This is what Maya Angelou had in mind when she wrote about “the dream and the hope of the slave.”

Meet Alexis Sims, Nia-Sarai Perry, Cori’Anna White, Aiyana Ringo, Alyssa Richardson, Sophia Davis and Mariama Diallo — a group of young Black women who personify academic excellence.

These are seven Spelman College graduates — better ...Read more

Last month, the White House announced that the United States and China had “operationalized” their new Board of Trade. The working procedures, however, say remarkably little about how the board is actually supposed to operate.

Years of tariff disputes between Washington and Beijing have produced many announcements. The Board of Trade is the...Read more

At the rape crisis center where I was trained in Chicago, we didn’t refer to the criminal justice system. We called it the criminal legal system: because justice, while aspirational, is rarely achieved. As an emergency room advocate, I was taught never to pressure survivors to report to the police, but simply to outline their options and ...Read more

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has a fantastic sense of humor. At a time when Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh has turned central bank “forward guidance” into a banned phrase, the academy awarded the Nobel Prize in economics to Michael Woodford, one of the intellectual fathers of the practice, and Robert Hall, whose research on ...Read more

One night in 2005, I sat in a church in Texas listening to a lecture by Helen Prejean, the prominent opponent of capital punishment. Her book about her work among death row inmates had been made into the film “Dead Man Walking.”

Mostly, Prejean was preaching to the choir. She talked convincingly about the brutality and futility of capital ...Read more

Russia’s war against Ukraine has become a test of American judgment. This weekend, Russian strikes in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region killed at least 20 people, including children, according to Ukrainian officials. At the same time, President Donald Trump called for Ukraine to get a new president, arguing that Volodymyr Zelenskyy has failed to...Read more

Math may not be popular, but it remains undefeated. That’s a problem when it comes to Social Security.

The Congressional Budget Office recently released its new long-term projections for Social Security. It shows that its trust fund will run out of money in 2032. Last year, Social Security collected tax revenues of more than $1.1 trillion. ...Read more

If America sold tap water the way it sells, say, eggs or gasoline, with the price right there in your face every time you consume it, then our national argument about inflation might have looked much different over the past decade.

That’s because tap water isn’t free, though it might seem that way whenever you drink it at a restaurant, ...Read more

Sometimes it’s the humble actions that matter, which is a lesson for our dangerous time. For years, I’ve volunteered to get out the vote for my preferred candidates. In one election, knocking on doors in a Seattle neighborhood, I spoke with three people who supported my candidate for governor but wouldn’t have voted had I not contacted ...Read more

Manufactured housing, colloquially known as the “mobile home,” has a reputation for low quality, but that stereotype is outdated. As states grapple with ways to relieve home prices for beleaguered residents, they need to rethink this option and clear the obstacles to constructing more of it.

Homes built to the modern Department of Housing ...Read more

Public comments quietly closed Oct. 6 in response to the proposed rescission of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, an undercelebrated piece of federal legislation that has protected about 58.5 million acres of roadless areas across our National Forest System. That’s about one-third of the 193 million acres that make up our national ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The California Secretary of State has mailed a thick “Official Voter Information Guide” to every registered voter. It’s jam-packed with helpful material. But one bit should be totally ignored.

It tells voters to fill out their ballot immediately — ”today” — and return it right now. Don’t take any time, in ...Read more

Social conservatives now assure American women they can still “have it all” if they just do it in sequence, starting with early motherhood and later taking on a job. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 Report claims it’s a mistake for women to postpone childbearing to pursue higher education and begin their careers. Heritage ...Read more

The big question this fall is not whether Ken Paxton, Greg Abbott, Bo French or TIm O’Hare will lose.

They’re all in elections that are too close to call. James Talarico, Gina Hinojosa, Jon Rosenthal and Alisa Simmons are pushing them like no Democrats in 30 years.

But no matter whether those Republicans lose, other Democrats will get ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — About two years ago, Michael Mata boarded a bus at 5 a.m. near the shelter where he was living, on the northern edge of South Los Angeles. He was determined to bring an end to years of sporadic homelessness and a string of dead-end jobs.

A shelter mate had advised him to arrive early at Chrysalis, a nonprofit that helps people ...Read more

FOOTHILL FARMS, Calif. — As a California state lawmaker, Richard Pan authored some of the strongest vaccine laws in the country.

His reward — and part of the backlash, on top of death threats — was being physically assaulted outside the Capitol in Sacramento and spattered with blood thrown from the gallery.

Now, a few years removed from...Read more

Ever since things in Ukraine first went sideways for Vladimir Putin back in the spring of 2022, the Russian president and his officials have said that, not only were they fighting Nazis and responding to NATO aggression, but that the stakes of the conflict were so high that Russia may cease to exist should they fail.

This claim has always been ...Read more

This weekend, President Donald Trump publicly surrendered U.S. honor and security interests to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

The U.S. president demanded that Ukraine “replace” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with someone willing to make “a deal” with the Kremlin to (supposedly) end the war. Yet the “deal” that Trump envisions would not ...Read more

When students at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee grilled Republican gubernatorial nominee Byron Donalds last month about his record, he promised to bring his finance background to the state’s top job. “The next governor has to have experience in how a company’s balance sheet operates,” said Donalds, who was a financial adviser ...Read more