Every story this columnist has written for News Stories, newest first. Each headline opens the full article with its sources.
Mara Vale writes from the belief that political and economic stories are clearest when they start with the people most affected by them. Her columns usually look for power imbalances, workplace consequences, public-service gaps, and the human cost behind budget language.
Another night of strikes, another round of damage to the places people live and work. While diplomats talk and the UN pleads, the real price of this war is paid by those who can least afford it — and the powerful have little incentive to stop.
Read full story →When the Supreme Court hears arguments over the Trump administration's use of a centuries-old law to deport Venezuelan migrants without hearings, the real question is not about legal technicalities—it's about who gets to decide someone's fate, and how much power we're willing to hand over in the name of security.
Read full story →As Canadians vote on April 28, the choice between Carney and Poilievre is also a choice about whose interests matter most in a moment of economic pressure.
Read full story →The brief from Reuters and AP tells a familiar story: leaders and diplomats are back at the table. But the table is set for people in suits, not for the workers and families who are paying for a war that is still being waged.
Read full story →Federal courts are weighing the rules that will govern the midterms. The outcomes will decide far more than which party wins — they will decide who gets to be heard at all.
Read full story →A headline out of Maine says a court let a father bar his daughter from church. The full case is still hidden, but the questions it raises about family, faith, and the power of the state deserve a slower look.
Read full story →The president’s “deal or finish the job” line keeps military pressure on Tehran, but the costs of brinkmanship are rarely carried by the people issuing the threat.
Read full story →After a burst of military escalation, the administration is signaling talks. But the public still does not know the terms, the timetable, or how much risk has already been locked in.
Read full story →A federal judge in Boston has blocked key parts of President Trump’s order to limit voting by mail, setting up another test of how far the White House can go in shaping election rules that are usually run by the states.
Read full story →The court’s final stretch is not just about elite legal doctrine. It is about who gets heard, who gets searched, who gets counted, and who has to live with the results of decisions made far from their daily lives.
Read full story →A U.S. strike on Iran after a drone attack on a cargo ship pushes an already fragile shipping corridor closer to a crisis with global consequences.
Read full story →The Court’s 6-3 ruling gives the Trump administration room to turn away some asylum seekers when processing capacity is stretched thin. That may sound administrative. It is also a decision about who gets to wait, who gets to enter, and who is asked to absorb the chaos of a system that keeps failing to meet its own obligations.
Read full story →A string of end-of-term rulings has placed Donald Trump’s authority at the center of the court’s work, while deeper fights over immigration, regulation, and agency independence keep moving beneath the surface.
Read full story →The Trump administration’s push for more money arrives in a capital where budgeting has become a proxy fight over power, priorities, and who gets to feel the pain when governing stalls.
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