Editorial: Good start, Harrisburg. Now finish the budget
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives is giving people reason to be optimistic. The lawmakers gave their approval Tuesday to the 2026-27 budget. The good news? This is the earliest a budget has moved this far in nine years. The bad news? This is not the finish line. Pennsylvania’s legislators —...
Editorial: How long is too long? A question of term limits
There are some jobs you just can’t have forever. In Pennsylvania, that’s written into law in some places and left entirely to voters in others. Governors are limited to two terms. That wasn’t always the case. It changed in 1967. Milton Shapp became the first to win a second term...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Trump and the Bible
Although it was widely reported at the time that Donald Trump did not place his hand on the Bible when he took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2025, that news was quickly eclipsed by other headlines he created that week. But it is getting a second look after...
Hope Reese: The election that unseated strongman Viktor Orban is the most important I’ve witnessed
Last Sunday night, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán conceded defeat in one of the most important elections I’ve ever witnessed. The right-wing strongman stepped down from power in Hungary after a rule of 16 years — years that spanned the adult lifetime of a generation of young people, who have...
Christopher Cokinos: Artemis II does for our era what Apollo 8 did for 1968
Millions in the streets. An unpopular war. Violence. And in the middle of all that: a moonshot. The parallels between today and 1968 are eerie. Nearly 60 years ago, civil rights marches and anti-Vietnam-war rallies burst across the country. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. Police...
Letter to the editor: Executive vs. judiciary
In his column “Rogue judges or a rogue president?” (April 4, TribLive), Joseph Sabino Mistick told only one side of the story when characterizing the Trump administration as the true rogue in disputes between the executive and the judiciary. Earlier this year, Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh...
Letter to the editor: Analyzing Trump’s rhetoric
I often wince at the things President Trump says. Trump recently warned Iran that “… a whole civilization will die tonight” unless “something revolutionarily wonderful” occurs. I think he was bluffing in the hopes that he wouldn’t have to use any more conventional military attacks to get their cooperation. He...
Letter to the editor: Is 12-year term limit on county officials a joke?
Regarding the article “Voters to decide on placing term limits on Allegheny County officials” (April 17, TribLive): 12 years? At first, I thought this was a joke. Benjamin Franklin wrote the Pennsylvania Constitution and in it limited lawmakers to one year, with no pay. Oh, how things have changed. A...
Letter to the editor: Gas company transparency would help our environment
Pennsylvania’s orphan oil and gas wells and its brownfield properties are often treated as separate challenges, but they share the same root cause: Economic value was created without fully accounting for long‑term cleanup costs. Across the commonwealth, tens of thousands of abandoned wells remain from generations of energy development. At...
Mary McNamara: Am I the only one who hates delivery robots?
LOS ANGELES When I was a child, I watched “The Jetsons” and “Lost in Space” and imagined my adult self living in a world of high-tech ease: flying cars, self-cleaning rooms, high-speed trains, personal jetpacks and wise-cracking robotic companions capable of solving any problem in a trice. Instead I got...
Lori Falce: 2 things can be true at the same time
I have a friend I really don’t like very much. My husband argued this with me for years, telling me that my friend — who we shall call Jennifer because it’s the most ubiquitous 1980s girl name — was not my friend. If I didn’t like her, how could I...
Laurels & lances: Playoffs & no-shows
Laurel: To an ice-cold matchup. The Pittsburgh Penguins facing off against the Philadelphia Flyers in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs is everything a sports fan could want. It is the pure distilled essence of hockey — two teams that would gladly beat each other into the ice...
Joe Battenfeld: Kamala Harris teases run with mob boss misfire
Just when you thought Democrats couldn’t sink any lower, along comes retread Kamala Harris to kiss the ring of Al Sharpton and adopt a fake mafia boss accent to tease another presidential run. You can’t make this stuff up. Harris, the failed 2024 White House nominee, said recently she just...
Lynn Schmidt: Trump’s screed against the pope desecrates our Catholic faith
As an American Catholic who has sat in a church pew my entire life, received the Holy Eucharist, marked more than 50 Lents with ashes and been taught from childhood that the pope is the Vicar of Christ on earth, I never thought I would have to say this: The...
Jay Sefton and Dr. Mark Basquill: Opening a window to protect children
Born, raised and sexually abused by priests in Pennsylvania, we are two licensed mental health professionals with a combined 50 years of experience in the field of psychology. We’re also the co-authors of “Unreconciled,” a solo play about a Pennsylvania survivor of childhood sexual abuse seeking healing and justice. As...
Sara Albrecht: When the government loses in court, but keeps charging anyway
At ports across the United States, something unusual is happening. Thousands of American businesses are now waiting for refunds on tariffs the courts have already ruled unlawful. At the same time, many of those same companies are being asked to pay a new round of tariffs — based on a...
Letter to the editor: Why do people need trucks?
High gasoline prices continue to frustrate drivers, especially as global instability has constrained supply, a situation unlikely to resolve quickly. The solution is to conserve. If we use less, demand decreases, and the price with it. A few suggestions follow. Pass a law that if you want to buy a...
Letter to the editor: Congress is the problem
Whether you love or hate President Trump, he is not the problem. Congress is. How many of today’s problems are due to Congress? Here’s some examples: Congress has passed all required spending bills on time only four times in the last 50 years. That’s a 92% failure rate. Congress has...
Editorial: Nuclear decay, bureaucratic delay
On April 7, a process 20 years in the making began. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers started excavation at a Parks Township nuclear waste site. This isn’t like other abandoned industrial sites. In Western Pennsylvania, those are familiar — old factories, mine sites, places with lingering chemicals or unstable...
Jonah Goldberg: What the end of Viktor Orban means for the New Right
Viktor Orban, the proudly “illiberal” prime minister of Hungary, beloved by various New Right nationalists and MAGA American intellectuals, was crushed at the polls this weekend. Over the past decade or so, Hungary became for the New Right what Sweden or Cuba were to the Old Left. For generations, various...
Carrie Sampson: District school boards have become political hotbeds for book bans and more — here’s what they actually do
Election races for local school boards have become hotly contested in many states as they have become forums for debates over gender-identity discussions, immigrant students and even prayer at school events. Liberal candidates largely swept school board elections April 7 in politically contentious districts in Wisconsin, Missouri, Alaska and Oklahoma,...
Letter to the editor: Nonprofits need to step up and help Pittsburgh firefighters
This week, WTAE-TV aired a story regarding the Pittsburgh fire department’s vehicles and their condition (I should say their long-past-working condition). They need help. Thank you to the University of Pittsburgh for making a five-year commitment to the city of Pittsburgh. What happened to Carnegie Mellon University, Duquesne University, Allegheny...
Letter to the editor: A madman in the White House
In 14 months, President Trump has turned America into a country that people around the world hate, fear, feel sorry for, laugh at, are sickened by, no longer believe in and want absolutely nothing to do with. I suppose when you put a lawless, dishonest madman in the White House,...
Letter to the editor: Let’s make Westmoreland a safe haven for criminals
After seeing on the news that the
Allegheny County commissioners voted to defy federal law enforcement agencies and grant foreign criminals a safe sanctuary, it occurred to me we should call on our commissioners to follow suit and declare Westmoreland County a safe haven for certain other types of criminals...
Letter to the editor: We should be able to trust ‘the news’
“Back in the day,” as the expression goes, when Walter Cronkite or Huntley-Brinkley delivered the news, the public had a high degree of confidence that they were telling the truth. Federal policies were in place to ensure that “news” was accurate. Until the 1980s, when the FCC started media deregulation....
