Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito cannot participate in any cases involving the Treasury Department because his son Phil works as an attorney there. Justice Amy Coney Barrett has two adopted children from Haiti, so she should be disqualified from hearing an ongoing case involving Temporary Protected Status for Haitians. Chief Justice John ...Read more

The most moving scene in Homer is not the death of the great heroes, Patroclus or Hector, but the tail-wagging of a pet dog, Argos. After 20 years away, 10 fighting the Trojans and 10 wandering the seas, Odysseus returns to his hometown of Ithaca disguised as a beggar.

As he approaches his family palace, where his wife is being besieged by ...Read more

Even as the U.S. struggles to conclude its war with Iran, it’s stumbling toward an equally ill-conceived conflict in Cuba. If the White House wants to avoid another strategic morass, it needs to adjust course soon.

Since the successful January raid to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, the U.S. has steadily intensified a campaign to ...Read more

Until recently, American politics operated on a simple premise: Aspiring politicians must suck up to party bosses, run for local office, earn supporters, master policy details and only then earn a shot at higher office.

That model has collapsed.

Today’s rising stars take a different escalator — television, social media, podcasts, activism,...Read more

Contrary to popular belief, rearranging deck chairs on a sinking boat can theoretically be of some benefit, if you’re clearing a path to the lifeboats, say, or keeping panicky people busy. Very quickly, though, you’ll have to confront the real problem, which is that you are on a sinking boat.

Unlike the Titanic, the Colorado River has too ...Read more

Even as the U.S. struggles to conclude its war with Iran, it’s stumbling toward an equally ill-conceived conflict in Cuba. If the White House wants to avoid another strategic morass, it needs to adjust course soon.

Since the successful January raid to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, the U.S. has steadily intensified a campaign to ...Read more

I've been openly gay for nearly 30 years — legally married for more than 10 of them — and it has been my experience that few scriptures delight the far right more this time of year than Proverbs 16:18: Pride comes before a fall.

I mostly blame inertia.

Pride month started in 1970. The Old Testament is, well … older than Jesus.

...Read more

The Supreme Court’s decision this week to allow Alabama to use a congressional map that the lower courts had twice overturned as racially discriminatory marks an important stage in the evolution of the court as an institution — and of the U.S. as a democracy. The ruling sends all Americans, as voters and citizens, a clear message: When it ...Read more

Well, that didn't take long.

A day after California's primary election, President Donald Trump took to social media with baseless claims of election fraud — predictable, but also dangerous.

"Look what's happening in California, the Dumocrats, right before our very eyes, are stealing the Vote," Trump wrote in one post.

"There's BIG cheating ...Read more

Just a month out from America's celebration of its 250th birthday, the national capital is a mess.

And I'm talking about the sites central to the pilgrimages that millions of Americans make each year to Washington, especially the White House. The once-verdant park remains a construction site, with makeshift fencing only partly obscuring the ...Read more

A democracy is only as robust and vibrant as the citizens who sustain it. Self-government depends upon people willing to deliberate honestly, reason carefully, and exercise judgment responsibly.

With the emergence of AI, this obligation becomes even more consequential because these powerful systems can either deepen human agency or quietly ...Read more

Recent turbulence in bond markets suggests that investors aren’t immune from anxieties about debt and inflation. The question is, are they anxious enough? On one particular point, I’d say the answer is no. They’re paying too little attention to the possibility of outright public-debt default.

Recently I argued that given the current ...Read more

R. Gordon Wasson was a Manhattan banker who fancied himself a mycologist. In 1955, after decades studying the mushrooms of ancient cultures, he traveled to the remote mountains of southern Mexico to partake of what locals called the “flesh of the gods.” Wasson chronicled the experience in Life magazine — the first widely published account ...Read more

Hispanic voters are down on President Donald Trump, and a majority are poised to support Democratic candidates in midterm elections this fall. But that doesn’t mean this crucial bloc is coming home to Democrats — or that it’s satisfied with the party’s agenda.

Democrats are leading the generic ballot gauging which party Hispanic voters ...Read more

Trillions, as in trillions of dollars, are being bandied about in the way millions were, then billions. But take a look at 1 trillion expressed numerically: 1,000,000,000,000. Awesome, isn’t it? Twelve zeros.

The national debt stands at $39 trillion, and the interest on that will top $1 trillion this year. Very soon, the first trillionaire ...Read more

A country with one of the fastest-rising scientific profiles operates under sweeping international sanctions, has limited access to Western research infrastructure and is rarely mentioned in American conversations about global innovation. That country is Iran.

Its rise, alongside China’s dominance in critical fields and India’s rapid ...Read more

Uber and Lyft drivers in Massachusetts recently secured a major breakthrough in the struggle for union representation of rideshare drivers.

On May 25, the App Drivers Union announced that it has been certified by the Massachusetts Department of Labor Relations as the official bargaining representative for approximately 70,000 rideshare drivers ...Read more

A huge, waning moon glimmered over Los Angeles on election night, a metaphor for a trend that emerged in early returns.

The city's political establishment seemed to be on the retreat in favor of populist insurgents from both the left and the right.

Mayor Karen Bass held a cushy lead in her bid for a second term, and the Associated Press ...Read more