Podcasts about pennsylvania capital star

In the latest episode of Working People, we go back to the picket line to get a critical update on the longest ongoing strike in the United States. In October 2022, over 100 workers represented by five labor unions—including production, distribution, advertising, and accounts receivable staff—walked off the job on an unfair labor practice strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PPG). The strike began after the newspaper's management, Block Communications, which is owned by the Block family, cut off health insurance for employees on Oct. 1 of that year. After more than 2.5 years on strike, with other unions reaching contracts or taking buyouts and dissolving their units, workers represented by the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh are the last remaining strikers holding the line. We speak with a panel of union officers for the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh about how they've managed to stay on strike so long and about recent legal updates that have given them hope that an acceptable end to the strike may be on the horizon. Panelists include: Ed Blazina, striking transportation writer at the PPG and one of the Vice Presidents of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh; Erin Hebert, also one of the Vice Presidents of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh and a striking copy-editor and page designer at PPG; Emily Matthews, photographer on strike and treasurer for the Post-Gazette Unit of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh. Additional links/info: Pittsburgh Union Progress website, Facebook page, X page, and Instagram Donate to Support Striking Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Workers Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh website Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “TRNN wins 2025 Izzy Award for coverage of East Palestine, OH, trainwreck & chemical disaster” Bob Batz Jr., Pittsburgh Union Progress, “The strike is over for 3 Pittsburgh news production unions, but the journalists' strike continues” Ian Karbal, Pennsylvania Capital Star, “The strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is now the longest in the nation. And it's not over” Mel Buer, Working People / The Real News Network, “Two years into a strike, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette workers aren't ready to give up” Bob Batz Jr. & Steve Mellon, Pittsburgh Union Progress, “A start to the end of the strike? Feds file for temporary injunction to return Pittsburgh news unions to work” Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams / The Real News Network, “‘AI will not scab us': Post-Gazette newsroom decries use of artificial intelligence” Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “(Livestream) After months of striking, media workers aren't backing down” Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “(Livestream) Strikes at Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, University of Michigan, and more” Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's half-year strike” Permanent links below… Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show! Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page Featured Music… Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor

In the latest episode of Working People, we go back to the picket line to get a critical update on the longest ongoing strike in the United States. In October 2022, over 100 workers represented by five labor unions—including production, distribution, advertising, and accounts receivable staff—walked off the job on an unfair labor practice strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PPG). The strike began after the newspaper's management, Block Communications, which is owned by the Block family, cut off health insurance for employees on Oct. 1. After more than 2.5 years on strike, with other unions reaching contracts or taking buyouts and dissolving their units, workers represented by the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh are the last remaining strikers holding the line. We speak with a panel of union officers for the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh about how they've managed to stay on strike so long and about recent legal updates that have given them hope that an acceptable end to the strike may be on the horizon. Panelists include: Ed Blazina, striking transportation writer at the PPG and one of the Vice Presidents of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh; Erin Hebert, also one of the Vice Presidents of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh and a striking copy-editor and page designer at PPG; Emily Matthews, photographer on strike and treasurer for the Post-Gazette Unit of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh. Additional links/info: Pittsburgh Union Progress website, Facebook page, X page, and InstagramDonate to Support Striking Pittsburgh Post-Gazette WorkersMaximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “TRNN wins 2025 Izzy Award for coverage of East Palestine, OH, trainwreck & chemical disaster”Bob Batz Jr., Pittsburgh Union Progress, “The strike is over for 3 Pittsburgh news production unions, but the journalists' strike continues”Ian Karbal, Pennsylvania Capital Star, “The strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is now the longest in the nation. And it's not over”Mel Buer, Working People / The Real News Network, “Two years into a strike, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette workers aren't ready to give up”Bob Batz Jr. & Steve Mellon, Pittsburgh Union Progress, “A start to the end of the strike? Feds file for temporary injunction to return Pittsburgh news unions to work”Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams / The Real News Network, “‘AI will not scab us': Post-Gazette newsroom decries use of artificial intelligence”Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “(Livestream) After months of striking, media workers aren't backing down”Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “(Livestream) Strikes at Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, University of Michigan, and more”Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's half-year strike”Permanent links below…Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter pageIn These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter pageThe Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter pageFeatured Music…Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme SongAudio Post-Production: Jules TaylorHelp us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Sign up for our newsletterLike us on FacebookFollow us on TwitterDonate to support this podcast

In this episode of The Spark, we confront a disturbing incident that has shaken Pennsylvania’s capital: the arson attack on the Governor’s Residence in Harrisburg. As law enforcement continues its investigation, we turn to journalists who have been closely following this developing story and the broader rise in political violence across the state. Joining the conversation was Peter Hall and Ian Karbal of the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, who have been reporting on the investigation into the arson and its potential political motivations. They provided insight into the ongoing search for answers, how officials are responding, and what this attack may signal about the current political climate in Pennsylvania. Also on the program is Laura Esposito of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who earlier this year published an in-depth piece on the increase in politically motivated threats and violence across the commonwealth. Esposito helps place the Governor’s Residence arson in a broader context, highlighting how elected officials, law enforcement, and journalists themselves are becoming targets in an increasingly charged atmosphere. Listen to the podcast to hear the conversation. Support WITF: https://www.witf.org/support/give-now/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

PennLive's Joyce Davis, along with Republican pundit Jeffrey Lord and Pennsylvania Capital-Star reporter John Cole speak with Admiral Joe Sestak about the latest in the Democratic National Convention and Democratic concerns over Project 2025.

It's the Friday news roundup! Kamala Harris made her pick for vice president and it's not our governor. We're talking about what's next for Josh Shapiro – plus what to make of JD Vance's first campaign stop in Pennsylvania – with Kim Lyons, editor of the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. We also check in on a Pittsburgh-based company that's raising millions to launch driverless trucks in Texas, and ask whether Neftlix's Unsolved Mysteries reboot could help solve a Beaver County cold case. We always cite our sources: Gov. Josh Shapiro warmed up the crowd at Kamala Harris' rally in Philly on Tuesday, before she and her running mate Tim Walz took the stage together for the first time. Some reporting suggests Harris had better chemistry with Walz than Shapiro during their meetings last weekend. JD Vance also held a rally in Philly on Tuesday – it was his first campaign stop in Pennsylvania since he became Donald Trump's running mate. Aurora Innovation raised $483 million to launch a self-driving truck route between Dallas and Houston – the company, which is headquartered in Pittsburgh, initially asked for $350 million. Netflix's Unsolved Mysteries reboot is highlighting a Beaver County cold case from 2014. Learn more about the sponsors of this August 9th episode: Pittsburgh Cultural Trust Tree Pittsburgh Rivers of Steel Become a member of City Cast Pittsburgh at membership.citycast.fm. Want more Pittsburgh news? Sign up for our daily morning Hey Pittsburgh newsletter. We're also on Instagram @CityCastPgh! Interested in advertising with City Cast? Find more info here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

PennLive's Joyce Davis and Pennsylvania Capital-Star's John Cole speaks with Pa. House Speaker Joanna McClinton about the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden stepping down from the 2024 race, Kamala Harris's rapid rise to become the apparent Democratic nominee for president, and the chances that Pennsylvania could get its first Black governor. 

PennLive's Joyce Davis and John Cole of the Pennsylvania Capital-Star are joined by Nathan Benefield, senior vice president at the Commonwealth Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank in the state to discuss Benefield's perspective on the 2024 election.

We are joined today by Matthew Mangino to talk about his career, the influence of film on the justice system, and his work in researching the death penalty.Matthew T. Mangino is the former district attorney of Lawrence County, Pennsylvania. He also spent a six year term on the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole. He is an adjunct professor at Thiel College.He is currently 'Of Counsel' with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly and George, P.C.Mangino's book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was published by McFarland & Company. The book is available HEREHis weekly column on crime and punishment was syndicated nationwide by GateHouse Media and Gannett. Mangino's articles have been published in the Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Columbus Dispatch and Harrisburg Patriot News.Mangino is a featured columnist for the Pennsylvania Law Weekly and a regular contributor to The Crime Report and the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.Mangino is a trial analyst for Law and Crime Network and a regular contributor to Crime Stories with Nancy Grace and Court TV.He has provided legal commentary for ID Discovery, A&E, CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews, Al Jazeera-America and National Public Radio. In addition to his law degree from Duquesne University, Mangino earned a masters degree in criminology from the University of Pennsylvania.Mangino served on the Pennsylvania Joint State Government Commission's Advisory Committee on Capital Punishment and the White House Conference of School Safety and Youth Violence.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crimecast--4106013/support.

