BOYS

Archbishop Wood Catholic High School 63, Father Judge High School 58

Berks Catholic 67, Wyomissing 39

Bermudian Springs 46, Kennard-Dale 40

Blue Mountain 60, Tamaqua 30

Carlisle 47, Central Dauphin East 33

Cedar Crest 67, Conestoga Valley 63

Devon Preparatory School 45, Cardinal O’Hara 38

Coventry Christian School 51, Conestoga Christian 40

Eastern Lebanon County High 46, Pottsville 41

Elizabethtown 50, Cocalico 46

Environmental 76, Wilmington 72

Erie 54, Fairview 39

First Christian 78, Iroquois 70

Governor Mifflin 46, Lampeter-Strasburg 32

Halifax 45, Columbia 44

Imhotep 73, West Philadelphia 41

Jersey Shore 49, Wellsboro 47

Juniata Valley 56, Bellwood-Antis 51

Karns City 62, West Shamokin 37

Lebanon 55, Donegal 48

Mercer 56, Greenville 43

Millville 55, Columbia-Montour 44

Mohawk 66, Deer Lakes 59

Monsignor Bonner and Archbishop Prendergast 77, Lansdale Catholic 59

New Covenant 55, Christian School of York 52

Lehighton 73, Northern Lehigh 48

North Schuylkill 56, Palmerton 44

Notre Dame-Green Pond 72, Northwestern Lehigh 70

Old Forge 69, Scranton Holy Cross 48

Philadelphia West Catholic 63, La Salle College High School 47

Pittsburgh Central Catholic 42, Penn Hills 31

Robeson 69, Great Oaks Charter School, Del. 52

Roman Catholic High School of Philadelphia 66, Archbishop Carroll 38

Saints John Neumann & Maria Goretti Catholic High School 93, Archbishop Ryan 80

Science Leadership 52, Masterman 51

South Williamsport 62, Bucktail 35

Southern Lehigh 53, Salisbury 51

St. Joseph’s Prep 69, Conwell-Egan 62

State College 52, Chambersburg 50

Turkeyfoot Valley 68, Hancock, Md. 67

W. Carrollton, Ohio 55, Ringgold 49

Warwick 43, Ephrata 36

Wilson 49, Manheim Township 43

GIRLS

Cocalico 56, Elizabethtown 27

Council Rock South 47, Bensalem 45

Dunmore 51, Western Wayne 27

Eastern York 47, Littlestown 31

Friends Select 61, Martin Luther King High School 37

Governor Mifflin 52, Lampeter-Strasburg 42

Grove City 41, Fort LeBoeuf 34

Hughesville 65, Southern Columbia 53

Lakeview 44, Franklin 37

Lebanon 62, Donegal 35

Lehighton 49, Northern Lehigh 31

Lewisburg 28, Mifflinburg 24

Manheim Central 39, Lancaster Catholic 34

Manheim Township 55, Conestoga Valley 46

Marian Catholic High School 47, Schuylkill Haven 39

Mars 40, Peters Township 31

Mountain Ridge (MD), Md. 71, Chestnut Ridge 41

New Covenant 48, Christian School of York 20

Pottsville 35, Eastern Lebanon County High 17

Red Lion 50, Hempfield 15

Scranton Prep 55, Scranton 46

Selinsgrove 40, Jersey Shore 29

Solanco 47, Garden Spot 36

South Fayette 75, Akr. Hoban, Ohio 65

Southern Lehigh 53, Salisbury 51

Susquehannock 38, Northeastern 28

Tulpehocken 45, Pottsville Nativity 33

Twin Valley 37, Wyomissing 26

Warwick 46, Ephrata 41

Some high school basketball scores provided by the Delaware County Daily Times, The Morning Call, the Reading Eagle and Scorestream.com, https://scorestream.com/

The Penn State Board of Trustees spent more time discussing university business in its public meetings in 2025 than in any of the five previous years.

However, the increase in discussions was not universal. Data analyzed by Spotlight PA show the board’s public conversations this year were almost entirely focused on three topics: naming the football field, removing a sitting trustee, and closing seven campuses across the state in 2027.

Spotlight PA reviewed only full board meetings to provide comparable data to its previous analysis and because the board’s bylaws only mandate trustee attendance for a certain percentage of full board meetings. (Under the bylaws, trustees are expected to “diligently participate in any Committees to which they are assigned.”)

Shannon Harvey, secretary for the board, disputed Spotlight PA’s methods of analysis in an email. “Committee meetings provide time for discussion, information sharing, and deliberation on matters including matters that ultimately come before the full Board for consideration,” Harvey wrote. “Any assessment of Board engagement should take into account the committee structure and the significant amount of work that occurs in those committee meetings.”

Last year, the newsroom tracked and analyzed trustee discussions and votes between 2019 and 2024. The data showed the 36-member board rarely discussed issues before voting, unless they were about athletics or internal board operations, and that the board approved 85% of proposals it considered without a single dissenting vote. At the time, the university did not respond to a request for comment about the findings.

