At least 18 were shot, four fatally, in Chicago's River North neighborhood after a drive-by shooting last week. Four families will prepare expenses for funeral services and seek mental health support in the wake of their loss. Or they may be so paralyzed by this event that they lose all functionality. The 14 who survived the shooting will fall ...Read more

Our nation’s paltry federal minimum wage of just $7.25 hourly is rightly criticized as far too little to sustain a worker, let alone a family, in 2025.

That’s bad enough, but did you know that there’s an even lower floor for workers who receive tips on the job? That’s right. The federal minimum wage for tipped workers is just $2.13 an ...Read more

Many so-called experts predicted that President Donald Trump’s economic agenda would usher in an inflationary Armageddon. This projection was so oft repeated in the media that many Americans, especially Democrats, believed a depression was imminent. Yet the economy is thoroughly beating expectations, with consumers’ expectations becoming ...Read more

Proving once again that anti-vax quack Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a threat to public health, confirmed measles cases in the United States have hit a 33-year high.

It’s even worse since it’s been a quarter century since the deadly disease was declared completely eradicated in the country. But no more.

The ...Read more

The de-naturalization of foreign-born U.S. citizens isn’t new and has been done under both Democratic and Republican presidents. But the Trump administration’s latest guidance telling federal prosecutors to “prioritize” such cases raises a significant question: How will be this new priority be focused? Will it be stretched to go beyond ...Read more

The other night, after the House passed the “Big Beautiful Bill of Goods” (BBBOG), I went out to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in Philadelphia. I know the people there; they are friendly, hardworking, and they allow me to speak Italian with them. It is a place where I can forget that I am in a city where some of the trash is ...Read more

One of the hallmarks that set the Social Security Administration apart from other government programs was its sedulous avoidance of anything resembling partisan politics. That was a key to its overwhelming popularity among Americans.

Apparently, those days are over.

The change occurred July 3, when the agency sent an email to millions of ...Read more

America’s leaders have latched onto the idea that they can address some big problems — most notably a gaping budget deficit — by forcing interest rates downward.

If only it were that easy.

President Donald Trump keeps turning up the pressure on the Federal Reserve to lower short-term rates, publicly expressing his dissatisfaction with ...Read more

Something troubling is happening to our brains as artificial intelligence platforms become more popular. Studies are showing that professional workers who use ChatGPT to carry out tasks might lose critical thinking skills and motivation.

People are forming strong emotional bonds with chatbots, sometimes exacerbating feelings of loneliness. And...Read more

President Donald Trump’s executive order “Restoring Gold Standard Science” provides a directive to restore a higher standard for scientific research and discovery. Yet despite the concerns it raises, the very standards that it describes already exist and are widely applied.

Section one of the order describes why the administration ...Read more

The international news cycle proceeds at such a fast pace these days that we tend to miss some of the significant stories that are bubbling beneath the surface. Many come from the Western Hemisphere, known as America’s backyard.

Compared to regions such as Europe and the Middle East, the Western Hemisphere seems like a relatively peaceful ...Read more

Reality is a difficult foe. This is a concept that some California Democrats have finally started to grasp.

The Golden State’s housing market is a well-documented tire fire. Soaring prices leave middle-class families struggling to find shelter. WalletHub reports that nine of the 10 least affordable cities in America are in California. ...Read more

Here we go again.

A bunch of successful, conservative professional women are telling young women they don't need careers to have fulfilling lives. All they need to do is avoid college (or better yet, just use it to find a husband), get married, have babies, stay home and live happily ever after.

Perhaps you've noticed the proliferation of "...Read more

Extraordinarily narrow and unstable House and Senate majorities have become routine in modern American politics. The frantic, final maneuvering last week before Congress approved President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act shows why that’s likely to persist for some time. And that means business, local governments, non-profits and ...Read more

Elon Musk is ramping up his feud with Donald Trump. Does that mean Democrats can like him again?

They used to. It wasn’t that long ago that the tech titan won praise from the left for his electric vehicle innovations, and the Tesla became the status symbol of choice for clean-energy elites. Last October, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) told Chris...Read more

An artificial intelligence furor that’s consuming Singapore’s academic community reveals how we’ve lost the plot over the role the hyped-up technology should play in higher education.

A student at Nanyang Technological University said in a Reddit post that she used a digital tool to alphabetize her citations for a term paper. When it was ...Read more

What's the most downtrodden and persecuted minority in America?

If you said it's transgender youths, immigrant workers or women trying to access their reproductive health rights, you're on the wrong track.

The correct answer, judging from a surge in news reporting over the last couple of weeks, is billionaires.

Concern about the welfare of ...Read more

Tragedies bring out the best in people — at least that’s the assumption of a decent society. For some, however, the misfortune of others prompts them to unleash the most vile and abhorrent of screeds.

When torrential rains in central Texas caused the surging Guadalupe River to flood Friday morning, the swift, deadly waters washed away much ...Read more

What a difference eight years makes. During President Trump’s first term, then-Sen. Marco Rubio pushed the president to expand his human rights diplomatic agenda. Rubio recognized that promoting human rights abroad is in the national interest. He urged the president to appoint an assistant secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights ...Read more