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Here’s to Your Health Care

Last week marked the first legislative interim meetings since the end of June, with lawmakers getting a two-month summer break. Well, some lawmakers. Much of Republican legislative leadership spent their summer in planning meetings for a possible special session that did not happen. At one point, there was a hard date set for a special session in July. But then that was moved back to September coinciding with last week’s interims. It should be obvious that a special session — which was to be focused on the Public Employees Insurance Agency (PEIA) — did not occur. While ...

Great Literature Still Matters in Our Shared Experience

Do stories matter? Does our collective human experience matter? Does the power to inspire, to love, and to feel sorrow matter? Think of what great literature has given us: “Moby Dick,” “The Scarlet Letter,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Huckleberry Finn.” Tales which, although they may depict worlds in which we have never lived, touch upon universal human themes and experiences and which resonate in our souls long after the final page is turned. English and literature departments are shrinking in colleges and universities across the country, and the ...

President’s Policies Prove Crime Easily Solved

On Aug. 11, 2025, President Trump took decisive action by deploying the National Guard to Washington D.C. For years, our nation’s capital has been plagued by out-of-control crime, with more than 91% of residents calling it a major problem. President Trump campaigned on a promise to crack down on crime in major cities, and he has shown he is unafraid to take bold action to keep that promise. Time and again he has proven that leadership requires courage and the ability to stand firm when America’s safety and prosperity are on the line. In just a few weeks, more than 1,900 criminals ...

A Good Man

West Virginia is a small state, and state government is not large, so the longer you cover certain politicians, the more chances you have to see the human side of the people you cover and even become friends. That’s the way it was with Tim Armstead, the late justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals and the former minority leader who rose to become the first Republican speaker of the House of Delegates in nearly 83 years. I attended the visitation for Armstead last Tuesday in the chambers of the House of Delegates, not as a news reporter but as a friend. I have a ...

The School Choice Option Nobody Talks About

In The Hunt Institute’s April 2025 article, “School Choice in the 2024 Election: Pros, Cons, and What Voters Want,” a key point was bulleted at the beginning of the article: Choice for some should not come at the expense of others. I just started my 23rd year of teaching, and I’ve been fortunate enough to teach every grade level from Pre-K through college. I had a brief stint in a private non-parochial school, and the rest public school. I’ve been to schools that are urban, rural, large, small, decently funded, and funded by the grace of Title I. I’ve found that my ...

We Cannot Lose Another West Virginian to Suicide

September is National Suicide Prevention Month, and here in West Virginia, the urgency couldn’t be higher. Our state is no stranger to hardship, but the current mental health crisis demands clear-eyed attention and bold action. In 2023, West Virginia’s age-adjusted suicide rate stood at 18.6 per 100,000 people, among the highest in the nation and significantly above the national average. That is 349 West Virginians we have lost in one year alone. Though this is slightly less than 2022, West Virginians deserve more. The numbers are more than data — they are human lives. In the ...