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Trump continues murderous assault on Washington landmarks

Editorials

WASHINGTON — First came the murder of the Kennedy Rose Garden. That was just a prelude for the killer in the Oval Office. His next victim is likely the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the arts heartbeat of the capital and the nation. Symphony, opera, theater and ballet lovers are aghast since President Donald J. Trump shut the building in July, stripped the art and declared it would go bankrupt if his name wasn’t on the wall. On a Sunday walk, I ambled along what was once the Reflecting Pool. Now it’s a mangled mess behind a chain-link fence. As you know, the ...

Gerrymandering, big money make state legislative races in Valley noncompetitive

David Skolnick

Gerrymandering and money — largely provided by special interest groups — mean there will be very few competitive state legislative races in Ohio, or the country for that matter. It’s no different in the Mahoning Valley. When the Ohio Redistricting Commission — consisting of five Republicans and two Democrats — unanimously approved the state Legislature maps in September 2023, its members gave the Mahoning Valley only one competitive district among the five House and two Senate seats in its boundaries. That contested seat is the 64th Ohio House District with state Rep. ...

State report cards show growth, path forward for our schools

Editorials

Students, teachers, staff, parents and taxpayers throughout the Mahoning Valley and Ohio have reason to smile over this week’s release of the humongous batch of 2025-26 Ohio School Report Cards. Collectively, they document a large majority of our public school systems making the grade. Statewide, grades for English language arts skills have reached a five-year high of 62% proficiency. “Every subgroup that we have made progress over this last year in literacy,” Ohio Department of Education and Workforce Director Steve Dackin touted Tuesday. Likewise, math proficiency among ...

Unleash artificial intelligence

Editorials

Cell phones made my life easier. So did the internet. Artificial intelligence may enrich it even more. But lots of people are worried. “Stop AI or we’re all going to die!” shout protesters. It’s possible that AI will decide that we humans are in the way and imprison us or kill us. Not likely, say AI specialists, but possible. Anthropic’s CEO just warned that AI is advancing faster than our ability to control it. He and other AI executives say they want to slow it down. He proposes embedding independent “evaluators” inside his company to assess risks. He also ...

The war in Ukraine is becoming very inconvenient for Trump

Editorials

One of the challenges with writing about the war in — and on — Ukraine is that so little changes. What I mean about so little changing are the moral considerations. Ukraine is the victim of a lawless, brutal, unprovoked invasion by a politically backward and dysfunctional would-be empire ruled by a murderous autocrat. That assessment was obvious on Feb. 24, 2022 when the full-scale invasion was launched, and it was obvious in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. The challenge of writing about the war is that once you’ve said that, saying it again just feels repetitive. The longer ...

Don’t let the war on woke lull all Americans to sleep

Editorials

History is written to be argued about, I have often said. Recent efforts by the Trump administration’s culture war have offered numerous examples. In recent days, we have seen Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a break from the administration’s war against Iran, announce the reinstallation of a Confederate memorial that had been removed from Arlington National Cemetery in 2023. History buffs may recall that the sculpture had been removed as part of a congressionally mandated effort to rid military bases and sites of Confederate names and images. If you are one of those ...