Let me congratulate the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West and other trade unions for gathering the signatures necessary to put a 5% billionaires’ wealth tax on the California ballot this November.

At a time of massive and growing income and wealth inequality, this initiative is needed now more than ever. If ...Read more

Republicans often rely on a handy set of allegations: Democrats want open borders; Democrats want to defund the police; Democrats want men to compete in women’s sports.

But these are just vague assertions: Democrats don’t really want men to compete in women’s sports. The disingenuous assertion that they do only obscures a complicated ...Read more

Forget pluck, elbow grease and a little old-fashioned hard work. In some corners of today’s markets, getting rich can be as simple as leveraging insider information to bet big on prediction markets.

On April 23, a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier was charged with using classified information about a secret mission to capture Venezuelan leader...Read more

For the next week or so, in homes all over California, ballots will be arriving for the June 2 primary.

Since 2020, a ballot has been mailed to every active registered voter in the state — more than 23 million, by last count. The time to choose is drawing nigh.

In addition to the race for governor, Californians will vote in contests for ...Read more

Part of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ justification for redrawing congressional district lines was a “racially gerrymandered” district his new map has “unwound,” he posted on social media.

The governor has often complained about the old shape of District 20, calling it last year “the most irregular shaped district on Florida’s map.�...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Across America, 53 women have served as state governors. But not one in California. What gives? Aren’t we supposed to be enlightened out here in this cutting-edge state?

In fact, 14 women currently are governors in all sorts of states — north, south, flyover and Pacific coast. Big, midsize and small. Red, blue and ...Read more

A familiar conservative argument is back: inflation is the result of government printing and overspending. Too many dollars, too much demand, not enough goods. It is a tidy explanation, one that has the advantage of clarity and a long intellectual pedigree. It is also incomplete.

That story assumes a stable, globalized economy in which ...Read more

Two truths and a lie: America is getting older, leading to an increasing number of older Americans relying on a shrinking labor force; American farmers are in trouble because of a shortage of talent and shrinking margins; and, artificial intelligence is too unreliable to assist with solving these and related public policy concerns.

Truth: The ...Read more

We live in an age of both scientific miracles and superstition about science, increasing more or less in tandem. One year we’re creating novel vaccines that arrest a global pandemic, and four years later we’ve got measles outbreaks because people believe nonsense about vaccines, disseminated by the nation’s chief health official.

Solar ...Read more

The global hierarchy of innovation is undergoing a structural shift that Washington is dangerously slow to acknowledge. For decades, the prevailing narrative in the United States was that China was merely the "world’s factory"—a nation capable of mass-producing Western designs but inherently lacking the creative spark to invent its own.

...Read more

Anyone who has spent time in criminal court knows this: One of the characteristics of lawbreakers is a poorly developed sense of cause and effect.

At the low end, the folly of the defendants is always on display. The young man who takes a gun with him on a night of drinking. He has increased his chances that he might use it and spend the rest ...Read more

Suddenly, artificial intelligence is everywhere we look. Three years ago, I had no exposure to it personally, but now it tries to auto-populate my emails, shows up at the top of my online searches and answers my consumer queries (or tries to, at least).

Any new disruptive technology comes with costs and benefits and growing pains, but AI seems...Read more

As a people, we feel lost. Our political life is full of division and animosity. Our society struggles to find its sense of meaning. Violence erupts far too often. And beyond our borders, we find ourselves embroiled in conflicts with enemies and allies.

We are a nation divided and adrift. Our Declaration of Independence can help us refocus on ...Read more

There is much debate around the world regarding both physician-assisted dying legislation—often called "Death with Dignity"—and expanding the circumstances in which it is applicable. Eight countries and 19 states already permit it in some form.

It is controversial for many reasons. Part of the controversy stems from our cultural discomfort ...Read more

We Americans have always felt anxious about our democracy. As Benjamin Franklin famously said, ours is only “a republic, if you can keep it,” and we’ve been plagued by a nagging feeling ever since that we can’t. The latest bout of handwringing is brought on by declining literacy and the threat it poses to liberal democracy, and—aware ...Read more

School’s almost out for summer, great news for class-weary kids looking forward to a break. For Chicago Public Schools, though, the year is winding up in the red.

CPS is projected to end the current school year with a $45 million deficit, WBEZ reported, following a $102 million deficit last year, a shift that returned the district to deficits...Read more

The Iran war, which Donald Trump started in February for no good reason and which could flare up again at any moment, broke a streak of easy American military wins. This raises a question for other countries that the U.S. president might coerce or attack, from Cuba to Nigeria, and from Danish Greenland to North Korea: Will the strategic fiasco ...Read more

The hype surrounding the psychedelic drug ibogaine reached a fever pitch in April, when President Donald Trump talked up its potential at a White House event promoting increased access to psychedelics. Ibogaine, which comes from the root of a West African shrub, has long been used for ceremonial and spiritual purposes. Now, for the first time, ...Read more

Artificial intelligence might be the most transformative technology ever devised. Exactly how its effects will work through the economy is impossible to say, but serious disruption of one kind or another seems likely. Millions of jobs — in the end, maybe most jobs — could radically change, and many will disappear entirely.

How should ...Read more