Sunday, November 1, 2026

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Viewpoints

JOHN BREASTED: The Great Barrington Selectboard’s credibility gap

Transparency does not require officials to reveal legal strategy. It does require them to tell voters when the town has been sued.

LEONARD QUART: New York City’s private schools

I have always assumed that if an experimental, student-led form of education works, something magical occurs; everybody involved begins to know what they are doing, and learning then becomes more deeply personal and less abstract.

Why do ordinary people pull a voting booth lever for Republicans?

Rather than having a plan to address illegal immigration by creating a path to citizenship, Republicans are sitting back allowing the Trump/Miller cruelty campaign to continue unabashed, while our workforce is being depleted and we are losing the tax revenue those people provide.

First they came

A cautionary message for our troubled times.

I WITNESS: Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran

So, what does a malignant narcissist do when the world has made clear that they could not care less about him, his opinions, his faux deal-making, his saber-rattling, his threats, his insults, and his cruelty? If he is Donald Trump, he orders the military to drop some bombs.

The state legislature must act on EMS crisis

This is not just a rural problem. It’s not just an urban one. It’s a Massachusetts problem.

We need to change the conversation about climate change

At its best, art can change people’s lives — bringing us face to face with difficult truths and complex moral choices.

Inclusiveness only strengthens the superintendent search at Southern Berkshire Regional School District

Our district is facing a pivotal leadership transition. The next superintendent will help shape the tone, culture, and direction of our schools, and the person selected will impact every student, teacher, and family in the district.

LEONARD QUART: Election Night in New York

Being a mayor is a thorny and difficult job, and I would rather have a cynical, power-driven pol like Cuomo fail than another fresh, young progressive like Mamdani, who seems to be genuinely committed to social change.

Proposed new law to raise the age of sexual consent is too harsh and rigid

I don’t in any way condone sexual relationships between adults and people under the age of 18 whom they supervise, but I think the current draft of Leigh’s bill is an inappropriately harsh response to the phenomenon of such sexual contact, and would be ineffective as a preventive measure.

Those who cross our borders unlawfully do so fully aware of the risk of deportation

President Trump’s resounding 2024 election victory reflects a clear mandate from the American people to uphold immigration laws. 

I WITNESS: Stephen Miller, architect of doom

He is relentless, cruel, and without a soul. He is a malignancy, a carbuncle, a malformed lump on the body politic, a sinister, hissing Trump-whisperer, a villain.

BRIGHT SPOTS: Week of June 18, 2025

Journalists are reporting on the constant chaos, but they are not featuring the Congresspeople who are speaking up. Here are a few; there are many more.

LEONARD QUART: My time in America

My being at odds with dominant American values in Ohio gave me a clarity that living amid New York's many complex subcultures had not.

Why has President Donald Trump not called Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to express his sympathies?

This man’s silence speaks for itself, just as it did after the violence and his silence thereafter on January 6, 2021, and subsequent pardons of the January 6 perpetrators.

CONNECTIONS: Bring back civics

If civics is dead, if the civility that underpins it and the citizenship that insists upon it are dead, then democracy is dead.

A reflection on No Kings Day

I don't know what kind of drugs the Trump administration and Fox News thinks Americans are on, but their response to No Kings Day defies belief—even by MAGA standards.