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Opinion

Living in lockdown USA

Columnists

“Just FYI if you’re seeing the news right now, I’m totally safe,” a son enrolled at Brown University texted me. “I’ve been home for a few hours now and wasn’t there when stuff started to happen. Seems to be some crazy shooting near brown.” What?! I turned on CNN and saw the quaint streets of Providence’s College Hill — lined with front porches — pulsing under emergency lights that washed the cold night sky an eerie red. Nothing like this ever happens around here. Brown was put in lockdown, and so were those of us living a few blocks away on Providence’s East ...

Shameful conspiracy theories

Columnists

Few would have guessed that Erika Kirk would have to spend energy these last few, heart-breaking months fending off a right-wing influencer bent on implicating her slain husband’s own organization, TPUSA, in his assassination. Here we are, though. Influential voices on the right have become more and more conspiratorial in recent years, and now, the paranoia is being wielded against its own. In the aftermath of the Kirk assassination, the talk was of an energized MAGA movement picking up his baton. Instead, TPUSA has been slandered nearly every single day by one of the loudest ...

Don’t go wobbly on China

Columnists

As the sun rises on a new Trump-era geopolitical chapter, Washington confronts a defining choice: Will America view the People’s Republic of China and its regnant Communist Party through the rose-colored lens of transaction and diplomacy, or will it soberly recognize Beijing as America’s foremost geopolitical adversary in a multigenerational cold war? The stakes could not be higher, and the answer ought to be simple. We should stop treating China with kid gloves — as a spirited economic or diplomatic competitor — and start treating it as the existential challenge to the ...

Economy

Editorials

West Virginia’s Republican supermajority in the House of Delegate and House Speaker Roger Hanshaw gave residents a peek at their intentions for the upcoming legislative session in January, with what — on the surface — is an impressive plan to focus on job creation and economic development. Jobs First — Opportunity Everywhere, sounds promising, with priorities including workforce-ready education, a job-creating business climate and responsible economic growth. “We have the perspective of every West Virginian represented here in the front of the room today. And that means ...

Mr. Trump goes to the grocery store

Columnists

CCTV captured this (completely fake) conversation between President Donald Trump and a grocery store clerk yesterday. CLERK: That’ll be $286.47, Mr. President. TRUMP: Did you swipe my customer rewards card? I thought the Twinkies were half off. CLERK: Yes, I did, but we’re doing this new thing where you have to download our app, log in, create a profile, find the item, scan the bar code and select “clip coupon” to get the discount. TRUMP: Well, that sounds annoying and difficult. CLERK: I’m pretty sure that’s the point. TRUMP: Eh, all right, I just did it. Did it ...

Immigration policy is ‘beyond inhumane’

Columnists

Absorbing the news about the brutal treatment of detainees, to say nothing of the outright murder of “suspected” drug runners in the Caribbean, I think back to a conversation I had in February of this year. My interlocutor was a Trump voter who had just had a friendly encounter with an African immigrant striver — the kind who came from poverty and had started a successful business here. I recall saying, “I hope he has his documents in order.” The Trump voter scoffed: “They’re not going after people like him. They’re only going after the criminals.” Eleven months ...