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5 Key takeaways from JD Vance’s Pennsylvania rally—Jan. 6, China War, more

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5 Key takeaways from JD Vance’s Pennsylvania rally—Jan. 6, China War, more


Manufacturing, immigration, crime, the economy, and alleged election fraud in 2020 dominated JD Vance’s Saturday two speeches in Pennsylvania, just weeks out from the election.

Speaking at a Saturday afternoon rally in Johnstown, the Ohio Senator and Republican vice-presidential candidate spoke for 40 minutes, in what has become a routine stop on the campaign trail. The Keystone State is a vital part of both candidates’ strategy to win the White House.

Johnstown is a small city of less than 20,000 inhabitants which has suffered decades of industrial decline following the closure of its steel mills and coal mines.

It has featured on the campaign trails of both presidential candidates as well as Vance. Vice President Kamala Harris visited some local businesses there in September, and Donald Trump held a rally in the city in August.

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JD Vance speaks during a campaign Town Hall on Saturday, October 12, 2024, in Reading, Pennsylvania. Manufacturing, immigration, crime, the economy, and alleged election fraud in 2020 dominated JD Vance’s two Saturday speeches in Pennsylvania.

Laurence Kesterson/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The repeated visits are emblematic to of the critical role Rust Belt cities, which lost most of their manufacturing economies decades ago, played in electing Trump in 2016, on his America-first manufacturing platform.

They were then crucial in electing President Joe Biden, who in 2020 campaigned as a pro-union, pro-manufacturing candidate who came from coal-mining Scranton, Pennsylvania.

In his 40-minute speech, Vance addressed Johnstown’s industrial heritage, casting himself and Trump as the candidates who would deport millions of “illegal aliens” to secure its economic future, and casting Harris as a candidate who would do nothing to prevent its decline.

He also continued to suggest that the 2020 election was unfair, following on from his Friday New York Times interview, in which he declined five times to acknowledge that Trump lost the election to Biden.

Later in the afternoon, he held a town-hall style rally in Reading, in eastern Pennsylvania, where he took questions from the audience and addressed the importance of voter turnout, home ownership, energy costs, and the need to “drain the swamp” of allegedly corrupt officials in the FBI and Justice Department.

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Here five key takeaways from the events.

Capitol Rioters Were “Knuckleheads” and Trump Is Not To Blame

A reporter asked Vance whether he condemned the riot at on January 6, 2021, where Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in order to disrupt the certification of Biden’s victory.

In response, Vance said he did condemn the riot, but he denied that Trump was responsible for the actions of the rioters and insisted that there was a “peaceful transfer of power” in 2020.

“Donald Trump asked people to protest peacefully,” Vance said. “He had every right to encourage people to protest peacefully, and the fact that a few knuckleheads went off and did something they shouldn’t do, that’s not on him; that’s on them, that’s on them.”

This answer diverges slightly from Trump’s own view, which has repeatedly been the rioters, over 1,200 of whom have been criminally charged, were not “knuckleheads,” but rather were “patriots.”

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He has insisted he would pardon them if elected to a second term. However, like Vance, Trump denied any involvement in the riot, stating during his September debate with Harris, “That had nothing to do with me.”

Trump’s alleged involvement in the lead-up to the riot is subject to an ongoing federal criminal case in Washington D.C., which is currently going through pretrial motions.

Trump and Vance Would Clean House at the FBI and the DOJ

Vance told a story about an FBI field agent who he said told him that the agency’s leadership is “so broken.”

“You’ve got to clean house, and that’s what we’re going to do,” Vance said. “We’re going to fire the people who are responsible for the corruption of our Department of Justice.

“Trump got famous firing people and it’s funny, you know, that’s the kind of person you actually want cleaning house in Washington D.C.”

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Newsweek has contacted the Department of Justice and the FBI via email for comment.

Trump and other Republicans have accused the Justice Department of being corrupt for bringing charges against the former president, and the FBI of engaging in numerous alleged politically motivated conspiracies against Trump and other conservatives.

Lower Housing Costs by Deregulating, Drilling, and Deporting

In response to a question about the increasing unaffordability of housing, Vance listed some of Trump’s economic policies which involve removing regulations, drilling for more oil, and deporting migrants.

