by Sheila Watson | Jun 28, 2026 | Opinion
Bigger is better or so the mantra goes. There’s an exception to be made though when it comes to the huge growth in SUVs. Expanding vehicle size is a part of a systematic push from auto manufacturers to sell their most profitable models — but the costs don’t end on the sales lot. Instead, the surge in both in size and quantity in pickup trucks and SUVs pose substantial risks to life, to the environment and to our wallets.
As reported by Bloomberg’s CityLab, while road deaths across high-income countries have been significantly falling over the past few decades, the United States has become a road safety anomaly. From its position as a road safety leader in the 1970s, now, only Saudi Arabia and the Bahamas have less safe roadways in the high-income group — and a Swedish road user is around seven times safer than an American.
The surge in both in size and quantity in pickup trucks and SUVs pose substantial risks to life, to the environment and to our wallets.
Pedestrian deaths in the U.S. have risen by 75% since 2009, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. A new analysis from the IISH and The New York Times found that pickup trucks and SUVs growing larger over that period are a significant contributor to that rise. Massive changes in vehicle shape, increases in weight and decreases in driver visibility are all also contributing factors to this worrying trend.
First, longer, higher hoods can extend blind spots to more than 14 feet, two to three times larger than the front blind zones of most sedans and compact cars. Stellantis’ Ram TRX
by Jessica Levinson | Jun 28, 2026 | Opinion
As I always say to my students, you may or may not like a Supreme Court decision as a matter of policy, but you need to understand it. It is impossible to effectively argue for or against anything with that crucial first step. Accordingly, the key to truly comprehending the Supreme Court’s big Second Amendment decision this week is reading Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s concurrence.
This week the Court voted 6-3 in Wolford v. Lopez to strike down a Hawaii law that placed new limits on concealed-carry permit holders. Simply put, the law required that gun owners seek permission from private property owners before exercising their Second Amendment right to bear arms in places like hotels and restaurants. With Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion, the four other states that similar laws will now also see theirs’ fall.
Given the Court’s recent rulings on gun control measures, Hawaii’s law was almost certainly doomed
Given the Court’s recent rulings on gun control measures, Hawaii’s law was almost certainly doomed. Four years ago in New York v. Bruen the Court held that there is a Constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense. It also created a new, more stringent, standard for evaluating gun control measures. Justice Clarence Thomas’ majority opinion ruled that gun control laws will only be upheld if they are “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” This is a much more difficult test for the government to satisfy than the previous standard, which balanced public safety needs against the right to bear arms.
In the wake of that decision, Hawaii sought a way to reduce the number of guns carried
by Jason Page | Jun 28, 2026 | Opinion, Sports
Odds are that Serena Williams won’t win Wimbledon.
But then, Williams has beaten the odds — and most of her competitors — for the better part of three decades, which is why millions will be watching her return to competitive singles at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club this week.
At 44, Williams hasn’t played a competitive singles match in nearly four years. The tournament announced last weekend that the 23-time Grand Slam singles winner would take a wild-card entry into the singles competition. Serena and her sister, Venus, had already received wild-card entries into the women’s doubles tournament, which they have won six times, most recently in 2016.
Williams’ timing is likely an indictment of the current crop of women’s tennis stars.
Speculation about her return to singles action abounded after Williams announced that she would play doubles in grass tournaments that lead up to Wimbledon. The question was less if than when — whether she would wait until the hardcourt U.S. Open, which she has won six times, or resume her career on the grass at Wimbledon, where she has won seven singles titles.
To those wondering why, or why now, Williams offered an intriguing comment during a press conference earlier this month: “I don’t need to win,” she said. “I’ve won more than most people have in their whole lives. I don’t have anything to lose. Everything is just a gain.”
Is this next chapter of her legendary career really about her children, ages 8 and 2, seeing her play, or is one of the game’s greatest competitors driven to take one last stab at tying or surpassing
by Zeeshan Aleem | Jun 28, 2026 | Opinion
After nearly a year of controversy and several lawsuits, the notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention center in Florida is officially shuttering. But Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ explanation for why it’s closing is disingenuous.
