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Trump has never been funny

In a display of Stockholm Syndrome, the White House Correspondents’ Association invited Donald Trump to be the keynote speaker at its annual festival of self-appreciation. Because he is who he is, he did not take the opportunity to do the kind of gentle press ribbing that past presidents have engaged in, and he certainly declined to engage in the self-deprecating humor that charmed audiences in the old days. Instead, he delivered a string of puerile insults that would be beneath a fifth grader. The tuxedo and ball gown-clad lads and ladies were forced to sit through meandering ...

Ballooning federal debt is straining private economy in US

The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond has climbed back to where it stood in 2007, north of 5%, and it pushed a little higher again last week after the Federal Reserve left its own rates alone. On its face, that sounds almost reassuring, a return to some pre-crisis normal. It is nothing of the sort. The same number today carries a very different, and far heavier, meaning than it did 19 years ago. In 2007, the federal debt held by the public was roughly $9 trillion. Today it is about four times that. A yield is simply the price of borrowing, and paying the 2007 price on four times the ...

AI has potential to do harm

As an old-school news hound — meaning I can remember typewriters — I am familiar with the old newsroom saying, “If you don’t like the news, just wait a few minutes.” Lately, I find myself waiting more than a few minutes for another shoe to drop in a present-day saga widely referred to as the “Hugging Face” breach. Or perhaps you’ve heard it referred to as the “rogue” OpenAI agent, although I still have questions about just how rogue it was, since it seems to have been doing only what it was designed to do, like it or not. The story began July 21, when tech giant ...

Orchids & onions

ORCHID: To the 12 residents of Austintown Township who demonstrated commendable civic engagement by submitting letters of interest/applications to become a governing trustee for the community. The recent resignation of Trustee Robert Santos has forced the two remaining township leaders — Monica Deavers and Bruce Shepas — to solicit, review and select his replacement. Given the high quantity and quality of the applicants, that will be no easy feat. Those 12 applicants from a wide variety of backgrounds serve as a model for residents of all communities throughout the Valley to consider ...

Congress must act to protect consumers from data center risks

The massive proliferation of data centers in our state and nation has fast rocketed to become the undisputed hot potato issue of 2026. To argue otherwise flies in the face of in-your-face realities. In the United States, nearly 4,000 data centers have opened in recent years with an additional 1,500 sites proposed or under construction. In Ohio, artificial intelligence and cloud computing demand have fueled construction of about 200 such centers, the fifth-highest number of any state in the nation. But as they grow, so, too, does fierce and sometimes caustic pushback in communities ...

Bring back ‘nattering nabobs’

President Trump’s performance at last Friday’s retooled White House Correspondents’ Dinner made me nostalgic for the days of Vice President Spiro Agnew, President Richard Nixon’s media attack dog. In a speech, Agnew called politicians critical of Nixon administration policies “nattering nabobs of negativism,” a phrase written by his speechwriter William Safire, and later usurped by media to apply to journalists. That was mild compared to the disgusting personal insults Trump hurled at journalists who were at the dinner to support the White House Correspondents ...