The Korea Times

Why so many Latinos in the US are anti-immigrant

Since President Donald Trump’s return to power, more than 60 people have died at the hands of or in the custody of immigration authorities, most recently two Latino immigrants in one week: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine. Many Latinos have come to feel that their brown skin makes them targets, and they are not wrong. But there is another dimension of this story that we often fail to consider: Many of those in charge of anti-immigrant operations also have brown skin, Hispanic names and links to the communities they terrorize. When the identities of the Customs and Border Protection agents who killed Alex Pretti in January were revealed as those of two Hispanic men, many people reacted with shock. The irony seemed obvious, but it reflected a mistaken assumption: that Latinos are naturally opposed to restrictionist policies. History suggests otherwise. Latinos have been not only frequent targets of nativism and xenophobic violence but also supporters — regularly enforcers — of it. For decades, Latinos have joined the Border Patrol (and

1d agoBy Eladio Bobadilla

Tribune Service

Vermont turns to the free market to lower health insurance costs

Those who believe government can provide health insurance better than the free market need to look at Vermont. For years, Vermont has geared its health-care policy toward creating a single-payer system. Perhaps that’s not a surprise given that the state keeps re-electing Sen. Bernie Sanders, an ardent socialist. As it turns out, it’s easier to share someone else’s money. Just like it’s easier to campaign on single-payer health care than to make it a reality. And Vermont has tried. In 2011, the state passed a single-payer health care bill. Then the estimated costs came in. Paying for it would have required an 11.5% payroll tax and an income tax hike. In 2014, then-Gov. Peter Shumlin decided that “free” government health care cost too much and abandoned the scheme. But many of the legislative policies that were aimed at creating government-run health care remained in place. As a result, Vermont’s health care marketplace offers coverage from only two private health insurance companies. New Hampshire has four companies offering coverage. Massachusetts residents can choose from

1d ago

Tribune Service

Orbital datacenters are a crazy idea. Go for it

Why not just build them in space? As data centers face rising costs, strained resources and growing political opposition, a number of entrepreneurs — Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Eric Schmidt — have raised the possibility of processing and storing data aboard satellites in low-Earth orbit, using large solar arrays for power. It’s a crazy idea, and well worth supporting. Data centers are an essential element of the digital economy, powering everything from cloud computing to artificial intelligence. Problem is, they also require a lot of land, energy and water. Building them often entails navigating a morass of permitting rules, litigation, and occasional protests, and may cost billions. Some politicians are calling for moratoriums or even an outright ban. Moving the process into space could (in theory) elide such problems. To an extent, it’s already happening. Last year, Starcloud Inc. sent an Nvidia Corp. processing unit into orbit. Axiom Space Inc. launched two datacenter nodes in January, which it says “will lay the foundation for space-based cloud computing.” Blue Origin LLC a

2d ago

Tribune Service

AI can create startups, just not good ones

The U.S. Census Bureau said July 9 that it received 531,423 business applications in June on a seasonally adjusted basis, capping what was for the first half of the year the highest sustained rate of such applications in the 22-year history of the series. The surge is being interpreted as the first real evidence of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven entrepreneurial boom. Not necessarily. Artificial intelligence has made the mechanics of starting a business nearly free, and the mechanics were never the barrier that mattered. When you apply for an employer identification number, the Internal Revenue Service asks when you expect to start paying wages. It is one line on a form, and you can leave it blank. That’s happening more often, and it matters more than the total number of forms submitted. Through the 2010s the rate of new business formations was falling, triggering worries that the country’s dynamism was fading. Jorge Guzman of Columbia Business School and Scott Stern of MIT looked for a better measure. They took 28 million business registrations across 32 states covering 81

2d agoBy Gautam Mukunda

AI can create startups, just not good ones

Tribune Service

Cracker Barrel's CEO ouster surprised Wall Street but not women

It seemed like Julie Felss Masino had saved her job as chief executive officer of Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Inc. After a logo change ensnared the restaurant chain in the culture wars, Masino had the company back on track. The stock has more than doubled year-to-date, making Cracker Barrel the S&P Composite 1500 Restaurants Index’s best performer. In June, the company reported a surprise profit for the quarter and raised its forecasts for the year. One month later, Masino is out. The decision sent the shares down more than 2 percent and left some analysts scratching their heads. But women who have sat in the corner office know better. Boards are moving much faster to fire the big boss when things go bad, based on the past few years of CEO turnover rates. The phenomenon is even more acute for female CEOs, who have always been under more intense scrutiny than their male counterparts. Over the past decade, women CEOs of Russell 3000 companies left after an average tenure of 6.2 years versus 8.9 years for men, according to Exechange, which tracks executive changes. In examining the r

