RealClearPennsylvania Articles

Kamala Harris addressed the Democratic National Committee last week with a new message: “Both parties have failed to hold the public’s trust.” When she mentioned “the future,” someone shouted “You!” Her book tour for “107 Days” expands to the critical early primary state South Carolina and cities with large Black populations that could give her an ironclad lead on “Super Tuesday.” Summer of Brat 2.0 approaches. Adrift in a “stuck culture” that has lost any sense of novelty, Americans willingly settle for reboots....

The Pennsylvania state House is Democratic-run – by one seat. The state Senate is Republican-run – by two seats. Meanwhile, at the national level, the U.S. House has a GOP majority, but if the party loses three seats, then it will shift to Democrats. The GOP in Pennsylvania has three members of Congress who won by less than 2% in 2024. The Democratic governor, running for reelection, wants to run for president in 2028. His likely GOP gubernatorial opponent is the state Treasurer – the leading vote-getter in Pennsylvania history. To paraphrase: “Fasten your seatbelts,...

If historians ever mark the moment when Pennsylvania broke free from a decade of self-inflicted economic drag, it may be found not at a ribbon-cutting, but in a state budget bill. Buried inside the Commonwealth’s FY 2025–26 budget was the landmark adoption of sweeping reforms to Pennsylvania’s permitting bureaucracy. The “Streamlining Permits for Economic Expansion and Development,” or SPEED program, ensures that state government permitting can no longer operate without transparency or deadlines. Critical to the bureaucratic reform is a “deemed...

Plenty of ink has been spilled and plenty of congratulatory statements have been issued about this year’s budget agreement in Harrisburg. But on one of the most urgent issues facing our Commonwealth, the reality hasn’t changed: Pennsylvania’s home care system is in crisis, the governor and legislative leaders know it, and they did just about nothing in this budget to fix it. More than 400,000 Pennsylvanians rely on in-home care to live safely and independently. They are seniors, adults with disabilities, and medically fragile children who depend on reliable, consistent...

In an interview with RealClearPennsylvania, U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick listed his accomplishments in his first year in office, including the “Big 5”: the Nippon-U.S. Steel deal, the $20 billion Amazon data centers investment, the Energy Summit bringing $92 billion in investments to the commonwealth, and the $5 billion deal bringing Korean firm Hanwha to the Philadelphia Shipyard. The ships built per year will go from 1.5 vessels to 20, creating 5,000 new jobs. And Westinghouse announced at this summer’s Pittsburgh Energy Summit that it will build 10 nuclear power plants in...

In the four decades since James Cameron introduced the world to a cybernetic assassin sent from a dystopian future, new RealClearPennsylvania/Emerson polling indicates nearly three-quarters of Pennsylvanians have seen “The Terminator.” Pennsylvanians are keeping a watchful eye on the rise of the machines. When surveying the landscape of Artificial Intelligence, Pennsylvanians are not necessarily seeing a helping hand.  The mood across Pennsylvania suggests a far more skeptical, if not outright fearful, outlook. The AI skepticism is broad-based. Nearly half of Pennsylvanians,...

In early November, U.S. Rep. Troy Balderson’s (R-Ohio) simple Affordable, Reliable, and Clean Energy Security Act underscored the titanic shift in the public psyche over the past decade. Note, it’s neither the “Clean and Reliable Act” nor the “Clean and Affordable Act.” Instead, affordability gets top billing. This is no accident: Electricity costs are skyrocketing, and affordability is top of mind for Americans. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports average retail revenues per kWh increased in 46 states since last August. Those rates...

Corey O’Connor sits in his downtown transition office fielding calls and reviewing appointments, friendly and businesslike, considerably more buttoned-down than his father, Bob, the late mayor whose ready smile and bouffant hair made him a beloved figure in this city for decades. The younger O’Connor, who will be sworn in as Pittsburgh’s 62nd mayor on January 5, speaks in practical terms about permits, childcare programs, and calling ten companies a week. His message is simple: Pittsburgh needs to get back to basics, and Democrats need to prove they can run cities...

In the spring of 1855, school officials in Pottsville gathered to debate a question that has echoed across centuries: how to protect their community from a deadly epidemic. The year before, smallpox had closed schools early, leaving behind sickness, fear, and death in its wake. Determined not to repeat that trauma, the Pottsville school board passed a resolution requiring every child to present a physician’s certificate of vaccination before being admitted to class in the coming school year. The editors of the Miners’ Journal, the region’s leading newspaper, applauded the...

