Longer reads. We pull together what is happening, why it matters, and what the primary sources actually say.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order on May 19 that bars the IRS from examining President Trump's prior returns and creates a $1.776 billion fund the administration controls.
GOP leaders shelved a scheduled vote on Rep. Khanna's resolution to compel withdrawal from the Iran war once it became clear enough Republicans would join Democrats to pass it. The Senate cleared a parallel resolution 50-47 on May 19.
A leaked May 19 cable orders U.S. diplomats to pressure Ambassador Riyad Mansour to drop a General Assembly vice presidency bid, listing visa revocation among possible consequences.
Fentanyl from Mexican cartels remains the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45. There has been a lot of tough talk and a lot of policy in the last three years. Here is what the data says is actually moving the number.
Major carriers have stopped writing new policies in Florida, premiums have tripled in five years, and a state-backed insurer of last resort is now the largest in the state. The free market is making a call.
Since October 2023, Congress has appropriated more than $20 billion in supplemental military aid to Israel. UN, Red Cross, and WHO numbers on the Gaza campaign keep getting worse. What the receipts and the official record actually say.
CDC puts the US rate at 22.5 deaths per 100,000 live births. The UK, Germany, Canada, and the Nordics are at a fraction of that. Rural maternity ward closures are a primary driver.
The Department of Defense failed its FY2025 financial audit in November. Of 28 sub-audits, only nine received a clean opinion. The agency-wide review covered $4.1 trillion in assets.
The trust fund runs out of cushion in eight years. After that, by law, benefits get cut by about 21 percent. Both parties know this. Neither has done anything about it.
Roughly 90 percent of the world's most advanced semiconductors are produced on a single island that Beijing claims as its own. The chip law passed in 2022 was supposed to fix that. The progress is real but slow.
Three years into the current tariff regime, economists across the spectrum largely agree on who bears the cost. The answer is not what was promised on the campaign trail.
After four years of fighting and roughly $175 billion in US aid, the front lines are roughly where they were a year ago. What the United States got in return is worth a clear-eyed look.
After two years of progress on the PACT Act surge, the Department of Veterans Affairs disability claims backlog is rising again. Hiring freezes and attrition in the claims-processing workforce are the proximate cause.
The gap between US worker productivity and US real wages opened in the mid-1970s and has held wide ever since. The data is from BLS, used across the political spectrum, and not in serious technical dispute.
Home prices have doubled in a decade, wages haven't kept pace, and every fix Congress has tried has either stalled or made things worse. Here's the honest picture.
Crossings are down sharply from the 2023 peak, but the picture is more complicated than either side wants to admit. Here's what the actual statistics say.
Some sectors are seeing real displacement. Others are adding work. The honest picture is more specific and less apocalyptic than the loudest voices on either side.
Congress has raised or suspended the debt ceiling 78 times since 1960. It will probably do it again. Understanding why this keeps happening is more useful than watching the standoff.
Police departments across the country are down thousands of officers from where they were five years ago. Recruiting has gotten harder, retirements spiked, and the effects are showing up in response times.
Overdose deaths have plateaued at a high level. The fentanyl surge reshaped who's dying and where. Treatment access in rural counties is still painfully thin. Here's the current state of things.