Pennsylvania Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro’s recent declaration that he will sign no death warrants is emboldening lawmakers who want to abolish executions in the Keystone State.
To that end, state Representative Chris Rabb (D-Philadelphia) is circulating a memorandum asking colleagues to cosponsor a measure he plans to offer ending the state’s death penalty.
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Congressman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH-2) this week commenced a House of Representatives investigation concerning the genesis of the novel coronavirus that hit U.S. shores in winter 2020.
As the new chair of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, the southern-Ohio legislator formally requested an on-the-record conversation with former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci and other senior federal health administrators as well as security officials. Wenstrup’s subcommittee is working on the matter alongside House Committee on Oversight and Accountability which is chaired by James Comer (R-KY-1) who last month made initial requests for federal documents pertaining to COVID-19’s origins.
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Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s opposition to Norfolk Southern Corp.’s handling of its East Palestine, Ohio train derailment contrasts strongly with his initial satisfaction with the controlled vent and burn of the rail vehicle’s toxic cargo.
The 53-car train with some cars carrying vinyl chloride derailed on February 3 in the village of about 5,000 residents one-quarter mile west of Beaver County in Pennsylvania. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, the train went off the rail as a result of a defective axle.
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Pennsylvania state Representative Stephenie Scialabba (R-Cranberry Township) this week proposed legislation banning compulsory diversity courses at state-funded universities.
The Bulter County-based lawmaker mentioned in a memorandum describing her emerging bill that she was impelled to draft it after learning that undergraduates at the University of Pittsburgh are required to “complete one course that is designated as a Diversity course.”
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Republicans lost their majority in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives last year, but on Tuesday GOP members voiced their hope that the state might still curb state spending and lighten the tax burden with which the commonwealth saddles residents and businesses.
With that goal in mind, House Appropriations Committee Minority Chairman Seth Grove (R-York) led a roundtable discussion with several state fiscal-policy experts.
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Republicans in the Ohio Legislature are working to pass a law codifying the election-integrity office whose creation Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) announced last year.
LaRose declared last October he would set up the Public Integrity Division in his office to improve the security, accuracy and accessibility of elections in the Buckeye State. The new department consolidates heretofore separate divisions dealing with campaign-finance administration, voter registration, election investigations and cybersecurity.
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U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) is urging fellow members of Congress to pass a measure to raise taxes on corporations with operations in low-tax foreign countries.
The legislation, called the No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act, would effect American participation in a global minimum tax, a major Biden-administration policy priority. In 2021, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen joined 130 nations to negotiate a framework to equalize corporate taxation so companies could not escape high taxes in their home countries. Two months ago, all 27 member states of the European Union agreed on a plan for their involvement in such a system.
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U.S. Congressman Mike Gallagher (R-WI-8) this weekend expressed heightened optimism about the prospect of banning all American use of the video-sharing application TikTok after the Senate version of his bill to do so gained bipartisan support.
Last week, Senator Angus King, an independent who is a member of his chamber’s Democratic Caucus, joined Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) in cosponsoring the legislation, known as the Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party Act (ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act). The measure has enjoyed bipartisan backing in the House of Representatives since its introduction in December, being cosponsored by Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL-8).
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Pennsylvania state Representative Dawn Keefer (R-Dillsburg) is asking the state General Assembly to support legislation she is drafting to require periodical audits of the commonwealth’s election registry.
The representative observed that an investigation by Democratic Auditor General Eugene DePasquale that concluded in December 2019 discovered numerous problems with the accuracy of Pennsylvania’s voter records. DePasquale’s report determined, for example, that 24,408 registrations with the same driver’s license number appeared on other registrations. It also found that 2,991 active voter records contained information matching that displayed on Department of Health death notices.
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Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers (D) on Thursday announced several budget items for Fiscal Years 2023-25 that would expand aid to Badger State veterans.
Priorities Evers mentioned included programs to assist ex-military personnel with employment, education, mental health and housing security. He said the proposal builds on earlier expenditures the governor and legislature made last year, spurred by recommendations of his Blue Ribbon Commission on Veteran Opportunity.
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Two state legislators from Wisconsin are urging colleagues to back their bill to strengthen crime victims’ rights to restitution in their state.
The bill authored by State Representatives Shae Sortwell (R-Gibson) and Duey Stroebel (R-Saukville) would halt the restoration of felons’ voting rights until after the perpetrators pay all fines, court fees, and victim restitution. In the Badger State, a convict loses his or her right to vote until he or she serves all prison time and completes any parole or probation that a court imposes. But that person may again vote before meeting his or her legal monetary obligations.
