"I'm not afraid."

With these three words Sunday morning, Pope Leo XIV offered as powerful a rebuke of President Donald Trump and everything he has wrought on the world as anyone ever has.

Three words that mocked Trump for being the bully that he is.

Three words that undercut Trump's self-hyped aura of invincibility.

Three words to inspire ...Read more

On Sunday night, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán conceded defeat in one of the most important elections I’ve ever witnessed. The right-wing strongman stepped down from power in Hungary after a rule of 16 years — years that spanned the adult lifetime of a generation of young people, who have now made their voice heard, through their ...Read more

Millions in the streets. An unpopular war. Violence. And in the middle of all that: a moonshot.

The parallels between today and 1968 are eerie.

Nearly 60 years ago, civil rights marches and anti-Vietnam-war rallies burst across the country. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. Police beat protesters outside the ...Read more

With no breakthrough between the U.S. and Iran in Islamabad this past weekend, President Donald Trump is reverting to his preferred tool: the U.S. military. Last week he vowed to keep American forces in the region at an elevated level and to restart shooting (“bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has ever seen before”).

Last ...Read more

The general consensus is that President Donald Trump's social media post of himself dressed in robes, after a busy weekend in which he blasted Pope Leo and attended a prizefight while an Iran peace plan fell apart, was an attempt to cast himself as a Jesus-like figure.

But Trump says we have it wrong.

"It's supposed to be me as a doctor, ...Read more

Vice President JD Vance and hundreds of expert-level U.S. officials arrived in Islamabad last weekend with a sliver of hope that a deal to end the nearly seven-week war in Iran could be hammered out. By the time they left on Sunday after 21 hours of negotiations, that hope had deflated. Vance, who never wanted the United States to wage a ...Read more

The Iran war, which is now likely to flare up again after talks in Islamabad between Washington and Tehran have failed, has been a humanitarian, economic and geopolitical disaster. One heuristic for grasping the scale of the strategic catastrophe is to look at America’s allies and adversaries worldwide and ask: Cui bono, who benefits? Cui malo...Read more

President Donald Trump has unleashed a diatribe against Pope Leo XIV on Truth Social that brings the simmering imbroglio between the two most powerful Americans in the world to a boil.

On one side, there’s the New York-born chief executive of the planet’s paramount military superpower. On the other, Chicago-born Robert Prevost, supreme ...Read more

When I was in grade school back in the 1800s, they fed us cheeseburgers extended to the frontiers of human palatability by hefty amounts of what some call “textured vegetable protein” but all the kids knew was soy. Nobody liked them. But Americans might start considering soy burgers this summer when they see what happens to the price of beef...Read more

Measles is back in the United States. More than 1,500 cases have already been reported in the first months of 2026, putting the country on pace to surpass last year’s total of more than 2,200, the highest number in decades. Public health officials warn that the nation’s status as “measles free” is now at risk as childhood vaccination ...Read more

It was midday just before Easter in Paris. My niece and I walked past the city's famous opera house, where tourists were relaxing on the wide steps. French soldiers armed with assault rifles strolled around, a comforting sight given the warnings about Iran-backed sleeper cells and potential retaliatory attacks. A busker with a guitar and a ...Read more

In January 1970, President Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Education Act, which framed the issue of environmental protection not only as a matter of regulation, but also of education. A year later, in his 1971 environmental message to Congress, Nixon emphasized that building a better environment would require “a citizenry that ...Read more

If you read the headlines, it’s easy to be discouraged about the American economy. If you follow the trend lines, it’s difficult not to be more optimistic.

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the Consumer Price Index was 3.3 percent in March. That was a 0.9 percentage point increase over the 2.4 percent inflation rate in...Read more

Across Los Angeles, you can feel the shift in dating without anyone saying it out loud.

Men talk about how hard it’s become to meet someone, while women talk about how peaceful life feels now on their own. The gap between those experiences is often framed as women asking for too much, but that explanation misses what’s actually changed. ...Read more

When the Taliban took Kabul in 2021, the world watched as Afghans clung to departing planes, hoping desperation might carry them to safety. We were among the lucky ones. We made it out.

At the time, I, Sediqa, held a leadership role at the International Rescue Committee (IRC), advancing women’s economic empowerment in one of the world’s ...Read more

Eric Swalwell's campaign for governor is over, whether he admits it or not.

For weeks, salacious talk swirled in campaign circles, ricocheted through email chains and was served up, like a buzzy side dish, over gossipy lunches from Sacramento to San Diego.

The talk revolved around the 45-year-old East Bay congressman, one of the top Democratic...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — There has never been a California governor’s race like this one. And that was even before the leading Democrat was shoved aside by shocking accusations of sexual assault.

For months, the contest has been unexciting and uninspiring. It really shouldn’t have been called a “race.” It was more like a slow trot. No ...Read more

From mobile home parks in Maine to modest apartments in California, seniors desperately need rent control to protect themselves against skyrocketing rents charged by predatory landlords. Our grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles, many of whom live on fixed incomes, face serious, life-altering consequences if politicians don’t protect them. ...Read more

Florida is dramatically — but quietly — changing the way immigration enforcement is practiced. The state’s Republican leaders have made it a testing ground for the aggressive immigration enforcement tactics championed by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

And although arrests have soared, the heavy-handed approach has had ...Read more

The Supreme Court is preparing to consider whether states and municipalities can pursue billions of dollars in damages from fossil-fuel companies over greenhouse gas emissions. Dozens of local governments argue that these firms misled the public about climate risks and should now pay for rising sea levels, wildfires and extreme weather.

Climate...Read more