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Democratic leaders in Pennsylvania, Maryland and other states have long called for PJM Interconnection, which administers the regional electric grid, to give more weight to state voices in its decision-making.
One month from Election Day, President Donald Trump’s long-running pressure campaign over elections is approaching a decisive moment.
The constitutional right to counsel is one of the cornerstones of American democracy. But a constitutional right without adequate funding is merely a promise on paper.
Kratom is an intoxicating substance that can be purchased at gas stations, smoke shops and corner stores across Pennsylvania and much of the country. In recent years, its popularity in America has exploded, as has the number of states that regulate its sale.
At the start of the General Assembly’s last session week before midterm elections, Rep. Russ Diamond (R-Lebanon) said he offered to work with Democrats to amend his legislation to also provide additional funding for public transportation agencies.
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. More than 20 states, including North Carolina, New York, California and Pennsylvania, as well as several cities, are suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over…
For years, the psychoactive compound kratom has been sold across much of the United States as an herbal supplement, available in powders, capsules and extracts with few of the restrictions applied to controlled substances. But the market is changing. Products containing a potentially dangerous kratom derivative known…
When township officials didn’t hold a hearing on Danko’s data center application within the normally required 60 days, the holding company took the position that its proposal was automatically approved under provisions of the Municipal Planning Code.
An unprecedented increase in cooperation between local and state law enforcement and federal immigration officers through collaborations known as 287(g) agreements helped drive numbers up.
The warning signs for a dramatic rise in gambling addiction are showing no signs of abating this year, according to the most recent annual report from the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.
All too often these days, constructing a major energy infrastructure project in Pennsylvania involves years of court fights and permitting delays.
Jobs across the United States rose by 29,000 in September, a disappointing result as recent growth was also revised down in Friday’s monthly jobs report, the last one before midterm elections.
A court battle that began when conservative-led states sued to block protections for transgender people has ended in a rollback of protections for people with disabilities — a result disability advocates have feared for months.
A new poll from The 19th and YouGov sheds light on how young men and women are shaped by certain historical moments and tend to diverge on issues of gender and reproductive rights
Kalshi, Polymarket and the Coalition for Prediction Markets have spent at least $3 million this year on lobbying and campaign contributions across the federal and state levels, according to a new report from the government watchdog group OpenSecrets.
County and local district attorneys oversaw higher state prison admissions during election years than in other years during the height of the nation’s “tough on crime” era, according to a new study from Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law.
Pennsylvania lawmakers returned to Harrisburg on Sept. 28, 2026, after a 10-week recess with little time to determine the future of the state’s skill games.
Nearly 100 community-based organizations have lost their federal HIV-prevention grants this week as the Trump administration redirects dollars to state and local health departments.
The statement said Bernstine must be held accountable for his words and actions, which the caucus leaders said make him unfit to serve in the state legislature.
Interested Pennsylvanian voters must apply for mail-in ballots by Oct. 17. The voter registration deadline is Oct. 19.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury released new guidance for participating states, scholarship-granting organizations and taxpayers as the federal scholarship tax credit program prepares to take effect in January.
News of a $3 billion gift quickly swept Carnegie Mellon University's campus amid a day of bagpipes, confetti and snacks.
Central Pennsylvania’s public broadcasting station, WPSU, is officially separated from Penn State.
Voters in four states will decide housing-related ballot measures in November, providing testing grounds for different strategies to boost affordable homes.
The House Energy Committee advanced three bills addressing electricity company profits, data center infrastructure costs, and ensuring speculative developments do not skew electricity demand forecasts.
Testing in a limited number of shallow aquifers near fracking sites in southwestern Pennsylvania found low levels of radium overall, but there aren’t yet enough samples to draw firm conclusions about the region as a whole, according to a new report from researchers at Penn State University.
A fifth measles-related death occurred in Pennsylvania, which remains one of the nation’s hot spots for outbreaks of the virus. The state Health Department reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that an unvaccinated person in Lancaster County died after testing positive for measles. The number of…
Constellation, the owner of Maryland’s Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant, said Wednesday it plans to move forward with massive upgrades at the facility after signing a 20-year power purchase deal with data center operator Amazon.