Repeating the slogan, “drill baby, drill,” Vance argued that by increasing oil production, energy costs would decrease, which would lead to lower housing costs.

He also argued that excessive regulation was holding back housing development, and that American citizens were suffering due to having to compete with undocumented immigrants in the housing market.

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“Unless we have American homes (…) going to American citizens, we are never going to make the American dream of home ownership affordable,” Vance said.

The U.S. Would Currently Lose a War With China

Vance argued that China would be able to win a war with the U.S. due to its superior manufacturing capacity.

“God forbid, let’s say we get into a war with China, and I certainly hope that doesn’t happen, but those commercial ships [sic] are going to start building warships very quickly,” Vance said.

“And this is the secret of why did we win the Second World War? Well of course we had the bravest people, and we had the best troops, but we had the world’s industrial might. No one could compete with America’s manufacturing sector.”

Vance argued that creating a regulatory environment which made it easier for businesses to manufacture in America was therefore not just economically essential, but also in the country’s national security interests.

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Republicans Are Ahead in Voter Registrations in Pennsylvania

Vance said that Pennsylvania Republicans are “knocking it out of the park” in relation to voter registrations.

“We are actually tracking some of this registration stuff,” Vance said. “Things are moving in the right direction and that’s a very good thing.”

This year has seen rising Republican registrations in the Keystone State. Spotlight PA reported in September that in 2024, the Democrats have had their weakest voter registration advantage compared to Republicans in decades

As of September 16, Democrats made up 44 percent of registered voters in the commonwealth, down from a 2009 high of 51.2 percent, while Republicans were at 40.2 percent, up from 36.9 percent in 2009. Unaffiliated and third-party voters have boosted their numbers even more, from 11.9 percent in 2009 to 15.7 percent.

Newsweek has contacted the Harris and Trump campaigns via email for comment.

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Pennsylvania-born indie rockers Tigers Jaw return with new album release

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Pennsylvania-born indie rockers Tigers Jaw return with new album release


The chorus for the song “Primary Colors” was something Walsh wrote years ago, with the song’s outro originally being used as a verse.

“And something just wasn’t quite clicking, and everything that I tried felt kind of forced,” Walsh said. “We were all just like, ‘Yeah, there’s something here, but it’s not quite doing what I think it has the potential to do.’”

The band then started toying with the dynamics between the verses and the chorus.

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“It just unlocked something for me in the idea where I was like, ‘Wow, this kind of quiet, loud, quiet, loud format really works well with this song,’” Walsh said. “So yeah, it just transformed it instantly into an idea that felt a lot stronger.”

The album was recorded with Grammy-winning producer Will Yip, a relationship still budding from their 2014 album, “Charmer.” Collins said the new album’s sound is “as true as we could be to playing the record live.”

“I wasn’t as tied to the tones that have classically been Tigers Jaw because I think at this point, I’ve just come to this realization that no matter what, if we’re making it, it is Tigers Jaw,” Collins said.

The new album has a “palpable energy” that shares the same spirit as their earlier records, Walsh said. And while “tastes evolve,” the band followed “what feels good.”

“This is the best representation of the band at the time, and it’s almost like a snapshot of us as artists, as people, as a creative entity over this time in our career,” he said.

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“Lost On You” is out now through Hopeless Records and is available on vinyl, CD and various streaming platforms.

“Lost On You” was released on March 27, 2026, through Hopeless Records. The album is available on vinyl, CD and various streaming platforms.

On April 16, Tigers Jaw will perform at Union Transfer at 8 p.m. They will be supported by Hot Flash Heat Wave and Creeks, the solo project of Balance and Composure vocalist and guitarist Jon Simmons, who is from Doylestown, Pennsylvania.





