The swamp may not be drained, but it’s shrinking.

In September, the federal government employed 2.68 million people. That number includes Postal Service employees, but not members of the military. It’s a noticeable decline from the start of President Donald Trump’s second term. In January 2025, the federal government employed more than 3 ...Read more

I recently went diving off Kawaihae on Hawaii’s Big Island. The water was bathtub warm, about 85 degrees, with an impressive 80 feet of visibility which meant you could see how little of the reef ecosystem was left. The coral was dead, just a few shoaling fish moving through the rocky structures that remained. It wasn’t my first encounter ...Read more

Last month, the annual day celebrating U.S. citizenship came amid deep challenges for our democracy. The Trump administration has launched an all-out assault on the right to vote, threatening to pass into law new challenges to voter registration that wouldn’t just make it harder for most Americans to make their voices heard, but outright strip...Read more

The Pentagon’s abrupt withdrawal of a dozen long-range B-1 bombers from a British airbase raises a host of troubling questions. Vice President J.D. Vance said the move was made “out of an abundance of caution” after U.S. and British officials reportedly received warnings of a potential drone attack ordered by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary...Read more

Mayor Zohran Mamdani showed himself to be callow and immature by insulting the Jews of New York with his smearing of Israel even when he was memorializing the atrocity of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack that slaughtered more than 1,000 Israelis.

So deep is Mamdani’s revulsion towards for the state of Israel that even on the mournful ...Read more

In President Donald Trump’s latest attempt to bring private universities to heel through policy change in the tax code, the administration is threatening to revoke tax-exempt status from schools that offer targeted support to minority students. This move should have everyone who cares about education, public works, and charitable giving ...Read more

More than 50 years after her death, Helen Keller still turns up in artificial intelligence debates. The communication breakthroughs of the American writer, who was deaf and blind, are often cited as evidence that language is the best path to creating machines that are as intelligent as humans.

Despite loud early doubters, large language models ...Read more

Last summer I returned to Minnesota after 12 years working in Washington, D.C. I spent much of that time helping cities in North America and Europe build the relationships and civic capacity that allow democracy to endure stress and division.

I was far from the front lines of Minnesota's response to the federal immigration surge last winter. ...Read more

Christa Pike’s execution in Tennessee was a disaster waiting to happen. The warnings did not only come from her lawyers or opponents of the death penalty: Doctors in Tennessee and Republican state senators called for the state to pause executions, because the chances of one going catastrophically wrong were so high.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee ...Read more

Less than half of Americans expect this November’s midterm election to be free and fair. According to a survey from the University of California San Diego, confidence is falling among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike.

The data is disconcerting, but it also points to an important opportunity. When trust is fraying, we have a ...Read more

Every October, Domestic Violence Awareness Month reminds Americans of a grim reality: Millions of people live with abuse at the hands of an intimate partner.

With such an urgent need to help survivors, it’s fair to ask why the U.S. military is wasting more than $5 million on an experiment in Canada that includes strangulation-like procedures ...Read more

Last month, New York City opened its first free 2-K classrooms. Roughly 2,000 two-year-olds got seats, the beginning of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s push for universal childcare.

More than 5,700 applied for those first 2,000 seats, which gives some sense of the demand. Childcare has become unaffordable for too many parents, and New York is doing ...Read more

It’s been three years since Hamas terrorists breached Israel’s border and launched a savage assault, killing, burning, kidnapping and raping innocent men, women and children.

The massacre on Oct. 7, 2023 and ensuing war can be chalked up by Hamas as a PR win, thanks to their allies on the American left.

The terrorist group was nothing if ...Read more

With Election Day less than a month away, voters should look beyond campaign slogans and ask what the policies on the ballot would mean for families who built their lives around work, homeownership, savings and the hope that their children can do better.

A growing socialist movement promises to make life fairer by putting more of the economy ...Read more

Oct. 7 was a brutal, savage sneak terror attack by Hamas in which they raped, kidnapped and murdered Israeli civilians in their homes, in their beds, at a music festival, wherever they could be found, in the worst day of slaughter of Jews since Hitler’s Holocaust. That’s what Oct. 7 is and that always must be remembered as the world marks ...Read more

My maternal grandmother, Marcela Miranda, was born in Arizona's copper country in 1914 and lived in the United States until she was about 7.

She was part of a generation whose parents were from the rancho of El Cargadero, Zacatecas, and started families in el Norte while waiting out the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s and the Cristero Revolt in...Read more

Let’s pretend for a moment you’re a Republican running for governor in the blue, blue state of California.

Your prospect of winning is small. So small, you could peer through a microscope, blink and miss it. How, then do you draw voters to your candidacy and boost your chances?

Actually, let’s not pretend. A very real flesh-and-blood ...Read more

Dilapidated artwork says a lot about a society. Restoring it can breathe fresh life into a culture. A timely case in point: the Christopher Columbus fountain in front of Union Station in Washington, D.C.

It’s a reminder of our history and of our connection to the old world. Yet it was left to ruin for nearly 20 years. The water didn’t flow,...Read more

For many students, the start of the fall semester means a new address. Whether it's a freshman-year dorm room or a sick (you decide the connotation here) off-campus apartment, your address can impact how and where you vote.

With midterms quickly approaching—no, we’re not just talking about your exams—checking your voter registration now ...Read more