Letter to the editor: Common sense and paper ballots
In the summer, the Westmoreland County commissioners were presented with a petition asking for paper ballots in a paperless era. Five thousand signatures is all it took for Sean Kertes and Doug Chew to approve $40,000 for these ballots. Of those ballots, 3,996 were used; that’s 1,004 less than the...
Letter to the editor: Clean energy good for people and planet
I believe the majority of the Pennsylvania population would agree with Erika Strassburger’s op-ed “Clean energy provides jobs, consumer savings” (Jan. 20, TribLive). I’m glad Pittsburgh City Council sees the importance of clean energy, and I hope the state government can also set aside its cozy promises to oil and...
Letter to the editor: Trump and our military
I just finished a book “The Boys in the Light,” a true World War II story about a tank division that landed at Normandy and, after traversing northern France and Germany, rescued two Holocaust survivors months prior to the end of the war. Against orders, the division kept the refugees,...
Editorial: Fetterman, McCormick and why ICE matters in Pennsylvania
U.S. Sen. David McCormick is among Republicans calling for a full accounting in the Minneapolis death of Alex Pretti, 37, a Veterans Administration intensive care nurse who was shot during an encounter with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. “We need all the facts,” he said. McCormick is joined — to...
Letter to the editor: Will Republicans stand up for the Republic?
It is now plain to me that ICE agents pushed an ER nurse to the ground, sprayed him, relieved him of his (legally carried) firearm, then panicked and shot him to death. They then left, failing to secure the crime scene, which professional law officers would have done. Before the...
Sheldon H. Jacobson: Getting air travel back on track is easier than it once was
The recent winter storm impacted over 245 million people spanning 2,000 miles as it crossed the country. Cities in the Midwest and the Northeast were blanketed with a foot or more of snow. Areas in the south were not spared, with Atlanta hit with ice and below-freezing temperatures and Dallas...
Letter to the editor: Dems prioritizing others over Americans
Not often do the predictable results of the Democrats’ border policies become so obvious locally (“New Kensington-Arnold considers adding in-house ESL service, phasing out French,” Jan. 26, TribLive). The rising number of English as a second language students has required difficult decisions be made at the local level. In this...
Dan Grzybek and Jordan Botta: It’s past time to reform Allegheny County’s LERTA program
Allegheny County’s Local Economic Revitalization Tax Assistance (LERTA) program was created with a worthy goal: to encourage investment in deteriorating properties by temporarily reducing the tax burden on new construction and major improvements. In theory, the LERTA program helps spur development where it wouldn’t otherwise occur, revitalizing communities that have...
Richard Fellinger: Reaction to McCarthy’s hire shows ageism exists
Suddenly, I’m rooting for new Steelers coach Mike McCarthy, and I mean really rooting for him. I would have rooted for him anyway as a Steelers fan old enough to rattle off names like Terry Hanratty and Frenchy Fuqua. But I’m really rooting for him now because I want to...
Letter to the editor: What about the local criminals?
The Trump administration is saying they are keeping the U.S. safe from illegal immigrant rapists, murderers and drug dealers. What are state and local authorities doing about the homegrown American rapists, murderers and drug dealers? Remember Luigi Mangioni, Tyler Robinson and Matthew Crooks? The suspected homegrown local drug dealer who...
Letter to the editor: Address looming power problems now
PJM, the grid operator that serves 67 million people across 13 states, including all of Pennsylvania, is facing an unprecedented electricity demand surge due to AI data centers opening. Starting as early as summer 2026, the grid may have only enough power to remain reliable, and by June 2027, the...
Letter to the editor: Students don’t need Republican propaganda
Rep. Brian Rasel’s proposed Unraveling Socialism Act purports to address a crisis in higher education that simply does not exist. Requiring every student at a public college or university to take a mandatory class about the “threats” of communism and socialism is not education, it’s public theater. Justification by Rasel,...
Editorial: By the time it’s an emergency, it’s already too late
By the time the snow begins to fall, the most important decisions already have been made. When it’s time to clear the driveway, it’s too late to buy a shovel. You can see that after a massive winter storm swept across 17 states, closing schools, snarling roads and forcing public...
Letter to the editor: Trump’s hypocrisy on Maduro, Hernandez
Did you know that on Dec. 1, President Trump issued a full pardon to former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez? Hernandez was convicted by a federal jury of conspiring to import cocaine and firearms into the United States, trafficking more than 400 tons of U.S.-bound cocaine. Was it the pardon...
Letter to the editor: Trump is a policy genius
For years I have closely monitored our political parties’ policy preferences, the most important factor in candidate selection. Today, major party preferences are more dissimilar than ever. President Trump is a policy genius, whose views closely align with our Founding Fathers and the governing documents they produced. His passion is...
Lester C. Olson: Communication can help de-escalate our current situation
Armed conflicts and U.S. citizens’ deaths in Minneapolis have riveted attention across the nation. We’ve seen the videos and the photos of graphic violence. We’ve seen the heartbreaking photos of a 5-year-old preschool boy and a 2-year-old girl detained by ICE. We have read the upsetting media accounts of countless...
Gene Baur: New food pyramid is a recipe for health disasters
The meat industry’s celebration of the Trump administration’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans should be a clear sign that these new guidelines aren’t for the people. It’s true that “the United States is amid a health emergency,” as Secretaries Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Brooke Rollins state. However, in claiming to...
Abby McCloskey: Too many kids already know someone who’s been deepfaked
The pre-AI world is gone. Estimates suggest that already, as many as one in eight kids personally knows someone who has been the target of a deepfake photo or video, with numbers rising to one in four who have seen a sexualized deepfake of someone they recognize, either a friend...
Letter to the editor: Comparing Renee Good, Jan. 6 rioters
It’s amazing. Anyone who gets shot by the unidentified, masked ICE agents is automatically described as a “member of some Latin American gang” or a “domestic terrorist” (37-year-old U.S. citizen mother Renee Good), and deserves to be shot in the face for not submitting to the screaming orders of unidentified...
Letter to the editor: Our leaders must support clean energy
Erika Strassburger’s op-ed “Clean energy provides jobs, consumer savings” (Jan. 20, TribLive) has some great news about America’s clean energy industry. As Strassburger points out, clean energy companies like Eos Energy invest in communities by building factories, helping people learn new skills and creating jobs for the future. With new...
Editorial: The number of Americans who feel politically homeless is rising. Understandably so
A record 45% of American adults now identify as political independents, according to new Gallup polling — up from 33% in 1990. That’s a big change. As the ranks of the politically homeless grow, the share of Americans who call themselves Democrat or Republican continues to shrink. That’s hardly surprising....
Letter to the editor: What will it take to disavow Trump?
Will his actions and behavior ever be enough to dissuade those who propelled Donald Trump into office for a second reign? Was it enough when he responded to a heckler with profanity and an obscene gesture? What does one tell an impressionable child when something like this takes place? Is...
Editorial cartoons for the week of Jan. 26
Editorial cartoons for the week of Jan. 26....
Mallard Fillmore cartoons for the week of Jan. 26
Mallard Fillmore cartoons for the week of Jan. 26....
Letter to the editor: Trump and the Ten Commandments
President Trump’s actions so far in 2026 have been head-spinning, but we can get clarity by checking them against some of the oldest and best instructions out there: the Ten Commandments. “Thou shalt not covet … anything of thy neighbor.” Trump says he attacked Venezuela to take its oil, and...
