Featured Commentary category, Page 23
Counterpoint: Let parents and teachers, not bureaucrats, make decisions about cellphones in schools
Should kids have access to smartphones in school? Some argue the smartphone problem leads to distraction. Others say smartphones are necessary for reasons related to safety or other concerns. In reality, it is a more complicated question than it appears. Yet, oftentimes, when complicated questions arise, broad state-level policies that...
Point: Cellphones are distractions, not toys
In today’s digital age, the ubiquitous presence of cellphones has transformed them into essential tools for communication, information and entertainment. However, when placed in the hands of children under 16, these devices can become detrimental, leading to physical inactivity, social isolation and addiction driven by sophisticated algorithms. As a scientist...
Cal Thomas: Demise of the penny makes cents
President Trump has ordered the Treasury Department to stop minting pennies to save money. It costs almost four cents to make one and as the president seeks to reduce federal spending, the penny is a good, if largely symbolic, target. The nickel is even more expensive. It costs nearly 14...
Patrick J. Schena: U.S. sovereign wealth fund — idea to invest strategically, or giant opportunity for waste?
Could the United States soon be joining the likes of Norway, Kuwait and Mongolia in having a national reserve to invest on projects of strategic interest? If President Donald Trump gets his way, then perhaps so. On Feb. 3, Trump issued an executive order calling for the creation of a...
Marj Halperin: A mass exodus from civil service would be disastrous for our communities
Civil service is another term for “professional workforce” and we want this in government, right? And yet, as I write this, our government is being taken over by the opposite kind of worker. The uncredentialed Elon Musk is running a massive government operation. His team of similarly unaccredited private-sector tech...
Ming Xie: If FEMA didn’t exist, could states handle the disaster response alone?
Imagine a world in which a hurricane devastates the Gulf Coast, and the U.S. has no federal agency prepared to quickly send supplies, financial aid and temporary housing assistance. Could the states manage this catastrophic event on their own? Normally, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known as FEMA, is prepared...
Parmy Olson: AI resurrecting the dead threatens our grasp on reality
A cruel twist of fate led Jason Gowin to make a novel parenting decision. Days after his wife gave birth to their twin boys in 2019, she had a stroke. The doctors gave her two or three years to live. Gowin and his oldest son were devastated, but worse was...
Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman: RFK Jr.’s immunity to scientific evidence is dangerous
As a physician with a long career in alternative medicine and who opposes pharmaceutical marketing, you might think I have a lot in common with Robert F Kennedy Jr. You’d be wrong. I’d be the first to argue that there are plenty of evidence-based alternative therapies. For example, chiropractic or...
Carl P. Leubsdorf: Courts will decide Trump’s efforts to expand presidential powers
President Donald Trump has spent a lifetime in the courts as both plaintiff and defendant, filing lawsuits to justify his actions and benefit his businesses or to defend himself against charges of illegality. For the next four years, however, he will mainly be a defendant as he forces the federal...
Trudy Rubin: No matter what Trump says, Gaza won’t become U.S. property and ‘Riviera of the Middle East’
If there was any doubt President Donald Trump believes he is no longer bound by history or laws — either American or international — it was eclipsed by his astounding proposal that the United States “take over the Gaza Strip” and turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”...
Rich Harwood: We need to rethink polarization before it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy
It’s time to rethink the notion that we Americans are too polarized to work together and get things done. And it’s time to get clear-eyed about what’s really holding us back and what it will take to help us move forward together. A few years ago, I engaged cross-sections of...
Kenji Yoshino and David Glasgow: Corporate America isn’t abandoning DEI — it’s just rebranding it
One could easily get the impression that corporate America is in full retreat from promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. Each news cycle seems to carry a headline about a rollback of diversity policies by another company, including Tractor Supply, Boeing, John Deere, Brown-Forman, Harley-Davidson, Lowe’s, Molson Coors, Ford, Toyota, Walmart,...
Max Eisendrath: NFL playoffs prime time for digital piracy
The NFL playoffs are an exciting time for football fans to watch the chase for the Super Bowl. It was a uniquely American obsession that has increasingly captured the attention of live sports fans worldwide. It’s also prime time for live sports piracy, and American lawmakers must enact measures to...
