Philadelphia-area women can now seek relief from hot flashes, night sweats, and other menopause symptoms from a health provider better known for supporting their reproductive choices earlier in life.
Planned Parenthood clinics around the region are now offering menopause hormone replacement therapy and perimenopause care and will begin providing vasectomies next year, in an effort to reach more patients and diversify services at a time when the nonprofit’s federal funding remains under fire because it is the nation’s largest abortion provider.
Local Planned Parenthood clinics lost millions of dollars this year when Republicans prevented the organization from billing Medicaid for services, and some were forced to stop accepting patients with the publicly funded insurance coverage. Medicaid access was restored in July, but conservatives who oppose abortion have vowed to pursue more funding cuts after the midterm elections this fall.
One way clinics have responded to ongoing financial and political attacks is by adding services that attract new patients who can pay out-of-pocket or with private insurance.
New patients accounted for nearly a third of the 350 patients who came to Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania clinics for menopause treatment last year, when the service was rolled out.
The program has been popular in part because patients can typically get appointments within a week, said Dayle Steinberg, CEO of the Southeastern Pennsylvania affiliate, which operates clinics in Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties.
Planned Parenthood Keystone began offering menopause and perimenopause care at its clinics in Allentown, Bensalem, Harrisburg, Lancaster, Reading, Wilkes-Barre, and York earlier this month.
The Keystone affiliate plans to begin offering vasectomies at its Allentown location next year.
“When we look at ways to be resilient, looking at service opportunities that speak to people of a variety of ages, sexual orientation and gender is going to be vital,” said Melissa Reed, CEO of the Keystone affiliate.
Expanding reproductive health services
With roughly 600 health centers nationally, Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the country. It is also a leading resource for family planning, sexual health education, and gynecological care, often operating in underserved communities where patients are more likely to be uninsured or covered by government insurance.
At the Southeastern Pennsylvania network, eight out of 10 patients come for routine exams, tests for sexually transmitted diseases, contraception, family planning guidance, or other reproductive healthcare.
The clinics serve women and men and provide gender-affirming care.
Local Planned Parenthood leaders said the new menopause services are a natural extension of the organization’s reproductive healthcare.
“For so long, women’s symptoms in menopause have been dismissed or ignored,” Reed said. “This is an important part of a woman’s reproductive health journey.”
The organization is also capitalizing on surging interest in menopause and perimenopause in recent years, as high-profile public figures speak out about a midlife challenge long considered taboo. Revised health guidance now underscores the safety and benefits of treatment options.
As a result, doctors often have long waitlists for appointments. And pharmacies struggle to keep in stock the hormone medications that have gained popularity as a way to control side effects, such as hot flashes, disrupted sleep, and bone degeneration.
Planned Parenthood providers can counsel patients on hormonal and emotional changes associated with menopause and perimenopause, and write prescriptions for hormone therapy or other medications.
Ongoing federal threats
Planned Parenthood faced a financial crisis when President Donald Trump’s 2025 signature spending plan included new rules that prevented the organization from billing Medicaid for services.
The two Philadelphia-area affiliates estimated they would lose about $3 million in revenue. The Keystone clinics temporarily stopped accepting Medicaid patients.
They resumed seeing Medicaid patients in July, when the ban was lifted at the end of the fiscal year.
The Southeastern Pennsylvania affiliate relied on fundraising and donations to continue caring for Medicaid patients who were no longer able to pay.
But leaders acknowledged the approach was unsustainable.
“This isn’t something you can fundraise your way out of,” Signe Espinoza, vice president of public policy and advocacy at the Southeastern Pennsylvania affiliate told The Inquirer in March. “We don’t want to turn patients away, but we know that eating the cost is not a sustainable model.”
The organization has since begun offering more advanced OB-GYN services and expanded clinic hours. Leaders routinely survey community members to learn more about what other services they would like to see at Planned Parenthood.
Some of the ideas patients and community members have suggested include postpartum and prenatal care, and fertility services.
The organization isn’t ready to expand to include those types of services yet, but “we’re feeling much more optimistic in our ability to move forward,” Steinberg said.
Political parties in Philadelphia can now spend unlimited amounts of money in coordination with their chosen candidates, according to a new board of ethics policy approved Wednesday.
For instance, in next year’s city elections — when Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and all 17 City Council members will be up for reelection — the candidates endorsed by the Democratic City Committee could be able to access major financial advantages over their Democratic primary rivals, if the party chooses to coordinate with them.
Candidates are still bound by the city’s strict campaign finance rules limiting the size of donations to their campaigns — no more than $3,700 per year for individual donors, and $14,800 for organizations — and prohibiting them from coordinating with independent expenditure committees, or outside groups that spend money on candidates’ behalf.
But endorsed candidates will now be the only primary contenders allowed to coordinate with a group that has no restrictions on how much money it can collect: the party. The candidates, for instance, will be able to work with the party on messaging strategy, the timing of TV ads, and where to deploy door-knocking canvassers.
While the policy does not allow donors to require that parties spend their money on particular candidates, endorsed politicians with deep-pocketed backers can encourage donors to contribute to the party, with the understanding that the party will ultimately decide how the money is spent.
The Philadelphia Council members inside the caucus inside City Hall in Philadelphia, Pa on Thursday, June 11, 2026.Aidan T. Gallo / Staff Photographer
The impact of the new policy will depend on how aggressively candidates, parties, and donors seek to take advantage of it. But it has the potential to steer power in some elections back toward the city’s Democratic establishment after a period in which labor unions, special interest groups, and progressive super PACs have become increasingly influential.
“This Supreme Court ruling is going to have the effect of shifting power back to political parties and away from independent expenditures in a lot of ways,” said Philadelphia elections lawyer Adam Bonin.
In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court in June overturned limits on how much money parties could spend in coordination with candidates, citing parties’ free speech rights. The 6-3 decision, with the conservative justices in the majority, was widely seen as the latest in a series of cases that have demolished longstanding rules around money in politics.
But the NRSC case centered on a law related to general elections for federal office, and it was not initially clear whether the Philadelphia Board of Ethics would determine the ruling applied to local elections and to primaries.
The board, in a 4-0 vote with member Nelson Diaz absent, approved a policy that answered both of those questions affirmatively, meaning local political parties are now able to coordinate with their chosen candidates in primaries.
In deep-blue Philadelphia, where Democrats hold a 7-1 voter registration advantage over Republicans, the party’s primary contests usually determine the outcomes of elections.
The new policy holds that the party can only coordinate with its nominees in general and special elections. In primaries, the ethics board will allow the parties to set their own rules for determining their preferred candidates that they can coordinate with. The Democratic City Committee determines its endorsements by holding a vote among its ward leaders.
The policy, meant to clarify the city’s rules in advance of next year’s municipal elections, is temporary. The full details of the new rules will be fleshed out in regulations the board will tackle in the coming months.
Philadelphia Democratic Party Chairman Bob Brady on May 18, 2026.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Democratic City Committee Chairman Bob Brady said the party was “still reviewing the new guidelines.”
“Protecting constitutional rights remains a priority of the Democratic Party, especially the right to participate in our democratic process,” Brady said in a statement. “We will continue the work to ensure that the final implementation of these policies and laws will right the wrongs that have too long infringed on First Amendment rights.”
To be sure, there are significant roadblocks for candidates hoping to benefit from the new policy. In crowded primaries, for instance, the Democratic City Committee often declines to endorse when a majority of ward leaders fail to coalesce around one candidate. And the candidates and parties would have to find donors willing to give large sums knowing that they cannot control how the money will be spent.
Additionally, Bonin said, the new policy may still be more restrictive than what the Supreme Court decision appears to have envisioned because the board is seeking to maintain many of the city’s existing campaign finance rules.
“They are doing it in a way in which, initially, it seems they’re trying to change their rules as little as possible, while still recognizing they need to act,” he said.
