Something feels wrong. American Democracy is supposed to be the beacon of hope that leads the free world. But for far too many, it feels like our votes do not elect leaders who truly represent what is best for our families and our communities.

Affordability of basic necessities is out of reach, and issues that have over 70% support from the ...Read more

The American workforce is now short 1.2 million workers — the result of the harshest, most aggressive campaign ever waged to drive immigrants from this country.

President Donald Trump promised that ridding the country of illegal or unworthy immigrants would usher in a golden age. Deporting millions of immigrants would lead to plentiful jobs,...Read more

President Donald Trump likes to brand himself a business genius. But for average Americans staring at flat paychecks, shrinking opportunities, and higher grocery bills, his “Art of the Deal” looks more like a private equity raid: strip the assets, juice the numbers, and leave someone else holding the bag.

Economic policymaking under Trump ...Read more

In fall 2020, I woke up in an apocalypse. It was 8 a.m., but the world outside was dark and blanketed by an angry red sky. With all the lights on in the house, we watched specks of smoke and debris float down outside from a nearby wildfire in Northern California. I will never forget driving down the freeway to the grocery store, watching a fire ...Read more

I’ve lived the first half of my adult life in darkness. Prison, gangs, conflict, violence. By the time I turned 30, I had spent more than 13 years in correctional facilities, including a total of nearly a decade in solitary confinement.

That same year, education saved my life. A grant from the Sunshine Lady Foundation funded a two-year degree...Read more

One of the first lessons I learned when I tried to run for local office is that politics is less about ideas than it is about paperwork.

I was in my early 20s, excited to run for alderman. I thought I could bring fresh energy to my community. At the time I had the encouragement of my political party, but I had no roadmap. To get on the ballot I...Read more

It’s a tale as old as time — or at least, the past three decades. Whether Democratic or Republican, members of Congress angry with the president and searching for some way to fight back against the White House decide to wield the constitutional power of the purse and shut down the federal government.

“We have leverage,” lawmakers have ...Read more

A lot of Democratic voters are looking for a fight, and a lot of Democratic politicians are looking to accommodate them. As it happens, the legislative calendar can oblige both sides: Democrats should be willing to risk a government shutdown, which looms at the end of the month, in order to save health insurance subsidies for millions of ...Read more

Two winners in Missouri and Texas split the $1.787 billion Powerball jackpot (with a cash option of $820 million), which is the second largest ever recorded. The Mega Millions lottery jackpot is also quite large, reaching over $358 million (with a cash option of $164 million), as of Monday afternoon’s estimate. All these numbers are far beyond...Read more

Pols and pundits were mostly amused when President Donald Trump mused aloud back in his first term about making Greenland part of America. But now Trump has remade America into ICEland.

And it is no laughing matter. Team Trump has done what the boss ordered – which meant doing it rashly, inhumanely and certainly injudiciously.

Google’s ...Read more

California’s leaders will readily acknowledge their state needs more housing. But they haven’t succeeded in cutting down the thicket of regulations that limit construction.

In 2017, then-gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom promised to “lead the effort to develop the 3.5 million new housing units we need by 2025, because our solutions ...Read more

At about the time President Donald Trump issued his Aug. 25 Executive Order entitled “Prosecuting Burning of the American Flag,” I happened to be reading “A Gentleman in Moscow,” Amor Towles’ droll novel about life under the Bolsheviks in the 1920s through the 1950s.

A secondary character, Mishka, is a passionate, idealistic writer ...Read more

I have no problem with renaming the Department of Defense into the Department of War, as Donald Trump is trying to do. (It’s technically not up to the president but to Congress, but the Republicans there will oblige him.) After all, that martial label was good enough from George Washington to Harry Truman. And “war” is more honest and ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Sneha Revanur has been called the “Greta Thunberg of AI,” which depending on your politics, is an insult or, as the youngs would say, means she’s eating.

That’s good.

Either way, Revanur, a 20-year-old Stanford University senior who grew up in Silicon Valley, isn’t worried about personal attacks, though she’...Read more

In 1972, I taught at a Boston prep school where one of my students, Chantal, had been sent from Haiti by her privileged family to complete her secondary education. She was poised, serious, and ambitious. But what I remember most was her fear — and her warning.

"You Americans don't know how lucky you are," she would say, speaking in hushed ...Read more

If the means justify the ends, we’d still be operating under the Articles of Confederation. The Founders understood that the means—the governmental structure itself—must always serve the ends of liberty and prosperity. When the means no longer served those ends, they experimented with yet another design for their government—they did ...Read more

It’s now been 20 years since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast. Tied, along with Hurricane Harvey in 2017, as the costliest storm in U.S. history, Katrina significantly altered the way Americans think about natural disasters, federal assistance, and community resilience. We’ve spent years studying what happened next. To better plan ...Read more

September is Sepsis Awareness Month, and in case you aren’t familiar with this terrible condition, sepsis is an extreme and often fatal reaction to infection that kills nearly 11 million people worldwide each year and affects more than 48 million. It’s responsible for 20% of all global deaths, meaning one in five people will die from sepsis....Read more

In a ruling likely to go down in history as a shameful expression of anti-immigrant prejudice, the Supreme Court has allowed ICE agents to re-start “roving stops” of people suspected of being undocumented immigrants because of what they look like, how they speak, and where they are gathered to work or seek employment.

The 6-3 ruling in the ...Read more