Featured Commentary category
Chris Koopman and Kevin Frazier: The problem with pausing data centers
Congress is now being asked to pause data center construction. In March, Sens. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced a bill to halt the buildout of the infrastructure that makes advanced AI possible. The framing is familiar: the pace is too fast, the risks too great, the window to act...
Chris Cargill: Citizens are fleeing bad policy — here’s the proof
The latest Census migration data tells a clear and consistent story: People are voting with their feet. In King County, Washington’s largest population center and economic hub, domestic migration has been negative for years. Between 2023 and 2024 alone, the county lost 12,501 residents to other parts of the United...
LZ Granderson: Here’s why Trump fired Pam Bondi
In President Donald Trump’s first term, many members of his Cabinet were establishment conservatives with tangible, executive experience who were willing to follow the president far to the right … but had lines in the sand they were unwilling to cross. In this second term, Trump has prioritized surrounding himself...
Daniel Trujillo Esmeral: On pharmacy lawsuit strategy, government must go back to basics
If a government hopes to function, it has to be able to enforce its laws. Our country is no exception, and in fact, the U.S. government is very good at enforcement. So when a big fraud case comes up, it’s absurd to think of Washington scrambling for a way to...
Ross Douthat: Is there a religious revival in America?
In the early 2020s, secularization stopped: After rising for 15 years, the nonreligious share of the American population suddenly stopped growing. Ever since, there’s been a vigorous debate over whether this plateau is a precursor to religious revival or just a leveling off preceding a further fall from faith. The...
Cal Thomas: Debunking the lone wolf ‘myth’
Since the 9/11 terrorist attack in 2001, government officials have said their greatest fear is self-radicalized individuals they call “lone wolves.” The March 12 terrorist attack on Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield, Mich., prompted a Department of Justice news conference Monday which offered new information about the attack and...
Christopher Fiorentino: Closing Pa.’s talent gap starts with affordable higher education
Pennsylvania has 61,000 jobs that require education beyond high school and not enough qualified workers to fill them. By 2032, the gap will grow to 218,000 jobs that lack workers with postsecondary-level credentials, according to a Pennsylvania Department of Education study. The gap has real-world consequences for our economy and...
Jess Reia: Cameras’ integration with AI is sounding alarms
For decades, cars dictated urban planning in the United States. Few could have predicted that they one day also would double as nodes for surveillance. In thousands of towns and cities across the U.S., automatic license plate readers have been installed at major intersections, bridges and highway off-ramps. These camera-based...
John Poister: Credit Myron Cope for draft coverage spectacle
It is fitting that the NFL will hold its annual draft spectacle in Pittsburgh with ESPN originating three separate draft shows and WTAE-TV providing wall-to-wall coverage leading into the draft. That’s in addition to massive media attention from other TV stations, sports networks, podcasters and a phalanx of print reporters....
Alex Hinton: Trump supporters split on his actions
There is a pall over the Make America Great Again, or MAGA, movement. Donald Trump overpromised. His public support has fallen. Some “America First” die-hards now openly criticize him. Amid war, economic challenges, democratic backsliding, the Epstein files and Americans shot dead in the street by government agents, Trump’s support...
Danny Tyree: Have we forgotten the lessons of Passover?
Even people who don’t celebrate Passover have been exposed to lessons from Exodus (if only through Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments”), but some of us retain water better than we retain the significance of the parting of the Red Sea. For example, the very ground on which Moses stood...
Rev. Dr. F. Willis Johnson: America at 250 — patriotic lament from her darker sons
As the United States approaches its 250th birthday, the nation confronts a moment that should stir both celebration and sober reflection. A quarter millennium is no small achievement in the long arc of human governance. Republics have faltered far sooner. Yet anniversaries, especially ones of this magnitude, are not merely...
Robert Cropf: The economic squeeze on young Americans — why it matters for democracy
As a parent of millennials, I can see firsthand the reality described in a recent Barron’s commentary by Randall W. Forsyth: The financial anxiety many younger Americans feel is not misplaced pessimism. It is a rational response to an economy that increasingly feels stacked against them. The traditional markers of...
