(File Photo: Source for Photo: FILE – The Pennsylvania State Capitol is reflected on the ground June 30, 2025, in Harrisburg, Pa. (AP Photo/Aimee Dilger, File)

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s counties, school districts and social service agencies are warning of mounting layoffs, borrowing costs and damage to the state’s safety net as the politically divided state government enters its fourth month of a budget stalemate.

The stalemate entangling Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, the Democratic-controlled House and the Republican-controlled Senate has stalled billions of dollars from going to schools and social services, and it has no certain end in sight as the federal government careens toward a shutdown.

The finger-pointing in Pennsylvania’s statehouse has fallen along partisan lines. Now it is a campaign trail topic as Republican state Treasurer Stacy Garrity prepares to challenge Shapiro’s bid for a second term in 2026’s election.

Budget standoff has big effect

The fight in the statehouse over things like public school funding and curbing the rising cost of Medicaid doesn’t involve most of the money in a roughly $50 billion budget.

But the effect is being felt broadly.

The grant-funded Jefferson-Clarion Head Start has laid off more than 50 staff while more than 300 families who had slots in state-funded pre-kindergarten programs have had to line up other arrangements, quit jobs or find ways to work from home.

One parent, Taylor Miller, said she is relying on babysitting help from her children’s grandparents who live a half-hour away while she completes her coursework to become a phlebotomy assistant. Her 3-year-old lost her six-hour daily preschool class, and her 18-month-old lost her weekly home-visit session with a teacher.

“This is the one thing that most children have, and they make friends, they socialize, they love to read and to learn and it’s just a great environment for the kids — and to have that taken away, only two weeks into the school year, it affects them, it hurts them,” Miller said.

The nonprofit Jefferson-Clarion Head Start, meanwhile, is on track to max out a $750,000 line of credit and has no guarantees that families and laid-off employees will return once state aid starts flowing again, executive director Pam Johnson said.

As October begins, county officials and human services providers say the damage is accelerating.

Lines of credit and reserves are running out, meaning deeper layoffs and more service shutdowns are inevitable, they say.

“Things are going to get exponentially worse in October,” said Kristen Rotz of the United Way of Pennsylvania, which surveyed over 100 social services agencies. “The impacts of this impasse are going to become much more real.”

Meanwhile, organizations that are using reserves to plug budget holes are missing out on the investment income on the cash that helps support their finances, officials say.

Without the governor’s signature on a new spending plan, Pennsylvania state government lost some of its spending authority starting July 1, and there is no trigger in the law to funnel aid to schools, counties or social services without an agreement.

The state is legally bound to make debt payments during a stalemate, cover Medicaid costs for millions of Pennsylvanians, issue unemployment compensation payments, keep prisons open and ensure state police are on patrol.

All state employees under a governor’s jurisdiction are typically expected to report to work and be paid as scheduled, so state offices are open.

But schools are missing out on an estimated $3.8 billion so far. The school board in Philadelphia, the state’s largest district, authorized the district to borrow up to $1.5 million, or three times the normal amount this time of year.

Universities, libraries and county health departments are also missing payments, Shapiro’s administration has said.

Armstrong County shut down senior centers and furloughed staff there, Westmoreland County issued furlough notices to 125 employees, and Lancaster and Chester counties warned that they will stop fronting entire reimbursements for social service providers.

Smaller social service agencies hit hard

Some smaller social services agencies have been hit hard.

Safe Berks, a domestic violence and sexual assault-prevention program serving Berks County, laid off several staff, took on debt and isn’t paying some bills or filling vacant positions, its CEO said.

County commissioners say waiting times for social services are growing, and laid-off caseworkers, counselors or social workers are unlikely to return to their jobs.

“How long does it take to train one of those workers, one of the social workers, the case workers, to get back out in the field?” said Dave Glass, a Clearfield County commissioner. “You could be losing a year or more.”

