BALTIMORE — April will mark nine years of state lawmakers pushing to transform education through an overhaul known as the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future. The reform plan includes a wide variety of initiatives, from publicly funding pre-K to attracting high-quality teachers to providing poverty grants for schools with a high share of low-...Read more

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Earlier this year, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson cut roughly $1 billion from the state budget, including millions for Kansas City-area highway work, health care and civic groups, frustrating local leaders and lawmakers.

Gov-elect Mike Kehoe will soon confront similar choices.

BoysGrow, which operates a Kansas City-area farm ...Read more

ATLANTA — Donald Trump’s dramatic gains with Latino voters, particularly among Latino men, have emerged as a huge talking point since his election win earlier this month.

But the surge in Latino support for Trump didn’t manifest equally across the electoral map.

Case in point: Latinos in Georgia appeared to have backed the Democratic ...Read more

BALTIMORE — Maryland counties are sharply divided over whether to assist President-elect Donald Trump with what he says will be the largest deportation program in American history.

A Baltimore Sun survey found widely divergent responses to Trump’s proposal — from Harford County’s pledge to “fully support” his efforts to Anne Arundel...Read more

LOS ANGELES — A reputed member of the Mexican Mafia was wounded in a shooting Saturday that left a second man dead in Los Angeles County, authorities said.

At 11 p.m., Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies responded to a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall on Valley View Avenue in La Mirada, where they found two men with gunshot wounds in the ...Read more

More than a decade ago, I spent a week working in Gatineau, a city on the southern edge of Québec, with the Cree Board of Health and Social Services. I was helping train researchers to interview Iiyiyiu elders about traditional birthing knowledge, so they could develop resources for soon-to-be parents and health care workers.

...Read more

Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.

Crossing the Divide

I developed the idea for this course in 2016 during an Amtrak writing residency program. I spent over two weeks crisscrossing the United States via train while working on my 2021 book ...Read more

Now that the elections are over, you might be left feeling exhausted, despondent and disillusioned – whether your preferred candidate won or not. You are not alone.

Survey after survey has found that Americans agree that the political system is not serving them.

Americans say they are angry at the political dysfunction, ...Read more

A brain region affected very early in Alzheimer’s disease may explain why some aging people are at greater risk of financial exploitation. That is the key finding of our new study, published in the journal Cerebral Cortex.

We are a clinical psychology doctoral student and a clinical neuropsychologist, and we are interested in ...Read more

History is full of examples of governments using forced segregation against ethnic minorities.

From settler colonialists coercing Indigenous peoples into reservations, Nazis forcing Jews into ghettos or the United States segregating Black Americans through redlining and zoning policies, displacement and housing have long been at the ...Read more

Shortly after the 2024 election was called in Donald Trump’s favor, he declared that voters had given him “an unprecedented and powerful mandate.”

As the popular vote margin shrinks, however, this claim seems less plausible. But it puts Trump squarely within the historical tradition of how presidents – and those around them �...Read more

Custom-designed helmets that stave off major brain injuries. Mobile blood banks and preliminary surgery on the battlefield. Dog tags that broadcast medical data. Evacuation by helicopter to hospitals, measured in minutes. Fentanyl lollipops to ease the pain.

As Israel plows into the second year of open-ended war on several fronts, its military ...Read more

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu severely criticized the International Criminal Court for issuing arrest warrants against him and a former minister, and said his government won’t be deterred from continuing its war against Hamas in Gaza.

The Hague-based court’s announcement on Thursday was “anti-Semitic” and Israel will keep...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Whooping cough — a highly contagious and potentially dangerous illness — has surged in California this year, staging a comeback to levels not seen since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Across California, there were fewer than 300 reported cases of whooping cough, also known as pertussis, all of last year. This year, ...Read more

Ukraine’s parliament canceled Friday’s plenary session due to the threat of a possible air attack on Kyiv’s government district, according to lawmakers.

The country is on high alert after Russia launched a “new” kind of ballistic missile at the city of Dnipro on Thursday, the latest escalation of hostilities in the long-running war. ...Read more

NEW YORK — A modified version of the mayor’s City of Yes housing proposal passed key City Council committees on Thursday, a major milestone for the plan.

Several aspects of the mayor’s plan were scaled back in the last hours of negotiations with the City Council’s speaker’s office and Department of City Planning, including the number ...Read more

Charles E. Case was sentenced to death by a Sacramento County jury nearly 30 years ago and immediately became eligible for an attorney skilled at state-level habeas corpus appeals, a key part of the process to determine whether capital punishment should be carried out.

Now 84 years old, he still hasn’t been assigned one.

Even older is the ...Read more

ICE agents stymied by sanctuary city loopholes keep tracking down drug dealers and accused rapists living illegally in Massachusetts despite the roadblocks from Boston to the Berkshires.

Two new arrests include a 21-year-old Guatemalan national charged with rape of child by force (two related counts) and indecent assault and battery against a ...Read more