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Editorial

Not a random act of violence

Republican politicians, including some of the party’s top leaders, openly espouse versions of a white supremacist conspiracy theory holding that an orchestrated effort is underway to displace white Americans. A recently published poll found that almost half of Republicans believe that immigrants are being brought to the United States as part of such an effort. On Saturday, a gunman who said he was motivated by a version of this “replacement theory” killed 10 people at a Buffalo grocery store, officials said. The suspect, identified as Payton S. Gendron, wrote in an online ...

Turning point in politics

A third member of the extremist Oath Keepers group pleaded guilty on May 4 to seditious conspiracy, admitting his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. The pleas provide more proof that the right-wing campaign to whitewash Jan. 6, playing down the extent to which the participants sought to stage an insurrection, is not just craven but also dangerous. The attackers did not behave like “tourists;” they were not unarmed; Jan. 6 was not a normal protest that got out of hand; the attack was not staged by far-left agitators posing as Trump supporters. Instead, it was a coordinated and ...

Staging post to more restrictions

It has taken anti-abortion campaigners a concerted five-decade campaign to get here: the Supreme Court’s provisional decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. More than half of America’s women can expect to live in states where abortion is banned or greatly restricted if, as anticipated, next month’s ruling is largely unchanged. Yet that will not mark the climactic triumph of the anti-abortion lobby. In their eyes, it is merely a staging post to further restrictions on other matters too, affecting more people — including outside the U.S. First, they will not be satisfied with pre-Roe ...

Behind the jobs report

The 428,000 net new jobs last month in the Labor Department’s Friday report is mildly encouraging since every major industry added workers. But the report also contains a warning that inflationary pressure may be starting to hurt the labor market. While the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.6 percent, the labor participation rate fell 0.2 percentage points to 62.2 percent and total employment declined by 353,000. Numbers from the household survey can fluctuate from month to month. But labor participation and the workforce have been trending up since January 2021 as lockdowns ...

A threat to Roe is a call to action

In scathing, dismissive language, Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote a draft opinion that does what for many decades seemed unimaginable — it overturns the 1973 ruling in Roe vs. Wade and annihilates the constitutionally protected right of a woman to control her own body. If the leaked draft, which was written in February and confirmed as authentic by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., becomes the court’s final decision, it will set reproductive freedom back generations. About half the states either have or will pass bans or will severely restrict abortion, with the ...

A boost for workers

In a historic legislative session that saw Hawaii lawmakers allocate more than a billion dollars to Native Hawaiian causes, housing and other projects, a highlight for workers was the passage of House Bill 2510. If signed by Governor David Ige, which is expected, the bill will raise Hawaii’s minimum wage from the current $10.10 an hour to $18 an hour. The increase would be phased in incrementally over the next six years, with the first jump coming on Oct. 1 when the minimum wage will go to $12 an hour. The rate will then increase $2 every two years until reaching $18 an hour on Jan. ...