(File for Photo: Source for Photo: A photo of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk is seen on a large screen during a memorial for Kirk, Sunday, Sept. 21, 2025, at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/John Locher)

PROVO, Utah (AP) — An attorney for the 22-year-old man charged with killing Charlie Kirk asked a judge Monday for more time to review the large amount of evidence in the case before deciding if the defense will seek a preliminary hearing.

A preliminary hearing would determine if there is enough evidence against Tyler Robinson to go forward with a trial. Defendants can waive that step, but Robinson’s newly appointed attorney Kathryn Nester said her team did not intend to do so.

Utah prosecutors have charged Robinson with aggravated murder and plan to seek the death penalty.

Both the defense and prosecution acknowledged at a brief hearing Monday that the amount of evidence prosecutors have is “voluminous.” Robinson was not present for the hearing and appeared via audio from jail at his defense team’s request.

Judge Tony Graf set the next hearing for Oct. 30.

Defense attorneys for Robinson and prosecutors with the Utah County Attorney’s Office declined to comment after Monday’s hearing. It took place in Provo, just a few miles from the Utah Valley University campus in Orem where many students are still processing trauma from the Sept. 10 shooting and the day-and-a-half search for the suspect.

Authorities arrested Robinson when he showed up with his parents at his hometown sheriff’s office in southwest Utah, more than a three-hour drive from the site of the shooting, to turn himself in. Prosecutors have since revealed incriminating text messages and DNA evidence that they say connect Robinson to the killing.

A note that Robinson left for his romantic partner before the shooting said he had the opportunity to kill one of the nation’s leading conservative voices, “and I’m going to take it,” Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray told reporters before the first hearing. Gray also said Robinson wrote in a text about Kirk to his partner: “I had enough of his hatred.”

The assassination of Kirk, a close ally of President Donald Trump who worked to steer young voters toward conservatism, has galvanized Republicans who have vowed to carry on Kirk’s mission of moving American politics further right.

Trump has declared Kirk a “martyr” for freedom and threatened to crack down on what he called the “radical left.”

Workers across the U.S. have been punished or fired for speaking out about Kirk after his death, including teachers, public and private employees and media personalities — most notably Jimmy Kimmel, whose late-night show was suspended then reinstated by ABC.

Kirk’s political organization, Arizona-based Turning Point USA, brought young, evangelical Christians into politics through his podcast, social media and campus events. Many prominent Republicans are filling in at the upcoming campus events Kirk planned to attend, including Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Sen. Mike Lee at Utah State University on Tuesday.

(File Photo: Source for Photo: Erika Kirk reacts as she prepares to speak at a memorial for her husband, conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Sunday, Sept. 21, 2025, at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

LOGAN, Utah (AP) — Turning Point USA’s college tour will return to Utah on Tuesday for its first event in the state since its founder, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated on a college campus earlier this month.

The stop, at Utah State University in Logan, is about two hours north of Utah Valley University, where Kirk was killed Sept. 10 by a gunman who fired a single shot through the crowd while Kirk was speaking.

The assassination of a top ally of President Donald Trump and one of the most significant figures in his Make America Great Again movement has galvanized conservatives, who have vowed to carry on Kirk’s mission of encouraging young voters to embrace conservatism and moving American politics further right. Kirk himself has been celebrated as a “martyr” by many on the right, and Turning Point USA, the youth organization he founded, has seen a surge of interest across the nation, with tens of thousands of requests to launch new chapters in high schools and on college campuses.

Tuesday’s event, which was scheduled before Kirk’s death, will showcase how Turning Point is finding its path forward without its charismatic leader, who headlined many of its events and was instrumental in drawing crowds and attention.

The college tour is now being headlined by some of the biggest conservative names, including Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Glenn Beck. Tuesday’s event will feature conservative podcast host Alex Clark and a panel with Sen. Mike Lee, Rep. Andy Biggs, former Rep. Jason Chaffetz and Gov. Spencer Cox.

