Five years ago this month, COVID-19 changed the world. The first pandemic in a century altered how Americans saw themselves, each other, work, health care, relationships, government, mortality, and media. It tangled everyone across the globe in webs of fear, conflict, grief, disbelief, estrangement, and gratitude.

It prompted a parallel ...Read more

Gavin Newsom — eyes on the White House, vision firmly fixed on his future — is leaning once more into the self-promotion business.

One might imagine his hands are quite full these days being California governor, what with the state reeling from one of the costliest, most destructive natural disasters in U.S. history. Two months after the ...Read more

Last month, close to 1,000 National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration workers, including weather forecasters, were fired. The Trump administration has now told agency leaders to fire another 1,000 people. Along with 300 resignations to date this will approach 20% of its workforce.

The White House’s Department of Government ...Read more

The Trump administration came into office claiming to stand for free speech. Yet the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident who led pro-Palestinian student protests at Columbia University, has dealt a serious blow to the First Amendment.

Going back to 1941, the Supreme Court has held that resident noncitizens have ...Read more

Immigrants to the United States holding green cards never expect to encounter agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE.

Green-card holders (there are some 13 million of them) are formally known as lawful permanent residents, or LPRs. Some hold them for decades. They can live, do business and find gainful ...Read more

Ask any elementary school teacher and they’ll tell you they know if their kids have come to school hungry. The question was put to the test during the COVID pandemic, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture suspended income rules for the first two years so that all students in grades K-12 could get breakfast and lunch at no cost.

Now, there�...Read more

Five years ago this month, COVID-19 changed the world. The first pandemic in a century altered how Americans saw themselves, each other, work, healthcare, relationships, government, mortality, and media. It tangled everyone across the globe in webs of fear, conflict, grief, disbelief, estrangement, and gratitude.

It prompted a parallel pandemic...Read more

In his record-long address to Congress, President Donald Trump reiterated his aspiration to have taxes on tips and overtime pay eliminated, a position that has enough bipartisan cachet that it also forms part of Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral run agenda. We disagree.

This falls into the bucket of a policy that sounds excellent on paper — wage ...Read more

Journalism may be the first draft of history, but in wartime, it is also the most dangerous draft of history for reporters on the front lines.

On June 27, 2023, in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s missiles, which sometimes seek out the gathering places of journalists, struck a restaurant where award-winning ...Read more

Hear me on this: Stephen A. Smith is no joke.

Democrats, do not underestimate him. Do not mock him. Do not take him lightly. Do not ignore him.

Do I think the face of ESPN (who, according to multiple sources, just inked a five-year, $100-million contract extension) and the most influential man in sports media is going to run for president on ...Read more

Columbia University and its sister school Barnard College did an exceedingly poor job handling nasty anti-Israel campus protests, which too often bled into even nastier antisemitism, but the federal government, restricted by the First Amendment, cannot use its tremendous powers and unlimited resources to crack down on institutions and people ...Read more

It started on Jan. 31, when someone named Mike Russo showed up at the Social Security Administration offices outside Baltimore and started introducing himself as a representative of DOGE, the federal budget-cutting service headed by Elon Musk.

Over subsequent days, he urged senior Social Security Administration officials to take the deferred ...Read more

The recent Consumer Price Index report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that prices have risen by three percent from one year ago. This is one percent above the Federal Reserve’s two percent inflation target, which they base on the Personal Consumption Expenditure Price Index.

No matter what these indexes say, people are paying more...Read more

At the Illinois Holocaust Museum, soon to undergo a major renovation, a heart-tugging special exhibit in Skokie explores the internment of Japanese Americans in U.S. prison camps during World War II.

Front and center as visitors enter the exhibit? An executive order from the desk of then-President Franklin Roosevelt.

The notorious Order 9066 ...Read more

As a new workweek begins, here’s a reminder that businesses and investors hate uncertainty most of all.

President Donald Trump last week should have received that message clearly, as his will-he-or-won’t-he gyrations over tariffs on Canada and Mexico prompted a Wall Street sell-off. Before last week, markets were riding the Trump roller-...Read more

President Donald Trump’s recent declaration of English as the official language of the U.S. may seem relatively benign. Most residents already speak English and most immigrants are eager to learn it.

Under most presidents, such a directive might have been largely symbolic. After all, 32 states already have English as their official language. ...Read more

FAIRFIELD, Calif. — Michael Duncan was adjusting the screen on his front door when he paused recently to consider what he wants from California’s next governor.

Duncan admittedly hadn’t given the matter much thought. But when you get down to it, he said, the answer is fairly straightforward: Do the basics.

Fight crime. Fix the state’s...Read more

After the 2008 financial crash threw millions of Americans out of their homes, Congress created a new agency — the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — to protect families from predatory financial firms.

Now President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency are “winding down” this agency and ...Read more

If you want to make this country great, imagine the strength of a nation whose children have been fought for and know they have been fought for.

Last month, my son reached two years in remission from a rare, malignant cancer that almost took his eye and his life. He is alive, well and enjoying 20/20 vision because of a groundbreaking treatment ...Read more