Connect with us

Pennsylvania

Trump’s Pennsylvania win fueled by economic concerns among Latino, working-class voters

Published

on

Trump’s Pennsylvania win fueled by economic concerns among Latino, working-class voters


Pennsylvania barbershop owner and second-generation American Ronald Corales, whose father immigrated to the U.S from Peru, voted for President-elect Donald Trump.

Democrats expected to do well with Latino voters, who now make up about 20% of the U.S. population, but Mr. Trump made gains with Latino voters both nationally and in key battleground states in the 2024 election. Corales’ vote boiled down, in part, to the economy. He wasn’t alone.

“A lot of the Latinos are working-class people,” he said. “They have families. You know, they help their families, even outside the country as well.”

Did Democrats take the Latino vote for granted?

Northampton County, where Corales lives and works, went for former President Barack Obama in 2012 and then to Mr. Trump in 2016. Mr. Biden flipped it back in 2020 and then Trump won it again in 2024. Latinos are the fastest-growing community in the county. Nationwide, Trump’s Election Day support jumped 14 points among Latinos. 

Advertisement

Corales’ immigrant father was so thrilled to be in America that he named his son after President Ronald Reagan. Today, Corales said he finds some common ground with Mr. Trump, even on immigration.

Ronald Corales
Ronald Corales

60 Minutes


“And hopefully President Trump will bring some kind of legalization to those immigrants because there’s still a lot of good people out there,” he said. “That they’re willing to work and continue dreaming with the American dream.”

Second and third-generation Latino families in the working and middle class are very sensitive to inflation, prices and the situation at the border, according to Leslie Sanchez, a Republican political analyst and contributor to CBS News. 

Advertisement

“Those two pressures together created a community which wanted change,” Sanchez said. “And they fundamentally felt, if you talk to them, that the Democratic Party had left them.”

The Democratic party “absolutely” took the Latino vote for granted, Sanchez said.

“I would think the party of my parents, the party of my grandparents, just assumed that Latinos, as the community grew, and our population grew, that we would just naturally fall in line with the Democratic Party,” Sanchez said. “And in the last 10 years about 10 percent more Hispanic Americans have moved into the middle class, they are much more sensitive to these economic issues. We live on the margins still so small ripples in inflation really have a dramatic impact.”

“Egg-flation” helps Trump win

Despite a generally healthy economy, many Americans, frustrated with high prices, voted for Mr. Trump in 2024. According to the CBS MoneyWatch price tracker, since 2019, the average price of a dozen eggs has risen 176%, the price of a loaf of bread jumped 52%, and a pound of chicken breast is up 36%. Overall, prices in the U.S. jumped 22% between January 2020 and September of this year.

Pennsylvania pollster Chris Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College, said many voters are focused on housing and grocery prices. 

Advertisement

“I can’t tell you how many times when I talk to people about elections this year, they referenced eggs and the price of eggs,” he said. 

At the Nazareth Diner near Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the average tab is now $38, up from $24 in 2020. Manager Roz Werkheiser grew up in a Democratic household.

“My mother used to always say, got to vote Democrat. You know, they’re for the poor people,’” she said. 

Nazareth Diner manager Roz Werkheiser
Nazareth Diner manager Roz Werkheiser

60 Minutes

Advertisement


Inflation, and interest rates are falling while wages are going up, but Werkheiser said she isn’t feeling it. 

“Everybody I talk to, nobody’s wages went up,” she said. “But we had four years of this. I mean, four years. Gas was super high. Yes, it just went down now, but what, the past four, three and a half years, it was up.”

Trump voters trust economic conditions will improve under the president-elect, Anthony Salvanto, CBS News executive director of elections and surveys, said. They use the COVID-19 pandemic as an economic benchmark. 

“The party in power is going to get blamed by a certain portion of the electorate for economic conditions that they don’t like,” Salvanto said. “And sometimes it’s just as simple as that.”

Lack of enthusiasm among Democratic voters, focus on the wrong issues

The count is ongoing, but Vice President Kamala Harris is on pace to be several million votes short of where Mr. Biden was in 2020.

Advertisement

“The Harris campaign lost the turnout game in many respects. We all knew going in that one of the keys here were people who don’t always vote, new voters, people who skipped the election in 2020,” Salvanto said. “The Trump campaign did a better job than the Harris campaign at turning them out. Those 2020 non-voters broke for Donald Trump.”

