Sinclair Broadcast’s pythonlike grip on local news stations across America became a national issue two weeks ago when our sister site Deadspin posted a video story showing dozens of anchors at Sinclair stations forced to recite Donald Trump’s talking points about “fake news.”

There is a $1.3 trillion spending bill being worked on in Congress right now. Democrats wanted to add language to the bill that would protect special counsel Robert Mueller and keep him from being fired by the president. Although a good many of them said that they believe Mueller should be allowed to finish the job he…

The most obvious answer when attempting to find the root cause for certain Americans being so obsessed with guns is fear. These people are scared of something—irrelevance, anarchy, immigrants, black people, aliens, Black Panther Build-a-Bears—and this fear drives them to amass arsenals and fight against even the idea…

Pundits and politicos were shocked Friday when a spokesperson for the Conservative Political Action Conference publicly admitted that former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele was the party’s token black guy. Although the comment was the least racist thing you might hear at CPAC, people were stunned…

A few months ago, The Root began a series of stories under the name “I Tried It,” chronicling the experiences of writers who were willing to step outside their comfort zones to try things they normally wouldn’t consider.

Nothing amuses me more as a political scientist than people who just don’t trust polls. The skepticism is usually brought on by incredulity about some type of polling analysis—“There’s no way black districts voted more Republican in 2016 than in 2012”—which is usually followed by some nonscientific justification for…

Saturday is the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, and you must admit that he’s managed a pretty radical transformation of America. He’s turned his White House into the location of a horrible reality show. He’s turned Twitter into a weapon of mass destruction. He’s made the United States…

As the year comes to a close, The Root takes a look back at those who took an L. We aren’t talking the kind of loss you feel sympathy for—or the kind of losses you point a finger and laugh at or shake your head in shame and secondhand embarrassment. Let’s review everyone—and everything—that caught an extreme loss in…

I remember vivid details about the morning when I first decided I didn’t want to go to church anymore. I remember that my mother attempted to wake me several times that morning when she was already fully dressed, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, wearing her nurse’s uniform that she had to wear every fourth Sunday because…

Congress is poised to pass a piece of legislation that will amount to a $1.5 trillion tax hike for Americans who don’t have trust funds, silver spoons or monocles. No one knows what is in the final bill because Republicans have added more changes than Kim Kardashian’s plastic surgeon, but luckily The Root always has a…

When Ohio state Rep. Wes Goodman was caught in his congressional office heroically helping another man release the Krakken, some people felt sorry for the politician. Even though he had a long history of anti-LGBTQ advocacy, including trying to block same-sex marriage in Washington, D.C., there were a few people who…

In the past few days, two top Republican officials have insinuated that America might not get a sequel to this dumpster fire of a presidency that some news organizations refer to as “the Trump administration.”

On Tuesday night, Roy Moore won the Alabama GOP primary by trouncing his opponent, Luther Strange, in what may be a double-digit margin, but the truth is, this was never really much of an election.

House Democrats taunted their Republican counterparts as GOP representatives  passed a bill that would erase the signature legislation of the Obama administration and replace it with a tax break for the wealthiest Americans and simultaneously karate-chop 24 million Americans in their soon-to-be uninsured throats.

In a ranking of the scariest phrases in the English language, coming in somewhere between the terms “states’ rights” and “The 45th president of the United States tweeted ... ” are the words “disgruntled white male.”

Just like when Republicans talk about “family values” and then you find out they’ve been having secret sex meet-ups in airport bathrooms or abusing teenage boys, when conservatives say they “support the troops,” they usually mean they’re sending them overseas to fight for oil profits, but now it also means they’re…

I got a lot of conflicting messages about winning and losing as a kid. I remember hearing, “It’s not how you win or lose, it’s how you play the game” from my dad when my eighth-grade youth football team lost Every. Single. Game (we actually didn’t score one point all season).

Senate Democrats successfully filibustered the confirmation of Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, sparking a series of contentious moves that will likely result in ... well ... the confirmation of Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch.

In the latest round of “studies confirming stuff we already knew,” newly released opinion-poll data from the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center shows that people who identify as Republican are more likely to believe that blacks are less motivated and less intelligent than whites. The survey…