At what point in a negotiation do you conclude that the other side is deliberately stalling? In business, the answer to this question is the definition of whether a sale goes through or dies on the vine. In war, it’s a matter of life and death.

Nearly one month since President Donald Trump’s administration opened indirect peace talks ...Read more

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele may have found the best description for Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s new approach to dictatorial regimes: a laughing emoji.

After a federal district judge ordered the administration to stop a U.S. flight deporting Venezuelans to his country, Bukele wrote on X, after the flight departed: “Oopsie…Too ...Read more

Lonnie G. Bunch III has never been afraid to address white supremacy. The leader of the Smithsonian Institution’s 21 museums and the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), Bunch may be one of the few leaders in Washington fearless enough to navigate the Trump administration’s machine gun ...Read more

Six months before World War II ended in Europe, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote a letter to his top science adviser. Could the wealth of technical knowledge developed for combat, he asked, spur the peacetime economy and improve public health? The resulting treatise, presented to Congress in 1945, established the nation’s commitment to ...Read more

People who start their regime by vacating a capital city probably have some disturbing plans.

Fifty years ago, in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge forcibly evacuated all residents (including bedridden hospital patients) of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and all other sizable population centers.

Those who survived the evacuation were sent to do agrarian work...Read more

Once, the United States was an uncontested superpower capable of fielding a military more powerful and more advanced than any other. No longer. Instead, a rival has emerged that poses a serious and credible threat to America and its allies.

Today, China boasts revisionist intentions evident through its buildup of the world’s largest navy and ...Read more

A leopard can’t change its spots. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is hoping the public won’t remember that.

Democratic Party leaders are scrambling to chart a path forward after President Donald Trump won the popular vote and Republicans secured control of both houses of Congress. Newsom leads the largest state in the country. That should be a...Read more

Why does child abuse happen? A new public service announcement says most people think it’s a “bad parent problem,” but the ad suggests “the root causes may be different than you think.”

This message from Prevent Child Abuse America goes on to explain that child abuse is the result of families’ lack of financial resources — a ...Read more

As a psychological researcher studying the intersection of empathy, ideological extremism and social influence, I have spent years analyzing the mechanisms by which belief systems spread and take hold.

After interviewing hundreds of students, I have observed how these dynamics materialize. One of the most provocative, and fundamentally ...Read more

The seven Colorado River states have only a few weeks left to submit a comprehensive plan for water management going forward. A new study by UCLA researchers should further inform the negotiations as they enter the late stages.

The states continue to discuss a framework for cooperation over the river’s precious water supply when the current ...Read more

As long heard around the world, the (lower-case) voice of America at its best used to sound compelling, authentic, attractive and even stirring, at times vibrating enough soft power to tumble the walls of modern-day Jerichos.

That was already true when the voice spoke German, as it did during the very first broadcast of the (upper-case) Voice ...Read more

In the 1980s, when the late Judge Robert Bork faced Senate scrutiny over his ill-fated nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, a small independent newspaper published a list of his rentals at a local video store.

The movies he and his family rented were perfectly innocuous, but Congress lost its collective mind over the idea that its members’ ...Read more

Choose Chicago finally has a new head honcho in Kristen Reynolds, formerly the CEO of the tourism agency Discover Long Island. Reynolds will have her work cut out for her and not just because marketing Chicago is a whole lot more complicated than selling Fire Island and the Hamptons.

Even as New York recovered relatively quickly from the ...Read more

In California, an estimated 1.8 million residents are undocumented immigrants, or about 5% of the population. They perform many jobs native residents would never do. The financial challenge facing Sacramento is that these immigrants also comprise nearly a quarter of the state general fund cost of health care via California’s program for low-...Read more

Democracy worked as it supposed in South Korea, as a president who abused power was peacefully removed from power. It’s a lesson for all of us. In 2021, Republican senators failed to protect democracy by not convicting Donald Trump and barring him from ever holding public office again.

On Dec. 3, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol invoked ...Read more

A little over a year ago, while trying to secure votes to pass a $1.2-trillion spending package, House Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly told the fiscal conservative members of his party to vote for the bill in part because it banned flying Pride flags over U.S. embassies.

Johnson's tactics were not a surprise. Before running for Congress, ...Read more

Doing away with FEMA would be a disaster.

A few months back, President Donald Trump said something that got attention from too few people.

“I say you don’t need FEMA. You need a good state government,” Trump said after he saw Hurricane Helene’s devastating flooding in North Carolina and the damage from the wildfires in Los Angeles.

...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom says he is inviting prominent followers of President Trump onto his podcasts to learn why Democrats “are getting our ass kicked.” He should look in the mirror.

Newsom epitomizes much of what he thinks is wrong with the Democratic Party.

Moreover, Democrats really haven’t been getting their asses ...Read more

A rare point of agreement across the political spectrum for several decades was that money didn’t matter much in education. Conservatives opposed spending increases as wasteful; many progressives focused instead on structural reforms.

But a recent Albert Shanker Institute report traces the crucial shift in thinking on K-12 education spending,...Read more