Lisa Scheid

Republicans Are Pushing DHS Over ICE Warehouse Purchases Lawmakers are facing concerns back home that new detention centers will strain local resources.

Looks like Meuser is coming to Berks. Will visit site and talk with officials. His congressional opponent held a town hall about the detention center at the end of Jan.

ICE’s detention center in Berks County, PA: What you need to know Can the PA government block ICE’s plans? How many people will be detained there? Here’s what we know.

Updates from township meeting and documents

image from wallace and gromit, a calendar showing February 12th labelled on a calendar as "Gromits birthday"

baby gromit with a pink boneshaped cake with one candle

everyone shut UP it's gromit's birthday HAPPY BIRTHDAY GROMIT

Tomorrow is CPI for January. It's a month that has burned us repeatedly -- core CPI inflation tends to pick up in January.

Consensus forecast has a pickup *but* we do not have a clear sense of the inflation late last year. No monthly inflation estimates in Oct. or Nov. due to govt shutdown.

With this data, @stlouisfed.bsky.social can return to update their unemployment flow analysis

In short, Jan is a month more net effect of unemployed people finding job is larger than the net effect of people entering labor force but yet to find job

www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-econo...

Government Loses Hard Drives It Was Supposed to Put ICE Detention Center Footage On A Kafkaesque saga in which the government has failed to produce critical video footage has reached new levels of absurdity.

Court battle over surveillance footage at the Broadview ICE detention center reaches new levels of kafkaesque absurdity: The DOJ claimed it *couldn't afford* hard drives to put video footage on. Plaintiffs bought THE US GOVERNMENT hard drives. ICE "lost" them.

www.404media.co/government-l...

a graph of US blue collar job growth

The US continues losing blue-collar jobs—year-on-year job losses have hit 170k as manufacturing, transportation, & mining industries lose jobs at a rapid pace while growth in construction remains low

Moderna says FDA refuses its application for new mRNA flu vaccine The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is refusing to consider Moderna’s application for a new flu vaccine made with mRNA technology.

It is absolutely outrageous that Moderna’s flu vaccine was met with a “refusal-to-file” even after their approved their protocol with FDA and carried out the trial as agreed. This vaccine works better in older adults than the current flu vaccines.

apnews.com/article/mode...

designed by humans, not just a template. All local!

Why Inflation May Be About to Come in Hot Prices have a habit of spiking in January. This year, tariffs might be a reason, but a likelier culprit is more esoteric.

This WSJ piece does a great job of asking the question:
"Are we going to talk about residual seasonality again after Friday's CPI report?"

The AI boom is so huge it’s causing shortages everywhere else The hundreds of billions of dollars being spent by tech companies on AI projects are diverting resources from other parts of the economy.

The domino effect from the tech industry’s $700 billion AI spending spree is diverting resources and attention from other sectors of the economy, making finding an electrician or a reasonably priced smartphone increasingly difficult.

Lieutenant Governor hopeful Jason Richey gains Pennsylvania GOP support before primary | WITF Members of the state Republican Party endorsed western Pennsylvania attorney Jason Richey on Saturday in his bid for lieutenant governor.Richey, 5 […]

I asked Republican LG candidate Jason Richey how he'd handle overseeing the Board of Pardons.

He pivoted, and talked about his priority of promoting natural gas extraction in Pennsylvania. www.witf.org/2026/02/07/l...

Sports betting reshaped newsrooms, and it’s “a little gross.” Now, here come the prediction markets "Sports media is kind of getting bribed," as one former ESPN reporter told journalist Danny Funt.

The American Gaming Association estimates a record $1.76 billion will be wagered on Super Bowl LX this Sunday. A new book looks at how sports betting has reshaped American newsrooms. www.niemanlab.org/2026/02/spor...

ICYMI: Asked about Trump's "nationalize" election remarks, Garrity said:

“I would work with the Trump administration, obviously, because we need to turn our state around."

