For quite a while now, someone has been living inside my computer, writing emails for me.

I don't recall signing up for this artificial intelligence feature, which is like having a word valet. It's in my phone, too, which offers three serviceable but impersonal responses I can fire off to someone who has just sent me an email pitching a story ...Read more

In one weekend, a series of ominous dots was laid out regarding the United States, Iran, and Russia. Once connected, the picture that forms is damning and chilling.

Russian President Vladimir Putin counted his winnings, America mourned its dead, and the U.S. president, astonishingly, shrugged it off as trivial.

Last Saturday morning President ...Read more

War is ugly.

So is hubris.

The next time President Donald Trump tells you how well the war is going, remember that U.S. missile strikes have killed more than 1,400 people in Iran, including 168 children who perished at an elementary school.

Remember, too, that the average price of gas in America has surged more than 65 cents a gallon in the ...Read more

Always beware the Why not? argument — especially when it comes to erecting barriers to voting in elections. In that case, the pertinent question should always be, Why?

There’s no good answer to the latter question regarding federal and Missouri state legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote.

Both the federal ...Read more

The MAHA base is bigger than you think. And the GOP is going to need all the support it can muster to survive what’s likely to be a bruising midterm.

Foughly four in 10 parents (38%) identify as supporters of the Make America Healthy Again movement, according to a KFF/Washington Post poll. I think this underestimates the movement’s ...Read more

My half-century as a journalist and two decades as an ocean advocate has taught me that democracy is not a guarantee of environmental protection for our public seas or people — it’s a prerequisite.

That’s why, in advance of what will be the third No Kings Day of mass protest against President Donald Trump’s increasingly authoritarian ...Read more

Not long ago, almost no one talked about the rules and culture of primary elections. Today, there is a growing recognition that the way we run primary elections isn’t working. They’re too partisan. Too low turnout. Too dominated by ideological activists. My organization, Open Primaries, has spent years pushing this conversation into the ...Read more

What do oil companies fear even more than cheaper and cleaner competition to their dirty fossil fuel business? A jury of American citizens.

In California and across the nation from Hawaii to Maine, a growing number of state and local governments are fighting in court to hold oil giants like Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell and BP accountable for ...Read more

In high school, I put useless trivia knowledge to work on the quiz bowl team. I wasn’t the fastest on the buzzer, but I learned quickly which names and facts came up repeatedly.

Grover Cleveland was one of those names.

He was the only president to serve nonconsecutive terms. Of course, this was before Donald Trump’s return to office.

...Read more

Education starts with the basics.

An educated person has core math skills — they can add, subtract, multiply and divide. With a solid education, a person can become a lifelong reader, or at least competently navigate the world and its written cues. A well-educated person can do these things and also think independently.

With their planned ...Read more

Few corporate cautionary tales are as vivid as the rise and fall of Moderna Inc. During the pandemic, the company’s mRNA vaccine was approved and distributed in record time, saving millions of lives and turning a once-obscure startup into a $200 billion behemoth.

Now Moderna is in a tight spot: Hundreds of millions of dollars in grants for ...Read more

One of my most longstanding and controversial opinions is that the move from defined-benefit pensions to defined-contribution pensions was a success. It’s an especially unpopular view amid stories of retirees who fall through the cracks and a grim market that is pruning many retirement accounts, if not retirement dreams.

Nevertheless, my ...Read more

I recently went to the doctor about a minor health issue. “Is what I’m experiencing normal?” I asked her. “No, it’s never normal,” she said, “but it happens to almost everybody.” I thought: That pretty much sums up the problem of national debt.

After all, it’s been normal for America to run up the federal deficit since the ...Read more

If you’re looking for the most elegant way to wrap up our “little excursion” in Iran, it’s this: President Donald Trump should follow what might politely be called the “declare victory and head for the airport” strategy.

You know the drill: Announce that we’ve set back Iran’s nuclear programs a decade, pounded their navy into ...Read more

If the Trump administration’s misguided tariff policy has proved anything, it’s that corporate America can afford to pay higher tax rates without the disruptions that Republican devotees of supply-side economics always say are inevitable. This is an important lesson as the warnings over the country’s elevated debt and federal budget ...Read more

Americans are struggling to save any money at all, let alone enough for major bills like tuition, a home or retirement. A new government initiative has the right objective but the wrong solution.

“Trump accounts,” created in last year’s reconciliation bill, will become available on July 4. The aim is to encourage families to accrue ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Ulises Menchaca idled in his pickup truck on a steep street in Silver Lake, late for work.

In front of him, activists were emerging from a tour bus to gather in front of the historic Paramour Estate.

Menchaca, a landscaper, had landed in the middle of a traffic jam sparked by Los Angeles' latest referendum on itself.

It was ...Read more

News broke earlier this week that Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks and a multibillionaire, is moving from his long-time home in Washington state to South Florida.

Schultz didn’t say the move was a response to Washington’s likely enactment soon of a 9.9% tax on income above $1 million, but the timing was hard to ignore. It’s become...Read more

As President Donald Trump’s administration wrestles with options in the war with Iran, it continues to consider “boots on the ground.” While the Pentagon has been doing a good job with the massive air and sea assaults against Iranian targets, there are several dangerous missions that ultimately would require US troops within Iran’s ...Read more

Spring has sprung on Leo Staples’ family farm in Oklahoma, and his Berkshire pigs couldn’t be happier about it.

Weighing in at about 550 pounds, Woody, his largest hog (named by a grandson after the“Toy Story” icon ) plays “like a puppy” in his free-range paddock, Staples told me, gobbling up the rye, clovers and winter peas that ...Read more