At a news conference on Thursday, the governor said Alligator Alcatraz has “fulfilled the role it was designed to serve.” He also said the facility was always meant to be temporary and that its function was merely to expand space for detaining undocumented immigrants awaiting deportation.
“We set it up as an assist for the federal government, which didn’t have the wherewithal to house and stage illegal aliens prior to deportation,” DeSantis said. “The bottom line is that they have the resources, they have the capability now to execute this mission on detention space. We were never going to make that a permanent facility.”
This isolated swampland dungeon was praised by Trump and helped inspire spin-offs. But it came at a steep price.
DeSantis’ account makes it sound as if Alligator Alcatraz was simply a standard detention center meant to temporarily help the Trump administration with space for detainees. In reality, it was designed to degrade immigrants and deter future immigrants from entering the country. However — like so many projects of the MAGA right — it was likely too impractical and politically costly to keep running, and it appears DeSantis has decided he’s had enough of it.
All indications point to Alligator Alcatraz being set up last summer for the purpose of creating a spectacle of domination of undocumented immigrants. It’s not just some coincidence that it was constructed sloppily in just eight days, deep in Everglades swampland teeming with alligators and pythons. Nor
by Paul Waldman | Jun 27, 2026 | Opinion, White House
For half a century, Watergate has been the quintessential American scandal, so much so that we frequently affix “-gate” to new episodes of official wrongdoing in an attempt to make it sound significant and sinister.
But what if, asked Vice President JD Vance, we consider Watergate no big deal? Or even better, why not decide that former President Richard Nixon, our pre-Trump model of corruption and abuse of office, was not the perpetrator of Watergate but its victim?
“I’m actually fascinated by Nixon as a character in history,” Vance said at an appearance this week at the Nixon Library in California. “I think that his historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance, but I think deservedly so. As I joked with Robert backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. Like, the idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”
Rewriting history is a longtime hobby of American conservatives.
Vance continued: “And by the way, if you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions tried to do to Donald Trump and the first Trump administration. There is a parallel.”
Rewriting history is a longtime hobby of American conservatives, both to absolve them of their sins and reshape the American mind to align with their values. For instance, the “Lost Cause” counternarrative of the Civil War, which portrays the Confederacy’s treasonous slavery advocates into noble men simply defending their homes, continues to this day, with the Trump administration renaming military bases and erecting statues to
by Symone D. Sanders Townsend | Jun 27, 2026 | Opinion
President Donald Trump can be unpredictable. He changes his mind based on who last talked with him. He has no real interest in the day-to-day work of running the federal government.
But beneath the chaos, he does have a governing philosophy.
The ongoing debacle of the Reflecting Pool has been a helpful distillation of his approach: Make a big promise, use it to reward your allies, blame setbacks on your opponents, criminalize dissent and then attack the press.
The first three steps are fairly common in politics, especially among populists with little experience in government. But it’s the last two that turn Trump into something more than just a run-of-the-mill incompetent politician.
Authoritarianism often begins with the habit of treating ordinary problems as criminal conspiracies. A court strikes down his policy, and he calls the judge “crooked” or “corrupt.” A protest escalates, and he calls the protesters “paid agitators.”
If an authoritarian government cannot accept criticism, then it has to label critics enemies. If it cannot admit a mistake, then it has to blame sabotage. And if it cannot accept failure, then it has to find someone to punish.
The fact that Trump used these tactics on the Reflecting Pool may be comical, but it’s also ominous.
Earlier this week, federal officers arrested multiple people at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after Trump blamed “vandals” for damage to the newly renovated monument.
So far, the only one we know is facing charges is a former Olympian who says he simply stopped during a bike ride, reached down and touched a piece of blue coating that had already peeled away from the bottom of the pool.
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