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The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s annual, nationwide Point-in-Time (PIT) count of homeless people is aimed at “getting a handle” on the scope of homelessness in this country. However, that task during winter months can best be categorized as being barely meaningful. How can a meaningful count be carried out during a miserable-weather month like January had been? Homeless people, more visible to others when better weather conditions exist, have resorted to whatever means they have been able to find to protect themselves from the brutal conditions that much ...

Barnhart

Editorials

With the retirement of former state Sen. Donna Boley, the question on the minds of many residents was who might fill the empty seat. Gov. Patrick Morrisey has made an excellent choice in Del. Trenton Barnhart, R-Pleasants. Barnhart has worked alongside Boley long enough to understand how she was getting the job done, and has been in the House of Delegates long enough to know the priorities on which his constituents will want him to focus. “It’s the honor and privilege of my life to be able to serve in this building, let alone on this side of the building. It’s something I’ve ...

Legislature

Editorials

This past weekend put the West Virginia Legislature nearly three weeks into its 2026 session. Both the House of Delegates and Senate have brought several bills to the floor of their respective chambers. The House has already passed multiple bills in the “Jobs First — Opportunity Everywhere” platform it touted before the session even began. One updated the state’s financial support for industrial access roads, doubling it from $3 million to $6 million. Another increased the caps on microgrants for the West Virginia Business Ready Sites program. Were those earth-shaking advances? ...

President Trump can’t stop backing down

Columnists

Does it sometimes seem as though too many people have never learned the lessons of the schoolyard? If you capitulate to a bully, you will be bullied forever. If you stand up to him, he will back down. What’s true on the playground is also true in the office, in politics and in international relations. Standing up to bullies is not free of risk. You might get bloodied in the process. But afterward, the bully, having learned that there is a price, will hesitate to push you around, whereas if you fail to stand up to him, he will grow ever more menacing. All of the bowing and scraping ...

‘Media’ is a broad term

Columnists

I’ll be the first to say that I, as a reporter, am not perfect. No one is. I can sometimes make mistakes in stories, both grammatical and factual. I can sometimes read a bill or a study too quickly and miss something important. If I get something wrong, I work as quickly as I can to send up a correction to my copy desk. Sometimes mistakes escape me and my copy desk. When you write as many words as I do in a week and you read as many words as my editors do, sometimes mistakes fall through the cracks. But when they are pointed out, we try to fix them. I believe the same goes for my ...

Census surprise

Columnists

About a month late, presumably due to last fall’s government shutdown, the Census Bureau has released its estimates of the populations of the 50 states and the District of Columbia for July 1, 2025. It provides an interesting picture of what the country is, and is becoming, halfway through the decade of the 2020s and one-quarter of the way through (have we really gotten this far?) the 21st century. It also provides some political dynamite, all the more explosive because of Census Bureau statisticians’ deserved reputation for apolitical rigor and willingness to admit mistakes, as it ...