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Musk’s American Party could be interesting

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is about to form a new third party after announcing his plan on the social media platform X, which he owns. It is registered with the Federal Election Commission and is expected to focus on two or three U.S. Senate races and about eight or 10 House seats in the 2026 election cycle. Heading up DOGE and wielding a chainsaw as he slashed one government program after another, Musk, before his fallout with President Trump, was dubbed the first buddy after pouring millions into Trump’s campaign war chest. In the previous elections, he had supported ...

Hope Scholarship participation set to double in size

With the Hope Scholarship application period underway, we at the Treasurer’s Office expect the number of participating students to increase this fall. Currently, we have about 10,500 students enrolled within the program and expect that number to nearly double for the 2025-2026 school year. That means about 7% of school-aged children in West Virginia will be participating in the program. Nearly 15,000 applied for full funding of the scholarship for the 2025-2026 school year. For those who support options in education, this is huge news. But numbers alone can’t tell the whole story. It ...

Resolution rates on informal complaints to the PSC are 98 percent

The statistic that astounds me yearly at the Public Service Commission of West Virginia is our ability to settle thousands of cases on an informal basis and without resorting to lawyers or litigation of any kind. Our most recent report shows that we received more than nine-thousand-five-hundred informal complaints last year. These types of complaints happen when you have experienced a service interruption, when the service you have is poor, when you can’t get service, or if you have a billing issue that you cannot get resolved. You want to talk with somebody about it. You have ...

Reminded how I omitted something last week

Last week, my column was written a little differently than those you have read these past two years. It wasn’t written how I usually express myself in this little corner of the paper. Yet, it was still something personal about my life. And it was still being able to share some of those little moments which I believe we all have in common. Either way, it was different. Maybe that was a good decision, or maybe it was an awful one. I can never be quite certain. I was explaining to a friend of mine who doesn’t read the paper what my column was about. I told him how the radio ...

Politics ain’t beanbag for the Capito family

There is an old saying that “politics ain’t beanbag,” meaning that the political arena can be a rough and tumble place. On one hand, I can understand West Virginia Democratic leaders jumping on the ill-timed nomination of former GOP candidate for governor and former lawmaker Moore Capito as the next U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia. On the other hand, I don’t believe it is deserved. To make a long story short, President Donald Trump released a list of nominees Tuesday for various offices – including Capito for U.S. Attorney for the Southern District ...

Don’t forget the needs for support businesses

Last week, officials in Steubenville brought up the idea of a mobile food market to serve the community. The Trumbull County Mobile Market Truck was among the participants in Juneteenth festivities in the city, and some officials thought a similar approach could help solve at least some of the food insecurity they are seeing in the area. The trucks offers a variety of options, including fresh meats and produce, frozen food, and some canned goods, traveling to different communities where an actual brick-and-mortar grocery store may not be available, or where a large enough percentage ...