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Editorial Encore: Project 2025: A plan to destroy democracy

EDITOR'S NOTE: This editorial is adapted from one that ran Sept. 8, 2023. “Led by the long-established Heritage Foundation think tank and fueled by former Trump administration officials ...  the idea is to have the civic infrastructure in place on Day One … to gut the ‘administrative state’ from within, by ousting federal employees they [Trump-era Republicans] believe are standing in the way of the president’s agenda and replacing them with like-minded officials … The goal is to avoid the pitfalls of Trump’s first years in office, when … policies were met with ...

The Good, the Bad and the Stupid 8

Good: HB 5516 — “prohibiting the use of deep fake images for the nonconsensual disclosure of private intimate images; prohibiting the unlawful depiction of nude or partially nude minors or minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.” Similar to the bills on child porn, this one makes it illegal to manipulate images to make it appear a real person doing or saying something they are not, specifically in the context of sexual activity, then sharing those images or videos. Think “revenge porn,” except that, while the person depicted is real, the images aren’t. Bad: HB ...

Improving relations between the police and the community

Morgantown Police Chief Eric Powell recently said he’s looking to foster a change in officers’ attitudes moving forward. “There’s lots of issues right now with our department when it comes to professionalism and how they treat people and how they talk to people, and I’m in the process of addressing that right now. They’re not using de-escalation techniques … I don’t want that to be how we operate.” That’s a step in the right direction, and we applaud Powell for his willingness not only to acknowledge these issues, but to work on addressing them. There’s been ...

W.Va. didn’t fund education. Now it can’t make a budget

There’s a special irony in the West Virginia Legislature calling for a national constitutional convention over fiscal responsibility when the state can’t even pass a full budget this session because it faces a possible $465 million clawback of federal COVID funds. Over the last several years, West Virginia, like many other states, has been drawing millions of dollars from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund. The important caveat on these dollars was that spending on education had to remain proportional to what it was before the pandemic, in ...

‘Media’ is not hiding the ‘truth’

Social media posts’ favorite tagline is some variation of “The mainstream media won’t tell you this …” followed by text or images of something that may or may not have been covered by traditional print or cable media. And if it is something that hasn’t been covered by the media, there’s probably a good reason for it. This is true of a variety of topics ranging from disease (think, COVID-19), to protests, to wars like the ones in Ukraine and Gaza. These posts purport to show “true” things that you won’t see on the 11 o’clock news or in the New York Times, then ...

The Good, the Bad and the Stupid 7

Good: SB 740 and SB 471 — both of which deal with digital technology and child pornography. SB 740 would make it illegal to use digital manipulation to alter any sexually explicit media (image, video, etc.) to include the image of an actual minor to make it look like the minor is engaging in sexually explicit conduct. This includes any image of a minor, even if that person is no longer a child or is deceased but was a minor when the picture was taken. SB 741 deals with generative artificial intelligence (AI), which can be used to create an image or video or sound recording of a ...