Pennsylvania category, Page 85
Commonwealth Court orders Pa.’s health department to release information on medical marijuana program
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters. HARRISBURG — A panel of Commonwealth Court judges has ordered the Wolf administration to reveal how many medical marijuana patients have...
Social media posts draw attention to Pa. election races, but will they affect the outcomes?
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman has repeatedly taken to social media to mock his Republican rival, Dr. Mehmet Oz, during this year’s campaign — using celebrity cameo videos to call out Oz for moving from New Jersey to run, memes to criticize his vast wealth and even Oz’s own...
Demolition of shuttered Philadelphia church begins after long battle
Demolition of a shuttered 19th-century church in Philadelphia has begun following a yearslong battle by some neighbors to save the crumbling structure. Crews last week surrounded the 140-year-old St. Laurentius Church in the Fishtown neighborhood with scaffolding, fencing and barricades. Neighbors gathered Wednesday to get their final look, taking pictures...
3 Pennsylvania counties ordered to count mail-in votes
A Pennsylvania judge has ordered three Republican-controlled counties to add about 800 contested mail-in ballots to the results of the May election, ruling in a legal dispute that stalled statewide certification of the primary results for governor and U.S. Senate. The Republican judge sided Friday with the Democratic governor in...
Reports: GOP cuts ad spending in Pennsylvania, as Fetterman launches ad targeting D.C. insiders
A major funding arm for Republican U.S. Senate candidates has slashed ad spending in several battleground states, including Pennsylvania, according to multiple reports. At the same time, Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman has released several proposals and launched a related ad blaming inflation on wealthy insiders and lobbyists in Washington,...
Man bought body parts on Facebook, central Pennsylvania police say
A Pennsylvania man has been charged with abuse of a corpse, receiving stolen property and other charges after police say he allegedly tried to buy stolen human remains from an Arkansas woman for possible resale on Facebook. A spokeswoman for the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock...
Pa. lawmakers weigh bills that would allow independents to vote on primary candidates
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters. HARRISBURG — Former elected officials and government experts told a panel of state lawmakers that Pennsylvania’s primary system should be opened...
Pa. lawmakers are set to get huge raises next year
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters. HARRISBURG — Fiscal responsibility is an axiom in Harrisburg, but nearly none of Pennsylvania’s 253 state lawmakers seem to mind when...
Kids-for-cash judges ordered to pay more than $200M
Two former Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200 million to hundreds of people they victimized in one of the worst judicial scandals in U.S. history. U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner awarded $106 million...
PennDOT offers 2nd chance to drivers facing license suspension
A new PennDOT program announced Tuesday will provide certain drivers facing a suspension a chance to hang on to their license by completing a driver improvement program. Drivers facing a suspension due to an accumulation of points on their driving record or for a conviction of excessive speeding can keep...
Doug Mastriano challenges Josh Shapiro to 2 debates, but only on his terms
State Sen. Doug Mastriano has proposed two debates in October with Attorney General Josh Shapiro, his Democratic rival for Pennsylvania’s governor’s office, but this particular offer appears to be dead on arrival. The Republican nominee’s proposed rules of engagement — cutting out all outside organizers and allowing debate questions only...
Wolf signs executive order discouraging LGBTQ conversion therapy
Gov. Tom Wolf on Tuesday used his pen to strip funding towards a controversial practice that is typically used on LGBTQ youth. Wolf signed an executive order directing state agencies to discourage the use of conversion therapy. Conversion therapy is a controversial practice of attempting to change a person’s sexual...
Pa. lawmakers tout increased state, federal funding to fight climate change
State and federal efforts to fight climate change could also create tens of thousands of jobs and lower energy bills in Western Pennsylvania, two Democratic lawmakers said Tuesday. The federal Inflation Reduction Act, which President Biden was expected to sign into law on Tuesday, will allocate $370 billion to fight...
