News & Brews September 10, 2026
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Fetterman addresses GOP convention
As Democrats continue to shun Sen. John Fetterman, he made a surprise appearance via video yesterday at the GOP midterm convention. Axios reports that in the video, Fetterman “praised President Trump and Republican Sen. Dave McCormick for helping America’s steel industry.” Despite rampant speculation, “Fetterman said later in a statement that he isn’t switching parties. But in the video he distanced himself from socialism in the Democratic Party’s left wing.”
Still, Axios claims “Fetterman’s stunning turn — a Democratic senator in a supporting role at the GOP’s showcase campaign event, fewer than eight weeks before the Nov. 3 midterms — marked a dramatic escalation in Fetterman’s growing estrangement from his party.” (Did it really, though? Given the long-growing chasm between Fetterman and fellow Dems, I’m not so sure.)
The Democrat trifecta threat
Our president and CEO Matt Brouillette warns in the Pottstown Mercury what would happen if Democrats in Pennsylvania succeed in gaining a governing trifecta this year—control of the state Senate, House, and governor’s office. And the picture isn’t pretty.
“Consider,” Matt writes, “that state-level election laws shape how ballots are cast, counted, accepted or rejected…. These decisions influence not only state races, but federal races for U.S. House, Senate, and the presidency. A Democrat trifecta could easily eliminate any safeguards currently in place and weaken confidence in our elections. Then there is the rapidly approaching congressional redistricting that will occur after the 2030 census. Absent a Republican firewall, a Democrat trifecta could easily gerrymander Pennsylvania’s congressional map fully in favor of Democrats.” This could hand Democrats multiple seats in an already closely divided Congress.
Dem proposes ‘single-payer’ healthcare
Pennsylvania Democrats are letting their true ideology shine through, as Dem state Rep. Greg Scott (Montgomery County) has officially proposed a “universal, single-payer health care system” in Pennsylvania. The irony (among many) is that it’s anything BUT single-payer, as millions of Pennsylvanians would be forced to pay for it, to the tune of more than $68 billion in tax hikes.
As one analyst explained to me, Scott’s bill “would impose a 7.5% employer payroll tax, 2.5% employee payroll tax, 10% tax on self-employment income, and 10% tax on most unearned income—basically the equivalent of a 10% income tax across the board.” And if you like your insurance? Well, tough. Further, Broad + Liberty’s editors remind us, “This kind of thing has been tried before and failed. Vermont passed a single payer health care plan more than a decade ago, and it fell apart before it even got started.”
Shapiro’s health dept. wants to invade your home
We’ve heard recently about concerns over the Shapiro administration’s new proposed health regulations. But now, attorney Jonathan Goldstein breaks it down even more for us. Writing in Broad + Liberty, Goldstein explains, “Some of [the proposal] is simple housekeeping, like updating a list of reportable illnesses. But other parts go much further. They would let state investigators enter homes without a warrant. They would let investigators pull students from class for private interviews, without telling parents. They would order pregnancy blood tests with fewer safeguards than current rules. And they would build a permanent database that includes people’s race and ethnicity.” Gee what could go wrong?
Inside the Socialism 2026 conference
While the political world focuses on the GOP mid-term convention, another conference happened this past weekend that didn’t get nearly as much attention: the 2026 Socialism conference in Chicago. And man, was it a doozy. The City-Journal reports more than 3,000 socialists attended the four-day event featuring such folks as Hasan Piker.
Among some notable moments: “a Health Fascism panel that described GLP-1s as a ‘fat genocide’ and being ‘dysgenic’ as aspirational; abortion activists presenting Piker with a ‘Satan’s School of Gay Communism’ hat; Weather Underground alumni Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn in attendance and professors from Columbia, CUNY, NYT, and the University of Illinois, Chicago promoting radical activism.”
But why stop there? “Throughout conference spaces, both speakers and attendees spouted left-wing jargon and buzzwords repeatedly … above all, ‘abolition,’ not just of a market economy and private property but also police, prisons, border security, gender, the family, and the state itself.”
