Abortion is back at the Supreme Court. The case contests decisions by the Food and Drug Administration to make the drug mifepristone available by mail and via telemedicine. But at oral argument on Monday, the court that overturned Roe v. Wade seemed poised to reject the arguments of the pro-life Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine.

As a political scientist, I’ve long believed political competition to be the keystone of representative democracy. Yet in the 2024 election cycle, I’m consciously limiting my time, attention and contributions to politics. I’ve turned off the news and social media app notifications on my phone. I plan to visit two or three trustworthy news websites only once a day. And I’ve unsubscribed to candidate fundraising emails.

When the Framers sat down to think about the best form of government for America, they had few good reasons to think a republic would succeed. Looking back at historical examples of failed democracies and oppressive autocracies, James Madison and the other members of the Constitutional Convention quickly saw that building a durable government is easier said than done.

By the time you read this, there’s a good chance that we’ll have already stopped talking about former president Donald Trump’s notorious “bloodbath” comment of March 16.

How does someone grieve without God? As an atheist whose devoutly Christian mother died in August, I can answer this question with alacrity: We grieve just fine.

Bernie Sanders emerged from the land of the sugarplum fairies earlier this month to advocate for a 32-hour work week — all with no reduction in pay.

Lena Brown’s lonely ending forewarns a future of death in America. She’d built a middle-class life in Hawthorne as a widow with no children. Her niece and nephew moved her to a nursing home when she was 93. They soon stopped visiting. Six years later, Brown died. Calls and letters from local officials to her relatives went unanswered. L.A. County cremated Brown and buried her ashes in a mass grave alongside those of nearly 1,500 other Angelenos, marked only by a small stone engraved with the year of death.

Finally, there was the explanation everyone was clamoring for but no one was expecting:

Progressives insist that Donald Trump will turn the United States into an authoritarian state if voters return him to the White House. They should pay close attention to what’s going on north of the border, where one of their own is in charge.

A semiautomatic rifle equipped with a “bump stock” can fire at a rate of up to 800 rounds a minute. Does that make it a machine gun? Joe Biden and Donald Trump have said yes. The Supreme Court appears divided.