Covering Pennsylvania politics, govt & scandals for
@AP
.
@Colorado
born. Honest as a Denver man can be.
@CambodiaDaily
alum. The wicked flee when none pursueth.
WASHINGTON (
@AP
) — The U.S. for the first time has approved the direct delivery of Stinger missiles to Ukraine as part of a package approved by the White House on Friday.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ Two 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 who fell victim to their crimes.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) — A Pennsylvania state senator abruptly left a West Wing meeting with President Donald Trump after being informed he had tested positive for the coronavirus, a person with direct knowledge of the meeting told The Associated Press on Sunday.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvania's Republican candidate for governor, says he wants to make everyone re-register to vote again. The concept flatly violates federal law, legal scholars say, and may conflict with state law and constitutional protections.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) — A Republican-controlled county in Pennsylvania violated state law when election workers refused to tell voters that their mail-in ballot had been rejected and wouldn’t be counted in last April’s primary election, a judge ruled.
WASHINGTON (
@AP
) — President-elect Joe Biden has tapped Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine to be his assistant secretary of health, leaving her poised to become the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ John Fetterman, Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor, is taking a definitive step toward running for the state's open U.S. Senate seat in 2022.
NEW YORK (
@AP
) — The United States leads the world in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases. According to a running count by Johns Hopkins University, the number of people infected in the US topped 82,000 on Thursday. That's ahead of 81,000 cases in China and 80,000 in Italy.
MARIUPOL, Ukraine (
@AP
) — The bodies of the children all lie here, dumped into this narrow trench hastily dug into the frozen earth of Mariupol to the constant drumbeat of shelling.
GOP Sen. Doug Mastriano had gone to the White House on Wednesday with like-minded Republicans after a four-hour-plus public meeting that Mastriano helped host in Gettysburg — maskless — to discuss efforts to overturn Biden’s victory in the state. Via
@AP
:
NEW YORK CITY (
@AP
) — New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order on Sunday forbidding her state from doing business with Russia. The order includes canceling its investments in Russia.
TORONTO (
@AP
) — Canada will send an additional $25 million worth of defensive military equipment to Ukraine in an effort to help the country defend against Russia’s invasion.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ The Green Party's candidate for president did not strictly follow procedures for getting on Pennsylvania's ballot in November's election and cannot appear on it, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ Pennsylvania will foot the cost of postage for voters to mail in ballots in November's general election, officials said Friday, a move Gov. Tom Wolf has made a priority as the coronavirus pandemic fueled high interest in voting by mail.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner awarded $106M in compensatory damages and $100M in punitive damages to nearly 300 plaintiffs in a long-running civil suit against the judges in what came to be known as the kids-for-cash scandal.
CANBERRA, Australia (
@AP
) — Australia will provide lethal military equipment to Ukraine to help the Ukrainians resist the Russian invasion.
The Australian government’s announcement Monday gave no details on what material it may be sending.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) — Philadelphia’s elections board voted Friday to reject a Republican state senator’s request for access to its voting machines for a “forensic investigation” into former President Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection defeat.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out some 4,000 juvenile convictions after the scheme was uncovered.
It's not clear whether the plaintiffs — now well into adulthood — will see any of the eye-popping damages award.
MADISON, Wisc. (
@AP
) _ Planned Parenthood in Wisconsin immediately halted all scheduled abortions at its clinics in Madison and Milwaukee following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling striking down the Roe v. Wade decision on Friday.
In his decision, Conner wrote that the plaintiffs are “the tragic human casualties of a scandal of epic proportions.”
Children as young as 8 were ordered to detention, many of them first-time offenders convicted of petty theft and other minor crimes.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ Democrat Josh Shapiro has won a second term as Pennsylvania’s attorney general, the top-ranking law enforcement position in the state.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ Pennsylvania's top election official has decertified the voting machines of a county that disclosed that it had agreed to requests by local GOP lawmakers and allowed a software firm to inspect the machines as part of an "audit" after the 2020 election.
“Their cruel and despicable actions victimized a vulnerable population of young people, many of whom were suffering from emotional issues and mental health concerns," Conner wrote of judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ Citing a warning by the U.S. Postal Service about delivery times, Gov. Tom Wolf's administration wants the state Supreme Court to extend deadlines to receive mail-in ballots in the fall election when Pennsylvania will be a presidential battleground.
Marsha Levick, co-founder and chief counsel of the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center and a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said Wednesday she “can't imagine there is any money out there."
WASHINGTON (
@AP
) — Members of the House committee investigating the Capitol attack said Sunday they uncovered enough evidence for the Justice Department to consider an unprecedented criminal indictment against Donald Trump for seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ A federal judge in Pennsylvania on Saturday threw out a lawsuit filed by Trump's campaign, dismissing its challenges to the battleground state's poll-watching law and its efforts to limit how mail-in ballots can be collected and which can be counted.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ Amid concerns that thousands of mail-in ballots will be discarded in the election over technicalities, state officials say counties can't reject a ballot because an election official believes the signature doesn't match the signature in the voter’s file.
