Former President Donald Trump isn’t a threat to democracy. Vice President Kamala Harris should acknowledge this before someone else tries to murder the former president.

On Sunday, the Secret Service stopped a would-be assassin at a golf course Trump was playing on. A federal criminal complaint stated that Ryan Wesley Routh may have been ...Read more

Once again, former President Donald Trump is talking about his candidacy as if he doesn't have a presidency we can refer to.

This time the topic is the construction of Nord Stream 2, a controversial gas pipeline between Russia and Germany. For years members of both parties had opposed Nord Stream 2, fearing it would increase Europe's dependency...Read more

Three tiny puppies born last year at an Ohio breeding facility were just 3 days old when they took their last breath. According to a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspection report, the breeder noticed they weren’t gaining weight but didn’t bother to seek veterinary care.

Three days later, a fourth puppy from the same litter ...Read more

There now is no question that Chicago needs the gunfire detection technology known as ShotSpotter.

We sympathize with those who wish this financially strapped city did not have use for an expensive system designed to get police officers more quickly to a bloody scene on its streets. We dearly wish the same. But the data is clear. Need it we do....Read more

For the first time since the Nazi era, a far-right party made a significant political breakthrough in Germany. The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won a regional election this month in the state of Thuringia and came second in neighboring Saxony. Visceral angst for democracy has befallen the country, but all is not as bleak as it seems.

As ...Read more

Could our unshakeable addiction to plastics be broken?

That’s certainly the hope of activists. The U.S. — birthplace of the modern polymers industry, and the biggest producer of its key feedstocks, oil and gas — has joined a bloc supporting a worldwide treaty capping plastics production. That could make a United Nations meeting in South ...Read more

President Ronald Reagan once said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” California Gov. Gavin Newsom keeps proving him right.

Last September, Newsom signed a bill mandating a $20 per hour minimum wage for fast-food workers. The requirement went into effect in ...Read more

Nearly half a million Americans received an unpleasant surprise this summer, according to insurance billing data: a new diagnosis of Lyme disease. Those numbers could shrink if scientists succeed in developing a vaccine for the tick-borne illness.

Low consumer demand scuppered a previous vaccine in the 1990s, but the situation is very ...Read more

Why does cynicism feel like a reasonable, inevitable, even smart posture these days? I think most of us have been there … ready to write off politics as corrupt or hopeless, ready to identify those on the other side of an issue as heartless or evil, feeling like the savvy thing is to keep our cards close, our hearts protected, our hopes low. ...Read more

Are Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump really the two best candidates for America's most demanding and important job? Hardly. Trump tried to reverse the last election. And while Harris would be a reversion toward the mean — after an unfit Trump and an aging Joe Biden — she's far from the most talented executive in...Read more

A seismic shift has occurred in America's race, identity and power discourse. Like tectonic plates beneath the Earth's surface, long-held assumptions are adjusting and giving way to a reimagined lingua franca for civic engagement. This revived language of liberation redefines the terms of debate. It empowers us to reclaim and reinvigorate words ...Read more

Getting folks to watch a documentary about the Big Lie is a Big Ask. Who wants to relive that horrible chapter in America’s political history, especially while we’re writing a new, possibly less-horrible chapter?

Despite its title, HBO’s “Stopping the Steal” is as much about what lies ahead of us as it is about that other election ...Read more

Donald Trump, in his determined effort to claim the mantle of friend of the working man and woman, unveiled a proposal the other day to make overtime pay tax-exempt.

"People who work overtime are among the hardest-working citizens of our country, and for too long, no one in Washington has been looking out for them," he told a rally in Tucson.

...Read more

Last week, President Joe Biden and the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and the Treasury issued new rules meant to ensure that insurance coverage for mental health conditions and substance abuse disorder has parity with the level of services available for physical health.

The provisions will be phased in between now and 2026, ...Read more

I teach at the University of Pennsylvania, which is an equal-opportunity censor. It suppresses voices on the right and the left, even as it proclaims its commitment to free and open dialogue.

That’s the sad takeaway of last week’s report by the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which ranked Penn 248th out ...Read more

Our eighth graders have a yearly tradition: They walk the hallways on their last day of school while the sixth and seventh graders and their teachers stand and honor them as they leave. As I walked with one of my eighth graders, Murphy, sixth and seventh grade teachers were giving him high-fives. I noticed him looking lonely and asked him what ...Read more

The child care challenges in the United States are many, and how candidates focus on the issue between now and Election Day may impact the outcome. A new poll indicates that voters want candidates to have a plan to address both child care and childhood education.

“Voters understand the strain that finding and affording care has on families. ...Read more

Scientists surprised themselves when they found they could instruct a version of ChatGPT to gently dissuade people of their beliefs in conspiracy theories — such as notions that COVID-19 was a deliberate attempt at population control or that 9/11 was an inside job.

The most important revelation wasn’t about the power of AI, but about the ...Read more

I send my 6-year-old son to kindergarten wearing an AirTag.

I take pictures of him every day in the school drop-off line to remember his outfit.

I avoid buying light-up sneakers. I subconsciously stay away from bright colors.

I’ve memorized the shape of his birthmark and every single scar on his little body.

I do all this just in case.

...Read more

How do you know property taxes are too high in this state?

Most homeowners if asked that question would laugh at the notion that there was any doubt. But there hardly could be starker evidence than that local politicians, led by Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi, are proposing to have taxpayers cough up more money — potentially lots of it — ...Read more