In an ideal world, everyone who qualifies for an aid program ought to receive its benefits. But the reality is that this is often not the case. Before the pandemic, for example, nearly one-fifth of Americans who qualified for food stamps didn’t receive them. In fact, millions of Americans who are eligible for existing social […]

On New Year’s Eve, America’s most prominent nativist declared that the nation needs more immigrants.  “We need competent people, we need smart people coming into our country,” President-elect Donald Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, “we need a lot of people coming in.” It may sound as though Trump was just visited by the […]

It’s been a contentious 24 hours in South Korean politics, after impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol narrowly avoided arrest for insurrection on Friday, a month after his martial law declaration.  It’s the latest development in a month-long political meltdown that has not only thrown Korean politics into turmoil, but surfaced the country’s deep political polarization, […]

House Republicans — after some initial drama — successfully reelected Rep. Mike Johnson as speaker on Friday. Johnson’s victory in the first round of voting came as something of a surprise, after three Republicans initially voted against him, depriving him of the 218-person majority he needed to win the speakership. After conferring with Johnson, however, […]

It’s hard to think of a more iconically American company than US Steel. It’s right there in the name.  But it’s more than that. The company emerged from Andrew Carnegie’s Pittsburgh-area steel mills, which produced one of the largest fortunes and were the site of one of the bloodiest and most brutal industrial strikes in […]