The board’s voting pattern remained consistent in 2025. Each of the nearly 50 votable items trustees considered was passed, and all but nine of them were unanimous. The corporate naming rights to the football field, in March, and the campus closure plan, in May, faced the most opposition, with eight trustees voting against each of those proposals.

The full board met nine times in 2025, for a total of nearly 10.5 hours — 22% (or two hours and 20 minutes) of which was spent discussing items that later received votes, according to Spotlight PA’s analysis. The percentage was a recent high for the governing body. In 2024, the figure was 17.5%. The other preceding years, going back to 2019, were all single-digit percentages.

Ross Mugler, interim president and CEO of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, said in a statement to Spotlight PA that a board’s public discussion can improve trust and help leaders make better decisions.

“When board members spend meaningful time in discussion, institutions benefit from the candid dialogue and healthy skepticism that occurs before final decisions are made,” Mugler said. “Quick approvals without inquiry fall short of fiduciary duty. Leaders must encourage questions, test assumptions, and explore alternatives before decision-making.”

Penn State’s board spent all but five minutes of its 2025 discussions on the football field naming, the campus closure plan, and the removal of alumni-elected trustee Barry Fenchak from the board in June. Other topics, such as Penn State’s strategic plan, the university’s operating budget, and President Neeli Bendapudi’s compensation package, received in total approximately 30 seconds of public discussion during full board meetings.

In November, the board updated its bylaws to require that trustees follow board or communications staff guidance on whether they can speak with members of the press, among other revisions. Tabitha Oman, the university’s general counsel, said in a committee meeting that the changes were to clarify that “board meetings are the time for robust and vigorous debate of trustee views.” Only one trustee, alumni-elected member Anthony Lubrano, voted against the changes.

First Amendment experts told the Centre Daily Times that the changes raise free speech concerns and could have a chilling effect.

SUPPORT THIS JOURNALISM and help us reinvigorate local news in north-central Pennsylvania at spotlightpa.org/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability and public-service journalism that gets results.

HARRISBURG — Gov. Josh Shapiro has not reappointed a longtime member of the Board of Pardons, a psychiatrist who advocates have opposed for his votes against clemency applicants, lack of experience in criminal justice and lines of questioning they find inappropriate.

John Williams, a child psychiatrist practicing in Montgomery County, has served on the board since then Gov. Tom Corbett appointed him in 2013. He was reappointed in 2019, under then Gov. Tom Wolf. His second six-year term expired in November, leaving a vacancy on the five-member body.

Williams did not return an email from Spotlight PA requesting comment.

A representative for Shapiro’s office said the governor is working with state Senate leadership to “restore the board to its full complement.”

Shapiro’s office would not confirm whether the governor may still nominate Williams. Spokesperson Kayla Anderson said, “No final decision regarding a nominee has been made at this time.”

The Board of Pardons makes the ultimate decision on both commutation and pardon applications from people who are seeking to either shorten a prison sentence or wipe clean a criminal history.

The board comprises two elected officials, the attorney general and lieutenant governor, and three political appointees — a corrections expert; a medical doctor, psychiatrist, or psychologist; and a victim advocate.

Applications the board deems “meritorious” are given a public hearing, after which the body votes to either deny the application or approve it for the governor’s consideration.

While pardons are recommended by the board in a majority vote, life sentence commutations, which allow a person to get out of prison, require unanimous approval — just one no vote dooms an application.

Earlier this year, a coalition of pro-clemency groups organized the Commutation Now campaign to pressure Shapiro to replace Williams, who frequently voted against both commutations and pardons.

In a report released in June, the group criticized Williams for routinely asking “inappropriate questions reflecting ‘lurid curiosity.’ ”

During a public commutations hearing in September 2024, Williams asked a victim speaking against the applicant to give increasingly specific details about the sexual abuse he endured as a child. When the man wasn’t sufficiently specific, Williams pushed for additional details. After the questioning, he acknowledged the man’s discomfort.

There was no reason for the line of questioning, said Etta Cetera, a longtime board watchdog and member of the Commutation Now campaign. Williams’ single no vote would have been sufficient to deny the commutation, Cetera said, negating the need to put a victim through an invasive line of questioning.

“When you come into these cases, any of these cases for people with life sentences are extremely sensitive. Somebody lost their life, and in other situations, there was other abuse and even sexual violence involved,” Cetera said. “And it’s irresponsible to not take seriously the trauma that comes up for people when these hearings happen. And the way that the psychiatrist questioned the victims is totally not trauma-informed.”

After a public pardons hearing in 2021, a viewer wrote to then-Lt. Gov. John Fetterman to complain about Williams’ conduct. The letter, which was also reviewed by Spotlight PA, expressed concern that “Williams questioned a pardon applicant about which sex positions he used during the commission of a decades-old sexual offense,” according to the report.

Williams then asked the applicant’s wife about her sex life with the applicant, including which sexual positions they used, the letter alleges.

Commutations interviews are not public, but attorneys interviewed for the Commutations Now study reported Williams consistently asked about an applicant’s sexual abuse “in excruciating detail,” and pursued invasive and humiliating questions.

Commutations Now hand-delivered the report to legislative leaders, including the state Senate Republicans who will have to confirm Shapiro’s new appointee.

