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New extreme in gerrymandering

This year's midterm elections aren't just about who wins in November; they're about who wins fights over gerrymandering taking place right now. Nowhere is the battle fiercer than in Virginia, a state where voters just six years ago approved a constitutional amendment to take partisanship out of congressional redistricting. Now Democrats want to make an exception to the rule Virginia voters approved by a nearly two-thirds majority in 2020: They want this year's congressional map to be drawn up by their own state legislators, erasing the districts set up by the bipartisan ...

Mamdani’s proposal would strip dying of their assets

If New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani gets his way, half of everything New Yorkers work a lifetime for — including their homes, their businesses or farms and their savings — could be stripped away on their deathbeds. No more Empire State; he'd make it the Expropriation State. Only one thing in life is certain: We all die. Mamdani is exploiting that certainty to close what he claims is a $5.4 billion city budget gap. More than that, he aims to undermine the foundations of American life by attacking wealth accumulation, homeownership and private property, per the ...

Debate puts America’s melting pot on trial again

As a Black American who is old enough to remember the last days of legal Jim Crow racial segregation, I pay special attention whenever I hear signs that in many American minds the Civil War never really ended. So does President Trump. That may help to explain why he took the extraordinary step on Wednesday of appearing in person in the grand chamber of the U.S. Supreme Court, apparently the first president to do so, as his solicitor general made the case against "birthright citizenship" before the high court justices. The issue, one of the most important Supreme Court rulings expected ...

Yes, boldly go

The BBC science editor covering the launch of Artemis II couldn't contain her enthusiasm when the first plumes of smoke spread out from the launch pad. "Oh, my goodness! Oh, my goodness!" she exclaimed, clapping like a schoolgirl. As the rocket lifted off, she got visibly emotional: "It's not just what you see and you hear as the rocket lifts off. You can feel the force of it through your body. This is the most powerful rocket that NASA has ever built!" Rebecca Morelle can be forgiven for falling in love with the subject of her story. A rocket launch is an awe-inspiring event — a ...

Dogs really are our best friends

My sister-in-law's dog, Molly, died recently. She was a sweet, graying Portuguese water dog, one of the gentlest pups I've ever met. She displayed a propensity for stealing food off the counter, refused to walk in heat, rain or cold and had an unhealthy obsession with eating dirt, but otherwise, she was an excellent pooch. My kids also grew up with her. They don't remember a time before Molly was born. And though she didn't live with us, they somehow felt as if she were also a little bit "their" dog. During the pandemic, my sister-in-law, who lived across the street from us, ...

What is purpose of NATO in 2026?

One month into Operation Epic Fury against the Islamic Republic of Iran, a long-overdue conversation has finally broken into the open: What, exactly, is the enduring rationale for NATO? For decades, this question has been treated in Washington foreign policy circles as heretical. But it isn't. And to their credit, President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are now saying so plainly. As Trump recently put it, "They haven't been friends when we needed them. We've never asked them for much. ... It's a one-way street." At best, America's European "allies" have spent ...