Politics
/ArcaMax

Commentary: Dehumanizing and starving Gazans has been a strategy all along
An Israeli soldier would position his leg against the wall in the narrow corridor to our school, then order us: “Pass under my leg, or no school.”
That was a recurring event for us children during the early 1990s in our Al-Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza, the “beach camp.”
It took us some growing up to understand it as systematic ...Read more

Editorial: Florida's dubious death-penalty record
Edward Zakrzewski II, 60, has spent nearly half of his life on Death Row, where next Thursday he is to be the ninth person executed in 2025, a modern one-year Florida record.
Only Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed the death warrant, knows why he didn’t select one of the 120 other inmates who have been there longer, or why he doesn’t answer the ...Read more

Commentary: South Korea's new president tries to shake up the Korean Peninsula
As the world rightly remains focused on the bloody battlefields of Ukraine and the humanitarian abomination that is Gaza, South Korea’s new president is trying to shake up the status quo on the Korean Peninsula, one of the most militarized regions on the planet. Whether he succeeds will depend on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s willingness...Read more

David M. Drucker: Firing Powell is too risky -- even for this White House
Donald Trump is hardly the first president to pressure the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates or take some other action the White House deems necessary to boost the economy and shield the commander-in-chief from the fallout that comes when voters can’t make ends meet.
President Lyndon B. Johnson did it 60 years ago, summoning William ...Read more

Commentary: Red states now lead the charge toward healthier living
Ever since Donald Trump rode down his golden escalator at Trump Tower in 2015, a political and cultural realignment has been underway in America, culminating in his second presidential victory. Many issues once considered the domain of the left seem to have been adopted by the new, right-leaning populist movement.
Nowhere is this more apparent ...Read more

Editorial: California's painful power prices are a choice
California has the highest residential electricity rates in the continental United States. The reason is exactly what you’d expect.
In May, residential customers in California paid an average of 35.03 cents per kilowatt-hour. Nevada residents paid 13.32 cents per kWh. In Arizona, it was 15.76 cents per kWh. California’s commercial and ...Read more

Commentary: 20% of college students are parents. Here's how we can do more to help them
The latest national report on students who left college without earning a degree contains some sobering data: Approximately 2.1 million students stopped higher education between January 2022 and July 2023, swelling the “some college-no degree” population to more than 43 million Americans.
What’s contributing to this national crisis is a ...Read more

Noah Feldman: Congress is surrendering its last real power
This hasn’t been a good year for congressional authority. Consider Congress’ craven vote to claw back some $9 billion of funding it had previously allocated for foreign aid and public broadcasting. That quiet move tells you a lot about how institutional power works in Washington — especially given some of the bigger headlines of the last ...Read more

Commentary: Barring undocumented kids from Head Start does not serve our nation
As President Donald Trump’s deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development and director of the Office of Head Start during his first term, I have seen firsthand the positive impact of his leadership. His dedication to streamlining government resulted in changes to the Head Start system that supported its programs’ commitment to ...Read more

Matthew Yglesias: Why MAGA wants to make Mexican Coke in the US
Coca-Cola is launching a new product in the U.S. this fall featuring cane sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup, and at least one restaurant chain is planning to offer sugar Coke as soon as next week. This news prompted Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to post his reaction online: “MAHA is winning.”
This new ...Read more

David M. Drucker: Susan Collins isn't worried -- Even though Maine is blue on paper
In 2020, Susan Collins’ Democratic challenger raised so much money, she couldn’t spend it all. Yet Sara Gideon lost in a blowout. Maine’s moderate Republican senator defeated her 51% to 42%, even as the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, won the state 53% to 44%.
With the 2026 midterm elections drawing near, Collins again looks ...Read more

Editorial: The best way to win the war in Gaza is to end it
For 22 months, since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted it’s too soon to discuss Gaza’s future. One can debate the merits of his position (and his motivations). For the sake of Israel’s long-term security, however, the time has come to change course.
Thanks in no small part to the prime ...Read more

Commentary: Billions for weapons, rather than troops, won't make us safer
The Pentagon got a whopping $150 billion increase in the budget bill passed by Congress and signed by the president July 4. That will push next year’s proposed Pentagon budget to more than $1 trillion. Most of that enormous amount will go to weapons manufacturers.
A new report by the Quincy Institute and the Costs of War Project at Brown ...Read more

Commentary: Political ploy or bold move to save democracy? Columnists debate Newsom redistricting threat
In a brazen move, Republicans in Texas have set out to redraw the state’s congressional map — an effort to boost President Donald Trump and the GOP in the 2026 midterm elections.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has threatened to respond in kind, gerrymandering blue California to give Democrats a lift and offset the Lone Star lunge for power.
That would ...Read more

George Skelton: Newsom responds to Trump's gutter politics
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — In fighting President Trump, Gov. Gavin Newsom reminds me of actor Gene Hackman’s hard-nosed character in the movie “Mississippi Burning.”
Hackman plays a take-no-prisoners FBI agent, Rupert Anderson, who is investigating the disappearance of three young civil rights workers in racially segregated 1964 Mississippi...Read more

Commentary: Burning down America's best tool for peace and prosperity
On July 11, the U.S. State Department imposed sweeping layoffs as part of a large-scale reorganization. Why should this matter to you? Violence is surging across the globe — 2024 saw the highest number of state-based armed conflicts in over 70 years. In our globalized world, instability affects us whether we like it or not.
This means now is ...Read more

Martin Schram: Gabbard's intel trove brings clarity
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s release of once-secret work documents has produced new clarity on what U.S. intel elites decided Russia did and didn’t do to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
She deserves our gratitude. Thanks to Gabbard’s decision to disclose a number of carefully redacted but readable work ...Read more

Commentary: New York City's ranked choice voting -- Democracy that's accountable to voters
New York City’s election has gotten a lot of attention, and ranked choice voting is a big part of the reason why.
Heads turned when 33-year-old state legislator Zohran Mamdani knocked off Andrew Cuomo, a former governor from one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent families. The earliest polls for the mayoral primary this winter found ...Read more

LZ Granderson: Malcolm-Jamal Warner carried a heavy load for Black America
There were three television characters who really mattered to me as a kid: Michael, Leroy and Theo.
In elementary school, "Good Times" was the television show that most closely resembled my family. And seeing reruns of Ralph David Carter's portrayal of a precocious young boy learning what it means to be poor, gifted and Black is what moved his ...Read more

Editorial: Gabbard makes her own hoax: Intel chief's absurd rehashing of Russian interference
The unqualified director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is again proving her unfitness by claiming that former President Barack Obama and his administration engaged in a “treasonous conspiracy” regarding the investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.
In Gabbard’s retelling, based on some ...Read more