Illegal immigration clearly is the top election year issue for Republicans, both at the national and state level, even if a majority of West Virginians have likely never encountered an illegal immigrant within the state’s borders.
“Moving us forward into the 18th century doesn’t seem to be a good thing to me.†— Delegate Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha.
“At the end of the day, we love, we just love to report the bad. At the end of the day, what we need to do is stand down and see where this thing wraps up.†— Gov. Jim Justice, July 20, 2021, downplaying reports of legal actions against his family-owned businesses by Carter Bank and Trust.
Thursday will mark the midway point of the 60-day legislative session, and although the system is designed to be back-loaded (at least before the current leadership short-circuited the legislative process), by this point in the session, bills to address critical issues facing the state shoul…
Although the Republican legislative supermajority professes to be pro-children, their legislative agendas frequently belie that claim. Consider a couple of bills under consideration this session.
Our Republican legislative supermajority continues its inexorable march toward making West Virginia a theocracy. One of the first bills advanced by the Senate Education Committee this session authorizes the teaching of intelligent design in public schools, which is a polite way of saying cre…
Leave it to Jim Justice to take what should have been a concise, 30- to 35-minute State of the State address and turn it into 86 minutes of bloviation.
I was running the numbers, and to my astonishment, this will be my 35th regular session of the Legislature, and my third in semi-retirement.
Many reporters, myself included, have written at length about how a series of “flat†state budgets are effectively forcing state agencies and offices to cut spending, compromising their abilities to perform mandated duties.
I’ve previously stated that for Zach Shrewsbury (or whoever the Democratic nominee will be) to have a chance in the 2024 U.S. Senate race, Gov. Jim Justice and Congressman Alex Mooney will have to engage in an ugly, knock-down, drag-out Republican primary that leaves party faithful dispirite…
When Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., announced he would not run for reelection, most pundits declared it a foregone conclusion that the election would be decided in the Republican primary pitting Gov. Jim Justice against Congressman Alex Mooney, R-W.Va.
Throughout their reign, the GOP legislative supermajority has treated public school and public employees as adversaries, perhaps because they are the literal personification of the party’s failure to achieve a core goal of drastically shrinking the size of government and government services.
I fear we are witnessing the death of transparency in state government.
More and more often these days, when state Democratic politicians flip parties, they don’t claim they are acting out of political expediency, but because they feel the national Democratic Party has “left them.â€
Although it hasn’t generated much in the way of headlines, a study in the November issue of the American Journal of Public Health seems to confirm what many of us feared when the Legislature passed a law in 2016 allowing adults to conceal carry firearms without completing gun safety training…
Now that Huntington mayor and former legislator Steve Williams has officially announced his candidacy for governor, political pundits are weighing in on his path, albeit narrow, to victory.
â€The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.†– George Orwell, “1984.â€
In the latest move away from transparency in state government, the state Public Energy Authority has drafted rules for a new law that requires authority approval before power companies can decommission coal, oil, or gas-fired power plants that omit any requirement for public notice of public…
I’ve never followed state high school sports, knowing that if my high school were somehow magically transported to West Virginia, it would dominate in all sports. (Heck, we won the Virginia state high school football championship a few years back.)
Republicans are now in their ninth year in power in West Virginia, and as the old saying goes, the chickens are coming home to roost:
U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., recently launched a media blitz touting the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Welp, as predicted here last weekend, the Legislature stumbled and bumbled its way through a special session that was by no means extraordinary.
With myriad crises facing the state (most of them, including Corrections, foster care, first responders, caused by ongoing systemic underfunding), Gov. Jim Justice and legislative leaders are stumbling and bumbling toward a special session — or not.
As the days count down to the departure of 50 West Virginia National Guard soldiers to Texas, at cost to state taxpayers of some $1.5 million, Gov. Jim Justice doubled down on social media crowing about his response to what he calls the “Biden Border Crisis.â€
Gov. Jim Justice and company recently celebrated a record budget surplus for the just-ended 2022-23 budget year – although as Justice and Revenue Secretary Dave Hardy admitted, the surplus was wildly inflated by deliberately and significantly underestimating state revenue collections.
