The Trump administration’s crackdown on pharmaceutical ads is a welcome step toward lessening Big Pharma’s influence over conversations between patients and their doctors.

Americans are among the few people in the world bombarded with advertisements for medications most of us don’t need — New Zealand is the only other country that ...Read more

Even as its forces prepare to launch a full-scale offensive into Gaza City, several long-standing supporters of Israel — including Australia, Canada, France and the UK — are threatening to recognize a Palestinian state, joining nearly 150 other nations. Israeli leaders have reacted furiously, taking steps to render any such entity unviable. ...Read more

Like most big American cities, Chicago has a homelessness problem. It is writ large in our public parks.

Take the situation in the 39th Ward, where Ald. Samantha Nugent has grown so frustrated with burgeoning tent cities that she marched into our office with a multicolored timeline going back to 2022, reflecting her efforts to restore her ...Read more

In democracies around the world, young people have started new political parties whenever the establishment has sidelined their views or excluded them from policymaking. These parties have sometimes reinvigorated political competition, compelled established parties to take previously neglected issues seriously, or encouraged incumbent leaders to...Read more

U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune is very wrong to weaken the Senate’s historic filibuster procedure — which allows legislation and nominations to be slowed or blocked in the absence of 60 votes. Thune, pushed by fellow Republican President Trump, is taking this damaging and drastic step over frustrations at Senate Democrats, who have ...Read more

There are plenty of good reasons to ban the TV advertising of prescription drugs, but coming from the anti-science, anti-medicine Trump administration and the dangerous anti-vaccine crackpot Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the motivation is suspect.

It is aimed to attack the pharmaceutical companies? Or hurt the ...Read more

Ask people how much they expect to change over the next 10 years, and most will say “not much.” Ask them how much they’ve changed in the past decade, and the answer flips. Regardless of age, the past always feels more transformative than the future.

This blind spot has a name: the end-of-history illusion. The result is a persistent ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Pigs are flying and Satan has on a puffer jacket. I know these things because the impossible is happening — I am writing about why Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert are right.

And why California’s Republican congressional representatives should be ashamed and shamed.

You may know these women as ...Read more

This week marks the third anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death in police custody — an event that ignited one of the most powerful protest movements in Iran since 1979. “ Woman, Life, Freedom” became not just a slogan but a rallying cry that cut across gender, class and ethnic lines.

Three years on, Iran’s political system is in deeper ...Read more

Some irresponsible right-wing influencer was wandering past the home of one of our public officials recently, just taking a little walk, in his parlance, and making a video for X and doubtless also for other socials. He popped up in our feed with his creepy and menacing stroll. We wish he’d stroll out of town.

We appreciate that people in ...Read more

In business, there’s a brutal rule: differentiate or die. If your product looks just like the competition’s, you don’t survive. Politics works the same way. And right now, America’s two major political parties are showing what happens when you forget that lesson.

For decades, Democrats and Republicans alike have drawn from the same ...Read more

When Cardinal Robert Prevost of south suburban Dolton became Pope Leo XIV in May, excited Chicagoans could hardly believe the first American pope in church history was homegrown — and a White Sox fan at that.

Conservative Catholics across the country could hardly believe it, either. The powerful Catholic right had campaigned for a ...Read more

Cellphones are ubiquitous these days, and just about everything that happens is recorded on video, usually from several angles. But I don’t think I want to see the graphic videos available on social media that show Charlie Kirk being assassinated in Utah last week. I hope you don’t either.

As a rule, news media blur the most graphic images ...Read more

From the outside looking in, Gov. Gavin Newsom unofficially announced he was running for president on Thursday, March 30, 2023, the day he transferred $10 million from his state campaign funds to launch his PAC, Campaign for Democracy, along with a nationwide tour. Newsom unofficially suspended his campaign a month later, on April 25, the day ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The crew had just poured a concrete foundation on a vacant lot in Altadena when I pulled up the other day. Two workers were loading equipment onto trucks and a third was hosing the fresh cement that will sit under a new house.

I asked how things were going, and if there were any problems finding enough workers because of ongoing...Read more

You’re deploying hateful language! You’re encouraging political violence!

Now, please excuse me while I do the same thing.

Welcome to the new American berserk, to borrow Philip Roth’s memorable phrase. We’re going crazy by denouncing violent rhetoric by others, even as we engage in it ourselves.

Witness President Donald Trump’s ...Read more

Compassion for criminals is cruelty for their past and future victims.

Officials in North Carolina recently released a video showing the cold-blooded killing of Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian immigrant. The disturbing footage shows Zarutska sitting on a light rail train. She’s absorbed in her phone and appears to be unwinding while wearing her ...Read more

Terrible test scores aren’t inevitable. But maintaining the status quo won’t fix them.

Last week, the National Assessment of Educational Progress released results for eighth-grade science and 12th-grade reading and math. Students took the tests in 2024. These results are called the Nation’s Report Card, and they were abysmal.

In eighth ...Read more

The assassination of Charlie Kirk is a watershed moment for America.

Beyond the horror that a person was assassinated while debating ideas with a campus crowd, the aftermath reveals the rot that’s set in to public discourse and institutions.

According to reports, at least a dozen faculty and staff, from school board officials to classroom ...Read more

The shooting death of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University on Wednesday is a tragedy. Whether someone enthusiastically supports Kirk’s views or vehemently opposes them does not matter; this nation cannot endure by resolving its differences with the barrel of a gun.

While the United States has been repeatedly stained...Read more