I’ve talked about it lots of times before: The high cost of lying and deception — by politicians and police, corporate executives, and clergy, even journalists, accountants, and educators — has been to weaken every major social institution.
As each of these institutions wages its separate battle to remove the cloud of suspicion and cynicism that hovers over it, there are certain truths about trust that must be understood and dealt with.
President Donald Trump’s second administration has been defined by its assault on the federal workforce. With Elon Musk at the helm of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Trump administration fired tens of thousands of federal workers, jeopardizing services that working families across the country rely on. Yet the attacks on workers have gone beyond firing public sector workers and will not end just because Musk has left the government.
President Trump says it was necessary for him to order U.S. pilots to bomb Iran to prevent that nation’s government from building a nuclear bomb.
Wait a minute. Something is coming to me. Just give me a moment. It’s coming into my mind. Oh, yes, I remember:
“WMDs! WMDs, Jacob! We have to invade Iran, I mean Iraq, because Saddam Hussein is coming to get us with his WMDs! We have to invade now! Tomorrow will be too late. WMDs! WMDs!”
My mother left a small village in western Ireland when she was 17.
She had good reason. Her public education ended at age 14. At the time, public high schools did not exist in Ireland. The fifth child of a Irish farmer’s 10 children could only get a secondary education with a scholarship to a private school. And she did not get that. Many people in her village in County Mayo were migrant workers, traveling to Scotland to pick potatoes.
She didn’t want that life. So she left. So did most of her sisters.
And decades later, she’s still angry.
Since the early 1990s, the small blue Energy Star label has appeared on millions of household appliances, electronics, and even buildings across the United States. But as the Trump administration considers terminating some or all of the program, it is worth a look at what exactly this government-backed label means, and why it has become one of the most recognizable environmental certifications in the country.
Energy Star was launched by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1992 and later expanded in partnership with the Department of Energy with a simple goal: making it easier for consumers and businesses to choose energy-efficient products, helping them reduce energy use and save money, without sacrificing quality or performance.
After a two-day manhunt, Minnesota authorities arrested and charged 57-year-old Vance Boelter on June 15, 2025 after he allegedly shot and killed Minnesota House Democratic leader Melissa Hortman and her husband in their home and seriously injured another state senator and his wife.
Boelter, disguised as a police officer, went to other Minnesota politicians’ homes late in the evening on June 13. In his parked car, he left behind a list of names and addresses of other Minnesota state and federal elected officials, as well as community leaders and Planned Parenthood locations.
This incident is the latest to demonstrate how political and often hate-based violence is becoming a more common part of American politics.
A man named Mohamed Soliman is charged with multiple crimes relating to a brutal Molotov cocktail attack on people in Boulder, Colorado, who were demonstrating in favor of Israeli hostages in Gaza. Some of the victims suffered second- and third-degree burns, but all of them are expected to survive. Soliman yelled “Free Palestine” as he lobbed his firebombs into the crowd.
It goes without saying that Soliman is being accused of antisemitism. But the discomforting fact is that the Israeli government bears responsibility for much of the antisemitism here in the United States and the rest of the world.
We demonstrate the virtue of respect for others by being courteous and civil and treating everyone in a manner that acknowledges and honors basic human dignity.
An important but often neglected aspect of respect is listening to what others say. Respectful listening is more than hearing. It requires us to consider what’s being said. That’s hard when we’ve heard it before, aren’t interested, or don’t think much of the person talking. It’s even worse when we act like we’re listening but are just waiting for our turn to speak.
President Donald Trump’s idea of a “Golden Dome” missile defense system carries a range of potential strategic dangers for the United States.
Golden Dome is meant to protect the U.S. from ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles, and missiles launched from space. Trump has called for the missile defense to be fully operational before the end of his term in three years.
The Trump administration, on June 4, announced travel restrictions targeting 19 countries in Africa and Asia, including many of the world’s poorest nations. All travel is banned from 12 of these countries, with partial restrictions on travel from the rest.
The presidential proclamation, entitled “Restricting the Entry of Foreign Nationals to Protect the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats,” is aimed at “countries throughout the world for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a full or partial suspension on the entry or admission of nationals from those countries.”
