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Trump's Executive Order on Birthright Citizenship, Explained
The American Civil Liberties Union and immigrants' rights advocates sued the Trump administration on its first day in office after President Donald Trump signed an executive order that seeks to strip certain babies born in the U.S. of the United States citizenship that the Constitution guarantees to them.
The lawsuit charges the Trump ...Read more

Dr. King's Dream Still Offers a Great Agenda
As we mark the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, ironically on the same day as Donald Trump’s second presidential inauguration, I am reminded of a famous quote from another King:
”Can we all get along?”
Yes, that plea came not from MLK but from Rodney King, no relation to the great civil rights leader, in May 1992 as riots ...Read more
'I Thought That Death Was Imminent'
*Jean Paul is a pseudonym. All names have been changed to protect those identified in this story.
I hail from Cameroon, a beautiful country tucked away in Central Africa that's sometimes called "Africa in miniature" for its diverse geography, culture, food and languages. Sadly, since 2016, this diversity has also contributed to conflict between...Read more

Jimmy Carter’s Funeral Brought a Rare and Much-Needed Vision of Peace
When he showed up at the Chicago Tribune one day in early 1976, James Earl Carter, Jr., was announced by one of our young newsroom copy clerks as “that governor from Georgia who thinks he can run for president.”
Yes, as a young reporter in that newsroom, I remember Jimmy Carter as a former peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia, and a former ...Read more
Disappearing Messages Don't Work -- and They're Great
Fifteen years ago it was unfathomable -- and a bad idea -- to imagine that your digital messages could automatically self-destruct. Once your message is on someone else's machine, you simply cannot guarantee that it will be destroyed when you want it to be. Fooling people into thinking they have more security and privacy than they really do ...Read more

MAGA Takes on Elon Musk’s 'Tech Bros'
Just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump was scheduled to return to the White House, the coterie of American tech oligarchs who played a decisive role in re-electing him was busy exerting their own power in ways that suggest the MAGA coalition may be heading for a crack-up.
Trump famously invited fellow billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek ...Read more
Attempts at a Technological Solution To Disinformation Will Do More Harm Than Good
There is widespread concern today about the use of generative AI and deepfakes to create fake videos that can manipulate and deceive people. Many are asking, is there any way that technology can confidently establish whether an image or video has been altered? A number of techniques have been proposed. They include -- most prominently -- a ...Read more

Behind the “Lie of the Year,” Some Bitter Truths
As it has been doing yearly since 2009, the fact-checking organization PolitiFact has chosen the Lie of the Year. There was an abundance of nominees.
And, it turns out, they chose the same whopper I identified as a top contender months ago: President-elect Donald Trump’s unfounded claim that Haitian migrants were eating the household pets of ...Read more
Welcome to the World of MAGA Machismo, Where Muscles Trump Brains
Ladies and gentleman, here is your United States Senate, then and now:
Sen. Daniel Webster on March 7, 1850: “It is fortunate that there is a Senate of the United States (with) a just sense of its own dignity, and its own high responsibilities, and a body to which the country looks with confidence for wise, moderate, patriotic, and healing ...Read more
A totally fixable budget impasse involving a potential presidential candidate
For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, Pennsylvania’s three-week-old budget impasse is the ultimate, binge-worthy summer drama.
There are great storylines, with real-world implications with fascinating characters in leading roles. And, like any addictive warm-weather series, the chances are pretty good that politics-watchers ...Read more
Trump and his lawyers think he can get away with anything. It's outlandish.
WASHINGTON -- "The king can do no wrong." That is the ancient legal maxim used to explain why a sovereign should not be held to account for misdeeds. President Trump and his lawyers are now making arguments that make this legal doctrine look wimpy. Their vision boils down to: The king can do whatever wrong he damn pleases, and there's nothing ...Read more