News & Brews September 30, 2026
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Lawmakers want AG to investigate Philly SD over antisemitism
Several Pa. House Republican lawmakers have sent a letter to state Attorney General Dave Sunday, calling on him to “investigate whether a ‘systemic pattern of discrimination’ against Jewish students occurs in the Philadelphia School District,” the Inquirer reports. Should be a short investigation. The answer is Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And Yes.
Pa. House votes for open primaries
Yesterday, the state House voted 115-88 for a Democrat-led bill that would open the state’s primary elections to independent and unaffiliated voters. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Primary elections are political party operations, so really shouldn’t be funded by taxpayers at all. And the argument that closed primaries disenfranchise voters is ridiculous and akin to saying a voter is disenfranchised simply because he or she chooses not to vote. What’s more, the claim that open primaries will somehow prevent the more “extreme” candidates from winning is also faulty. Just look at Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed, who couldn’t bring himself to condemn hunting down women in the streets for improperly wearing hijabs or flogging a man for offending terrorists, won the Democrat U.S. Senate primary. The House-passed bill now heads to the state Senate.
Is Supreme Court felony murder ruling retroactive?
Yesterday, the state Supreme Court said it would take up the question of whether its March ruling striking down mandatory life sentences for second-degree murder applies retroactively to those already serving such sentences. You’ll recall the court gave the legislature 120 days to “write a new sentencing law and, if lawmakers chose, decide the question of retroactivity themselves.“ The legislature didn’t meet the deadline, with each chamber blaming the other.
Dem senator wanted to tax adult content—that he used
Broad + Liberty reports that Democrat state Sen. James Malone (Lancaster County), “co-sponsored legislation to impose a 10% tax on online adult content [but he] also maintained a Tumblr account where he liked bondage-themed artwork and sexually suggestive photos.” Malone is in a heated re-election battle against Republican Tom Jones. “Broad + Liberty sent questions to the [Malone] campaign as well as the senate office asking whether Malone believed his Tumblr activity was consistent with the intent of the adult content tax legislation he co-sponsored, and whether Malone wished to comment on the apparent contradiction. Neither responded.”
Senate hearing today on combatting antisemitism
This morning at 9:00 a.m., the state Senate Majority Policy Committee held a public hearing on combatting antisemitism. Among those scheduled to testify were Andrew Goretsky of ADL Philadelphia, Jason Holtzman of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, and David Knoll of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. The hearing took place as hatred of Jews has reached a new fever pitch once thought impossible in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Notably, the hearing comes 85 years to the day after the two-day massacre of more than 33,700 Jews by Nazi Germans at Babyn Yar on September 29-30, 1941.
CMU receives largest gift to higher education
Carnegie Mellon University is receiving a $3 billion donation, the largest ever single gift to a university, WESA reports. The gift, from hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin, “includes $2 billion to build a new 35-acre campus in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood,” with the remainder to “be divided evenly between the Pittsburgh campus’ computer science program … and other unspecified projects on the main campus.”
