Finally, there was the explanation everyone was clamoring for but no one was expecting:

A semiautomatic rifle equipped with a “bump stock” can fire at a rate of up to 800 rounds a minute. Does that make it a machine gun? Joe Biden and Donald Trump have said yes. The Supreme Court appears divided.

In many ways, nuclear energy and renewable energy are the inverse of each other. One is reliable and efficient, but has a terrible reputation and faces onerous government regulations. The other is unreliable and inefficient but is widely popular and receives many government advantages

Without polls, you can’t understand politics; with them, you can misunderstand a lot.

Imagine that the Jan. 6 insurrection had succeeded. Perhaps the Oath Keepers who had been standing by with weapons caches ready to go had mounted a full-scale assault, capturing the Capitol and taking some lawmakers hostage, or even killing some. Maybe they did hang Mike Pence, and in the aftermath, the presidential results went uncertified, setting off a period of broad uncertainty as armed groups roamed the country trying to assert dominance, battling with security forces.

As the judge presiding over the federal prosecution of Donald Trump for hoarding classified records at his Florida estate, Aileen Cannon has been a dubious influence from the start. She has consistently indulged Trump’s far-fetched legal arguments and overall strategy of delay.

President Joe Biden recently gave a rough, tough, eyes-ablaze, here-I-come State of the Union speech that some saw as a definitive disposal of his democratically diagnosed mental vacuity. But wait. The speech simultaneously raised all kinds of questions about Biden, and then, not too many days after that, TV sets were once again spreading news about Biden’s brain gone blank in a different situation, one that had included an impeachment possibility.

Child actors were exploited and sexually abused by the adults they worked with on several hit Nickelodeon shows throughout the ‘90s and 2000s. When one such adult — Brian Peck — was arrested on 11 charges of child sex abuse and then pleaded no contest in 2004, dozens of notable actors and television industry figures openly supported him during the sentencing portion of his case. And after he served his time for raping a child, the Disney Channel hired him to work on one of their hit series, “The Suite Life with Zack &Cody.”

It’s impossible to predict with confidence who will win the presidency of the United States in November 2024.

In a federal court settlement last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ signature “don’t say gay” law — which cost the state millions in business and led to the governor attempting to subjugate a noncompliant Disney — was dealt a significant blow. This comes as the legislature abandoned more than 20 other anti-LGBTQ bills in a sign of a changing tide.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — whom we knew back when he was Brooklyn Assemblyman Chuck Schumer and Congressman Chuck Schumer — wants Israel to hold new elections, and makes no secret that he thinks and hopes when they do, Bibi Netanyahu will be turned out. So he conveyed in a Thursday speech on the Senate floor that surprised and rankled many fellow Democrats.

Special prosecutor Nathan Wade’s resignation Friday from the Georgia racketeering prosecution of Donald Trump and others was the right decision and, indeed, a virtually forced one. Judge Scott McAfee’s resolution of a defense motion to disqualify Wade’s boss, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, left no practical alternative.

In a political stampede Wednesday, the House overwhelmingly approved a bill that would force the social media app TikTok to be divested from China-based owner ByteDance, or face banning. The Senate should have more sense and slow this down.

A few months ago, the idea that in vitro fertilization — the medical process of fertilizing eggs in a lab setting and selecting embryos to be carried by would-be parents — would be a major political issue in the State of the Union would have seemed shocking. Yet, Thursday night, President Joe Biden referred to it explicitly as a priority, calling for Congress to guarantee a national right to IVF.

With a one-two punch, the incumbent president made a strong case for his reelection — especially given that the alternative is a man who seeks to overturn the results of democratic elections, who’s champing at the bit to punish his political enemies and who says immigrants are vermin.

Hawaii grapples with a daunting challenge: the urgent need for 4,000 to 5,000 affordable rental units annually over the next five years to tackle our lack of affordable housing. This acute shortage of housing drives both the houselessness and outmigration crises. The state Legislature has a pivotal opportunity to address this situation by reevaluating conveyance tax rates on the sale of multimillion dollar investment properties.