News & Brews November 10, 2025
Get News & Brews in your inbox each day: Subscribe here!
RGGI appears in state budget talks
The federal government is finally making progress towards ending a budget stalemate (see next story), but Gov. Shapiro still has nothing to show on the state budget front. Now, PennLive reports that the much-debated Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is showing up in budget talks. “Multiple lawmakers and environmental advocates said last week they understood that Shapiro and Democratic legislators were considering putting RGGI on the chopping block in order to get a budget agreement with Republicans.” You’ll recall Shapiro’s (nonexistent) authority to unilaterally join RGGI is sitting before the state Supreme Court awaiting a ruling.
Fetterman, McCormick vote to reopen government
Last evening, the U.S. Senate finally advanced a measure to reopen the federal government after nearly a month and a half of a shutdown. U.S. Sens. John Fetterman and Dave McCormick have consistently voted to re-open, with Fetterman bucking his party time and again to do so. Following yesterday’s vote, Fetterman posted, “After 40 days as a consistent voice against shutting our government down, I voted YES for the 15th time to REOPEN. I’m sorry to our military, SNAP recipients, gov workers, and Capitol Police who haven’t been paid in weeks. It should’ve never come to this. This was a failure.” There’s still work to do before the government officially re-opens, but yesterday saw tangible progress for the first time in weeks. And speaking of Fetterman, his book—Unfettered—comes out tomorrow, and the Free Press has a preview.
Pa. power prices are lower than RGGI states
And speaking of RGGI (see first item), a new report details that even as electricity prices are rising, “Pennsylvania continues to have lower electricity prices than every state participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI),” per the Pennsylvania Business Report. “From 2019 to 2024, electricity prices in the United States rose an average of 2.4 cents per kilowatt hour, to 12.9 cents. Pennsylvania’s price went up slightly more (2.7 cents), but its 2024 price remained below the U.S. average at 12.5 cents. The numbers for the RGGI states are much worse, where the price hikes ranged from a low of 2.9 cents (Delaware) to a high of 5.8 cents (Connecticut). And customers in those states now have electricity prices that are higher than Pennsylvania’s or the average price paid in the U.S.”
SNAP battle continues
On Friday, Gov. Shapiro held a press conference saying his administration was getting SNAP benefits out as quickly as possible after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to fully fund the program. But later on Friday, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, arguably the most liberal justice on the court, granted a stay of the lower court’s ruling. Shapiro, meanwhile, blasted the Trump administration. Then, late last night, an appeals court again ruled against Trump, meaning Jackson’s stay “lasts now for only two more days. It will be up to the [U.S. Supreme Court] to decide what happens next.”
Which schools are ‘beating the odds’ in reading?
The74 conducted an analysis comparing “literacy vs. poverty rates for 10,000 districts, 42,000 schools and 3 million kids.” The analysis “found 2,158 [individual schools] where third-grade reading scores are much higher than might be expected.” This is 5% of the schools evaluated. Click here for the story or here for an interactive map.