The policy could also have an impact on elections for the two seats on Council that are set aside for minority-party or independent candidates. Republicans held those seats for about 70 years before Councilmembers Kendra Brooks and Nicolas O’Rourke of the progressive Working Families Party won them in the last two election cycles.
City Council candidates Kendra Brooks and Nicolas O’Rourke celebrate after the Working Families Party declared victory at their election night gathering at Roar Nightclub in Philadelphia, Pa. on Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
Before Wednesday, it appeared possible the ruling could create an uneven playing field, with the Republican City Committee being allowed to coordinate with its nominees while the Working Families Party was unable to do so because it is not a major political party under state law.
The language of the board’s approved policy, however, effectively gives the Working Families Party the same rights as the Democratic and Republican Parties because it fielded candidates in the most recent municipal election.
Republican City Committee chairman Vince Fenerty celebrated the ethics board’s decision.
“I’m very happy,” Fenerty said. “It will make our candidates be able to interact with other groups easily, and hopefully it will be a good day for the Republican Party of Philadelphia when we can have good funding to be victorious in some municipal elections.”
A Working Families Party spokesperson said this summer that the party opposed the Supreme Court’s attacks on campaign finance law, but did not rule out the possibility of the progressive group taking advantage of any new policy.
WASHINGTON — The war in Iran is costing the United States up to $3 billion per month and has tallied more than $38 billion in direct costs to the government since it began more than six months ago and became a flash point in voters’ frustrations over rising prices, according to a new and nonpartisan analysis.
The estimate, released Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office after a request from U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle (D., Philadelphia), mostly represents munitions expenses as of Aug. 1. It does not include some other direct and indirect costs — such as the spike in gas prices felt by consumers — that likely make the total price tag for Americans far higher.
But with the war on the minds of voters during the midterm elections this fall, the latest tally is the one of the clearest signs yet of the conflict’s impact on taxpayers.
“It is now concrete evidence that when the administration was pretending like there wasn’t going to be a real cost to this war, they were wrong,” Boyle said in an interview Tuesday. “We have now paid $40 billion, and climbing, on the most reckless decision to go to war of at least my lifetime. So as the people go to the polls this November, they need to recognize that if they are voting for the president’s party, they’re voting for more of this.”
The top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, Boyle requested the analysis in the first days of the conflict — when President Donald Trump said the campaign would last four or five weeks. The president and his allies said the goals were to root out Iran’s regime and to dismantle its capacity to build a nuclear weapon.
Democrats and other critics warned of a reckless and potentially yearslong conflict.
Trying to win control of Congress for the final two years of Trump’s term, they have largely framed their opposition to the war around the economic consequences — marrying an affordability message around rising healthcare and grocery costs with one about gas prices, which they say are even more directly connected to Trump’s actions.
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Polls and interviews show that message could have an impact in the midterm elections this fall. In Pennsylvania, voters in four key battleground districts will decide whether to keep their Republican members of Congress, each of whom has supported the war to varying degrees.
“This mess must stop,” Uber driver Miguel Vazquez, 60, of Allentown, said last week while filling up his 2021 Mitsubishi Outlander with $4.53-per-gallon fuel.
The price of gas has remained elevated and has increased in recent weeks as fighting continues in the oil-rich region. On Tuesday, the average cost of a gallon of gas was $4.50 in Pennsylvania and $4.33 nationally.
The war in Iran and tariffs have made daily living and working “a nightmare” that can be fixed only by “regime change,” Vazquez said. He said he plans to vote for Democrat Bob Brooks, a challenger to freshman Republican U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, who represents a swing district that covers the Lehigh Valley and the Poconos.
“The [Republican] Party listens to Trump, who put us in Iran and set tariffs — making gas, food, and everything else expensive,” said Vazquez, a Democrat. “They have to go.”
U.S. Rep. Brendan F. Boyle holds a news conference at a Philadelphia gas station to announce legislation to suspend the federal gas tax whenever the national average price of gasoline exceeds $4.00 per gallon, in Philadelphia, Tuesday, April 14, 2026.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
The cost of war
The report from the Congressional Budget Office, where nonpartisan staffers analyze federal policy for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, largely aligns with other estimates of the war’s costs so far.
The nearly $38.1 billion in direct costs as of Aug. 1 is slightly more than the $37.5 billion figure that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth noted during congressional testimony in late July.
The CBO’s estimate includes $21.7 billion to replace expended munitions, $10.4 billion for additional flying hours — which refers to the cost of the military’s deployment of aircraft in the region — and $2.7 billion due to higher fuel prices. The agency was unable to determine other costs, like the damage to U.S. facilities in the region or expenses related to diplomatic operations and foreign aid.
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The overall price tag also does not include indirect costs that affect the U.S., such as inflation and interest rates — though it notes that both are impacted by the war. For instance, year-over-year inflation is expected to be 0.5 percentage points higher in the first quarter of 2027 because of the war.
Independent analysts have noted those indirect costs are significant.
An “Iran war energy cost tracker” from Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs shows that consumers have felt the brunt of nearly $107 billion in additional gasoline and diesel costs since the start of the war.
Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, who is based in Chester County, in June pegged the cost at $1,000 for a typical American household. The war has also fueled inflation and led to expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates this year instead of cutting them, he has said.
“The net effect of the Iranian conflict on U.S. economic output is unclear at this time,” the CBO report states. “Higher prices erode the purchasing power of U.S. households and businesses, dampening consumption and investment growth. Conversely, supply disruptions increase demand for U.S. energy exports, spurring additional domestic energy production.”
According to the analysis — for which the Pentagon did not provide information — it will “probably take at least five years” to replenish the significantly depleted weapons stockpile.
“The shortfall would become especially problematic if a conflict arose with an opponent whose arsenal included large numbers of ballistic and cruise missiles,” the report states, adding that China maintains an arsenal that “would probably play a major role in a military conflict involving Taiwan.”
The CBO report states that while the ongoing costs of the war are difficult to estimate, the U.S. military action is costing between $2 billion and $3 billion per month, depending on the level of hostilities.
Fighting in recent weeks has included U.S. Central Command destroying five Iranian crude oil carriers after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targeted a U.S. Navy ship with ballistic missiles, Central Command announced last week. Eighteen U.S. service members have died in the war and several hundred have been wounded.
Election messaging
Boyle, who represents a safe Democratic district, has taken a leading role in helping craft his party’s response to Trump’s economic policies, including the president’s signature tax-cut bill in 2025 and the expiration of healthcare subsidies at the beginning of this year.
When Trump unilaterally decided to join Israel in attacking Iran on Feb. 28, Boyle joined other Democrats in quickly denouncing the move and adding it to their list of economic grievances.
Candidates challenging Republican incumbents in Pennsylvania have taken a similar tack.
“Six months in, nobody in Washington is treating Iran like the emergency it is for families here,” Democrat Janelle Stelson, who is challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Perry in a Harrisburg-based district, said in a video at a gas station on the six-month anniversary of the conflict.
Perry, a hard-line conservative from York County, has supported Trump in his war efforts, while Stelson blamed him for the “astronomical” increase in gas prices.
Perry has voted against Democratic-led war powers resolutions aimed at restricting Trump’s actions in Iran. Mackenzie and U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R., Luzerne), who are also running in competitive districts that could ultimately determine which party controls the House, have also voted against them.
Pennsylvania’s U.S. senators, Democrat John Fetterman and Republican Dave McCormick, have also both supported the war, rejecting war powers resolutions multiple times.
“[E]very family has paid money from their own wallets to fund Trump’s war,” Kim wrote on social media.
On the campaign trail, Republicans have largely refrained from commenting on the war as they seek to retain control of the House and Senate.