And it will further a pledge his widow, Erika Kirk, made to continue the campus tour and the work of the organization he founded. She now oversees Turning Point along with a stable of her late husband’s former aides and friends.

‘Nothing is changing’

Erika Kirk has sought to assure her husband’s followers that she intends to continue to run the operation as her late husband intended, closely following plans he laid out to her and to staff.

“We’re not going anywhere. We have the blueprints. We have our marching orders,” she said during an appearance on his podcast last week.

That will include, she said, continuing to tape the daily podcast.

“My husband’s voice will live on. The show will go on,” she said, announcing plans for a rotating cast of hosts. She said they intended to lean heavily on old clips of her husband, including answering callers’ questions.

“We have decades’ worth of my husband’s voice. We have unused material from speeches that he’s had that no one has heard yet,” she said.

Erika Kirk, however, made clear that she does not intend to appear on the podcast often, and so far seems to be assuming a more behind-the-scenes role than her husband.

Mikey McCoy, Kirk’s former chief of staff, said Erika Kirk is in daily contact with members of the Trump administration, and has described her as “very strategic” and different from her husband.

The events have served as tributes to Kirk

The events so far have served as tributes to the late Kirk, with a focus on prayer, as well as the question-and-answer sessions that he was known for.

At Virginia Tech last week, the state’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, urged the crowd to carry Kirk’s legacy forward.

“The question that has been asked over and over again is: Who will be the next Charlie? And as I look out in this room and I see thousands of you, I want to repeat the best answer that I have heard: You will be the next Charlie,” he said. “All of you.”

He also praised Erika Kirk as an “extraordinary” leader.

“Over the course of the last two weeks, Erika Kirk has demonstrated that she not only has the courage of a lion, but she has the heart of a saint. We have grieved with her and her family. We have prayed for her and her family,” he said. “Is there anyone better to lead Turning Point going forward than Erika Kirk?”

He then turned the stage over to Kelly, who said Charlie Kirk had asked her to join the tour several months ago. She said she knew appearing onstage carried risk, but felt it was important to be there “to send a message that we will not be silenced by an assassin’s bullet, by a heckler’s veto, by a left-wing, woke professor or anyone who tries to silence us from saying what we really believe,” she said to loud cheers.

At another event at the University of Minnesota last week, conservative commentator Michael Knowles gave a solo speech in lieu of the two-man conversation with Kirk that was originally planned. Then he continued Kirk’s tradition of responding to questions from the audience, which ranged from one man quibbling about Catholic doctrine to another arguing that the root of societal problems stems from letting women vote. (To the latter, he responded that women aren’t to blame because “men need to lead women.”)

As Knowles spoke, a spotlight shined on a chair left empty for Kirk.

Knowles said Kirk was instrumental in keeping together disparate conservative factions, and he worries about the MAGA movement fracturing without Kirk doing the day-to-day work to build bridges between warring groups.

“Charlie was the unifying figure for the movement. It’s simply a fact,” he said. “There is no replacing him in that regard.”

“The biggest threat right now is that without that single figure that we were all friends with, who could really hold it together, things could spin off in different directions,” Knowles said. “We have to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

(File Photo: Source for Photo: Little remained of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints chapel the day after a former Marine opened fire and set the building ablaze in Grand Blanc Township, Mich., Monday, Sept. 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Vancleave)

DETROIT (AP) — The man who shot up a Michigan church and set a fire that killed four people was a former U.S. Marine who expressed animosity about the Mormon faith to a city council candidate knocking on doors just days before the attack.

Thomas Sanford, who was known as Jake, drove a pickup truck with a deer skull and antlers strapped to the front and two large American flags flapping in the wind in the bed, according to friends and social media posts.

Sanford, 40, smashed that truck into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints chapel in Grand Blanc Township. He was killed by police officers who rushed to the scene Sunday, 60 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of Detroit. The building was destroyed.

