So much for the presidential candidate who claimed the desire to end “forever wars.” President Donald Trump’s administration has trapped itself in a Middle East quagmire with Iran. A conflict the president said would last only weeks will soon surpass six months as global energy prices continue to surge.

Results of Trump’s second-term ...Read more

Earlier this year, as the Islamic Republic of Iran was busy crushing the largest protests since those in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution, President Donald Trump promised that help was on its way. He meant, of course, that the U.S. would ride to the rescue of the ordinary Iranians being slaughtered in the streets. Instead, he launched a war ...Read more

The world’s militaries are locked in an arms race to develop the use of artificial intelligence in warfare. They’ve been at it for more than a decade — despite calls from civil society and AI experts to ban its use in military operations, given the devastation that inaccurate AI targeting can cause.

In Gaza, AI has helped accelerate the ...Read more

When an Israeli prime minister jets into Washington for a meeting with the president of the United States, the red carpet is typically rolled.

But when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited President Donald Trump on July 29, that was not the welcome he received. Instead, the veteran pol, who was in town for U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham�...Read more

Overeducated and underpaid: Welcome to the rising faction of voters pushing the Democratic Party to the socialist left and foreshadowing a clash with mainstream liberals in 2028.

Strong support from these voters, both young and middle-aged, has advanced several populist progressives and candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of ...Read more

Every transformative technology has its prophets of doom. AI is just the latest to draw them out.

In the early 1800s, the “Luddites,” followers of the possibly mythical Ned Ludd, smashed textile machinery, convinced that destroying the new technology would save their livelihoods.

They weren’t entirely misguided: Mechanized looms did ...Read more

The midterm election season is in full swing, and candidates for Congress are doing what politicians often do: promising voters something in return for sending them to Washington or keeping them there.

Quite often, those promises involve tax cuts.

Proposed cuts often aren’t sweeping, across-the-board reductions, but narrowly targeted breaks ...Read more

The crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln has been at sea for over 265 days, and over 200 days without a port call. The aircraft carrier left San Diego on November 21, 202 for a routine Pacific deployment, only to be redirected to the Middle East instead for a war Congress never declared and voted not to authorize.

Carriers are supposed to pull in ...Read more

File under “stupid publicity stunt that I shouldn’t even be writing about, but here I am, writing about it.”

Last week, former NBA players Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White demanded they be officially declared eligible for the 2027 WNBA draft. White, who recently lost the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by ...Read more

Over the past three decades, drug development in the United States accelerated dramatically. Industry spending increased tenfold between the 1980s and 2019; the number of manufacturers grew; clinical trials became more sophisticated; and new technologies and precision medicines emerged.

The Food and Drug Administration kept pace, building ...Read more

Socialism gets rebranded every generation. New faces, a new hashtag and a catchy slogan, but the pitch stays the same: This time will be different.

It never is, because socialism’s problem isn’t bad luck or bad leadership. It’s just a bad idea.

Socialism assumes that government planners can determine what millions of people need better ...Read more

The debate over capitalism vs. socialism often looks like a battle of cartoon caricatures: Monopoly Man versus the Marx Monster.

Across the planet there are countless flavors of capitalism and socialism, unique mashups of free markets and government policies. Into this muddle wade the right-wing ideologues who fear the red “socialist” demon...Read more

President Donald Trump continues to enrich himself through rampant self-dealing while everyone else pays the cost of his failed policies — including the war in Iran, tariffs, and mass deportations.

Now comes the latest pocket-lining scheme that reeks of insider trading.

Trump’s media company has begun selling investors advanced access to ...Read more

Today, less than half of rural hospitals in the U.S. still offer labor and delivery services, and since 2020, 139 of them have stopped delivering babies altogether.

That's usually treated as a public health statistic. It's also an economic one. Each closure doesn't just push expectant mothers into longer drives to the hospital, it pushes out ...Read more

The jokes about President Donald Trump’s secret escape from Turkey last month via an airport catering truck are still flooding the internet. Typical mockery included AI-generated images of the president hunched inside the truck gorging himself on bags of McDonald’s fries, while making his furtive getaway.

The jests about Trump’s transfer ...Read more

It's come to this: pain gloves.

Just when President Donald Trump's efforts to deport immigrants his administration deems not the right kind — and you're deluding yourself if you think it's all about legality — news came recently that Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants to spend up to $20 million on electrically charged gloves so that ...Read more

As a people, have we become too cynical for our own good? We live in an age where we routinely assume that all politicians have the worst motives, that they are driven by self-interest and that they are dishonest and/or corrupt.

It’s our default attitude. And we are not always wrong. There are certainly politicians like this, but not everyone...Read more

A man slammed me onto the concrete on East 7th in Skid Row — fast, hard and without warning.

One moment, I was walking. The next, I was on the ground, my head hitting the pavement inches from a tree trunk. He stood over me, screaming words I could not understand, with his arms swinging wildly. I covered my head and braced for blows that never...Read more

I know what it’s like to walk out of prison believing your debt has finally been paid.

I served time, as I should have. And in a twist of remarkable fate nearly a decade ago, I went back to prison after earning my release. At the time, my unique situation didn’t fall through the cracks of our legal system, like many do. It became a national...Read more

After enduring 14 of the most destructive wildfires in its history over the past decade, California has started waking up to a related crisis: its dysfunctional and inadequate insurance system. Before the next catastrophe, reform is urgently needed.

For nearly four decades, state-imposed constraints on premiums gave property owners a false ...Read more