The nomination must undergo two committee votes before the full chamber weighs in, said Kate Flessner, a spokesperson for state Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman, R-Indiana.

Tobey Oxholm, who works with pardons applicants statewide, said in recent years the number of applications exploded, but the board held only nine days of hearings in 2025. The backlog of potential pardons keeps people with nonviolent felonies from working in roles the state needs, he said, such as home health, elder and child care.

“The crushing numbers really requires somebody who is a systems thinker as well as somebody who has experience with the populations that are coming before the board,” Oxholm said of the position.

The advocate community wrote a letter to Shapiro in October recommending David DeMatteo, an attorney and forensic psychologist teaching at Drexel University. State Sen. Maria Collett, D-Montgomery, wrote to the governor endorsing him as well.

In the meantime, the board will be able to proceed with four people, as four still constitutes a quorum for all votes.

But Oxholm questioned why the position was allowed to lapse.

When there are only four people on the board, a person seeking a pardon has a narrower chance to have their application receive the three votes they need to move on from their felony conviction, which can keep them from jobs and housing opportunities.

“This indicates that there isn’t a full appreciation by the governor and the senate about the importance of this position to individuals, families, and their communities,” he said.

BEFORE YOU GO… If you learned something from this article, pay it forward and contribute to Spotlight PA at spotlightpa.org/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.

HAMMONTON, N.J. (AP) — Two helicopters crashed midair in New Jersey on Sunday, killing one person and critically injuring another, authorities say.

Hammonton Police Chief Kevin Friel said rescuers responded to a report of an aviation crash at about 11:25 a.m. Video from the scene shows a helicopter spinning rapidly to the ground. Police and fire crews subsequently extinguished flames that engulfed one of the helicopters.

The Federal Aviation Administration described the crash as a midair collision between an Enstrom F-28A helicopter and Enstrom 280C helicopter over Hammonton Municipal Airport. Only the pilots were on board each aircraft. One was killed, and the other was transported to a hospital with life-threatening injuries.

Sal Silipino, owner of a cafe near the crash site, said the pilots were regulars at the restaurant and would often have breakfast together. He said he and other customers watched the helicopters take off before one began spiraling downward, followed by the other.

“It was shocking,” he said. “I’m still shaking after that happened.”

Hammonton is a town of about 15,000 people located in Atlantic County in the southern part of New Jersey, about 35 miles (56 kilometers) southeast of Philadelphia. The town has a history of agriculture and is located near the Pine Barrens, a forested wilderness area that covers more than 1 million acres (405,000 hectares).

The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board will be investigating the crash, Friel said.

Investigators will likely first look to review any communications between the two pilots and whether they were able to see each other, said Alan Diehl, a former crash investigator for the FAA and NTSB.

“Virtually all midair collisions are a failure to what they call ‘see and avoid,’” Diehl said. “Clearly they’ll be looking at the out-of-cockpit views of the two aircraft and seeing if one pilot was approaching from the blind side.”

Although it was mostly cloudy at the time of the crash, winds were light and visibility was good, according to the weather forecasting company AccuWeather.

___

Associated Press writer Sean Murphy contributed from Oklahoma City. Fernando reported from Chicago.

HARRISBURG — In November, Pennsylvania Department of Aging Secretary Jason Kavulich found himself in the hot seat.

He was testifying before a legislative committee on his department’s oversight of 52 county-based Area Agencies on Aging that protect vulnerable older adults from abuse or neglect.

Reading from prepared remarks, Kavulich asserted that under his watch, the department has ushered in an era of modernization and change.

He said the system his agency now uses to determine the quality of protective services is more accountable and gives real-time feedback so any problems can be speedily fixed. He also testified that the department is the most transparent it has ever been, saying that it places an unprecedented amount of data on its website about whether counties are following state requirements for quickly and efficiently investigating abuse and neglect allegations — and keeping older adults safe.

The reality is far more nuanced.

Over the past 18 months, a Spotlight PA investigation has revealed persistent flaws within Pennsylvania’s safety net for older adults. The reporting highlighted how delays, secrecy, and government inaction have left older Pennsylvanians vulnerable to abuse, neglect, and even death.

Many of those older adults lack financial resources for alternative care or a network of family and friends to watch out for them — they rely on the system to remain safe.

Protective services work is emotionally and physically taxing. Many caseworkers juggle high workloads, often for little money. Turnover is high, making it difficult to retain qualified, experienced people. Even the most hardened critics of the state’s protective services system acknowledge the difficulty of the work.

Still, new data show that many counties continue to fail in some of the most important areas of older adult protective services.

Critics of Kavulich’s administration, including former protective or aging services staffers at the department, believe many of his changes have relaxed oversight of the county agencies and weakened efforts to ensure they follow rules and keep older adults safe.

These critics note that Kavulich once helmed a county aging agency and later presided over the association that represents their interests. That background, they believe, makes him sympathetic to the very agencies his department is supposed to oversee.

At least one employee is suing him and the department, alleging retaliation for raising alarms about transparency problems and elder abuse system failures.

