ArcaMax

You made it. There are any number of reasons you should not have been confirmed, but Republicans were afraid to buck Trump. They voted in lockstep (except polio survivor Mitch McConnell, who Trump then ridiculed), and now you are the most powerful man in the world when it comes to health care. There are many people -- especially sick people --...Read more

Few Americans would welcome an elected leader from Germany or France who gave a speech on our soil, urging politicians here to stop shunning the Ku Klux Klan. Yet that isn't so far from the message delivered to European officials by Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 14 -- which understandably provoked outrage ...Read more

When I was young, I knew a lot about old people. Especially about old people I knew personally: members of my family, my mother's contemporaneous older friends, teachers, clients on my paper route.

It wasn't a choice. When I was young, no one asked whether I was interested in events that significantly preceded my birth. They just talked. My mom...Read more

Every interaction you have creates a ripple, whether you intend it to or not. The kind of ripple you create is up to you. Mindy Corporon wants it to be one of kindness. How she came to this resolve after a white supremacist opened fire and killed her son and her father in the parking lot of the Kansas Jewish Community Center in April 2014 is why...Read more

You can tell Valentine's Day was designed with women in mind because there is no holiday meal for Mom to cook.

Thanksgiving and Christmas both have women out in the kitchen baking animals or parts of an animal. In a lot of households, it's a woman who makes the Super Bowl wings and things.

On Valentine's Day, the tradition is to free your ...Read more

Fentanyl presents America with a terrible dilemma. More than 74,000 Americans died in 2023 after taking fentanyl or other drugs with fentanyl mixed in. There is no proven blueprint for stopping the scourge. We've spent over half a century trying to address the problem. The war on drugs that Richard Nixon declared in 1971 has produced nothing ...Read more

Maybe.

That's the best constitutional scholars can say right now.

But I'm putting my money on the federal courts.

So far, it is the federal courts that have stood in the way of our presidents' (that's Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who's kidding whom) efforts to strip Congress of its power over appropriations and rewrite the Constitution. ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Only three weeks old, the new Trump presidential power in town knows the price of everything (except eggs) and the value of nothing, as Oscar Wilde observed of fools and cynics.

Let's add "shameless." Shame has left the stately building at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The city on the hill feels occupied.

Donald Trump, president, and ...Read more

Here's something I had never given any thought to: the price of fire trucks. Plus, a worrisome fire truck shortage!

Huh? What would cause any town or city to run short of this essential piece of its community infrastructure? Answer: old-fashioned greed, coming from a modern-day monopolistic construct called "private equity."

Essentially, ...Read more

"The key to success," George Burns observed, "is sincerity. If you can fake that, you've got it made." Donald Trump has established himself as far and away the most successful faker in American history, conning half the country plus a bit more in battleground states into believing that he is all about Making America Great. Motivated instead by...Read more

As Elon Musk takes a jackhammer to American institutions, Democrats seem frozen in confusion. That's in part because Donald Trump serves as wingman, diverting attention from the sabotage of government services through a carpet-bombing of bizarre plans, most recently, having the U.S. empty Gaza of Gazans to build a Mediterranean resort for "the...Read more

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order barring transgender girls and women from playing as girls and women at federally funded schools, colleges and universities. Nearly all schools receive federal funds.

A day later, the NCAA, the governing association for college sports in this country, followed suit, barring ...Read more

I've been unpersoned. Here, in the United States of America.

The censor? OpenAI, the huge tech company run by Sam Altman, famous for creating ChatGPT.

Open ChatGPT and ask it: "Who is Ted Rall?"

ChatGPT will answer: "I'm unable to produce a response."

Unable? Unwilling is more like it.

ChatGPT had all sorts of things to say about me a few ...Read more

While President Donald Trump signed executive orders to strip diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs from the federal government, Aretha Fuqua traveled to Atlanta to accept the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Champion award on behalf of the West Louisville Tennis Club at the United States Tennis Association Southern Division ...Read more

A few years ago, some people acted like they were horrified when a poll showed that a lot of high school and college students wanted to work for the government when they grew up.

"No ambition, these little punks," grumped people who would soon be voting for Donald Trump, the working man's friend. "They just want to work for the government ...Read more