This article contains descriptions of sexual assault. On Jan. 12, Lisa Montgomery is set to become the first woman executed on federal death row in nearly 70 years. The last executions, both in 1953, were of Bonnie Heady, killed in a gas chamber in Missouri, and Ethel Rosenberg. Ms. Montgomery would be only the fifth […]

The start of an off-road motorcycle or all-terrain vehicle endurance race is like a freight train rolling through an earthquake. Open courses stretch over grass tracks, woods and streams. Spectators are unfazed as, inches away, racers fly by. There’s a lot of dirt. When I stumbled upon a race near Ithaca, N.Y., in 2014, a […]

All major American veterans’ organizations have called for the ouster of Robert Wilkie as secretary of veterans affairs over the shameless treatment by him and his senior staff of a veteran who says she was sexually assaulted. When men and women who served in uniform speak almost with one voice, it is not politics, as […]

This year has awakened us to the fact that we die. We’ve always known it to be true in a technical sense, but a pandemic demands that we internalize this understanding. It’s one thing to acknowledge the deaths of others, and another to accept our own. It’s not just emotionally taxing; it is difficult even […]

It’s been a very good month for Covid-19 vaccines. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration provided an emergency authorization for a vaccine produced by Pfizer-BioNTech. On Thursday, an advisory committee recommended authorizing a vaccine by Moderna, and the F.D.A. is expected to authorize it soon. These vaccines are a triumph. In large-scale trials with […]

Congress is deep in negotiations this week to pass a coronavirus relief bill. In the meantime, many aid programs — from expanded unemployment to the federal eviction moratorium and student loan freeze — may expire at year’s end, or experience a lapse once a stimulus package is approved. Without ongoing government support, many Americans find […]

More from our inbox: To the Editor: The reign of Donald Trump has brought us face to face with the uniquely American brand of demagogy, from the dictatorial Huey Long and racist George Wallace to the Red-baiting Joe McCarthy and our current bully in chief, Donald Trump. But last month’s election reminds us that every […]

The Supreme Court was never going to hear, let alone grant, the request by red-state attorneys general and the White House to overturn the election results in four battleground states that went for Joe Biden. We knew that, we privileged few who could have offered an inventory of the lawsuit’s flaws while standing on one […]

Want to get The Morning by email? Here’s the sign-up. Good morning. The U.S. again stands virtually alone in the severity of its outbreak. It’s happening again: For the second time this year, the United States has fallen behind nearly every other country in combating the virus. The U.S. was not alone in suffering a […]

VIENNA — The philosopher Avishai Margalit was born in 1939, at the onset of World War II, and has lived most of his life in Israel, a country that has always existed between war and peace. That the value of political compromise has always occupied Professor Margalit’s thinking should come as no surprise. He is […]