Aug. 23—WILKES-BARRE — Gov. Josh Shapiro this week joined Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) Commissioner Colonel Christopher Paris to celebrate the graduation of the 173rd Cadet Class of the Pennsylvania State Police Academy — one of the nation’s most rigorous and respected law enforcement training programs.
The Governor welcomed 59 new troopers that completed 28 weeks of comprehensive training and will now be assigned to PSP stations across the Commonwealth, where they will begin serving their communities.
“Policing is a noble profession — and the men and women of the Pennsylvania State Police go to work every single day to protect and serve our communities,” said Gov. Shapiro. “Today, these cadets join their ranks after completing one of the most challenging and rigorous law enforcement training programs in the nation. You are the best of us, and now you will carry the responsibility of keeping Pennsylvanians safe.”
“Today is the result of months of hard work, determination, bravery, and selflessness,” said Colonel Paris. “I am proud to call members of the 173rd Cadet Class troopers, and I have full confidence that they will succeed in answering the call to serve, protect, and uphold the law throughout our great Commonwealth.”
Since taking office, Gov. Shapiro has made historic investments in the Pennsylvania State Police — removing outdated barriers to service, expanding recruitment, and providing critical resources to keep communities safe.
The Shapiro Administration has funded eight cadet classes to train over 800 new State Troopers and secured funding to help departments recruit and retain nearly 700 municipal police officers across Pennsylvania. To date, more than 500 cadets have graduated and joined the ranks of PSP under Gov. Shapiro’s leadership.
Nearly $400 million has been secured for the construction of a new state-of-the-art PSP Academy.
The Administration is expanding the use of body-worn cameras across 67 counties to improve transparency and accountability.
Since Governor Shapiro took office, gun violence is down 42% and gun deaths by firearm are down 38% across Pennsylvania. In 2024 alone, violent crime declined nearly 12% compared to 2022.
Rep. Meuser supports bill to expand charter school opportunities and strengthen school choice
U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Dallas, this week cosponsored H.R. 3453 — the Empower Charter School Educators to Lead Act — bipartisan legislation to help experienced educators open new charter schools and expand learning opportunities across the country.
The bill gives states greater flexibility in using funding from the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP). Specifically, it allows states to use up to 5% of their CSP grants for small planning grants to assist educators navigating the complex application process for new charter schools.
Currently, Rep. Meuser said CSP funds cannot be used for planning phases, often forcing teachers and administrators to step away from their jobs and bear financial hurdles to complete applications. This legislation removes that barrier and ensures skilled educators have a fair and supported path to launch schools that meet their communities’ needs.
Rep. Meuser said proponents of the legislation argue that charter schools consistently deliver strong academic outcomes, with higher graduation rates and improved test scores in reading and math.
Rep. Meuser said expanding charter access is a critical component of school choice, empowering parents to choose the right educational setting for their children — rather than being locked in by geography or under-performing school districts.
“Charter schools provide families with more choice and students with new opportunities to succeed,” said Rep. Meuser. “By supporting experienced educators at the planning stage, this legislation removes barriers, strengthens accountability, and helps meet the demand from parents seeking alternatives to under-performing schools. Every child deserves access to a high-quality education, and expanding school choice through charter schools is an important part of that mission.”
Rep. Meuser also noted how charter school expansion complements broader reforms enacted through the One Big Beautiful Bill. Included in that legislation is a new federal tax credit scholarship program giving parents new control over their children’s education.
Starting in 2027, donors can receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit — up to $1,700 annually — for contributions to nonprofit scholarship organizations that provide K — 12 assistance. These flexible scholarships can cover tuition, tutoring, books, uniforms, transportation, technology, and special-needs services, empowering low- and middle-income families with real educational options.
Rep. Meuser said the urgency of this effort is underscored by troubling state education outcomes. He said according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Nation’s Report Card, 69% of Pennsylvania’s eighth grade students are not proficient in either math or reading.
The Empower Charter School Educators to Lead Act was reported out of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce favorably in June and now awaits consideration on the floor.
PennDOT reminds Pennsylvanians to drive responsibly ahead of Labor Day weekend
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) this week joined the PSP and safety partners to urge Pennsylvanians to celebrate responsibly ahead of the Labor Day holiday.
PSP and local municipal police agencies will be conducting impaired driving enforcement details as part of the National Crackdown on Impaired Driving enforcement and education campaign running through Sept. 1.
Over the Labor Day holiday weekend last year — Friday, Aug. 30, 2024, through Monday, Sept. 2, 2024 — there were 1,002 crashes statewide, resulting in 13 fatalities and 722 injuries. Of those crashes, 106 were alcohol related, resulting in four fatalities and 65 injuries; and 27 were drug-related, resulting in three fatalities and 22 injuries.
“These numbers should be zero,” said PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll.
Reach Bill O’Boyle at 570-991-6118 or on Twitter @TLBillOBoyle.
Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro greets supporters in Lititz. Photo: Alex Kent for New York Magazine
Rallies of serious electoral consequence aren’t usually held deep in a farm on Butter Road at 10 a.m. on a weekday. But last Thursday morning, in Lititz, Pennsylvania, a few hundred mostly older white voters gathered outside a barn covered in solar panels, clutching “Eagles Fans for Harris” signs, and swaying as they heard a parade of local Republicans reveal their support for Kamala Harris and their revulsion with Donald Trump. Jim Greenwood, who’d been recruited to run for Congress by Newt Gingrich three decades ago, diagnosed Trump with malignant narcissism and reassured anyone who worried that Harris was too liberal that Congress would have plenty of Republicans so she’d have to reach across the aisle. Speaker after speaker, including Georgia’s former Republican lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan, brought up John Kelly’s warning that his former boss is a fascist. Men in t-shirts identifying themselves as veterans nodded quietly next to guys in Teamsters hoodies and a grave-looking woman holding a “Republicans for Harris” sign as Georgia senator Raphael Warnock, the first Democrat to speak, declared the election would be a “moral moment in America” and a test of the country’s character. The crowd of a few hundred nodded and applauded politely, and lit up a bit as Warnock spoke.
But these voters were clearly waiting for the keynote speaker.
When Josh Shapiro stepped forward to the lectern, he seemed unsurprised by the volume of cheers, like he was used to it. Pennsylvania’s governor, dressed in a dark suit with no tie and black leather dress sneakers, thanked Duncan and Warnock for coming to conservative Lancaster County, talked up Harris’s economic agenda, and quickly pivoted to Trump. The ex-president, he argued, didn’t even have the baseline “level of respect that we try and teach our kids every day,” he said. “Donald Trump is constantly trying to create ‘others’ in our society, trying to separate people out.”
He celebrated the country’s and state’s recent economic gains, then built towards a patriotic crescendo, nearly yelling: “This is a great nation, and we should have leaders that want to lift us up, not tear us down! I’m proud to be an American and I want a president who’s proud of his nation!” He was clearly playing for the cameras at the back of the crowd, abutting a sprawling pasture, not far from a leftover cow pie. It was obvious that the voters who’d traveled to the out-of-the-way event on a working morning were likely already converted to the Harris cause, but his real audience was current and former Republicans who might be watching on the local news and may prove critical to delivering the state to Harris.
The final campaign stretch is proving to be a practically sleepless one for Shapiro, who was scheduled to criss-cross the state for in-person events and interviews for the remainder of the election. By the end of the week, he was slated for his 60th appearance for Harris since she became their party’s nominee three months ago, the vast majority of them in Pennsylvania, where he is unquestionably her top surrogate after falling just short of being selected as her running mate. It’s a strange position for Shapiro, who is still celebrated by Democrats for his blowout win in the governor’s race two years ago, but who is now a prominent face of a campaign that will likely be won or lost not on the airwaves, but with door-knocking and voter mobilization — operations over which he has no significant influence.
That morning, a poll conducted by Franklin and Marshall College, just 25 minutes away from the farm, also in Lancaster County, was the latest to call the Trump-Harris race an effective tie. For days I’d been hearing Democrats sigh that they wouldn’t be surprised if the state’s final margin ended up in the area of 20,000 votes, a quarter the size of Joe Biden’s historically tight win four years earlier. Yet those same Democrats all had the same reason for cautious confidence: the campaign’s 2 million door-knocks, its 50 offices and more than 475 staffers in Pennsylvania, compared to the mysterious absence of Trump’s ground game, which appears to have been largely outsourced to Elon Musk’s super PAC.
“Why am I optimistic, and why am I not worried about polls that show it to be a statistical dead heat? I think the groundwork has been laid more effectively by Kamala Harris,” Shapiro, 51, told me a few minutes after he left the stage in Lititz. “I think the Harris ground game is far more effective than Donald Trump in driving up the turnout, and I really do think at the end of the day, for those voters who are going to walk into the polls on November 5, they do not want to go back to the chaos of Donald Trump. All of those things combined are going to lead to a Harris victory.”
Shapiro has been at the center of the Democrats’ push from the start, but especially since Harris, who is far less familiar to Pennsylvanians, took over the ticket from Biden, a native son who represented neighboring Delaware in the Senate for decades. Shapiro’s blitz on TV and on the campaign trail was to support her candidacy, but also to pursue his own ambition to become her running mate, though he has kept at it even after Harris picked Tim Walz. Notably, he introduced Harris in Philadelphia when she introduced Walz as her veep candidate, and other tentpole moments followed: He was ubiquitous at her convention in Chicago the next month and was the first person in the spin room to declare victory for her after her debate with Trump in September. More recently, he addressed Harris’s top donors at their final retreat in Philly and joined governors Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Tony Evers of Wisconsin on a bus tour through their states. But most of his campaign work has been less splashy. In addition to barnstorming, he has done more than 30 television, radio, and podcast interviews, including on local stations that have been featuring him for years but draw no national attention.
Harris’s Pennsylvania operation has been happy to rely on him to do public messaging, for obvious reasons. Most Democratic research shows that Shapiro is by far the most popular political figure they have in the state, and at least some suburban voters have been selecting his name on their ballots since he first won a seat in the statehouse 20 years ago. And the internal data also show that many voters perceive Shapiro as a moderate. His 15-point win in 2022’s governor’s race came partially thanks to Republicans who couldn’t stomach his far-right conspiracist opponent, Doug Mastriano. So Shapiro has married events like the one in Lancaster County with appearances on Fox News and the conservative WSBA radio in York.
