It’s election season, and we’re all awash in political ads, some dealing with issues like high grocery prices, others seeking to distract us from those issues. But one topic deserves voters’ attention, whether or not you see it in commercials: the impact that the upcoming elections will have on our health.

When the Trump administration ...Read more

With a month to go until midterm elections, Democrats find themselves in better shape than expected. Odds are, they’ll win the House and perhaps a slim majority in the Senate. Exactly what they’ll do with that power, though, remains a mystery.

On the campaign trail, most of the party’s congressional candidates have been long on rhetoric ...Read more

Next week, we have parent-teacher conferences at school. It’s the end of the quarter, so tensions are high with early deadlines for college applications looming. The stress is palpable. One student let out a sob by my office door because of a missed writing conference for a personal statement.

I could only reschedule it the next week. “But ...Read more

Is “Brad,” the gamer, the new welfare queen?

Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders recently released a video calling for work requirements for those receiving government benefits. To make her point, she featured a young, seemingly able-bodied man at home playing video games. He’s clearly not working — he can’t even be bothered to ...Read more

Here’s something funny. My brother Tom died seven years ago. (That’s not the funny part.)

Tom was a firefighter, like our father and both grandfathers. He was also on the Massachusetts FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Force that worked at the World Trade Center during 9/11. He had run into burning buildings. He had saved lives. He had seen...Read more

DFL Attorney General Keith Ellison says it directly at the end of a campaign commercial: “My opponent? He’ll take orders for the biggest fraudster in American history, Donald Trump.”

I was thrilled at last to hear a Minnesota DFLer call out the president’s egregious $2 billion self-enrichment so clearly.

Minnesota Republicans are ...Read more

With not-terrible odds heading into the 2028 Democratic primaries, Gov. Gavin Newsom is getting one shared warning whispered in his ear by roughly 3,729 political consultants right now: Do not mess with the murderers.

Do not, under any circumstance, follow that inner voice that may be telling you to commute the death sentences of the 563 ...Read more

Nearly 40 years have passed since a Californian was president.

Several have pursued the White House in the decades since Ronald Reagan ambled into retirement, in January 1989. But not a one succeeded. Kamala Harris, who was saved from political purgatory when Joe Biden chose her as his running mate, came closest — though not close — in 2024...Read more

Parents dismayed by the sorry state of penmanship, take heart: A decade and a half after most states stopped requiring cursive in public schools, instruction is making a comeback.

More than a dozen states have reintroduced cursive mandates in recent years, New Jersey and Pennsylvania the latest among them. The measures come amid rising ...Read more

The newest trend in tobacco policy is so-called "Nicotine-Free Generation" laws, which ban anyone born on or after a certain date, say, Jan. 1, 2004, from ever buying a commercial nicotine product like a vape, cigarette, cigar or nicotine pouch.

Advocates portray these bans as child protection policies, but it is already illegal to sell any ...Read more

The most fatal, addictive drugs in the world are nicotine and tobacco. Worldwide, nicotine deaths are double the totals from alcohol and illicit drugs combined. In Massachusetts, more than 9,300 people die annually from nicotine use, plus an additional 1,000 from secondhand smoke.

Every day, more than 250 of Massachusetts’ residents turn 21. ...Read more

Recent books and studies have begun to highlight the risks that AI poses to children. This is a good thing. Maybe we’re collectively realizing that we shouldn’t wait a decade after a new technology emerges — as we did with social media — before sounding the alarm.

But kids aren’t the only ones affected by artificial intelligence. ...Read more

Spain's government may become the latest casualty of a housing crisis that policymakers helped create, offering a cautionary tale for America.

This month, Spain's parliament rejected two housing decrees championed by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. While the package included some sensible measures aimed at curbing housing speculation, it was ...Read more

A sign of how deeply sports gambling has penetrated the culture is the flock of top athletes and celebrities who have signed on as paid shills for the companies that operate legally in many states, helping to propel the explosive growth of betting platforms. Tom Brady, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Jamie Foxx, Derek Jeter, Sydney Sweeney, Charles ...Read more

In 2003, the pharma firms GlaxoSmithKline and Schering-Plough, poised to launch the new erectile dysfunction drug Levitra, signed a celebrity spokesperson. To carry out the marketing strategy designed to persuade men to seek treatment without feeling unduly self-conscious, the companies recruited a “brand ambassador” who would fit the bill ...Read more

Americans are understandably freaked out about the possibility of disruption in the elections next month. I get the concern. But every doomsday scenario falls down in practice. If we can just tune out the noise, the process at the polls is most likely to be refreshingly mundane.

I have run a nationwide election protection program. It’s real ...Read more

On Friday, President Donald Trump shocked the world by easing sanctions on Russia to allow the sale of Russian diesel fuel to the United States and global markets. He boasted that his action would dramatically reduce the price of diesel fuel for Americans and the rest of the world. Trump’s action is a shameful betrayal of Ukraine and our ...Read more

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, standing in front of the Parthenon, declared that the Trump administration sought to partner with Europe in defending the “distinct character” of Western civilization. It was meant, perhaps, as an exhortation.

But to Europe, it sounded like a threat. The U.S., said Rubio, had chosen “the ...Read more

An embattled President Donald Trump is undertaking a risky gambit raiding the home of controversial “Squad” member Rep. Ilhan Omar just seven weeks before the election.

If the court ordered warrant by Homeland Security turns up nothing and Omar is cleared, it could seriously backfire on Trump and the GOP, which has been obsessed by the far ...Read more

The omens that President Donald Trump is facing an epic example of what another Republican president once called “a thumpin’” are accumulating. His deeply unpopular Middle East war is metastasizing, contributing to persistently high prices and a historically low public opinion of his presidency.

Republican schemes to rig the vote by ...Read more