Politics Election category, Page 136
State Sen. Jim Brewster retiring at end of 2024
A Mon Valley political fixture is stepping down from his state Senate seat, but he insists it won’t lead to a sea change in his district. State Sen. Jim Brewster, D-McKeesport, said Wednesday that he is retiring at the end of this year. He will not seek reelection. Brewster serves...
U.S. Rep. Greg Pence of Indiana, former VP Mike Pence’s older brother, won’t seek reelection
WASHINGTON — Republican U.S. Rep. Greg Pence of Indiana said Tuesday he will not seek reelection this year to a fourth term, becoming the latest House member to announce that they won’t run for reelection. Pence, the older brother of former Vice President Mike Pence, announced his decision Tuesday morning...
How an animated character named Marlon could help Trump win Iowa’s caucuses
SIOUX CENTER, Iowa — Well before Donald Trump takes the stage, a waiting audience of hundreds of supporters sits captivated as dramatic music begins to swell throughout the room. On projector screens, a rotating Planet Earth appears. “Making America Great Again starts one place on Earth, and one place only,”...
Florida Republicans oust state party chairman facing rape allegations in critical election year
TALLAHASSEE — The Republican Party of Florida ousted Chairman Christian Ziegler in a special vote on Monday as police investigate a rape accusation against him — a move that came a week before Gov. Ron DeSantis competes in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation presidential caucus. A majority of about 200 members approved the...
School funding, permitting at top of Pa. legislature’s 2024 agenda
This story first appeared in The Investigator, a weekly newsletter by Spotlight PA featuring the best investigative and accountability journalism from across Pennsylvania. HARRISBURG — In the new year, Pennsylvania lawmakers plan to put a lot of their energy into changing permitting processes, getting a long-sought constitutional amendment over the...
Congressional leaders announce an agreement on spending levels, a key step to averting shutdown
WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders have reached an agreement on overall spending levels for the current fiscal year that could help avoid a partial government shutdown later this month. The agreement largely hews to spending caps for defense and domestic programs that Congress set as part of a bill to suspend...
Trump downplays Jan. 6 on the anniversary of the Capitol siege and calls jailed rioters ‘hostages’Video
NEWTON, Iowa — Former President Donald Trump, campaigning in Iowa Saturday, marked the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol by casting the migrant surge on the southern border as the “real” insurrection. Just over a week before the Republican nomination process begins with Iowa’s...
Biden invokes George Washington, calls Trump a threat to democracy
President Joe Biden pitched his reelection as a defense of democracy Friday, visiting a historic Revolutionary War site to accuse Republican Donald Trump and his supporters of having “abandoned the truth” about what happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The president, speaking at a campaign event in Blue...
Massachusetts voters become latest to try to keep Trump off ballot over Jan. 6 attack
BOSTON — Five Republican and Democratic voters in Massachusetts have become the latest to challenge former President Donald Trump’s eligibility to appear on the Republican primary election ballot, claiming he is ineligible to hold office because he encouraged and did little to stop the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the...
Florida resort cancels Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Jan. 6 event
A fundraiser and book signing at a sprawling Central Florida resort featuring U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been canceled after the resort’s owners discovered the event was also a commemoration of the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. “Please be advised that Westgate was...
House Republicans ready contempt of Congress charges against Hunter Biden over a subpoena he defied
WASHINGTON — House Republicans plan to move forward next week with holding Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress after the president’s son defied a congressional subpoena to appear for a private deposition last month. The Republican chairmen of the House Oversight and Judiciary committees announced Friday that they will hold...
House Democrats say Trump hotels got foreign money during presidency
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump-owned hotels received at least $7.8 million in payments from foreign governments and their representatives during his presidency, according to a report from House Democrats. The 155-page report shows this money came from China, Saudi Arabia and more than 20 other countries — and that the amount...
