With inflation, high-interest rates and slowing economic growth already stressing Americans heading into the 2024 election, another reason to worry about the Biden economy has cropped up: distressed banks in danger of failing.
Last month U.S. regulators seized a bank known as Republic First Bancorp and agreed to sell it to Fulton Bank.
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The prevailing belief in the Democratic Party is that abortion will again be a potent issue against Republicans in this year’s election cycle just as it was in 2022 – and that this time it will not just cost the GOP gaining the majority in the U.S. Senate, but also give Democrats the upper hand in retaining the presidency and winning back the House.
Abortion rights put the brakes on the Republicans’ chances in 2022 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion after almost 50 years; a decision that transformed American politics that year, benefiting Democrats who were on their way to a bruising midterm election defeat.
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Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano (R-Franklin County) said that establishment Republicans need to come together during this election cycle to support and elect grassroots candidates and former President Donald Trump to office.
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Republican secretaries of state and state legislators are pushing back against “Bidenbucks,” what call the federalization of voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts, claiming that the executive order is unlawful.
West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner and Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson, along with Republicans in the Pennsylvania legislature, are fighting President Biden’s Executive Order 14019 from March 2021, which turns federal agencies into “Get Out The Vote” (GOTV) centers across all states.
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Former President Donald Trump received polling bumps against President Joe Biden in the battleground states of Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in a survey released Wednesday.
Trump’s advantage grew in Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina since March, while he is now leading in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to the latest Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll. The former president’s lead in Georgia remained the same, and his margin across all seven battleground states including Michigan also grew to six points in a head-to-head matchup with Biden.
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Former President Donald Trump’s support among black men has increased in battleground states ahead of the 2024 election by more than double his support among the same group in 2020’s election, according to a poll published on Thursday by The Wall Street Journal.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has long sought to gain support among black voters, traditionally a Democratic-supporting demographic, by touting his record on the economy and criminal justice reform while in office, among other matters. A recent poll estimated that 30 percent of black men in seven battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — “definitely or probably” plan to vote for Trump in November’s election, an increase of 18 percent from his nationwide performance among that demographic in 2020, where he earned 12 percent of their votes, the Journal reported.
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While Democrats and liberals criticize Republicans, conservatives, and others who are concerned about election integrity, smearing them with the pejorative label “election deniers,” many allegations regarding election irregularities are now being made against Democrats.
Since the 2020 presidential election, former President Donald Trump and other Republicans have raised concerns about election irregularities and are often called “election deniers” by Democrats and the media. However, many Democrats have been accused or found guilty of election crimes, sometimes by members of their own party.
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Former President Donald Trump has staked out a significant lead against President Joe Biden in several of the most pivotal states that could decide the 2020 election, a recent survey has revealed.
The Wall Street Journal survey questioned voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and found Trump leading his likely opponent in all of them except Wisconsin, where the pair tied.
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As Alabama has banned ballot harvesting and Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania are fighting ballot drop boxes, GOP campaign efforts are using those same tools where legal.
Democrats have long focused on mail-in and early voting while Republicans have warned of potential insecurities of those methods. Now the GOP is starting to embrace it this election cycle. However, the acceptance of mail-in voting as a tool isn’t preventing Republicans from looking to secure or ban certain aspects of it, such as ballot harvesting and ballot drop boxes.
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It’s the economy, stupid.
Bill Clinton political strategist James Carville’s famous quip in the 1992 presidential election is truer than ever for 2024.
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The sixth week of the disbarment trial of Donald Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar, John Eastman, wrapped up Friday with testimony by two witnesses from Eastman’s team. Attorney Kurt Olsen, who is representing Kari Lake in her election challenge, testified first. Next, Ray Blehar, a retired Department of Defense analyst, testified, discussing his findings that 280,000 to 300,000 votes in Pennsylvania were “vote laundered” through the electronic tabulating machines.
Olsen began his testimony explaining why he decided to become involved in an election lawsuit over the 2020 election. He said, “I believed that something was not right.” He listed what concerned him: video clips of poll workers not allowed to watch tabulation, the controversy in Michigan’s Antrim County, results that didn’t make sense such as the stopping of counting ballots overnight in key counties, and “clear violations of law.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis officially launched his presidential campaign Wednesday, ending months of speculation and ratcheting up what promises to be an intense battle for the Republican Party nomination.
