For most moms I know, summer is a mixed bag. It’s not hard to understand why.

For mothers without access to flexible or remote work, summer break is associated with a significant drop in earnings and work hours. This tightens already tight family budgets and adds to the gender pay gap, as fathers don’t tend to reduce work hours in the ...Read more

Funding for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agencies was at the epicenter of the recently resolved budget impasse. This roadblock, resulting in a record-long 75-day shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, was focused on how ICE was staffed and directed by the Trump administration.

During ...Read more

Leading AI models are doubling their capabilities every four months, and the implications for accelerating scientific research, improving education, and transforming much of the economy provoke both enthusiasm and angst.

While some CEOs of major AI companies speculate that AI will destroy millions of jobs in the U.S., just in the next five ...Read more

Lawmakers in both parties are increasingly embracing the idea of price controls on medicines — and in doing so, they’re making a losing bet.

Price controls involve a fundamental tradeoff: lower prices today in exchange for less innovation tomorrow. Consider the “most favored nation,” or MFN, drug pricing proposal currently before ...Read more

Political tides rise and fall. They always have.

Laws change. Priorities shift. Administrations come and go. Across generations, societies debate, correct course and eventually find new balance. Some long-standing norms endure because they serve the common good. Others, like the once-accepted evil of slavery, are rightly rejected as societies ...Read more

The Chicago Teachers Union has suffered another very public blow, this time at the hands of its own members.

CTU officials looking for extra money for politics had asked union members to approve a plan that was projected to yield about $8.5 million in new dues money for the CTU. Union leadership wrote that “with about 80 percent of schools ...Read more

Even as the U.S. and Iran wrestle over an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, surging gas prices have turned the government’s attention to a perennially popular fiscal scam: Ease the pressure on household budgets with a gas tax holiday. In reality, such a plan to curry favor with voters would make them, all things considered, worse off. ...Read more

Supporters of Washington state’s impending 9.9% millionaire tax celebrated the state Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling blocking a voter referendum on the measure. However, if proponents better understood the potential economic damage this tax is likely to inflict, they might adopt a more cautious stance.

The public could ...Read more

President Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican Party is slipping. Sort of. Because even though the president’s support among GOP voters has diminished, his demonstrable strength is still swaying the party’s primary contests.

The Indiana state senators who quashed the president’s redistricting scheme there? Several were defeated for ...Read more

The Trump administration’s recent decision to dissolve the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition has received little public attention. But for more than 5 million English learners in America’s public schools, the consequences could be life-altering.

The Office of English Language Acquisition, known as OELA,...Read more

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his deputy mayor, Leila Bozorg, get solid grades for addressing the biggest issue in New York City: the lack of housing.

The Block by Block report is a comprehensive approach covering market-priced units, affordable apartments, rent-stabilized dwellings, distressed properties and NYCHA and even the possibility of using ...Read more

On May 16, the United States found and killed Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, a top Islamic State commander, in Nigeria. The precision operation in the northeast of Africa’s most populous country came about a week after President Donald Trump’s administration released its new counterterrorism strategy.

As one might expect, combating the Islamic State ...Read more

American political party organizations have imploded in the post-World War II era, largely replaced by dark money from unknown donors. The party vacuum is ominous for a healthy democracy, because voters are left without stable cues about how to vote. There are options that could — it won’t be easy — strengthen parties and diminish the ...Read more

The catalog of unrequited hopes and hearts is a long one.

Captain Ahab went mad in his vengeful search for "Moby Dick." Jay Gatsby's ostentatious fortune failed to win the love of Daisy Buchanan. Charlie Brown never kicked the football.

Then there's Texas, the land of broken Democratic dreams.

It's been half a century since the party carried...Read more

First the good news, such as it is. Chicago suffered the lowest number of shooting deaths in a Memorial Day weekend in more than 15 years.

The one known fatality was the tragic case of 2-year-old Jamonte Shaw, who died after accidentally shooting himself on Sunday at his home in the South Side Pullman neighborhood.

But the dearth of shooting ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Spencer Pratt, please give me a call.

We should talk.

You say you want to be mayor of Los Angeles, but do you really?

I know that being a candidate has rescued you from anonymity after your career in reality TV went off a cliff. You've got CEOs backing you, and fans raving, and you've managed to milk social media attention.

...Read more

In the end Tulsi Gabbard wasn’t pushed out of her job as Director of National Intelligence, as Washington’s cognoscenti were expecting (they had started punning that DNI stood for “Do Not Invite”). Instead, Gabbard is leaving for a good and noble reason: to stand by her husband, who has been diagnosed with an “extremely rare form of ...Read more

Former Vice President Kamala Harris turned heads with a video earlier this month in which she argued Democrats need an “expanded playbook” to explore structural reforms to the institutions of American government, including the Supreme Court.

Her comments reflected soaring Democratic frustration with the court after its recent Callais ruling...Read more