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The Trump takeover nears its end

Are we almost at the point of no return? Let America be America again, please, in a post-Donald Trump world. Rebuilding our institutions, arts and trust in government is not a sure thing. Given a global economic, environmental or medical crisis, the endeavor could cross country boundaries, as natural historian David Attenborough said, in “an international ambition for survival.” But on the first day of President Trump’s second term, he ruined hundreds of thousands of lives by making Elon Musk cancel all foreign aid and then fire much of the federal career workforce. He also ...

New prediction markets need more oversight

Athletes can’t bet on their own sport, right? That could lead to charges of taking bribes or fraud. Employees of publicly traded companies can’t give stock tips based on nonpublic information. That’s insider trading. There are legal consequences for some people who make money based on information only they have, or on situations over which they have some control. Meanwhile, prediction markets such as Kalshi or Polymarket provide platforms so new there are not yet consequences for many cases in which a person might make money betting on something they know more about than the ...

Why the US is ‘underbabied’

It was just my luck last week that as my column on the fertility crisis was being laid out in newspaper pages and posted to websites, the sharpest minds of the Trump administration were gathered in the Oval Office to hold forth ... on the fertility crisis. Bad timing is an occupational hazard. But something made it a little more painful for me. As President Trump struggled to keep his eyelids open nearby, Dr. Mehmet Oz, who heads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, stated the gravity of the crisis in terms our nation will not soon forget. “1 in Americans,” the ...

Artificial intelligence CEOs are their own worst enemies

Much of our rising energy costs comes from a decadeslong campaign of progressive environmentalists and Democrat-backed regulators to tear down coal-fired power plants, block nuclear and natural gas expansion and make America reliant on wind and solar — the two power sources most popular during the dark ages. Data centers get blamed for higher power bills, but the reality is inflation has much more to do with those rising costs. The fear about data centers, however, is spreading with misinformation about rising costs, social harms, etc., spreading from a well-organized propaganda ...

Honor America’s fallen appropriately this Memorial Day

Today’s Memorial Day holiday carries added poignance this year as it comes amid a new U.S. war — and war fallen — in Iran and as it ushers in a summer of events to mark this great nation’s 250th birthday. But sadly enough, many in the Mahoning Valley and across the country unintentionally will disrespect the true meaning and purpose of today’s solemn national holiday. After all, ever since 1971, when Congress declared Memorial Day a national holiday to be observed on the fourth Monday in May, for many, the holiday is simply the final day of a long weekend dedicated to the ...

Don’t excuse political violence

A society that begins to excuse political violence should not be surprised when political violence multiplies. Once you create a moral framework in which violence is not merely understandable but righteous — once you argue that certain institutions are so corrupt, so “murderous,” that the people who participate in them deserve to be killed — you are no longer condemning violence. You are licensing it. And when that cultural permission structure meets a criminal justice system increasingly designed to favor perpetrators over victims, the results are predictable: more criminals ...