In the month since passage of the federal debt ceiling bill, we’ve heard little about how the claw-back provisions in the legislation will be carried out.
Glad to see CBS News finally pick up on Gov. Jim Justice’s outrageously grotesque giveaway of millions of taxpayer dollars otherwise known as the “Do It For Babydog†sweepstakes.
As I’ve noted frequently, Democrats are terrible at messaging. State Democrats’ inability to get their message out to voters over the past few years likely contributed mightily to West Virginia flipping red.
The U.S. Census Bureau continues to release data from the 2020 census, recently including population trends from 2010 to 2020, and it’s not good for West Virginia.
West Virginia is facing a Corrections crisis that threatens to explode like a power keg at any moment.
Politics has always been something of a funhouse mirror, distorting reality to fit preconceived opinions.
Things may look grim at the moment for West Virginia Democrats, but history tells us there may be a glimmer of hope heading into the 2024 election cycle.
West Virginia politics is a bundle of contradictions, as we’ve seen recently.
I was walking down Quarrier Street last fall when I heard a familiar voice call out to me, asking the question, “Whatever happened to ethics?â€
It’s no surprise that the state Republican Party last week welcomed into its flock Delegate Elliott Pritt, a one-time card-carrying Socialist Party USA member, given how enamored the state GOP is with the welfare system.
I generally don’t have occasion to quote conservative media pundit Ann Coulter, but a comment she made following Janet Protasiewicz’s double-digit win over Dan Kelly in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race caught my attention.
Gov. Jim Justice, state legislators and statewide elected officials have a fiduciary responsibility to the people of the state to run it in a fiscally responsible manner, a responsibility that they are shirking more and more frequently.
At one point in my statehouse reporting career, I found myself going through stacks of personal emails to and from Gov. Bob Wise (I won’t go into the circumstances here, but you can look it up). One thing that stuck with me was Wise saying that he would not indulge in more than one glass of …
You would think that, having covered the Legislature for thirty-some years, there would be nothing new to see. But the 2023 legislative session featured some firsts (and rarities) for me.
One of my favorite German words is schadenfreude, which roughly translates as deriving pleasure from the misfortune of others.
Our legislators act like they are hell-bent on turning West Virginia into a fundamentalist Christian theocracy.
Sen. Rupie Phillips, R-Logan, made news recently for opposing state funding to attract Form Energy, a manufacturer of high-capacity energy storage batteries, to West Virginia, stating, “This is coal money that we’re giving to a woke company.â€
Gov. Jim Justice has always treated the office of governor as a vaudeville act, but never more so than when he staged his latest dog and pony show, a so-called tax reform roundtable.
Now that the 60-day 2023 regular legislative session has passed the midway point, we can see some themes emerging.
Public schools across the state are in crisis mode.
Perhaps the time has come to take down those “welcome†signs at the state lines, as the Legislature continues to pursue increasingly unfriendly policies this session.
Last week I wrote about how Senate President Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, and Senate leadership were obliterating any pretense of transparency and accountability by ramming through legislation on the Senate floor without one wit of committee review, public hearings or input from experts, the pub…
In my thirtysomething years covering the Legislature (leave it to me to sneak in an obscure pop culture reference), I’ve come to respect and admire the legislative process.
Despite Republican supermajorities, the Legislature is approaching the start of the 2023 60-day regular session Wednesday with anything but unanimity.
What a dark, twisted year it has been in the world of West Virginia politics.
Jim Justice’s contemplation of a run for U.S. Senate seems to be more a matter of it being a prize he thinks he can win, as opposed to being a public service opportunity he covets.
It’s been said that Jim Justice campaigned harder against Amendment 2 than he ever campaigned for himself, and there’s something to be said for that.
One of the key reasons for Gov. Jim Justice’s inexplicably high approval ratings is his uncanny ability to talk out of both sides of his mouth on any given issue.
