Democratic Rep. Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania announced his retirement Monday after 14 terms in the House, becoming the latest Democrat to retire just over a year from the midterms.
Doyle represents Pittsburgh and is the dean of Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation. His decision comes as Democrats seek to defend their 220-212 House majority and they struggle to pass President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda despite their control of both chambers.
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The Pennsylvania House of Representatives approved a measure this week that would require schools to post curriculum online.
Prime sponsor Rep. Andrew Lewis, R-Harrisburg, said it’s only an extension of what some districts already do – and gives parents access to what their kids are learning without having to visit a school building in person.
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Students at Point Park University are petitioning administrators to remove Logan Dubil, their conservative classmate from the school, after the undergraduate student appeared in media criticizing the university’s “Misgendering, Pronoun Misuse, and Deadnaming Policy.”
The Change.org petition, created by “Max,” currently has 396 signatures.
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State Rep. Kevin Boyle, D-Philadelphia, was arrested late Friday by city law enforcement on charges accusing him of harassment and violating a protection from abuse order.
Court documents show the 41-year-old lawmaker was arraigned in the early hours of Saturday morning. A trial date is set for Tuesday.
The news comes just days after Spotlight PA reported that House Democratic leadership stripped Boyle of his committee chairmanship and limited his access to the state capitol building.
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A number of Pennsylvania educators said Thursday the Department of Health hands down COVID-19 mitigation orders and doesn’t back them up when it comes to enforcement, leaving schools in a difficult spot.
Michael Bromirski, superintendent of Hempfield School District in Lancaster County, told the Senate Education Committee that since pandemic mitigation rules lifted earlier this summer, school districts no longer handle quarantine orders for students exposed to the virus after the department told them it’s the state’s responsibility – and authority – to do so.
Except, parents rarely receive such instructions, generating confusion and frustration.
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The University of Pennsylvania named its women’s studies center the “Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies” — removing a tribute to a prominent suffragette in the process.
According to Melissa Sanchez, an English and comparative literature professor who will lead the center, Penn decided to rename the Alice Paul Center — home to the Ivy League university’s gender studies department — in order to signal “commitment” to LGBTQ “intellectual and political movements.”
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Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro challenged a Republican-led election subpoena on Thursday, saying that it “goes too far” and violates the constitutionally protected privacy of up to 9 million residents.
“By trying to pry into everyone’s drivers license numbers and social security numbers they have gone too far,” he said. “Today we say enough is enough. What they are doing is against the law and we intend to win.”
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Pennsylvania Senate Democrats filed a legal challenge in Commonwealth Court against what they call an “overreaching” subpoena of election records containing personal information for nearly 7 million voters.
The lawsuit filed late Friday alleges Republican members of the Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee – including Chairman Cris Dush, R-Wellsboro and President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, R-Bellefonte – broke the law when they issued a subpoena against the Department of State seeking the name, address, date of birth, driver’s license number and partial social security number of each and every resident that voted by mail or in person during the last two elections.
In a joint statement, the Democratic members of the committee – including Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Pittsburgh; Minority Chairman Tony Williams, D-Philadelphia; Sen. Vince Hughes, D-Philadelphia; and Sen. Steve Santarsiero, D-Lower Makefield – said the consequences of the subpoena “are dire” and leave the personal information of residents in the hands of an “undisclosed third party vendor with no prescribed limits or protection.”
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The prime sponsor of a vetoed voting reform bill said Friday he reintroduced the measure after Gov. Tom Wolf shifted his public opinion on some components of the legislation over the summer.
Rep. Seth Grove, R-York, said House Bill 1800 would bolster voting rights “through three broad concepts of increased access, increased security and modernization.”
“We know access and security are not mutually exclusive,” he said.
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Gov. Tom Wolf recalled his nomination for acting Secretary of State Veronica Degraffenreid on Monday after alleging that Senate Republicans would not vet her fairly amid the chamber’s controversial election investigation.
