It's a story that seems almost as old as time itself: business tycoons forced to make a public defense — whether before a jury or a congressional committee or in the court of public opinion — of products that made them billionaires but turned out to exert hidden harm on society.

They often betray their shock at being brought to public book ...Read more

Fifty years ago, in September 1976, my parents Rabbi Daniel and Esther Moscowitz moved to Chicago to establish the first Chabad Jewish outreach center in Illinois. Until his passing in 2014, my father served as the regional director of Lubavitch-Chabad of Illinois, overseeing the development of what became the Chabad network of over 50 Jewish ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — It was unprecedented and stunning: California’s governor and top two legislative leaders negotiated a compromise on a big bill — and one house rebelled, refusing to bring it to a vote.

Not just any bill, but this year’s biggest in the state Legislature, dealing with catastrophic wildfires, arguably the state’s ...Read more

Last week, more alarming details were revealed about a recent safety incident involving the company OpenAI, and the unexpected actions taken by an artificial intelligence product it was testing.

I'll dive into those details in a minute, but the takeaway from inside the industry is basically this: Uh-oh.

Even many of those creating artificial ...Read more

Free and fair elections are foundational to our representative democracy. A government intended to reflect and honor the will of the people works only if the people can express their will. That's why we have elections.

But don't take the word of your friendly political columnist.

John Lewis, the late Georgia congressman and hero of the civil ...Read more

The president has called it an “arc.” Others, such as the rest of the English-speaking world, refer to it as an “arch.”

Whatever you choose to call Donald Trump’s latest vanity project, construction crews will soon break ground on the bigliest and most beautiful monument ever in the history of America, the Great Triumphal Arch.

...Read more

As we approach the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11, it is important to reflect on the historic significance of that atrocity and on the lessons we have drawn and should draw from it.

The 20 years that followed al-Qaida’s massive attack on the United States were anything but typical in the history of international affairs. Indeed, until the ...Read more

Remember where you were 25 years ago, on Sept. 11? I was driving back from a nice day at the beach in France when I heard that 19 terrorists had hijacked jet planes and flown them into the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington.

For every generation, there’s a date people remember. For the “Greatest Generation,” it’...Read more

On the morning of Aug. 26, a catastrophic flash flood traveled around 60 miles along the Nepal-Tibet border region, destroying bridges, buildings and a border crossing. It swallowed entire villages and swept thousands of people along with it. Whole tour buses are still missing. More than 1,200 people have been confirmed dead, with thousands more...Read more

The number of homicides in Chicago was lower in June, July and August than in any year since 1965. As we mark the bittersweet end of summer over the holiday weekend, this is undeniably good news.

The Chicago Police Department recorded 122 homicides in those three months, down from 129 in the same period last year and a still-staggering 271 in ...Read more

On the night of the June primary, standing before cheering supporters at a downtown brewery, Nithya Raman was in a familiar position: Outspent by rivals. Mocked by online haters. Her political career left for dead.

In early returns for Los Angeles mayor, Raman was in third place behind incumbent Karen Bass and reality TV villain Spencer Pratt. ...Read more

Parenting is a relatively novel term for what humans have done since the dawn of humanity — keep their progeny alive. These days, it comes with a long list of confusing rules that often conflict with each other.

Let kids have independence, experts say. Put them on their bikes, strap on a helmet and send them out into the neighborhood. Or to ...Read more

When pushing for the United States to be run more like a business, please keep in mind that framework naturally conflates the populace with labor and public servants with bosses. As it is, roughly half the country sees a workplace future of "struggling" or "suffering," according to Gallup's "State of the Global Workplace" report. Yet this week, ...Read more

The attacks on Hugging Face ran from May to late July, yet the details of what actually happened when OpenAI’s artificial-intelligence agents deceived their human overseers and breached the online repository of AI models and datasets are still trickling out.

That’s understandable. The attack was incredibly complex, involving more than 1,200...Read more

Michigan's mid-term election ballot is littered with socialists.

Candidates who in the past would be relegated to the fringes of the ballot under labels such as Workers of the World Party, Working Class Party and Let's All Just Have a Big Party are now carrying major office banners for the Democratic Party.

These political misfits have found ...Read more

I once wrote that Gloria Steinem, the great feminist thinker and activist who died Wednesday at 92, was like an indispensable computer program running in the background of every American woman's life.

"You don't always remember that she's there," I wrote, "but without her, your life would be constrained in ways you can hardly imagine."

Think ...Read more

To determine a political party’s priorities, see what makes it upset.

The rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is one of the biggest ongoing stories in politics. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is a member of the DSA. In recent months, Democrats connected to the DSA have won primaries in Michigan, Colorado, New York and ...Read more

The Florida election is awash in ludicrous Republican accusations of socialism.

Plans for a hurricane insurance fund are socialist. Ranked-choice voting is socialist. New residents are suspected of being “radicals.” David Jolly, the ex-GOP congressman running for governor as a moderate Democrat, is a Trojan horse, hiding his true socialist ...Read more

The two recent measles-related deaths in Lancaster County, including that of a newborn, were the first in Pennsylvania in 35 years. Sadly, as vaccination rates decline across the commonwealth and the country, they will likely not be the last.

The deaths occurred amid a major measles outbreak in Lancaster that has sickened nearly 400 people. ...Read more

The U.S. is quietly — and largely with a view to a potential war against China — tweaking its nuclear strategy, contemplating a bigger role for so-called tactical nukes. To the uninitiated, the shift may seem arcane. To those in the know, the stakes are nothing less than the risk of atomic Armageddon.

Obscure or not, the topic is so ...Read more