Syndicated columns

The worst public health crisis in 100 years became arguably the worst public policy failure in U.S. history because of social pathologies that the pathogen triggered. The coronavirus pandemic is over. What it revealed lingers: intellectual malpractice and authoritarian impulses infecting governmental, scientific, academic and media institutions.

Extraordinarily narrow and unstable House and Senate majorities have become routine in modern American politics. The frantic, final maneuvering last week before Congress approved President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act shows why that’s likely to persist for some time. And that means business, local governments, nonprofits and ordinary Americans need to buckle up for more hairpin turns in national policy that make it almost impossible to plan for the long term.

When a student turns in a writing assignment done at home and it’s clear parts of the finished piece don’t represent the kind of work the student usually does in the classroom, should the teacher grade it anyway?

I’m generally optimistic about all the ways artificial intelligence is going to make life better – scientific research, medical diagnoses, tutoring and my favorite current use, vacation planning. But it also offers a malevolent seduction: excellence without effort. It gives people the illusion that they can be good at thinking without hard work, and I’m sorry, that’s not possible.

The notion that conservatism is “the new punk rock” has been a common trope of the Donald Trump era, repeated by alt-right college kids, thirsty politicians and headline writers. Progressives, the argument went, had become the uptight enforcers of taboos, while right-wingers were impudent insurgents pushing the bounds of permissible expression. As people on the left increasingly valorized safety and sensitivity, members of the new right reveled in transgression and cast themselves as the champions of free speech.

Former First Lady Michelle Obama is done with politics, at least in the traditional sense.

From Iran to Capitol Hill, President Trump is governing as if he believes all the constraints that limited him during his first term have collapsed.

There’s a lot to celebrate this Independence Day, as we mark the 249th anniversary of our national divorce from Great Britain and the abuses of King George III.

Zohran Mamdani got three chances to repudiate the expression “globalize the intifada” in a weekend interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker. It would have been easy, and politically smart, for the Democratic candidate for New York mayor to say that he’d been educated about the phrase’s violent connotation and that he regretted not rejecting it sooner. Instead, he ducked each time, saying that although he does not use those words himself, he would decline to “police” the language of others.

In 2023, a branch of the Palestinian restaurant Ayat opened in Brooklyn’s Ditmas Park, not far from where I live. The eatery trumpets its politics; the seafood section on the menu is headed “From the River to the Sea,” which I found clever but some of its Jewish neighbors considered threatening. An uproar grew, especially online, so Ayat made a peace offering.