At the first-ever Republican midterm convention in Dallas last week, dozens of speakers — including Mackenzie, Bresnahan, and McCormick — did not address the largest-scale U.S. military engagement in the Middle East since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Vice President JD Vance’s speech appeared to briefly refer to the disagreements around the war. While talking about Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist killed last year, Vance urged voters not to reject Republicans just because they do not agree with them “on every single issue,” like wars.
“He just hated war. That was his view,” Vance said of Kirk. “Now, of course, there are people who love what we’ve done and people who don’t. I’m not here to litigate the disagreements between Charlie and some of the people that he disagreed with. But what I’m asking you to do is do what Charlie did. Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Don’t give the country over to a bunch of crazy people because you happen to disagree with us on a policy issue here or there.”
Polls have shown widespread disagreement with Trump over the war. An Inquirer/New York Times/Siena University poll of likely Pennsylvania voters in August found that 30% of Trump’s 2024 voters and 66% of all voters disapproved of his handling of Iran — the most of any issue asked about in the survey. A national poll from the New York Times and Siena University published Tuesday similarly found two-thirds of likely U.S. voters, and three-quarters of independent voters, disapproved of the war.
“I don’t see a reason to be there and pushing up gas prices,” said three-time Trump voter Greg Kerrick, 58, of Scranton.
Kerrick said that the president was “mostly doing all right” and that he was supporting Bresnahan, the Republican incumbent, for reelection in the swing district. But he disagreed with the war.
“I don’t drive but I feel for all the people paying $4.30 or whatever a gallon,” Kerrick said.
Charles Grasty, 66, of Dickson City in Lackawanna County, said his objection to the war was on moral grounds. The Republican voter said the conflict feels like a grab for oil from Iran’s massive reserves.
“We are literally trying to take stuff that belongs to other people,” said Grasty, who works for a fabric-manufacturing company near Scranton. “I’m a Christian and I’ve been taught you can’t bully people like that. We have to stay off their soil.”
Boyle said the conflict is historically unpopular, based on consistent and strong opposition in polls since it began. The CBO report, he said, shows that part of the reason is the growing costs.
“Americans are essentially paying for this twice,” Boyle said. “They’re paying for it directly through tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money that is going to fund the war. But then they’re paying for it a second time in terms of increased costs at the pump, increased costs at grocery stores, and increased costs for consumer goods.”
One of the many things we won’t forget about the Trump era is how much the family of POTUS 47 has enriched itself — not only the president but his children, including Donald Trump Jr., who is said to be now worth at least $500 million and growing. So it was no surprise when his second marriage to Palm Beach, Fla.’s Bettina Anderson in May was a lavish affair on two private islands in the Bahamas. What is a surprise — as we now know from some stunning work by a team of reporters from ProPublica — is who paid: a very close associate of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. So maybe the “Russia, Russia, Russia” folks were onto something?
Pa. Democrats are alarmed at the rapid growth of ICE-police deals. But can they stop them?
Immigrants’ rights advocacy group members and their supporters hold up letters that read “The people vs 287(g)” during a rally last September in Doylestown against the Bucks County sheriff’s efforts to implement a 287(g) program.Daniella Heminghaus | Bucks Coun
The big, mostly under-the-radar story around the Donald Trump regime’s relentless push to arrest and remove immigrants from the United States has been this year’s explosion of so-called 287(g) agreements. These allow local cops to act as immigration agents, working collaboratively with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
But if you look at a national map to understand how these 287(g) agreements have spiked from just 135 when Trump retook office in January 2025 to more than 2,500 such pacts today, you’ll notice that one state sticks out like a sore thumb.
In Pennsylvania, amped-up promises of federal cash incentives have meant a soaring number of localities where local beat cops are now working with ICE to make arrests — up from just a handful at the start of the year to some 130 now. Most 287(g) collaborators are in Trump-voting pockets of the Keystone State — northeast and south-central Pennsylvania, or out west near the Ohio border.
But when you look at the rest of the Northeastern United States, the 287(g) map is very sparse. That’s partly because most local pols across the region agree with their constituents about opposing Trump’s mass deportation policies, and in several states it’s also the result of legislation that aims to ban the program altogether.
In late August, New York enacted the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act — backed and signed by its Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul — which calls on police departments and county sheriffs to terminate their 287(g) agreements, although several counties are still challenging the measure in court. Maryland has a similar law on the books, while New Jersey, which had long prevented such pacts under an attorney general’s directive, also passed a law this spring to codify the ban.
There’s a growing number of Pennsylvania lawmakers who want to pass a similar law here, but there’s one big problem: Republicans. They control the state Senate in Harrisburg — currently by a 27-23 margin — and GOP lawmakers have no interest in rebuking the president on immigration policy.
“The reason we exist alone is because of our split legislature,” State Rep. Heather Boyd, a Democrat who represents heavily immigrant Upper Darby and adjacent parts of Delaware County, told me. Last year, Boyd circulated proposed legislation to ban 287(g) deals in Pennsylvania, and while dozens of Democrats in Harrisburg are supportive, any move is on hold until a November election that could shift the balance of power. Boyd said lawmakers are wary of “starting any culture wars” ahead of the vote.
I pressed the office of Gov. Josh Shapiro, who’s running for a second term and who is seen as a possible top contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, for his position on reining in the 287(g) program here.
“Governor Shapiro has been clear that law enforcement should be focused on keeping Pennsylvanians safe — not sowing fear in communities or targeting people who are working hard, raising families, and contributing to our Commonwealth,” his press secretary, Rosie Lapowsky, said. She noted that the governor has barred Pennsylvania State Police from any formal ICE collaboration, and he would urge local police to take a similar stance.
She added: “Ultimately, however, these decisions rest with local law enforcement agencies. The governor does not have the unilateral authority to dictate whether individual sheriffs or police departments enter into these agreements.”
Many of those local law enforcement agencies have instead rushed to join 287(g), with ICE promising small-town departments an initial $100,000 cash windfall and additional incentives for training officers to make arrests and to cover the cost ofworking overtime on the program.
Last week, I reported from Schuylkill County in east-central Pennsylvania, where some 14 law enforcement agencies have raced to adopt 287(g), more than any other county in the state. Since the spring, local cops there have arrested about 100 immigrants at highway stops or by assisting ICE in job site raids. The blitz has prompted rising complaints about alleged racial profiling, the handcuffing of U.S. citizens, and a sense of fear that permeates a growing Latino community in Pennsylvania coal country.
Statistics obtained from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security by advocates show that local police in Pennsylvania have arrested and turned over to ICE more than 1,200 immigrants this year — ranking the state fourth in the nation on a list in which the other leading states are all south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
In Washington, some of the state’s Democratic House members say they’re fed up with a lack of transparency over who is being detained and how the 287(g) program is working here. Last week, four of them — Reps. Mary Gay Scanlon and Madeleine Dean from the Philadelphia suburbs and Reps. Chris Deluzio and Summer Lee from Western Pennsylvania — sent a letter to ICE’s acting director David Venturella demanding information on why the agency’s data lack any specific details about which departments are making arrests, which is required by law.
“It is unacceptable to me that ICE is hiding information from Pennsylvanians about who ICE is working with in their mass deportation regime,” Deluzio — viewed as a potential 2028 primary challenger to embattled Sen. John Fetterman — told me in an emailed statement.
Deluzio also summed up the growing unease by many over the speedy growth of 287(g) in the state. “Let’s keep local law enforcement focused on local public safety, rather than enlisting them in extreme federal immigration enforcement that has ripped away American liberties and targeted so many law-abiding families,” he said. Indeed, 287(g) data guru Andrew Thrasher has reported that a whopping 70% of the immigrants arrested in Pennsylvania under the program have no criminal record or pending charges.
“People in my community are getting smashed off the streets,” said Boyd, the Upper Darby lawmaker. That Delco township is about to vote on a local ordinance to restrict its cops from collaborating or sharing data with ICE.