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Pennsylvania Democrats in the House of Representatives are seizing their new majority in the state House of Representatives — secured this week with three special-election victories — to advance abortion and lose voting security.
Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chairman Sharif Street, who represents part of Philadelphia in the state Senate, issued a statement congratulating Joe McAndrew, Abigail Salisbury and Matt Gergely, all of whom won Allegheny County-based House seats. The chair said he looks forward to the work he believes House leadership wants to do to keep abortion widely available and ensure Pennsylvanians need not submit identification to vote at the polls.
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State Representative Brad Roae (R-PA-Meadville) this week proposed legislation to permit small businesses to continue operating during potential future states of emergency in Pennsylvania.
His bill, a version of a measure he sponsored in 2020, would permit small businesses to serve one customer at a time during such periods. The earlier legislation passed the House with nearly all Republicans and some Democrats in support but the Senate did not vote on it.
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Two nonprofit law firms challenging Wisconsin’s Kettle Moraine School District’s (KMSD) gender-transition policy announced this week they’ve enlisted the expertise of two mental-health professionals including a prominent transgender psychologist.
The center-right Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), headquartered in Milwaukee, and the faith-focused Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), based in Arizona, filed the lawsuit last summer on behalf of parents of a daughter who attended Kettle Moraine Middle School. The anonymous plaintiffs assert that district officials defied their wishes and acceded to the daughter’s request that faculty and staff recognize her as a transgender boy and call her by her preferred male pronouns and chosen name.
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U.S. Representatives Dave Joyce (R-OH-14) and Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA-1) are seeking an end to the COVID-19-vaccine mandate affecting workers at Head Start facilities.
The federal Head Start program was founded in 1965 and provides numerous early-learning, wellness and parenting-support services to families with children ages five and younger who receive public assistance or have incomes below the poverty line. The program serves more than 800,000 children nationwide including 33,241 in Ohio and roughly 1,500 in Joyce’s district.
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Pennsylvania House Republican Leader Bryan Cutler (R-Quarryville) is seeking answers regarding what he terms a major security infraction on the part of House Speaker Mark Rozzi (D-Temple).
Rozzi was elected speaker with the support of all Democrats and 16 Republicans in the state House of Representatives as part of a deal Cutler said would entail the Berks County representative re-registering as an independent and caucusing with neither party. The speaker has since declined to lose his party affiliation and chose to adjourn session until later this month. Rozzi’s decision disempowers Republicans who, had they been in session, would have enjoyed a few weeks with a narrow House majority, but three special elections scheduled for this Tuesday almost guarantee the Democrats will gain control of the chamber.
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A center-right policy-research center based in Columbus, OH is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to nix President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive almost $500 billion in unpaid student loans.
Nebraska and six other states sued the Biden administration to stop the program that Congress never authorized. Last November, petitioners succeeded in getting a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit to pause implementation of the plan. The following month, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and oral arguments have been scheduled for February 28.
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Having received an appointment to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee this week, Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is poised to play a major role in this year’s fight over raising the debt ceiling.
Earlier this week, Blackburn joined her Utah Republican colleague Mike Lee in penning a letter, signed by 22 of their fellow senators, insisting a rise in the federal debt limit must only happen as part of a deal to pare back government spending. In an interview with The Tennessee Star, Blackburn explained her view that fiscal circumstances demand such an agreement so debt does not snowball into an even more unmanageable burden on American families.
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A Pennsylvania state senator this week announced he will soon reintroduce legislation he proposed last session to end use of election drop boxes and satellite offices.
In a memorandum asking colleagues to cosponsor his bill, Senator Cris Dush (R-Bellefonte) characterized drop boxes where voters can deposit absentee ballots as fraught with security problems. Lawmakers never enacted a law authorizing counties to set up the receptacles, but the commonwealth’s Democrat-controlled executive branch issued guidance to counties in 2020 permitting drop boxes’ usage.
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A Pennsylvania lawmaker is asking colleagues to support an expansion of the state’s mandate that contractors use the E-Verify system to ensure they only hire legal U.S. residents.
