RealClearPennsylvania Articles

The oldest Catholic church in Scranton, the Nativity of Our Lord Church, recently held its final Mass. For 120 years, it stood as a cornerstone of city’s South Side, a space where generations gathered to worship, connect, and create memories. But due to declining attendance and rising maintenance costs, the doors have closed. Closures are painful to parishioners, of course, but the absence of a church is felt by the larger community as well. Churches, synagogues, mosques, meetinghouses, and temples are sites of worship, yes, but their importance extends beyond that. These sacred places...

Bucks County Sheriff Fred Harran is running for re-election. He’s doing the job of the elected office: keeping residents safe. Progressives, though, are attempting to put a Trump-target on Harran’s back. He holds a relatively unknown office but now he’s in the limelight because of a local Democratic alliance.   Bucks County Democrat Commissioners Diane Marseglia and Bob Harvie have spent a peculiar amount of time at commissioners’ meetings attacking Harran. For example, Marseglia and Harvie cut him off during his monthly reports. They’ve tried to place...

How do you go from 100% to dead? That is the tragic enigma which changed Jim Foote’s life. In 2004, Foote’s 15-year-old son, Trey, was diagnosed with bone cancer.  After chemotherapy and surgery, doctors told him, “We never say it’s [cancer] 100% dead. It’s 100% dead. You’re good.” Three months later the cancer returned. In October 2006, Trey Foote died; he was 17.   Bereft, Foote was haunted by the riddle “how do you go from 100% to dead?” When he learned bone cancer treatment protocols had not budged in 25 years, Foote saw...

Zohran Mamdani is having a moment. The 33-year-old Queens assemblyman is now the Democratic nominee for mayor of the country’s largest city. Leaving aside his democratic socialist politics, for the moment, his victory points to the coalitions that are possible as new demographic groups emerge.   Mamdani won with a variation on the Obama coalition (upscale whites, liberals, Latinos, and other non-white workers and small business people, and young voters). Indeed, his ability to get young voters to follow him on social media, to support him, and then register and vote will be studied...

As we approach the July 4th holiday, which most Americans celebrate as our true “break away” from England in July 1776, it’s worth looking back just a bit further to explore the real break which occurred before 1776. Americans were in armed combat – in three different battles, the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill – early in 1775. This tumultuous year – filled with the first breakout of violence against the Mother County – was one of enormous turmoil in the colonies. The overwhelming majority of colonials did not support a break from...

Presidential elections present voters with a mix of triumphs, scandals, and defining moments. The 2024 election was no exception. From former President Trump’s near-fatal rally in Butler, PA, to President Biden’s eleventh-hour exit from the race following his June debate performance, the news cycle shifted rapidly. One of the biggest post-election surprises came from the data breakdown: a significant share of young voters, specifically Generation Z men, overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump. McKinsey & Company defines Generation Z as “people born between 1996 and 2010...

33-year-old state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani's triumph over aging dynast Andrew Cuomo in New York's Democratic mayoral primary should have Pennsylvania Democrats taking notes. Not because the state’s voters will eagerly cast their ballots for a democratic socialist preaching about subsidized gender-affirming care – that dog won't hunt in a purple state where Trump's "Kamala is for they/them" ads helped flip working-class voters red. But Mamdani cracked a code that matters: how to marry compelling political theater with concrete benefits that actually improve people’s...

SP&R’s latest Pennsylvania poll conducted June 16-21 (with 713 Likely voters) shows U.S. Sen. John Fetterman with a 41% job approval after two and a half years in office. On the surface, this isn’t so bad. For comparison, former U.S. Sen. Bob Casey had a 37% job approval rating in our polling in April 2009 – approximately two and a half years into his first term, or after serving a similar amount of time as Fetterman. All things considered, Fetterman is overperforming past politicians after a similar amount of time in office. But the problem concerns the source...

To remote-work carpetbaggers fleeing soon-to-be-socialist New York and other failing cities who are looking to take advantage of Pittsburgh's developing-economy prices, I have a simple message that I’ve adapted from remarks given by former Vice President Kamala Harris: “Do not come. Do not come.” For me, the last straw was when one of these newly-arrived folks – a software engineer acquaintance of mine – referred to the Burgh as a nice “starter city,” a place to save a little money before he returned to a real metro somewhere else. Though a...

