Portside

California’s hospitals struggle once more to find beds for desperate patients. In Los Angeles County, the average number of available hospital beds slipped to its lowest level since the pandemic began.

The 117th Congress has finished its work, with little to offer American children. Lawmakers were unable to muster a deal to combine an extension of last year’s expanded child tax credit with tax breaks for businesses.

A baby born in the U.S. in 2021 has a life expectancy at the lowest level since 1996. Native Americans, Black people and Hispanics are hardest hit. “Our increasingly potent and deadly drug supply is a result of the war on drugs.”

We need to be far more generous with each other, able to hold conversations without resort to insults and abuses. Out of disagreement comes understanding. But out of malicious slander only comes disorientation.

Workers vs neoliberalism — it's happening everywhere

Has public health failed us? Or have we failed public health?

From building up defenses in the nose to slowing down a virus’s ability to make copies of itself, scientists are rolling out a raft of creative approaches to fighting infection

In this conversation, we talk to Juan Moreno Haines, editor of the San Quentin News, about what drew him to investigate the Adjustment Center, and what it was like to report on the prison’s Covid-19 crisis as he was living through it.

In the 1960s, more than a third of seniors lived in poverty. Federal programs like Medicare to help the elderly, the situation improved significantly. But last year, the poverty rate for those 65 or older increased, even as it sank for everyone else.