President Donald Trump steps off Air Force One after arriving at Andrews Air Force Base, Thursday, Sept. 26, 2019, in Andrews Air Force Base, Md. Trump had spent the week attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Evan Vucci / AP Photo
Evan Vucci / AP Photo
President Donald Trump steps off Air Force One after arriving at Andrews Air Force Base, Thursday, Sept. 26, 2019, in Andrews Air Force Base, Md. Trump had spent the week attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Evan Vucci / AP Photo
President Donald Trump steps off Air Force One after arriving at Andrews Air Force Base, Thursday, Sept. 26, 2019, in Andrews Air Force Base, Md. Trump had spent the week attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York. (Evan Vucci / AP Photo)
Multiple presidential campaign events are happening in Pa. this week. While not an official campaign stop, President Trump is due to deliver the keynote speech at the Shale Insight Conference in Pittsburgh tomorrow. Across the state and on the same day, Democratic primary frontrunner Joe Biden will be talking foreign policy in his hometown of Scranton after a private fundraiser tonight in Exton, Luzerne County.
Vice-President Mike Pence went to Luzerne, too, to plug the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade at Schott Advanced Optics in Duryea yesterday. Democratic contender and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg hit the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia on Sunday night.
The succession of appearances underscores “Pennsylvania’s extreme importance in deciding the 2020 election”, PennLive’s David Wenner writes — yet this Pittsburgh Post-Gazette analysis shows what amounts to underspending by campaigns in at least part of the state.
Meanwhile, former presidential nominee Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, verified that he does, in fact, have a secret Twitter handle, Slate reported over the weekend. Romney says he created an account under the fake name “Pierre Delecto” to monitor others’ activity — but Slate and The Washington Post note tweets in support/defense of himself as well. (BTW: If you want to see activity deleted by politicians from Pa. and elsewhere, check out ProPublica’s Politiwoops archive.)
Brett Sholtis / Transforming Health
Buckenell chemistry senior Anna Islas connects a vaping device to a hose for testing. (Brett Sholtis / Transforming Health)
A Bucknell researcher and her undergrad chem students recently detected carbon monoxide in electronic cigarettes, Transforming Health’s Brett Sholtis reports. As they turned up vaping products’ power settings, students found CO levels “rose exponentially” – up to “20 times higher than outdoor air quality standards” at the max e-cig setting, Brett writes. In nearby Northumberland County, community leaders have planned a panel discussion on the risks of vaping for next week. The News Item has details here.
Domestic violence claimed the lives of 123 Pennsylvanians in 2018 last year. Advocates and state officials paid tribute to them yesterday in a statehouse ceremony also meant to raise awareness of the problem and efforts to address related systemic issues. PA Post’s Ed Mahon has this story out of the event.
State lawmakers could tack on election reforms (including no-excuse absentee voting) and commit $90 million to reimburse counties for voting machines to a bill up for discussion at the House State Government Committee’s meeting today, reports the AP’s Marc Levy in this story. SB421 focuses on straight ticket/party voting — and Gov. Tom Wolf cited that provision when he vetoed a similar measure last summer. Committee Chairman Garth Everett, R-Union/Lycoming, told me he believes his proposed amendments hit a “sweet spot” for compromise by including components with broad support.
Lawmakers also are looking at Sunday hunting; the House Game & Fisheries Committee voted yesterday to send a bill, which already passed the state Senate in June, to the full floor for consideration. And the House Education Committee has advanced a bill from Rep. Mark Kauffman, R-Franklin, to reinstate school police officers’ powers of arrest after a bill passed amid the “June rush of legislation … mistakenly stripped” them away, Andrew Bahl writes for The PLS Reporter.
