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Leftist ‘martyr’ now tries to save his own rear

Many progressives elevated accused killer Luigi Mangione to folk-hero status after he was arrested and accused of gunning down a health insurance executive in cold blood in New York City in late 2024. The horrifically twisted theory is that executing business executives should be celebrated if it seemingly advances some left-wing cause du jour. But it’s quite telling how this leftist vigilante has now gone weak-kneed when it comes to sacrificing for his misguided cause. On Wednesday, CBS News reported that Mangione’s defense “will argue that he was suffering from an extreme emotional disturbance” when he killed Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. This could allow a jury to convict him on the lesser charge of manslaughter. It’s not an insanity defense, but it is an effort to blame psychiatric problems for Mangione’s actions. “It seems like they are giving up the question of who did it,” legal expert Richard Schoenstein told the network. “This is a defense when you are conceding that he is the person who pulled the trigger. You’re not fighting that anymore. Yo

2d ago
Tribune Service

Missouri's costly cut to young readers

When it comes to preparing young children for successful lives, few factors weigh more heavily than early reading. A Harvard Graduate School of Education study found that reading to children starting very early — even as babies — gives them measurable advantages later over those who don’t have that exposure. The American Academy of Pediatrics reports that “reading together with infants and young children … lays the groundwork for school readiness and long-term benefits throughout life.” Providing kids with that early benefit is surely even more crucial in a state like Missouri, with its chronically underfunded and underperforming education system. Yet, in the latest stark illustration of the skewed priorities of our state’s leaders, Missouri’s new budget guts a nationally lauded, modestly priced book-gifting program for young kids to achieve $4 million in savings — an inconsequential sum in the state’s bigger budget picture. Gov. Mike Kehoe and the Legislature can and must undo this shortsighted mistake. Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a renowned program that

Jun 18, 2026
Tribune Service

Ukraine’s cheap drones and combat robots offer hope for the good guys

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Washington and Europe expected a quick Russian victory. Russia’s population was more than three times that of Ukraine, its military four times larger and gross domestic product 10 times bigger. The power imbalance was just too great. That Russia was entirely in the wrong meant little. Any realist would tell you Ukraine would fall. Then President Volodymyr Zelenskyy refused to flee, and Russia couldn’t take Kyiv. Observers decided that Ukraine just might be able to stave off defeat, as long as generous U.S. military assistance kept coming. Ukraine faced steep losses but stayed in the fight. Then Donald Trump returned to the U.S. presidency in January 2025. He had spent years blaming Ukraine for being invaded and covering for Vladimir Putin’s war crimes, so it now seemed inevitable that U.S. support would end and Ukraine would lose. U.S. assistance nearly dried up, and Trump pressed Zelenskyy to accept Putin’s terms. Observers in Washington and European capitals began to debate exactly how much territory Uk

Jun 18, 2026By Elizabeth Shackelford
Ukraine’s cheap drones and combat robots offer hope for the good guys
Tribune Service

Cognition for sale

DUBAI—In his seminal 1956 paper “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two,” American psychologist George Miller made a deceptively simple argument: our working memory can hold only seven pieces of information at once. In effect, Miller identified a hard constraint on the human mind’s processing capacity, showing that short-term cognition operates within surprisingly narrow limits. At roughly the same time, the Nobel laureate economist Herbert A. Simon arrived at a strikingly similar conclusion. His theory of bounded rationality held that decision-makers never optimize in the sense that classical economics imagines, because cognition itself is a scarce resource. Faced with more variables than they can simultaneously process, human beings do not search for the best possible answer. Instead, they settle for an answer that is good enough within the limits of their cognitive resources. As Simon put it, “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” In the 1980s, educational psychologist John Sweller pushed this logic further with his cognitive load theory. Sweller

Jun 17, 2026By Sami Mahroum
Cognition for sale
Tribune Service

Inequality in Évian

RIO DE JANEIRO — Nestled between mountains and a pristine lake, Évian-les-Bains, the French town where G7 leaders are gathering this month, evokes an image of stability and prosperity. Yet beyond the summit venue lies a world marked by deepening economic insecurity, political fragmentation, climate change, and distrust in institutions. And at the center of these interconnected crises is a challenge that governments continue to treat as an afterthought: rising inequality. This G7 summit puts “global imbalances” at the top of its agenda, with French President Emmanuel Macron warning that the international economy is becoming a theater of confrontation rather than cooperation. But if G7 leaders are serious about addressing that problem, they must tackle inequality head-on. That means abandoning the mistaken view that inequality is primarily a problem for developing countries. Extreme disparities in income, wealth, opportunity, and political influence have become a defining feature of the global economy, affecting rich and poor countries alike. In OECD countries, the wealthiest 10 p

