Op-Ed

I grew up in rural upstate New York, where life was difficult and often isolating. Folks in our community were very poor, but we took care of one another. Neighbors lavished affection and support on my family. Still, there was a deep undercurrent of abandonment and anger. Far from the South, Confederate flags pierced the […]

Washington—Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today called on the Senate to immediately move to consider her Age 21 Act, a bill to raise the minimum age to purchase assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines from 18 to 21. ·         On May 25, an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in […]

Washington, DC — Following the mass shooting today at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, which according to news reports left 14 children and one teacher dead before the shooter’s life was ended, Violence Policy Center Executive Director Josh Sugarmann issued the following statement: “The cold horror of this attack should be unthinkable, but it […]

May 23, 2022 – Australia has had a change of government. The Liberal Party — conservative  in everything but name — lost control of the federal government to Labor.   Australia was recently ranked last out of sixty countries in climate policy.The victorious Labor candidate told his supporters, “Together we can end the climate wars. Together we can […]

May 16, 2022 – Trevor Potter, former chairman of the Federal Election Commission and president of Campaign Legal Center, issued the following statement: Today’s decision from the Supreme Court of the United States in FEC v. Ted Cruz for Senate is a disappointing one. American campaign finance laws are designed to limit political giving that overly indebts officeholders […]

Mexico has reached the tragic figure of 100,000 disappeared and missing people since records have been kept; that is, today these 100,000 people’s whereabouts remain unknown. What does this moment mean for the country and what are some of the steps authorities should take to achieve truth, justice, and an end to disappearances? For years now, relatives […]

May 11 2022 – These Senators just voted against abortion rights. And they’re all up for re-election in 2022. Robert Reich’s writes at robertreich.substack.com. His latest book is “THE SYSTEM: Who Rigged It, How To Fix It.” He is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at […]

May 9, 2022 – “We just buried Mom. Can you believe it? She was too young to die. I can’t take her place for my younger siblings.” These are the painful words of my 17-year-old cousin, Sima, who had just lost her mother a few hours before we spoke. My Aunt Bibi was only 40 […]

May 3, 2022 – In light of the leaked draft of an expected Supreme Court decision that appears to overrule Roe v. Wade, and the widespread panic it has sparked, the Freedom From Religion Foundation urges five constructive acts of resistance. The first: to demand that the U.S. Senate finally pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, which […]

Washington—Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today released the following statement after reports that the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade:             “Make no mistake, if Roe v. Wade is overturned, women will be harmed and some will die. It happened before Roe became the law of the land and it will happen again, […]

May 2, 2022 – Soon after Trump took office, Republicans used the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overturn sixteen Obama-era regulations. If they win control of the government in 2024, they’ll undoubtedly do the same thing to Biden regulations. It behooves us, then, to understand the effect of these legislative interventions. A Ninth Circuit ruling last week in a […]

The Biden administration failed to issue many of the immigrant visas—more commonly known as green cards—that were allotted last year for immigrants who have been sponsored by a U.S. employer or family member. Statistics released by the State Department indicate that 66,781 visas for employment-based immigrants and 141,430 visas for family-based immigrants went unused in Fiscal Year (FY) 2021. Another 35,938 Diversity Visas […]

The great pamphleteer of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine, had much more on his mind than independence from the British. Paine spent his life, Jeremy Bearer-Friend and Vanessa Williamson write in a new paper, advocating for a democratic “commonwealth” that shared the wealth. He wanted to free people “from domination both political and economic.” In particular, Paine believed […]

Your life could get a lot more dangerous. Republican appointees on the Supreme Court seem poised to strip away basic safety standards for our workplaces, our food, our air and water. Congress gives federal agencies the authority to enact regulations that protect us in our daily lives. Congress defines the goals, but leaves it up […]

Russian President Vladimir Putin on stage during a rally in Moscow on March 18, 2022. Sergei Guneyev/Pool/AFP via Getty Images Alexander Motyl, Rutgers University – Newark When Vladimir Putin unleashed an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the Ukrainian media, public and policymakers almost unanimously began calling the Russian president and the state […]

Once upon a time, the tutelary gods of nationalism and internationalism met for a chat. They had a superb perch above the clouds. From there, they could see everything happening on the Earth below and they set to arguing, as they so often did. Sophia, the goddess of internationalism, began by proudly pointing to the […]

The Biden administration will end Title 42—a public health order that has been misused to block and expel people seeking protection at the US border more than 1.7 million times in the past two years—in May, according to multiple media reports today. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) welcomes this long overdue decision to revoke […]

As I write this, President Joseph Biden is signing into law the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act.  It recalls the struggle many in this country had to cut down on extrajudicial killings.  As my college students and I found, calling attention to these illegal acts did make a difference in how many lynchings occurred in America, […]

One million US deaths from COVID-19. Catatonic politics on climate change. Communities suffocating from environmental injustice. All these issues are tragically linked by the hardening divisions in the United States over our acceptance or rejection of expertise in science, public health, and environmental protection. Nearly six decades ago, in 1963, US President John F. Kennedy told […]

WASHINGTON, March 28, 2022—American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, AFT Executive Vice President Evelyn DeJesus and California Federation of Teachers President and AFT LGBTQIA+ Task Force Chair Jeff Freitas issued the following remarks after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a measure into law, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay,” that bars educators from discussing sexual orientation […]