Residents on both sides of ICE enforcement issue give Elizabethtown officials an earful Echoing the broader national debate on immigration policy, Elizabethtown residents offered opposing views on the prospect of borough police cooperating with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement...

ICE cooperation debate in deep red Lancaster County, Pa.:
lancasteronline.com/news/local/r...

Transplant recipient arrested by federal agents in Rochester needs medicine, state representative says State Rep. Kim Hicks told MPR News she drove to the Whipple Federal Building near Ft. Snelling Thursday night to give the man his medication but authorities wouldn't take it without a doctor's note. S...

A man taken into custody in Rochester Thursday by federal immigration agents and now held at the Whipple Federal Building in the Twin Cities is a recent organ transplant recipient who is without his needed anti-rejection medication, state Rep. Kim Hicks tells MPR News.

U.S. Jobs Disappear At Fastest January Pace Since Great Recession There were 108,000 job cuts in January in the U.S., the most to begin a year since the Great Recession in 2009, according to a new report.

There were 108,000 job cuts in January in the U.S., the most to begin a year since the Great Recession in 2009, according to a new report.

+11% rise in new unemployment insurance claims in week ending (WE) Jan 31, driven by rises across a broad set of states (PA, NY, WI, MD, MO, IL...)

That's a substantial rise. Keep an eye on it for signal of weakening of labor demand.

ICE dragged me from my car after I told them I’m autistic. Exclusive Details: Aliya Rahman speaks to Eric Garcia about her ordeals — on the streets of Minneapolis, in a grim ICE detention center where she was mocked over her condition and through the public t...

I spoke with Aliya Rahman, the autistic woman whom ICE ripped out of her car, about her experience of being in a viral video, what she experienced in detention and why she thinks we might be in bigger trouble in the future.
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

Who owns Pa.’s digitized history? We’re a step closer to an answer. https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2026/02/ancestry-digital-records-commonwealth-courrt-capitol/

Failure to Alert Judge to Press Law for Reporter Search Draws Ethical Scrutiny The Justice Department may have violated a candor rule by not disclosing a 1980 law when seeking a warrant for a Washington Post reporter’s home.

The disclosure that the Justice Department failed to alert a judge about a 1980 law protecting journalists when applying for a warrant to search a Washington Post reporter’s home last month is casting new scrutiny on the legal issues raised by the raid.

Exhibit of this ecosystem: Many local news pieces on ICE detention centers are referencing stories broken by the Post and Bloomberg.

Spotlighting The World Factbook as We Bid a Fond Farewell Somewhat devastating news today from the CIA: One of CIA’s oldest and most recognizable intelligence publications, The World Factbook, has sunset. There's not even a hint as to why they …

The CIA just stopped publishing their World Factbook and took every page, including the archived copies of previous versions!

This sucks. It was public domain, so I recovered the 2020 edition (the last one published as a zip file) and shared it to GitHub simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/5/t...

PA budget 2026: Shapiro pitches more money for poor schools, legal weed Shapiro wants PA lawmakers to tax slot-like skill games and legalized marijuana to help pay for new spending.

News: Gov. Josh Shapiro pitched a $53.3 billion spending plan Tuesday that puts more money into education and transit (in 2027) while asking policymakers to tackle housing and energy affordability in earnest.
www.spotlightpa.org/news/2026/02...

This is an image of a poster promoting the rally that will run from noon to 1 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 4, at 1301 K St. NW to save The Washington Post newsroom from rumored mass layoffs.

Join us Thursday for a rally to #SaveThePost!! The rally will run from noon to 1 p.m. Thursday at 1301 K St. NW!!

Bring friends! Bring gloves! Bring a love of journalism!

Shapiro’s new memoir doesn’t tell the full story about his time as attorney general https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2026/02/josh-shapiro-memoir-attorney-general-pardons-criminal-justice-missing-details-josh-shapiro/

What a transformation - it used to be in the Clean and Green program. Then that was terminated and the thoroughbred breeder Miller family sold it for $6M in 2019 to a warehouse developer who developed and sold it for $57M to the equity fund who sold it to the US government for $87M.