Featured Commentary category, Page 5
Robert T. Smith: Pennsylvania deer management?
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is spreading in the state’s deer herd. There are now potentially too few hunters to control a deer herd that is always looking to expand naturally, and with this expansion goes the disease. Who will help keep the spread in check? CWD is a contagious, always-fatal...
Bruce Cooper: McCormick must support the Fix Our Forests Act
In recent years, summer in the U.S. has been blighted by wildfires. And as megafires grow, so does air pollution. Just this summer, we experienced air quality alerts in Western Pennsylvania because of the wildfires in Canada. Seeing our beautiful forests ravaged by wildfires is devastating and then there’s the...
David M. Drucker: We’ve reached peak whataboutism. It was a long time coming.
President Donald Trump commuted the seven-year federal prison sentence of acknowledged criminal George Santos because, as he explained in a Truth Social post, the disgraced former New York congressman “had the Courage, Conviction and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!” Democrats are sticking by Jay Jones despite revelations that their nominee...
Joshua Pederson: Sam Altman’s terrible reason for letting ChatGPT talk to teens about suicide
Last month, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism held a hearing on what many consider to be an unfolding mental health crisis among teens. Two of the witnesses were parents of children who’d committed suicide in the last year, and both believed that AI chatbots played a significant...
Lionel Laurent: Louvre robbery gang used a brazen new criminal blueprintVideo
A ladder truck, an angle-grinder, a maxi-scooter and seven minutes. That appears to be all it took for thieves to nab priceless jewelry from the Louvre, the world’s most-visited museum. The vulnerability of this cornerstone of French soft power adds to the country’s sense of malaise, and fingers are being...
Counterpoint: Trump’s compact would cripple universities
Among the many dangerous actions President Donald Trump has taken, his push to force some of the country’s best universities into signing a sweeping federal “compact” ranks just behind his pardons for the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. The 10-part compact is a bizarre mix of bombast, authoritarianism and a few unremarkable...
Point: Trump to universities — olive branch compact or prosecution and defunding
American universities are at a crossroads. Their business model, which is overwhelmingly dependent on the twin pillars of federal grants and taxpayer-backed student loans, is failing in the face of declining public trust, financial malfeasance, a looming demographic cliff, and their publicly acknowledged discrimination, contrary to civil rights law. The...
Danitra Sherman: Your rights are on the ballot Nov. 4
Everything is political — and pretending that our political choices don’t have consequences for our family, our friends and our community is an act that we can no longer afford to keep up. With our Constitution, our democracy and the rule of law undermined and under daily attack by the...
Matthew Yglesias: What makes this shutdown so different
During the 2013 government shutdown, I happened to be in Philadelphia, and I was surprised to find the Liberty Bell — which sits in its own little room with big windows — was “closed.” You could stand there and look at it but only through tourist-smudged glass. This time around,...
Eric Snoey: Cuts to Medicaid and to insurance subsidies will push ERs past the brink
Back in 2007, President George W. Bush was being challenged on his opposition to the Children’s Health Insurance Program — which provides health coverage for children in families too poor to afford private insurance, yet too “wealthy” to qualify for Medicaid. His response was honest, if characteristically clumsy: “People have...
Jim Nowlan: Politicians seem incapable of balancing the federal budget
I was struck, no, dumbfounded by this: Debt funded all federal government spending in 2025. The federal government plans to spend a total of $7 trillion in fiscal 2025 but only bring in $5.16 trillion in revenue. That leaves a deficit of approximately $1.8 trillion. The big four expenditures —...
David Wassel: Reimagining the Gainey campaign offers deeper look into Democratic Party
Since November, Democratic special and primary elections have been observed to measure how are playing out the internal tensions between progressive and institutional factions. This includes the Pittsburgh mayoral contest between Mayor Ed Gainey and County Controller Corey O’Connor. In Allegheny County the most prominent progressive candidates have been a...
