How marching as the books you love and want to protect may build the pro-democracy movement — Saturday evening in Doyleston, Pennsylvania, a group of residents put on clunky pasteboard outfits each depicting the cover of a different book: Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison, All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. They were…

The Russian Orthodox Church has fused with its nuclear weapons complex, and in a religious conflict all bets are off. — The world is probably closer to nuclear war than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, but you wouldn’t know that from current news coverage. Back in late February, when Russian President Vladimir Putin started his all-out invasion of Ukraine, fears of a nuclear conflagration surged, as Google Trends…

MAGA Governors Dumping Refugees on Democratic Cities and Towns Have Picked a Fight They Will Lose — “There were men, women and CHILDREN! They hadn’t eaten anything since 6:00 am. What kind of depraved individual loads up 50 people onto a plane and dumps them in a strange place without even notifying anyone that they’re coming? These are ‘leaders’? These are ‘Christians’? I’ll tell you what this…

What will you do with your agency? Will you let events shape you, or will you add your voice to shaping them? — Yesterday, the US stock market crashed more than 4.3% in response to the latest inflation report from August. Yesterday, the last of this year’s round of state election primaries were held, crystallizing who will be on the ballot for this fall’s mid-terms. Yesterday, the Biden Administration held a huge outdoor…

Republican women who voted for Trump in 2016 are signaling a sea change for 2022. — Yesterday, I was listening to a group of nine Republican women who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 discuss their feelings about the current political moment in America, courtesy of The Focus Group, a weekly podcast produced by Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark. And what I heard kind of blew…

The President and the former GOP hardliner both evoked the same metaphor, but for vastly different visions of America — I listened to President Biden’s Thursday night speech on “The Continued Battle for the Soul of the Nation” on the radio, so I didn’t catch the optics of his standing in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia and the weird lighting that his advance team used to stage the event…

The President is trying to protect “democratic values,” but unless Republicans join him in speaking out, Trumpism won’t break. — Between May and August, something shifted in the minds of a lot of American voters. They got a lot more worried about what is happening to our democracy. Tonight in Philadelphia, President Biden is expected to address that issue head on. …

A reflection on a moment of extra-worldly beauty as we get ready for the change in seasons and our never-ending political dramas — Five years ago, my son took this photo of me and my wife during the middle of the total solar eclipse that crossed the United States mainland that day. We were standing on top of a high bluff in the hills of eastern Wyoming, somewhere west of Casper, and we…

The freedom to choose an abortion shifted the balance in an upstate congressional race; a sign of things to come this fall? — For all the attention that focused the last few weeks on two congressional races happening in the heart of New York City, one pitting two Democratic lions of the House against each other and the other a free-for-all battle for a rare open seat in a heavily Democratic district, the…