BRUSSELS — On April 19, I watched an audience of European and American political officials and strategic experts pay rapt attention as U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy told them Congress would enact a Ukraine aid package that weekend. Minutes later, the attendees at the German Marshall Fund's Brussels Forum broke into cheers at the news that the House ...Read more

California Democrats are demonstrating that they view Sacramento as their own little club, where duly-elected Republicans have no power. This malignant feature of California’s one-party state results in a legislature that seems to us like a mere puppet of the Governor.

On Thursday, the state Assembly Democrats made a quick and quiet kill of a...Read more

The left’s absurd calls for Justice Sonia Sotomayor to step down so that President Joe Biden can name a younger replacement should be roundly condemned. To be sure, such pressure is an American tradition in the never-ending battle to “control” the Supreme Court. But the tactic is one that the justices themselves have a happy tradition of ...Read more

Over 200 days into Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs to decide what matters more: extracting ultimate revenge on Hamas, and in the process all other Palestinians in Gaza, or getting hostages back alive.

Israel has made it clear that a major assault on Rafah, the Gaza border town in which four Hamas ...Read more

Idaho’s medical community has been saying for the past two years — since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — that Idaho’s strict abortion ban is jeopardizing medical care when the health of the mother is at risk.

Idaho’s abortion laws take into account only risks to the life of the mother.

The laws are the subject of a ...Read more

One of the many things to appreciate about our home planet is that buried in its layers of rock is a kind of time machine. These strata tell us so much about our tumultuous history of glaciers, volcanoes and asteroid impacts, as well as the plants and animals that lived, evolved and died over eons.

There’s no doubt that future geologists or ...Read more

Earlier this month, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared on Stephen Colbert’s television talk show and delivered an eloquent plea for U.S. government policy toward Gaza to be guided by human rights and democratic values. She warned of the potential for mass starvation in Gaza, which she termed an “unfolding genocide.” And she spoke in ...Read more

As of Thursday, under New York State law, the imprisoned rapist Harvey Weinstein serving a 23-year sentence in upstate’s Mohawk Correctional Facility, became a completely innocent man, having his conviction for sex crimes thrown out by the highest court in state, the Court of Appeals. Well, it was sort of the Court of Appeals.

In a plot more ...Read more

On Wednesday during a visit to Columbia University, House Speaker Mike Johnson warned that if the wave of protests against Israel’s U.S.-funded war in Gaza on college campuses, including UCLA and USC, is not contained quickly, “there is an appropriate time for the National Guard. We have to bring order to these campuses.”

How troubling ...Read more

It seems unlikely that the Supreme Court will embrace Donald Trump’s outrageous claim that as a former president he enjoys absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions that he allegedly took to overturn the 2020 election and cling to power. This is a relief. To do otherwise would allow the office to become, as Justice Ketanji Brown ...Read more

For those rightly concerned about the timing of Donald Trump’s federal Jan. 6 trial, Thursday’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court gave plenty of reasons for worry. Moreover, the court’s conservative majority seemed inclined to define presidential immunity from prosecution in a way that could undermine some of the charges in special ...Read more

On Wednesday, a divided Supreme Court listened to arguments over a state’s abortion ban – its first such hearing since the justices overturned Roe v. Wade. The case, in which the Joe Biden administration is challenging Idaho’s abortion ban, literally puts the health and even the lives of pregnant women on the line.

The Biden ...Read more

The American electorate is facing the most serious threat to our democracy since the Civil War. Many believe that if Donald Trump is elected president again, we face a real possibility that he will erode our democratic institutions past the breaking point to retain power. Others believe that whether Trump or Joe Biden resides in the White House ...Read more

It is embarrassing to have to type this sentence, but type it we will: If and when there are no shelter beds available, it is unacceptable for a city or town to make it a crime for individuals to fall asleep outdoors. Though Grants Pass, Oregon, insists it is only prohibiting behavior, not the people themselves, that’s a distinction without a ...Read more

My mom stood next to my grandfather, both of them crying as he emptied the bulk tank and dumped his milk in protest.

It was the 1960s, and dairy farmers in Wisconsin and elsewhere who were members of the National Farmers Organization were destroying their milk to cause shortages in supply chains and improve prices. They were desperate, ...Read more

No one could have predicted that the worst Congress in memory would morph into the Kumbaya Congress. Or that Mike Johnson, the accidental House speaker from Louisiana, would transform from Trump puppet to statesman.

The two developments are related, of course. Congress was able to veer from the dangerous, dead-end course that the Republican-run...Read more

In recent days, the inflation indicators have stubbornly signaled that a high tide of prices is still soaking us consumers. Growing at a 3.5% annual rate in March, the Consumer Price Index has now exceeded expectations for three months hand-running. Once again, investors and financial decisionmakers—and isn’t that everyone with a bank ...Read more