PennLive's Joyce Davis is joined by John Cole of the Pennsylvania Capital-Star and Democrat pundit Rogette Harris to discuss the fallout of former President Donald Trump's conviction on 34 charges on the campaign. They also discuss Trump opening his first Pennsylvania office of the 2024 campaign in Philadelphia, Hunter Biden heads to trial.

PennLive's Joyce Davis is joined by Republican pundit Jeffrey Lord, along with Pennsylvania Capital-Star reporter John Cole to discuss President Joe Biden's impact after his State of the Union address, the Republican party shakeup with members of former President Donald Trump's family now in charge of the RNC and more.

Welcome to the Friday News Flyover for November 3, 2023. I'm Sean Diller. This week: Medicaid chaos in red states around the country | Cannabis legalization on the ballot in Ohio | Pennsylvania Democrats have returned triple the mail ballots compared with their Republican neighbors | Colorado voters consider two statewide ballot initiatives, and | It's Britneyhttps://missouriindependent.com/2023/11/02/medicaid-unwinding-breeds-chaos-in-states-as-millions-lose-coverage/Medicaid ‘unwinding' breeds chaos in states as millions lose coverageBY: PHIL GALEWITZ, KATHERYN HOUGHTON, BRETT KELMAN AND SAMANTHA LISS - NOVEMBER 2, 2023 11:34 AM     More than two dozen people lined up outside a state public assistance office in Montana before it opened to ensure they didn't get cut off from Medicaid.Callers in Missouri and Florida reported waiting on hold for more than two hours on hotlines to renew their Medicaid coverage.The parents of a disabled man in Tennessee who had been on Medicaid for three decades fought with the state this summer to keep him enrolled as he lay dying from pneumonia in a hospital.Since the expiration of COVID-era protections earlier this year, states have reviewed the eligibility of more than 28 million people and terminated coverage for over 10 million of them. Millions more are expected to lose Medicaid in the coming months.The Medicaid disenrollment rates of people reviewed so far vary dramatically by state, largely along a blue-red political divide, from a low of 10% in Illinois to a high of 65% in Texas.“I feel like Illinois is doing everything in their power to ensure that as few people lose coverage as possible,” said Paula Campbell of the Illinois Primary Health Care Association, which represents dozens of community health centers.Camille Richoux, health policy director for the nonprofit Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families said, “It's not just bad, but worse than people can imagine. This has not been about determining who is eligible using all possible means, but how we can kick people off by all possible means.”The unprecedented enrollment drop comes after federal protections ended this spring that had prohibited states from removing people from Medicaid during the three pandemic years. Since March 2020, enrollment in Medicaid and the related Children's Health Insurance Program had surged by more than 22 million to reach 94 million people in the U.S.The process of reviewing recipients' eligibility has been anything but smooth for many Medicaid enrollees, and some suspect particular states have used the confusing system to discourage enrollment.But gaps in coverage can jeopardize people's access to health services - or their financial security - if they get medical bills for care they cannot postpone.Pam Shaw, a pediatrician in Kansas City, Kansas, who chairs the American Academy of Pediatrics' state government affairs committee said, “Any type of care that's put off — whether it's asthma, whether it's autism, whether it's something as simple as an earache — can just get worse if you wait,”Doctors and representatives of community health centers around the country said they have seen an uptick in cancellations and no-shows among patients without coverage — including children. Nationwide, states have already disenrolled at least 1.8 million children in the 20 states that provide the data by age. Children typically qualify more easily than adults, so child advocates believe many kids are being wrongly terminated based on their parents' being deemed no longer eligible. In Texas, 68% of those disenrolled from Medicaid were children, compared with 16% in Massachusetts, according to KFF. In September, President Joe Biden's administration said most states were conducting eligibility checks incorrectly and inappropriately disenrolling eligible children or household members. The administration  ordered states to reinstate coverage for some 500,000 people.Idaho, one of a few states that completed the unwind in six months, said it disenrolled 121,000 people of the 153,000 recipients it reviewed as of September because it suspected they were no longer eligible. Of those kicked off, about 13,600 signed up for private coverage on the state's ACA marketplace, according to Pat Kelly, executive director of Your Health Idaho, the state's exchange. What happened to the rest, state officials say they don't know.Nationwide, about 71% of Medicaid enrollees terminated during the unwinding have been cut because of procedural issues - meaning they could actually still qualify for Medicaid, but lost it anyway. ‘People are not getting through'In many states, enrollees have faced long waits to get help with renewals. The worst phone waits were in Missouri, according to a KFF Health News review of letters the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services sent to states in August. In the letter to Missouri's Medicaid program, CMS said it was concerned that the average wait time of 48 minutes and the 44% rate of Missourians abandoning those calls in May was “impeding equitable access” to assistance and patients' ability to maintain coverage.Some people are waiting on hold more than three hours, said Sunni Johnson, an enrollment worker at Affinia Healthcare, which runs community health centers in the St. Louis area. That's a significant hurdle for people with inflexible jobs and other barriers.In Florida, which has removed over 730,000 people from the program since April, enrollees earlier this year were waiting almost 2½ hours on a Spanish-language call center, according to a report from UnidosUS, a civil rights advocacy group. The Spanish versions of the Medicaid application, renewal website, and other communications are also confusing, said Jared Nordlund, the Florida director for UnidosUS.Some Medicaid recipients are seeking help through the courts. In a 2020 class-action lawsuit against Tennessee that seeks to pause the Medicaid eligibility review, parents of recipients describe spending hours on the phone or online with the state Medicaid program, trying to ensure their children's insurance coverage is not lost.One of those parents, Donna Guyton, said in a court filing that Tennessee's Medicaid program, called TennCare, sent a June letter revoking the coverage of her 37-year-old son, Patrick, who had been eligible for Medicaid because of disabilities since he was 6. As Guyton made calls and filed appeals to protect her son's insurance, he was hospitalized with pneumonia, then spent weeks there before dying in late July.“While Patrick was fighting for his life, TennCare was threatening to take away his health insurance coverage and the services he relied on,” she said in a court filing. “Though we should have been able to focus on Patrick's care, our family was required to navigate a system that kept denying his eligibility and putting his health coverage at risk.”TennCare said in a court filing Patrick Guyton's Medicaid coverage was never actually revoked — the termination letter was sent to his family because of an “error.”Phil Galewitz in Washington, D.C., wrote this article. Daniel Chang in Hollywood, Florida; Katheryn Houghton in Missoula, Montana; Brett Kelman in Nashville, Tennessee; Samantha Liss and Bram Sable-Smith in St. Louis; and Bernard J. Wolfson in Los Angeles contributed to this report.KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2023/11/01/marijuana-legalization-would-add-260m-to-ohio-economy-study-predicts/Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Or when you get ‘em anyway.Issue 2, an initiative that would legalize recreational marijuana for people over 21 in Ohio, is on the ballot in next Tuesday's election. An economic analysis released last week found that the benefits of legalizing cannabis in Ohio would outweigh the costs by a quarter-billion dollars a year.A study by Columbus-based Scioto Analysis attempts to identify the pluses and minuses that would come with legalization.To do the analysis, the group used studies from states such as Washington and Colorado, where recreational weed has long been the law. To examine how the pros and cons identified in those states might play out in Ohio, the researchers looked at economic and census data, as well as crime statistics.with its 10% excise tax on top of Ohio's normal sales tax, passage of Issue 2 would produce $190 million a year, according to the report.  Then there are the jobs the new industry would create.The report predicts that Ohio will add roughly 3,300 new jobs in the first year after legalization. Assuming these jobs are full time and pay matches the average wage across the state of Ohio, this will amount to about $190 million in wage benefits for workers across the state. And if weed is no longer illegal for adults over 21, it stands to reason that there will be fewer arrests.The report said using data from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report on the number of cannabis-related arrests in Ohio, they estimate there would be about 4,400 fewer arrests per year if recreational cannabis were legalized. Adding up the cost of those arrests, and assuming that 6% of those people would have been convicted of felonies, this amounts to over $38 million in savings for Ohio.”Overall, study estimated Ohioans would receive $260 million in annual benefits if Issue 2 passes this coming Tuesday. https://www.penncapital-star.com/blog/mail-in-ballot-returns-top-half-a-million-2023-election-mailbag/Dems far outpacing Republicans in mail and absentee ballots returnedMail-in ballot returns top half a million | 2023 Election MailbagBY: CASSIE MILLER - NOVEMBER 1, 2023 2:00 PM     Here are the numbers: As of Nov. 1, Pennsylvania voters requested a total of 1,026,227 absentee and mail-in ballots.Of that number, 90% requested a mail-in ballot and 10% requested an absentee ballot ahead of the municipal election.Registered Democrats requested 723,746 mail-in and absentee ballots compared to 215,286 Republicans and 87,195 requests from “other” registered voters. So about 3 of every 4Of the 570,000 ballots returned so far statewide, 417,829 - or about 3 of every 4 - were ballots from registered Democrats and 114,149 were from those registered as Republicans. https://coloradonewsline.com/2023/10/01/proposition-hh-proposition-ii/Colorado voters will decide on two statewide measures this election, both of which were referred to the ballot by the state Legislature.First, Proposition HHIf approved, Proposition HH would lower property tax rates over the next 10 years and allow the state to keep more money than it would otherwise be obligated to return to taxpayers. If Proposition HH passes, the residential assessment rate would be reduced to 6.7% from 6.765% until 2032. Proposition HH would also raise the amount of tax revenue the state can keep — set by the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights — by 1%. The new revenue allowed would be used to backfill property tax revenue that local governments would miss out on, for things like public education. $20MM would also be set aside for a rental assistance program.The proposition is backed by the Democratic lawmakers who voted to put it on the ballot and by Demoratic Gov. Jared Polis, as well as by other liberal groups, unions, AARP and the League of Women Voters. They say the proposal is a responsible solution to rising property taxes while still keeping schools funded. https://variety.com/2023/music/news/britney-spears-memoir-the-woman-in-me-sales-publisher-1235768414/It's BritneyBritney Spears‘ long-awaited memoir “The Woman in Me” — which details her fight for freedom and tumultuous relationships with the men in her life — has sold 1.1 million copies in its first week across print, pre-sales, e-books and audiobooks in the United States.“The Woman in Me” was released on Oct. 24 and has officially been out for just over a week. The memoir is 275 pages long and the audiobook is read by actress Michelle Williams. The book featured a wild assortment of revelations that touched on Spears' career, family, conservatorship and high profile relationships. Among them, Spears revealed that she and her ex-beau Justin Timberlake had gotten an abortion and she also claims Timberlake cheated on her with unnamed celebrities. Spears landed the publishing deal for a tell-all last February, just a few months after her conservatorship was terminated. Simon & Schuster acquired the rights to Spears' book last year after a bidding war that involved multiple publishers, though the financial terms of the transaction have not been revealed. That's it for me, from Denver I'm Sean Diller. Stories featured in today's show were originally reported in the Missouri Independent, Ohio Capital Journal, Pennsylvania Capital Star, Colorado Newsline, and Variety. Thanks for listening, see you next time. 

