The flag of the United States is raised over San Juan on Oct. 18, 1898. (Wikipedia) By GREGORIO IGARTÚA DE LA ROSA Special to The STAR The fact is that several plebiscites have been held, all won by the statehood movement yet they have yielded no results in Congress. We do not vote in federal elections. One must therefore ask: Why haven’t we moved toward achieving statehood? There are several reasons, but they largely stem from the misconception that a plebiscite is required

President Donald Trump welcomes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., Dec. 29, 2025. (Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times) By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin are drastically different men, but they do have one important thing in common: Each thinks he is the smartest person in any room he enters. Alas, though, because they have all done the dumbest thing you can do as a leader — surroun

American and Chinese flags, seen under a magnifying glass. (Daniel Ribar/The New York Times) By ROSS DOUTHAT Early in the Cold War, even as the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a relentless nuclear arms race, they treated nuclear technology as a tool of soft power and diplomacy — something to share and export, a seal on alliances and a token of friendship. Thus Dwight Eisenhower’s America launched the Atoms for Peace program, which helped build civilian nuclear p

Todd Blanche, then President Donald Trump’s nominee for deputy attorney general, appears at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington on Feb. 12, 2025. (Pete Kiehart/The New York Times) By THE EDITORIAL BOARD Last Monday, two days before the Senate hearing to consider Todd Blanche’s nomination to become the nation’s chief law enforcement official, a federal judge strongly suggested that he may not even be fit to practice law. Earlier this ye

A banner of President Donald Trump, on the Department of Justice building in Washington on Wednesday, July 15, 2026. (Demetrius Freeman/The New York Times) By MAUREEN DOWD Ordinarily, I love stories of obsession: “Wuthering Heights,” “The Story of Adèle H.,” “Remembrance of Things Past,” “The Caine Mutiny,” “Fatal Attraction,” “The Good Wife,” “Moby-Dick” and the new Generation Z horror hit “Obsession.” My Netflix algorithm is trained to compulsively hunt for tales of compuls

“The Popular [Democratic] Party leadership does not use coercion, but it attempts to convince its electorate that having a federal government without consent is a good thing,” contributing columnist Gregorio Igartúa De La Rosa writes. By GREGORIO IGARTÚA DE LA ROSA Special to The STAR Guinness world records are continually recognized around the globe for extraordinary and verifiable events ranging from human feats to global natural phenomena. Once recognized, they are recorde

Missiles manufactured by the Ukrainian defense firm Fire Point and video footage of a burning Russian refinery, at a defense industry conference in Kyiv on June 30, 2026. What matters in the new phase of Ukraine’s war with Russia, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made clear, “is to have the means to block the Russian fusillades,” Times columnist Serge Schmemann writes, “and there lies the current crunch.” (Jedrzej Nowicki/The New York Times) By SERGE SCHMEMANN Back w

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD Five months after the United Nations reported acts of genocide in Sudan, another human rights catastrophe may be imminent. The Rapid Support Forces, a rebel group that controls parts of the country and has a history of committing atrocities, has gathered outside El Obeid, a strategically important city, and nearly encircled it. About 600,000 people are facing severe shortages of food, water and medicine, and the RSF has already killed some civilians thr

A supporter of Assemblywoman Claire Valdez at her primary night watch party in Brooklyn, June 23, 2026. (Will Matsuda/The New York Times) By BRET STEPHENS I grew up in a conservative movement that thought it had gotten the better of its worst ideological impulses. True, there were the usual Father Coughlin throwbacks, people like Pat Buchanan, who were against free trade, sympathetic to Vladimir Putin, down on the Jews and inveterately hostile to immigration, legal or otherwi

Recently arrived Sudanese refugees from various parts of north Darfur, including el-Fasher, at the Oure Cassoni refugee camp in eastern Chad, Nov. 28, 2025. Last year, a brutal militia overran el-Fasher, slaughtering some 60,000 people in a few weeks, after repeated warnings by human rights experts went unheeded, Times columnist Nicholas Kristof writes. (Ivor Prickett/The New York Times) By NICHOLAS KRISTOF Last year, human rights experts warned for many months that a brutal