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Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro calls for legalization of recreational marijuana

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Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro calls for legalization of recreational marijuana


PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is calling for the legalization of recreational marijuana, but not everyone is on board with the idea.

The Commonwealth’s neighboring states, except for West Virginia, have legalized cannabis. 

During his budget address, Governor Shapiro shared details of how he wants to blaze a new trail in Pennsylvania.

“It’s time to catch up. I ask you to come together and send a bill to my desk a bill that legalizes marijuana,” Governor Shapiro said.

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The governor told KDKA-TV that legalizing cannabis would bring in $250 million in tax revenue each year.

Some groups want to see this idea go up in smoke. The Pennsylvania Family Institute’s director of communications, Dan Bartkowiak, said there’s a lot of talk of projected revenue, but no one’s talking about the variety of costs and expenses that would come with legalizing recreational marijuana or recognizing how it could harm families.

“We have a medical program right now in Pennsylvania so folks can access marijuana in a legal way. Yet when it comes to recreational use, this is commercialization, this is high potency, 99 percent THC being advertised, marketed, increasing its accessibility and that leads to harm,” Bartkowiak said.

The Pennsylvania Cannabis Coalition commends the governor for joining others who believe the legalization of adult-use marijuana would create budding opportunities and deliver more than just revenue. 

The organization sent a statement to KDKA-TV that said, in part, “Governor Shapiro’s leadership on this issue will deliver more than just revenue to the commonwealth. The establishment of a well-regulated adult-use cannabis market built on the experience and infrastructure of the current medical marijuana program will add thousands of jobs, reap millions of dollars in investments for Pennsylvania, and stop the revenue bleed to neighboring adult-use states.”

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Bartkowiak believes the stakes are just too high, especially for young people. He’s worried teen marijuana use would rise.

“It’s an entirely different thing to say we want to force your community to have pot shops selling 99 percent THC and flavored vapes and all these types of products that appeal to children, advertise and market that and have the state encourage more addictive use of that because they are going to make a profit off of it,” Bartkowiak said.

During the budget address, Governor Shapiro also asked for legislative relief for those ever convicted of marijuana use.

“Oftentimes we think of this, we don’t want to throw someone in jail for a small amount of marijuana,” Bartkowiak said. 

The Pennsylvania Cannabis Coalition also told KDKA-TV, “Pennsylvania Cannabis Coalition looks forward to working with the Shapiro administration, key advocates in the Pennsylvania legislature, and stakeholders to craft a regulatory system that legalizes the sale of recreational cannabis through a well-regulated system that assures safe products for adult consumers, reduces the impact of the illicit market, rights the wrongs of cannabis prohibition and allows the commonwealth to quickly experience revenue.”

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Senate President Kim Ward told KDKA-TV that the Republican-controlled State Senate is a long way from approving legalization. Ward suggests it took years to pass medical marijuana and the issue of expanding cannabis use is not something you can make happen right away.



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Pennsylvania

Multiple Reports Of Fireball Sighting In Eastern PA Skies

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Multiple Reports Of Fireball Sighting In Eastern PA Skies


Multiple people in the Philadelphia region reported seeing a fireball in the sky Tuesday.

The American Meteor Society listed the event in its meteor sighting database, saying it had received nearly 150 reports from across the region, including in Eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut about the fireball.

According to the database, reports of the fireball came in from Doylestown, Lansdale, Willow Grove, King of Prussia and more.

Nick Brucato of Whiting shared video of it in The Pine Barrens group on Facebook and with Patch. “Took this video as fast as I could today in Whiting at 2:34 PM. Heard the loud boom minutes later,” he said.

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“We were out on our deck and my wife saw it,” a Waretown resident said on the Tri-County Scanner News post. “She said it was bright white ball and then it broke apart into several pieces and then it was gone. Then the sonic boom hit!”

A meteor is the flash of moving light that becomes visible when a meteoroid — a chunk of an asteroid or a comet — hits the Earth’s atmosphere, according to the American Meteor Society.

In mid-March another meteor was the likely cause of a large boom that was felt over parts of Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio.

The National Weather Service in Pittsburgh said it received reports from numerous people across Western Pennsylvania of the tremendous noise and a fireball in the sky on March 17.

A weather service employee caught the cause of the boom and the weather service posted it. MORE: Meteor Causes Tremendous Boom Over Parts Of PA

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With reporting by Karen Wall





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Pa. data centers: How lawmakers are responding, from electricity and water use to tax breaks

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Pa. data centers: How lawmakers are responding, from electricity and water use to tax breaks


What data centers think of Matzie’s bill

The Data Center Coalition is watching bills like Matzie’s closely. The coalition represents companies including Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, Anthropic, CoreWeave and OpenAI.

Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy with the group, said the coalition is open to special utility rates for large electricity users that force these customers to pay for any grid upgrades their operations require while insulating other ratepayers from these costs. But the group opposes bills like Matzie’s that apply specifically to data centers, rather than to all electricity users over a certain size.

“If it’s a transmission line or if it’s a substation, if it’s a generating asset, of course, data centers should pay for that and will pay for that,” Diorio said.

But “no specific end user should be singled out for disparate treatment,” he said.

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The coalition also opposes mandating data centers to curtail energy use during times of peak demand or bring their own new, clean power, preferring instead incentives that reward data centers for voluntarily doing so, Diorio said.

“Things like having to take interruptible service … you could see projects move across to a different state line where they didn’t have that requirement, while doing nothing to solve the ultimate shortfall within [the regional grid],” he said.

Pennsylvania lobbying records show the Data Center Coalition spent $19,632 on lobbying at the state level on the topic of “energy, information technology and utilities” during the last three months of 2025.

“Pennsylvania is a very strong, growing and important market for the data center industry,” Diorio said. “We understand concerns, and we want to be an engaged stakeholder to address those concerns, but also keep the state strong for development. And I think we can do that — I think we can find a good middle ground.”

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Parents charged after toddler injured by wolf at Pennsylvania zoo

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Parents charged after toddler injured by wolf at Pennsylvania zoo




Parents charged after toddler injured by wolf at Pennsylvania zoo – CBS News

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The parents of a 17-month-old child are facing endangerment charges after the toddler stuck his hand under the fence of a wolf enclosure at a Pennsylvania zoo. Tom Hanson reports.

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