A Pennsylvania judge ruled to kick five Democratic members off the school board for the West Chester Area School District over a mask mandate.
Judge William Mahon of the Chester County Court of Common Pleas ruled to immediately remove the officials from their position due to “no response” from the members to a petition to end the mandate.
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Pennsylvania state Sen. Gene Yaw (R-Williamsport) indicated Wednesday he will soon introduce legislation to create a regulatory framework for “carbon capture” in the commonwealth.
Carbon capture is the process of catching carbon-dioxide discharge from fossil-fuel-fired power plants and manufacturing facilities for either reuse or storage so that the emissions don’t make it into the atmosphere and exacerbate global warming.
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On Tuesday, a committee in the Pennsylvania state legislature advanced a bill that would ban so-called “transgender women” from competing in women’s sports.
According to The Hill, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives’ Education Committee approved the legislation by a vote of 15-9. The bill, if passed into law, would make it so that “athletic teams or sports designated for females, women or girls…may not be open to students of the male sex.” The bill defines “sex” as the “biological distinction between male and female based on reproductive biology and genetic make-up,” and would include public schools, community colleges, and state universities.
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In a rare moment of concord between industry and unions, representatives of both interests exhorted Pennsylvania state Senators on Tuesday to resist Pennsylvania’s entry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
Eleven states in the northeast and mid-Atlantic regions have joined the pact to impose prices on carbon emissions for power plants. Unlike most member states, however, Pennsylvania entered into the agreement without legislative approval though an executive order by Gov. Tom Wolf (D) in 2019. The emissions pricing has not yet gone into effect; the governor wants to implement it in the next fiscal year.
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Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and prominent conservative voice, endorsed Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race.
Since announcing his candidacy, McCormick has attempted to secure widespread GOP support, as he battles Mehmet Oz and other contenders in the Republican primary competition.
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A bipartisan majority of a Pennsylvania House of Representatives panel Monday passed several measures to increase fossil-fuel development in and exportation from the Keystone State.
One resolution, sponsored by state Rep. Stan Saylor (R-Red Lion) would call upon Govs. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) and Phil Murphy (D-NJ) to terminate their states’ bans on the building of new conduits that could carry natural gas extracted in Pennsylvania. Other legislation offered by state Sen. Joe Pittman (R-Indiana) would ensure that legislators must approve Pennsylvania’s entry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a multi-state pact to which Gov. Tom Wolf (D) has committed the state by executive order. Implementation of RGGI entails effectively imposing a tax on carbon emissions.
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Montgomery County, Pennsylvania’s Democrat-controlled administration has defended a woman who dropped off numerous voters’ absentee ballots last year—and Republicans are saying political favoritism is the reason.
As The Pennsylvania Daily Star reported last week, Montgomery County Chief Operating Officer Lee Soltysiak wrote a letter to Montgomery County Republican Committee (MCRC) Chair Liz Preate Havey insisting that MCRC was “irresponsible” to allege the woman acted illegally.
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In less than six months, a private college has allegedly enforced racial segregation, prohibited a student group from opposing critical race theory, and punished the same group for privately raising travel funds to avoid the college’s COVID-19 rules.
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A proposed Pennsylvania gun restriction law is drawing criticism from defenders of the Second Amendment.
Rep. Darisha Parker, D-Philadelphia, proposed HB2435 that would require sales of long guns to include “a locking device to ensure safe storage of the firearm,” similar to current law that requires the same for handguns.
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A proposed bill would require Pennsylvania employers to provide all employees with paid sick leave, going beyond current federal requirements.
HB2439, introduced as the Health Family Healthy Workplaces Act, was introduced by Rep. Jennifer O’Mara, D-Delaware.
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Pennsylvania public-sector unions cannot compel state workers to join a union, and many workers have exercised their right to leave in recent months.
Over a nine-month period in 2021, almost 1,200 workers left AFSCME Local 13, which represents state and local government workers in Pennsylvania, according to public records obtained by the Freedom Foundation, a group that educates workers about their right to leave government unions.
