As winter settles in and daylight fades early, Americans long have turned to books for comfort, curiosity and company. The good news this holiday season is that the bookstores which make that habit possible are rebounding, too.

In the late 1990s, many book lovers often looked with scorn upon the likes of Barnes & Noble and the now-defunct ...Read more

President Donald Trump's executive order directing states to deploy artificial intelligence in foster care isn't just welcome—it's overdue.

The provision calling for "predictive analytics and tools powered by artificial intelligence, to increase caregiver recruitment and retention rates, improve caregiver and child matching, and deploy ...Read more

At a recent peaceful Hanukkah celebration of Australian Jews at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, two gunmen opened fire on families who were singing, laughing, eating festive food and enjoying fellowship. Fifteen innocent people were killed, and more than 50 were wounded.

The mourning has begun, but the anger and alienation felt by the Jewish community...Read more

“I’m not really fearful anymore,” Mary Wood told me. Wood, 49, doesn’t dodge uncomfortable topics. But I’m unsure how much to credit this claim. Over dinner in late November at a chain restaurant near her home outside Columbia, South Carolina, she recalled the “constant state of fear” that enveloped her in February 2023 when she ...Read more

Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski’s appeal to Gov. Ron DeSantis and President Donald Trump to pause immigration enforcement during the holiday season is the humane thing to do — in a situation that has become increasingly inhumane.

Wenski, who has long been active in immigration issues in Miami, made his pitch Monday on behalf of the Bishops ...Read more

"As far as human nature is concerned, with panic comes irrationality."

This simple statement by Professor Steve Calandrillo and Nolan Anderson has profound implications for public policy. When panic is highest, and demand for reactive policy is greatest, that's exactly when we need our lawmakers to resist the temptation to move fast and ban ...Read more

Of course, not all of the Jeffrey Epstein files were released.

Even some files made available late Friday were quickly removed. Large portions were heavily redacted. Some portions contained boldfaced names, but there was little mention of Donald Trump.

As long as Trump keeps his thumb on the scales at the U.S. Department of Justice, no one ...Read more

The Frances Perkins Building in Washington, D.C., serves as the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Labor. Its dedicated employees implement and enforce labor laws passed by Congress. It’s not a church, or a synagogue, and its mission is not to serve or praise any religious deity. But if you stopped in at the Cesar Chavez auditorium on Dec....Read more

A decade ago, the Islamic State terrorist group was a household name. Tens of thousands of fighters, many from countries as far afield as Australia and France, traveled to Iraq and Syria to join an organization that sought to establish the world’s first modern-day caliphate.

It was a time when civil war raged in Syria, the Iraqi government ...Read more

“A holiday from the facts.” That’s how the antagonist of "Brave New World" describes the wonder drug soma. The phrase might equally apply to U.S. marijuana policy.

Since California first legalized medicinal cannabis in 1996, the U.S. pot industry has morphed into a $40 billion behemoth. Weed is now legal in 24 states for recreational ...Read more

From U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war to AI developments, 2025 has been full of dramatic twists and turns. One of the most consequential takeaways is to never, ever underestimate China.

At the onset of the year, the world’s second-largest economy was left for dead. Economists were predicting lost decades akin to what Japan ...Read more

Medical experiments on research dogs could be phased out soon — a change that’s based as much on science as ethics. Pressure is coming from within the scientific community as well as from activists, following a string of scandals involving inhumane living conditions. It follows a similar phase-out in the last decade of the use of captive ...Read more

The federal government's monthly releases of economic statistics — especially the inflation rate and growth as tracked by gross domestic product — have long occasioned partisan preening (or denunciation) and for a general public stock-taking of the health of the economy.

Not this month. This time, they're the occasion for doubt and ...Read more

Medicaid is a federal program jointly funded with the states, providing health and long-term care insurance to more than 80 million low-income Americans.

And if you didn’t know all of that, you’re not alone.

The government has spent a fortune over the years de-emphasizing the term “Medicaid,” instead promoting other names that carry ...Read more

The reaction to President Donald Trump’s recent social media post was immediate and telling.

For many, the post was stunning in its cruelty, a line so clearly crossed it demanded condemnation. For others, it was dismissed, defended or waved away as exaggeration, provocation or “just how he talks.” That divide is the story. Because when ...Read more

The states along the Colorado River are proving the truth of the famous adage often attributed to Mark Twain: “Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.”

At the end of the year, the current agreement governing water in the Colorado River will end. The agreement includes seven states. The four Upper Basin states are Colorado, New ...Read more

Thank goodness for state governments. One of the most underappreciated stories in 2025 was the role states played in checking federal overreach. As the Trump administration barreled through norms, rules and laws, state officials — sometimes from both parties — supplied the friction to slow the administration’s power grab.

Trump swept ...Read more

There are a lot of reasons, some deserved and some not, for Americans’ distrust of their institutions. Lately I have been thinking about one of the more counterintuitive ones: Our schools, governments and even employers are trying too hard to make things fair.

In so doing, they are not only setting themselves up for failure — and eventually...Read more