Penn State spent half a million dollars on police overtime at football games in 2021
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters. Penn State University paid $572,119 for officers from five Centre County police departments to work overtime at football games last year,...
Pa. man gets stuck in drain pipe while trying to hide from police: report
A man suspected of shoplifting a CVS store in Radnor Township, Delaware County, was rescued Sunday after he got stuck in a drain pipe while attempting to elude police, according to a story from WPVI. According to the report, around 4:30 p.m., officers from Radnor and Lower Merion township officers...
Fetterman keeps attacking Oz for being from New Jersey. That’s resonating in parochial Pa.
There’s something about Pennsylvania’s political DNA that’s playing out in this year’s crucial Senate race. It’s not that we have one unifying statewide identity, but we are a state with lots of intense regional identities — that can oftentimes breed distrust of out-of-towners. People don’t say they’re from Pennsylvania. They...
1 dead, 17 hurt in crash in northeastern Pennsylvania during fundraiser for fire victimsVideo
BERWICK — One person was killed and another 17 people injured when a vehicle struck a crowd gathered at a Pennsylvania bar for a fundraiser for victims of a house fire that killed 10 earlier this month; the man police say was the driver was arrested shortly afterward in the...
Car crashes into Pa. fundraiser for fire victims: reports
BERWICK - Authorities in northeastern Pennsylvania responded to a multi-scene incident that started with a car plowing into a fundraiser here. According to initial reports, a person drove a car into a crowd at the benefit fundraiser in Berwick, Columbia County, and then sped off. That driver then was involved...
Fetterman ‘grateful’ as he returns to Pa. Senate race
ERIE — Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman acknowledged he was lucky to be alive as he officially returned to the campaign trail Friday, more than 90 days after the Democrat suffered a stroke that threatened his life and political prospects in one of the nation’s premier Senate contests. Fetterman spoke...
Dr. Mehmet Oz makes campaign stop at central Pa. diner
Kenny Aumack happened to be passing Capitol Diner in Dauphin County when he spotted Dr. Mehmet Oz, Republican U.S. Senate candidate. “I’m just here for a picture,” said Aumack, of Lindenwold, N.J., as he waited in the diner’s parking lot. “He’s a celebrity.” Dozens of people showed up Friday at...
Fetterman plans ‘raw’ remarks in return to Pa. Senate race
ERIE — Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman is expected to open up about his personal health challenges as he officially returns to the campaign trail Friday, more than 90 days after the Democrat suffered a stroke that threatened his life and political prospects in one of the nation’s premier Senate...
Rep. Scott Perry says he’s ‘not a target’ of FBI probe amid reports of subpoenas for other Pa. GOP lawmakers
Details remained scarce a day after a news report that several Republican lawmakers in Harrisburg had been subpoenaed this week as part of the federal inquiry into efforts to organize a slate of pro-Trump electors in the 2020 presidential election. But at least one figure whose name has emerged prominently...
Mehmet Oz scored a $50,000 annual tax break on his $3.1 million Montgomery County manor
PHILADELPHIA — When Mehmet Oz bought a bucolic farmhouse in Montgomery County last year, he not only acquired property in the state where he’s running for Senate, he also scored a $50,000-a-year tax break. While the purchase seemed designed to put to rest questions about Oz’s ties to the Keystone...
17-year-old killed in wood chipper accident in Lehigh County is identified
A 17-year-old from Coplay died Tuesday when he was partially pulled into a commercial wood chipper in North Whitehall Township. Isiah M. Bedocs was pronounced dead at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest, according to a news release from Lehigh County Coroner Daniel A. Buglio. An autopsy, completed Wednesday morning, showed the...
Pa. elections official blames spreadsheet for state’s mistake in certifying a county’s election results
A top elections official said that “human error” in tracking the results of the primary election on May 17 led Pennsylvania to inadvertently certify a county’s vote counts that the state deems to be inaccurate. The embarrassing revelation came in a filing before the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court, where the state...