Most alarmingly, hundreds of older adults continue to die while their abuse and neglect cases are actively being investigated by their local aging agency, according to data provided to Spotlight PA by state aging officials.

“Has he made changes? Yes,” said Sheri McQuown, a former Department of Aging specialist who monitored the quality of protective services by counties, including the one Kavulich once led. “Do those changes benefit older adults? No. They benefit the [counties].”

A new monitoring system

Appointed by Gov. Josh Shapiro in 2023, Kavulich has repeatedly asserted that he inherited a deeply flawed system for assessing how well counties investigate abuse and neglect allegations and provide services to keep older adults safe.

He called the system subjective, said it was riddled with inconsistencies, and claimed that it did little to help counties correct problems or improve their performance.

This year, he replaced it with a new monitoring system, called the Comprehensive Agency Performance Evaluation, or CAPE.

Under CAPE, counties are assessed and scored in five main categories, and those results are published online — the first time the department has made that information easily accessible.

CAPE, Kavulich has said, allows the department to drill down on specific problems and help counties in the areas where they are struggling the most, including through training opportunities.

“Accountability is about improvement, not punishment,” Kavulich said at a state Senate hearing in November.

Earlier this year, Spotlight PA obtained copies of the forms and scoresheets the department used to monitor counties both before CAPE and after. Those records show the prior monitoring system assessed counties using a wide range of measures drawn from state regulations.

For instance, it assessed counties on how quickly they met in person with an older adult suspected of being in danger of abuse or neglect. It also monitored them on how quickly the investigation was completed.

Denise Getgen, the department’s former director of protective services, oversaw the agency’s previous monitoring system until her tenure ended in 2023 and rejected Kavulich’s assertion that it was flawed. It was “absolutely based on the law and regulations and our policy documents at the time,” she said.

In fact, Getgen said, the department provided the county aging agencies with paperwork that cited the specific regulation, policy, or law for every point on which they were being monitored.

Kevin Longenecker, who headed the department’s division of housing and aging services before he retired in 2021, echoed Getgen’s assessment of the legacy system. He said the assertion that it was haphazard and subjective “couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“It was the most consistent monitoring we had,” he said.

Former department employees interviewed by Spotlight PA assert that CAPE makes it easier for counties to receive passing grades.

That is because in implementing CAPE, the department did away with the previous weighted scores, meaning local aging agencies are no longer graded more harshly for serious investigative failures. Under CAPE, the department equally scores relatively minor problems — such as poorly kept paperwork — and more serious deficiencies, such as failing to swiftly complete abuse and neglect investigations.

Unlike the previous monitoring system, CAPE does not designate counties as compliant or noncompliant with state regulations. Nor does it assign them an overall score. Instead, it uses a percentage system to score the counties in each of the five main categories — they must score at least a 75% to avoid additional scrutiny from the department.

Since CAPE went into effect earlier this year, 16 county aging agencies have been monitored. Of those, 12 received less than 75% in the “risk mitigation and safety” category, according to department data.

It is one of the most important categories — and one that used to be weighted more heavily.

State aging officials describe it this way on the department’s website: “Risk mitigation for the older adult involves assessing their individual needs, coordinating support services, and implementing protective actions to ensure safety. The goal of risk mitigation and safety is to enhance the older adult’s well-being and protect them from further harm.”

In an email, department spokesperson Karen Gray said criticism that CAPE is more lenient on the counties has “no basis in fact.”

“In fact, some AAAs have not met the department’s minimum compliance threshold of 75% in certain categories, clearly showing the new system is working and readily identifying issues — not masking them within an overall score like the previous system allowed,” she said.

When asked whether the department was concerned that the majority of counties monitored so far were falling short in the risk mitigation category, Gray did not respond.

More public data

The department has made good on Kavulich’s promise to make more data about his agency’s work — as well as the work of the county aging agencies — available to the public.

The department now publishes data on its website on how well counties are complying with state rules that mandate caseworkers make “every attempt” to meet face-to-face with an older adult within 24 hours of receiving an emergency or priority report of suspected abuse or neglect.

That is a metric that the majority of counties have, at least since 2017, met with success.

The agency also began posting data about whether counties complete abuse and neglect investigations — and provide services to help an at-risk older adult, if an allegation is substantiated — within 20 days of receiving a report. (Kavulich, as well as representatives of the county’s aging agencies, have asserted that the 20-day deadline is a goal. State regulations say counties “shall make all reasonable efforts” to complete investigations of reports of need in that timeframe, “and, in cases of abuse and neglect, at least within 20 days of the receipt of the report.” The Office of State Inspector General has described it as a legal requirement.)

Still, the 20-day compliance data on the department’s website exclude instances where caseworkers were unable to locate an older adult — a change from past practice, when those cases were included. That makes it difficult to determine whether counties have, as the department has asserted, made improvements. It also makes it impossible to compare their performance with past years.

Asked about the change, Gray said the department isn’t excluding those data — instead, it is “no longer including” them in its calculations.

But, she said, the information is still tracked. And the department has a directive that spells out multiple steps counties must take before determining someone can’t be located, including contacting the person’s family and friends and monitoring their residence and frequented locations.

