In 2010, California voters drove the foxes from the henhouse, seeing to it that lawmakers in Washington and Sacramento would no longer have the power to draw congressional districts to suit themselves.

It wasn't close.

Proposition 20 passed by a lopsided 61%-to-38% margin, giving congressional line-drawing authority to an independent mapmaking...Read more

“Because I said so” never is persuasive or satisfying. And it certainly should not be regarded as acceptable when it is the Supreme Court resolving important issues — up to and including matters of life and death — without the slightest explanation. Yet, that has been the pattern in recent weeks, as in a series of significant cases the ...Read more

For too long, the debate over antisemitism on college campuses has bogged down over whether anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Endless ink has been spilled over the distinction (or not) between the two.

Last week, in their testimony to the House Committee on Education & Workforce, UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons, City University of New York ...Read more

Missouri’s airwaves are about to get a lot dumber. For that, we can all thank President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans — Missouri’s own Sen. Eric Schmitt in particular.

Schmitt was the Senate sponsor of legislation passed last week yanking more than $1 billion in federal funding for National Public Radio and the Corporation ...Read more

The size of the national debt has become a preoccupation across the political spectrum. Democrats have complained about the $3.4 trillion increase in the debt projected to result from President Donald Trump’s tax cut.

This represents 10 percent of the projected gross domestic product for 2035. Republicans also scream about the debt, even as ...Read more

One July morning in 1990, a crowd gathered on the White House lawn, some in wheelchairs, others holding signs, many with tears in their eyes. President George H.W. Bush lifted his pen and signed his name to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)—the most sweeping civil rights law for people with disabilities in the nation's history.

It ...Read more

The recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act signals a major shift in federal energy policy. Among its provisions, the law accelerates the phase-out of tax credits for new wind and solar projects and eliminates long-term subsidies for renewable developers on public land.

The law revives a principle that should guide all energy policy: Let the...Read more

Dead six years, child sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein is causing a problem for President Donald Trump and the Republican Party and has now caught House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is backflipping wildly.

This week, the Trump toady lived up to that description by sending the House out of town early on its month-long summer recess right as bipartisan ...Read more

The Butterfly Effect is the chaos-theory idea that the flapping of an insect’s tiny wings can influence massive weather events far removed from it in distance and time. It may overstate the importance of butterflies, but it is a reminder of how small actions can have larger, unforeseen consequences.

An even clearer example is the Trump ...Read more

When you consider all the damnable behavior that congressional Republicans have meekly accepted from President Donald Trump — his frequent and blatant constitutional violations, his deranged cabinet appointments, his reckless dismantling of much of the federal government, and most of all what should have been the permanently disqualifying ...Read more

In their classic book “This time is different: Eight hundred years of financial folly,” Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart found that over the centuries, a high public debt level has been among the most reliable indicators of future financial crises.

It is a pity that Rogoff and Reinhart’s findings seem to have escaped President Donald ...Read more

Green energy advocates insist that Nevada can be a leader in the field given its natural resources and copious sunshine. But that would require the development of those resources — something many of those same green activists aren’t prepared to abide by.

The U.S. Geological Survey in May concluded that geothermal energy in Nevada’s Great ...Read more

The phrase “there are two Americas” has many meanings. It can mean that there are two justice systems: one for the rich and one for the poor. It can mean right and left. Rural and urban. Ketchup and … the right way to eat a hot dog.

When it comes to taxes and spending, state leaders often split into two camps, too — one that talks about...Read more

With Coldplaygate on track to become one of the most viral moments of the year, you would think this is the first time in history that a CEO has gotten busted for having what certainly seems to be an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate.

Well, let me tell you — this is far from the truth. As someone who covers corporate America, CEOs...Read more

Information, in the second Trump administration, is a currency of power and fear. Last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced sweeping subpoenas targeting physicians and medical providers who offer care for transgender youth. The aim is not to initiate prosecutions: Indeed, the legal theories upon which such prosecutions might rest are ...Read more

If you’re a reader, and you’re on Instagram, chances are the algorithm has fed you posts promising that “this book will change your life” or touting “five books that made me successful.” These claims are compelling. They make me pause and ask a deeper question: Are self-help books really helping us?

I’ll say this up front: One ...Read more

In the early 1900s, the U.S. Bureau of Immigration created a special “Chinese Division” to enforce the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which was the first major U.S. immigration law to ban entry based on race and nationality. Federal agents were sent to Mexican border towns and tasked with secretly photographing, tracking and cataloging ...Read more

In these days when it seems like the current administration couldn't organize a utensil drawer, what with a military parade witnessed by empty bleachers and immigrant dragnets snaring American citizens and such, it seems like it would be a shock to find a government function that, you know, actually works.

I found it.

On June 14, I applied to ...Read more

Believe it or not, France has had a form of social security since the 1600s, and its modern system began in earnest in 1910, when the world's life expectancy was just 32 years old. Today the average human makes it to 75 and for the French, it's 83, among the highest in Europe.

Great news for French people, bad news for their pensions.

Because ...Read more