Welcome to the Friday News Flyover for November 3, 2023. I'm Sean Diller. This week: Medicaid chaos in red states around the country | Cannabis legalization on the ballot in Ohio | Pennsylvania Democrats have returned triple the mail ballots compared with their Republican neighbors | Colorado voters consider two statewide ballot initiatives, and | It's Britneyhttps://missouriindependent.com/2023/11/02/medicaid-unwinding-breeds-chaos-in-states-as-millions-lose-coverage/Medicaid ‘unwinding' breeds chaos in states as millions lose coverageBY: PHIL GALEWITZ, KATHERYN HOUGHTON, BRETT KELMAN AND SAMANTHA LISS - NOVEMBER 2, 2023 11:34 AM     More than two dozen people lined up outside a state public assistance office in Montana before it opened to ensure they didn't get cut off from Medicaid.Callers in Missouri and Florida reported waiting on hold for more than two hours on hotlines to renew their Medicaid coverage.The parents of a disabled man in Tennessee who had been on Medicaid for three decades fought with the state this summer to keep him enrolled as he lay dying from pneumonia in a hospital.Since the expiration of COVID-era protections earlier this year, states have reviewed the eligibility of more than 28 million people and terminated coverage for over 10 million of them. Millions more are expected to lose Medicaid in the coming months.The Medicaid disenrollment rates of people reviewed so far vary dramatically by state, largely along a blue-red political divide, from a low of 10% in Illinois to a high of 65% in Texas.“I feel like Illinois is doing everything in their power to ensure that as few people lose coverage as possible,” said Paula Campbell of the Illinois Primary Health Care Association, which represents dozens of community health centers.Camille Richoux, health policy director for the nonprofit Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families said, “It's not just bad, but worse than people can imagine. This has not been about determining who is eligible using all possible means, but how we can kick people off by all possible means.”The unprecedented enrollment drop comes after federal protections ended this spring that had prohibited states from removing people from Medicaid during the three pandemic years. Since March 2020, enrollment in Medicaid and the related Children's Health Insurance Program had surged by more than 22 million to reach 94 million people in the U.S.The process of reviewing recipients' eligibility has been anything but smooth for many Medicaid enrollees, and some suspect particular states have used the confusing system to discourage enrollment.But gaps in coverage can jeopardize people's access to health services - or their financial security - if they get medical bills for care they cannot postpone.Pam Shaw, a pediatrician in Kansas City, Kansas, who chairs the American Academy of Pediatrics' state government affairs committee said, “Any type of care that's put off — whether it's asthma, whether it's autism, whether it's something as simple as an earache — can just get worse if you wait,”Doctors and representatives of community health centers around the country said they have seen an uptick in cancellations and no-shows among patients without coverage — including children. Nationwide, states have already disenrolled at least 1.8 million children in the 20 states that provide the data by age. Children typically qualify more easily than adults, so child advocates believe many kids are being wrongly terminated based on their parents' being deemed no longer eligible. In Texas, 68% of those disenrolled from Medicaid were children, compared with 16% in Massachusetts, according to KFF. In September, President Joe Biden's administration said most states were conducting eligibility checks incorrectly and inappropriately disenrolling eligible children or household members. The administration  ordered states to reinstate coverage for some 500,000 people.Idaho, one of a few states that completed the unwind in six months, said it disenrolled 121,000 people of the 153,000 recipients it reviewed as of September because it suspected they were no longer eligible. Of those kicked off, about 13,600 signed up for private coverage on the state's ACA marketplace, according to Pat Kelly, executive director of Your Health Idaho, the state's exchange. What happened to the rest, state officials say they don't know.Nationwide, about 71% of Medicaid enrollees terminated during the unwinding have been cut because of procedural issues - meaning they could actually still qualify for Medicaid, but lost it anyway. ‘People are not getting through'In many states, enrollees have faced long waits to get help with renewals. The worst phone waits were in Missouri, according to a KFF Health News review of letters the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services sent to states in August. In the letter to Missouri's Medicaid program, CMS said it was concerned that the average wait time of 48 minutes and the 44% rate of Missourians abandoning those calls in May was “impeding equitable access” to assistance and patients' ability to maintain coverage.Some people are waiting on hold more than three hours, said Sunni Johnson, an enrollment worker at Affinia Healthcare, which runs community health centers in the St. Louis area. That's a significant hurdle for people with inflexible jobs and other barriers.In Florida, which has removed over 730,000 people from the program since April, enrollees earlier this year were waiting almost 2½ hours on a Spanish-language call center, according to a report from UnidosUS, a civil rights advocacy group. The Spanish versions of the Medicaid application, renewal website, and other communications are also confusing, said Jared Nordlund, the Florida director for UnidosUS.Some Medicaid recipients are seeking help through the courts. In a 2020 class-action lawsuit against Tennessee that seeks to pause the Medicaid eligibility review, parents of recipients describe spending hours on the phone or online with the state Medicaid program, trying to ensure their children's insurance coverage is not lost.One of those parents, Donna Guyton, said in a court filing that Tennessee's Medicaid program, called TennCare, sent a June letter revoking the coverage of her 37-year-old son, Patrick, who had been eligible for Medicaid because of disabilities since he was 6. As Guyton made calls and filed appeals to protect her son's insurance, he was hospitalized with pneumonia, then spent weeks there before dying in late July.“While Patrick was fighting for his life, TennCare was threatening to take away his health insurance coverage and the services he relied on,” she said in a court filing. “Though we should have been able to focus on Patrick's care, our family was required to navigate a system that kept denying his eligibility and putting his health coverage at risk.”TennCare said in a court filing Patrick Guyton's Medicaid coverage was never actually revoked — the termination letter was sent to his family because of an “error.”Phil Galewitz in Washington, D.C., wrote this article. Daniel Chang in Hollywood, Florida; Katheryn Houghton in Missoula, Montana; Brett Kelman in Nashville, Tennessee; Samantha Liss and Bram Sable-Smith in St. Louis; and Bernard J. Wolfson in Los Angeles contributed to this report.KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2023/11/01/marijuana-legalization-would-add-260m-to-ohio-economy-study-predicts/Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Or when you get ‘em anyway.Issue 2, an initiative that would legalize recreational marijuana for people over 21 in Ohio, is on the ballot in next Tuesday's election. An economic analysis released last week found that the benefits of legalizing cannabis in Ohio would outweigh the costs by a quarter-billion dollars a year.A study by Columbus-based Scioto Analysis attempts to identify the pluses and minuses that would come with legalization.To do the analysis, the group used studies from states such as Washington and Colorado, where recreational weed has long been the law. To examine how the pros and cons identified in those states might play out in Ohio, the researchers looked at economic and census data, as well as crime statistics.with its 10% excise tax on top of Ohio's normal sales tax, passage of Issue 2 would produce $190 million a year, according to the report.  Then there are the jobs the new industry would create.The report predicts that Ohio will add roughly 3,300 new jobs in the first year after legalization. Assuming these jobs are full time and pay matches the average wage across the state of Ohio, this will amount to about $190 million in wage benefits for workers across the state. And if weed is no longer illegal for adults over 21, it stands to reason that there will be fewer arrests.The report said using data from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report on the number of cannabis-related arrests in Ohio, they estimate there would be about 4,400 fewer arrests per year if recreational cannabis were legalized. Adding up the cost of those arrests, and assuming that 6% of those people would have been convicted of felonies, this amounts to over $38 million in savings for Ohio.”Overall, study estimated Ohioans would receive $260 million in annual benefits if Issue 2 passes this coming Tuesday. https://www.penncapital-star.com/blog/mail-in-ballot-returns-top-half-a-million-2023-election-mailbag/Dems far outpacing Republicans in mail and absentee ballots returnedMail-in ballot returns top half a million | 2023 Election MailbagBY: CASSIE MILLER - NOVEMBER 1, 2023 2:00 PM     Here are the numbers: As of Nov. 1, Pennsylvania voters requested a total of 1,026,227 absentee and mail-in ballots.Of that number, 90% requested a mail-in ballot and 10% requested an absentee ballot ahead of the municipal election.Registered Democrats requested 723,746 mail-in and absentee ballots compared to 215,286 Republicans and 87,195 requests from “other” registered voters. So about 3 of every 4Of the 570,000 ballots returned so far statewide, 417,829 - or about 3 of every 4 - were ballots from registered Democrats and 114,149 were from those registered as Republicans. https://coloradonewsline.com/2023/10/01/proposition-hh-proposition-ii/Colorado voters will decide on two statewide measures this election, both of which were referred to the ballot by the state Legislature.First, Proposition HHIf approved, Proposition HH would lower property tax rates over the next 10 years and allow the state to keep more money than it would otherwise be obligated to return to taxpayers. If Proposition HH passes, the residential assessment rate would be reduced to 6.7% from 6.765% until 2032. Proposition HH would also raise the amount of tax revenue the state can keep — set by the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights — by 1%. The new revenue allowed would be used to backfill property tax revenue that local governments would miss out on, for things like public education. $20MM would also be set aside for a rental assistance program.The proposition is backed by the Democratic lawmakers who voted to put it on the ballot and by Demoratic Gov. Jared Polis, as well as by other liberal groups, unions, AARP and the League of Women Voters. They say the proposal is a responsible solution to rising property taxes while still keeping schools funded. https://variety.com/2023/music/news/britney-spears-memoir-the-woman-in-me-sales-publisher-1235768414/It's BritneyBritney Spears‘ long-awaited memoir “The Woman in Me” — which details her fight for freedom and tumultuous relationships with the men in her life — has sold 1.1 million copies in its first week across print, pre-sales, e-books and audiobooks in the United States.“The Woman in Me” was released on Oct. 24 and has officially been out for just over a week. The memoir is 275 pages long and the audiobook is read by actress Michelle Williams. The book featured a wild assortment of revelations that touched on Spears' career, family, conservatorship and high profile relationships. Among them, Spears revealed that she and her ex-beau Justin Timberlake had gotten an abortion and she also claims Timberlake cheated on her with unnamed celebrities. Spears landed the publishing deal for a tell-all last February, just a few months after her conservatorship was terminated. Simon & Schuster acquired the rights to Spears' book last year after a bidding war that involved multiple publishers, though the financial terms of the transaction have not been revealed. That's it for me, from Denver I'm Sean Diller. Stories featured in today's show were originally reported in the Missouri Independent, Ohio Capital Journal, Pennsylvania Capital Star, Colorado Newsline, and Variety. Thanks for listening, see you next time. 

