Breaking News

National Columnists

What should Trump say at State of the Union?

America is tired. Not tired of debate. Not tired of conviction. Americans can handle disagreement. What they are weary of is perpetual combat. They are weary of the temperature always being set at boiling. They are weary of economic anxiety, cultural distrust and political trench warfare that seems to reward outrage more than results. If President Donald Trump truly wants to secure not only victory but legacy, this is the moment for a different kind of speech on Tuesday. Not a rally speech. Not a grievance speech. Not a score-settling speech. A governing speech. He ...

Remembering Rev. Jesse Jackson

President Trump called Rev. Jesse Jackson "a force of nature" and so he was. Jackson, who died Tuesday at 84, was the last great orator of the civil rights movement. He could bring an audience to cheers or to tears with the power of his personality. I once accompanied him to a Washington, D.C., public middle school. He admonished the young girls in the all-Black audience not to get pregnant and to the boys he said to respect the girls and refrain from sex until marriage. They seemed to hang on his every word. Afterward I said to him: "That should be your main message if you want to help ...

Rubio makes case for stronger West

Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a speech at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday that stood out not for its bombast but for its clarity. In a room filled with political figures from across the Atlantic — and from both parties at home — Rubio was unmistakably the adult in the room. Within the Trump administration, Rubio is easily the most articulate spokesman on foreign policy, and at Munich he demonstrated why. His address offered a robust defense of the transatlantic alliance while avoiding the sharper edges that have unsettled European audiences in recent ...

You have run your race, Jesse

The passing of Jesse Jackson marks the end of a turbulent and transformative era in American politics. For more than five decades, he stood at the intersection of protest and power, unapologetic in his focus on race, relentless in his pursuit of equity, and unafraid to confront America's deepest contradictions. The era that shaped him defined him. Jackson came of age in the segregated South, forged in the crucible of the civil rights movement under the moral thunder of Martin Luther King Jr. That generation did not believe in incremental whispers; it believed in confrontation. ...

Don’t turn Epstein files into MeToo

In recent years, public trust in American institutions has collapsed, and understandably so, given the overt politicization of supposedly objective fields such as medicine and education -- you know, The Science. Meanwhile, this distrust has also spread throughout our justice system. In an ideal world, a truly just justice system is built upon a platform of absolute objectivity and absolute equality. But, since we clearly live in a world that is far from ideal, justice is routinely doled out by a Lady Justice whose blindfold has been replaced with blinkers, adjusted as needed by ...

Why are anti-ICE activists building borders?

Anti-ICE activists in Minneapolis are setting up blockades. They're demanding ID from drivers. In short, they're setting up their own borders — against America's laws and law enforcement. It's not the first time "protesters" have done this. Activists inspired by Black Lives Matter seized control over a portion of Seattle six years ago and christened their conquest the "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone" (CHAZ) or "Capitol Hill Occupation Protest" (CHOP). A black teenager, Antonio Mays Jr., was shot and killed by what the Seattle-area ABC affiliate KOMO News calls ...