Politics
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Editorial: Gaza is not ours to occupy
President Donald Trump has proposed America occupy Gaza and forcefully resettle two million Palestinians in other nations. It is frequently a mystery how serious Trump is.
If he is serious, he ignores the long-term price the U.S. pays for inserting itself into other nations, especially those in decades-long conflicts. In Afghanistan, for ...Read more

Editorial: Trump's Gaza nonsense -- Crazy scheme harms real steps for Mideast peace
President Donald Trump’s fanciful plan for Gaza will not happen; still his wacky vision actually undermines legitimate efforts to improve relations in the Mideast, with Israel’s Arab partners like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia looking for the exits.
Listening to everything that Trump spun Tuesday during three different public appearances, ...Read more

Michael Hiltzik: These are the legal obstacles that could stop Trump's assault on government in its tracks
Here's a phrase — three words, only eight syllables in all — that's going to gain paramount importance in the conduct of government policy by President Donald Trump over the next few years.
The phrase is "arbitrary and capricious." It's a guidepost for federal judges hearing challenges to agency rulemakings — whether by promulgating new ...Read more

Editorial: The NYPD's long learning curve -- Slowly getting better on stop, question, frisk
A dozen years ago, a federal judge ruled the NYPD’s practice of stopping, questioning and frisking New Yorkers by the hundreds of thousands to be unconstitutional — as the vast majority of stops, overwhelmingly of young Black and Brown men, weren’t based on sufficient individualized suspicion.
The 23rd — count ’em — report of the ...Read more

Tom Philp: California's smart and vocal farmers are silent about Trump as he wasted their water
Agriculture is a form of legalized gambling here in California, our land is prone to deluge or drought. Our farmers, relentlessly adapting, are as innovative as any set of suits in Silicon Valley, learning new ways to grow more food with less water.
As sure as the sun, our farmers have always shared their views of California politics as they ...Read more

Juan Pablo Spinetto: Trump's tariffs already hurt Mexico -- Even if they're on hold
“We're definitely making the factory in Mexico. We feel very good about that. We put a lot of effort into looking at different locations and we feel very good about that location. We are going to build a factory there and it's going to be great.”
Oh, those great days when Elon Musk had such rapport with Mexico that not only was he planning ...Read more

Commentary: Corporate America isn't abandoning DEI -- it's just rebranding it
One could easily get the impression that corporate America is in full retreat from promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. Each news cycle seems to carry a headline about a rollback of diversity policies by another company, including Tractor Supply, Boeing, John Deere, Brown-Forman, Harley-Davidson, Lowe’s, Molson Coors, Ford, Toyota, ...Read more

Commentary: Donald Trump's cowboy diplomacy in the Western Hemisphere is succeeding, but has risks
Donald Trump has a special affinity for William McKinley, the former American president who was struck down by an assassin’s bullet in 1901, ending his second term before it really began. Trump has called his distant predecessor a “great but highly underrated” chief executive who made the United States wealthy by slapping tariffs on ...Read more

Commentary: Why no water system is built with capacity for fires like Palisades and Eaton
In the immediate aftermath of the devastating Eaton and Palisades fires, local water agencies have been questioned and criticized about why sufficient water resources may not have been available for the fire suppression effort.
As the general manager of a public water agency, I’ve tried to succinctly explain the quandary facing water systems...Read more

Commentary: Trump is right to end federal diversity programs
Recently, I had the chance to catch up with a friend from Los Angeles. She’s a political liberal and cast her vote for Kamala Harris last fall. As we talked, I discovered she shared common ground with the MAGA crowd: My friend was outraged by what she said “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives have done to the entertainment ...Read more

Commentary: The Los Angeles fires demand a better answer to the question 'How can I help?'
Since the Eaton and Palisades fires, I keep hearing one question: “How can I help?” I live in North Pasadena and was evacuated. My family is fortunate that our house survived but just a few blocks away, neighbor after neighbor lost everything. Rebuilding will not be easy.
As a historian who studies cities, public health and immigration, I ...Read more

Trudy Rubin: No matter what Trump says, Gaza won't become US property and 'the Riviera of the Middle East'
If there was any doubt President Donald Trump believes he is no longer bound by history or laws — either American or international — it was eclipsed by his astounding proposal that the United States "take over the Gaza Strip" and turn it into "the Riviera of the Middle East."
Flying high from his demolition of America's international aid ...Read more

Parmy Olson: AI resurrecting the dead threatens our grasp on reality
A cruel twist of fate led Jason Gowin to make a novel parenting decision.
Days after his wife gave birth to their twin boys in 2019, she had a stroke. The doctors gave her two or three years to live. Gowin and his oldest son were devastated, but worse was to come.
Months later, Gowin found out he had stomach cancer. Facing the prospect of ...Read more

Commentary: Decades after 28 deportees died in a California plane crash, Mexicans still dehumanized
Seventy-seven years ago, a chartered Douglas DC-3 aircraft left Oakland with 28 Mexican nationals being sent back to México. Most were “braceros,” the slang term for Mexican laborers once imported to the United States in a long-ago farm labor program. Some on the plane that day were undocumented residents being deported once their labor was...Read more

Editorial: US aid agency shouldn't be above scrutiny
Donald Trump and Elon Musk have triggered panic in Washington with their efforts to cap the U.S. foreign aid spigot. To the extent that this ignites a conversation about how best to direct billions in American assistance abroad, the move is long overdue. But the White House will need congressional help to accomplish many of its objectives in ...Read more

Editorial: Trump is hurting people who know how to lower egg prices
The avian flu pandemic ravaging poultry farms across the country, raising the price of eggs and wings is an act of nature, but the human response to it reveals the value of a non-political group whose funding, already restricted by the Trump administration, remains in jeopardy: scientific researchers funded through the National Institutes of ...Read more

Gene Collier: Trump and the incredible disappearing government
Now that the complete dismantling of the U.S. Government looks as though it's going to require a third full week, the people who are paying attention have begun to appreciate the general sequencing of the dominoes in play.
The Department of Education appears to be next in the line, adjacent to the General Services Administration, following the ...Read more

Editorial: Arrests in two shocking Chicago murder cases give us hope there's a price to be paid for violent crime
In the past few days, police have arrested suspects in two of Chicago’s most horrific murder cases last year.
Arrested last Friday was Deron Wolfe, 19, who was charged with first-degree murder and armed robbery in connection with the shooting death of Elgin teen Jesse Kendall in October outside the United Center. Kendall was on his way with ...Read more

Jackie Calmes: Trump's second presidency delivers a diktat a day
At a televised town hall in 2023, Sean Hannity gave Donald Trump a chance to dispel fears that he'd abuse power if given another spin as president. Trump sort-of obliged: He'd be a dictator, he said, just "for Day 1."
Supporters insisted he was only joking with his use of "dictator." Critics took him seriously; he had, after all, tried to stay ...Read more

Editorial: DeSantis' 'Second Amendment Summer' is more about his aspirations than Florida's budget
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is no stranger to political showmanship, and his latest tax holiday is one more example.
In his 2025-26 proposed state budget, DeSantis is asking lawmakers for a new statewide sales-tax free holiday that he is calling the “Second Amendment Summer.” The tax holiday, which would run from Memorial Day through the ...Read more