Aug 2, 2026By Beth Kowitt

Cracker Barrel's CEO ouster surprised Wall Street but not women

Tribune Service

All Americans lose from Trump's vendetta on TPS

Temporary Protected Status has expired for more than 300,000 Haitians and Syrians, leaving thousands in New York and around the country vulnerable and unmoored after sometimes decades here, all to please Stephen Miller and Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant zealotry. We know what isn’t going to happen: these people are not going to just up and leave lives they’ve spent years building here with the express permission of Uncle Sam. Now that the government has changed its mind, it doesn’t have anywhere close to the capacity to remove them, either, despite its best (and most authoritarian) efforts. Instead, hundreds of thousands of these folks will continue to live and work in the country as our friends and neighbors, but now without work authorization or protections from deportation, in more dangerous and itinerant lives. So now those who have been fully legal and taxpaying cabdrivers, nurses, teachers, small business owners and more, will be forced instead into underground, less-regulated industries and jobs where they will be more susceptible to abuse and under-payment and unable to u

Jul 30, 2026

Tribune Service

The No Surprises Act could be a shock to the healthcare system

When the No Surprises Act took effect in 2022, it was a rare feat of bipartisan problem-solving. The law was meant to prevent a once all-too-common scenario: An insured patient would seek emergency care, only to face financial disaster because one of the providers involved was outside the patient’s insurance network. Imagine, for example, being rushed to the hospital with a broken ankle that requires emergency surgery, only to later receive a $12,000 bill because one of the many providers involved in your care was outside your insurance network. Before the No Surprises Act, that happened all the time, even to people with generous coverage. (In fact, this happened to my editor.) The law took that problem out of patients’ hands, requiring insurers and out-of-network doctors to settle on a fair payment. That protection has spared millions of Americans from unexpected medical costs. But consumers might eventually discover that they’re paying the bill in other ways. The process for settling disputes between insurers and providers has tilted heavily toward providers, leading to unusuall

Jul 29, 2026By Lisa Jarvis

Tribune Service

The best answer to election fraud claims is old-fashioned transparency

New Jersey made national headlines earlier this week when it was revealed that 6,600 noncitizens had been added to the state’s voter rolls between June 2023 and June 2024 — and roughly 400 of them had cast ballots since then. Not good. Especially given the moment, when debates over election integrity have become intensely polarized and the Trump administration has made the issue a central policy priority. The New Jersey admission added fuel to this political fire. In reality, stories like these make headlines because they are exceptions. No systems are perfect and these errors do not constitute evidence that election systems are routinely riddled with fraud. Still, it was good to see a state leader address the issue head-on. Indeed, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill offered a useful model for how to move forward after such a serious error. State leaders, particularly those already sparring with the Trump administration over voter-roll information, would do well to pay attention. “When we find a problem, we don’t hide it, deny it, or invent conspiracies. We investigate it, we fix it,

Jul 27, 2026

Tribune Service

Illinois ordered an audit of AI developers. Who will do it?

On July 6, Gov. JB Pritzker signed the Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act, which passed with overwhelming legislative support in the General Assembly. Anthropic backed it. So did OpenAI. The companies being regulated stood alongside the legislators regulating them, which is rare enough to be worth pausing over. California and New York had already required the largest AI developers to publish safety frameworks and report serious incidents. Illinois added the thing neither had: Beginning in 2028, those companies must submit to an annual independent audit. Every year, an outside party must examine whether the company actually did what its safety plan said, and sign its name to the answer. This is the first time any American government has required that an AI company’s safety claims be checked by someone other than the AI company. Illinois deserves the credit it is receiving. Now the question the statute has left unanswered: Who performs these audits? The law says the third-party auditor must work consistent with generally accepted auditing standards and must have demonstrated com

Jul 27, 2026By James E. Malackowski and Chase J. Malackowski

Illinois ordered an audit of AI developers. Who will do it?

Tribune Service

College sports are a mess. Can Congress help?

College sports have long been influenced by money. These days, commercial gain appears to be the point. Some athletes are playing at a different school every season. Others are betting on their own games. Eligibility has become so loosely defined — and potential compensation so generous — that some professionals are trying to play for college teams. Many have expressed dissatisfaction with this arrangement, including courts, lawmakers, college administrators, educators, fans and (not least) many student-athletes themselves. Exactly what should replace it is harder to say. The National Collegiate Athletic Association was founded in 1906 to establish safety standards for football. Over time, it evolved into a sprawling regulatory body, composed of member colleges. This group didn’t agree on much but settled on a central premise: that college athletes shouldn’t get paid. Amateurism is a worthy principle and worth defending. College sports give players access to elite training and competition, foster virtues such as grit and self-confidence that are rewarded in the workforce, and nur

Jul 26, 2026

Tribune Service

Why so many Latinos in the US are anti-immigrant

Vermont turns to the free market to lower health insurance costs

Orbital datacenters are a crazy idea. Go for it

AI can create startups, just not good ones

Cracker Barrel's CEO ouster surprised Wall Street but not women

All Americans lose from Trump's vendetta on TPS

The No Surprises Act could be a shock to the healthcare system

The best answer to election fraud claims is old-fashioned transparency

Illinois ordered an audit of AI developers. Who will do it?

College sports are a mess. Can Congress help?

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