Growing up in Moreno Valley, Ivette Torres thought it was normal to see tractor trailers rumbling through the neighborhood and to have giant warehouses and truck parking lots located next to homes and schools. When she left home to go to the University of California, Santa Cruz a few years ago, Torres realized her community was far from the norm...Read more

In the days preceding President Joe Biden's release of his $1 trillion American Families Plan, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and several of his Democratic colleagues lobbied for it to include a provision he has been introducing and reintroducing for years — the option to buy into Medicare at age 50.

The efforts were for naught. So far.

Instead...Read more

As President Joe Biden addressed a joint session of Congress recently, he highlighted a fundamental truth about his American Jobs Plan. For once, our leaders aren’t pushing another tax break for the elite, bailing out the ultra-wealthy or preaching the false gospel of trickle-down economics. As the president put it, this is “a once-in-a-...Read more

Only a handful of places — including Taiwan, Vietnam and New Zealand — acted in time to contain the coronavirus last year, causing the world to spend trillions of dollars fighting an infection that has led to the deaths of more than 3 million people so far. The World Health Organization shoulders some of the blame. At the least, it should ...Read more

Liz Cheney, the Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, is likely to be dumped as chairman of the party’s House conference. That’s not because she recognized in public that President Joe Biden won the legal votes to be president. It’s not because she voted to impeach President Donald Trump over his campaign to keep power even though he had ...Read more

This Mother’s Day, be kind to someone else’s mom — by going vegan. Farmed animals have mothers, too, after all.

We’ve all heard the term “mother hen” used to describe someone with a strong maternal instinct. That’s because hens are doting parents who will even care for other baby animals as if they were their own. When not ...Read more

Almost 70 years ago, President Dwight Eisenhower pushed bipartisan legislation that created the interstate highway system. Earlier leaders made universal access to education, starting with kindergarten and running through high school, standard throughout the United States. The Republican Party of today would have one word for these policies: ...Read more

Mike Saunders thought the fight was over.

For almost a year, he'd made it his mission to persuade the city of Placerville — perched in the remote Sierra foothills, not far from Lake Tahoe — to change its official logo from a noose swinging from a tree.

The noose, he'd explained again and again with uncanny patience, is a symbol of hate and...Read more

Ron DeSantis became governor of Florida by less than half of one percentage point — 32,463 votes, to be exact. DeSantis failed to receive a majority of votes cast, when you add the votes of minor-party candidates. But he wants you to forget how close he came to losing and he works every day to make you think he won in a landslide.

DeSantis is...Read more

"That is not normal. That's not what we do in America," Iowa state Sen. Jack Whitver declared emphatically on a recent "Iowa Press" TV show.

I was washing dishes and had missed the lead-in, but caught the emotion in his voice. What unacceptable behavior was the leader of majority Republicans in the Senate denouncing? Was someone driving on a ...Read more

The 2020 elections worked out pretty well for Florida Republicans. But since then, they have twisted themselves into a knot to push for ill-conceived voting restrictions that will not just curb Democratic voting but perhaps their own.

Then-President Donald Trump carried the state by more than 3 percentage points — a landslide, by the usual ...Read more

When Harold Macmillan became Britain's prime minister in 1957, a reporter asked him what could blow his government off course. "Events, dear boy," Macmillan replied. "Events."

American presidents of the last 50 years would have no trouble understanding that sentiment. It's unexpected "events" that often upend a leader's agenda. Bill Clinton ...Read more

The Biden administration is promoting its American Jobs Plan as an “infrastructure” proposal. In reality, it’s a gargantuan tax-and-spend package that would expand federal power and control in a wide variety of areas.

Although the plan is hyped as a path toward shared goals such as “jobs” and “global competitiveness,” a closer ...Read more

In a lengthy decision upholding Facebook's temporary ban on former President Donald Trump, the social network's oversight board called out several of the company's most aggravating traits, including its seemingly arbitrary approach to its rules, its lack of transparency and its bizarre tolerance for conduct by politicians that's so bad it's ...Read more

A quasi-independent oversight board for Facebook extended a ban on former President Donald Trump for six months on Wednesday. It appears the decision on whether to allow him back on the social media platform then will ultimately be made by founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Trump was removed from Facebook and Instagram following the Jan. 6 insurrection ...Read more

Donald Trump remains banned from Facebook Inc.’s global echo chamber, and that’s a good thing. After the social media company banned him in January for inciting a deadly insurrection at the Capitol, its Oversight Board — the outside group the company established to monitor controversial content and arbitrate thorny issues such as Trump’s...Read more

On the surface — but only on the surface — the Facebook Oversight Board’s decision Wednesday on the banning Donald Trump looks like a solid blow against the misuse of the platform’s global reach to foment violence and undermine democracy.

The ostensibly independent board, which Facebook established to mute criticism that it tolerates ...Read more

In the debate over President Joe Biden’s infrastructure and climate bill, it was perhaps inevitable that some policymakers would object to including anything other than traditional infrastructure such as roads and bridges. More surprising is what I’ll call the “new pundit view,” which casts doubt about spending in precisely that narrow ...Read more

Donald Trump’s lawyers Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell said a lot of outrageous things in the weeks after the 2020 election, when the president was desperately trying to cast doubt on the outcome of the race. Among other things, they peddled baseless conspiracy theories about two companies they said were engaged in election fraud — ...Read more

Last week, Washington State University became the first big public school in the state to announce it will require students, faculty and staff to be vaccinated against COVID-19, though with exceptions. The state's other universities should follow suit to ensure campuses are credibly safe.

At WSU, everyone should get the vaccine by the fall. The...Read more