Richard Galant is Executive Producer of the new platform Now It's History and a Senior Fellow at New America. He is a journalist who has led two Pulitzer Prize-winning teams at Newsday and New York Newsday and founded an industry-leading Opinion section for CNN. 

After working his way up from reporter to Managing Editor at Newsday, Galant joined CNN in 2008 to develop a digital opinion section, which became one of the most popular and most engaging parts of the world’s biggest news site. He hired the team and led the award-winning section for 15 years through some of the most tumultuous times in American political and social history. He wrote the section’s weekly Provoke/Persuade newsletter. 

At Newsday, Galant directed the teams that won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for General Local Reporting and the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Reporting. He also served as metropolitan editor, deputy managing editor for investigations and enterprise and assistant managing editor for business. He worked as a local and statehouse reporter and wrote a business column during his time at Newsday.

His work as an editor leading teams in enterprise and investigative reporting has been recognized with numerous awards including the Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Reporting for “Rush to Burn,” a series also published as a book, and prizes from the Deadline Club and the Silurians Press Club. As a writer, he received the Long Island Press Club award for magazine reporting.  

Under Galant’s leadership, CNN Opinion published the work of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Sheryl Sandberg, Bill Gates, Ban Ki-Moon, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, David Axelrod, Van Jones, Jake Tapper, John Boehner, Peter Bergen, Fareed Zakaria, David Frum, Adam Kinzinger, David Gergen, Naomi Wolf, Sebastian Junger, Melissa Etheridge, Margaret Atwood, Colin Powell, John McCain, Michael Bloomberg, Edwidge Danticat, John Kerry, Denzel Washington, Wynton Marsalis, Mia Farrow, Sally Field, Gloria Steinem, Sir Richard Branson, Matt Damon, Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Mitch McConnell, Elizabeth Warren, Richie Havens and John Dean. 

Galant received a master’s degree with first-class honors in politics and philosophy at Oxford University and a bachelor’s degree in politics summa cum laude at Brandeis University, where he was editor of the student newspaper The Justice.

Opinion: The shipwreck of our leaders June 30, 2024 The two highly imperfect performances by President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump at their first 2024 debate set off alarm bells among many Americans who have to choose a president this fall. Are these the candidates either party should put in front of us?

Opinion: Destined to be a lame duck June 23, 2024 Republicans couldn’t defeat President Franklin D. Roosevelt when he ran for a third and fourth term. But in 1947, two years after the Democratic president died of a stroke at his Warm Springs, Ga. retreat, the GOP-led Congress passed a resolution to make sure a three-term presidency never happened again. The two-term limit means Biden and Trump are slugging it out over their last hurrah, raising questions about who comes next

Opinion: The simple thing Supreme Court can’t agree on June 16, 2024 The Supreme Court’s majority struck down a ban on the device a shooter used to commit the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, in a bitterly contested argument over the meaning of a term.

Opinion: Astonishing about-face sends a message June 9, 2024 In this year of global elections, voters are reminding politicians from New Delhi to Johannesburg that bread-and-butter issues really matter. That helps explain why New York Gov. Kathy Hochul shelved the nation’s first congestion pricing program weeks before it was to start, even though the state is counting on the toll money to fund mass transit and has spent hundreds of millions to make it happen.

Opinion: Jill Biden’s prophecy June 2, 2024 After a jury convicted former President Donald Trump of 34 felony counts, the real test of his fate will be November’s election. First lady Jill Biden describes it as a choice between good and evil, while other Americans feel they are being asked to decide on the “lesser of two evils.”

Opinion: Credibility is the key at Trump trial  May 19, 2024 Demolishing star witness Michael Cohen’s credibility is central to the defense effort to persuade jurors that there’s reasonable doubt former President Donald Trump intended to falsify business records to hide the hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels.

Opinion: Seinfeld’s spoof riles up the critics May 12, 2024 While the gentle humor of the Pop-Tart biopic “Unfrosted,” lacks the misanthropic edge that Larry David helped contribute to the “Seinfeld” sitcom, the Sixties spoof has still managed to rile up some critics. So did an ominous Apple ad that seemed to sum up our fears about AI.

Opinion: Donald Trump’s luxury May 5, 2024 Four years ago, many Americans saw Joe Biden as the ultimate “safe pair of hands” to tame the pandemic-induced chaos of Donald Trump’s final year in office. That image of competence has been tested by a string of events, including crises overseas and political and economic challenges at home, and with Trump out of office, the former president can blame Biden

Opinion: Winds of fate confront Trump April 28, 2024 The Republican candidate’s odds of victory in November stand to be swayed by the decisions of judges and jurors in New York and Washington. In the Art Deco criminal courthouse in Manhattan, prosecutors started methodically building a case against Trump while the conservative justices in the US Supreme Court’s marble-walled chamber seemed inclined to give the former president some support for his immunity argument.

Opinion: Trump’s followers were asleep at the switch April 22, 2024 After two months of inaction partly induced by former President Donald Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson worked with Democrats to approve aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

Opinion: Darkness in daytime — how to spend those few minutes April 7, 2024 Nearly 100 years ago, an impending solar eclipse prompted whimsical suggestions for how to spend the few minutes of darkness from a prominent American humorist. Millions are on the move to get to the path of totality for Monday’s eclipse or planning to watch close to home but what will they do when the moment comes?

Opinion: Trump videos send wildly different messages March 31, 2024 The former president began the week by sharing a video hawking a “God Bless the USA” Bible and ended it with one showing an image of President Joe Biden tied up in the bed of a pickup truck, two jarring moments in a campaign like no other.

Opinion: Trump’s image is on the line March 24, 2024 In the midst of a presidential campaign, former President Donald Trump has to contend with a financially crushing court judgement, facing the possibility of a state attorney general attempting to seize his assets if he can’t post a bond while he appeals the ruling. The spectacle clashes with his carefully tended image as a billionaire with endless resources.

Opinion: Trump gives Biden one big lift March 17, 2024 With less than eight months left to go, almost everything is going wrong for President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign. Gas prices are rising and progress in stamping out high inflation more generally seems to have stalled, possibly jeopardizing interest rate cuts that could fuel the economy. A Gaza deal is proving elusive. And former President Donald Trump is winning delay after delay in his criminal trials. Yet one thing is going right for Biden.

Opinion: Which America do you choose? March 10, 2024 With nearly eight months to go before the vote for president, the battle lines are clearly drawn between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, two men who lead bitterly divided factions that accuse the other of trying to tear down the vision of America each embraces.

Opinion: Why ‘My Way’ won’t go away March 3, 2024 The song written for and made famous by Frank Sinatra was played as Alexei Navalny’s coffin was lowered Friday. The lyrics feed the notion, despite all, that we are in control of the lives we lead.