On today's episode of The Confluence: Pennsylvania House Democrats had their first full week of session since solidifying their majority. We discuss what priorities are on the table. Also, we are less than three weeks from the May primary where voters in Allegheny county will choose their candidate for the November election. Today's guests include: Katie Meyer, government editor and reporter at Spotlight PA; John Micek, editor-in-chief at Pennsylvania Capital Star; and Chris Potter, WESA's government and accountability editor.

Vanity Fair looks into Tucker Carlson’s surprising exit from Fox News. The Washington Post examines how abortion is dividing 2024 candidates and confounding many in the GOP. Jury selection is expected to begin in the trial involving E. Jean Carroll’s rape allegation against Donald Trump. The Wall Street Journal reports. As the Tree of Life synagogue-shooting trial begins, the Pennsylvania Capital-Star looks at attempts to change gun and hate-crimes laws in the wake the killings. The Los Angeles Times has the story of actor Danny Masterson’s retrial on rape charges. We’re also nearing the end of the seditious conspiracy trial of five Proud Boys leaders accused of spearheading the January 6 attack on the Capitol. The Washington Post has more.

On today's episode of The Confluence:Gov. Josh Shapiro is traveling the state drumming up support for his key proposals in his $44 billion budget proposal, but the state treasurer warns the commonwealth could be headed for a fiscal cliff, so lawmakers need to protect rainy day funds. We discuss these issues and more with our roundtable of politics reporters. Today's guests include: Stephen Caruso, capitol reporter with Spotlight PA; Sam Dunklau, WESA's capitol bureau chief; Marley Parish, state Senate reporter with the Pennsylvania Capital-Star; and Chris Potter, WESA's government and accountability editor.

On today's episode of The Confluence:State legislators have elected democrat Joanna McClinton as speaker, now that special elections to replace three Allegheny County area representatives have concluded. After taking office in Washington, D.C., Senator John Fetterman's entrance to federal politics has been disrupted by his health. One aide says he may be hospitalized for weeks. This week's guests include: Marc Levy, who covers Pennsylvania politics and government with the Associated Press; Katie Meyer, government editor and reporter with SpotlightPA; John Micek, editor-in-chief at the Pennsylvania Capital-Star; and Jonathan Tamari, national politics and policy reporter with the Philadelphia Inquirer.

