Politics
/ArcaMax
Commentary: Donald Trump's war on Iran masks his support of Vladimir Putin
If there is a familiar refrain from the critics of President Donald Trump these days, it’s about his foreign policy excursions overwhelming his administration and preventing him from focusing on the economy and other domestic challenges, which register his approval rating at around 40%. Some of his MAGA loyalists are now questioning their 2024...Read more
Gene Collier: How's it lookin' for that Peace Prize again?
As the U.S. president continues his quest to spread peace throughout the world, even if we have to “keep bombing our little hearts out” and threatening imminent war crimes in the process, it’s a good time for an update on the Nobel Peace Prize, don’t you think?’
The Nobel, or “the Noble,” as Trump sometimes types it in his ...Read more
David M. Drucker: Joe Kent is a conspiracy theorist, not a principled dissenter
Joe Kent is a cautionary tale.
When Kent resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center to protest the Iran war, critics of the conflict — especially opponents of President Donald Trump — quickly cast the decorated military combat veteran as a principled dissenter. Superficially, that tracks. And yet those tracks are laid on ...Read more
Editorial: Democrats need a better affordability agenda
As midterm elections approach in November, voters have one thing on their minds: Life is too expensive. Democrats are wise to campaign on “affordability.” Unfortunately, many of their ideas are likely to make matters worse.
Most poll respondents now rank some variant of “high prices” as their top concern, with good reason. Inflation, ...Read more
Commentary: The lockout at BP's Whiting refinery is one that America cannot afford
BP, the British oil major, has locked out roughly 800 union workers at its Whiting, Indiana, refinery after contract talks with the United Steelworkers broke down. This is no local matter. Whiting is the eighth-largest refinery in the nation, the largest in the Midwest, and a critical supplier of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel to the American ...Read more
Gustavo Arellano: Why I'm not taking down my César Chávez photo
The framed photo of César Chávez and Dolores Huerta sits in my personal office on a bookshelf crammed with volumes about California and the American West.
The two are at a 1973 United Farm Workers convention, presiding over the union they co-founded. After years of victories in the name of campesinos, the group and its charismatic leaders ...Read more
Commentary: Antisemitism appears from the left and the right, but not equally
The attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, belongs to a terrifying new phase in the global surge in antisemitism that has shown its ugly face in recent months in the United States, Canada, Europe and of course at the massacre at Bondi Beach in Sydney last December. A much larger tragedy was prevented in Michigan by a mix of quick ...Read more
Commentary: Our digital lives have hidden costs
Every time we stream a movie, upload photos, send emails or ask artificial intelligence to answer a question, the action feels effortless. The internet appears weightless — floating somewhere in an invisible “cloud.”
But the cloud is not weightless at all.
Behind every digital activity lies a vast physical infrastructure of data centers,...Read more
Commentary: Americans are united against Trump's war
As it turns out, we aren’t quite so divided as a nation.
Again and again, surveys show that Americans agree that billionaires and corporations don’t need more tax breaks. We agree that we want quality, affordable health care, housing, child care and education. We agree that our children should not go hungry. We agree on equal rights for all...Read more
Commentary: Why I support AIPAC and a big tent Democratic Party
I am a proud Democrat, and I have always proudly supported Israel. And because I support Israel, I support the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, though my journey there has not been a straight line.
I was an AIPAC supporter from the late 1980s through 2017, when I stepped away over the organization’s opposition to President Barack ...Read more
Martin Schram: How to de-sabotage a presidency
From the moment Donald Trump began the first legacy-shaping lap of his 2.0 presidency, things started looking and feeling nothing like he wanted them to be.
Every day began feeling like a desperate uphill effort. Yet his polls kept tumbling downhill. So he began doing more of his usual things – bragging and making up whatever facts he needed ...Read more
Commentary: Being insured in America is not the same as having access to care
In April 2022, my mother-in-law, Karla, went for a routine physical therapy visit for carpal tunnel pain. The clinic was full and nearly turned her away. Only after she insisted that something felt wrong did a therapist send her to the emergency room.
A CT scan revealed a mass in her brain.
Karla was 50 years old. She was a first-generation ...Read more
Commentary: If you're going to debate gender, make better arguments
Femininity, we were told in 2025, is just as “toxic” as masculinity. Women — or perhaps, liberal feminism or maybe feminine vices — “ruined” the workplace. Then again, women were also recalcitrantly “leaning out” of the workplaces they had “culturally neutered.”
Last year was the SnackWell’s year of opining about gender in...Read more
Editorial: Sheridan Gorman was not in the wrong place at the wrong time. The system failed her
As we learn more about what led to the tragic shooting death of Loyola University freshman Sheridan Gorman, political agendas are threatening to subsume the grief we feel on her family’s behalf and what we can learn from all that preceded that fateful night to do a better job keeping Chicago safe.
News that a Venezuelan migrant, 25-year-old ...Read more
Editorial: The power of 'sunshine' vs. Pete Hegseth
No more fitting tribute exists of Sunshine Week, the annual tribute to open government, than a judge’s refusal to let Pete Hegseth manipulate the Pentagon press.
U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman said the policy he struck down favored journalists “willing to publish only stories that are favorable or spoon-fed” by Department of Defense ...Read more
Commentary: The Gulf states are between Iran and a hard place
On Saturday, President Donald Trump tossed a big, loud threat Iran’s way: If Iran doesn’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz in 48 hours, the United States will start bombing its nuclear power plants. But on Monday morning, as the deadline neared, Trump reversed course. The U.S. strikes, he wrote, are now off for a five-day period because U.S. and ...Read more
Adriana E. Ramírez: The SAVE Act is not about protecting the vote
President Donald J. Trump gathered Republican lawmakers in his Florida golf course on March 9, encouraging them to push the controversial SAVE Act through Congress. The proposed law requires “documentary proof of United States citizenship” to vote in federal elections, among other things.
“If you don’t get it, big trouble, my opinion,�...Read more
Editorial: There's no constitutional right to sodas paid for by SNAP
You should have to spend your own money to buy soda. Some people disagree.
This month, the National Center for Law and Economic Justice sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That agency runs the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is often called food stamps. The goal of SNAP is to help low-income Americans purchase food.
But ...Read more
Editorial: America's airport problems need to be fixed now
America cannot function with travelers stuck in security lines for three and four hours, as was reportedly the case Monday at several major U.S. airports, compounding the weekend problems and snarling the travel of business travelers and spring breakers alike.
Transportation Security Administration employees cannot be expected to go weeks or ...Read more
Aaron Brown: What we still don't know about private credit is troubling
What’s going on in the $3 trillion private credit sector? To understand, let’s start with a sampling of the recent news that’s put investors on edge:
•In February, Blue Owl Capital Inc. gated withdrawals from a retail credit vehicle, meaning investors who wanted their money back were told to wait. Then, it was forced to defend a sale of...Read more




















