Statewide, Boyd says she’s one of about 50 House Democrats in a Welcoming Pennsylvania Caucus with an extensive list of proposed bills that would not only bar 287(g), but look to expand opportunities for noncitizens to do things like obtaining driver’s licenses or gain professional certification. But any serious action hinges on November, when Democrats are hoping a blue wave at the ballot box will flip at least three more Senate seats and create a trifecta for their party in Harrisburg.
“Even if we can’t stop ICE from picking them up on the streets, we have to protect their rights,” Boyd said. “And right now, there are barriers to that in the state of Pennsylvania.”
Yo, do this!
The issue of wrongful convictions is back in the news here in Philadelphia — but for all the wrong reasons. Some reckless and seemingly wrongheaded moves by Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner and his underlings have the vultures who’ve always opposed criminal justice reform circling. The shame is that the real crisis around wrongful conviction is the thousands of mostly Black and brown folks who remain behind bars for crimes they did not commit. I cannot say enough about a book that came out earlier this year from Brown University (yay!) sociologist Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve called Crime Fictions: How Racist Lies Built a System of Mass Wrongful Conviction. She mines the most outrageous prosecutions — often of young Black teens and boys — to make a compelling argument that wrongful convictions aren’t a flaw in the criminal justice system. They are the system.
If timing is everything, then you’ve got to hand it to my freshman dorm pal at Brown who became Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones, David Corn. On the heels of ProPublica’s bombshell reporting on ties between the Trump family and Vladimir Putin, Corn is out Tuesday with his newest book: How Russia Won — Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America. It promises a raft of new information about Russia’s efforts to meddle in U.S. elections in 2020 and 2024, the ongoing close links between Team Trump and Team Putin, and how the current president’s pro-Russian slant has changed the world.
Ask me anything
Question: What happens when [House Speaker Mike] Johnson refuses to seat newly elected Dems in January? — David Minckler (@audivita.bsky.social) via Bluesky
Answer: Suddenly, Jan. 3 — the date the 120th U.S. Congress begins, and new members who won their November elections are to be sworn in — has become the new Jan. 6. Summer vacations are over, and the body politic is focused on the looming midterms, and — more importantly — with polls showing the Democrats on track to retake one and possibly both chambers. So there’s been a surge of speculation that the Trump-allied Johnson will do what former Vice President Mike Pence would not do on Jan. 6, 2021, and somehow fail to certify Democratic winners. That’s based on an assumption that Trump’s election-meddling tactics like stopping mail voting — blocked on Monday by the U.S. Supreme Court — won’t work, yet Team MAGA will attempt to undo the election after the fact, as was tried unsuccessfully in 2020-2021. Lawfare has published the most detailed analysis of a so-called rogue clerk theory in which Johnson appoints a MAGA loyalist to serve as House clerk with the understanding that some Democratic wins won’t be certified. Its article notes that such a gimmick is unlikely to pass muster in the courts, but that won’t necessarily stop Trump and the GOP from trying. My only guidance is: Fasten your seat belts.
What you’re saying about …
It turns out readers of the newsletter aren’t eager to join the punditocracy. Only a few of you responded to last week’s question about the chances of a Democratic-led Senate in 2027, and one of them was to give me a verbal tongue-lashing for even asking this. (Frequent writer Daniel Fleisher called it “a pointless exercise in predicting the unpredictable.”) That said, Cathy King has her eye on Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, her home state, writing that “he seems to be following [Zohran] Mamdani’s playbook.” Meanwhile, in Iowa, Mary Chilton thinks the Dems’ Josh Turek has a real shot in a state won three times by Donald Trump, noting that farmers are up in arms “over the data center issue, imported beef, water pollution and the soaring cancer rates …”
📮 This week’s question: Suddenly, everyone is talking about one thing: the Silicon Valley whistleblowers saying there’s not a trivial chance that a swarm of angry artificial intelligence agents could wipe out humankind by the end of the decade. Are you worried by this, or do you think Big AI is deflecting here to draw attention away from other issues like data center opposition or the stock market bubble? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “the AI threat” in the subject line.
Backstory on that other thing that could kill humanity
A barge on the Ohio River moves past the Mountaineer Power Plant, a coal-fired power plant near New Haven, W.Va., in March.Carolyn Kaster
This weekend, a Bluesky post went super viral almost the second its author, a scientist named David Ho, hit the button to post it. “I resigned from ExxonMobil today,” he wrote. “I spent the last three years doing fossil fuel extraction research at both BP and ExxonMobil. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing to maximize extraction while the window to act closes, and gambling with our lives.”
It’s a safe bet that many of the 13,000 people who liked Ho’s post truly believed they were sharing the words of a brave whistleblower — but instead the post was satire from a leading climate scientist based at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Ho would never work for a Big Oil giant. He was trying instead to mimic — and thus make a point about — the recent posts from Silicon Valley whistleblowers that triggered the new freakout over whether AI robots are a threat to human existence.
Climate change is a threat to society, and it’s even closer to reality. Maybe we should freak out about that?
Ho absolutely has a point. Just before his post, it was announced that August had been tied for the hottest month ever recorded in the history of the planet. That doesn’t come without consequences. In the Himalayas between Nepal and Tibet, a glacier and the adjacent bedrock of mountains at 17,000 feet abruptly collapsed in a region plagued by higher-than-normal temperatures, sending a 150-foot-high cocktail of floodwater and debris down a populated valley at 100 mph. At least 1,386 were killed, and thousands more remain missing. Here in the U.S., a summer of record heat triggered wildfires across the Pacific Northwest.
Robots didn’t do this. Humans did. Maybe that’s why humans — at least the ones that are running Donald Trump’s America — are reacting so differently to the danger of AI than the way they’re dealing, or not dealing, with the lethal pollution from burning fossil fuels. In the case of artificial intelligence, even tech leaders like Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, whose firm makes the Claude program, have urged a slowdown until we better understand the risk from rogue AI agents.
But in the case of climate change, willful ignorance rules the day. The latest outrage from a Trump regime that’s expensively killing off wind farms while racing to extract as much fossil fuel as possible? The now ironically named Environmental Protection Agency is repealing the rule that limits greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants that burn coal or natural gas. A president who spent his summer sweltering on the golf course continues to insist climate science is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”
There’s one last irony here. Increasingly, the biggest new sources of climate-altering pollution are the massive data centers that power AI. An Amazon data center proposed for Pecos County, Texas, would likely become the world’s largest source of carbon dioxide if it opens, spewing out 33 tons from natural gas generators every year. Slowing down the AI arms race would also help the planet. Artificial or not, that would be intelligence.
What I wrote on this date in 2019
Joe Biden performing badly in a presidential debate? Say it ain’t so, Joe. We all remember what happened on that 2024 stage in Atlanta (“The night the lights went out in Georgia,” I called that one), but I was almost as unimpressed with the future 46th president during a Democratic primary debate on this date seven years ago. That put me at odds with the punditocracy. I wrote, “The cable TV news show that both channels and is most revered by Washington’s elites — MSNBC’s Morning Joe — is at times so over the top in its bias toward Barack Obama’s former wingman that it could be renamed Morning Joe Biden.”
Summertime is over, and the living is no longer easy. I published my monthlong investigation into local cops collaborating with ICE under the controversial 287(g) program in semirural Schuylkill County, northwest of Philly. I found U.S. citizens handcuffed, families hiding behind blanket-covered windows, and a community wrestling with what it means for neighbors to be treated as suspects. Over the weekend, I delved into the astonishing $850 million or so Trump World has raised in campaign contributions since his reelection — despite the fact that he’s barred from seeking office again. You don’t think he has a scheme to pocket the excess cash, do you?
