Major disasters have a way of bringing people together. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks ushered in months of unity and bonhomie among New Yorkers. The 1985 earthquake in Mexico City, which killed approximately 5,000 people, did much the same, with Mexican civilians teaming up to launch their own rescue operations as the federal and city ...Read more

It shouldn’t be too much to ask that taxpayer-funded social service programs benefit people who actually exist.

Apparently it is, as more than 1 million people enrolled in Obamacare plans lack Social Security numbers, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced with Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services ...Read more

The American Revolution unleashed what one prominent historian has called a “contagion of liberty.” Ideas for change went viral, as revolutionaries saw independence as an opportunity to establish a truly different sort of nation. Some even saw the possibility of creating a more equitable society.

While many reformist proposals involved ...Read more

The flow of money into U.S. politics is already harming democracy, and now, it’s about to get worse.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down limits on campaign expenditures by political parties in coordination with candidates in a 6-3 decision that only continues the problematic trend started by Citizen’s United v. FEC. Without these ...Read more

Here’s the truism that powers the free market. Economic growth hinges on what the government doesn’t do far more than what the government does do.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released an update on state-level employment. Over the past year, only two states have had a substantial increase in nonfarm payroll employment. They are ...Read more

Former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot in 2021 created a pilot program called Crisis Assistance Response and Engagement to weave mental health experts into public safety responses.

The idea was both compassionate and practical. Many 911 calls involve people suffering psychiatric crises, severe depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or ...Read more

There’s a saying: “You are what you eat.” If that’s true, then everyone around here is Italian. It’s the meal of choice at home and dining out, and no one turns it down — not even, I suspect, members of the Chicago news media. I’ve seen plenty of them in Italian restaurants. But a few of these journalists still serve up twisted ...Read more

It’s settled now. States can count mail-in ballots after Election Day if postmarked by that day.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s opinion for the majority in Monday’s 5-4 ruling on vote-by-mail was straightforward. In interpreting federal law, the opinion read, “The electorate’s choice is made when voting is complete, not when ballots are ...Read more

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- The driverless white Jaguars crisscrossing Los Angeles were such a novelty at first, like something out of a science fiction novel. Every time a Waymo passed, delighted pedestrians pointed and grabbed their smartphones for photos.

And yet, there was also something kind of creepy about the robot cars zipping around town, whirring ...Read more

The good news about the landmark birthright citizenship decision the Supreme Court issued Tuesday is that it correctly holds that children born in the U.S. automatically become citizens. That’s the right interpretation of the 14th Amendment and reaffirms the 1898 precedent that the president tried to upend with his executive order purporting ...Read more

Happy 250th birthday to America and to all my fellow citizens. Let’s celebrate!

But first, let’s reflect for a moment on the state of our republic.

(If you read my columns regularly, you might assume that I’ll begin by unleashing my Trump Derangement Syndrome on our president. You’re mistaken; I’ll save that until the end.)

The ...Read more

"It was to be a party of special magnificence!" — JRR Tolkien

America’s 250th birthday on July 4 is a glorious occasion. Some people may have a different view, but ignore the party-poopers. Let’s make “having fun” an honorary American Principle this month.

For 250 years, we Americans have creatively celebrated our country’s ...Read more

As the United States celebrates its 250th birthday, it’s worth reflecting on how much has changed—and how much we’ve left behind. We no longer rely on lamplighters to illuminate our streets or switchboard operators to connect our calls. We don’t gather around the radio for evening broadcasts or wait days for news to travel. We’ve ...Read more

Growing up as a Christian, I frequently heard from other churchgoers how fortunate we were to live in a Christian nation. These days, I’m more likely to hear fellow Christians lament that the nation has fallen into secularism.

But as America turns 250, it’s worth remembering that the history of Christianity in America is complicated. So, ...Read more

As we wrote here last week, public safety must ultimately fall on the shoulders of Chicago mayors. More bureaucracy — in the form of the new stand-alone Department of Gun Violence Reduction — while well-intentioned, isn’t the panacea to what plagues our city, especially as whoever is appointed head of this new department will enjoy too ...Read more

The United States is struggling to ensure patients receive the care they need. The math is simple, and scary: more patients plus fewer caregivers equals a major crisis. The baby boomer generation is aging, and so is everyone else. Over 1 million nurses are expected to exit over the next decade, driven by a combination of burnout, retirement and ...Read more

The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court last week let President Donald Trump put another nail in the coffin of America’s humanitarian asylum program and allowed him to end Temporary Protected Status for some 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians in the country, who could now be sent back to life-threatening conditions abroad.

The TPS decision has...Read more

After the 1787 Constitutional Convention, American socialite Elizabeth Willing Powell asked Benjamin Franklin whether the founding leaders had just created a monarchy or a republic. Franklin famously answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

As Americans celebrate our nation’s 250th anniversary, those words provide us with an excellent ...Read more

As Social Security hurtles toward insolvency, its path is a reflection of missed opportunity. In particular, many Democrats over the years have preferred performance demagoguery designed to score political points over the difficult task of finding solutions that actually address the system’s long-term structural deficiencies.

A case in point ...Read more