“It is clear that instead of providing advice and consent on my nominee for Secretary of the Commonwealth, they instead plan on using her confirmation as an opportunity to descend further into conspiracy theories and work to please the former president [Donald Trump] by spreading lies about last year’s election, instead of working together to address real issues facing Pennsylvanians,” Wolf said in an emailed statement to reporters on Monday.
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As Pennsylvania Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee Majority Chair Cris Dush (R-Wellsboro) investigates recent elections, Democratic lawmakers against tightening election security must contend with a withering 2019 audit of Pennsylvania’s voter registry.
At his investigation’s initial hearing last Thursday, Dush announced his intention to hold the Department of State (DOS) accountable for the mismanagement identified in the audit by calling the department to testify at the committee’s next hearing to be scheduled soon.
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Former President George W. Bush’s remarks about domestic extremism during his speech in Shanksville for the 20th anniversary of 9/11 were “definitely not exclusive to” the January 6th Capitol riot.
Speaking at the Flight 93 memorial, Bush compared violent extremists in the U.S. and foreign extremists.
“There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and those at home,” Bush said on Saturday at the memorial in Pennsylvania. “But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit and it is our duty to confront them.”
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The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has slapped “Harmful Language” warnings on online displays of American founding documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—and U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA-17) is keeping quiet about it.
The Star News Network emailed Lamb’s press office Friday to ascertain his view of the matter. Neither the congressman—who recently announced a bid for U.S. Senate—nor his staff have replied.
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The Pennsylvania Senate committee tasked with investigating instances of election malfeasance asked residents this week to submit their testimony for its review.
Intergovernmental Operations Committee Chairman Cris Dush, R-Wellsboro, said residents should only submit their stories if they are willing to sign an affidavit and potentially testify under oath, under penalty of perjury, before the panel during forthcoming hearings.
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The Amistad Project, in conjunction with Pennsylvania Senate President pro tempore Jake Corman (R-Centre) and State Representative Jesse Topper (R-Bedford), filed a lawsuit against actions by Pennsylvania acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam.
In the lawsuit, the organization is challenging a new statewide school mask mandate, arguing the new restriction violates state law and is a broad overreach of governmental power.
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As part of a state-by-state review of the 2020 General Election results, the non-profit Voter Reference Foundation (VRF) has discovered 41,503 discrepancies between the Pennsylvania voters officially recorded as having cast ballots and the total ballots certified per the state’s official canvass.
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Democrats in the Pennsylvania General Assembly hope to increase monthly welfare benefits in Pennsylvania, reasoning that payments under the federally funded Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program have stayed flat since the 1990s, falling well behind inflation.
Legislation being drafted by state Sen. Katie Muth (D-PA-Royersford) and state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D-PA-Philadelphia) would increase Pennsylvania’s TANF benefits, which average $403 per month for a family of three in most counties.
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An internal fight among legislators over a forensic election audit is spilling into public after Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Gettysburg, accused leaders in his own party of stonewalling his investigation.
The senator made the comments during a Thursday interview with One America News Network that he later doubled down on in a lengthy statement posted to his social media pages the following day.
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Fulton County, Pennsylvania election officials are defending their decision to conduct an audit of the 2020 election in their jurisdiction and their right to continue use of their voting machines.
Attorneys from Dillon, McCandless, King, Coulter & Graham LLP who are affiliated with an election-integrity nonprofit known as the Amistad Project, will be handling the case for the small county of about 14,500 residents, situated about 90 miles southwest of Harrisburg.
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State legislatures in six states limited their governors’ emergency powers wielded during the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing executives have overextended their authority.
As of June 2021, lawmakers in 46 states have introduced legislation stripping governors of certain emergency powers, according to USA Today. Legislatures justified their actions as necessary to restore a balance between the branches of state government, pointing to examples of executive overreach and the centralization of power in the hands of governors.
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Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb launched a long-expected Senate bid in his state Friday morning, becoming the latest to join a crowded primary field in one of the country’s most competitive races.
Lamb, a 37-year-old Marine, first won a special election in a Pittsburgh-area swing district in 2018, months before Democrats took control of the House. He is vying to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey in a state that President Joe Biden narrowly won, as Democrats look to expand their slim 50-50 majority.
