Opinion

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...

Don’t know what it is about warm weather that seems, more so than other seasons, to pull always-present racial tensions to the fore — probably nothing, probably just a perception — but recent high-profile events are conglomerating in such a way as to portend a long, hot summer. “Hot” being a metaphor. And not just in Minneapolis, but across the nation.Start with the death of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia. Arbery, 25, was jogging in a suburban neighborhood near his home and was shot dead after being pursued, for the purpose of interrogation, by two white men who told police they thought he was a bur...

Florida’s senior U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio should make the most of his talents as “Trump whisperer.” He could help elevate the country’s stature in the eyes of a disappointed world.This week, Republican leaders tapped Rubio to be acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, one of the most powerful committees in Congress.His predecessor, North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, is under investigation for recent suspicious stock transactions after being briefed about the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. He has stepped aside.Rubio, the committee’s most influential and knowledgeable member, is th...

There’s a powerful case to be made that the coronavirus crisis — with its mounting evidence that earlier and more aggressive U.S. intervention in March could have saved thousands of lives — isn’t the first or only time that people have died needlessly because of Donald Trump’s unfitness for the presidency. For more than two years, civilians in Yemen — where a humanitarian crisis caused by a ceaseless Saudi Arabian military campaign has killed tens of thousands and exposed millions to the risk of starvation and disease — have successfully convinced top Americans in both political parties that it...

MIAMI — Latinos say they are skeptical of federal authorities’ response to the coronavirus, but they generally support provisions in the new financial stimulus bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, according to a new national poll released by Democratic-leaning organizations Wednesday.The survey, conducted May 10 to May 16 by the research firm Latino Decisions, was commissioned by the nonprofits UnidosUS, SOMOS and the progressive advocacy group MoveOn. Polling in all 50 states — including over-samples in Florida, Arizona, Texas, New York, New Jersey, Colorado, Illinois and Califor...

Since January, President Donald Trump has alternately minimized the risks of the coronavirus, oversold his administration’s response and exaggerated possible treatments and vaccines, all while lashing out against experts who dare buck the line of the moment.Friday was par for the course, with a Rose Garden announcement of “Operation Warp Speed” — uniting the Departments of Health and Human Services and Defense to produce a vaccine as early as year’s end. Good luck, good scientists, but beware the hypeman’s promises.This press conference came, surely coincidentally, the day after Dr. Rick Brigh...

Historically, times of crisis have brought out the best in U.S. policymaking. The Great Depression ushered in the New Deal. The Cuyahoga River burning due to industrial pollution in 1969 gave us the Environmental Protection Agency. What might the coronavirus-fueled public health and economic emergencies lead to? If we follow another example from history, the answer just might be universal child care.The crisis facing our nation today shines a spotlight on the shortcomings of our health care delivery system, flaws in our democratic process and racial and environmental injustices. Perhaps more t...