For months, President Donald Trump's Justice Department has hinted that it intends to crack down on Silicon Valley. It recently took a big step closer as senior antitrust officials met with their state counterparts to plot out a case against Alphabet Inc.'s Google. Quite what they plan to argue isn't yet clear. But as the final months of Trump's...Read more

The recent spike in U.S. COVID-19 infections has mercifully been accompanied by a declining death count. There were days in the spring when the country had half the number cases but twice as many deaths. Now, at least, the U.S. is testing more widely.

And even though death is a lagging indicator, and the numbers are likely to catch up to some ...Read more

Online schooling has failed. American schools need to reopen in the fall.

It has now become obvious that the steady diet of online instruction put in place for the coronavirus pandemic not only has hurt kids academically and increased absenteeism, but has contributed to anxiety and depression and probably even aggravated health problems such as...Read more

When demonstrators took to the streets to protest the death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, the cause was just but the worry was real: Were the marches going to lead to massive new outbreaks of coronavirus just as most of the nation had flattened the curve?

At the same time, newly reopened bars, restaurants and ...Read more

It's unfortunately beyond the power of the Supreme Court to abolish the electoral college, a hopelessly antiquated and unfair way to choose the president. But in a unanimous ruling Monday, the court at least prevented the system from becoming even less democratic.

Acting on cases from Washington and Colorado, the justices held that states may ...Read more

It's almost always an advantage to have a seat at the table.

In March, as Congress wrestled with the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic and debated the contours of what would soon become the largest economic bailout in U.S. history, four legislators pushed hard to make sure that franchise operators received special treatment.

They wrote a letter...Read more

WASHINGTON -- At Gettysburg, where the bloodiest and most decisive battle of the Civil War occurred, no fewer than 1,320 monuments are scattered across the rolling Pennsylvania landscape. Some memorialize Union generals and their men; others remember Confederates.

One is especially poignant: the Maryland monument, which lists both Union and ...Read more

Congressional Republicans put out a clear message recently: Face masks are OK. You should wear one.

The concerted effort, reluctantly joined by President Donald Trump, should ease the partisan tension, if not end it, over face masks in the battle to stem the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

Hopefully, that will do the same for the larger ...Read more

As much as Facebook deserves a comeuppance for its years of egregious behavior, the social media company probably won't suffer long-term from the July ad boycott.

Nor change its shameful ways.

It's disgraceful that CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg's company divides America, threatens our democracy and gives the tech industry a black eye. His ...Read more

Our public spaces have been put under extreme pressure in the last few months. Since the pandemic lockdown, people have headed for open spaces to revive their mental and physical health. More recently, public spaces across the city and the country have played a key role in protests and demonstrations, reminding us how important they are for ...Read more

The calls for real transformation of policing are urgent and needed, but not enough. Transformation can start, but not end, there.

The police, after all, are only the front end of the criminal justice system. Prosecutors' offices are next in line; then courts, trial and appellate. Prisons and corrections departments are the back end. Together, ...Read more

In a moment of deep uncertainty about making the 2020 presidential election work, the U.S. Supreme Court has struck a blow for stability and common sense. In a 9-0 decision, the court held that states have the power to force members of the Electoral College to vote for the candidate their state has pledged to support -- and to punish them if ...Read more

Gov. Gavin Newsom bears responsibility for the current surge of COVID-19 cases in California.

Early on, he wisely adopted Bay Area health officials' strategy for controlling the coronavirus. It was working as the number of cases leveled off in early April. But then the governor, ignoring warnings from some of those same health officials to take...Read more

The past few weeks will go down in history as some of the most disastrous in California history.

After an unwise and unscientific rush to reopen the state, COVID-19 infections are spiking in California, including here in Sacramento. The California miracle has become the California nightmare. We bent the curve and avoided the worst-case scenario...Read more

There's more than meets the eye in this week's Supreme Court decision striking down a 2015 law that allows some robocalls to your mobile phone -- namely, calls seeking to collect government debts.

On the surface, the court straightforwardly said that if Congress bans robocalls across the board (as it did in the 1990s) it violates the First ...Read more

The exit of pundit Chris Matthews from MSNBC, on March 2, was one of the zillion discordant notes drowned out in the deafening cacophony this past spring. But it's worth another look.

Matthews' abrupt over-and-out could be a model for how men might quit the he-man wolfpack that defines Trump times.

A few days before he resigned, "The Daily ...Read more

If you're weary of America's politics of grievance, fed up with its constant churning of resentment and bitterness, then the Fourth of July might be just the festive reprieve you need. Provided you don't pay too close attention to the holiday's bill of particulars.

Over the course of more than two centuries, America has buried most of the ...Read more

The Golden State Killer is the perfect example of why the death penalty is justified -- and why life in prison is preferable.

Especially in California, where a death penalty sentence is practically meaningless.

Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. -- also dubbed the Visalia Ransacker, East Area Rapist or Original Night Stalker, depending on the community...Read more

In recent days, with cases of the potentially deadly coronavirus spiking across much of the United States and the jobless rate still foundering above 11%, the president was obsessed with what a Washington Post front-page story described as "an urgent task for Trump and his team." That would be coming up with a new nickname for the political foe ...Read more

It seems quaint to note in the summer of 2020 that America's global war on terror will soon enter the last year of its second decade. Yet it's not something that the junior senator from Kentucky, who has long opposed it, is prone to forget -- and though Rand Paul's attempts to end it are misguided, he is not wrong about Congress's dereliction of...Read more