Dante only had Nine Circles of Hell, but the downward spiral of Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman seems to be never-ending. It’s one thing to profoundly disagree on a political and moral issue such as the war crimes of Israel’s right-wing government in Gaza, but recent reporting suggests things are far, far worse in Fettermanland. No senator — regardless of how much their ideology has flip-flopped — should be blowing off their home-state constituents, or clocking out of committee hearings after five minutes. The Democratic senator’s surprise video appearance at the midterm miniconvention of Donald Trump’s GOP, introducing his new best buddy, Republican Sen. Dave McCormick, did nothing to dispel the sense of utter betrayal among liberal voters who now see his winning 2022 campaign as a big lie. The next two years will be crazy as Democrats line up to primary Fetterman, amid rumors the hoodie-clad politico might run as an independent or even change parties. The only sure thing is that The Inquirer will be there for every move. Join us. Subscribe!
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Pennsylvania House Speaker Joanna McClinton was listening to a sketch by comedienne Zainab Johnson when Florida State Rep. Angie Nixon’s name came up. Johnson mentioned how Nixon, who is vying to become the Sunshine State’s first African American U.S. senator, had been attacked by a right-wing influencer named Laura Loomer.
McClinton is closely following Nixon’s race and immediatelywondered: “Who’s Laura Loomer? Who is she?”
McClinton found out soon enough.
Loomer, reportedly a close ally of President Donald Trump, has been publicly going after Black female legislators and other prominent women — including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — calling them “ghetto” and the B-word.
State Rep. Angie Nixon, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, during a canvassing event in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in August.SAUL MARTINEZ
The MAGA influencer zeroed in on Nixon last month after she won Florida’s Democratic Senate primary and accused her of using Ebonics. She also likened the former grassroots organizer to a dog, saying, “Maybe I need to bark at you and tug your leash and then you’ll finally understand.”
Loomer has also posted about Reps. Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and LaMonica McIver, and former Rep. Cori Bush, saying they’re “entitled,” “destructive,” and “race-obsessed.”
I don’t know, Laura — you might want to look in the mirror to see who’s really “entitled,” “destructive,” and “race-obsessed.”
She made me mad.
A lot of people may have brushed it all off, but as you can tell, I haven’t.
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has condemned Loomer. Where are the other Republicans who pride themselves on being civil and having family values? Every member of the GOP should speak out against what’s been happening.
House Speaker Joanna McClinton during a news conference at the Capitol in Harrisburg in February.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
“We need the president to condemn these comments,” McClinton told me, adding that U.S. Senate leadership should also act. “Unfortunately, attacking Black women is nothing new.”
She added, “We have been fighting with racism and misogyny for as long as we have been a democratic republic.”
I won’t repeat all of the racist things Loomer has uttered on her podcast or posted online lately about Black female politicos. If you’re curious, you can go on social media and see for yourself.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson speaks to the 2025 Supreme Court Fellows Program, Feb. 13, 2025, at the Library of Congress in Washington.Jacquelyn Martin
While you’re there, you can check out her Islamophobic posts.
I thought long and hard about ignoring what’s been happening and writing off Loomer as just another right-wing extremist.
But she has traveled with the president numerous times, visited Mar-a-Lago, and reportedly has Trump’s ear. Her platform is huge — nearly two million followers on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter. And she doesn’t hesitate to use it.
That’s political currency — not just in Washington. In this era of the attention economy, the most strident voices get traction.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore was spot on when he posted a statement directed at Loomer saying, “You attack and insult Black women because you believe peddling racism is good for your clicks and your business model.”
It felt good to see Moore, who is a possible presidential contender, defend Black lawmakers against Loomer’s looney tunes. Same with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who called her a “stone-cold racist.”
Being a Black woman in traditionally white spaces can be challenging. Nixon appeared near tears during a recent appearance on Don Lemon’s YouTube show and said she was tired. “It’s become so normalized for people to continue to attack us,” she said.
Timothy N. Welbeck, director of Temple University’s Center for Anti-Racism, said he wasn’t surprised there hasn’t been a more fervent pushback against Loomer.
“Things like woke and DEI were politically expedient slurs to convey anti-Black sentiments,” he told me. “And now people like Laura Loomer are forgoing the veiled statements.”
It has felt like open season on Black women ever since Trump’s return to office.
We have been disproportionately impacted by widespread cuts to the federal workforce. Trump weaponized the U.S. Department of Justice to try to prosecute Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and New York Attorney General Leticia James.
Black women are survivors, though. Ever since we were dragged through the Middle Passage and forced into bondage, we have managed to make a way out of no way, as my mother used to say.
This is our heritage.
This is our legacy.
U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.) gestures while addressing a gathering at a roundtable meeting in November in Boston.Charles Krupa
In the spirit of the late Shirley Chisholm, the first Black female member of Congress, and all of the other ancestors, we will get through the Trump era, too.
And we’ll be inspired by the passion of Nixon, the style and commitment of Pressley, and the sheer brilliance of Justice Jackson.
That’s what we do.
As Moore pointed out, “We will never let anyone steal our joy or let those that don’t matter too much, matter too much.”
Addressing the crowd packed into Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia on Thursday, Pennsylvania House Speaker Joanna McClinton and three other Black House speakers from around the country outlined the steps they’re taking in their state legislatures to safeguard the future of American democracy under President Donald Trump’s administration.
McClinton hosted the three House speakers — Delaware House Speaker Melissa Minor-Brown, New York House Speaker Carl Heastie, and Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch — for the discussion on America’s progress toward its founding ideals 250 years ago. Each of the speakers, including McClinton, are the first Black person or Black woman to lead their chambers.
The event was moderated by WURD radio host Solomon Jones. Attendees from around the city, including at least two high school classes, packed Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church in Society Hill, which is on the oldest property continuously owned by African American people in the United States since 1791.
House Speaker Joanna McClinton (left) hosts an America 250 Conversation at Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church on Thursday. Others reflecting on America’s history and path to inclusion for Black Americans are, from left, moderator Solomon Jones, Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, New York House Speaker Carl Heastie, and Delaware House Speaker Melissa Minor-Brown.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
The three blue-state leaders from Illinois, New York, and Delaware have enshrined voting protections into state law under the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that dismantled some federal protections.
“When we talk about voting, it’s very personal,” said Welch. “When I first got elected to the state House in 2012, I won my election by 36 votes … Eight years after winning the election by 36 votes, I became the state’s first Black speaker. You can’t tell me every vote doesn’t count.”
Similar legislation has yet to become law in Pennsylvania, where the General Assembly is split, with Democrats controlling the House and Republicans controlling the Senate.
McClinton, the first woman and first Black woman to lead the Pennsylvania state House, said she was jealous of her blue-state neighbors, as Pennsylvania Democrats are vying for control of the state Senate in November. The state House passed a bill to expand voting access to include same-day voter registration in a bill titled the Leroy Irvis Voting Rights Protection Act to memorialize the late Pennsylvania House speaker, who in 1977 became the first Black person to lead any state legislature since Reconstruction. That bill has yet to be called up for a vote by the GOP-controlled Senate.
“I know I’m not supposed to be envious of my neighbors,” McClinton joked from the table set up in front of the church pulpit.
House Speaker Joanna McClinton hosts an America 250 Conversation at Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church on Thursda. She hosted three other state House speakers from around the country at the event, reflecting on America’s history and path to inclusion for Black Americans.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Each of the leaders acknowledged the ways Black Americans were purposely excluded from many of America’s liberties by the nation’s founders, progress in broadening civil rights since then — and how their state governments are trying to safeguard those protections under Trump’s administration. They each expressed concern about voting access, immigration, healthcare, and their state-level efforts to protect them through legislation.
“State legislatures have power,” McClinton said, noting Pennsylvania’s increased investments in public education and a focus on Black maternal health. “We are not in charge of ICE, we are not in charge of the president, but we do have power, and we do good work.”
In New York, Heastie said state lawmakers included protections in this year’s state budget to discourage U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from appearing near polling places as Trump ramps up his efforts against noncitizen voting that advocates fear will discourage American citizens from going to the polls.