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Pennsylvania court upends mandatory use of life-without-parole for second-degree murder

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Pennsylvania court upends mandatory use of life-without-parole for second-degree murder


What to Know

  • Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court says the state cannot automatically give life without parole for felony murder without weighing each defendant’s culpability in the killing.
  • The high court on Thursday ordered a new sentencing hearing for Derek Lee over a second-degree conviction, but paused it for four months to give state lawmakers time to consider legislation in response.
  • Pennsylvania law has made people liable for second-degree murder if they participated in an eligible felony that led to death. Life with no possibility of parole has been the only possible sentence.
  • The court says the current rule treats a lookout the same as the person who kills.

Pennsylvania’s high court on Thursday overturned the use of automatic life sentences without parole for people convicted of second-degree murder, saying it violates the state’s constitutional ban on cruel punishment when imposed without a closer look at the defendant’s specific role and culpability.

The court majority ordered resentencing in the case of Derek Lee, convicted of a 2014 killing in Pittsburgh, but the decision also has implications for others among the roughly 1,000 other inmates currently serving similar second-degree murder sentences.

The court’s order was put on hold for four months to give the General Assembly time to “consider appropriate remedial measures.” In a footnote, the justices said they were ruling on Lee’s sentence and not addressing “questions of retroactivity.”

Prison reform groups hailed it as a landmark decision, while the Allegheny County district attorney’s office said it will follow the court’s order.

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Pennsylvania law has made people liable for second-degree murder if they participated in an eligible felony that led to death, and life without parole has been the only possible sentence.

“The mandatory penalty scheme of life without parole for all offenders convicted of second degree murder fails to assess individual culpability regarding the intent to kill, and mandates the same punishment regardless of that culpability,” wrote Chief Justice Debra Todd in the lead opinion. She characterized it as not distinguishing “between the lookout, and the killer who pulls the trigger.”

The state high court’s decision comes after years of advocacy to undo mandatory life without parole sentences both in Pennsylvania and nationally. Nazgol Ghandnoosh of the Washington-based Sentencing Project said she counts 11 states and the federal system as having such laws for that kind of crime, sometimes called felony murder. Several states — California, Colorado and Minnesota — have moved away from that sentencing framework in recent years, she said.

Justice Kevin Dougherty noted in a separate opinion that unlike those convicted of first-degree murder, defendants serving life without parole for second-degree murder have “never been found by a judge or jury to have harbored the specific intent to kill” and may not have had “any involvement whatsoever with the actual killing. He or she does not even have to expect or foresee that a life may be taken.”

Lee’s lawyers had wanted the court to rule that life without parole sentences are unconstitutional for all second-degree murder convictions in Pennsylvania, said Quinn Cozzens, a staff attorney for the Abolitionist Law Center, which helped represent Lee. Instead, the court ruled that trial judges must examine the individual circumstances of a defendant’s case to decide which sentence is most appropriate, including the potential of life without parole.

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The state’s public defenders’ association said the ruling will generate new post-conviction litigation and require them to do more investigation as well as develop “strategic litigation” to get the decision to apply retroactively.

A jury convicted Lee of second-degree murder but acquitted him of first-degree murder in 44-year-old Leonard Butler’s shooting death. Butler was shot in a struggle over a gun with Lee’s codefendant, Paul Durham.

Prosecutors argued it should be up to state lawmakers and the executive branch to address the policy issues surrounding second-degree murder sentences. Todd wrote that while the district attorney’s office “acknowledges that there may be persuasive arguments why a non-slayer should not be held to the same degree of culpability as the slayer, it stresses that these are policy decisions for the General Assembly.”

Cozzens urged lawmakers to “address this constitutional violation, given that the court granted them the opportunity to do so.”

Rep. Tim Briggs, a suburban Philadelphia Democrat who chairs the state House Judiciary Committee, said he planned to engage with Senate Republicans on potential legislation in response.

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Briggs said he wanted to have decision apply retroactively, to give people serving life “for being the getaway driver” to “have the opportunity to have their facts looked at again.”

“I think inaction leaves a lot of this up to the courts to decide. I don’t feel comfortable doing that,” Briggs said. “We have a policymaking role here.”

Justice Sallie Mundy wrote that Lee “willingly participated in an armed home invasion and robbery, and purposefully engaged in assaultive behavior in the form of tasing and pistol-whipping the victim.” She said Lee and Durham “arguably kidnapped the victims by forcing them into the basement” and it will be up to the county judge to decide if Lee’s life-without-parole sentence is appropriate.

