When the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce was convening experts and community leaders around a health initiative, the idea of raising the smoking age from 18 to 21 kept coming up. Within a mere two weeks, legislators in both Kansas City, Mo., and Kansas City, Kan., passed ordinances in November 2015. “The amount of interest and the momentum behind this idea surprised even us,” says Scott Hall, senior vice president for civic and community initiatives, in a phone interview.

Sun, 14 Oct 2018 06:00:01 -0400

“The North American free-trade agreement was ... stitched back up without major damage to the Canadian economy...,” writes Campbell Clark. “The peace treaty worked out [recently] isn’t going to be a glowing ode to the principles of free trade.... The deal ... doesn’t have so-called poison-pill demands that the U.S. made last October.... Could [Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau have done better if the Canadian team hadn’t been pushed aside when the U.S. and Mexico started to hammer out the framework of an agreement in summer? It’s hard to know.... It’s not the ‘win-win-win’ deal Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland kept talking about during negotiations.

Sat, 13 Oct 2018 06:00:02 -0400

Ever since President Trump accepted the counsel of son-in-law and Middle East adviser Jared Kushner to make Saudi Arabia the first foreign trip of his presidency, it was clear that the kingdom was to be the linchpin of his administration’s regional policy. From countering Iran and achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace to promoting sustainable reforms of rigid Arab societies, Saudi Arabia under its young crown prince (and de facto leader) Mohammed bin Salman would be Washington’s go-to partner in the region. Now the Saudi strategy Mr. Kushner engineered has been rattled and indeed threatens to come crashing down.

Fri, 12 Oct 2018 17:01:00 -0400

Indeed, it’s not a reference to hurricane Michael, the Category 4 storm that slammed into the Florida Panhandle earlier this week and wrought devastation across the southeastern United States. Superstorm Sandy had just struck the New Jersey coast, and the state’s then-governor, Republican Chris Christie, greeted a visiting President Barack Obama warmly. Six years later, on the eve of President Trump’s first midterm elections, such bipartisan comity seems unimaginable.

Fri, 12 Oct 2018 15:49:52 -0400