ArcaMax

From a young age, I enjoyed playing around with gender roles, but it wasn't until later in my adolescence that I started to have more complex thoughts about my gender identity. What I discovered, both in my childhood and later in my development, was that a lot of trans folks have similarly nonlinear approaches, or nonlinear journeys, to their ...Read more

In an interview taped Wednesday for Megyn Kelly's radio show, Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth said Trump told him he wanted a "warfighter" who would clean out the "woke crap."

What "woke crap"?

The "woke crap" that allows some 15,000 qualified transgender service members -- the best estimate I could find -- to risk their lives for ...Read more

As Democrats survey their recent losses in the election, they should avoid drawing conclusions or floating prescriptions for fixing their party's problems. First, they should absorb the biggest data point that is currently being ignored by both the progressive and the corporatist wings of the party: They haven't really won a presidential ...Read more

The trait most broadly shared by Donald Trump's nominees to top Cabinet posts is an utter lack of fitness for their prospective jobs. Most appear to be afflicted with negative attributes that would automatically disqualify them not only from these highly sensitive government positions but even from much less senior jobs in any normal ...Read more

En route to visit family in South Texas for Thanksgiving, we stopped in San Antonio to enjoy the riverwalk and take our 9-year-old son to the Alamo. Most kids in America learn the story of the Alamo in history class at some point. If you're a student in Texas, the state is really particular about how that 1836 battle at the old Spanish Mission (...Read more

When I was a high school kid in Missouri, around 1972 or so, there were people in our town who used the word "foreigner" to refer to anyone who spoke English with an accent or spoke no English at all. Some older people would say someone was "speaking foreign" if they spoke a language other than English.

Neither thing was necessarily meant as ...Read more

"Some may seek to deny or delay the clean energy revolution that's underway in America, but nobody -- nobody -- can reverse it. Nobody. Not when so many people, regardless of party or politics, are enjoying its benefits." Still-President Joe Biden said that on a recent visit to Brazil.

His administration's Inflation Reduction Act, for example...Read more

Of course he pardoned his son. Joe Biden had already lost one son, as well as his wife and his daughter. He lost his ability to seek reelection, and then Democrats lost the election, for which he was roundly blamed. His son was facing prison time, a disaster for former addicts; as former President Bill Clinton put it, there was "reason to ...Read more

My father and I, discouraged at the election over the holiday, opened a book of poetry I brought along to the house.

Somewhere we traveled was back in time to John F. Kennedy's inauguration on a bright snowy day on Jan. 20, 1961.

Almost unbelievably, Kennedy asked New England poet Robert Frost to compose and read an original poem for the ...Read more

Social media has been lighting up like fireworks, with myriad Trump voters exclaiming, "I didn't know he meant me!" For example, many MAGA cheerleaders are now shocked to learn that his rallying cry to eliminate "Obamacare" means killing the popular Affordable Care Act that provides their health coverage!

Perhaps the most stunned, though, are...Read more

The word that Palestinians use for the 1948 displacement of many of their forebears is "Nakba," Arabic for "catastrophe." That displacement, of course, was a self-inflicted catastrophe, but also one that Arab leaders inflicted on the rest of the world, which has paid a heavy price for it. It was the proximate result of the decision by Arab ...Read more

Working-class voters put Donald Trump over the top, thinking he would look out for their interests. How does the administration he's putting together look for them?

Not great.

Roman emperors maintained control over the populace by giving them "bread and circuses" -- free bread and lavish entertainment to distract them. Trump appears to be ...Read more

The opioid epidemic has gripped communities for more than 20 years. From 1999 to 2022, nearly 727,000 people died from an overdose involving prescription or illicit opioids.

Litigation has dramatically changed the substance-use disorder policy landscape, and today, more than $50 billion in opioid settlements from pharmaceutical companies, ...Read more

We face so many challenges that the task of choosing which ones to emphasize and which can be edited out for the sake of brevity is nearly impossible. So many injustices afflict our fellow human beings that, of those that make the shortlist to be attacked and redressed, determining an order of priority is best left unattempted even by -- ...Read more

My wife and I just bought a house. The house we sold is in a city, just a three-minute drive from District Court. If you beat the murder rap, you can walk to my house in about 20 minutes. There's a methadone clinic a 10-minute walk away, too. Many clients of the court are also customers at the methadone clinic. We live in between the two. It's...Read more