Politics
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Michael Hiltzik: Are White House insiders using Trump's tariff announcements to play the stock market? It's not that easy
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

Jackie Calmes: When it comes to Trump's economy, the adults have left the room
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

Commentary: Why the Trump administration is easing up on crypto crime at exactly the wrong moment
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

Editorial: Boston makes it easy to be in US illegally
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

Commentary: Trump's plan to privatize the Postal Service should be stamped 'return to sender'
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

Sammy Roth: The protectors of Santa Monica Bay are caving to Trump's dangerous demands
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

Editorial: For California towns with a bear problem, using dogs to hunt is no solution
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

Commentary: The NIH knows experiments on animals don't work -- but keeps wasting billions on them anyway
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

Lisa Jarvis: NIH cuts create a lost generation of scientists
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

Commentary: Stonewall and other monuments must not be used as a weapon
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

Editorial: Lawmakers scheme to block Florida voters' ideas from reaching the ballot
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

Andreas Kluth: How Trump could win, and deserve, a Nobel Peace Prize
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

Michael Hiltzik: A small study of COVID vaccine aftereffects triggers a political and scientific storm
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

Commentary: Is Trump actually interested in talking with Iran?
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

POINT: Economics is destiny
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

Commentary: Liberation through the womanist perspective
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

Lara Williams: Woolly mammoths? Mars? Let's take care of what we've got
Last week, science delivered a really cute experimental result. Researchers created a “colossal woolly mouse,” a fluffy rodent that’s purported to be a step on the way to resurrecting woolly mammoths from the age of dinosaurs.
But that project — along with Elon Musk’s obsession with establishing a colony on Mars — makes me wonder: ...Read more

Editorial: California dreamin' shouldn't dictate auto market
President Donald Trump said in his joint address before Congress last week his administration has ended rules that force automakers to build electric vehicles, an issue that impacts the foreseeable future for Michigan’s automotive industry.
One way to truly make good on that claim would be to eliminate California’s outsized regulatory ...Read more

Commentary: The GOP's budget gamble -- Slashing safety nets to fund tax cuts for wealthy
In February, the House of Representatives narrowly passed a Republican budget resolution, delivering a key victory for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and President Donald Trump — but at what cost?
The 217-215 vote advanced a plan that calls for $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade while extending and expanding the...Read more

COUNTERPOINT: STEM is key
By nearly all objective measures, the U.S. education system is not fulfilling its primary duty of ensuring that today’s students are prepared to achieve in the world of tomorrow.
As we all know, modern society is becoming ever more dependent on technology. Hence, if American students are to compete in the job market of the future, they must ...Read more