After a pretrial period replete with juvenile tantrums, nonstarter attempts to delay the proceedings, and savage attacks on prosecutors, the presiding judge and New Yorkers in general, Donald Trump is about to face the men and women who will decide whether he is guilty of 34 felony charges.

With the start of his historic hush money trial in ...Read more

Of all the retaliatory options against Israel that Iran had on its table, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei chose the most bombastic: a direct missile and drone strike launched from Iranian soil. The attack, coming about two weeks after Israel bombed an Iranian diplomatic facility in Damascus, Syria, killing one of its top generals, ...Read more

California has some of the nation’s highest electricity rates, and power bills are rising fast. That’s a problem because it makes it harder for people to afford switching from fossil fuels to clean electric cars and appliances that are essential to combating climate change.

Who wants to invest thousands of dollars in a heat pump or ...Read more

In an election year where the air crackles with political tension, the arrival of Alex Garland's film "Civil War" has sparked a broad spectrum of reactions.

The movie presents a dystopian vision of a fragmented United States where various factions are at war. This narrative, while unsettling, offers us a valuable lens through which to examine ...Read more

Like a lot of parents, I’ve carried a picture of my son everywhere I go for many years. Unlike a lot of them, I have a child who never ages: My son George was shot and killed on July 17, 1996.

My photos of my son remind me of the days before I had to tell my grandson Gabriel, on what happened to be his 6th birthday, that his father had died. ...Read more

Though largely thwarted by Israel and its allies, the assault launched by Iran against the Jewish state over the weekend was a powerful reminder that the Tehran regime remains the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East. Israel’s security would be best served now through resolve and restraint, rather than military escalation.

Iranian ...Read more

Studies show that young children and social media can be a bad combination. Florida is doing something about it.

Last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that bans children under 14 from having social media accounts. Children who are ages 14 and 15 can obtain an account only with parental consent.

The genesis for the law is the ...Read more

The next seven months are going to be divisive times in America. Once again, the suffocating partisanship that most of us abhor will be on display as we approach the November elections.

Fasten your seat belts and get ready for the madness.

Perhaps you’ll be appalled, but certainly not surprised, as you watch the behaviors of the candidates ...Read more

Aug. 9 will mark 10 years since Michael Brown Jr.'s life was violently cut short by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown's death ignited a powder keg that had been building for years: a simmering frustration over police violence and systemic racism in America. The ensuing months and years saw a wave of civilian killings and assaults by ...Read more

There is a growing movement to install Christian chaplains in public schools. The Washington Post reports that bills are pending in nine states, have passed in one legislative chamber in three states, and Florida has a bill waiting for the governor’s signature. This is clearly unconstitutional; it is bad for students, and it is bad for America...Read more

There was a time when many of President Donald Trump’s top officials – including his Cabinet-level advisers on national and global security – thought the toughest decision they had to make was whether to tell you the truth about what they really thought about their boss.

Then, belatedly, but eventually, a surprising number of Trump’s ...Read more

Whatever happened to the empathetic Joe Biden who won the 2020 presidential election?

Some days it feels as if that kindly Uncle Joe has been replaced by a cranky old pol annoyed at voters who don't give him credit for a strong economy.

Last week, when the Labor Department reported that inflation had ticked up to 3.5%, probably delaying a cut ...Read more

A kerfuffle in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in recent days revealed a grim truth about America's institutions in these troubled times: Too many of them lack the courage to stand up to the threat to democracy that is Donald Trump, thereby contributing to the alarming staying power of the once and perhaps future president.

We already know about the ...Read more

Weeks before she was slashed to death outside her Brentwood condo in 1994, O.J. Simpson's ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, had predicted her own death.

"She knew exactly what was going to happen to her," Nicole's friend Kris Jenner told "Dateline NBC" in a 20th anniversary special episode about the murders of Nicole and Ronald L. Goldman, a ...Read more

An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, as Mahatma Gandhi allegedly said. After Iran’s massive retaliation for the Israeli strike against Iran’s diplomatic compound in Damascus, it now falls to President Joe Biden to prevent subsequent rounds of escalation from blinding the entire Middle East, or even the world. Biden must punish ...Read more

Perhaps you can imagine punishments more to be feared than a lengthy prison sentence, but in a country that proscribes cruel and unusual punishment—except the death penalty—the only thing I can think of that would be worse than confinement in prison is confinement as the result of a crime that I did not commit.

This is the situation in ...Read more

In the past three years, 23 states have passed legislation that prohibits physicians and other health care providers from providing gender affirming health care to transgender minors. These laws constitute an extreme, unprecedented attack on transgender adolescents, their families and the medical providers who care for them.

Criminalizing ...Read more

When Donald Trump visited the southern border in February, he told a Fox News host in an interview that Gov. Greg Abbott was among those being considered as his running mate.

It wasn’t much of a surprise. It was almost a courtesy.

Of course Trump would consider (or at least say he was considering) Abbott while visiting the state he governs, ...Read more

What do some Republicans have against lab-grown meat? Legislatures in Alabama, Arizona, Tennessee and Florida are all considering bans on the sale or import of so-called “cell-cultured food products.” In Florida a bill has reached Governor Ron DeSantis’s desk, and though he has not yet signed it, he has come out strongly in favor of meat. ...Read more