Shapiro has been accused of copying Barack Obama’s speaking style, and he can sometimes come across like a walking Pennsylvania tourism ad. (At one point on Thursday, as we talked about what distinguishes his state’s voters, he started a sentence with, “This is an incredible, beautiful, wonderful tapestry of America right here in Pennsylvania.”) But in Lititz, his audience was rapt.
“This is a familiar-looking coalition for me. A bunch of Democrats — we got some Democrats in the house — and a bunch of like-minded Republicans and independents who are here as well. You all helped power me forward to give me the opportunity to serve as the 48th governor of this great commonwealth,” he told the crowd from the stage. Now, he continued, “this coalition is being called upon to again do the hard work of winning an election, yes, of helping us get stuff done in this country, yes, but of also saving the nation.”
Still, a few minutes later, off-stage, Shapiro cautioned against directly comparing this race to his last one. For one thing, it might raise expectations unduly in a contest likely to be decided by just a point or less. More specifically, Harris and Trump are known quantities in a race with a much higher likely turnout, and Shapiro is far from the point this time. If anything, some Pennsylvania Democrats say, he is risking his own standing by campaigning so aggressively for Harris given that he won more votes than Biden did when they were both on the ballot in 2020, with Shapiro up for re-election as attorney general. “It would be kind of easy to sit back, not really take a side, and preserve all his gains with Republicans and independents,” says Conor Lamb, the former Pittsburgh-area congressman.
But some longtime Democratic officeholders who’ve watched Shapiro’s rise aren’t so sure. In their eyes, he is a hyper-ambitious political operator who is probably happy to help, but who is also well aware that he could rise to the top of Democrats’ 2028 presidential lists if Harris loses but he maintains visibility in the most hotly contested battleground. This group has long been skeptical of Shapiro, who has occasionally clashed with colleagues in Pennsylvania, including Senator John Fetterman, who himself has appeared repeatedly for Harris within the state — but not alongside Shapiro. To this crowd, it’s gospel that Harris chose Walz over Shapiro not because of personal chemistry with the Minnesota governor or, as the rumor went, because of fear of backlash over Shapiro’s past positions on Israel and his Jewish faith. Rather, they thought he was ruled out because of her discomfort with Shapiro’s apparent ambitions to be president himself one day. Yet Shapiro and Harris have in fact kept in touch since she chose Walz.
There’s little doubt among top Democrats in Pennsylvania that Shapiro does have a unique connection to the state’s voters, but they also believe that it would be stupid to rely on him too much. “I always try to caution people to remember that though he won by a lot, it’s unfair to assign him a burden to try to deliver something outsized,” says Lamb. It’s lost on none of these people that for all his popularity, when he won two years ago Shapiro still received fewer votes than Trump had when he lost Pennsylvania in 2020.
Despite Shapiro’s political stature, he has had relatively little to do with the day-to-day direction of Harris’s statewide campaign. Unlike in states such as North Carolina, where Harris’s campaign is mostly run by advisors to Democratic governor Roy Cooper, the governor’s inner orbit and the Harris campaign’s stateleadership have little overlap. (Many of her Pennsylvania campaign aides have worked in recent cycles for other statewide leaders, like Fetterman.) As a result, he has stayed out of a recent spat that has shadowed the Harris campaign in Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia is the heart of the party’s vote in the state, and one place where Harris will need blockbuster turnout. Some operatives close to the mayor, Cherelle Parker, have groused about Nikki Lu, Harris’s state director who comes from Pittsburgh, specifically blaming her for organizational shortcomings like insufficient yard sign distribution and campaign literature not being translated into the right language. In recent days, some Democrats critical of Lu have been whispering about how not long ago a bus of Chinese Americans fluent in various native languages arrived from New York to canvas Philly’s Chinatown — only to be dispatched to largely Black neighborhoods on the north side of the city.
To hear people close to the Harris operation tell it, these complaints are overblown — and more about specific Philadelphia operatives wanting jobs and credit than any fundamental strategy or expertise problem. (The doors of Chinatown did not need another round of knocking, some Democrats told me this week, so the entire bus saga had been exaggerated in importance.) More than one local Democrat pointed out that many of the complaints — published most prominently in Politico and the Inquirer, but also in the Wall Street Journal — appeared to come from allies of Mayor Parker, and that two of Harris’s in-state leaders managed mayoral campaigns against her last year. Parker herself has appeared with Harris as recently as this week and Harris is slated to spend Sunday campaigning across Philadelphia yet again. Still, Harris supporters have remained concerned about turnout in Philadelphia and this fall Lu’s team brought in a handful of longtime Philly-based strategists, and in recent weeks Paulette Aniskoff, an Obama confidant who ran the state’s field program for him in 2008, joined up to help manage the get-out-the-vote push.
Many Democrats have largely chalked the Philly issues up to what they call organized chaos. “Let’s not forget that in a relatively short period of time we’ve had to coordinate the Biden-Harris team, the Harris-Walz team, the Philadelphia Democratic City Committee, the Pennsylvania State Committee, and a number of former President Obama’s highly successful top team members,” says former mayor Michael Nutter. “On the best day, coordination is always a challenge. But at the end of the day, we always get our shit together.”
Still, the example of 2016 — when Hillary Clinton became the first Democratic nominee to lose the state since 1988 — is never far from anyone’s mind, and everyone on the ground working for Harris believes, as Nutter put it, “the candidate who wins Pennsylvania becomes the next President of the United States of America.” This is not technically true, but it is basic electoral math. The state’s 19 electoral votes are the most of any of the seven battlegrounds, and both parties see their candidate’s likeliest path to victory running through the commonwealth. This has been the case for well over a year, but this fall, the race has become completely unavoidable there: Every suburban street is lined with yard signs and every highway with political billboards, every screen is inundated with campaign ads proclaiming Trump unfit for office, Harris a California extremist, and both candidates the savior of the American economy and your children’s future. When Obama was ready to return to the campaign trail this month, the Harris campaign made sure his first stop was Pittsburgh.
Harris supporters in conservative Lancaster County. Photo: Alex Kent for New York Magazine
But there is no single closing message about Trump for Pennsylvania’s Democrats, perhaps because there can’t be when they’re trying to appeal to so many different kinds of voters who have so many different kinds of thoughts on the ex-president. A simple drive through the state reveals the diversity of messages. In Philadelphia, Richard Hooker Jr., the leader of the city’s Teamsters, considers Trump “a wild man trying to be a dictator.” But when it comes to turning out union members and mobilizing their families and friends in coordination with local Democrats, the labor activist, a UPS package handler and the first Black leader of his local, takes a different tack, telling them that Trump “is the ultimate employer, and he is very anti-worker.” He argues that “Your employer does not want you to have a pension, does not want you to have the right to strike, does not want you to have union wages, does not want you to have a contract. And neither does Trump.”
Shapiro suggested to me that he had yet another preferred approach. His own focus in the final days would be on genuinely undecided voters who are just now beginning to pay attention to the election in the first place. “We live and breathe this stuff, but a lot of folks are just tuning in and they want to know what she’s really like, what she’s really gonna do,” he said in Lititz. For these voters, Shapiro continued, the case against Trump has little to do with fascism. “I think if you’re undecided right now, you care about the future of this country, but you also care about what’s happening in your home, at your job, with your kids, and I want to make sure that there is a clear understanding with those folks about the clear contrast that exists between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump when it comes to those economic issues.”
Lancaster County, which is home to Amish country, is a prime example of the kind of Republican-heavy area where Harris has no real expectation of winning, but where she instead wants to minimize her margin of loss. (Trump won it by 20 points when he first ran and 16 points in 2020.) It’s a significant part of any responsible Democratic strategy in a state whose electoral geography has shifted rapidly in recent years. Both campaigns are spending big chunks of time and energy fighting for votes in the historically Democratic area around Pittsburgh that now skews red — an area where organized labor leaders had been close to Biden but where their rank-and-file has been less convinced by Harris. Meanwhile, though he has focused primarily on immigration and inflation, Trump’s campaign against Harris has also zeroed in on her past support for banning fracking, an important part of the state’s economy. (She has backed away from that position.)
Yet with such a tight expected margin, the campaign has spread far beyond traditional lines, both sides figuring that any small slice of voters could make the difference. Each party has courted the growing Puerto Rican vote around the state, including in mid-sized cities like Bethlehem, as Trump seeks to replicate the kind of inroads with Latino voters he’s seen elsewhere in the country. Harris has spent time in rural corners but has trained much of her focus on building her support in suburban areas, especially those where white women play a significant electoral role — even if they have tended to lean more conservative in previous years. Private polling in congressional races shows Harris taking advantage of a bigger than expected gender gap, largely thanks to her focus on abortion.
Democrats have put an extra emphasis on abortion in the counties around Philadelphia that represent a huge portion of the state’s overall vote. Delaware, Bucks, Chester, and Montgomery — Shapiro’s home base — have more than 2.5 million voters. In 2020, Biden overperformed in these counties, which saved him from slippage within Philadelphia. Now, Harris organizers and advertisers have been fanning out across the counties and saturating the local media market with messaging about Trump’s threat to abortion rights.
It’s Philly itself that still concerns some Democrats. Though Harris is still very likely to win it by a huge margin, many local officeholders remain on edge about turnout there being on a long-term downward trajectory, and how Harris will fare among Black men. Still, some strategists believe the agita about Democrats’ local operation are of the quadrennial anxiety variety rather than serious cause for immediate concern, and that a Harris victory would be the result of Philadelphians turning out in large numbers.
A few hours before we spoke, Shapiro had done an interview on a Philadelphia radio show with a large Black audience and showed up at a barbershop with Warnock. Shapiro has also spent time talking to Jewish Democrats about anti-Semitism, and he is a regular presence on Spanish-language radio in the state. “Any time I can have real, meaningful conversations with people who weren’t expecting to see me, who weren’t expecting to have the ear of their governor, you get for-real for-real from that, and that tells me a lot about the direction a campaign is going to go,” Shapiro said. “You get real talk.”
