In an era in which everyone’s a media critic, Nina Totenberg has been getting some exceptionally rough reviews lately. NPR’s veteran Supreme Court watcher last week reported that conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch refuses to wear a mask while sitting next to liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who is diabetic, thus causing Sotomayor to ...Read more

The last thing California needs is a new barrier to clean energy production. Yet the state Public Utilities Commission is poised to add one at the behest of private companies that see rooftop solar as a threat to future revenue.

California's utility regulator could vote as soon as Thursday on a proposal to undercut the net energy metering ...Read more

No sane American is eager for a hot war between the United States and its allies and Russia over a potentially imminent invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin’s forces. Yet even as President Joe Biden talks up the prospect of imposing debilitating economic sanctions, he rushes additional arms to the Ukrainians and weighs deploying thousands of ...Read more

The American Museum of Natural History, a wonderful institution founded in pursuit of science and truth, has been fulfilling a lifesaving mission for the past nine months, administering COVID-19 vaccines seven days a week. Under the great blue whale, more than 85,000 shots have been given to New Yorkers (including us). President Ellen Futter and...Read more

The Knight Foundation and Ipsos have a new survey on Americans’ views about free speech, and for those of us who consider spirited and even wrongheaded debate crucial to democracy, there’s both good news and bad.

Let’s start with the good news. Asked whether freedom of speech is an important constitutional right, 99% of respondents in the...Read more

America still had the naïve ability to be shocked back on Nov. 16, 1973, when a rambling then-President Richard Nixon stood up before 400 Associated Press journalists. Wallowing in the Watergate scandal, the 37th president joked morbidly about his plane crashing before he could be impeached, then uttered these famous words: "'People have got to...Read more

For the first time, the United States has been added to the list of backsliding democracies. And majority of young people no longer believe that they will do better than their parents, a key indicator of faith in the American dream.

Few may doubt that the United States is in one of the darkest, most challenging times in its political history, ...Read more

Despite its reputation as a global climate leader with tough environmental standards, California has lagged when it comes to protecting its own people from the impacts of oil drilling. The state has allowed companies to extract oil essentially wherever they please — near homes and schools, child care centers and hospitals — exposing millions...Read more

When Gavin Newsom refused to parole Sirhan Sirhan this month — the 16th time the convicted killer of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy has been rejected for release — California's governor hung his decision heavily on one central argument: Sirhan lacked "insight" into his crime, refusing to acknowledge guilt or accept responsibility for his acts.

"It ...Read more

A revolution in university admissions appears to be at hand.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear two cases on affirmative action in higher education, raising the likelihood that it will strike down the practice in the near future. The only thing surprising about this development is the timing, in the same Supreme Court term that already ...Read more

In 1995, when Ryan Busse began working for a tiny gun company called Kimber America, he believed that the gun industry and the NRA embodied wholesome values. “Those were still the days of magazine covers featuring the warmth of father-son hunting trips,” he writes in his new book, “Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized ...Read more

The daily number of COVID-19 cases reported in the nation has surged over the past two weeks, now surpassing 1 million, with 95% of them from the omicron variant. At such a rate, every week, over 2% of the entire population becomes infected.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports such data, as well as hospitalizations and deaths...Read more

There are bills in the U.S. Senate and House focusing on food and nutrition insecurity that will, if they become law, initiate a national discussion. That’s a great idea. The consequences of our food consumption dwarf most of our other national problems.

However, this discussion will only be helpful if it addresses public health without ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Things don't always go as hoped. A prime example is the Democrats' push for single-payer health care legislation.

A good-government hope was that this effort would result in a thoughtful, substantive legislative debate worthy of the monumental issue of universal health care.

That hope was dashed Thursday in a ...Read more

As 9/11 was unfolding, a relatively new president, down in the polls shortly after getting into office, George W. Bush, skyrocketed in the polls because of his clever use of branding and marketing. He became the icon for confronting the “all evil” that was behind the first attack on U.S. soil since the attack at Pearl Harbor.

What makes a ...Read more

On Jan. 6, 2021, Arizona lawmaker Mark Finchem — a practiced peddler of nutso conspiracy theories — stood outside the U.S. Capitol and tweeted his support for the mob seeking to overturn Joe Biden's victory.

"What happens when the People feel they have been ignored, and Congress refuses to acknowledge rampant fraud," Finchem wrote, pushing ...Read more

The right-wing cable channel One America News is among the worst purveyors of disinformation today, spewing a steady stream of lies regarding the pandemic, election integrity and other issues. But OAN’s pipeline for its toxic product just got narrower. DirecTV’s recent announcement that it will soon stop carrying the channel has riled some ...Read more

Israel became the United Nations’ 59th member on May 11, 1949. In the seven decades since, the General Assembly, now numbering 193 countries, has passed uncounted resolutions blasting the Mideast’s sole democracy. Slander and libel and unfairness by a majority of tyrannies gathered at Turtle Bay against the world’s only Jewish state is ...Read more

During the summer of 2020, candidate Joe Biden was not the first choice of many liberals, or even the second or third choice. He was too old, too establishment, too moderate, too inarticulate or too gaffe-prone. He looked more like the Democratic Party’s past than its future.

But whether he was the only Democrat who could have beaten Donald ...Read more

The fate of the Capitol on the day of the insurrection, some White House insiders believed, rested on the slender shoulders of Ivanka Trump.

As President Donald Trump watched the mayhem unfold on Jan. 6, 2021, unwilling to intervene, it became clear to those around him that there was only one person on Earth who could get him to call off the ...Read more