Public health officials at all levels seem bent on continuing the divestiture of credibility they began during the COVID-19 pandemic by acting as if their role is to decide what the public needs to know, rather than fully informing the public — as long practice, good sense and the law require.

The American West has gone bone dry, the Great Salt Lake is vanishing and water levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the two great life-giving reservoirs on the Colorado River basin, are declining with alarming speed.

After months of doing nothing, Democrats in Congress appear poised to achieve something at last — or rather, multiple somethings, from protections for same-sex marriage to tens of billions of dollars toward computer chips to, finally, an economic package passed through reconciliation.

The Port of Galveston should move ahead with installing electric vehicle charging stations at various facilities along the public docks.

Roughly a third of the state’s psychiatric beds are offline.

La Marque residents have an opportunity they shouldn’t squander.

The first images from NASA’s James Webb telescope, released last week, offer wondrous glimpses into stars and planets billions of light years away: in what is truly a space opera, the telescope shows them being born and dying, and cosmic material being sucked into black holes.

At a legislative hearing in Austin last week, lawmakers from both parties grumbled about the murky costs of Operation Lone Star, Gov. Greg Abbott’s exorbitantly expensive election-year effort to crack down on unauthorized border crossers.

A state advisory panel this month described the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality as “a reluctant regulator” that should do more to protect Texans from the growing scourge of industrial pollution and its threat to public health.

It’s time to move along, Republican Party of Texas.

It is a natural human impulse, and a political one, to turn inward when threatened by a crisis that appears beyond our control. The world is facing several such forces at once: food shortages, inflation, the persistence of COVID-19 and the effects of global warming.

A group of landowners and biologists is lobbying the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to manage mountain lion populations in the state. We hope Texans for Mountain Lions succeeds.

Sunday is day of great significance for Galveston, for the United States and for anyone who truly does believe in the concept of liberty and justice for all.

Every year come multiple heartbreaking reports of children dying from heat stroke after having been left unattended in cars during hot weather.

During the latest hearing in Texas’ decade-long foster care lawsuit, federal District Judge Janis Graham Jack again threatened to hold two state agencies in contempt of court because of their continued failure to fix unsafe conditions for foster care children they’re supposed to protect.

Acknowledging that “progress can be slow and frustrating,” President Biden recently signed a long-anticipated executive order aimed at reforming the criminal justice system — a full two years after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for more than nine …