With polls showing most voters don’t like the Trump/Project 2025 regime’s compulsion to demolish what’s made this country great, some pundits say even our red congressional district is in play.
That’s why every voter should take a hard look at the candidates. GOP incumbent Dan Meuser sees his real job as cheerleading, sugarcoating, and rubber-stamping the regime’s policies, while Democratic challenger Rachel Wallace wants to reverse as many of them as possible.
Their first and unfortunately only debate was a rare opportunity to compare them side by side. And it’s still available for streaming.
Organized by the Schuylkill Chamber of Commerce, it wasn’t everything I hoped for.
Some vital issues weren’t addressed, and Donald Trump, the biggest elephant in the room, was barely mentioned.
As moderator, Chamber President Bob Carl addressed Wallace as “Rachel” but Meuser as “Congressman.” Aside from that, he kept his promise to be fair and impartial, even though his organization has Meuser’s campaign committee as a member and a Meuser staffer on its board.
But thanks to Wallace, Meuser had to answer for his allegiance to this corrupt, incompetent, and destructive regime, and she clearly presented herself as the better candidate.
She listed commonsense ways that Congress could stop the damage from Donald Trump’s Iran war, capricious tariffs, and One Big Beautiful Bill for Billionaires while calmly taking Meuser to task for supporting them.
Forced to try to justify his unjustifiable positions, Meuser responded the way he does when he ventures beyond the MAGAverse: He sweated, snarled, denied, lied, and insulted Wallace. And he spewed so many whataboutisms that debate viewer Lisa Hollenbach posted that he apparently thinks he’s running against Joe Biden. (Or perhaps Barack Obama.)
Wallace 1, Meuser 0
Wallace’s best moment and Meuser’s worst came when he said we’re at war to keep Iran from developing nuclear bombs. (He must have forgotten that Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Obama administration’s deal that accomplished that.)
But anyway…
“Have we stopped Iran?” Wallace asked Meuser. “Don’t they still have uranium and missiles and drones? Are we safer today than we were eight months ago?
“No, we’re paying more for gas and home heating oil. These policies have failed.”
After several seconds of silence, Meuser started bashing Biden.
Carl tried to move on to the next question, but Meuser had more to say: “Pardon me, Bob, but it has not gone as planned, but the goal is …”
(Fortunately for him, Carl cut off debate before anyone could remind Meuser that planning for the war was either haphazard or nonexistent.)
Fact checks
Although Meuser vehemently denied voting to keep state and local governments from regulating artificial intelligence and data centers, that restriction was in a version of the One Big Beautiful Bill for Billionaires that he and nearly all GOP House members said “yea” to in May 2025. The Senate removed that provision.
Meuser also claimed he didn’t vote for tax breaks for data center developers, but they’re getting hefty ones, especially for projects in rural “opportunity zones,” because of corporate tax benefits the OBBB for Billionaires provides. He could have pushed to exclude data centers from those windfalls, as some House Democrats proposed last month.
Wallace never used the word “billionaires” during the debate, but Meuser complained that Democrats say the GOP is working for them.
He said he doesn’t know any but immediately acknowledged he may know one whose car has “wood on the side.”
Hmmm. I guess he’s not as tight with Trump or Elon Musk as his namedropping would have people believe.
Where Wallace stands
In our district, “we know what Congress needs to do,” Wallace said. “Lower costs. End the disastrous war in Iran. End these destructive tariffs. Hold health insurance companies accountable.
“Take on fraud and corruption so Washington actually works for us, and ban congressional stock trading.
“Stand up to AI data centers so that our communities get a say, not a bill.
“And show up, listen and fight for us.”
She also said she would vote to restore health care funding that the OBBB for Billionaires removed.
And she’d help protect Social Security, citing bipartisan legislation to raise the maximum income level subject to the payroll tax.
What was missing:
* Trump’s tacit approval of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Even people who don’t care about this barbaric act should worry that waiving sanctions against the Russian tyrant will just mean more aid and comfort for Iran.
* The erosion of civil rights, from ICE’s wanton brutality to the regime’s lawfare against critics of Trump to his blatant attempts to rig this election.
Meuser called it “a contest for the heart and soul of this country.” I agree. The problem is that he and his party have shown they lack both.
If the GOP retains control of Congress, its leaders’ power will be virtually unlimited. And it won’t matter one bit if we Americans don’t like how they use it.
P.S. Meuser has held just one public in-person town hall, a small one last December, and that was after years of pressure from constituents. I don’t recall any when he ran in 2018 for his first term.
Wallace has scheduled in-person town halls for Wednesday and Thursday and has held seven in the past year, including one for western Schuylkill County residents who opposed a since-cancelled plan by the Department of Homeland “Security” to overwhelm the area with an immigrant concentration camp. Meuser never met with them and even suggested this atrocity might be a good thing.
In short, Wallace is already doing what Meuser should.
Photo by Jacqueline Dormer
Canary note: Opinions expressed in any Op-Ed column appearing on this site are the views of the writer and are not necessarily the opinions of Coal Region Canary.
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