One of the most important elections in recent Latin American history will take place Sunday in Brazil. Incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has recently been emphasizing the issue of national sovereignty. One reason: The challenger, Flávio Bolsonaro, has the strong backing of the Trump administration — and the U.S. has been ...Read more

The mistrial declared on Sept. 4 in the case of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother who strangled her three children while, her lawyers argued, in the grip of postpartum psychosis, has forced the country to confront postpartum mental illness and the gaping holes in how we care for it. A jury deliberated seven days and could not agree on ...Read more

If artificial intelligence leads eventually—or suddenly—to the extinction of humankind, we can’t say we weren’t warned. Writers, scientists, academics and philosophers have been speculating since at least the middle of the 19th century about the possibility that our machines could become smarter and more powerful than we are and could ...Read more

In President Donald Trump’s world, public service pays better than being a real estate mogul.

Trump has been lining his pockets since he returned to the White House. His sons, Eric and Donald Jr., have been cashing in, too. So has his wife, son-in-law Jared Kushner, and other cronies in the Trump administration.

In just his first year back ...Read more

American politics is being hijacked not by one ideology, one party or one faith but by influential voices who have discovered that resentment attracts attention, outrage builds audiences and division produces political power.

Hasan Piker, Tucker Carlson, Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed occupy different places in our political culture. They ...Read more

Republican candidates heading into the November midterms should feel some relief. For the first time in a long time, they have the justification to clearly break from President Donald Trump on issues with which they disagree.

What has been considered for the past five years to be a betrayal in Republican politics — disagreeing with the ...Read more

Employer-sponsored health insurance is rapidly deteriorating. In 2027, premiums are expected to see their largest single-year increase in two decades, jumping 11% and closing in on a nearly five-fold increase this century. The amount workers pay for their portion today would have covered the entire premium in 2000.

This coverage will never get ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — What’s so wrong about requiring every Californian to show a government ID before they’re allowed to vote? That’s what Proposition 39 backers ask. And it’s a fair question.

Here are some valid answers:

It would make California’s already notoriously slow vote count even more pokey.

It would be an added hassle...Read more

The midterms are just a few weeks away, and polls predict that independent voters, who broke for Donald Trump in 2024, are planning on voting for Democrats by wide margins. Among Latinos, the numbers are staggering, to the point that the Republican gerrymanders in Florida and Texas may actually result in Democratic victories.

If the Democrats ...Read more

Here is a disturbing game: Try to spot the illegal immigrant.

Is it the waitress, the winning one from Bulgaria, or is it the charming emergency room doctor from Pakistan, or is it one of the Mexican men working on the housing site at the corner? Maybe it is the Haitian caregiver in your home, whom you adore and are afraid to ask if employing ...Read more

The Fulcrum is committed to nurturing the next generation of journalists. We asked Idris Mohammed, a Fall Fulcrum Fellow, to share what democracy means to him and his view of its current health.

____

Growing up in northern Nigeria has taught me that democracy is more than elections. It is also about how a country is governed every day. In my ...Read more

President Donald Trump has a loyalty problem. Actually, he has two of them.

The first concerns where his own loyalties lie. Consider these questions: Has he been loyal to the oath he took to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution? Does he respect the separation of powers and the limits on his authority as president? Does he understand that ...Read more

Is it acceptable to bring an iced coffee to a job interview?

This seemingly mundane question has somehow consumed various corners of the internet, taking over social media feeds and group chats. Bloomberg Opinion is not immune. Not since the great shorts-in-the-office firestorm of 2024 has a workplace debate lit up our team’s Slack channel ...Read more

Russian President Vladimir Putin, frustrated by his bogged-down war in Ukraine, is trying to intimidate the European nations that — given President Donald Trump’s severe cuts in aid to Kyiv — are now Ukrainians’ main military, economic and diplomatic supporters.

A few of the many examples: an explosive-laden drone found at the airport ...Read more

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