Mar 23, 2025 –PITTSBURGH —Letter carriers in Pittsburgh participated in a nationwide rally Sunday in an effort to protect the United States Postal Service from what they say President Donald Trump’s proposed budget cuts and privatization could do to the organization and its workers.
The rally was held by the local union of Branch 84 alongside the National Association of Letter Carriers in the North Shore, which represents 2,800 carries in Allegheny, Washington, and Beaver counties.
“We’re here to gather together to say no,” Paul Rozzi, president of the Pennsylvania State Association of Letter Carriers, told Pittsburgh’s Action News 4. “We don’t want any of those things to happen. It doesn’t only affect us, but it affects every patron.”
The rallies across the nation come as Trump proposed moving the U.S. Postal Service under the control of the Commerce Department in what would be an executive branch takeover of the agency, which has operated as an independent entity since 1970.
Trump made the remarks at the swearing-in of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. He called the move a way to stop losses at the $78 billion-a-year agency, which has struggled to balance the books with the decline of first-class mail.
“We hope that the Trump administration hears this message and we’re not at war, but we’re prepared to fight like hell,” president of Branch 84 National Association of Letter Carriers of Pittsburgh Ted Lee said.
USPS says about 640,000 people would be affected by these changes if passed.
Town halls have become potent political theater early in Donald Trump’s second term, and Lee told a friendly crowd that Democrats must try different tactics in a “failing democracy.”
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee speaks at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Pittsburgh’s Hill District on March 20, 2025, in a town hall meeting. (Photo by Cameron Croston/PublicSource)
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee made a case for bolder action from elected Democrats at a town hall event Thursday evening, speaking to hundreds of constituents as her party tries to find its footing during the chaotic first months of Donald Trump’s second term as president.
Lee, a second-term Democrat from Swissvale, took questions at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. Constituents asked questions about Trump’s moves to drastically change federal policy on education and housing, potential cuts to Medicaid and Social Security and environmental issues.
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, speaks at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Pittsburgh on March 20, in a town hall event to solicit input and answer questions about the federal government two months into the second administration of President Donald Trump. (Photo by Cameron Croston/PublicSource)
It was a friendly crowd for Lee in the historical heart of Black Pittsburgh, a neighborhood and city that reliably vote overwhelmingly Democratic. The crowd applauded and shouted in agreement at many points throughout Lee’s remarks.
Lee argued that Democrats in Congress largely aren’t doing enough to push back on Trump’s agenda so far, echoing widespread criticism from the party’s rank and file that intensified after Senate Democrats provided votes to pass Trump’s budget measure last week.
Her comments were in response to a question from audience member Veronica Pratt, who said that most elected Democrats “are not meeting the moment.”
“There are a lot of people in Congress,” Lee said, “… who have been there for a very long time. Institutional knowledge is typically very important. But the things that worked for us even two years ago cannot work in a failing democracy. And we are in a failing democracy right now.”
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, speaks to town hall meeting attendees at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Pittsburgh’s Hill District on March 20, 2025. (Photo by Cameron Croston/PublicSource)
An attendee at a town hall meeting holds a sign while waiting in line outside Ebenezer Baptist Church in the Hill District. U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, held the meeting to hear concerns about changes in the federal government since President Donald Trump’s inauguration two months prior. (Photo by Cameron Croston/PublicSource)
Attendees hold up signs in front of Ebenezer Baptist Church in the Hill District while waiting in line for a town hall meeting with U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, on March 20. (Photo by Cameron Croston/PublicSource)
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, speaks to town hall meeting attendees at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Pittsburgh’s Hill District on March 20, 2025. (Photo by Cameron Croston/PublicSource)
An attendee at a town hall meeting holds a sign while waiting in line outside Ebenezer Baptist Church in the Hill District. U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, held the meeting to hear concerns about changes in the federal government since President Donald Trump’s inauguration two months prior. (Photo by Cameron Croston/PublicSource)
In what may have been a veiled reference to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, Lee said “there’s no shame” in elder leaders stepping aside.
“If you’ve served for 40 years, if you’ve served your time and this isn’t the moment you’re willing to fight back … then maybe it’s OK to step aside,” she said.
The gathering was the latest representation of local opposition to the White House, where President Donald Trump has used his first two months back in power to begin a sweeping remaking of the federal government, shut down refugee resettlement and launch a large-scale deportation campaign.
