The Washington Post

A Father's Initiative

Paul Gayle had no job, no money, a new baby and 16 lessons from the Obama administration to teach him what to do next

A father’s scars: For Va.’s Creigh Deeds, tragedy brings unending questions

Almost a year ago, Creigh Deeds’s mentally ill son attacked him with a knife before committing suicide. Now the Virginia state senator struggles with unending what-ifs.

After Newtown shooting, mourning parents enter into the lonely quiet

After the shooting and the politics, the Barden family suffers all that’s been lost since the day their son died.

American Icon: What does an AR-15 do to a human body? A visual examination of the deadly damage.

The Washington Post examined autopsy and postmortem reports from nearly a hundred victims of past mass shootings that involved an AR-15 style rifle.

An American education

Amid a historic U.S. teacher shortage, a ‘Most Outstanding Teacher’ from the Philippines tries to help save a struggling school in rural Arizona.

An American Void

He told friends in the trailer he was living in what he might do. Why do they shrug at their own inaction?

An economic collapse has pushed families who live in Orlando’s motels to the brink

Florida’s tourism economy crashed, leaving dozens of low-wage workers trapped in a crumbling motel without electricity.

An investor called $140,000 the new poverty line. Experts disagreed but said he had a point.

Michael Green’s tally of the costs of raising a family in the U.S. today is going viral, even if some economists scoff at his math.

Anger and heartbreak on Bus No. 15

As American cities struggle to recover from the pandemic, Denver's problems spill over onto its buses.

Asteroids! Solar Storms! Nukes! Climate Calamity! Killer Robots!

A guide to contemporary doomsday scenarios — from the threats you know about to the ones you never think of.

Disney World layoffs leave its workers fighting to hold onto vanishing middle-class lives

The once famously long lines at Disney World remained short even as Orlando’s free food lines, packed with laid-off hotel and theme park workers, grew longer. All the while Flaviana Decker's unemployment checks shrank from more than $800 a week in July to less than $245 a week in October, which didn’t even cover her rent.

Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime?

Winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.

Fixing the broken lovelies

A psychiatric nurse who deals with the homeless, the sickest and the most vulnerable people in post-pandemic Seattle reckons with the high cost of compassion.

From belief to outrage: The decline of the middle class reaches the next American town

“We’ll be fine because we’ve always been fine.”

His wife was dying, his federal job crumbling. It tested his faith

One federal worker was rejected three times from the administration’s early resignation offer. Would he blame the president he voted for?

How rogue officers turned a nationwide camera network into a tool for stalking

Flock’s array of license-plate cameras was built to fight crime. But at least 50 law enforcement officers were charged with or accused of misusing it and other systems.

Life of a salesman: Selling success, when the American dream is downsized

For the man who sells monuments of the American dream, that dream is starting to feel downsized.

Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness.

No one's offering men a model except the right. It's time for a new plan.

Pearls Before Breakfast: Can one of the nation’s great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let’s find out.

Joshua Bell is one of the world’s greatest violinists. His instrument of choice is a multimillion-dollar Stradivarius. If he played it for spare change, incognito, outside a bustling Metro stop in Washington, would anyone notice?

The best African American figure skater in history is now bankrupt and living in a trailer

Debi Thomas graduated Stanford and became a surgeon before her downward spiral began