In the eyes of many Americans, Elon Musk is still a great man.

The myth often goes unquestioned by powerful men with access to him: be it his biographer Walter Isaacson or interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin at last week's New York Times DealBook Summit conference.

"I've done more for the environment than everyone — than any single human on Earth...Read more

In 2010, the Affordable Care Act emerged as a ray of hope for the 64 million women in the United States now entitled to no-cost preventive services. With their health insurance, it promised no-cost access to birth control, a vital component of health care.

This pledge was a significant milestone in the struggle for affordable contraception. No-...Read more

The skewed numbers of those killed in and around the Gaza Strip so far — around 1,200 Israelis and 15,000 Palestinians— in the latest phase of a more than century-long conflict point to the enormous disparity between these two sides.

These numbers are characteristic of colonial wars, one of many facts often obscured by the media, as are the...Read more

The George Santos fiasco is finally at an end, at least in Congress, with the U.S. House of Representatives — including 105 of his Republican colleagues — voting Friday to expel him. The 311-114 vote comfortably cleared the two-thirds majority needed to make him only the third House member to be expelled since the Civil War.

Santos himself...Read more

America is getting older.

That was the snapshot given earlier this year by the U.S. Census Bureau. Our median age is about 40 and rising. In a third of the states, it's already higher.

Remember that, while also considering this: America's suicide rate in 2022 was the highest seen since 1941 — the tail end of the Great Depression.

The nation...Read more

Two years ago, Long Beach City College officials decided they had to do something to help homeless students who lived out of their cars, at least until it could find housing for them. So the school set up a safe parking program.

The program lets students stay in their vehicles from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. in a parking structure across from the campus...Read more

President Joe Biden must stop trying to appease Hamas sympathizers inside the White House and Democratic Party and reiterate America’s steadfast commitment to Israel. Particularly in the wake of his secretary of state’s dumbfounding and ill-timed remarks regarding the Jewish state.

On Friday, the Times of Israel reported that, when one high...Read more

Former President Ronald Reagan once noted, “No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size.” That’s true, which is why what’s currently happening with Medicaid is so remarkable.

During the pandemic, Medicaid enrollment grew dramatically because the federal government tied increased emergency funding to a provision that prevented ...Read more

Conventional wisdom suggests Americans know little about foreign policy and care about it even less. Opinion polls regularly show that international issues take a back seat to topics more prosaic (economics, education) or provocative (culture wars, gun control).

Next year’s presidential election, however, might be a bit different. Continued ...Read more

News that Sandra Day O’Connor, the Supreme Court’s first woman justice, had died Friday at age 93 brought back fond memories in these offices of her gracious — and well-attended — visit 10 years ago to our Editorial Board.

Although retired since 2006, she politely disappointed us by holding to the high court’s practice of refusing to ...Read more

After a tenuous few days of calm during the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, the fighting has started anew in Gaza, with Hamas firing rockets and Israel responding with airstrikes. It’s not clear when the hostilities may stop again, only that at some point, hopefully in the near future, the war will be over and the explosions will ...Read more

Days before Sam Altman was fired — and then rehired — as CEO of OpenAI, researchers at the company wrote a letter to its board of directors warning that a major new discovery could threaten humanity. We don’t know more about the details of that breakthrough or its precise role in the soap opera that’s consumed the tech world in recent ...Read more

In the wake of the 2023 elections, the bulk of media coverage and analysis has understandably focused on whether Democrats or Republicans have more momentum going into 2024. But there’s no question that Election Day 2023 gave momentum to the fastest-growing nonpartisan voting reform in the nation: ranked choice voting.

On Nov. 7, 11 cities ...Read more

It’s often noted that the Latino vote is “not monolithic,” and Latino voters do in fact come from an array of countries, generations, regions, races, faiths and classes. But with a few exceptions, this loosely connected group has voted strongly Democratic, meeting all conventional definitions of a voting bloc.

Until recently.

The Latino ...Read more

This is the season of controversial big-government actions by Republicans and Democrats. They too often want to direct people’s actions toward how politicians see fit. While these range from policies dealing with industrial support, climate change, and labor markets, one concern is regulating social media.

From the Supreme Court's scrutiny of...Read more

After collapsing in a Houston studio during a recording session last year, R&B star Al B. Sure wound up in a coma that lasted longer than some of his concert tours.

For nearly three months, the hitmaker behind such classics as“Nite and Day” and‘Off on Your Own” was flat on his back, hooked up to a ventilator preparing for what could ...Read more

I’d never heard of Sandra Day O’Connor when the news broke that she was President Ronald Reagan’s likely nominee for the new vacancy on the Supreme Court. This was in 1981, toward the end of my term as a law clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall, and a bunch of us crowded around the one Lexis terminal in the court library — yes, one, and ...Read more

Years ago, I had the good fortune to be in Washington, when the National Portrait Gallery had a show starring portraits of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who died Friday in Phoenix at 93.

In October 2006, nine or so months after she'd stepped down from the high court, O'Connor had agreed to sit for members of the Painting Group, two...Read more

The summer of 1973 was my baptism into national politics, as my teenage self was riveted by the legendary saga of Watergate.

I watched the months of Justice Department investigations, congressional hearings and news reports that laid out the case against a president, Richard Nixon, accused of ordering, and then covering up, a break-in at the ...Read more

The Israel-Hamas war in Gaza has fostered an almost daily deluge of campus controversies.

Here’s a sampling: The Anti-Defamation League and the Brandeis Center called on 200 college presidents to investigate pro-Palestinian student groups. Faculty members and instructors at several public and private colleges have either been placed on leave ...Read more