Syndicated columns

When the Rev. Father Francis Mann read the last benediction at Donald Trump's inaugural ceremony, he ended by saying, "Americans kneel to God and to God alone." But in President Donald Trump's second inaugural speech, and in the executive orders he's issued since, it is clear he expects Americans and the world to kneel to him. Not since George Washington refused to let Americans make him a ...

One of the longest, most technical and, as it turns out, most inconsequential public-policy debates of the 21st-century was about net neutrality. Now that a federal appeals court has effectively ended the debate by striking down the FCC’s net neutrality rules, it’s worth asking what we’ve learned.

The most interesting detail of the hostage and ceasefire deal that Israeli and Hamas officials agreed to Wednesday lies neither in its terms, which mainly resemble what’s been on the table for months, nor in the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, is effectively acquiescing to Hamas’ continued grip on power in the Gaza Strip after loudly and repeatedly vowing he wouldn’t.

I’m a little late to the New Year’s resolutions rush for 2025. But in case some of you are still pondering which rules to embrace and which pleasures to forgo in the name of a higher purpose, I want to put an unorthodox option on the table: To save the world from climate change, stop eating organic. That is, if you truly think the world is on the verge of a climate catastrophe, cut the grass-fed, free-range, hormone-free, happy-cow steak.

The biggest threat to your health isn’t your inability to afford an inhaler or to get that weird mole checked, the GOP argues. It’s everything else about American society, from nutrition to neurotoxins.

Democrats have a terrible habit, during moments of right-wing backlash, of voting for Republican legislation that they don’t seem to truly believe in and eventually live to regret.

Americans tend to have a soft spot for our former presidents. Even the bad ones.

Maybe you made a New Year’s resolution to cut down on the amount of alcohol you drink or to stop drinking altogether. Maybe you’ve committed to Dry January. Maybe you were alarmed when the surgeon general last week said that consuming alcohol is a leading preventable cause of cancer and that alcoholic beverages should carry warning labels more like those for cigarettes.

On Friday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments over whether TikTok should be banned in the U.S. on Jan. 19. Mia Manson, a pole vaulter at the University of Michigan, will be paying attention. She earns thousands of dollars (and merchandise) by posting videos to the addictive social media site for brands like Sweetgreen Inc. and the prebiotic soda brand Poppi. If the Court upholds the ban, she told me during a recent phone call, “it will definitely hit my income.”

Donald Trump is obsessed with raising tariffs. Though it’s tricky to predict how much he will hike them, they will be higher than today’s average rate of 2.4%. Hardly a day passes without Trump mentioning how “beautiful” and profitable tariffs are. And this week, he laid bare why he will raise them this year: He needs money to pay for bigger tax cuts.

Donald Trump’s election with Republican House and Senate majorities has put the Internal Revenue Service back in the spotlight. The agency lost $20 billion in funding under the latest deal to avoid a government shutdown, and further cuts to its enforcement budget are likely in the next Congress.

For those waiting and hoping to see the economy return to pre-COVID levels of activity, recent employment data, while showing considerable strength, must be discouraging.