In Lititz, he was single-minded about trying to appeal to Republicans. Relentlessly on-message, he insisted that he’s just a good soldier, if an especially influential one. “I’ve worked hard to create a bipartisan coalition to get stuff done in Pennsylvania. Well, to win elections, and you see part of that coalition here, but also to govern effectively,” he told me. “So anything I can do to be able to say to independents, and in Republicans in particular, ‘Y’all trusted me, you gave me the keys to the office and I’m delivering for you, I believe Kamala Harris can do the same, so give her a shot” — I’m going to continue to do that, all over Pennsylvania.”
Shapiro and I were standing alone in a field with just his press secretary and a photographer. Across the field, a handful of voters were still staring over at us, hoping for selfies with the governor over half an hour after the event had ended. Warnock, who’d been at Shapiro’s side all morning, was already on his way back to Atlanta, where he’d meet up with Harris, Obama, Bruce Springsteen, Samuel L. Jackson, Spike Lee, and Tyler Perry for a rally with 20,000 Georgians.
Before she joined Warnock in Georgia, Harris spent the morning in Philadelphia. The next morning, as the Democrats were ironing out plans for Bernie Sanders to visit, Walz was scheduled to touch down in Philly himself. About 24 hours after that, it was the Republican ticket’s turn in the state: J.D. Vance was headed to nearby Harrisburg and Trump to State College. But both campaigns are now trying to be everywhere in the state, all the time. That night, not far from the field where Shapiro and I were standing, the Trump team would host its own Lancaster event — a “Make America Healthy Again” town hall in neighboring Manheim with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Phil.
As I drove away from the farm a few minutes after the event ended, I passed an Amish man driving a horse and buggy along the side of the truck-filled highway. He rolled past one Trump 2024 poster — not far from an array of signs accusing Harris of opening the border — turned his carriage away from a cluster of “Republicans for Harris” yard signs, and waited for a while for the traffic to slow down.
Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla and SpaceX who’s gone all-in on Republican Donald Trump’s candidacy for the White House, is pledging to give away $1 million a day to voters for signing his political action committee’s petition backing the Constitution. The offer is sparking questions among election experts about the plan’s legality.
Some experts say it is a violation of the law to link a cash handout to signing a petition that also requires a person to be registered to vote. The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
A source familiar with Musk’s America PAC said, “The PAC is confident in the legality of this initiative and the predictable media meltdown is only helping AmericaPAC’s efforts to support President Trump.”
Musk, the wealthiest person in the world with a fortune of $242 billion, has already committed at least $70 million to reelect the former president and is now ramping up his efforts to get voters in swing states to support Trump. The X owner had previously offered supporters $47 for each registered voter in seven battleground states that they could get to sign his petition, a nod to the fact that the winner of the November 5 election will be the nation’s 47th president.
“Though maybe some of the other things Musk was doing were of murky legality, this one is clearly illegal,” wrote Rick Hasen, a UCLA Law School political science professor, at the Election Law Blog, about the $1 million per-day giveaway.
He pointed to a law that prohibits paying people for registering to vote or for voting.
“The problem is that the only people eligible to participate in this giveaway are the people who are registered to vote. And that makes it illegal,” Hasen said in a telephone interview.
Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, the state’s former attorney general, expressed concern about Musk’s $1 million give-away plan on Sunday.
“I think there are real questions with how he is spending money in this race, how the dark money is flowing, not just into Pennsylvania, but apparently now into the pockets of Pennsylvanians. That is deeply concerning,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Elon Musk’s PAC petition
Musk promised on Saturday that he would give away $1 million a day, until the Nov. 5 election, for people signing his PAC’s petition supporting the First Amendment, which protects freedom of speech, and the Second Amendment, with its right “to keep and bear arms.”
He awarded a check during an event Saturday in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to a man identified as John Dreher. A message left with a number listed for Dreher was not returned Sunday. Musk gave out another check Sunday.
Musk’s America PAC has launched a tour of Pennsylvania, a critical election battleground. He’s aiming to register voters in support of Trump, whom Musk has endorsed. The PAC is also pushing to persuade voters in other key states.
Trump, who was campaigning Sunday in Pennsylvania, was asked about Musk’s giveaway, and said, “I haven’t followed that.” Trump said he “speaks to Elon a lot. He’s a friend of mine” and called him great for the country.
Legal issues with Musk’s $1 million giveaway
Among the election law experts who are raising red flags about the giveaway is Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance lawyer, who noted the latest iteration of Musk’s giveaway approaches a legal boundary.
That’s because the PAC is requiring registration as a prerequisite to become eligible for the $1 million check. “There would be few doubts about the legality if every Pennsylvania-based petition signer were eligible, but conditioning the payments on registration arguably violates the law,” Fischer said in an email.
Michael Kang, an election law professor at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, said the context of the giveaway so close to Election Day makes it harder to make the case that the effort is anything but a incentivizing people to register to vote.
“It’s not quite the same as paying someone to vote, but you’re getting close enough that we worry about its legality,” Kang said.
Typically coordination between campaigns and so-called super PACs had been forbidden. But a recent opinion by the Federal Election Commissioner, which regulates federal campaigns, permitted candidates and these groups to work together in certain cases, including getting out the vote efforts.
Governor Josh Shapiro signed a bill that eliminates licensing for natural hair braiders, making Pennsylvania the 34th state to do so.
The law exempts hair braiders from having to obtain a cosmetology license to practice braiding.
“Natural hair braiding has been commonplace in the African American community for centuries. The techniques have been passed from generation to generation and are learned from early childhood. It does not take formal training to do,” State Rep. Regina Young said. “This is a recognition of the distinct cultural richness of natural hair braiding and that all it takes a comb, a brush and a beautiful head full of hair — no license necessary.”
The bill passed unanimously in the House and with an overwhelming majority in the Senate with a 49-1 vote.
The Institue for Justice responded to the signing of the bill.
“This is another step forward in ensuring that everyone in this great nation has the opportunity to pursue their calling free from unnecessary regulation,” said Meagan Forbes, the Institute for Justice’s Director of Legislation and Senior Legislative Counsel. “We thank everyone who had a hand in helping pass this bill and making sure braiders have every opportunity to succeed.”
According to the institute, the average license for low- and moderate-income jobs in Pa. takes 120 days to obtain and the classes can be very expensive.
The Institute for Justice advocates for the right to earn a living across the country and has a National Braiding Initiative that began in 2014 when only 11 states allowed braiders to work without needing a license.
The legislation was presented by Young and Representative Donna Bullock who stated in a memorandum that natural hair braiding is different from cosmetology.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s legislative Republicans would like to pass additional voter ID requirements, restrict abortion and make election changes to improve their odds of winning judicial races. Democrats want to bump up the state’s minimum wage and widen civil rights for LGBTQ people.
In the closely divided General Assembly, those proposals have gone nowhere.
Next month the state’s voters will determine whether to change that dynamic, filling all 203 House seats and half the 50-member Senate. Democrats go into the election with a one-seat House majority, while in the Senate, Republicans have 28 seats and therefore majority control.
Democrats would need to flip three Senate seats to get the chamber to a 25-25 deadlock, leaving Democratic Lt. Gov. Austin Davis to break ties on procedural votes but not final passage of legislation. They hope to thread the needle by taking GOP seats in Harrisburg, Erie and the Pittsburgh area while returning all of their own incumbents.
This year, a few dozen legislative races across the country could determine party control in state capitols, affecting state laws on abortion, guns and transgender rights. Statehouse control is more politically important in the wake of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions weakening federal regulatory oversight, giving more power to states.
In state House elections, it’s typical that only a couple dozen races are close enough to be competitive — a handful in the Philadelphia suburbs along with others scattered around the state.
Democrats were aided by redrawn district lines when they flipped a net of 12 seats two years ago, retaking majority control after more than a decade in the legislative wilderness. A state House rule linking majority status to the results of elections rather than new vacancies has meant Democrats have maintained control of the chamber floor even as two members resigned this summer and gave Republicans a bare 101-100 margin. Those seats were filled Sept. 17 by Democrats who ran unopposed, and both are also unopposed in the General Election.
This fall, more than half of the House districts have only one candidate on the ballot.
Among the Republican targets in the House is Rep. Frank Burns, a Cambria County Democrat who has somehow stayed in office despite facing biennial GOP challenges in the very Republican Johnstown area. Another is Rep. Jim Haddock, a freshman Democrat who won a Lackawanna and Luzerne district by about 4 percentage points two years ago.
Democrats have hopes of unseating Rep. Craig Williams, R-Delaware, who made an unsuccessful bid for the GOP’s attorney general nomination this spring. Outside Pittsburgh, Rep. Valerie Gaydos is also seen as relatively vulnerable.
Rep. Nick Pisciottano, a Democrat, is giving up his Allegheny County district to run for state Senate. Rep. Jim Gregory lost the Republican primary to Scott Barger, who is unopposed in a Blair County district. Brian Rasel, a Republican, faces no other candidate to succeed Rep. George Dunbar, R-Westmoreland.
Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, D-Philadelphia, is unopposed for reelection but he’s also running for auditor general, raising the possibility the two parties could be tied after the votes are counted.
What to know about the 2024 Election
The state Senate races widely seen as the most competitive are the reelection efforts of Sen. Dan Laughlin, R-Erie, and Sen. Devlin Robinson, R-Allegheny. Dauphin County Sen. John DiSanto, a Republican, is not seeking another term after his district saw significant changes through redistricting. State Rep. Patty Kim, D-Dauphin, and Nick DiFrancesco, a Republican and the Dauphin County treasurer, are facing off to succeed DiSanto.
Democrats have to defend a Pittsburgh state Senate opening because of the retirement of Sen. Jim Brewster, a Democrat. Pisciottano is going up against Republican security company owner Jen Dintini for Brewster’s seat.
Mail-in ballot processing rules could lead to a drawn-out vote count in the pivotal swing state of Pennsylvania. Top election official Al Schmidt is urging voter patience.
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“The things that truly last when men and things have passed, They are all in Pennsylvania this morning.” – Rudyard Kipling in “Philadelphia.”
