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The ice beneath Trump is cracking

PITTSBURGH — In 2016, then-Reps. Lou Barletta, R-Hazleton, and Tom Marino, R-Loyalsock Township, became the first sitting members of Congress to endorse then-candidate Donald Trump for president. Their colleagues in Washington gave them the side-eye. Barletta told me at the time that when that didn’t work, their colleagues tried to talk them out of it. It didn’t work. The two traveled throughout the state and sometimes in other states, earning the nickname “Thunder and Lightning” from Trump on the trail. It turned out they were onto something. They broke the streak that year ...

COVID-19 and stereotypes about age and natural causes

I recently read an article about a series of deaths involving older adults. With the exception of one, all the deceased were women mostly in their 80s and 90s, widowed, financially well off and living independently in upscale senior living complexes. All owned expensive jewelry, which disappeared at the time of death. Nearly two dozen women living in the Dallas area — eight in one facility — died within a period of two years. The deaths appeared suspicious, given their frequency and the similarities in how their safes and jewelry boxes were emptied and their valuable jewelry ...

Bringing environmental solutions to tackle our plastic waste crisis

At Encina, we process hard-to-recycle plastic waste and turn it into the building blocks for making new plastic-containing products, a process that can be repeated indefinitely. The current system for plastics recycling is simply not working. Our solution is better than any feasible path for reaching the double goals of reducing plastic waste pollution and enabling the continued use of plastics for critical uses. Our solution reduces reliance on new petroleum and brings jobs and tax revenue to the community. With proposed innovation, questions and opposing viewpoints often follow. ...

Pandemic lessons our communities must never forget

In January 2020, nothing stood out to me when reading the BBC News article, “China pneumonia outbreak: Mystery virus probed in Wuhan.” Not even when I read the second sentence, “A total of 44 cases have been confirmed so far, 11 of which are considered ‘severe.’” In retrospect, the news was eerily similar to the now famous 1981 New York Times article with the headline, “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals.” I was too young to read the New York Times in 1981, but I’ve spent a lot of time the last 20 years thinking about how different the world would be if that early ...

A recent visit to the mall — but not just any mall

No stay in Be’er Ya’akov is complete without many visits to the local mall. Now this not the Mall of America, the King of Prussia Mall, or anything like a mall in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. This is the Be’er Ya’akov Mall! My first project was to drop off two pairs of pants to be shortened. The best place to buy cargo workpants is the hardware store. After making my purchase at the hardware store the other day, under my wife’s close supervision, it was time to bring the pants into the tailor at the mall. My daughter, Kaila, warned me that, “they don’t speak English ...

No more Evusheld — now what?

It’s been three years since COVID-19 decided to rear its ugly head and have an everlasting impact on the world. For some, family members died as a result of the severity of the SARS-CoV-2 viral infection. For others, it was a true test of surviving what seemed to be un-survivable. Then there are the people that have pre-existing medical conditions making them immunocompromised and the people who became immunocompromised because of COVID. Some were lucky and didn’t get the infection or did so with little to no effect on their health. As most of us know, various medical treatments ...