Free Republic

A new bill introduced by a Florida congresswoman aims to incentivize states to increase minimum teacher salaries as the country’s education system faces a growing need for educators. The American Teacher Act was introduced last week by Rep. Frederica S. Wilson, chair of the Higher Education and Workforce Investment Subcommittee. The bill would work to entice states to increase the minimum K-12 teacher salary to $60,000 through a federal grant program. The bill is an attempt to persuade educators to remain in the profession as a national teacher shortage impacts districts across the country — a problem that has been...

NEW ORLEANS — For the last two years, Democrats in battleground states have played defense against Republican efforts to curtail voting access and amplify doubts about the legitimacy of the nation’s elections. Now it is Democrats, who retained all but one of the governor’s offices they hold and won control of state legislatures in Michigan and Minnesota, who are ready to go on offense in 2023. They are putting forward a long list of proposals that include creating automatic voter registration systems, preregistering teenagers to vote before they turn 18, returning the franchise to felons released from prison and criminalizing...

Williams was convicted of six murders, including one triple murder in 1989, but freed after almost 30 years in prison when his final murder charge was tossed because evidence of prosecutorial misconduct came to light. Williams was part of a funeral procession for formerly incarcerated friend Tyree Little in Philadelphia, his friends told the Philadelphia Inquirer. As he stepped out of his car on the 3000 block of Lehigh Avenue at around 2.20pm, he was shot once in the head. [snip]

TikTok records every keystroke, click, swipe, and text communication—including information written but not sent by the user—when users enter other websites through the app. That level of surveillance not only goes beyond user expectations, but in some states, it is a violation of wiretapping laws, a class action lawsuit filed last week in Pennsylvania alleges. The case claims TikTok violates the Pennsylvania Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act, which bans the interception and recording of private communications without prior consent of all parties to the conversation. For example, to record a phone conversation, both parties must agree to the recording....

HARRISBURG — If House Republicans are successful in getting the special elections for two Allegheny County-based House districts delayed until May, the results of a Senate special election could lead to a whole new level of chaos in the power struggle in the state House. Republicans are clinging to a 101-99 advantage, with three special elections looming in seats vacated by Democrats. If Democrats win all three of those races, as expected, the Democrats will reclaim the majority in the chamber for the first time in more than a decade. One of those special elections — to fill the vacancy...

Persistent questions from voters and a petition with 5,000 signatures have convinced the Lycoming County Commissioners in Pennsylvania to recount its 2020 election results. Around the state, loosely organized groups of voters have been asking various counties for recounts from 2020. “In our county, they approached our commissioners and leveled allegations that there were thousands of uncounted votes in our county based on what I believe are nonsense statistics,” Lycoming County Director of Elections Forrest Lehman told The Epoch Times. Groups of 20-80 people started attending county meetings asking for the recount. The county showed various information to answer their...

On the backs of several lame-duck Republican members, the House on Wednesday passed a resolution to keep the federal government running until Dec. 23 in the hope of passing a massive budget bill by then.Although the official House Republican position was to oppose the bill, nine GOP representatives supported the package, which passed 224-201, according to The Hill.Republican Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Chris Jacobs and John Katko of New York, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, Fred Upton of Michigan, Steve Womack of Arkansas and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania supported moving the...

Why has Gov. Tom Wolf’s Office of General Counsel paid nearly $400,000 of taxpayer money to several private law firms? It’s a simple question, and there may be a simple and reasonable answer. But the administration’s failure to answer it raises questions about what causes and activities the governor has used state resources to pursue, and why he didn’t use the state’s attorneys to do it. Secrecy always raises suspicions, even if they are entirely unwarranted. In terms of legal bills for complex institutional litigation, $367,500 spread across six firms is a pittance. The Office of General Counsel employs hundreds...

The city's school district announced yesterday it will require all K-12 students to wear masks in classrooms and hallways from January 3 to 13 - the first ten days after school returns from winter break.

Pennsylvania lawmakers have been busy preparing memos pitching new legislation for the 2023–2024 session. Before laws are made and before a bill is written, legislative ideas start as a memo offering a rationale for the proposed legislation. A bill based on the memo is presented at the committee level and rewritten if committee discussion calls for edits. This is a good time for the public to weigh in on new laws, but the public often does not know about proposed legislation until it is presented on the full chamber floor, if it gets that far. Sometimes the same bills are...

Shell Chemicals’ new cracker plant in Beaver County has exceeded its air permit limits for two months in a row, prompting a notice of violation from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. The petrochemical plant near Monaca was officially pronounced to be in commercial operations last month, but start up activities began months earlier. In September, the facility had by far its worst air quality month, releasing 492 tons of volatile organic compounds from its high-pressure flare, according to data submitted to the DEP by Shell. The emissions ate up 95% of the annual limit included in Shell’s air permit....

