On the streets of Iran in recent weeks, security forces have killed thousands of protesters demanding basic rights and opposing the state’s authority. That stark image is not meant to equate our politics with theirs, but it poses a question Americans cannot ignore: What does it look like when government violence becomes routine and when ...Read more

Imagine taking your SUV in for a new fuel pump, only to have the mechanic dismantle a nearby motorcycle and pronounce, “This one might work!” Most everyone would know to bolt for the door, but tragically, experimenters toying with xenotransplantation—cutting organs out of genetically engineered animals and stitching them inside humans—...Read more

In most industries, leaders can respond quickly when market conditions change. Within months, companies can shrink or expand their workforces, adopt innovative technologies, and reconfigure operations.

Health care lacks such flexibility. It takes a decade to train new physicians. Hospitals take years to plan, fund, and build — years longer ...Read more

The more divided we become, the more absurd it all starts to look.

Not because the problems aren’t real—they are—but because the patterns are. The outrage cycles. The villains rotate. The language escalates. And yet the outcomes remain stubbornly the same: more anger, less trust, and very little that resembles progress.

This isn’t a ...Read more

Newspaper billionaire deciders are demolishing their news media hobbies like bored kids disassembling the electric trains they’ve outgrown.

And TV news-CEOs have already scrapped most of their professionally reported, scripted, edited, soundbite-packed news packages not because they got bored, but because of quality costs. So they’ve mostly...Read more

President Donald Trump, in the face of domestic and international resistance, appears to have ruled out, at least for now, the use of military force to acquire Greenland. While the heat has been turned down in the short term, the longer-term consequences of Trump’s recklessness for the Arctic are unlikely to be worthy of celebration.

If Trump...Read more

We’re one year in, and President Donald Trump’s second term has already produced a parade of problematic historical analogies. Critics have invoked King George III and the Revolutionary War (“No Kings!”), flirted with comparisons to Nazi Germany (subtlety has never been our strong suit as Americans) — and lately have escalated to ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California may be headed toward killing the billionaire birds that lay the golden eggs needed to nourish this Golden State.

The English fable about the farmer and his wife who foolishly whack their golden goose comes to mind when I think about the proposed billionaire tax in California.

The couple possessed a bird that ...Read more

It says a lot about the state of affairs when a Puerto Rican singer and rapper does more to unify the country in about 13 minutes than the president of the United States has done in the past 13 months.

Bad Bunny’s halftime performance at Super Bowl XL was all about love, while Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office is focused on hate.

...Read more

America’s largest libertarian thinktank just produced a study that blows up the Trump administration’s claims about the horrible economic damage immigrants are doing.

Specifically that, in the words of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, they “suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars” who “snatch the benefits owed to AMERICANS,�...Read more

President Donald Trump’s defenders often counsel me along these lines: Don’t listen to what Trump says; watch what he does.

But saying something is also doing something. And some things, once said, cannot be unsaid. Here are three examples:

Let’s make the point with an example that pre-dates Trump’s presidencies: During the 2016 ...Read more

For decades, Los Angeles business and political figures have focused their attention on creating a sleek, vibrant downtown. The common thought, as the late Eli Broad suggested, has been, “a great city needs a great downtown.”

This notion of a revived downtown is still embraced by booster groups and the Urban Land Institute. Yet despite the ...Read more

More than a year after the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, the economic aftershocks of the disaster still permeate the lives of the people who survived it. Fewer than a dozen homes in some of the city’s hardest-hit neighborhoods have been fully rebuilt. Families remain scattered across temporary rentals, and many are still grappling with letters ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her flunkies may have expected a population that would cow before the masked, armed agents dispatched to Minnesota. Instead, the Twin Cities refuse to break.

Individuals organized. Tens of thousands have marched. While Operation Metro Surge continues, its implementation here is a ...Read more

Mayor Zohran Mamdani was wrong and frankly rude to skip Friday’s investiture of the new Catholic archbishop of New York, Ronald Hicks. As leader of the city — the whole city — it is important for the mayor — any mayor — to participate in the major milestones of our varied communities and here Mamdani failed.

A new archbishop is a ...Read more

Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” may have persuaded the American colonists of the need for independence, but it is one thing to favor independence and quite another to pick up arms to obtain it.

We tend to think of war as being won by large armies on vast fields commanded by generals. But small victories can have a big effect. One such ...Read more

The president of the United States posted a racist video Thursday night depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. On Friday, the White House dismissed criticism — but the president deleted the post. Was this episode disappointing? Yes. Surprising? Not anymore.

Last spring, after Pope Francis had died, Donald Trump posted an AI image of ...Read more

You may have missed it, what with President Donald Trump’s endless pyrotechnics, but California voters will decide in November who succeeds Gavin Newsom, the highest-profile governor since the Terminator returned to Hollywood.

Unfortunately for those attempting to civically engage, the current crop of contenders is, shall we say, less than ...Read more