Pennsylvania and federal open records laws don’t require elected officials to release their work calendars to the public. STATE COLLEGE — Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, multiple protests...

This is an era when the great certainties that ruled American life for nearly three generations are being questioned more deeply, more widely and more seriously than at any time in decades. When the C...

IMAGINE FOR A MOMENT having your whole life derailed by a traffic ticket. You decided to study business in Mississippi, and, after getting that degree, you applied to graduate school. You looked at al...

Meetings in local government next week Every week, the Mon Valley Independent editorial staff will share upcoming government meetings around the Mid-Mon Valley. If there’s an item or other event of pu...

Kudos to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. She managed to generate the most negatively iconic photo of a Democrat since Michael Dukakis wore a helmet atop a tank. Whitmer, long considered a promising pr...

Happy Easter to all of our readers and neighbors throughout the Mon Valley. We hope this annual season of rebirth and growth leads to wonderful things for all of you. Let’s celebrate the holiday and t...

To the Editor: Will you, Monessen resident, go to the polls this coming November and give Mr. Mozer another four years as mayor of Monessen? Are you satisfied with what he has done or not done for the...

After two terms in the United States Senate, Gary Peters is calling it quits. “I will say, over these last few years, it gets harder every single year,” the Michigan Democrat told CNN. “The middle is ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday inserted himself directly into trade talks with Japa- nese officials, a sign of the high stakes for the Unit ed States after its tariffs rattled t...

A PENNSYLVANIA COURT has decided the people don’t need to know about communications between state lawmakers and lobbyists who court them for influence. Nonprofit newsroom Spotlight PA asked for commun...

It’s understandable that Democrats are fuming about Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency ferreting out waste, fraud and abuse, inasmuch as the people committing the waste, fraud and abuse a...

DURING PASSOVER, the Jewish people remember the liberation of their ancestors from slavery in Egypt. It is a time of reflection and rejoicing. It is marked by solemnity and celebration. On Saturday, G...

To the Editor: In “No pain, no gain” ( MVI, 4-9-25) the letter writer makes a valiant effort to put lipstick on Trump’s tariff war with China. He turns history upside down to imply China betrayed our ...

Much of the public’s attention to the Trump tariff situation focuses on 1) each person’s individual loss, or possible loss, in the stock market and 2) whether tariffs will result in inflation going fo...

To the Editor: Why doesn’t the left deal with facts, instead of spewing out DNC talking points? While reading some of these “Letters to the Editor,” I wonder why they want this country and Trump to fa...

1. President Donald Trump’s so-called “trade war.” Many call the American effort to obtain either tariff parity or a reduction in the roughly $1 trillion trade deficit and 50 years of consecutive trad...

Pope Francis making snow angels. That image adorned the cover of an issue of The New Yorker in December 2013. I have a coffee mug I picked up in Rome early on in his pontificate depicting him as a sup...

ACCORDING TO PENNSYLVANIA LAW, your land is not your possession and affords no expectation of privacy. That was the argument Deputy Attorney General Anthony Kovalchick made to the Pennsylvania Supreme...

AMERICAN GOVERNMENT is representative. We pull from our neighbors to find the people who should lead us. But we don’t put those people in place forever. Or at least, we don’t plan on it. Frequently, h...

It’s the middle of April in twenty-five, and hardly a man or woman is now alive who knows by heart the opening of the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem that once was memorized by generations of American...