Politics
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Commentary: California's majestic desert must be preserved. This proposal can help
As the former superintendent of Joshua Tree National Park — and a 38-year career employee for the National Park Service — I have seen the undeniable benefits that come with conserving our public lands. Nowhere has this become more clear than in the California desert, where conservation efforts have nurtured a growing and sustainable outdoor ...Read more

James Stavridis: Venezuela's threats to Guyana follow Putin's Ukraine playbook
A nation that few Americans could find on a map, the oil-rich South American country of Guyana, is in trouble. It has a large and aggressive neighbor, Venezuela, run by an authoritarian leader who maintains close relationships with Russia, Iran, Cuba and other authoritarian states.
In a move reminiscent of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of ...Read more

Editorial: Want to protect children? Don't sign this trans-bashing petition
You’ve got to hand it to the California state attorney general’s office: It knows how to put an accurate title on a proposed ballot initiative. Consider the new anti-transgender proposal in California: “Restricts Rights of Transgender Youth.”
Because, yes, transgender minors do have rights in this state under the law. They can play on ...Read more

Will Bunch: Liz Magill's ouster at Penn will help the worst people take down free speech, higher ed
A band of raiders never stops at just one scalp. Just minutes after the University of Pennsylvania’s president Liz Magill pulled the plug on her stormy 17-month tenure, under intense pressure for her handling of antisemitism questions on Capitol Hill, her chief inquisitor — GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York — was back on the battlefield ...Read more

Editorial: Campus lesson on hate: UPenn's Liz Magill's weak testimony on genocide and Jews costs her big
Rep. Elise Stefanik set a clever trap at a House hearing on antisemitism on campus, snaring the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and MIT. The presidents, Liz Magill of Penn, Claudine Gay of Harvard and MIT’s Sally Kornbluth, walked right into it and Magill has now lost her job over her fumbling response.
The question was:...Read more

Jonathan Bernstein: Will third-party candidates hurt Biden or Trump? It's too soon to guess
With former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney’s comments that she’s considering an independent bid for president against Donald Trump, experts are beginning to game out how she and other third-party candidates could affect next year’s election.
A political action committee backing independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign announced that it�...Read more

Editorial: Put up for sacrifice: Anti-abortion zealot Ken Paxton makes mom of two into an example
Kate Cox, a 31-year-old Dallas-Fort Worth married mother of two, might die. She’s not recovering from some tragic accident, nor does she have some kind of untreatable ailment. The best path to her health is eminently clear and medically proven: an abortion to terminate an unviable 20-week pregnancy, as recommended by her doctors.
Those ...Read more

Robin Abcarian: Read Liz Cheney's book and weep. America's democracy hangs on the details
You don't read a book like former Wyoming U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney's tell-all looking for literary pearls.
You read it to find out what was going on behind the scenes in Congress after the 2020 election, as Donald Trump's Republican sycophants and enablers schemed with him to overturn the results of a legitimate U.S. election. You read it to ...Read more

Trudy Rubin: Israel's right to destroy Hamas cannot excuse mounting Palestinian deaths
Lubna Elayan was a teenage violin student who wore huge black-rimmed glasses and dreamed of becoming a professional musician and playing in international competitions.
In a Facebook photo montage of her practicing and mugging for the camera in her school uniform, her enchanting smile is infectious. That is, until you read in the caption that ...Read more

Doyle McManus: Trump's campaign in 2016 was a populist revolt. In 2024, it's a quest for retribution
The question to former President Donald Trump last week was a softball, served up as an opportunity to rebut his critics.
"They want to call you a dictator," Sean Hannity told him at a Fox News town hall. "Do you in any way have any plans whatsoever, if reelected president, to abuse power, to break the law, to use the government to go after ...Read more

Commentary: The TSA is ramping up its use of biometrics for flyers. Here's why that's important
The Transportation Security Administration screened more than 2.9 million people on Nov. 26, the highest number on record. As the volume of passengers continues to rise, what will airport security checkpoints look like in 2035, when such high daily volumes are the norm?
To understand this future, one need only look at where the TSA is making ...Read more

Editorial: Why is Paxton wasting state resources on lawsuits that don't help Texans?
We regret to inform you that Ken Paxton is at it again.
When the Texas Senate declined to remove him from office during an impeachment trial in September, Paxton immediately went back to his regular activities, which is to say he started using the office of attorney general to sue anybody and everybody, usually in service of some political ...Read more

Editorial: Zieglers, begone. Florida doesn't need more hypocrisy
The deepening troubles of Christian and Bridget Ziegler would be just another local news story if they were two private people. But they are highly public figures who are suddenly in a heap of trouble, and their sex life is in headlines.
He is chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, close to both Gov. Ron DeSantis and former president ...Read more

Editorial: Pakistan is creating the world's next refugee crisis
Amid wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, Western governments have limited capacity to deal with another humanitarian crisis. Yet a decision by Pakistan to expel hundreds of thousands of Afghans threatens to create a new wave of refugees and destabilize an already volatile region. Preventing the chaos from spreading needs to be a priority for ...Read more

Mark Gongloff: No, Virginia, your Christmas tree is not a climate crime
If there’s one climate-change solution everybody seems to agree on, it’s that trees are good. Even Donald Trump, who has called climate change a Chinese hoax, has proposed planting a trillion trees.
So it might seem that the holiday tradition of chopping down one of these precious planet-savers and dragging it into your living room to ...Read more

Nicole Russell: Paxton's threat to doctors over abortion to save woman isn't pro-life
A culture and legal system that is pro-life is healthy for Texans, for Americans, and a society that hopes to value life, from conception to natural death and continue to thrive.
However, life is messy and imperfect. Texas law after the fall of Roe vs. Wade makes only a narrow, rare exception for abortion — to save a woman’s life. That ...Read more

Mary Ellen Klas: It's time for Nikki Haley to take off the gloves
When Nikki Haley was elected governor of South Carolina, one of the first things she did was require all state employees to answer their office phones with: “It’s a great day in South Carolina.”
This continued for five years until she left to become Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations. The forced cheeriness was annoying to ...Read more

Lisa Jarvis: A sickle cell breakthrough is here. Now the hard part
The approval of Casgevy, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Crispr Therapeutics Inc.’s gene therapy for sickle cell disease, is a transformative moment in medicine. Not only is it the first Crispr-based drug to reach the market — it’s a potentially life-altering advance for a patient population that has been for too long ignored and ...Read more

Editorial: White House must come to the table on aid package
The White House must get serious about reaching a deal with Republicans over aid to Ukraine and border security. It’s time for President Joe Biden to end the bluster and work toward compromise.
On Wednesday, Senate Republicans blocked the administration’s $111 billion package on a procedural vote that required support from 60 senators for ...Read more

Commentary: As a Gaza teen, I used to dream of college. Now I feel sentenced to death by Israel's bombings
SOUTHERN GAZA — Until two months ago, my life as a 17-year-old in Gaza was marked by the predictable anxieties and aspirations of a student applying to university. I dreamt of crossing borders to pursue a better life — of landing on my feet at an American school and, eventually, of returning to serve my community as a doctor. Education was ...Read more