AUSTIN, Texas (
@AP
) _ Law enforcement authorities had enough officers on the scene of the Uvalde school massacre to stop the gunman three minutes after he entered the building, the Texas public safety chief testified Tuesday, condemning the police response as an “abject failure.”
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) — Democrats won control of the Pennsylvania House in special elections Tuesday, wresting partial power from Republicans for the first time in a dozen years in the competitive swing state.
The
@AP
has called one of three outstanding races for Pennsylvania's state House of Representative, declaring Democrat Brian Munroe the winner of the 144th. That leaves two outstanding races, with Democrats now at 101 and Republicans at 100.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ Independent presidential candidate Cornel West lost a legal challenge Friday in his bid to get on the ballot in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.
McCraw told the Senate committee that Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school district police chief, decided to put the lives of officers ahead of the lives of children.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ Gov. Tom Wolf on Thursday extended a statewide moratorium on foreclosures and evictions until Aug. 31, saying renters need more breathing room in the midst of the pandemic.
PHILADELPHIA (
@AP
) — The poorest big city in the US has passed legislation that will ensure fast-food, retail and hospitality workers will know when they'll work and how much they'll work. Philadelphia is the 2nd-biggest US city, after New York, to approve a scheduling law.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ In a lawsuit filed Tuesday night in a statewide appellate court, Republican US Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania and five other plaintiffs want to block counties from allowing voters whose mail-in ballots were disqualified to vote by provisional ballot.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ Pennsylvania's Supreme Court ruled unanimously Friday on a key concern over mail-in ballots in the battleground state, prohibiting counties from rejecting ballots because the voter's signature on it may not resemble their signature on their registration.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) — The developer of pipelines linking Marcellus Shale gas fields in western Pennsylvania to an export terminal near Philadelphia pleaded no contest Friday to criminal charges it systematically polluted waterways and residential wells across hundreds of miles.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (
@AP
) — Federal prosecutors in Virginia say multiple arrests have been made in connection with a white nationalist torch-lit march and rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year. A Tuesday afternoon news conference is scheduled to announce the charges.
Police officers with rifles instead stood and waited in a school hallway for nearly an hour while the gunman carried out the May 24 attack that left 19 children and two teachers dead.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ A statewide appellate court judge in Pennsylvania has dismissed a request from Republicans to stop the state or counties from counting provisional ballots that were cast by voters whose mail-in ballots were disqualified by a technicality.
As a result, Wolf’s administration is asking the state Supreme Court to order that ballots postmarked by 8 p.m. on Nov. 3 be counted if they are valid and received during the three days following the election.
Via
@AP
:
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ A statewide court on Friday declared that Pennsylvania's expansive two-year-old mail-in voting law is unconstitutional, agreeing with challenges by Republicans.
As a result, voters in Washington County were unable to exercise their legal right either to challenge the decision of the county elections board or to cast a provisional ballot in place of the rejected mail-in ballot, the judge said.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ Republican Kevin Brobson was elected Tuesday to serve on Pennsylvania’s highest court, leaving it with a 5-to-2 Democratic majority.
In case you saw the latest conspiracy theory about a stolen election in Pennsylvania, no, there were not more votes than voters in the state and there were not 205K phantom votes created out of thin air. Via
@AP
:
But Fetterman, 51, said he is no longer interested in running for governor. He has set up a campaign account for a U.S. Senate run and said he will have a final decision in the coming weeks.
Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, testified at a state Senate hearing on the police handling of the tragedy.
Delays in the law enforcement response have been the focus of federal, state and local investigations of the mass shooting.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ House Republicans in Pennsylvania are dropping plans to fast-track an 11th-hour effort to set up a Republican-majority election panel with subpoena power, officials said Friday, amid accusations that it was an effort to steal the election.
KVIV, Ukraine (
@AP
) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office announced plans for a meeting with a Russian delegation at an unspecified location on the Belarusian border.
They are stacked together with dozens of others in this mass grave on the outskirts of the city. A man covered in a bright blue tarp, weighed down by stones at the crumbling curb.
Via
@AP
:
Pelosi is holding a conference call with House Democrats about what they should do about Trump in his waning days in office, including the possibility of impeachment.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ Democrat Timika Lane won a seat on a statewide appellate court in Pennsylvania, giving Democrats a sweep of four statewide judicial races in Tuesday's election, including an open seat on the state’s highest court.
Fetterman said Friday that he is exploring a run for U.S. Senate. Previously, Fetterman had said that he was looking at running for either governor or U.S. Senate in 2022.
There’s 18-month-old Kirill, whose shrapnel wound to the head proved too much for his little toddler’s body. There’s 16-year-old Iliya, whose legs were blown up in an explosion during a soccer game at a school field.
Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor, John Fetterman, says he had a stroke and is told by doctors that he suffered no cognitive damage. Says he on way to 'full recovery.' He is the front runner for the Demoratic nomination for US Senate.