The 20-day deadline is an area in which many counties have historically fared poorly.

A Spotlight PA analysis of compliance data between 2017 and 2024 found that, in the best year, nearly a third of total cases investigated annually by the 52 county agencies either missed the 20-day deadline or contained faulty paperwork that made it impossible to determine how they performed. Some years were far worse — nearly half didn’t meet the requirement.

The 20-day compliance data posted on the department’s website does not permit the public to calculate the percentage of overall cases in which the deadline was missed, although it does provide overall monthly scores for each of the 52 agencies. It also doesn’t break down how many days past the deadline an investigation dragged on. Spotlight PA’s analysis found that investigations at times blew the deadline by months or even more than a year.

The data also do not include the number of older adults who died while their abuse and neglect cases were actively being investigated. In 2018, 888 people died while counties looked into allegations they were being abused or neglected. In 2023 — the last year of complete data — that number was 1,511, a 70% increase over just five years.

The association that represents county aging agencies has argued that those numbers don’t tell the whole story, and that the data are skewed in part by the dramatic impact of the pandemic on the well-being of older adults.

Yet the number of deaths hasn’t dropped dramatically in the years since. Preliminary data show that 1,364 older adults died while under the care of the system in 2024.

A whistleblower suit

Just before Thanksgiving, a longtime employee of the state Department of Aging sued the agency and Shapiro in federal court, alleging retaliation and harassment for sounding the alarm about the state’s failures in protecting older adults from abuse and neglect.

Aging Services Supervisor Richard Llewellyn alleges department brass thwarted his efforts to assist investigations by outside agencies, including the Office of State Inspector General, into the quality of older adult protective services around Pennsylvania.

Llewellyn also alleges that top department officials purposely suppressed or manipulated data to shield problems when responding to public records requests, including in response to one by Spotlight PA. Llewellyn alleges that Deputy Aging Secretary Jonathan Bowman even bragged about his ability to exploit loopholes to dodge having to turn over complete and accurate data.

Llewellyn alleges that when he objected to and later reported the alleged wrongdoing to other state officials, he was subjected to a campaign of retaliation, including targeted administrative complaints and investigations.

He was also stripped of work duties — notably, gathering accurate information in response to Right-to-Know requests.

In his lawsuit, Llewellyn describes a culture of intimidation and retaliation in violation of the First Amendment as well as the state’s Whistleblower Law.

Gray said the department cannot comment on personnel matters or pending litigation.

Llewellyn has been suspended from his position since July, the result of a human resources complaint being filed against him. In all, Llewellyn has been subjected to five complaints in the space of 13 months, and so far has been cleared of wrongdoing in two.

In an interview, Llewellyn said he was never told who filed the complaints, but believes they are part of a concerted effort to intimidate him, hamper criticism, and prevent the system’s problems from being aired publicly.

Llewellyn said he hopes that, as a result of his litigation, the retaliation that has upended his professional life comes to an end.

He also said he hopes it sheds light on what he believes is “outright fraud” by department executives.

“And I hope it helps shed light on the fact that the changes made by Secretary Kavulich benefit the [county aging agencies] and not older adults,” he said. “Because that is what is happening.”

BEFORE YOU GO… If you learned something from this article, pay it forward and contribute to Spotlight PA at spotlightpa.org/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.

HARRISBURG — Special interests, organizations connected to Pennsylvania’s richest man, and groups with mysterious donors broke spending records to influence the outcome of this year’s critical state Supreme Court elections.

In all, they spent cash and provided other support worth at least $18.7 million, a Spotlight PA review found.

Pennsylvania’s 2025 retention races are likely among the five most expensive elections of their kind in American history, according to Douglas Keith, a deputy director of the New York-based Brennan Center who tracks judicial elections.

“A lot of the changes that we’re seeing around retention elections right now, they reflect a changing understanding of how important these courts are,” Keith told Spotlight PA. “But they also reflect some enormous changes in just how our campaigns operate in this country.”

Almost three-fourths of the spending and support — more than $13 million — favored retention for three justices elected as Democrats: Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht. It came from the candidates’ campaigns as well as a plethora of Democratic-aligned interest groups funded by plaintiffs’ lawyers who argue for big money verdicts, organized labor, and liberal-leaning mega donors from across the country.

The spending opposing retention came predominantly from nonprofits tied to a network of political groups historically funded by billionaire Jeff Yass. This type of spending is often known as “dark money” because of the difficulty of tracing the money’s origins, and was enabled by the federal Citizens United ruling in 2010.

In total, spending on these races was much higher than in 2005, the last time this kind of election was seriously contested. The two candidates reported spending under $1 million combined that year.

Despite a determined effort to oust them through a campaign of, at times, misleading ads, all three justices were comfortably retained. In each race, roughly 800,000 more voters supported keeping them on the bench rather than kicking them off. Turnout was high for an off-year election, particularly in Philadelphia and its suburbs — areas favorable to Democrats.

Historically, the goal and intention of the retention elections are for voters to base their decision on a judge’s performance, Deborah Gross, chief executive of advocacy group Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, told Spotlight PA. But looking at 2025, “money has now reared its ugly head.”

