On Wednesday morning, I turned on an MSNBC livestream to hear 10 heroic women speak at a news conference on the steps of the Capitol. My husband sat next to me. His eyes filled with tears.

Marina Lacerda, who said she was first invited to give “massages” to the shady and mysterious financier Jeffrey Epstein when she was a 14-year-old New ...Read more

In a historic decision, U.S. District Court Judge Allison Burroughs ruled that the Trump administration violated Harvard University’s First Amendment rights — and federal law — when it froze and then terminated the school’s federal grants. The outcome marks a significant victory for the university as well as for free speech and academic ...Read more

America, your front yard has been militarized. Yet residents and visitors there hardly pay the troops any mind.

It's the normalization of excessive federal force under President Donald Trump, just seven months into his reign.

America's Front Yard is what the National Park Service calls the National Mall, the grassy expanse that knits together ...Read more

The Big 10 is a powerhouse. As fall arrives, our student athletes will be returning to campus, and we will have the pageantry of Saturday afternoon football. But the Big 10 is also the educational engine of our nation.

Our 18 member institutions are spread across the country, from Rutgers, New Jersey, to Seattle and Los Angeles. Each fall, in ...Read more

On paper, these are good times for the U.S. economy. The latest GDP numbers show growth was at 3.3% in the second quarter. Business investment is up. The unemployment rate remains low, and the inflation rate is reasonable.

Still, underneath it all lies a nagging question: If the economy is so good, why does it feel so bad?

First, the numbers. ...Read more

President Donald Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be health and human services secretary to shake up the country’s public health status quo. Shake it up he has, putting vaccine skepticism at the helm of life-changing decisions and placing chosen outcomes ahead of data.

Florida is proving to be a testing ground for this new antiscience...Read more

Vaccine policy in the U.S. is rapidly dividing into two opposing camps: state leaders who are prioritizing access to shots, and those who are taking increasingly aggressive steps to undermine confidence in them.

That piecemeal policy approach, enabled by federal health leadership that appears to question the value of, and restrict access to, ...Read more

I know the look of an armed patrol. I’ve seen it in Baghdad, in Syria — in streets where fear ruled and peace was fragile. I never expected to see that same look on the subway in our own capital.

Traveling from my home in Northeast D.C. to Dupont Circle, I passed several pairs of National Guard soldiers in full gear — at stations, on ...Read more

The recent ouster of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez and the resignations of top officials mark not just an institutional crisis but the latest chapter in a political war on evidence-based public health. This purge is not reform. It is the culmination of a right-wing assault that began in President Donald Trump�...Read more

One of the defining features of Donald Trump’s second presidency is an endless parade of legally dubious assaults on the foundations of American institutions. His administration’s attempt to destroy the independence of the Federal Reserve, with the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency rummaging through private mortgage filings to ...Read more

As President Donald Trump decides to invest in Intel to secure American chips, batteries are not far behind.

For too long, America has been sleepwalking into a dangerous dependency on Chinese battery technology. It’s not just about electric vehicles or smartphones anymore. It’s about national security, economic resilience, and the ability ...Read more

As part of the Trump administration's many moves toward tackling the United States’ "immigrant crisis," the DOJ recently announced a prioritization of denaturalization procedures, a move that some migrant support organizations recognize as setting a dangerous precedent.

But that’s not all, the Trump administration has also requested over $...Read more

I was working in El Salvador when President Nayib Bukele declared a state of exception. In 2022, after a sudden spike in homicides, he suspended due process and sent soldiers into neighborhoods. Overnight, thousands were detained. Many were guilty. Many were not.

Bukele’s crackdown raised a simple, brutal question: What is the value of ...Read more

This is the story of two Republican doctor-senators named Bill.

One of them, as majority leader from 2003 to 2007, helped a self-described “compassionate conservative” Republican president pass a Medicare prescription drug plan and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR ), “the largest commitment by any nation to address...Read more

Here’s a brief news quiz.

Last week, a shooter opened fire at a Catholic church where students were celebrating Mass to mark the first day of school.

In what city did this happen? What was the name of the school? How many children were killed and wounded?

The correct answers: The shooting occurred in Minneapolis, at the Annunciation ...Read more

Despite having lost an important federal lawsuit barring the use of the military for civilian law enforcement purposes, Donald Trump is still lawlessly promising to send troops into the streets of Chicago and other cities. That is counter to the American way and the law and Trump must not do it.

In a 52-page order, California Federal Judge ...Read more

Toward the end of her 2024 campaign, Kamala Harris made a big mistake. Having gained traction by talking about “joy” and “freedom,” she panicked and reverted back to apocalyptic warnings about Trump.

Today, those warnings read like a prophecy. But — and this part is key — she still lost.

The lesson? Shouting “democracy is on the ...Read more

For Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Labor Day weekend spewed out an inconvenient truth: Nine people killed and 52 wounded in the most violent weekend of the Chicago summer.

Too many gunmen did not get the message that Chicago had crime under control. That might not constitute a “killing field,” to use the ...Read more

Constitutional protections don’t mean much if federal officials can violate them without facing consequences.

This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in United States Postal Service v. Konan. The immediate dispute involves an individual’s attempt to hold the post office liable for the malfeasance of its employees. Lebene Konan...Read more

The most-followed professional sports league on Earth is increasingly an American one, but it’s not the NFL, NBA or Major League Baseball. Despite their impressive strides in growing global audiences and reach, homegrown U.S. sports aren’t the world’s biggest draw. Instead, American teams are buying into the world’s most popular sport �...Read more