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Bipartisan gun bill offers hope

The Washington Post says GOP support for gun bill offers hope for more reform. Fifteen Republicans in the Senate and 14 in the House joined with congressional Democrats this week to break more than 25 years of inaction on gun safety. That these Republicans, many of whom had ratings of A or A-plus from the National Rifle Association, defied the gun lobby with their support of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act suggests they saw the political peril in doing nothing about the gun violence gripping the country. Indeed, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who voted for the ...

Defending women’s rights

The decision, when it came on Friday, was not a surprise. Even before the dramatic leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion last month, it was widely predicted that the U.S. Supreme Court would grab the opportunity presented by the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case to rescind the decision made in 1973 in Roe v Wade. This, after all, was the purpose of President Trump’s three Supreme Court selections — and the culmination of a decades-long campaign by anti-abortionists to return to states the authority to ban the procedure. But the announcement still came as a ...

Environmental defenders in peril

The killing of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira in the Amazon is devastating for their families and friends. It is also the embodiment of a wider assault on environmental defenders and those who work with them, and of the dangers faced by journalists. The relentless targeting of those who seek to protect an ever more fragile world is increasing as the climate crisis grows more intense. In 2020, more than four defenders a week died globally. A disproportionate number are Indigenous people or, like Mr. Pereira, those who work closely with and for them. Mr. Phillips, though passionate about ...

FDA floats new tobacco rule

The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday made a decision of rare importance, concerning not a pandemic illness but the country’s leading cause of preventable death: smoking. It is crucial the White House stick up for what would be the FDA’s most assertive antismoking policy ever — one that will inevitably meet severe resistance. The agency is preparing a rule that would mandate that tobacco companies dramatically cut the amount of nicotine in cigarettes sold in the United States, rendering their deadly products minimally or not-at-all addictive. This move has long been ...

Celebrating Juneteenth

In 1963, the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, James Baldwin published his searing classic “The Fire Next Time.” In the first of the two essays in the book, a letter to his nephew, Baldwin writes, “You know, and I know, that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon.” Today Juneteenth is the day we commemorate Texas’ enslaved celebrating their emancipation two years, five months and 18 days too late. That’s how long it took for word to reach them on June 19, 1865, in Galveston Bay by way of Gen. Gordon ...

Understanding what CRT is

Teachers, parents and students across the nation, including in Georgia, marched last weekend to protest laws restricting school curriculum that includes mentions of racial and social justice. Lawmakers have railed and pandered to a vocal minority about the teaching of so-called critical race theory. The public should be reminded of the facts. Critical race theory is not a part of the curriculum in Georgia elementary, middle and high schools. Critical race theory does not postulate all white people are racists, or bad. Critical race theory is not an academic discipline designed to ...