Politics
/ArcaMax

Mary Ellen Klas: Florida orange juice could be tariffs' most iconic casualty
President Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada is on hold for now but, if it resumes, it could deliver a fatal blow to one iconic American industry: Florida orange juice.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged Canadians to forgo “Florida orange juice altogether” as he slapped a (now-paused) 25% tariff on American exports from “red...Read more

Commentary: A mass exodus from civil service would be disastrous for our communities
Civil service is another term for “professional workforce” and we want this in government, right? And yet, as I write this, our government is being taken over by the opposite kind of worker.
The uncredentialed Elon Musk is running a massive government operation. His team of similarly-unaccredited private-sector tech wonks have taken control...Read more

Commentary: After the Assad regime's fall, will Syrian refugees return?
The sudden fall of Syria’s Assad regime in early December has raised an important question: Can the 6 million who became refugees during the 14-year civil war now go home?
Officials in Turkey, Austria, Denmark and Bulgaria have started publicly discussing plans to repatriate the Syrian refugees in those countries. Others — including France...Read more

Justin Fox: The blue state-red state tax divide isn't really that fair
The Trump administration’s many attempts over the past couple of weeks to halt federal spending have met mostly with approval from Republicans on Capitol Hill and outrage from Democrats.
That’s sort of what one would expect given that Trump is a Republican, but also kind of weird in that states and congressional districts that vote for ...Read more

Editorial: Managing health records shouldn't be this maddening
The U.S. health-care system exchanges tens of millions of patient records a day. Thanks to recent technological advances, the ability to analyze such large amounts of data has improved markedly.
Why, then, are patients still filling out clipboards of redundant information, or juggling multiple passwords and portals to make a doctor’s ...Read more

Commentary: Can Trump persuade North Korea to return to the negotiating table?
During a recent interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, President Donald Trump stated that he would reach out to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un again in his second term to mitigate security threats.
This was not the first time Trump expressed his intention to reopen diplomacy with North Korea since taking office. On his first day in office,...Read more

Stephen Mihm: The FAIR plan was meant to insure against racism, not wildfires
With the wildfires in Southern California finally contained, the finger pointing has begun — with much of the ire aimed at the state’s patchwork system of fire insurance. There’s special scrutiny of the so-called “FAIR Plan,” a state-run insurer of last resort that has only $377 million in reserves. There are growing fears that this ...Read more

Commentary: Trump's Gaza plan echoes decades-old Israeli calls to expel Palestianians
On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza, was received warmly by President Donald Trump at the White House.
Netanyahu, a longtime backer of Trump, beamed with satisfaction as the two men met with reporters and ...Read more

James Stavridis: Trump's 'Iron Dome' must succeed where Reagan's 'Star Wars' failed
President Donald Trump’s surprise announcement that the U.S. would pursue an Iron Dome-like national missile defense system has taken a page from Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” initiative of decades ago.
Like Reagan’s never-fulfilled plan for a system to “intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own ...Read more

Commentary: Dr. Anthony Fauci should come clean about COVID-19
Just before he exited the White House, one of President Joe Biden’s last official acts was to grant a preemptive pardon to Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has not been convicted of, or even charged with, any crime.
Significantly, the pardon dates to 2014, when the National Institutes of Health and Fauci awarded a multimillion-dollar grant to the ...Read more

Editorial: Gaza is not ours to occupy
President Donald Trump has proposed America occupy Gaza and forcefully resettle two million Palestinians in other nations. It is frequently a mystery how serious Trump is.
If he is serious, he ignores the long-term price the U.S. pays for inserting itself into other nations, especially those in decades-long conflicts. In Afghanistan, for ...Read more

Editorial: Trump's Gaza nonsense -- Crazy scheme harms real steps for Mideast peace
President Donald Trump’s fanciful plan for Gaza will not happen; still his wacky vision actually undermines legitimate efforts to improve relations in the Mideast, with Israel’s Arab partners like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia looking for the exits.
Listening to everything that Trump spun Tuesday during three different public appearances, ...Read more

Michael Hiltzik: These are the legal obstacles that could stop Trump's assault on government in its tracks
Here's a phrase — three words, only eight syllables in all — that's going to gain paramount importance in the conduct of government policy by President Donald Trump over the next few years.
The phrase is "arbitrary and capricious." It's a guidepost for federal judges hearing challenges to agency rulemakings — whether by promulgating new ...Read more

Editorial: The NYPD's long learning curve -- Slowly getting better on stop, question, frisk
A dozen years ago, a federal judge ruled the NYPD’s practice of stopping, questioning and frisking New Yorkers by the hundreds of thousands to be unconstitutional — as the vast majority of stops, overwhelmingly of young Black and Brown men, weren’t based on sufficient individualized suspicion.
The 23rd — count ’em — report of the ...Read more

Tom Philp: California's smart and vocal farmers are silent about Trump as he wasted their water
Agriculture is a form of legalized gambling here in California, our land is prone to deluge or drought. Our farmers, relentlessly adapting, are as innovative as any set of suits in Silicon Valley, learning new ways to grow more food with less water.
As sure as the sun, our farmers have always shared their views of California politics as they ...Read more

Juan Pablo Spinetto: Trump's tariffs already hurt Mexico -- Even if they're on hold
“We're definitely making the factory in Mexico. We feel very good about that. We put a lot of effort into looking at different locations and we feel very good about that location. We are going to build a factory there and it's going to be great.”
Oh, those great days when Elon Musk had such rapport with Mexico that not only was he planning ...Read more

Commentary: Corporate America isn't abandoning DEI -- it's just rebranding it
One could easily get the impression that corporate America is in full retreat from promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. Each news cycle seems to carry a headline about a rollback of diversity policies by another company, including Tractor Supply, Boeing, John Deere, Brown-Forman, Harley-Davidson, Lowe’s, Molson Coors, Ford, Toyota, ...Read more

Commentary: Donald Trump's cowboy diplomacy in the Western Hemisphere is succeeding, but has risks
Donald Trump has a special affinity for William McKinley, the former American president who was struck down by an assassin’s bullet in 1901, ending his second term before it really began. Trump has called his distant predecessor a “great but highly underrated” chief executive who made the United States wealthy by slapping tariffs on ...Read more

Commentary: Why no water system is built with capacity for fires like Palisades and Eaton
In the immediate aftermath of the devastating Eaton and Palisades fires, local water agencies have been questioned and criticized about why sufficient water resources may not have been available for the fire suppression effort.
As the general manager of a public water agency, I’ve tried to succinctly explain the quandary facing water systems...Read more

Commentary: Trump is right to end federal diversity programs
Recently, I had the chance to catch up with a friend from Los Angeles. She’s a political liberal and cast her vote for Kamala Harris last fall. As we talked, I discovered she shared common ground with the MAGA crowd: My friend was outraged by what she said “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives have done to the entertainment ...Read more