President Donald Trump, foreground, accompanied by acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, left, speaks at a luncheon with members of the United Nations Security Council in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 5, 2019. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
President Donald Trump, foreground, accompanied by acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, left, speaks at a luncheon with members of the United Nations Security Council in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 5, 2019. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
President Donald Trump, foreground, accompanied by acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, left, speaks at a luncheon with members of the United Nations Security Council in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 5, 2019. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
A constitutional expert in Western Pennsylvania offered an idea to to avoid an impeachment trial of President Donald Trump: Censure the president instead.
“A big part of this could be just jointly acknowledging that this is not how presidents are supposed to behave and hopefully adopting legislation ultimately to make sure in the future, presidents are on notice that trying to manipulate foreign governments in this fashion for their own political advantage is not permissible,” Ken Gormley, Duquesne University’s president, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
That doesn’t appear to be the path the House is headed for, though. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, on Thursday said Democrats will move ahead with drafting articles of impeachment against the president over his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and one of his sons. NPR has the details.
Any articles of impeachment will have to be voted on by the full House. Many of the nine Republicans from Pennsylvania took to Twitter to blast Pelosi and the Democrats on Thursday: John Joyce (13th District), Fred Keller (12th District), Mike Kelly (16th District), Dan Meuser (9th District), and Guy Reschenthaler (14th District), who sits on the Judiciary Committee.
Over on the Democratic side, several lawmakers continued to lay out why they think the president should be impeached. Mary Gay Scanlon (5th District), a key Judiciary Committee member, came out swinging. She was joined by Dwight Evans (3rd District).
Notably quiet are some of the lawmakers from swing districts: Republican Brian Fitzpatrick (1st District), and Democrats Conor Lamb (17th District) and Matt Cartwright (8th District). GOP Rep. Scott Perry (10th District) was quiet on Thursday, but he’s been a vigorous defender of the president on social media, live-tweeting the Intelligence Committee hearings two weeks ago.
The president plans to stop in Pennsylvania on Tuesday evening for a rally in Hershey. WITF’s Katie Meyer and I plan to cover it. Meanwhile, Vice President Mike Pence also plans to travel to Pittsburgh on Tuesday. Then he’ll take a bus tour, making a stop in Beaver County before arriving in Hershey. If my math is right, this is reminder No. 3,001 of how important Pennsylvania is expected to be in 2020.
In other presidential campaign news, a man — who described himself as “an old Iowa retired farmer” — told Biden that he’s too old to be president and accused him of getting a job for his son in Ukraine. “You’re a damn liar, man,” Biden said. He also challenged the man to do push-ups with him. The whole exchange is worth watching.
Biden, you probably recall, was born in Scranton, Pa., and has the backing of many Pennsylvania insiders. John Kerry, the former Massachusetts senator who won Pennsylvania in the 2004 presidential election, endorsed Biden on Thursday.
Reminder: Biden will join many of the leading Democratic presidential hopefuls next Saturday in Pittsburgh for a forum on education.
Avi Wolfman-Arent / WHYY
Kathleen Connolly’s autistic daughter, Olivia McCann, left her elementary school without supervision in 2014. (Avi Wolfman-Arent / WHYY)
Avi Wolfman-Arent, a reporter for WHYY’s Keystone Crossroads, looks at systematic changes that happened in Philadelphia after an 8-year-old girl, who has a form of autism that severely limits her ability to communicate or reason, ran out of her elementary school and — for unknown reasons — took off nearly all her clothes. Tragedy was avoided that day, but the case ultimately changed how the school system assigns one-to-one aides to special needs students. “When I think about all the kids who will no longer fall through the cracks, I get pretty emotional about that,” mother Kathleen Connolly said.
The state’s Megan’s Law website, which lists thousands of sex offenders, received 411 million page views in the past year, Spotlight PA reports based on state records. Reporter Angela Couloumbis looks at challenges to Megan’s Law and “five separate cases before the state Supreme Court are attacking it as outdated, discriminatory and unnecessarily cruel, depriving thousands of people of their fundamental rights.”
On Wednesday, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said state Rep. Movita Johnson-Harrell was the 60th public official his office arrested. Billy Penn’s Max Marin looked into what the other 59 allegedly did. It’s an interesting range of charges, including DUIs, prostitution-related offenses, and some big and small thefts.
Johnson-Harrell, a West Philadelphia Democrat, announced Thursday that her resignation will take effect on Dec. 13, Mark Scolforo reports for The Associated Press. She’s accused of stealing more than $500,000 from a charity she founded.
A York County school district turned down about $330,000 from the state for school security. The money would have gone toward a school police officer pilot program, the York Dispatch reports. Board members raised concerns about having to pay for the program once state money ends — and whether stationing police on campus would really make the school safer.
NPR’s Cheryl Corley looked into that last question a year ago. Marc Schindler, head of the Justice Policy Institute, told NPR that there are conflicting studies about the effectivices of police in schools, but there is evidence for unintended consequences. “He says that includes higher rate of suspensions, expulsions and arrests that funnel kids into the criminal justice system. That’s especially true, he says, in schools attended predominantly by students of color,” Corley wrote.
A pair of Russian hackers were charged with computer crimes by the U.S. Attorney in Pittsburgh. They stand accused of “two international malware conspiracies that cost businesses millions of dollars and began with the attempted theft of $1 million from the Sharon City School District nearly a decade ago,” the Post-Gazette reports.
