There are a lot of jobs in the U.S. economy that pay miserably low wages. And there are a lot that offer a reasonable hourly rate but still result in miserably low earnings because of unstable, fluctuating schedules.

How many is hard to know, but it’s not a small number: According to the Government Accountability Office, there are about 9 ...Read more

We may never know what caused the COVID-19 pandemic that has taken more than 7 million lives worldwide. Was it a leak at a laboratory, as some have claimed? Did it come from animals, as most scientific bodies have stated?

We do know this: The answers won’t come from a vicious Republican persecution of Dr. Anthony Fauci. And as if there isn’...Read more

U.S. states are supposedly the laboratories of democracy, cooking up and testing local solutions to national problems. But some of those labs are more like Walter White’s RV methmobile: They’re not always doing stuff you want to emulate.

Consider the concoctions Florida has brewed up in response to the national home-insurance crisis that ...Read more

On Wednesday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker wrote to the U.S. CEOs of seven major oil companies accusing them of “profiteering” from the war in Iran and imploring them to return their bounty to Illinois consumers.

“Under the guise of supply disruptions from war in the Middle East,” Pritzker wrote, “your companies are collecting windfall ...Read more

Arizona and Nevada will feel the brunt of the pain under a federal plan to reduce stress on the Colorado River. It’s an unjust solution, particularly for the Silver State.

Recently, the Interior Department released a 10-year blueprint to address water shortages on the Colorado. The river has been over-allocated for a century, and long-term ...Read more

Sen. Tina Smith warned Minnesotans two years ago that a zombie could rise from the dead. She was right.

The zombie in question isn’t a movie monster. It’s the Comstock Act, a 1873 law criminalizing the mailing of “obscene” materials that has remained on the books, though largely unenforced, for more than a century. In an April 2024 Star...Read more

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s decision to join Japan in supporting the yen was the first joint intervention of its kind for decades and took investors by surprise. There’s a respectable case for such cooperation: The U.S. and Japan can both benefit, at least for a while. But the policy fails to tackle the underlying problem and could ...Read more

Let’s give credit where it’s due to Democrats hoping to unseat Republican Senator Susan Collins in Maine: Troy Jackson is certainly an improvement over Graham Platner.

As a former longtime state legislator, his background has been vetted, and he doesn’t appear burdened by personal scandal (or a Nazi tattoo.)

But Democrats — ...Read more

The day after the state's Senate primary, I was at a gym in Michigan when I overheard a brief exchange about the results of the close race.

The small group of voters were all elderly and white. Most of them expressed disappointment that Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens lost. Most of them questioned victor Abdul El-Sayed's ability to win in ...Read more

The Iran war has provided at least two clear economic lessons. It has exposed the steep costs of being reliant on fossil fuels, highlighting the need for countries to diversify their homegrown energy sources, including solar and wind power. And it has shown what U.S. commerce could look like freed from the Jones Act, one of the most ...Read more

A few years ago, I interviewed a Black teen as part of a study on the health of Gen Z. What this ninth-grader from an inner-city community was most passionate about surprised me.

“In eighth grade, lunch used to be something tasty; I could eat it,” she told me. “Here we go now: 65% reduced fat. Barely any seasoning. I’m like, ‘What is ...Read more

Back in February, hours after the Supreme Court overturned most of President Donald Trump's tariffs, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent joshed about whether consumers would get a piece of the refunds when the government refunded the illegal duties.

Responding to a question about that at an economics conference, Bessent stated — with "a ...Read more

The narrower than expected victory by the far left Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, could backfire on the party in November.

El-Sayed barely staved off the establishment Democrat by less than one percentage point — just 15,000 votes — despite polls which showed him leading by double digits.

The polls, it turns out,...Read more

As of this week, with a green light from the Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority, President Donald Trump is free to mount his long-promised mass deportation campaign in earnest. His Homeland Security Department notified employers last week that about 350,000 Haitian immigrants no longer are protected, triggering mass layoffs. His blood-...Read more

A week ago, Emerson College released a poll of likely Democratic primary voters in Michigan that had progressive firebrand Abdul El-Sayed leading U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens by 15 percentage points in the race for U.S. Senate.

Emerson was just one of many polling outfits that forecast a likely blowout in the primary, but it was the one with the ...Read more

“The days of school closures, consolidation and privatization have ended, officially, under the Johnson administration,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said on Monday. “And to anyone, billionaire or not, that believes that you can take us back to a model of torment and torture, you got another thing coming.”

Johnson was reacting to the official ...Read more

The more I think about Proposition 40, the billionaire tax that will go before California voters in November, the angrier I get.

I'm angry at President Donald Trump. His cruel slashing of Medicaid threatens the health of millions of Californians, may lead to the loss of hundreds of thousands of medical jobs and is the stated reason behind ...Read more

Francesca Hong, the Democratic Socialist who’s leading in the polls to be the Democratic Party nominee for Wisconsin governor, is now best known nationally for a call for “canceling” Thanksgiving.

She did so in a 2020 social media post that went on to say, “If it takes a worldwide pandemic for us to realize we should stop celebrating ...Read more

A new report from the non-profit Citizen Budget Commission reveals that New York lost over $10 billion in personal income tax revenue for fiscal year 2022. The problem is clear: high-income earners and business owners are fleeing. 

The Big Apple’s high taxes, oppressive regulations, and policymaker’s hostile rhetoric have ...Read more