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A Montgomery County, Pennsylvania administrator this week responded to the local Republican Party’s allegations of “ballot harvesting,” insisting that video surveillance does not show that it occurred.
As The Pennsylvania Daily Star reported, Montgomery County Republican Committee (MCRC) Chair Liz Preate Havey addressed the county Board of Commissioners last Thursday regarding numerous election-integrity concerns. She mentioned video footage of a woman depositing handfuls of ballots into a drop box in Upper Dublin Township in the run-up to the 2021 general election. Such drop boxes have been in use in Pennsylvania for absentee-ballot delivery since 2020.
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President Joe Biden has demanded the resignation of Dr. Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker, appointees from former President Donald Trump and candidates for the U.S. Senate, from the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition.
If either of the individuals refuses to resign, the letter threatens termination. However, despite the threat, both candidates have pledged to not back down.
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A bill that was referred to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives Finance Committee last week would amend the state Constitution to allow voters to reject any state-level revenue hike.
The legislation, introduced by State Rep. David Rowe (R-Mifflinburg), would place a question on the primary ballot regarding any new tax or fee or any new increase in such levies. Should Pennsylvanians reject a revenue increase, the legislature could attempt to override the voters but would need support from two thirds of its members to succeed.
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According to several Wednesday reports, scammers are targeting Pennsylvanians in an attempt to profit off the tragic deaths of two state troopers.
“It’s disgusting to even have to issue this statement, but our members and others are reporting to us that they’re receiving phone calls from people alleging to represent law enforcement organizations that are raising money to benefit the families of our fallen brothers,” Pennsylvania State Troopers Association (PTSA) President David Kennedy reportedly said.
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Pennsylvania State Rep. Darisha Parker (D-Philadelphia) this week introduced a measure to restrict employers’ consideration of job applicants’ criminal records.
In a statement on her bill, Parker cited data from the U.S. Department of Justice indicating that nearly a third of Americans have a criminal record, almost as many as have earned college degrees. She said that incurring such a record has proved a major burden for many Pennsylvanians seeking jobs as well as housing and public benefits.
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Women’s groups in Pennsylvania are quiet after the University of Pennsylvania’s (UPenn) biologically male transgender swimmer Lia Thomas won the women’s National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) 500-yard freestyle swimming championship at the end of last week.
The Pennsylvania National Organization for Women (PNOW), Women’s Way and the Women’s Law Project did not return The Pennsylvania Daily Star’s Tuesday comment requests regarding whether they felt Thomas’ win was a victory for women.
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A regulatory review panel on Monday approved numerous new administrative rules imposed by Pennsylvania’s executive branch on charter schools, a move the institutions did not welcome.
Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC) Chair George Bedwick, Commissioner Murray Ufberg and Commissioner Dennis Watson, all appointed to the board by Democratic state officials, voted in favor of the new regulations. Vice Chair John Mizner and Commissioner John Soroko, both Republican appointees, voted in opposition.
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A federal appeals court this week blocked certification of the election results for the contest between Republican David Ritter and Democrat Zachary Cohen for Lehigh County, Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas Judge.
Currently, Ritter is 74 votes ahead of Cohen, but the win would flip to the Democrat should the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decide to count 257 absentee ballots that lack handwritten dates on their return envelopes. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Pennsylvania is litigating on behalf of five of the voters who cast those ballots.
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Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial hopeful Dr Mehmet Oz. joined The John Fredericks Show Monday for a wide-ranging interview covering his thoughts about endorsing former President Trump in 2022, his dual citizenship, and much more.
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Vulnerable New Jersey Democrat U.S. Representative Tom Malinowski (D-NJ-7) is under fire for an anti-parent rant.
At a town hall, Malinowski referred to parents’ concerns about their kids’ education as “made-up cultural bulls**t because they want power. Not because they actually care about us.”
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State Sen. David Argall (R-Mahanoy City) last week proposed two constitutional amendments that would affect state-legislative redistricting in Pennsylvania.
