May 17, 2023 4:22 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats are seeking to force a vote on expelling Rep. George Santos from Congress. The effort is expected to be defeated but puts Republicans in the uncomfortable position of taking a stand on an indicted colleague. The freshman congressman from New York has been charged with embezzling money from his campaign, falsely receiving unemployment funds and lying to Congress about his finances. He has denied the charges and has pleaded not guilty. Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California introduced the resolution to expel Santos. The House has only expelled a member twice in recent decades. A vote to expel requires a two-thirds majority.
May 17, 2023 4:21 am
NEW YORK (AP) — Top executives at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank largely avoided taking responsibility for their banks’ dramatic failures at a Senate hearing Tuesday, instead using their time to assign blame to events they said were largely out of their control. The arguments got little traction with senators on both sides of the aisle. Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee criticized the executives for taking risky actions or missing obvious problems that directly led to the demise of their banks, while still accepting lucrative pay packages and bonuses, even in the days and weeks leading up to the failures.
May 17, 2023 4:20 am
NEW YORK (AP) — Consumers picked up their spending modestly in April from March, particularly in dining out and online, buoyed by a solid job market and easing inflationary pressures. A bump up in car sales also helped results, according to the Commerce Department report issued Tuesday. But shoppers are facing plenty of challenges heading into the second half of the year from tightening credit to a weaker job market. Retail sales increased 0.4% in April from March when it was down 0.7%. It marked the first increase since January when unusually warm weather and a big jump in Social Security benefits likely spurred more spending.
May 17, 2023 4:18 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Democrats will maintain their narrow Pennsylvania House majority after winning a special election in the Philadelphia suburbs. Tuesday’s win will also help them control how the chamber will handle abortion, gun rights and election law legislation. Heather Boyd defeated Republican Katie Ford in a special election to fill a vacancy created by the resignation of Democratic Rep. Mike Zabel. Zabel quit the Legislature in March, shortly after a lobbyist accused him of sexually harassing her. Boyd’s win gives Democrats 102 representatives, the minimum needed to control the agenda in the 203-seat House.
May 17, 2023 4:17 am
One person is in custody and another at Washington Hospital following a report of shots fired at the 8th Ward playground in the city’s West End Wednesday night. Washington County 9-1-1 says police were called to the area of Broad Street and Baird Avenue around 8 p.m. following several reports of gun shots. A short time later, 9-1-1 says they received a call from the Emergency Room at Washington Hospital that an individual with a gunshot wound came in. Dispatchers say the hospital was placed on lockdown as a result. We are told a private citizen then notified authorities that they were following a vehicle with a person connected to the shooting and police were able to intercept that vehicle and take the person into custody. No identities have been released and we have no word on the condition of the person taken to the hospital. City Police are investigating.
May 17, 2023 4:16 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — Debt limit talks have entered an encouraging new phase as President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy have tapped top emissaries to negotiate a deal to avert an unprecedented national default. The president also cut his upcoming overseas trip short in hopes of closing out a deal before the end of the month. The fresh set of negotiators means that the scope of the discussions is now largely narrowed to what White House and McCarthy will agree to as part of a deal that would allow lawmakers to raise the debt limit in the coming days. The speaker said after a meeting with Biden and congressional leaders that a deal was “possible” by week’s end.
May 17, 2023 4:13 am
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Legislation banning most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy is becoming law in North Carolina after the state’s Republican-controlled General Assembly successfully overrode the Democratic governor’s veto. The House completed the second and final part of the override Tuesday night after a similar three-fifths majority voted for the override earlier Tuesday in the Senate. The outcome represents a major victory for Republican legislative leaders who needed every GOP member on board to enact the law over Gov. Roy Cooper’s opposition. The vote comes as abortion rights in the U.S. faced another tectonic shift with lawmakers also debating laws to sharply limit abortion in South Carolina and Nebraska.
May 17, 2023 4:09 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Democrat Dan McCaffery and Republican Carolyn Carluccio have won their parties’ primaries for a vacant seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The two will face each other in a fall contest for the court, which is at the center of cases on guns, abortion and elections in a presidential battleground state. Each nominee won a two-way primary race. McCaffery defeated Deborah Kunselman, a colleague on the Superior Court, and Carluccio defeated Patricia McCullough, a Commonwealth Court judge who lost a primary for a high court seat in 2021. Party allies reported spending nearly $1 million to help her beat McCullough.
May 17, 2023 2:39 am
The City of Washington will have a Democratic Mayoral candidate not named Scott Putnam. With all precincts reporting, JoJo Burgess will be the nominee in November. Burgess has beaten the incumbent Putnam 478-406.
May 17, 2023 2:33 am
The Democratic Candidates for Washington County Commissioner have been called. Incumbent Larry Maggi and his running mate Cindy Fisher will be on the ballot in November. Maggi stated that he looks forward to bringing civility back to county government if he is elected. Fisher agrees with Maggi. Fisher has been called anti oil and gas as a Cecil Township Supervisor. Fisher responded that nothing could be further from the truth about those claims. Maggi and Fisher handily defeated the third Democratic candidate Randy Barli.