Kris Johns, a council candidate in Burton, said he met Sanford while introducing himself to voters last week. He told MLive.com that Sanford was pleasant but became “unhinged” when he suddenly began talking about the Mormon church, as it is widely known.

It’s not known what ties, if any, Sanford had to the church. But Johns said Sanford indicated that some members wanted him to get rid of his tattoos. He also talked about “sealing,” the Mormon temple ceremony of joining a man, a woman and their children together for eternity.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, speaking on Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends,” said the FBI was learning that Sanford “hated people of the Mormon faith.”

Genesee County prosecutor David Leyton said his office wrote warrants to search Sanford’s vehicles, home and electronic devices to try to discover his motives.

“All this takes time,” he told The Associated Press.

Coincidentally, Sanford and his family lived next to a church, Eastgate Baptist, in Burton. Pastor Jerome Taylor said he mostly talked to Sanford about fallen trees on church property that his neighbor wanted to cut and sell as firewood.

“He had free rein,” said Taylor, who described Sanford as a “general blue-collar person in our neighborhood.”

“The knowledge that there was a threat, a danger, across our property line so heinous — it’s a little bit mind-warping,” he said, adding that Sanford never attended Eastgate Baptist.

A family friend, Kara Pattison, said she saw Sanford on Friday, two days before the shooting. She and her daughter were walking in the street at the Goodrich High School homecoming parade and became startled when the driver of a pickup truck hit the gas pedal hard.

When the window was rolled down, it was Sanford “laughing,” Pattison said.

“How do you mourn the death of someone who did something so terrible?” Pattison told WDIV-TV, referring to the church attack.

After high school, Sanford served in the Marines from 2004 to 2008, including seven months in Iraq, focusing on vehicle operations and maintenance, records show. He was discharged at the rank of sergeant.

Under Michigan law, police, family or health professionals can ask a judge to take guns away from someone for reasons that include mental health. There were no petitions filed against Sanford, court administrator Barbara Menear said.

In 2015, Sanford’s baby son received groundbreaking treatment at a Fort Worth, Texas, hospital for a condition called “hyperinsulinism,” or abnormally high levels of insulin. The boy’s stay at Cook Children’s Health Care System lasted for weeks and was promoted by the hospital in a news release.

Sanford told the hospital that a doctor’s willingness to help his son was a “sign from heaven.”

“We put our faith to the wind and it took us to Texas,” he said.

(File Photo of Two Road Closed Signs on a Road)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Pittsburgh, PA) According to public safety officials, a large water main break on the South Side of Pittsburgh has shut down a part of East Carson Street this morning. The end of the Birmingham Bridge is where this water main break is located. Traffic going inbound along East Carson Street is currently shut down. Additional closures of roads are expected and drivers are asked to avoid the area of East Carson Street.

(File Photo of the PennDOT logo)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Harrisburg, PA) PennDOT is inviting those in Pennsylvania and the public to take an online survey which gives them feedback about their services for construction and maintenance, which is available through October 21st, 2025. The 2025 PennDOT Construction/Maintenance Customer Satisfaction Survey is twenty-two questions and asks those taking it about how they receive roadway information from PennDOT, how often PennDOT exceeds or meets expectations in activities of construction and maintenance, experiences with reporting concerns to PennDOT, and how or whether they use the 511 PA traveler information services in Pennsylvania. According to a release from PennDOT, PennDOT has been hard at work improving Pennsylvania’s roads and bridges throughout the year, improving more than 2,600 miles of road, including over 900 miles of paving, and beginning work to repair, replace, or preserve more than 230 bridges from January through August of this year. You can take the 2025 PennDOT Construction/Maintenance Customer Satisfaction Survey by clicking on the link below:

Click here to take the 2025 PennDOT Construction/Maintenance Customer Satisfaction Survey.