Each of the legislative leaders encouraged the young people in attendance to get involved in their local government, expressing hope for the future.
“I look at pictures of my late aunt and uncle back in the ’60s and ’70s and I see them at protests,” Minor-Brown said. “When I see those pictures, I look at our young people today and know that’s the direction that we’re going in. That’s where we’re at right now, and that’s what brings me hope that we’re going to get to a better place. I know we will, because our young people are so energized and ready to move and ready to close these gaps.”
McClinton also noted the ways the Trump administration has tried to rewrite history just a few blocks away from Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church at the President’s House Site, where officials swapped panels detailing the brutality of slavery for ones that sanitize George Washington’s history as an enslaver.
“We see the fact that this federal administration continuously out an eraser and says, ‘Oh that didn’t happen, that’s not how it occurred,’” McClinton said. “We, in this moment, have to recommit to the promise of this nation.”
During Thursday’s panel, the speakers fielded questions on a number of current events, including about the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. McClinton recalled her experience in college at the time, and said that America is at risk of another terrorist attack due to Trump eroding the nation’s image in the rest of the world.
“Thank God we’ve not had another attack … But we have to also recognize that our policies are impacting our perception around the world,” she said.
Several Pennsylvania Republicans were quick to seize on her comments on the eve of the anniversary as insensitive and trying to blame America for the terrorists’ actions.
Earlier in the week, McClinton presided over a ceremonial session of the state House in Independence Hall, the same place where the Declaration of Independence was signed 250 years ago, and the building that also served as Pennsylvania’s first statehouse.
Joanna McClinton, speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, along with members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives convened a special session at Congress Hall on Wednesday in Philadelphia. The gathering commemorates the 250th anniversary of America and Pennsylvania’s Constitution.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
She stood at the rostrum, leading the same room where in 1787 the nation’s founders decided that enslaved Black people would only be counted as three-fifths of the number of white residents when tallying America’s population to calculate congressional representation.
“We are in a day where ‘We, the people’ should mean what it says, finally,” McClinton said Thursday. “But starting with the inception of this country, it did not mean all of us. ‘We, the people’ meant white men who owned a certain amount of property.”
DALLAS, Texas — As Republicans look to keep their narrow control of Congress by defending the seats they flipped in 2024, there aren’t many places where they can afford to lose fewer votes than in U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie’s district covering the Lehigh Valley and Poconos.
Mackenzie’s takedown of a three-term Democrat by a mere 4,000 votes two years agowas the narrowest congressional race in Pennsylvania — his 1% margin of victory was the seventh smallest out of 435 House districts across the country.
Standing Thursday on the Republican Party’s biggest stage of the year — and likely staring down another razor-thin result this fall — Mackenzie didn’t hold back when laying out the potential stakes.
“I’m running in one of the top races again, and it will determine the future direction for our nation,” Mackenzie said on the second day of the first-ever Republican midterm convention. “Now we must get to work, we must go out and win in November, and we must save America.”
In an interview after a brief speech that focused on the president’s signature tax cuts, Mackenzie said Democrats’ threats to repeal those cuts and other Trump policies meant the president is, in a sense, on the ballot — so it makes sense to campaign in that way.
“We know the history of American politics is the party who has the White House, their voters end up being less energized in midterm elections, and so I think it was a smart idea to try something like this, a midterm convention, to energize our voters,” Mackenzie said.
Generating enthusiasm for the Republican ticket could be a tough task for Mackenzie and other incumbents, with polling in Pennsylvania showing widespread frustration with Trump’s handling of key issues, including the cost of living.
“Everybody is getting gouged,” said Ron Jones, 79, an Allentown Democratic voter and Navy veteran who said he feels stretched relying on his Social Security and pension checks. “You just can’t afford to live. Period.”
Jones said he hasn’t been following the congressional race closely, but said he plans to help “get rid of all incumbents.”
President Donald Trump onstage during the Republican Party’s unusual midterm convention in Dallas on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026. (Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times)HAIYUN JIANG
Going after Brooks on a national stage
Mackenzie told The Inquirer his phone started blowing up with text messages immediately after his speech. The lawmaker said he welcomed the opportunity to have a national audience to talk about his work, and his opponent.
Mackenzie didn’t just applaud Trump’s policies during his speech, he also imitated the president’s ferocious style of politics by blasting his Democratic challenger Bob Brooks as a scandal-ridden, “far-left nutjob.”
Brooks, he contended, was “handpicked by the Democratic establishment,” and has spoken critically about nonunion firefighters. He also accused Brooks of stealing money from his own family, a claim based on a lawsuit brought by Brooks’ former mother-in-law and involving a decades-old debt she says that he owes.
“That’s what crazy looks like,” Mackenzie said.
Brooks, a retired firefighter in Bethlehem and the Pennsylvania Professional Fire Fighters Association president, was recruited last year by prominent Democrats, including Gov. Josh Shapiro and U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio. He quickly got a groundswell of support from moderates and progressives alike, including U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Those high-profile supporters, and Brooks himself, leaned into his working-class image — highlighting his history of working multiple jobs and his insistence, even as he ran for Congress, on continuing to drive a snowplow and coach high school baseball.
Mackenzie and national Republicans who’ve invested resources into his campaign have repeatedly targeted Brooks for the lawsuit involving his family and for old social media comments.
In one post, Brooks lambasted volunteer firefighters working in areas where other union firefighters operate as “scabs” and other pejoratives.
Brooks has dismissed those and other attacks on his old posts, saying he never thought he would be a candidate for office when he made them.
The Democrat did not directly address those issues in a comment after Mackenzie broadcast them to a national audience.
“Ryan Mackenzie got his wish today: a big boy speaking slot on stage at Trump’s party in Dallas,” Brooks said in a statement that blamed Mackenzie for rising costs and voting against restricting Trump’s attacks in Iran, the two areas that polls show Trump performing the worst among both Republicans and Democrats.
“Mackenzie’s trip to Dallas is a reminder of who he is: a lap dog for Donald Trump, for his party bosses, and for anyone with power and money,” Brooks said.
Bob Brooks, who is running for Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District, addresses the audience during a rally at the United Steelworkers Union Hall in Bethlehem, Pa., on Sunday, July 26, 2026.David Maialetti / Staff Photographer
Just steps from the convention location earlier in the day, a small group of House Democrats that included U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean (D., Montgomery) protested by, mainly, hitting Republicans on affordability.
“If you listen to what’s being said across the street, you might feel like you’re living in some separate reality. Here’s the reality check,” Dean said as she rattled off the higher cost of groceries, electricity and gasoline since Trump took office.
Dean targeted Mackenzie as well as U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R., Luzerne) and U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.) — who each spoke at the convention on Wednesday — specifically, saying they were among the Republicans “happy to coddle a president who is unfit and unwell.”
“Here at the heel of Donald Trump, I don’t know what they think they’re doing,” Dean said behind a podium with a sign reading, “Fighting for an affordable America.”
Both Bresnahan, who is running in a competitive race against Democratic Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, and Mackenzie focused on an economic message during their speeches.
They did not directly address concerns about inflation, or the Iran war’s effects on the rising cost of gas.
U.S. Rep. Jason Smith, a Missouri Republican who joined Mackenzie onstage, contended the GOP majority had focused its agenda on the working class. He pointed to the tax exemptions for tips and overtime pay.
“If you don’t believe me, just ask yourself, how many billionaires do you know that are tipped employees?” said Smith, the House Ways and Means Commitee chair.
But neither he nor Mackenzie addressed the cuts to Medicaid and food assistance that were included in the same legislation to help pay for the tax cuts they repeatedly touted.
“We delivered tax relief for every American by locking in lower rates and expanding the standard deduction,” Mackenzie said.
