Republican insiders in Pennsylvania have been waiting for a big show of unity around gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano since he won a harshly contested primary, and on Friday, they’ll finally get it.

Mr. Mastriano’s campaign — to this point quiet on the airwaves, out-fundraised and thriving mostly on word-of-mouth on the trail and through social media — will get a high profile, national boost from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, an increasingly popular figure in the GOP who is seen by party stalwarts as a model 2024 presidential candidate.

At the Downtown Wyndham in the late afternoon, Republicans will see Mr. Mastriano, the state senator, appear jointly at a rally with Mr. DeSantis, who’s making the trip as part of a swing to help Donald Trump-backed candidates in key electoral areas. After his Pittsburgh visit, Mr. DeSantis will head to Ohio to stump for Senate candidate J.D. Vance.

Democrats aren’t sweating the visit, and note that their candidate, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, has a sizable lead in early polling. They’re continuing to label Mr. Mastriano an extremist — chatter that has spread to Mr. DeSantis’ home state, where faith leaders and officials on Thursday warned that if their governor associates himself with Mr. Mastriano, he’ll do irreparable damage to his reputation.

HARRISBURG — Fiscal responsibility is an axiom in Harrisburg, but nearly none of Pennsylvania’s 253 state lawmakers seem to mind when their own salaries swell spending.

State House and Senate lawmakers receive an annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) to their salaries under a 1995 law meant to shield them from political blowback for voting for their own pay increases.

The automatic raises vary each year, but typically represent a 1% to 3% bump in pay. The salary hike was temporarily suspended in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but raises resumed the following year — boosted by high inflation.

At the moment, the base pay for state legislators in both chambers is $95,432. That number could push past $100,000 next year, according to an analysis by The Caucus/LNP, adding to the price tag for Pennsylvania’s already expensive, full-time legislature.

Lawmakers can return the increase to the state treasurer, but records obtained by Spotlight PA show very few do.

Since 2008 — the first year for which records are available — 176 lawmakers have paid back almost $578,000, according to the State Treasurer’s office. Of that, 93% was given back before 2018.

(Other lawmakers may donate their pay bump to charity, The Caucus/LNP reported, but it is difficult to independently verify who does and does not without access to private financial documents.)

Two Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200 million to hundreds who fell victim to their crimes.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner awarded $106 million in compensatory damages and $100 million in punitive damages to nearly 300 people in a long-running civil suit against the two Luzerne County judges, writing that the plaintiffs are “the tragic human casualties of a scandal of epic proportions.”

In what came to be known as the “kids-for-cash” scandal, Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan shut down a county-run juvenile detention center and accepted $2.8 million in illegal payments from the builder and co-owner of two for-profit lockups.

Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, pushed a zero-tolerance policy that guaranteed large numbers of kids would be sent to PA Child Care and its sister facility, Western PA Child Care.

He ordered children as young as 8 to detention, many of them first-time offenders convicted of petty theft and other minor crimes. And he often ordered youths he had found delinquent to be immediately shackled, handcuffed and taken away without giving them a chance to say goodbye to their families.

“Ciavarella and Conahan abandoned their oath and breached the public trust,” Judge Conner wrote Tuesday in his explanation of the judgment. “Their cruel and despicable actions victimized a vulnerable population of young people, many of whom were suffering from emotional issues and mental health concerns.”

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out some 4,000 juvenile convictions after the scheme was uncovered in the late 2000s.

Ciavarella is serving a 28-year prison sentence. Conahan, who was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison, was released to home confinement in 2020 — with six years left on his sentence — because of the pandemic.

Circling the state just three months before the November election, Democrat Josh Shapiro and Republican Doug Mastriano — gubernatorial contenders hoping to take over for Gov. Tom Wolf — agree on one thing:

The stakes are higher than ever, and they — not their opponent — can meet this crucial moment in Pennsylvania’s history.

Mr. Shapiro, the sitting attorney general, has used the stakes as a sledgehammer. He’s been repeatedly labeling Mr. Mastriano an extremist and telling voters that his opponent needs to be stopped.

Cognizant of the fact that Republicans are on the verge of complete legislative and executive control in Harrisburg, the Democrat has framed his own candidacy as a work-across-the-aisle antidote to chaos and division — an effort that will benefit Pennsylvanians who are struggling economically.

