This term, the Supreme Court decided two cases involving religion: Groff v. DeJoy was a relatively low-profile case about religious accommodations at work; 303 Creative v. Elenis was a blockbuster case about the clash between religious exercise and principles of equal treatment. (The legal question was technically about speech, but religion was at the core […]

How did you sleep last night? Did you slumber lavishly, temperature and temperament aligned, waking with the sun? Or was it one of those stormy-seas nights, dreams indistinguishable from waking-life worries, tangled covers, eyes on the clock? Sleep is mysterious, although we try mightily to make it less so. We use metaphors to describe it, […]

Dr. Rochelle Walensky became the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at what was both the darkest period of the pandemic and a moment of remarkable optimism. In early 2021, several thousand Americans were dying each day in Covid’s first, brutal winter surge. But vaccines were already being delivered, faster than in […]

It’s no small irony that so much federal money is being dedicated in various ways to climate-change projects that will do nothing to curtail Americans’ love of driving or to reduce the costs associated with it. The country’s road system receives much of its funding through a tax on gasoline, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs […]

Hosted by Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat, Carlos Lozada and Lydia Polgreen Listen to and follow ‘Matter of Opinion’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon Music The New York Times Audio app includes podcasts, narrated articles from the newsroom and other publishers, as well as exclusive new shows — including this one — which we’re making available […]

When faced with a particularly tough question on rounds during my intern year, I would run straight to the bathroom. There, I would flip through the medical reference book I carried in my pocket, find the answer and return to the group, ready to respond. At the time, I believed that my job was to […]

Israel ends its West Bank operation Israel’s military said yesterday that it had withdrawn from the occupied West Bank city of Jenin after a large-scale incursion that killed at least 12 Palestinians, left one Israeli soldier dead and sent thousands fleeing from their homes over the past two days. Palestinians in Jenin joined a mass […]

The University of Virginia, one of the country’s top public universities, enrolls a strikingly affluent group of students: Less than 15 percent of recent undergraduates at UVA have come from families with incomes low enough to qualify for Pell Grants, the largest federal financial aid program. The same is true at some other public universities, […]

To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we have to make two big transitions at once: First, we have to generate all of our electricity from clean sources, like wind turbines and solar panels, rather than power plants that run on coal and methane gas. Second, we have to retool nearly everything else that […]

BERLIN — It’s not often that the publication of a policy paper is cause for excitement. But when the German government set out the country’s first national security strategy in June, it set off a flurry of coverage. The document, in the end, was a bit of a disappointment. Partly that was because, for all […]