Pennsylvania
Hikers, others asked to watch for signs of escaped Pennsylvania inmate
YOUNGSVILLE, Pa. (AP) — Authorities are asking hikers and others to keep an eye out for signs of provisions or campsites that might have been left by a homicide suspect who used bed sheets to escape from a northwestern Pennsylvania jail earlier this month.
Michael Burham, 34, fled the Warren County jail in the late evening hours of July 6 by climbing on exercise equipment, going through a window and scaling down a rope fashioned from jail bedding, authorities have said. He was being held on $1 million bail and was charged with kidnapping, burglary and other counts. Authorities have said he should be considered armed and dangerous.
Lt. Col. George Bivens, the deputy commissioner of Operations for the Pennsylvania State Police, said investigators believe Burham, who taught himself survival skills and had military reserve training, remains in the area, and they have found “small stockpiles or campsites” and believe some are associated with him.
By pursuing funding equity in court, financially challenged Pennsylvania districts are following a well-traveled school reform path.
A homicide suspect who used bed sheets to escape from jail last week continues to evade capture. But authorities said Friday they believe Michael Burham may be growing “desperate” as he tries to live with little support while apparently camping in rough terrain in the woods of northwestern Pennsylva
Authorities are seeking information about a drone that may have been operating near a northwestern Pennsylvania jail before the escape of a homicide suspect last week, and they say they have increasing concerns that the escaped prisoner may be armed.
Authorities searching for a homicide suspect who used bedsheets to escape from a northwestern Pennsylvania jail last week say items found in the last 24 hours lead them to believe he is still in the area.
“As people hike or otherwise spend time in the woods this weekend and beyond, we ask that they notify us if they find any stored packages or apparently abandoned campsites,” Bivens said Saturday afternoon. He said authorities aren’t recommending cancelation of outdoor activities, but people encountering police activity are asked to keep their distance.
Bivens said investigators had concluded that a brief video displayed the day before and believed to have been Burham was not in fact him. The video, apparently taken by a home security camera, showed a man walking on a residential street, and Bivens declined to say exactly where or when it was taken.
“We still have strong reason to believe he is in the area, but we now know not to rely solely on that particular video as we attempt to determine his physical condition or other things that we might from any particular video,” Bivens said. The person appeared to have a limp, and Bivens said he still believes Burham has a similar injury.
Bivens renewed a call for people in northwestern Pennsylvania and western New York to regularly to review doorbell and surveillance camera footage, and also once again urged people to make sure vehicles, sheds, homes and anything else useful to a fugitive is secured.
“He is no doubt becoming more desperate and will attempt to acquire the things he needs to survive,” he said. “We ask that people in this area, either residents or visitors, pay particular attention to small items they may discover missing — a tarp, blanket, clothing items, lighter or matches, food etc. — from their campsite, storage sheds and garages.”
Bivens said officials have not yet located a drone some people reported hearing near the jail just before the escape, although they are aware of other drones operated during that day or evening a few blocks from the jail. Officials have said they believe Burham may have been receiving aid from someone, citing the stockpiles.
Bivens said morale among the searchers remains high despite the effort entering its second week.
“We’ve been down this road before, and our people know that it sometimes takes time to find somebody,” he said. “It’s a vast area, very difficult terrain.”
In September 2014 in Pennsylvania, a manhunt of more than a month and a half ensued after a gunman killed a state trooper and permanently disabled another in an ambush outside the Blooming Grove barracks. Eric Frein, of Canadensis, also described as a self-taught survivalist, was captured after a 48-day search. He was convicted and sentenced to death, though Pennsylvania has a moratorium on executions.
More than 200 state, federal and local officers are taking part in the search for Burham, and up to $22,000 in reward money has been posted, Bivens said.
District Attorney Jason Schmidt, of Chautauqua County, New York, said in June that Burham was the prime suspect in the May 11 killing of Kala Hodgkin, 34, and a related arson in Jamestown, New York. Authorities also accused him of abducting an older couple in Pennsylvania while trying to evade capture before his arrest in South Carolina. New York officials said they opted to let Pennsylvania handle the initial prosecution as they probe the killing and arson.
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania elections judge changes his tune after vote counting concerns
Pennsylvania’s Jay Schneider said he started volunteering as a poll worker in 2022 due to his own skepticism about how votes were counted.
During the last presidential election between Democrat Joe Biden and then-President Donald Trump, a spike in mail-in ballots due to the Covid-19 pandemic led to some of his concerns.
Schneider, who now serves as judge of elections for Chester County, Pennsylvania, recalled his feelings from four years ago to Newsweek in an interview Monday at the Caln Township building.
“I just find it hard to believe that what the 3,400 counties in the country that all of them are prepared for this giant influx mail-in ballots,” said Schneider, a registered Republican, who told Newsweek that he votes for ‘people over party.’ “I think there could have been some shenanigans.”
Heading into Election Day on Tuesday, many voters, especially Republicans, continue to express similar concerns.
