The U.S. deficit has reached $1.97 trillion and is on track to pass 6% of gross domestic product this fiscal year, the latest milestone in a remarkable deterioration of the federal budget. With national debt at a record $40 trillion, the feeling that the music must stop at some point has jittery market watchers zeroed in on a jittery bond market...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco got slapped down Thursday by the California Supreme Court in not one but two cases. Ouch.

First, the court told Bianco to return more than 600,000 ballots he had seized as part of an ill-conceived, conspiracy-laden “investigation” into voter fraud — making it clear it was the ...Read more

The Trump administration has been processing immigration cases at 26 Federal Plaza amid “overcrowded, squalid, and degrading” detention conditions, says Manhattan Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan, who has ordered it be permanently cleaned up and that people in custody no longer be denied access to medical care or their lawyers.

This is the exact ...Read more

Visiting mixed villages in former Yugoslavia before it careened toward its violent breakup in 1992, I spoke to neighbors who dismissed the idea of a coming war as simply unimaginable. But as each tuned in to the increasingly nationalistic TV stations of their respective Serbian or Croatian capitals, they were bombarded by commentary posing as ...Read more

Just three years after OpenAI said its models were good at grade-school math, the company announced they had solved the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize problem in 88 hours, something that had stumped humanity’s greatest mathematical minds since the 1930s. Project that trend forward and you see why OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman ...Read more

The ballots Californians cast, or fail to cast, this November will say more about the republic’s health than any of the 250th anniversary commemorations could.

Generation Z accounts for roughly 1 in 5 of the state’s eligible voters, yet its members register and turn out far below every older cohort: In the 2024 general election, 42.5% of ...Read more

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has raised a seemingly incongruous possibility: Perhaps Canada, 3,500 miles from Brussels, might become an “associate member” of the European Union. Prime Minister Mark Carney seems open to the idea.

Exactly what this might mean is far from clear. Whether Canada or the EU’s member ...Read more

President Donald Trump is full of thiols.

We all are, actually.

The easiest spots to find them are our hairs, however anyplace carbon, sulfur and hydrogen atoms are collectively having a party, one type of molecule they can form is a thiol. The mix and number of thiols in our system varies, depending on diet and other factors, thus the ...Read more

If you try to take a free ride on, say, public transit in New York City, you’ll get in trouble with the law. If your mode of transportation is a private jet, on the other hand, there’s a high risk you’ll be offered champagne.

Private jets are far from free, of course; the average hourly charter rate for a midsize jet is $12,730, according...Read more

The election system I ran no longer exists.

I served as California’s chief elections officer from 1995 to 2003. In that time, my standard never varied: full participation, zero tolerance for fraud. I have never understood why those are treated as competing goals. The machinery that proves a ballot is genuine is the same machinery that lets a ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- Man, we Latino men have it rough.

Americans have demonized us as criminals, buffoons, lechers, invaders, criminals and job stealers since the fall of the Alamo. Latino culture typecasts hombres as eternal machos always a few drinks away from brawling or bawling. Educators view us as underachievers. The political class long ...Read more

Shortly after President Donald Trump imposed new tariffs on a slew of Canadian imports, aiming to cripple its economy unless it bends to his will, Canada took more careful aim when returning fire earlier this month.

To a large extent, it aimed at the ballot box.

Wisconsin is expected to be a key swing state in the upcoming midterm elections on...Read more

Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium surely hoped its dramatic rescue of 10 beluga whales from the widely despised and imminently liquidating Marineland of Canada in Niagara Falls, Ontario, was going to be a public relations boon. The sensational international rescue of the famously sentient creatures, replete with colossal cargo planes, huge crates and ...Read more

A few years ago, I received a call I’ll never forget. Jeanette Epps, an astronaut aboard the International Space Station, Zoomed into my living room from 250 miles above Earth. During our conversation, she told me that one of the reasons she chose her career was a television show my father created in 1966.

She wasn’t alone. I’ve heard ...Read more

Americans have rarely trusted their institutions less. In June, Gallup found average confidence in the 14 institutions it tracks was near a record low. Some 9% of the public trusted Congress, 27% trusted the Supreme Court, and 45% trusted the police. The criminal justice system, as a whole, ranked near the bottom.

Below those totals, however, ...Read more

Like it or not, we are all betting on AI taking over the economy. In the last 40 years, the U.S. has become a nation of stock investors. On the whole, it has made Americans rich. Now the stock market is soaring on the hopes that AI will make everyone more productive — and if that doesn’t work out, we all may learn the definition of a bad ...Read more

The bill for a season in youth sports comes in installments: new skates, registration fees and uniforms. Then there’s the price of travel tournaments, gas and restaurant meals. Finally, the hotel requirement, which feels like one mandate too many. Families are instructed to stay at a designated hotel, or their children — and even their team ...Read more

President Donald Trump might not look smaller, but he is.

At home and abroad, among a significant majority of Americans that includes increasing numbers of Republicans, as well as in the eyes of foreign leaders, the president of the United States is shrinking by the day into a hapless peacock, a cartoon figure posting comic word balloons at all...Read more