The failure of Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, to be chosen as Kamala Harris’s running mate reflects the low esteem that Pennsylvania’s political figures are held nationally. Since the nation’s founding, Pennsylvania, once the second largest state in the union, and Philadelphia, once the second largest city, have counted little politically.
Over the years the country’s various political parties, from the Jeffersonians and Federalists to today’s two parties, made few attempts to enlist the city and state’s elites into the heart of national politics. Pennsylvania’s only President, James Buchanan, is regarded as among the nation’s greatest political failures. His inaction during the national crisis over the slavery issue is often credited with helping bring about our Civil War. Since Buchanan, no Pennsylvanian has been a serious candidate for President or Vice President of either major party.
The record of the state’s governors and senators is equally unimpressive as far as national prominence is concerned. This despite the fact that for most of the 20th century, Pennsylvania’s electoral vote was second only to New York’s. It was the solidest of Republican bulwarks, voting for the Grand Old Party in every Presidential election from 1900 to 1932 with the exception of Teddy Roosevelt in his Bull Moose campaign of 1912. Franklin D. Roosevelt held the state for his last three terms, but it reverted Republican in 1948 and remained so until John F. Kennedy, building upon a huge majority in Democratic-dominated Philadelphia, carried the state in 1960. In the last eight Presidential elections it only voted Republican once, narrowly for Donald Trump in 2016.
Over the last 125 years, only one member of the Keystone State achieved national significance: Boies Penrose, a U.S. senator from 1896 to 1921. Penrose, a 300-pound mammoth of a man, had a legendary appetite. A typical breakfast would consist of a dozen eggs, a half-dozen rolls, and an inch-thick slab of ham washed down in a vat of coffee. His appetite for politics also was equally huge. He effectively ran Pennsylvania politics along with Republican party boss Matt Quay and was a major figure nationally for 30 years. He helped engineer the vice presidency for Theodore Roosevelt in 1900, mostly as a way to spite the Republican party boss, Mark Hanna, whom he personally disliked. He also was one of men responsible for Warren Harding winning the presidency in 1920. No other Pennsylvanian since could boast of similar influence.
A case could be made that David Lawrence, a long-time Democratic major of Pittsburgh, former governor and respected voice in the Democratic party, helped Kennedy become president. But he was a minor figure compared to Penrose. Hugh Scott, a long-time Republican member of the House and the Senate, was one of the three Republican elders who told Richard Nixon he had to resign the presidency. But like Lawrence, he was a behind-the-scenes operator with no national ambitions.
The question remains: why has Pennsylvania counted so little nationally? Some historians have argued that Pennsylvania and Philadelphia suffered from an inferiority complex once the state lost influence to New York early in the 19th Century. The nation’s banking center moved from Philadelphia to New York in the 1830s when Andrew Jackson declared war against the Bank of the United States then housed in the city. Financial dominance has remained on Wall Street ever since. The same holds true for Philadelphia’s legal position. The term “Philadelphia lawyer” was once a synonym for honesty and probity and the University of Pennsylvania was once famous for the quality of its graduates. Now Yale and Harvard have long outstripped Penn. The last graduate from Penn’s law school to serve on the Supreme Court was Owen J. Roberts. Famous for casting the vote, “the switch in time that saved nine,” that may have saved the Court from President Roosevelt’s packing plan, Roberts left the Court in 1950. Yale and Havard have dominated the Court since.
Pennsylvania’s major contribution to the nation’s economic development, the coal mining industry, Pittsburgh steel mills and the railroads, gave the state a powerful economic position in the nation into the 20th century, but that failed to translate to political power. The Pennsylvania Manufactures Association carefully nurtured the state economically and politically but lacked any interest in national politics. The Pennsylvania Railroad lost power and influence as the New York Central and the Erie Canal gave the Empire state access to the economically expanding Middle West and Great Lakes region.
Some historians have argued that the state and especially Philadelphia have suffered from an inferiority complex viz a viz as New York became the economic and cultural center but also the sports capital of the nation. For 30 years, Philadelphia matched New York for dominance in the only sport that mattered to the nation, baseball. Christened “White Elephants” by New York Giants Manager John McGraw, Connie Mack’s Athletics won one fewer pennants but two more World Series titles than McGraw’s Giants. But the success of Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees combined with the miserable performance of the two Philadelphia teams, the A’s, and Phillies, further reinforced the state and city’s sense of inferiority.
One of the most interesting and intriguing explanations for both the state’s and its largest city’s sense of inferiority was developed by the historian, R. Digby Baltzell of the University of Pennsylvania, the man who coined the term WASP. Baltzell, an historian as well as sociologist, in a series of books and articles, especially “Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia” argued that Quaker influence with its emphasis on equality and deference was at the core of the state’s reluctance to push itself forward. He contrasted the record of statesmanship beginning with John Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams, down to the Kennedys compared with the quiet deference of the great Philadelphia families, the Drexels, the Ingersolls and the Biddles.
With Shapiro’s rejection for the vice presidency nomination and relative insignificance of current Sens. Robert Casey and John Fetterman – one a quiet party regular and the other a party renegade – I doubt if the state’s political insignificance nationally will change.
John P. Rossi is Emeritus Professor of History at La Salle University.
Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania, greets delegates during the Democratic National Convention at the United Center in Chicago. Photo: Bloomberg via Getty Images
The decision by Kamala Harris to choose Minnesota governor Tim Walz over Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro to be her running mate arrived like a political thunderbolt earlier this month. He seemed like a lock — the overwhelmingly popular governor of the most important swing state — so speculation swirled over why he was snubbed. Was it because he was Jewish and skipping him spared the outrage of anti-Israel activists on the left? Was it because he was too moderate on charter schools? Or was it simply because he just did not vibe with Harris the way Walz did?
Shapiro wasn’t dwelling on it in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention, but reporters were. On Tuesday morning, a gaggle of journalists surrounding him with television cameras and audio recorders asked yet again about why he wasn’t the vice presidential nominee. “Was his religion a factor in him not being chosen as vice president?” asked one. Shapiro quickly insisted he was “proud of his faith” and that this was untrue. Instead, he said it was “being injected into the conversation” by Donald Trump who is the real racist and the real anti-Semite.
Though this was a well-practiced answer on national cable TV news, it would now appear on local news in California whose delegation he addressed on the second day of the convention as he made the rounds to impress Democrats he may need for a future campaign.
For all of the attention on the United Center in prime time, there are sort of mini-conventions at hotels across the city hosting each state’s delegation every morning. After shaking off a hangover or short night’s sleep, attendees cram into a conference room to eat buffet-style scrambled eggs and bacon and listen to even more speeches. For the South Carolina delegation, that meant Shapiro followed Pete Buttigieg, and Cory Booker, both of whom had run for president in 2020 and campaigned extensively in the first-in-the-South primary.
Booker in particular was a tough act to follow. Halfway through his remarks, he abandoned the podium and delivered the rest of his speech on a chair in the middle of the conference room. He captivated the crowd so much that not a single forkful of honeydew was consumed as he talked about the emotional impact of watching Ketanji Brown Jackson become the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.
Shapiro stepped up to the podium and, in his most Obamaesque cadence, joked that “my rabbi always tells me I spend more time in Baptist churches than I do in synagogue. He gets a little mad at me.” He followed with what has become a staple of his speeches: “Greetings from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, a state with a lot of letters in it but where I focus on three letters every day G-S-D, getting stuff done.” Afterwards, he took selfies with the inevitable crowd that lined up around him. One offered Shapiro condolences over losing out to be vice president. “I was rooting for you,” he said as his iPhone’s camera flashed. “It’s all good,” Shapiro responded, looking unphased. “Really good.”
He had given well received stump speeches to two different state delegations and hopefully a few potential voters in a future primary had been impressed. On Wednesday, Shapiro will address the entire convention in prime time. He won’t be in the feature slot dedicated to the vice presidential nominee, but there will still be plenty of potential future voters watching.
Kamala Harris passed over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro when selecting her running mate, instead opting for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
The presidential candidate revealed her pick Tuesday morning, ending two weeks of speculation that began after she replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket. Shapiro was among at least three contenders who reportedly met with Harris in Washington on Sunday. The others: Sen. Mark Kelly, of Arizona, and Walz.
Harris is set to formally introduce Walz as her running mate Tuesday night at a rally at Temple University’s Liacouras Center.
The decision is expected to be among the most critical of Harris’s campaign. Harris and Walz will square off against Republican Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, in November’s general election. Vance is holding a campaign event Tuesday afternoon in South Philly.
Walz, 60, is in his second term as Minnesota’s governor, having previously served as a Congressman. He is a veteran, hunter and a former school teacher and high school football coach. As governor, Walz has pushed for stronger gun laws – a leftward shift from the stance he held earlier in his political career. Under his leadership, Minnesota has legalized recreational marijuana, enshrined the right to abortion in the state constitution, allowed undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses and boosted funding for free school meals and free college tuition for low-income families, according to the Washington Post.
In an Instagram post announcing her selection, Harris said she was impressed by his “deep” convictions for fighting for middle-class families, noting that he has worked with Republicans to pass infrastructure investments, cut taxes for working families and signed a law to provide paid family and medical leave for Minnesota families.
Walz called his selection “the honor of a lifetime,” adding “I’m all in.”
In a statement, Shapiro praised Walz as an “exceptionally strong addition to the ticket who will help Kamala move our country forward.” He committed to stumping for the Democratic ticket throughout Pennsylvania over the next three months.
“As I’ve said repeatedly over the past several weeks, the running mate decision was a deeply personal decision for the Vice President – and it was also a deeply personal decision for me,” Shapiro said. “Pennsylvanians elected me to a four-year term as their Governor and my work here is far from finished – there is a lot more stuff I want to get done for the good people of the Commonwealth.”
Shapiro, 51, of Abington, Montgomery County,had the backing of Democratsin the Philadelphia region; the city’s party endorsed him for the vice presidential nomination, and Mayor Cherelle Parker and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey had been among his outspoken advocates. The case for Shapiro centered on him being a political moderate with a high approval rating in a swing state. But Harris elected to go in a different direction.
