Secretary of State Marco Rubio – once derided by Donald Trump as “Little Marco”– has emerged as the trusted point man riding shotgun on Trump’s mechanical bull of a foreign policy – from taking Greenland to dealing with a dangerous Iran.

No secretary of state in recent history has had to deal with so many crises and hot spots all at...Read more

As New Year’s Eve approached, I found myself mulling over something that in all my previous adult years would have been unthinkable: What if I didn’t drink? Sure, I had a lovely bottle of champagne chilling in the fridge. But I’d already planned on having Dry(ish) January. Wouldn’t it be great to wake up in 2026 fully rested and with a ...Read more

Donald Trump was elected twice on a slogan to make America great, but nearly everything he does makes the country worse.

Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill increased U.S. debt and boosted health care costs. His tariffs have raised prices, while cuts to regulations have left workplaces more dangerous. Trump has also weakened higher education, slashed ...Read more

Democrats have to bring more to the table in 2028 than a robust hatred for Donald Trump and animosity for Republicans in general if they want to regain substantial power in D.C.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has a new-ish plan for that, which she outlined Monday in a speech at the National Press Club.

Think “big tent.”

“There are two visions ...Read more

Darren Woods is known mostly as the chairman of ExxonMobil, the largest U.S. oil company. On Friday, however, he made noise in a different sphere by placing an obscure financial term into the political lexicon: "Uninvestible."

That's how Woods described Venezuela — more specifically, Venezuela's oil industry. His remark came during a meeting ...Read more

There’s a time-honored tradition of U.S. presidents, whose electoral fortunes tend to rise or fall with the state of the economy, grumbling about chairmen of the Federal Reserve Board.

Famously, Paul Volcker, who as Fed chair dramatically raised interest rates in the early 1980s to combat inflation rates considerably higher than those that ...Read more

This season’s flu is lurking right around the corner. Even if you’ve done the right thing and had the flu shot. Even if you haven’t had the flu for years.

Don’t make the mistake of taking this virus lightly. The main strain making the rounds is virulent and hard to shake.

By the end of December, the Centers for Disease Control ...Read more

January represents a time of new beginnings, an opportunity for self assessment and productive change — unless you sit in Congress, where inertia and fiscal fantasy rule the day.

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office noted that the federal deficit for the first three months of fiscal 2026 — October through December — hit an estimated...Read more

It’s National Pizza Week—a tribute to late college nights, birthday parties and slices eaten straight from the box while running errands. In the U.S. alone, we eat roughly 4 billion pizzas a year. And each day, we consume the equivalent of 100 acres of pizza, which translates to approximately 350 slices per second.

Pizza is comfort. Pizza ...Read more

What does it mean to be an American? That question lies at the heart of a debate between Vivek Ramaswamy and Vice President JD Vance that will help determine the future of the Republican Party. The run-up to the country’s semiquincentennial is the perfect time to hold the debate, but it also presents an enormous problem for Vance: The Founders...Read more

More than a week after Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro was captured and brought back to the United States to stand trial on narcoterrorism charges, officials with the Donald Trump administration are trying to determine how relations with one of South America’s largest countries will evolve in the weeks and months ahead. In between Trump’...Read more

Current high prices for groceries, housing and other goods are largely not the fault of President Donald Trump. That blame still rests with the inflationary policies of former President Joe Biden, whose tenure brought a 21.5% rise in consumer prices.

Most of the Democrats who are now castigating Trump and Republicans for the continued stress ...Read more

Recently, while sailing with friends on San Francisco Bay, I enjoyed the sight of harbor porpoises, cormorants, pelicans, seals and sea lions — and then the spouting plume and glistening back of a gray whale that gave me pause. Too many have been seen inside the bay recently.

California’s gray whales have been considered an environmental ...Read more

A WhatsApp group serves as a lifeline for my maternal family, including my aunts and uncles, all still in Iran, and my cousins, who have left Iran. With the protests in Iran growing by the day, the conversations in our chats changed to signs of hope even amid grave concerns about our family’s safety.

“I feel it this time. This is the time ...Read more

It’s a lot easier to waste someone else’s money.

Before the recent tragic shooting, the biggest story out of Minnesota involved massive fraud. Content creator Nick Shirley’s massively viral video appeared to show that some day care centers, supposedly serving scores of kids, were essentially ghost towns. One even had a sign that spelled ...Read more

We don’t have to go far to find a convincing explanation for President Donald Trump’s Jan. 3 attack in Venezuela; it’s transactionalism.

This doesn’t require much speculation. In fact, Trump deserves credit for transparency: “We’re going to be taking oil.” Access to and control of Venezuela’s oil reserves will belong to the ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The most outstanding thing about Gov. Gavin Newsom’s final State of the State address last week was that he actually gave it.

Every California governor since Earl Warren back in World War II had annually paraded into the ornate 1800s-decor Assembly chamber to address a joint session of the Legislature in what was ...Read more

One of the most important political stories in American history — one that is particularly germane to our current, tumultuous time — unfolded in Los Angeles some 65 years ago.

Sen. John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, had just received his party's nomination for president and in turn he shunned the desires of his most liberal supporters by choosing...Read more

Let’s resolve to have the courage to speak up more in 2026. I realize this is easy for me to say; I’m a columnist. But I live in Florida, where I have many friends who have been Trump supporters and who are privately queasy about what they see as brazen corruption coming from President Donald Trump and his administration. While there is ...Read more