Opinions

Dick Durbin, a Democrat, is the senior US senator from Illinois. He is chairman of the US Senate Judiciary Committee. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion articles on CNN. (CNN) It's Tuesday, November 8, 2022. A nurse in Georgia just finished a 12-hour shift. It's 6:15 p.m. She rushes to the polling site she's voted at every election year, only to discover that a long line awaits her. Parched and hungry after a long day, she won't find any assistance from good Samaritans offering water or food to voters in line -- because under Georgia's new restrictive voting law , such an offer would risk a criminal charge. Dick Durbin Her neighbors, an elderly couple, had hoped to vote early to avoid the long lines. They had planned to vote after church, but Georgia's new law allows counties to choose not to open for early voting on Sundays. As an alternative, they requested absentee ballots, but they didn't realize that they … [Read more...] about As states attack voter rights, Congress has to step in

It has taken nothing short of a heroic effort for families and schools to get through this pandemic. And while the year has been exhausting, we’ll need to dig deep and summon the energy to engage in one of the most pivotal decision points for Denver Public Schools that we will face for the next decade or more — the selection of a new superintendent. The superintendent of the school district holds a massively consequential role for the future of our city’s schools. The superintendent drives policy recommendations, allocates resources, and determines priorities for the district. Denver has incredible educators and families and they deserve all of our input, vetting, and work to ensure we choose a transformative leader for our district. As a former teacher, administrator, and current school leader who has worked in multiple schools across the city, I humbly offer my thoughts in the process of selecting a new superintendent of Denver Public Schools. We need a superintendent who is a … [Read more...] about Opinion: Denver’s next superintendent must end the union vs. reformer battle and tackle racial justice directly

Peter Baldwin is the author of " Fighting the First Wave: Why the Coronavirus Was Tackled so Differently across the Globe ," just out from Cambridge University Press. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion on CNN. (CNN) Forgive me for thinking that the midst of a global pandemic that cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars in economic loss is not an ideal moment to parse the fine points of individual rights. Covid has already sparked political fires over how to rein it in. Peter Baldwin Privacy advocates have undercut contact tracing apps' use. This technology would have permitted us to go about our business -- unless we were unfortunate enough to contract infection. Then we would have been alerted to isolate. That was certainly preferable to the alternative we were left with -- most everyone stuck at home in lockdown. The claims that mask-wearing in public violates civil rights is too … [Read more...] about Vaccine passports — A technical, not an ideological issue

Kenneth Roth ( @KenRoth ) is executive director of Human Rights Watch. The views expressed here are his own. Read more opinion at CNN. (CNN) Last summer, Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny narrowly survived an assassination attempt, widely believed to have been organized by Russia's security services, through a Novichok nerve-agent poisoning. Now, without concerted action, he may die from medical neglect in a Russian penal colony where the authorities locked him up following a mockery of a trial. The botched nerve-agent attack, since exposed , was supposed to have been accomplished with deniability. If Navlany now dies in prison, the blame will lie unequivocally with the Kremlin. Kenneth Roth The Kremlin has already weathered a raft of Western sanctions imposed for misdeeds ranging from the Novichok poisoning of Navalny and of a former KGB agent in Britain, to Russia's seizure of Crimea and hacking into US databases. It's reasonable … [Read more...] about The last chance to save Alexey Navalny

Elizabeth Slattery is a senior legal fellow at Pacific Legal Foundation and co-host of Dissed , a podcast about the Supreme Court. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN. (CNN) US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer recently offered some advice to the proponents of court packing: think long and hard about the consequences. The octogenarian justice, who finds himself the latest target of a pressure campaign to retire, warned while speaking at Harvard Law School that "[s]tructural alteration motivated by the perception of political influence can only feed that perception, further eroding that trust." Elizabeth Slattery Breyer is right. Any silver-bullet solution that purports to fix the perception of a politicized court will likely miss the mark and worsen the problem. Nevertheless, President Joe Biden has tasked a commission to examine a variety of court reforms, including appointment procedures, judicial … [Read more...] about What packing the Supreme Court would really do