Bob Brady, who chairs Philadelphia’s Democratic Party, quickly threw his support behind Walz on Tuesday, writing in a fundraising email that Harris and Walz will make “great teammates.”
“For 12 years, we walked the same halls of Congress, fighting for working families back home,” Brady, a former Congressman wrote. “As VP, I am confident that Tim will continue that fight — to raise the minimum wage and not just protect but expand reproductive freedoms, workers’ rights, and our children’s educational opportunities.”
Some Democrats had voiced concerns about Shapiro’s standing among progressive voters because of his position favoring private school vouchers — traditionally thought of as a conservative policy — and his staunch support for Israel in the face of calls for a ceasefire in Gaza. Shapiro, who is Jewish, has been outspoken about antisemitism and joined calls in the spring to dissolve a pro-Palestinian encampment outside the University of Pennsylvania. Critics have argued that Shapiro’s views are a potential threat to free speech.
Shapiro also has been rebuked for the way his administration handled a sexual harassment scandal involving his top legislative liaison, Michael Vereb, who resigned weeks after a $295,000 settlement was reached with the woman who came forward against him.
In the days before the announcement, Sen. John Fetterman‘s aides reportedly had expressed his concerns about Shapiro to Harris, saying Shapiro was too focused on his personal ambitions. Some in the party’s progressive wing, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) had pushed Harris to select Walz, a moderate expected to appeal to working-class voters.
Her shortlist had included six white men who had demonstrated an ability to win over white, rural voters. In addition to Shaprio, Walz and Kelly, they included Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker.
Shapiro’s steady rise in the Democratic party traces back more than two decades, when he held a series of roles on Capitol Hill while earning his law degree at Georgetown University. Shapiro returned to Abington in 2004 to run for state representative and won convincingly in a district that had long leaned Republican. He was then appointed to the newly created role of deputy speaker, cultivating a reputation as a bipartisan consensus builder in state government.
After four terms in the House, Shapiro was elected to the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners in 2011 when the board flipped to Democratic control for the first time. He was then elected Pennsylvania Attorney General in 2016 and served two terms, spearheading investigations into sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and securing a $1 billion opioid settlement with drug distributors. In 2022, he defeated Republican Doug Mastriano to become Pennsylvania’s governor.
Harris and her running mate will spend the next week campaigning in several swing states, including Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona. The Democratic National Convention begins Aug. 19.
This is a developing story. Check back for more details.
Staff writer Michael Tanenbaum contributed to this report.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a contender to become the Democratic vice presidential candidate, has seen his record come under scrutiny, with some of his actions while in office receiving renewed attention. Here’s what we know about those cases.
Questions over Shapiro’s handling of 2011 death of Ellen Greenberg
In 2011, Ellen Greenberg, a 27-year-old Philadelphia teacher, was found dead in her apartment by her fiance. She had 20 stab wounds to her body, including in the back of her neck. The medical examiner’s office initially ruled the death a homicide, but police publicly objected to the ruling because her apartment door was locked from the inside and her fiancé, who said he broke down the door to get to her, had no defensive wounds. The medical examiner’s office then revised the findings, saying the cause of death was suicide.
Greenberg’s parents had been fighting since her death to have the case reexamined, and when one of their lawyers became Philadelphia’s district attorney in 2018, the family appealed to him to reopen the case. Citing a conflict of interest, however, he recused himself and sent the case to state Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s office.
In February 2022, the attorney general’s office announced it had reviewed the case and ruled once again the cause of death was suicide. However, in July 2022, Shapiro’s office referred the case back to the Philadelphia district attorney’s office, after critics cited unverified claims that Shapiro had connections to Greenberg’s fiancé’s family. The attorney general’s office said, “While the Office of Attorney General does not have an actual conflict in this matter, circumstances beyond our control have created the appearance of a conflict.”
Shapiro’s team previously told The Philadelphia Inquirer it had never addressed or clarified the allegations because it was “not acknowledging unfounded accusations.”
In July, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed to hear Greenberg’s parents’ case. Their attorney, Joe Podraza, told CBS affiliate WHP-TV they are seeking a decision on “whether coroners and medical examiners have absolute power, or can they be challenged when the evidence shows they are not only mistaken, but grossly mistaken.”
The Greenbergs have also filed a civil suit against members of the medical examiner’s office, the police department, and the DA’s office.
Shapiro’s office accused of mishandling sexual harassment complaint against aide
As governor, Shapiro has drawn criticism from the National Women’s Defense League and others for his office’s handling of a sexual harassment complaint made against one of his former cabinet members.
A former employee of the governor’s office alleged in a March 2023 complaint that Michael Vereb, who was Shapiro’s head of legislative affairs, sexually harassed her for months and retaliated against her for speaking up. The woman resigned from her job after reporting the issue, saying the governor’s office did not remedy the situation or protect her from retaliation.
Both parties signed a nondisclosure agreement as part of the settlement, according to the New York Times, agreeing not to discuss the case publicly.
In a statement to The New York Times on Aug. 3, Shapiro spokesman Manuel Bonder said the governor “was not aware of the complaint or investigation until months after the complaint was filed.”
“Governor Shapiro has no tolerance for harassment in the workplace or anywhere else,” Bonder said.
Fetterman aides raise concerns that Shapiro was slow to grant clemency on Board of Pardons
As state attorney general, Shapiro spent six years on Pennsylvania’s Board of Pardons, alongside then-Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, with whom he frequently disagreed publicly. A 2019 report by the Pennsylvania Capital-Star found that Shapiro voted to commute 17 sentences, compared to Fetterman’s vote to commute 30 sentences.
Politico reported that Fetterman’s advisers brought up Shapiro’s commutation record with Vice President Kamala Harris’ team. Shapiro and Fetterman were on opposite sides of a 2019 clemency vote for two prisoners — Lee and Dennis Horton — who were over two decades into their life sentences for a robbery and fatal shooting that both said they did not commit. During their time in prison, the brothers had good behavioral records, including no reports of misconduct.
In December 2019, the Board denied the Hortons’ request for clemency in a 2-3 vote – Shapiro voted against granting clemency, while Fetterman voted in favor. A spokesman for Shapiro told The Philadelphia Inquirer that Shapiro wanted the board to hold the case so he could interview the brothers separately and seek information missing from their files.
When the case came under review again in 2020, Shapiro voted with the rest of the board to free the brothers. Shapiro’s spokesman told Politico: “The governor evaluates every pardons case individually and on its merits and during his time as attorney general, he approved more pardons and commutations than all of his predecessors over the last 25 years, combined.”
Presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris is meeting Sunday with the top contenders to be her running mate, and among them are Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Both governors are traveling to Washington for an interview with Harris, according to multiple sources familiar with the plans. The Washington Post first reported the interviews with Harris’ top VP contenders.
However, Harris is also having formal interviews with candidates who have not been confirmed in the media, both in person and virtually, according to a source familiar with the process. Harris herself had a virtual meeting with Mr. Biden when he was interviewing VP candidates. Although that interview was during the pandemic, other candidates had in-person interviews with him at the time.
Shapiro is one of the nation’s most popular governors and has a 60% approval rating, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll. He has won statewide office three times — twice as state attorney general and once as governor. As Pennsylvania’s top law enforcement official, he oversaw the investigation of widespread sexual abuse perpetrated by hundreds of priests and a decades-long cover-up by the Catholic church.
Walz, a former congressman, is serving his second term as governor and also has high approval ratings. With Democrats controlling both chambers of the state legislature during his second term, Walz has enacted a number of progressive priorities, including the protection of abortion access and gender-affirming health care, legalizing recreational marijuana, restricting gun access, providing free school meals to all kids and expanding paid family leave.
And Kelly, the junior senator from Arizona, is a political centrist and former astronaut who is married to former Rep. Gabby Giffords, a gifted politician who was severely injured and left disabled by an assassination attempt in 2011. Kelly and Giffords have become prominent advocates for gun safety and founded a gun control policy organization in her name. Kelly also served in the Navy as a fighter pilot and was a decorated combat veteran before launching a career as an astronaut.
The Associated Press reported that Harris is also interviewing Govs. Andy Beshear of Kentucky and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, citing two people with knowledge of Harris’ selection process.
President Biden said Friday he has spoken with Harris about her running mate, but when pressed further on the qualities she should look for in a candidate, he responded, “I’ll let her work that out.”
Harris is expected to name her vice presidential pick by Tuesday. She and her running mate will be campaigning together in battleground states this week.
Harris has received a majority of the pledged and automatic delegates in the electronic roll call to secure the Democratic nomination, but voting remains open until Monday.
Melissa Quinn, Nidia Cavazos and Caitlin Yilek contributed to this report.
Weijia Jiang is the senior White House correspondent for CBS News based in Washington, D.C. Jiang has covered the White House beat since 2018, including the transition between the Trump and Biden administrations. In 2023, Jiang won an Emmy Award for her contributions to “CBS Mornings.”
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Vice President Kamala Harris will visit Philadelphia on Tuesday with her running mate for a campaign event, a spokesperson for the campaign said.
Harris has not announced her running mate yet, but the decision is expected by Monday, CBS News has learned.
Harris will be interviewing potential vice presidential candidates this week. While about 10 hopefuls remain, a top tier of five people has emerged, CBS News reports. Those people are Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Shapiro has been campaigning for Harris in Pennsylvania, including a rally in Ambler with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Monday.
“I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again: The vice president has a very deeply personal decision to make right now: who she wants to run with, who she wants to govern with, and who can be by her side when she has to make the toughest decisions for the American people,” Shapiro said. “I trust that she will make that decision on her own terms when she is ready.”
Whitmer and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said this week they are not being considered for the running mate role.
Dan Snyder, a Lehighton native and Temple University graduate, is excited to return to his home area after spending over three years as the Evening Anchor in Oklahoma City.
This week on “Face the Nation,” Senate Intelligence Committee chair Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia talks what the timeline for a possible TikTok sale or ban could look like. Plus, House Appropriations Committee chair Rep. Tom Cole on the foreign aid legislation that passed the House on Saturday.
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Let’s start with the obvious. The concerns about Joe Biden are valid: He’s old. He talks slowly. He occasionally bumbles the basics in public appearances.
