Syndicated columns

Nearly 82 years ago, my father was born in Nazi-occupied Belgium. When he was only 3 weeks old, his own father, Max, was captured and murdered by Nazis; my dad survived because he was hidden by a series of Christian foster homes. I was born in a peaceful time and place – Victoria, Canada, in 1974 – but my own life was shaped by those events that happened decades before my birth.

Is it possible that Israel could win a military victory in Gaza and still lose the war?

Many adjectives have been deployed to describe House Republicans. Hapless. Thuggish. Clownish. Ineffective. But the most politically descriptive: Minority.

Last week, I gave a lecture at the University of California at San Diego about politics and social justice. Afterward, as I was signing books, a young Black woman approached my table and whispered a question, asking me what I thought about the horrors playing out in the Gaza Strip.

Here’s a suggestion for American fashionistas eager to do what they can to prevent climate change: Contra the ads, don’t buy American. For each dollar’s worth of clothing it manufactures, the U.S. textile industry emits nearly three times as much carbon dioxide as its Chinese counterpart. Stick to sourcing your wardrobe from China.

In announcing last week that he will not seek reelection to the Senate – and hinting at a third-party presidential bid – Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., wrote an op-ed in which he decried the lack of bipartisanship in Washington. His first example? The Senate’s failure to pass his legislation to reverse Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and codify Roe v. Wade.

In his first big test as House speaker – coming up with a credible plan to avert a government shutdown, which passed the chamber on a bipartisan vote on Tuesday – Mike Johnson, R-La., has offered a sign that he might be a more skillful and pragmatic leader than many thought possible.

The witness stand in Justice Arthur Engoron’s courtroom at 60 Centre St., in lower Manhattan, is an ordinary wood-paneled box off to the side of the bench.

I don’t know Mike Johnson, the brand-new speaker of the House of Representatives, but I feel as if I do because we’re from the same neck of the woods. He’s from Shreveport, in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, where I was born and where one of my brothers died.

A few things you can bet on when there’s been a terrible mass shooting in this country.

The health case against regularly eating red meat keeps getting stronger. At what point is the data convincing enough for Americans to change their diets? One recent study found that eating red meat increases the risk of Type 2 diabetes; another paper finds a diet low in meat, sugar and salt but rich in vegetables and legumes is associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer’s.

As a few bleak anecdotes illustrate, it is often impossible, in real time, for outsiders to know what is happening in the ceaselessly reigniting war between Israel and the Palestinians. This was true even before social media, and before Elon Musk acquired Twitter and turned it into the cesspool of misinformation, trolling and hysteria now called X. But today countless people are plugged into a frantically churning news cycle, trying to instantly metabolize a conflict that is a hall of mirrors in the best of times and is now careening toward a possible regional war, with all the propaganda and mass panic that entails. It's an epistemological catastrophe that is putting people's lives in danger.

Leadership turmoil in Congress could potentially help the local news industry in its quest for federal support, according to an update provided to publishers gathered in Chicago last week.

The terrorist attack by Hamas against Israelis – the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust – was horrid, barbaric and inexcusable. Israel has a right to defend itself and pursue the perpetrators.

On the surface, the gridlock caused by the Republican Party’s failure to elect a speaker of the House of Representatives looks like a dysfunction of our old-fashioned Constitution. But the fault doesn’t lie with that document. The House’s dysfunction today is the product of the evolution of the American party system and the House’s own rules.

Respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, is a nasty bug. It’s the leading cause of hospitalizations among American infants and results in thousands of deaths among the elderly each year.

On Sunday afternoon, I sat in US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis to watch the Kansas City Chiefs battle the Minnesota Vikings. Behind me, a couple wondered whether Taylor Swift, who had attended the last two Kansas City games, had decided to attend this one, too. In front of me, I could see a couple leaning over a phone, looking at search results for "Taylor Swift Minneapolis."