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In recent years, an acute housing crisis has engulfed both America’s coastal metros and Rust Belt regions. California’s Bay Area, for example, confronts a crisis of affordability and limited supply that hastens a population exodus. Midwest cities like Detroit face low real-estate prices and low demand, intensifying urban decline.
Pennsylvania is a microcosm of such alarming housing trends, especially east of the Susquehanna River, which is seeing an influx of metro New Yorkers relocating to the area.
From the Keystone State’s middle-class suburbs to its post-industrial locales, the housing crisis is a major challenge. In the midstate, most notably in Harrisburg and Lancaster, housing has become significantly more expensive. In the northeast’s anthracite coal region, anchored by Scranton, rents are spiking. And in suburban Philadelphia’s Lansdale, a townhouse went for nearly $500,000.
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Before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia on Thursday, legal counsel for several Pennsylvania counties as well as numerous public officials and private companies, argued Governor Tom Wolf (D) abused his police powers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Specifically, the private-sector compainaints charge that the governor’s shutdown of and other demands on businesses during parts of 2020 and 2021 violate the takings clause and the due-process clause of the U.S. Constitution. All plaintiffs, governmental and private, further insist that the governor’s restrictions on public gatherings over the past year violated the rights of assembly, association and religion secured by the First Amendment.
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The Pennsylvania Department of State decertified Fulton County’s voting machines on Wednesday after officials there participated in a third-party audit.
The voluntary probe came at the request of Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Gettysburg) who’s currently spearheading a larger effort to audit machines in Tioga, York and Philadelphia counties amid his ongoing campaign to ferret out fraudulent activity during the past two elections.
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The Pennsylvania state senator who led a hearing on election fraud in Gettysburg, PA, last November, has initiated a “full forensic investigation” into 2020 election results in several counties.
Republican State Sen. Doug Mastriano said in a statement that as chair of the Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee, that he has issued letters to several counties representing “different geographical regions of Pennsylvania and differing political makeups,” requesting “information and materials needed to conduct a forensic investigation of the 2020 General Election and the 2021 Primary.”
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Pennsylvania’s highest court on Wednesday overturned Bill Cosby’s sex assault conviction, allowing him to be immediately released from prison.
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The number of homicides in six major cities across the country has increased compared to last year, disproportionately affecting black people, according to crime data.
Black people have represented a massive share of murder victims in six major cities through the first six months of 2021 compared to last year, which itself saw a large crime surge, according to data analyzed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The DCNF analyzed both police department data and homicide reports compiled by local news outlets to determine how black people have been victimized in the wake of the 2020 crime spike.
“We are seeing an uptick in violent crime across the country, specifically gun violence,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told The New York Times earlier this month.
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Texas and Florida are slated to gain congressional seats during the decennial redistricting process, while California and New York are set to each lose one, the U.S. Census Bureau announced Monday.
The U.S. Census Bureau released the decennial state population and congressional apportionment totals Monday, outlining how many districts each state will have for the next decade. The data also determines how many Electoral College votes each state will have through 2032, and allocates how federal money is distributed to each state for schools, roads and other public projects.
The release was originally scheduled for December, but faced delays due to the coronavirus pandemic and the Trump administration’s unsuccessful effort to exclude non-citizens from the count.
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Pennsylvania, one of the top battlegrounds of the 2020 election, has agreed to remove the names of about 21,000 dead people from voter registration rolls before the general elections this year.
The agreement was reached last week, according to the Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election-integrity watchdog group that first identified the names of 21,000 dead people who were still registered to vote a month before the 2020 election.
The organization provided Pennsylvania state officials with the names of 21,000 dead registrants who were not removed from the voting rolls after their deaths.
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The U.S. economy reported an increase of 916,000 jobs in March and the unemployment rate fell to 6%, according to Department of Labor data released Friday.
Total non-farm payroll employment increased by 916,000 in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report, and the number of unemployed persons fell to 9.7 million. Economists projected 675,000 Americans would be added to payrolls prior to Friday’s report, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“There’s a seismic shift going on in the U.S. economy,” Beth Ann Bovino, an economist at S&P Global, told the WSJ.