State Representative Ryan Mackenzie (R-Macungie) this week began circulating a memorandum seeking co-sponsors for his upcoming legislation that would require all public contractors and subcontractors to use the federal government’s E-Verify website. Established in the late nineties and now run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the site lets employers avail themselves of it free of charge. The system cross-references information from workers’ Employment Eligibility Verification Form I-9 with preexisting government data to determine whether a hire is living in America legally.
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The Badger Institute, a free-market think tank that has operated in Milwaukee for since 1987, is expanding with a new office near the state Capitol.
While the policy-research center, known in its early days as the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, will keep its principal headquarters in Cream City, its educational consultant Jim Bender and communications vice president Michael Jahr will staff the new Madison office. Badger leadership expect the new capital-city presence to bolster the think tank’s government-relations efforts.
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Ohio Governor Mike DeWine proposed major expansions of various social programs in his 2023 State of the State address to legislators in Columbus on Tuesday.
The Republican governor called on lawmakers to enact a variety of new policies to aid families through the budget for Fiscal Years 2024 and 2025. Those requests include allowing parents who adopted children from private agencies to access Medicaid coverage and expanding a home-visit program providing health assistance to expectant mothers.
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U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) is asking the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to provide information about the effects that COVID-19 vaccines may have had on numerous aviation professionals and the agency’s response to those effects.
Johnson wrote a letter to FAA Acting Administrator Billy Nolen and Office of Aerospace Medicine Federal Air Surgeon Susan Northrup last week requesting an investigation into the conditions of commercial pilots Greg Pierson, Bob Snow and Wil Wolfe. The three were all in their 50s or 60s and the latter two received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine while Pierson got the Pfizer shot. The senator also wants investigations to determine vaccine effects on agricultural pilot Cody Flint and air-traffic controller Hayley Lopez, respectively 33 and 29, who both obtained the Pfizer jab.
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A state lawmaker is urging colleagues to support a bill he is drafting to legalize esports betting in Pennsylvania.
Representative Ed Neilson (D-Philadelphia) began circulating a memorandum last week making the case for legitimating video-game betting in the Keystone State, observing that the esports business took in $1.1 billion worldwide in 2022 and is predicted to soon realize a $1.8-billion global value. Neilson ascribes much of the recently increased enthusiasm around esports to the lifestyle constraints imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021.
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U.S. Representative Bob Latta (R-OH-5) is leading a charge by federal lawmakers against the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) relaxation of safety requirements for abortion drugs so consumers can access them by mail.
The Bowling Green-area lawmaker coauthored a letter with U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) and garnered signatures from 75 other members of Congress to insist that the FDA’s recent actions violate federal law. In particular, the legislators object to the agency’s approval of chemical abortion-inducing substances while no longer requiring in-person dispensing.
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Numerous university think tanks have had national political leaders as figureheads. The University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement isn’t unique in that regard. What does set the center apart from similar institutions — besides its recent immersion in national scandal — is its limited research output.
The Penn Biden Center is undergoing intense and somewhat bipartisan criticism for having housed nearly a dozen classified government records after Joe Biden used the space as his main D.C. office from 2017 to 2019 while also nominally working as a professor. The documents were discovered last November and other restricted federal materials turned up this month in the president’s Delaware home. Some of the records were generated when Biden served as a U.S. senator and others materialized when he was vice president.
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President Joe Biden’s D.C.-based think tank operated by the University of Pennsylvania reportedly held a two-day “bootcamp” last year during which congressional staffers were urged to support greater cooperation between the United States and China.
The Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement has become the subject of heightened public attention in light of revelations earlier this month that Biden, who used the establishment as his main D.C. office, kept classified federal documents there.
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A Democratic California congressman this week weighed in on President Joe Biden’s classified-document scandal, characterizing the president’s housing of restricted records in his University of Pennsylvania office and his Delaware home as indefensible.
A member of the House Oversight and Armed Services committees, U.S. Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA-17) told Fox News that Biden warrants scrutiny for keeping numerous records he obtained during his earlier service as a U.S. senator and later as vice president. Khanna noted that the law requires classified federal documents to be kept in “sensitive compartmented information facilities” (SCIFs). While presidents can sometimes temporarily designate rooms within their personal properties as SCIFs, Biden has never suggested any spaces in his home or office were deemed to be such areas.
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The Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy & Global Engagement, the University of Pennsylvania think tank of which President Joe Biden was once the de facto leader, has had no publicized activity for nearly a year and its future is uncertain.