Jun 16, 2026By Adriana Abdenur
Inequality in Évian
Tribune Service

Protecting the First Amendment

The First Amendment needs all the help it can get these days. Many progressives want restrictions on “hate speech,” while Democrats weren’t shy about pushing private companies to censor “misinformation” during the pandemic. Meanwhile the FCC under a Republican president has threatened to use its licensing authority to punish broadcasters over perceived political slights. It is against this backdrop that unlikely bedfellows Sens. Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, and Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, last week introduced the JAWBONE Act, formally known as the Justice Against Weaponized Bureaucratic Overreach and Expression Act. The authors argue that their proposal is necessary to “hold government accountable for censorship and violations of the First Amendment.” The bill would make it easier for U.S. citizens to sue over federal government infringements of free-speech rights. “Evidentiary and doctrinal hurdles preclude remedies even in cases where the government clearly bullied companies into censoring speech,” Sens. Cruz and Wyden note. Under the legislation, government age

Jun 16, 2026
Tribune Service

The Griffin MSI and Obama center are creating a new chapter on the South Side

We come to this moment from different directions. But today we stand in the same park, seeing the same thing: Something extraordinary is happening on Chicago’s South Side. For almost 100 years, the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry has been a place where generations have come together to learn, imagine and see themselves as part of something bigger. And on June 19, the Obama Presidential Center joins in that tradition, attracting new energy, new visitors and new opportunities to the South Side. As neighboring institutions that share deep commitments to education, public service and community impact, the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry and the Obama Presidential Center are already working together to ensure the best start possible for the new museum. The museum will close to the public on June 18 to help the Obama Presidential Center prepare for its grand opening. And then, on June 19 and beyond, we’ll jointly welcome thousands of visitors to this singular place — a place that’s already full of natural beauty and now will be even more accessible. Consider what is now a

Jun 16, 2026By Chevy Humphrey and Valerie Jarrett
Tribune Service

Corporate America is no meritocracy. Just ask women

Back in 2008, there were 12 women running Fortune 500 companies. Even though that equaled a measly 2.4 percent, it was still progress. A decade earlier, that number was 0.4 percent, or just two women (Jill Barad at Mattel Inc. and Marion Sandler at Golden West Financial Corp.). I remember these stats well because at the time I had just started at Fortune Magazine, where one of my first assignments was working on its Most Powerful Women in Business list that tracked the comings and goings of the handful of women who had managed to claw their way into the C-suite. Since then, I’ve used the count of female CEOs as a telling — albeit imperfect — measure of the advancement of women in corporate America. This year’s number has just been published and it’s alarming. Women run 55 Fortune 500 companies, or 11 percent. Objectively, this is an improvement. But if the growth continues at the same pace, it would take about 100 years for women to reach parity with men. What concerns me even more is that the number, while tied with last year’s record, didn’t even move an inch. If corpora

Jun 15, 2026By Beth Kowitt
Tribune Service

A tale of two Republicans who crossed Trump

For those of us struggling to understand today’s Republican Party, this past week’s primary elections in South Carolina offered a useful case study. The key developments were these: Rep. Nancy Mace — a former conservative rising star who seems tailor-made for the Trump-era attention economy — finished fifth in her state’s Republican primary for governor. Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey Graham — who seems like a relic from an earlier time in the Republican Party — easily dispatched a wealthy “America First” primary challenger. At first glance, none of this makes sense. Making matters more confusing, when it comes to the defining “issue” of our time — Donald Trump — Graham and Mace have both spent years criticizing him and then crawling back to him. Until, that is, one found the door locked. In 2026, Graham flourished, while Mace crashed and burned. Every zig and zag that led them here was all about Trump. Graham once was one of his fiercest critics. During that first presidential campaign, he called Trump a “demagogue,” “the world’s biggest jackass” and a “race-

Jun 15, 2026By Matt K. Lewis
A tale of two Republicans who crossed Trump
Tribune Service

No more free passes for Pam Bondi

The most subversive aspect of Donald Trump’s tyrannical designs and paranoia is his corruption of the Department of Justice. He has made it into a personal weapon against any perceived foe whom he wants to destroy. This alone makes Trump’s third impeachment long overdue. He couldn’t do it alone. His accomplices need to be held to account, especially the administration’s most notorious Floridian, Pam Bondi, his former attorney general, and Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general whom he now wants the Senate to confirm as her successor. The corruption doesn’t stop with trying to invent crimes where there aren’t any, as in the James Comey “seashell” case. The $1.8 billion slush fund to reward his Jan. 6 mob and stifle IRS tax audits is not dead after all, despite a court ruling against it. If it were, his stooges in the Senate wouldn’t have needed to protect it during a recent immigration budget debate. Blanche, his former personal lawyer, concocted it in staggering disregard of legal ethics. For the Senate to confirm him would be a monumental disgrace. Fifty-four senators

Jun 14, 2026
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