A plaintiffs' attorney said he would begin a probe of the judges' assets, but did not think they had any money to pay a judgment.
Full story, via
@AP
:
In the nearly three weeks since Russia’s war began, two Associated Press journalists have been the only international media present in Mariupol, chronicling its fall into chaos and despair. The city is now encircled by Russian soldiers, who are slowly squeezing it.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ Pennsylvania's top election official has asked the state's highest court to back her up in a new legal dispute with President Trump's campaign over whether to count mail-in ballots when a voter's signature doesn’t necessarily match the one in their file.
Local officials have tallied more than 2,500 deaths in the siege, but many bodies can’t be counted because of the endless shelling.
Many of the deaths documented by the AP were of children and mothers, despite Russia’s claims that civilians haven’t been attacked
Airstrikes and shells have hit the maternity hospital, the fire department, homes, a church, a field outside a school. For the estimated hundreds of thousands who remain, there is quite simply nowhere to go.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ A Canadian university that granted a doctorate in history to Doug Mastriano nearly a decade before he became the GOP's nominee for governor of Pennsylvania is investigating a complaint that makes multiple allegations of academic fraud in his dissertation.
On March 4, it was yet another child in the emergency room — Kirill, the toddler struck in the head by shrapnel. His mother and stepfather bundled him in a blanket. They hoped for the best, and then endured the worst.
WASHINGTON (
@AP
) — President Joe Biden is pardoning thousands of people who were convicted of use and simple possession of marijuana on federal lands and in the District of Columbia, the White House said Friday.
WASHINGTON (
@AP
) _ The Supreme Court will allow Pennsylvania to count ballots received up to three days after the election, rejecting a Republican plea.
Trump nominated Marino in 2017 to become the nation’s drug czar, but Marino withdrew his name after reports he played a key role in weakening federal power to stop companies from distributing opioids.
Apparently one male lawmaker in Pennsylvania’s House just called another male lawmaker a “little girl” during floor debate and that was supposed to be an insult. Well, the girls who live in my house kick ass.
WARSAW, Poland (
@AP
) – The prime ministers of the three Baltic states and Poland are calling on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Google to restrict the spread of misinformation by Russia about its invasion of Ukraine.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) — Conor Lamb is accusing rival John Fetterman in Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate primary of skipping candidate forums to avoid talking about a 2013 incident when, shotgun in hand, he confronted a man who he suspected the man was involved in gunfire nearby.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) — In his campaign for US Senate, Democrat John Fetterman takes credit for reinventing Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor’s office, transforming it into a pulpit to advance progressive causes.
Records from his four years in office offer a different portrait.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) — Democrat Josh Shapiro will become the 48th governor of Pennsylvania at Tuesday’s inaugural ceremony at the state Capitol, taking the oath of office on a cold winter day in the nation’s fifth-most populous state on the heels of his blowout win in November.
Since the Civil War, Pennsylvania has had two Democratic senators and a Democratic governor at the same time just once -- when Arlen Specter switched parties in 2009. In 2010, Democrats lost the governor's office and Specter's Senate seat.
SEOUL, South Korea (
@AP
) – South Korea says it will ban exports of strategic materials to Russia, including weapons and missile-related technologies, and support international efforts to exclude major Russian banks from a key global payment system.
PHILADELPHIA (
@AP
) _ A regulatory agency that’s responsible for the water supply of more than 13 million people in four states voted Thursday to permanently ban natural gas drilling and fracking in the watershed.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ Pennsylvania schools need a statewide requirement that students in classrooms wear masks as protection against the coronavirus, the Democratic governor wrote in a letter Wednesday to legislative leaders.
The Pennsylvania House has passed legislation, 102-99, to allow counties to begin processing mail-in ballots up to seven days before Election Day. Currently, counties can't start processing mail-in ballots until Election Day.
PHILADELPHIA (
@AP
) _ Philadelphia will require proof of COVID-19 vaccination to dine indoors at bars, restaurants, indoor sporting events and other food-related establishments starting Jan. 3, city and public health department officials announced Monday.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ Democrats in Pennsylvania's state Senate sued Friday evening in a state court to block a Republican-approved subpoena seeking voter information and to put a stop to what Republicans call a “forensic investigation” of last year’s presidential election.
The Office of the City Commissioners’ unanimous decision will be laid out in a letter telling state Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Franklin, that Philadelphia “will not participate in your proposed analysis.”
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) _ Pennsylvania's Democratic governor sued the state Legislature on Thursday over a package of proposed constitutional amendments pursued by Republicans, including one that would say the state constitution does not guarantee any rights relating to abortion.
Rep. Scott Perry repeats the baseless claim that 205K more votes were cast than there were voters. There were more than 9 million registered voters before the election. Under 7 million voted. These figures, this state data, is public.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (
@AP
) — Pennsylvania’s larger-than-life lieutenant governor, the 6-foot-8, bald, and tattooed John Fetterman, will run for U.S. Senate, making the announcement Monday after kicking off an exploratory fundraising campaign last month that raised over $1 million.