Here's the most depressing aspect of this election: Half the country is ready to vote for a man who opposes the basic principle on which this nation was founded — the right to a free and fair vote.

Donald Trump has not only sold his MAGA followers on the Big Lie that he won the 2020 presidential race, but he has convinced them that the only ...Read more

Ah, autumn: the season of pumpkin-spice everything, falling leaves and poll derangement syndrome.

These days, I wake up, log in and immediately look at the "Latest Polls" pages on Real Clear Politics and 538. My anxiety level on any given morning depends on the distance between the blue and red lines. Invariably, they are maddeningly close.

I ...Read more

We’re all eyewitnesses to history being made — the wrong kind of history.

Gov. Ron DeSantis is engaged in an all-out effort, unprecedented in its scope in Florida history, to defeat two ballot initiatives on abortion and recreational marijuana. What he’s doing is unethical, unconstitutional and possibly illegal.

Voters will vote yes or ...Read more

The only challenge here was limiting myself to 10 arguments against Donald Trump (and one good reason to vote for Kamala Harris). So, drum roll, working toward No. 1:

10: As president, he violated his oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution."

Ask Mike Pence, who forfeited his place as Trump's ticket mate to Ohio Sen. JD Vance ...Read more

Perhaps you’ve heard: Menopause is having a moment. Celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Drew Barrymore have begun speaking out about coping with symptoms and self-worth. Halle Berry shouted from the steps of the Capitol: “I’m in menopause, OK?!”

As menopause advocates, we have long seen this “moment” as overdue, spurring necessary...Read more

Generative artificial intelligence, or GenAI, keeps making headlines. Every day, we hear more success stories about how GenAI is transforming sectors such as health care, infrastructure, business and commerce, education and research. We can applaud this technological progress, but is there anything we should be concerned about?

Much has been ...Read more

As first responders, repair crews and so many other people rushed to the aid of flood-stricken North Carolina, we wrote that “the worst of the weather has brought out the best in America.”

That’s still true. But there’s a depressing postscript. The worst weather brings out the worst in some people. Three examples:

Donald Trump

There�...Read more

For years, free-market think tanks such as the Cato Institute and the Fraser Institute have emphasized the link between economic freedom and prosperity. This month, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics to three men whose work confirmed the nexus.

The award went to Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, both of ...Read more

The war in Ukraine is going badly for the good guys. Ukraine is slowly losing on the eastern front. Its forces are plagued by a dearth of manpower and ammunition. A summer incursion into Russia made headlines but didn’t change the overall trajectory of the fighting. A deep-strike missile campaign into Russia is potentially promising but has ...Read more

Former President Donald Trump has made it clear what he’d like to do with the Department of Justice if he’s reelected: go after his political opponents. As he has posted on social media, “WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED” — Democrats, in his dark fantasy of election fraud — “will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law,...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — There's a lot more on the election ballot than Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump, although those two rightfully are drawing extraordinary attention.

The race for the White House is sucking up all the oxygen, to echo an old political cliche. Voters can't help but focus on the tight presidential contest and scratch their ...Read more

With the election only two weeks away, let’s stipulate the futility of any attempt by my humble column—or anyone else’s—to accomplish much in the way of changing voters’ minds. So-called independents and uncommitteds may waver until the moment they step into the voting booth, but most voters have made up their minds, and at this point ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The presidential election is still too close to call, but here are three predictions you can take to the bank:

First, we won't know who won on election night. Three potentially decisive states — Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — are notoriously slow at counting. A winner may not emerge before the end of the week.

Second...Read more

There is a video clip of Vice President Kamala Harris talking to a young girl about leadership. Her advice: “You never have to ask anyone permission to lead. When you want to lead, just lead,” she says.

Clearly Harris took that permission for herself in her overnight rise from Joe Biden’s loyal running mate to his replacement as ...Read more

After weeks of mealy-mouthed avoidance, vice presidential candidate JD Vance finally last week directly answered the question of whether Donald Trump lost the 2020 election: no. His exact languages was a question: “So, did Donald Trump lose the election? Not by the words that I would use, OK?” He said a good deal more to hedge and expand on ...Read more

A new explainer by the Migration Policy Institute seeks to apply facts to the lively discussion of immigration and crime. A spokesperson for MPI said the nonpartisan research organization, known for a sober tone, hoped to clear up “confusion.”

That’s one way to characterize Donald Trump’s nine-year campaign of lies. Trump is busy making...Read more

Less than 90 minutes before Robert Roberson was to have been executed by lethal injection in Texas on Thursday evening, first a district judge and then the Texas Supreme Court blocked the state from going through with it. For now, anyway.

The reprieve was unprecedented in that it came in response to a "separation of powers" argument from a ...Read more

Bible salesmen are synonymous in American culture with hucksterism.

Plying the country’s backroads, the charismatic con men of literature prey on the gullibility of the faithful with insincere pitches for an overpriced product their targets can ill afford.

Donald Trump is bringing those predatory characters to life. The former president, ...Read more

The price of housing in many areas of the United States is too high for many Americans, and in some areas the demand for affordable housing outstrips the supply. There is a heated debate as to how, exactly, to target this crisis.

Some would like to address the shortage of housing using the basic economic theory of supply and demand. Others ...Read more

Bloomberg recently reported that Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg is now worth over $200 billion. He’s not alone. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla founder Elon Musk, and LVMH founder Bernard Arnault are also worth north of $200 billion.

The news is a searing reminder of the uneven distribution of wealth in America. In the same country as ...Read more