Breaking News

Opinion

The bottom 1% we rarely talk about

Columns

America spends an extraordinary amount of time debating the top 1% — the billionaires, corporate CEOs and hedge fund managers — and the widening gap between the rich and everyone else. It is an important conversation in a nation that prizes both opportunity and free enterprise. But there is another 1% we talk about far too little. Not the poor. Not the single mother working two jobs. Not the veteran struggling to find his footing. Not the family living paycheck to paycheck. Poverty is not a moral failing, and millions of Americans with modest means are among our country’s ...

Republicans control Congress, so why is Trump’s SAVE America Act stuck?

Columns

President Donald Trump’s obsession with unfounded claims of election fraud has defined his second term in office. But in recent months his fixation has moved from executive nominee litmus tests and executive orders reinforcing proof of citizenship to vote into legislation – dragging Congress into the fray. The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or the SAVE America Act, featured heavily in Trump’s primetime speech on July 16, 2026. It’s become the focus of the administration in recent months, eclipsing prior legislative efforts by proposing stringent and widespread ...

Dear Annie: The burden of always being available

Columns

Dear Annie: My younger sister has always been the “fun one” in our family. She breezes in late with a bottle of wine and a funny story, and somehow everyone forgives her before she has even taken off her coat. She forgets birthdays, cancels plans at the last minute and borrows money she never seems to pay back. My parents still smile and say, “That’s just how she is.” I, on the other hand, have become the family’s unpaid manager. I am the one who takes my mother to her doctor’s appointments, makes sure my father’s prescriptions are filled, hosts Thanksgiving and ...

There are many types of blue and white porcelain

Columns

Blue and white ceramics have been made all over the world, from Chinese porcelain to Dutch delft to the cobalt blue decorations on American stoneware. One type, Hirado ware, comes from Japan. Its name comes from the Hirado Domain, which lasted from 1587 until 1871, when the domain system was ...

Dear Annie: Growing older, feeling smaller

Columns

Dear Annie: I sit here writing to you starting another week much like the past six months of this year: depressed by the way time has altered my life. I’m 76 and married. My routine rarely changes. I wake up, listen to the news and eat breakfast. I straighten up the house and make the bed. I sometimes go shopping or have doctor’s visits. I read, do needlework and pay bills. My family lives 200 miles away, and I talk to them every Sunday. If I don’t, I feel more depressed. Visits from family have lessened since our children have grown and gotten jobs. I feel like crying most of ...

Paving paradise: Dismantling the US Roadless Rule threatens to disrupt wildlife, water and peace in the last quiet places in America

Columns

Pause for a moment and listen. What do you hear? Chances are, somewhere in the background, is the ever-present hum of a road. More than 4.2 million miles of public roads crisscross the lower 48 states — enough to reach the Moon and back almost nine times. This vast network of roads spiderwebs its way across the contiguous U.S., leaving only about 5% as an inventoried roadless area or wilderness. Now, some of those last remaining lands free of roads are under threat from the Trump administration’s proposed rollback of the 2001 Roadless Rule. That includes southeast Alaska’s ...