The heroes and victims of 9/11 who are suffering terrible and sometimes lethal medical problems from exposure to the toxic cloud that arose when Al Qaeda terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center have a right to know what City Hall knew decades ago about the environmental risks from Ground Zero. Any records being held by New York City and its ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- His job, for more than a decade, has been to steer homeless people into housing.

Last week, social worker Anthony Ruffin lost his home.

On Monday morning, still reeling five days after the Eaton fire destroyed much of Altadena, Ruffin, 56, sipped coffee at a Glendale diner, wiped his eyes, and described the historic Black ...Read more

In 2000, years after I had escaped human trafficking, I was pulled over for having a nonfunctioning tail light. By then I had rebuilt my life. I had a great job and a nice apartment. But when the police officer pulled me over and ran my information, he found a bench warrant for my arrest.

The warrant was a remnant of my past that I didn’t ...Read more

The GOP has a tough task ahead: dealing with a looming financial crunch in Washington. Key parts of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) will expire, adding to the national debt, which has already hit $36.1 trillion.

Contributing to the problem, the spending ceiling under the Pay-As-You-Go Act will require $190 billion in cuts, and ...Read more

"Is it time to go?"

That's the question my husband and I have been asking ourselves with traumatic regularity over the past seven days. As we watched the Eaton fire erupt in nearby Altadena, we wondered. When we got the evacuation warning alert, we answered: We packed the car, took a few additional minutes to scoop up some photo albums and left...Read more

When asked what was the best place for lunch in Altadena, I often recommended Fox’s Restaurant on north Lake Avenue. Their elevated take on the BLT — stacked with roasted red pepper and goat cheese — paired well with a crisp Sauvignon Blanc. For dinner, the generous plate of fish and chips was a must. The kitschy diner’s decor remained ...Read more

Donald Trump has endlessly complained about the Department of Justice abusing its wide-reaching powers to make improper political attacks on him. But it was the DOJ under Trump himself that did exactly that to the Democratic governors of New York and New Jersey in late October 2020, violating department policy. So says the DOJ’s own ...Read more

Since the horrific Hamas terrorist attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has been at war in the Middle East. The conflict has stretched across borders, spanning Gaza to Lebanon to Iran. Over the course of 15 months, the Israel Defense Forces and Israel’s intelligence services have taken the fight directly to Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah, two of the ...Read more

The term “presidential” has long referred to a way a person carries himself and the significance of the office. It also can refer to the people the president surrounds himself with.

After the rapid evolution of public discourse in recent years — some might convincingly call it devolution — we wonder whether the term will survive another...Read more

Regardless of the presidential election results, the clean energy transition is still a major priority for the nation’s electric utilities. Perhaps nowhere in the world is the pressure more intense than in Southern California, where the demands on the power grid are high and many residents are well acquainted with the consequences of aging, ...Read more

Donald Trump was hardly a steward of responsible global governance in his first term. His withdrawal from multilateral agreements, including the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accords, showcased an unusual disdain for international institutions and cooperation. He has little evident regard for the “rules-based international order” ...Read more

One bill or two? That’s the question currently obsessing Washington as President-elect Donald Trump fails to decisively resolve a tactical disagreement between House and Senate Republicans.

John Thune, the new Senate majority leader, wants the party to pass two bills through the filibuster-dodging budget reconciliation process: The first ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- The sprawling geography of Los Angeles is hard to envision for those who live outside the region. Friends and family members in New York, gripped by apocalyptic images of the fires in 24/7 news reports, have had difficulty accepting that I live far enough away from the hills and the coast to be relatively safe.

"Still OK?" is the...Read more

Harvard University recently made headlines because its number of Black students has decreased following the U.S. Supreme Court decision that determined Harvard’s affirmative action program had to come to an end.

Harvard also made news when it announced that it was returning to standardized testing. More recently: Some of Harvard’s ...Read more

There is a reason that President-elect Donald Trump has tapped so many Floridians to fill his administration. Part of it is proximity — Trump has a mansion in Palm Beach — but more than that, Florida is the breeding ground for the kind of government Trump envisions for his second term: A souped-up executive branch that has contempt for ...Read more

It was date night for me and my husband, the first since our daughter was born. When we returned to my mom’s house for the baby — hurriedly, being first-time parents — I heard a strange but familiar voice.

It was that of Raffi Cavoukian, known simply as “Raffi,” who rose to fame in the 1970s with such folksy, reassuring numbers as “...Read more

The young pitcher's on his way to the majors, but the old catcher who will never get there knows the tricks to pull. He tells him to bean the mascot, in the great baseball movie "Bull Durham." He does.

The batter says, "This guys crazy," and the catcher agrees, adding, "I wouldn't dig in there if I was you. The next one might be at your head." ...Read more

Mark Zuckerberg can do with his social media giant Meta as he pleases and he aims to please the prevailing views of the federal government. The return of Donald Trump to the White House coincides with the naming of key Trump ally and UFC CEO Dana White to its board and abruptly deciding to move away from using fact-checking partners to combat ...Read more

Based on the questioning of the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, the justices sound inclined to uphold a law requiring the Chinese owner of TikTok to either sell the widely popular app or be banned from this country. It seems the correct reading of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.

As we’ve said before,...Read more

I meant to write a column about key global flashpoints to watch out for in 2025.

But I soon realized there are two main things you need to observe closely in the new year to assess whether this chaotic world will grow more stable: what Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin each want from the world (hint: it seems to be the same thing), and where that...Read more