FOOTHILL FARMS, Calif. — As a California state lawmaker, Richard Pan authored some of the strongest vaccine laws in the country.

His reward — and part of the backlash, on top of death threats — was being physically assaulted outside the Capitol in Sacramento and spattered with blood thrown from the gallery.

Now, a few years removed from...Read more

Ever since things in Ukraine first went sideways for Vladimir Putin back in the spring of 2022, the Russian president and his officials have said that, not only were they fighting Nazis and responding to NATO aggression, but that the stakes of the conflict were so high that Russia may cease to exist should they fail.

This claim has always been ...Read more

This weekend, President Donald Trump publicly surrendered U.S. honor and security interests to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

The U.S. president demanded that Ukraine “replace” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with someone willing to make “a deal” with the Kremlin to (supposedly) end the war. Yet the “deal” that Trump envisions would not ...Read more

When students at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee grilled Republican gubernatorial nominee Byron Donalds last month about his record, he promised to bring his finance background to the state’s top job. “The next governor has to have experience in how a company’s balance sheet operates,” said Donalds, who was a financial adviser ...Read more

As predicted when President Donald Trump and his dangerous quack Health Secretary Bobby Kennedy Jr. cast doubt on vaccines, preventable disease is spreading, such as measles.

Now New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has now had to declare a state of emergency over the measles outbreak, which has exceeded 100 cases.

Surprising no one, these cases have ...Read more

When the Founding Fathers gathered in Philadelphia 250 years ago to “form a more perfect Union,” they studied the collapse of the Greek and Roman republics with an eye toward designing a system of government that could withstand a populist demagogue who could seduce the masses, undermine democracy, and catalyze tyranny.

The system of checks...Read more

If you haven’t already done so, now is the ideal time to get your flu shot.

If you have, great job. You’re giving your body time to build immunity before cooler weather and indoor activities increase your exposure to influenza that sickens people throughout fall and winter.

Early signs are that the flu could be particularly bad this year. ...Read more

“Nobody knows anything,” the screenwriter William Goldman famously said of the movie business. Much the same can be said today for artificial intelligence, a technology that’s moving fast, destination unknown. Unlike movies, though, the bots may one day rise up and exterminate humanity, according to some in the industry. It’s fair to say...Read more

The swamp may not be drained, but it’s shrinking.

In September, the federal government employed 2.68 million people. That number includes Postal Service employees, but not members of the military. It’s a noticeable decline from the start of President Donald Trump’s second term. In January 2025, the federal government employed more than 3 ...Read more

I recently went diving off Kawaihae on Hawaii’s Big Island. The water was bathtub warm, about 85 degrees, with an impressive 80 feet of visibility which meant you could see how little of the reef ecosystem was left. The coral was dead, just a few shoaling fish moving through the rocky structures that remained. It wasn’t my first encounter ...Read more

Last month, the annual day celebrating U.S. citizenship came amid deep challenges for our democracy. The Trump administration has launched an all-out assault on the right to vote, threatening to pass into law new challenges to voter registration that wouldn’t just make it harder for most Americans to make their voices heard, but outright strip...Read more

The Pentagon’s abrupt withdrawal of a dozen long-range B-1 bombers from a British airbase raises a host of troubling questions. Vice President J.D. Vance said the move was made “out of an abundance of caution” after U.S. and British officials reportedly received warnings of a potential drone attack ordered by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary...Read more

Mayor Zohran Mamdani showed himself to be callow and immature by insulting the Jews of New York with his smearing of Israel even when he was memorializing the atrocity of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack that slaughtered more than 1,000 Israelis.

So deep is Mamdani’s revulsion towards for the state of Israel that even on the mournful ...Read more

In President Donald Trump’s latest attempt to bring private universities to heel through policy change in the tax code, the administration is threatening to revoke tax-exempt status from schools that offer targeted support to minority students. This move should have everyone who cares about education, public works, and charitable giving ...Read more

More than 50 years after her death, Helen Keller still turns up in artificial intelligence debates. The communication breakthroughs of the American writer, who was deaf and blind, are often cited as evidence that language is the best path to creating machines that are as intelligent as humans.

Despite loud early doubters, large language models ...Read more

Last summer I returned to Minnesota after 12 years working in Washington, D.C. I spent much of that time helping cities in North America and Europe build the relationships and civic capacity that allow democracy to endure stress and division.

I was far from the front lines of Minnesota's response to the federal immigration surge last winter. ...Read more

Christa Pike’s execution in Tennessee was a disaster waiting to happen. The warnings did not only come from her lawyers or opponents of the death penalty: Doctors in Tennessee and Republican state senators called for the state to pause executions, because the chances of one going catastrophically wrong were so high.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee ...Read more

Less than half of Americans expect this November’s midterm election to be free and fair. According to a survey from the University of California San Diego, confidence is falling among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike.

The data is disconcerting, but it also points to an important opportunity. When trust is fraying, we have a ...Read more