Republicans have rightfully criticized Democrats in recent years for leaning on the Supreme Court in an effort to intimidate the justices into supporting a progressive agenda. It’s unfortunate that some members of the GOP now exhibit a similar intolerance for judicial independence.

Five years ago, Sen. Chuck Schumer stood in front of the ...Read more

Border Czar Tom Homan was hand-picked by President Donald Trump to carry out the mass deportations that were central to Trump’s winning campaign. Since his appointment, Homan has sown fear among immigrant communities, blustered on television about prosecuting mayors of blue cities who don’t comply, and staged photo ops of shackled migrants ...Read more

Over the past couple of weeks, America’s Ukrainian partners have been riding a roller-coaster of President Donald Trump’s making. The low point was the disastrous blow-up in the Oval Office between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which led to the U.S. cutting off military aid and intelligence sharing until the Ukrainians ...Read more

The share of U.S. workers represented by a union ended 2024 at 9.9 percent. Strip out public sector workers and the rate was 5.9%. Both numbers are even more stunning once you realize union representation is less now than 1934, the year before the right to organize was enshrined into law by the National Labor Relations Act.

Logically, the ...Read more

In what may be a sign of the times, and not an especially healthy one, my readers and friends recently have been filling my email inbox with questions about whether Donald Trump and White House insiders have been manipulating the stock market with his vacillating announcements about tariffs and the economy.

Speculation along those lines broke ...Read more

The great and powerful Oz, as Donald Trump models himself, never warned Americans that the road to his promised Golden Age would be full of speed bumps, stops and starts and big tolls in the form of higher shopping bills and reduced retirement accounts. Candidate Trump also didn't caution voters that they'd have to be patient. No, he would work ...Read more

The Securities and Exchange Commission is scaling back its cryptocurrency enforcement unit. Why does this matter? Because crime pervades the crypto industry.

Just last month, a hacker stole about $1.5 billion from the crypto exchange Bybit in the biggest theft the industry has ever experienced. As this incident suggests, crypto crime seems to ...Read more

Boston has a message for all those new citizens sworn in every year at naturalization ceremonies around town: Why bother?

If you’re here illegally, the mayor and city council will bend over backward to make sure you face no consequences for your actions.

The Boston City Council held a community-based hearing where advocates pushed for ...Read more

Many observers suggest that the United States is coming apart as a nation. They parse us into red states and blue states, urban areas versus rural. Some believe that our social and political divides are too wide to overcome.

I don’t accept that.

As someone who grew up in Peoria, Illinois, lived and worked in Chicago, and is raising a family ...Read more

Even as many businesses and universities rush to abandon their climate goals, diversity commitments and small-d democratic values for fear of reprisal from an increasingly authoritarian Trump administration, you might think an environmental group based in progressive West Los Angeles, at least, would hold firm to its principles.

Alas, you’d ...Read more

California’s black bears are clever, resourceful and opportunistic. They eat anything and everything — fruits, nuts, insects, human food and pet food. They love bird feeders. They poach mountain lion kills — such as deer — that they find.

It’s called kleptoparasitism. They can use their bottom teeth to work open an unlocked car door....Read more

A bombshell media report recently exposed an official-unofficial policy at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under former director Francis Collins: Top officials conducted public business in private, including by using personal e-mail accounts, to skirt public records law and to keep their scheming hidden from the people who pay their ...Read more

The Trump administration’s attacks on science and funding at the National Institutes of Health will set research and training for future scientists back a generation.

This might sound melodramatic to anyone not intimately familiar with the world of academic training and research. But in just two months the administration has cut off ...Read more

When the National Park Service recently removed all references to transgender and queer people from the Stonewall National Monument website, one of our country’s most important ways to honor and preserve the past was effectively turned into a weapon, one designed to further the Trump administration’s attack on so-called “gender ideology”...Read more

Democracy is dying — not in darkness, but in plain sight at the Florida Capitol.

Republican legislators want to make it outrageously expensive for citizens to launch ballot initiatives. In the past, voters have used their direct access to the ballot for a wide range of issues: An increased minimum wage; a ban on dog racing; multiple ...Read more

It’s no secret that Donald Trump is obsessed with winning the Nobel Peace Prize, which is one reason why he’s pushing Ukraine and Russia so hard toward cease-fire negotiations.

The way the U.S. president is going about it won’t earn him any favor in Oslo, though, because so far he mainly seems to be coercing Ukraine to capitulate.

But ...Read more

Under normal circumstances, the study of health problems after COVID vaccinations posted online on Feb. 25 might not have generated much controversy.

Its principal authors were well-respected scientists at Yale. The study was explicitly preliminary: Its sample size was only 42 people whose claims to have suffered long-term medical problems ...Read more

As if President Donald Trump isn’t busy enough taking a woodchipper to the federal bureaucracy, threatening to wage economic war in North America, putting the screws on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to pressure him into peace talks with Russia and giving impromptu interviews in the Oval Office every other day, he has added another ...Read more

In late February, students at dozens of U.S. high schools participated in the first round of an international competition in economics. The top five American students will travel to historic Olympia, Greece, later this year to compete against students from other countries.

The Economics Olympiad, as the competition is called, is challenging —...Read more

Women's History Month finds us at a critical crossroads. Nearly three-quarters of the world's population faces increasing backlash against women's rights, while technological disruption and economic uncertainty threaten to deepen existing inequalities.

Yet, within this challenging landscape lies an opportunity to radically reimagine our ...Read more