Policing and prosecuting for profit contradicts reasonable notions of justice and fairness, yet it’s allowed in most U.S. states. Using a process known as civil asset forfeiture, law enforcement agencies seize private property that they claim was somehow involved in a crime. And they may keep it — even if the owner is never criminally ...Read more

The We the People competition has trained young Americans to know and engage in our democratic system for over 30 years.

It has long been recorded that Benjamin Franklin, when departing the Constitutional Convention in 1787, was asked “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"

The American sage responded warily: “A ...Read more

Every day, 10,000 babies are born in the United States. These babies representing all races are born innocent. They do not know racism.

I was born in rural Louisiana and was oblivious to racism. As a sharecropper, I worked 13 years without a paycheck. We were taught God created us all equal. I moved to Chicago in 1965, and my relatives began to...Read more

There was once a president-elect who suspected the previous, one-term president — a man with an outsized ego, thin skin for criticism and a penchant for trying to restrict fundamental rights — was plotting to overturn the free and fair election and refuse to vacate the White House.

Alarmed, the incoming president sought an audience with the...Read more

Artificial intelligence is already affecting our lives in many positive ways, automating tasks, helping to diagnose medical issues and acting as a voice-controlled virtual assistant for many. Still, there is a very real danger of misuse and unintended consequences of the technology, as we saw recently in Maryland, with the filing of what is ...Read more

Republican-led states keep finding ways to challenge the authority of the federal government on anything that doesn’t line up with their conservative worldview.

This time the target is a new law that requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to pregnant employees.

That law, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, was a decade in the...Read more

As someone who remembers when Columbia University students took over Hamilton Hall 56 years ago, let me say that 2024 is not 1968.

Back then, our whole country was engaged in debate over the justice of a Vietnam War that involved tens of thousands of American troops. Today, students are setting up tent encampments to protest a war that is not ...Read more

There is no artificial intelligence without the fruits of human inquiry.

Today’s generative AI applications were built on a foundation of such information, drawn from across the internet and from various databases totaling, according to at least one estimate, somewhere around 300 billion words.

That’s a lot of intellectual property, much ...Read more

A reckoning is happening on college campuses across the country.

In the last few weeks, students at dozens of colleges and universities have camped out to protest Israel’s U.S.-backed war on Gaza — and often their schools’ investments in companies that profit from that war.

These students have been met with incredible repression. As of ...Read more

She’s already written an entire book about the racist history of Kentucky’s state song.

But now, Louisville historian Emily Bingham is trying another tack: a social media campaign to encourage folks to stop singing “My Old Kentucky Home” on Derby Day.

On Saturday, Bingham will be at Churchill Downs with guests, and when they play “My...Read more

United States drug policy this week moved one step closer to sanity. It’s got much further to go.

We are not cannabis enthusiasts, nor do we love what legal and regulated substances like alcohol and tobacco do to human and public health. But dealing with those who sold and used pot through arrest, prosecution and occasional incarceration was ...Read more

The news Tuesday that the Justice Department plans to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug is most welcome. But very, very late in coming.

President Biden promised during the 2020 presidential campaign that he would decriminalize cannabis. Moving the substance from Schedule I, for the most dangerous and abused drugs, to Schedule III as...Read more

It is never OK to use physical violence against people with whom you disagree. This should be obvious, but the events that unfolded on the UCLA campus early Wednesday show the consequences when that message is lost.

Late Tuesday night, a large group of people attacked the anti-war encampment on the Westwood campus. They weren’t campus ...Read more

On April 25, former President Donald Trump argued to the United States Supreme Court that the Constitution crowned him absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for acts taken during his presidency. The facially alarming argument made startling headway with conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and ...Read more

Donald Trump is in court right now. But not everyone understands that this is not a “hush money” case. He isn’t charged with being unfaithful to his wife or even with paying a woman to keep quiet about his affair. He is charged with falsifying business records, which is illegal, no matter who you are.

I have read about the case, but I don...Read more

It has been nearly seven years since the #MeToo movement rocked social media, with millions of women posting publicly about their experiences of sexual assault in response to allegations that Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein had committed predatory acts.

As a former New York sex crimes prosecutor and legal director for a Chicago nonprofit ...Read more

We've all come to recognize that committee hearings conducted by the Republican House majority are almost invariably clown shows featuring spittle-flecked posturing by members intent on displaying their ignorance to an appreciative crowd.

Wednesday's hearing by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic was a crystalline example of the...Read more