CNN-Opinion

CNN’s Brynn Gingras reports.

Opinion by Don Lincoln On April 24, 1990, the Space Shuttle Discovery was launched. Discovery’s engines and boosters thundered away as the spacecraft was pushed upward with over a million pounds of thrust. It achieved orbit in a mere eight and a half minutes. While the launch of any space-going vehicle is a glorious spectacle,

Arick Wierson and Bradley Honan The hugely consequential New York City Democratic Primary election took place last Tuesday, June 22, and the winner is … “chaos.” Here is a quick recap: Back in November of 2019, New York City voted in favor of adopting a ranked choice voting (often abbreviated as RCV) system in which

CNN presidential historian Tim Naftali analyzes a C-SPAN poll that ranks former President Donald Trump as the worst living President.

Analysis by Lauren Dezenski, CNN Even though President Donald Trump famously boasted he would be “more presidential than any president that’s ever held office” with the exception of Abraham Lincoln, historians now say he’s among America’s worst presidents. Ever since 2000, when a new president has been elected, C-SPAN surveys presidential historians and asks them

Opinion by Nicole Hemmer During the insurrection in January, a rioter hoisted a Confederate flag over his shoulder, letting it furl out behind him as he marched through the Capitol. It was an outrageous sight: not even during the Civil War had insurrectionists breached the halls of Congress with the battle flag. Yet there it

Analysis by Harry Enten, CNN The New York City Democratic mayoral primary is a total mess. The city’s Board of Elections, known for previous errors, managed to make its biggest one to date when it accidentally included about 135,000 test ballots in its initial calculation of the primary results under the city’s new ranked-choice voting

Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf, CNN The counting error in New York’s mayoral primary is the last kind of screwup American democracy needed. Not right now. Not when the whole idea of people choosing their government is on the ropes in so many ways: A proposal for a new national voting standard has been blocked.

Opinion by Thomas Balcerski On Wednesday, C-SPAN released its 2021 Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership, including for the first time former President Donald Trump. The survey organizers have assembled a broad ideological and demographic spectrum of 142 presidential historians and professional observers of the presidency invited to participate. I was one of them. The results

Opinion by Michael D’Antonio During the 2016 election campaign a new political phenomenon emerged: journalists seemed to take then-candidate Donald Trump literally, but not seriously, while his supporters did the reverse: They took him seriously but not literally. This curiosity was noted by many, including tech billionaire Peter Thiel. Thiel explained that while Trump may

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN America’s “forever war” in Afghanistan outlasted the first three commanders in chief of this century. But this week, Joe Biden is set to become the president who imposes closure on the US’ role in the bloody, intractable conflict. Twenty years after the 9/11 attacks — plotted by al-Qaeda from Afghan

CNN’s Chris Cuomo and former White House ethics czar Norm Eisen discuss former President Trump’s potential future legal issues.

Analysis by Stephen Collinson Imagine going to work knowing that millions of people want you to quit. We’re not talking about a football manager who just led his team to a first-round exit in Euro 2020. Or a public health official like Dr. Anthony Fauci or Chris Whitty assailed by public ire over lockdowns. The

Analysis by Paula Newton In the words of Chief Bobby Cameron, it is time to listen to the “whispers” of past children. The leader of Canada’s Federation of Sovereign Indigenous First Nations evoked a singular image when he spoke with me last week: Indigenous children hauntingly pleading from their graves for Canada to atone for

Opinion by Hanif Kara On Thursday, the partial collapse of a residential building in Surfside, Florida, left 11 dead and 150 still unaccounted for. While we await answers about what caused this tragedy, we are left asking the question: What could cause a building simply fall down? The answer, usually: exceptional circumstances. In modern times

Opinion by Norman Eisen, E. Danya Perry and John Cuti As long-time criminal law practitioners, we know that the Monday meeting held between New York prosecutors and former President Donald Trump’s attorneys was among the more dramatic that can play out in the behind-the-scenes life of any case. The District Attorney for the County of

Analysis by Lauren Dezenski, CNN Congress is trying again Tuesday on removing Confederate statues from the US Capitol. The House is expected to vote on a resolution to expel Confederate statues and replace the Capitol’s bust of Roger B. Taney, the chief justice who wrote the Dred Scott decision, with one honoring Thurgood Marshall, the first

Opinion by Jill Filipovic Republicans sure do have a bizarre definition of “patriotism.” Prominent members of the GOP are outraged that hammer thrower Gwen Berry silently turned her body away from facing the American flag while the National Anthem played at the Olympic trials in Oregon Saturday. Berry, who placed third and qualified for the

Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf, CNN There are more and more mixed messages on masks, even for those vaccinated against Covid-19. The World Health Organization is encouraging even the vaccinated to keep the masks on, particularly indoors, as the Delta variant of Covid-19 ricochets around the world. Compare that with the US Centers for Disease

Opinion by Fortuna Smukler My husband woke me up last Thursday morning at 6 a.m .to let me know that Champlain South had partly collapsed. I grew up, and we both raised our family, just one mile from the condominium until we moved 20 years ago. We saw it being built. It was one of