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Pats on the Back

- To the Wheeling Police Department and Belmont County Sheriff’s Office for their continued support of children with “Operation Toy Lift.” The event, set for 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 5 at the Ohio Valley Mall, offers a brighter Christmas to many children in our region. - To the musical directors, students and staff at Wheeling Park High School that have kept a holiday tradition, the Festival of Sound, going for the past 30 years. This year’s event, set for 7 p.m. on Friday, Dec.12 and Saturday, Dec. 13, and for 2 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 14, will feature Wheeling Park ...

Lessons We Still Struggle To Learn

Eighty-four years have passed since the morning the world changed in a matter of minutes. On Dec. 7, 1941, as Americans awoke to an ordinary Sunday, Japanese aircraft descended on Pearl Harbor with a ferocity that stunned a nation that believed oceans still offered protection. By the time the attack ended, 2,403 Americans were dead and the United States had been forced into a global conflict it had hoped to avoid. Each anniversary prompts us to remember the fallen. But at 84 years, Pearl Harbor is also becoming something else — a test of whether we remain capable of learning from the ...

What Is President Trump Doing in the Caribbean?

Editor, News-Register: Why has Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered our largest, most lethal aircraft carrier with supporting destroyers and guided missile ships to sail near Venezuela? Trump says it’s to stop drug traffickers, yet, at the same time, he released from prison the Honduran ex-president, who was convicted of massive cocaine trafficking into our country. The aircraft carrier was moved from the Eastern Mediterranean, near the Ukraine conflict. Trump seems to be abandoning our allies in Europe, giving Russia the opportunity to expand its war-stolen territory in ...

Can We Stop Going in Circles Over the Homeless?

Editor, News-Register: Nobody wants to see anyone sleeping on the streets, nobody wants to live in an unhealthy or unsafe city, and we certainly don’t want to become the “Mecca of the Homeless” in the Ohio Valley, as one councilman has stated. Yet here we are again. Wheeling once again closed a homeless encampment, and the reaction is exactly what it has been in years’ past. People are angry, rallies are forming, Facebook comments sections are exploding with some of people’s worst thoughts, and emotions are pouring into the City Council chambers. At the Nov. 4 Council ...

Congress Must Strengthen Health Benefits for All

Congress is finally getting back to work after the government shutdown, and it’s critical that lawmakers act on legislation to address the most significant financial burden facing West Virginia families: health care. Both parties agree this issue demands attention. With health care once again at the forefront of the national conversation, and with leaders searching for common ground, Congress should start by passing the Strengthening Benefits Plan Act of 2025. Few Americans realize that billions of hard-earned dollars are currently locked away in overfunded 401(h) accounts, sitting ...

Restoring a Government That Helps, Not Hurts: On Hunger, Housing and Health Care for the Holidays

Housing. Hunger. Healthcare. Across West Virginia and the country, a survival crisis is hitting us right at the winter holiday season. And instead of helping alleviate it, our government is making it worse. That must stop. This split between a government that helps versus a government that hurts is on full display in Morgantown and Wheeling. Morgantown is trying to help by opening an emergency winter-weather survival shelter. Wheeling, by contrast, is evicting more than 70 people from a city-established homeless camp, even though local shelters are already full and ...