The umpteenth reason why I dread this election season is that former president Donald Trump and his campaign have already chosen to go infantile and primitive in matters of foreign policy and national security. The meme MAGA is pushing — on all channels, in answer to all questions, all the time — is that President Joe Biden is “weak,” ...Read more

Amending the Constitution has become about as rare as Haley’s comet. That wouldn’t be a problem if the checks, balances and principles set forth by the Framers still functioned in our modern era. Recent experience, however, shows that’s not the case. Our amendment-phobia, constitutional apathy and institutional distrust have rendered our ...Read more

With the Kentucky Derby upon us, there is little chatter about the contenders. The question this year is not “Who will win?” but “Who will die?” Last year, 12 horses lost their lives at Churchill Downs in the weeks surrounding the Derby. Eventually, under intense pressure, the track suspended racing.

This is a sorry state of affairs for...Read more

Over the years, we’ve all heard fellow Americans grousing about moving to Canada if an upcoming election doesn’t go their way. It’s not a bad idea, as Canada is known for friendly people and as a safe place to live and work.

But leaving aside immigration issues, would it be worth it to move? If you ask Canadians these days, you might be ...Read more

In 2018, Gavin Newsom was elected governor after a campaign in which he told editorial boards across California that he would in effect be a better version of then-Gov. Jerry Brown. The lieutenant governor said he would be a much more effective manager of dysfunctional state agencies — but would also emulate Brown's careful stewardship of ...Read more

Global temperatures are rising — and workers in one of America’s hottest cities are finally getting some relief.

During the summer of 2023, millions of people in Phoenix suffered a record-breaking 31 straight days of temperatures exceeding 110 degrees. In response, the city broke new ground with an ordinance requiring employers with city ...Read more

America’s young people face a mental health crisis, and adults constantly debate how much to blame phones and social media. A new round of conversation has been spurred by Jonathan Haidt’s book “The Anxious Generation,” which contends that rising mental health issues in children and adolescents are the result of social media replacing ...Read more

After decades of refusing to acknowledge the link between human activity and a warming planet, most conservatives no longer deny that climate change is real. Republican-led states have advanced proposals for developing renewable energy and are investing in clean fuel technology. Southern governors have embraced the green jobs boom created by ...Read more

The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in an important case regarding homelessness. Grants Pass v. Johnson will decide whether the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, violated the constitutional rights of people experiencing homelessness by fining or arresting them for sleeping outdoors — even when there were no shelters to take them in...Read more

President Joe Biden’s 2025 budget blueprint won’t become law, but it provides a glimpse of what the nation can expect if he wins re-election and Democrats gain control of Congress. Middle-class Americans frustrated by the rising prices triggered by Bidenomics should be prepared for more of the same.

Biden’s budget, unveiled in March, ...Read more

Donald Trump has fussed about many things during his criminal trial in Manhattan: the judge, prosecutors, their relatives, witnesses, jurors and of course the media, for reporting on the sparse crowds outside.

Yet Trump of all people knows that his fellow New Yorkers are proudly blasé about celebrity goings-on. It shouldn't be surprising that ...Read more

I fear that the current round of campus protests is wearing out its welcome. This isn’t a conclusion I reach lightly. In my increasingly distant youth, I was a sometime protester myself, marching and chanting alongside classmates, and I tend to take vicarious pleasure in student activism. But in my day, we recognized the moment to stop. ...Read more

During Vietnam War protests, the Nixon administration called them “outside agitators.” Now my university’s provost prefers “participants — many of whom do not appear to be affiliated with USC.” Beyond Andrew Guzman’s misdemeanor of wordiness, the playbook is the same: Blame outsiders, as part of the justification for police action ...Read more

I've lived and/or worked in 10 states scattered across the country. Arizona was and remains the most complicated. The same state that elected the first openly gay mayor of a large U.S. city is also the state that did not want a federal holiday for Martin Luther King Jr.

Perhaps the cultural pendulum swings so drastically because the population ...Read more

More than 100 years ago, astronomer George Ellery Hale brought our two Pasadena institutions together to build what was then the largest optical telescope in the world. The Mount Wilson Observatory changed the conception of humankind’s place in the universe and revealed the mysteries of the heavens to generations of citizens and scientists ...Read more

Decades of research show that on average, children who grow up with parents who are not married and living together have worse achievement and behavioral and well-being outcomes than children of two-parent homes. Despite this evidence, rates of nonmarital childbearing have risen dramatically in the U.S., especially among the noncollege-educated....Read more

Across the country, most high school classrooms still resemble their 20th century counterparts despite massive changes in the workforce over the past 50 years.

Today’s jobs require advanced skills and education or training, yet many graduates feel unprepared for their next steps.

A 2022 YouScience survey found three-fourths of high school ...Read more

Things have gotten horribly crowded here in America’s virtual ERs.

As always, doctors in white coats and nurses in light blue scrubs are urgently applying their expertise to help – sometimes even save – patients, who include desperate pregnant women who arrived at their hospital emergency rooms suffering life and death emergencies.

But ...Read more

In the fictional world of the P.D. James novel "Children of Men" and its movie adaptation, humanity has lost the ability to reproduce and thus faces certain extinction. We are meant to understand this as a bad thing. But there is a subset of people who would consider it a utopia. To them, Earth is doomed as long as it’s infested with humans.

...Read more

BRUSSELS — On April 19, I watched an audience of European and American political officials and strategic experts pay rapt attention as U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy told them Congress would enact a Ukraine aid package that weekend. Minutes later, the attendees at the German Marshall Fund's Brussels Forum broke into cheers at the news that the House ...Read more