Politics
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Commentary: All LA rentals are to be cooled by 2032. Here's how to survive the heat until then
Sweating inside your apartment as the temperature climbs is becoming ever more common in Los Angeles and, as extreme heat keeps intensifying, more dangerous. Last month, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance that will require landlords to ensure the ability to maintain a temperature of 82 degrees or below in all ...Read more

Editorial: ICE must leave US citizens alone
Here is something all Americans can agree on, whatever their feelings on immigration enforcement: United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement should not be harassing, let alone detaining, citizens of the United States.
Nor should that agency be harassing, let alone detaining, green card holders, officially known as lawful permanent ...Read more

Commentary: Donald Trump and MAGA are targeting Black women
The war against Black women is heating up.
President Donald Trump says he wants to keep the United States out of the wars raging overseas. So, he has humiliated Ukraine, catered to Russia and kowtowed to Israel, while eschewing U.S. involvement in their brutal conflicts.
Yet, Trump is waging his own homegrown wars. In addition to targeting ...Read more

Editorial: Melissa Hortman's life mattered, too
We should be capable of mourning conservative activist Charlie Kirk without diminishing former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman.
It is deeply upsetting in a state grieving not one but two horrific tragedies this summer that influential Fox News host Greg Gutfeld cast decency aside this week with a televised, profanity-laced rant ...Read more

Jackie Calmes: What came of Trump's Putin summit? Nothing good
Remember the vaunted Trump-Putin summit? It was just a month ago this week, but Americans could be excused for having forgotten. Nothing good has come of it. The cringy Alaska photo-op for the American and Russian presidents certainly didn't yield President Trump's long-promised deal to end Vladimir Putin's criminal war on Ukraine.
In fact, as ...Read more

Commentary: Confronting Charlie Kirk's legacy
I first became familiar with Charlie Kirk as a college student in March 2023, when he visited my university as part of his “Live Free Tour.” His visit was sponsored by my school’s chapter of Turning Point USA, the conservative youth advocacy group co-founded by Kirk and Bill Montgomery in 2012.
At the University of California, Santa ...Read more

Michael Hiltzik: Sen. Cassidy, whose vote got RFK Jr. his job, finally starts to make amends
There were a couple of especially dramatic moments in Wednesday's Senate Health Committee hearing delving into Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s firing of the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the subsequent resignations of three top CDC officials.
Interestingly, both were generated by the committee chair, Sen. Bill Cassidy, ...Read more

David M. Drucker: Trump is not as unpopular as his opponents think
President Donald Trump is not as popular as he claims. But neither is he as unpopular as his opponents might like to think.
That’s the simple explanation. Dig under the hood, however, and things get complicated.
I’m constantly asked to assess Trump’s political standing; it’s among the more consistent questions posed to professional ...Read more

Michael Hiltzik: The Trump administration's attack on Social Security is looking worse
There's some good news related to the Trump administration's concerted attack on the Social Security Administration: Thus far, it doesn't appear to have significantly affected the delivery of benefits. Checks are still going out and payments into beneficiaries' bank accounts are still arriving on time.
Beyond that, however, the system is going ...Read more

Editorial: At a national moment that calls for compassion and calm, Trump uses Charlie Kirk's death to stoke the fires of division
The assassination of Charlie Kirk has become a flashpoint in the deep divide between red and blue America.
The normal and obvious reaction of responsible leaders would be to call for calm and try to unite the country. At least that is what has happened in the past and enabled the Great Experiment to soldier on.
When the country was torn apart ...Read more

COUNTERPOINT: Lionization of Kirk is all wrong
To hear his supporters now, following his murder last week at a Utah university, Charlie Kirk was a brave broker of competing ideas, an honest peddler of open debate who encouraged young people to examine all sides of any claim.
In truth, Kirk was a clever racist. How else to explain his view that the landmark Civil Rights Act was “a huge ...Read more

POINT: Free speech is expensive; Charlie Kirk paid with his life
In the annals of history, free speech has always been a double-edged sword. It’s the lifeblood of our Constitution, the core mechanism by which ideas clash, truths emerge and society thrives. What happens when that sword turns lethal? When the cost of speaking out isn’t lost revenue or livelihood, but a bullet to the neck? That’s the grim ...Read more

Commentary: What would Charlie Kirk do?
As a young Christian conservative growing up in a state that shamed a voice like mine, Charlie Kirk gave me the confidence I thought was impossible to find.
As I sat through high school lectures about gender ideology in a class that was supposed to teach me English literature, my teacher claimed I was a bigot for believing there are only two ...Read more

Anita Chabria: Charlie Kirk gave young men something to believe in. Newsom wants to do the same
Like many young men these days, Kamaldeep Dhanoa, a lanky 17-year-old, knew he wanted to do something with his life, be a part of something, but didn't quite know what that meant.
Coming up with a career was important. But even more, it was finding the right friends — discovering what he wanted to be a part of.
He did both when he joined ...Read more

Editorial: Recent shootings connected by the internet's darkest corners
A 16-year-old gunman shot two students at his Denver-area high school last Wednesday before killing himself, a terrible act of violence that received fleeting attention due to the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah at nearly the same time.
While the crimes were starkly different, the two suspects shared a common ...Read more

Editorial: Illinois can't fix what it won't track
An important way to tell whether a corrections system is working is to track how many people end up back behind bars after serving time.
For years now, Illinois has left the public in the dark about how many people are returning to prison after release.
The phenomenon is called recidivism, which refers to convicts who reoffend, cycling in and ...Read more

Editorial: Another Democrat mainstreams Mamdani
Just because an ideology has failed repeatedly doesn’t mean it won’t attract new adherents. Witness what’s happening in New York.
On Sunday, New York governor Kathy Hochul penned a New York Times op-ed endorsing Zohran Mamdani for New York City mayor. Mamdani is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He hasn’t been shy about ...Read more

Commentary: When good intentions kill cures -- A warning on AI regulation
Imagine it is 2028. A start-up in St. Louis trains an AI model that can spot pancreatic cancer six months earlier than the best radiologists, buying patients precious time that medicine has never been able to give them.
But the model never leaves the lab.
Why? Because a well-intentioned, technology-neutral state statute drafted in 2025 ...Read more

Editorial: Why public employee strikes should be illegal
What just happened in Washington state is a vivid example of why opposing public employee strikes was once a bipartisan priority.
School was supposed to begin late last month in Vancouver, Washington. But support staff workers in Evergreen Public Schools went on strike instead. The details of the dispute were entirely predictable. The union ...Read more