Featured Commentary category, Page 13

In a slew of mid-October campaign speeches in Pennsylvania, Vice President Kamala Harris pitched economic policies that she believes would boost the purchasing power and job opportunities of the working class. These calls follow the campaign pledge she made this summer to revitalize Pennsylvania’s manufacturing sector and reinvigorate its economy....

Federal Reserve policymakers shouldn’t lower their guard. Inflation isn’t dead. September’s consumer price index was up just 2.4% over 12 months prior, but core inflation, which takes out volatile food and energy prices, hung stubbornly at 3.3%. Rents for apartments and homes increased 4.9%, while prices for other services, excluding...

As voters cast their ballots in the 2024 presidential election, there’s still time to rethink the oversimplified strategies used to engage Black voters. Doing so starts with rejecting the false notion that Black voters are a monolith. This political convenience fails to acknowledge the rich diversity of perspectives, experiences and...

Kamala Harris’ historic campaign, which launched with joy and once seemed destined for an inevitable victory, is now dogged by doubt. There are less than three weeks until the presidential election, but the postmortem analyses have already begun. One of the most prominent diagnoses came from former President Barack Obama...

My parents used to talk about the county’s farmers streaming into town on Saturday and shopping until midnight. From my own childhood, I still remember Petula Clark’s then-new song “Downtown” blaring from the radio at my hometown’s first Dollar General store, located about a block from the public square. During...

Donald Trump or Kamala Harris? The answer to the question of 2024 couldn’t be more straightforward: Trump. Even without the failures of the Biden-Harris administration, there are plenty of reasons to support a second Trump term. As one of the most successful businessmen in American history, Trump would be a...

Voting is already underway in many places nationwide, and Election Day is only weeks away. While many people have decided whether they are voting for one candidate or perhaps just against another, some are still deciding whether they will vote. No matter where you are, I want to share why...

As Jewish members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, serving others and bettering our community is not just a calling. It’s a commandment — one informed by our values, our faith and the legacies of our family members who survived pogroms and the Holocaust. These experiences move us to uphold...

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have radically different views on how to manage the U.S. economy — but no matter who wins the presidential election in November, the U.S. stock market will thrive. Consider the growth potential of the U.S. technology sector alone. Bain & Co....

I’ve spent more than five decades fighting for the U.S. steel industry. I started my career as a maintenance turn foreman, eventually working my way up to president of the Steel Manufacturers Association (SMA) before retiring nine years ago. Over the years, I’ve seen it all — the highs, the...

I am no stranger to the tactics employed by the Trump campaign: weaponizing fear, amplifying uncertainty and exploiting disillusionment. Their strategy relies on knee-jerk emotional reactions designed to manipulate and divide. These tactics are easily identifiable — if you know what to look for. Unfortunately, many Americans struggling under difficult...

The recent disclosure that Donald Trump has allegedly been speaking to one of America’s most dangerous adversaries, Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the lead-up to our presidential election raises serious questions again about his judgment and fitness to be commander in chief and the danger he would pose to America’s...

Across the commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the country, millions of Americans live within just one mile of an orphaned oil and gas well. These legacy pollution sites are environmental hazards that jeopardize public health and safety by contaminating groundwater, emitting noxious gases like methane, littering the landscape with rusted and...

Since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, I have been frequently asked this question: What would your father (Pittsburgh native, former Republican governor and U.S. attorney general Dick Thornburgh) think about the state of the country, about the state of the Republican Party and about Donald Trump? These questions...

With Pennsylvania defined as “the Keystone” and 19 electoral votes in the balance, the presidential contest here could determine what happens in the rest of the republic. Critical to the fortunes of Vice President Kamala Harris are her performance in municipalities situated in “persuadable” counties. How might she incorporate such...

In the same week Kamala Harris claimed on “The View” she wouldn’t change a single action taken by the Biden-Harris administration in the past four years, Democrats scrambled and sent Barack Obama — a man who once called Pennsylvanians “bitter” and “xenophobic” — to do damage control. Unfortunately for the...

Political centrism has a bad name. In fact, it has a lot of bad names. Centrists have been denigrated as squishy, weak in the knees, guilty of being sellouts — and worse, unpatriotic. However, the idea of centrism has been getting a second look recently. Americans are feeling like they...

This week, Pennsylvania 434,00 Jewish residents are mourning the one-year anniversary of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust — by Hamas. Hamas murdered more than 1,200 Israelis during the attack, slaughtering babies, committing sexual violence, burning whole families alive and taking 240 civilians hostage. One year later, Hamas...

Over my lifetime, I’ve thought about the people I want around during an existential crisis — a world war, pandemic or whatever other disaster we might imagine. I can’t predict the nature of the crisis, but I can think of family, friends, colleagues and others who I imagine will perform...

We are in the midst of an energy boom. Since 2019, America’s energy production has exceeded our consumption. Under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, America is producing more energy than any time in history, and Pennsylvania is at the heart of it. While we are producing more...

Since returning to power three years ago, the Taliban have been enforcing oppressive laws that violate people’s freedoms and human rights, especially those of women and girls. But a newly passed “vice and virtue” law goes further. It is among the most repressive and discriminatory measures ever enacted by the...

When Georgia Rep. Mike Collins posted a Photoshopped image of JD Vance the morning after the vice presidential debate, it felt like the latest attempt to project onto Vance what we want to see, rather than looking at who he really is. I can relate. The first time I heard...

In Pennsylvania, our most recent poll (conducted between Sept. 22 and 28, with a sample size of 700 likely voters) shows Kamala Harris and Donald Trump tied at 46% to 46% — a statistical tie. The remaining 6% are undecided; 1% would choose another candidate. This poll shows a slight...

In the 2024 election cycle, voters without children are under the microscope. Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance has said that “childless cat ladies” and older adults without kids are “sociopaths” who “don’t have a direct stake in this country.” So it was notable that when pop star Taylor Swift...

The Republican Party has been transformed under Donald Trump, and not all Republicans are happy about it. In 2020, about 6% of Republican voters pulled the lever for Joe Biden; about 5% of Democrats did the same for Donald Trump. To put this in context, according to data at Cornell...