On today's episode of The Confluence: A judge has ruled the state system to fund K-12 public schools is unconstitutional; a report from Pittsburghers for Public Transit says unreliable transit service affected every city district last year; and changes to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits mean recipients will get less assistance, starting next month. Today's guests include: Marley Parish, reporter for the Pennsylvania Capital-Star; and Laura Chu Wiens, executive director of Pittsburghers for Public Transit.

On today's episode of The Confluence: In his first weeks, Gov. Josh Shapiro has signed a few executive orders, including one that eliminates a required college degree for most state jobs. A panel of political reporters discuss executive orders and action, or inaction, in the very divided state House and beyond to Washington, D.C.Today's guests include: Marc Levy, Pennsylvania political reporter with the Associated Press; Katie Meyer, government editor and reporter with Spotlight PA; Marley Parish, who covers the state Senate for the Pennsylvania Capital-Star; and Jonathan Tamari, who covers national politics and policy for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Host: Kevin Smith Dives into the weekly news most impactful to the HeartlandHEADLINESOklahoma Charter School earns coveted largest abuse of taxpayer funds 'in the history of this state' award. Tulsa World - https://tulsaworld.com/news/local/education/state-auditor-to-lawmakers-epic-charter-schools-mismanagement-is-largest-abuse-of-taxpayer-funds-in/article_7d9f6fc4-83a6-11ec-9c66-836dae32ab96.htmlThe Oklahoman - https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/politics/government/2023/01/11/epic-charter-schools-scandal-to-be-prosecuted-by-oklahoma-ag-gentner-drummond-after-oconnor-dropped/69796742007/Decade Long Water Rights Battle Sees Supreme Court DecisionWall Street Journal - https://www.wsj.com/articles/rio-grande-water-deal-between-texas-and-new-mexico-is-opposed-by-u-s-11674045744LIGHTNING ROUNDMissouriMissouri Governor Mike Parson Embraces Build Back Better Programs in his State of the State Speech  Missouri Independent - https://missouriindependent.com/2023/01/18/parson-makes-i-70-a-focus-for-missouri-budget-heavy-on-infrastructure-education-spending/?fbclid=IwAR3Uco4MgaV8bZP3EEnvYcXIWZqONJyVH_iBSb3B6VwxXeUVfs3BMjLvozg&mibextid=Zxz2cZArkansasNew bill that would require adults to present proper identification before viewing pornographic content online in the state. THV11 - https://www.thv11.com/article/news/local/proposed-arkansas-bill-digital-id-porn/91-59598af8-d81e-42c7-8414-d1b5ad40b6fdRetail customers in Arkansas to be compensated for any excess solar generation. Arkansas Advocate - https://arkansasadvocate.com/2023/01/18/arkansas-energy-stakeholders-begin-talks-on-new-net-metering-compensation-bill/PennsylvaniaGov. Josh Shapiro signs first executive order, removing a four-year degree requirement for state government jobs. Pennsylvania Capital Star - https://www.penncapital-star.com/government-politics/in-his-first-executive-order-shapiro-removes-degree-requirement-for-thousands-of-state-jobs/OklahomaPoultry pollution in the Illinois River watershed Tulsa World News -https://tulsaworld.com/news/state-and-regional/crime-and-courts/after-18-years-a-home-run-for-oklahoma-as-judge-rules-in-poultry-pollution-lawsuit/article_3fa41802-9771-11ed-a005-a706e564ba4f.htmlNebraskaEducation funding decisions.Nebraska Examiner https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2023/01/17/nebraska-gov-pillen-wants-2-5-billion-in-new-funding-for-schools-property-tax-relief/IowaHouse File 3 targets SNAPIowa Hunger Coalition - https://www.iowahungercoalition.org/protect-snap/WisconsinConstitutional Amendment to raise bailMilwaukee Journal Sentinel - https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2023/01/19/wisconsin-lawmakers-vote-to-add-ballot-question-bail-to-april-ballot/69820307007/IndianaPrivate hands seek to pilfer from public schools.Indiana Capital Chronicle - https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2023/01/19/indiana-lawmakers-weigh-bill-to-create-universally-expand-school-choice-program/

On today's episode of The Confluence: Pennsylvania has a new governor, lieutenant governor and speaker of the state House navigating razor thin margins; we discuss the priorities for the coming year and what's ahead with new leadership. Today's guests include: Stephen Caruso, Capitol reporter with Spotlight PA; John Micek, editor in chief at Pennsylvania Capital-Star; Chris Potter, government and accountability editor at WESA; and Charles Thompson, government reporter with PennLive.

On today's episode of The Confluence: We look at the funding sources behind the candidates running in today's election; the latest voter registration numbers and what that means for candidates looking to gain an edge in tight races; and a look at what's ahead for the film industry in Pittsburgh.Today's guests include: Chris Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion; Nick Field, correspondent for Pennsylvania Capital-Star and Decision Desk HQ; and Dawn Keezer, director of the Pittsburgh Film Office.

It's the Friday news roundup! This week, we dive deep into Banned Books Week, explore the intersection of race and policing in Pittsburgh through film, and celebrate a regional, indigenous delicacy, the pawpaw fruit! As always, our Friday shows are powered by great local journalism.  Our own Mallory Falk in WHYY on student organizing against a book ban: https://whyy.org/episodes/schooled-after-the-spotlight-book-ban/  Emily Rizzo with WHYY on the anatomy of a school book ban: https://whyy.org/episodes/schooled-from-covid-to-censorship-bucks-county/  Ariana Figueroa in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star on Pennsylvania book bans: https://www.penncapital-star.com/dc-bureau/pa-a-national-leader-as-an-unprecedented-flood-of-book-bans-engulfs-u-s-school-districts/   The Allegheny Front's story about the indigenous roots of pawpaws: https://www.alleghenyfront.org/searching-for-the-pawpaws-indigenous-roots/ Grow Pittsburgh's Garden Dreams pawpaw tasting: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/pawpaw-parties-at-garden-dreams-tickets-408013508387?aff=ebdssbdestsearch Our newsletter is fresh daily at 6 a.m. Sign up here. We're also on Twitter @citycastpgh & Instagram @CityCastPgh! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's the Friday news roundup! The team is talking about how a new executive order from Gov. Wolf could help protect kids from conversion therapy, and why two former Pa. judges were ordered to pay $200 million to victims of a “kids-for-cash” scheme. Plus, with an immersive psychedelic conference in town, when could tripping for science become legal? As always, our Friday shows are powered by great local (and national) journalism. This week, check out:  Marley Parish in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star on Wolf's executive order discouraging conversion therapy: https://www.penncapital-star.com/government-politics/wolf-issues-executive-order-discouraging-conversion-therapy-urges-legislative-action/  Michael Rubinkam in the Associated Press on the $200 million award in the kids-for-cash case: https://apnews.com/article/crime-trending-news-government-and-politics-6f30f575dc739415af1e5b47b1be50f0 The MySpace Misdemeanor episode of the podcast Crime Show, for more on the kids-for-cash corruption scandal: https://open.spotify.com/episode/11gO9KlTvnBbAmfaTqxKq5 City Cast Denver's “Ballot Trip” series: https://pod.link/citycastdenver/episode/14faae3395082af7df1ac1206fcf0ae8 Brian Howard in Philly Mag on the journey to legalized psychedelics in Pa.: https://www.phillymag.com/news/2022/01/15/pennsylvania-legal-psychedelics/ You can learn more about Saturday's Entheocon event here: https://www.entheocon.com/ And don't forget: CITY CAST IS HIRING: If you're looking for a full-time, temporary audio job, then we've got the project for you. Apply to work with the City Cast team here: https://citycast.fm/audio-producer-city-cast-pittsburgh-temporary/ VOTE FOR US: City Cast Pittsburgh is among the finalists for City Paper's annual “Best of Pittsburgh” contest. Scroll down to Best Podcast and smash that vote button here: https://bit.ly/voteforCCP Our newsletter is fresh daily at 6 a.m. Sign up here. We're also on Twitter @citycastpgh & Instagram @CityCastPgh! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Upholds No Excuse Mail-in Voting LawToday's LinksArticles:  Pennsylvania Capital-Star  -  Pennsylvania's mail-in voting law survives constitutional challenge by GOP lawmakersNPR - Pennsylvania's mail-in voting law is upheld by the state's Supreme CourtGovernor Tom Wolf -  Statement on PA Supreme Court Upholding Mail-in VotingUSA Today - Fact check: Pennsylvania mail-in ballot claim mixes primary, general election data State of PA - Pennsylvania's Election StatsGroups Taking Action:   Keystone Votes Coalition, League of Women Voters PA,  Common Cause PAYou're listening to the American Democracy Minute, keeping YOUR government by and for the people.August 2nd,  the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld Act 77, a bill allowing mail-in voting for all citizens, which passed with bipartisan support in 2019.  The Big Lie caused some of the legislators who voted for the bill to join a suit against it after the 2020 election.The Pennsylvania Capital Star reports that when Act 77 passed in 2019, a deal was struck by the Republican-controlled legislature with Democratic Governor Tom Wolf.   In exchange for no-excuse mail balloting for any citizen, the Republicans got “Straight Ticket” voting removed from the ballot.  Then came President Donald Trump and his debunked narrative that fraudulent mail voting was to blame for his loss.Seemingly overnight, mail voting was perceived as unsecure and liberal leaning by conservatives, and a suit by Pennsylvania Republicans argued that the legislature had overstepped its bounds.  After a lower court struck it down, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said on August 2nd that the legislature did not overstep.    In 2020, 2.63 million Pennsylvania voters used mail in voting, one-third of them  Republicans.   Governor Tom Wolf said in a statement:  “Voting is a fundamental right — a right that we should ensure is accessible for all voters. Mail-in voting is a safe, secure and legal option for Pennsylvania voters to exercise that right.”  Articles and groups taking action are at AmericanDemocracyMinute.org.Granny D said Democracy is not something we have, it's something we DO.   For the American Democracy Minute, I'm Brian Beihl.

