January represents a time of new beginnings, an opportunity for self assessment and productive change — unless you sit in Congress, where inertia and fiscal fantasy rule the day.

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office noted that the federal deficit for the first three months of fiscal 2026 — October through December — hit an estimated...Read more

It’s National Pizza Week—a tribute to late college nights, birthday parties and slices eaten straight from the box while running errands. In the U.S. alone, we eat roughly 4 billion pizzas a year. And each day, we consume the equivalent of 100 acres of pizza, which translates to approximately 350 slices per second.

Pizza is comfort. Pizza ...Read more

What does it mean to be an American? That question lies at the heart of a debate between Vivek Ramaswamy and Vice President JD Vance that will help determine the future of the Republican Party. The run-up to the country’s semiquincentennial is the perfect time to hold the debate, but it also presents an enormous problem for Vance: The Founders...Read more

More than a week after Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro was captured and brought back to the United States to stand trial on narcoterrorism charges, officials with the Donald Trump administration are trying to determine how relations with one of South America’s largest countries will evolve in the weeks and months ahead. In between Trump’...Read more

Current high prices for groceries, housing and other goods are largely not the fault of President Donald Trump. That blame still rests with the inflationary policies of former President Joe Biden, whose tenure brought a 21.5% rise in consumer prices.

Most of the Democrats who are now castigating Trump and Republicans for the continued stress ...Read more

Recently, while sailing with friends on San Francisco Bay, I enjoyed the sight of harbor porpoises, cormorants, pelicans, seals and sea lions — and then the spouting plume and glistening back of a gray whale that gave me pause. Too many have been seen inside the bay recently.

California’s gray whales have been considered an environmental ...Read more

A WhatsApp group serves as a lifeline for my maternal family, including my aunts and uncles, all still in Iran, and my cousins, who have left Iran. With the protests in Iran growing by the day, the conversations in our chats changed to signs of hope even amid grave concerns about our family’s safety.

“I feel it this time. This is the time ...Read more

It’s a lot easier to waste someone else’s money.

Before the recent tragic shooting, the biggest story out of Minnesota involved massive fraud. Content creator Nick Shirley’s massively viral video appeared to show that some day care centers, supposedly serving scores of kids, were essentially ghost towns. One even had a sign that spelled ...Read more

We don’t have to go far to find a convincing explanation for President Donald Trump’s Jan. 3 attack in Venezuela; it’s transactionalism.

This doesn’t require much speculation. In fact, Trump deserves credit for transparency: “We’re going to be taking oil.” Access to and control of Venezuela’s oil reserves will belong to the ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The most outstanding thing about Gov. Gavin Newsom’s final State of the State address last week was that he actually gave it.

Every California governor since Earl Warren back in World War II had annually paraded into the ornate 1800s-decor Assembly chamber to address a joint session of the Legislature in what was ...Read more

One of the most important political stories in American history — one that is particularly germane to our current, tumultuous time — unfolded in Los Angeles some 65 years ago.

Sen. John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, had just received his party's nomination for president and in turn he shunned the desires of his most liberal supporters by choosing...Read more

Let’s resolve to have the courage to speak up more in 2026. I realize this is easy for me to say; I’m a columnist. But I live in Florida, where I have many friends who have been Trump supporters and who are privately queasy about what they see as brazen corruption coming from President Donald Trump and his administration. While there is ...Read more

After a year of whiplash, Americans enter 2026 with cautious optimism as professional forecasters expect the economy to grow by about 2% or more — not a boom, or a bust — and they predict relatively modest changes for inflation, unemployment and interest rates. Most Wall Street analysts say stocks will continue to rally, and many consumers ...Read more

Harvard University is home to The Harvard Crimson, the nation’s oldest continuously published daily college newspaper, and the fine student journalists there offer excellent coverage on a wide array of topics, beginning with their own campus leaders. That storied student paper published something last week that caught our eye, amplifying the ...Read more

Donald Trump is right to offer America’s support to the people of Iran seeking freedom from repressive theocratic rule and warn the tottering regime of Ayatollah Khamenei not to attack his own population. Freedom for Iran will come from the desires of the Iranian public, now surging through the streets across the country, not American arms, ...Read more

For survivors of human trafficking, domestic violence, and people seeking reproductive care, the threat today isn’t just an abusive person, it’s an algorithm, a data broker, a surveillance system, a phone app.

Take the example of Heather Cornelius. Her husband monitored her every move using smart-phone GPS, shared accounts, and other apps ...Read more

As the WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement negotiations drag on, the players’ union finds itself at a crossroads. The league’s proposal, which includes raising minimum salaries to more than $220,000 and allowing top earners to reach up to $1.1 million through base pay and revenue sharing, has been met with skepticism from the WNBPA, who...Read more

I recently saw a patient complaining of shortness of breath and a persistent cough. Worried he was developing pneumonia, I ordered a chest X-ray — a standard diagnostic tool. He refused. He hadn’t met his $3,000 deductible yet, and so his insurance would have required him to pay much or all of the cost for that scan. He assured me he would ...Read more

This past year, and especially in these past few weeks, the faith of Americans and essential trust of the free world has been shaken in ways most of us thought we’d never see.

Generations who assumed they could always count on the world’s greatest democracy now wonder every time they glance at their news screens. They see all the to-ing and...Read more