President Donald Trump’s 2026 “skinny budget” is out, and at first glance it gives small-government advocates reason to cheer. It proposes deep cuts to domestic agencies, calls for eliminating redundant programs and gestures toward reviving federalism by shifting power and responsibility back to the states. It promises to slash ...Read more

In a little over a month, Gov. JB Pritzker will be one of three governors of so-called sanctuary states testifying before the U.S. House Oversight Committee.

Republicans who run that panel held a similar session in early March in which Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was one of four mayors put on the spot about laws that forbid local police from ...Read more

I wonder if nations can be characterized by the same attributes, emotions and traits that we use to describe people. Can a nation grieve or be aggrieved, just as a person can? Can it be welcoming and accommodating as opposed to insular and exclusive? Can a nation be proud? Or prideful? Can it be empathetic or cruel?

In a democracy one hopes ...Read more

The Trump White House is 1,000% wrong in “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus in the context of immigration. It is the only protection written into the Constitution, not the Bill of Rights, a fundamental shield — stretching back to the Magna Carta — to contest one’s detention by the government: “The Privilege of the Writ of...Read more

Waskom, Texas, is an old railroad town of about 2,000 nestled at the midway point between Dallas and Shreveport, La. According to the city's website, Waskom became a significant player in America's east-to-west trade during the 1880s because J.M. Waskom, a director of the Southern Pacific Railroad, "led the way in bringing the railroad to East ...Read more

That there’s a spasm of dislike for Trump’s chaotic presidency is not news — new polls show Americans unhappier with this president at 100 days than any of his predecessors.

Much of the attention has focused on his rapidly falling numbers with young voters (“Is Gen Z abandoning Trump?” Newsweek asked last week), but we’re seeing ...Read more

I am standing outside the auditorium, seeing my students line up, or attempt to, for graduation photos. In their formal best, they complain their hair isn’t what they wanted or ask when the retakes are. They sneak their phones out to take selfies and ussies, while I am nagged for bobby pins, help with ties and, yes, even, a pocket square.

I ...Read more

While the world and the nation were fixated on the white smoke billowing above the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, and the latest White House assault on the U.S. economy, a group of Memphis police officers were quietly acquitted of abusing their power and brutally beating a Black man to death.

But because the cops are also Black, last week’s ...Read more

David Souter, the former U.S. Supreme Court justice who died at 85 on Thursday, was sometimes mistakenly thought to have turned into a liberal after being nominated by President George H.W. Bush on the expectation that he would be an ideological conservative.

History will show the opposite: Souter was among the most consistent, principled ...Read more

"May peace be with you."

That was the first sentence uttered by Pope Leo XIV after he was introduced Thursday as the new leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics. From the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, the first American pontiff then reminded the audience that those were also the first words Jesus spoke after His resurrection.

"This is ...Read more

It’s no surprise that President Donald Trump’s first trade “deal” after his disastrous tariffs is more-so a framework than a done deal, but a handshake with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is better than a trade war.

Still, we are hard-pressed to give Trump too much credit just like you wouldn’t exactly praise a friend for paying ...Read more

The animus that has led President Donald Trump to order an end to federal funding of PBS and NPR isn’t new. Public broadcasting has been an irritant to conservatives for a long time.

Conservatives say public broadcasters are biased against them, especially PBS; they are a kind of ground zero for all things “woke”; and they don’t deserve...Read more

Now that the histrionics have calmed — and before California Republicans pick another topic to distort with lies, over-dramatic outrage and public tantrums — it should be said that the California GOP didn’t succeed in anything last week other than showing the dishonesty at the heart of who they are.

Assembly Bill 379 was all the rage (...Read more

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) has been the bogeyman of the right for the better part of four years. The hysteria began with Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “war on wokeness,” which one might have assumed would flame out following his disastrous showing in the 2024 Republican presidential nominee race, fueled in part by voters...Read more

Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker recently gave a speech in New Hampshire that lit up partisan circles thrilled with his fiery and combative tone.

“The reckoning is here,” Pritzker said while issuing a thunderous call for mass mobilization and disruption to counter President Donald Trump’s agenda. He said the American house is on fire,...Read more

Ever since those two mushroom clouds darkened the skies above the fiery hell that was Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world’s two nuclear superpowers somehow found ways to work together – even in times of intense conflict – to prevent the world from plunging itself into all out nuclear war.

Yet, after 80 years without another nuke being ...Read more

I have just one thing to say about President Donald Trump's proposal to reopen Alcatraz as a prison for ruthless offenders.

What took you so long?

The "Rock," as it has sometimes been referred to, sits uselessly in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, criminally underutilized as a tourist destination. I've been there, and the beauty of the ...Read more

The journey of Bob Prevost of the South Side of Chicago to Pope Leo XIV of the Holy See could not have been foreseen when the new pope was a Chicago kid in the 1960s or when he was a math major at Villanova in the 1970s. Every pope since 1523 — 45 men sitting as successors to St. Peter as bishop of Rome — had been Italians.

But the Church ...Read more

One of the central weaknesses of the Biden administration’s national security policies was its reliance on the concept of “integrated deterrence” to prevent aggressive actions by the People’s Republic of China.

The strategy entailed building robust alliances in the Indo-Pacific, forward-deploying greater numbers of U.S. military assets ...Read more

For decades, we have watched America wrestle with its demons. Sometimes, she has successfully pinned them down. Other times, the demons have slipped beyond her grasp. Yet, America has always remained in the ring. There is no difference right now, and the stakes couldn't be higher.

Across America, from small-town council meetings to state ...Read more