IT IS HARD to overstate just how much President Trump repels young voters.

"No recent president has ever been more hated by young people," Samuel Abrams, a professor of political science at Sarah Lawrence College and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said in an interview. "This generational opposition casts a very dark shadow on the future of the Republican Party."

Reams of survey data confirm Trump's unpopularity with young adults.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

FIRST CAME the furor when the Scottish actress Tilda Swinton was cast by Marvel Studios to play the Ancient One in "Doctor Strange" — a character that was Asian in the original graphic novels. Then came an uproar over the choice of Scarlett Johansson to star in a movie about the life of Dante "Tex" Gill, a transgender gangster. Still another controversy erupted when the able-bodied Bryan Cranston won the role of Phillip Lacasse, a quadriplegic billionaire, in the movie "The Upside."

In all three cases, critics blasted the actors for the supposed sin of cultural appropriation — for taking parts that ought to have gone to actors whose racial, gender, or bodily identity matched that of the character being portrayed.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

ON COUNTLESS ISSUES, Americans are more divided than ever. But if there's one thing we agree on, it's that the 2020 election is the most important any of us has ever experienced.

That's what President Trump told a Wisconsin rally last month ("This is the most important election in the history of our country") and it's what Kamala Harris declared as the Democratic National Convention opened ("I firmly, in my heart and in my soul, know that this is the most important election of our lifetime"). You probably agree with them: In a YouGov survey of more than 6,500 Americans, seven in 10 respondents agreed that the 2020 presidential election is the most important of their lifetime.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

PENDING BEFORE the highest court in Massachusetts is Desrosiers v. Baker, a lawsuit challenging the many unilateral orders Governor Charlie Baker has issued since declaring a state of emergency in response to the pandemic seven months ago. The Supreme Judicial Court heard oral arguments in the case on Sept. 11, but hasn't yet issued a decision. That delay has a silver lining: It allows the justices to take into account rulings handed down by two other American courts in similar cases in recent weeks.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

AT THE Lincoln Memorial in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech, with its iconic exhortation that Americans "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." One year later, in a significant advance toward the realization of King's dream, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, making it illegal "to discriminate against any individual" in employment, education, and public accommodations "on the basis of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin."

Continue to the full article  |  More articles