The first reform the senator wants to make would change the process for choosing the chair of the Legislative Reapportionment Commission (LRC), which oversees remapping of the General Assembly’s districts every 10 years. Current law directs the state Supreme Court to pick a chairperson, effectively deciding which party controls the five-member commission on which the Republican and Democratic leaders of the state House and state Senate sit.
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Public transportation funding has been a growing concern in some cities, and a proposed bill could give some Pennsylvania counties the authority to levy local taxes to support their transit systems.
Rep. Tim Hennessey, R-Chester/Montgomery, introduced HB2366 to grant Allegheny, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties the ability to levy taxes “for transit and transportation systems and transportation infrastructure.”
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Pennsylvania-based company Reveal Global Consulting, LLC agreed to settle allegations of improper billing of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
According to a release from the Department of Justice (DOJ), the company will pay back $820,000 to the federal agency in order to avoid consequences of potentially violating the False Claims Act.
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Republicans in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives were dealt an expected blow this week as the state Supreme Court unanimously declined to overturn a new state-House-district map.
Every ten years, Pennsylvania’s Legislative Reapportionment Commission (LRC) must redraw the state’s 203 state legislative districts and 50 state senatorial districts to cohere with new population data reported by the U.S. Census. The five-member LRC is composed of the respective Republican and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate as well as a chair appointment by the state Supreme Court. In the latest round of redistricting, Democrats effectively controlled the LRC, as the majority of justices on the court selected fellow Democrat Mark A. Nordenberg.
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NORRISTOWN, PA—Montgomery County, Pennsylvania’s Republican Party yesterday asked the county’s Democrat-controlled Board of Elections to consider several election-security measures, mainly regarding absentee voting.
At a County Commissioners’ meeting, Montgomery County Republican Committee (MCRC) Chair Liz Preate Havey said the reforms her organization proposes will curb alleged breaches of law and foulups in administration that have already taken place in the county during recent elections.
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Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor who’s running for Senate from Pennsylvania, is denying reports that he is in discussions to return to television and suggested opponent David McCormick is behind the rumor.
The entertainment site Radar Online reported Tuesday that inside sources said that while Oz aims to win the May 17 Republican primary and the November 8 election for retiring Sen. Pat Toomey’s (R) seat, he’s working on reviving his broadcast career in case he doesn’t prevail.
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Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives Education Committee Tuesday issued a letter opposing new regulations Gov. Tom Wolf (D) has imposed on the state’s charter schools.
All 15 Republicans on the committee voted to authorize the letter to the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) and the Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC) while all 10 Democrats voted against it. Majority Chairman Curt Sonney (R-Erie) said the panel is not voicing opposition to every new rule on the list published last month but merely those that frustrate reputable charter schools’ ability to operate.
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State Rep. Barbara Gleim (R-PA-Carlisle) announced to fellow lawmakers on Monday that she will soon introduce a measure to bar Pennsylvania teachers from championing their personal political convictions in the classroom.
Gleim stated that her proposal is an important step toward reaffirming anti-discrimination principles as outlined in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, religion or sex in education.
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Former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane (D) was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) after crashing her car in Scranton around 6:30 p.m. on Saturday evening.
City police reported Monday that no injuries resulted from the two-car collision at the intersection of Moosic Street and Meadow Avenue and that Kane will incur official charges this week.
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Pennsylvania State Senators Doug Mastriano (R-Chambersburg) and Scott Hutchinson (R-Oil City) last week proposed a measure to lighten the tax and regulatory burden for fossil-fuel producers.
Their legislation, entitled the PA Energy Independence Act, would immediately pause income taxation for natural-gas developers, reduce state gas-extraction fees by 200 percent and end Governor Tom Wolf’s (D) moratorium on new state-land leases for fossil-fuel drilling. It would also suspend the state’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which would amount to a tax on carbon emissions.
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While the pandemic has upset the norm in education, a substitute teacher shortage in Pennsylvania has sparked changes to state law and continues to delay the return of a normal school day.
