I realized a famous true crime story was a part of my family history more than two decades ago, when I discovered my mom’s name in a book. In my parents’ bedroom combing through their bookshelf, my eyes stopped on a peculiar title, “Killer Clown.”

I’m not sure why I paused. The title was strange; unless it was some Stephen King novel,...Read more

Americans are exhausted—by our divisions, our politics, and a media landscape that thrives on tearing us apart. When asked to envision our ideal future, Americans say they want to connect and be united. But how do we get there?

Perhaps, I'm simply invoking my Midwestern roots here, but I believe most Americans not only want to know their ...Read more

Are foreign tourists still welcome in President Donald Trump’s America? I’m starting to wonder after several cases of international visitors being detained for long periods in questionable circumstances. If this rough treatment continues, it won’t just be travelers who suffer.

While the U.S. has a duty to protect its borders and enforce ...Read more

It has been a rough week for national security adviser Mike Waltz, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the rest of the Trump administration’s national security team. The so-called Signalgate catastrophe, in which Waltz organized a top-secret chat on the Signal messenger application about pending U.S. airstrikes against the Houthis in Yemen, ...Read more

The 2024 film, “Anora,” about a young woman victimized by sex trafficking, recently won five Oscars at the Academy Awards. Perhaps, it is a signal of more awareness and less stigma surrounding the pervasiveness of domestic violence at all levels of society.

The ongoing lawsuits between actors Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni claiming sexual ...Read more

The DOGE-damners on Capitol Hill are going to hate Elon Musk’s latest target: Congressional wallets.

Speaking at a town hall in Wisconsin Sunday night, Elon Musk suggested that his Department of Government Efficiency will investigate how certain members of Congress got “strangely wealthy” despite their comparatively modest public salaries...Read more

There is no honor in kicking a man when he’s down — or a political party, for that matter.

Yet that’s exactly what Gov. Gavin Newsom did Friday when he appeared as a guest on Bill Maher’s “Real Time” talk show.

Newsom branded the Democratic Party “toxic,” which seems like a weird way to go after the Democratic presidential ...Read more

Should Catholic Charities be exempt from paying state unemployment taxes because it has a religious purpose?

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the issue Monday, and the odds look good that the court will grant the exemption. But the way it does so matters. A narrow ruling would protect the general principle that religious organizations ...Read more

President Trump’s executive order seeking to impose federal oversight on state-run elections is not needed and is not legal. And tasking Elon Musk’s incompetent DOGE team makes it even worse. Voter fraud and multiple votes by the same person in a single election is a largely nonexistent bogeyman of Trump’s. Voting by people who are not U.S...Read more

If you've driven on the freeway in recent years, been to the grocery store, attended a movie or a live performance — heck, if you've been at all sentient — the findings of a new poll will startle you about as much as the sun rising at dawn and setting at dusk.

America has gotten ruder.

At least, that's how a plurality of Americans perceive...Read more

On March 12, French artists, DJs, and musicians united to fight the threat of the far-right government in France that they felt was a threat to democracy in their country.

More than 1,200 artists, DJs, and promoters from the French music industry came together to galvanize “the world of the night” into political action and to protest the ...Read more

Of all the things Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is trying to do in Washington, putting the squeeze on government contractors is generating the least popular backlash. There’s a widespread and seemingly bipartisan belief that, as tech entrepreneur and Obama administration veteran Josh Miller put it on X a few weeks ago, “...Read more

Anyone who has been fired, or knows someone who has, must be shocked at the callousness of Elon Musk talking about taking a “chain saw” to agencies and Russell Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget, saying he wants government employees to be “traumatically affected” and “viewed as villains.” Making trauma for government...Read more

Attention, please!

We are losing the liberty of controlling our own minds. And education must be restructured to meet this challenge.

The corporations that define our economy are manipulating and harvesting our individual focus in unprecedented ways. This is “attention capitalism,” and authors Chris Hayes and Jonathan Haidt have each ...Read more

Some years back, I fired off a forgettable social media post referencing the “three co-equal branches” of government. A friend — a smart journalist steeped in American political history — responded with a gentle correction reminding me that Congress was the “supreme branch,” befitting its Article I status in the United States ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The Trump administration’s screwup texting about military attack plans while using an unsecured app instantly reminded me of a phone call I made when Ronald Reagan was president.

The anecdote illustrates the contrast in competence and grasp of real world dangers between Reagan’s team and Trump’s toadies — and ...Read more

In a moment defined by fracture and division, a surprising development has emerged in America's religious landscape. The decades-long decline of Christianity is leveling off.

According to new research from the Pew Research Center, the share of Americans identifying as Christian has stabilized at around 62% — a dramatic shift from previous ...Read more

About 63% of U.S. public school students now have the freedom to choose not to dissect animals, according to data published in the journal The American Biology Teacher. Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia have passed dissection-choice laws, which give young learners the ability to complete a similar assignment using a modern, ...Read more

President Donald Trump likes superlatives: He often asserts that everything—the economy, the military, his ratings—is better, bigger and stronger than ever before. Everything is at levels no one’s ever seen. That’s what everyone is saying.

It’s certainly true for presidential impeachments. The United States had experienced only two of...Read more

By now, most newspaper readers know the basics: Somehow, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and a dozen other high-ranking officials were chatting on ...Read more