Here’s the thing about ageism. It’s not always malicious, but it hurts. Is there anyone who would say that we don’t want everyone, no matter what their age, to participate fully and to the best of their ability in American society?

“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” President Donald Trump tweeted in December of 2020. “Be there, will be wild!” His supporters listened.

Hunger is stalking the world. Seven years ago, the United Nations vowed to eradicate it by 2030. Yet the number of people affected globally reached 828 million last year, and an unprecedented number — 345 million — are currently experiencing acute food insecurity, the U.N. has warned.

It has been an important year for the memory and impact of Emmett Till’s life and terrible death. That alone shows how slow justice can be for people of color in America.

The baby formula shortage continues to frustrate parents who are still paying significantly more for the product — if they’re able to find it on grocery store shelves at all. While President Joe Biden initiated Operation Fly Formula to ship in formula from other countries more than a month ago, a factory at the center of the crisis was shut down again recently due to flooding, causing the supply of formula to plummet once again.

Every mass shooting in America is a tragedy, but the one that killed seven people near Chicago Monday was especially jolting, as it combined two singularly American phenomena: the nation’s annual celebration of its independence and the chronic scourge of gun violence at a level unheard of in the rest of the advanced world. Why was a 21-year-old man who had posted violent imagery glamorizing mass shootings able to legally buy a weapon of war and at least 70 rounds of ammunition, and take it to a rooftop over a July 4 parade? That ludicrous scenario was as uniquely American as the parade itself.

Culture wars continue to polarize U.S. politics, but Americans on both sides of the cultural divide should agree that the growing gap between the richest Americans and average folks undermines democracy. The average compensation for a CEO at the country’s largest companies hit $20 million this year, up 31% since 2020. That’s 275 to 350 times the wages of median workers.

The deadly July Fourth attack in Highland Park, Illinois, underscores how a cherished constitutional right is under attack — the First Amendment right to peacefully assemble.

The Supreme Court set off political fireworks this year with divided opinions on gun rights, abortion, religious liberty and more. So it’s worth highlighting the Court’s unanimous June decision that reinforces a core tenet of the U.S. legal system (Ruan v. U.S.)

I am a resident physician, a brand-new doctor. I am just beginning my residency training. The process of becoming a doctor is long and tedious and involves a tremendous amount of work and dogged commitment. We complete undergraduate education, four years of medical school, and three to five years of residency. The hardest part, though, is not academics or occupational stamina — but rather developing a personal and professional identity as you bear witness to the suffering of your fellow man.

For decades, U.S. companies have been making a significant omission in their financial statements: They’ve failed to recognize and disclose the full cost of climate change. This matters not only for the planet’s future, but also for investors today. It makes some businesses look more profitable than they really are, and it prevents others from realizing the value of new and greener opportunities.

By definition, meetings of global leaders are important even if they’re not always consequential.

In a remarkable reversal of tradition, some Republicans have proposed a generous, broad-based federal benefit that Democrats are likely to oppose because it soaks the rich — their rich.

Nicotine kills. Oh, not directly, for the most part. It’s just so addictive that cigarette smokers find it nearly impossible to quit a product that subtracts years off their lives, causes cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, strokes and heart disease, along with worsening Type 2 diabetes. In 2018, more than half of the smokers in this country tried to stop; only 8% did.

When a 2,000-pound Russian missile slammed into a crowded shopping mall in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk on Monday — killing at least 18 people buying bathing suits or blenders — that was par for the course for Russia.

Conventional wisdom holds that America’s democratic norms are withering. It also asserts that high voter turnout signifies a healthy democracy. So does a record high voter turnout for this May’s midterm primary election mean American democracy is in better shape than it seems?

Count us fans of the Food and Drug Administration’s historic push to reduce nicotine levels in cigarettes, which, in concert with a proposed ban on menthol-flavored cancer sticks, promises to liberate millions of Americans from deadly addiction. Cigarette smoking is responsible for nearly a half-million deaths in America per year, a fact easily forgotten amid understandable attention to COVID-19’s carnage and the opioid epidemic. It’s the tar and carbon monoxide and other chemicals in burning tobacco that kill, but it’s the nicotine that keeps smokers smoking.

Few issues within America’s dysfunctional health care system are more pressing than the astronomical price of insulin — access to which is, for millions of Americans, literally a matter of life or death. Congress is finally moving toward approving legislation that would partially address the problem. But passage will rely on the willingness of some hesitant Republicans, including Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, to set aside their free market absolutism and acknowledge that the apparent price-gouging going isn’t what markets are supposed to do.

President Joe Biden’s call for a three-month suspension of the 18-cent federal gas tax in response to soaring gas prices has, thankfully, landed with a bipartisan thud in Congress. The idea, an old fallback for politicians when pump prices rise, is virtually always a bad one, providing meager relief to motorists while blowing major holes in highway budgets. The administration should let this notion sputter out.