Molly Parzen: With Washington stepping back on clean energy, Harrisburg must step up
Newly inaugurated President Donald Trump ran on a platform of massive giveaways to billionaire oil and gas CEOs. Trump has pledged to roll back historic clean energy programs — transformational investments that are creating thousands of union jobs and positioning the United States as an international leader in the 21st-century...
Bruce Yandle: DeepSeek, bottled AI and mankind’s free spirit
The startling news that DeepSeek, an unexpected Chinese AI powerhouse led by 39-year-old founder Liang Wenfeng, has unveiled a chip and software package that could be superior to America’s revolutionary ChatGPT shocked world financial markets and forced political and industrial leaders to rethink their efforts to control the distribution of...
Yael Silk: Pittsburgh government must focus on issues, not battling ideologies
Pittsburgh has real problems — an affordable housing shortage that keeps getting worse, a city budget stretched so thin you can see through it and a school district fighting to recover after years of decline, to name just a few. And now, we are facing a tidal wave of chaos...
Joan Flores-Villalobos: Yes, the Panama Canal was built at a dear price — paid in Black lives
“The spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts,” said President Donald Trump in his second inaugural address, on Jan. 20, as he cited his foreign policy initiatives. The Gulf of Mexico would be changed to the Gulf of America and Denali peak renamed as Mt. McKinley. But the...
Kevin Frazier: Stuck and stagnant — why Americans need a frontier
The pandemic reshaped our world in countless ways, but perhaps the most insidious effect is the pervasive feeling of being stuck. A recent survey revealed that a majority of Americans feel socially stagnant — unable to take a major step toward a better life, better job, or better community. The...
Sen. Dick Durbin: Big Pharma should disclose prices on drug advertisements
Patients in the United States pay the highest prescription drug prices in the world — on average four times what people in other developed countries pay for the exact same brand-name medications. What makes the U.S. such an outlier when it comes to the high price of prescription drugs? The...
Michael B. Poliakoff and Justin D. Garrison: Pa. universities pay lip service to campus free speech, yet self-censorship still persists
Like many universities, Penn State and the University of Pittsburgh are struggling to protect free expression, encourage a plurality of views and foster habits of civil discourse on their campuses. Seemingly aware of the problem, Pitt announced a “Year of Discourse and Dialogue” in 2023-24 that has been extended to...
Claire Kovach and Yomarilis Gueits Rodriguez: Groundhog Day and minimum wage deja vu
As Pennsylvanians observe our dapper rodent weather prognosticator’s forecast, workers across the commonwealth will continue to wake up each day faced with the same reality we’ve known for 16 years now — we still have a $7.25 per hour minimum wage. As legislative efforts to raise it stall year after...
Wolf Gruner: Newly discovered photos of Nazi deportations show Jewish victims as they were last seen alive
The Holocaust was the first mass atrocity to be heavily photographed. The mass production and distribution of cameras in the 1930s and 1940s enabled Nazi officials and ordinary people to widely document Germany’s persecution of Jews and other religious and ethnic minorities. I co-direct an international research project to collect...
Jason W. Park: Hey Hegseth — for Pete’s sake, get a Eureka! moment
Pete Hegseth’s appointment to lead the Department of Defense involved the slimmest of margins and required the tie-breaking vote of Vice President JD Vance, 51-50. However, this was not before allegations of public drunkenness on one hand and sexual assault and spousal abuse on the other surfaced. Of course, even...
Destenie Nock: Help is out there for those struggling with heating costs
The sound of a pipe bursting somewhere inside my wall, followed by a torrent of water gushing from my kitchen cabinet, interrupted one of my work calls a week ago. The culprit: freezing temperatures in Pittsburgh. The estimated cost of repairs: $950 and counting. I had taken all the recommended...
Cal Thomas: The good and the bad in Trump’s first days
When President Trump threatened to slap tariffs on Colombia if President Gustavo Petro did not accept criminal migrants deported from the U.S., he did not get the initial response he expected. Instead of immediately caving to Trump, Petro countered with plans for his own tariffs on U.S. goods coming into...
