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Exactly two years ago, U.S. Steel Corporation announced that the company would turn its Mon Valley operations into a key source of lightweight steel for the automotive industry. At the time, local leaders and company officials called the investment “transformational.” It involved a whopping $1.5 billion upgrade to its Mon Valley Works. On Friday, U.S. Steel said after months of tug-of-war with the Allegheny County Health Department, it is canceling the $1.5 billion upgrade and idling three batteries at Clairton Coke Works by 2023. President Joe Biden said in his joint speech in front of Congress that there there's no...

PITTSBURGH -- They're still there, planted in front of stately homes in wealthy suburban neighborhoods, on flagpoles in middle-class communities, and along the front stoops of inner-city row houses. Whether they say "Trump 2020" or simply "Trump," there are plenty of people who have left their sentiments planted on their own personal hill. It is not just here in Pennsylvania. The signs are not hard to spot as you travel to the Great Lakes, the Midwest, and Appalachia. The reason is complex. People who come from a variety of socioeconomic, religious, and political experiences formed a conservative populist coalition long...

They're still there, planted in front of stately homes in wealthy suburban neighborhoods, on flag poles in middle-class communities, and along the front stoops of inner-city row houses. Whether they say "Trump 2020" or simply "Trump," there are plenty of people who have left their sentiments planted on their own personal hill. It is not just here in Pennsylvania. The signs are not hard to spot as you travel to the Great Lakes, the Midwest, and Appalachia. The reason is complex. People who come from a variety of socioeconomic, religious, and political experiences formed a conservative populist coalition long before...

Thirty years ago, Jason Capps was a young man with ambition, but when he looked around this town near Pittsburgh, where he grew up, all he saw were opportunities slipping away. The coal mines where his father worked were dying; the glass, steel and manufacturing industries were on their last legs. In 1987, when Capps graduated from high school, the unemployment rate was at a staggering 12 percent. “My ability to carve out a future here was limited at best, impossible at worst,” he said. “So I left.” Capps, 51, became a chef and traveled the country honing his skills....

ROARING SPRING, PA. — When the Appvion Inc. paper mill plant shuts its doors for good in two weeks, putting 293 people out of work, it will mark the first significant manufacturing loss in this state since President Biden took office. “We were all completely blindsided,” said state Sen. Judy Ward, who claims she and other local officials had no hint that the plant, founded in 1866, was in danger of shuttering. Mitchell Becker, president of the local branch of United Steelworkers, the union that endorsed Biden for president, said he thought his job — which he’s kept for 25...

PITTSBURGH — One year ago, Lena Carson was pulling straight A's at the city's Creative and Performing Arts School across the river from her parent's home. She also swam every day at the local YMCA in preparation to compete at the annual state competition and enjoyed the everyday social life of a teenager. Today, she is sitting at home. Again. It has been nearly a year since she walked into CAPA, a magnet school she had to earn admission to through a portfolio of her work, and interacted with her teachers or friends. Her daily swims are gone, along with...

Anthem protests began in 2016, when San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat and later knelt during the anthem, followed by several other players for other teams doing the same thing. It was a significant factor in the 8% plunge in viewership for a league that had previously been seen nationwide as a great unifier. That ratings plunge continued the next year after the protests expanded in President Trump's first year in office. This time, the plunge was 9.7%. For years, the NFL was the glue that for generations gave a guy sitting in his game room in East Palestine,...

JOHNSTOWN, Pennsylvania -- Ken Miller walked into one of the four storefronts on the right flank of the Richland Shopping Center, asked if this was where he could change his voter registration, sat down with a purpose and began to fill out the form. "It is time to go," he said flatly as he checked his Pennsylvania driver's license number to place on the form. Miller did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016; he didn't vote for Hillary Clinton either. He is a retired insurance manager and does not like what he sees coming from the party he has...

Miller did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016; he didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton, either. He said he is a retired insurance manager and does not like what he sees coming from the party he has been a part of his adult life. “I just get tired of the game-playing that the Democrats are doing. Everything's just so disgusting today. Something has to change. Well, something's going to change,” he said. Miller is not alone. For the first time that anyone could remember, Cambria County is no longer dominated by Democratic voter registrations. They lost that dominance quietly on...

Jerry Morgan, a longtime Republican grassroots strategist, was on the line. “Potter, I’m glad I caught you,” he said. “I’ve been up all night long, analyzing the results from Pennsylvania. We won by less than 1 percent — 40,000 votes. I’m absolutely convinced if the Mighty American Strike Force had not been here for the past 15 days Trump would not have carried Pennsylvania. Today they are known as the Mighty American Strike Force and their ranks have grown to more than 3,000, with volunteers based in safe red states like Alabama and Mississippi and impossible-to-win blue states like California...

