The federal government managed to become even more fiscally inept during the past fiscal year, running a deficit of $2 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That’s a $218 billion increase from the previous 12 months.

The sea of red ink comes as revenues have risen. Tax collections were up 3 percent in fiscal 2026, coming in ...Read more

“Seven times.”

In an annoyingly repetitive TV ad, that’s how often congressional candidate Scott Singer claims he cut taxes as Boca Raton mayor.

A frame from a Scott Singer for Congress TV ad (YouTube.com) It seems as if the ad runs seven times an hour during Miami’s early-morning news.

South Florida viewers endure an endless barrage ...Read more

This fall, like every other, I tried to game the flu season. My goal, always, is to get my vaccine at just the right moment: before the first cases pop up, yet late enough so that its protective effects last beyond the holidays and well into January or February, when infections tend to peak. That typically means scheduling my appointment for ...Read more

Abortion has fallen off the GOP agenda. In its place is a campaign against transgender issues, largely centered on children’s sports. Politically, I understand it. Ethically, I don’t.

Consider Texas. Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico is unabashedly pro-choice and supports restoring Roe v. Wade, this time as a federal law. But there...Read more

Here in Chicago, we’ve seen the smash-and-grab movie that played this weekend in previously peaceful French cities.

It’s the one where guys in hoodies and masks smash the plate-glass windows of a luxury store and grab some desirable designer stuff under the guise of some kind of anti-establishment protest action and then exit rapidly with ...Read more

Whether on purpose or by accident, the Trump administration’s new voucher program could do something it never promised to do: help public schools. It’s a bit of a surprise from the White House that promised to abolish the Department of Education and then dismantled large parts of it. But under rules released this month by the U.S. Treasury ...Read more

In what may be one of the most comical self-owns in recent politics, the esteemed attorneys of the U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday that despite the extravagant and terrifying misuse of their investigative power under the Trump administration, they have so far been able to identify only 28 people in all of California who may have ...Read more

One of the greatest frustrations I had during my 18 years representing the great state of Montana in the U.S. Senate was watching, in real time, the ever-increasing flood of corporate money poison our political discourse.

Washington couldn’t — or wouldn’t — fix the problem unleashed by the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens ...Read more

Ben Franklin was wrong. The certain things in life aren't only death and taxes, but death, taxes and news articles about how wealthy families are living "paycheck-to-paycheck."

We're undergoing a new round of this coverage, triggered this time by a survey from Goldman Sachs titled "New Economics of Retirement: Making Every Dollar Saved Work ...Read more

The summer of 2026 once again saw wildfire smoke from the West Coast and Midwest blanketing East Coast skies. Smoke-filled summer skies now seem to be the norm across America, and wildfire season isn’t even close to over.

The public response is also becoming normal. When investigators determine that a person started a wildfire, online chatter...Read more

The way Republican politicians tell it, democratic socialists are un-American — “incompatible with American values,” in the words of a recent U.S. House resolution. The resolution’s author, Colorado Rep. Jeff Crank, celebrated the September vote, claiming that it “showed who stands for freedom, and others who stand with socialism.”

...Read more

The last 10 days have arguably been one of the toughest periods of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s tenure since the war with Russia commenced more than four years ago. Ukrainian cities are getting pummeled daily with Russian missiles. Ukraine’s stock of missile interceptors is running dangerously low. And Ukraine’s political ...Read more

France’s crisis keeps getting more extreme, spilling over the weekend into broader protests that precipitated hundreds of millions of euros in damage and nearly 2,400 arrests. The country’s leaders are rightly focused on curtailing the violence. Yet as they seek ways to placate a frustrated populace, they must be careful not to make a bad ...Read more

With measles’ alarming resurgence in Minnesota and across the nation, voters should know where political candidates stand on the most effective protection available against this disease and many other dangerous infections: vaccination.

Specifically, do candidates intend to protect — or weaken — longstanding immunization requirements for ...Read more

If you watch as many of President Donald Trump’s rally speeches as I do—and I watch them at levels no one has ever seen before—you begin to hear the same lines, phrases and anecdotes again and again.

Watch enough of his speeches and you can predict the next sentence: We were a “dead” country when Trump took over; now we’re the “...Read more

“If you see something, say something,” the public awareness campaign tells us. A Taco Bell employee recently did just that — he called the police about a co-worker’s disturbing, hate-filled behavior. Police moved swiftly and thwarted an unprecedented attack on the largest Hindu temple in Aurora, Illinois, potentially saving hundreds of ...Read more

On the morning of June 11, 2001, readers of the Terre Haute Tribune-Star turned to an inside page of the main section and saw a family in front of a television. In the full-page ad, the father shakes his fist at the TV while the mother and children lean in as the set casts its light across the darkened den like a projector in a picture palace. A...Read more

Five years ago, youth mental health was at a tipping point. Pediatricians, child and adolescent psychiatrists and children’s hospitals saw this crisis playing out on the frontlines and our organizations took the step together to declare a national emergency in youth mental health.

While we’ve seen some bright spots of progress, children ...Read more

Nicole Noren spent 24 years at ESPN, much of that time producing award-winning investigative journalism on difficult topics, including human trafficking, sexual abuse, and concussions. But as ESPN embraced sports betting, Noren, in a new interview with Columbia Journalism Review, says the network repeatedly rejected her proposals to investigate...Read more