On June 9, U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., spent several hours meeting with detainees at a federal immigration facility near the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

Most of the detainees -- 174 of 206 -- were women. Many are fleeing violence and deprivation in their home countries; they are seeking asylum in accordance with U.S. and ...Read more

CHICAGO -- Near the end of the long journey never before taken by human feet, the three remaining adventurers spied their final destination through the trees.

"Oh my God, you can see it!" said Emily Leu.

"There it is," said Jay Readey.

"Keep going!" cried Molly Fitzgibbon.

And on they trekked through downtown Chicago Monday evening, to the ...Read more

The U.S. economy is growing, unemployment has reached lows not seen in almost two decades, wages are starting to rise and inflation is subdued. Yet lots of Americans say they're not particularly happy or satisfied with their lives. Bloomberg Opinion columnists Conor Sen and Noah Smith met online recently to discuss the state of Americans' ...Read more

The J. Paul Getty Museum has been fighting in Italian courts for more than a decade to keep its bronze "Statue of a Victorious Youth," one of the museum's most prized antiquities. But the Getty itself has yet to emerge victorious. In the latest round, a court in Pesaro ruled that the bronze -- which was pulled out of the sea by Italian fishermen...Read more

True to form, North Carolina Republicans are wasting little time making life more difficult for the vulnerable in our state.

This time, that means those among us who have preexisting health conditions -- the kind that used to result in high insurance premiums or denial of coverage altogether before the Affordable Care Act made those practices ...Read more

The long-ago summer of 1950 was different from previous ones for this elementary school boy. Yes, I played stickball in the sidelot and began learning the artifices of adult card games. But something quite extraordinary captured my imagination and attention: the outbreak of the Korean War, on June 25, 1950.

For this boy, war was something he ...Read more

Missouri's education leaders can get back to business with enthusiasm and optimism this week now that Gov. Mike Parson has made two new appointments to the state Board of Education. The board, which oversees about 900,000 students in K-12 education, has had too few members since December to appoint a new state schools commissioner.

A hefty ...Read more

A recent survey that shows fewer Connecticut teens are drinking and using drugs is good news for the future.

It's hard to say whether the drop in the number of teens using drugs -- as well as alcohol and cigarettes -- is directly related to the sharp increase in video game use, also reported by the 2017 Connecticut School Health Survey.

But ...Read more

Blame Comey. That's the main takeaway of the much-awaited Justice Department inspector general's report on the Hillary Clinton email investigation. The report faulted former FBI Director James Comey both for saying in July 2016 that there were no grounds for a reasonable prosecutor to go after Clinton and for saying in October of that year that ...Read more

Washington and other states with legal marijuana laws need clarity from the federal government.

In a break from his attorney general, President Donald Trump now appears ready to provide it. On Friday, the president said he "probably will end up supporting" a bill in Congress to keep the federal government from interfering in states with legal ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- It's nothing to pop champagne corks about, but California state government is reaching a historic milestone: its first $200 billion spending plan.

It wasn't very long ago that Sacramento had its first $100 billion budget. In fact, people who saw the first $10 billion budget are still around. I'm one.

Gov. Jerry Brown and ...Read more

When we're old and sick and poor, we might be forced to keep warm by burning all the government reports that we ignored, warning us that Social Security and Medicare are running out of money; the latest such report was issued last week.

According to the Social Security Administration, the Medicare trust fund will run dry in 2026 and Social ...Read more

After failing to persuade President Donald Trump that punitive tariffs on European imports aren't a good idea, Chancellor Angela Merkel has apparently decided to fight back by taking a page from his playbook and manipulating facts.

"Trade surpluses are still calculated in a relatively old-fashioned way, based only on goods," Merkel told a ...Read more

Theoretically, the Trump administration's immigration policy is based on two core principles: upholding the rule of law and promoting a "merit-based" system that's good for the economy.

So why has the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) just proposed to scrap the International Entrepreneur Rule, a late-Obama program intended to lure the world...Read more

If our past two weeks of reality TV diplomacy were being rushed into a quickie paperback, the conventional wisdom of my fellow pundits might be summed up by a New Yorky rewriter who sleeps with his fedora on his bedpost and admires the face he sees in his bathroom mirror as the next Runyon, Mailer or Breslin:

"Donald digs despots. But democracy...Read more

It might seem cynical to put the issue of gun safety in the context of election-year politics.

But here we are.

There are at least two ideas floating around Congress that could make "red flag" laws a reality in all 50 states. These laws allow authorities to temporarily take guns away from a person who has shown a pattern of violence or the ...Read more

Missouri's favorite aviatrix, Sen. Claire McCaskill, has flown into turbulent skies again.

The Democrat admitted this week that a recent campaign swing wasn't just a ground-based affair, as she had implied. On occasion, McCaskill hopped on a private plane, flying to places apparently too inconvenient to travel to by recreational vehicle.

Well,...Read more

A good way to guarantee you'll be wrong about something is to predict the future of technology. As in, "One day, we'll all ...." Experts can hazard guesses about artificial intelligence, driverless cars or the death of cable television, but technological innovation and societal change aren't orderly. They disregard expectations. They're dynamic....Read more

Breaking California into three states is no longer just a kooky idea being pushed by one rich guy. Now it's a kooky idea that millions of Californians will face on the ballot in November, with less than five months to study how such a profound change might fundamentally change their lives and fortunes.

The so-called Cal 3 proposition, authored ...Read more

Even in times of drought, California's natural and human-made arteries run with the nation's cleanest, most accessible water. So fundamental is the stuff to the state's identity and to its residents' daily lives that California law recognizes a human right to "safe, clean, affordable, and accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking,...Read more