Feeling caucus confusion? Your guide to how Iowa works
WASHINGTON — The race for the White House officially begins in less than two weeks, and despite some prolonged jockeying over the election calendar, the long primary season will once again begin in Iowa with a caucus process that has served as the lead-off voting event since the 1970s. While...
Trump’s ballot fight plunges the Supreme Court into the 2024 election
The U.S. Supreme Court will chart the nation’s political future as it confronts a potentially stark choice over efforts to remove Donald Trump from this year’s presidential ballot for trying to overturn his 2020 election loss. The court’s options include putting the kibosh on challenges to Trump’s candidacy with a...
Speaker Johnson demands hard-line policies during a border visit as Ukraine aid hangs in the balance
EAGLE PASS, Texas — U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson led about 60 fellow Republicans in Congress on a visit Wednesday to the Mexican border to demand hard-line immigration policies in exchange for backing President Joe Biden’s emergency wartime funding request for Ukraine. He expressed serious doubts about whether he would...
U.S. asks Supreme Court to step in on Texas border barrier
The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to intervene in its ongoing fight with Texas over border policy and immigration laws and allow border agents to remove razor wire on the Texas side of the Rio Grande river. The application asked the justices to set aside an order...
Biden will start the year at sites of national trauma to warn about dire stakes of the 2024 election
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is starting the campaign year by evoking the Revolutionary War to mark the third anniversary of the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and visiting the South Carolina church where a white gunman massacred Black parishioners — seeking to present in the starkest possible terms...
Senate leader Kim Ward hopes 2024 brings big change to Pa. education system, minimum wage hike
Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward looks forward to 2024 as a year that will deliver a seismic change to Pennsylvania’s education system, a long-awaited boost in the state’s minimum wage and stronger laws against human trafficking. In remarks made after being re-elected for a second year as the chamber’s...
U.S. national debt hits record $34 trillion as Congress gears up for funding fight
WASHINGTON — The federal government’s gross national debt has surpassed $34 trillion, a record high that foreshadows the coming political and economic challenges to improve America’s balance sheet in the coming years. The U.S. Treasury Department issued a report Tuesday logging U.S. finances, which have become a source of tension...
Lawsuit seeks to remove Pa. Rep. Scott Perry from 2024 ballot
A former Pennsylvania congressional candidate filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to remove Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Perry from the state primary ballot, arguing that Perry’s role challenging the results of the 2020 election should make him ineligible to run for office. Gene Stilp filed the suit as a voter in...
Biden and Trump are poised for a potential rematch that could shake American politics
LACONIA, N.H. — U.S. presidential elections have been rocked in recent years by economic disaster, stunning gaffes, secret video and a pandemic. But for all the tumult that defined those campaigns, the volatility surrounding this year’s presidential contest has few modern parallels, posing profound challenges to the future of American...
Ron DeSantis urges crowd to defy odds, help him ‘win the Iowa caucuses’
WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — To underscore how much Iowa means to Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor was unwilling to put his campaigning there on hold even in the waning hours of 2023. At a New Year’s Eve event in a Sheraton Hotel ballroom in West Des Moines, jeans and...
Poll: More Americans think foreign policy should be a top priority
WASHINGTON — In this time of war overseas, more Americans think foreign policy should be a top focus for the U.S. government in 2024, with a new poll showing international concerns and immigration rising in importance with the public. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults named foreign policy topics in...
Maine state official who removed Trump from ballot was targeted in swatting call at her home
A fake emergency call to police resulted in officers responding Friday night to the home of Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows just a day after she removed former President Donald Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot under the Constitution’s insurrection clause. She becomes the latest elected politician to...
American democracy has overcome big stress tests since the 2020 election. More challenges are ahead
Over the past three years, the world’s oldest democracy has been tested in ways not seen in decades. A sitting president tried to overturn an election and his supporters stormed the Capitol to stop the winner from taking power. Supporters of that attack launched a campaign against local election offices,...
