News & Brews December 15, 2025
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Pa. has fewest new laws in a decade
Spotlight PA reports that Pennsylvania “could end the year with the lowest number of new laws in at least a decade.” Despite having the largest full-time legislature in the country, at 253 members, “lawmakers have passed only 65 bills this year — an all-time low for at least the past decade.” This underscores the Commonwealth Foundation’s analysis that found that despite his “GSD” rhetoric, Gov. Josh Shapiro has been the least productive governor in at least 50 years.
Teachers’ union says parents are the enemy
The Capital Research Center (CRC) exposes that the National Education Association—the nation’s largest teachers’ union—”has a training guide to help teachers identify, argue with and marginalize conservative parents.” The leaked documents reveals a training titled “Advancing LGBTQ+ Justice and Transgender Advocacy.” The training “includes staff transition guides for teachers, exercises that instruct participants to analyze their ‘race, class, gender, and positionality,’ and role-play scenarios in which educators practice challenging parents who disagree with gender ideology.” What’s more, CRC notes, “According to the leaked module, the NEA’s Organizing Department instructs teachers to profile ‘hostile’ parents, build messaging strategies to discredit them, and frame Republican elected officials as threats to student safety.”
Pa. Dems again try for severance tax
Three years after an eight-year losing streak, Democrats are once again pitching the idea of imposing a severance tax on Pennsylvania’s already-taxed natural gas industry. Democrat State Reps. Chris Pielli (Chester County) and Tarik Khan (Philadelphia) are behind the proposed legislation. As Marcellus Drilling News explains, their bill “introduces a per-volume severance tax on natural gas operations. The bill would place the new severance tax on top of the existing impact fee (i.e., tax), creating a double tax on the Marcellus industry. Adding a severance tax to the existing impact fee would instantly make PA’s tax on natural gas extraction the highest in the nation.”
Mail-gate expands to 3.4 million letters
The scope of mail-gate continues to grow. Over the weekend, the Inquirer reported that the state’s “unsent mail backlog now totals 3.4 million letters, including SNAP eligibility and health benefit info.” State officials discovered the issue last week after a vendor failed to process a month’s worth of official agency mail. “Residents may not have received letters detailing whether they need to renew their health benefits or if they are required to submit additional information to continue receiving SNAP food assistance…. Administrative hearing notices — which could determine someone’s eligibility for public benefits, appeals about alleged elder abuse, or approvals of new foster homes — as well as child abuse clearances were also among the affected mail.”
About the ‘court-ordered ed funding hike’ myth
A few weeks ago, I had an eye-opening interaction with a reporter who had falsely said on air that “Pennsylvania is under a court-ordered obligation to increase funding to public education.” (That’s a direct quote). I challenged the reporter to publicly correct her incorrect statement, but to date, I have seen no such correction. This brings up a problem: When journalists spread false info, the public sometimes believes it. So, it’s worth setting the record straight. That’s exactly what the Commonwealth Foundation has done, explaining that the 2023 court order in question did not, in fact, mandate increased public education funding.