Tag: pennsylvania

PA Dem Commissioner Charged With Dozens of Felony Drug Offenses

A local elected official in Pennsylvania is facing extensive felony drug charges following an investigation that authorities say uncovered evidence of repeated narcotics transactions over a nearly two-year period.

Zachary Borghi, a Democratic commissioner in Lehigh County, was arrested and arraigned in late March in connection with the case. He remains in custody at the Lehigh County Jail after failing to post $500,000 bail.

Prosecutors allege that Borghi faces a wide range of charges, including 89 counts of criminal use of a communication facility, 14 counts related to the delivery of cocaine, and an additional count involving the delivery of psilocybin mushrooms. The charges stem from what investigators describe as a detailed review of digital communications spanning from November 2023 through August 2025.

According to the Lehigh County District Attorney’s Office, the case was built in part through forensic analysis of Borghi’s cellphone and Apple iCloud data. Authorities say the records include text messages that appear to show arrangements for drug transactions taking place across multiple locations, including his home, a relative’s residence, government offices, and other sites within the region.

Among the more serious allegations, prosecutors claim that Borghi conducted or facilitated drug-related communications during official public events. These include a Lehigh County Board of Commissioners meeting and a “Peace and Justice Symposium” held at Northampton Community College. Investigators say they were able to match timestamps from text messages with video recordings of public meetings, strengthening the case.

Lehigh County District Attorney Gavin Holihan said the investigation initially identified Borghi through a broader grand jury probe before additional evidence led to the current charges.

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Kindergarten Teachers Fired for Filming Themselves Celebrating Iran’s Assassination Threat Against Trump Brag That They Have Been Hired at Taxpayer-Funded Pittsburgh Charter School 

Two kindergarten teachers who were terminated from Propel Charter Schools in Pittsburgh after they recorded themselves in a classroom celebrating Iranian state media threats to assassinate President Donald Trump have reportedly been hired at the nearby Urban Pathways Charter School.

The teachers, Kate Patterson and Devin Hays, made national headlines earlier this month after they posted a video showing their excited reaction to a news report about Iran’s threats against Trump.

In the clip, the pair crossed their fingers with huge smiles on their faces while showing the headline: “IRAN ISSUES ASSASSINATION THREAT AGAINST TRUMP: RPT,” while sitting in what appeared to be their Propel classroom.

Propel Schools initially placed Patterson and Hays on paid administrative leave for an internal investigation.

The district later confirmed that both women were “no longer employed,” citing the inappropriate nature of the social media posts and the video made on school property.

“We want to be clear that Propel Schools rejects any suggestion of harm or violence toward anyone,” the school said in a statement obtained by WTAE Pittsburgh. “Such sentiments are incompatible with our values and with the responsibility entrusted to educators who serve children and families.”

The statement continued, “Our focus remains on the safety and well-being of our scholars and on upholding the professionalism and trust our community expects.”

Now, just weeks later, the same two teachers have landed new jobs at Urban Pathways Charter School, a taxpayer-funded charter serving students in Pittsburgh.

A video posted by one of the teachers shows the duo excitedly announcing their new jobs at the school, bragging in the caption, “all I do is win.”

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Wait, That’s Why PA House Dems Pulled Their National Women’s Month Resolution

They’re just unserious people. The Democratic Party is so unhinged, illiberal, and has a base to back that up. They’re also terrified of them since we’re dealing with left-wing cultural authoritarians, where any deviation is a political death sentence. Why do you think the party is so paralyzed on transgender issues? Most Americans can answer what a woman is. The average Democrat cannot. In Pennsylvania, they even nuked a resolution honoring National Women’s Month over it.  

I’m not kidding. Pennsylvania Democrats drafted this resolution but ran away like scared wombats when a Republican wanted to attach an amendment clarifying the definition of womanhood. The Democrats then pulled the resolution.

Pennsylvania House Democrats withdrew consideration of a resolution honoring March as “National Women’s Month” after a Republican lawmaker filed an amendment to include the physiological definition of “woman” in the text. 

What was expected to be a quick, symbolic vote instead turned into a brief but telling floor moment, with Republicans forcing the question into the open and Democrats opting to shelve the resolution rather than define “woman” in legislation — leading to an eruption of laughter on the House floor. 

House Speaker Joanna McClinton, D-Southwest Philadelphia, was bringing a rapid-fire succession of bills up for consideration late in Tuesday’s session when she asked the clerk to introduce House Resolution 390. 

The bill, from state Rep. Carol Hill-Evans, D-York, recognized March as Women’s History Month in Pennsylvania. Hill-Evans wrote in her presentation of the bill that it “celebrat[es] the extraordinary accomplishments of women,” which “too often go unacknowledged.” 

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Democrat Gettysburg Mayor Who Ran Local Gay Pride Organization Steps Down After Being Arrested for Child Sex Crimes

Gettysburg Borough Mayor Chad-Alan Carr, a Democrat who ran the local Gay Pride organization, has stepped down after being arrested for child sex crimes.