Staff writer Alfred Lubrano contributed reporting.
Democrat Bob Harvie released his first general election TV ad Thursday morning, calling for a moratorium on artificial intelligence data center development and attacking U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R., Bucks) for his stance on the issue.
“I don’t want any more data centers. I want a moratorium. Big tech owns enough; they shouldn’t own our congressman, too,” Harvie says in the 30-second ad.
The ad marks the first timethe congressional candidate and Bucks County commissioner has called for a moratorium and signifies a shift in his position.
Previously, in an interview with The Inquirer last week and on his website, Harvie had calledonly for strict regulations on development. To focus his first major television ad on the topic shows how the projects are becoming a top issue for voters in Bucks County’s swingy 1st Congressional District amid a national backlash against data centers.
In Bucks County, both Harvie and Fitzpatrick have to grapple with the development of an Amazon data center in Falls Township, which is nearing completion.
Harvie, who lives just miles from the project, voted in December 2020 to approve acounty tax break for NorthPoint Development, the property owner of the Falls Township site.
Last year, Harvie celebrated Amazon’s investment in the data center and Fitzpatrick called it “one of the most transformative investments Bucks County has seen in decades.” More recently, they both supported Shapiro’s executive order.
In Harvie’s television ad, images of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg flash on the screen. “Big tech is taking over our lives,” the candidate says in the ad. “And they want more. Grabbing our land, water, electricity, and sticking us with the bill.”
Heather Roberts, a spokesperson for Fitzpatrick’scampaign, said in a statement that the Bucks County Republican has always been supportive of “uniform federal regulations” and “100% control by local residents who could be impacted.”
She also pointed tohis cosponsorship of two bills aimed at regulating the effects of data centers: the Ratepayer Protection Act and the Data Center Transparency Act.
“Bob Harvie literally created this problem in our community — and he is now well aware of the massive albatross that this is around his neck. Hence, his latest lie in this ad,” Roberts said.
In an interview about data centers last week, Harvie did not call for a moratorium on the projects, but rather for strict regulations — as is also reflected on his campaign website. He also touted tasking the county planning commission with developing guidelines for municipalities facing potential data center proposals.
When asked last week why he had not called for a moratorium, Harvie said: “I think there’s probably areas in the country where data centers can make sense, where the energy grid can handle it, where there’s limits to it on the impact it could have on other people who might live in the area.”
“But I do think certainly we need to have a lot of cause for concern about how rapidly this is happening and making sure we can put some kind of handle on it,” he added.
He also echoed residents’ environmental concerns related to data centers and said that the developments need the increased oversight outlined in Shapiro’s executive order and that projects should not continue if the local community opposes.
Nine days later, Harvie said Thursday in another interview with The Inquirer that the decision for a moratorium did not come “out of left field for me” but was the product of many conversations amid what he says is a “complete failure of leadership” by Trump and Republicans, including Fitzpatrick, on the issue.
Of his 2020 vote to give NorthPoint a tax break, he said there was not an indication that the property was going to be used for data centers, but rather for e-commerce distribution.
He said that he is not set on one particular time frame for the moratorium but that “setting up guardrails” is most important, and he hopes a Democratic-controlled Congress would further hold hearings on imposing a moratorium.
“As we’ve seen more and more of what’s going on around the country with data centers just trying to gobble up space and build, build, build without any regulation, I’ve come to the point now where we have to do something to slow down this genie getting out of the bottle,” Harvie said.
Dennis Mahoney has spent a decade in disaster relief, dispatching humanitarian aid in the wake of devastating hurricanes in the United States and Puerto Rico and poverty crises in 18 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Now the 34-year-old independent candidate is using that same determination to engage in an uphill battle as he seeks to represent Philadelphia’s 3rd Congressional District this November.
Mahoney, from South Philadelphia, is the lone opponent running against State Rep. Chris Rabb, a democratic socialist from Northwest Philly who won the crowded Democratic primary in May to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans.
“I think it’s going to be a hard fight and a hard run, but I feel so strongly that people in Philadelphia want something different,” Mahoney said of his independent campaign.
Mahoney will have his work cut out for him to persuade voters to back his grassroots candidacy.
The 3rd Congressional District is one of the most Democratic-leaning districts in the country, where Rabb won with almost 45% of the vote. Rabb saw national support from big-name progressives, including U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), and used his victory to support other like-minded candidates throughout the United States.
And the last time Pennsylvania elected an independent to Congress was in 1920, when Milton W. Shreve of Erie won as an Independent Republican.
But Mahoney and his allies view his candidacy as an opportunity to present an alternative option after more than half of 3rd District voters in the May primary cast their ballots for Rabb’s opponents. Mahoney’s platform focuses on addressing poverty, expanding access to affordable housing, and investing in education.
Rabb’s campaign did not comment on Mahoney’s candidacy Wednesday.
The race comes amid shifting political dynamics in the United States in response to growing frustration with the two-party system.
On one hand, progressive candidates — many of whom, like Rabb, are part of the Democratic Socialists of America — have been gaining momentum in elections nationwide.
Earlier this year, meanwhile, a Gallup poll showed a record high of 45% of U.S. adults identified as independents in 2025.
State Rep. Chris Rabb greets supporters after appearing with U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (rear) Tuesday, July 28, 2026, on his “Made in PA: New Economic Patriotism Tour” at the City Institute Library on Rittenhouse Square.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Mahoney said he has belonged to both political parties in the past, but did not find a home in either.
The first-time politicalcandidateworked in humanitarian aid through his former Washington, D.C., church, the Christiannonprofit Food for the Hungry, and now his own firm, AOI Solutions. He said the experience provides lessons for overcoming partisan division in Congress.
“Let’s build bridges and partnerships and bring results. And that’s the same work that I did in the disaster relief field, where we would land in a spot where a disaster happened, and we’d work with anyone we could to really make the place come back to whole,” Mahoney said.
‘Anti-MAGA’ and ‘anti-DSA’
It’s those middle-of-the-road qualities that made Mahoney an appealing candidate to Craig Snyder, a registered Republican who led an effort to support Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid two years ago and is now leading the Philly-based Forward Party Victory Fund.
The super PAC plans to support Mahoney and other independent candidates across the country — including a pair of independent Senate candidates running in GOP-leaning states, Todd Achilles of Idaho and Brian Bengs of South Dakota — this fall via spending on digital ads and text messages. The PAC is also supporting U.S. Rep. Kevin Kiley, who switched from the GOP to run for reelection in California as an independent, and Kevin Block, an independent running for Rhode Island governor.
Snyder said the group is an independent offshoot of the Forward Party, founded in 2022 by former presidential candidate Andrew Yang and former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman. He described the centrist candidates the PAC is backing as both “anti-MAGA” and “anti-DSA.”
He said a win in one of the group’s targeted races wouldbe “an earthquake in American politics.” But even if Mahoney is unsuccessful, Snyder said, it will be the start of elevating the independent movement in Philly politics.
“I think people don’t want to be told that they have to vote for somebody just because of the party label,” Snyder said. “I think that they want there to be alternatives, and so it’s our job to make that case.”
Dennis Mahoney (center) on the campaign trail as he prepares to run against State Rep. Chris Rabb in the general election in the 3rd Congressional District this November.Dennis Mahoney
Mahoney said, if elected, he would help form the first independent caucus in the U.S. House, contending he would become a coveted vote for both parties that would enable him to influence legislation and score committee assignments.
Butunder current House rules — which Kiley has proposed changing — Mahoney would not be able to hold a committee seat if he does not caucus with either party. Kiley, for instance, has continued caucusing with the GOP even after becoming an independent.
Mahoney pointed to the 19,000 signatures he received for his petition to join the ballot as a sign some voters are open to a choice in the deep-blue district.
He said he would like to debate Rabb.