Biden’s age is so concerning that many Biden supporters now believe he should step aside and let some other candidate become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. The New York Times journalist Ezra Klein made the best-available case for this view recently in a 4,000-word piece that garnered intense attention by arguing that Biden is no longer up to the task of campaign life. “He is not the campaigner he was, even five years ago,” Klein writes. “The way he moves, the energy in his voice. The Democrats denying decline are only fooling themselves.”
In one sense Klein is correct. As the political strategist Mike Murphy said many moons ago, Biden’s age is like a gigantic pair of antlers he wears on his head, all day every day. Even when he does something exceptional—like visit a war zone in Ukraine, or whip inflation—the people applauding him are thinking, Can’t. Stop. Staring. At. The antlers.
Biden can’t shed these antlers. He’s going to wear them from now until November 5. If anything, they’ll probably grow.
That said, there’s another point worth noting up front: Joe Biden is almost certainly the strongest possible candidate Democrats can field against Donald Trump in 2024.
Biden’s strengths as a candidate are considerable. He has presided over an extraordinarily productive first term in which he’s passed multiple pieces of popular legislation with bipartisan majorities.
Unemployment is at its lowest low, GDP growth is robust, real wage gains have been led by the bottom quartile, and the American economy has achieved a post-COVID soft landing that makes us the envy of the world. He has no major scandals. His handling of American foreign policy has been stronger and defter than any recent president’s.
Moreover, he is a known quantity. The recent Michigan primary results underscored that Democratic voters don’t actually have an appetite for leaving Biden. In 2012, 11 percent of Michigan Democrats voted “uncommitted” against Barack Obama when he had no opposition. This week, with two challengers on the ballot and progressive activists whipping votes against Biden, the “uncommitted” vote share was just 13 percent. Biden is fully vetted, his liabilities priced in. Voters are not being asked to take a chance on him.
This last part is crucial, because 2024 pits a current president against a former president, making both quasi-incumbents. If Biden was replaced, another Democrat would have her or his own strengths—but would be an insurgent. Asking voters to roll the dice on a fresh face against a functionally incumbent President Trump is a bigger ask than you might think.
But the biggest problem plaguing arguments for Biden’s retirement is: Who then? Pretend you are a Democrat and have been handed a magical monkey’s paw. You believe that Biden is too old to defeat Trump and so you make a wish: I want a younger, more vigorous Democrat. There’s a puff of smoke and Kamala Harris is the nominee.
Do you feel better about the odds of defeating Trump in nine months?
You shouldn’t. Harris’s approval rating is slightly lower than Biden’s. People skeptical of her political abilities point to her time as vice president, but that’s not really fair: Very few vice presidents look like plausible successors during their time in office. (George H. W. Bush and Al Gore are the exceptions.)
What should worry you about Harris is her 2020 campaign, which was somehow both disorganized and insular. She did not exhibit the kind of management skills or political instincts that inspire confidence in her ability to win a national campaign. Worse, she only rarely exhibited top-level-candidate skills.
Harris had some great moments in 2020. Her announcement speech and first debate performance were riveting. But more often she was flat-footed and awkward. She fell apart at the Michigan debate in 2019 and never got polling traction. (My colleague Sarah Longwell likens Harris to a professional golfer who’s got the yips.)
Some public polling on this question fills out the picture: Emerson finds Harris losing to Trump by three percentage points (Biden is down one point in the same poll). Fox has Harris losing by five points (it also has Biden down by one point). These are just two polls and the questions were hypothetical, but at best, you can say that Harris is not obviously superior to Biden in terms of electability. At worst, she might give Democrats longer odds.
So you go back to the monkey’s paw with another wish: a younger, more vigorous Democrat who’s not Kamala Harris, please.
I’m not sure how it would work logistically—would the Democratic Party turn its back on the sitting vice president?—but this is magic, so just roll with it. There’s a puff of smoke and Gavin Newsom walks onstage.
Newsom is one of those people who, like Bill Clinton, has been running for president since he was 5 years old. Also like Clinton, Newsom is a good talker with some ideas in his head. But Clinton was a third-way Democrat from the Deep South at a time when the Democratic Party needed southern blue-collar voters. Today, the Democratic Party needs Rust Belt blue-collar voters—and Newsom is a liberal from San Francisco. Not a great starting position.
Every non-Harris Democrat begins from a place of lower name recognition, meaning that there would be a rush to define them in the minds of voters. Republicans have convinced 45 percent of the country that Scrantonian Joe Biden is a Communist. What do you think they’d do with Newsom? In the Fox poll, he runs even with Vice President Harris at -4 to Trump. In the more recent Emerson poll, Newsom trails Trump by 10 points.
Then there’s the eyeball test. Look at Newsom’s slicked-back hair, his gleaming smile, and tell me: Does he look like the guy to eat into Trump’s margins among working-class whites in Pennsylvania and Michigan?
What about Pennsylvania and Michigan? You have only one wish left on the monkey’s paw, and Gretchen Whitmer and Josh Shapiro—popular governors who won big in swing states in 2022—are sitting right there. Maybe you should put one of them on the ticket in place of Biden?
Nationally, it’s a much different question. I haven’t found anyone who’s polled Shapiro-Trump nationally, but Emerson and Fox both have Whitmer polling worse than Biden. (Emerson has Whitmer 12 points behind Trump.)
Name recognition accounts for part of this gap, but not all of it. In 2022, Whitmer won her gubernatorial race by 11 points while Shapiro won by 15. But each ran against an underfunded MAGA extremist. In the Michigan poll pitting Whitmer against Trump, she leads by only six points; in the Pennsylvania poll with Shapiro, he leads Trump by 11. So even in states where everyone knows them, these potential saviors are softer against Trump than they were against their 2022 MAGA tomato cans.
Sure, Whitmer and Shapiro seem like strong candidates at the midsize-state level. But you never know whether a candidate will pop until they hit the national stage. Scott Walker, Ron DeSantis, John Kerry, Mitt Romney, Kamala Harris—all of these politicians looked formidable too. Then the presidential-election MRI for the soul exposed their liabilities. Always remember that Barack Obama’s ascent from promising senator to generational political talent was the exception, not the rule.
Let’s say that one of these not–Kamala Harris candidates is chosen at the Democratic National Convention in August. In the span of 10 weeks they would have to:
Define themselves to the national audience while simultaneously resisting Trump’s attempts to define them.
Build a national campaign structure and get-out-the-vote operation.
Unify the Democratic Party.
Fend off any surprises uncovered during their public (and at-scale) vetting.
Earn credit in the minds of voters for the Biden economy.
Distance themselves from unpopular Biden policies.
Portray themselves as a credible commander in chief.
Lay out a coherent governing vision.
Persuade roughly 51 percent of the country to support them.
Perhaps it’s possible. But that strikes me as a particularly tall order, even if one of them is a generational political talent. Which—again with the odds—they probably aren’t.
We’ve got one final problem with the monkey’s paw: It doesn’t exist. If Biden withdrew from the race, the Democratic Party would confront a messy, time-consuming process to replace him. Perhaps a rigorous but amicable write-in campaign would produce a strong nominee and a unified party. But perhaps the party would experience a demolition derby that results in a suboptimal nominee and hard feelings.
Or maybe party elites at a brokered convention would choose a good nominee. (This is the Ezra Klein scenario, and I’m sympathetic to it. Smoke-filled back rooms get a bad rap; historically they produced better candidates than the modern primary system.) But very few living people have participated in a brokered convention. It could easily devolve into chaos and fracture the moderate, liberal, and progressive wings of the party.
The point is: Biden has a 50–50 shot. Maybe a little bit worse, maybe a little bit better—like playing blackjack. Every other option is a crapshoot in which the best outcome you can reasonably hope for is 50–50 odds and the worst outcome pushes the odds to something like one in three.
Joe Biden is Joe Biden. He isn’t going to win a 10-point, realigning victory. But his path to reelection is clear: Focus like a laser on suburban and working-class white voters in a handful of swing states. Remind them that Trump is a chaos agent who wrecked the economy. Show them how good the economy is now. Make a couple of jokes about the antlers. And then bring these people home—because many of them already voted for him once.
Having a sure thing would certainly be nice, given the ongoing authoritarian threat we face. But there isn’t one. Joe Biden is the best deal democracy is going to get.
Justin Mohn, the man accused of decapitating his father at their home in Levittown, allegedly traveled to a Pennsylvania National Guard base before his arrest Tuesday in an effort to incite a state rebellion against the federal government, Bucks County prosecutors said Friday.
Mohn, 32, allegedly told prosecutors he had hoped to speak with Gov. Josh Shapiro to convince him to “join forces” with his purported militia and raise arms against the feds. Mohn was arrested while trespassing on the grounds of the National Guard’s headquarters in Fort Indiantown Gap — about 100 miles away, in Lebanon County — where he was found with a loaded handgun and surrendered to authorities, police said.
Mohn is charged with first-degree murder and abuse of a corpse in the killing of Michael Mohn, 68, a longtime employee of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Philadelphia. He allegedly purchased his gun Monday at a gun shop in Croydon, Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Schorn said at a news conference Friday.
An autopsy determined that Michael Mohn was fatally shot in the head before his son allegedly used a knife and machete to sever his neck, Shorn said. The gun recovered by police was missing a single round.
In a video Mohn posted to his YouTube channel Tuesday, he held up his father’s head in a plastic bag and described him as a traitor, prosecutors said. Mohn read a prepared speech that continued for more than 14 minutes, including threats against the Biden administration, a rant about the nation’s borders and a proclamation that he was declaring martial law as the new acting U.S. president, according to investigators.
Mohn is a graduate of Neshaminy High School and Penn State University. He previously spent time in Colorado working as a contractor for Microsoft, but returned home to live with his parents, prosecutors said. He recently had been unemployed.
Michael Mohn’s body was found by his wife, who notified authorities and said her son had left the home in his father’s car. The YouTube video, which had been filmed at the family home, was later brought to the attention of investigators as they searched for Mohn.
Investigators arrested Mohn at the National Guard base at 9:25 p.m. Tuesday after tracking him down by using cell phone location data. But they feared the possibility of an extended search.