Her turnout failed even among women voters who the campaign hoped would turn out because of issues like abortion.

“They thought they would do better with women. They did not,” Salvanto said. “They thought that the abortion issue would drive more people to the Harris side. It did not.”

Democrat Susan Wild, Northampton County’s representative in Congress, has served since 2018 and, on Tuesday, lost by 1.2% to Republican Ryan Mackenzie, a Trump disciple who questioned the 2020 election. She’s been thinking about what’s behind Democratic losses.

Susan Wild
Rep. Susan Wild

Advertisement

60 Minutes


“If you are struggling to pay your rent or feed your kids, you don’t have the privilege of thinking about things like LGBTQ rights. Unless you’ve got somebody in your own family that’s personally affected, you don’t have the luxury of thinking about reproductive rights,” she said. “Unfortunately, I think our party needs to figure out that not everybody is just thinking about these very important social issues.”

Wild says the party should spend more time in places like Pennsylvania’s Northampton County and Lehigh Valley, and speak to people like her constituents. She also acknowledged a lack of enthusiasm for the top of the Democratic ticket. 

“That part I think a lot of us didn’t gauge,” she said. “And just thinking that people were going to turn out to vote against Donald Trump was a miscalculation.”

Looking to the future

With Arizona called on Saturday night, Mr. Trump swept all seven battleground states. Six of them had voted for Mr. Biden in the 2020 election. So far President-elect Trump has won just over 50 percent of the popular vote and made gains in key demographics, including young voters, Latinos, and women. Republicans took control of the Senate and are on track to win the House. As of now, more than 80% of counties shifted right on Election Day, a move that could be lasting.

Advertisement

“I think it’s a shift but it’s an important one,” Salvanto said. “And not just in the battleground states, but in places like counties in New York, in New Jersey, in Pennsylvania.”

Sanchez thinks there’s an opportunity for this to be a lasting change beyond this year’s election. 

“The question becomes, if Trump can really meet those promises, bring inflation down, make things more affordable, and make these families feel more financially secure, he’s going to have an ally for probably several election cycles going forward,” she said.

A new economy and new politics are at the forefront of change, Borick, the Pennsylvania pollster, said. 

“It was such a Democratic place for such a long time, and that Democratic Party doesn’t exist. Those Democratic voters don’t exist the way they long did in Northampton County. They have to re-vision what it’s going to look like,” Borick said. “Does that center on candidates? Does it center on issues? The answer is all of those things.”

Advertisement

Produced by Maria Gavrilovic, Henry Schuster and Nicole Young. Associate producers: Alex Ortiz, Kristin Steve and Sarah Turcotte.



Source link

Advertisement

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania-born indie rockers Tigers Jaw return with new album release

Published

on

Pennsylvania-born indie rockers Tigers Jaw return with new album release


The chorus for the song “Primary Colors” was something Walsh wrote years ago, with the song’s outro originally being used as a verse.

“And something just wasn’t quite clicking, and everything that I tried felt kind of forced,” Walsh said. “We were all just like, ‘Yeah, there’s something here, but it’s not quite doing what I think it has the potential to do.’”

The band then started toying with the dynamics between the verses and the chorus.

Advertisement

“It just unlocked something for me in the idea where I was like, ‘Wow, this kind of quiet, loud, quiet, loud format really works well with this song,’” Walsh said. “So yeah, it just transformed it instantly into an idea that felt a lot stronger.”

The album was recorded with Grammy-winning producer Will Yip, a relationship still budding from their 2014 album, “Charmer.” Collins said the new album’s sound is “as true as we could be to playing the record live.”

“I wasn’t as tied to the tones that have classically been Tigers Jaw because I think at this point, I’ve just come to this realization that no matter what, if we’re making it, it is Tigers Jaw,” Collins said.

The new album has a “palpable energy” that shares the same spirit as their earlier records, Walsh said. And while “tastes evolve,” the band followed “what feels good.”

“This is the best representation of the band at the time, and it’s almost like a snapshot of us as artists, as people, as a creative entity over this time in our career,” he said.

Advertisement

“Lost On You” is out now through Hopeless Records and is available on vinyl, CD and various streaming platforms.

“Lost On You” was released on March 27, 2026, through Hopeless Records. The album is available on vinyl, CD and various streaming platforms.

On April 16, Tigers Jaw will perform at Union Transfer at 8 p.m. They will be supported by Hot Flash Heat Wave and Creeks, the solo project of Balance and Composure vocalist and guitarist Jon Simmons, who is from Doylestown, Pennsylvania.





Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania court upends mandatory use of life-without-parole for second-degree murder

Published

on

Pennsylvania court upends mandatory use of life-without-parole for second-degree murder


What to Know

  • Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court says the state cannot automatically give life without parole for felony murder without weighing each defendant’s culpability in the killing.
  • The high court on Thursday ordered a new sentencing hearing for Derek Lee over a second-degree conviction, but paused it for four months to give state lawmakers time to consider legislation in response.
  • Pennsylvania law has made people liable for second-degree murder if they participated in an eligible felony that led to death. Life with no possibility of parole has been the only possible sentence.
  • The court says the current rule treats a lookout the same as the person who kills.

Pennsylvania’s high court on Thursday overturned the use of automatic life sentences without parole for people convicted of second-degree murder, saying it violates the state’s constitutional ban on cruel punishment when imposed without a closer look at the defendant’s specific role and culpability.

The court majority ordered resentencing in the case of Derek Lee, convicted of a 2014 killing in Pittsburgh, but the decision also has implications for others among the roughly 1,000 other inmates currently serving similar second-degree murder sentences.

The court’s order was put on hold for four months to give the General Assembly time to “consider appropriate remedial measures.” In a footnote, the justices said they were ruling on Lee’s sentence and not addressing “questions of retroactivity.”

Prison reform groups hailed it as a landmark decision, while the Allegheny County district attorney’s office said it will follow the court’s order.

Advertisement

Pennsylvania law has made people liable for second-degree murder if they participated in an eligible felony that led to death, and life without parole has been the only possible sentence.

“The mandatory penalty scheme of life without parole for all offenders convicted of second degree murder fails to assess individual culpability regarding the intent to kill, and mandates the same punishment regardless of that culpability,” wrote Chief Justice Debra Todd in the lead opinion. She characterized it as not distinguishing “between the lookout, and the killer who pulls the trigger.”

The state high court’s decision comes after years of advocacy to undo mandatory life without parole sentences both in Pennsylvania and nationally. Nazgol Ghandnoosh of the Washington-based Sentencing Project said she counts 11 states and the federal system as having such laws for that kind of crime, sometimes called felony murder. Several states — California, Colorado and Minnesota — have moved away from that sentencing framework in recent years, she said.

Justice Kevin Dougherty noted in a separate opinion that unlike those convicted of first-degree murder, defendants serving life without parole for second-degree murder have “never been found by a judge or jury to have harbored the specific intent to kill” and may not have had “any involvement whatsoever with the actual killing. He or she does not even have to expect or foresee that a life may be taken.”

Lee’s lawyers had wanted the court to rule that life without parole sentences are unconstitutional for all second-degree murder convictions in Pennsylvania, said Quinn Cozzens, a staff attorney for the Abolitionist Law Center, which helped represent Lee. Instead, the court ruled that trial judges must examine the individual circumstances of a defendant’s case to decide which sentence is most appropriate, including the potential of life without parole.

Advertisement

The state’s public defenders’ association said the ruling will generate new post-conviction litigation and require them to do more investigation as well as develop “strategic litigation” to get the decision to apply retroactively.

A jury convicted Lee of second-degree murder but acquitted him of first-degree murder in 44-year-old Leonard Butler’s shooting death. Butler was shot in a struggle over a gun with Lee’s codefendant, Paul Durham.

Prosecutors argued it should be up to state lawmakers and the executive branch to address the policy issues surrounding second-degree murder sentences. Todd wrote that while the district attorney’s office “acknowledges that there may be persuasive arguments why a non-slayer should not be held to the same degree of culpability as the slayer, it stresses that these are policy decisions for the General Assembly.”

Cozzens urged lawmakers to “address this constitutional violation, given that the court granted them the opportunity to do so.”

Rep. Tim Briggs, a suburban Philadelphia Democrat who chairs the state House Judiciary Committee, said he planned to engage with Senate Republicans on potential legislation in response.

Advertisement

Briggs said he wanted to have decision apply retroactively, to give people serving life “for being the getaway driver” to “have the opportunity to have their facts looked at again.”

“I think inaction leaves a lot of this up to the courts to decide. I don’t feel comfortable doing that,” Briggs said. “We have a policymaking role here.”

