Opinion

America now has the highest COVID death toll of any country, yet still no national plan for doing the testing, contact tracing and isolation that stops big outbreaks.These measures have allowed other countries to tamp down on new infections early, by identifying them even before people show symptoms. You need a low transmission rate to ensure that enough customers are willing to go out and support local businesses.Yet incredibly, President Trump now has a plan to cut funding for testing and contact tracing from a Republican proposal – exactly what you need to keep things open in a pandemic.Thi...

By Ryan Haygood“You have to tell the whole truth, the good and the bad, maybe some things that are uncomfortable for some people.” - John LewisIt was five years ago March when I had the privilege of joining Congressman John Lewis on a walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, for the 50th reenactment of the iconic Bloody Sunday March in 1965.After we reached the top of that bridge along with the late Rev. C.T. Vivian, the late Amelia Boynton, President Barack Obama and other civil rights leaders, Congressman Lewis led us in a moment of reflection and prayer, just as he did when h...

From the Electoral College to structural racism, America is feeling painfully aware of its inherent flaws these days. None looms more ominously now than that awkward moment that is the presidential transition. In the momentous winter of 1860-61, the United States literally split in two during the haze between the failed presidency of Pennsylvania’s James Buchanan and the first-ever Republican administration of Abraham Lincoln that terrified the slave-addled South.Now consider this scenario: A seemingly unending crisis has ripped millions of jobs from the U.S. economy, with a growing homelessne...

For months, the Editorial Board has implored Gov. DeSantis to put a protective mask on the smiley face that he continues to flaunt as Florida’s coronavirus cases reach the stratosphere. He could mandate face masks. He could credibly threaten another lockdown. The number of cases is soaring, but no dice. He’s blamed Hispanic farmworkers. He’s blamed low-income residents. He owes both an apology, for they are the essential workers who let the rest of us stay home.His dereliction has gotten national attention, as most things Florida do. The headlines tell the most infuriating of stories. So, mayb...

Aboard a Trump Train that is hurtling out of control toward its inevitable fate — and which in June 2020 feels more like Agatha Christie’s Orient Express with its warped passenger list of muddled motives and evil intent — the mysterious midnight ouster of Manhattan’s U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman reads as the ultimate “Whydunnit?”Everybody knows WHO wielded the ax late Friday night in a botched, messy political hit job that took nearly 24 hours to complete. That would be Attorney General William Barr, who’s taken on the role of “President Trump’s Roy Cohn” and over-the-top defender with such a...

In New Jersey cities, many thousands of families will soon be homeless, once the governor lifts his moratorium on evictions during the pandemic.Some are already being evicted, illegally. Yet even a decent landlord is in an impossible situation without federal help. And Mitch McConnell is standing in the way.The Senate Majority leader and President Trump have been blocking any more help to states, including as much as $100 billion for tenants and landlords, in rent and utility assistance.Miserly Mitch also pledged not to renew the unemployment benefits that have been helping tens of millions of...

From the beginning a civil war was inevitable.The first seven decades of our history are a story of compromise, accommodation and temporizing, all in the attempt to avert armed conflict as long as possible.The Three-Fifths Compromise, the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 eased tensions temporarily. But the conflict between an industrializing, modernizing, free-labor North and an agricultural South that depended on slaves and white supremacy was irresolvable, except, eventually, by war.Hostilities began on Apr. 12, 1861, when confederates opened fi...

It’d be great if racism didn’t exist. If you didn’t have to give your kid an explanation for why a person clutched a bag as a black man walked by. If black families didn’t have to hold multiple versions of “the talk” in hopes that their child doesn’t become the next Michael Brown or George Floyd. But that’s not our current reality, nor has it been across our nation’s entire history.As psychologist Beverly Tatum puts it, anti-blackness is a smog, one we’re breathing in everywhere, knowingly or not.“Cultural racism — the cultural images and messages that affirm the assumed superiority of Whites ...

Tucked away on an inside page of the Star Tribune last week was a short story noting that global surface temperatures in May were 1.13 degrees above average, topping the previous record for that month set in 2016. Also noted was that for the 12 months just concluded, global temperatures were 1.3 degrees above average, matching the warmest 12-month period ever, set between October 2015 and 2016.It’s possible if the coronavirus pandemic had never happened and if George Floyd were still walking the streets of Minneapolis, this latest earth-is-heating-up story would have gained more prominent medi...

Donald Trump is such a cunning politician. He knows the kumbaya moment taking place in America right now will not last forever.He realizes that this multiracial alliance is fragile, because anything that has to do with race always is. Before George Floyd could be laid to rest last week, cracks already were forming in our cohesive platform.While we were basking in the excitement of white, black and brown people marching in lockstep over Floyd’s killing, Trump was busy looking for fractures.He found two very quickly. First, it was the looters. Now it’s the volatile phrase “defund the police.”Bot...

Minutes before he encountered police on a Minneapolis street, George Floyd was just another flawed human being. To some, he was even less than that because he was black.Nothing about him — not the way he looked or the way he carried himself — offered a clue that he could become one of the biggest social justice symbols of our time. Few would have noticed this large black man, wearing a black sleeveless T-shirt and sweatpants, walking toward them and decided that he was worthy of knowing.In fact, some would have crossed the street to get away from him.But his death transcended his faulty life. ...

Donald Trump is not responsible for America’s racial politics, at least not completely. Racial injustice is America’s original sin and you can’t pin that on the current president. That being said, it’s hard to imagine anyone more ill-equipped to handle the current state of unrest. Ill-equipped may not even be the right term to use. He is completely unequipped to deal with the outpouring of anger being expressed on the streets of our cities. He is incapable of listening to anyone besides himself. He cannot sympathize. He cannot empathize. He cannot lead, he doesn’t want to.Instead, he resorts t...

BELLINGHAM, Wash. — Fired whistleblower physician Dr. Ming Lin, backed by attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, filed suit Thursday against former employer PeaceHealth, one of its top administrators and a national medical staffing firm, seeking damages and reinstatement after his March dismissal from a Bellingham hospital.Lin, 58, was fired from PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center after publicly protesting what he called inadequate workplace measures to protect hospital personnel and patients from the COVID-19 disease. He became a global cause célèbre among health care workers w...