“We were discussing that if Justin hadn’t been apprehended, can you imagine the manhunt that would have been underway shortly thereafter and how everything would have been focused on finding him — and the entire community would have been in a state of panic,” Middletown Township Police Chief Joseph Bartorilla said.
Schorn said the investigation remains in its early stages and may continue for months. It’s possible Mohn will face federal charges, or additional charges in Bucks County, Schorn said. Authorities are looking into whether he had any established contact with others who planned to take up his cause.
Mohn has no history of diagnosed mental health issues and there are no records of him having a voluntary or involuntary commitment for inpatient psychiatric treatment, Schorn said.
“With the evidence we have gathered thus far, this individual was acting with clear mind, aware of his actions and proud of his consequences,” she said.
Days before purchasing his gun, Mohn allegedly surrendered his state medical marijuana card so he could legally purchase a firearm, prosecutors said. Investigators have not detailed any events that led up to Mohn’s alleged actions or how long he may have been planning them.
The video Mohn posted online was removed by YouTube and other social media platforms hours after it was uploaded. Schorn said it appeared to have been viewed thousands of times.
“That was incredibly concerning,” Schorn said. “I mean, obviously, from evidentiary value, that video is very important and we need to have possession of that. But it’s quite horrifying how many views we understand it had before it was taken down.”
Since Mohn’s arrest, reports have emerged of neighbors describing unusual behavior from him. His former roommate in Colorado told CNN that Mohn had shown signs of paranoia for years and thought the government was “out to get him.” Mohn was an amateur writer and musician who shared his work online, including material that alluded to his views. In multiple lawsuits Mohn filed against the U.S. government, he reportedly claimed his student loans were illegitimate because he wasn’t able to get a job and pay them back — which he attributed to being an “overeducated white man.”
Middletown Township police knew of three prior incidents involving Mohn, but none of them indicated a serious threat that required more attention, Bartorilla said. In 2011, he was involved in an argument in the driveway of his family’s home, but it was not a criminal matter. In 2019, Mohn told police he had been threatened by someone from an insurance company that he was suing in Ohio and that he wanted it documented.
The third incident was a report from an unnamed employer in Philadelphia who called to express concern about Mohn’s behavior at work. The employer was seeking legal advice about how to fire Mohn, but police referred the matter to other legal resources.
“We keep hearing that police were outside of his home at various times — outside of what I just mentioned — (but) I can only speak for the Middletown Township Police Department,” Bartorilla said. “We were not.”
The concern from Mohn’s former employer in Philadelphia stemmed from his online writings, authorities said. Middletown police did not follow up on the matter with Mohn.
“Based on the information that the officer gathered and the decision the officer made, I don’t think we needed to have contact,” Bartorilla said.
Mohn is being held without bail at the Bucks County Correctional Facility.
“Our thoughts are with this family,” Schorn said. “This is the unimaginable. That’s going to take time. We’re going to provide the resources for this family, but this is truly just unimaginable for them.”
A semester at a state university or community college would cost just $1,000 for many students under a proposal Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said he will detail in his second budget address next month.
Shapiro won the governor’s office in 2022 campaigning, in part, on improving access to higher education and developing Pennsylvania’s workforce to boost the state’s economy. In his first budget address last February, Shapiro declared the state’s higher education system broken.
“Every Pennsylvanian deserves the freedom to chart their own course and the opportunity to succeed,” Shapiro said in a statement. “For some, that means going right into the workforce – but for those who want to go to college or get a credential, we need to rethink our system of higher education.”
Pennsylvania’s public universities have suffered disinvestment for 30 years, Shapiro said, leaving students without enough affordable options to earn a degree and enter the workforce. Pennsylvania spends less on higher education than any other state except New Hampshire, the governor’s office noted.
Enrollment in state universities and community college has decreased by about a third, the governor’s office said. And colleges are competing for the same students, duplicating programs, driving up costs and reducing access.
On Friday, Shapiro announced a three-pronged plan to reinvigorate public higher education by:
• Uniting Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education universities with the state’s 15 community colleges under a new governance system
• Setting tuition at those schools at $1,000 per semester for low and moderate income students and increasing Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency grants for students attending private universities by $1,000
• Distributing state appropriations to Pennsylvania’s state-related universities – the University of Pittsburgh and Penn State, Temple and Lincoln universities – according to a performance-based formula
Democratic lawmakers spoke in support of the plan, noting that it would help Pennsylvanians avoid the burden of student debt.
“We need to make it easier and more affordable for students to attend our state schools, which provide vital job training and a quality higher education for tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians every year and remove barriers for students transferring between schools here in the commonwealth,” House Democratic leaders said in a statement.
While Republican lawmakers said the plan was short on details, they said they were glad to see the administration join Republicans in putting students first while acknowledging the state’s financial needs.
“We will work with education stakeholders, the administration, and Pennsylvania families to continue moving away from the endless funding of systems in Pennsylvania so we can move toward a student-first, family-focused, and taxpayer-accountable system of higher education,” Jason Gottesman, spokesperson for House Minority Leader Bryan Cutler (R-Lancaster), said.
Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R-Indiana) said ensuring that Pennsylvania is an economic leader depends on a strong workforce and jobs in the commonwealth and preserving access to higher education is a key to promoting economic growth.
Pittman said the changes that Shapiro proposed are substantial and his plan lacked information about how the state would fund them. Key considerations in implementing such changes include the cost to taxpayers and the impact on communities where state universities are located, Pittman added..
“Details matter and a proposal of this magnitude will require extremely close examination,” Pittman said, adding that he looks forward to discussing the proposal with Shapiro and fellow lawmakers.
For several years, funding for the state-related universities used only to provide tuition discounts for Pennsylvania residents, has stalled in the General Assembly during budget season. Republican lawmakers have cited objections to research using fetal tissue cells, gender affirming care, a lack of transparency, and rising tuition as reasons for withholding the two-thirds majority votes needed to approve appropriations to the private institutions.
State Rep. Seth Grove (R-York), who is the GOP’s ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, was less complimentary of Shapiro’s plan, however, describing it as a “three-step plan for financial disaster.” It would come with unsustainable spending increases, depletion of the state’s $12 billion surplus and future tax increases, Grove said.
“The bottom line is this plan creates more bureaucracy, necessitates more spending, and creates more questions than answers,” Grove said, adding that it doesn’t comport with the Republican position that the state should fund students, not institutions.
“Shapiro should propose direct grants so every child of God will have options for higher education. But given his track record on reneging on school choice, it appears the Governor is once again siding with unions over students,” Grove said.
Shapiro’s announcement included statements of support from the heads of the state university system and each of the state-related universities.
PASSHE Chancellor Dan Greenstein said the consolidation of several state universities over the last six years has shown that collaboration benefits students, communities and employers. Shapiro’s proposal would build on the strengths of state universities and community colleges.
“Together we can create a new, larger system with better collaboration that gives students more pathways to a degree or credential, rapidly adjusts to the changing knowledge and skills employers want, and provides the lowest-cost option for students throughout their lifetime,” Greenstein said.
Performance-based funding for the state-related universities would not only improve transparency and accountability, Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi said, but it would also help ensure positive outcomes for students.
“I am extremely pleased to see that part of Gov. Shapiro’s blueprint is a call to establish a predictable performance-based funding formula, and we look forward to working with the legislature to implement such a model,” Bendapudi said.
Pennsylvania Capital-Star is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Pennsylvania Capital-Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kim Lyons for questions: info@penncapital-star.com. Follow Pennsylvania Capital-Star on Facebook and Twitter.
Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro wants to devote millions of dollars to creating a 10-year economic development plan.
His plan, announced Tuesday, would include developing commercial and industrial sites, revitalizing an aging workforce and better competing with neighboring states to entice big businesses to choose Pennsylvania.
The announcement comes as neighboring states are pouring incentives into luring multibillion-dollar microchip, electric vehicle and battery factories. Shapiro has been eyeing such a strategy since last year, when he told legislators during his inaugural budget address that he was “sick and tired of losing to other states.”
Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro wants to devote millions of dollars to creating a 10-year economic development plan, including developing commercial and industrial sites, revitalizing an aging workforce and better competing with neighboring states to entice big businesses to choose Pennsylvania.
The plan, which Shapiro announced a week out from his formal budget address, seeks to address workforce shortages, ease challenges for startups and tech spinoffs and boost funding for economic development incentives.
Shapiro’s administration will focus its funding in five industries: agriculture, energy, life sciences, manufacturing and robotics and technology.
Shapiro has been eyeing such a strategy since last year, when he told legislators during his inaugural budget address that he was “competitive as hell — and I’m sick and tired of losing to other states.”
The announcement comes as neighboring states are pouring incentives into luring multibillion-dollar microchip, electric vehicle and battery factories. That includes Ohio landing a $20 billion factory by chipmaker Intel in 2022, which officials say has the power to create a new technology hub in the state.
But business-sector officials say Pennsylvania lacks huge tracts of available land to attract such projects.
Shapiro has worked to shorten the wait time to receive licenses and permits, and he has touted Pennsylvania’s role in being awarded federal funding to establish two hydrogen hubs in the state as part of President Joe Biden’s effort to fight climate change.
But challenges still abound. Even though Pennsylvania’s payrolls hit a record high in December, the state’s labor force has lagged behind pre-pandemic levels. The state’s economy is less dynamic than some other states and its workforce is relatively older and slower-growing.
Shapiro has warned that being competitive would take money, and he plans to ask lawmakers for millions to kick start the plan.
A “major investment” would go to site development, building on a pilot program that provided grant funding to do site assessments and prepare land for remediation as a sweetener to commercial and industrial businesses.
For small businesses and commercial corridors, Shapiro is proposing $25 million. Another $3.5 million will create the new Pennsylvania Regional Challenge, which is aimed at incentivizing regional growth. To further develop the workforce and create more internships as a way to keep people in the state, he is asking for $2 million.
Other funds will support start-ups and entrepreneurs, with $10 million set aside for the agricultural industry.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania state court on Tuesday rejected the latest Republican effort to throw out the presidential battleground state’s broad mail-in voting law that has become a GOP target following former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims about election fraud.
