Earlier this month, scrolling the TV channels, I happened upon a documentary about Dolly Parton and started watching. Before long I thought: "Boy, I needed this."

That evening came at the end of another week of wallowing in all things Donald Trump. It's my job and, I think, my civic duty. It's also soul-crushing, as news consumers around the ...Read more

The U.S. Constitution is clear that the states — and the states alone — handle elections and the U.S. Supreme Court is wrong to even open up the possibility that President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail-in ballots can go forward. The president and the U.S. Postal Service aren’t in charge of voting practices and the lower...Read more

The idea that states must shower subsidies on favored interests to create jobs and juice their economies has, unfortunately, taken root across the political spectrum. But Republicans and Democrats could save the taxpayers plenty of treasure if they would instead come together on occupational licensing reform.

A recent report in Governing ...Read more

My favorite Dolly Parton song is nowhere near her most famous and not even among her best.

But if you want to honor the late country music legend's legacy — a testament to the Gospel's radical notions of love, acceptance and uplifting the marginalized — you need to blast her cover of Woody Guthrie's "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)."

...Read more

More people would accept a nuclear power plant in their community than a data center, according to recent Gallup polling. Who would have predicted that even five years ago?

The facilities needed to power the rise of artificial intelligence as well as to allow us to continue our collective smartphone addiction are wildly unpopular.

And yet ...Read more

I recently tumbled into a social media post about the depths of underappreciation for Curtis Sittenfeld’s 2020 novel “Rodham.”

I could relate. I’ve not read the book despite being a huge fan of the Minneapolis-based author since her 2005 debut “Prep.” I can recommend Sittenfeld’s two more recent efforts, “Romantic Comedy” and ...Read more

This is a tale of two documentaries.

One is a lightweight reality series that follows a family’s trek across the United States. The other is a powerful exposé on the safety breaches that have caused deadly crashes and accidents on Boeing airplanes.

The two August releases, one on Netflix and the other on YouTube, appear to have nothing in ...Read more

Democrats and Republicans, in Congress and the White House, once collaborated on fraught legislation to address major public policy and fiscal challenges: Social Security reform in 1983, Welfare reform in 1996, the Troubled Asset Relief Program of 2008 that arguably saved the U.S. from financial ruin. That’s just in my lifetime.

Today, an ...Read more

The State Department recently announced it had revoked more than 175,000 visas since President Donald Trump took office. Thanks to “continuous vetting,” it’s been able to yank the visas from foreigners who abused our hospitality by committing fraud and crime.

That might sound like a lot, but in fiscal 2024 the U.S. issued 612,258 ...Read more

News reports and social media constantly remind us that today’s political system rewards conflict, viral moments, and ideological performance over thoughtful and courteous debate.

Tune into the melee, and it is as if every high-ranking official is now a TV political pundit rather than a serious statesman or stateswoman.

What’s missing in ...Read more

In late June, the Supreme Court ruled against limits upon state political party spending in federal elections. The specter of Money in Politics, already looming large, grew several sizes. It begs the question, naturally: just how much will all this additional inflow affect our elections? And can anyone compete against so much damn money?

In ...Read more

Like so many others, I spent late July choking on smoke as wildfires, worsened by fossil-fueled climate change, raged across Canada and the United States, as well as France, Greece, Spain and Turkey. People, including firefighters, lost their lives.

Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to flee their homes, with many losing everything. ...Read more

Every year, tens of thousands of people travel to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert for a week devoted to radical self-expression—the freedom to shed everyday constraints, explore, create and live more fully on their own terms.

For one week, Burning Man becomes a city built around that idea. Participants leave behind many of the expectations and ...Read more

OpenAI has launched ChatGPT for Teens, complete with various safety features. But this implies that the main concern of kids using AI is their access to damaging content. If only.

Don’t get me wrong. The AI-assisted suicides, deepfakes and sexually explicit conversations with and for children are — to be frank — horrific.

But as a mother...Read more

Listening to politicians, it can be difficult to know how the U.S. government is performing in terms of human rights.

Some have pointed to a number of potential human rights abuses committed by the U.S. government inside and outside its borders in the past two years.

And yet President Donald Trump recently called the country “the home of ...Read more

Barely a month after Canadian wildfire smoke drifted over large swaths of the United States and set off climate alarmism, the panic has crossed the Atlantic.

In France, fires west of Bordeaux forced more than 220,000 people to flee. In Spain, outside Madrid, flames scorched an area twice the size of the Spanish capital and drove nearly 90,000 ...Read more

The Supreme Court’s ruling on Monday allowing President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail voting to go forward is stunningly insensitive to the context: Trump is trying to exercise control over elections when he has absolutely no authority to do so. In one sense, the justices decided nothing, simply saying it was too soon for federal ...Read more

Your power bill is too high. Electricity prices have risen by as much as 40% since 2020, far outpacing overall inflation. And after decades of nearly flat growth in energy consumption, data centers are driving up grid demand for the first time in roughly 35 years. Then heat waves, like the one currently cooking Southern California, push the ...Read more

Amid the cyclospora outbreak that has sickened more than 27,000 people in 47 states, causing more than 800 hospitalizations and two untimely deaths, many people are blaming the federal government for letting its guard down on the monitoring of food-born illnesses.

That criticism is warranted: Under President Donald Trump, funding for the ...Read more

History tells us that Republicans have an uphill climb this November to keep control of the House — and perhaps the Senate. President Donald Trump isn’t doing them a favor with his latest tariff threats against Canada, this country’s second-largest trading partner.

After talks between the United States and its northern neighbor broke down...Read more