Opinion

The Congressionally-mandated State Department policy review for Somaliland is well underway. It is long overdue. For decades, the State Department’s approach to Somalia was both ineffective and divorced from reality. As Somaliland grew its democracy, ambassadors like Donald Yamamoto and Larry André, Jr., undercut it by enforcing a “One Somalia” policy whose parameters represented more […]

Rural communities warned President Donald Trump that his unilateral trade war with the rest of the world would devastate farms, but Trump didn’t listen. Now, farmers face billions of dollars in losses, and the president is promising a bailout. However, the federal accounts built to aid farmers are low, and Trump needs a cash infusion […]

After the Taliban returned the wrongfully detained American Amir Amiry to the United States on Sept. 28, news of further prisoner trades has percolated. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that Amiry’s release was “an important step forward” to getting freedom for “additional Americans unjustly detained in Afghanistan.” At the time of Amiry’s release, a U.S. official told […]

Actress Olivia Cooke has a knack for playing the social climber. In 2018, she embodied Becky Sharp in an adaptation of William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, wielding charm and wit to seduce her way into the upper class. Now, in Amazon Prime’s 2025 miniseries The Girlfriend, Cooke plays Cherry Laine, a similarly ambitious daughter of a London middle […]

Is it worth shutting down the government to keep billions in federal cash flowing to health insurers? That’s a question Republicans should be asking Democrats every chance they get.  The minority party has brought business in Washington to a halt as part of a wrongheaded strategy to obscure the out-of-control growth in health insurance costs […]