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A convoluted scheme to pay parents to stay at home

Columns

Vice President JD Vance wants to pay married parents to stay home with their children, and he wants to do it with money Congress appropriated to help low-income families afford day care. Whatever one thinks of the goal, which may prove popular, the proposal fails every test we should apply to government subsidies. That’s because the proposal corrects no market failure. It pays people for choices they’re already making. It adds a new claimant class to a budget that cannot carry the ones already promised something. And it does all of this without a workable plan to pay for ...

Some people do well with lower doses of GLP-1 agonists

Columns

DEAR DR. ROACH: I’ve been on Zepbound for about eight months. I’ve had fantastic results as far as weight loss, and I’m building muscle back. The problem is that I’ve constantly had to push back on increasing my dose. I started at 2.5 mg, then 5 mg, then 7.5 mg. My body couldn’t handle 7.5 mg, so I asked to go back to 5 mg. My weight loss slowed down, but I was still losing weight and was happy with this. With the 7.5-mg dose, I couldn’t eat anything, which meant that I always felt tired, couldn’t get my proteins, and didn’t have energy to work out. Also, my hair ...

Dear Annie: ‘Retired’ husband puts their golden years on hold

Columns

Dear Annie: My husband retired last year after 40 years as an engineer, and we finally started planning the life we’d been talking about for decades: travel, hobbies, quality time together. But three months after he retired, he accepted a series of offers for “small consulting projects.” He accepted without checking with me, and since then, it’s been a series of “just one more” promises. He finally left his full-time job, but he’s working as much as ever. We’ve already had to postpone a trip because of his shifting availability, and I’m starting to wonder if he ...

Five tests of American restraint

Columns

Five seemingly unrelated developments — the Supreme Court’s intervention in mail-in ballot rules, a federal judge’s decision affecting foreign students and journalists, the blockade threatening Saudi Arabia, an unusual alliance in Michigan politics, and the accelerating power of artificial intelligence — are testing whether American institutions can exercise authority without abandoning restraint. Let’s begin with the Supreme Court’s decision concerning mail-in ballots. The Trump administration asked the justices to permit new Postal Service requirements before the ...

Keep in mind

Letters to the editor

Arthur Keller Beavertown During early 2026 funding standoff and ‘government shutdown’ over Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) appropriations, up to 8- or 16-times votes were tallied depending on the specific procedural vote. No Democrat voted for this bill. It took 76 days to resolve this standoff and pass the DHS bill, ‘the longest partial agency shutdown in U.S. history’. So why did seven Democrats finally break ranks with their party and vote for the bill? They were up for reelection on Nov. 3 midterms ‘in Republican-leaning swing districts’, making their upcoming ...

Natural CMV immunity isn’t fully protective against reinfection

Columns

DR. ROACH WRITES: A recent column on congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV, a herpes virus that is similar to EBV — the virus that causes classic mononucleosis) stated that pregnant women who’ve had CMV are protected from further infections. But an expert on CMV — Dr. Sallie Permar, MD, PhD — wrote in to say that it’s possible to reacquire CMV because natural immunity isn’t fully protective against reinfection. This is why it’s so important for pregnant women to be careful not to get exposed (or reexposed) to CMV. Since the major route of exposure is through young ...