This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

An appeals court overturned a lower court ruling regarding mail-in ballots this week, asserting that a requirement for Pennsylvania voters to put accurate handwritten dates on the outside envelopes of their ballots doesn’t violate civil rights laws. State and national Republican groups, who have defended the date requirement, called the decision a “crucial victory for election integrity and voter confidence.” Something tells us this isn’t the last time we’ll be hearing about the issue.

Bucks County joined dozens of other local governments around the country in suing the oil industry, alleging that fossil fuel producers deceived the public about their role in accelerating the impacts of climate change. The suburban Philadelphia region joins municipal governments in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, South Carolina and Puerto Rico, as well as eight states and Washington, D.C. in filing the suit. 

One of Pennsylvania’s most celebrated families has just gotten a bit bigger. The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club announced this week that Punxsutawney Phil and his wife(?) Phyllis are the parents of two baby groundhogs, who are residing at a zoo at the Punxsutawney Memorial Library. The news of the birth attracted well wishes from across the commonwealth, including from Gov. Josh Shapiro. There’s no word yet on whether the baby groundhogs have any meteorological talents. 

Philadelphia-based Comcast is on a dubious Top Ten list: companies that have made the biggest political contributions to candidates who are election deniers. According to Popular Information, Comcast has donated $787,500 to 83 election deniers at the federal level and eight people at the state level since the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The corporation’s questionable largesse has continued to take place despite its assurances that it would suspend political donations to officials who opposed the certification of Electoral College votes in 2021.

The Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus was dealt a legal loss this week after a federal judge dismissed its case seeking, among other things, an injunction to block Gov. Josh Shapiro’s executive order implementing automatic voter registration at PennDOT facilities and photo license centers, according to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. Shapiro celebrated the legal win in a statement, calling the lawsuit a “frivolous effort to stop automatic voter registration.”

There’s something to be said about leaving no trace. Vallis Slaughter – who was connected to an unsolved murder by DNA from a cigarette butt and bitten-off piece of a styrofoam cup – was arrested and charged in the 2012 murder of Julio Torres outside a diner in West Reading. Authorities said this week that after Slaughter was identified using facial recognition software, authorities surveilling him collected a smoldering cigarette butt that he threw to the ground and matched it with DNA found on a styrofoam cup found on the scene a decade ago.