Activist-led protests have occurred on city streets at times since the Jan.
“We’re going to see actions and they’re going to escalate across the country,” Lee said.
Long an unassuming part of American democracy, town hall meetings have gained added significance this year. Republican congressional leadership observed a surge in protests at town halls held by GOP lawmakers, and urged them to stop holding the meetings. Democrats, meanwhile, have seen the open gatherings as opportunities to galvanize opposition to Trump.
Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, speaks at a town hall meeting at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Pittsburgh’s Hill District on March 20. (Photo by Cameron Croston/PublicSource)
In sharp contrast to the Trump administration’s focus on removing any references to diversity and multiculturalism from government spaces, Thursday’s town hall began with a rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” commonly referred to as the Black national anthem.
The first question from the audience concerned Trump’s move just hours earlier to attempt to begin shutting down the federal Department of Education via executive order.
Lee predicted dire implications for residents, noting that the federal government provides thousands of dollars per student for Pittsburgh schools and predicting that if that money stops, schools will falter or the cost will be passed onto local property taxpayers.
“If you cut and you gut public education, any child can be left behind,” Lee said. “… What does that mean for the future of America?”
Another audience member asked about the influence of billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk on the government. Musk was Trump’s biggest campaign backer last year, spending a quarter billion dollars to boost his candidacy and those of other Republicans, and now has a wide-ranging role in shaping White House policy. Musk and the Musk-inspired Department of Government Efficiency have focused on making significant cuts to the federal workforce, sometimes going further than federal judges will allow and leading to lapses in federal services.
Lee railed against the “idiocracy of Elon Musk and those babies he has working for him” and said she would use her seat on the House Oversight Committee to probe his business conflicts of interest.
Charlie Wolfson is PublicSource’s local government reporter. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org.
Mr. Deluzio represents Pennsylvania’s 17th Congressional District.
The New York Times Op-Ed
March 7, 2025 – Democrats have wasted no time rejecting President Trump’s tariffs as “damaging” and “unnecessary.” My colleagues have lampooned them as “irresponsible,” “bad economics” and purely a tax on consumers. This anti-tariff absolutism is a mistake.
I’m a Rust Belt Democrat from a swing district in Western Pennsylvania — where lousy trade deals like NAFTA stripped us for parts.
Many of my constituents support smart tariffs, particularly ones that target China, and so do I. Watching my colleagues on the Hill, it’s clear we’re missing the mark. Democrats need to break free from the wrong-for-decades zombie horde of neoliberal economists who think tariffs are always bad.
Mr. Trump’s tariff approach has been chaotic and inconsistent. There’s no doubt about that. But the answer isn’t to condemn tariffs across the board. That risks putting the Democrats even further out of touch with the hard-working people who used to be the lifeblood of the party — people like my constituents.
Instead, Democrats should embrace tariffs as one component of a broader industrial strategy to revitalize American manufacturing and make whole communities that have been hollowed out by decades of bad trade policy. This isn’t just about making the economy work for more Americans; it’s also about earning back the trust and faith of the people we need to win elections and who ought to be at the heart of the Democratic Party.
Since the 1990s, presidents from both parties pushed trade agreements that were great for corporate bosses and their Wall Street overlords, but a disaster for districts like mine. American companies offshored production to take advantage of cheap labor in countries like Mexico, which for decades have crushed independent unions to keep wages rock bottom. Later, firms shifted production to China and Vietnam, which are often called out for employing beggar-thy-neighbor tactics like wage suppression, enormous subsidies and currency manipulation to jack up their exports.
For too long, we absorbed these unfair imports and created a chronic trade deficit that deindustrialized our nation and fueled income inequality. In 2004, the grandfather of modern trade economics, Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson, revealed how offshoring could cost American workers more in relative wages than they gained from cheaper imported goods, making the current trade regime a bad deal for most Americans.
Tariffs are one of a few tools that can break this cycle: They force mercantilist countries to increase their domestic consumption of what they produce because they can no longer dump it in the United States. Increasingly, policymakers — of all political stripes — recognize that tariffs can help protect industries that are key to our economic and national security, boost American production and wages, and safeguard workers’ rights as well as our air and water by incentivizing firms to raise their labor and environmental standards.
