More than 130 million Americans woke up Saturday morning to the news that their health care coverage has been thrown into doubt.

That's because, late Friday night, a federal judge in Texas ruled that the Affordable Care Act -- including its exchange health plans, Medicaid expansion and its provisions affecting Medicare's prescription drugs ...Read more

Our arguments over a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border encapsulate much of what's wrong with American politics. The wall has become a much larger issue than it deserves to be, and the parties have been unable to make a deal over it that ought to be easy to make.

The debate is overwrought on both sides. It was a mistake for immigration hawks to ...Read more

SEATTLE -- Christmas is days away, but women got a couple of early presents -- one from local medical researchers and the other from the highest court in the land.

I would say, "You shouldn't have," but here's my truth: "What took you so long?"

The first gift is a contraceptive gel for men being tested by the University of Washington. When ...Read more

It's been apparent for years that the American death penalty system is so deeply and irredeemably flawed that it should not be used to determine whether someone should die for a crime. It's prone to manipulation by prosecutors and police, witnesses get details wrong (intentionally and not), and the penalty is applied disproportionately on ...Read more

How can it be that no one (besides Whoopi Goldberg) wants to host the Oscars?

Are other comics worried that internet users will unearth some cyber trove of homophobic, sexist or racist remarks and stand-up routines in their pasts? Just days after the announcement that Kevin Hart would host, the comic bowed out when years-old homophobic tweets ...Read more

If you really want to talk about blind loyalty, let's talk about dogs.

For now, I'm going to skip over Michael Cohen's confession in court Wednesday that he committed a host of crimes because of "blind loyalty" to his former boss, Donald Trump.

Most of us would dismiss that excuse as dog poop, the way the federal judge apparently did before ...Read more

On December 14, 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the world changed.

Innocence was shattered. Dreams of what the future might look like were destroyed. The unthinkable became reality.

The tragedy in Newtown sent waves of pain to an unprepared world. No one was untouched: The mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, daughters, sons, wives, ...Read more

The three-year prison sentence given Wednesday to President Donald Trump's former longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen -- for a series of crimes he said he committed to "cover up" Trump's "dirty deeds" out of "blind loyalty" -- is a figurative if not literal indictment of the 45th president. It should go without saying that the Cohen situation...Read more

A man who had spent time in a mental institution just seven months earlier walked into a Fort Mill, S.C., Cabela's, bought a gun, walked out with it and an hour later shot a 19-year-old grocery worker five times, killing her.

How is this possible?

Christopher Benjamin Mendez had said he was having suicidal and homicidal thoughts and as a ...Read more

No one wins when the federal government shuts down, least of all the American people.

Yet President Donald Trump proclaimed this week he would be "proud to shut down the government," with a braggadocio that shows callous disregard for federal workers and the public they serve.

Trump's reason for pushing the nation toward a partial government ...Read more

For the past month, President Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet have warned members of Congress not to rock the boat too much about Saudi Arabia's murder and dismemberment of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

On Thursday the Senate disregarded those warnings and passed two important pieces of legislation. The first was a resolution -- with ...Read more

The email landed in my inbox on Monday morning of last week. "The gun-grabbing tyrants are on the march," it screamed in bold text, "but their defeat is possible with your support."

The note was sent from a gun rights group, and it was timed to arrive on the day I introduced AB 18, legislation that would establish a statewide gun tax and use ...Read more

Stop fighting on, USC business school grads and deep-pocketed donors.

You're losing.

And you're making things worse for the university you profess to love.

Instead of supporting an important personnel move by USC Interim President Wanda Austin, who was brought in to rebuild the tarnished reputation of a scandal-ridden place, a group of ...Read more

Here's another reminder that, despite the many pledges and programs to make it easier for people to bike, walk and otherwise get around without driving, California still treats the car as king.

This week the Los Angeles City Council reluctantly voted to raise the speed limits on more than 100 miles of streets. The council felt it had no choice ...Read more

In a policy statement released last month, the American Academy of Pediatrics aims to end the debate over whether corporal punishment is an acceptable parenting tool.

The verdict? It's not.

"Corporal punishment is associated with increased aggression in preschool and school-aged children," write Drs. Robert D. Sege and Benjamin S. Siegel, ...Read more

Walls work. Just ask the East Germans.

Of course, the Berlin Wall, with its 15-foot-high concrete walls topped by barbed wire, only stretched for 28 miles across the divided city. And border guards killed nearly 200 East Germans as they tried to flee to freedom in the West.

In contrast, the U.S.-Mexican border is more than 1,900 miles long. ...Read more

President Donald Trump's three-tweet sequence on Michael Cohen Thursday morning was different from the usual presidential stream of consciousness. Compact and carefully reasoned, the tweets sound an awful lot like they were written with a lawyer standing at the writer's shoulder.

Taken together, the tweets signal that Trump and his team are ...Read more