RealClearPennsylvania Articles

Review: Beyond Steel: Pittsburgh and the Economics of Transformation by Christopher P. Briem (The Kent State University Press, 2026, 320 pp.) On May 28, 2009, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs tried to sell reporters on a curious choice of host city for a global summit. The G20, he announced, would meet “in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.” University of Pittsburgh economist Christopher Briem writes that the press corps greeted the line with “murmurs and more than a few audible laughs.” The laugh came from a country that had filed Pittsburgh away as an old-timey...

Technology and tactics have changed dramatically since Lincoln was training Whig Party leaders, though his strategy for winning elections still applies today.  It’s a timeless roadmap: identify your voters; work on undecideds to grow your voter bloc; and then, get out the vote (GOTV). Yet beyond technology, the emphasis is very different from Lincoln’s time. Democrats have altered the strategy – and therefore their tactics. Meanwhile, for the GOP, Trump on the ballot seems to be the only counterbalance. Democrats' focus is on turning out those who already believe, and...

Many parts of the country have experienced a decrease in crime, especially violent crime, according to FBI crime statistics. This is great news for communities as less people are being victimized.These national crime reductions are reflective to what many municipalities are experiencing. Bensalem Township is no different. A suburban town located in southeastern Pennsylvania, it borders the northeast section of Philadelphia, and has often had to deal with rising crime rates. However, over the past two years, Part 1 crimes (the most serious crimes) are down 38%, with robberies and burglaries...

Health care access has put Pennsylvania into the national spotlight over the past few years – but for all the wrong reasons. Last fall, a national health care publication explored why the commonwealth holds the dubious distinction of leading in hospital closures. As a maternity care desert the size of Connecticut continues to grow, Pennsylvania continues to rank among the states with the greatest losses of labor and delivery services. Recent hospital closures in the state have made national headlines as neighboring hospitals partner with community leaders to maintain access to emergency...

With National School Choice Week upon us, we must reflect on our successes and challenges in expanding educational options across our great commonwealth. We must set a bold path to ensure every family has the opportunity to choose the educational environment that best meets the needs of their kids. Pennsylvania has been a trailblazer in educational opportunity. Long before school choice became a national movement, the good people of our great commonwealth helped prove that empowering families — not bureaucracies — could change lives. In 2001, Pennsylvania became one of the first...

Review: Where We Keep the Light: Stories from a Life of Service, by Josh Shapiro (Harper, 272 pp., $30) Josh Shapiro clearly wants to be president. Like most political memoirs, his memoir says as much what he thinks about the path ahead as an accurate rendering of the past.  Shapiro embraces his faith, believes in government as a force for good, and casts himself as a pragmatist with real bipartisan appeal. It’s not hard to imagine this path to the White House. After all, it’s the one traveled by Joe Biden in 2020. Will that lane still be there in 2028? Will he be the one in...

Conor Lamb’s office sits across from PPG Paints Arena in downtown Pittsburgh, a world away from the rural stretches of Washington County where he pulled off one of the most improbable Democratic wins of the Trump era. The former congressman is 41 now and, at least for the moment, no longer anyone’s candidate. That freedom shows. In March 2018, Lamb emerged on the scene by defeating Republican Rick Saccone by 627 votes in a special election for Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District, a seat Donald Trump had carried by nearly 20 points in 2016. Republicans and aligned...

Despite being in the crosshairs of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee with potential Democratic challengers galore, first-term Republican U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie was confident. In a recent interview with RealClearPennsylvania, Mackenzie, who represents the Lehigh Valley-centered 7th congressional district, was confident that he’s delivering on his campaign promises. “I ran in 2024 focused on cost-of-living issues and for working families, seniors, and others,” said Mackenzie. “They had been ravaged by Bidenomics and inflation that compounded over four...

Did it actually work? It is what we hope most policymakers ask themselves after a piece of legislation is passed. In the case of work requirements for food assistance, the question has lingered for nearly a decade: revived, rebranded, and reheated across administrations. But in Pennsylvania, we finally have enough recent data to move beyond talking points and into something closer to an answer. The Trump administration’s renewed push for work requirements in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) did not arrive with the glaring interest and bold focus of 1990s welfare...