DeSantis enters the race as a top tier candidate, but still lagging far behind frontrunner Donald Trump, according to just about every poll out there.
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President Joe Biden announced his re-election campaign Tuesday, insisting he’s running again to “stand up for fundamental freedoms.”
Republicans in the nation’s presidential battleground states say the out-of-touch 80-year-old Democrat has cost Americans their freedoms — and their finances.
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Pennsylvania remains one of six states that still levy an inheritance tax, but an old plan to gradually phase it out resurfaced last month.
Senate Bill 75, sponsored by Sen. Michele Brooks, R-Greenville, would reduce the sibling inheritance tax over seven years until it’s fully eliminated.
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America has seen a spike in overdose deaths since the pandemic, when drug overdose deaths rose more than 14% from 2020 to 2021.
The biggest increase, perhaps surprisingly, came from adults aged 65 and over, but rates for adults 35-44 remain highest. As synthetic opioids like fentanyl continue to displace heroin, overdose deaths have increased.
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In Pennsylvania, a phone call from a local jail can cost more than three times the cost of one from a state prison.
Thanks to the outsourcing of phone services, high costs get passed off to families of inmates, many of whom are less well-off than the median Pennsylvania family.
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Pennsylvania’s number of open jobs remains high while its number of workers in the labor force continues to shrink.
The trend, which has been ongoing for years, became worse when the pandemic hit in March 2020. The commonwealth has struggled to recover to its 2019-era labor force participation rate.
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Natural gas prices are climbing, but overall production in Pennsylvania has lagged year-over-year.
The latest report from the Independent Fiscal Office says prices in the third quarter of 2022 jumped almost 95% compared to the same period last year. Nor will prices drop soon, either. The Pennsylvania average price was $6.89 per million BTU, compared to $3.54 in 2021.
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A tight job market in Pennsylvania is good news for workers, but employers still struggle to find enough people to fill the available jobs.
That struggle remains a stubborn one for business owners, as shown in the latest economic update from the Independent Fiscal Office.
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The cost for Thanksgiving dinner has crept up, as has the gas Pennsylvanians buy to get to their relatives.
“The centerpiece on most Thanksgiving tables – the turkey – costs more than last year, at $28.96 for a 16-pound bird,” the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau said in a price report. “That’s $1.81 per pound, up 21% from last year, due to several factors beyond general inflation.”
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Pennsylvania is out of step with its neighbors and deregulating some health care services could give residents of the commonwealth better access to treatment, a new analysis argues.
The Commonwealth Foundation released a report arguing that Maryland’s effort to grant nurse practitioners full practice authority is a model for Pennsylvania.
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Pennsylvania has the better part of a million veterans living within the commonwealth, but support for them can be lacking.
“I don’t like that veterans have to take care of veterans,” Rep. Joe Webster, D-Collegeville, said, noting a lack of centralized support. “Our nation should be taking care of these veterans. It shouldn’t fall to a 501(c)(3) or a group of guys just helping a veteran down the street … Our nation asks for the full measure – we’re not then taking care of them when they have sacrificed greater than the average citizen.”
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Google agreed to a $391.5 million settlement with 40 states after an investigation found that the tech giant participated in questionable location-tracking practices, state attorneys general announced Monday.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong called it a “historic win for consumers.”
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While Pennsylvania lawmakers debate whether to legalize recreational marijuana, its neighbors have started to greenlight it.
The midterm elections have seen Democratic gains on the state and federal level in the commonwealth, as The Center Square previously reported, and Maryland voters approved cannabis legalization.
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Democrats are getting some warning signs in the mail. Voting data in the key states show that mail-in voting, which traditionally favors Democrats, is down. In-person voting, meanwhile, will likely continue to be dominated by Republicans.
Take, for example, my home state of Pennsylvania. In 2020, there were 1,564,483 ballots cast nine days out from Election Day. As of Sunday, nine days out from the midterm election, there were only 777,309 ballots cast. That’s a drop of more than half. And it is even steeper for traditionally Democratic voting groups like black voters. In 2020, approximately 147,539 black Pennsylvanians had voted at this point; now, it’s only 47,830.
