Day: October 2, 2019

The Democratic Party has moved to the left on issues such as health care, college, and taxes on the wealthy. Now some Democratic candidates are trying to get the party to do the same on guns.

But divisions on just how far the party should go were on display when nine leading Democratic presidential candidates talked about containing gun violence at an MSNBC forum on Wednesday.

The candidates still agreed on a lot. They talked up universal background checks, repeating the words “common sense” again and again. An assault weapons ban got wide support, with candidates decrying “weapons of war …

Several American cities are rallying around a new response to the opioid epidemic: safe spaces for using heroin.

The concept has gained traction in New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and other cities across the US. The thinking is to allow supervised drug consumption sites where people can use drugs with sterile injection equipment and the supervision of trained staff, who are ready with the opioid overdose antidote naloxone if anything goes wrong. The sites may also link people to addiction treatment on request.

The idea: While in an ideal world, no one would use dangerous and potentially deadly …

I still remember the way I felt the first time I watched the Transparent pilot.

Maura, the trans parent of the title, had gathered her children to come out to them. The kids continued to refer to her as “Dad,” and Maura was in so-called “guy mode,” the armor that trans women early in transition wear for uncomfortable situations. But I knew what Maura was going to say. The way her hands trembled as she began to talk, the way she struggled to speak over her kids, the way she finally resigned herself to “not tonight” — it felt …

President Donald Trump tweeted on Tuesday night that the Democrats’ investigation into the Ukraine scandal “is not an impeachment, it is a COUP” — an authoritarian rhetorical escalation that shows how unstable American politics could become as the impeachment process goes on.

Definitionally, a coup refers to the overthrow of a leader by the country’s security forces. Obviously, that’s not what’s happening here: House Democrats are initiating a legal process for removing the president enshrined in the Constitution, pretty much the opposite of an extrajudicial overthrow of a leader by military force.

By labeling impeachment a “coup,” Trump is …

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Former Dallas police officer convicted of murder; protests in Hong Kong escalate with police using live ammunition.

A jury agrees: shooting an unarmed man in his home was murder

Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News/AP

• Former police officer Amber Guyger, who is white, was convicted Tuesday of murdering her unarmed black neighbor Botham Jean, when she shot him in his own home in 2018