By Tim Lambert | Editor-in-chief
“If you’re just looking at the bigger picture from 30,000 feet up, Democrats are obviously gonna want more money, and obviously Republicans are a little more conservative. The whole thing is not black and white.” — Edward Albert, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small School Districts.
A good Wednesday morning to you. What a day for sky watchers. Did you get up at oh-dark-30 to check out the rare alignment of six planets (Saturn, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune)?
A partial eclipse where the moon obscures a portion of the sun will be visible in Pennsylvania. It’s expected to start around 1 p.m. and about 9o minutes later in most areas of the state. The time for maximum visibility range from 1:40 p.m. in Erie to 1:53 p.m in Philadelphia. A reminder: You will need to wear special glasses to view it.
Keep those eyes to the skies because the peak of the Perseid Meteor shower is also expected to be visible tonight.
Now, let’s get you to our top stories.
Thanks for starting your day with us. As always, we deeply appreciate you reading, sharing and supporting our work. -- Tim
The state Capitol building in Harrisburg. (Photo by Tim Lambert/Pennsylvania Capital-Star)
The Pa. budget included additional funding for a handful of school districts for third year in a row
By Ian Karbal
For the third year in a row, the annual state budget included provisions that sent additional dollars to a handful of school districts, outside of the typical funding formulas that govern state support for the 500 public school districts.
And for the third year in a row, all of those districts are represented by Democrats in the state House.
Collectively, four school districts are set to receive $8 million in the 2026-2027 school year, on top of what they receive through the commonwealth’s basic education formula and newer adequacy formula.
But they all faced unique financial challenges. Democratic lawmakers who sought the funding bumps in the latest budget say it was a product of those needs and their advocacy, not partisan favoritism.
A woman uses the TikTok app. (Photo by Thicha Satapitanon/Getty Images)
By Whitney Downard
Nearly 100 million Americans use TikTok, a popular app for sharing short-form videos, every day, but Pennsylvania joined a growing number of states questioning the platform’s protections for young users.
“Today is an action rooted, very simply, in protecting children,” said state Attorney General Dave Sunday in a Tuesday press conference. “Social media allows us to be closer than ever to celebrities, athletes and musicians that we like. However, as easy as a child can watch (Dwayne) ‘The Rock’ (Johnson) make breakfast or hang out with his kids, they can see someone drinking alcohol or consuming drugs. And that is what is often glorified.”
Sunday alleges that TikTok “misrepresents its app as age appropriate for teens as young as 13,” even though content can include profanity, drinking, drug use and sexually suggestive situations.
Wildfire smoke caused unhealthy levels of air pollution across Washington, D.C., in mid-July as fires raged across Ontario, Canada. A new study examining years between 2003 and 2019 found that the primary pollutant affecting pregnancies was wildfire smoke. (Photo by Finn Gomez/Getty Images)
By Marie Cuisck of Inside Climate News
Karen Schaeffer is used to spending a lot of time thinking about how to keep kids happy and healthy. But only recently has she confronted a new problem at the childcare center she runs in Lititz, Pennsylvania: hazardous air wafting south from wildfires blazing far away in Canada.
“Until the past few years, we’ve never had to worry about this,” she said.
This marks her 39th year at St. Paul Christian Early Learning Center, where she and her staff take care of 130 children ranging from infants to elementary school-aged students.
On July 17, she made the decision to keep all the children indoors. That day the Environmental Protection Agency’s air quality index (AQI) in Lititz hit 270—a level deemed very unhealthy for everyone.
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UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh in Lawrenceville, June 2025. (Photo by Jakob Lazzaro/WESA)
By Glynis Board of WESA
The U.S. Department of Justice is dropping its appeal of a federal court ruling that quashed its subpoena issued to UPMC just over a year ago, seeking to access medical records of young people seeking gender-affirming care.
The Public Interest Law Center, which represents the patients and their families along with the law firm Ballard Spahr, released a statement Monday saying that as a result, “that district court ruling is final.” The statement referenced a ruling by Chief U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon of the Western District Court of Pennsylvania.
In March, Bissoon reaffirmed her December 2025 denial of the DOJ’s subpoena to UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh for records and rejected the DOJ’s offer to accept anonymized records. Her ruling followed similar findings from judges in Philadelphia, Colorado, and Washington state who said the agency does not have the authority to require sensitive health data.
TODAY IN THE CAPITAL-STAR
The top donor to Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s PAC is from Pa.: Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s top donor outpacing them is someone with almost no online footprint or public details of his life, other than his Carlisle, Pennsylvania address.
States, cities try to keep ICE out of schools: Since President Donald Trump began his second term with a vow to crack down on illegal immigration, more than a dozen states have enacted laws designed to keep ICE away from schools. But an incident in Baltimore was a stark illustration of the limits of state and local authority when it comes to immigration enforcement.
ICYMI
A tale of three Pa. communities dealing with data center proposals: Community stewards and public officials in three Pennsylvania counties, Cumberland, Lycoming and Montour, have met data center proposals with varied responses, from unquestioning acceptance to organized community resistance and rejection.
As Pa. crime rates fall to record lows, law enforcement flags challenges: Violent crime rates are down across the nation and commonwealth, and 2026 numbers appear to be even lower so far. Homicides alone fell by 23%between 2023 and 2024, which is near historic lows.
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