Politics
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Lorraine Ali: Call it propaganda or a PSA, Trump's latest ad blitz is paid for by you
“America will never be a communist country,” states the 30-second television ad.
Never mind that socialism is a more probable scenario given the rise of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Nithya Raman’s healthy lead in the Los Angeles mayoral race. This commercial is not about semantics, political systems or the health of the nation.
It�...Read more
Mark Z. Barabak: War games and draft lawsuits: Democrats work to Trump-proof November election
DENVER — The office of Colorado's attorney general is a perch 10 stories above downtown Denver. From his aerie, Phil Weiser has a sweeping view of the city skyline, the gold-domed Capitol and, occasionally, a red hawk on the wing.
But looking toward November, Weiser sees something darker.
Federal agents swarming polling places. Voters ...Read more
Commentary: Trump's loyalty problems
President Donald Trump has a loyalty problem. Actually, he has two of them.
The first concerns where his own loyalties lie. Consider these questions: Has he been loyal to the oath he took to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution? Does he respect the separation of powers and the limits on his authority as president? Does he understand that ...Read more
Beth Kowitt: The workplace war over iced coffee reveals a bigger issue
Is it acceptable to bring an iced coffee to a job interview?
This seemingly mundane question has somehow consumed various corners of the internet, taking over social media feeds and group chats. Bloomberg Opinion is not immune. Not since the great shorts-in-the-office firestorm of 2024 has a workplace debate lit up our team’s Slack channel ...Read more
James Stavridis: Putin's shadow war is testing NATO's restraint
Russian President Vladimir Putin, frustrated by his bogged-down war in Ukraine, is trying to intimidate the European nations that — given President Donald Trump’s severe cuts in aid to Kyiv — are now Ukrainians’ main military, economic and diplomatic supporters.
A few of the many examples: an explosive-laden drone found at the airport ...Read more
Commentary: There's a secret third path to escaping America's debt trap
The U.S. deficit has reached $1.97 trillion and is on track to pass 6% of gross domestic product this fiscal year, the latest milestone in a remarkable deterioration of the federal budget. With national debt at a record $40 trillion, the feeling that the music must stop at some point has jittery market watchers zeroed in on a jittery bond market...Read more
Anita Chabria: Court reminds sheriff he's not above the law, even when pursuing conspiracies
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco got slapped down Thursday by the California Supreme Court in not one but two cases. Ouch.
First, the court told Bianco to return more than 600,000 ballots he had seized as part of an ill-conceived, conspiracy-laden “investigation” into voter fraud — making it clear it was the ...Read more
Editorial: Immigration court can't be secret and must be humane
The Trump administration has been processing immigration cases at 26 Federal Plaza amid “overcrowded, squalid, and degrading” detention conditions, says Manhattan Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan, who has ordered it be permanently cleaned up and that people in custody no longer be denied access to medical care or their lawyers.
This is the exact ...Read more
Marc Champion: Make threats of annihilation taboo again
Visiting mixed villages in former Yugoslavia before it careened toward its violent breakup in 1992, I spoke to neighbors who dismissed the idea of a coming war as simply unimaginable. But as each tuned in to the increasingly nationalistic TV stations of their respective Serbian or Croatian capitals, they were bombarded by commentary posing as ...Read more
Gautam Mukunda: The AI folks don't seem to understand intelligence
Just three years after OpenAI said its models were good at grade-school math, the company announced they had solved the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize problem in 88 hours, something that had stumped humanity’s greatest mathematical minds since the 1930s. Project that trend forward and you see why OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman ...Read more
Commentary: Young people aren't voting. Sacramento knows how to change that
The ballots Californians cast, or fail to cast, this November will say more about the republic’s health than any of the 250th anniversary commemorations could.
Generation Z accounts for roughly 1 in 5 of the state’s eligible voters, yet its members register and turn out far below every older cohort: In the 2024 general election, 42.5% of ...Read more
Editorial: Good luck to Canada and the EU. They'll need it
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has raised a seemingly incongruous possibility: Perhaps Canada, 3,500 miles from Brussels, might become an “associate member” of the European Union. Prime Minister Mark Carney seems open to the idea.
Exactly what this might mean is far from clear. Whether Canada or the EU’s member ...Read more
LZ Granderson: Republican candidates can't escape the stink of Trumpism
President Donald Trump is full of thiols.
We all are, actually.
The easiest spots to find them are our hairs, however anyplace carbon, sulfur and hydrogen atoms are collectively having a party, one type of molecule they can form is a thiol. The mix and number of thiols in our system varies, depending on diet and other factors, thus the ...Read more
Mark Gongloff: Private jets have a free-rider problem
If you try to take a free ride on, say, public transit in New York City, you’ll get in trouble with the law. If your mode of transportation is a private jet, on the other hand, there’s a high risk you’ll be offered champagne.
Private jets are far from free, of course; the average hourly charter rate for a midsize jet is $12,730, according...Read more
Commentary: California needs common-sense ID law to ensure votes count
The election system I ran no longer exists.
I served as California’s chief elections officer from 1995 to 2003. In that time, my standard never varied: full participation, zero tolerance for fraud. I have never understood why those are treated as competing goals. The machinery that proves a ballot is genuine is the same machinery that lets a ...Read more
Gustavo Arellano: Heads up, Latino men: The future of democracy hangs on your vote
LOS ANGELES -- Man, we Latino men have it rough.
Americans have demonized us as criminals, buffoons, lechers, invaders, criminals and job stealers since the fall of the Alamo. Latino culture typecasts hombres as eternal machos always a few drinks away from brawling or bawling. Educators view us as underachievers. The political class long ...Read more
Editorial: Tariffs on Harley-Davidson bikes? Canada takes revenge on Trump by targeting his political weaknesses
Shortly after President Donald Trump imposed new tariffs on a slew of Canadian imports, aiming to cripple its economy unless it bends to his will, Canada took more careful aim when returning fire earlier this month.
To a large extent, it aimed at the ballot box.
Wisconsin is expected to be a key swing state in the upcoming midterm elections on...Read more
Editorial: The Shedd Aquarium did all it could to save the beluga whales
Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium surely hoped its dramatic rescue of 10 beluga whales from the widely despised and imminently liquidating Marineland of Canada in Niagara Falls, Ontario, was going to be a public relations boon. The sensational international rescue of the famously sentient creatures, replete with colossal cargo planes, huge crates and ...Read more
Commentary: We need more of the hopeful sci-fi that 'Star Trek' gave us 60 years ago
A few years ago, I received a call I’ll never forget. Jeanette Epps, an astronaut aboard the International Space Station, Zoomed into my living room from 250 miles above Earth. During our conversation, she told me that one of the reasons she chose her career was a television show my father created in 1966.
She wasn’t alone. I’ve heard ...Read more
Commentary: Partisan loyalty now drives Americans' trust in justice
Americans have rarely trusted their institutions less. In June, Gallup found average confidence in the 14 institutions it tracks was near a record low. Some 9% of the public trusted Congress, 27% trusted the Supreme Court, and 45% trusted the police. The criminal justice system, as a whole, ranked near the bottom.
Below those totals, however, ...Read more

















































