Navigating Public Policy, Technology, Health, Data, and Innovation for a Fairer Future
College football functions as civic ritual as much as sport. The stadiums resemble cathedrals. The rituals resemble holidays. Generations of families plan their lives around Saturdays in the fall. The Big Ten has long held a unique place in that cultural landscape. It represents not only tradition but a certain Midwestern idea of fairness and Read More “The Big Ten’s Payday Loan”
Chicago has always had a kinetic pulse. Stand at any Loop corner and you feel it: the steel skeleton of the L humming above, declaring that this city believes in motion. The tracks run not only through downtown corridors but through the city’s sense of itself. Chicagoans will tell you that you can navigate life Read More “The Last Train to Somewhere: Chicago Has a Transit Problem. Illinois Has a Math Problem.”
On a quiet stretch of Indiana farmland, the combines should be humming. September is harvest season, when grain silos begin to fill and contracts with Chinese buyers typically bring relief to debt-laden families. Yet this year the bins stand conspicuously empty. China, once the world’s largest buyer of American soybeans, has turned off the spigot. Read More “The Heartland Pays the Price of Tariffs”
Something remarkable is happening. Across the country, renters are joining together to form tenant unions on a scale we have never seen before. In affordable housing complexes owned by Capital Realty Group, more than 1,000 residents in five states are organizing across buildings, across cities, and even across state lines. It is a hopeful, inspiring Read More “The New Labor Movement Is in Our Living Rooms”
Here’s what’s happening right now with artificial intelligence: A handful of giant corporations are seizing control of the most transformative technology of our era, making unilateral decisions about who gets access, how much it costs, and what purposes it serves. This approach is fundamentally backwards. AI should function as a public resource accessible to all Read More “The Future of AI Belongs to All of Us, Not Just Silicon Valley”
Eighteen months ago, I wrote about an economy trapped in perpetual limbo, like a plane hovering above the runway, promising a soft landing that never quite materialized. Back then, we had genuinely strong economic indicators that simply refused to translate into public confidence. The unemployment rate was low, wages were rising, consumer spending was robust, Read More “Tariffs, Turbulence, and a Tumbling Job Market”
The plumbing of progress is always invisible until it becomes indispensable. When telegraph cables first crossed the Atlantic, they seemed like curiosities. Within a decade, no ship’s captain could afford to leave port without consulting the latest wire from London. The Suez Canal began as Ferdinand de Lesseps’ engineering fantasy. It ended as the jugular Read More “Build It and They Will Come: Musk Just Bought the Sky”
Margaret Chen has spent thirty-two years teaching fourth grade in San Bernardino. She retired last June with a comfortable pension from CalSTRS, California’s teacher retirement system. What she discovered in her first quarterly statement might have surprised her: among her largest investments was a $5.26 billion stake in Nvidia, the chip company whose processors power Read More “What Happens When Your 401(k) Speaks Fluent AI”
Most Americans don’t spend their mornings thinking about sovereign wealth funds. Yet this wonky Washington concept has suddenly entered our national conversation, thanks to recent government moves to buy stakes in companies like Intel and U.S. Steel. President Trump made it official in February with an executive order directing his administration to create a U.S. Read More “America’s Trillion-Dollar Temptation”
Every once in a while, a problem comes along that is so big, so intertwined with everything else, that we stop seeing it. Housing in America is like that. It’s the air we breathe, the floor beneath our feet, the backdrop of our lives, and right now, that foundation is cracking. We have millions of Read More “The House We All Live In”