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** 1. Shapiro refuses to tell us if he’ll protect women’s sports ([link removed])
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By Rep. Joe D’Orsie and Guy Ciarrocchi

Governor Shapiro was finally asked if he’d sign Senate Bill 9, “The Save Women’s Sports Act,” which would ensure that only biological females can play competitive women’s sports.

His non-answer and partisan attack embody that of a slick salesman. “What we do not need in Pennsylvania are politicians — extremists politicians like Trump and Mastriano, and these others — trying to legislate a student’s participation…” Yet, he declined to say if he’d veto the bill: “It’s a hypothetical…and, I haven’t reviewed it specifically.”

Well, he has reviewed it… and bringing up Trump and Mastriano on legislation that affects over one million Pennsylvania girls is deflection to the nth degree.

Why It Matters. As an emerging Democratic presidential darling, Josh Shapiro, who prides himself on bipartisan agreement, finds himself amidst the mere 20 percent of Americans who believe girls’ sports should be dominated by biological males. A 2025 New York Times/Ipsos poll found that 79 percent of Americans do not support men invading girls’ sports fields, courts, and locker rooms, even 67 percent of Democrats hold this belief. (We believe that the numbers are even higher.) Senate Bill 9, the Save Women’s Sports Act, carried the support of five Senate Democrats, which is good for over 20 percent of the Democratic caucus.

The only sensible conclusion, then, is that the Governor picks and chooses when the “bipartisan” hat might be politically useful. With this strange betrayal of Pennsylvania women and girls, he has sided with far-left political ideologues — betraying not just girl athletes, but Democrats, Independents, and Republicans alike.

80/20 issues are few and far between, but 70/30 issues are almost as rare. School choice is one of those issues – one that 70 percent of Pennsylvanians support – and one that Governor Shapiro has failed to deliver on.

Continue Reading ([link removed])


** 2. Delco spent $4.7M on outside lawyers in 2024, dwarfing neighboring counties ([link removed])
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By Todd Shepherd

Delaware County spent $4.69 million on outside attorneys in 2024, according to an analysis ofdocuments ([link removed]) obtained via Right to Know request — more than eleven times higher than 2019, the last full year that category of spending was under Republican control. The 2024 figure is a record high for outside counsel spending, surpassing the previous record set in 2023.

The total shows that while the rate of increase in that category has leveled out, there are as yet no signs that the county intends to lower that spending so that it would be more commensurate with earlier years or with what neighboring counties spend.

Additionally, the increase in outside spending has not resulted in any interior savings. According to the county’s2024 budget ([link removed]) , the line-item for the county solicitor’s office has skyrocketed from $1.64 million in 2020 to $3.99 million in 2024 — a 143 percent increase.

Why It Matters. This latest fact lands as the county is just four months away from its first county council election in the wake of a massive24 percent tax increase ([link removed]) levied on residents in December of last year that set off waves of public complaints. The 24 percent tax increase followed a five percent tax increase just one year earlier.

Those tensions were on display recently when Councilwoman Christine Reuther voted no on purchasing new electroshock weapons for the county’s park police. “I feel very stressed about voting no but … I’m going to feel stressed about laying people off or cutting benefits or cutting services,”Reuther said ([link removed]) earlier this month.

The Democrats who campaigned for council seats in 2017 and 2019 and then into the early years of this decade promised to create a county health department as well as to deprivatize the county prison, which had previously been privately run for almost 30 years.

After winning a majority, they delivered on those promises, but many residents are left wondering if the changes were worth the expense, especially after the mammoth 24 percent tax increase last year. The increase was a stunning reversal onpledges ([link removed]) to keep taxes level from council members like Brian Madden.

For example, as Broad + Liberty previously reported, In 2021, the prison’stotal bill ([link removed]) for outside legal help was $125,375. By 2024,that bill climbed ([link removed]) to $967,598.

Continue Reading ([link removed])


** 3. Lightning Round
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* Beth Ann Rosica: Feds declare bathroom policies illegal — 63 percent of Philly-area schools could be next ([link removed])
* Wally Nunn: Councilwoman Reuther finally tells the truth — sort of ([link removed])
* Chris Holbert: A better way forward on cannabis for Pennsylvania Republicans ([link removed])
* Matt Meyers: Don’t lock out opportunity — TRIO cuts are class warfare on college dreams ([link removed])
* Kyle Sammin: The only thing better than a closed primary is no primary ([link removed])
* Guy Ciarrocchi: Dick Allen — A Hall of Famer in baseball and in life ([link removed])
* Thom Nickels: Two Philadelphia mansions ([link removed])
* Paul Davis: Buyer beware of home improvement fraud ([link removed])


** 4. What we're reading
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Doug Mastriano is looking at another run for governor and many Republicans — including President Trump, according to some sources — are nervous. So writes Holly Otterbein in POLITICO ([link removed]) this week in a deep dive into the political fortunes of the central Pennsylvania state senator who lost by fifteen percentage points to Democrat Josh Shapiro in 2022.

Beyond defeating Shapiro, Republicans have hopes of retaining marginal US House seats — hopes that could be jeopardized by an unpopular nominee atop the ticket. “If he’s our nominee, we lose four House seats,” GOP consultant Josh Novotney told Otterbein. “He’s a nightmare that no one wants.”
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