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Ms. Pao contends she was discriminated against.

What is really under examination in this trial is the question of why there are so few women in leadership positions in Silicon Valley. At stake is any hope that the tech world can claim to be a progressive place, or even a fair one.

Were women simply not interested in becoming venture capitalists, “or did the venture capital world fight them off?”

Indiana’s governor is now vowing to “clarify” a religious freedom law he recently signed in that state, because of what he calls a “perception problem” about whether the legislation would allow open discrimination against people whose sexual identities defy the heteronormative construct.

Rather than simply protecting the free exercise of religion, the bill provides the possibility that religion could be used as a basis of discrimination against some customers.

One Indiana pizzeria, asserting that it is “a Christian establishment,” has already said that it will not cater gay weddings: “If a gay couple came in and wanted us to provide pizzas for their wedding, we would have to say no.” By the way, is wedding pizza a thing in Indiana? Just asking…

leaders and publics. But they are wrong in asserting that he is somehow a danger to the traditional principles of the Republican Party. On the contrary, Mr. Trump represents a return to the party’s roots. It’s the neocons who are the interlopers

it can be hard to remember that a much different sensibility had previously governed the party, one reminiscent of Mr. Trump’s own positions: wariness about foreign intervention, championing of protectionist trade policies, a belief in the exercise of unilateral military power and a suspicion of global elites and institutions.

One can hear echoes of this Republican past in Mr. Trump’s own positions. His animating credo on foreign policy seems to be to farm out the heavy lifting to other countries whenever possible. Speaking on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” last August, he made his distaste for intervention clear: “At some point, we can’t be the policeman of the world. We have to rebuild our own country." Since then, to the consternation of the party establishment, he has also forthrightly denounced the Iraq war, declaring that the Bush administration’s case for it was based on a “lie.”

A NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump 52% to 43% in a general election matchup.

For all intents and purposes, the general election campaign is underway. Yes, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is still running, but he has no realistic path to winning the Democratic nomination. That means that it's Biden vs. Trump.

And the President starts out in a very unusual place for an incumbent: behind. Trump is the first incumbent president to be trailing at this point in the general election cycle (i.e. late March in the election year) since Harry Truman in 1948.

The disturbing contrast between the values and culture of the Democratic and Republican parties was on horrifying display on Tuesday.

On one hand, you had a lovely, personal endorsement of former vice president Joe Biden from 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, followed by a substantive discussion of the unequal impact of the coronavirus. After Biden introduced her as “a woman who should be president of the United States right now,” Clinton remarked, “I wish he were president right now, but I can’t wait until he is.

On display was empathetic, data-driven leadership. The friendly reminiscing of their time in the Obama administration reminded us of a time when graceful, decent and cordial people populated government.

A fifth of undergrads now say it’s acceptable to use physical force to silence a speaker who makes “offensive and hurtful statements.”

when students were asked whether the First Amendment protects “hate speech,” 4 in 10 said no.

Speech promoting hatred — or at least, speech perceived as promoting hatred — may be abhorrent, but it is nonetheless constitutionally protected.

Regal Cinemas will reopen its theaters in the U.S. in April, six months after they closed amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.The reopening plans were announced by parent company Cineworld Group on Tuesday. Cineworld intends to reopen its theaters in the U.K. in May. Regal has more than 7,000 movie screens in 536 theaters in the United States.

The theaters' reopening will coincide with a couple of big-ticket movie openings: Godzilla vs. Kong on April 2 and Mortal Kombat on April 16.

Cineworld also announced a multiyear deal with Warner Bros. Pictures Group in the U.S. that will guarantee a period of exclusivity for movies in theaters before being released more widely, starting in 2022. But in 2021, Warner Bros.' new movie releases — including Godzilla vs. Kong and Mortal Kombat — will also be available to stream on HBO Max.

In the new poll, 61% support the $1.9 trillion economic relief bill proposed by Biden and expected to pass in the House Wednesday, and several key provisions of the bill are even more popular. A broad majority of Americans (85%) say they support policies in the bill that would provide larger tax credits for families and make them easier for low-income households to claim, including majorities across party lines (95% of Democrats and 73% of Republicans support it). Around three-quarters favor provisions to provide funding to facilitate a return to the classroom for K-12 students (77%), and sending stimulus checks worth up to $1,400 per person to most families and individuals (76%). Both of those policies also have majority support across party lines (55% of Republicans support each, among Democrats, support tops 90% for each one).

Roughly two-thirds of Americans say that if the bill becomes law, it will help the economy at least some (66%), and 55% say it would help people like them. Those with lower annual incomes are more likely to say the bill will do a lot to help them than are those with higher incomes (46% of those earning less than $25,000 per year say it will help people like them a lot, compared with just 6% among those earning $100,000 or more per year), as are women (28% of women say it will help them a lot vs. 19% of men), and people of color (37% among people of color vs. 16% among Whites).

