For most of my career as a political scientist, representation was the central theme of my teaching and research. Early on, I studied how legislators understood their responsibilities to constituents — whether they saw themselves as delegates carrying out constituent mandates, trustees exercising independent judgment, or politicos combining ...Read more

President Donald Trump’s ever-cruel administration is wrongly trying to put up even more roadblocks to block legal immigrants from getting green cards and a coalition of states and cities, led by New York in the persons of Attorney General Tish James and Mayor Zohran Mamdani, is correctly fighting back.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration ...Read more

Last month, the Census Bureau published a strange little document claiming that “over 24,000” votes were cast by noncitizens in the 2020 U.S. general election.

The anonymous report has come under fire for its provenance and methods: It was reportedly produced outside of regular Census Bureau channels by political appointees and staffers at...Read more

Far from the halls of Congress, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis are making factual assessments about how artificial intelligence is affecting workplaces in the real world.

So far, the hype machine is getting a reality check. Contrary to the predictions of AI boosters, who have much to gain from promoting the technology, ...Read more

As of last Friday, a quarter century has elapsed since the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) became law. When U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and U.S. Reps. Danny Davis and Jan Schakowsky depart D.C. in January, no Illinois legislator who voted for the AUMF will remain in office. In fact, only 32 lawmakers of the 2001 Congress will ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Three state bond measures are on California’s November ballot. You probably haven’t paid much attention to them. So here’s my read on these big-ticket proposals.

One is a no-brainer “yes.” It would help middle-class Californians buy a new home by allowing them to borrow most of the down payment. And it wouldn�...Read more

KYIV, Ukraine — It’s not easy to get to Ukraine, where the airports have long been closed and where Russia is now targeting the country’s essential railway network, hitting tracks and destroying hundreds of locomotives.

On my sixth visit since 2022, I decided to fly to neighboring Moldova and taxi across the border, even though Moscow has...Read more

Repeat after us: The Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park (IQMP), in development on 128 acres of the former U.S. Steel South Works site on Chicago’s South Side, will not be a collection of power-sucking, water-drinking data centers.

Repeat after us: Quantum computing is not threatening to take over humanity.

The emergent technology ...Read more

In the second week of the college football season, in a clash of titans, the University of Texas scored 21 unanswered points to surge past Ohio State in the fourth quarter and win, 24-23.

The comeback, Gov. Greg Abbott decreed, was the greatest home victory in more than 130 years of Longhorn football.

A screen grab of one celebratory moment ...Read more

As a young adult Barbie collector, I vividly remember seeing the first Bob Mackie Barbie doll in a print ad of Barbie Bazaar magazine in 1990. I was mesmerized by this plastic goddess. Mackie, the fashion designer who died last Monday at 87 years old, had taken inspiration from Cher’s wardrobe, sheathing Barbie in a sleek, gold-sequined gown. ...Read more

A country that’s $40 trillion in debt can’t afford to provide generous welfare benefits to the world.

On Monday, a group of states sued the Trump administration over its efforts to limit green cards for immigrants who receive government assistance. The contested rule was set to go into effect this week. Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, ...Read more

As Democratic senators in Washington, D.C., coalesce awkwardly — and in some cases reluctantly — around the Michigan Senate campaign of liberal firebrand Abdul El-Sayed, the candidate himself has his own uncomfortable relationship to navigate.

We refer to the incendiary Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, with whom El-Sayed seemed almost ...Read more

During the same summer in which Americans marked the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, disabled Americans have faced a renewed threat to their freedom: an effort by the administration of President Donald Trump to reopen the door to forced institutionalization.

On June 18, Trump’s Department of Justice issued...Read more

Chroniclers of history and masters of geometry have every reason to be equally confounded by what we have witnessed happening to President Donald Trump – not just once, but time and again, this year.

Trump seems to keep painting himself into a corner of his cornerless Oval Office. He’s looking trapped and unable to see he can deliver on ...Read more

Less than three months before Americans vote in the 2026 midterms, a federal judge on August 11 blocked the U.S. Postal Service from implementing part of President Donald Trump’s executive order tightening mail-in voting rules.

The ruling came amid an intensifying fight over how November’s elections will be administered. That fight ...Read more

President Donald Trump reads the polls, too.

Terrified of a “Blue wave,” he’s working furiously to keep Democrats at bay and democracy on the ropes. First, he promised $5,000 checks to all Americans — a flat-out bribe, payable if Republicans remain in power. Then Trump told cheering supporters to “cheat like hell!”

There’s no ...Read more

The U.S. Supreme Court sided with democracy last week when it put a stop, at least temporarily, to President Donald Trump’s yearslong attempt to derail free and fair elections.

In an unsigned emergency decision, the court’s 7-2 majority (Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented) upheld an injunction and ruled that “...Read more

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh and the other 11 members of the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee last week carried out their mission to control inflation by managing monetary policy and raised the key interest rate to 4%, even though President Donald Trump has been demanding that borrowing costs be cut.

Actually, more than demanding, as ...Read more

The funny thing about American capitalism is that it requires abundance to truly thrive, and yet capitalists prefer the illusion of exclusivity and scarcity to control the market.

It wasn't too long ago when the Great Recession exposed the phrase "free market" as a synonym for "less accountability." We also learned then that "job creators" just...Read more

Donald Trump Jr.’s lavish Bahamas wedding was already a bad look, coming amid America’s brutal affordability crisis and when gaping inequality is on the rise. But the news that it was largely funded by Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev shifted this story from distasteful to dangerous. It is more concerning still that this is no isolated incident...Read more