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Thank you to the community for a successful United Way golf event To the Editor: The 2026 United Way of Mifflin-Juniata’s Golf United Classic was held on May 8 at the Lewistown Country Club. This was the fifth annual Golf United Classic event, and it was a great success. This event was a fantastic example of the supportive and giving nature of our communities. We want to thank our sponsors who made this day a success. Special thanks go to our title sponsor Geisinger College of Health Sciences! We also wish to thank our Ace sponsor Juniata Valley Bank, and our Eagle sponsors: ...

Senate to defer pay during shutdowns

Editorials

Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on much these days, but you can bet they share an aversion to political suicide. Consider this week’s Senate vote on a bill related to government shutdowns. On Wednesday, members of the upper chamber adopted a resolution to withhold their pay — most make $174,000 a year — during future shutdowns. The vote was unanimous. No surprise. Who’s willing to go on record demanding his or her own paychecks keep coming when federal workers are sent home without pay? Shutdowns have become increasingly more common in recent years as political ...

Asphalt, oil and the high cost of smooth roads

Editorials

Planning a government budget — large or small — requires a little clairvoyance. Not only does it demand looking back at the history of what was needed, but there also has to be a crystal ball to anticipate the unpredictable. One of the most prominent examples is road maintenance. Clear, usable roads are necessary for everything from economy to education to emergencies. They need to be traversable in winter, which means road salt and functioning plows. They need to be repaired in good weather, which means asphalt and heavy equipment. Planning ahead is smart. It also can be almost ...

People carry burden of Spirit departure

Editorials

The consequences of war, economic policy and big business make headlines. They get talked about on cable news shows. They are discussed in board rooms and government hearings. Those are big-picture topics. They matter on a macro scale but can be hard for people to connect to their communities. The community felt it in Unity Township last week. Twenty-five workers at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport lost their jobs in the fallout from Spirit Airlines abruptly shutting down operations. Two more employees saw their hours cut. The Transportation Security Administration has informed the ...

Israel: A 78-Year-old miracle

Editorials

On May 14, 1948, Israel declared its independence. It did so following a United Nations vote to partition British-ruled Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The fact Israel is still here and still flourishing 78 years later is a modern-day miracle. On the very day of its declaration, that beleaguered nation with fewer than 1 million people was attacked by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, a coalition with a combined population more than 30 times greater. Since then, Israel has resisted aggression undertaken by its neighbors in 1967, 1973 and 2023. A loss in any one of ...

Why the Nevada state treasurer race matters

Editorials

It's challenging enough to pay attention to political races in our home states, much less those in other states. But recent headlines make clear that it's more important than ever that the klieg lights shine on these offices, and that those who occupy them face national as well as regional scrutiny. Remember Tiffany Henyard, the self-proclaimed Democrat "super mayor" of tiny Dolton, Illinois? Her unaccounted-for spending was so bad that the village brought in former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to investigate; Lightfoot's work revealed that the village of Dolton went from having a ...