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Pennsylvania Supreme Court rules undated ballots won’t be counted in presidential election

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4 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

Pennsylvania’s highest court did not, however, agree with Republicans that provisional ballots should not be granted to people whose original mail ballots were too flawed to be counted.

Mail ballots submitted without a date will not be counted in Pennsylvania after all, the state’s highest court ruled Friday after a lower court declared they should be accepted.

The Epoch Times reports that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court granted the Republican National Committee and Pennsylvania Republican Party’s emergency request for a stay of a appellate court ruling two days earlier that the “free and equal elections clause” of the Pennsylvania Constitution required the Philadelphia Board of Elections to count a set of undated envelopes in a September special election for a state House seat.

While those envelopes did not directly concern the 2024 presidential election, if the ruling stood it would have had major ramifications for the race between Republican former President Donald Trump and Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris. Therefore, the justices made clear that the appellate decision “shall not be applied to the November 5, 2024 General Election.”

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s election decisions have not all been favorable to Republicans, however; it previously ruled that Pennsylvania voters will be allowed to cast provisional ballots in the event of a problem with the mail ballots they already cast, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene Friday.

“The actual provisional ballots contain no identifying information, only a vote,” GOP attorneys argued, to no avail. “Once ballots are separated from their outer envelopes, there is no way to retroactively figure out which ballots were illegally cast. In other words, once the egg is scrambled, it cannot be unscrambled.”

Pennsylvania holds 19 electoral votes (down one from prior elections due to redistricting), and is believed by many to be a crucial swing state that could be enough to decide the election’s outcome. The RealClearPolitics polling average for the state places Trump in the lead at just 0.4 percent, while RaceToTheWH’s average has Harris ahead by a scant 0.3 percent. Trump won the state in 2016; outgoing Democrat President Joe Biden claimed it in 2020.

Election integrity has long been an issue in American politics, but the controversy significantly intensified when the 2020 presidential election was marked by widespread election irregularities and numerous allegations that the election had been rigged for Joe Biden against Donald Trump, bolstered by the dramatic expansion of voting by mail in the wake of COVID-19.

Twenty-eight states relaxed their mail ballot rules in 2020, contributing to a 17-million vote increase from 2016. In addition to mail ballots generally being less secure than in-person votes, four of those states – Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – changed their rules without legislative consent. Those four alone comprised 56 of Biden’s electoral votes, more than enough to decide the victor.

At the same time, attempts to prove the election had been stolen were undermined by judges who dismissed some claims on process issues without ever considering their merits as well as flawed legal briefs by election challengers and dramatic examples of “smoking guns” that never panned out. Nevertheless, the controversy did lead to 14 states tightening their election rules over the following two years.

Business

Trump Raises US Tariffs on Canadian Products by 10% after Doug Ford’s $75,000,000 Ad Campaign

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Anthony Iafrate

President Donald Trump announced Saturday he is increasing U.S. tariffs on Canada by 10%, after the leader of the country’s largest province said he would be pulling an anti-tariff ad — but not until after it could air during Game 2 of the World Series.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford stated Friday his government plans to pull the ad in question after Trump said he was ending trade negotiations with Canada the night before. The spot featured the voice of President Ronald Reagan appearing to sharply criticize “high tariffs” and “protectionist” policy, and used an edited form of remarks the then-president made in an 1987 radio address.

In announcing his intention to pull the ad — which was intentionally broadcast on major networks in American markets — Ford noted he “directed” his team to keep it live until after the second game of baseball’s Fall Classic on Saturday night, a move Trump initially called a “dirty play.” The ad also ran Friday night during Game 1.

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As he was about to depart Friday night on Air Force One for his three-country Asia trip, Trump told reporters at the White House the Ontario government “could have pulled it [the ad] tonight,” adding, “I can play dirtier than they can, you know.”

Trump then declared Saturday he was going forward with a 10% tariff increase on Canada.

“Their Advertisement was to be taken down, IMMEDIATELY, but they let it run last night during the World Series, knowing that it was a FRAUD,” Trump wrote in a Saturday afternoon Truth Social post. “Because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act, I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are paying now.”

“Canada was caught, red handed, putting up a fraudulent advertisement on Ronald Reagan’s Speech on Tariffs. The Reagan Foundation said that they, ‘created an ad campaign using selective audio and video of President Ronald Reagan. The ad misrepresents the Presidential Radio Address,’ and ‘did not seek nor receive permission to use and edit the remarks. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute is reviewing its legal options in this matter,’” Trump added in his post, citing an organization dedicated to continuing the late 40th president’s legacy.

