This year, for the first time, the Pentagon’s budget topped $1 trillion. We’re told this is to “support the troops.” Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. While tens of thousands of veterans are homeless and hundreds of thousands are going hungry the Pentagon is wasting billions on things like $1,500 coffee cups and $...Read more

If you want to live somewhere without mosquitoes, you’re running out of options. One of the world’s last remaining mosquito-free zones has been infiltrated by the bloodsuckers.

Three specimens of Culiseta annulata were found in the southwest of Iceland, leaving Antarctica as the only remaining refuge from the biters.

Scientists will be ...Read more

A decade ago, Delta Air Lines proudly announced that Wisconsin-based Lands’ End would partner with fashion designer Zac Posen to create new uniforms for more than 60,000 of its employees worldwide.

This was an assignment taken seriously: Lands’ End spent a couple of years shadowing workers, staging focus groups and providing prototypes for ...Read more

Former Vice President Dick Cheney died on Monday at 84. In a nation whose vice presidents tend to be forgotten by history when they don’t go on to become presidents themselves, Cheney will go down as a history-maker who left his mark on the office.

His “One Percent Doctrine” proved his lasting legacy. It continues to govern the national ...Read more

My late daughter, Katie Abraham, touched many lives, each in their own way. She had friends from every walk of life. She was kind, empathetic and endlessly curious. She made people feel seen and valued. Then her life was stolen by a criminal immigrant in the country illegally.

And she was also a young woman with a deep sense of fairness — ...Read more

The state of Illinois released new student performance data the day before Halloween, touting better reading and math proficiency and a higher graduation rate.

What state officials didn’t emphasize is that this year’s “improvements” come with a big asterisk. Illinois changed how it defines “proficiency,” lowering the bar for what ...Read more

Forty-five years ago, Mothers Against Drunk Driving had its first national press conference, and a global movement to stop impaired driving was born. MADD was founded by Candace Lightner after her 13-year-old daughter was struck and killed by a drunk driver while walking to a church carnival in 1980.

Terms like “designated driver” and the ...Read more

Last week, Paul Biya declared victory for an eighth term as president of Cameroon, an extremely poor Central African country suffering from two violent insurgencies, entrenched corruption and poor governance. With such a bad track record, it’s unsurprising that the results are widely disputed.

Biya, who is 92, has had plenty of time to prove...Read more

Schools have long declared themselves to be gun-free zones. It’s time to make them cellphone-free zones as well.

In October, the National Bureau of Economic Research released a paper on Florida’s cellphone ban in schools, which began two years ago. That allowed David Figlio, a University of Rochester economics professor, and Umut Özek, a ...Read more

Senate Democrats — including Sen. Jacky Rosen — have shut down the government in an effort to force Republicans to extend expanded tax credits created to cushion the blow of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. Now that the COVID crisis has long passed, they insist that millions of Americans will face a “death spiral,” as NPR so delicately put...Read more

“Doomsday” was in the news last week. It’s an Old English word, dating to the 900s, at least. Doomsday originally denoted Judgment Day, the decisive event at the end of the world when the Almighty separates the sheep from the goats and commends them to their respective fates.

Modern usage expands the word’s scope; we use it to describe ...Read more

President Donald Trump’s months-long effort to find a primary challenger to Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, a fellow Republican and MAGA devotee, is the latest proof that Republicans in Washington were never truly intent on achieving the agenda they sold to voters last year.

If they were, they would be endorsing Massie as exactly the kind...Read more

Rarely, if ever, in American history has political party allegiance been so closely correlated with religious beliefs.

A white evangelical churchgoer in our country is now 82% likely to be a Trump supporter, according to the Pew Research Center, meaning that churches are also increasingly politically homogeneous. There may be understandable ...Read more

No question, antisemitism is real, resurgent and too often conflated with criticism of the Israeli government as it has destroyed Gaza to root out Hamas.

But it beggars belief that the Trump administration is sincere when it demands UCLA pay the government more than $1 billion because, as it alleges, the school failed to protect Jewish students...Read more

“My kid’s getting A’s at Harvard” isn’t much of a flex anymore, thanks to a report from the erstwhile Ivy League institution admitting that roughly 60% of grades given to undergraduates were A’s, up from 40% a decade ago and less than a quarter 20 years ago.

“Current practices are not only failing to perform the key functions of ...Read more

As the government shutdown drags into its fifth week, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, has become just another casualty of the Donald Trump administration’s cruelty. Without congressional action, millions of Americans may see their SNAP benefits vanish this month — including over 2 million people in Illinois and ...Read more

There’s a principle that keeps a free market free: You can’t take what isn’t yours and sell it as your own. Yet, that is precisely what some of the most prominent players in artificial intelligence are doing.

OpenAI’s new “Sora 2” can generate movie-quality video from a text prompt. It’s a remarkable technological leap and a ...Read more

When veterans and their families gather at commemorative events on Nov. 11, many who use the benefits and services of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will be wondering whether they can still rely on that federal agency.

Among those worried about the agency’s future — and their own — are the 100,000 former service members who ...Read more

I fell in love with dance as a child. For me, it was joy in motion — a healthy, creative expression where I found confidence, discipline and community. I started ballet lessons at age 11 and was transformed by the experience.

However, in recent decades, I’ve watched something precious slowly erode. The children’s dance world I knew ...Read more

Baseball has always been a great cauldron of American vernacular speech. One relatively new expression has caught my attention: “Wear it.” Like when a 99 mph fastball hits a batter’s shoulder or thigh or foot. “Yah, I’ll wear it.” As in, this is part of the game. Sure it hurts, but it is the price I pay for being here.

It is time ...Read more