This summer has toppled heat records, with July going down as the hottest month in world history.

The world is on fire.

As we write nearby, the expansive indictment by a Georgia grand jury of Donald Trump and 18 allies persuasively establishes that the former president orchestrated a conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It nicely complements the charges brought by a federal grand jury as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack, as well as the allegations by Smith that Trump illegally kept and shared defense secrets, and obstructed the government’s attempt to get them back.

Although it was expected, the indictment by a Fulton County, Georgia, grand jury of Donald Trump and 18 others is still a wrenching moment — another one — for American democracy. As with the federal indictment that also grew out of Trump’s outrageous attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the former president is presumed innocent until proven guilty as are the other defendants.

If you’ve seen the movie “Oppenheimer,” which you should — trust me, it’s gripping even though it’s three hours long and you know how the story ends — you probably noticed several appearances by the physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi, who is portrayed in some ways as Oppenheimer’s voice of conscience. I was a bit puzzled when I watched, because I happened to know that Rabi wasn’t a resident at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. But the film was historically accurate: Rabi did visit Los Alamos on occasion, and was present for the Trinity bomb test.

Not long ago, I moved from a tiny town to a small city of about 8,000 people in central Illinois to be closer to the action. You know: band concerts, ice cream socials, veterans’ sandwich sales in the park and even a professional summer theater festival, as well as a mayor who personally waters the huge flower-bedecked urns along Main Street. (Talk about good politics.)

Many people either know someone who has a school loan, is a relative or guardian of a borrower, or owes student debt themselves.

Democracy does not end in one day. Corruption, autocratic leadership and weak institutions gradually eat away at it. But things can get worse fast, as Ecuadorians learned this week when a presidential candidate was killed in a sicario-style execution.

Some people seek a bar or nature hike when they feel low. I go to the supermarket.

Ron DeSantis must believe his path to the White House cuts through Florida’s democracy. What else explains the Republican governor’s ouster Wednesday of another Democratic prosecutor, this one in Orlando, just as his presidential campaign continues to tank? The governor has again abused his authority by weaponizing his office, making a mockery of elections, the rule of law and his fitness for higher office.

Here is the lesson from Tuesday’s special election in Ohio, where voters resoundingly defeated a ballot measure that would have made it more difficult to pass state constitutional amendments — notably the one enshrining abortion rights in the Ohio Constitution on the November ballot:

Despite multiple state and federal indictments, recent polling indicates that former President Donald Trump retains a commanding lead in the race for the 2024 Republican Party presidential nomination.

After years of protests and community organizing, on June 30 California shut the doors on the last of its youth prisons, signaling the end of what was once the nation’s largest network of these facilities. The model is also losing steam nationwide, as states from Connecticut to Maine slowly abolish youth prisons and replace them with a holistic restorative justice framework of collective care and support for young people.

Former President Donald Trump, a Palm Beach resident, is not the only South Florida resident indicted recently for playing a role in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riots 19 months ago.

Americans, riven over the federal indictments of former President Donald Trump, may actually agree on one thing: The proceedings should be televised.

In 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that states could not impose congressional term limits — it would take a constitutional amendment to accomplish the objective. Nearly 30 years later, it may be time to embark down such a path.

It’s Restaurant Week in Dallas/Fort Worth, an annual event in which participating restaurants donate some of their proceeds to local charities.