With pressure mounting, the House and the Senate this week passed legislation mandating the release of a slew of government documents involving financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. President Donald Trump signed the bill late Wednesday.

The Justice Department files have been the source of rumor, innuendo and distraction, as ...Read more

For more than 40 days, an impasse among members of Congress and President Donald Trump over funding the federal government left millions of Americans in limbo. That ended last week when eight senators — seven Democrats and one independent — voted with 52 Republicans on another continuing resolution, this one lasting until Jan. 31, to restart...Read more

Seven years have passed since Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

A year after the killing, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency concluded that Khashoggi, a critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, had been assassinated at the crown prince’s direction, his ...Read more

I come from a long line of racists.

Tracing my ancestry back to the early nineteenth century, I discovered that my great-great-great-grandfather emigrated from Ireland and then drifted south, eventually settling in Dallas County, Alabama. Daniel Brislin called Selma home.

He was a cabinet maker, and a decent one at that. The Selma Times ...Read more

The Trump administration is moving forward with efforts to neuter the Department of Education. The move couldn’t come fast enough.

The Washington Post reported this week that various grant programs within the department will be moved under other Cabinet agencies. This includes the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Office of...Read more

Artificial intelligence has become a societal disruptor. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT have reached across society, giving everyone with a smartphone the opportunity to interact with AI in new ways. With such capabilities now in the mainstream, though, the tasks that AI systems can deliver means that the list of jobs at risk for elimination ...Read more

On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives took what once seemed like the impossible step of voting 427-1 to release the Epstein files. Republican representatives did so with the permission of President Donald Trump, who on Sunday realized he could no longer block what appears to be even more unsavory truths about a convicted sex offender and...Read more

Why is anyone still listening to Megyn Kelly?

No matter how many times the former Fox News personality reinvents herself — friendly NBC daytime talk show, serious Sunday night newsmagazine anchor, desperate-to-cash-in right-wing podcaster — the old Megyn Kelly sabotages the new one.

The veteran media personality has done it again, this ...Read more

In the days and weeks after the 2020 election, partisans across the country used lies and deceit to try to defraud the American people and steal the White House.

Although Joe Biden was the clear and unequivocal winner, racking up big margins in the popular vote and electoral college, 84 fake electors signed statements certifying that Donald ...Read more

Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, recently floated the idea of offering people a 50-year mortgage instead of the more conventional 30-year financing option. It sounds attractive at first because stretching out repaying of a mortgage would lower the borrower’s monthly payment, but this wouldn’t fix the homeownership ...Read more

The most extended government shutdown in U.S. history has revived a familiar argument: The Senate’s filibuster is to blame for congressional paralysis.

It’s a compelling narrative with a convenient villain, but it misses the point. The filibuster isn’t the source of the Senate’s dysfunction. It’s a key tool that prevents the chamber ...Read more

The Virginia State Bar is “an agency of the Supreme Court of Virginia” with an explicit mission: "(1) to protect the public, (2) to regulate the legal profession of Virginia, (3) to advance access to legal services, and (4) to assist in improving the legal profession and the judicial system.”

Why then has it engaged in activities ...Read more

Every November, many of us gather around the table to pass mounds of mashed potatoes and catch up on health, house projects and happy news.

If we’re lucky, the young people will put down their devices. And if we’re extra lucky, Drunk Uncle won’t bring up politics. But with the recent government shutdown—and the party divide stronger ...Read more

For something so admired, so synonymous with merit, the concept of intelligence is remarkably poorly understood. Our society operates on the assumption that people with greater intelligence deserve access to better schools and better jobs. Many people believe that animals with higher intelligence deserve to be treated more humanely, or at least ...Read more

Republicans and Democrats have been guilty of attempting to abolish the filibuster when they held power. The truth is that the filibuster is merely a Senate procedure to shut off debate that has existed since 1917. The abolition of the filibuster is a bad idea that will destroy the Senate’s nature and make the government less responsive than ...Read more

If you’re a woman of a certain age, your social media feed is likely filled with advice on what hormones you should take. The promises made by menopause influencers about hormone therapy are expansive: easing hot flashes and night sweats for starters, but also promoting better brain and heart health, improving muscle mass and bone strength, ...Read more

At a White House event on Nov. 6 announcing price cuts for those blockbuster weight-loss drugs, Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Mehmet Oz made an astonishing claim.

Because the price cuts would vastly improve access to prescription drugs, Oz said, by next year's midterm elections in November, "Americans will lose 135 billion pounds."

As ...Read more

The September morning that immigration agents grabbed Mercedes' husband was like a tragic prophecy fulfilled.

The El Salvador native narrowly escaped when three coworkers were nabbed this summer during a raid at a car wash in Orange County. La migra stalked his dreams for weeks after. On the day they finally got him, Mercedes said her husband ...Read more

Math scores in the U.S. have been so bad for so long that teachers could be forgiven for trying anything to improve them. Unfortunately, many of the strategies they’re using could be making things worse.

It’s a crisis decades in the making. In the early 20th century, education reformers including John Dewey and William Heard Kilpatrick ...Read more

Artificial intelligence is upon us, and just as other historical breakthrough technologies have proved, it is not a matter of how it will accommodate us but how we must accommodate it. Education, finance, law, transportation and energy are all sectors that are being dramatically transformed by AI, and medicine will be no exception. What will the...Read more