The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Friday announced that it would be closing its historic Frank Furness/George Hewitt-designed building on North Broad Street for the next year. PAFA is undertaking renovation work that “focuses on upgrading the HVAC system,” according to a news release.
PAFA will close the building to the general public beginning July 8, a spokesperson said. Plans call for it to “reopen to the public in the fall of 2025, in advance of the building’s 150th anniversary in 2026,” according to the announcement.
The museum/school has been undergoing a series of broad institutional changes, including the elimination of its degree programs and changes to its buildings. Earlier this year leaders discussed a $10 million replacement of the HVAC system.
Back then, PAFA president and CEO Eric G. Pryor also spoke of a larger project of renovations, repairs, and addressing deferred maintenance, with a price tag of about $25 million. It was unclear Friday whether that project was still happening. A PAFA spokesperson said no further details were available.
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Pryor said several months ago that PAFA had received an anonymous $4 million “angel gift” to help pay for the new HVAC system and that another $1,128,477 toward the project had been raised. “But we’re going to need to find additional angels,” he said at the time.
He also spoke of selling naming rights to the building at Broad and Cherry Streets, which PAFA refers to as its Historic Landmark Building. “Someone could put their name on it for the right price. It is an amazing opportunity,” he said.
While the building will be closed to the public as of July 8, it will remain open for summer camps until renovations begin Aug. 10. During the closure, PAFA’s Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building will remain open with “a robust slate of exhibitions and public programs,” the announcement stated.
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.”
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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.”
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.”
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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 (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.
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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.
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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.
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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.