There is a distinct, heavy silence that accompanies a late-night phone call. For adult children of aging parents, it is the one we all quietly dread. A sudden fall on the stairs, an acute medical event, or a rapid, unexpected decline in health that changes everything in the blink of an eye.

In my work in senior living, I see the aftermath of ...Read more

Amid record-breaking temperatures and headlines about “heat domes,” I worry profoundly about dogs like Cash, who spent his life deprived of relief from extreme weather—and everything else—while chained to a tree in North Carolina. Legislators there are considering Duke’s Rescue Act, a bill that would restrict tethering—a move we ...Read more

The Fourth of July has come and gone, and for many families, summer has reached its sweet spot. The pools are open. The bikes are out. Library reading logs are filling up. School feels far away.

At least, that’s the nostalgic version.

And yet, for many children in the city and suburbs, summer doesn’t look like that at all. Children of ...Read more

Last year, we wrote in the Los Angeles Times that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was done chasing criminals after we’d already handed them money. We said we were building something different — a prevention-first operation that would detect and stop fraud before the check cleared, not attempt to claw back lost funds years ...Read more

A new study finds that Australia’s ban on social media accounts for kids under 16 has not curbed use among teens. The findings come as other nations are exploring age-based bans of their own. Has the social media train left the station, leaving parents and policymakers without a way to protect their kids from Big Tech’s addictive embrace?

...Read more

It often feels like the only predictable thing about President Donald Trump’s foreign policy is that he’s unpredictable.

At a NATO summit on Wednesday, Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It went quite differently than their public disagreement at the Oval Office last year.

“We’ve actually developed a good ...Read more

The Democratic establishment, shaken by the rise of progressive socialists, is right to wonder where this wave might lead. The similarly populist movement of Tea Party Republicans, however muddled, foreshadowed President Donald Trump.

Republican candidates for Congress backed by the GOP establishment were pushed to the limit beginning in the ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- On my way through Skid Row to meet up with Estela Lopez, things looked pretty much as they did when I spent time there more than 20 years ago and first heard the promises that things would be better soon.

Tents lined some of the sidewalks, making them unpassable. Some people wore the damage of physical or mental disease, ...Read more

A secret shopper survey conducted by researchers at Yale University and published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association offers an alarming, if unsurprising, glimpse into the world of telehealth purveyors of GLP-1 medicines. It confirms what doctors have worried about for years: The popular obesity drugs are being ...Read more

The nation's largest retirement program will reach a cliff in six years unless Congress acts. Social Security is going bankrupt, facing a structural imbalance between promised benefits and dedicated revenues.

The 2026 Social Security Administration Trustees' report predicts the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund that ...Read more

The Supreme Court has recognized the Federal Reserve as a special case among the government’s numerous independent agencies — one that requires protection from White House interference. The distinction is less than clear-cut in legal terms. As a practical matter, however, preserving the central bank’s independence in monetary policy is ...Read more

Not many historians have seen their work referenced on “The Simpsons” and “The Sopranos.” Not many historians have been condemned by name by a president on the White House lawn for the “crime” of researching and writing about this nation’s history. And not many historians have taught countless people that this country’s past ...Read more

Modern politics in many quarters is more performance art than serious policy, a never-ending quest to generate votes rather than address substantive issues. This was on full display last week with the introduction in the Senate of the so-called Living Wage for All Act.

The legislation is sponsored by Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from ...Read more

I never thought I’d be writing a column that led off with an analysis of soccer.

I’d planned to write about the lessons our nation’s 250th birthday party provided for Americans about the real meaning of “patriotic values.” But as it turns out, an examination of the scandal that ensued after President Donald Trump’s shameful World ...Read more

The University of California Board of Regents is being asked to consider whether to bring back the SAT and ACT for admissions, a debate so hot even New York is weighing in on this Golden State dilemma.

Despite dire warnings from our right-coast friends and thousands (yes, thousands) of professors who claim incoming students lack necessary ...Read more

For the past 11 years, I've waited for a scandal, a slip up, a moment of clarity that would finally make President Donald Trump's supporters realize that their man is charlatan.

My fellow Americans, I think we finally found it.

Earlier this week, Trump appears to have successfully lobbied FIFA to allow U.S. striker Folarin Balogun to play in ...Read more

Every four years when the World Cup rolls around, no matter where in the world I am watching — in a pub in England, in a crowded restaurant in Spain or in a bar in Chicago — my mind always conjures up images of that night in Senegal where I saw my first match on a portable black-and-white TV hooked up to a truck battery.

I had barely made ...Read more

The Supreme Court is destroying originalism in order to save it. In Trump v. Cook, Chief Justice John Roberts, a supposed originalist, bypassed the theory in favor of a five-year-old doctrine known as “history and tradition.” That allowed the court to preserve the independence of the Federal Reserve — even as, in a separate decision issued...Read more