We spend a lot of time talking about the problem of polarization in today’s politics. If you get right down to it, however, most of that happens, well, at the fringes — either end of the pole, if you will.

What’s more normal, in our experience, is for the average American to question whether either political party cares about regular ...Read more

Schemes of national governance are complicated and subject to generalization, but for the sake of argument, let’s put “democracy” at one end of a spectrum and “autocracy” at the other and consider the bright line that separates them?

There isn’t one. In fact, since 1997 the Center for Systemic Peace has maintained a 21-point scale ...Read more

The price of gold has hit one record after another this year, and if the past is any guide, the precious metal’s wild ride means bad news could be on the way.

Gold is the doomsday prepper’s favorite commodity, a store of value for difficult times. In the 1970s, gold prices shot up alongside runaway inflation and the end of a system that ...Read more

In the 1987 book “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” Donald Trump introduced the notion of “truthful hyperbole,” which he called an “innocent form of exaggeration and very effective form of promotion.” The idea is to use sensational imagery or language to get attention and generate excitement — regardless if it has anything to do with ...Read more

LAS VEGAS — Aaron Mahan is a lifelong Republican who twice voted for Donald Trump.

He had high hopes putting a businessman in the White House and, although he found the president's monster ego grating, Mahan voted for his reelection. Mostly, he said, out of party loyalty.

By 2024, however, he'd had enough.

"I just saw more of the bad ...Read more

If you’re faced with a serious disease, you better hope it’s not a rare one.

After an often tortuous path to diagnosis, people with rare diseases are likely to find that good treatment options don’t exist and none is on the horizon. Many of these conditions are poorly understood, and conducting studies in tiny patient populations can be ...Read more

As the White House threatens to send the National Guard into more U.S. cities, its rationale seems to vary by place — and by day. In some instances, it’s to fight crime. In others, it’s to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Either way, it’s a bad idea: To the extent those problems are legitimate, they’re better ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Some witty person long ago gave us this immortal line: “No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”

Humorist Will Rogers usually is credited — wrongly. Mark Twain, too, falsely.

The real author was Gideon J. Tucker, a former newspaper editor who founded the New York Daily ...Read more

Restaurant owners talk about how hard it is to survive, but they keep one gripe pretty much to themselves because the public might take offense: They’d like us to act more like our parents and less like the tourist who backed into and damaged a painting while taking a selfie at the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Italy.

To put it in gentler ...Read more

Being a millionaire isn’t what it used to be. This isn’t a lament, it’s a fact: As Bloomberg News reported recently, almost one-fifth of U.S. households have a net worth of more than $1 million. Fully one-third of them have gained that status since 2017.

There is, however, an important caveat to this data, which is through 2023: Most of ...Read more

In the first week of October, with the government shutdown underway, the Senate confirmed President Donald Trump’s nominee to head up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Neil Jacobs.

Jacobs, who served as the acting under secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere during the first Trump Administration, is best ...Read more

Banned Books Week just ended, but the fight it highlights continues every other week of the year. This year’s theme was Censorship is So 1984: Read for Your Rights, invoking George Orwell’s famous novel to warn against the dangers of banning books.

It was a powerful rallying cry. But now that the week has ended, we need to face two ...Read more

President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are vigorously fighting for a world where your health care costs more, covers less and gives even greater power to private insurance companies.

That is not good for you. It is not good for America. You deserve a health care system that is universal, affordable and humane — one in which ...Read more

In the annals of American politics, few figures have reshaped the landscape as profoundly as President Donald Trump. His bombastic style, unfiltered rhetoric, and policy disruptions galvanized the Republican base while triggering a seismic reaction among Democrats.

As Trump’s second term approaches its end in 2029, the GOP stands at a ...Read more

Don’t believe the headlines. The government shutdown is not really about Obamacare. That’s just the pretext.

The shutdown is a tactic employed by the Democratic congressional leadership to create a high-profile platform from which to oppose President Donald Trump. More dangerously, it’s a political trap for the GOP, aimed at influencing ...Read more

When you think of role models, there are probably a number of women who come to mind before Angela Lansbury: women who boldly and sometimes loudly shook things up like Rosie the Riveter, Riot Grrrl rebels, and RBG. Maybe even Miss Piggy, though that could just be me. In contrast, Lansbury, who died in 2022, is associated with cozy Cabot Cove (...Read more

The American immigration system is broken, and the arrest and detention of a Fresno mother poignantly illustrates this tragic reality.

On Oct. 8, Maria Francisca Villanueva Caballero, accompanied by her lawyer, followed the rules set out by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and showed up at the Fresno office expecting to walk out ...Read more

The weekend of July 4, 2024, was a bloody one in Chicago. Over 100 people were shot in the city and, for 19 Chicagoans, this was the last holiday weekend they ever would see.

In its wake, this city’s business leaders announced a remarkable thing: They had come up with $104 million to fight the violent crime that they could see was ...Read more

State Sen. Scott Wiener is a strategic and effective legislator who rarely lets emotion make his decisions — much like Nancy Pelosi, whose congressional seat he would like to take.

It has been a wide-open secret for years that Wiener wanted to make a run for federal office when or if Pelosi retired, but he's also been deferential to the ...Read more