Raging Chicken's Friday Politics Roundup for June 24, 2022. So much to catch up on! It's great to be back after a two-week hiatus for family vacation. Today we had a great community initiated discussion about organizing for the midterms, the differences in how the GOP and the Dems run their parties and campaigns, the critical importance of the PA gubernatorial race, how the right-wing is coming for our public libraries, and so much more.  Articles mentioned today: “What legislation did Gov. Tom Wolf approve or veto during budget season?” Pennsylvania Capital-Star: https://www.penncapital-star.com/campaigns-elections/what-legislation-did-wolf-veto/ “Manchin Pulls Plug on Climate and Tax Talks, Shrinking Domestic Plan,” New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/14/us/politics/manchin-climate-taxes.html “What's Happening With The Vinton (IA) Public Library?” https://iowastartingline.com/2022/07/13/whats-happening-with-the-vinton-public-library/ “House votes to make it easier to report UFOs” Politico https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/13/house-votes-easier-report-ufos-00045640 You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.  Don't Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, supporting local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmasking the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We're putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/. Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u  

It's the Friday news roundup! Morgan is away celebrating her birthday (we see you, Cancer season) so the rest of the squad gets nerdy with state budget talks and all those anti-trans bills announced recently, plus why the spotted lanternfly is on everyone's seasonal kill list. There's always great reporting behind these convos: The Pennsylvania Capital-Star and the Associated Press break down the latest bills on LGBTQ instruction: https://www.penncapital-star.com/government-politics/senate-approves-limits-on-sexually-explicit-content-gender-identity-discussions-in-schools/ and https://apnews.com/article/education-pennsylvania-gender-identity-tom-wolf-government-and-politics-2fb27c1be186f2e36095b308523286af Spotlight PA really goes into detail on different budgetary sticking points this year: https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2022/07/pennsylvania-state-budget-explainer-late/ Check out this meaty report from Old Dominion University that really details PA's past budget woes: file:///Users/meganharris/Downloads/289-Article%20Text-915-1-10-20201112.pdf And here's Penn State's Spotted Lanternfly sighting reporting tool https://extension.psu.edu/spotted-lanternfly Our newsletter is fresh daily at 6 a.m. Sign up here. We're also on Twitter @citycastpgh & Instagram @CityCastPgh! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode of The Confluence: We talk about the significance of Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano agreeing to be interviewed by the committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol; a look at the projects southwestern Pennsylvania representatives have proposed to receive earmarked federal funds; and we look at the early impact of new rules that require the Mon Valley's major polluters to tamp down emissions on poor air quality days.Today's guests include: John Micek, editor-in-chief of the Pennsylvania Capital-Star; and Ashley Murray, Washington, D.C. bureau chief for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, weathered three days of Senate confirmation hearings. Of course that meant she had to endure, QAnon infused conspiracy theories; Sen. Lindsey Graham storming out of the hearings in a hissy fit - twice;  and, as Gabrielle Gurley from the American Prospect put it, “The Ted Cruz CRT Minstrel Show.”  Jackson is expected to be confirmed by the Senate early next week. But with Mitch McConnell making it public that he will not be voting for her, she may be confirmed without a single Republican vote.  Ginni Thomas - the right-wing extremist who is married to Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas - was actively pressuring Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and other Trump officials to overturn the 2020 vote. That according to texts recovered from materials Meadows turned over to the January 6 investigation.  More good news on the guaranteed income front, the Georgia Resilience and Opportunity Fund (GRO) and GiveDirectly are launching the largest guaranteed income program tried in the South. The program will target Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward, providing $850 per month to about 650 women with no questions asked.  As Chris Hayes laid out on his show last night, Russia's invasion of Ukraine feels like the first armed conflict of a new era. An era in which authoritarianism is on the rise and liberal democracies have been backsliding.  And Antarctica is seeing temperatures more than 70 degrees hotter than normal this week.  Jim Worthington, owner of the Newtown Athletic Club in Bucks County, is at it again. A staunch supporter of Donald Trump and major financial backer of Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, is suing Democratic Congressional candidate Ashley Ehasz for $50,000, because she dared call attention to the fact that Worthington “spent thousands of dollars to organize bus loads of Trump supporters to attend the ‘Stop the Steal' rally that turned into violent insurrection.”  Pennsylvania is facing a major teacher and school staffing shortage as teachers are leaving the profession due to COVID, lack of support, and contentious politics, according an excellent article by Marley Parish of the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. In addition, Pennsylvania has seen a 66% decline in Instructional I Teaching Certificates granted - which is the most basic teaching certifications given to new graduates.  The scuttlebutt is that the President of the Pennridge School Board, Joan Cullen, is floating the narrative that the community is supportive of abandoning all DEI initiatives.  Pennsylvania remains the only state that does not provide state funding for public defenders. 

On today's show, I welcome Stephen Caruso to the show. Stephen is the House reporter for the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. He previously covered Pennsylvania state government for The PLS Reporter. He's been  Stephen is joining me today to talk about redistricting, voting, and map, maps, and more maps. Once again the PA State Supreme Court will be drawing Pennsylvania's Congressional maps after deep divisions between Republicans and Democrats could not be bridged. Pennsylvania continues to play a critical role in the balance of power in the House of Representatives. New State legislative maps were approved last week, however some controversy remains. For example, some Lehigh Valley Latino leaders are saying the new maps dilute the influence of Latino voters. We'll get into all of this in more on today's show. You can follow Stephen on Twitter: @StephenJ_Caruso.