“He talks a lot and engages a lot, and I think that that’s wonderful,” Mahoney said. “But I think at the end of the day, there’s people who are hurting in the district who need somebody who isn’t worried about being on, you know, MSNBC or TV, but who really is like, let’s just get into the community and drive results.”
Mahoney said he has been connecting with religious leaders, educational organizations, community groups, and youth organizers to hear feedback on what they want public service to look like in the 3rd District.
The independent will have scant resources to spread his name in just two months but said he is not concerned with raising big money for advertising. He had roughly $8,200 cash on hand in his most recent campaign finance report.
Rabb had a little more $21,000, but that was after the Democrat raised and spent more than $1.3 million for the primary campaign in which he out-raised his opponents.
Mahoney, meanwhile, has been trying to meet voters where they are — at running clubs and other fitness groups, for example.
“I think people find it refreshing to have somebody who wants to represent them out there running alongside them,” he said.
DALLAS — In an arena littered with President Donald Trump’s image — from the photos that lined the concourse to the gift shops selling merch depicting the president as a cowboy — one of Pennsylvania’s most vulnerable Republican lawmakers this fall went all-in.
U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan, running for reelection in a Scranton-based district that is one of the most competitive in the nation, addressed the Republican Party’s first-ever midterm convention during its opening night on Wednesday.
His decision to attend “Trump-a-palooza” (as the RNC has described it) at all was notable. Some Republicans in tight races decided to stay away out of concerns of associating themselves with a president with low approval ratings. U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R., Bucks), for example, is not attending and has distanced himself from parts of Trump’s agenda.
Bresnahan promoted Trump’s signature tax policy in a brief speech focused on supporting workers and their families.
“Tax relief matters,” Bresnahan told hundreds of party loyalists at the American Airlines Arena in a speech that followed Ken Paxton, the controversial Trump-backed U.S. Senate candidate in Texas. “In Northeastern Pennsylvania, we work until the job is done. And those extra hours should mean more money in your pocket.”
Democrats have used Bresnahan’s vote for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which included cuts to Medicaid and food assistance, as a wedge against Bresnahan and other vulnerable Republicans. But Bresnahan contended the income tax cuts and other policies in the legislation, like no tax on tips, are paying dividends for families.
Two other Pennsylvania GOP lawmakers in similar situations, U.S. Reps. Ryan Mackenzie (R., Lehigh) and Scott Perry (R., York), are also attending the two-day convention, with Mackenzie slated to speak Thursday.
Bresnahan spoke to a somewhat sparse crowd compared with Republican National Conventions during presidential election years, which served as a model for the novel midterm convention this year as the party looks to energize its base of voters while seeking to defend narrow majorities in the House and Senate.
Delegates, clustered by state on the convention floor, cheered and waved signs reading “Keep the majority” and “Republicans are fixing Democrats’ mess.” The stands in the roughly 19,000-person arena remained largely empty, at least for the first few hours before Trump’s speech.
Merchandise shops were packed with Trump’s typical MAGA merchandise, copies of his son Eric Trump’s book, Under Siege, and new mugs and shirts showing Trump on a horse in cowboy gear. Red, white, blue, and — in an unmistakable nod toward the president — gold balloons waited in the rafters for the grand finale on Thursday.
“I’m asking you to pretend that I’m on the ballot. I’m on the ballot, just one more time,” Trump told the cheering crowd in prime time, noting there were about 35 “swing” races the party was prioritizing.
President Donald Trump speaks at the Republican convention Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026, in Dallas. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)Alex Brandon
About 1,500 miles away, in another town called Dallas, one of Bresnahan’s constituents hatched a plan to tune in.
On the opening night of the annual Luzerne County Fair — in a booth yards from deep-fried Oreos, flying elephant kiddie rides, and life-size cardboard cutouts of Abraham Lincoln, Donald Trump, and Jesus — Dwayne McDavitt fiddled with his tablet to see if he could stream the convention.
The symmetry of Dallas, Texas, and Dallas, Pa., was “too good to pass up,” said McDavitt, the head of a conservative group called Thunder and Liberty PAC and also the Pennsylvania chapter of Bikers For Trump.
He said he supports Bresnahan, who lives in Luzerne County, over Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, the Democratic nominee.
“He shares our values of faith, family, and freedom — meaning free and fair elections,” McDavitt said.
Interviews with other voters in the district on Wednesday underscored the potentially risky nature of Bresnahan’s leaning into the Trump administration.
Malcolm Mabry, 28, of Wilkes-Barre, said he had been victimized by a “Trump bait and switch” as a Republican who voted for the president two years ago. He picked Trump, believing that better policing of the Southern border was paramount.
And while Trump has been using ICE to “grab up people,” as he said, Mabry said much of what else the president promised, like lowering prices and avoiding war, has not occurred.
“Trump just said what he had to, to get into office,” said Mabry, who was unaware of the convention happening at the same time.
A campaign about workers and affordability
Bresnahan won his seat by less than 2 percentage points in 2024 to take down a six-term Democrat in the northeast corner of the state. Trump won the district by more than 8 percentage points.
His Democratic challenger, Cognetti, has garnered high-profile supporters like Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is also up for election, and she has repeatedly targeted Bresnahan for trading stocks while in office despite his previous statements that he would not do so.
Bresnahan, the former head of a family-run electrical contracting business, has made jobs and the workforce a top focus in his campaign and in his brief congressional career.
On a few occasions, he has broken with House Republican leaders to support bills that would strengthen union protections for federal workers. He has said that he hopes his party changes tactics to support those kinds of bills.
“We need the unions that have trained generations of some of the most skilled workers in American history,” Bresnahan said onstage Wednesday. “We have those workers in Northeastern Pennsylvania, and communities across this country are ready for the same opportunity.”
Texas state Rep. Keresa Richardson (R), right, attends the GOP midterm convention. (Joel Angel Juárez/For The Washington Post)Joel Angel Juárez
Bresnahan has racked up a series of union endorsements that are otherwise rare for Republicans. While major unions like the AFL-CIO and the Pennsylvania State Education Association have backed Cognetti, he has won support from organizations like the American Federation of Government Employees and the Teamsters — groups that, in a region with a long history of union issues, could make a difference in a close race.
In his speech, Bresnahan talked generally about supporting workers and manufacturing in the U.S. He spoke about tax policies that put “more money in your pocket” and help “build communities where people can stay, raise a family, and build a life.”
They and other speakers did not address other affordability issues that Democrats have seized on and that polls show voters have top-of-mind heading into early voting.
Trump has mocked the Democratic attacks on the issue as a hoax, including in a speech in Bresnahan’s district last year. But it is a message, and a reality, that has resonated with voters in Pennsylvania, according to polls and interviews.
“I’m on a fixed income,” Bill Dudeck, 83, of Nanticoke in Luzerne County, said Wednesday. “But under Trump, gas, groceries, and utilities are skyrocketing.”
Trump promised a lower cost of living, “but now all our money is out the window,” said Dudeck, a Democrat and former construction worker in Bresnahan’s district.
Bresnahan, whose campaign said earlier this week that he was looking forward to bringing “NEPA to the national stage,” appeared onstage instead with a sheet metal worker and mother of seven from Baltimore.
Cognetti’s campaign noted the pairing in a comment Wednesday that criticized Bresnahan, in part, for trading stocks in office.
“That’s probably why he didn’t have a Pennsylvanian on stage with him tonight,” a Cognetti campaign spokesperson said in a statement. “His speech is just more empty words to try and distract from his broken promises.”
Nora Pruitt, who joined Bresnahan, had previously been recognized by the White House as a beneficiary of Trump’s second term. Listed on the agenda as an “everyday American, factory worker, working mother and manufacturing success story,” Pruitt said “things have really improved for our family since President Trump returned to office.”
“We are so grateful President Trump and Republicans in Congress like Congressman Bresnahan vote for families like ours,” she said.