Justice Sallie Mundy wrote that Lee “willingly participated in an armed home invasion and robbery, and purposefully engaged in assaultive behavior in the form of tasing and pistol-whipping the victim.” She said Lee and Durham “arguably kidnapped the victims by forcing them into the basement” and it will be up to the county judge to decide if Lee’s life-without-parole sentence is appropriate.

Todd’s opinion, citing an advocacy group, said 73% of those convicted of felony murder in Pennsylvania were 25 or younger when the killing occurred and almost 70% are Black people.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro also responded to the ruling on X.

Advertisement





Source link

Continue Reading

Pennsylvania

Teen boys in Pennsylvania get probation after using AI to create fake nude photos of classmates

Published

on

Teen boys in Pennsylvania get probation after using AI to create fake nude photos of classmates


Lancaster Country Day School in Lancaster, Pa., Wednesday, March 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

LANCASTER, Pa. — Two teenage boys who used artificial intelligence to create fake nude photos of their classmates at an exclusive private school in Pennsylvania received probation Wednesday after dozens of victims described the images’ traumatizing effect on them.

The boys were 14 at the time. They admitted this month that they made about 350 images, showing at least 59 girls under 18, along with other victims who so far have not been identified.

Authorities said the boys took images of the girls from school photos, yearbooks, Instagram, TikTok and FaceTime chats in 2023 and 2024, and morphed them with images of adults depicting nudity or sexual activity.

More than 100 students and parents from Lancaster Country Day School were in court to hear victims describe the shock of having to identify their own faces in pornographic photos to detectives. Juvenile proceedings in Pennsylvania are normally closed, but this was opened by the judge, providing an unusual opportunity for the community to be seen and heard.

Advertisement

The girls described the fallout — anxiety attacks, a loss of trust, problems focusing on schoolwork and a fear that the images may someday surface in unexpected ways.

The two young men stood stone-faced throughout, flanked by their lawyers and parents, as they were called pedophiles, “sick and twisted” and perverted.

“I will never understand why they did this,” one victim told Judge Leonard Brown, saying it “destroyed my innocence.”

One young woman told Brown “how excruciating it is to bring these feelings up again and again.” Another choked back tears as she excoriated one of the defendants for expressing “fake empathy” as girls confided with him about their pain, before it became known that he had been part of creating and disseminating the images. Still another said all of her friends transferred schools, and that she “needed trauma therapy to even walk around my neighborhood.”

The defendants declined several opportunities to comment to the judge, who said he had not heard either boy take responsibility or apologize.

Advertisement

“This has been a regrettable, long, torturous process for everyone involved,” said Heidi Freese, defense attorney for one of the defendants. “There were very interesting, underlying legal issues surrounding the charges in this case and those will be decided on a different day in a different case.”

Brown ordered each to perform 60 hours of community service, have no contact with the victims and pay an unspecified amount of restitution. If they don’t have any additional legal problems, Brown said, the case can be expunged after two years.

As he imposed his sentence, Brown said that if they were adults, they probably would be headed for state prison. He said they should “take this opportunity to really examine” themselves.

The resolution of the Pennsylvania case comes days after three teenagers in Tennessee sued Elon Musk’s xAI, claiming the company’s Grok tools morphed their real photos into explicitly sexual images. The high school students are seeking class-action status to represent what the lawsuit says are thousands of people who were similarly victimized as minors.

The scandal in Pennsylvania led to a student protest, criminal charges against the two teenagers and the departure of leaders at the school, which says it has about 600 students K-12, class sizes averaging just 12 kids, and “an endowment in excess of $25 million.”

Advertisement

Nadeem Bezar, a Philadelphia lawyer who represents at least 10 of the victims, said Tuesday he expects to file a claim “against the school and anybody else we think has culpability in these deepfakes being created and disseminated.”

He said he has not yet seen the photos but expects the legal process to determine “exactly when and where and how the school knew, how the boys created these images, what platforms they used to create these images and how they were disseminated.”

As AI has become accessible and powerful, lawmakers across the country have passed laws aimed at barring deepfakes.

President Donald Trump signed the Take it Down Act last year, making it illegal to publish intimate images including deepfakes without consent, and requiring websites and social media sites to remove such material within 48 hours of being notified by a victim.

Forty-six states now have laws addressing deepfakes, with legislation introduced in the remaining four — Alaska, Missouri, New Mexico and Ohio — according to the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

Advertisement

___

Associated Press writers Geoff Mulvihill in Haddonfield, New Jersey, and Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed.





Source link

Continue Reading

Trending