News & Brews May 26, 2026
Get News & Brews in your inbox each day: Subscribe here!
Before running for gov, Garrity was military whistleblower
Spotlight PA recounts Republican gubernatorial nominee Stacy Garrity’s pivotal role in reporting abuse at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq and her leadership at the prison camp. While her decision to expose violations of the Geneva Convention caused some soldiers to turn against her, she maintains she has no regrets. “Like I always tell my soldiers — you have to be able to look yourself in the mirror and know you did the right thing, even when people aren’t looking,” she said. Garrity retired from the U.S. Army Reserve in 2016 as a Colonel.
Shapiro wants pause on property dispute lawsuit
WHP reports that Gov. Shapiro is asking a judge to either dismiss or pause a federal lawsuit filed by his Montgomery County neighbors over Shapiro’s attempt to seize a portion of their property. Shapiro argues that a case pending in Montgomery County Court, which Shapiro himself filed, should take precedence. Here’s another idea: Why doesn’t Shapiro back off his attempt to take his neighbor’s land?
A ‘critical test’ for Shapiro this November
The Post-Gazette reports that beyond Gov. Shapiro’s campaign for re-election, several races in Pennsylvania this year “will test as never before Shapiro’s standing as a national leader of his party.” That’s because if he wants to get to the top of the list of 2028 Democrat presidential contenders, Shapiro will “need to bring others along with him.” And, “Democrats nationwide will be watching to see whether Shapiro can carry his party to power in the largest swing state by campaigning for nominees trying to flip the Republican-held seats that will determine who controls the General Assembly — and possibly even the U.S. House.”
PGH finances even worse than imagined
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports, “Despite the recent multimillion-dollar budget reconfiguration launched by Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O’Connor, new projections show the city could still end this year tens of millions of dollars in the red…. O’Connor’s administration expected that at the end of the year, they would have to pull about $6.5 million from the rainy day fund to keep the budget balanced. Now it looks like the deficit could be almost four times larger than that — even with the 20% property tax increase council passed last year.”
These Republicans bowed to union bosses
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board writes that U.S. House Republicans have handed union bosses a pair of victories they were unable to achieve “when Democrats ran Congress and Joe Biden was president.” One of the victories was advancing the Faster Labor Contracts Act (FLCA) to the House floor. This “gives unions a bludgeon against business by mandating government arbitration if companies don’t reach agreements on an approved timeline of when unions are first certified.” The Ed Board points out, “The GOP Members who confuse the priorities of union bosses with the needs of union workers” include “Pennsylvania’s Rob Bresnahan and Brian Fitzpatrick.”