As Rep. Liz Hanbidge started promoting her bill to educate and promote health access for women experiencing perimenopause and menopause this week, one fellow lawmaker said he’d support the measure — but wished she’d stop talking about it. “He asked me to stop talking about it because he thinks it’s gross,” Hanbidge…
Lawmakers say the systems can help at a time when residents’ power bills are skyrocketing and utilities are struggling to keep pace with demand.
Under the proposed law, retailers who register with the state would be allowed to sell natural leaf kratom products to people 21 and over, but those products would have to meet strict packaging requirements and be subject to the tobacco tax.
The sewage sludge some farmers have applied to their fields for decades is contaminated with PFAS — with serious consequences for drinking water.
Advocates for open primaries have argued that the current system disenfranchises groups including about 400,000 Pennsylvania veterans and nearly two-thirds of young adults who choose to join an alternative political party or remain independent. The commonwealth is one of just 10 states with closed primaries.
Felony murder is a charge brought when a victim dies during the commission of another felony, even if the perpetrator never intended or planned to kill.
The system is being launched about two years after Gov. Josh Shapiro signed Act 122 of 2024, which required the PCCD and Pennsylvania State Police to establish an online tracking system to allow sexual assault survivors to track evidence processing at each step.
Nonprofit leaders say that state law needs to be modernized to allow charitable gaming operations to accept electronic payments for small games of chance, such as raffles.
The U.S. Department of Justice has charged four additional noncitizens with crimes related to registering to vote and voting in the 2022 or 2024 elections in Pennsylvania.
Seven federally recognized Native American tribes are ending their bid to formally join the Chesapeake Bay cleanup, saying they have been disappointed by the response from Bay Program leaders. The Virginia-based tribes began their quest last January, hoping to be added as a single signatory — the status awarded to…
Five weeks before Election Day, President Donald Trump’s sprawling effort to identify and remove noncitizen voters hasn’t produced the kind of large purges that could meaningfully affect the midterm elections.
It takes a lot to knock football out of the headlines in Pittsburgh. But reports of measles cases, exposure alerts and calls for residents to double-check their vaccination status have dominated local news since August 2026.
Democratic and Republican governors say they will more aggressively push back on federal overreach regardless of which party controls Washington.
Small businesses will once again challenge President Donald Trump’s tariffs in federal court this week as they continue to feel the squeeze of the administration’s roller coaster policy on import taxes.
Experts warn that, while such measures may be intended to protect children, they can ultimately wind up burdening adults, posing data privacy concerns, and restricting access to First Amendment-protected material.
Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman addressed some of the biggest topics ahead of the final legislative stretch before midterms.
(This article was updated Oct. 1, 2026, to correctly attribute comments Electronic Frontier Foundation senior staff attorney Lisa Femia.) Amid a growing national backlash against automatic license plate reader technology and its potential for misuse, Pennsylvania lawmakers grilled law enforcement, tech and civil…
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has, once again, infuriated lawmakers from both political parties by using a controversial maneuver to cancel funding previously approved by Congress. The $810 million in the “pocket rescission” would have gone to refugee assistance programs at the Department of Health and Human…
Arguing on behalf of the class of men who were removed under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, Lee Gelernt of the American Civil Liberties Union told the three-judge panel that the men, who were accused of being suspected members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, were entitled to hearings to challenge those…
WE BUY HOUSES. CASH 4 HOMES. FA$T CA$H. The signs, text messages and mailers promise cash, quick sales and a seamless means of unloading unwanted homes. But advocates say the business of buying homes for cash can confuse vulnerable homeowners and rob them of home equity. And now, many states are cracking down…
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. ICE ramped up its arrests of immigrants at major airports over the summer of 2026, including in Philadelphia, to help meet the Trump administration’s reported goal of apprehending 1,100 people daily. The…
Advocates warn that as word of raids near hospitals and medical centers spreads, so can fears of seeking healthcare services in immigrant communities. Medical workers too have warned that more aggressive immigration enforcement has led to immigrants delaying or refusing necessary care.