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State revenues from natural gas were high last year, and are expected to set a new record this year buoyed by rising prices and more drilling.
According to a new estimate from the Independent Fiscal Office, impact fees from natural gas wells will hit $275 million in 2022, $40 million higher than 2021.
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Former President Barack Obama urged Pennsylvanians to vote for Democratic candidates in the November midterm elections during a campaign ad, just days after Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman struggled during his debate with Republican Mehmet Oz.
Obama told Pennsylvanians that their midterm vote would shape the future of American democracy and women’s abortion rights, according to the 15-second ad which was obtained by Axios. Obama’s efforts to ramp up support for the Democrats in Pennsylvania comes after most of the debate audience believed that Fetterman failed to win, according to a recent poll conducted by WXPI.
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Aliquippa, Duquesne, Greenville, New Castle, and Rankin: western Pennsylvania has no shortage of economically distressed municipalities that seem to have been left by the wayside and forgotten. But the town of Braddock got something different: a political figure standing 6-foot-8, draped in gym shorts and a Carhartt hoodie. He promised to turn around a persistent economic depression, and he brought national media attention to the small town, which had seen a population decline from a peak of 20,000 in the 1920s to under 1,800.
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The majority of the audience from Tuesday night’s debate between Democratic Pennsylvania Lt. Gov John Fetterman and Republican challenger Mehmet Oz felt that Fetterman failed to perform, according to a new poll.
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The Appalachian Regional Commission has announced almost $50 million in grants across the 13-state region, and Pennsylvania will receive $7 million to encourage economic growth.
Nine projects in Pennsylvania will receive about $50,000 to $1.5 million for workforce training, manufacturing, child care and feasibility studies for potential development.
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Punctuated by claps, cheers, jeers and a call to order, the Senate State Government Committee held a public hearing on a proposed parental bill of rights that raised questions of local control, race, and gender issues.
Senate Bill 996 is sponsored by Republican gubernatorial nominee Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Chambersburg.
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In a recent ranking of America’s governors, Pennsylvania’s Tom Wolf ranked at the bottom of the pack – 44th for his fiscal policies.
An annual fiscal policy report card from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, graded the nation’s governors “from a limited-government perspective.” In their grading that emphasized lowering taxes and cutting spending, Wolf earned an “F.”
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Pennsylvania’s expansion of mail-in voting in 2019 has left some ambiguity about which ballots get counted, and state Republicans are requesting clarity from the Department of State over the matter.
While Republicans point to a recent federal ruling, the Department cites a state ruling to deny changing its current guidance.
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For families living in Pennsylvania’s suburbs, things are not OK.
The prosperity enjoyed by suburbanites is in peril, and they know it. Soccer field small talk has moved beyond gas prices. Polite conversation has moved into something more urgent: survival.
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Pennsylvania during the 2022 midterms will once again fail to produce election results on election day itself, a shortfall the secretary of state’s office is blaming on a recently passed law that fails to permit pre-election counting of mail-in ballots.
Pennsylvania Acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman said in a briefing on Tuesday that state officials are anticipating “that once again Pennsylvania will not have unofficial results on election night.”
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While Pennsylvania’s retired population grows in the future, its working-aged and school-aged populations that support them will shrink.
Such are the projections in a new report from the Independent Fiscal Office, noting flat state population growth in the near term and a slight decline in the long term (-0.1% annually).
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In the final weeks of the 2022 midterm campaign, Pennsylvania Democratic candidates continue to bet big on abortion. It was the dominant theme of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman’s first rally in Philadelphia. And the party’s candidates in swing U.S. House districts, like the 1st in suburban Philadelphia and the 17th in suburban Pittsburgh, are hoping that the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade will entice voters to go blue.
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Pennsylvania’s Republican nominee for governor — that would be state Sen. Doug Mastriano — is under attack by the establishment elite for not being … part of the establishment elite. And, of all people, the Republican Governors Association has signed on for the attack.
For those who have not followed the tale, Mastriano is a 30-year active-duty combat veteran who retired as a colonel in the Army. Apart from being deployed to Iraq for Operation Desert Storm (1991), assigned to the U.S. forces liberating Kuwait, in the post–9/11 world he was assigned to NATO and had three tours in Afghanistan. He ended his military career as a professor at the U.S. Army War College, in nearby (to me) Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He has four master’s degrees and holds a doctorate in history.
