Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine has made the West — in this context, NATO and the European Union — more united than it’s been in a long time. Unfortunately, that cohesion is now at risk, as the Russian invasion turns into a grinding war of attrition. To deter Putin from escalating and to keep him from winning, Western leaders must focus on the two weakest links in their alliance: Turkey and Hungary.

Canada and Australia, both allies of the United States, are clearly birds of a feather. Both have taken turns lately to smear China by accusing Chinese fighter aircraft of putting lives at risk by intercepting their military aircraft.

For the United States to have any hope of restoring itself as a global beacon of democracy, the Biden administration must take a firm and consistent stand when dealing with dictators. If other nations’ leaders can’t embrace the fundamentals of democracy, they don’t deserve to be welcomed on these shores. President Joe Biden faced some precarious choices this week in hosting the Summit of the Americas and scheduling a July trip to Saudi Arabia, a notorious human rights abuser.

A lack of trust toward medical organizations, or “medical mistrust,” is a barrier to safe and timely health care, especially for Black, Latinx and immigrant patients. It can result in missed appointments and delayed procedures, which in turn lead to higher risks of adverse health incidents and potential death.

The mass murders in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, were the culmination of decades of lobbying and deceptive marketing perpetrated by the gun industry. Because of their lies, more Americans have died from gun violence — including suicides and accidents — since 1975 than in all of the wars in U.S. history.

The back-to-back massacres at a Buffalo grocery store and a Texas elementary school have brought into sharp focus the disparity in federal gun law that forbids people younger than 18 from buying handguns but allows them to purchase semiautomatic rifles. That someone too young to buy alcohol or cigarettes is allowed to buy weapons designed for war makes no sense. If ever a loophole cried out to be closed, it is this dangerous distinction. Congress must make it a top priority in any package of reforms.

With public hearings coming soon from the House committee investigating Jan. 6, the Department of Justice has decided not to charge two key figures with contempt of Congress for refusing to honor subpoenas. Former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino are apparently off the hook despite refusing a legally binding obligation to tell Congress what they know about an attack on America’s democracy — an attack that continues to pose a threat.

The U.S. lost massive ground in combating climate change during the Trump administration, a recent report says. Now, congressional Republicans are offering their own climate plan — which doesn’t actually do anything new — while slamming President Joe Biden for climate shortfalls GOP opposition caused. When are Republicans going to understand that climate change isn’t a political football to be played with, but a genuine global crisis? The Environmental Performance Index, from Yale and Columbia universities, periodically charts the progress of nations around the world in the common goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The latest report scored 180 countries on a range of environmental criteria. It found that in the first half of Donald Trump’s presidency, between 2017 and 2019 (the latest period for which there is complete data), America plunged from 15th in the world to 101st in terms of climate-related action.

Teachers are trained to elevate young minds, not to gun down people wielding assault weapons who burst into their classroom intent on mass murder.

Inflation has no cure-all. The Federal Reserve’s rate hikes – two already this year, and more expected – might help, but they do nothing to address one of the main underlying problems: not enough workers.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — People buy handguns to protect themselves and their families. But guess what? Living with a handgun owner makes a person less safe.

Acknowledging that “progress can be slow and frustrating,” President Biden last week signed a long-anticipated executive order aimed at reforming the criminal justice system — a full two years since a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes. Even as he signed the order, Mr. Biden admitted it was insufficient. It directly affects only 100,000 federal law enforcement officers. Most policing occurs on the state and local level; only Congress or state and local leaders can overhaul law enforcement on a larger scale. The president’s action is an accomplishment, but it is just as much a reflection of how much more the nation must do.

As the murdered children of Uvalde are laid to rest this week, our nation needs to muster the courage and political will to treat rising gun violence and mass shootings as an acute public health crisis.

World Environment Day (June 5), led by the United Nations Environment Programme, serves as a reminder: Our Earth is a living organism, and every one of us is a part of its body. But that body is burning up with fever.

The bad news for President Joe Biden is that his popularity has fallen, this past week, into dead last place. Of the 13 presidents during the polling era, none has been in worse shape at this point in his first term, almost 500 days into a presidency, than Biden’s 40.5% approval rating. That’s according to FiveThirtyEight’s estimate of his average standing in all the public opinion polls. It’s not quite Biden’s own low point — he briefly dipped a bit lower in late February — but it’s close.

The Disinformation Governance Board has been put on pause — leaving skeptics of the new body within the Department of Homeland Security sighing with relief. The board was from the start too mired in controversy to perform its intended function. But its collapse is no cause for celebration.

Democrats are fighting over the Biden Administration’s antidumping investigation of Chinese solar manufacturers, and it’s a revealing brawl. Progressives want cheap and abundant green energy that boosts U.S. manufacturing, but they’re discovering they can’t have it all.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has made us all more acutely aware of the dangers of nuclear conflict than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Now, with Russia losing ground against an entrenched Ukrainian resistance, the stakes are only going to get higher.

While the Catholic Church has spent much of the last three decades wrestling with deeply painful revelations of priestly sexual abuse and the bishops’ callous disregard for the people in their care, many American Protestant denominations self-righteously wagged fingers at the Catholic hierarchy for tolerating pedophile priests when they knew they had a problem.