Pennsylvania’s Senate on Wednesday approved a bill to encourage school districts to start a pilot program that effectively bans students’ use of cellphones during the school day in an effort to improve their mental health and academic performance.

The bill, which passed 45-5, would authorize grants to school districts to buy locking bags after the district creates a policy requiring students to leave their phones in such bags for the whole school day. It now goes to the state House for consideration.

The bill’s sponsor, Republican state Sen. Ryan Aument of Lancaster, said he hopes that limits on phone use will result in improvements in students’ mental health and academic performance.

“Kids spend so much time on social media and using their smartphones that it’s taking a toll on them mentally, emotionally and academically. Smartphone restrictions have proved successful in reversing these trends,” Aument said.

HARRISBURG, PA — Pennsylvania bars and restaurants soon will likely be able to offer patrons longer happy hours and combo meals that include alcoholic beverages.

Legislation that has passed the House and Senate would nearly double the weekly limit for happy hours from 14 to 24 hours. The bill, now awaiting Gov. Josh Shapiro’s signature, also would allow bars and restaurants to provide discounts on as many as two daily food and drink combination specials.

Additionally, it would permit the cost of up to two drinks to be included in the admission price for parties establishments sponsor for sporting and other special events.

Further changes would include making permanent the expanded outdoor seating that originated during the pandemic and allow employees to work in multiple licensed liquor establishments.

The provisions, included in the bill sponsored by Rep. Matt Gergely, D-Allegheny, is designed to assist bars and eateries still attempting to financially recover from the pandemic and aid them with overcoming persistent staffing challenges.

The bill was applauded by the Pennsylvania Licensed Beverage and Tavern Association.

“It’s well known that happy hours are used to pull customers into establishments through special drink offerings,” Chuck Moran, the industry organization’s executive director, said in a statement.

“By increasing the total hours per week, we’re hopeful that through creative marketing each establishment will be able to use this tool to attract more patrons.”

Bob Casey Jr. rode a wave of reform to the U.S. Senate in 2006, standing out with other Democrats who vowed to end a culture of scandal and self-dealing in Washington, D.C.

A fixture of Pennsylvania politics whose late father had served as governor, Casey unveiled an ethics plan at the restaurant formerly owned by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He later seethed over an ad in which his Republican opponent questioned his integrity.

Nearly two decades later, Casey faces a tough fight for a fourth term, along with accusations that friends and family have benefited from his political career. In a family with a brand name in Pennsylvania politics, several Casey siblings have seen their own politics-adjacent careers intersect with the senator’s.

There’s a brother who registered to lobby for a semiconductor manufacturer soon after Casey supported a bill to expand opportunities for the industry. There’s another brother whose law partner helps Casey recommend federal judges and whose firm’s employees have donated more than $225,000 to Casey’s campaigns, according to Federal Election Commission documents. And there’s a sister whose printing company has received more than a half-million dollars’ worth of work from Casey’s campaigns, records show.

Casey, 64, is not accused of breaking any laws or violating ethics rules. But GOP operatives working to unseat him in one of the country’s top Senate races this year are calling attention to those and other family ties. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has also compared Casey to President Joe Biden, whose family members have been accused of trading on their famous last name.

“It’s called the Casey Cartel,” the narrator says in an ad from the NRSC. “Because, like Biden, Bob Casey gets elected, and his family gets richer.”

The senator’s defenders point to a long commitment to ethics reform, including his crusade against influence peddling and revolving-door practices involving members of Congress, their staffers and Washington’s K Street lobbying firms. Elements of the plan Casey pushed as a candidate in 2006 made it into a bill signed into law by then-President George W. Bush.

Casey also voiced support eight years ago for former President Donald Trump’s “drain the swamp” push for a five-year lobbying ban on former executive branch officials. 

In a written statement for this article, Casey campaign manager Tiernan Donohue characterized the GOP messaging as “baseless attacks” and a “blatant attempt to distract” from potential liabilities for his Republican opponent, Dave McCormick. Donohue noted past media scrutiny over McCormick’s campaign finance practices, as well as Bridgewater Associates’ investments in Chinese companies during McCormick’s time running the hedge fund. McCormick has acknowledged his work at the hedge fund while campaigning on proposals for tougher restrictions on U.S. investments in China. 

“Senator Bob Casey is known across the Commonwealth for his commitment to high ethical standards and quality public service,” Donohue said in the statement.

The case the GOP is prosecuting against Casey mirrors a playbook that the party is using against other vulnerable Democrats this year with partisan control of the Senate up for grabs. 

Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, facing a challenge from former aerospace executive Tim Sheehy, has come under scrutiny for his relationships with lobbyists. Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is running against businessman Bernie Moreno in Ohio, faced questions in a HuffPost story this year about how his pro-labor record squares with support for a merger involving the Kroger grocery chain. Democrats, meanwhile, have branded McCormick and other GOP Senate candidates as wealthy elitists with unscrupulous business practices, from Sheehy’s work in aerial firefighting to Moreno’s days as a car salesman.

“Bob Casey and his family have displayed a pattern of corruption that should infuriate Pennsylvanians,” NRSC spokesperson Philip Letsou said. “Pennsylvanians are struggling to get by but career politician Bob Casey’s top priority seems to be enriching his family.” 