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Significant legislative attempts are underway in multiple U.S. states, including key battleground states, to roll back major changes in voting rules and regulations to various pre-2020 status quo antes. The efforts come after an historically chaotic election process that has left millions of Americans doubtful of election fairness, security, transparency and accountability.
Changes to election rules — some of them enacted prior to 2020 and others put in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic last year — have included expansive mail-in voting, expanded early voting, relaxation of verification rules, and extensions to ballot receipt deadlines.
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The Supreme Court has always been an anomaly in our democratic republic. This now-powerful body meets in secret, wears uniforms, and has life tenure. The nine-member court has issued rulings explaining how Americans need to alter their views about everything from sex to taxes, affecting the rights of presidents and of prisoners. Recent Republican nominees to the court have been the unjustified targets of fierce fights, with Democrats making wild charges and ad hominem attacks. Of course, Joe Biden and his crew have put the court on notice that they will pack it, when given the excuse.
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Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman will launch his bid for his state’s open Senate seat on Monday, becoming the first major candidate to vie for what will likely be one of the most competitive races in the country.
Fetterman previously served as the mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania, a small steel town outside of Pittsburgh, but has found grassroots support across the country. He announced that he raised over $1.1 million in the weeks before his campaign, and his strong support in western Pennsylvania could make him an early frontrunner among the multiple Democrats expected to run for the seat.
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College community members are subjects of internal and even federal probes for their presence at “Stop the Steal” protests on Jan. 6.
It’s largely unclear if the identified participants committed acts of violence at the U.S. Capitol or simply showed up to peacefully protest the Senate’s confirmation of Electoral College votes.
Yet their alleged attendance – and in one case, online rhetoric – was enough to spawn investigations by their colleges and, in another case, the feds.
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A group of Republican Pennsylvania state lawmakers announced Monday that the certified results of the 2020 election for president in the Keystone State were off by more than 200,000 votes—more than twice the margin of Biden’s alleged victory.
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The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a Pennsylvania GOP effort to halt the certification of the 2020 presidential election in that state, dealing a potentially fatal blow to efforts by Republicans to bring before the high court a constitutional argument regarding mail-in voting there.
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Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s election lawyer, on Sunday laid out a possible path to victory that includes the legislatures in states that include Georgia, as well as the Supreme Court.
The legislatures in states like Georgia could take action voter fraud by naming Electoral College electors, which would likely push the election into the Supreme Court, Rudy Giuliani told Fox News on Sunday. He appeared on Maria Baritomo’s Sunday Morning Futures.
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Will we allow our election system for future elections to be upended by a single state supreme court, which happens to consist of partisan hacks? If the answer is no, then the only option is to fight the open lawlessness in Pennsylvania with every channel and tool of both the judicial and legislative processes.
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During the weeks following November 3, innumerable election experts and statistical analysts have pored over the voting data upon which former Vice President Joe Biden’s purported campaign victory ostensibly stands. A growing body of evidence ranging from straightforward ballot audits to complex quantitative analyses suggests that the tabulation of the votes was characterized by enough chicanery to alter the outcome of the election. Consequently, a consensus has gradually developed among the auditors of publicly available information released by the states, and it contradicts the narrative promulgated by the Democrats and the media. The more data experts see, the less convinced they are that Biden won.
Among the analysts who question the legitimacy of Biden’s victory is Dr. Navid Keshavarz-Nia, a cybersecurity expert whose technical expertise was touted by the New York Times last September and who has been described as a hero in the Washington Monthly. It’s unlikely that either publication will be singing his praises for his work pursuant to the recent election. His damning analysis of the electronic manipulation of votes that occurred in the early hours of November 4 appears in a sworn affidavit included with C.J. Pearson v. Kemp, a lawsuit filed by Attorney Sidney Powell in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
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There are landslides and then there are landslides. There are lopsided votes and then there are lopsided votes. There are egregious examples of vote manipulation and then there are really egregious examples of vote manipulation. What surfaced during hearings in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on November 25, 2020 may set the standard for electoral outrageousness. An expert testifying to the Pennsylvania Senate flagged a batch of ballots that recorded some 570,000 votes for Joe Biden and only 3,200 for Donald Trump.
