Key members of Congress have seen with their own eyes how the U.S. military deliberately killed two men who survived a missile attack on their small boat.

What the video showed was either a war crime or simple murder. Whether that got through to the politicians depended largely on whether they were Democrats or Republicans.

America is supposed...Read more

On most days, the words “Donald Trump” and “strategy” don’t fit in the same sentence. Combined, they’re an oxymoron in the truest sense. After all, strategy denotes a well-thought-out plan with concrete goals, realistic ways of achieving those goals and a set of principles that serve as an anchor as the president goes about the job. ...Read more

Every year on Dec. 1, World AIDS Day isn't just a time to look back, but it’s a call to action.

This year, that call echoes louder than ever. Even as medicine advances and treatments improve, support from political leaders remains shaky. When the Trump administration threatened to roll back the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (...Read more

On the Sunday before Thanksgiving, a wealth manager named Michael Green published a Substack post arguing that a $140,000 income is the new poverty level for a family of four in America, where the official poverty line is $32,150.

The post promptly went viral.

One would hope that economic commentators coast-to-coast mentioned Green as their "...Read more

A terrible irony of dementia — which can result in the inability to recognize people and places — is that the condition itself does not get the worldwide recognition it deserves.

Until now.

The United Nations recently announced a plan to address major neurological disorders, such as dementia. This is particularly significant because many ...Read more

Nevada’s legislative Democrats have flirted with rent control as a means of addressing high housing costs. But their proposals have, thankfully, lacked sufficient support. Perhaps they should consider New York City’s predicament.

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani wants to bring sweeping changes to the Big Apple. One of his most popular proposals ...Read more

Frank McRae, a retiree who lives in Koreatown, did not hesitate when I asked what he'd say to President Donald Trump about his claim last week that the affordability crisis is a hoax.

"I would say, 'Mr. President, please travel with me … so that you can experience firsthand … what it means to have to search for affordable food,'" McRae said...Read more

For the latest bit of proof that President Donald Trump has lost his political mojo and that his era is one of political rot, look no further than the curious case of Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar, a Laredo Democrat.

Here’s the timeline: In 2022, just weeks before a competitive primary, federal agents raided Cuellar’s home and offices. ...Read more

ChatGPT and its peers have become the bane of teachers. Students churn out homework assignments with it and, according to one exasperated professor, secretly feed themselves smart comments for class discussions.

Far from helping kids think for themselves, today’s artificial intelligence tools offer an irresistible cognitive shortcut they’...Read more

If you’re a Republican, you can explain away the troubling results of last week’s special election in Tennessee’s Seventh Congressional District any way you want. But what about the dozens of other special elections in 2025 that saw your party underperform?

And that’s the problem for the GOP.

The 13-percentage-point shift toward the ...Read more

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t recommend perusing the annual National Security Strategy of the United States of America. It generally summarizes the foreign policy direction in which the current administration is headed, and makes for lengthy, dry reading.

But the new 33-page document is so shocking — even given what we already know about this ...Read more

Her brown face, green mantle and forgiving gaze is a mainstay of Southern California: In front yards. As murals. On decals flashing from car windows and bumpers. Sold at swap meets in the form of T-shirts, ponchos, statues, bags and so much more.

Tomorrow, it will be the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and She couldn't come soon enough. ...Read more

The confluence of two seemingly unrelated news events in recent days — the first one roiling Hollywood and media from coast to coast, the other playing out before the Supreme Court — was nothing short of uncanny.

And disturbing.

The first news was the one-two punch of Friday's bombshell that Netflix planned to swallow up Warner Bros. ...Read more

Everyone has a stake in keeping the unemployment rate low. A single percentage point increase in unemployment is tied to a jump in the poverty rate of about 0.4 to 0.7 percentage points. Higher rates of unemployment are likewise associated with an increase in rates of depression among the unemployed and, in some cases, reduced mental health ...Read more

I first met Frank O. Gehry, who died Dec. 5 at his California home, in November of 1982 when I was an undergraduate architecture student at the University of Virginia. He was known at the time for his own home in Santa Monica — a roller coaster of a design that slashed plywood, corrugated metal and chain link through the carcass of a modest ...Read more

On a recent French language immersion course in Nice, I got to know one of my classmates, an academic from Russia. On the final day of class, I gathered the courage to bring up the war between Russia and Ukraine.

This conflict is deeply personal for me. Though I am a Swedish American based in the U.S., my family originates from Lviv, Ukraine, ...Read more

Most Americans would be overjoyed if politicians and political activists would cool their rhetoric. Despite the claims of activists on both the left and right, all policy questions aren’t “life or death,” and those on the “other side” aren’t necessarily ignorant and evil.

Although political conflict is inevitable, we each have the ...Read more

Politicians and policy experts like to talk about the “root causes” of crime, homelessness, poverty, rising prices and other problems. If they want to understand the root cause of political polarization, they might want to consider the whole picture and look in the mirror.

In a book published 40 years ago, economist and political ...Read more

Military life is a family mission anchored in shared purpose, sacrifice, and service. Every deployment, relocation, and empty chair at the dinner table reflects not only the service member’s duty to the country, but also the family’s quiet endurance. Together, they live a calling few outside the military will ever fully understand.

That ...Read more

The Trump administration’s latest outrage is firing immigration judges and replacing them with military lawyers who lack experience in immigration law. The move combines two of President Donald Trump’s signature initiatives: It’s part of his war on immigrants and also part of his effort to make civil servants obey the administration’s ...Read more