Attorney General William Barr recently gave a speech on religious freedom at the University of Notre Dame law school. He said that that mainstream faiths were being attacked by secularists, mass media, academia, movies, TV and the like, that our traditional moral system was being degraded and that the traditional self-discipline of the past was ...Read more

California Attorney General. Xavier Becerra's many lawsuits against the Trump administration are policy fights, at the simplest level -- legal battles by a blue state to impede a Republican president's deregulatory and socially conservative agenda.

But a more interesting subtext is the work by California and its allies to limit the power of the...Read more

A career civil servant who is a West Point graduate, soldier, officer, military attache and veteran diplomat told Congress on Tuesday that President Donald Trump personally and explicitly tried to force Ukraine's president to investigate Trump's political opponents by withholding crucial military aid and a coveted White House meeting.

William ...Read more

Last week, President Donald Trump tweeted a photograph intended to mock House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the photo she is standing at the table in the Cabinet Room wagging her finger at Trump, who's surrounded by a table full of other men also sitting, some with heads bowed. Along with the photo he tweeted, "Nervous Nancy's unhinged meltdown." The...Read more

The last time we heard Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, was in Chicago was just before her May 2018 wedding to Prince Harry. The former Meghan Markle, a Northwestern grad, was spotted at O'Hare International Airport in a White Sox baseball cap, apparently in town to complete her United Kingdom visa application.

Then, as the world knows, Meghan became...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Pierre Delecto might save the republic yet.

Ever since Mitt Romney was elected to the U.S. Senate a year ago, he wrestled with his scratchy, uncomfortable role as a NeverTrump Republican in Donald Trump's Washington.

Even before he was sworn in, the senator from Utah published an op-ed decrying the president's "shortfall" in ...Read more

Leading Democrats have settled on a familiar thread to connect the two scandals currently engulfing the Trump administration: Russia. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked President Donald Trump last week: Why do "all roads lead to Vladimir Putin"?

Pelosi was referring to president's chaotic and abrupt decision to pull U.S. forces from the Syrian...Read more

In the corrosive and dangerous Trump presidency, the outrages fly so fast and the chaos mounts so thoroughly that it's easy to pass off the entire unsettling phenomenon as one more made-for-TV-and-Twitter unreality show. New outrages drive the previous ones from our minds.

In recent days, two questions have dominated the discussion: Did he ...Read more

The next presidential election will be about character and fitness to lead the nation above all else. But the Democratic primary will also be a contest of ideas, which helps explain why the candidates have been cranking out plans, proposals and white papers like blue plate specials at a diner.

As the 2016 election showed, though, having binders...Read more

Over a century ago, President Roosevelt brought antitrust enforcement into the heart of American democracy by declaring war on the steel, rail and oil trusts. His concern was driven, as antitrust scholar Tim Wu argues in "The Curse of Bigness," not only by their threats to the free market, but by the recognition that the power of these ...Read more

Earlier this month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a ban on those small plastic bottles for hotel guests that contain shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, moisturizer and other personal care items.

They're convenient, sure, particularly for airline passengers who, since 2006, haven't been allowed to carry on containers of liquids any...Read more

Race is going to be a crucial issue in the 2020 election. Or if it isn't, it ought to be.

Partly that's because of Donald Trump. He has shamelessly exploited ethnic and racial divides for cynical political reasons, using code words and dog whistles to drive Americans farther apart. (Remember, to name just a few examples, the Mexican "rapists," ...Read more

When my doctor ordered a CT scan I didn't need, I found myself in an uncomfortable position. As a physician myself, I quickly realized the scan was unnecessary and preferred not to expose myself to ionizing radiation, which can increase the risk for cancer. Nevertheless, I dutifully played the role of the compliant patient.

Saying no to bad ...Read more

The battle for the soul of the Democratic Party is underway.

What's it to be -- progressive or moderate? Passionate or pragmatic? Left or less left? Will voters embrace the party's more radical wing and back far-reaching policies such as "Medicare for all" and free college tuition, or will they support a more cautious, more centrist ...Read more

Growing up in my family, cancer and talk of it was everywhere.

My cherished Grandma Edra, one of 14 children raised on a tobacco farm in North Carolina, saw a brother die of leukemia in childhood. A sister died of breast cancer, then another. Another brother would die from prostate cancer. A cancer diagnosis for yet another brother led to ...Read more

If Elizabeth Warren were to be elected president next year, she would be 71 on Inauguration Day. Joe Biden would be 77. Bernie Sanders would be 79.

In other words, if elected, any of the three leading candidates for the Democratic nomination would become the oldest person ever to begin the job, breaking the record set in 2017 -- by Donald Trump...Read more

With an incumbent president like ours, it is no surprise that many American voters look at the current crop of Democratic challengers and say, "I'd be happy if any one of them were to win."

It's a perfectly rational attitude. Faced with the very real possibility of a disastrous Trump reelection next November, voters can be forgiven for feeling ...Read more

Mitt Romney has emerged as the Lone Ranger Republican, willing to speak out about our corrupt president. When the news of Trump's phone call with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskiy broke, Romney said the situation was not just "troubling" but "appalling." He insisted we needed to know more and encouraged the impeachment inquiry to go forward.

Not ...Read more