Now that the dust has settled some after last week’s stunning midterm elections, there are two words the electorate has for President Donald Trump.

No, not those two words.

The two words we’re hearing most are “lame duck.”

As for the other two words, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the next likely Speaker of the House, covered ...Read more

Are you exhausted? Just can’t shake that weary feeling? If you’re chronically fatigued, you are not alone. Far from it, in fact.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently conducted a national study of fatigue, and researchers found that many Americans admit they are worn out.

Nearly three-fourths of people aged 18 and older ...Read more

It would be wrong to say there wasn’t any federal interference in the midterm elections. The electoral landslide was simply so thorough that the dangers experts had warned about never came to pass.

Some votes are still being counted, and certification deadlines have yet to arrive, but one thing is clear: The nation’s decentralized system of...Read more

The big message from the midterms is that Americans are struggling with the cost of living. In case anyone missed it, they need relief now. This will put even more attention on the Federal Reserve: Will Chair Kevin Warsh do all he can to bring down inflation or placate the White House, which wants lower interest rates?

These are the wrong ...Read more

Kalshi and Polymarket have taken the trading world by storm in recent years, and now Illinois has become a battleground for the future of “prediction markets.”

These newfangled exchanges make it easy for everyday people to trade on simple yes-or-no questions: Will the Chicago Bears win the Super Bowl? Will President Donald Trump be ...Read more

Earlier this fall, sitting in the back of an immigration courtroom in Hyattsville, Maryland, I watched an immigration judge convince an elderly man that he didn’t need an attorney.

The man was facing the threat of deportation to a country where he said he’d experienced attempts on his life in the past. His voice was quiet, but he repeatedly...Read more

When Chuck Schumer takes over as Senate majority leader in eight weeks, he should move to restore the filibuster back to where it was before the power of the minority to slow down the chamber was eroded by former Majority Leaders Harry Reid (a Democrat) and Mitch McConnell (a Republican). Both Reid and McConnell chipped away at the filibuster ...Read more

“The reason we lost is the war,” declared Vice President JD Vance in a lengthy post on X. And, he’s right. The 2026 midterm elections were an unquestioned rebuke of the forces that drive America into foreign wars, with 74% of voters citing the Iran war as a crucial or major factor in their vote.

The question now is: What will these newly...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Billions of words have been regurgitated analyzing how Democrats flipped so many Republican seats last week. But all that’s really needed are five: Americans flipped off the president.

My quick in-depth elaboration:

Sure, voters were fed up with a botched war that raised gas prices to an intolerable level. And they ...Read more

The midterm elections drew most people’s attention last week, but some may have noticed that the Powerball and MegaMillions jackpots both crossed the $500 million mark. A person from Illinois won the Powerball jackpot of $1.04 billion back in August. The largest recent Powerball jackpot was $1.817 billion won on Dec. 24. This was also the ...Read more

Never thought I'd say this, but DEI is back!

Diversity, equity and inclusion had an excellent midterm election:

California got its first elected Latino governor, Xavier Becerra.

New Mexico elected its first Native American governor, Deb Haaland.

Minnesota elected the first Native American woman to serve in the U.S. Senate, Peggy Flanagan.

...Read more

It’s being called regime change given the Democratic sweep of midterm elections across the nation, especially in once Republican-dominated Texas where Democrats won all the statewide races and the U.S. Senate seat. And Democrats won four of the five Trump-induced gerrymandered districts in the Longhorn State.

But it’s considerably short of ...Read more

For a time, Chad Bianco was one of the front-runners in the race for California governor — or at least as front-runnery as a Republican can get in this cobalt-blue state.

Polling in the primary showed the Riverside County sheriff drawing support in roughly the mid-teens, which — while nothing to shout about — was still enough in a jumbo-...Read more

America's obsession with the Latino vote has become a ritual as slippery and messy as a grunion run.

But who could be blamed for caring too much about how we crushed it in the midterms?

Latinos helped Democrats take back the House and Senate by casting our ballots in record numbers.

We flipped red districts blue, including those in the Rio ...Read more

When my wife, Christy, was murdered in 2011, my life was torn apart. My wife was the center of my universe. She was a mother of three, a grandmother, a friend and the person I expected to grow old with. She was working in a hair salon when a man walked in and brutally and senselessly shot and killed her and seven other people in the blink of an ...Read more

In the runup to Tuesday’s election, political prognosticators eyed Florida’s Amendment 3 with skepticism, doubting it would get the required 60% to pass.

But it did — and then some. It only fell short of that benchmark in a few counties including Leon, Alachua, Orange and (surprisingly) Seminole. Statewide, the amendment drew 61% of the ...Read more

Minutes before she was declared Minnesota’s next governor, DFL U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar spoke to reporters for a few minutes, underscoring her goals and expectations.

At that moment, the four-term senator was on the verge of trouncing her GOP opponent, House Speaker Lisa Demuth, and becoming the state’s first female governor. Voters were ...Read more

The Democratic steamroller flattened Republican candidates across the country this week. But there was one bright spot for the GOP: Ballot measure results across the country failed to reflect the rushing blue tide.

In Nevada, the verdict was split. Question 6 — further codifying abortion rights in the state constitution — passed handily, as...Read more

It took me a while, but about a month ago I came clean and admitted it: I’m a YouTube addict.

I was in and out of rehab for about five years. By “rehab” I mean a self-imposed semi-conscious notion that, as a Gen Xer, I “should” prefer an outdoor, free-range existence: running through the woods barefoot, skipping stones across ponds, ...Read more

More than 124 million Americans made their voices resoundingly clear at the polls last week Tuesday.

By percentage, this was the second highest national midterm turnout since 1914.

Still, it is not the first time that bread-and-butter cost of living issues generated robust and even historic numbers. And it’s not the first time that voters ...Read more