Mr. Mastriano, a state senator whose district is centered in Adams County, has rolled through southwestern Pennsylvania this week to tout what supporters call a people-powered campaign. He says Democrats — and their friends in the media — are underestimating the size of his movement, and voters understand he’s a change agent who can right the wrongs of Democratic control.

A detailed look at the candidates’ recent public messaging shows a race that could be one of the most significant — and contentious — in the country, at a time when the GOP legislature here seems poised to act on numerous key issues, if only they had a governor’s approval and not his veto pen.

Ellen Freeman left Ukraine in 1993. She never dreamed that nearly 30 years later, she’d be helping others do the same. She is an immigration attorney who started her own firm after working for some of Pittsburgh’s largest law firms. In her work, she specializes in navigating the immigration system for corporations hiring international employees.


But now, she’s helping all manner of people navigate immigration issues related to the war in Ukraine, from the families of her elementary school classmates to Russian artists.

She grew up in Odesa, Ukraine, from a long line of distinguished scientists. She ended up focusing on the humanities instead, getting an undergraduate degree and master’s degree and eventually running the Odessa office of a Jewish-American nonprofit. Shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, members of her family were able to come to America.

In 1993, she came as a single mom with her then 5-year-old daughter, settling in Pittsburgh where her mother and grandmother had recently immigrated. But instead of running a large office, she worked as a waitress at the Concordia Club in Oakland and as a salesperson at Saks Fifth Avenue Downtown.

“It was a really difficult transition,” said Freeman, 54, of O’Hara. “I didn’t lose my master’s degree, I didn’t lose my skills, but I got treated very differently.”

In the summer of 1994, she mentioned to a co-worker at Saks that she’d always had an interest in becoming a lawyer. She was told that if she ever wanted to pursue law, she’d need to take a test called the LSAT to get into law school.

PHILADELPHIA — When Mehmet Oz bought a bucolic farmhouse in Montgomery County last year, he not only acquired property in the state where he’s running for Senate, but also he scored a $50,000-a-year tax break.

While the purchase seemed designed to put to rest questions about Mr. Oz’s ties to the Keystone State that continue to dog his campaign, the large tax rebate could provide ammunition for Democrats seeking to paint Mr. Oz as a wealthy, out-of-touch carpetbagger from New Jersey. And while owning property may signal the celebrity doctor’s commitment to Pennsylvania, he’s still not living in the home — and it’s unclear when he will be.

The cardiothoracic surgeon and former daytime TV personality’s use of the tax incentive is totally legal and was in place decades before Mr. Oz purchased the property, according to local officials and public records. “I inherited it,” Mr. Oz said in an interview last week. “And I intend to preserve that land and not do anything that would hurt it.”

A $50,000 tax break

The tax incentive is part of a controversial state program designed to encourage the preservation of farm or forestland that overwhelmingly benefits wealthy landowners like Mr. Oz.

And while Mr. Oz says he’s simply awaiting renovations before he moves into his new home, there’s little sign of work at the property, and he continues to live at his in-laws’ home in the nearby borough of Bryn Athyn, Montgomery County.

Federal investigators delivered subpoenas or paid visits to several House and Senate Republican offices in the Pennsylvania Capitol on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to multiple sources.

At least some of the individuals receiving subpoenas were told they were not targets of an investigation, according to at least six sources reached by PennLive, but that they may have information of interest to the FBI. All of the sources had been briefed on the investigative moves in some way, but demanded anonymity in order to discuss them.

The information being requested centered around U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., and the effort to seek alternate electors as part of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to remain in office after the 2020 election, several sources said. The Washington Post on Wednesday, citing a source familiar with the probe, also reported that Mr. Perry’s cellphone was seized Tuesday as part of the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into the use of fake electors to try to overturn President Biden’s victory. The Post’s source also spoke on the condition of anonymity.

- snip -

The Trump slate included a number of well-known GOP luminaries, including former congressman Lou Barletta, Allegheny County Republican Committee Chairman Sam DeMarco III, Mr. Comfort, the current vice-chair of the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee, and Andy Reilly, one of Pennsylvania’s members on the Republican National Committee.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said in January that his investigators had looked over the Republican elector slate and felt that while the action was “intentionally misleading and purposefully damaging to our democracy,” they did not believe it met the legal standards for criminal prosecution under state law.

No sitting Pennsylvania legislators were a part of the pro-Trump elector slate, though The New York Times reported last month that at least some in Mr. Trump’s campaign leadership considered Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for governor, as the “point person” to help organize electors in Pennsylvania.