Russia takes a few more steps closer to provoking war in Ukraine.  The Canadian “Freedom Convoy” protests intensify. Three international bridges have been blocked and supply lines are further jammed up. The Biden administration is urging Canadadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to use federal powers to end the bridge blockade. Copycat protests are creeping up in other parts of the country and across the world. New reporting from the New York Times suggest that weekend protests in the U.S. may disrupt the Super Bowl, according to the Department of Homeland Security.  As the number of COVID cases start to slowly decrease, even Democratic governors are racing ahead of scientists to rollback pandemic safety protocols. So much for “listening to the scientists.” Meanwhile, the new Omicron “subvariant” is now dominant in South Africa and is expected to spread. Scientists are still finding the variant to spread even more easily than Omicron, but it does not appear to be more deadly.  It looks like sticking our heads in the sand during a pandemic isn't an entirely American practice. Writing in the Washington Post, Jess McHugh takes a look at what happened ahead of a 4th wave of the Spanish Flu…it's remarkably familiar.  Australia just designated koalas as an endangered species. Environment Minister Sussan Ley said in a statement, “The impact of prolonged drought, followed by the black summer bushfires, and the cumulative impacts of disease, urbanization and habitat loss over the past twenty years have led to the advice.”  PA's Supreme Court put on hold the period for candidates to gather signature petitions to qualify for the May 17 primary.  Victor Martinez, a Lehigh Valley Latino radio station owner says he may join with Republicans to contest newly drawn congressional maps.  According to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, “Martinez has argued that the maps as currently drawn will dilute the voting power of Pennsylvania's Latino residents, even though they were the fastest growing demographic group in Pennsylvania.” Central Bucks school district field trip to the Holocaust Museam in Washington, DC was cancelled this week because some school board members were upset with DC's strict vaccination requirements. Diana Leygerman - who we've had on the show - tweeted out her outrage at the cancellations and it went viral with more than 90,000 people viewing her tweet.  Bethlehem-based Alt-right podcaster, Joseph Paul Berger, is facing federal charges for allegedly stockpiling a cache of more than a dozen unregistered machine guns. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Lehigh County prosecutors say Berger once encouraged his listeners to “assassinate lawmakers, lobbyists, and ‘left-wing' billionaires' with explosives. Berger was also found to be 3-D printing a collection of untraceable “ghost guns” in his parents' basement. His father was also arrested.  NASA says SpaceX's Starlink - including plans to launch 30,000 more small satellites as part of its orbital internet plans - may interfe with the Hubble telescope and the agency's ability to detect incoming asteroids. Don't look up.  Foundation, Ozark, and Legends of Vox Machina

Works Cited“A ‘Perfect Storm' of Injustice—Death-Row Prisoner Christopher Williams Exonerated in Philadelphia Murder Case.” Death Penalty Information Center, 24 Jan. 2020, deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/a-perfect-storm-of-injustice-death-row-prisoner-christopher-williams-exonerated-in-philadelphia-murder-case. Accessed 18 Jan. 2022.Capital-Star, Special to the, et al. “Exonerated Philly Death Row Inmate Files Civil Suit against Cops, Prosecutor Who Sent Him to Prison.” Pennsylvania Capital-Star, 2 Dec. 2021, www.penncapital-star.com/criminal-justice/exonerated-philly-death-row-inmate-files-civil-suit-against-cops-prosecutor-who-sent-him-to-prison/. Accessed 18 Jan. 2022.“Christopher Williams – National Registry of Exonerations.” Umich.edu, 2019, www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=5669. Accessed 18 Jan. 2022.“Christopher Williams Exonerated after 25 Years on PA's Death Row.” Witnesstoinnocence, 10 Feb. 2021, www.witnesstoinnocence.org/single-post/christopher-williams-exonerated-after-25-years-on-pa-s-death-row. Accessed 18 Jan. 2022.“Conviction Integrity Unit.” Office of the District Attorney : City of Philadelphia, phillyda.org/safety-and-justice/investigations/conviction-integrity-unit-ciu/. Accessed 18 Jan. 2022.“Conviction Integrity Units.” Www.law.umich.edu, www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/Conviction-Integrity-Units.aspx.Melamed, Samantha. “Accused of 6 Murders, Philly Man Spent 25 Years on Death Row. Now, His Record Is Cleared.” Https://Www.inquirer.com, 9 Feb. 2021, www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-conviction-integrity-christopher-williams-exoneree-20210210.html. Accessed 18 Jan. 2022.—. “Philly Prosecutors Used a Jailhouse Snitch to Convict Two Men of an '89 Triple Murder. Now, His Lies Are Unraveling.” Https://Www.inquirer.com, 8 Jan. 2020, www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-da-larry-krasner-exoneration-christopher-williams-theophalis-wilson-20200106.html&outputType=app-web-view. Accessed 18 Jan. 2022.—. “The Battle in Philly DA's Office: Conviction Integrity Unit Report Shows Rocky Path to Reform.” Www.msn.com, 15 June 2021, www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/the-battle-in-philly-s-da-s-office-conviction-integrity-unit-report-shows-rocky-path-to-reform/ar-AAL4KJ1#:~:text=Since%20District%20Attorney%20Larry%20Krasner%20took%20office%20in. Accessed 18 Jan. 2022.

This episode highlights the life-altering moment that John Micek, a journalist with decades of experience under his belt, pivoted from a successful position with a top performing news organization to leap into the unknown and become the lead editor of a non-profit news site, the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. John shares insights into his service as a member of the fourth estate and how the winding, twisting road of life will often lead us to destinations we could have never anticipated. 

Join host Jesse White and guest Stephen Caruso of the Pennsylvania Capital-Star as they take a deep dive into the legislative redistricting process, specifically the proposed Pennsylvania State House and Senate maps.Part 2 focuses on the winners and losers in terms of regions, political parties, and individual lawmakers.Check out the maps for yourself, courtesy of Dave's Redistricting App:https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::5db459af-cfbf-42d0-839e-30230a97f34eThe Keystone Reckoning Project depends solely on donations to educate, inform, and influence Pennsylvania voters. If you like what we do and want to see us continue, please visit www.keystonereckoning.com and click "DONATE" to make a contribution!Visit www.truebluegear.com for all your progressive political t-shirts and gear. Use code "KEYSTONE" at checkout for a 20% discount. Support the show (https://secure.actblue.com/donate/the-keystone-reckoning-project-1)

Join host Jesse White and guest Stephen Caruso of the Pennsylvania Capital-Star as they take a deep dive into the legislative redistricting process, specifically the proposed Pennsylvania State House and Senate maps.Part 1 focuses on the transparency of this redistricting process as compared to previous years, the likelihood of litigation based on a host of factors, and what state government could look like if these preliminary maps become law.Check out the maps for yourself, courtesy of Dave's Redistricting App:https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::5db459af-cfbf-42d0-839e-30230a97f34eThe Keystone Reckoning Project depends solely on donations to educate, inform, and influence Pennsylvania voters. If you like what we do and want to see us continue, please visit www.keystonereckoning.com and click "DONATE" to make a contribution!Visit www.truebluegear.com for all your progressive political t-shirts and gear. Use code "KEYSTONE" at checkout for a 20% discount. Support the show (https://secure.actblue.com/donate/the-keystone-reckoning-project-1)

"Lynn is talking with Pennsylvania Capital Star reporter Steven Caruso about Senate Republicans voting to request identifying information from Pennsylvania's roughly 9 million registered voters including their social security numbers."

