Iran is portraying the United States as in retreat after the shooting down of a U.S. drone and President Donald Trump’s decision not to retaliate. But despite high tensions, and today’s move by the U.S. to sanction Iran’s supreme leader and eight commanders, leaders on both sides say they don’t

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This week the Monitor asks one of the most important questions in politics today: How could the abortion debate look different? On the surface, the cover story is about one issue, and it is set in the United States. But really it is about much more. It is about how we view one another as […]

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Bernie Sanders feature I thoroughly enjoyed reading the June 3 Weekly cover story, “Roots of Bernie’s revolution,” by Christa Case Bryant. It was so well written and informative.  I like the way Bernie Sanders voices his views, but the feature article gave him a persona I did not know:

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President Donald Trump’s Iran strategy seems to be a policy of two approaches running at full tilt in opposite directions. In canceling an armed attack on Iranian military sites Thursday night, Mr. Trump appeared to show restraint and a desire to keep American actions proportional to

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The case of the Bladensburg Peace Cross is in many ways about the emotional burdens of history. In 2014 local residents and the American Humanist Society objected to the Latin-style cross, which has stood on a patch of municipally maintained land for a century, commemorating local boys who fell

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An estimated 2 million Hong Kongers braved hazy heat Sunday to continue protesting a controversial extradition law. The day before, Chief Executive Carrie Lam had announced she would shelve the bill, for now. But increasingly, Mrs. Lam herself is a target of the protests. Calls of “Carrie Lam!

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Not long after his 2017 election as Brooklyn’s district attorney, Eric Gonzalez gave a speech in which he declared that “The real cultural shift I’m going to be asking prosecutors in my office to make is considering jail as the last option.” In most American cities that would be an

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Taxi driver Nery Vásquez begrudgingly cast a ballot on Sunday for the person he decided was least corrupt on the lengthy list of candidates. “We have to pick somebody [other than Sandra Torres], so that there’s competition,” he said, adding that none of the candidates excited him. If

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Just for a second, turn back to the cover and look at those two photos of Baltimore. If I asked you simply to say the first thing that came to your mind, we all would surely say about a hundred different things. But the first thing that comes into my mind is “balance.” Admittedly, I […]

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‘Who’ versus ‘whom’ The May 20 “In a Word” column by Melissa Mohr titled “The waning use of the word ‘whom’” really got my attention. In my school days in England during the 1950s and ’60s it cost you a minus point if your essay contained the word “who” where “whom” was required. So this […]

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Every single Father’s Day for the last ten years, like clockwork, I’ve gotten a phone call from a kid I once coached on a sports team. Actually, this kid is a grown man now. He’s explained that during those years we were on that team together, although he knew that I was mainly focused on […]

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‘Becoming” is the right descriptor for Theodor Seuss Geisel. The grandson of a New England brewer, he started out as a clever self-taught cartoonist whose comic touch with image and words was first fully appreciated in advertisements for bug spray and motor oil. “‘I began to get it through my

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Hong Kong is no stranger to protests, and students have often been on their front lines. But Wednesday, as tens of thousands of demonstrators massed around the territory’s government headquarters, the demonstrations and police response reached their most intense levels in years, with tear gas,

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On a bright winter day in Botswana’s capital, a panel of three High Court judges unanimously struck down a colonial-era law criminalizing homosexuality, becoming the second court in African history to do so. “A democratic nation is one that embraces tolerance, diversity, and open-mindedness,”

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The Mexico tariff threat has been dodged, for now. That’s the bottom line of the bilateral agreement between the U.S. and Mexican governments announced by President Trump last Friday. But if the short-term outlook is relief, the longer-term outlook is more mixed. Yes, U.S. manufacturers,

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If, after two years as editor of The Christian Science Monitor and another eight as deputy and national news editor, I could offer one piece of advice to readers, it would be this: Don’t trust shortcuts. In democratic nations, the purpose of government is to be a reflection of their people. The

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