Biden reportedly used the Washington, D.C.-based center as his main D.C. office for much of the time between the end of his vice presidency in 2017 and his presidential run in 2020. From 2017 to 2019, Biden received approximately $900,000 in salary for a Penn professorship that did not require him to teach regular classes.
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A Texas congressman is asking the U.S. Department of Education (DoE) to investigate funding that foreign entities have bestowed on the University of Pennsylvania.
Last week, U.S. Representative Lance Gooden (R-TX-5) authored a letter to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona in which he noted that $51 million flowed to the Philadelphia Ivy League university from non-American sources in 2021 and 2022. Of those donations, $14 million came from unnamed Chinese or Hong Kong entities and $2.4 million came from Saudi Arabia.
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Revelations that President Joe Biden kept classified federal documents at his University of Pennsylvania office in Washington, D.C., have brought renewed scrutiny to his relationship with the university — and the role many Penn professors had in persuading his administration to kill a Justice Department project combatting Chinese espionage.
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A review by The Pennsylvania Daily Star of output from the Penn Biden Center, the foreign-policy think tank established in 2017 to coincide with the start of Joe Biden’s professorship at the University of Pennsylvania, suggests the center has produced little to no original scholarly work.
The Washington, D.C.-based center has drawn heavy media scrutiny after news came out earlier this month that nearly a dozen classified federal documents were housed there until last November. Biden reportedly used the location as his main D.C. office after his vice presidency ended and before he became president.
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“Today, Penn’s relationship with China is strong, and continues to grow.”
That’s how the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Global website still refers to the Philadelphia-based Ivy League school’s association with the communist-run nation.
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President Joe Biden’s former private office in Washington, D.C., where roughly a dozen classified documents were discovered earlier last November, was recently a site for high-profile University of Pennsylvania internships.
Administrators of the Philadelphia-based Ivy League school brought the former vice president aboard as a professor in the winter of 2017 to coincide with the “soft opening” of the 13,800-square-foot Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. Just under a year later, the think tank officially commenced operations with a stated aim of engaging “our fellow citizens in shaping this world, while ensuring the gains of global engagement are widely shared.”
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U.S. Representative Dave Joyce (R-OH-14) is encouraging fellow congresspersons to get behind a resolution he introduced to shield American industry from new disclosure requirements meant to advance leftist environmental policy.
Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed requirements for publicly traded companies to disclose information about the “climate-related risks that are reasonably likely to have a material impact on their business, results of operations, or financial condition….”
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Pennsylvania state Representative Torren Ecker (R-Abbottstown) is preparing legislation to restore a rule keeping each healthcare lawsuit in the county where the alleged malpractice occurred.
Two decades ago, state lawmakers enacted the Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error (MCARE) Act which forbade patients claiming they suffered from a doctor’s medical mistakes to file their lawsuits in jurisdictions where the alleged harm did not take place. Before that time, much litigation was being filed in Philadelphia and Allegheny counties whose common-pleas courts were known to look especially favorably on healthcare plaintiffs.
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The Pennsylvania Senate this week passed an amendment to the state Constitution that would require individuals to provide identification to vote in person in an election.
Also contained in the bill the chamber approved are an amendment that would open the statute of limitations for survivors of child sexual abuse and another amendment that would strengthen legislators’ power against a governor’s regulatory authority.
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The School District of Waukesha (Wisconsin) Board of Education this week passed a resolution recognizing parental rights with regard to political and gender issues.
The measure, which passed the board 8-0, furthermore affirms biological sex as determinative in allowing students to join sports teams and use bathroom facilities. Board President Kelly Piacsek said she drafted the resolution to address concerns that numerous parents brought to her and other school directors. She added that she is a parent of three students who attend district schools.
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U.S. Representative Bob Latta (R-OH-05) reintroduced a bill this week to end automatic pay raises for members of Congress.
The congressman has proposed this measure in past sessions to force federal legislators to go on record every time they wish to raise their salaries. All seven cosponsors of the legislation were Republicans. It did not receive a vote in committee.
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Four Republican state senators are encouraging their colleagues to join them in legislating to keep a new requirement from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) from going into effect in Pennsylvania.
Two decades ago, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) began requiring that heavy-duty diesel-vehicle engines receive CARB certification as part of the agency’s Heavy-Duty Diesel Emissions Control Program.
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U.S. Representatives Mike Gallagher (R-WI-8) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL-8) sent a letter this week to the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) opposing its decision to let TikTok run commercials during recent college football halftime shows.
