When Congress passed sweeping Medicaid cuts as part of President Donald Trump’s signature tax bill last year, the headline numbers were grim: Some 7.5 million people were expected to lose coverage due to changes to the public health insurance program.

Now, an already bad situation for Americans’ health is getting worse. Seemingly at every ...Read more

A 1965 “Wizard of Id” comic strip by Johnny Hart and Brant Parker went as follows: The diminutive but tyrannical king is addressing his subjects on the need for peace and harmony. He then proclaims, “We must all live by the Golden Rule.”

The people were confused at what he meant until the Joker clued them in: “He means whoever has the...Read more

AI is unpopular. And nearly a billion people use ChatGPT.

AI is destroying jobs. And fields predicted to have been eliminated by AI, like radiology, continue to grow and leverage the technology to improve their work.

AI is wrecking the environment. And state officials are learning from hyperscalers how to run the grid more efficiently.

A ...Read more

The Trump family is openly looting the federal government. Congressional Republicans have decided that's fine.

My congressman, Rep. Bob Onder, recently sent a constituent email praising the Trump White House for its anti-fraud efforts. "The White House anti-fraud task force," he wrote approvingly, "highlighted efforts to identify fraud in ...Read more

Elected officials throughout the country are failing to help their constituents, which is their job. Right now in the United States, too many people in power work instead to represent corporate interests, billionaire donors and an oligarch class focused on preserving its advantages.

It is a betrayal that millions of ordinary Americans feel ...Read more

Government has never been known as a model of efficiency. Yet a new report from the Government Accountability Office should make even the most hardened cynic blanch.

Last week, the GAO revealed that the federal government lost at least $186 billion to “improper payments” in fiscal 2025. That’s up by $24 billion from the previous fiscal ...Read more

Born in the 1890s and nearly killed off 20 years ago, the historic Yerkes Observatory along the shores of southeast Wisconsin’s Geneva Lake is getting a new life.

Instead of condos and a high-end resort, scientific research continues, and a growing array of recreational activities have turned an institution once deemed obsolete into a one-of...Read more

President Donald Trump’s decision to leave a long, aggressive interview with the slanted, outdated “Meet the Press” show drew the usual outrage from liberal critics who always gave free passes to Democratic presidents.

“You’re a one-sided, crooked network,” Trump told the moderator, Kristen Welker, from NBC News. “Sorry, let’s ...Read more

Recurring legal setbacks haven’t deflected the White House from its plan to impose a worldwide tariff regime. Whether the fourth variant of this protectionist strategy, proposed last week, will fare better in the courts than its predecessors is doubtful. What’s certain is that it will cause yet more disruption, compound the economic damage ...Read more

In the case of United States vs. James Brien Comey Jr., the U.S. president’s security is pitted against the bedrock right to free speech enjoyed by Americans.

Two federal charges have been lodged against former FBI Director Comey and are based on his Instagram post that depicted seashells spelling out “86 47,” which many people thought to...Read more

The most encouraging redistricting news of the year came from two states that did nothing.

Illinois lawmakers adjourned without drawing new congressional maps. South Carolina legislators, including Republicans, rejected a President Donald Trump-backed remap that would have tilted the political playing field. Better yet, it was a bipartisan ...Read more

Fidelity Investments, the big brokerage and mutual fund firm, long has had a rule protecting its small retail clients from plunging into initial public stock offerings while the shares were still subject to IPO-related hype.

In most cases, Fidelity would allow IPO investments only for clients with at least $500,000 in their brokerage accounts. ...Read more

The U.S. and Europe tried unsuccessfully for 35 years to end the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Moscow also failed, sending “peacekeepers” after Azerbaijan’s attacks on Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020; these forces idly watched when Azerbaijan took the entire region and drove out 110,000 ethnic Armenians in 2023.

President Joe Biden’...Read more

With Tom Steyer all but eliminated from California’s top-two gubernatorial runoff in November, he joins a long conga line of beaucoup-bucks, self-funding candidates who tried to buy their way into elected office in our state and failed miserably.

This includes Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman, Al Checchi and Michael Huffington. Whitman, a former ...Read more

Polls indicate that President Donald Trump is doing a lot that most Americans don’t support: The war with Iran; the arbitrary tariffs; the retribution campaign against his perceived enemies; the 250-foot Triumphal Arch; the $1.776 billion fund intended to reward Trump loyalists. (Even Republicans don’t like that one!)

There’s so much that...Read more

This is a reflective time of year for me. My father, Ronald Reagan, died in June 2004, and each year I let myself drift into whatever realm my thoughts and memories lead me to. Sometimes it’s about who he was as a father — magical when I was a small child, but elusive and a bit awkward as I grew up.

This year I have found myself reflecting ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Winning elections — or achieving any success — often is about being in the right spot at the right moment. Getting lucky and capitalizing. Xavier Becerra is a textbook example.

Becerra’s moribund campaign for California governor was flatlining in early April when he got a shocking break. Five women publicly accused...Read more

Upon returning home from his time as a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I, naturalist Henry Beston famously described wild animals as “other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

Fast-forward to today, as Arabian humpback whales navigate between sea ...Read more

Since 2016, when Donald Trump shattered the Democrats’ blue wall by winning working-class voters across the Midwest, a cottage industry has sprung up on the left dedicated to answering a single question: How can Democrats win back the working class?

The answers come in different forms. Sometimes it is veteran Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders— ...Read more