I had a nagging toothache recently, and it led to an even more painful revelation.

If you X-rayed the state of oral health care in the United States, particularly for people 65 and older, the picture would be full of cavities.

"It's probably worse than you can even imagine," said Elizabeth Mertz, a UC San Francisco professor and Healthforce ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The race for California governor couldn’t be much closer. And that’s scary for Democrats.

Only the top two vote-getters in the June 2 primary — regardless of their party — will advance to the November election. And although still unlikely, it’s increasingly conceivable that both could be Republicans.

“Scare ...Read more

NEW YORK — If this city was like it used to be, like it’s supposed to be, then the fracas that erupted in Washington Square Park last week would have been nothing more than the simple snowball fight that Mayor Zohran Mamdani said it was.

But it wasn’t.

Because if what happened in Washington Square Park had been a simple snowball fight ...Read more

Donald Trump has never been one to play by the rules.

Whether it's stiffing contractors as a real estate developer, defying court orders he doesn't like as president or leveraging the Oval Office to vastly inflate his family's fortune, Trump's guiding principle can be distilled to a simple, unswerving calculation: What's in it for me?

Trump is...Read more

One thing you can say for California Gov. Gavin Newsom: He's not afraid to tick people off.

In 2004, as mayor of San Francisco, he defied the law and ordered that gay couples be allowed to marry. The move, he was told, was a career ender. He did it anyway.

In 2013, as lieutenant governor under then-Gov. Jerry Brown, Newsom took the occasion of...Read more

Retirement experts note the folly of retiring from something, which drives what most people do, and the wisdom of retiring to something, a rarer but far superior choice.

The analogy holds when it comes to what just happened this weekend in Iran.

Especially if you look at what took place in Venezuela, the previous example of Donald Trump-led ...Read more

The U.S. and Israel gambled on “decapitation” in Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many others. History shows the danger of this approach in nationalist conflicts: It often works tactically — and fails strategically.

Although the weekend’s “shock and awe” bombing campaign and the U.S.-led regime change remind ...Read more

The energy policy choices our nation makes today are among the most important and far-reaching policy decisions we will make in the 21 st century.

U.S. oil production reached a record high last year. If we are to continue our nation’s positive energy trends, we must implement energy policies based on current reality and our potential as an ...Read more

The word that seems to concern many people today is “affordability.” Whether one is purchasing a home, buying food or paying doctors’ bills, everything seems more expensive. And the fact is, everything is more expensive.

The consumer price index in December 2021 stood at 278. By December 2025, it had reached 324 — an increase of 16.5 ...Read more

Last December, the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for demolishing the East Wing of the White House for Trump’s $300 million ballroom.

While the destruction alarmed historians and preservationists, angered political opponents, and may prove illegal, it’s also ...Read more

Much of what I know and practice I have learned at a Starbucks. For me, it is where community and connection are as steady as and unique as a craft beverage.

Not long ago, I thought of Robert Fulghum's "All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten." Fulghum’s main idea was clear: The same rules that help kids get along, like playing ...Read more

A science-fiction trope is the time traveler who visits the present day with a dire warning about the future only to be tragically ignored. It resonates because it’s so believable. In fact, Earth had just such a visitor recently, and we dismissed it completely.

Three years ago, scientists warned that an approaching El Niño in the Pacific ...Read more

In his State of the Union address, the president announced a new type of government retirement account designed for Americans who don’t have access to one. Whether he can make good on this promise remains to be seen, given the likely need for legislative approval from a deeply divided Congress in an election year.

Donald Trump in 2026? Try ...Read more

For decades, autism was believed to overwhelmingly affect boys. Yet a big new study out of Sweden provides perhaps the best evidence yet that girls aren’t less likely to be autistic — they’re just less likely to be diagnosed young.

Researchers looked across 35 years of health records for nearly 2.8 million people (an incredibly complete ...Read more