Judges, she added, are “not accountable to the public. They’re accountable to the Constitution and the rule of law, and the public shouldn’t really be influencing that. They really need to be independent.” This level of spending — and fundraising it entails — could threaten that independence, she argued.

Added Jim McErlane, a lawyer and 2016 Republican National Convention delegate, to Spotlight PA: “Judges should not have to worry about their popularity with anybody.”

It’s still unknown if 2025 was an aberration or a sign of things to come.

McErlane thought it was a one-off driven by a unique opportunity for Republicans to open a path to flip the court from a majority of justices elected as Democrats. Had voters rejected any of the candidates, that seat would have been vacated and up for grabs in the next odd-year election (Donohue’s seat will be on the 2027 ballot because she is approaching the mandatory retirement age).

While the court had delivered rulings on issues like gerrymandering and voting by mail that aligned with Democrats’ positions, that didn’t mean the justices deserved to be kicked off the bench, McErlane argued.

“Sometimes your side’s going to win, sometimes your side’s going to lose,” he said. “I think you sort of roll with it.”

But writing in a November op-ed, Matt Brouillette, who leads the network of Yass-funded groups, struck a defiant note, calling for GOP-aligned investment to match Democrats’ spending.

“It’s time for the Right to recognize what’s at stake — and send in its own cavalry to win Pennsylvania,” he wrote.

A likely incomplete total

As money flooded into this year’s judicial races, many of the spending details weren’t clear to voters ahead of Election Day.

Spotlight PA reported in October that the state’s process for political groups to report independent spending is full of loopholes, has minimal penalties, and is mostly self-enforced.

To gain a better understanding of the donors and power players who shaped this year’s retention elections, Spotlight PA in mid-December analyzed three big buckets of spending. The news organization examined spending as reported by the candidates’ own committees, independent expenditures reported by outside groups, and “in-kind” contributions accepted by the candidates. Those in-kind contributions can be anything of value under state law, but typically include TV ads, mailers, and fundraiser expenses like food and drink.

Since money sometimes moves between different groups, Spotlight PA took steps to avoid double-counting dollars. The analysis also included totals for some disclosures that appeared to lump spending on the state Supreme Court retention election with other races.

The total could still rise. A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State told Spotlight PA in mid-December that agency officials were “still receiving some Independent Expenditure reports and are working to enter them,” with new entries entered by hand in real time.

Brouillette’s groups, the established Commonwealth Partners and the brand new Citizens for Term Limits, paid for nearly all of the advertising opposing retention, totaling about $4.8 million, Spotlight PA’s analysis found. As both groups are nonprofits, the source of these dollars is unknown. However, Brouillette’s groups have historically been funded by billionaire stock trader Jeff Yass.

A spokesperson for Commonwealth Partners did not respond to requests for comment.

On the pro-retention side, Donohue, Dougherty, and Wecht — plus groups coordinating with them — spent or made “in-kind” contributions of more than $9 million.

All three candidates also contributed to a political action committee called Vote Yes for Fair and Independent Courts, which paid for the production and placement of TV ads. Vote Yes received the majority of its funding from trial lawyers, who often argue big money personal injury, medical malpractice, and other civil suits before judges.

At least $4 million in pro-retention spending was done independently by groups that did not coordinate with the candidates, including Planned Parenthood’s advocacy arm. A wide range of other organizations also paid for student engagement, flyers, text messages, canvassing, and other support.

The ACLU reported spending about $914,000 to the Department of State, and online records describe the expenditures as supporting the candidates. The state and national chapters described the campaign as educational in public statements, while a spokesperson told Spotlight PA its independent expenditure report included the disclaimer that the organization “does not endorse or oppose candidates.”

“The expenditures being reported in this filing were in support of one or more of the positions of the candidates identified on critical civil liberties issues,” the spokesperson continued.

Other pro-retention spending was done by Pennsylvanians for Judicial Fairness, a state-level super PAC. It has poured money from unions, trial lawyers, billionaires, national super PACs, and dark money nonprofits into the commonwealth’s statewide judicial races since 2023.

This year, more than a third of its funding came from nonprofits such as PA Alliance Action, a state-level dark money group, according to Spotlight PA’s analysis of PJF’s fundraising. Such organizations’ funding is harder to trace than that of a typical PAC, as they do not have to disclose their donors.

PJF’s spending also shows some of the limits in how the commonwealth tracks political spending, particularly in the age of dark money.

As of Dec. 22, it reported spending more than $780,000 on digital ads, mail, “production,” and a phone program to the Department of State as independent expenditures.

However, the super PAC also funded at least one pro-retention TV ad, Spotlight PA previously found. The group had not reported that spending as an independent expenditure as of mid-December, though it did disclose spending about $3 million on TV buys through separate reports — campaign finance filings to the state.

PJF did not respond to a request for comment to explain what the about $3 million was spent on — the reports describe the expenditures as TV buys and TV ad buys — and why it wasn’t reported as an independent expenditure.

