When California lawmakers convened in Sacramento for a special session this month, they marked a milestone. For the first time ever, women held nearly half the seats in the 120-member Legislature.

But overall, the political picture is less bright — at least for those believing our elected representatives should be, well, more representative. ...Read more

The arrest in the slaying of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was the first step to putting his killer behind bars, though it won’t end the power struggle in health care illuminated by public reaction afterward.

Another wave of criticism rose against Minnetonka-based UnitedHealthcare, the nation’s largest health insurer, and the broader ...Read more

Americans love to talk about liberty. But if we’re completely honest with ourselves, the bulk of our conversations about individual freedom, or more precisely, the loss of it, are abstract — most of us, thankfully, have known nothing else but unfettered self-determination.

We may be frustrated with government policies as varied as pandemic...Read more

The king is dead — or, rather, he’s somewhere in Moscow enjoying exile with his family.

Syria, dominated by Bashar Assad and his family for more than half a century, is now in the early stages of a new beginning after rebels triumphantly rode into Damascus after a 10-day, cross-country offensive. The Syrian army, whose troops were underpaid...Read more

The free speech implications of the coming ban on TikTok in the United States are staggering and unprecedented. On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a federal law that requires TikTok to stop operating here on Jan. 19 if its owner, ByteDance, does not sell it to a non-Chinese company. The 150 million ...Read more

Over the last two years, the Republican-dominated House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic conducted 38 interviews and depositions, held 25 hearings and meetings, and examined more than 1 million pages of documents.

Chairman Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, a podiatrist, called it "the single most thorough review of the pandemic conducted to...Read more

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to carry out mass deportations. Can it happen?

A one-time operation that targets the entire population of more than 11 million who lack legal status is an unlikely scenario. One organization has estimated the cost of such an operation at a minimum of $315 billion.

But if “mass deportation” means a ...Read more

As pundits imagine the coming Trump presidency, much of the attention has focused on the most extreme measures he has promised to implement, from mass deportations to abolishing the Department of Education. Yet these may pale in significance next to his promise to use something less showy but ultimately more far reaching: impoundment.

The term ...Read more

Cuba went dark on Dec. 4 as the Antonio Guiteras Thermoelectric Plant east of Havana malfunctioned. This follows a series of blackouts over the past two months, ranging from total to intermittent. Communist leaders may be powerful, but they can’t produce reliable power.

After Cuba’s electrical grid suffered a total collapse in mid-October, ...Read more

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the two billionaires tasked by President-elect Donald Trump to find ways to make government more efficient, have hit upon one good idea: ending the obnoxious and inconvenient twice-a-year clock change between daylight saving time (in the summer) and so-called standard time (in the winter).

“Looks like the ...Read more

Like many other farm families, my family rents out some of our land to help pay the bills. Usually, when this happens, we can rest assured about two things: first, that someone will rent from us; and second, they will pay more year after year.

Farmland rents have risen steadily over the years, increasing 3.2% per acre over the last year alone.�...Read more

President Joe Biden wants Medicare and Medicaid to cover weight-loss drugs, a proposal that would expand access to the costly but life-changing medications for millions of people who struggle with obesity. It’s a good idea that Donald Trump should pursue when he’s in office.

Medicare, which provides health care for more than 65 million ...Read more

Many people are wondering: how is it that, in 2024, voters in the United States elected a twice-impeached convicted felon with multiple indictments in other cases — who led an insurrection to overthrow the U.S. government on January 6, 2021 — to lead us again?

The answer is multi-layered, but there’s no doubt that “low-information ...Read more

Robert H. Jackson was a towering figure in American jurisprudence. The only jurist to serve as solicitor general, attorney general and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Jackson was a fierce defender of the rule of law. He was also a noted empath. He felt duty-bound to pause his tenure on the high court to prosecute Nazi war criminals ...Read more

The Los Angeles City Council is considering changing the way it sets annual allowable increases for rent-controlled properties for the first time in nearly 40 years. That’s good. The law needs to do more to prevent price shocks for tenants during periods of high inflation while ensuring landlords can recoup the costs of managing their ...Read more

The holiday shopping season has started fast, especially online, and those automated chatbots are working overtime.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly finding its way into decisions that once were purely human, like whether or not to buy a sweater. This year, more than ever, smart computer programs are stepping between customers and their ...Read more

The CDC is advertising on TV the benefits of vaccines for folks over age 65, but those people have a choice, babies don’t and rely on parents and pediatricians and the government to protect them, which is a huge reason that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s unqualified nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services, must not ...Read more

So this is what Donald Trump means by "Make America Great Again." Bring back the "Mad Men" days.

As I've been working to keep up with the unusual number of alleged sexual predators that the president-elect, himself an adjudicated sexual assaulter, has chosen for his Cabinet, I also celebrated my younger daughter's birthday last week. Which got ...Read more

As another election season draws to a close, I find myself reflecting on a familiar refrain — one that has grown all too weary with age. It is the lamentation of the allegedly apathetic African American male, a narrative that persists in depicting my brothers as disengaged and disinterested in shaping our collective future.

As a minister, a ...Read more