(Photo Provided with Release Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Department of State)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Harrisburg, PA) Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt reminded registered voters in Pennsylvania today that October 28th, 2025 at 5 p.m. is the deadline for applying to vote by mail for the November 4th, 2025 general election in Pennsylvania, which is four weeks away. According to Schmidt: “The Shapiro Administration wants every registered voter to be able to make their voice heard, and casting a mail ballot continues to be a safe, secure, and convenient option for voters. Voters need only a few minutes to apply online for a mail ballot or they can visit their county board of elections to apply in person. Registered Pennsylvanians who prefer to vote by mail should apply today to give themselves as much time as possible to receive, complete, and return their ballot before the 8 p.m. deadline on Election Day, Nov. 4. Whether voting in person or by mail, the most important part is making your voice heard. Ensuring our elections are conducted freely and fairly, and that every eligible voter has a chance to vote, are top priorities for the Shapiro Administration.”

You can also click here to contact your election officials in your county.

You can also click here to apply online for a mail ballot.

According to a release from the Pennsylvania Department of State, here is some more information about what mail ballot voters should know about the November 4th, 2025 municipal election in Pennsylvania:

Once voters receive their mail ballot, they should do the following:

• Carefully read the instructions.
• Fill out the ballot, being sure to follow the instructions on how to mark their candidate selections.
• Seal the ballot in the yellow secrecy envelope marked “official election ballot.”
• Seal the yellow secrecy envelope in the outer return envelope.
• Sign and date the outer envelope.

More information:

• If a voter makes an error while completing their ballot, they should contact their county elections office to get a replacement ballot.
• Completed mail ballots must be received by a voter’s county elections office by 8 p.m. Nov. 4, which is Election Day. Mail ballots received after that time will not be counted.
• Options for mail ballot voters include mailing the completed ballot or dropping it off in person at their county elections office, which you can click here to contact the officials in your county . Some counties provide drop boxes or other drop-off sites for mail ballots and you can click here to find out where you can return your mail ballot.
• Pennsylvanians can also request their mail ballot, complete it, and return it in one visit to their county elections office until the close of business on Oct. 28. Voters are encouraged to check their county elections office’s hours and mail ballot availability before making the trip.
• Voters who received an absentee or mail-in ballot may still vote in person on Election Day if they bring their mail ballot materials with them to be surrendered.
• Voters who requested a mail ballot but did not receive it or do not have it to surrender may vote by provisional ballot, which you can click here to find more information about, or they can vote at their polling place.
• The Department’s voter information website, vote.pa.gov, is available in English, Spanish, and Chinese and offers voter registration applications, which you can find more information about by clicking here, a polling place locator by clicking here, and contact information for county elections offices by clicking here. It also includes tips for first-time voters by clicking here, mail-in and absentee voters by clicking here, elderly and disabled voters by clicking here, and members of the military by clicking here.