Todd’s opinion, citing an advocacy group, said 73% of those convicted of felony murder in Pennsylvania were 25 or younger when the killing occurred and almost 70% are Black people.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro also responded to the ruling on X.

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Teen boys in Pennsylvania get probation after using AI to create fake nude photos of classmates

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Teen boys in Pennsylvania get probation after using AI to create fake nude photos of classmates


Lancaster Country Day School in Lancaster, Pa., Wednesday, March 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

LANCASTER, Pa. — Two teenage boys who used artificial intelligence to create fake nude photos of their classmates at an exclusive private school in Pennsylvania received probation Wednesday after dozens of victims described the images’ traumatizing effect on them.

The boys were 14 at the time. They admitted this month that they made about 350 images, showing at least 59 girls under 18, along with other victims who so far have not been identified.

Authorities said the boys took images of the girls from school photos, yearbooks, Instagram, TikTok and FaceTime chats in 2023 and 2024, and morphed them with images of adults depicting nudity or sexual activity.

More than 100 students and parents from Lancaster Country Day School were in court to hear victims describe the shock of having to identify their own faces in pornographic photos to detectives. Juvenile proceedings in Pennsylvania are normally closed, but this was opened by the judge, providing an unusual opportunity for the community to be seen and heard.

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The girls described the fallout — anxiety attacks, a loss of trust, problems focusing on schoolwork and a fear that the images may someday surface in unexpected ways.

The two young men stood stone-faced throughout, flanked by their lawyers and parents, as they were called pedophiles, “sick and twisted” and perverted.

“I will never understand why they did this,” one victim told Judge Leonard Brown, saying it “destroyed my innocence.”

One young woman told Brown “how excruciating it is to bring these feelings up again and again.” Another choked back tears as she excoriated one of the defendants for expressing “fake empathy” as girls confided with him about their pain, before it became known that he had been part of creating and disseminating the images. Still another said all of her friends transferred schools, and that she “needed trauma therapy to even walk around my neighborhood.”

The defendants declined several opportunities to comment to the judge, who said he had not heard either boy take responsibility or apologize.

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“This has been a regrettable, long, torturous process for everyone involved,” said Heidi Freese, defense attorney for one of the defendants. “There were very interesting, underlying legal issues surrounding the charges in this case and those will be decided on a different day in a different case.”

Brown ordered each to perform 60 hours of community service, have no contact with the victims and pay an unspecified amount of restitution. If they don’t have any additional legal problems, Brown said, the case can be expunged after two years.

As he imposed his sentence, Brown said that if they were adults, they probably would be headed for state prison. He said they should “take this opportunity to really examine” themselves.

The resolution of the Pennsylvania case comes days after three teenagers in Tennessee sued Elon Musk’s xAI, claiming the company’s Grok tools morphed their real photos into explicitly sexual images. The high school students are seeking class-action status to represent what the lawsuit says are thousands of people who were similarly victimized as minors.

The scandal in Pennsylvania led to a student protest, criminal charges against the two teenagers and the departure of leaders at the school, which says it has about 600 students K-12, class sizes averaging just 12 kids, and “an endowment in excess of $25 million.”

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Nadeem Bezar, a Philadelphia lawyer who represents at least 10 of the victims, said Tuesday he expects to file a claim “against the school and anybody else we think has culpability in these deepfakes being created and disseminated.”

He said he has not yet seen the photos but expects the legal process to determine “exactly when and where and how the school knew, how the boys created these images, what platforms they used to create these images and how they were disseminated.”

As AI has become accessible and powerful, lawmakers across the country have passed laws aimed at barring deepfakes.

President Donald Trump signed the Take it Down Act last year, making it illegal to publish intimate images including deepfakes without consent, and requiring websites and social media sites to remove such material within 48 hours of being notified by a victim.

Forty-six states now have laws addressing deepfakes, with legislation introduced in the remaining four — Alaska, Missouri, New Mexico and Ohio — according to the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

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Associated Press writers Geoff Mulvihill in Haddonfield, New Jersey, and Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed.





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