These discrepancies are “another indication of maybe some gaps in Pennsylvania’s reporting system, or at very least the way it’s presenting the data,” said Keith, of the Brennan Center.

Whether the tsunami of money actually changed voters’ minds is hard to say.

Sue Grice, a 41-year-old mother of four and registered independent from Montgomery County, told Spotlight PA on Election Day that she supports abortion access, but was also still frustrated by the closure of schools and churches during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Weighing the two stances, she decided the latter was her priority and voted against retaining all three justices.

Finding trusted, nonpartisan information on the races was a frustrating endeavor, she said, compared to the barrage of advertising.

“I got a stupid amount of text messages,” she said, “and sent them all to spam.”

BEFORE YOU GO… If you learned something from this article, pay it forward and contribute to Spotlight PA at spotlightpa.org/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.

The storm is expected to begin as freezing rain Friday morning in western Pennsylvania before turning to snow in the eastern part of the state by afternoon, according to a PennDOT news release.

The department of transportation has issued Tier 3 restrictions on a number of roads, which means no commercial vehicles are allowed except loaded single trailers with chains or approved traction devices. School buses, commercial buses, motor coaches, motorcycles, RVs and vehicles towing trailers are not allowed on the road while those restrictions are in place.

Tier 3 restrictions go into effect at 10 a.m. Friday on the following roads:

• Interstate 81, south of Interstate 83
• All Pennsylvania interstates west of I-81 including I-70 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike (I-76)

Tier 3 restrictions go into effect at 2 p.m. Friday on the following roads:

• I-81, north of I-83.
• All interstate highways east of I-81, including I-78
• Pennsylvania Turnpike (I-76, I-276 and I-476)
• Route 22 between I-78 and Route 33Route 33, entire length

Additional restrictions, including reduced speed limits, are likely during the storm.

The National Weather Service has issued a winter storm watch for much of the state Friday into Saturday. The weather service is urging people to consider delaying all travel during the storm.

Anyone who must drive should consider bringing a winter storm kit with items such as flashlights, shovels, blankets, extra clothing “and anything else that would help you survive in case you become stranded,” according to the weather service.

BRISTOL, Pa. (AP) — Rescuers braved shooting flames, falling debris and the threat of more explosions to evacuate dozens of nursing home residents after a blast ripped through a Pennsylvania facility, killing a resident and an employee, and setting off a frantic search of the wreckage.

Officials said Wednesday they’d located everybody after hours of looking.

The police chief of Bristol Township said he’d “never seen such heroism,” and a speech therapist working there described feeling the building shake in Tuesday’s blast and hurriedly wheeling out a bed-bound resident, bed and all.

“They were running into a building that I could — from 50 feet away — could still smell gas, and walls that looked like they were going to fall down,” Police Chief Charles Winik told reporters Wednesday.

Responders spent hours digging through the badly damaged building and checking with hospitals into the night Tuesday to locate the missing. But officials said they didn’t yet know the cause of the explosion, even though a utility crew had been on site investigating a reported gas leak.

The blast sent 20 others to hospitals, including one person in critical condition. The rest of the 120 residents were transferred to nearby nursing homes, officials said.

The Bucks County coroner’s office said the employee who died was 52-year-old Muthoni Nduthu. Authorities didn’t immediately identify the resident who died at a Philadelphia hospital. Both victims were women.

Nduthu’s sister said she was a great mother to her sons, a great wife, a devout Catholic and very involved in the community. A Kenyan immigrant, she went to nursing school, loved to cook and was a hard worker, her sister, Rose Muema, said.

“She was an immigrant who came to make a difference in this country, and she did that,” Muema said.

Nineteen people were still hospitalized Wednesday, Winik said.

The explosion was so powerful that it shook nearby houses for blocks in Bristol, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of Philadelphia.

A wing of the facility with the kitchen and cafeteria was almost entirely destroyed, leaving the roof caved in, sections of walls completely missing and windows on adjoining walls blown out. Debris littered the grounds.

Winik said the scale of the casualties could have been much worse. Police and firefighters flooded in from the area, as staff from a hospital next door, nursing home employees and neighbors rushed to help evacuate people. One person was resuscitated at a hospital, officials said.

They found people trapped in stairways and elevator shafts and under rubble, authorities said. Some residents couldn’t walk, and some were in wheelchairs or bed-bound. A second explosion happed as rescues were underway.

Speech therapist Julia Szewczyk described the experience as terrifying and devastating.

She was in a group therapy session in another part of the building when it began to shake. She and other staff rushed to evacuate residents across a street to safety.

“And then the next thing was, to go inside and grab more people,” Szewczyk, 25, said.

They dragged out a bed-bound resident into the cold, then Szewczyk ran back into the burning building twice to grab blankets from a supply closet. One coworker got trapped inside an elevator when the power went out, she said.

Outside, during the rescue, employees had been looking for Nduthu, Szewczyk recalled.

Federal agencies were set to assist in the investigation, but the collapsed walls and roof needed to be cleared first, Winik said.

A utility crew was responding to reports of a gas odor when the explosion happened, authorities have said. The local gas utility, PECO, said the crew shut off natural gas and electric service to the facility, but didn’t know if utility equipment or gas was involved in the blast.

