America’s war with Iran is at an impasse. President Donald Trump’s unfulfilled threats to launch a “major strike” are partly to blame. By constantly promising to strike the Islamic Republic only to back off at the last moment, Trump has undercut America’s leverage and made Iran less, not more, likely to negotiate in good faith. […]
The Senate adjourned for a five-week recess early Saturday morning after passing a bill to fund the federal government until Dec. 11 and confirming Todd Blanche as attorney general. Senate Republicans also agreed to set aside — for the moment — President Trump’s demand to approve another budget resolution to pave the way for tens...
If you like underdogs, you will not like the NIL (short for name, image, and likeness) era of college athletics. Since expanding to a field of 64 in 1975, at least one school from a mid-major conference has made the NCAA Tournament’s second weekend of play, more commonly known as the Sweet 16, every year. […]
California Democrats are once again proving they do not plan much of anything carefully, which shows exactly the kind of short-sighted thinking that has run the state into the ground. As of last year, California had the highest gas tax in the country. The state has jacked up the gas tax in recent years, using […]
Nothing has gone to plan for the Democratic Party since the 2024 election votes were counted — except one thing. Lacking a governing vision and desperate for a new villain — the old one had proven unbeatable — Democrats found one in Elon Musk, and they’ve managed to bring him down a notch. Musk’s dual […]
The group chat that broke Washington has sparked a weeklong war of words between President Donald Trump’s top staff and Jeffrey Goldberg, the liberal editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. He reported in a March 24 blockbuster story that he had been erroneously added to a Signal group chat of top national security officials. Yet, neither side […]
Americans are wealthier than ever before by some measures, but there’s evidence that we’re all walking close to the edge, thanks to the post-COVID-19 Biden-Era inflation. While off its record highs, the stock market is still far higher than in the recent past. In late March, the S&P 500 was 20% higher than its late […]
When I gave birth to my first baby over a decade ago, I had many options for baby products to put her down in. Baby bouncers, baby pillows, baby rockers — all manner of vessels that could contain her little body so I could do things like go to the bathroom, cook dinner, or simply […]
In November 2023, downtown San Francisco underwent a sudden transformation. Its streets were power washed, graffiti was erased, trash was cleared, and the city’s sizable homeless population was relocated. For a city grappling with a mass exodus fueled by these very problems, the cleanup revealed that it was never a matter of feasibility but rather […]
“We will know that we are free when the pornography no longer exists,” Andrea Dworkin concludes in her book Pornography: Men Possessing Women, originally released in 1981 and rereleased this year by Picador. It is easy to read the book nearly 45 years later as a well-meaning but quixotic and doomed quest. Even Dworkin seems […]
Taxpayers should have stopped funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting long ago, but National Public Radio CEO Katherine Maher’s cowardly, disingenuous, and dishonest testimony before Congress on March 26 must surely convince reluctant lawmakers that now is the time to cut the cord. Long before Maher took the helm, defenders of NPR and the Public […]
When I tell my friends in show business that I am now at Princeton Theological Seminary, getting a master’s degree in divinity and on my way, I hope, to ordination in the Episcopal Church, their response is usually to nod thoughtfully and say something along the lines of “Can’t wait to read the sitcom script […]
Born in Toronto in 1944, Lorne David Lipowitz, as Lorne Michaels was known at birth, was, like all baby boomers, seemingly predisposed to undermine, question, and, above all, parody the prevailing conventions of his civilization. “People start to be funny early in their lives, when they notice the difference between the official version and what […]
It is old hat to say that Steven Soderbergh’s movies are stylish, but a look through the auteur’s catalog inspires few descriptors that are more fitting. The director of 35 feature films since 1989’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Soderbergh knows when to begin and end a scene. He understands what characters should wear and how […]
On the night of Oct. 10, 1985, Lt. Cmdr. Barry Steel, call sign Vert, was relaxing aboard the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga. The ship was cruising in Alert 60, a readiness condition with weapons stowed and planes tied down, so it would take 60 minutes to launch a bird. “Stand by. Stand by. Now launch […]
This column will be boring to read. You know I try. I really do, but there is no other way. This week I write about antisemitism. There is so much of it about, and so much is said about it, that by now, you must as be bored with it as I am. But it […]
