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1. Shapiro continues to promote partisan voter-registration site that mimics official state election site — and skims your data

By Todd Shepherd
 

Governor Josh Shapiro continues to cooperate with a voter registration website with a web address deceptively similar to the official Pennsylvania Department of State’s, but which also harvests the registrant’s personal information for partisan political advertising.

Broad + Liberty first reported on the website vote.pa last year, pointing out that the website address was a classic example of website impersonation, where a person or entity creates a web address (also known as a URL) that is extremely similar to a well trafficked, official web address, but that has minor variations such as being off by one letter.

In the most recent example of Shapiro’s cooperation, the governor appears in a Facebook video ad promoted by a local political action committee, Black Leadership Pennsylvania. In that video, Shapiro urges the user to register to vote, and the ad’s link takes them to vote.pa — just a few keystrokes off from the official state registration website, vote.pa.gov

Why It Matters. Vote.pa is a project of Commonwealth Communications, which is run by J.J. Abbott, a longtime Democratic political operative and former communications officer for Gov. Tom Wolf.

Vote.pa will register someone to vote if the user fills out all the required information. But it will also pocket the user’s personal data. The website’s privacy policy specifies, “We may use your personal information in connection with our political efforts and activities.” The policy also tells users, “We reserve the right to share your personal information to third parties as part of any potential business or asset sale…or similar type of transaction.”

One irony is that vote.pa is similar in a sense to “cybersquatting” sites of the kind Shapiro used to warn Pennsylvanians about when he was attorney general.

Quotable. “I am concerned that he’s continuing to use those data mining operations on Pennsylvanians because I think it’s difficult for the average person to discern what is a campaign website and what is an official state government website,” Sen. Kristin Phillips-Hill said. “Because when you look at these, they look nearly identical. And this sort of tactic is what you expect from a fringe group, not from someone who sits as the governor of the commonwealth.”

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2. Predatory finance meets magical thinking at Crozer-Chester — and patients lose

By Frank Speidel
 

A health care desert has emerged in Delaware County. 

There are currently only two hospitals, Riddle and Mercy Fitzgerald, operating in a county of around 576,000 where there once had been six. The four additional hospitals of the Crozer Health System, Crozer-Chester, Taylor, Delaware County Memorial, and Springfield began closing in 2022 after their acquisition by Prospect Medical Holdings.

On January 12, 2025, PMH filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. On January 13, 2025, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported the state health department cited Crozer for diverting heart attack patients because of nursing staff shortages and noting reports from staff of supply shortages.

Why It Matters.  At the time of its acquisition by Prospect in 2016, the not-for-profit Crozer Keystone Health System had debt on the order of $300 million with approximately $51 million funding The Foundation for Delaware County.

There seems to be a pattern. A private equity investment (PE) firm acquires an asset, a healthcare system, worth hundreds of millions. The PE then refinances the asset in the magnitude of billions allowing the PE to reward itself in order of hundreds of millions. The asset, the healthcare system, burdened by the debt and debt service and having burned through pension funding and other obligations such as unsecured creditors, files for bankruptcy.

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3. Lightning Round

• Ben Mannes: Is Philly ready to fire Krasner? Judge Dugan thinks so.

• Beth Ann Rosica: Chester County hires a “Chief Experience Officer” as taxes rise — corporate titles at public expense

• Christine Flowers: Celebrating getting Columbus Day back in Philadelphia

• Thom Nickels: Where formalwear meets flip-flops

• Ben Mannes: Washington, Philadelphia, and the problems of home rule

• Lloyd Smucker: Big Beautiful Bill puts hard-working families first

4. What we're reading

President Donald Trump’s takeover of law enforcement in the District of Columbia has ruffled a lot of feathers. But is it illegal? Writing for the Free Press this week, Prof. Jed Rubenfeld of Harvard Law School informs us that “Trump has more power over D.C. than any other city in the United States, and he seems to be well within his legal authority — for now.”

D.C.’s crime has been an issue for decades — even Senator Joe Biden said so back in 1992. It’s had its ups and downs since then, but it’s never been a completely safe city. Now, President Trump wants to clean up America’s capital. Democrats, naturally, oppose this, like they oppose whatever Trump is doing. It might be smarter for them — and more useful for DC residents — if they could get on board and make the capital America’s showcase, not its basketcase.