Last year, it suddenly fell to me to manage the affairs of a couple of ailing and now deceased elderly people (my parents-in-law). As anyone who has been through this ordeal knows, it involves spending lots and lots of time on the phone and online communicating with banks, insurers, medical billing departments and other service providers.

The ...Read more

Less than a month into Donald Trump’s second term, a case involving his extreme claims of presidential power has already made it to the Supreme Court. It raises a question of profound importance: Can the president fire anyone who works in the executive branch even when a law limits his power to do so?

To side with Trump and grant him that ...Read more

With anti-U.S. rallies on the streets and the star-spangled banner in flames, Panama hasn’t taken well to President Donald Trump’s vow to repossess its famous canal.

Since Trump’s surprising proclamation, Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino has been doing a delicate balancing act, trying to appease the new U.S. administration while ...Read more

President Donald Trump’s assault on the federal government, the rule of law, and the Constitution is playing out in plain sight. Fortunately, some lawmakers, judges, and citizens are fighting back, but more must be done if Americans want to keep the republic.

Some scholars said Trump’s destructive conduct has already created a ...Read more

To the outside world, Isabel is a thriving professional in her early 30s. But each morning, she wakes up with a racing heart and an overwhelming sense of dread. Before heading off to work, she is gripped by a paralyzing panic. The fear has never truly faded. It lingers, an invisible weight pressing down on her chest.

“I’ve felt this way ...Read more

Monitoring shipping traffic in Puget Sound. Maintaining the Navy's submarine force. Preventing power outages throughout the Pacific Northwest.

These imperatives rely on highly trained professionals based in Washington state. And, as federal government employees, all have been thrown into chaos and uncertainty, thanks to President Donald Trump's...Read more

The good of diversity must not be jettisoned from the workplace or eliminated from core American values in one sweeping move.

The recent executive order eliminates initiatives “including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal ...Read more

When drastic disruptions bring new political leaders, policymakers respond with major changes. We’re living in such a time, even if it’s not clear how much a pandemic, rampant inflation, international strife, and other events of the last half-decade contributed to the returning president’s government shake-up.

Properly executed, changes ...Read more

Dry January may already be a distant memory, but the problems for big booze are far from receding.

The U.S. surgeon general’s advisory on the link between alcohol and cancer, the rise of weight-loss drugs that can dampen demand for a drink, young people preferring the gym to a gin, and now the prospect of tariffs have left brewers and ...Read more

The opening month of the second Trump administration has been marked by incredible speed and progress, especially toward their goal of scaling back the bloat of the federal government. The pace has left an out-of-power Democratic Party reeling. Rather than propose their own spending cuts, most Democrats have decided to oppose reflexively ...Read more

Here’s the most important yet overlooked fact about the Justice Department prosecutors who resigned rather than drop charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams: The Trump administration could have avoided the whole debacle with the stroke of a pen.

Had the president simply pardoned Adams the way he pardoned 1,600 Jan. 6 rioters, public ...Read more

The analysis and parsing of learned lessons from the 2024 elections will continue for a long time. What did the campaigns do right and wrong? What policies will emerge from the new arrangements of power? What do the parties need to do for the future?

An equally important question is what lessons are there for our democratic structures and ...Read more

“Rule of Law.” I remember my first in-depth conversation about the phrase while working in Latin America—which says a lot since I took that job immediately AFTER law school.

The concept is, of course, integral to the U.S. Constitution, our founding documents, and our ideals—but I’d simply not heard the phrase, “rule of law”, used ...Read more

Before President Donald Trump, the most high-profile call to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico came from Stephen Colbert, who joked on his Comedy Central show in 2010 that the body of water should be referred to as the Gulf of America in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill because "we broke it, we bought it."

Almost 15 years later, ...Read more

Even as Hamas releases hostages and temporarily lays down its weapons, leaders of the terror group continue to make clear their intentions: No matter what happens in the Middle East, they will continue to attack Israel and to indiscriminately kill Jews in their maniacal effort to eliminate the Jewish state.

It is with this reality as a backdrop...Read more

The Palisades and Eaton fires represent thousands of personal tragedies, but they also constitute a collective disaster, adding new housing shortages to California’s already massive shortfall — a catastrophe that stems not from acts of nature but from human policy blunders.

Gov. Gavin Newsom bought a new $9 million house in November, but ...Read more

Jan. 21 marks the 15th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, a decision that opened the floodgates for unlimited corporate spending in elections. Since that ruling, super PACs and outside spending have skyrocketed and the voices of everyday voters have been drowned out by wealthy donors and corporate interests. The impact ...Read more

SAN FRANCISCO — In all of California, there may be no better political launching pad than the office of attorney general.

As the state's top cop as well as its chief consumer advocate, the attorney general resides in an electoral sweet spot; California voters tend to be tough on crime and jealous of their civil protections.

Several who've ...Read more

It wasn’t until after Martin Niemöller, a Lutheran pastor, ended up in a Nazi concentration camp that he realized he should have done more to help Hitler’s victims. He saw what was happening but he never thought they’d come for him.

Of course, they eventually did. And that’s what Americans need to understand about what’s happening ...Read more