Morgan Marietta: Supreme Court’s decision on birthright citizenship will depend on its interpretation of 1 key phrase
The Supreme Court on April 1 began hearing oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara, the case that challenges the Trump administration’s efforts to bar the children of immigrants without legal status from birthright citizenship by reinterpreting the terms of the 14th Amendment. In January 2025, President Donald Trump issued an...
Lisa Jarvis: Health-care costs are forcing terrible trade-offs
Earlier this month, as I waited to pick up a prescription at my local CVS, I watched a man leave without his elderly father’s medication. The pharmacist had tried several tricks to lower the cost. It wasn’t enough. When the man heard the bottom line, he stuffed his hands in...
Cal Thomas: Lessons from the Vietnam War for Iran
We Americans are an impatient lot. If we must engage in warfare, we would prefer it be wrapped up in weeks, not months, and certainly not years like World War II, Korea and Vietnam. In those wars we had the draft, so more Americans were engaged in fighting and watching...
Stefani Pashman and Rich Fitzgerald: Southwestern Pa. is scouting the digital frontier
Pick up your smartphone and look at your apps — banking, health care, social media, even your morning coffee order. The server holding that data and performing those actions isn’t in your hand; it’s in a data center. From personal lives to global commerce, data centers are the backbone of...
Minky Worden: World Cup needs an ICE truce
With the world’s largest sporting event, the World Cup, slated to begin in June, the United States should call a truce in the campaign of terror being waged by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies against immigrants and others. Major sporting events have long relied on the so-called...
Garry South: Kamala Harris is polling well, which signifies nothing
When I read all the hype being heaped on Kamala Harris’ lead in early polls for the 2028 Democratic nomination, I have to chuckle to myself. The release of a Rasmussen Reports poll in February was titled, “Kamala Harris Still Leads 2028 Field for Democrats.” One headline in the Hill...
Hunter DeRensis: Will Pennsylvanians punish Republicans over Iran war?
On Feb. 28, Donald Trump made a bigger gamble than ever took place at any of his Atlantic City casinos. Betting that a joint U.S.-Israeli decapitation strike on Iran would result in another overnight, low-cost operation that the president could tout as a quick victory, Trump has risked both his...
Athan Koutsiouroumbas: Helicopter parents making Pa.’s teachers miserable
Pennsylvania’s teachers have the lowest morale in the country. According to the most recent Education Week survey, it is not about pay, curriculum or testing. Instead, it’s the parents. Pennsylvania teachers overwhelmingly say student behavior is not improving. In fact, they are among the most pessimistic about whether things are...
Christopher Nicholas: Shapiro’s brand is high gloss, high cost
Pennsylvania’s “Get Stuff Done” (GSD) governor has a favorite state department that he’s willing to staff to the rafters: his personal, dedicated PR team. As published reports last summer detailed, Gov. Josh Shapiro now sports 21 employees in his executive office, “dedicated to promoting” his image. But earlier this month,...
Daniel Katz: Social media platforms aren’t the new cigarettes. They’re worse.
A jury in Los Angeles may have just done for social media what early lawsuits did for Big Tobacco. Outside the courtroom, families who said they have lost children to the effects of these platforms gathered in shirts that read “We Are K.G.M.,” expressing solidarity with the 20-year-old plaintiff. Inside...
Harry Psaros: The day I stopped denying my son’s autism
When my son Gus was diagnosed with autism, my wife saw it first. I did not. Like many fathers, I resisted the diagnosis with a stubborn optimism that masked something deeper: fear. Michelle noticed the early signs — the speech delays, the social struggles, the subtle differences that began to...
Felicity A. Williams: The affordability crisis Pa. families can’t ignore
Across Pennsylvania, families are doing everything right — working, budgeting and planning — yet it still feels harder to get by. The reason is not hard to find: the cost of everyday life has risen faster than paychecks, and the squeeze is showing up in nearly every monthly bill. At...
