News & Brews June 19, 2025
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No budget by June 30, and no marijuana-for-fun
Speaking to reporters yesterday, Pa. Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman predicted the state budget will not be complete by the traditional June 30 deadline. “There is no framework of a deal,” Pittman said. “We are engaged in conversations. Those conversations have not gone nearly as quickly as we would prefer. So we have a lot of work to do.” That said, a late budget is not uncommon, and it would have to be several months late before any impact is felt. Pittman also dealt a blow to Gov. Shapiro’s hopes to legalize, tax, and regulate recreational marijuana, saying it’s not going to happen as part of the budget deal.
U.S. Steel / Nippon Steel deal is finalized
Yesterday, Nippon Steel “finalized its acquisition of U.S. Steel, days after securing a national-security agreement with the Trump administration that cleared the way for the deal to move forward,” the Wall Street Journal reports. Under the deal, Nippon Steel will “invest roughly $11 billion across U.S. Steel’s domestic operations over the next three years, a move the companies say will protect and create more than 100,000 jobs. … The deal … will preserve U.S. Steel’s incorporation in the U.S., as well as its headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pa.”
Juneteenth and the path to freedom
An op-ed in the Wall Street Journal reminds us that like Independence Day, Juneteenth—recognized as a federal holiday in 2021—”celebrate[s] a commitment to liberty whose fruition took time.” It commemorates June 19, 1865, the date that slaves in Galveston, Texas finally received word of the Emancipation Proclamation, which President Lincoln had issued more than two years earlier. “Juneteenth and Independence Day honor the struggle of an imperfect people on an imperfect path to freedom and equality.”
Pa. officials guilty of election fraud sentenced to prison
Several months ago, I shared the story of elected officials in Millbourne (Delaware County) who were charged with trying to steal an election. Now, a federal, judge has sentenced two of those officials to prison. Spotlight PA reports that one received a sentence of 36 months in prison, as well as one year of supervised release. And the other received a prison sentence of one year and one day, along with one year of supervised release and $1,700 in fines. A third—who still sits on the borough council—will be sentenced next week. The story notes that the sentences were “harsher … than prosecutors requested.”
‘No Kings!’ (Just kidding: The Left means ‘Only Our Kings’!)
This past weekend’s “No Kings!” protests were hilarious in their misleading moniker. As the Commonwealth Foundation’s Nathan Benefield writes, none of the rallies said a peep about countries that actually have monarchs (of which we are not one). What’s more, “The protesters weren’t even calling for Congress to act to limit executive authority. Indeed, if the No Kings crowd supported reducing unilateral executive power and restoring checks and balances, we’d have a lot of common ground to work together.” Nate breaks down the hypocrisy of the protests, then outlines what the protesters would support if they “actually care about protecting the rights of American citizens from a tyrannical government.”