U.S. educators better hope Santa doesn’t check test results. New results from an international comparison of K-12 students showed they continue to fall behind their peers around the world. If American students are to bounce back, policymakers nationwide need to ignore the calls for lower—yes, lower—standards coming from some sectors and reject claims that more spending in education is the answer.

When Kevin Towers was the San Diego Padres’ general manager, he received a voicemail delivered in a high-pitched, high-energy voice then familiar to most baseball people: “KT! It’s Rickey! Calling about Rickey! Rickey wants to play baseball!” Rickey Henderson, in 2001, became a Padre again.

It’s wrong for the incoming president to start suing newspapers and it’s a transparent effort to bully the press, but there Donald Trump stood Monday, proclaiming that “we have to straighten out the press. Our press is very corrupt. Almost as corrupt as our elections.”

The resistance to Donald Trump has failed. He has now shaped American politics for nearly a decade, with four more years — at least — to go. A hard truth his opponents must accept: Trump is the most dominant American politician since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The aerospace industry was relieved last year when the Federal Aviation Administration, the main regulator for all things that fly, finally got an administrator after an 18-month vacancy.

Just days after a former Proud Boy from Miami was sentenced to a year in prison for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, President-elect Donald Trump vowed to pardon people involved in the attack meant to overturn his 2020 defeat.

It’s been a hard, hard 18 months. Mom got sick and died. The election was crazy. Job security diminished.

Before Democrats lose the White House and the Senate, they should push through legislation to repeal the Comstock Act, which could be used to prevent legal medically induced abortions everywhere in the United States. Given the success of ballot initiatives that protect the right to abortion in even conservative states in last month’s election, the politics could be right to repeal that 1873 law.

Donald Trump’s defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, already under fire from revelations about his scant qualifications, is facing the heat of an in-depth New Yorker magazine piece detailing his drunken mismanagement of the organizations Vets for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America.