Musuline Watson, who said she was a certified nursing assistant at the facility, told WPVI-TV that staff smelled gas over the weekend, but did not initially suspect a serious problem because there was no heat in that room. Other employees told Szewczyk they smelled gas earlier in the day Tuesday, Szewczyk said.

The nursing home recently became affiliated with Ohio-based Saber Healthcare Group, which called the explosion “devastating” and said in a statement that facility personnel promptly reported the gas odor to the local gas utility before the blast.

Willie Tye, who lives about a block away, said he was watching a basketball game when he heard a loud boom.

“I thought an airplane or something came and fell on my house,” he said.

___

Levy and Scolforo reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Associated Press reporters Mingson Lau in Bristol, Pennsylvania; Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire and Michael Casey in Boston contributed to this report.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a later news conference that emergency responders braved the flames, a heavy odor of gas and a second explosion to evacuate residents and employees.

Fire officials said they were in “rescue mode” five hours later, with responders still digging by hand and using search dogs, earth-moving equipment and sonar to locate potential victims.

The explosion happened at Bristol Health & Rehab Center in Bristol Township, just as a utility crew had been on site looking for a gas leak.

Shapiro said a finding that a gas leak caused the explosion was preliminary.

A plume of smoke rose from the nursing home as emergency responders from across the region rushed there.

Authorities did not identify those who died and did not immediately know the total number of people injured.

The town’s fire chief, Kevin Dippolito, said at the Tuesday evening news conference that five people were still unaccounted for, but he cautioned that some may have left the scene with family members.

Shapiro asked his fellow Pennsylvanians to take a moment to pray “for this community, for those who are still missing, for those who are injured, and for those families who are about to celebrate Christmas with an empty chair at their table.”

Dippolito described a chaotic rescue where firefighters found people stuck in stairwells and elevator shafts and pulled residents out of the fiery building through windows and doors. Two people were rescued from a collapsed section of building, he said.

Firefighters handed off patients to waiting police officers outside, including one “who literally threw two people over his shoulders,” Dippolito said. “It was nothing short of extraordinary.” A second explosion erupted during the rescue, he said.

Bucks County emergency management officials said they first received a report of an explosion at approximately 2:15 p.m.

Willie Tye, who lives about a block away, said he was sitting at home watching a basketball game on TV when he heard a “loud ka-boom.”

“I thought an airplane or something came and fell on my house,” Tye said.

He got up to go look and saw “fire everywhere” and people escaping the building. “Just got to keep praying for them,” Tye said.

The local gas utility, PECO, said while its crews were responding to reports of a gas odor at the nursing home, an explosion happened.

“PECO crews shut off natural gas and electric service to the facility to ensure the safety of first responders and local residents. It is not known at this time if PECO’s equipment, or natural gas, was involved in this incident,” the utility said in a statement.

One worker sustained non-life-threatening injuries, the utility said.

Investigators from the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission’s went to the scene. Finding that the explosion was caused by a gas leak won’t be confirmed until the agency can examine the scene, a utility commission spokesperson said.

Musuline Watson, who said she was a certified nursing assistant at the facility, told WPVI-TV/ABC 6 that, over the weekend, she and others there smelled gas, but “there was no heat in the room, so we didn’t take it to be anything.”

The 174-bed nursing home is about 20 miles northeast of Philadelphia. It is newly affiliated with Saber Healthcare Group and had been known until recently as Silver Lake Healthcare Center.

In a statement, Saber called the explosion “devastating.” It said facility personnel had promptly reported a gas smell to PECO before the explosion and that it was working with authorities to ensure the safety and well-being of staff, residents and the community.

The latest state inspection report for the facility was in October, and the Pennsylvania Department of Health found that it was not in compliance with several state regulations.

The inspection report said the facility failed to provide an accurate set of floor plans and properly maintain several stairways.

It said the facility failed to maintain portable fire extinguishers on one of the three levels and failed to provide the required “smoke barrier partitions,” which are designed to contain smoke on two floors.

According to Medicare.gov, the facility underwent a standard fire safety inspection in September 2024, during which no citations were issued. Medicare’s overall rating of the facility is listed as “much below average,” with poor ratings for health inspections in particular.

Associated Press reporter Holly Ramer in Concord, N.H., and Michael Casey in Boston contributed to this report. Levy and Scolforo reported from Harrisburg.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

The trooper, who has not yet been named, was working an overtime assignment at the reception desk when the 44-year-old gunman walked in, approached the trooper and fired, state police said at a news conference Tuesday night.

The gunman and state trooper were transported to a hospital, where they died.

“We lost a brother, a son, a best friend, a coach, a husband and a father,” Col. William D. Crotty of the state police said at the news conference. “His last actions were that of a hero, a hero who saved lives today while sacrificing his own.”

The threat was over before 3 p.m., according to state police. A woman and second state trooper had minor injures not from gunshots.

“What happened today was an act of pure evil, and if not for the heroism of several troopers and other officers, the consequences could have been so much worse,” Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer said at the news conference.

The state DMV said it has closed its offices statewide.