ArcaMax

SAN DIEGO -- Once the Trump administration started attacking Venezuelan drug boats that appeared to be traveling to the United States, it was inevitable that Americans would be pulled back into a conversation about the much-ballyhooed War on Drugs. Just as it was predictable that, once we were enmeshed in that dialogue, we'd lose our bearings ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- All Americans want for Christmas is for things to cost less. Is that asking too much?

It is if they're making the "ask" of President Donald Trump. When it comes to fulfilling his 2024 campaign promise to be the "affordability president," he is way out of his depth. How is Trump supposed to battle inflation if he doesn't even ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- You have to hand it to President Donald Trump. His brutally racist comments about Somali immigrants managed to alarm and terrorize a group of people who -- having survived warlords, famine, and marauding gangs -- don't scare easily.

Some former U.S. presidents might have aspired to emulate George Washington, Abraham Lincoln or ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- It's been less than a week since the tragic shooting of two West Virginia National Guard soldiers by an Afghan refugee in Washington D.C. and already many Americans are pretty far down the road in terms of casting blame and discerning motive.

We're even starting to debate what would be historic and radical changes to our asylum ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- With all due respect to baseball, the real national pastime is complaining.

Oblivious to how soft and comfortable our lives are compared to those of millions of other people around the world, Americans love to gripe. Whether it's harvest time or not, we make "whine" year-round.

We complain about the weather in the places we ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- Democrats take Latino voters for granted. But Republicans must take us for fools.

Burned by both parties, U.S. Latinos are political nomads who don't feel like we can let our guard down in our own country. In this land of the free, we're in a kind of psychological prison.

Oh, one more thing: We're really pissed off.

If you ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- My father's love affair with policing was sparked decades ago by a children's book that featured a cat stuck in a tree.

The book was part of a series that was popular in the 1950s. The main characters were two children named Dick and Jane, and they had two pets: a dog and a cat. One day, the cat climbs up a tree. A friendly ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- I love the smell of vindication in the morning. I'm getting a strong whiff now that at least some conservatives are finally acknowledging something I've tried to get them to confront for years: Anti-Semitism is alive and well within the Republican Party.

As a Mexican American who is horrified by ethnocentric immigration raids, I ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- This Thanksgiving dinner, Vice President JD Vance might need a taste tester.

The Yale Law School graduate has for years benefited from the assumption that he's a smart cookie. Yet Vance has a knack for saying dumb things, and that's when the public image begins to crumble.

Last month, when Politico published hundreds of racist ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- With elections, as with individuals, appearances can be deceiving.

At first glance, Election Day 2025 appeared to be small and inconsequential. The national media were focused on a literal handful of races in this off-year election, and the coverage wrapped up early given that most of those electoral contests were on the East ...Read more