The U.S. Department of Education’s suspension this year of a comprehensive monitoring process puts billions of K-12 dollars at heightened risk of undetected waste, fraud and abuse, according to a new report by the nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office.
Election Day isn’t until Nov. 3, but the 2026 election is officially underway in Pennsylvania: The first ballots are starting to hit voters’ mailboxes.
This story was originally published by WITF. The Department of Homeland Security is making weekly deportation flights from Louisiana to Haiti. After receiving a reprieve last week, York pastor Molis Augustave was flown out of the country Thursday, according to a community group organizing on his behalf. Even with an…
As physicians continue to navigate care for patients with complex pregnancies in states with abortion bans, a group of maternal-fetal medicine specialists has developed new guidelines to help providers in those states navigate legal risks for themselves and medical challenges for their high-risk patients.
Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore is commissioning a state task force to examine new data center proposals and advise local jurisdictions considering the projects.
Gov. Josh Shapiro’s huge fundraising lead over Republican challenger Stacy Garrity continues to be built in part by contributions from out of state, and has positioned the Democratic incumbent to spend millions trying to win control of the General Assembly for his party.
The 2025 Youth Risk Behavior Survey report focuses on five areas — diet, physical activity, sleep, digital behavior, and mental health and suicide risk — while largely leaving out national findings on substance use, sexual behavior, violence and disparities among student groups that were prominent in previous reports.
As the energy industry scrambles to meet surging electricity demand, largely from AI data centers, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is poised to spend nearly $2 billion to help fund 31 grid improvement projects in 26 states.
Gov. Andy Beshear asked Kentucky’s congressional delegation in a Thursday letter to throw their support behind a bill amending the Black Lung Benefits Act to “provide adequate benefits for miners suffering from black lung disease.”
New federal rules likely will force three dozen states to reduce their annual Medicaid payments to doctors and hospitals by a total of more than $50 billion — potentially shrinking the number of providers willing to see Medicaid patients, according to a new analysis.
Government investigators Thursday released a report that found the Department of Homeland Security wasted more than $20 million in federal funding in its rapid expansion of immigration detention, including warehouse purchases strongly opposed in numerous U.S. communities.
The Nov. 3 ballot measures include questions about pretrial release, fentanyl and human trafficking penalties, immigration enforcement, traffic cameras, drug cartels and marijuana regulation.
WASHINGTON — A vast and growing network of artificial intelligence-driven Flock cameras could violate constitutional privacy rights, U.S. senators on a Judiciary Committee subcommittee said during a Wednesday hearing. GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, the chair of the Crime and Counterterrorism Subcommittee, said the…
About a third of all shooting victims in Philadelphia this year were age 22 or under, or what the School District of Philadelphia calls “school-aged youth.”
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. In February 2023, George Garrow jumped in his car and hurried to help people impacted by a freight train that had derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. The crash happened…
A spokesperson for the Department of Aging questioned the timing of the report as Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro seeks reelection in November.
New data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows more than 330,000 Americans lost access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, between May and June, the latest numbers available.
This fall, voters in at least nine states will decide whether to cut, cap or raise taxes through ballot measures that will give them a direct hand in steering state tax policy in a conservative or progressive direction.
The Pavilion, a long-term care facility at the former hospital in Bradford will close on or before December 1, according to Kaleida Health officials.
As opposition to data centers grows, researchers eye the state’s thousands of acres of polluted mine lands as potential solutions.
More than half of women of reproductive age have seen or heard the false claim that hormones in contraceptives are harmful, and about 4 in 10 have been exposed to the false idea that hormones in contraceptives limit your ability to get pregnant in the future, according to a new survey.
As it stands, Schmidt said roughly 986,000 mail ballot applications have been approved in Pennsylvania — roughly 95% of those received. And 20 counties have already begun to send mail ballots to voters who requested them.
An eight-state coalition filed lawsuits Tuesday challenging the Trump administration’s payments to private companies to cancel offshore wind leases, escalating an ongoing legal battle over the government spending billions of dollars to block wind projects.