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A controversial union contract at a steelworks plant has pitted workers against their union representatives. Though workers twice rejected a contract, union officials ratified it with management. Now, workers who want to decertify the union are barred from doing so for three years.
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Pennsylvania’s struggle to build more housing, be it affordable or market-rate, will continue unless dramatic change happens within city, county, and state governments.
Such was the takeaway from a House Urban Affairs Committee hearing focused on northeastern Pennsylvania on Wednesday.
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Allies of Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania have dramatically increased their funding for his candidacy in the state, with new polls released Tuesday suggesting that their contributions are impacting the race.
John Fetterman currently leads Oz by under 2%, gaining 47.7% of the vote to Oz’s 45.9%, per a September poll by the Trafalgar Group – within the margin of error of 2.9%. In July, the same poll showed Fetterman leading Oz by 5%, outside the margin of error.
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Criminal justice reform that started in Pennsylvania to clear previous convictions may become the standard in federal law.
Two criminal justice reform bills, the Clean Slate Act and the Fresh Start Act, would “enable people with federal arrest and conviction records to petition to clear those records and support increased access to automatic record sealing for eligible offenses at the federal and state levels,” as described in a news release from the Clean Slate Initiative, a pro-reform group.
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Pennsylvania will expand its electric vehicle charging infrastructure after it received $25 million in federal funds to do so.
Gov. Tom Wolf announced the $25.4 million came from November’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, legislation also known as the bipartisan infrastructure law.
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As Pennsylvania gears up for a November election less than eight weeks away, county boards of elections are getting more funds and the Department of State will require more audits to ensure public confidence in results.
Changes that could speed up the voting process and counting of ballots, however, do not appear to be on the table for this year.
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Pennsylvania is set to spend $1 billion from the National Opioid Settlement – and the focus is on the county level.
Pennsylvania’s share of the $26 billion settlement will be divvied up so that 70% goes to counties, 15% is appropriated by the General Assembly, and 15% goes to counties involved in the opioid litigation, subdivisions, district attorneys, and special districts.
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Pennsylvania earned a dubious distinction recently that underscores the economic pain wreaking havoc statewide for millions of residents struggling to make ends meet.
We, along with four other states, account for 69% of all 3.6 million utility disconnections between January 2020 and December 2021, according to a report from the Center for Biological Diversity.
It gets worse.
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Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, maintains that he agrees with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a socialist, on “virtually every issue.” Sanders, in turn, has endorsed Fetterman and appeared at events with him. But if Fetterman is taking his economic advice from the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party, where is he getting counsel on dealing with violent crime? Sadly for Pennsylvania voters, Fetterman seems to be taking his lead from the City of Brotherly Love’s Larry Krasner, district attorney of Philadelphia.
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Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, maintains that he agrees with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a socialist, on “virtually every issue.” Sanders, in turn, has endorsed Fetterman and appeared at events with him. But if Fetterman is taking his economic advice from the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party, where is he getting counsel on dealing with violent crime? Sadly for Pennsylvania voters, Fetterman seems to be taking his lead from the City of Brotherly Love’s Larry Krasner, district attorney of Philadelphia.
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Housing shortages and rising rents are a national problem, and the process for building more housing, especially affordable housing, is only one of many barriers.
In Pennsylvania, rents have increased mainly in the southeast and central parts of the state. As The Center Square previously reported, a report from pro-housing group Up for Growth estimated Pennsylvania has underproduced 98,000 units of housing. Statewide, rents increased by 14% from 2020 to 2021.
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The critical midterm election is in less than 70 days, but it can’t come soon enough for Keystone State families being crushed under the weight of failed Democrat policies. Reckless spending by Democrats in Washington has driven us into a recession and burdensome policies by Tom Wolf, John Fetterman, and Josh Shapiro have left Pennsylvania with high unemployment and shuttered small businesses. As State Treasurer, I know the importance of fiscal responsibility. I oversee an office of more than 300 employees and am tasked with protecting more than $150 billion in state assets. As a Pennsylvanian living in Joe Biden’s economy, I know firsthand the consequences of reckless spending and see the painful impact on every town in the commonwealth.
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