There are few people, if any, who've tracked U.S. elections for longer or in greater depth than Charlie Cook.

Ever since 1984, when he started his eponymous political newsletter, Cook and his stellar crew of nonpartisan analysts have plumbed many thousands of races — for president, Congress, governor — following the money, sussing out the ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- My dad howled with laughter when I told him we were going to eat tacos with Steve Hilton.

"Isn't he with Trump?" he said in Spanish.

Indeed! But the former Fox News host has also staked his chances of becoming California's next governor on courting Latinos with a gospel of affordability, lower taxes and the California Dream. He ...Read more

Diligent news consumers might have noticed a story recently about a MAGA Missouri senator who humiliated himself before the nation by spinning a slanderous and easily debunked lie against a prosecutor.

No, we’re not talking about Sen. Eric Schmitt — though the description definitely applies there as well. The whole country has been laughing...Read more

Responsible management of data centers and the resources they consume is among the most important and contentious national debates, and no place is that more consequential than in Virginia. The commonwealth has more of the facilities than any other state, with about 400 in operation and another 280 or so under construction or in the planning ...Read more

For students, alumni and fans, there’s nothing quite like college football on an autumn afternoon. The thrill of the action, the roar of the crowd and the beauty of a packed stadium all combine to make the sport one of the most popular in the nation in the 157 years since collegiate players first took the field for a game.

The experience has ...Read more

New research using a strand of hair from Thomas Jefferson has effectively settled a longstanding, acrimonious debate: He almost certainly fathered children with Sally Hemings, a young Black woman he enslaved.

The latest scientific discovery, announced last month, is the result of a collaboration between the Smithsonian and researchers at the ...Read more

Covering the recent round of AI apocalypse warnings, I’ve tried to reject this cult-like deference toward all-powerful computer systems and the inevitability rhetoric: If Silicon Valley doesn’t build them first, someone else — likely China — will.

Yet a recent spate of incidents in the U.S. has spurred a fresh, heated debate on the ...Read more

Ideally, the screams of infancy and the insolence of toddlerhood fade as a person grows and the scalpel of life begins sculpting away. Yes, problems still persist, but part of maturing is understanding that "he that is slow to wrath is of great understanding but he that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly." As the Bible story goes, King Solomon ...Read more

These are the best of times for Americans — at least economically and at least on paper (in the metaphorical sense of course, since no one uses paper anymore). We’ve never been richer or more prosperous as a nation. Living standards and life expectancy are at all-time highs. Yet, it feels like the economy is broken.

What explains this ...Read more

The bleachers were packed for the 1989 Little League championship game because every kid in my community played in the same league, and if they weren’t in the game, they were there to watch. Also, it was inexpensive and required no travel. After the season, we switched to the next local sport. When we made it to high school, we weren’t ...Read more

One of the dirty little secrets about school choice in Florida is that students with disabilities often don’t actually have many choices.

That’s because, while public school districts are required to serve all children, Florida allows private schools to refuse them.

Most people already know that Florida allows discrimination against LGBTQ ...Read more

Rabid bats and rattlesnakes. Mosquitoes carrying West Nile virus and dengue fever. Increased bear and mountain lion attacks. A summer full of tragic hiker deaths, many brought on by extreme heat.

The news cycle has begun to resemble all those “nature rebels” movies that terrorized my childhood.

And perhaps with good reason.

This should ...Read more

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has published a letter to the American people ahead of midterm elections in the U.S. Suffice to say that this remarkable document ends with Jesus Christ and the last Imam, Mahdi, rising together to lead humanity into the Kingdom of Heaven. I read all 14,390 words — think of it as a public service.

...Read more

Last month, the U.S. Department of Education posted an image to Facebook styled like an old woodcut print, with President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon above the words MEGA and “Make Education Great Again.”

The slogan reminded me of a poem I read in high school: Langston Hughes’ “Let America Be America Again.” ...Read more

With the congressional midterm elections nigh and the midpoint of Donald Trump’s second presidency not far behind, it’s time to ask: How does Trump’s foreign policy measure up so far? And where is it likely to go once he’s a lame duck?

Even people you’d expect to be in the know have been off by 180 degrees in their predictions. I ...Read more

In announcing the resignation of New Jersey Lt. Gov. Dale Caldwell amid allegations of harassment and ethics violations, Gov. Mikie Sherrill said an independent investigation had found “a pattern of behavior that does not meet the standards of this administration.”

In a state where official misconduct has often been not just tolerated but ...Read more

President Donald Trump’s planned 250-foot-high triumphal arch at the foot of Arlington National Cemetery, which he has proposed outfitting with armed drones and manning with snipers, is easy to shrug off as nothing more than a malignant daydream. The absurd whim of a mad king. But to indulge that temptation would be a mistake.

The arch has to...Read more

What if we got it all wrong? That’s the question that usually goes through my mind at this point in every election cycle. Because 25 years of experience in analyzing elections has made me more humble, rather than more cocky.

Political handicapping has a way of knocking people down a couple of notches. Do it long enough, and you’ll have a �...Read more

Former federal prosecutor Jack Smith, who led the Justice Department investigation into Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference and the purloining of classified documents, laughed off a GOP Senate Judiciary Committee trap, part of their years-long effort to deny the basic truth that what Smith was investigating was real: Trump did in fact ...Read more