Breaking News

Opinion

Sound off!

Letters to the Editor

High gas prices and inflation. Iran will never negotiate in good faith. Taking out Kharg Island, and bombing Tehran, if necessary, might eliminate the fanatical leaders. Only when they are gone will there be peace and will the Strait of Hormuz be open for free travel. If gas prices stay high, the Dems will win the midterms and impeach 47. Iran and their proxies will then continue their terror with nuclear enhancement. — Columbiana While Trump and the Republicans have cut billions of dollars in taxes for the ultra-rich, they signed into law in July 2025 a 10% reduction of hundreds of ...

Summertime political reruns

Editorials

When I was younger, so much younger than today (credit The Beatles for that lyric from “Help”), television networks would rerun programs that had originally been broadcast the previous fall and spring. A few still do, like “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy,” but those are syndicated shows. Still, it can be fun to watch programs you missed, or even ones you have seen, especially if you can impress someone with “Jeopardy” answers because you know them. Reruns that always annoy are the political ads, which start before primaries and continue until the day before the ...

Letters to the editor

Letters to the Editor

Lying should not be a good look for a US president DEAR EDITOR: All politicians lie. That’s not a new concept, and whether it is true or not doesn’t matter when too many people accept it as fact. The Trump era has brought us to a tipping point: Since lying is ubiquitous, it must not be wrong. This is dangerous territory for a democracy. I’ve known hundreds of politicians, and I’m sure some, maybe even many, lied. Sometimes, I could tell if they were lying; sometimes I figured it out later through fact checking. But I never knew anyone who lied the way President Trump does. ...

The normalcy of American wars

Editorials

The war in Iran is unlawful and unconstitutional, but in post-World War II America, it is normal. Here is the backstory. When President Donald Trump decided to begin bombing Iran last June, he did not state a coherent or lawful reason for doing so. His director of national intelligence and his own CIA had publicly told him that Iran did not possess a nuclear weapon and had ceased building one in 2005. His secretary of state told him that Iran and Israel had threatened each other, but he could not articulate how Iran imminently threatened the United States. Yet, since Israel ...

Join the race to win war on breast cancer

Editorials

The ongoing war on breast cancer brings both good news and bad news to the Mahoning Valley. The good news is that Mahoning and Trumbull counties have made great strides in attacking the disease and lowering the death toll from it. According to the National Cancer Institute within the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, those two counties rank among the lowest in the state and below the national average in incidence and in fatalities from the disease, and trend lines continue to edge lower. The bad news is that those trend lines are not diving downward as deeply or as ...

Data centers rise as key issue in race for governor

David Skolnick

In connection with affordability issues, data centers have emerged as a hot-button issue in politics. Data centers are needed in our digital world. Whether you are texting, checking your email, opening an app, doom scrolling, watching a video or doing anything with your phone or computer, a data center is needed. They’re increased in numbers with the major growth of artificial intelligence. Data centers also consume tremendous amounts of electricity, which adversely impacts power grids and increases costs to residents, and uses massive amounts of water to keep servers from ...