President Donald Trump has ordered the Navy to develop a plan to replace the electromagnetic catapults used to launch aircraft from future Ford-class aircraft carriers with legacy steam catapults. That might make sense if the newer technology had failed. It has not.

The USS Gerald R. Ford was the first U.S. carrier built to launch aircraft ...Read more

Recent cyberattacks on water systems in several states demonstrate the risks posed to cyber physical systems that support critical infrastructures. Cyberattacks have become common enough that most people do not take much notice when one occurs, unless it affects them directly.

In 2024, there were over 859 thousand cyberattacks, or nearly 100 ...Read more

President Donald Trump can dismiss public opinion polls as “fake news” all he wants. That won’t change the fact that the commander-in-chief is in political distress — even according to survey outlets that usually give him more favorable ratings.

Perennially reliable RealClearPolitics, as of Monday, averaged Trump’s job approval rating...Read more

Through little fault of her own, the nation’s new head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention starts her job with low expectations. It’s not just her boss’s antipathy for the agency, which he has called a “cesspool of corruption.” Within days of Erica Schwartz’s confirmation as director, the president issued an executive ...Read more

Republicans have painted themselves into a corner by undermining vaccines. Nowhere is this clearer than Florida, where the outgoing Republican governor and his potential successor have tried to use vaccine mandates to align themselves with President Donald Trump’s politically risky position.

Governor Ron DeSantis rode his COVID-era public ...Read more

You might not know it yet, but there is more at stake in this year’s midterm elections than just which party wins control of Congress.

Across the country, politicians and wealthy special interests have put billions of dollars in state tax cuts on the ballot. It’s a familiar strategy that often works. But this year’s crop of tax ballot ...Read more

Americans are taught a reassuring story about their country’s success. The United States became prosperous, powerful, and free because the framers wrote an exceptional Constitution. The miracle of Philadelphia produced the miracle of America.

The story appears in classrooms, campaign speeches, judicial opinions, and serious scholarly works. ...Read more

Vigilantes are disabling Flock cameras in at least three dozen states, and while I don’t condone property damage, I understand the outrage. The American people did not ask for a sprawling nationwide surveillance apparatus operated in secret and subject to few rules. Our elected representatives did not vote for this. These systems’ potential ...Read more

Influencers aren’t just hawking lip gloss, vacation ideas and exercise tips these days. Increasingly, they’re being paid to shape how voters view elections.

If podcasts were the battleground for the 2024 presidential election, the battlefield today is Instagram and TikTok, where influencers are increasingly peddling not only talking points ...Read more

Raise your hand if you have affordable, accessible healthcare. Anyone? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

With independent studies showing that close to half of all Americans struggle to afford healthcare, I expect I got the rest of you with the addition of the word “accessible.” That’s because, while rising costs are a barrier for too many, ...Read more

I’ve been back to school for a week, and I still haven’t had “the AI talk.” To me, it’s almost as bad as the sex talk I avoided with my kids years ago. What should a teacher say about artificial intelligence? I’ve followed protocol and pasted pages of our English department policy into my syllabus. Normally, I would read that aloud ...Read more

Americans have gotten used to hearing big numbers from the federal government since the 1960s, when Sen. Everett Dirksen, R-Ill., supposedly uttered his famous quote, "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money." But a much bigger number caught people's attention in the last week.

That was the revelation that the...Read more

My 5-year-old twin boys, Mikey and Charlie, started kindergarten a couple of weeks ago, marking the end of their preschool careers. They walked into class wearing backpacks full of back-to-school supplies, like markers and glue. With their summers in the rearview mirror, they stepped into a world not with circle time or naps, but with desks, ...Read more

The war in Iran, the “little excursion” that was supposed to be over in four to six weeks, passed its six-month mark on Friday. And notwithstanding President Donald Trump’s premature declarations of victory, threats to pummel the Iranians into submission and his repeated proclamations that the United States is winning the conflict, the ...Read more

Following the Supreme Court’s decision early this year that President Donald Trump’s tariff regime was unconstitutional, many corporations have seen substantial windfalls in the form of federal refunds for the tariffs they paid.

That’s put some of them, particularly retailers that passed much of that tariff bill along to consumers, in the...Read more

The U.S. Supreme Court, as one of its members recently noted, has held that judges “are not required to exhibit a naiveté from which ordinary citizens are free.” And yet, that is precisely what its conservative justices just did.

Considering one of Donald Trump’s latest attempts to illegally suppress votes, the court’s Republican-...Read more

Limiting kids’ access to its addictive social media products Facebook and Instagram, Meta cut a worthwhile deal in a lawsuit with 47 states, D.C. and several U.S. territories. No more will children be glued to screens thanks to some needed reforms and Meta will write out at least $12 billion in checks to be doled out over 10 years, including ...Read more

Anyone searching for good news in a report published last week in the BMJ—a prominent British medical journal—might turn to the headline under which the New York Times published the report’s conclusions: “Study’s Alarming Finding: At Least 1 in 4 N.F.L. Players Gets Brain Disease.”

The brain disease is C.T.E., chronic traumatic ...Read more

A U.S. president must work hard to rupture a relationship with a neighboring country that has been America’s closest economic, security, and people-to-people partner for decades.

Leave it to President Donald Trump.

He has just started a new trade war with Canada that will hurt the U.S. economy, batter our auto industry, and undermine ...Read more

After months of negotiations and hang-ups, the Senate overwhelmingly passed a Russian sanctions bill this month prior to leaving town on recess. House Speaker Mike Johnson should now round up the votes and send the legislation to the White House.

The bill was sponsored by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, and Sen. ...Read more