In diplomacy, it’s not always what you know — it’s who you serve. The White House has tapped a self-professed Hooters fan and an orthopedic surgeon for two key postings in Southeast Asia, a front line in the battle for influence between the U.S. and China. The inexperienced candidates for Singapore and Malaysia are raising eyebrows in a ...Read more

In an unsigned order with no explanation, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority blocked the lower court orders that had stopped President Donald Trump from shuttering the Department of Education.

The decision seems legally wrong to me, given that Congress created the department and only Congress should have the legal power to shut it down...Read more

There is no good reason for any American to become infected with the measles virus in 2025. Effective vaccines reduced the incidence of the disease to nearly negligible figures by the 1980s, and since a brief resurgence in the early 1990s, most years have had fewer than 100 cases across this enormous country.

This year, however, is poised to ...Read more

As we look back on 1776 after the July 4 holiday, it's a good opportunity to skip forward and predict what our forebears will think of us. When our descendants assess our policies, ideas, and culture, what will they see? What errors, born of myopia, inertia, or misplaced priorities, will they lay at our feet regarding today's revolutionary ...Read more

Walking in stocking feet across a grimy airport as you make your way through security was the reality for many travelers for years. And if you happened to show up to security in sandals … well, we shudder to think.

But last week, the Transportation Security Administration ditched its “shoes off” rule.

Good riddance. An irritant of modern...Read more

“Bring in the clowns” is a great motto for a circus but a bad one for a political party. I know because I was there when the Republican Party and conservative journalists started inviting in the Trumpy clowns in 2009 at the conservative Washington Times. We all know the result is they took over the Republican Party.

Now that the MAGA wing ...Read more

In 2000, Congress passed the Chimpanzee Health Improvement, Maintenance, and Protection Act (C.H.I.M.P. Act) to provide funding for lifetime care and sanctuary for chimpanzees who had been kept and used in U.S. laboratories. Today, chimpanzee sanctuaries across the United States care for more than 700 of these majestic great apes.

That there is...Read more

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a single federal judge could not issue a nationwide injunction on a case related to the constitutional right of birthright citizenship that the Trump administration is trying to end, the justices made an exception for class action cases. OK, so now a New Hampshire federal judge has certified a nationwide ...Read more

Stephen Miller, the front man for President Donald Trump's deportation campaign against immigrants, took to the airwaves the other day to explain why native-born Americans will just love living in a world cleansed of undocumented workers.

"What would Los Angeles look like without illegal aliens?" he asked on Fox News. "Here's what it would look...Read more

Recently, Nvidia founder Jensen Huang, whose company builds the chips powering today’s most advanced artificial intelligence systems, remarked: “The thing that’s really, really quite amazing is the way you program an AI is like the way you program a person.” Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of OpenAI and one of the leading figures of the AI ...Read more

With President Donald Trump continuing to bulldoze through American politics, Democrats are forced to confront a fundamental question: Do voters even want what they’ve been offering?

The meteoric rise of Zohran Mamdani, a fiery young Democratic Socialist who recently claimed a shocking New York mayoral primary win, points to a grim answer.

...Read more

When the first nuclear bomb test took place 80 years ago, the scientists who gathered to observe the explosion in the New Mexico desert recognized they were playing with fire.

Physicist Enrico Fermi tried to break the tension by taking bets on whether the bomb would ignite the atmosphere and destroy the world. J. Robert Oppenheimer wagered $10 ...Read more

Last month, New York City’s mayoral race drew national attention when Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani secured a stunning victory over former governor and political veteran Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary, thanks to the relatively new system of ranked-choice voting. Less noticed were the 28 contested New York City Council races on ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — If you, like me, in recent days have wistfully considered a utopian fantasy where an economically powerful country of California breaks away from the chaos of a second Donald Trump presidency, then I have both good news and bad news for you:

The good news is that the fantasy seems to be rapidly gaining support. A new ...Read more

Recently, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that will likely reverberate through American classrooms for years to come. In a 5-4 ruling, the justices granted parents broad authority to exempt their children from curricular materials and school activities that conflict with their religious convictions.

Like so many recent decisions from ...Read more

It’s July, and many Midwesterners are flocking to the lake, driving south to go to the beach, or simply sticking around to enjoy the fleeting hot weather at their local pool.

Even Pope Leo XIV, arguably one of the busiest and most important people in the world, is taking a summer vacation. (True, his break includes six weeks off, something ...Read more

For generations, Americans have surrounded themselves with the symbols of ancient Greece and Rome: marble columns, laurel wreaths, Roman eagles, and the fasces. These icons, carved into our government buildings and featured on our currency, were intended to embody democracy, civic virtue, and republican ideals.

But in recent years, far-right ...Read more

Before O.J. Simpson’s “trial of the century,” another courtroom clash riveted America and merited that title. In the sleepy town of Dayton, Tenn., on July 10, 1925, the Scopes “Monkey Trial” was gaveled to order. The issues contested in the second-story courtroom of the Rhea County courthouse may seem long settled, but they still ...Read more

She called me while she walked her dog because it was the only time she could use the phone without being monitored by her husband. Reaching out to me as a program manager for domestic survivors in a major U.S. city, she wanted to see what her options were and where she and her seven-year-old son could go.

I went over the resources in the ...Read more

The Comet Ping Pong Pizzagate shooting, the plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and a man’s livestreamed beheading of his father last year were all fueled by conspiracy theories. But while the headlines suggest that conspiratorial thinking is on the rise, this is not the case.

Research points to no increase in conspiratorial thinking. ...Read more