News & Brews August 14, 2025
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Pa. House rejects budget; stalemate continues
Yesterday, two Democrat-controlled Pa. House committees rejected the GOP Senate’s proposals to pass a short-term budget and temporary mass transit funding. The Inquirer reports that the rejections “signal that the state’s divided legislature remains at a stalemate over a budget,” which “is still far away.”
On mid-decade redistricting, Pa. was early offender
GOP consultant Chris Nicholas takes to the pages of RealClear Pennsylvania to weigh in on the redistricting sagas playing out in Texas and across the country. “Normally I would … write that such a mid-decade redraw could not happen here in Pennsylvania, as we have divided government,” he notes. “But former Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and the then-newish Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court did just that in 2018…. The forced 2018 redraw flipped four of the state’s GOP congressional seats to blue … only one of which … Republicans have won back – and that took six years.” And despite Democrats’ wailing and gnashing of teeth over Texas today, “No national Democrats complained about Democrats’ redraw” in Pa. in 2018.
Will U.S. Steel explosion bring changes?
The Post-Gazette floats the idea that Monday’s explosion at the Clairton Coke Works, which tragically killed two workers and injured several others, “may well mark a turning point for the iconic Mon Valley Works.” This is according to one industry analyst, who believes that “Nippon Steel [which recently purchased U.S. Steel] covets its reputation for worker safety and environmental protection too much to allow accidents such as Monday’s explosion to happen again.”
The NEA is as bad (and worse) than you think
As the nation’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association (and its Pa. affiliate, the Pennsylvania State Education Association) wields considerable power over union-beholden politicians. Consider, for example, lawmakers who oppose school choice do so at the NEA/PSEA’s bidding and receive political donations from the unions. Well, the Capital Research Center reports that at the NEA’s 2025 Representative Assembly, delegates approved a resolution for the union’s handbook that omits the word Jewish from a section on the Holocaust. Instead, the section on International Holocaust Remembrance Day references “the more than 12 million victims of the Holocaust from different faiths, ethnicities, races, political beliefs, genders, and gender identification, abilities/disabilities, and other targeting characteristics.” Say what? Time to revoke the NEA’s congressional charter.
Op-Ed: Shapiro’s double standard
Dan Bartkowiak of the Pennsylvania Family Institute writes that Gov. Josh Shapiro “often calls for honesty and accountability, but time and again, his own actions fail to meet those very standards.” A recent case in point is Shapiro’s claim that Planned Parenthood clinics in Pa. provide prenatal care. Yet, calls to Planned Parenthood confirm they do not, in fact, provide such care. This is just one example of Shapiro’s double-standard. Other instances? Shapiro stated his support for Lifeline Scholarships only to veto them later. And Shapiro claims “that his administration takes allegations of discrimination and harassment seriously,” but he let a senior aide stay in his job for months after being credibly accused of sexual harassment.