The shortage sometimes means pay spikes for substitutes, cutting into school district budgets. In the long run, shortages may require more tax revenue to cover costs and attract teachers.
Some schools have turned to remote days or shut down when they became shorthanded, like they did during a rise in COVID-19 cases, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review noted. By February, disruptions in Pennsylvania and nationally leveled off, but the supply of substitute teachers remains small.
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Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman (R-Bellefonte) proposed lowering the state’s gas tax levels in order to ease the burden on consumers.
Corman’s legislation, known as the Consumer Gas Prices Relief Act, would reduce the state’s liquid fuels tax by one-third through the end of 2022, cutting roughly 20 cents per gallon off the price.
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Officials from the Department of Education testified on Thursday about learning loss for students, the barriers to recruiting teachers, and the need for more funding to reach parity among schools across Pennsylvania.
Gov. Tom Wolf’s proposed budget would boost state funding for education by $1.6 billion, a 22% increase from last year’s spending.
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Pennsylvania’s House Appropriations Committee ended hearings on next fiscal year’s budget on Thursday, with the governor’s budget chief defending a plan that many lawmakers fear significantly overspends.
Governor Tom Wolf (D) has asked the Republican-controlled General Assembly to consider a Fiscal Year 2022-23 budget that spends $43.7 billion, an increase of 16.6 percent over current expenditures. His proposal assumes the state will enjoy a revenue intake that surpasses that predicted by the nonpartisan Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) by $762 million.
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TRANSCRIPT: McCabe: Investigative journalist Peter Schweizer, in his new book Red-Handed, reports how the Chinese Communist Party has targeted American institutions of higher learning. Schweizer told The Star News Network how these institutions, after receiving funds from communist China, have worked to suppress criticism of the communist regime there and also have misreported or even failed to report millions of dollars received from China. Schweizer: Section 117 of the Education Act in 1965 is very explicit. It says that if U.S. colleges and universities take in foreign donations, substantial foreign donations, they are required to report those to the federal government. McCabe: Many American colleges fail to report any or all of their Chinese cash haul, Schweizer said. Such as Yale University and the millions of dollars it received from Joseph Tsai, co-founder of Alibaba and owner of the Brooklyn Nets. Schweizer: This is particularly applicable to China today, because hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing to American colleges and universities from Chinese nationals, many of them linked to the Chinese Communist Party and to the Chinese state. He’s donated hundreds of millions of dollars to Yale. He says that they come from his foundation based in California. The…
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Republicans in Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives this week introduced several measures to boost fossil-fuel production in the Keystone State, including a resumption of new state-land drilling leases.
Gov. Tom Wolf (D) imposed a moratorium on new leases for oil and gas development on state-owned areas in January 2015. A bill authored by State Rep. Clint Owlett (R-Wellsboro) would rescind that order and stipulate that all energy exploration performed under any resulting leases be subsurface. That means that the well site must be built off of commonwealth property and that underground channels would reach horizontally into the public lands, allowing for better environmental preservation than older drilling methods.
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Tea Party Patriots Action (TPPA), a national conservative nonprofit, began a tour of Pennsylvania Monday to emphasize the importance of election integrity.
TPPA kicked off the trek in Grove City and has since visited Du Bois, State College and Altoona. The organization plans to push eastward, penultimately visiting Philadelphia on March 29 and finally the state capital of Harrisburg on March 30. At each stop, organizers will impress upon audiences the need for both legislative reforms and for citizen involvement to improve voting and vote-count processes. Toward that end, TPPA is recruiting citizens for local election integrity task forces to aid area elections.
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected appeals from Republicans in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, an attempt to prevent the states’ redistricting maps.
GOP leaders in both states asked the Court for a temporary stay of the two maps in order to block them from being fully enacted. Because the ruling is not on the constitutionality of the maps, litigation can continue while the boundaries are in place.
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A new Franklin & Marshall College (F&M) Poll shows President Joe Biden’s positivity numbers have fallen from 38 percent to just 25 percent among independents since August.