Carr, 41, served as mayor until earlier this month, when he left office citing a “personal legal matter.”

The disgraced politician also stepped down as president of Gettysburg Pride, an LGBTQ advocacy group he helped promote in the historic Pennsylvania town known for its Civil War battlefield.

Pennsylvania State Police announced the arrest during a press conference on March 13, following a Childline report received on February 24.

The charges include two felony counts for photographing or filming sexual acts and knowingly depicting them on a computer, plus one misdemeanor count of corruption of minors.

According to court documents, Carr allegedly groomed a 16-year-old boy he met through high school musical productions in Gettysburg around 2011-2013.

The victim, now an adult, reported that Carr solicited explicit photos, engaged in video sex acts via Skype, and shared his own nude images while pressuring the teen for more.

Carr reportedly described the interactions as “late-night talks.”

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Is This the Scandal That Dooms Josh Shapiro’s Presidential Ambitions?

Josh Shapiro has spent years polishing his image, positioning himself as a potential presidential candidate. He hasn’t quite figured out that his party will never nominate a Jew for president, so you would think he’d still try to keep up appearances and pretend to be a decent human being before he starts his presidential campaign next year.

Instead, he’s making headlines for something extremely unflattering: a backyard land grab that truly destroys his statesman image and makes him out to be more like a corrupt governor abusing his position to get what he wants.

“Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s neighbors are suing the Democrat, accusing him of stealing a slice of their land to erect an eight-foot-high security fence around his private residence in an ‘outrageous abuse of power,’” reports the New York Post. “The neighbors, Jeremy and Simone Mock, are currently duking it out with the governor in court over a 2,900 square foot parcel of land located between their two homes in Abington, Montgomery County, court papers show.”

It gets worse. Shapiro is essentially claiming squatter’s rights on the land.

The Mocks alleged in a lawsuit filed last month that Shapiro and his wife, Lori, unlawfully seized the stretch of land after initial negotiations to buy it from them went up in flames.

Shapiro claimed in a countersuit that he owns the disputed land due, citing an “adverse possession” loophole that makes it his because he has maintained the sliver of property for decades.

The land-grab tit-for-tat kicked off last year when the Shapiros first sought to erect the huge fence and upgrade security following an arson attack on the governor’s official residence in Harrisburg while they were all sleeping inside on April 13.

“This is a case of squatters’ rights, which is the colloquial term for the legal doctrine known as adverse possession,” attorney Chad Cummings told Realtor.com. “Where a person continuously maintains possession of another’s property openly, visibly, and notoriously for a set period of time, which varies by state, the squatter can file a court action to ask the court to recognize the squatter—the ‘adverse possessor’—as the legal owner through a quiet title action.”

Think it can’t get worse? Well, it does.

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Parents of alleged ISIS-loving NYC bomb thrower own $2.5M Pennsylvania home, are naturalized citizens from Afghanistan

The parents of one of the alleged ISIS-loving wannabe terrorists who tried to detonate an IED near Gracie Mansion own a gorgeous, $2.25 million home – a sign they seized the American Dream after arriving from Afghanistan decades ago, The Post has learned.

Alleged teen bomber Ibrahim Kayumi’s family home is a 5,800-square-foot manse with six bedrooms and five bathrooms in scenic Newtown, Pennsylvania, records show.

Kayumi, 19, and his friend Emir Balat, 18, traveled from the blissful enclave of McMansions in Bucks County to the Big Apple, where they allegedly hurled homemade bombs at a racist agitator’s anti-Muslim protest outside the mayoral residence on the Upper East Side Saturday, according to police and prosecutors.

The stunning attempted bombing – which NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said was being investigated as an act of “ISIS-inspired terrorism” – shocked Kayumi’s neighbors.

“This is not the kind of place you think of when you think Islamic terror,” one neighbor, Kathy, said Monday. “This is Americana, here. It’s middle class, but in the best way.

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Farmer Hailed as Hero for Rejecting Huge Payment to Turn His Land Into a Giant Data Center

The immense hype surrounding AI has caused enormous data centers to crop up across the country, triggering significant opposition. It’s not just the loss of land: enormous power needs are pushing the grid into meltdown and driving up local electricity prices, catching the attention of politicians and their irate constituents.

One 86-year-old farmer in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, has heard enough. As local Fox affiliate WPMT reports, Mervin Raudabaugh, who has farmed the surrounding land for more than 60 years, turned down more than $15 million from data center developers in a package deal that involved three neighboring property owners as well.

The farmer was offered $60,000 per acre to build a data center on his property. But giving up his family legacy wasn’t in the cards for him.

“I was not interested in destroying my farms,” he told WPMT. “That was the bottom line. It really wasn’t so much the economic end of it. I just didn’t want to see these two farms destroyed.”

Instead, he sold the development rights in December for just under $2 million to a conservation trust, taking a significant loss but guaranteeing that it would stay farmland in perpetuity.

