William Shakespeare’s famous tragedy “Othello” is often the first play that comes to mind when people think of Shakespeare and race. And if not “Othello,” then folks usually name “The Merchant of Venice,” “Antony and Cleopatra,” “The Tempest,” or his first – and bloodiest – tragedy, “Titus Andronicus,” my ...Read more

Immigration has become a defining issue in the 2024 elections and a major challenge in many U.S. cities. Over the past several years, wars and armed conflict, violent persecution and desperate poverty have displaced millions of people worldwide and propelled the arrival in the U.S. of thousands seeking protection, mainly at the U.S.-Mexico ...Read more

Americans, it seems, can both value the idea of democracy and not support it in practice.

Since 2016, academics and journalists have expressed concerns that formerly secure democracies are becoming less democratic. Different measures of democracy, such as scores produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit, Freedom House and the ...Read more

Society Hill, where Sixers star Joel Embiid recently put his penthouse condo on the market for US$5.5 million, has long been one of Philadelphia’s most exclusive neighborhoods.

It’s a distant cry from what the neighborhood looked like 125 years ago when sociologist and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois published “The ...Read more

The news about the Israel-Hamas war is filled with reports of Israeli families huddling in fear from relentless rocket attacks, Israeli tanks and artillery flattening buildings in the Gaza Strip, hundreds of kidnapped hostages imprisoned in subterranean tunnels, and millions of people driven from their homes by fighting.

But beyond ...Read more

NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s loyal former White House press secretary Hope Hicks testified at his Manhattan trial Friday, breaking down after divulging potentially damaging testimony for the former president regarding the motivations behind his fixer’s hush money payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Trump’s former White House Communications...Read more

NEW YORK — The second week of testimony in Donald Trump’s hush-money criminal trial gave jurors first-hand accounts of negotiations for payments to two women and how the former president’s 2016 campaign reacted when news of their alleged affairs leaked out anyway.

Hope Hicks, who was press secretary for Trump’s campaign and became a top...Read more

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-joe-biden-awards-the-medal-of-freedom-to-u-s-rep-news-photo/2151325031?adppopup=true

and

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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Friday awarded the ...Read more

The fight to change warehouse working conditions that has been playing out in state legislatures is now headed to Washington, D.C.

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, and Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minnesota, introduced legislation Thursday that would put new safeguards in place for warehouse workers who are expected to move quickly and face intense ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Rep. Henry Cuellar and his wife have been indicted in two schemes involving unlawful foreign influence, bribery and money laundering, the Justice Department announced Friday.

An indictment unsealed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas accused the Texas Democrat and his wife, Imelda Cuellar, of ...Read more

NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s loyal former White House aide Hope Hicks testified at his Manhattan trial Friday, tearing up when questioning turned to what Trump knew about his fixer’s hush money payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Trump’s former White House communications director and campaign spokeswoman, once considered among the former ...Read more

NEW YORK — Prosecutors called Donald Trump’s loyal longtime aide Hope Hicks to the stand at his Manhattan hush money trial Friday, where she is expected to face questions on what she knew about Trump’s alleged efforts to silence women who alleged they’d had extramarital trysts with him when he first ran for the White House.

In 2019, ...Read more

NEW YORK — Donald Trump is in no way limited by what he can say about witnesses at his Manhattan hush money trial if he chooses to take the stand in his own defense, the judge presiding over the case told him Friday — correcting a claim Trump made outside court.

On his way out of court Thursday, Trump claimed Merchan’s gag order — the ...Read more

NEW YORK — Donald Trump is in no way limited by what he can say about witnesses at his Manhattan hush money trial if he chooses to take the stand in his own defense, the judge presiding over the case told him Friday — correcting a claim Trump made outside court.

On his way out of court Thursday, Trump claimed Merchan’s gag order — the ...Read more

Rishi Sunak’s ruling Conservative Party lost a bellwether parliamentary seat and was on track to shed hundreds of local councilors, a set of devastating election results that nonetheless fell short of a worst-case scenario that might have prompted a Tory bid to remove him.

The Conservatives’ widespread losses to the Labour Party echoed a ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Protests on college campuses related to the Israel-Hamas war and humanitarian crisis inside Gaza that turned violent this week handed President Joe Biden a political headache and former President Donald Trump a new attack line. The unrest showed the risks of being the incumbent and allowed Trump to — once again — push his ...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