The tragic news out of central Texas has been heartbreaking, but it’s also been maddening — because so many lives could have been saved if elected officials had done their jobs. They owe the families who lost loved ones — the death toll from the Fourth of July floods is now at more than 100 — more than thoughts and prayers. They owe them...Read more

As the Trump administration dismantles federal environmental protections and strips the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of its capacity to do its job, local governments are emerging as frontline defenders against dangerous and unchecked pollution.

On Chicago’s southeast side, where I live, our parks, schools and homes are surrounded by ...Read more

The list of executions is a stunner.

B.A. in French — dead, or in Hoosier political-ease, “Suspend (with Teach-Out toward Elimination)/Written Commitment to Merge/Consolidate the Program before AY26-27.”

B.A. in Art History — dead. B.A. in Italian — dead. M.A. in Japanese — dead. M.A. in Theater and Drama — dead. M.A. in Chinese ...Read more

Rep. Robert Garcia's relatives, many of Peruvian decent, have been asking him recently if they need to carry identification with them, as federal agents seemingly round up brown people at will.

His answer? Yes, but don't let fear quell resistance.

"What's happening right now with the terror of seeing masked men with rifles running into ...Read more

The Trump administration’s attack on higher education is both wide-ranging and carefully targeted at certain institutions. It has included, figuratively speaking, cluster bombs and surgical strikes.

The ordinary human impulse when under assault is to flee or to hide. The more noble response, however, is to stand up and confront one’s ...Read more

Imagine you can’t breathe. Panic sparks through your body like an electric current. And every second hurts more than the last. That’s what death looks like for rainbow trout and countless other fish slaughtered by air asphyxiation, a practice still common around the globe.

New research published in Scientific Reports establishes that fish ...Read more

In a lengthy ruling last week D.C. Federal Judge Randolph Moss struck down the Trump administration’s near total ban on asylum under the specious argument that the country was under invasion.

It is almost embarrassing for our federal court system that a judge even had to make this determination, in the same way that it would be humiliating ...Read more

Forget the doomsday predictions about what President Donald Trump’s cuts might do — his “Big Beautiful Bill” has already notched its first major casualty: Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican.

Tillis, who couldn’t support a bill that would kick an estimated 660,000 North Carolinians off Medicaid, told reporters: “I respect ...Read more

“Why am I learning AI if it’s going to eventually take my job?” one of my students asked me at the end of the school year.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I wonder the same thing about mine.”

Students are off for the summer, but Big Tech is working hard pitching its brand to schools, marketing its products to students as “homework ...Read more

When a student turns in a writing assignment done at home and it’s clear parts of the finished piece don’t represent the kind of work the student usually does in the classroom, should the teacher grade it anyway?

This is the dilemma educators face now as our youngest generations grow up in a world of artificial intelligence. Students look ...Read more

California is a state of contradictions. We lead the nation in environmental regulation, tout our clean energy goals with pride and champion a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. Yet despite this green image, our economy — and daily life — still very much run on oil and gas.

Fossil fuels account for roughly 8% of California’s $3 ...Read more

One of the biggest spending items in the Republican budget bill has hardly gotten any attention: $170 billion for an unprecedented crackdown on immigration. By some calculations, it would make the annual budget of Immigration and Customs Enforcement larger than Israel’s entire defense budget.

The supplemental funds — to be spent over the ...Read more

The wisest among us realize that what we normally think of as opposites are also associates. There’s life and death, joy and pain, fulfillment and absence. And, as Charlie Chaplin understood, and helped millions to understand, comedy and tragedy.

Cinema was about a quarter of a century old when Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush” premiered June ...Read more

Whether U.S. bombers recently “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capability (President Donald Trump’s preferred wording) or “severely damaged” it (per the CIA) matters so much to Trump that he’s threatened to sue news outlets reporting the CIA’s terminology.

The common presidential desire to shape the narrative has been especially ...Read more

The Trump administration has accomplished something that Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and other dictators desired. It destroyed the Voice of America.

Until mid-March, VOA had been on the air continuously for 83 years. Starting in 1942 with shortwave broadcasts in German to counter Nazi propaganda, America’s external voice had expanded to nearly 50 ...Read more

Within the hearts and faces of the Class of 2025 is a mixture of anticipation and apprehension—on the edge of a world that is, by turns, irreverent and weary, defiant and desperate for something more. These are not gentle times. Our society, economy, and politics all feel stretched and fraying, sometimes broken. But that, my friends, is ...Read more

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was appointed secretary of health and human services, everyone knew he was capable of doing great damage. He had a long history of indulging conspiracy theories, particularly when it came to vaccines.

Already, his attempt to reassess immunization schedules in the U.S. has outraged pediatricians. But his latest ...Read more

Illinois is down young people — by a lot.

To put it bluntly, our pipeline is drying up. We’ve lost than 185,000 people ages 18 and younger compared with 2020, a 6% decrease. Cook County lost the bulk of these youngsters, with its 18-and-under population decline accounting for over half of the state’s total.

Meanwhile, the retiree ...Read more

Many legal commentators apparently believe that, in the term that just ended, the Supreme Court further enabled President Donald Trump. The court did, in fact, issue a series of conservative decisions that Trump likes. However, under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts, the court also simultaneously pursued a careful strategy aimed at ...Read more

In one of the most memorable scenes in “Pulp Fiction,” a film replete with memorable scenes, a Los Angeles gangster, Marsellus Wallace, turns the tables on a man who has kidnapped and abused him. He’s going to get a couple of friends to go to work on his assailant “with a pair of pliers and a blow torch,” he says, and ensure that he ...Read more