For Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his troops on the front line, relief is hopefully coming soon.

On Saturday, the U.S. House of Representatives muscled through a $61 billion military aid package at a time when Russian forces are continuing to chip away at Ukrainian positions in the east. After six months of intense discussions ...Read more

The scheme at the heart of the charges against Donald Trump in New York is well-known: To keep allegations of an affair with the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels from becoming public, Trump is accused of agreeing to pay her $130,000, camouflaged as payments to Michael Cohen for legal services. It’s in the camouflaging that Trump is charged ...Read more

House Speaker Mike Johnson endured a titanic struggle to get Ukraine aid through the House, one that demonstrates the benefits of cooperation and the pitfalls of extremism.

His ultimate success on Saturday, however, came at a dear price, one paid by Ukrainians in blood and in the countless lives that might have been saved had Johnson taken up ...Read more

Last month, the Department of Justice filed its long-awaited antitrust suit against Apple, accusing the company of monopolizing the smartphone market. This makes Apple the last of the U.S.-based tech giants to face a major monopolization lawsuit from a federal agency. (Google also faces one from the Justice Department; Facebook and Amazon have ...Read more

If you care about fair elections, you need to understand what’s happening in Central America. Developments in El Salvador — along with the root causes of migration — are crucial to U.S. politics as immigration issues take center stage this election season. More than three decades after the Salvadoran civil war, it’s time to look at ...Read more

From state capitols to Washington, D.C., lawmakers are scrambling to come up with regulations that can protect kids from the potential harms of social media, since the platforms have been unwilling to adopt reasonable safeguards themselves.

In just the last few months, Florida passed a law banning children under 14 from having a social media ...Read more

I’m on the road nonstop these days. In just the past few weeks I’ve been to Ohio, Florida, California, North Carolina and Michigan. Everywhere I go, I love telling the story of Reading, Pennsylvania. I never tire of it.

Why? Because I can think of no clearer example of what it looks like for a community to come together and build, ...Read more

At 46, I’ve made some sense of my life by thinking about it as a story of second chances. If my evil twin were the author, it would be a string of dead ends — of not being a good enough writer, mother, wife, daughter, friend, teacher, sister (the list is endless). But I see my life as an endorsement of second chances. Almost everything that ...Read more

What are we to make of the anonymous jury in former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York? The practice has long had its critics.

First let’s get technical: Trump’s jury is not actually anonymous. Unlike the practice in some organized crime cases, the parties and their lawyers know the jurors’ names. Only the media and the...Read more

For high school seniors from the Class of 2024 who plan to attend college in the fall, these are tense days.

The traditional May 1 deadline for picking a school is fast approaching. At the same time, Uncle Sam is making the painful process of applying for financial aid extra difficult this year. Colleges and universities are up to their usual ...Read more

California’s math wars are roiling the state’s educational system, with contentious debates over high school curricula.

At issue is whether a “data science” course should be available as a substitute for Algebra 2. The University of California and California State University systems previously accepted data science as an advanced math ...Read more

If you’re searching for insight into the likelihood of a second American civil war, you won’t find it in “Civil War,” a film written and directed by Alex Garland and currently in theaters.

When the movie starts, the U.S. is already in full-blown war against itself. Things have gotten so bad that California and Texas have formed a ...Read more

Students are taught in civics class that, under the American justice system, a defendant may be convicted of a crime only if a jury finds him or her guilty of the charged offense “beyond a reasonable doubt.” What’s rarely mentioned, however, is that federal law allows judges to ignore a not guilty verdict and sentence men and women to ...Read more

Louisianan Mike Johnson became House speaker by accident, when eight renegade Republicans voted with the Democrats to eject the unfortunate Kevin McCarthy from the chair in October. After a number of more senior members failed to win enough support, the booby prize went to Johnson.

Johnson has been an exceptionally weak speaker, and not just ...Read more

Shortly after Acting Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan gaveled out the final day of jury selection for the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump on Friday afternoon, the New York County Criminal Court Electronic Document Delivery System sent an email notification of receipt at 5:22 to lawyer Jim Walden that his application had ...Read more

The most anticipated first-round series of the NBA playoffs is here: the Lakers versus the defending champion Denver Nuggets. LeBron James' squad was swept by Denver in the last postseason, and L.A. hasn't beaten the Nuggets since December 2022, which is why the Lakers are serious underdogs according to the online gambling site DraftKings.

...Read more

Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but the hapless House Republicans have finally achieved something big: an end to tit-for-tat impeachments.

Of course, that's the opposite of the achievement they promised two years ago, ahead of the midterm elections that gave them control of the House. Back then, some chest-beaters were vowing to impeach ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Before Donald Trump's hush-money trial in New York got underway, pundits predicted that the proceedings could be a media bonanza for the former president. During this year's Republican primaries, they noted, Trump's popularity rose every time he was indicted.

But so far, the trial, on charges that Trump covered up illicit ...Read more

In her song “We Are Here,” Alicia Keys sings, “Let’s talk about Gaza ... let’s talk about Israel. Right now it is real.” No, the song wasn’t released last week; it was released 10 years ago.

But there’s another part of the song that carries its own importance. In the chorus, Keys sings, “We are here, We are here for all of us,...Read more