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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

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Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Trudy Rubin: Trump betrays his pledge to Iran’s protesters by letting clerics crush them

When President Donald Trump called on Iranian demonstrators to “KEEP PROTESTING — TAKE OVER THE INSTITUTIONS” in early January and pledged “HELP IS ON THE WAY,” I feared a shameful episode of American betrayal was about to be repeated. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” he had promised these brave Iranians, fed up with decades of corruption and repression by the ayatollahs. Human ...
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Trudy Rubin: Trump’s slurs vs. allied soldiers who died in Afghanistan shake NATO

Words matter. With his nonstop litany of lies and insults, President Donald Trump appears to believe no one will remember what he said yesterday or last week (perhaps he can’t recall, either). Yet, just as Americans won’t forget how Kristi Noem smeared Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti as a “domestic terrorist,” European allies won’t forget the most outrageous slur Trump hurled at them at the ...
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Commentary: Free speech needs a reset in America

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights, guarantees each person the freedom to speak out, untethered by government, in addition to freedom of the press. Yet our society has morphed into a segregated form of free speech that erodes the very essence of such freedom. Terms like “hate speech” and “ racism” are viewed negatively in our society. They describe beliefs ...
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Commentary: Americans are sounding all the alarms. Lawmakers aren’t listening

Sometimes a view of the bigger picture is born in small moments. The other day, I and my little pug, Lily, were at a friend’s house visiting her and her pug, Olive. The two dogs were crawling all over us on the couch, when Olive abruptly jumped off, ran to a corner of the room and hit a bell. Surprised, I asked my friend what that was about. She said: “It’s 4 o’clock. It’s her dinner time. ...
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Nia-Malika Henderson: The killings and cruelty in Minneapolis can’t be spun

Over the course of the last many days, indelible images have dominated the White House’s mass deportation efforts in Minnesota. A teary-eyed 5-year-old named Liam Ramos, wearing a blue bunny hat and carrying a Spider-Man backpack, and bound for a Texas detention facility. A man pinned to the ground by federal agents as another sprays a chemical agent in his face. ChongLy “Scott” Thao led out of his house in boxers in the falling snow. Renee Good saying, “I’m not mad at you,” seconds before being shot and killed. Now there is Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse, first filming border agents on his phone, then on his knees surrounded by masked Border Patrol agents – and then, seconds later, shot dead.
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Trump is embarrassing us. Even Republicans don’t want Greenland. | Opinion

When I first saw a note from President Donald Trump to the prime minister of Norway popping up on social media, I thought it was fake. I’ve written about this loon of a politician for more than a decade, but surely this ornery, whining communiqué to a world leader – with Trump venting over not receiving a Nobel Peace Prize while threatening to take Greenland by any means necessary – was a prank.
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Frank Barry: What Vance gets wrong about being an American

What does it mean to be an American? That question lies at the heart of a debate between Vivek Ramaswamy and Vice President JD Vance that will help determine the future of the Republican Party. The run-up to the country’s semiquincentennial is the perfect time to hold the debate, but it also presents an enormous problem for Vance: The Founders were on Ramaswamy’s side. In a recent speech and ...
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Mary Ellen Klas: What my Trump-supporting friends won’t say

Let’s resolve to have the courage to speak up more in 2026. I realize this is easy for me to say; I’m a columnist. But I live in Florida, where I have many friends who have been Trump supporters and who are privately queasy about what they see as brazen corruption coming from President Donald Trump and his administration. While there is widespread support for the ouster of Venezuelan President ...