CLEVELAND — Avik Roy is a Republican’s Republican. A health care wonk and editor at Forbes, he has worked for three Republican presidential hopefuls — Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Marco Rubio. Much of his adult life has been dedicated to advancing the Republican Party and conservative ideals. But when I caught up with Roy... Read More

When Donald Trump accepts the Republican nomination on Thursday in Cleveland, it will represent a stunning moment in American politics — the triumph of a raw populism, embodied by a shameless demagogue, over both the official establishment and the official ideology of a major political party. We didn’t see Trump’s apotheosis coming. But in our... Read More

On average, Democrats (that’s my team*) use guns for shooting the innocent. We call that crime. On average, Republicans use guns for sporting purposes and self-defense. If you don’t believe me, you can check the statistics on the Internet that don’t exist. At least I couldn’t find any that looked credible. But we do know... Read More

A rebellious slate of candidates who this year upset the normally placid balloting for the Board of Overseers at Harvard has failed to secure positions on the board, which helps set strategy for the university. Calling itself Free Harvard, Fair Harvard, the group ran on a proposal t

Republican Ron Unz, trying to vault his U.S. Senate campaign into November, said Monday that he’s been endorsed by former Rep. Ron Paul. In a prepared statement released by Unz, Paul cast the software developer and one-time gubernatorial candidate as strong, courageous and willing to weigh in on controversial issues. Unz said he supported Paul... Read More

Great fights often have great names. The Thrilla in Manila. The Rumble in the Jungle. The Race for Second Place. Wait a second: The Race for Second Place? Our recent Republican and Democratic primary polls suggest that Democrat Loretta Sanchez and Republican Ron Unz are in a tight race to place a very distant second... Read More

Most of the candidates running for California’s up-for-grabs U.S. Senate seat were swaying so far to the left during Monday’s televised debate that even the Republicans were talking about raising the minimum wage, the problem of income inequality and how bad George W. Bush’s foreign policy was. “I think we have to crack down on... Read More

Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments are at TheNation.com.) Whatever else one may think about Donald Trump as a presidential candidate, Cohen argues, his foreign policy views expressed, however elliptically, in a Washington Post interview this week should be welcomed,... Read More

A fierce debate over free speech, academic openness and anti-Jewish sentiment will come to a head on Wednesday when UC regents consider an apparently unprecedented policy statement classifying anti-Zionism -- a viewpoint opposing the existence of a Jewish state -- as a form of bigotry. A draft of the statement has been endorsed by Hillel... Read More

Ron Unz, the conservative critic of bilingual education who in recent years has championed incrementally increasing the statewide minimum wage, said Wednesday he will enter California’s crowded race for U.S. Senate. Unz, a candidate for governor against fellow Republican Pete Wilson in 1994, said his chief motivation for mounting the uphill challenge is to help... Read More

SAN JOSE -- In 1956, when Lupe and Ramiro Compean made their way to San Jose from Texas, the newly married couple arrived with next to nothing. On Monday, in honor of her late husband, Lupe Diaz Compean, 89, who never attended college, donated $15 million to San Jose State for programs to support student... Read More

MENLO PARK -- Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg scolded employees this week for crossing out the phrase "Black Lives Matter" and writing "All Lives Matter" on the walls of the company's headquarters. In a leaked internal message, Zuckerberg said he and other leaders have told employees in the past to stop the behavior but it hasn't... Read More

If you are dismayed by Trumpism, don’t kid yourself that it will fade away if Donald Trump fails to win the Republican nomination. Trumpism is an expression of the legitimate anger that many Americans feel about the course that the country has taken, and its appearance was predictable. It is the endgame of a process... Read More

About 15 years ago, I said something nasty on CNN about Donald Trump’s hair. I can’t now remember the context, assuming there was one. In any case, Trump saw it and left a message the next day. “It’s true you have better hair than I do,” Trump said matter-of-factly. “But I get more pussy than... Read More

Tread lightly, dear reader. Today's philosophical, political, scientific or religious tenet is tomorrow's frowned-upon no-no. We are seeing the latest example of that in Palo Alto where the public school district is taking a long, hard look at some of some of the names of its schools. David Starr Jordan Middle School has come in... Read More

AS CAMPAIGN ANNOUNCEMENTS GO, it was as splashy as could be: a page-one story in The New York Times of January 15, headlined “How Some Would Level the Playing Field: Free Harvard Degrees.” The article detailed a plan by five people to petition for slots on the annual ballot for Harvard’s Board of Overseers election... Read More

Should Harvard be free? That is the provocative question posed by an outsider slate of candidates running for the Board of Overseers at Harvard, which helps set strategy for the university. They say Harvard makes so much money from its $37.6 billion endowment that it should stop charging tuition to undergraduates. But they have tied... Read More

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders said on Sunday he thinks he can persuade supporters of Republican front runner Donald Trump to back him in the 2016 race. Mr. Sanders of Vermont said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that his message about economic inequality can appeal to Trump backers who are angry about lower wages... Read More

Last week, leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump provoked global outrage with his call for a ‘temporary’ ban on all Muslim immigration to the United States. His remarks also sparked enthusiastic support from neo-Nazi white supremacists, triggered a spike in campaign donations, and maintained his 35% lead in the Republican campaign race. In Britain, Prime... Read More

We live in an era of political news that is, all too often, shocking but not surprising. The rise of Donald Trump definitely falls into that category. And so does the electoral earthquake that struck France in Sunday’s regional elections, with the right-wing National Front winning more votes than either of the major mainstream parties.... Read More

The United States has some of the most hostile policies toward an immigrant population found in the developed world. Start with the special police forces dedicated to persecuting and deporting over a quarter of the nation’s immigrants, the estimated 11 million who entered the country without authorization. Then there is the lack of labor laws... Read More

LOKOJA, Nigeria—This was a small town on the docks where steamships stopped when a traveling young nut merchant named Ahmed Musa settled here in the 1940s. He didn’t even lock his doors at night. Now Lokoja is the fastest-growing city on Earth. His roof looks out over shanties and suburban estates tangling along the Niger... Read More

Ever since the global financial crisis, economists have groped for reasons to explain why growth in the U.S. and abroad has repeatedly disappointed, citing everything from fiscal austerity to the euro meltdown. They are now coming to realize that one of the stiffest headwinds is also one of the hardest to overcome: demographics. Next year,... Read More

The air shrieks, and life stops. First, from far away, comes a high whine like angry insects swarming, and then a trampling, like a herd moving through. The kids on their bikes who pass by the Caltrain crossing are eager to get home from school, but they know the drill. Brake. Wait for the train... Read More

Théo Négri, a young software engineer from France, had come up with so many novel ideas at his job at an Internet start-up in San Francisco that the American entrepreneur who hired him wanted to keep him on. So he helped Mr. Négri apply for a three-year work visa for foreign professionals with college degrees... Read More