“The sole purpose of this FRAUD was Canada’s hope that the United States Supreme Court will come to their ‘rescue’ on Tariffs that they have used for years to hurt the United States,” Trump’s post continues. “Now the United States is able to defend itself against high and overbearing Canadian Tariffs (and those from the rest of the World as well!). Ronald Reagan LOVED Tariffs for purposes of National Security and the Economy, but Canada said he didn’t!”

The ad campaign carried a price tag of $75 million CAD (Canadian), roughly equivalent to $54 million, according to The Associated Press (AP). The taxpayer-funded ad was paid for by Ontario’s provincial government, which the premier leads.

 

“We’ve achieved our goal, having reached U.S. audiences at the highest levels,” Ford said in a Friday statement reported by AP announcing his plan to pull the ad after Game 2. “Our intention was always to initiate a conversation about the kind of economy that Americans want to build and the impact of tariffs on workers and businesses.”

“I’ve directed my team to keep putting our message in front of Americans over the weekend so that we can air our commercial during the first two World Series games,” the Ontario premier added.

Trump announced Thursday night on Truth Social he was ending trade negotiations with Canada due to the ad.

“Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED,” the president wrote in the post.

“TARIFFS ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO THE NATIONAL SECURITY, AND ECONOMY, OF THE U.S.A.,” he added [sic].

“High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars. Then the worst happens. Markets shrink and collapse,” Reagan’s edited radio message can be heard in the ad, which included a backdrop of mellow music and a video montage of people and landscapes. “Businesses and industries shut down and millions of people lose their jobs. Throughout the world, there’s a growing realization that the way to prosperity for all nations is rejecting protectionist legislation and promoting fair and free competition.”

“America’s job and growth are at stake,” Reagan can be seen delivering the ad’s final line on a TV screen before the words “Ontario” and “Canada” flash on the screen.

The 2025 World Series features the Toronto Blue Jays and Los Angeles Dodgers. The Blue Jays are the only Major League Baseball (MLB) team based in Canada despite having only one Canadian-born player on its 26-man World Series roster.

Ford, a member of the center-right Progressive Conservative Party has led Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, since 2018. His late younger brother, Rob Ford, served as Toronto’s mayor from 2010 to 2014. The younger Ford made national headlines in 2013 after admitting to having smoked crack cocaine “in a drunken stupor.”

Premier Ford’s office did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s (DCNF) request for comment. The White House did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

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Economy

Top Scientists Deliberately Misrepresented Sea Level Rise For Years

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From Michael Shellenberger

Image

Accelerated sea level is one of the main justifications for predicting very high costs for adapting to climate change. And while good scientists have debunked acceleration claims in the past, they did not clearly show how IPCC scientists engaged in their manipulations.

For years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, has claimed that human-caused climate change has accelerated sea level rise. But that claim is false. There is no scientific evidence of accelerated sea level rise since the mid-19th Century, and thus none showing human-created emissions caused an acceleration in recent decades.
This does not mean that climate change isn’t happening. It is. It simply means that it has not caused the sea level to rise at a rate any higher than one would expect without human-caused climate change.
Not only that, but the top scientists know this fact and have deliberately misrepresented it for years, deceiving the public.
In September, I reported on one of the first global studies of sea level rise that used tide-gauge data, which is the only real-world data that goes back long enough, to the mid-19th Century, that would allow one to detect whether sea level rise had accelerated, decelerated, or remained steady. Since then, I exchanged over 50 emails with one of the world’s leading sea level rise scientists, Robert Kopp from Rutgers University, and heard back from IPCC, NASA, and NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. What I learned shocked me.
For years, the world’s top scientists have known that they cannot prove there has been an acceleration of sea level rise, and yet they have told the public that they can. Not only that, in the process of this exchange, I gained a glimpse into how the scientists have been able to mislead journalists, policymakers, and the wider public for so long.
You might think this is either old news or unimportant. Some climate scientists in years past have pointed out that the real-world data do not support claims of acceleration. And in recent years, a supposed increase in natural disasters from climate change has eclipsed sea level rise in terms of attention-grabbing headlines. But sea level rise has, since the 1990s, been the main justification for apocalyptic climate claims, and past efforts to debunk sea level rise have failed to show that scientists were deliberately misleading.
The media and others have published terrifying maps of the future showing cities underwater. Accelerated sea level is one of the main justifications for predicting very high costs for adapting to climate change. And while good scientists have debunked acceleration claims in the past, they did not clearly show how IPCC scientists engaged in their manipulations.
Not only can I prove that the real-world data do not support the claims that there has been an acceleration, I can show that the scientists deliberately misrepresented their research, and how they did it, thanks to my on-the-record email conversation with Kopp of Rutgers….
Please subscribe now to support Public’s award-winning investigative reporting, to read the whole article, and watch the full video!

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