Politics
/ArcaMax
Doyle McManus: Want answers? Here are questions debate moderators should ask Trump and Harris
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have both shown themselves skilled at avoiding questions they don't want to answer. The former president does it by burying questioners under a barrage of unrelated assertions, many of them false. The vice president does it the old-fashioned way, by taking refuge in vague talking points.
If they succeed at dodging...Read more
John M. Crisp: Banish cellphones from school? Maybe. Guns? Never
Cellphones and guns got mixed up together in a curious way last week after the school shooting in Georgia, which left two students and two teachers dead.
In fact, the shooting may represent a setback for growing initiatives by school districts and state legislatures to ban cellphones entirely from classrooms. This effort is based on the theory ...Read more
Editorial: Students and teachers don't have to die
Teachers, coaches and students don’t have to die.
Our children don’t have to cower in closets.
Scared students don’t have to text loving messages to their parents, hoping those aren’t their last words.
School boards don’t have to contract with tech companies for instant-alert messaging to warn about school shooters.
Sixteen months ...Read more
Editorial: The teen arrested in Georgia school shooting is not an adult, and shouldn't be treated like one
Our society has utterly failed to come to grips with mass shootings, a fact brought home by the angry, panicked justice system response to Wednesday’s deadly attack at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, outside Atlanta.
Colt Gray, 14, is accused of killing two students and two teachers and wounding nine others with an AR-15-style rifle...Read more
Commentary: Harris has an advantage over Trump -- Being a woman
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is downplaying the fact that, if elected, she’ll be the first woman president. On the other hand, her opponent, Donald Trump, has tried repeatedly reminding voters of this fact by leveling gendered insults at her.
Both campaigns are probably taking these approaches for the same reason: Hillary Clinton ...Read more
Editorial: Stumped by Trump on the stump: A candidate's coherence matters
At an appearance at the Economic Club of New York Thursday, Donald Trump confounded listeners and produced plenty of mockery with a long, rambling and fundamentally unintelligible answer to a simple question about whether he’d support legislation to bring child care costs down under control.
Over nearly 400 words of stream of consciousness, ...Read more
Editorial: Trump gets another break: Justice Juan Merchan put off the hush money sentencing to after the election
In a four-page letter on Friday, Acting Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan explained his reasoning in postponing Donald Trump’s sentencing for his 34 felony convictions in the Stormy Daniels hush money case until late November, after the election.
Merchan pointed to the need for analysis on the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court...Read more
Matthew Yglesias: Not even Musk could discipline Trump's spending
Donald Trump favors enormous tax cuts while also swearing to protect Social Security and Medicare benefits and promising steep cuts in immigration, which will make retirement programs harder to sustain. This does not work, mathematically, especially in an economy already dealing with inflationary and interest-rate pressure.
Enter Elon Musk. ...Read more
Commentary: Election predictions are too noisy to tell if Trump or Harris wins
What is the probability that Donald Trump will win the 2024 presidential election?
Assuming you’re not a super-forecaster with access to inside information and a dedicated staff of researchers, you’ll likely rely on experts and prices from election betting markets. Most show a race close to even, with prediction markets mostly having Trump ...Read more
Jackie Calmes: Listen up, Kamala -- let Trump beat Trump
Whatever else Kamala Harris is doing to prep for her debate with Donald Trump on Tuesday, she's already shown that she knows how to handle his provocations: Swat them away like the small, familiar gnats they mostly are.
"Same old, tired playbook. Next question, please," was all Harris had to say when CNN's Dana Bash asked her on Aug. 29 about ...Read more
Commentary: We called him Hersh
We called him Hersh.
Even those of us who’d never met him.
Hersh Goldberg-Polin, the Israeli American with family ties to Chicago, was like a member of our family. He was our son, our grandson, our brother.
It’s hard to distill the horror of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks into something — someone — relatable. But for us, especially in the ...Read more
Commentary: Why aren't we talking about America's retirement crisis?
With the presidential race heating to a boil, America’s looming retirement crisis should take center stage in this election alongside other top issues. But so far, apart from a few mentions of Social Security, elder poverty and lack of retirement security have been cast to the sidelines.
Older Americans are the most likely to vote — Social ...Read more
Editorial: Protecting Jews at Columbia -- University should adopt NYU policy of barring discrimination against Zionists
A trip up Broadway yesterday showed that all was quiet at Columbia University’s main gate at 116th St. But the day before, the first day of classes on the Morningside Heights campus, there was a group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators outside the gate with signs and banners and that included shouts like “Say it loud, say it clear. We don’t ...Read more
Trudy Rubin: Keeping the Philadelphi Corridor will endanger Israel's security and doom the remaining hostages
Imagine if you were the parent or child of one of the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas terrorists in Gaza, and you knew your loved ones were being abandoned by your own government for political reasons.
That is effectively what is happening as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists on changing the terms of a U.S.-backed cease-...Read more
Editorial: Biden follows Harris's lead in fuel flip-flop
The Biden-Harris administration is many things, but steadfast on policy isn’t one of them.
When President Joe Biden ran in 2020, he caved to the Bernie Bros and let Sen. Bernie Sanders “Unity Task Force” influence his climate change agenda. Fossil fuels bad, pipelines must go, and green was the order of the day.
Vice President Kamala ...Read more
Commentary: Brazil takes on Elon Musk in an effort to regulate a weapon of mass disinformation
Elon Musk, the eccentric, far-right billionaire behind X (formerly Twitter), SpaceX and Tesla is testing the world’s willingness to regulate the ultrarich. Billionaires, with money to burn and control over the vital industries that created their wealth, can make great friends and difficult enemies.
But the power that is their appeal is also ...Read more
Joe Battenfeld: Kamala Harris momentum slows as economy, immigration drag her down
Kamala Harris’s post-convention momentum appears to have died as new polls show a tight race in key battleground states, with Harris’s weakness on the economy and immigration dragging her down.
The once bright glow from Harris’s ascension to Democratic nominee has started to wear off as voters take a closer look at her far left record and...Read more
James Stavridis: Hamas tunnels show future wars will be fought underground
A year into Israel’s fight against Hamas, it has become clear that the military “center of gravity” — the most important element of the conflict — is not the missiles or manpower of the terrorist group. Rather, it is the 400-plus miles of tunnels carved out under the Gaza Strip. From those tunnels, Hamas and its sponsor, Iran, were ...Read more
Noah Feldman: Chicago gun ruling is yet another absurd decision
Illinois can’t ban the concealed carry of licensed handguns on Chicago’s famous L — short for “elevated trains” — according to a new ruling by a Donald Trump-appointed federal district judge.
The decision joins a growing number of absurd rulings following the Supreme Court’s notorious 2022 holding in Bruen, which overturned ...Read more
Commentary: Trump goes full revisionist on the economy
Listening to former President Donald Trump speak to the Economic Club of New York, you could be forgiven for thinking that the economy has been such a disaster since he left office that the stock market is in a perpetual free fall. And yet, the benchmark S&P 500 Index is up 64% since the 2020 election through Wednesday, topping the 60% gain at ...Read more