Peace and Security
King’s Dream Included Economic Equality, Too
April 4 marks the 50th anniversary of the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, King was fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. American history...
It’s on Us to Stop the War in Yemen
We’re helping fight someone else’s war in Yemen — and the blood is on our hands. Since March 2015, the United States has supported a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that's intervening in a civil war in Yemen. The war has...
This Popular Pro-Gun Argument Doesn’t Make Any Sense
As our nation debates gun rights vs. gun control, there's a stupid argument that keeps resurfacing on the anti-gun control side. I'm not anti-gun, but I am anti-stupidity, so this is bugging me. It's the idea that because criminals, by their very nature, do not follow...
One No-Brainer Way to Bring Gun Deaths Down
It's now been over a month since 17 teenagers were gunned down at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, culminating in a march that brought nearly a million people to the capital. Yet Congress is still dragging its feet on guns. While Republicans and Democrats...
Get Ready for Bush 2.0
Political reporters have a saying: There’s always a tweet. That is, for nearly every political moment or presidential decree, there’s an uncannily on-point comment buried somewhere in the presidential Twitter feed. Often it features the president expressing a past...
A Genuinely Scary Moment in Foreign Policy
I'm scared. I don't have anything more savvy, or cool, or nuanced to say. I'm just scared. Since November 8, 2016, I've felt varying degrees of distress ranging from unease to panic. But whatever Donald Trump has done while in office — however much he's taunted Kim...
Give Me Liberty or Give Them Death
15 Years After the Iraq Invasion, What Are the Costs?
This March marked the 15th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. In 2003, President George W. Bush and his advisers based their case for war on the idea that Saddam Hussein, then dictator of Iraq, possessed weapons of mass destruction — weapons that have never...
Nurses Are Calling #TimesUp on Domestic Abuse
Few people think of nurses like me as being on the frontlines of domestic violence prevention, but we are. Among the thousands of patients I’ve treated, I’ve seen countless women who were abused. When my decades of experience and instincts as an ER nurse prompt me to...
Getting Real About School Safety
Can we get real about school safety? Since the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, there have been at least 239 school shootings in the United States. 438 people were shot and injured in these shootings, and 138 people were killed. On Valentine’s...