Americans are having fewer children, and the birth rate has dropped to historic lows — prompting declarations of a U.S. existential crisis, most notably and volubly from Elon Musk. But how worried should we actually be?

Here’s the legitimate concern. The United States’ total fertility rate — which estimates the average number of ...Read more

President Donald Trump posted Sunday on his Truth Social platform that he's ordered various government agencies to reopen Alcatraz to serve as a symbol of law, order and justice.

"For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute anything other than Misery ...Read more

A fair summary of the president’s kaleidoscopic vision for the American economy might go something like this: Workers should have rewarding manufacturing jobs and live comfortably in affordable homes with great showers. Too bad all of those goals are being disrupted by a competing White House priority — a seemingly endless renegotiation of ...Read more

I know Mother’s Day is just around the corner, but this can’t wait until Father’s Day, not with all the talk circling in sports about famous dads and their dereliction of duty to their pro athlete sons.

It started recently with LeBron James and the barrage of criticism he received after his son Bronny followed in his footsteps to join him...Read more

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is doing whatever he can to undermine public health. Last week, he ordered his department to undertake a search for alternative measles treatments as the disease surges around the country, which came as a surprise to the many epidemiologists, doctors and others who are aware of the ...Read more

The captive National Endowment for the Humanities recently announced a call for proposals for statues to be assembled in the Trump administration’s “National Garden of American Heroes,” a project that takes obvious inspiration from the Foro Italico, which includes a stadium ringed with classical statues constructed in Rome under the ...Read more

On a recent Friday morning, President Claudia Sheinbaum stood inside Mexico’s presidential palace during her daily morning news conference and was asked by one of the reporters whether she had talked with President Donald Trump about a visit to the White House.

“We’ve talked about how nice it would be to meet in person, but there’s ...Read more

I’m a college professor and a liberal Democrat. It won’t surprise you to learn that I also despise Donald J. Trump.

But let’s imagine, for a moment, that I wanted Trump and his MAGA acolytes to prosper and thrive in the 2026 midterm elections and forever thereafter.

I’d cancel Bill Maher and Saquon Barkley.

That’s what many of my ...Read more

Whatever you think of the National Endowment for the Arts, or federal funding of the arts more generally, surely reasonable Americans all can agree that government agencies should not claw back previously approved grants when struggling nonprofit organizations had already started their projects after being told they could count on that money.

...Read more

The United States of America is at a precarious moment. Our constitutional republic is hanging by a thread when the president himself seems uncertain about his obligation to uphold the Constitution — while those who do are being honored for their courage, as though fidelity to our founding principles were exceptional rather than fundamental. ...Read more

What do Pennsylvania, Illinois, Nebraska, Mississippi, Michigan, Utah, Minnesota, Maine, South Carolina and Massachusetts — states that span U.S. regions and the political divide — have in common?

All 10 have seen recent attempts to redesign their state flags.

In Mississippi, public pressure led the state to abandon their Confederate-...Read more

An ironic side-note to Donald Trump’s status as the most demonstrably dishonest president America has ever had (more than 30,000 verifiable lies during his first term, reports The Washington Post, with the pile now growing ever-larger in his second term) is his penchant for occasionally blurting the quiet part out loud.

That’s apparently ...Read more

The student loan program is a case study in government mismanagement.

Last month, the Department of Education announced it will resume collecting on defaulted student loans. It hadn’t done so since March 2020. At that point, a pause was understandable. The COVID crisis was unfolding. Shutdown orders were about to grind the economy to a halt, ...Read more

For today's sermon on courage, I would like the church to open their King James Bibles to Matthew 27:24: "When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it."

While Pontius Pilate knew ...Read more

Warren Buffett is stepping down as chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., the company he built alongside his later partner Charlie Munger for the past six decades. It’s a final show of humility by a man many consider the greatest investor of all time.

Operating in an era replete with purported Wall Street soothsayers, the 94-year...Read more

Buried – and virtually out-of-sight – after a landslide of poll-driven OMG! insight-journalism that quantified America’s wide and deep discontent with the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s 2.0 presidency, is a two-sentenced quote that historians may someday declare historic.

But it was easy to overlook. It was tacked onto the end of yet ...Read more

Most climate-change deniers don’t even bother fighting the established science anymore: The planet is warming, human activity is the cause, and we can do something about it if we really try. Modern deniers will concede all that, but fire back that the “do something about it” part is too hard, too expensive to be worth trying. We have to be...Read more

One way to hasten a long-delayed home renovation is to set the house on fire. Having helped torch much of the federal bureaucracy, Elon Musk says he plans to move on from his work at the Department of Government Efficiency. Here’s hoping a sounder reform of the civil service can now begin.

DOGE began with much hype. It promised some $2 ...Read more

Should a blatantly sectarian educational institution qualify for public funding as a charter school? The Supreme Court wrestled with the question Wednesday. The answer must be no.

Charter schools are public schools; we’ve said this many times, as have fellow advocates for the innovative instructional models they deliver. They are free and ...Read more