The survey also found that, broadly speaking, more Pennsylvania voters now rate President Joe Biden as doing a “poor job” than at any previous point in his presidency.
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Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano (R-Harrisburg) hosted a panel discussion Friday with medical experts to highlight the four pillars of pandemic response, the failed medical establishment, and his new Medical Freedom legislation.
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Philly Weekly’s brief, modest shift to the political center has ended and its new editor apologized on Friday for giving non-leftists a voice in its pages.
Josh Kruger, who also wrote for PW in its earlier days as a reflexively progressive tabloid, issued a note to readers lamenting that the Philadelphia, PA-based paper ever strayed from its longstanding party line. He blasted PW’s deviation from that line as “really offensive and, frankly, hurtful.” He recalled he “was sort of devastated” when, in autumn of 2020, the publication announced it would embrace “alt journalism that’s conservative” and sought financial support via Kickstarter.com so it could realize that vision.
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The federal Payment Protection Program established in 2020 to help small businesses and protect the jobs of their workers eventually was allowed to include unions, and millions in forgivable loans ended up with them and other organizations.
Eligibility and timing are in question for many, according to a new report from the Freedom Foundation. Nationally, labor organizations received $36.7 million in PPP funds, and $1.2 million ended up in the hands of Pennsylvania unions.
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College costs and student debt remain high, and the Senate Appropriations Committee’s hearing with the leaders of Pennsylvania’s state-related universities was about how the General Assembly can help schools, rather than why its leaders aren’t doing more.
While leaders of Penn State, Temple, Pitt, and Lincoln universities noted more funding from the Legislature would cover more costs, they noted an emphasis on graduating students faster to lower student debt.
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While President Joe Biden proposed $22.5 billion in coronavirus-related spending this week, Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey (R) urged clarification of how the government has spent almost $6 trillion in earlier COVID relief.
Toomey joined 35 Senate colleagues in writing to Biden asking for a detailed explication of the disbursements made over the last two years which, the authors noted, amounted to the largest allotment of taxpayer money for one concern in American history.
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Pennsylvania state Rep. Mike Puskaric (R-Jefferson Hills) indicated Wednesday he will urge state agencies to ditch social-media platforms he says engage in censorship.
In a memorandum asking fellow representatives to cosponsor his upcoming resolution, the Pittsburgh-area legislator argued that especially large information-technology companies violate the state and federal constitutions when they make politicized publishing decisions. He insisted government institutions and officials should respond by cancelling their accounts on such sites and signing onto more permissive online venues instead.
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The John Fredericks Media Network purchased WVCH AM 740 and 103.3 FM in Chester and Malvern, Pennsylvania and will operate 95.3 FM in Pennsauken, New Jersey.
The new stations will allow programming to reach Philadelphia and large portions of New Jersey and Delaware.
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The Pennsylvania Supreme Court Tuesday ruled that controversial mail-in voting laws will remain in place for now.
Republicans argue that those laws, which have been in place for two years and were struck down by Commonwealth Court Senior Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt on February 16, violate the Pennsylvania Constitution.
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At a Pennsylvania House Appropriations Committee hearing Tuesday, representatives discussed the governor’s requested 40-percent state-police funding increase with department officials.
The Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) received $629,342,000 this fiscal year. In a budget proposal unveiled last month, Governor Tom Wolf (D) asked the Republican-run General Assembly to fund the agency at $925,599,000 (in combined state and federal dollars). The governor, however, anticipates that PSP funding can be kept flat over the four fiscal years after next year.
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Pennsylvania State Representative Stan Saylor (R-Red Lion) announced Monday he’ll introduce a resolution exhorting New Jersey and New York’s respective governors to allow construction of natural-gas conduits.
In 2014, Democratic New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s predecessor Andrew Cuomo (D) banned hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) for natural-gas extraction and thenceforth barred the creation of new natural-gas pipelines. Last month, Hochul endorsed a statewide prohibition of gas power for new buildings, the first such state-level interdiction in the U.S.
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