More pressure to end the filibuster as Republican Senators refuse to back the Jan 6 commission. More momentum for Biden’s Build Back Better infrastructure proposal. A new polls shows that a majority of Pennsylvanians support the proposal, by the way.  It was a trifecta for the climate on Wednesday. A Dutch court ordered Royal Dutch Shell to cut its global carbon emissions by 45% by the end of 2030 in a case brought by Friends of the Earth.  Shareholder activists pushed out two of Exxon’s hand-picked board members and elected members who “pledged to steer the company toward cleaner energy and away from oil and gas.” And, shareholders at Chevron voted 61% to cut its emissions. Another proposal that would have required the company to prepare a report on the impact its business would have from the net zero 2050 scenario, lost with 48% of the vote.  ConocoPhillips has a unique solution to the melting of Alaskan permafrost on Alaska’s North Slope - refreeze the permafrost so you can drill.  A UK-based blimp company is looking to deploy hybrid airships for shorter trips between places like Liverpool and Belfast or Barcelona to the Balearic Islands. The company, Hybrid Air Vehicles, says replacing air and ship traffic with its airships could cut emissions by 90%. Half of all U.S. adults are now fully vaccinated, according to the CDC. New book finally exposes Bernie Sanders as a sham! Yes, you will not believe what this foot soldier of the ruling elite demand! When he’s on the road he demands hotel rooms with...wait for it...a KING BED and temperatures as low as 64 degrees! The hypocrite! Ladies and Gents (long pause) we got him.  Sedition Hunters, online sleuths, angry partisans and supporters of the ruling elite unearthed video footage that showed State Senator Doug Mastriano breaching police barricades & walking towards the capitol steps minutes before the building was breached on January 6th.  This latest round of reporting completely undermines the stories and statements Mastriano gave to reporters and Senate leadership in the days following the insurrection.  If that’s not bad enough, Senator Mastirano issued a statement attacking the Huffington Post for reporting on this story and reporting on the fact that he posed for pictures with Sam Lazar, an insurrectionist wanted by the FBI for using bear spray on police officers.  Mastriano compared the photos to Obama taking pictures with Bill Ayers or Louis Farrakhan. Mastriano’s statements prompted reporters to dig more into his connections with Lazar and showed that he has posed for photos with Lazar at least 5 times over the past year. Keeping up with the insurrection, Sandy Weyer, another Mastriano associate who is known as “Sedition Sandy,” was named in an FBI affidavit for entering the capitol on January 6th.   Talking about Senator Mastriano.  The Arizona Mirror, a sibling outlet related to the Pennsylvania Capital Star, reported that Senator Mastriano ordered an unauthorized audit of the 2020 election in Fulton County.  The company that conducted the audit is associated with Sydney Powell and the Stop the Steal Movement.  On top of that, they spoiled over $20,000 worth of election equipment that couldn’t be used in the previous primary.  Reps. Russ Diamond and Barabar Gleim began seeking co-sponsors for legislation that would penalize any school that teaches “critical race theory.”  Another Bucks County, PA man, Leonard Ridge, was arrested for allegedly taking part in the Jan 6 insurrection. Ridge bragged about his involvement on Snapchat. The battle of the billionaire space barons is heating up and the Senate prepares a $10 billion dollar bailout for Jeff Bezos’s “Blue Origin” after his fufus were hurt after he lost the bid to SpaceX for the moon lander.  The European Space Agency is looking to develop a GPS and communication network around the Moon to aid in Earth-to-Moon communications for future missions.  The chickens are coming home to roost in the craft beer industry. Brienne Allan, a production manager at Notch Brewing in Salem, MA asked an open-ended question on her Instagram account: Is anyone else experiencing sexist comments? As reported on Boston’s WBUR, “The answer was this cascade of experiences, flooding her private messages with a deluge of trauma. …’It escalated really quickly into people talking about sexual violence and sexual harassment, racism from owners and superiors and just how, the HR system in general is just failing people right now,’ Allan said. ‘It just escalated out of control. I have over a thousand stories up now’." The reckoning is ONLY BEGINNING. 

Guilty, guilty, guilty. Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin found guily on all three counts in the murder of George Floyd. Now attention turns back to the work of fundamentally transforming policing in America.  The three former Minneapolis police officers who were involved in George Floyd’s arrest and who stood by as Derek Chauvin killed Floyd, will be facing their own day of reckoning in court in the coming months.  As if to underscore that convicting Derek Chauvin would not change the rot at the core of American policing, police shot and killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright just 10 miles from where Derek Chauvin’s trial was being held.  Axios reported that Senate Democratic and Republican staffers see the Chauvin verdict as “taking off the pressure” to pass meaningful police reform. And...is Nancy Pelosi actually trying to hurt Democrats and prove to everyone that she and others in the party leadership are completely out of touch?  India sets a new global record for the most number of COVID cases in a day at more than 330,000. Until now, the United States was the only nation to see that number of cases in a day. Hospitals in Delhi and in other large cities are running out of oxygen. Indian journalist Rana Ayyub told Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman “it is an apocalyptic situation in India right now.” With a population four times as large as the United States the devastation from the virus could prove catastrophic and lead to the spread of new virus strains. The explosion of COVID cases in India has further exposed inequity in vaccine distribution globally. Even though India is one of the largest producers and suppliers of vaccines to the world, corporate patent protections have prioritized getting vaccines to nations who can pay top dollar, not to those who need it most. We can thank Bill Gates for that, as outlined in Ann Neumann’s recent article in the Baffler, “Who Owns Vaccines.”  Yesterday, on Earth Day, Biden made a commitment to cut U.S. carbon emissions in half by 2030.  While the commitment is one of the boldest we’ve ever seen from an American president, energy experts told the New York Times that such a move would “require a dramatic overhaul of American society,” and fundamental changes in American’s energy system. It remains to be seen if the Biden administration truly has the political will to do what is necessary to meet his own commitments. It should be noted that climate scientists and activists have pointed out that even Biden’s bold goals are not enough to stave off some of the worst effects of climate change.  Priorities USA, the Super PAC that supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, released a report last week that was very critical of Democrats' ad spending.  Republicans outspent Democrats on TV and digital advertising for House and Senate campaigns 8 to 12 months before the 2020 even though Democrats outspent Republicans by the time of the election.  And here’s the kicker: 75% of the money Democrats spent on TV advertising for Congressional races missed their target audiences.   DC Statehood, baby. House passed a D.C. Statehood bill yesterday. The bill moves on to the Senate. It will be one more test of how wedded to the filibuster Democrats are.  Seth Grove and the House Republicans from the State Government Committee released their “findings” from their election integrity hearings.  Republicans are eyeing up voter IDs for in-person voting and those voting by mail, limiting dropboxes to one per county, having signature tests and third party witness signatures for mail-in ballots and purging of the voter rolls. Stephen Caruso from the Pennsylvania Capital Star published an amazing interview with House State Government Chair Seth Grove.  During the interview, Caruso asked Grove how he can be a “good faith” actor in negotiating voting reforms when he is associated with ALEC, put his name on letters seeking to overturn Pennsylvania’s election results and had a meeting with Kris Kobach during his election integrity hearings.  Grove’s response “we’ll see.”   Election truthers, conspiracy theorists and insurrectionists inspired by the MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell returned to the capitol this week demanding that the Pennsylvania General Assembly pass legislation to conduct a complete audit of the 2020 election.  The event was such a hit that independent journalist and documentarian, Zach Roberts, traveled to Harrisburg for it.   Cris Dush went full blown “Cold Warrior” in the middle of a Senate appropriations hearing yesterday.  Dush used COVID conspiracies and Nazi anaologies when asking Acting Department of Health Secretary Allison Beam if the Wolf administration intentionall sent COVID infected patients to nursing homes and turned those nursing homes into “death camps.” In an Op-Ed this week, Tara Murth and Susan Frietsche from the Women’s Law Project, warned that maternal mortality is skyrocketing in Pennsylvania while PA Republicans continue to pursue anti-abortion legislation that will only worsen the crisis. HB 1977 is a near total abortion ban; SB 21 pretends to protect people with disabilities as a justification for restricting abortion rights; and HB 1890 would mandate a death certificate be issued for every abortion and would threaten medical providers who did not obtain a death certificate.  The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a big, if rather superficial, story on PASSHE Chancellor Greenstein’s plans to fundamentally redesign the 14 state-owned university system. While much of the article misses the mark, it has helped place PASSHE in the national spotlight - right where Greenstein wants it, I suspect.  APSCUFs survey of the faculty affected by the planned mergers found that fewer than 8% of faculty were supportive of the mergers and only 7% believed the process has been transparent.  NASA’s Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, made not one, but two flights on the red planet this week. The historic first flight on Monday saw the helicopter take off, hover about 10 feet in the air for about 30 seconds, then descend back to the ground. On Thursday, the flight lasted almost a minute. The helicopter hovered at about 16 feet and moved sideways for about 7 feet before returning to the ground.  Meanwhile on the ground, NASA’s Perseverance rover turned a bit of Martian air into breathable oxygen thanks to an instrument called MOXIE. The little toaster-sized instrument is designed to separate oxygen atoms from carbon-dioxide molecules. The test produced enough oxygen to give a single astronaut about 10 minutes of breathable air.  Early this morning the SpaceX Crew-2 Dragon capsule launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida upon a Falcon 9 rocket. The international crew consists of 2 astronauts from the U.S., one from Japan, and one from Russian. Crew-2 should arrive at the International Space Station early tomorrow morning.  U.S. military chose Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, and General Atomics for their first phase of a project to test nuclear propulsion systems in orbit.  And, SpaceX beat out Blue Origin and defense contractor Dynetics to win build the space craft for NASA’s Artemis mission to the Moon.  I got myself some Human Robot beer this week! And...a hat.  Free Will Releases.