(File Photo of a New Sewickley Township Police Car)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(New Sewickley Township, PA) A man from Brooklyn, New York who is also an undocumented immigrant from China has now received more filed charges against him of extorting money from residents through a scam that involved a telephone and a computer. Thirty-five-year-old Xinhua Chen is currently in the Beaver County Jail and is being held there without bond as a result of charges that were filed against him by the Pennsylvania State Police and the City of Aliquippa Police Department and he is also being held because of a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer as a result of that. Chen has six felony counts of charges, which are one count each of theft, theft by deception, theft by extortion, receiving stolen property, criminal use of a communication facility and unlawful use of a computer. Chen also has a charge of impersonating a public servant, which is a misdemeanor count. In the criminal complaint filed by New Sewickley Township police, a township resident gave a report to them on September 5th, 2025 that they had given $24,700 in money to “Jack,” the name of a supposed federal agent, to resolve “unpaid subscriptions” for which that resident believed they were responsible. According to the police affidavit, the resident was using their computer on September 4th, 2025 when several pop-up messages appeared, leading the victim to believe that the computer was locked and they needed to call what they thought was the Microsoft Help Desk to resolve the issue. Then, the affidavit went on to say the victim called the phone number on the screen of their computer and “was instructed by a female voice on the phone to download an application named Ultra Viewer onto their computer,” which let another person to gain remote access into the computer of the victim. The victim then got told that $24,700 in “unpaid subscriptions” was owed and to fix their computer, $20 bills for the total of that money should be withdrawn by the victim from their bank account so “Jack” the federal agent would collect the money at their residence in person. The affidavit also confirmed that “Jack” arrived in a gray SUV at the residence of the victim several hours later and opened a bag for the victim to place the money into. New Sewickley Township police also discovered on September 15th, 2025 that a man, who was identified as Chen, got arrested on September 12th, 2025 by the City of Aliquippa Police Department for allegedly stealing about $100,000 from a resident of Aliquippa who responded to a pop-up message that showed up on their computer. Chen was charged with six felony counts by extortion and deception. A preliminary hearing is tentatively scheduled for October 14th, 2025 for Chen in regards to both incidents.

(File Photo: Source for Photo: FILE – The Tuskegee Airmen Way street sign is briefly displayed in front of a 1943 North American T6 Texan aircraft used to train pilots during WWII, at the Selfridge Air National Guard Base, in Harrison Township, Mich., Feb. 27, 2018. (Todd McInturf/Detroit News via AP, File)

(AP) Lt. Col. George Hardy, the youngest fighter pilot of the Tuskegee Airmen, the nation’s first Black military pilots, has died. He was 100.

Hardy was the last surviving combat pilot of the Tuskegee Airmen who went overseas. He died last week, according to Tuskegee Airmen Inc.

“His legacy is one of courage, resilience, tremendous skill and dogged perseverance against racism, prejudice and other evils,” Tuskegee Airmen Inc. said in a Facebook post.

Born in Philadelphia, Hardy was a dedicated student who dreamed of becoming an engineer and never planned on joining the military. He was intrigued after his brother joined the U.S. Navy, but still pursued a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s degree in systems engineering from the U.S. Air Force Institute, according to the National WWII museum.

“It wasn’t until 1941 when the Army started opening the door for us to be pilots and whatnot. And we walked through the door and had a great opportunity, and we took advantage of it,” Hardy told AVI-8, an “aviation-inspired” watch manufacturer, in an interview.

Before World War II, Black Americans were not allowed to serve in the Air Force. But in 1941, the Tuskegee Airmen unit was established by the U.S. Army Air Corps as the 99th Pursuit Squadron based at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. The military pilots served in a segregated World War II unit, and their all-Black 332nd Fighter Group had one of the lowest loss records of all the bomber escorts in the war.

Several white leaders in the U.S. Army Air Forces tried to prevent Black pilots from combat duty and banned them from using their club spaces, spurring civil disobedience from Tuskegee Airmen.

Hardy was commissioned as a second lieutenant at 19 and flew his first combat mission before he had ever driven a car, he told AVI. He ultimately completed 21 World War II missions and also served in the Korean War and Vietnam War.

Brian Smith, president and CEO of the Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Museum, described Hardy as a “humble man” with a passion for aviation. He was passionate about encouraging young people to become pilots, and up until recent years, he often attended air shows, Smith said.

“We always talked about the racism in World War II, but we also celebrated the progress America and the world has made in accepting people of color,” Smith added.

The Tuskegee Airmen were spotlighted in a 1995 HBO film, “The Tuskegee Airmen,” and a 2012 feature film, “Red Tails.”

The men are commemorated in several states year each year as a part of Tuskegee Airmen Commemoration Day, usually on the fourth Thursday of March.

Amid President Donald Trump’s attempts to purge federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs, the Air Force removed training courses with videos of the Tuskegee Airmen and the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, in January. They later restored them after bipartisan criticism.