Opinion

Want some good news? Illinois has become the 10th state with some form of automatic voter registration. Most of those are Democratic states, but in Illinois a Republican governor signed the bill, and Georgia, Alaska and West Virginia have adopted this reform as well. (An 11th state, North Dakota, doesn’t have voter registration at all.) So it’s not entirely partisan. ...

Britain’s exit talks with the European Union resume—following the release of position papers on what the UK government intends, and a notable change of approach by the opposition Labour Party. Up to a point, these developments are encouraging, but the basic problem remains: Prime Minister Theresa May’s government is moving far too slowly. The UK has now officially embraced the ...

As summer reached the high Himalayas this past June, one corner of the mountains turned hotter than expected. On a small plateau called Doklam, close to where the India-China border meets the tiny kingdom of Bhutan, two of the largest armies in the world faced off against each other. Chinese soldiers, convinced they were on Chinese territory, had brought equipment ...

Symbolic struggles over the Confederacy are uniquely American. But fierce battles over public spaces and monuments, and the values they elevate and enshrine, are not. “The French have their own versions of these battles,” said Peter Brooks, a professor of literature who has taught at Yale and Princeton. In such battles for cultural and political supremacy, history is a weapon. ...

In the affluent nations of northwestern Europe, people with university educations have taken over politics. Cabinet ministers with fancy degrees are nothing new, but more and more parliamentary seats have been going to college graduates. In some countries, the highly educated’s share of seats is completely unprecedented. In others, it hasn’t been this high since the 1800s, when politics was ...

Sooner or later, and the later the better, the president’s wandering attention will flit, however briefly, to the subject of trade. So, let us try to think about the problem as he seems to: Wily cosmopolitans beyond our borders are insinuating across our borders goods that Americans, perhaps misled by British economist David Ricardo, persist in purchasing. Exactly 200 years ...

With the presidency and both houses of Congress in their grasp, Republicans have a rare opportunity to make policy reforms. So far, nothing major has been done. On health care, the GOP failed to advance legislation. Now attention is turning to tax reform. Let’s hope the fact that taxes aren’t as much of a hot-button issue as health care will ...

In his speech about Afghanistan, President Donald Trump admitted that he once opposed the very strategy he was proposing. “My original instinct was to pull out,” he said. “I like following my instincts.” Credit where it is due: These may be the five truest words Trump has ever spoken. Harder to credit is his explanation for why he changed his ...

As usual, Donald Trump was overstating things when he bragged on Twitter that he has made the US nuclear arsenal “far stronger and more powerful than ever before.” The US does have the world’s largest collection of its most dangerous weapons, but the work of modernizing it predates and will outlast his presidency. The Pentagon is in the early stages ...

Mario Draghi’s appearance alongside Janet Yellen and Haruhiko Kuroda this week at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, would make a great photo for the history books. It may well be the trio’s last Fed retreat together. The guessing game on Fed leadership has received plenty of attention, and this month I wrote that Kuroda deserves a second term atop of the Bank ...