The broad popularity of the bill comes as just over half of Americans say they approve of the way Biden is handling the presidency (51%), while 41% disapprove.

The political divide in America has shifted. It is no longer liberal vs. conservative, but instead pro-democracy vs. anti-democracy.

While "conservative" has always meant different things to different people, the modern GOP has marketed itself as the party of small government, backing reduced spending, states' rights, a strong national defense and a stance against authoritarian regimes, respect for traditions and norms, and a reverence for the rule of law and so-called traditional family values.

he party that once decried judicial activism is leading efforts to get the courts to swing the election and sees no problem with asking a federal judge to grant the vice president the power to hand the election to his own party.

most Americans would support energy-conserving policies only if they cost households less than $200 per year — woefully short of the investment required to keep warming under catastrophic rates. This inaction is breathtakingly immoral.

Why would we mortgage our future — and that of our children, and their children — rather than temper our addiction to fossil fuels? Knowing what we know, why is it so hard to change our ways?

Deeply empathic people tend to be environmentally responsible, but our caring instincts are shortsighted and dissolve across space and time, making it harder for us to deal with things that haven’t happened yet.

The coronavirus pandemic has brought health care to the forefront of the 2020 presidential election.

Trump has backed a lawsuit to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the landmark health care law also known as ObamaCare, and repeatedly pledged to nominate Supreme Court justices who would rule against it. 

Biden, meanwhile, has laid out a plan to expand the ACA by adding a public option that's open to all Americans but preserves the option for individuals to keep their private insurance.

The United States devotes a lot more of its economic resources to health care than any other nation, and yet its health care outcomes aren’t better for it.

That hasn’t always been the case. America was in the realm of other countries in per-capita health spending through about 1980. Then it diverged.

It’s the same story with health spending as a fraction of gross domestic product. Likewise, life expectancy. In 1980, the U.S. was right in the middle of the pack of peer nations in life expectancy at birth. But by the mid-2000s, we were at the bottom of the pack.

Not long ago, the struggle between racial liberalism and racial conservatism was a battle fought inside the Democratic and Republican parties. Now it’s a battle fought between the parties.

As African-Americans and other racial minorities increasingly occupy positions of influence and authority in American society, they also face backlash from those on the right whose opposition to ceding power is fierce, whether their opposition is veiled or out in the open. This opposition is now lodged solidly in the contemporary Republican Party, and the two parties regularly confront each other with rising intensity over the issue.

the importance of ethnicity and race in American politics is growing, not diminishing.

What Mr. Trump’s stunning win and Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s extraordinary comeback in the 2020 primaries both demonstrate, they say, is the crucial importance of momentum-changing events, the mood of the electorate and the ingrained perceptions of the candidates. Tactics like well-produced campaign ads, high-profile endorsements and clever one-liners at debates often matter far less, as Mrs. Clinton found.

To call Mr. Trump’s political organization four years ago bare-bones would be an insult to other bare-bones campaigns. Mr. Trump cycled through campaign managers, ran his campaign from a spare floor in Trump Tower and approached social media like a guy watching TV at the end of a bar. But it all proved less important than the structural factors that shaped the 2016 election and ultimately favored him.

First, Mr. Trump ran in a crowded and fragmented Republican field and found a strong plurality of voters for his racial grievances and attacks on the political establishment.

Roughly one-in-five say that the federal government should stop enforcing the separation of church and state (19%) and that the U.S. Constitution was inspired by God (18%). And 15% go as far as to say the federal government should declare the U.S. a Christian nation.

For example, two-thirds of U.S. adults (67%) say the Constitution was written by humans and reflects their vision, not necessarily God’s vision. And a similar share (69%) says the government should never declare any official religion.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the survey finds that Christians are much more likely than Jewish or religiously unaffiliated Americans to express support for the integration of church and state, with White evangelical Protestants foremost among Christian subgroups in this area. In addition, Christians who are highly religious are especially likely to say, for example, that the Constitution was inspired by God. But even among White evangelical Protestants and highly religious Christians, fewer than half say the U.S. should abandon its adherence to the separation of church and state (34% and 31%, respectively) or declare the country a Christian nation (35% and 29%).

For instance, 44% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they personally own a gun, compared with 20% of Democrats and Democratic leaners.

Men are more likely than women to say they own a gun (39% vs. 22%).

And 41% of adults living in rural areas report owning a firearm, compared with about 29% of those living in the suburbs and two-in-ten living in cities.

Given that reactionaries can come from across the political continuum, each of us—particularly those of us on the left who have assumed that reactionaries always originate from the right—needs to take seriously the fact that we are vulnerable to the pitfalls of reactionary politics.

A reactionary is someone with extreme opposition to dramatic social or political change

What distinguishes the reactionary is that they end up making two key intellectual mistakes: