Opinion

There’s hardly a spot of color on the hardwood trees in our yard, but the light is glorious, as it always is in October, and the signs of fall are unmistakable. The pokeweed, in full berry-laden splendor at the end of September, has been reduced to drooping leaves and magenta …

In August, health officials recorded the first case of polio in Gaza in more than 25 years, in an unvaccinated 10-month-old baby whose lower left leg became paralyzed by the virus. Sadness and frustration washed over me when I first heard the news. It is outrageous that polio — which …

Listen to and follow ‘The Opinions’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube | iHeartRadio Despite concerns over the falling birthrate, especially on the right, the Times Opinion columnist David French recognizes that the push to have more families — and bigger ones — has become problematic. In this …

At the beginning of the Biden presidency, many of us serving in the National Security Council gathered to read the intelligence and reached a key conclusion: The 2020s would be what we called the “decisive decade” in U.S. competition with China. Beijing seeks to displace the United States from its …

There are many ways for New York City to turn the page on Mayor Eric Adams. None of them need to include Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor now plotting a comeback as mayor. Yet he is working the phones right now, trying to persuade donors and New York Democrats …

As the presidential campaign begins its final sprint, Donald Trump has made crystal clear how he will respond if he loses. He will refuse to accept the results; he will make baseless claims of voter fraud; and he will turn, with even more ferocity than he did in 2020, to …

I’ve never considered “immigrant” my calling card, even though it’s one I’ve always carried. I arrived here first as a 3-year-old boy in the mid-1970s, settling with my family in Northern California, in a small town with trees so thick that their branches mingled high over the roads. My mother …

Like many health care workers, I am required to receive my annual flu shot by the end of October. Every year, I wait until the last possible day to get vaccinated. That’s because a substantial body of research shows that flu shot effectiveness wanes markedly over time, just as that …

True political courage — the principled stand, the elevation of country over party pressure, the willingness to sacrifice a career to protect the common good — has become painfully rare in a polarized world. It deserves to be celebrated and nurtured whenever it appears, especially in defense of fundamental American …

Barack Obama got blunt in Pittsburgh on Thursday. He chided Black men who are not supporting Kamala Harris, saying that some of “the brothers” were just not “feeling the idea of having a woman as president.” That left me mulling again: Is Harris in a dead-even race against a ridiculous …