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A state judge in Pennsylvania is upholding her earlier injunction against the state’s certification of the 2020 election results, stating that a lawsuit alleging the unconstitutionality of a state ballot rule is “likel[y] to succeed” on its own merits.
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A federal judge in Pennsylvania dismissed the president’s “meritless” election fraud lawsuit on Friday, leaving the door open for an appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephanos Bibas said arguments made by Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, that fraudulent mail-in ballots in Philadelphia tipped the scales for former Vice President Joe Biden were unsubstantiated.
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Dominion Voting Systems Thursday night abruptly backed out of attending a fact-finding hearing that was set for Friday morning with the Pennsylvania House State Government Committee.
At a press conference Friday morning, State Govt Committee Chair Seth Grove said the 1.3. million Pennsylvanians who used Dominion’s voting machines have been “hung out to dry and slapped in their faces.”
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In a sworn declaration, a respected mathematician says his analysis of election data and phone interviews with Pennsylvania voters raises questions about as many as 100,000 absentee ballots requested in the key battleground state where President Trump and Joe Biden are separated by just about 82,000 votes.
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President Trump’s lawyers hosted a press conference saying they have more than enough evidence to overturn the election. Attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis gave the joint preliminary presentation.
Giuliani offered state-by-state breakdowns outlining evidence of voter fraud; Powell delved into the fraud committed using electronic voting systems, including Dominion Voting Systems; and Ellis explained how the legal process would work to investigate the alleged multi-tiered orchestration of fraud that occurred.
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The U.S. saw record numbers of mail-in votes cast in the 2020 election, driven largely by voter concerns that crowded polling places and long lines could act as major spreading centers for COVID-19.
Activists and public officials in the months leading up to the Nov. 3 election launched major informational campaigns and voting drives to help as many people as possible vote via mail. A reported 65 million ballots were cast by mail in the 2020 election, far outstripping earlier years.
The Voter Integrity Project intends to release its complete investigation results in the coming days, including a report on mass amounts of dead voters.
Voter Integrity Project is the brainchild of Look Ahead America Executive Director and former Trump for President Data Chief and Strategist Matt Braynard. He started the project to discover if there was evidence that would lead to legal remedy or reforms for this election, mainly through affidavits and death certificates.
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Clarks Mills, Pennsylvania
Driving through this rural area late Thursday morning, nine days after Election Day, it’s clear the extraordinary enthusiasm for Donald Trump has not waned. “TRUMP 2020: NO MORE BULLS—” remains a popular sign, as does “DRAIN THE SWAMP,” as does a placard protesting Gov. Tom Wolf and Pennsylvania Democrats: “FIRE THE LOCKDOWN LIBERALS!” Trump flags fly alongside the American flag in front yards. As usual, there’s not a Biden–Harris sign for miles. Ask folks in these parts, and they’ll tell you that Donald Trump couldn’t have possibly lost Pennsylvania.
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Beginning today, the Trump Campaign will start prosecuting its case in court to ensure election laws are fully upheld and the rightful winner is seated. The Associated Press, CNN and FOX don’t pick U.S. Presidents. The voters do. Legitimate ones. Legal votes decide who is president, not the news media.
The bottom-line is that this election is far from over.
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Tens of thousands of Trump voters in Pennsylvania angry they were disenfranchised by voter fraud in Philadelphia and other parts of the state have an option for justice through what is called a “Private Criminal Complaint.”
Pennsylvania is one of the states that allows citizens to file criminal complaints. A Rule 506 complaint must be submitted to a PA District Attorney, who may reject it. Rejections of Private Criminal Complaints by PA District Attorneys may be appealed to a court, but rarely does an appeal succeed. Therefore, it is important Private Criminal Complaints be submitted correctly.
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