PA Headlines
HARRISBURG — Spotlight PA is reporting…Pennsylvania’s top election official spent nearly three hours Thursday defending her handling of the 2020 presidential election and calling for an end to the “lies that have been proven again and again to be false.” The meeting of the House State Government Committee centered on what in any other election would have been mundane — guidance to counties on how to handle certain problems with mail ballots. But with intense national focus on Pennsylvania, that guidance became a flashpoint.
After the election, GOP leadership seized on Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar’s actions to cast doubt on the results. The top Republicans in the Senate called for her resignation, while leaders from both chambers asked Congress to reject the state’s electors for President Joe Biden. A handful of rank-and-file GOP lawmakers spread outright falsehoods about voter fraud. The complaints came despite the fact that state Republicans performed exceedingly well in the election, strengthening their hold on the legislature and winning the state auditor general and treasurer’s races. Republicans have so far raised no concern about races they won.
“The attack on our Capitol was the direct result of disinformation and lies — lies that were intentionally spread to subvert the free and fair election and undermine people’s faith in our democracy,” Boockvar said during the hearing, referring to the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C, that turned deadly when a violent mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters invaded the U.S. Capitol.
HARRISBURG (AP) – AP is reporting…Some of Pennsylvania’s largest health systems are delivering a reality check after the state greatly expanded eligibility for the COVID-19 vaccine this week, pointing out there’s not nearly enough supply to meet surging demand. Pennsylvania, which surpassed 20,000 deaths attributed to the coronavirus pandemic on Thursday, has expanded initial eligibility for the vaccine to include people age 65 and over as well as younger people with serious health conditions that put them at higher risk.
“We simply do not have adequate vaccine supplies or clear notification of when and how much is coming to be able to meet this new, much larger group who can benefit,” said a statement released by a consortium of 11 Pennsylvania hospitals and health systems. “That means many requests for vaccination will not be met in the next days to weeks, and this is not from a lack of desire.”
Geisinger said it’s beginning to vaccinate people who meet the state’s expanded criteria. So is Penn State Health, though it also warned that its supply is not sufficient to reach as many as 200,000 patients the health system has identified as currently being eligible. Municipal health departments are facing the same constraints.
One of the consortium members, UPMC, reported a surge in interest after the state’s announcement on Tuesday. “People began to think, ‘I need to be calling right now, and that this means this minute, this hour,’” Dr. Donald Yealy, UPMC’s senior medical director, said Thursday. Yealy said UPMC is ready to put more shots into arms, but will, for now, remain focused on inoculating health workers and residents and staff at nursing homes. He said UPMC does not plan to schedule appointments for people who are newly eligible for the vaccine until it has an adequate supply.
The expansion means that some 3.5 million people are now eligible to receive one of the two approved vaccines. The problem, hospital officials say, is that weekly allotments are still extremely limited, and there is no indication when the vaccine might begin arriving in sufficient quantity to allow them to invite more people to roll up their sleeves.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — With Donald Trump out of the White House, Pennsylvania’s Republican Party shows no sign of walking away from a president who lost control of Congress, carried out an unprecedented campaign to overturn an election and is blamed by some in his party for inciting a violent assault on the country’s democracy.
Save for two notable exceptions, Pennsylvania’s top Republican politicians stayed loyal to Trump as he tried to undo his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the battleground state and refused blame for the siege of the U.S. Capitol. Republicans say there is no conversation inside the state party about moving away from Trump at a critical juncture: would-be candidates are beginning to jockey for an inside track to the nomination next year for Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate seat and governor’s office.
Trump remains popular among the GOP’s rank-and-file voters in Pennsylvania, even if he lost the state and struggled mightily in the suburbs around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, party officials say, “I don’t think you can just walk away from Trump,” said Tom McGarrigle, the GOP chairman in the Philadelphia suburb of Delaware County. “In the western part of the state, they love the guy, so to walk away from Trump, you lose the Trump base and you can’t afford to lose the Trump base.”
