Featured Commentary category, Page 6

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...

“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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

President Donald Trump loves to keep us guessing. This is exactly what we’re all doing as his second term in the White House begins. It’s one way he controls the narrative. Trump’s off the cuff, unfiltered, controversial statements infuriate opponents and delight his supporters. The rest of us are left...

President Donald Trump has begun to radically change how the U.S. government handles immigration, from challenging long-held legal concepts about who gets citizenship to using the military to transport migrants back to their countries of origin. Trump’s administration is doing more than reshaping the approach of the federal government toward...

India is proud of its diaspora. People of Indian extraction tend to earn well over the average wage in most countries and often fit seamlessly and unobtrusively into local power structures. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made a point of cultivating Indians abroad and sometimes gifts foreign leaders a bit...

Congress is often criticized for being “out of touch” with the American public. One biting critique is that Congress just doesn’t “look like” the constituents they represent. Its members are overwhelmingly more male, white, educated and older than the general U.S. population. And while this holds true for most of...

All of us, regardless of where we live or what we look like, deserve homes that are safe, affordable and accessible. Yet across Pittsburgh, housing has become increasingly unaffordable. Against this trend, a grassroots movement for housing justice has been gathering momentum. Among its successes is inclusionary zoning (IZ), which...

Greenland is one of the few places on Earth where climate change is sometimes referred to as an opportunity by making it less inhabitable for those who live there and more accessible to those who don’t, a point not missed by leaders elsewhere. With the landmass no longer safely insulated...

Former Vice President Kamala Harris took a wise step toward potentially running for governor in her first action after returning to California. She visited wildfire victims, volunteers and firefighters and helped distribute free meals to people burned out of their homes. That doesn’t mean she’s running for anything. It’s highly...

This month, two bodies were found in the wheel well of a JetBlue airplane that departed from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport en route to Fort Lauderdale-­Hollywood International Airport. The bodies had already begun to decompose, suggesting that the people had died some time before they were discovered....

As Donald J. Trump returns to the role of U.S. president, many Americans ask themselves a simple question: Will his administration protect their pocketbooks, their way of life and their health? While we want our government to do just that, Trump focused his first speech as the 47th president of...

The New York Times called it “A Grim Picture of America.” Politico labeled it “American Carnage, Part 2.” However, for most Americans, President Donald Trump’s second inaugural address was a positive, hopeful vision of his America First politics. And the days when negative media coverage could convince them otherwise are...

For years, the Food and Drug Administration has taken up arms against clinics hawking unproven and ineffective stem cell treatments to desperate patients looking for cures of intractable diseases and conditions such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis and even erectile dysfunction. As the FDA has repeatedly cautioned, there is no...

Having inaugurated the 47th president this week, it is worth reflecting on the example set by Harry S. Truman, our 33rd president. Truman was known for a sign that sat on his desk in the Oval Office: The buck stops here. This sign, crafted at an Oklahoma Federal Reformatory, symbolized...

If you live in Pittsburgh, you may be surprised to learn that a rodeo bull riding event will be coming to town this weekend. This is an alarming development, as Pittsburgh has had protections since 1992 to shield animals from some of the most egregious practices used in rodeos. These...

When scientists constructed a puzzle-solving task and pitted teams of people against teams of ants, the insects sometimes proved to be the smarter species. That’s not to denigrate human intelligence — ants are smart, and their feats of coordinated activity are rare in nature. Still, it is fair to say...

There’s a looming crisis threatening our future workforce and economic stability: Pennsylvania’s literacy crisis. Today, only 1 in 3 of Pennsylvania’s fourth-graders are reading proficiently. It is a flashing warning sign of a system that’s not adequately preparing our children for the future. By fourth grade, students transition from learning...