Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement announcement offers Republicans a real opportunity. No, not the opportunity to install yet another hard-right conservative on the bench. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell already can claim victory for the kinds of obstructionist and unfair manipulation that ...Read more

The Supreme Court decision that killed the federal vaccine-or-test rule for large businesses is a defeat for employee health and safety. But even aside from the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government doesn’t devote sufficient resources to protect workers in high-risk environments.

The agency that monitors workplace conditions, the ...Read more

It is time for President Joe Biden to use one countermeasure to Russia’s military menace at the Ukraine border that he has so far failed to deploy. It’s way past time, in fact.

But luckily there is still time for America’s president to shift into his people gear and deliver a straight-talk message that can prove meaningful to its prime ...Read more

Many experts doubt the ultimate ability of the criminal justice system to convict Donald Trump because it’s possible he really believed he’d won the election.

The argument goes this way: His conduct — trying to overturn a legitimate election — may look like a crime, but was there criminal intent? If he is so much of a sociopath that he ...Read more

It's hard to believe that two years into this pandemic, we're having to repeat this: Schools must get kids back into the classroom. The continued disruptions have proven damaging to students and their families, and at this point, the learning gaps will be difficult to erase.

Some districts in Michigan, including the state's largest in Detroit, ...Read more

The fatal shooting of a journalist in Tijuana last week was horrible. Now it's happened again. Two truth-tellers, who had publicly feared for their safety as a result of jobs they wouldn't stop doing, gone just like that, killed outside their homes in Tijuana a week apart, first photojournalist Alfonso Margarito Martínez Esquivel on Jan. 17, ...Read more

State Sen. Richard Pan's new bill to treat students' COVID-19 vaccinations like measles vaccinations — as mandatory, with no "personal belief" exemptions — is logical given how disruptive the pandemic has been. Even if kids are less likely than older people to get very sick if infected, they can still transmit the virus to the hundreds of ...Read more

The dubious claim that the term Latinx is a creation of white liberal elites — one being vigorously promoted in right-wing circles — is gaining ground.

The campaign to police and ban one word has scored numerous wins in recent weeks: a flurry of editorials condemning the term and a ban on its use in official communications by the civil ...Read more

The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing are right around the corner. Even though the torch is not yet lit, the Olympic Games have already thrust China’s human rights abuse record into the spotlight, with the United States leading a diplomatic boycott against the sporting event, the first since 1980.

But human rights are not the only frightening ...Read more

Surveys find 81 percent of U.S. adults support voter ID requirements. Yet President Joe Biden recently condemned state election integrity laws that strengthen voter ID protections and ensure the accuracy of voter registration rolls as “Jim Crow 2.0.” This supposed “threat to our democracy” is so grave that Biden equated those who support...Read more

Better late than never came the news on Wednesday that Justice Stephen G. Breyer will retire after the Supreme Court's term ends in June, and before the midterm election that could restore Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans to power in the Senate. Better for President Joe Biden and Democrats, surely, but also for the court and for the ...Read more

In the wake of Justice Stephen Breyer’s rumored retirement, an odd controversy has swirled around President Joe Biden’s campaign pledge to appoint a Black woman to the first vacancy. Critics have compared the promise to college admission quotas; supporters have pointed out that President Ronald Reagan fulfilled his own campaign vow to ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Children are getting COVID-19, being hospitalized and dying. Sure, it's in relatively small numbers. But how many kids' deaths must there be to count as significant?

Just one if you're the parent. Or a brother or sister or a grandparent.

So, when opponents of mandatory vaccinations as a condition for being allowed in a ...Read more

Panicked progressives weren’t shy about telling Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to stop judging and start golfing or gardening.

“Justice Breyer should retire right now” was the headline over a typical see-ya-later-judge opinion piece in the New York Times last year. Not to be outdone, the Washington Post had one, too. And the Breyer-...Read more

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, at the age of 83 and after three decades of demonstrating his brilliance and knowledge, is retiring. Past comments tell us what he wants as a replacement: someone of high legal skill to serve not as a politician seeking popularity or ideological objectives but as an upholder of the rule of law.

President ...Read more

Every election cycle, it seems, there is a new way to refer to a group of voters who seem to have all the juice. These are the voters whom elected officials are targeting to put them over the top in close races.

Sometime back it was soccer moms.

Last presidential election it was suburban moms.

This cycle, it seems, public school parents are ...Read more

President Joe Biden promised to change U.S. foreign policy after two decades of a costly military-driven approach and four years of an America-first shift away from our allies. He committed to using military power only as a tool of last resort, in defense of vital national interests, and to work with our friends and allies on collective ...Read more

The news on Wednesday of Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement from the Supreme Court at the end of this blockbuster term marks an historical transition point.

One of the great pragmatists in the court’s history, Breyer is the last of President Bill Clinton’s appointees to still be serving. Only Justice Clarence Thomas, appointed by ...Read more

The Colleyville synagogue hostage-taking was a nightmare, a vicious, antisemitic attack on a vulnerable Jewish community. It is tempting to obsess on the antisemitism, to see it as the great, sole evil. But if we want change, we must recognize that Colleyville was about more.

Especially since the 2018 shooting that killed 11 people and injured ...Read more

For years now, conservative activists have decried “cancel culture,” the phenomenon of suppressing any speech or writing that offends liberal sensibilities. And it is, in fact, an alarming and annoying trend from the left. But in Wentzville today, conservatives have provided a disturbing example of what might be called the original cancel ...Read more