Michael Ohler: Pa. needs more state prison boot camps
The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) has one of the highest recidivism rates in the nation. That’s why its decision last month to close the Quehanna Boot Camp, the state prison with the lowest rate of recidivism and the highest rate of GED graduations, continues to deserve scrutiny. On the...
Allison Schrager: A zombie economy could be America’s future
Over the next decade, the U.S. economy will face two big challenges: higher interest rates and AI-generated disruption. Each invites the same solution: policies to keep rates below their market level. The strategy, also known as yield-curve control, is tempting, and it may even provide an immediate boost to the...
Ken Silverstein: Bridging the red-blue divide on climate
Heather Reams, the president of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (CRES), stepped onto the stage at Breckenridge’s Mountain Towns 2030 summit — a room full of progressives accustomed to negotiating with Republicans on climate policy. She faced an audience from Idaho, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado — areas that often depend...
Patricia Murphy: Trump forged Middle East peace. How about fixing Congress next?
Defying the odds and expectations of many, President Donald Trump went to the Middle East last week and announced what many thought impossible — a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and, hopefully, a path to peace in the Middle East. As a part of getting both sides to agree to...
Ryan Kennedy: Far fewer Americans support political violence than recent polls suggest
A series of recent events has sparked alarm about rising levels of political violence in the U.S.: the assassination of political activist Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10 ; the murder of a Democratic Minnesota state legislator and her husband in June ; and two attempts to kill Donald Trump during...
Cal Thomas: After Gaza, what’s next?
In his address to Israel’s Knesset following the release of 20 living hostages by Hamas, President Donald Trump said several things that reflect wishful thinking. Among them: “The forces of chaos that have plagued the region are totally defeated.” “The enemies of all civilization are in retreat.” And the “long...
Panini Chowdhury: We all have a right to walk safely on our streets
We all walk. When we visit a place, we walk — and those moments often become the highlights of our journey. Whether young or old, whatever our race or gender, walking is the hum of daily life — the simplest confluence of dignity, mobility and human connection. Yet in America,...
Tyler Samstag: From Mister Rogers to machine learning — Pittsburgh’s next big moment in education
When cellphones became widely available in 2007, educators suddenly faced a question with no clear answer: What happens when every student carries a device that can calculate, record and connect them to endless information? Some worried about distraction. Others saw possibility. Across Pittsburgh, teachers, artists, librarians, museum leaders and technologists...
Jackie Calmes: George Washington would be spinning in his grave
George Washington, who set long-followed precedents by voluntarily giving up first military and then civilian power, and who built the foundation of the nation’s wall between its military and partisan politics, would by all historical evidence be appalled by successor Donald Trump’s escalating efforts to tear down that wall in...
David M. Drucker: Politicians need to stop being so online
As it turns out, Twitter is not the town square. Someone might want to alert American political leaders. In the era of social media, Democratic and Republican politicians have grown hyper-sensitive, and responsive, to activists who seemingly live their lives online. Whether on X, formerly Twitter, where the right ruminates...
Alex Wallach Hanson: Strassburger’s failed play on inclusionary zoning
On Wednesday, Pittsburgh City Councilwoman Erika Strassburger introduced a surprise amendment to the inclusionary zoning bill that has been debated in Pittsburgh City Council for months. This proposed amendment would gutthe bill. Instead of requiring developers of buildings with over 20 housing units to include at least two units of...
Mark Reinecke: A goal of zero youth suicides is reasonable. Here’s how we get there
After 35 years as a clinical child and adolescent psychologist and a medical school professor, treating hundreds of children and teens who suffer from depression and suicidal thoughts and meeting with thousands of parents, I had hoped that through research, training and clinical care, I’d eventually be put out of...
Henry I. Miller: Autism, Tylenol and the perils of easy answers
Half of all pregnant women take acetaminophen — better known as Tylenol or paracetamol — to relieve pain or reduce fever. The drug has been around for decades, is available without a prescription and is often one of the few options doctors consider safe during pregnancy. However, on Sept. 23,...
