For my 50th birthday, I bought a Toyota Corolla. Wait. Is my midlife crisis car really a Corolla, the best selling and most boring model of all time?

Well, yes. And no.

I have “modded” it, or in layman’s terms, modified the stock components and tuned the engine. This is not your aunt’s Corolla. When I hit the gas, the car pulls hard ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The man who brought California the top-two open primary now thinks it needs a drastic overhaul. In fact, he says the “top-two” part should be trashed.

Former state Sen. Abel Maldonado advocates returning to a “top-one” system where the winning vote-getter in each recognized political party — major or minor — ...Read more

“I felt like a rock.”

Those were the words of nine-year-old Odai Shanah in a news interview that gained viral attention on social media. Odai was a witness to the horrific shooting that took place at the largest mosque in San Diego last month.

In the video, we can all see a young boy recounting his experience with stunning composure, ...Read more

Terrorism is evolving, sometimes almost beyond recognition. The pace of radicalization is accelerating. Attacks have become increasingly basic, unsophisticated and cheap. For some, terrorism seems to be like a craving, a source of dopamine to satisfy carnal impulses.

Quick preparation, convenience and mass production: Welcome to the age of fast...Read more

In May 1818, James Madison rode the 25 miles from his Virginia plantation Montpelier to Charlottesville to address the recently founded Albemarle Agricultural Society. As he rose to speak, some 30 men — politicians, wealthy landowners, physicians, lawyers and farmers — listened closely to what the former president had to say.

It was a ...Read more

There’s a war monument in Savannah, Georgia, that Americans should take notice of. It pays tribute to over 500 men of African descent from Saint-Domingue, the future country of Haiti, who in 1779 fought alongside American colonists, storming British fortifications in Georgia. The Siege of Savannah is not the best-known battle of our ...Read more

In May, the JAMA Network released a study showing that doctor visits for children’s anxiety rose by more than 250% over 10 years. If we only respond with more clinical visits and prescriptions, we miss the chance to invest in the everyday conditions that help prevent anxiety in the first place—unstructured social time, accessible ...Read more

The Supreme Court will soon rule on Trump v. Barbara, the case that could upend birthright citizenship as we have known it for over a century.

But the current debate over birthright citizenship overlooks the fact that legal citizenship— by birthright or naturalization — has never fully protected marginalized Americans. People of color, ...Read more

As the nation’s 250th celebration approaches, many Americans don’t feel much like celebrating.

We empathize. Unlike at previous landmark anniversaries of the country’s founding, we have a narcissistic president who wants to make the day more about him and his endless grievances than the enduring principles and ideals on which most ...Read more

The U.S. Department of Justice — make that the U.S. Department of "Justice" — is sniffing around Gavin Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom.

This is widely seen as a throw-me-in-the-briar-patch gift from President Trump, coming as California's governor edges ever closer toward a 2028 run for the White House. The presumed effort to ...Read more

Trust me. Trust the process.

That was the essential message U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen delivered Tuesday, June 16, at a Minneapolis press conference announcing a sweeping conspiracy indictment against 15 Minnesotans connected to anti-ICE protest activity. Ninety-four pages. Eight counts. Five months of Signal chats and social media posts ...Read more

As we approach America’s 250th anniversary, the political party that brags of its patriotism is actively undercutting national security.

Although many GOP House members and senators are versed in foreign affairs and grasp the irresponsibility of their actions, they are too cowardly to confront the biggest security threat America has faced in ...Read more

After Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that the U.S. Department of Justice may be investigating his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, media and pundits pounced on millions in charity payments he has solicited for nonprofits, including ones she is involved in.

Those donations, known as "behested payments," aren't illegal in California, but, long before ...Read more

The Supreme Court will wrap up its term in a matter of days, offering rulings on a number of important cases. In the meantime, the justices issued a directive last week that continues their push to rein in executive branch overreach.

The case involved a Biden administration edict demanding that furnaces and water heaters meet higher efficiency ...Read more

Keir Starmer has informed King Charles III of his intention to depart 10 Downing Street. By September, the UK will have its seventh prime minister in the span of a decade. It’s all but certain now that the man taking the helm of the good ship Great Britain will be Andy Burnham.

There are many reasons Burnham may struggle to do much better ...Read more

“If liberty means anything at all,” wrote George Orwell, in a preface to Animal Farm, “it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” Generations of students have been taught that lesson. Yet some of the world’s most robust democracies are in danger of forgetting it.

The UK’s recent decision to deny entry to two ...Read more

As a minister and a rabbi, we write to decry the 2026 House Farm Bill that was sent to the Senate in late May. The bill, as written, is cruel and will increase suffering.

It threatens to push even more farmers out of business while eliminating democratically enacted bans on some of agriculture’s cruelest practices. The Farm Bill, which the ...Read more

This July 4, America will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a document that throws off the yoke of a divinely appointed ruler. But President Donald Trump is exploiting this occasion to promote a revisionist history of America as “one nation under God.”

These words, importantly, appear nowhere...Read more

When Washington debates international alliances, the conversation usually sounds like a corporate ledger sheet. Critics often treat the North Atlantic Treaty Organization like a bad business transaction, complaining that European nations must “cover their own asses” and stop relying so heavily on American military dollars. It is a message ...Read more

I was seated onstage at Grand Valley State University’s commencement when Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak leaned into the microphone and reframed the entire conversation about artificial intelligence in six words.

“You all have AI — actual intelligence.”

The arena erupted. Not polite applause — genuine, full-throated cheering from ...Read more