YouTube recently announced it will ban content that spreads misinformation regarding not just the coronavirus vaccines but vaccination science in general. It’s an acknowledgment that today’s misplaced conservative resistance to the coronavirus vaccines both feeds and is fed by the broader anti-vaccination movement that was around well before the pandemic.

Vaccine mandates work. Just ask New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, whose state gave roughly 600,000 health care workers until this past Monday to get a COVID-19 jab or lose their jobs.

Congressional testimony this past week by the top Pentagon officials charged with the Afghanistan pullout made clear that President Joe Biden opted against their recommendation against completely withdrawing U.S. troops. Instead, Biden insisted on a hasty pullout, leading to disastrous results. The advisers didn’t seem proud about their assessment, nor did they try to sugarcoat the Pentagon’s various missteps that blocked a successful end to the 20-year war.

“Too many lives have been lost. Families, communities and nations have been devastated. … Our marathon effort has been a success, but the last mile may be the most difficult path.”

The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing recession have hit older workers especially hard. Today’s economy is simultaneously pushing out millions who were counting on their paychecks to survive, while trapping millions of others in jobs because they can’t afford to retire.

When the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called gun violence a “serious public health threat” in a recent interview, it may have seemed like garden-variety politics. It was anything but. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, was ending more than two decades of official near-silence on the topic — and suggesting a better approach may finally be on the way.

Workers have been losing their jobs to machines in the name of productivity and efficiency since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

The Biden administration is actively pushing Congress to require banks to report to the Internal Revenue Service on the account activity of a huge swath of Americans. This unwarranted snooping would be an invasion of privacy, and lawmakers should make sure it doesn’t happen.

A year and a half into the pandemic, the long-feared specter of rationed health care — that is, the delay or denial of medical treatment to some patients who need it because there simply aren’t enough resources to go around — is perilously close to becoming reality. As unvaccinated coronavirus victims overwhelm hospitals, some states are edging toward allowing doctors to decide which patients get immediate care and which don’t. It could affect not just coronavirus patients but medical care across the board.

President Biden’s first speech as Commander in Chief to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday was full of the high-minded internationalist sentiment that defines his rhetoric. If only those words reflected the reality of the world he and America will have to navigate over the next four years.

The Biden administration got ahead of the science last month in proposing to make all Americans vaccinated against COVID-19 eligible for a booster shot. That’s why it was good to see a federal advisory panel last week reassert the role that data and critical thinking must play in managing this pandemic. The White House and public health experts may share the same goals, but science — not politics — must shape the nation’s vaccination strategy.

With their domestic priorities facing do-or-die votes in the coming days, congressional Democrats are coalescing behind their all-too-common strategy: Ready, fire, aim. Not content with capitalizing on their majorities in Congress, Democratic centrists and progressives are bickering over two spending bills, threatening both pieces of legislation, President Joe Biden’s agenda and their party’s tenuous grip on Congress. House Democrats should settle for a win by passing the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure bill.

After more than 30 years of circular conversations and legislative wrangling, immigration advocates finally came close to a mass legalization program, only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory: Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough Sunday ruled that the measures could not be included in the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill, which requires only the approval of a bare majority to pass.

It’s three o’clock in the morning and a piercing tone from your phone jolts you awake. Your heart pounds and your hands shake as the urgent message sinks in: A disaster is heading straight for your area, and it will hit within an hour. What should you do? Where should you go? Will your whole family — including your animal companions — make it through the emergency safely?

Picture a 19-year-old gymnast, sitting on her bedroom floor, recounting in detail how her team doctor sexually abused her. She’s on the phone with two FBI agents, telling them about the time the doctor molested her in a hotel room in Tokyo. She begins to cry.

The battle over Democrats’ ambitious spending plan is heating up in Congress, but one piece of the outcome is already clear: The $3.5 trillion price tag is being whittled down.

A new Treasury Department report finds that the United States is losing $163 billion per year because of tax evasion by the top 1% of earners. The story is mind-numbingly familiar: phenomenally rich people finding new and creative ways to boost their wealth even more by cheating the rest of the responsible, taxpaying public.

While political pundits are focusing on the massive amount of money that is going to be spent on the 2022 midterm elections, money in itself won’t determine the fate of the election and, ultimately, control of both the House and Senate.

California’s 13 largest wildfires have occurred since the Cedar fire burned 2,820 structures and killed 15 people in San Diego County in October 2003. With the Dixie and Caldor fires front of mind now, it’s maddening to hear lip service from lawmakers and bureaucrats, and see how little has been done to take basic steps to reduce wildfire risks.

A bill passed last week by the California Legislature would ban manufacturers from putting the triangular chasing-arrows symbol, signifying that their plastic products and packaging are recyclable, on items that are not anywhere near recyclable. Although this first-in-the-nation measure didn’t receive much outside attention, the bill deserves to be imposed nationwide in order to halt the widespread and destructive use of the recyclable symbol — along with the overuse of plastics in packaging.