George Washington was quite the man.

Life handed him the keys to this brand-new country, and instead of clinging to the steering wheel until he drew his last breath, he pulled over and let someone else drive.

It was this peaceful transfer of power that made America exceptional — and Washington the defining figure of American masculinity. ...Read more

A United Nations climate summit has once again failed to strengthen a pledge made two years ago to transition “away from fossil fuels.” Instead these dirty drivers of the climate crisis went completely unacknowledged last weekend’s COP30 agreement. It’s disappointing, certainly, but a more ambitious outcome wouldn’t have been much ...Read more

The Democratic Party stands at the precipice of a profound internal reckoning. For decades, it has balanced precariously between populist aspiration and corporate capture, a tension that has now reached its breaking point.

The election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City has shattered the illusion of establishment inevitability. What ...Read more

Although the longest federal government shutdown in our nation’s history has formally ended, and payments to the one in eight U.S. residents who rely on the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) have resumed, the problem of hunger in America remains unsolved.

Kids are still going hungry, inflation is out of control and the ...Read more

There are fundamental differences between liberals and conservatives—and certainly MAGA adherents—on what are “American values.”

But for both liberal and conservative pundits, the term connotes something larger than us, grounding, permanent—of lasting meaning. Because the values of people change as the times change, as the culture ...Read more

For Republicans, November was bookended by two ominous developments: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resignation and the party’s resounding defeats in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races.

The Republican candidates in those races — Jack Ciattarelli in New Jersey and Winsome Earle-Sears in Virginia — tried one strategy for ...Read more

The most astonishing feature of Donald Trump’s decade as one of the most dominant figures in American politics is his ability to make the unthinkable seem not only thinkable, but possible. The president’s latest attempts to push the boundaries of what is conceivable — and legal — in our system of government include claims that his ...Read more

The dismissals of the indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James were a victory for the rule of law, but the victory may be short-lived.

On Monday, a federal judge concluded that the appointment of interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan was invalid, thereby voiding the indictments she ...Read more

The good news is that Americans have never been richer. The bad news is that most of them don’t feel like it.

There has been tremendous growth in income and wealth in the U.S. in the last half century, even for poorer and middle-class households. But because of the nature of that growth, as well as the changing structure of the national ...Read more

We ply our trade with words and we like to think they have weight. But the wild Donald Trump-Zohran Mamdani news conference at the White House Friday almost convinced us of the opposite. When it comes to saying what we mean, or not, America has gone totally bananas.

Consider: Mamdani has often said Trump is a “despot who betrayed the country�...Read more

For generations, home ownership has been part of the very definition of capturing the American dream. First-time buyers face a process that can be both exciting and daunting—the right home, in the right community, and with the right financing.

As housing costs continue to rise and first-time home purchases are being delayed more than ever, ...Read more

When the president of the United States pointed angrily at a reporter and called her "piggy" last week, I wish she had gone full Muppet: "Who? Moi?"

Of course, Bloomberg White House reporter Catherine Lucey did nothing of the sort. She was a consummate professional and did not respond to President Donald Trump's gratuitous insult after she ...Read more

The bloodstains are visible from space.

In the last weeks, the Rapid Support Forces — one party in Sudan’s years-long civil war — captured the desert city of el-Fasher after a 17-month siege. Since then, fighters have embarked on a campaign of horrors: lining up and executing civilians, systematically killing patients in the city’s last...Read more

There are plenty of sophisticated materials that the world is counting on to limit global warming. Polysilicon for solar panels. Rare-earth magnets for wind turbines. Lithium for electric vehicle batteries. But propane?

Believe it or not, the fossil hydrocarbon — produced from oil and gas wells, and mostly used as a cooking and heating fuel ...Read more

For followers of medical disinformation, the claim that autism is linked to childhood vaccinations is the reddest of red flags. The issue is among the most intensively studied in the scientific literature, and the results among the most conclusive: There's no connection.

That's why the revision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ...Read more

A federal judge has dismissed indictments against former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. The move should be a lesson for the White House.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie, appointed in 1994 by President Bill Clinton, sided with Comey, who had argued that the prosecutor who brought the case ...Read more

By now, Americans have become familiar with seeing masked federal agents snatching people off the street and outside courthouses. Separations of families of asylum seekers and other non-citizens, and occasionally even citizens, are all part of the malevolence of U.S. immigration policy.

But far less attention has gone to another measure that ...Read more

It is no secret that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs are under attack in our country. They have been blamed for undermining free speech, meritocracy, and America itself. The University of Virginia is the latest to settle with the government and walk away from its DEI initiatives rather than defend its programs or find a new ...Read more

Science has always relied on young innovators to drive progress. In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, still PhD students, founded Google. More recently, in 2020 and 2021, Kizzmekia Corbett, then a senior research fellow at the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Vaccine Research Center, led a team of scientists in developing the COVID-19 ...Read more

The U.S. military runs on hierarchy. Orders flow down the chain of command, and discipline keeps everything moving in sync. That structure is what allows the armed forces to act quickly and effectively, even in the toughest situations.

But the system also recognizes a hard truth: Not every order is automatically lawful. That’s why there are ...Read more