If you oppose all tariffs, you are essentially signaling that you are comfortable with exploited foreign workers making your stuff at the expense of American workers. I am not and neither are most voters. Many polls show that Americans — especially the three-fifths without college degrees — support tariffs in part, economists have suggested, because communities harmed by global competition view them “as a sign of political solidarity.” The Biden administration, to its credit, tripled tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum imports. So, why is the Democrats’ only message on tariffs that they raise prices? That was the play during the 2024 election and it flopped. Just last month, a CBS poll found that a majority of Americans one, thought Mr. Trump was not focused enough on lowering prices, two, believed that tariffs could increase prices and three, still wanted tariffs on China.
Rather than reflexively condemning all tariffs, Democrats should be highlighting how Mr. Trump’s scattershot threats, unanchored to any real industrial strategy, will not deliver on the goals of rebuilding American manufacturing, raising wages or rebalancing trade.
For one thing, tariffs are effective only when used in a predictable and stable way — and the Trump administration’s approach has been anything but. On Feb. 1, Mr. Trump announced he was imposing new 10 percent tariffs on China and fixing part of a trade scam that allows four million packages to enter the United States daily without facing tariffs, taxes or meaningful inspection — simply because they’re labeled “low value.” Not only does this “de minimis” loophole undermine U.S. producers and retailers, but traffickers also often exploit it to sneak in deadly fentanyl-laced pills and fentanyl precursor chemicals. Days after his announcement, Mr. Trump flip-flopped and reopened the loophole. He raised China tariffs another 10 percent on March 4 — good! But still, the loophole means billions in Chinese imports can evade tariffs and inspections.
Mr. Trump’s chaotic tariff two-step — imposing, delaying, threatening and then again imposing tariffs, including on allies like Canada with whom we mainly have balanced trade — is bad business for America. Entrepreneurs ready to invest in production here sit on the sidelines, wondering where the tariff roller coaster will stop. (Continued)
Photo: High voltage electrical equipment at the University of Pittsburgh’s GRID Institute at the Energy Innovation Center in Pittsburgh’s Hill District on Feb. 10. (Photo by Quinn Glabicki/PublicSource)
As research and investment flow to the region, Pittsburgh strives to develop a workforce to build the green energy future.
By Quinn Glabicki and Alice Crow PublicSource
February 24, 2025 -Brandon Grainger stood beneath a towering, 13,800-volt webwork of power lines and transformers constructed inside a laboratory at the Energy Innovation Center in the Hill District, home to the University of Pittsburgh’s GRID Institute. Solar panels layer the sawtooth roof and a prototype wind turbine spins high above the parking lot. Both provide energy to the lab, and a research opportunity for those seeking to understand how to best integrate renewable energy.
As power demands increase from booming tech and AI development, the GRID Institute studies how to efficiently get electricity where it’s needed, and Grainger and other professors prepare students to eventually work in advanced industry.
But concerns persist, and a question remains: Do we have enough labor — from doctoral candidates to electricians — to meet the demands of the future?
“Well, the answer is no,” said Granger, an associate professor of electrical engineering. His graduate students, mostly electrical engineers, are being hired nearly eight months before they graduate, he said, and undergraduates, too, are being scooped up by industry well before they leave campus.
Industrial electrical equipment with interconnected metal structures and cylindrical components in a facility.
Southwestern Pennsylvania has the industrial capacity and hard-working heritage to be a bedrock of green energy manufacturing and development at a time when climate-friendly projects awaiting connection to the grid could go a long way toward addressing energy supply challenges.
Research and investment is already flowing to the region, but as green energy development accelerates, the local stock of legacy labor might not match the demand for workers, potentially posing a serious risk to the sector’s development amid quality control issues and delays. At the same time, local efforts are striving to train and graduate new workers to help meet the need. (Next page)
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, speaks to town hall meeting attendees at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Pittsburgh’s Hill District on March 20, 2025. (Photo by Cameron Croston/PublicSource)
An attendee at a town hall meeting holds a sign while waiting in line outside Ebenezer Baptist Church in the Hill District. U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, held the meeting to hear concerns about changes in the federal government since President Donald Trump’s inauguration two months prior. (Photo by Cameron Croston/PublicSource)
Attendees hold up signs in front of Ebenezer Baptist Church in the Hill District while waiting in line for a town hall meeting with U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, on March 20. (Photo by Cameron Croston/PublicSource)
Beaver County Blue: Voice of the 17th CD of Progressive Democrats of America 