If you’re a parent — or considering becoming one — you likely understand that it’s a pricey prospect. Consider: The annual cost of raising a child in Illinois is an estimated $23,821 — nearly $430,000 over 18 years — according to a 2024 SmartAsset study. Saving and investing for these children is a good thing, and something many ...Read more

The Supreme Court will decide numerous politically and socially important cases throughout this term, with implications for redrafting congressional maps, campaign finance rules, the death penalty, transgender rights and much more on the docket. But do not expect the court’s decisions on these cases to honor the past.

Under Chief Justice John...Read more

While many people will be enjoying the next few weeks surrounded by friends and family, many of our neighbors will be isolated, especially those in their senior years.

This isolation can contribute to depression and other disorders, which in turn can contribute to the rising levels of suicide or suicide attempts among the senior population.

A ...Read more

Picture this: You’re looking to buy a place to live, and you have two options.

Option A is a beautiful home in California near good schools and job opportunities. But it goes for nearly a million dollars — the median California home sells for $906,500— and you’d be paying a mortgage that’s risen 82% since January 2020.

Option B is a ...Read more

The new Ken Burns documentary, "The American Revolution," provides a special opportunity to learn why our nation’s founders chose liberty and built a democracy based on three branches of government that would serve as a system of checks and balances on one another.

Today, that system is being challenged and is at a dangerous tipping point. ...Read more

Do economic rivalries between Texas and California or New York and Florida feel like yet another sign that America has become hopelessly divided? There is a bright side to their disagreements, and a new ranking of economic freedom across the states helps explain why.

As a popular bumper sticker among economists proclaims: “I heart federalism ...Read more

President Donald Trump’s recent comments about renaming the Republican Party after him raises the question of whether this might be the spark that ignites a serious reconsideration of just what the Republican Party stands for and what the future holds for the party. Some will write off Trump’s ruminations about changing the name to “ ...Read more

Minnesota finds itself in a harsh spotlight as President Donald Trump revs up his attacks on Gov. Tim Walz, an old political foe, while simultaneously expanding his demonization of Somali Minnesotans.

After unleashing torrents of foul language against Walz last weekend, and then this week referring to Somali Americans, including U.S. Rep. Ilhan...Read more

Within 15 years, a garbage truck’s worth of plastic could be entering our environment every second. Not every minute. Every second.

Plastic is everywhere in modern life and has essential, lifesaving uses, but the proliferation of plastic has also made it one of the great environmental challenges of our time. Plastic pollutes our land, air ...Read more

The government shutdown may be over, but Congress still hasn’t solved the biggest problem left on its plate: Extend the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies to avoid a doubling of insurance premiums or replace them with something new altogether. Lawmakers have committed to a vote in December.

While public debate about the issue has centered...Read more

President Donald Trump and Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth, at first glance, do not look like a natural match.

Hegseth joined the Minnesota Army National Guard in 2003 and served tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq. Trump, on the other hand, followed the path of other white guys with resources and avoided military service altogether ...Read more

In a stunning decision that defies all expert advice and scientific evidence, the influential group that shapes U.S. vaccine policy will no longer recommend that all infants receive the hepatitis B vaccination shortly after birth.

It’s a dangerous change that will cause real harm, made by a panel — the Centers for Disease Control and ...Read more

President Donald Trump had a blunt message for anyone struggling to make ends meet: He does not feel your pain.

During a lengthy cabinet meeting on Tuesday, the president called the issue of affordability a “fake narrative.”

Between nodding off and a racist rant, Trump declared during the gathering that the cost-of-living squeeze felt by ...Read more

A profound unraveling is underway in the American Southwest, happening across a thousand-mile arc from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the central Sierra. In an unprecedented calamity, the most widely distributed, most iconic tree of the region — the beautiful ponderosa pine — is disappearing. So significant is this loss, both visually and ...Read more

It’s hard enough for most of us to predict what we’re having for dinner tonight, much less how the the world will look in 2100. By that time we might have cured cancer and started building giant space brains. Or maybe we’ll be nothing but batteries for our robot overlords. Or spraying crops with a sports drink.

And yet without such ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — It’s almost like slapstick comedy — the budget act that California’s Legislature and governor perform every year.

OK, it’s not really funny. But it is a joke — all the gymnastics the politicians go through trying to hide their red-ink spending and convince us they’ve met their legal obligation to produce a ...Read more

Across much of the industrial world, trust in government is low and declining. Why is this happening and why, exactly, does it matter?

An unusually thorough new study looks at these questions and finds answers that are somewhat unexpected and, in one way, more disturbing than you might have guessed.

The fact of diminished trust is hardly a ...Read more

As former President Ronald Reagan famously noted, if you subsidize something, you’ll get more of it. But when it comes to higher education, that’s only half the story.

For decades, America’s education establishment pushed most students toward attending college. This year, The New York Times described the phrase “college for all” as �...Read more

The setting: a two-story home in Whittier, California, prettied with holiday decorations, pet beds, American flags and a shelf of tchotchkes dedicated to John Wayne.

The face-off: 63-year-old Gloria Valles and her daughter, 33-year-old Brittney Valles-Gordon.

The debate: What else these days? Politics. For two hours on a recent morning, the ...Read more

With the tech takeover of Hollywood coming fast, legacy film studios now face an existential crisis. Paramount was swallowed by Skydance during a months-long $8 billion merger finalized in August. Warner Bros. is next, but this time the stakes may be higher.

With Netflix winning the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery— agreeing to pay more...Read more