It’s rare these days to find a proposal out of Washington that checks every box: common sense, bipartisan, and pro-worker. That is exactly what Pennsylvania U.S. Sens. Dave McCormick and John Fetterman have delivered with their bill to relocate the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (OFECM) from Washington to Pennsylvania. It’s a smart move – and long overdue. Federal agencies have operated in the echo chambers of Washington, far removed from the communities they regulate. When policymakers and regulators live hundreds of miles away...

Pennsylvania is evolving, and our workforce development system needs to adapt to this change. For years, there have been flashing red lights on Pennsylvania's demographic dashboard. Our population is aging, and retiring workers are not being replaced by new workers quickly enough. It's leaving employers understaffed. Beyond that, there is a mismatch between the skills leaving the workforce and the skills entering the workforce. It’s an imbalance that threatens our broader economy if Pennsylvania doesn't focus on solving the gap between retiring workers and young talent. But what’s...

I have Thanksgiving dinner every year with only teachers. My mother, father, sister, brother-in-law, aunt, cousin, and my grandmother, along with all my great-aunts, have served as educators. While I’m the odd one out professionally, I value their work and service and the path they took to get there. My mother was a first-generation college student from Scranton paying her own way through college. When her student teaching came up, she had nowhere to live.  Luckily, a teacher in Sunbury had a practice of permitting student teachers use of her attic space as a bedroom suite as they...

Pennsylvania’s rural hospitals are struggling. Declining patient volumes, workforce shortages, and chronic underpayment have left many on a lifeline. About half are operating at a loss, according to fiscal year 2023 data from the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council. Another 17% are barely breaking even or operating with margins too low to make investments necessary to maintain facilities, enhance services, and secure long-term stability. Eleven rural Pennsylvania hospitals have closed over the past two decades. Many have had to reduce services. Labor and delivery unit...

Earlier this month, Aaron Rodgers finally signed with the Steelers, ending an exhausting offseason saga that directly impacted their draft. The 41-year-old quarterback’s arrival marks the beginning of what promises to be the weirdest chapter in franchise history. Good. Scouting reports paint a grim picture: diminished arm strength, slower processing speed, increasingly erratic decision-making in the pocket. This isn’t the MVP who torched the Steelers in Super Bowl XLV. It’s a guy who is lucky he’s still able to throw more touchdowns than interceptions. But given that...

Gov. Josh Shapiro once said, “Leaders have a responsibility to speak truth.” Yet, truth be told, the governor’s lack of leadership on this year’s state budget is concerning. It all began with his budget address in February. Shapiro’s 2025–26 budget proposal was an unrealistic, irresponsible nonstarter. His $51.5 billion budget proposal – about 8% higher than this fiscal year – is chock full of excessive government spending, including hundreds of millions in handouts to government unions and other special interests. Pennsylvanians...

With all that’s wrong in public education today, what if I told you some good news? There are more than 69,000 students in Pennsylvania who have found a K-12 school that works for them – after trying two or more other schools that didn’t work. And there’s more good news: these schools only cost us about 68% of what it costs taxpayers to run public schools. If you’re a parent, taxpayer, or small-business owner looking for employees, you’re probably smiling. Well, sadly, you wouldn’t fit in among many politicians in Harrisburg. Instead of celebrating or...

“You guys don’t know how good you have it.” That is typically not a winning message for politicians heading into an election year.  Yet when it comes to energy prices, Pennsylvanians have never had it this good. After all, nearly all Pennsylvanians pay less for energy than they did thirty years ago. Accounting for inflation, Pennsylvanians’ electric bills are 46% cheaper than they were in 1996. What are legislators to do when the top issue on the minds of voters is their electric bill despite the cost declining by nearly half? Let’s start with how we got...

In October 1862, Irish mineworkers in the rural coal mining villages of western Schuylkill County rose up in armed opposition to Pennsylvania’s first attempt to create a drafted militia to add soldiers to the United States Army. They marched from mine to mine across Cass and New Castle Townships, shutting down mining operations as they went. Several hundred men, some armed with pistols and other weaponry, stopped a train carrying recruits for the Army at the village of Tremont and ordered them to return to their homes. Chaos reigned through mid-October in Schuylkill County, raising...

César B. Liriano embodies the striving, entrepreneurial spirit of generations of immigrants. Like many Hispanics, he came from the Dominican Republic by way of New York City and found rural Lebanon, Pennsylvania appealing. He bought a three-apartment building, lived in one, and rented out the others. His family loaned him the money for a downpayment, including $27 from a sister’s piggy bank. Four years later, he paid them back. Now he wants to repay his community by running for mayor of Lebanon County’s only city. Liriano is a staunch Democrat, though his program would be...