U.S. politics this coming year will be defined by the midterm elections, and if current trends continue, Democrats could take back Congress.

According to recent Marist polling, Democrats lead by 14 points on the national ballot question, while President Donald Trump’s approval rating is at a new low of 36%.

The question is whether, and how, ...Read more

As New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration looms, the wealthiest Americans are being targeted as a rallying cry. In recent weeks, Mamdani’s criticism of millionaires and billionaires has been echoed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, megamillionaire singer Billie Eilish, and even an entity called “Patriotic Millionaires,” which demands ...Read more

Democrats may not have pulled off the political upset of the 21st century in the recent special election in Tennessee, but Republican Matt Van Epps’ single-digit margin of victory in a much-watched Seventh District congressional race should give his party pause.

The GOP candidate should have won by at least twice as much, given the district�...Read more

America’s housing crisis is no longer a looming threat: It’s here. Across the country, home prices and rents have climbed beyond reach for millions of families. While many factors play a role, from zoning laws to inflation, one root cause is often ignored: We simply don’t have enough construction workers to build the homes America needs.

...Read more

The heart-wrenching news over the weekend came in waves, a tsunami of senseless tragedy and calculated malevolence. Two dead and several others wounded in a mass shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island; two U.S. national guardsmen and an interpreter ambushed and murdered in Syria; 15 dead and 40 wounded after a terror attack in Australia ...Read more

Philosopher George Santayana once famously observed, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Unfortunately, our nation’s collective memory doesn’t seem to even extend back two decades.

Last month, Fannie Mae dropped the requirement that borrowers have a minimum credit score of 620. Freddie Mac had made a similar...Read more

LOS ANGELES — When millions of people come to Los Angeles for the World Cup, Olympics and Paralympics, their first taste of the city will probably be the infuriating congestion of LAX. Now, do we want to treat our guests — and ultimately ourselves — to an even worse welcome: a half-finished, $1.5-billion roadway project at LAX that will ...Read more

So which example of human carnage most deserved an editorial board’s focus this day?

Was it the antisemitic shooting incident at Bondi Beach in Australia, where a father-and-son team of assassins opened fire on what was supposed to be a fun celebration of the beginning of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah? There, at least 15 people died and ...Read more

I first encountered Leszek Kołakowski, the Polish political thinker, as an undergraduate. It was he who warned of “an all-encompassing crisis” that societies can feel but cannot clearly name.

His insight reads less like a relic of the late 1970s and more like a dispatch from our own political moment. We aren’t living through one ...Read more

Government officials and education experts are right to express concerns about recent evidence of declining academic achievement among the students who struggle most. Researchers are exploring potential reasons behind this decline, including pandemic-era learning loss and the negative effects of excessive screen time.

As the head of a public ...Read more

Two horrific mass shootings over the weekend offered a contrasting study in political leadership.

In Australia, after a father and son allegedly killed at least 15 people and injured more than two dozen others who gathered on a Sydney beach to celebrate the start of Hanukkah, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called an emergency meeting and ...Read more

It's pointless to expect Donald Trump to apologize for his reprehensible response to the murder of Hollywood actor/director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele. Even though the American people deserve an apology, remorse is not in the president's repertoire.

Trump's horrid comments in the aftermath of the double homicide mark a new low for a ...Read more

No doubt social media and online discussion forums have played an integral role in most everyone’s daily digital lives. Today, more than 70% of the U.S. adults use social media, and over 5 billion people worldwide participate in online social platforms.

Discussion forums alone attract enormous engagement. Reddit has over 110 million daily ...Read more

Universal basic income, or UBI for short, first gained prominence as an idea from the perennial independent Andrew Yang, who championed this cause during his 2020 presidential run as not only a way to combat poverty, but as “human-centered capitalism.”

The appeal of guaranteed income is understandable, especially in an era of technological ...Read more

Whether you sat across the table from him or across the aisle, Rob Reiner left no doubt about what he cared about and was willing to fight for.

I had lunch with him once at Pete's Cafe in downtown L.A., where he was far less interested in what was on his plate than what was on his mind. He was advocating for local investments in early childhood...Read more

President Donald Trump’s birthday is June 14, which also happens to be Flag Day.

To celebrate, the president wants to offer free admissions that day to the country’s national parks, a self-serving gesture, no doubt, but one that is no surprise for a man who spent much of his adult life plastering his name on the sides of buildings, ...Read more

Imagine that your child has been kidnapped and taken far away. That child is scared, and you can offer no comfort. You don’t know if your child is being tortured, abused or militarized, but you know that someone is trying to turn your child into someone else entirely. It’s a parent’s worst nightmare.

Imagine that trauma and then scale it ...Read more

Hours after Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, were found dead in their home in what is shaping up to be a heartbreaking family tragedy, our president blamed Reiner for his own death.

“A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away...Read more

Gavin Newsom is off and running, eyeing the White House as he enters the far turn and his final year as California governor.

The track record for California Democrats and the presidency is not a good one. In the nearly 250 years of these United States, not one Left Coast Democrat has ever been elected president. Kamala Harris is just the latest...Read more

A relatively mundane middle-aged rite of passage — shingles vaccination — might offer an added benefit: protection against, or even the slowing of the progression of, dementia.

Over the past several years, a growing body of research has suggested that immunization against shingles may reduce the risk of dementia by up to 20%. Now, a new ...Read more