When Salena Zito took a buyout from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review over the summer, she may not have expected that the end of her 11 years at the paper would presage a new, more high profile chapter in her career -- as a reporter who saw Trump's victory coming from miles away. For several months, for outlets ranging from the liberal Atlantic to the red-blooded New York Post, Zito churned out pieces about the supposedly elusive Trump voters that the polls seem to have missed. She wrote that these people take Trump “seriously, not literally.” She wrote a piece about the...

Democrats have placed their focus on bringing in top surrogates to Pennsylvania's colleges and black neighborhoods in an effort to motivate these key demographics to show up to vote for Hillary Clinton in the same numbers they supported Barack Obama. "Clinton so far has shown she is lagging in inspiring these voters – that is why you see (first lady) Michelle Obama at two universities in Pennsylvania Wednesday, Hillary herself in a black neighborhood and with plenty of plans for both [President Barack] Obama and Bill Clinton to do the same thing," said Terry Madonna, political science professor at Franklin...

On his lawn are a variety of signs that tell the story of Spickler — at least, the political story. There is a Trump-Pence 2020 sign, a Trump flag, a Trump Country sign, and an Ohio for Trump banner. Spickler was a lifetime Democrat. He voted for Barack Obama, then switched to Donald Trump in 2016. He cannot wait to show up to vote for him in November and is quick to note the divide in this country. He hopes whoever wins will try to repair it. Outside the Trump headquarters, the door here opens and closes repeatedly as supporters...

Look closer, though, and you can see the changes. Truth be told, there are far more Trump signs than there were in 2016, even though there were a lot of Trump signs in 2016. Nonetheless, there is a deeper change that leaves you perplexed as to where this election is heading for the next 80-plus days. First, a continuation of the visuals: There are a lot of small businesses closed out here, some with signs thanking people for their business while saying they are closing for good, some with signs that are hopeful about coming back, and some boarded up....

But these are no longer traditional times, so elected officials on both sides of the aisle have joined together in a statewide campaign called VoteSafe Pennsylvania to advocate for mail-in ballots for the 2020 presidential election.

And judging by the numbers so far, President Trump drew voters out in force. With almost 98 percent of districts counted, Republicans have cast more than 861,000 ballots for Donald Trump, with 734,000 Democrats voting for Joe Biden. And while it’s still unclear how many people voted in person versus mail-in ballot, some counties are reporting that Trump drew plenty of supporters out of their homes. Most voters who cast in-person ballots in the suburban Pittsburgh county of Beaver, for example, were Republicans, said Daniel Camp, a GOP elected official there. “Republican turnout in person outperformed Democrat turnout in a...

ALLENTOWN, Pennsylvania -- President Donald Trump, speaking to the Washington Examiner ahead of an event at a medical supply facility in this key swing state, took aim at Joe Biden's mental faculties, at one point claiming his Democratic challenger "has absolutely no idea what's happening." Trump was reacting to news that Biden had teamed up with former rival Sen. Bernie Sanders in naming Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez co-chair of a climate change panel, which Trump said would help cost Biden the state of Pennsylvania. "If you asked him who he named, he wouldn't even know it," Trump said. "Joe has absolutely...

TARRS, Pennsylvania -- Five years ago, the plot of land where the Dollar General store sits on Glades Pike was just that: a plot of pastoral greenery located near a row of neatly kept homes in an unincorporated village that once briefly boomed as a coal town. The store's familiar yellow sign with bold, all-capitalized black letters sits slightly back from rolling Pennsylvania Route 31, which runs parallel to both the turnpike and the Lincoln Highway. For many people in the area, the store serves as a quick stop for a forgotten grocery staple or deeply discounted household goods. These...

Pennsylvania is not a slam-dunk for Donald Trump's reelection campaign. That's one takeaway from Tuesday's elections, which turned the Philadelphia suburbs even bluer, as Republicans suffered additional congressional losses following last year's midterms. The Democrats have gone from a 13-5 minority in the House to a 9-9 split. These results in the eastern part of the state "are not helpful to Trump's reelection prospects in Pennsylvania," said Jeff Brauer, political science professor at Keystone College. "The big question will be the extent of enthusiasm of his nonsupporters in the state," Brauer added. "If that outweighs his base support, that will...

This cohort leans Republican now more than ever; a Gallup poll this year shows they favor the GOP by a whopping 25 percentage points. It was as if the Democratic Party didn’t understand how much they needed labor. Oddly, it appears they still don’t. “The working-class voters in my county tend to wonder if the party still wants them,” says Mark Hackel, the Democratic chief executive of Macomb County, Mich., where voters favored Trump over Clinton by 11 percentage points. “They’re not really sure where they fit in.” Mike Mikus, a Democratic strategist who helped guide Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s...