The two congressmen are sponsors of a measure to ban the video-sharing application from all Americans’ computing devices. Gallagher and other Republican members of Wisconsin’s U.S. House delegation this month successfully encouraged Democratic Governor Tony Evers to prohibit the app’s download or use on any state-owned computers or phones. Numerous other state governments as well as the federal government no longer permit the program’s download or use by public entities.
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Attorneys for the Elias Law Group announced over the weekend they are representing several left-leaning institutions seeking to nix Ohio’s new law requiring voters to show photo identification to participate in an election.
The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, the Ohio Federation of Teachers, the Ohio Alliance for Retired Americans and the Union Veterans Council are listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R). The firm working the case is headed by Marc Elias who has handled cases for Democrats in the 2020 presidential contest and numerous other national elections.
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A lawmaker from Montgomery County is circulating a request to colleagues to back repeal of a requirement that a married woman seeking an abortion in Pennsylvania notify her spouse.
In a preliminary description of the upcoming bill, state Representative Liz Hanbidge (D-Blue Bell) bemoaned last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide. Hanbidge insisted that Pennsylvania’s founding principles of freedom and individual sovereignty should empower people to kill unborn life without constraint.
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A $6 billion spending bill that Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) signed on Friday expands a program assisting parents and guardians with supplemental education purchases.
The ACE Educational Savings Account program previously bestowed a $500 credit on families seeking to purchase enrichment materials or services to help their children get past the learning setbacks caused by the COVID-19 school shutdowns. The new legislation raises the credit to $1,000.
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A bill is re-emerging in Pennsylvania’s new State Senate session to end the requirement that pardon and commutation recommendations from the State Board of Pardons be unanimous.
The five-member board comprises the lieutenant governor and the state attorney general as well as experts on corrections, victims’ rights, and mental health. Once the panel issues a recommendation for an inmate to receive a pardon or a commuted sentence, the governor reviews those determinations and decides whether to sign off on them. Historically, governors have tended to follow the board’s advice.
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The Pro-Life Wisconsin Victory Fund political action committee (PAC) on Thursday came out in favor of Justice Daniel Kelly’s election to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Kelly previously served on the court from 2016 to 2020 but failed to get reelected that spring. This year, he will face state Circuit Court Judge Jennifer Dorow (3rd District), Dane County Circuit Court Judge Everett Mitchell (Branch 4), and Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz (Branch 24) in the February 21 primary. The top two vote-getters will compete for the high-court seat in an April 4 general election.
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Kay LeClaire, the far-left Madison, Wisconsin-based activist who claimed an American-Indian heritage and clamored for radical causes she said benefitted the indigenous community, is facing public denunciation after being exposed as entirely white.
LeClaire, who went by the alias nibiiwakamigkwe [lower-case in the original] is a co-founder of giige [also lower-case in the original]. The arts-oriented group describes itself as “an Indigenous and queer space for the community in and around Teejop [a Ho-Chunk tribal word for the Great Lakes region].” Though female, LeClaire describes herself as “nonbinary,” denying she belongs to either sex.
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Pennsylvania state Senator Cris Dush (R-Bellefonte) is asking colleagues to cosponsor legislation to let law-abiding state residents carry concealed firearms without a permit, something he tried but failed to get enacted last session.
The senator’s original bill passed the General Assembly in autumn of 2021 but Governor Tom Wolf (D) vetoed it. Its chances of becoming law have diminished even further insofar as Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro recently was elected in November to succeed Wolf and Democrats won a majority of seats in the state House of Representatives.
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Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) on Sunday signed legislation allowing Ohioans who acquired occupational licenses in other states to utilize their credentials in the Buckeye State.
Eighteen states, including neighboring Pennsylvania, already recognize occupational licenses that their residents received elsewhere. For years, a coalition of free-market organizations, including the Columbus-based Buckeye Institute, have urged Ohio lawmakers to adopt the same policy to ease burdens on workers and make the state more economically competitive.
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Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers (D) is preparing to allocate a large fraction of opioid settlement money toward a new housing program for those in recovery.
In February 2021, an assemblage of 47 states including Wisconsin announced an agreement with the consulting firm McKinsey & Company would yield a total of $573 million for the jurisdictions in recompense for the corporation’s alleged role in the opioid epidemic. Prior to the settlement, state Attorney General Josh Kaul (D) and prosecutors across the country undertook an investigation that led to allegations that McKinsey devised promotions for high-strength pain medications resulting in widespread, improper use.
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