If you — like me — were deeply disappointed in the direction this country and our state went on Election Day, then you — like me — have probably felt emotionally drained for the last week or so.

I fell into a fitful sleep in the wee hours of the morning after the election as it looked increasingly clear that former President Donald ...Read more

Democrats are blaming Donald Trump’s defeat of Kamala Harris on everything from fake news that immigrants were eating American house pets to Elon Musk’s alleged manipulation of his Starlink satellite network to interfere with voting-machine counts. I have my own theory: Harris made the fatal mistake of abandoning the one thing that even her ...Read more

Get ready to welcome back polio and welcome back measles and other preventable viruses if Donald Trump has his way and makes Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the secretary of Health and Human Services, endangering us all.

Bobby Kennedy is a dangerous crank, a vaccine-denier who is a threat to public health and who should not become the top person in ...Read more

“The implacable logic of retribution will prove as appalling as the crime itself,” observes the loyal-to-a-fault Macduff in William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” “consisting of the soul’s slow agonizing descent.”

That’s why philosophers and preachers have argued against seeking retribution since time immemorial. Judeo-Christian ...Read more

How detrimental will President-elect Donald Trump’s second term be to the rule of law? We got the answer with Wednesday’s announcement of his intent to nominate Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz as attorney general: worse even than the worst-case scenario we had imagined.

This isn’t just hyperbole from a harsh Trump critic. It’s a sober ...Read more

The only difficulty with winning an election by a large margin, as President-elect Donald Trump did, is accurately reading the message that voters were trying to send you.

Focus on the fundamentals, and you could be the next generational leader. But overreach and aim wrong, and you and your party will be right back out of power.

The message of...Read more

For those whose sense of doomy gloom has them searching for a ray of light, look no further than the amusing lawsuit filed by one George Kersey, arguing “that the political stance of the Republican National Committee is inconsistent with its name.”

Amusing — yet not uninteresting.

The complaint has been dismissed as frivolous, and given...Read more

Donald Trump’s resounding election to a second term as U.S. president sealed the deal on a new world disorder.

The liberal, rules-based order that had shaped the rules of the game since World War II was already on its heels. It had proved wholly unable to prevent, punish or halt Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, a violent war in Sudan ...Read more

If the run-up to the election can be taken as a preview, don’t expect corporate America to act as any kind of check to the Donald Trump presidency redux.

The strategy most CEOs adhered to during the campaign cycle was to do and say as little about politics as possible. It’s the same approach they seem poised to carry over into Trump’s ...Read more

Elon Musk has wasted little time laying the groundwork for his job in the next Trump administration, overseeing the new Department of Government Efficiency. The billionaire entrepreneur says he can cut $2 trillion from the federal budget while holding federal bureaucracies more accountable for underperformance.

On Thursday, he and his co-pilot ...Read more

Once again, the people of Puerto Rico have voted in favor of becoming the nation’s 51st state. Last week’s vote was the fourth time in the past 12 years that the island’s voters have endorsed statehood, and the victory margin was a clear and convincing 56%.

On the same ballot, Puerto Ricans elected a new governor, Jenniffer González-Col�...Read more

After killing millions of birds worldwide, the H5N1 avian flu is creeping like a black fog of death through U.S. dairy farms. Dead cows and calves infected with the virus lie in piles along Californian roadsides, baking under the sun, surrounded by swarms of flies. The outlook is troubling for humans, too: Globally, over 400 people have already ...Read more

Matt Gaetz, the House-wrecking Florida congressman, cannot be U.S. attorney general. No way at all. We know that this isn’t a joke because Donald Trump published the proposed nomination on his Truth Social at 3:24 Wednesday afternoon, surprising flabbergasted Democrats and Republicans.

It must not happen. Gaetz, who had been under a DOJ ...Read more

President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Florida’s U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio to be secretary of state on Wednesday will elevate the Miami native and son of Cuban exiles to the post of America’s chief diplomat.

It’s a fitting and clever choice — one that Rubio, 53, meticulously carved out by aligning himself with Trump after they ...Read more

In western North Carolina, the cold is creeping in. Autumn usually gives way to winter early in the mountains, but this year it comes at a precarious time, when many residents are still suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

There is plenty going on in our nation in the aftermath of the recent election, just as families here in Hampton...Read more

Former President Donald Trump has won a convincing Electoral College victory, although the swing states were decided by narrow margins. But when you take the 30,000-foot perspective of the election, it is very illuminating.

Forty percent of registered voters, according to Gallup, do not identify as either the Democrats or Republicans. Moreover,...Read more

After the rhetoric comes the reality. For anyone who thought Donald Trump’s immigration talk was just stirring up fear to get elected, his first appointments should make clear he is going to work to make it happen.

Trump is bringing Stephen Miller in as deputy chief of staff for policy and Tom Homan will have the nebulous overarching role of ...Read more

After months of obsessing over the presidential contest, it was jarring to tune in to the annual Veterans Day commemoration at Arlington National Cemetery and see President Joe Biden center stage. The all-but-forgotten president is too literally a lame duck; his stride has given way to a shuffle. He looks lost. He tried to project force in his ...Read more

Right now, Democrats are asking despairingly what, if anything, can constrain Donald Trump from doing whatever he wants in his second term. And Republicans may be assuming optimistically that, with the Senate and the House in his pocket, there will be little to stand in the president-elect’s way. I have some good news and some bad news for ...Read more

With a newly emboldened Republican Party poised to take over the federal government and much of the nation, the question of what kind of party it will be going forward looms large.

Will it continue down a radical-populist MAGA path that ignores laws it deems inconvenient and attempts to overturn any voting outcome it doesn’t like? Or will it...Read more