O.J. Simpson’s death reminds us that the 134 days of wall-to-wall TV coverage of his 1995 criminal trial allowed Americans to see every aspect of a celebrity case play out in a Los Angeles courtroom. Millions watched and millions of others didn’t, but the choice was theirs.

In a video address yesterday, former President Donald Trump reiterated the reality that states are currently in charge of determining abortion restrictions, a statement that was widely misinterpreted as his support for a state-based approach. That’s just how he wanted it, winking to his anti-choice supporters while muddying the waters on whether he will seek nationwide abortion restrictions that he knows are hugely unpopular.

Lawmakers around the world are proposing legislation that would spare dogs “torture breeding” — reckless practices that intentionally produce deformities such as dangerously flattened faces or abnormally elongated spines. Germany began cracking down on torture breeding back in 1986, and a new bill would strengthen the country’s existing regulations. Austria, the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland have enacted similar laws — for good reason.

I can’t say I’ve spent much time thinking about O.J. Simpson over the last three decades. But hearing Thursday that he died of cancer reminded me of two conversations that I’ve had about him in the last six months.

Every defendant is entitled to a fair and impartial jury.

A recent report from Santa Clara County in California highlights a troubling trend: Despite housing more people than ever before in a single year, the rate of new people falling into homelessness spiked by 24% in 2023. The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) 2023 homelessness assessment report shows a 12% national increase, with over 650,000 people experiencing homelessness, the highest numbers recorded since the Point-in-Time Count began in 2007.

Bring Chicago Home’s loss at the polls is the second time a progressive tax has failed in Illinois in recent years: first, a graduated marginal income tax, the unfortunately dubbed “fair tax,” and now an increase in the real estate transfer tax on buyers purchasing property of more than $1 million.

Congress eliminated parole from the federal criminal justice system in 1984, but it didn’t completely do away with post-release supervision. About 3 of every 4 people leaving federal prison remain under supervision, often for years, and often for no good reason.

Marijuana legalization is killing a lot of people. Not slowly — though some studies suggest that it may be doing that, too — but quickly, in car crashes. It’s one more symptom of the disastrous rush by lawmakers to capitalize on cannabis sales without doing the hard work needed to keep the public safe.

Thursday morning, the staff of The Kansas Reflector got a jolt: Without warning or explanation, every link to their website was erased from their Facebook page. And it wasn’t only them — the same went for every other user who had shared their content.

Long is the list of things that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has gotten wrong, from guns to immigration to abortion to nonsense culture war salvos compromising academic freedom in the name of protecting it. We pause here to appreciate the spirit of his effort but not the method to safeguard children from online harms as social media gets its hooks in ever more kids.

On Monday, seven humanitarian workers with World Central Kitchen lost their lives in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza amid the war that Hamas began with its Oct. 7 onslaught of murder, rape and kidnapping. Israel and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu (who will be talking with President Biden today) must explain how this airstrike happened, and guarantee that avoiding civilian deaths will be a priority in weighing military actions.

In a pair of rulings on Monday, the Florida Supreme Court took power away from women to make reproductive choices while allowing voters, potentially, to restore it.

After Donald Trump used the occasion of Acting Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan’s gag order in the hush money criminal case to smear the judge’s own daughter, Merchan expanded it to include the families of himself, DA Alvin Bragg, prosecutors, witnesses and court staff.

With a presidential election just months away, many Americans are enduring 2024 with a sense of dread.