Apparently, the only thing as strong as the get-Trump attitude of the deep state is the protect-Biden stance of the federal government. ... For years, our federal government has quietly operated a protect-Biden racket. The public, however, has only recently — and haphazardly — learned of the lengths federal law enforcement officials and government employees have gone to safeguard the Biden family secrets. Here are eight times our government squelched scandals. 1. Censoring the Hunter Biden Laptop Story.. The most recent and most well-known example of the feds protecting the Biden family stems from efforts by intelligence agencies to squelch...

HARRISBURG, PA — Future sales of assault weapons and any multi-burst trigger activator would be prohibited in Pennsylvania under legislation poised to be introduced in the state House. Two Democratic representatives, Benjamin Sanchez of Montgomery County Aerion Abney of Allegheny County, are co-sponsoring the assault weapons bill. Sanchez is sponsoring separate legislation that would prohibit the trigger activators. In a memo to colleagues, Sanchez and Abney noted that high-capacity semi-automatic rifles in the style of or similar to an AR-15 were found at the mass shooting sites of an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas; an Orlando nightclub; an elementary school...

A law signed by Gov. Tom Wolf on Nov. 3 encourages doctors to test pregnant women, and children up to 2 years old, who they believe have been exposed to lead. Act 150 is a smart move, but it doesn’t go far enough. Lead is everywhere — especially in industrial regions with older housing, which means Pittsburgh and vast swaths of Pennsylvania. Sen. Lisa Baker, R.-Luzerne, wanted Act 150 to make testing mandatory, but it was watered down in the amendment process. Now she’s reintroducing a bill to switch “encourage” back to “require,” making lead testing mandatory for all young...

It’s unclear if he’ll have a speaking role, but the newly elected Democrat senator from Pennsylvania John Fetterman is set to make a cameo appearance in a new movie starring Christian Bale. The senator-elect made the announcement by posting a photo of himself and his wife, Gisele, dressed in full costume alongside Bale on the set of the 19th-century crime drama, The Pale Blue Eye, which was filmed in western Pennsylvania. Fetterman said he’s happy to work with director Scott Cooper again in his social media post: It me + G + Christian Bale circa 1830 pic.twitter.com/4NXMuUQ5j5 — John Fetterman...

HARRISBURG — Republicans inside and outside Pennsylvania government say that despite a disastrous midterm election, they don’t see signs that the party is shifting its electoral or governing strategies away from contentious social issues like restricting abortion. Some party insiders say that trend is a bad sign for GOP prospects. After losing marquee races for governor and U.S. Senate, as well as control of the state House (though for now that remains contested), Republicans in Harrisburg, particularly in the lower chamber, have seemed to resume their previous combative agenda with gusto. The week after the election, the House impeached Philadelphia’s...

With just weeks left in his final term, U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey played a key role in blocking sweeping anti-money laundering legislation that was created to choke off the billions of dirty dollars pouring into the United States from shady operators, including drug traffickers, oligarchs and corrupt foreign leaders. The outgoing Pennsylvania Republican pushed last week to halt the reforms from being included in the nation’s annual defense spending bill in a blow to advocates who had gained bipartisan support to wage the most comprehensive crackdown on money laundering in a generation. Citing the flow of suspicious money into the...

The beating heart of the Pittsburgh region is the Golden Triangle, and people are its lifeblood. For the sake of the social and economic health of Downtown, and of the entire city and region, employers in the urban core should encourage as many workers as possible to return to the office, at least a few days each week. It’s not just about maximizing the number of warm bodies in office chairs: More workers mean more lunches and happy hours, more shopping and catering, more cycling and transit riding, more haircuts and shoe shines. In other words, more people mean more...

Philadelphia's mayor said he is "disappointed" that a court ordered the city to remove a plywood box covering a statue of Christopher Columbus. A spokesperson for Jim Kenney said the office believes the statue should be removed from Marconi Plaza.... ...Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt handed down her ruling on Friday, telling the city that if it disagrees with the statue's "message" it can add a plaque..."More to the point, the City accepted the donation of the Columbus statue in 1876. It has a fiduciary duty to preserve that statue, which it designated an historic object in 2017," the judge wrote.

Dr. Rachel Levine, a man who identifies as a woman, tried to enlist children’s doctors and nurses into the transgender activist movement, urging them to become evangelists and preach the gospel of transgenderism. Anything less would be a betrayal of their profession and science itself, he argued. Levine, assistant secretary of health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, claimed that there is a large population of biological males who are really female and vice versa, and these people are likely to commit suicide unless doctors pump them with drugs to delay puberty, introduce a hormone disease into...