Politics
/ArcaMax

Commentary: We all saw Biden's decline in real time. The scandal is how few people cared
For weeks now, Americans — left, right and terminally online — have been obsessed with former President Joe Biden’s fitness as president.
The whispers about cognitive decline, once the province of Fox News pundits and dinner table cranks, have gone mainstream. And now, with the release of a couple of high-profile books and a report ...Read more

Commentary: Why is the GOP resisting Chinese investment in the US?
The United States and China are locked in a standoff with no resolution in sight. The U.S. wants to reshore manufacturing, and China wants to sell its manufactured products into the American market. It will take a creative solution to overcome this impasse, but it’s very possible.
President Donald Trump himself has already previewed what a ...Read more

Editorial: For the love of Leo, hold your horses on seizing the pope's boyhood home, Dolton
Boy, did Dolton need that white smoke rising from the Vatican.
The south suburb just outside Chicago has taken blow after blow in recent years.
Former Mayor Tiffany Henyard’s antics led to an FBI investigation and a separate investigation by former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who was appointed by village board members to look into ...Read more

Lisa Jarvis: A big, ugly attack on Americans' health
In the wee hours of Thursday morning, House Republicans pushed through President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” a proposal that dramatically cuts Medicaid, in part by imposing strict work requirements on recipients. The hastily devised plan amounts to a reckless attack on health care that covers some 83 million low-income Americans....Read more

Commentary: Boost SNAP to make healthy eating easier
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to make it harder for poor Americans to buy unhealthy food. Together with Agriculture Secretary Brook Rollins, he is asking some 15 states to submit waivers to bar beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) from using those funds to buy soda and other ...Read more

Commentary: Medicaid work requirements threaten a critical health care system
Republicans recently released their proposed plan to cut $715 billion in federal health care spending over 10 years. While they position changes to Medicaid as removing waste and not cutting eligibility, don’t be fooled by that spin. The only thing this plan will do is strip health coverage from an estimated 8.6 million Americans to fund tax ...Read more

Commentary: What comes after left and right? Students want systems, not sides
You can walk into almost any American high school right now and feel it. Students aren’t just frustrated. They’re disillusioned. The message we’re hearing isn’t “get involved,” it’s “good luck.”
We’re told to pick a side, vote blue or red, join a cause, or take a stand. But when you’re inside the system, when you see ...Read more

Commentary: Waving the flag could turn the tables on Trump and the GOP
Waving the flag is as American as apple pie. For years, Republicans have painted Democrats as far-left extremists and America haters, to disastrous effect. It’s time to turn the tables.
Flag-shagging, as it’s known in the United Kingdom, is the “uncouth vernacular for overt displays of patriotism,” according to a recent essay in The ...Read more

Commentary: LA has now laid a real foundation to address homelessness
Los Angeles’ continuing struggle to reduce homelessness has become Exhibit Number One for a broader critique of the failure of progressive governance. Recent tensions between the city and the county over how to organize homeless services have not helped. But look a little deeper and something more promising comes into focus.
For the past nine...Read more

Parmy Olson: AI sometimes deceives to survive. Does anybody care?
You’d think that as artificial intelligence becomes more advanced, governments would be more interested in making it safer. The opposite seems to be the case.
Not long after taking office, the Trump administration scrapped an executive order that pushed tech companies to safety test their AI models, and it also hollowed out a regulatory body ...Read more

Editorial: A building boom on federal land? It just might work
Amid the relentless chaos in Washington — tariffs, trade war, terminally rising deficits — at least one sensible idea has recently emerged: The federal government wants to free up more land to build homes. It’s a great ambition. The devil, as ever, will be in the details.
Few problems vex Americans more than the struggle to find ...Read more

Juan Pablo Spinetto: Latin America's baby bust is arriving early
Latin America’s demographic time bomb keeps ticking.
Data published in the past few weeks confirm the quick decline in the region’s fertility levels, with the number of births in Brazil falling to the lowest in close to 50 years. In Argentina, the number of newborns has almost halved in just a decade, with kindergartens struggling to find ...Read more

Lara Williams: Deadly fungi are here, and they're spreading
What spoils our crops, kills about six times more people than malaria every year and is breathed in by each of us every single day? It’s not a virus or bacteria, but something even more formidable: fungi.
Aspergillus spores, for example, are ubiquitous in our environment. Most of the time, this group of molds cause no harm, but exposure to a ...Read more

Editorial: A phony DOJ probe of Cuomo: Investigation into Cuomo continues Justice politicization
The Justice Department criminal probe of Andrew Cuomo for supposedly committing perjury in testimony to Congress is just more garbage from a DOJ that has become hyper political and partisan under Donald Trump. Meant to hurt the frontrunning mayoral candidate weeks before the Democratic primary, it may actually help the former governor.
Remember...Read more

Commentary: Trump's first 100 days changed the game – the next 1,300 could change the nation
The country has now witnessed and felt the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s second term. These days were filled with unrelenting, fast-paced executive action.
He signed a record-breaking number of executive orders, though many have been challenged and may be reversed. Working with Congress to pass legislation, though more difficult...Read more

Commentary: When the heat rises, so should our compassion
As the days stretch longer and the sun warms our skin, many of us are drawn to the joys of summer — backyard barbecues, beach outings and long-awaited vacations. But as we embrace the season’s pleasures, let’s remember that we’re not the only ones stepping into the sunshine. Other animals, too, are venturing out after the long winter —...Read more

Editorial: Republicans need to show work requirements can work
For weeks, Republicans in Congress have been haggling over cuts to Medicaid, the health care program for the poor. Some lawmakers see an opportunity to offset the cost of extending $5 trillion in tax cuts, a priority for the White House. Others worry their constituents could lose access to critical care.
Of the myriad proposals that have been ...Read more

James Stavridis: How can Europe deter Putin? Revive the 'Reforger'
When I was a junior officer during the Cold War, the biggest North Atlantic Treaty Organization military training exercises — perhaps the largest in history — were annual drills called Exercise Reforger. The goal was to ensure NATO’s ability to deploy troops rapidly to West Germany if war broke out between the alliance and the Soviet Union...Read more

Commentary: The hidden moral cost of America's tariff crisis
In the spring of 2025, as American families struggle with unprecedented consumer costs, we find ourselves at a point of "moral reckoning."
The latest data from the Yale Budget Lab reveals that tariff policies have driven consumer prices up by 2.9% in the short term. In comparison, the Penn Wharton Budget Model projects a staggering 6% ...Read more

Commentary: Trump's policing policies threaten human rights
In late April, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that expands the federal government’s power over local and state police. The order is a recipe for abuse. The return to the overt embrace of mass incarceration through expanded funding and other support for police and prisons, coupled with the divisive underlying rhetoric of law-...Read more