Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania school choice program criticized as ‘discriminatory’ as lawmakers return to session
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Public school advocates in Pennsylvania are criticizing publicly funded programs that help underwrite tuition at private and religious schools, saying many of the eligible schools discriminate by cherry-picking the students they want to teach.
Pennsylvania’s Capitol is already gripped by a broader and mostly partisan debate over how to respond to a judge’s ruling that the state’s system of funding public school, which depends largely on property taxes, unconstitutionally discriminates against students in the state’s poorer districts.
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With Democrats controlling the House and Republicans controlling the Senate, lawmakers returned to session on Monday with school funding still an unresolved area of contention. Democrats are pushing for billions of additional dollars for public schools, but Republicans are pressing to expand taxpayer funding for private schools — including through programs that provides tax credits to businesses to defray the cost of private-school tuition.
As negotiations continue, the nonprofit Education Voters of Pennsylvania is calling for greater scrutiny. The nonprofit said it studied about 160 of the 800 schools eligible to receive donations offset by tax credits, called the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit, and found that all have policies that discriminate on the basis of religion, LGBTQ+ status, disability or another reason.
It is the opposite of “school choice,” said the nonprofit’s director, Susan Spicka. “It is schools that are choosing students.”
The money that goes to this program, as well as the Educational Improvement Tax Credits program, undermines Pennsylvania’s capacity to adequately fund public schools, she said.
The report found that the private schools — many of which are also religious — have policies that would expel pregnant students or have them go through Christian counseling; reject students who are part of or support the LGBTQ+ community; and openly state that they cannot serve students with disabilities.
Republican leaders who support the legislation said the report manifests “baseless accusations,” arguing that audits are required annually and the programs support poorer students.
“Empowering parents to decide the best options for their child’s education remains a top priority for Senate Republicans,” Senate Majority Leader Sen. Joe Pittman, R-Indiana, said in a statement. “Every child should have access to educational opportunities.”
Over the past 20 years, the state has earmarked about $2 billion to the tax credit programs, with a bulk of it coming in the last five years.
The programs enable businesses to donate up to $750,000 a year to a qualifying school or educational organization and shield up to 90% of that amount in revenue from state taxes.
Of the schools analyzed, 100% of them included a policy that could be used to discriminate against students, the report found. Those schools either had outright discriminatory statements on their website, or through application requirements, like requiring letters from clergy or details about where families attended church, or inquiring about students’ disabilities and requiring testing before admission, according to the report.
The report found that of the schools studied, one in five had policies that discriminate against LGBTQ+ people and 13% had “punitive” measures against pregnancy and abortion.
Parents often have little recourse when they come up against such policies, said Sharon Ward, policy advisor for Education Law Center.
The Capitol’s education funding tug-of-war is holding up the state’s spending plan. The GOP-controlled Senate has pushed for more funds to go to tax credit scholarships and to create a new school voucher program, which would allow students in low-performing districts to use public dollars to attend private schools. The voucher program has the backing of Gov. Josh Shapiro — making him unique among Democratic governors — but opposition from the Democrats who control the House.
House Democrats have criticized such efforts under the shadow of the court’s February decision, but their attempts to pour more money into public education have met a chilly reception in the Senate, deadlocking the chambers.
— Brooke Schultz is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
A man was tased by police after attempting to enter the press area of a Donald Trump rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania on Friday.
The failed storming of the press corral came after Trump criticized CNN’s interview with Kamala Harris as overly deferential, according to the Associated Press. In a video shared by CBS News’ Taureen Small, the man can be seen climbing the riser before being pulled down by a gaggle of sheriff’s deputies.
In the clip, Trump supporters can be heard jeering the man, with one attendee shouting, “Cut his head off.” Attendees also cheered when police escorted the man away, leading the president to remark from the stage “Is there anywhere that’s more fun to be than a Trump rally?”
Trump’s comments follow his campaign’s line of attack against the interview, which drew 6 million viewers to the cable news outlet. Senior campaign adviser Jason Miller told Newsmax earlier this week that Harris didn’t “look presidential.”
“There’s a certain threshold that you have to meet,” he said. “Can you lead this country? Other candidates in the past have had it. I don’t see that with Kamala Harris.”