It is the latest of several refusals by a state court to invalidate Pennsylvania’s 2019 mail-in voting law, enacted barely months before the COVID-19 pandemic began and Trump began attacking mail-in voting.
In the lawsuit filed last year, 14 current and former Republican state lawmakers said the court must invalidate the law because two earlier court decisions triggered a provision written that says the law is “void” if any of its requirements are struck down in court.
Gov. Josh Shapiro is trying to wrap up his first budget by Saturday’s start of the new fiscal year, as the Democrat works to balance Pennsylvania’s politically divided Legislature.
A Pennsylvania state trooper who was shot and killed earlier this month when he went to work on his day off after learning his barracks had been attacked by an armed man was lauded during his funeral as a hero who only wanted to serve his community.
Spurred on by train derailments, some states crisscrossed by busy freight railroads aren’t waiting for federal action to improve safety.
Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride says she’s running for the U.S. House of Representatives. Already the first openly transgender state senator elected in the country, she’d be the first trans member of Congress if she wins in November.
The law has a requirement that voters must hand-write a date on the outer envelope of their mail-in ballot in order for the ballot to be counted. The Republicans argued that the two earlier court decisions refused to enforce the hand-written date requirement — meaning the law should be thrown out.
But the Commonwealth Court, in a 24-page opinion, unanimously found that the court decisions did not invalidate “the dating provision” of the law. It dismissed the lawsuit, in favor of Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration and the national and state Democratic parties.
Democrats hailed the ruling for protecting the opportunity to vote by mail. Shapiro’s administration said over the past three years, more than 7.5 million Pennsylvanians have voted by mail.
“We are pleased that today’s court ruling allows all eligible voters to continue exercising their fundamental right to vote using this secure, accessible method,” Shapiro’s administration said in a statement.
Greg Teufel, the lawyer for the 14 Republican lawmakers, said he expects to appeal to the state Supreme Court, which has twice upheld the mail-in voting law against previous Republican-backed challenges.
In an interview, Teufel said he disagreed with the court’s rationale, saying that the court is ignoring the plain language of the law.
“They’re sidestepping a critical issue, just pretending they don’t see it,” Teufel said.
Officials are scrambling to set up alternate transportation options for Monday morning commuters after a section of Interstate 95 collapsed in Philadelphia due to a tanker truck fire Sunday – leaving the East Coast’s primary highway with major damage that could take months to repair.
No injuries or fatalities from the highway collapse have been reported. But it remained unclear whether anyone was caught in the burning commercial tanker truck, which was carrying a flammable substance/oil?. The truck was still trapped under the collapsed highway Sunday afternoon, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said at a news conference.
Roughly 160,000 vehicles typically commute on the now-collapsed road each day, making it “likely the busiest interstate in our commonwealth,” said Pennsylvania Department of Transportation Secretary Mike Carroll.
“I found myself thanking the Lord that no motorists who were on I-95 were injured or died,” Shapiro said, describing witnessing “remarkable devastation” during a flyover of the scene.
Northbound lanes collapsed and southbound lanes were damaged due to the intensity of the blaze and were “not structurally sound to carry any traffic,” Shapiro said.Restoring the highway will likely take months, he said, adding that his office was looking into “alternatives to connect the roadway beyond detours.”
Rep. Brendan Boyle, a Democrat whose district includes the section of the highway, told CNN that “you are literally going to have millions of people in what is one of the largest population centers in the country impacted in a significant way.”
The governor said he plans to issue a disaster declaration Monday, allowing the state to immediately dip into federal funds, cut through the red tape and move quickly to repair and reconstruct this roadway. He said he got assurances from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
“Secretary Buttigieg has assured me that there will be absolutely no delay in getting federal funds deployed to quickly help us rebuild this critical artery. I-95, of course, is a critical roadway that supports our economy and plays an important role in folks everyday lives,” Shapiro said.
The commercial tanker truck, which was carrying a petroleum-based product, caught fire around 6:20 am ET, causing a section of the overhead northbound I-95 highway to collapse atop the truck, authorities said. The cause of the fire is also under investigation.
By Sunday afternoon, the fire was contained but firefighters remained at the scene as a precaution “because of the large volume of product that was involved,” Philadelphia Fire Department Deputy Commissioner Jeffrey Thompson said.
Crews will be working through the night to clear the collapsed section of the road, Carroll said.
Officials warned residents to avoid the area and to expect delays of trash collection and bus routes in the area.
“The challenges will be real when it comes to traffic movements in the city as a result of this incident,” Carroll said.
Leslie Richards, general manager of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), said the agency is adding extra capacity and service to other transportation routes and evaluating all options in assisting travelers work around the highway collapse including.
“In order to accommodate travel through the city and region following the I-95 collapse, SEPTA will provide added capacity and Service. on the Trenton, West Trenton and Fox Chase Lines,” SEPTA, the sixth largest public transportation agency in the US, said in a statement.
Mark Fusetti was driving south on I-95 in Philadelphia to pick up his son from the airport on Sunday before the collapse when he saw large plumes of dark smoke and began filming, initially thinking there was a brush fire.
Video he filmed on his cellphone appears to show his car and other vehicles driving over a “dip” along I-95 as smoke billowed from under both sides of the highway. He said he was startled by the dip, saying, “it felt like you drove off a curb.”
“I realized what happened when I looked in my rear-view mirror. I see 95 – all of the cars stopping and then I learned, shortly after that the road had just collapsed and what was really going on,” Fusetti told CNN’s Jim Acosta Sunday.
The cause of and circumstances surrounding the fire and collapse remain under investigation, officials say.
Philadelphia Fire Department Battalion Chief Derek Bowmer said “it looked like we had a lot of heat and heavy fire underneath the underpass.”
With thousands of tons of steel and concrete on top of where the fire was burning, firefighters initially faced a challenge getting to the seat of the fire, Bowmer said during a news conference Sunday morning.
There were also explosions around the highway collapse caused by “runoff of maybe some fuel or gas lines that could have been compromised by the accident,” Bowmer noted.
“We have fire coming out of those manholes,” Bowmer said Sunday morning.
While the exact cost of repairing the crucial roadway remains unclear, the governor told reporters Sunday afternoon that the state is working with federal officials on a “speedy rebuild of I-95.”
President Joe Biden has been briefed on the collapse, according to a tweet from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
A spokesperson for the Federal Highway Administration said administrator Shailen Bhatt would be in Philadelphia on Monday to “offer federal support and assistance.”
The US Coast Guard, which was looking out for possible water pollution after the fire and road collapse, reported “a sheen on the water” that was confined to one area, according to a spokesperson.
The tanker that caught fire has the potential to spill 8,500 gallons of gasoline, the Coast Guard said in a statement.
A 29-foot boat was sent to monitor the area “to observe any pollution to the waterways. They reported that there is a sheen on the water but it seems to be confined to the cove,” the Coast Guard’s statement reads. “The substance is gasoline and the tanker has a potential to spill 8500 gallons. However, it has been reported to us that clean up efforts are mainly shore side, meaning on land.”
The governor later Sunday sought to assure residents, saying “there is no threat to anyone’s drinking water.”
Brendan Riley, director of water operations for the Philadelphia Water Department, echoed that water in the city was safe.
“At this point in time, we have no concerns of any environmental impact to our water intake at the Baxter Water treatment plant,” Riley said. “There was a lot of coordination with the Department of Environmental Protection, the US Coast Guard as well as to make sure that we responded appropriately and deploy some booms, not only at our intakes but also at the outfall location where there was any potential discharge.”
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Democrats won control of the Pennsylvania House in special elections Tuesday, wresting partial power from Republicans for the first time in a dozen years in the competitive swing state.
Democrats won all three vacant Pittsburgh-area House seats to claim a slim edge over Republicans, finally securing a majority they first appeared to have won in last November’s General Election. Republicans still hold the Senate, creating a political division that could make it difficult for lawmakers to send priority bills to new Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro.
The special elections capped several months of electoral drama.
Republicans held a comfortable 113-90 House majority last year. But once-a-decade redistricting and strong performance in statewide races helped Democrats flip just enough seats in the fall election to win a 102-101 majority in the House. Or so it seemed. Three of those Democratic seats quickly became vacant, casting uncertainty over who actually controlled the chamber.
Rep. Tony DeLuca died of cancer in October, shortly before winning reelection, Rep. Summer Lee resigned after also winning a congressional election and Rep. Austin Davis quit before being sworn in as lieutenant governor.
That left Republicans with more people in the House than Democrats and led to a political impasse. The chamber elected Democratic Rep. Mark Rozzi as speaker as the new session began on Jan. 3, but only after Republican leaders and a few other GOP members joined with all Democrats on the vote.
The House has been frozen since Rozzi took over and has not passed internal operating rules, assigned members to committees or approved any legislation. Rozzi said last week he wants to retain the speakership when Democrats convene with their newly elected members.
At a news conference in Pittsburgh late Tuesday the Democratic floor leader, Rep. Joanna McClinton, said the three Democratic candidates had been “tossed into the mixer really quickly” to compete in the special elections.
She noted Democrats have been in the House minority for 24 of the past 28 years.
McClinton wants the speakership but said she did not want to “get ahead of the days to come” as the election results are fully tabulated the certified, asking people to “please stay tuned to see what the will of this body will be” when the House returns to voting session.
A few minutes after McClinton was done speaking, the clerk’s office sent out an email with notice of House floor sessions to resume in two weeks.
Democrats had been expected to win Tuesday’s special elections, because they had easily won the same seats last fall.
DeLuca’s former seat was won by Democrat Joe McAndrew, 32, a business owner who is a former state House Democratic staffer and the former executive director of Allegheny County’s Democratic committee. Lee’s former seat was won by Abigail Salisbury, 40, a lawyer and Democratic member of the Swissvale Borough Council. Matthew Gergely, a Democrat who works for the McKeesport city government, was elected to succeed Davis.
The special elections occurred only after the courts rejected an attempt by the House Republican floor leader, Rep. Bryan Cutler, to prevent two of the contests from being decided on Tuesday.
When the newly elected lawmakers take office, the House may still be one member short of its full complement. That’s because Republican Rep. Lynda Schlegel Culver won a special election Jan. 31 to fill a vacant state Senate seat.
