Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus: No Penn State Funding Until Puberty Blockers Ditched

The Pennsylvania House Freedom Caucus (PAFC) this week issued an ultimatum to the Pennsylvania State University: Either your hospitals will stop providing puberty blockers to children or funding won’t be forthcoming. 

Penn State Health operates six hospitals in central Pennsylvania. The PAFC is castigating the university-run system for “prescribing experimental puberty blockers and providing “‘gender-affirming care’ to children as young as FIVE YEARS OLD.”

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Pennsylvania GOP Senate to Tackle Budget That Overspends Shapiro Proposal by $1.1 Billion

At first, Keystone State Republicans viewed Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro’s Fiscal Year 2023-24 budget proposal with mere skepticism. This week, state House Democrats larded it with an extra $1.1 billion and passed it, making a fray between their chamber and the Republican-run Senate even more probable. 

The nearly $47 billion spending plan, approved by representatives along party lines, hikes spending by $5.7 billion over the current fiscal year, a more than a 13-percent increase. Members of the Republican minority excoriated their Democratic colleagues for rushing the plan to passage within six hours of its completion, a move they said reflected poor transparency. Representative Doyle Heffley (R-Weissport) spoke for many in his party when he called the House-passed plan a “poison pill” for Pennsylvania’s economy. 

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Pennsylvania Representative Proposes Election-Audit Reforms

Pennsylvania state Representative Dawn Keefer (R-Dillsburg) is asking the state General Assembly to support legislation she is drafting to require periodical audits of the commonwealth’s election registry.

The representative observed that an investigation by Democratic Auditor General Eugene DePasquale that concluded in December 2019 discovered numerous problems with the accuracy of Pennsylvania’s voter records. DePasquale’s report determined, for example, that 24,408 registrations with the same driver’s license number appeared on other registrations. It also found that 2,991 active voter records contained information matching that displayed on Department of Health death notices. 

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