President Donald Trump’s Secret Service detail has one job: protect the president. Yet even after a 2024 assassination attempt in which then-candidate Trump was shot in the ear while campaigning in Butler, Pennsylvania, there are appalling lapses in security.

In September, the president went to dinner with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, ...Read more

“The difference between a politician and a statesman,” said James Freeman Clarke, a 19th century American theologian and writer, “is that the politician thinks about the next election while the statesman thinks about the next generation.”

Nancy Pelosi, a Democratic congresswoman from California and former speaker of the U.S. House of ...Read more

Artificial intelligence is already impacting the criminal justice system, and its importance is increasing rapidly. From automated report writing to facial recognition technology, AI tools are already shaping decisions that affect liberty, safety, and trust. The question is not whether these technologies will be used, but how—and under what ...Read more

America’s education system is in historic decline. According to the latest report card on 12th graders, students finishing high school have fewer skills and less knowledge in core academics than their predecessors a decade ago.

The learning losses revealed in that report, September’s National Assessment of Educational Progress, show that ...Read more

Like many people over 60 and thinking seriously about retirement, I’ve been paying closer attention to Social Security, and recent changes have made me concerned.

Since its creation during the Great Depression, Social Security has been one of the most successful federal programs in U.S. history. It has survived wars, recessions, demographic ...Read more

In recent years, a handful of deep-blue states have aggressively tried to offer “free” health care to those in the country illegally only to develop alligator arms when the check arrived. Go figure.

In Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has proposed ending the Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults (notice the word “illegal” is nowhere to be ...Read more

Amelia Miller has an unusual business card. When I saw the title of “Human-AI Relationship Coach” at a recent technology event, I presumed she was capitalizing on the rise of chatbot romances to make those strange bonds stronger.

It turned out the opposite was true. Artificial intelligence tools were subtly manipulating people and ...Read more

Two centuries ago, gentlemen routinely carried swords or pistols to protect themselves, their families and their property. On the unlit dirt backroads of England or colonial America, armed highwaymen like Dick Turpin could demand “your money or your life!” without warning.

There was no 911. No local law enforcement or highway patrol on the ...Read more

The unprecedented turmoil at the top U.S. health agencies, under the leadership of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is sure to have a long-term impact on the well-being of Americans. Although Kennedy’s mantra has been to “Make America Healthy Again,” the most visible changes he and his allies have made within the ...Read more

Here's a quick quiz about some cultural icons on the verge of experiencing a kind of rebirth:

1. What was the original storyline of the Dagwood and Blondie comics?

2. What was Blondie's maiden name?

3. In her original incarnation, what animal was Betty Boop?

Those characters all date from 1930, which means that on New Year's Day 2026 they ...Read more

In one of its most consequential rulings of the year, just before breaking for the holidays last week the Supreme Court held that President Donald Trump acted improperly in federalizing the National Guard in Illinois and in activating troops across the state. Although the case centered on the administration’s deployments in Chicago, the court�...Read more

For President Donald Trump’s supporters, 2025 has been a year of transformation. For his opponents, it’s been nothing short of a long nightmare. The holiday season is a perfect time to look back, reflect and remember the consequential moments of the past year.

As human beings, we generally fixate on the negative. Indeed, there are a ton of ...Read more

Fifteen months ago, this page warned that Illinois faced likely electricity shortages in the next few years if Gov. JB Pritzker’s landmark Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, passed in 2021, wasn’t made more flexible to allow existing natural gas-fired power plants to run past the law’s closure deadlines.

Since then, Illinoisans have watched ...Read more

Millions of families just survived the longest shutdown in U.S. history. Now they’re bracing again as politicians turn food assistance into a bargaining chip.

Food assistance should not be subject to politics, yet the Trump administration is now requiring over 20 Democratic-led states to share sensitive SNAP recipient data—including Social ...Read more

In a society that treasures and protects free speech, it’s important to focus a spotlight on people who were hunted down because their ideas were too dangerous or offended too many people.

These names are threaded through the history of this nation, and of Florida as well. Teaching schoolchildren and reminding everyone of their importance is ...Read more

So much climate news comes out in any given week that it can be hard to keep up with it all. Much is gloomy, but there are positive developments all the time — so many, in fact, that it’s easy to miss some of the things that have been happening.

For the past few years, I’ve been compiling year-end lists of the more neglected good and bad...Read more

It was a year when the ground finally started to shift under our feet. So much felt uncertain in 2025—politics, weather, the pace of the world itself—but one thing became beautifully, unmistakably clear: Compassion is reshaping the way scientists conduct experiments and how we eat, dress and live in other ways. For animals, it was a year of ...Read more

This is a column about lies. Big lies. Presidential lies. Dumb lies. The type of lies that have made life in the United States a daily dumpster fire of bad news. The kind of lies that would've made Frank Sinatra want to knock out a palooka.

More on Ol' Blue Eyes in a bit.

For now let me tell you about one victim of President Donald Trump's ...Read more

It was hard to know what to believe this year. In the old days, there were conspiracies about the moon landing. These days, it feels like there’s a conspiracy about everything — that the truth is up for grabs, alongside crusty government datasets.

Some people chose to verify what they heard with multiple sources, including legacy media. ...Read more

I know boats. Catamarans where water laps at your legs. Fishing boats with bright colors and splintered seats. Even though I grew up in the heart of Silicon Valley in San José, California, I come from a line of Venezuelans who were fed by the ocean. And, like all the fishermen before him, my father’s sunworn skin smelled of salt.

My father ...Read more