Defeating Casey this fall won’t be easy. He won each of his three Senate terms by comfortable margins and is respected across the aisle. McCormick, meanwhile, has been criticized for the time he spends at a rental home in Connecticut.

“I’m true to my core, a Keystone State guy. I’ve known the Casey family, and the pride in the Casey family in this state is huge,” Scott Hoeflich, who served as chief of staff to the late Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the former Republican who became a Democrat while serving with Casey, said in an interview. “Bob Casey Jr. is a great guy. … He’s always been an upstanding public servant with the highest integrity standards.”

Several of the Casey family ties that Republicans are scrutinizing have been covered by other news organizations in recent years. And some of the connections appear more coincidental or more at arm’s-length than others. None of the family members mentioned in this article responded to requests for comment.

Casey’s brother-in-law, Patrick Brier, registered in 2022 as a state lobbyist for Keystone First, a company that was being audited in a federal investigation of Medicaid managed care providers that Casey had called for in his role as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Aging. The connection was first reported by Broad + Liberty, a right-leaning Pennsylvania outlet. There is no record that Brier ever lobbied for the company at the federal level. The audit report, released six months after Brier began lobbying for the company, was critical of Keystone First, finding that the company “did not comply with Federal and State requirements” when denying dozens of requests for care or service. 

One of Casey’s brothers, Patrick Casey, registered to lobby the Senate on behalf of a semiconductor company in late 2022 — a move first reported by Politico. His disclosure statement noted that his work focused on U.S. semiconductor policy and implementation of the CHIPS and Science Act, which had passed earlier that year. In January, Patrick Casey’s firm reported that he was no longer lobbying for the client.

“Pat Casey is not lobbying Senator Casey’s office,” Casey spokesperson Mairead Lynn said in an emailed statement. “Senator Casey supported and voted for the 2007 law prohibiting family members from lobbying Senate offices, and he abides by that law.”

Away from the lobbying scene, Casey’s state and federal campaigns have spent nearly $600,000 with Universal Printing Co., the Scranton-area print shop run by the senator’s sister, Margi McGrath, who identifies herself as the company’s CEO and business owner, according to FEC records. McGrath and her husband, William, a Universal executive, have donated more than $50,000 to Casey’s campaigns and affiliated PACs over the years, records show. The New York Post first reported on Casey’s use of his sister as a campaign vendor last year.

Casey, who before being elected to the Senate served as a state auditor general and treasurer and lost a 2002 primary for governor, paid Universal more than $255,000 for work on those campaigns, according to state documents. The $325,000 his Senate fund has paid his sister’s firm accounts for a third of his campaign printing expenditures and roughly 15% of Universal’s $2.1 million in federal campaign work since 2005, records show. Universal’s political client list has included the Democratic National Committee and several presidential campaigns.

Hiring a relative for campaign services is legal, so long as the campaign pays fair market value for the services, said Kedric Payne, the vice president, general counsel and senior director for ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan voter advocacy group.

“In this situation where you have someone who not only has other clients who they provide these services for, but they seem to be providing legitimate services to that member, it would be difficult to argue that there is a violation,” said Payne, who saw no legal jeopardy in the other issues that Republicans have raised against Casey.

Casey has also forged close political ties with Ross Feller Casey, a personal injury law firm co-founded by his brother, Matt Casey. The firm’s employees have donated more than $225,000 to Casey’s campaigns since 2005, according to campaign finance disclosures first reported by the New York Post. The firm also contributed $100,000 in 2017 to PA Values, a super PAC that at the time was backing Casey’s re-election campaign. The firm has not donated since then to the super PAC, which remains active, having recently produced an ad that uses former President Donald Trump’s words in a misleading way to discourage voting by mail.

Sen. Casey has called on one of Ross Feller Casey’s other founding partners, Robert Ross, frequently over the years to lead committees that screen candidates for federal judicial nominations, according to news releases from his office. Senators from the sitting president’s party typically have the most influence when recommending nominees. During the Obama administration, Casey continued a tradition, established under his Republican predecessors, of running a bipartisan vetting process that gave his GOP counterparts the ability to pick screening committee members.

Ross did not respond to questions for this article.

Defenders of the process, including Republicans, assert that it has yielded quality judges. Former Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican who succeeded Specter, has spoken highly of the work he and Casey did together.

“The bipartisan, nonpartisan nominating committee has been and is the gold standard for how senators should vet and nominate candidates to the U.S. courts,” Hoeflich, the former Specter aide, said when asked about GOP attacks on the process. “This is politics at its worst — trying to manipulate the information to create false narratives and distract people from the real issues.”

Others offered differing views. One source familiar with Toomey’s role in the process recalled it as being more tilted in Casey’s favor during the Obama years and argued that Toomey’s picks for the screening panels had more serious legal chops, while a former Toomey staffer had a more favorable recollection of Casey’s work. Both requested anonymity to share their insights.

“We were proud of the process,” the second source said. “I think that bears out when you look at all the judgeships we were able to fill in a pretty timely manner, and they were all high caliber.”

A former senior staffer to former Sen. Rick Santorum, the Republican whom Casey unseated in 2006, said GOP operatives are making “much ado about nothing” with their attacks.

“I’ve never, ever questioned Bob Casey’s ethics, even when he was our opponent in that ’06 election,” said the staffer, who requested anonymity to share candid opinions about GOP messaging. “I never found the Caseys to be anything other than stand-up people.”