Category: Politics

Exactly one month ago, Donald Trump chatted briefly with reporters on a tarmac and boasted about inflation. “Prices are dropping fast,” the president said. The rhetoric was wrong but familiar. In fact, a month earlier, the Republican similarly claimed, “Inflation is way down. Everything is great. The prices are coming down.” Reality continues to tell…

Around this time eight years ago, as then-Sen. Bob Corker neared the end of his congressional career, the Tennessee Republican voiced his frustrations about the direction of his party, telling reporters that the GOP had become almost “cultish” about Donald Trump. The retiring senator added, “It’s not a good place for any party to end…

Good morning. You’re reading the Up First newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox, and listen to the Up First podcast for all the news you need to start your day. Today’s top stories Twenty-five years ago today, a terrorist attack changed American life forever. Four planes were hijacked by al-Qaida; two struck the World Trade Center…

Another day, another horseman of the apocalypse galloping over the horizon. Lately we have heard from so many AI doomers – tech whistleblowers popping up to warn that their work is probably going to kill us – that we’re becoming almost blase about it. Humanity wiped out within a decade? Well, only if another world…

Republicans often slam the left for promoting the idea that Americans ought to have access to “free” stuff — like government-backed health insurance or childcare. Those policies of course aren’t actually free, because tax revenue finances those social services. But robust social democratic policies, which have enjoyed great success in many other affluent democracies, are…

In January 2002, I gave a lecture on trauma and depression to 40 New York firefighters who had survived 9/11. I was there as part of a program I co-developed with the FDNY to help New York’s bravest navigate the emotional aftermath of losing 343 firefighters — many of them close friends, some of them…

Twenty-five years have passed since Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people after taking control of four passenger planes and crashing into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. In that time, some communities have recovered and others still bear the scars; a generation has come of age that…