Users on social media called him a “legend,” and argued he had “more integrity than the whole government.”

“Now that is a real hero in these gutless times!” another user tweeted.

“$15M is huge, but clean water, quiet land, and legacy don’t have a price tag,” another user argued.

The sheer amount of land being earmarked to construct enormous energy and water-sucking data centers is remarkable. A data center in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, is set to take up 600 acres, which could cost local residents their land, as ABC News reported this week. Another octogenarian farmer, the 83-year-old Tom Uttech, who has lived on his 52-acre Wisconsin property for almost 40 years, told the broadcaster that he “couldn’t believe” that a local utility company was looking to build “power lines that are 300 or something feet tall, taller than apparently the Statue of Liberty,” through his land to power the data center.

Per ABC, there are more than 3,000 data centers in the US, a number that will soon grow by 1,200 more, which are currently being constructed.

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‘Quiet’ Pennsylvania father allegedly stabbed 3-month-old son, threw him in the snow as part of ‘sacrifice’

A “quiet” Pennsylvania father allegedly stabbed his baby son and tossed his tiny, injured body into the snow last week as part of a “sacrifice,” prosecutors chillingly revealed Thursday.

Michael Phillips, 44, was arrested after police responded to a call about a stabbing on Wednesday at an apartment complex in Coatesville just before 11:40 a.m., according to the Chester County District Attorney’s Office.

After arriving at the home, police discovered that Phillips had allegedly stabbed his 3-month-old son in the abdomen after the infant’s mother said he made comments about “having to sacrifice the baby” and had come at her with a knife, the DA said.

Philips allegedly tried to stab his baby son several times, but only managed to strike him once, the mother told police.

After the father launched the alleged freak assault, the terrified mother grabbed the injured child and her 9-year-old son to flee the residence, prosecutors added.

As the older son ran to get help, Philips allegedly followed the mother outside, grabbed the baby from her arms, and “threw the infant in the snow.”

The mother heroically “used her body to shield her child from further harm” until first responders arrived at the scene.

Officers quickly got the infant medical attention and flew him to a local hospital in “very serious condition,” according to the Coatesville police department.

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Small Pennsylvania town locked in bitter dispute as billionaire buys up village to revamp under his control

Residents of a wealthy Pennsylvania village confronted developers this week after learning that a billionaire has quietly bought up much of the town’s commercial core, fueling fears that one family now wields outsized control over its future.

The backlash centers on Jeff Yass, Pennsylvania’s richest man, whose family has spent more than $15 million acquiring homes, storefronts, and civic properties in Gladwyne, a community of just under 5,000 residents and where median home prices top $2.3 million.

At a packed public meeting in a school auditorium, developers working with Yass unveiled their first detailed redevelopment plans for the village center.

The moment that drew both applause and skepticism from residents alarmed by shuttered businesses, rising rents, and unanswered questions about the scope of the billionaire-backed project.

Standing before the crowd, Andre Golsorkhi, founder and CEO of design firm Haldon House, unveiled a sweeping redevelopment plan crafted in partnership with Yass and his wife, Janine. 

Golsorkhi framed the effort as a ‘community impact project,’ insisting the billionaire family’s intentions were rooted in preservation rather than profit.

But for a town already rattled by closed storefronts, the presentation drew plenty of suspicion and unease.

Over the past several years, Haldon House and the Yass family have acquired multiple properties clustered around the intersection of Youngs Ford and Righters Mill Roads – effectively Gladwyne’s commercial heart.

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100 skulls and mummified body parts found in a Pennsylvania grave robbery case, police say

Bones and skulls visible in the back seat of a car near an abandoned cemetery on Philadelphia’s outskirts led police to a basement filled with body parts, which authorities say were hoarded by a man now accused of stealing about 100 sets of human remains.

Officers say a Tuesday night arrest culminated a monthslong investigation into break-ins at Mount Moriah Cemetery, where at least 26 mausoleums and vaults had been forced open since early November.

Investigators later searched the Ephrata home and storage unit of Jonathan Christ Gerlach, 34, and reported finding more than 100 human skulls, long bones, mummified hands and feet, two decomposing torsos and other skeletal items.

“They were in various states. Some of them were hanging, as it were. Some of them were pieced together, some were just skulls on a shelf,” Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse said.

Most were in the basement, authorities said, and they also recovered jewelry believed to be linked to the graves. In one case, a pacemaker was still attached.

Police say Gerlach targeted mausoleums and underground vaults at the 1855 cemetery. It’s considered the country’s largest abandoned burial ground, according to Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery, which helps maintain the 160-acre landmark in Yeadon that’s home to an estimated 150,000 gravesites.

Police had been looking into the string of burglaries when an investigator checked Gerlach’s vehicle plates and found he had been near Yeadon repeatedly during the period when the burglaries occurred. Police say the break-ins centered on sealed vaults and mausoleums containing older burials, which had been smashed open or had stonework damaged to reach the remains inside.

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