When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was appointed secretary of health and human services, everyone knew he was capable of doing great damage. He had a long history of indulging conspiracy theories, particularly when it came to vaccines.

Already, his attempt to reassess immunization schedules in the U.S. has outraged pediatricians. But his latest ...Read more

Illinois is down young people — by a lot.

To put it bluntly, our pipeline is drying up. We’ve lost than 185,000 people ages 18 and younger compared with 2020, a 6% decrease. Cook County lost the bulk of these youngsters, with its 18-and-under population decline accounting for over half of the state’s total.

Meanwhile, the retiree ...Read more

Many legal commentators apparently believe that, in the term that just ended, the Supreme Court further enabled President Donald Trump. The court did, in fact, issue a series of conservative decisions that Trump likes. However, under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts, the court also simultaneously pursued a careful strategy aimed at ...Read more

In one of the most memorable scenes in “Pulp Fiction,” a film replete with memorable scenes, a Los Angeles gangster, Marsellus Wallace, turns the tables on a man who has kidnapped and abused him. He’s going to get a couple of friends to go to work on his assailant “with a pair of pliers and a blow torch,” he says, and ensure that he ...Read more

American and Israeli forces have done the world a favor by setting back Iran’s nuclear program, whether by a little or a lot. But, unless the U.S. now binds the regime to a deal with strict, long-term constraints on its nuclear activities, the risks they’ve taken may well be for naught.

The Beltway debate over whether Iranian nuclear ...Read more

Just as you may have thought that it was finally safe to think about American politics without thinking about Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, he has slinked his way into the national news again.

The occasion was a tour he hosted Tuesday for Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of what has become known as "...Read more

Zohran Mamdani isn’t the most famous Democrat in America. But the frontrunner to serve as New York’s next mayor is well on his way — and he’ll get there, if Republicans have anything to say about it.

Immediately after the previously little-known state assemblyman from Queens won the Democratic nomination for mayor, stunning his party’...Read more

The thing about bullies is they don't have real friends.

They have lieutenants, followers and victims — sometimes all three rolled into one.

Most of us learn this by about third grade, when parents and hard knocks teach us how to figure out whom you can trust, and who will eat you for lunch.

Elon Musk, at age 54 with $400 billion in the ...Read more

The political realignment has come for economics. At least since the days of Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes in the last century, the divide in economic thinking roughly corresponded to the political split. In the mainstream, everyone was a capitalist and saw some role for government. The right/left divide was mostly over exactly how big...Read more

For the last several months, I have organized a weekly “Stand-Up for Democracy” rally/protest on the busiest street corner in my hometown. On Fridays at 5:30 pm., students, teachers, townspeople, and senior citizens come together, hold signs, and wave at passing drivers, some of whom honk their horns in solidarity.

I live in a very ...Read more

The Pew Research Center is one of the most trusted polling firms in the country, especially when it comes to Latinos. Last week, it published findings that should have been a victory lap for Donald Trump and his tortuous relationship with America's largest minority.

According to Pew, Trump won 48% of Latino voters in the 2024 presidential ...Read more

I love pickles. Dill pickles, kosher dill pickles, cornichons, full-sour pickles, half-sour pickles, quarter-sour pickles, quick pickles, gherkins, German senfgurken. Not bread and butter pickles. Those are not pickles. The flaccid, round slices with their fluorescent yellow tint and sickeningly sweet flavor are a disgrace to the pickle name.

I...Read more

For several hold-your-breath weeks, as spring sizzled into summer, the nuclear dealmakers of President Donald Trump’s USA and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s Iran seemed astonishingly close to a deal.

So close that it seemed they’d soon reach out and seize the deal. But no one was willing to reach out.

First, on May 13, Iran�...Read more

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s dismantling of Americans’ trust in — and ultimately, access to — vaccines isn’t happening with one sweeping policy that grabs the public’s attention. It’s unfolding quickly and quietly, in bland conference rooms where hand-picked appointees make decisions that will have far-...Read more

Is President Donald Trump tired of winning?

That’s the conclusion you almost have to come to after watching the events of the last five days, when North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis decided to leave Washington instead of deal with Trump’s special brand of revenge politics.

The two-term Republicans decision tells us a lot about the current ...Read more

Every Fourth of July, Erwin Knoll, the late editor of The Progressive magazine, would host a party. He’d grill burgers and brats and tack copies of the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights to trees in his backyard in Madison, Wis.

The U.S. government has never had a fiercer critic than Knoll. And yet, having come to New York City as...Read more

That deep-bass rumble you may have been hearing since June 24 is the sound of heads exploding on Wall Street and in certain Democratic Party smoke-filled rooms, provoked by the victory of self-described "democratic socialist" Zohran Mamdani in New York City's Democratic primary for mayor.

Here's my personal response to the handwringers over ...Read more

Politics and intellectual consistency go together like banana on pizza. But the reaction from Democrats to last week’s Supreme Court ruling on judicial authority deserves special attention.

In a 6-3 ruling Friday, the justices limited the ability of lone federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions that restrict the ability of the executive...Read more

On Tuesday, Republican Senator Thom Tillis became one of only three GOP senators to cast a vote against President Donald Trump’s budget bill. Ultimately, his vote was mostly symbolic — the measure passed on a 51-50 vote, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tiebreaker.

But the vote has already had consequences for the two-term lawmaker ...Read more