Boston Globe Opinion

01/06/2025

With DOGE and Trump, we have been given the generational chance to try again, writes Janie Nitze. It’s something that all of us — blue or red — should cheer on.

Roosevelt expanded government to help the nation climb out of the Great Depression. But he also recognized that too much bureaucracy was a big problem.

01/06/2025

Editorial: The high cost, the hint of favoritism, and the sometimes terrible food highlight the need for more scrutiny of the lucrative contract given to the company delivering meals to family homeless shelters in Massachusetts.

The migrant crisis isn’t going away, and state costs will continue to mount. Officials should make sure costs are reasonable and sustainable.

01/06/2025

The 2024 election proved that Democrats don't actually have the demographic advantage they've been counting on. Or at least, that's now becoming the conventional takeaway. But it might be the wrong takeaway, as David Scharfenberg writes in .

The Democratic Party expected that an increasingly diverse country would deliver an enduring majority. The election proved the folly of that prediction — or did it?

01/06/2025

American carmakers have been complaining about federal deadlines for increasing the amount of electric cars they sell. So Donald Trump said he'd get rid of those rules — and the carmakers said, "Wait, actually, keep the rules!"

In , Micheline Maynard explains what's going on.

Detroit automakers have been dithering on electrifying their offerings. But it’s too late for them to give up.

01/05/2025

Editorial: Welcome to the Massachusetts Legislature — a body with a propensity to work in secret and to draft rules that guarantee each and every member is beholden to the House speaker and Senate president from whom all power and most perks are derived. https://trib.al/ZdSKvfG

01/04/2025

“Three cats, a tense demilitarized zone, and pages of instructions for neighbors who sometimes looked after the tribe. We were that household,” writes Todd Balf. “We were crazy cat people.” https://trib.al/aglcGSY

01/04/2025

President Vladimir Putin will one day be replaced, and another leader with the characteristics of former premier Nikita Khrushchev may slip into his seat of power and flip the East-West dynamic in a more hopeful direction, says Marvin Kalb. https://trib.al/nElnL3c

01/03/2025

It symbolizes something about the circle of violent events America travels around, again and again, writes Heather Hopp-Bruce. We read the news with horror; we wash the blood off the streets and sidewalks; we move on to the next event.

Someone gave the heartbreaking order to clean up all that blood and someone else arrived with a power washer to methodically wash the visible remnants of that morning into the gutters and down the storm drains.

01/03/2025

Grover Cleveland and Donald Trump were born 109 years apart, but they’re joined by being the only figures to win the White House after losing a reelection bid, writes David Shribman. What advice would Cleveland give the incoming president?

Eight pieces of advice for the incoming president.

01/03/2025

Editorial: A year of widening political divisions ended with the sobering news that confidence in the nation’s judicial system has also taken a hit and dropped to a record low 35 percent, according to the most recent Gallup poll.

Ethics reforms — even from within — would help stem the slide.

01/03/2025

Mass shootings in public places are far rarer than we are generally led to believe, says Northeastern criminology professor James Alan Fox. Our high level of fear of such massacres is leading to bad policies, from relaxed concealed-carry laws to traumatic lockdown drills in schools.

The risk of being gunned down in public or school is overstated. As a result, we’re getting bad policies that make us less safe.

01/02/2025

Given the prominence of fears that the attacker in New Orleans may have acted in concert with the Islamic State — now put to rest by the FBI — it would be easy to overreact. Let’s put the attack in context, writes Robert A. Pape.

Their threat remains low, but a low threat does not mean no threat.

01/02/2025

The total cost of Mayor Michelle Wu’s plan for White Stadium is still unknown — and its ultimate compatibility with Franklin Park and the surrounding neighborhood is still an open question, says Joan Vennochi.

Would park land in any other part of Boston be given up so readily to privatization?

01/02/2025

“I’m not about to outsource my self-esteem issue to Big Pharma if I don’t have to,” writes Alex Beam.

My weight concerns mainly injure my considerable vanity, and I’m not about to outsource my self-esteem issue to Big Pharma if I don’t have to.

01/02/2025

Following the death of Jimmy Carter, many commentators have stressed his personal characteristics — but his importance was in his politics and policies, says Nicholas Evan Sarantakes.

He was also open-minded, willing and determined to hear from people with different ideas.

01/02/2025

Greenland? The Panama Canal? Why stop there? As Stephen Kinzer writes in , Donald Trump wants to go back to the old days when the United States simply grabbed what it wanted in the world.

The US has annexed strategic territory before. To do it now would be a path to global chaos.

01/02/2025

Editorial: Two major bills — one on health care market oversight and another on prescription drug costs — landed on Governor Maura Healey’s desk Monday. Although neither is perfect, she should sign them into law.

Although neither is perfect, Healey should sign the bills on drug pricing and market oversight into law.

01/01/2025

"When you learn about the history of a city, you start to realize that a lot of stories… echo across generations," says Ebony Gill, creator of the Boston Urban Archive.

Read more about how Gill makes Boston’s forgotten history go viral: https://trib.al/xFUQx3D