Just a month out from America's celebration of its 250th birthday, the national capital is a mess.

And I'm talking about the sites central to the pilgrimages that millions of Americans make each year to Washington, especially the White House. The once-verdant park remains a construction site, with makeshift fencing only partly obscuring the ...Read more

A democracy is only as robust and vibrant as the citizens who sustain it. Self-government depends upon people willing to deliberate honestly, reason carefully, and exercise judgment responsibly.

With the emergence of AI, this obligation becomes even more consequential because these powerful systems can either deepen human agency or quietly ...Read more

Recent turbulence in bond markets suggests that investors aren’t immune from anxieties about debt and inflation. The question is, are they anxious enough? On one particular point, I’d say the answer is no. They’re paying too little attention to the possibility of outright public-debt default.

Recently I argued that given the current ...Read more

R. Gordon Wasson was a Manhattan banker who fancied himself a mycologist. In 1955, after decades studying the mushrooms of ancient cultures, he traveled to the remote mountains of southern Mexico to partake of what locals called the “flesh of the gods.” Wasson chronicled the experience in Life magazine — the first widely published account ...Read more

Hispanic voters are down on President Donald Trump, and a majority are poised to support Democratic candidates in midterm elections this fall. But that doesn’t mean this crucial bloc is coming home to Democrats — or that it’s satisfied with the party’s agenda.

Democrats are leading the generic ballot gauging which party Hispanic voters ...Read more

Trillions, as in trillions of dollars, are being bandied about in the way millions were, then billions. But take a look at 1 trillion expressed numerically: 1,000,000,000,000. Awesome, isn’t it? Twelve zeros.

The national debt stands at $39 trillion, and the interest on that will top $1 trillion this year. Very soon, the first trillionaire ...Read more

A country with one of the fastest-rising scientific profiles operates under sweeping international sanctions, has limited access to Western research infrastructure and is rarely mentioned in American conversations about global innovation. That country is Iran.

Its rise, alongside China’s dominance in critical fields and India’s rapid ...Read more

Uber and Lyft drivers in Massachusetts recently secured a major breakthrough in the struggle for union representation of rideshare drivers.

On May 25, the App Drivers Union announced that it has been certified by the Massachusetts Department of Labor Relations as the official bargaining representative for approximately 70,000 rideshare drivers ...Read more

A huge, waning moon glimmered over Los Angeles on election night, a metaphor for a trend that emerged in early returns.

The city's political establishment seemed to be on the retreat in favor of populist insurgents from both the left and the right.

Mayor Karen Bass held a cushy lead in her bid for a second term, and the Associated Press ...Read more

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” — Donald Trump, April 7, 2026

Too often, we sip our morning coffee while reading a bizarre Truth Social post by President Trump, often posted between midnight and dawn. His missives inevitably become grist for that evening’s late-night shows. The jokes can be funny...Read more

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass made what sounded like a victory speech Tuesday night.

Councilmember Nithya Raman made what sounded almost like a concession speech.

And former reality TV star Spencer Pratt relayed a message from the heavens.

"Well, obviously God wanted five more months of me exposing all the failures of our mayor, so it's gonna be a ...Read more

The biggest national security threat the United States faces at this moment is President Donald Trump.

Nothing illustrates that threat more clearly than the president’s pick of MAGA attack dog Bill Pulte, who has zero experience in the intelligence field, as acting czar of all 18 U.S. intelligence agencies.

This choice is a neon sign ...Read more

We can at least say that the property-tax cuts the Florida Legislature approved on Tuesday are an improvement from Gov. Ron DeSantis’ initial proposal from less than a week ago. The legislation exempts public education from massive funding cuts that could have devastated school districts.

But lawmakers still failed voters by not hammering out...Read more

The indictment of Raúl Castro is a powerful statement, reinforcing that there is no statute of limitations on murder charges, and supports my belief that Castro’s Battle of Ideas was a failed concept.

Castro, 94, is the brother of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and served as Cuba’s president from 2008 to 2018. He then led the Communist ...Read more

When it became evident a few weeks ago that President Donald Trump had no strategy for winning the war in Iran and little hope of getting out of the increasingly unpopular conflict without losing face, I started worrying about Israel.

Trump took the United States into battle in lock step with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. My ...Read more

Former first lady Jill Biden drew considerable attention recently after acknowledging that President Joe Biden’s performance during his 2024 debate with then-candidate Donald Trump was so troubling that she feared he might be having a stroke.

“I was frightened, because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never,” she told ...Read more

What will it take to cure Parkinson’s disease? It’s one of the first questions I asked when I was diagnosed in 1991, and one that patients and families still ask today. A lot has changed in those three decades, and thanks to the tireless efforts of a global community of scientists, patients and advocates, we’re closer to a cure than we’...Read more

A new report released by the Trevor Project in early May found that an astonishing one in 10 LGBTQ+ young people attempted suicide last year, and more than a third seriously considered attempting suicide.

These findings add urgency to the call for the federal government to restore the LGBTQ+ youth option for its national 988 Suicide & Crisis ...Read more

While most folks think that the U.S. Department of Agriculture focuses on farm policy, the largest agency within USDA is the Forest Service — famous for Smokey Bear and quietly doing significant work on many fronts.

As secretaries of Agriculture during the Clinton and Bush administrations, we spent years getting to know what this agency does:...Read more

The results of a survey on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s “bell-to-bell” statewide ban on smartphones in school during its first academic year were exactly as we predicted: An A+. Other states should follow, as it keeps kids focused on their class work and their teachers, not being lost to online distractions. The only downside is that it should have...Read more