States and China heading for a new Cold War? Judging by some of the rhetoric and policies emanating from Beijing and Washington, it sure looks that way.

Already tense, relations between the world's two largest powers have deteriorated sharply since the lethal coronavirus first emerged in the eastern Chinese city of Wuhan and then...Read more

As soon as Donald Trump announced that he is taking hydroxychloroquine to ward off the coronavirus, it is likely that somebody, somewhere in America immediately began trying to figure out how they could get their hands on some.

They clung to his every word as he spoke to reporters on Monday, convinced that their president is the smartest man on...Read more

The coronavirus offers important lessons on the need to reduce the threat of climate change.

For starters, we've learned there is a heavy price to be paid for ignoring repeated warnings from scientists with expertise in their field of study.

Researchers at the Global Carbon Project on Tuesday published a report revealing that the Earth can ...Read more

It has often occurred to me that the appropriate response to some of the ridiculous things President Donald Trump utters is: "He's an idiot."

Don't get me wrong (as op-ed writers like to say). I'm not impugning Trump's IQ. By "idiot" I mean something a bit different: that Trump often doesn't know what he's talking about. (That doesn't exclude ...Read more