According to an October survey from The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, only one quarter of Republicans have “quite a bit” of trust in the nationwide vote counting. Those poll numbers improve for local elections officials, such as Scheider, as half of Republicans have a “great deal” or “quite a bit” of trust that municipal officials will count votes accurately.
Just last week, authorities in two Pennsylvania counties flagged thousands of potentially fraudulent voter registration applications, prompting Trump to stoke fears of fraud in the Keystone State. However, there was no evidence the applications have led or will lead to illegal votes.
Shneider says, with two years of experience an election worker, his “opinion has changed.” And while he says he can’t speak for election offices nationwide; he doesn’t see evidence of voter fraud happening in his own county.
“It’s very transparent,” said Schneider. “Here at the polls, we have Democrats and Republicans. Do you think one’s going to let the other get away with something? No. That’s the same thing at the county, plus everything is videotaped. You as a resident can just walk in here and watch things happen. It’s not hidden in anyway.”
As the fifth-most populous state, Pennsylvania holds 19 critical electoral votes, making it the largest of the seven key swing states in national elections.
Polls show Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in a dead heat in the Keystone State. According to polling expert Nate Silver’s calculations, the candidate who wins Pennsylvania has more than a 90 percent chance of winning the election.
Schneider said he voted by mail this year to tryout a new method of casting his ballot. “Just to make sure what the front-end looked like when you do that,” he said.
“This election is crazy,” Schneider said. “I have no idea what it’s going to be like because early voting — there’s a lot of that going on. But I have eight people (working the polls) this year. I never had that many people before.”
Pennsylvania Poll Workers Gear Up for Election Day
This year, Schneider’s Election Day will start at 5 a.m.
Schneider will head to the local Wawa, get a gallon of coffee, then report to the Caln Township building in Thorndale. Along with the poll workers, Schneider will rearrange the furniture so that there’s designated areas for people to line up, grab their ballots, vote, and submit into the sealed ballot machine.
Schneider has a binder full of color-coded sheets that indicate what to do in different situations with voters, including additional paperwork for provisional ballots.
“It’s like our cheat sheet for the poll work,” Schneider said.
This year, Schneider said his team does not need to hand count ballots on top of the machine’s work. Throughout the day, the voting machine will be checked multiple times to ensure the ballots that are entered match with voters.
He said with a camera, a Democrat and a Republican there, “nobody’s going to mess with that.”
“For me personally. I know it’s legit. And talking to the county and other people that do the same job has everybody confident about what’s happening here, at least in Chester County,” Schneider said. “I don’t feel that there’s any issues here. I hope there aren’t any anywhere else.”
Election Day is tomorrow. Follow Newsweek’s live blog for the latest updates.
Follow Newsweek’s Monica Sager on Twitter @monicasager3 for more election updates from the key swing state of Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania
VP Kamala Harris, former President Donald Trump put focus on Pennsylvania on eve of 2024 election
What to Know
- The focus is on Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes as both Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris work to get out the vote the day before Election Day.
- Harris will spend all of Monday in Pennsylvania, whose 19 electoral votes offer the largest prize among the states expected to determine the Electoral College outcome.
- Donald Trump makes four stops in three states, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan. He’ll end in Grand Rapids, where he completed his first two campaigns.
A presidential campaign that has careened through a felony trial, an incumbent president being pushed off the ticket and multiple assassination attempts comes down to a final push across a handful of states on the eve of Election Day.
Kamala Harris will spend all of Monday in Pennsylvania, whose 19 electoral votes offer the largest prize among the states expected to determine the Electoral College outcome. The vice president and Democratic nominee will visit working-class areas including Allentown and end with a late-night Philadelphia rally that includes Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey.
Allentown public schools were closed due to the Kamala rally that’s “expected to draw large crowds, heavy traffic, and potential disruptions that may impact the safety and security of our students and staff,” the Lehigh Valley school district said.
Donald Trump plans four rallies in three states, beginning in Raleigh, North Carolina and stopping twice in Pennsylvania with events in Reading and Pittsburgh. The Republican nominee and former president ends his campaign the way he ended the first two, with a late Monday night event in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
About 77 million Americans already have voted early, but Harris and Trump are pushing to turn out many millions more supporters on Tuesday. Either result on Election Day will yield a historic outcome.
A Trump victory would make him the first incoming president to have been indicted and convicted of a felony, after his hush-money trial in New York. He will gain the power to end other federal investigations pending against him. Trump would also become the second president in history to win non-consecutive White House terms, after Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century.
Harris is vying to become the first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office, four years after she broke the same barriers in national office by becoming President Joe Biden’s second in command.
The vice president ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket after Biden’s disastrous performance in a June debate set into motion his withdrawing from the race. That was just one of a series of convulsions that have hit this year’s campaign.
Trump survived by millimeters a would-be assassin’s bullet at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. His Secret Service detail foiled a second attempt in September when a gunman had set up a rifle as Trump golfed at one of his courses in Florida.