The Moshannon Valley Processing Center, with beds for about 1,800 people, is the largest ICE detention center on the east coast. The county serves as a pass-through for about $5 million a month in federal money that ICE pays private prison operator The GEO Group to run the center. The county receives $200,000 a year.
The mistrial in Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial earlier this month places her future in doubt, three years after she killed her three children in Duxbury, Massachusetts. But one potential outcome is a state legislative push to boost mental health support for new mothers.
Viewing the centuries-long history of American librarianship through a Pennsylvania lens shows it's more complex, nuanced and fascinating than many people realize.
The rare 2026 issue that draws huge support from Republicans and Democrats in Congress is the same one that’s mobilized many Americans: restrictions on giant data centers.
Black Lung Disease has long been a risk of coal mining, an industry the Trump administration is trying to reinvigorate.
Diesel prices hit a record average of $6.51 a gallon Monday, and some in President Donald Trump’s own party are breaking their support for the ongoing war in Iran that has driven fuel prices to staggering levels in the United States and across the globe.
Medicaid enrollees from five states and leading medical organizations filed a lawsuit Friday challenging new Medicaid work requirements.
The Trump administration’s top wildlife official issued a directive last week that expands a recent rollback of endangered species protections much further than the feds had told the public.
Pa. Supreme Court decisions on felony murder and skill games will force the two issues to the top of lawmakers' agendas when they return next week.
After vowing to spend $20 billion on data centers across Pennsylvania, Amazon is now quietly reaping the rewards of a controversial, yet lucrative state tax exemption, records show.
West Publishing, a division of Thomson Reuters, said it detected unauthorized activity involving its C-Track case management system June 30.
Women giving birth in rural communities were more likely than peers in urban areas to receive oral opioid prescriptions for pain upon leaving the hospital after a cesarean section, according to a new analysis of data from half a million C-sections.
Higher education teaches our students to ask hard questions. Colleges and universities should be ready to do the same.
A federal judge in Pennsylvania on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit challenging changes to the way grants are awarded under a program that provides funding for services such as family planning and reproductive health wellness exams.
UPMC is one of more than 20 hospitals that received subpoenas last year for the patient records of children receiving gender-affirming care, the overarching term used to describe a range of services provided to transgender people ranging from talk therapy to surgery.
Nearly 3,000 acres of Ohio’s only national forest were leased this week for more than $11 million by the Bureau of Land Management to out-of-state companies for fracking.
Gov. Josh Shapiro called on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to update their public dashboard on measles cases before Pennsylvania accepts federal help.
Just months after federal officials joined Chesapeake Bay states to renew their pledge to restore the nation's largest estuary, President Donald Trump on Wednesday rescinded an Obama-era executive order that called for federal leadership in the effort.
Voting rights groups and Democratic officials are looking to defend against what they see as possible election interference from the Trump administration ahead of the upcoming midterm elections, now that they’ve won a major battle over mail ballots.
Students ages 12 to 18 experienced higher rates of reported crime at school than away from school in 2024, according to a new federal analysis. But the overall rate of crime victimization at school has not changed significantly since 2014.
Altogether, the incident paints a picture of how difficult it can be to get timely and accurate information on ICE activity at this phase of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, which has gained steam since it began last year.
The GEO Group operates Moshannon Valley under an agreement with Clearfield County, in which the local government serves as a pass-through for more than $5 million a month to skirt a ban on federal agencies contracting with private prison operators.
Concerned about conditions in federal immigrant detention facilities but often barred from entering them, some Democratic-led states are fighting to enforce their own health and safety standards at the sites.
Republican members of the Senate Agriculture Committee voted Wednesday to advance a farm bill despite Democrats voting against it.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday announced a civil lawsuit against TikTok on Aug. 11, 2026, filed in Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas and accusing the social media platform of violating state…
In its latest effort to overhaul federal homelessness funding, the Trump administration is proposing to provide more money to localities that prioritize treatment-first policies such as sober living, more cooperation with law enforcement and more temporary and transitional housing.
New records provide the most detail so far about the previously opaque process by which the federal government concluded that thousands of potential noncitizens are registered to vote in Pennsylvania.