From Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Big Tech to Republican members of Congress to universities to law firms, President Trump is using bullying intimidation tactics to get his way. His targets can push back or give in, but capitulation to a bully only brings more bullying.

Zelenskyy now agrees to what Trump offers (although that ...Read more

What, exactly, does the Democratic base want? More. More of everything. Including new leaders.

When will Democrats step up to “flood the zone” with the vigorous fight for our democracy that this moment demands?

Our elected leaders repeatedly complain about President Donald Trump’s domination of the daily news cycle. Why didn’t it occur...Read more

Even before President Donald Trump started his trade wars, McDonald’s Corp. top brass knew this year would start sluggishly.

Prices are up for food, paper goods and labor, while many of the Chicago-based burger chain’s core customers are finding the menu unaffordable. As a result, CEO Chris Kempczinski told investors last month, “The ...Read more

For me, the daughter of small business owners, winter and the holidays meant more family time at the dining table, not just to eat but to hand-write thank you notes to our customers.

My brother would climb up to the attic to bring down bins full of greeting cards my mother and I had purchased the previous year after Christmas, when the holiday ...Read more

Over the past two decades, school districts have spent billions of taxpayer dollars equipping classrooms with laptops and other devices in hopes of preparing kids for a digital future. The result? Students have fallen further behind on the skills they most need to succeed in careers: the three R’s plus a fourth — relationships.

Today, about...Read more

We all learned long ago, perhaps on the playground, that giving in to a bully only makes things worse. That is why it is shocking to see capitulation on the part of those being illegally bullied by President Trump. This will only embolden him.

On Thursday and Friday, a law firm and Columbia University surrendered.

Trump said Thursday that the ...Read more

Electricity is already too expensive in California, but it could get even worse if we can’t find a way to partner with our neighboring states.

That’s because California could be left out of a fundamental shift in how electricity is bought and sold. Imagine if there wasn’t a New York Stock Exchange and that regions within every state had ...Read more

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s drive toward the political center has hit a jarring speed bump: He’s spending way over budget on health care for undocumented immigrants.

Let’s put this in perspective:

Newsom presumably has been repositioning himself to run for president in 2028 — less as a wild-eyed California liberal and more like a sensible ...Read more

After years of poor decision-making, the federal government’s $1.64 trillion student loan program is in critical condition. Congress needs to stanch the bleeding — and give serious thought to overhauling this flawed system for the longer term.

The underlying problem is clear: Too many students have loans they can’t repay. Even before the ...Read more

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s recent contentious meeting with President Donald Trump raised eyebrows among many Americans. Vice President JD Vance called the Ukrainian president “disrespectful,” but the circumstances of the meeting in the Oval Office were not unusual in diplomatic history.

When Dwight Eisenhower took office ...Read more

PLEASANTON, Calif. — It was a child's drawing — the kind of sweet, simple sketch you hang on the refrigerator — but something about the family portrait was off.

The heights and the adult-to-offspring ratio didn't line up, so Eric Swalwell asked his daughter, "Who are all these people?"

"That's Mr. Darly," the kindergartner replied, ...Read more

Over the last decade, it’s become commonplace to describe President Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party as hostile — as if the one-time New York real estate mogul was the political version of a corporate raider. That’s a gross mischaracterization, one that has contributed to a misunderstanding of the source of Trump’s ...Read more

As a former Cook County state’s attorney and a former chief of staff in a district attorney’s office, we were alarmed to learn that President Donald Trump’s administration quietly deleted the first federal police misconduct database — a critical tool created to prevent federal law enforcement officers with histories of serious misconduct...Read more

Uncomfortable truth time: The biggest reason California’s electric rates are rising so fast is that utility companies are spending billions of dollars each year to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires.

Does that mean Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric should spend less money trimming trees, ...Read more

On March 8, Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born green card holder and Columbia University graduate student, was arrested at his New York apartment by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

The arrest was linked to Khalil’s involvement in pro-Palestinian student protests at Columbia University last spring. Now facing deportation, the Algerian ...Read more

A federal judge has held that Elon Musk and DOGE’s actions to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development likely violated the Constitution in “multiple ways.” U.S. District Court Judge Theodore D. Chuang also ordered the reversal of many of the steps Musk directed to be taken to close the agency.

The decision could mark the ...Read more

The conventional wisdom — really, it’s an Article of Faith for the Republican Party — is that the federal bureaucracy is a hopeless swamp of waste, fraud, and inefficiency staffed by lazy, incompetent idlers.

But is it?

It’s a question worth considering, since it’s the rationale that drives the chainsaw — or wood chipper — that ...Read more

I confess that I had no intention of reading "Careless People," the tell-all memoir from former Facebook executive Sarah Wynn-Williams. I figured I knew all I needed to know about the company's history and its leader, Mark Zuckerberg, from following it for the better part of a decade.

But then Zuckerberg, whose company changed its name to Meta ...Read more

We’ve all witnessed it. The Thanksgiving table and other family gatherings turned terribly wrong. “Don’t talk about politics.” Maybe our parents told us that.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve lost the ability to have discourse over political issues with our neighbors, and even our family. We’ve all felt the divide. It’s not just a ...Read more

Welcome to Florida. Where Sunshine needs lobbyists and lawyers, and the state motto could just as well be “nothing to see here.” Where elected officials shamelessly reject attempts to let the people who voted for them know what they are up to. Where government bureaucrats seem increasingly inclined to simply ignore the law, particularly in ...Read more