Harris, 60, has played down the historic nature of her candidacy, which materialized only after the 81-year-old president ended his reelection bid after his June debate against the 78-year-old Trump accentuated questions about Biden’s age.
Instead, Harris has pitched herself as a generational change, emphasized her support for abortion rights after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision ending the constitutional right to abortion services, and regularly noted the former president’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Assembling a coalition ranging from progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to Republican former Vice President Dick Cheney, Harris has called Trump a threat to democracy and late in the campaign even embraced the critique that Trump is accurately described as a “fascist.”
Heading into Monday, Harris has mostly stopped mentioning Trump. She is promising to solve problems and seek consensus, while sounding an almost exclusively optimistic tone reminiscent of her campaign’s opening days when she embraced “the politics of joy” and the campaign theme “Freedom.”
“From the very start, our campaign has not been about being against something, it is about being for something,” Harris said Sunday evening at Michigan State University.
Trump, renewing his “Make America Great Again” and “America First” slogans, has made his hard-line approach to immigration and withering criticisms of Harris and Biden the anchors of his argument for a second administration. He’s hammered Democrats for an inflationary economy, and he’s pledged to lead an economic “golden age,” end international conflicts and seal the U.S. southern border.
But Trump also has veered often into grievances over being prosecuted after trying to overturn Biden’s victory and repeatedly denigrated the country he wants to lead again as a “failed nation.” As recently as Sunday, he renewed his false claims that U.S. elections are rigged against him, mused about violence against journalists and said he “shouldn’t have left” the White House in 2021 — dark turns that have overshadowed another anchor of his closing argument: “Kamala broke it. I will fix it.”
The election is likely to be decided across seven states. Trump won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016 only to see them flip to Biden in 2020. North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada add the Sun Belt swath of the presidential battleground map.
Trump won North Carolina twice and lost Nevada twice. He won Arizona and Georgia in 2016 but saw them slip to Democrats in 2020.
Harris’ team has projected confidence in recent days, pointing to a large gender gap in early voting data and research showing late-deciding voters have broken her way. They also believe in the strength of their campaign infrastructure. This weekend, the Harris campaign had more than 90,000 volunteers helping turn out voters — and knocked on more than 3 million doors across the battleground states. Still, Harris aides have insisted she remains the underdog.
Trump’s team has projected confidence, as well, arguing that the former president’s populist appeal will attract younger and working-class voters across racial and ethnic lines. The idea is that Trump can amass an atypical Republican coalition, even as other traditional GOP blocks — notably college-educated voters — become more Democratic.
Pennsylvania
Trump campaign rallies across Pennsylvania as Election Day approaches
PENNSYLVANIA (WPVI) — The Trump campaign rallied in two counties across Pennsylvania on Sunday as they tried to garner more support in the critical swing state before voters cast their ballots.
“A very, very special hello to Pennsylvania. What a great place,” former President Donald Trump said to a crowd of supporters at the Lancaster Airport in Lititz.
“November 5 will be the most important day in the history of our country, and together we will make America powerful again,” said Trump.
Trump spoke about strengthening the country as president while taking aim at the Democratic Party and journalists.
RELATED | With Election Day nearing, candidates continue campaigning across Pennsylvania
At one point, he referred to the bulletproof glass surrounding him and said he wouldn’t mind if someone shot through the reporters.
“We have this piece of glass here, but all we have over here is the fake news. And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news, and I don’t mind that so much,” he noted.
Trump’s campaign team defended his remarks by saying, “he was making a joke.”
In Delaware County, Senator JD Vance took the stage at Sun Center Studios in Aston.
“Pennsylvania, are we ready to take this country in a different direction? Are we ready to make Donald Trump the next president of the United States?” said Vance.
YOUR VOICE, YOUR VOTE | Check out 6abc’s Voter Guide for the upcoming presidential election
“I think a lot of energy is on Trump’s side; seems like the momentum is on Trump’s side,” said Ron Poliquin who drove to the event from Dover, Delaware.
Vance focused on key issues including the economy, immigration, border security, and crime.
“I feel like Trump and Vance really do care about the everyday person and actual Americans and not their personal agenda,” said Maria Poliquin from Dover, Delaware.
“Here is my message to Kamala Harris: We are not garbage for thinking that you’ve done a bad job, but in two days, we’re going to take out the trash in Washington, D.C.,” said Vance.
Trump will hold four more rallies on Monday before Election Day. He’ll start in North Carolina, then head to Reading and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania before ending the day in Michigan.
The Harris campaign will also be in Philadelphia on Monday for a massive Get Out the Vote concert on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway the night before Election Day 2024.
Kamala Harris’ campaign is hosting the concert, which is set to begin at 5 p.m. Monday.
The event is expected to have performances or remarks by DJ Cassidy, Fat Joe, Freeway and Just Blaze, Lady Gaga, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Ricky Martin, The Roots, Jazmine Sullivan and Adam Blackstone, and Oprah Winfrey.
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