Bloomberg.com • 27th April 2025

A Baby Boom? In This Economy?

The US birth rate is near a record low, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Wednesday, with only 1.6 children born per woman, below the 2.1 needed to sustain the population. This is no surprise — the birth rate has been falling since 2007. What is surprising is the inconsistent — and contradictory — set of policies the Trump administration is employing to try to address it.

Bloomberg.com • 23rd April 2025

GOP's Voting Reform Is Paperwork, Not a Solution

Listen closely to the arguments of the House Republicans pushing the so-called “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act” and you realize they aren’t interested in solving the problem the bill purports to address: non-citizens voting in federal elections.If you take the proponents of the bill at their word — that the measure is needed “to increase integrity of elections” because “non-citizen voting decreases confidence in our elections” — you’d expect a targeted proposal aimed at increasi...

Bloomberg.com • 17th April 2025

Harvard Proves the Only Choice Is to Fight

School districts across the US are now facing the same decision as institutions of higher learning: allow the government to censor their instruction or stand up for themselves and lose federal funding. As Harvard and Columbia demonstrated by taking opposite approaches, there is really only one choice: fight.That’s because the Trump administration has demonstrated it’s not negotiating in good faith. Each time an educational institution engages with the White House, the White House shifts the goal...

Bloomberg.com • 12th April 2025

The Florida Entrepreneur Suing Over Tariffs Is Right

When Emily Ley started her stationery business 17 years ago in Florida, she felt like it was the embodiment of the American dream. Today, she’s the unlikely face of opposition to a trade war against China instigated by the American president. Those tariffs threaten to extinguish Ley’s business and the operations of millions of companies like hers.

Bloomberg.com • 8th April 2025

North Carolina Courts Are Too Close to Undoing an Election

A state appeals court just dealt a blow to North Carolinians still waiting for their 2024 Supreme Court election to be resolved and, in the process, provided a template for election deniers to create mayhem in the midterm elections next year.

Bloomberg.com • 6th April 2025

This Marco Rubio Is Unrecognizable

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele may have found the best description for Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s new approach to dictatorial regimes: a laughing emoji.

Bloomberg.com • 2nd April 2025

Democrats Wasted Donors' Money in Florida

Tuesday marked the most consequential political report card yet in President Donald Trump’s second term. Voters in Florida gave him lower than expected — but passing — grades. It was Democrats who failed the test.

Bloomberg.com • 27th March 2025

Forget Polls. Watch the Florida Special Election Results.

Florida holds two special congressional elections on Tuesday in districts where President Donald Trump won more than 60% of the votes. They’ll be closely watched to see if that margin — which months ago seemed effortless for Republicans to sustain in the president’s home state — has melted away.

Bloomberg.com • 21st March 2025

Cutting the Department of Education Is Theater, Not a Plan

Late on Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to “begin eliminating” the US Department of Education. It was exactly as expected: a performative exercise that will achieve none of the president’s stated campaign promises, ​including shutting down the agency.

Bloomberg.com • 20th March 2025

North Carolina’s Ongoing Election Dispute Is Dangerous

The 2024 election still isn’t over in North Carolina. On Friday, the state Court of Appeals will hear arguments in a dispute over a judicial election for the state Supreme Court.

Bloomberg.com • 17th March 2025

Are GOP Leaders Afraid to Listen to Their Own Voters?

No politician will ever admit they have zero interest in hearing what their constituents have to say. But from Washington, DC to Wichita, Kansas elected officials are cancelling meetings with constituents and systematically undermining citizen-led ballot initiatives — the one tool the public has to make change when elected officials won’t listen.It is profoundly hypocritical — and dangerously shortsighted.

Bloomberg.com • 22nd October 2024

This Is Why You Don’t Recognize Your State Government

The nation is going in two different directions. That’s because more states have fallen under one-party control — either Republican or Democrat — than at any time in modern US history. We examined a trove of legislative and electoral data and found that when one party secures control, representative democracy erodes, voters get ignored, and the gaps are wider under Republican control.

Bloomberg.com • 11th March 2025

This GOP Fight Will Determine How Many Kids Go Hungry

A group of Republican lawmakers in the White House and Congress don’t believe it’s the government’s job to feed people. But at the state level, the GOP is heading in a different direction.

Bloomberg.com • 7th March 2025

Florida Deserves Better Candidates for Governor

For nearly half a century, Florida has been America’s ultimate political bellwether. Now, the race to replace Governor Ron DeSantis in 2026 is flashing a warning sign about the influential state’s shallow leadership pool.DeSantis can’t run again because of term limits, but he wants to run for president again so he’s looking for a way to stay relevant. He’s propping up his wife Casey and President Donald Trump endorsed Congressman Byron Donalds. Florida can do better, and it should.

Bloomberg.com • 27th February 2025

Even Steve Bannon Knows Cutting Medicaid Is a Mega-Risk

Republicans are taking a huge political gamble as they try to find money for tax cuts by threatening to slash Medicaid. As Congress has learned repeatedly, most recently in 2018, when the party in power messes with Americans’ health care, things don’t go well for them in midterm elections.

Bloomberg.com • 23rd February 2025

What Declaring War on the AP Really Means

President Donald Trump’s standoff with the Associated Press over its refusal to abide by his executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico isn’t a benign dust-up between a global media institution and a stubborn president. It’s a deliberate and carefully targeted strategy of media intimidation.

Bloomberg.com • 15th February 2025

The GOP Is Obsessed With DEI in Schools. What About the ABCs?

Linda McMahon’s nomination to head the Department of Education has always seemed incongruous. But after watching her Senate confirmation hearing Thursday, I now see why President Donald Trump would appoint the co-founder and former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. Like WWE itself, with its choreographed athletic feats and staged conflict, the president’s commitment to America’s school children is pure performance art.

Bloomberg.com • 12th February 2025

Meet the Educator Who Thinks Fewer Women Should Go to College

Conservatives have made no secret of their desire to dismantle the current university system and replace it with their own, “anti-woke” version that would discourage the advancement of women and minorities. Scott Yenor, nominated to chair the board of trustees at the state-run University of West Florida, is one of the lightning rods in this crusade — and if he is confirmed to that post, he will make Florida his proving ground. State senators should vote to reject his nomination when they meet in...

Bloomberg.com • 6th February 2025

Florida Orange Juice Could Be Tariffs’ Most Iconic Casualty

President Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada is on hold for now but, if it resumes, it could deliver a fatal blow to one iconic American industry: Florida orange juice. If Trump resumes the reckless trade war with the US allies of Canada and Mexico, the impact of their retaliatory tariffs in Trump’s home state of Florida alone would not only raise the cost of importing Mexican juice to Florida bottlers, it could squeeze the Canadian market dry.

Bloomberg.com • 2nd February 2025

Don’t Eliminate FEMA. Reform It.

President Trump is making noises about slashing the disaster-management agency. That’s the wrong call in an era of climate risk. He shouldn't eliminate it. He should reform it. Here's why.