The former president’s speech was full of inflammatory language directed at Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. He repeatedly referred to the vice president as “Comrade Kamala” and told attendees that she wants to “outlaw your car and truck and force you to buy electric vehicles” as part of a “radical left war on Pennsylvania.”
Trump worked blue at certain points throughout the rally, which was held less than 80 miles from the site of a rally where he was nearly assassinated in July. He told the crowd that “every place [Harris] has touched has turned to s**t.”
A chaotic scene—and police intervention—played out during Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on Friday, just 75 miles from the town of Butler, where a would-be assassin shot at the former president last month, killing one rallygoer and injuring two others.
As Trump spoke onstage, a man in the audience attempted to enter the cordoned-off press pen, according to multiple reports and videos from the scene. The individual was able to breach a barrier of bicycle racks surrounding the pen, and was climbing a riser on which reporters and cameramen were stationed when he was tackled and subdued by security officers and law enforcement officials, who eventually tased him.
Law enforcement officers detain a rallygoer who tried to climb onto the press riser during a campaign event for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on Aug. 30, 2024.
Brian Snyder/Reuters
The unnamed man was subsequently taken into custody, the Johnstown Police Department told the Daily Beast on Friday night, but has subsequently been released. No information concerning his identity or potential motive has yet been made public; speculation on social media has presented him as either an incensed Trump supporter or a radicalized counter-protester. Pick your poison!
(The Daily Beast has reached out to the Johnstown Police Department and the Cambria County Sheriff’s Department for further comment.)
At the time of the incident, Trump was criticizing the media for its coverage of his campaign and the election more broadly—and, in particular, attacking CNN’s recent interview with his opponent, Kamala Harris.
As the man was detained and removed from the rally, the former president quipped, “Is there anywhere that’s more fun to be than a Trump rally?” per the Associated Press.
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania Democrats quietly change website page recruiting poll watchers after GOP called out ‘disinformation’
Pennsylvania Democrats quietly updated their website Thursday night after Republicans accused them of publishing “misinformation” on the site’s recruitment page, which appeared to be enlisting out-of-state poll watchers in violation of the battleground state’s election law.
The Republican National Committee sent a letter to Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt earlier in the day Thursday, pointing out that the Pennsylvania Dems’ “Voter Protection” page on their website said that poll watchers on Election Day “must be physically present in PA for their shift, but do not necessarily have to be PA voters.”
That language contradicted Pennsylvania election law going back to 1937, which states, “Each watcher so appointed must be a qualified registered elector of the county in which the election district for which the watcher was appointed is located.”
“The misinformation on the PA Dems’ website threatens the integrity of November’s general election,” the RNC’s letter to Schmidt reads, explaining that the Democratic Party cannot be allowed to “flood polling places with unqualified out-of-state poll watchers.”
The Pennsylvania Department of State told The Post that poll watchers are “specifically defined as individuals appointed by candidates or political parties to observe inside a polling place on Election Day,” not outside.
In other words, Pennsylvania poll watchers must not only be Pennsylvania voters, but they can also only serve in the polling place in the county they are registered to vote.
That’s a far cry from what Pennsylvania Democrats were telling potential volunteers, thus sparking Republicans’ complaints of “misinformation.”
In a statement to The Post on Friday, the Pennsylvania Dems clapped back at their Republican opponents.
“Our Party takes our democracy seriously, unlike the MAGA Republicans that are busy launching bad faith attacks on voters and our volunteers,” said Mitch Kates, PA Dems’ Executive Director.
“Poll watchers may be located inside or outside of polling locations, and outside poll watchers can be volunteers from any state,” Kates said. “We have always made this distinction in assigning our volunteers on Election Day.”
But Pennsylvania Democrats didn’t make this distinction on their recruitment page – until it was changed Thursday night.
Still, the Republicans are urging Schmidt, who was appointed by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, to correct the PA Democrats’ “misinformation and disinformation” on the state’s “Fact-Checking Election Claims” page, and order them to “cease and desist” from publishing inaccurate election information.
Both Democrats and Republicans recruit voter protection volunteers from out of state, and both parties are recruiting armies of volunteers to monitor polling places to make sure their team’s ballots are counted, and contest questionable ballots on the opposing side.
An Emerson poll released Thursday showed Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump tied at 48% support in the Keystone State.
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