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Charlie Kirk

Today will mark a week since the killing of Charlie Kirk. While many details — including about the gunman’s ideology — remain uncertain, it has become increasingly clear that this is a major moment in American history. Let’s start here: who was Charlie Kirk? It has been our experience that, prior to his killing, many people had never heard of him. Kirk was 31 years old, and leaves behind a wife, two children and grieving parents. He grew up in Prospect Heights, Illinois, the son of a mental health counselor and an architect. He earned the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy ...

Remembering 9/11, and the legacy of that shared trauma

Today marks 24 years since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In that time, America has undergone a remarkable transformation, born of a shared trauma and grief that has never truly healed. Many young Americans have no idea what our nation was like before 9/11. If you read our periodic Throwback Thursday columns in the Scene section, you might encounter this when some of our younger editorial staff are confronted by the filmed ghosts of an American gestalt long since faded. Perhaps most commonly referenced internally in our newsroom is one person’s confusion at the airport scene in ...

The practice of gerrymandering must end for all of our sakes

Politics is sometimes referred to as a “great game” — with incrementally more powerful politicians moving the lesser pieces around a board of boundaries, both physical and topical. We would argue that there are few venues where this is more reflective of reality than gerrymandering. Don’t believe us? What if we told you gerrymandering has literally been made into a board game? It’s not like we are the only ones who see it this way, either. Recently, The Express had the privilege of talking to Carol Kuniholm, one of the co-founders of Fair Districts PA. In an interview ...

Labor Day an important reminder that workers are not expendable

Did you know that Labor Day has been an official public holiday since 1894 — with Oregon being the first adopter, in 1887? That makes this the 131st Labor Day, at least as a nation. People think of many things around Labor Day — the first days of school and the end of summer being two prominent ones. But we think that the original intent of the holiday — as a day to honor workers and recognize American labor movements — is perhaps too understated these days. Consider, as columnist Salena Zito does in today’s edition of The Express, the steelworkers in Clairton. Or ...

Classrooms are for learning, not phones

Let us begin by acknowledging that this is a more complicated issue than many people make it out to be. That said: as a general rule, we believe that phones should be put aside during class time. Now, we have been out of school for some number of years, so we don’t want to make a blanket statement here because we can easily imagine some class subjects where integrating phones into the coursework brings benefits as opposed to detriments. We suspect those would be the exception, however, and not the rule. And, of course, there needs to be an understanding of the real world, ...

All eyes on Washington, DC

Washington, DC is a pretty unique place. Obviously there’s the museums and historic monuments — as well as the inelegant government concrete boulders that house the alphabet soup of bureaucratic entities. But DC is more than just a showroom. The city itself occupies more than 60 square miles of land — for reference, Lock Haven reaches just more than 2 square miles. A closer, though still hilariously not to scale, comparison is Williamsport, which occupies about 9.5 square miles. Within that acreage, DC houses a population of 689,545, as of the 2020 Census. Keep in ...