Warehouses have been growing tremendously over the past decade in Pennsylvania. In our recent report conducted with support from the Center for Rural Pennsylvania, we examined the impacts of warehouse development in Pennsylvania, focusing on rural areas.   We studied three effects: economic impacts, transportation impacts, and community impacts over the ten-year period between 2014 and 2023.  The key findings in our economic analysis included growth in the number of warehousing establishments in the General Warehousing sector, as identified through the Bureau of Labor...

This fall, there was widespread coverage of an outright horrible group chat involving numerous members of various Young Republican organizations. Politico detailed their racially charged messages. Among the chats involved the [now former] nominee to head the Office of Special Counsel, “an independent federal agency that protects federal employees from prohibited personnel practices, particularly retaliation against whistleblowers.” That guy texted he had a “Nazi streak,” whatever that is. As The Hill reported before he withdrew his nomination, “The Republican...

Precarity is an omnipresent force lurking just under the surface of daily life for the average American family. Fear of an adverse expense spells the difference between scraping by and falling behind. An insurance premium for a shattered arm, new tires on the car to pass inspection, a broken hot water heater – such mundane yet unpredictable expenses can seriously disrupt a family’s finances and impose painful yet necessary choices like skipping Thanksgiving dinner to pay the bills on time. I know what precarity feels like. I was raised by my mom after my father was killed in a car...

“We just got killed.” Tom Eddy knows his Republicans had a tough night. The chair of the Erie County Republican Party sighed and admitted, “Republicans, for some reason, chose not to come out and vote.” At the top of the ticket, the Democratic nominee for Erie County executive, Christina Vogel, swamped the Republican incumbent, Brenton Davis, in a 25-point landslide. That onslaught was merely the start. Erie Democrats won every race of consequence: mayor, sheriff, city council, and 2 out of 3 county council seats. Pennsylvania’s swing county, yet again, pointed...

In 2023, after Republicans’ defeat in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court race, I wrote, “The Left has done a stellar job convincing deep-pocketed national donors and special interests that they should invest in Pennsylvania. That’s because it understands that Pennsylvania is the frontline battleground for the American future. The Right needs to come to this same realization.” Staring down another judicial defeat this year, I could write the exact same thing. Election Day was a win for Democrats across the country — not surprising as the most prominent elections...

Spoiler alert: Gov. Josh Shapiro wants to be president. Why else would he have spent so much of 2025 campaigning and fundraising across America –especially while Pennsylvanians had to wait 136 days after the constitutionally-required deadline to get our state budget? His 2025 looks more like a band’s tour than the governor of a state with a stagnant population, lackluster economy, and frighteningly bad student test scores. Among his stops: New Orleans, Los Angeles, Boston, Nantucket, Morgantown, WV, New Jersey – almost enough times to take up residency – ditto for New...

After a four-month impasse, Pennsylvania lawmakers finally delivered the 2025–26 state budget. The newly minted spending plan offers some meaningful policy victories, such as affordable energy, regulatory reform, and educational choice. This monthslong debacle all started with Gov. Josh Shapiro. The governor launched the commonwealth into a 135-day-long impasse when he proposed a budget with almost $7 billion in deficit spending. His proposal vastly expanded the size and scope of the state government, unlawfully dipped into state reserves, and threatened Pennsylvanians with a statewide...

Integrity is doing the right thing — even if nobody is watching. However, after this month's election, it’s clear that Pennsylvanians are watching. Our recently retained justices — Justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht — must honor their oaths and do the right thing because the good people of our great commonwealth have their eyes on them. Let’s travel back in time for some context. Believe it or not, there was a time not too long ago in Pennsylvania when we didn’t think of judges as partisan or political. Our judges upheld the...

Ronald Reagan once joked, “A Republican candidate was out giving a speech to a group of farmers. He was standing on the bed of a manure spreader, and he gave a great speech about the virtues of the Republican Party. When he was done, one of the farmers yelled out, ‘That’s the first time I ever heard a Republican speech from a Democratic platform!’”  Reagan’s joke accentuates a political truth that much of the 20th century displayed: rural America voted blue. Whether a lifelong Democrat in the South or a resident of a city like Johnstown or Beaver in...

Numerous Democrats have been outraged by the end of the government shutdown as agreed to by eight Democratic senators. Veteran political observers observed, even as the shutdown started, that past shutdowns have ended with the minority party getting nothing. Minority parties possess less leverage than party stalwarts believe.  That did not keep Pennsylvania Democrats in the House from slamming the deal as capitulation and a betrayal of voters. The Philadelphia Inquirer recently reported that, “Rep. Dwight Evans, a Philadelphia Democrat who is retiring at the end of this term,...