Veteran suicide is a persistent public health crisis in the United States. Though veterans make up just 7% of the adult population, they account for nearly 14% of adult suicides – 20 veterans lost every day. In Pennsylvania, the crisis is even more severe. The state’s veteran suicide rate is nearly double the national average, and Southwestern Pennsylvania sits at the center of that reality, home to more than 100,000 veterans across Allegheny, Fayette, Greene, Washington, and Westmoreland counties. Moreover, many of the rural areas of our region experience...

In recent years, workforce development has figured as a major topic in Pennsylvania. Students who used to focus on going to college are looking at different pathways to a good career. No doubt, we need more blue-collar workers. So, why aren’t there more pathways to good careers? Every economic-development speech focuses on career and technical education. Political ads feature a welder or a pipefitter. But how can policymakers in Pennsylvania really support workforce development? It’s important to know that there have been workforce development professionals on the ground, doing...

“Trump is Trump, and he’s going to be Trump.” Sam Talarico learned this iron law of American politics in 2024. The pinwheel ballyhoo that would derail an ordinary politician somehow works in the president’s favor. In 2024, the chair of the Erie County Democrats watched Trump escape assassination, drive a garbage truck, work a McDonald’s Drive-Thru, and host massive rallies that spawned a 75% turnout in the nation’s preeminent swing county. The president’s narrow, yet decisive, victory in Erie mirrored the returns in Pennsylvania and nationwide....

When JD Vance was announced as an attendee and speaker at this year’s annual March for Life, an unsurprising conversation ensued. Is the Trump-Vance administration publicly and aggressively anti-abortion, as many claim on the Left? Or, as recent pro-life advocates have insisted, is the Trump-Vance administration the “least pro-life” Republican administration in history? This is a good stand-in for the bigger question: what does this administration really believe? What policies does it actually care about and remain consistent on? As the Republican Party has significantly...

Pennsylvania is not alone in navigating the vast expansion of both private- and public-sector investment in artificial intelligence. States across the country are simultaneously grappling with how to attract more AI-focused investment and with the consequences of that investment.  Today, the competition for AI centers around the need for exponentially more electricity generation capacity. Across the nation, states are rushing to build out data centers, as AI-dedicated generating capacity is being described. Yet the challenge of quickly ramping up generating capacity has generated...

Electricity doesn’t come from the outlets in our walls. In simplified terms, electricity arrives at our homes from power-generation stations, created using natural gas, coal, or hydro-power. Those raw materials are converted into electricity and sent to our homes, hospitals, schools, and businesses. And yes, nuclear power also generates a great deal of electricity in Pennsylvania. Misguided policies led to Three Miles Island’s closing a few years ago, but Microsoft recently stepped forward and is re-opening the nuclear power plant for its own data center projects. It’s a...

If anyone still doubts how serious the power situation unraveling in Pennsylvania has become, the warning signs are no longer abstract. PJM Interconnection, the regional transmission organization that coordinates wholesale electricity across all or parts of 13 states, including Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia, made the problem unmistakably clear in its most recent capacity auction. According to PJM’s own executive summary, the auction ended more than 6,623 megawatts (MW) below what PJM says it needed to keep the lights on safely, leaving far less backup power than...

In Pennsylvania, it’s not an understatement to say that women are less inclined to own small businesses. The Keystone State ranks in the bottom five of states in its percentage of small business owners who are women. The statistic is shocking, particularly when Pennsylvania ranks among the top states for the five-year survival of new businesses, with over half of new firms still open after five years. Pennsylvania’s economy is big, rivaling entire countries in economic output. Moreover, small businesses are a cornerstone here: over 176,000 firms employing 1.4 million workers...

Unions say they exist to protect workers. But when I needed my union most, it turned its back on me.   Over the past eight years, as a Pennsylvania Utility Commission employee and member of AFSCME Council 13, which represents some 65,000 public employees here in Harrisburg and across the state, I’ve experienced this firsthand. In 2018, I took a job at the PUC specifically because the position was covered by a union contract — one Council 13 had negotiated for employees. The contract stipulates my terms and conditions of employment, from pay scale to promotions to how...

Pennsylvania is hemorrhaging residents and resources. And it’s been happening for years.  The recent U-Haul Growth Index shows that people are voting with their feet against Pennsylvania and other purple and blue states that have become inhospitable as places to live, work, and raise a family. And these out-migrators are heading to redder states that welcome them. In 2025, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee topped U-Haul’s ‘in-migration’ states, measured by one-way customer moves.  Meanwhile, Pennsylvania ranked an abysmal 44th.  The...