April is a good month to be thinking about poetry because it is National Poetry Month in the United States.

Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo famously said, "You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose." This brilliant formulation may be how things should be. It may be how things used to be.

Today, campaigns are soaked in lies and negativity. ...Read more

As he signed the school chaplains bill— another one he should have vetoed — Gov. Ron DeSantis said something that underscored how totally wrong it is.

“There are some students,” he said, who “need soul prep.”

That's not a legitimate mission for Florida’s public schools, which at least have the authority to reject it, and should. ...Read more

My father, who served as a Navy officer in the South Pacific, shared fascinating World War II stories with me. With ensuing history classes, I became troubled by America’s slow response to Hitler’s atrocities in Europe and incredulous that Christians in Germany blindly followed their deranged dictator.

While pursuing a master of divinity ...Read more

American democracy is far younger than is often supposed. It is younger than the current president, younger than the man most likely to challenge him in November and younger than most United States senators.

True democracy, in which everyone born or naturalized in the U.S. can vote to elect their leaders and representatives, did not immediately...Read more

It’s hard to keep track of ever-increasing stamp prices. This month, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) proposed hiking stamp prices in July from 68 cents to 73 cents, a 7.4% increase. In January, USPS hiked the price of first-class Forever stamps from 66 cents to 68 cents. Six months earlier, the agency raised prices from 63 cents to 66 cents. ...Read more

For Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his troops on the front line, relief is hopefully coming soon.

On Saturday, the U.S. House of Representatives muscled through a $61 billion military aid package at a time when Russian forces are continuing to chip away at Ukrainian positions in the east. After six months of intense discussions ...Read more

The scheme at the heart of the charges against Donald Trump in New York is well-known: To keep allegations of an affair with the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels from becoming public, Trump is accused of agreeing to pay her $130,000, camouflaged as payments to Michael Cohen for legal services. It’s in the camouflaging that Trump is charged ...Read more

House Speaker Mike Johnson endured a titanic struggle to get Ukraine aid through the House, one that demonstrates the benefits of cooperation and the pitfalls of extremism.

His ultimate success on Saturday, however, came at a dear price, one paid by Ukrainians in blood and in the countless lives that might have been saved had Johnson taken up ...Read more

Last month, the Department of Justice filed its long-awaited antitrust suit against Apple, accusing the company of monopolizing the smartphone market. This makes Apple the last of the U.S.-based tech giants to face a major monopolization lawsuit from a federal agency. (Google also faces one from the Justice Department; Facebook and Amazon have ...Read more

If you care about fair elections, you need to understand what’s happening in Central America. Developments in El Salvador — along with the root causes of migration — are crucial to U.S. politics as immigration issues take center stage this election season. More than three decades after the Salvadoran civil war, it’s time to look at ...Read more

From state capitols to Washington, D.C., lawmakers are scrambling to come up with regulations that can protect kids from the potential harms of social media, since the platforms have been unwilling to adopt reasonable safeguards themselves.

In just the last few months, Florida passed a law banning children under 14 from having a social media ...Read more

I’m on the road nonstop these days. In just the past few weeks I’ve been to Ohio, Florida, California, North Carolina and Michigan. Everywhere I go, I love telling the story of Reading, Pennsylvania. I never tire of it.

Why? Because I can think of no clearer example of what it looks like for a community to come together and build, ...Read more

At 46, I’ve made some sense of my life by thinking about it as a story of second chances. If my evil twin were the author, it would be a string of dead ends — of not being a good enough writer, mother, wife, daughter, friend, teacher, sister (the list is endless). But I see my life as an endorsement of second chances. Almost everything that ...Read more

What are we to make of the anonymous jury in former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York? The practice has long had its critics.

First let’s get technical: Trump’s jury is not actually anonymous. Unlike the practice in some organized crime cases, the parties and their lawyers know the jurors’ names. Only the media and the...Read more

For high school seniors from the Class of 2024 who plan to attend college in the fall, these are tense days.

The traditional May 1 deadline for picking a school is fast approaching. At the same time, Uncle Sam is making the painful process of applying for financial aid extra difficult this year. Colleges and universities are up to their usual ...Read more

California’s math wars are roiling the state’s educational system, with contentious debates over high school curricula.

At issue is whether a “data science” course should be available as a substitute for Algebra 2. The University of California and California State University systems previously accepted data science as an advanced math ...Read more

If you’re searching for insight into the likelihood of a second American civil war, you won’t find it in “Civil War,” a film written and directed by Alex Garland and currently in theaters.

When the movie starts, the U.S. is already in full-blown war against itself. Things have gotten so bad that California and Texas have formed a ...Read more

Students are taught in civics class that, under the American justice system, a defendant may be convicted of a crime only if a jury finds him or her guilty of the charged offense “beyond a reasonable doubt.” What’s rarely mentioned, however, is that federal law allows judges to ignore a not guilty verdict and sentence men and women to ...Read more

Louisianan Mike Johnson became House speaker by accident, when eight renegade Republicans voted with the Democrats to eject the unfortunate Kevin McCarthy from the chair in October. After a number of more senior members failed to win enough support, the booby prize went to Johnson.

Johnson has been an exceptionally weak speaker, and not just ...Read more

Shortly after Acting Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan gaveled out the final day of jury selection for the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump on Friday afternoon, the New York County Criminal Court Electronic Document Delivery System sent an email notification of receipt at 5:22 to lawyer Jim Walden that his application had ...Read more