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Hope (Scholarship) floats

Columnists

Much as I predicted last week, the Hope Scholarship educational voucher program remains intact for the next fiscal year. Instead of recommending its first originating bill to reform the Hope program, the House Finance Committee recommended a new originating bill that only changed the payment frequency to Hope families from two times per year to four times. Some are saying the committee buckled under pressure from current home school and private school families. That’s a complete misunderstanding of what happened. The reason the first originating bill was drafted was to deal with a ...

Change

Editorials

More than three years after a disastrous derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, Congress has continued to sit on its hands rather than upset its friends in the railroad industry by implementing desperately needed rail safety reform. Well, most of Congress, anyway. A few have repeatedly tried to push change. Most recently, a bipartisan group that includes U.S. Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, has introduced the Railway Safety Act of 2026. “Three years ago, many Ohioans understandably lost faith in the safety and reliability of our nation’s railways after the accident in East Palestine, ...

EMS Fund

Editorials

There is good reason House Bill 5168 passed out of the House of Delegates without a single vote against on Monday. It is one of the very few, genuine no-brainers to come before lawmakers in recent years. HB 5168 would establish a permanent funding stream for EMS workers across the state — $12 million annually from lottery net profits. According to House Finance Committee Chairman Vernon Criss, R-Wood, it brings EMS funding in line with a formula used to support fire departments. The bill mandates the first $1 million of the $6 million Salary Enhancement, Crisis Response, and Mental ...

Media vs. America?

Columnists

Alysa Liu is an American figure skater whose family fled China and faced harassment and persecution by Chinese authorities. She won gold. You might have missed it. The American press corps chose, instead, to praise Eileen Gu, an American skier with family ties to the Chinese communist party. Gu skied for and was paid by China. The press elevated her over American athletes until shifting to hating our hockey team. “Eileen Gu won three medals — one gold and two silver — in Milan and now has six total medals over the span of two quadrennials. She also made herself one of the most ...

Hockey team did it right

Columnists

If men’s basketball is the most popular and professional athlete-filled team sport at the quadrennial Summer Olympic Games, then men’s ice hockey is its Winter Olympic Games analogue. Every four years, the two-week Summer and Winter Olympics provide a respite, for NBA and NHL fans, from the annual domestic calendar. Stars who might normally be teammates instead pick up the jerseys of rival nations, competing against one another for love of home and hearth on the world’s grandest sporting stage. Each Olympic sport has had its iconic American triumphs too: Who can forget the 1992 ...

State of the Union showcased frail Congress

Columnists

The president wasted no time getting to his lies. It started in the first minute, when he claimed that: “When I spoke in this chamber 12 months ago, I had just inherited a nation in crisis, with a stagnant economy, inflation at record levels, a wide-open border, horrendous recruitment for military and police, rampant crime at home and wars and chaos all over the world.” None of that is truthful. Economic growth was actually a bit better during Joe Biden’s final year in office (2.8%) than in Trump’s first year (2.2%). In March of last year, inflation was not at “record ...