DV Journal

Bucks County mom Megan Brock won a partial victory over the county government in her open records case Friday before a Common Pleas judge.

Brock, of Richboro, is seeking emails from August 2021, when the county suddenly overrode COVID-19 guidance issued by its own Health Department Director, Dr. David Damsker. He said the science supported more parent-friendly, less-restrictive policies, a view confirmed in the following months. But he was overruled by Bucks County bureaucrats who imposed stricter state guidelines for masking, lockdowns and vaccinations, all unsupported by science.

The state Office of Open Records has already ordered the county to turn emails and other correspondence over to Brock, but Bucks County sued in an attempt to keep information about how they came to the override decision secret from the public. They argued Brock was not entitled to the records, despite the OOR ruling in her favor.

The county claimed the records were either attorney-client privilege or part of a “pre-decisional” process and therefore not subject to the right-to-know act.

Judge Denise Bowman heard the case and reviewed the records in her chambers. She ruled partly in favor of Brock and ordered the county to turn over some of the requested records and to pay her lawyers $1,500.

But the judge also found that the county had the right to keep some records private.

James O’Malley, a spokesman for the county, said the county’s lawyers were still in the process of reviewing the ruling on Friday evening.

After the ruling, Brock said, “This was a win for every person in Bucks County, regardless of political affiliation. Government transparency is a critical component of our constitutional republic. No one should be abused by their government or have their weaponized against them for simply doing their due diligence as a responsible citizen.

“Our kids have been thrown into crisis due to the harsh Covid-19 lockdowns and prolonged school closures. They deserve answers as to why and how these decisions were made, so that we can do better and learn from the mistakes of the past,” said Brock.

“I’m so thankful for this outcome and I can’t adequately express my gratitude to Judicial Watch and my attorneys, Chad Schnee and Meredith DiLiberto, for their exceptional representation,” she added.

Schnee said, “This decision was a victory for accountability and transparency, and we are very pleased that the judge imposed the maximum civil penalty allowed under the Right-to-Know Law.”

Pat Poprik, chair of the Bucks County Republicans also commented, calling it “a clear victory for transparency and the right of citizens to seek answers from those who should be representing them”.

“For nearly a year now, Democrats Bob Harvie and Diane Ellis-Marseglia have been using county resources to overrule decisions by the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records in order to hide communications and documents generated when the county’s guidance for schools related to COVID suddenly changed in the midst of the pandemic.  After a review of the hidden documents, the court sided with Brock.

“Pamela Van Blunk, the county controller, called the litigation the county brought against Brock a ‘waste of taxpayer dollars. Harvie and Ellis-Marseglia are irresponsibly spending taxpayers’ money to hide communications that the public—including Brock—have a right to see,'” said Poprik.

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After a brief hearing Thursday, a judge delayed ruling on whether Bucks County can continue to hide records declared public by the state Office of Open Records (OOR).

Richboro resident Megan Brock is seeking emails from August 2021, when the county suddenly overrode COVID-19 guidance issued by its own Health Department Director, Dr. David Damsker, who said the science indicated more parent-friendly, less-restrictive policies. Instead, Bucks County bureaucrats replaced Damsker’s rules with stricter state guidelines for masking, quarantines, and vaccinations.

The OOR ordered the county to turn those emails over. Instead, county officials went to court.

Judge Denise Bowman on Thursday did not say when she would issue the final ruling on the matter.

Keith Bidlingmaier, a lawyer for the county, claimed the records Brock seeks are either covered by the attorney-client privilege or else  “pre-decisional” and therefore exempt under the right-to-know law.

Meredith Di Liberto, a lawyer for Judicial Watch, a public interest law firm also representing Brock, told DVJournal the county “relied on boilerplate” for its arguments.

“It boils down to saying they’re exempt (from turning over the documents) because they say so,” said Di Liberto.

Outside the courthouse, Brock was joined by state Sen. Jarrett Coleman (R-Bucks/Lehigh) and Jamie Walker, another mother who is being sued by the county in an attempt to deny her documents the state OOR ruled she should be given.

“When that guidance was abruptly changed after a letter was sent by the Wolf administration to our county commissioners, I myself and another mom, Jamie Walker, started asking questions,” Brock said.

“We came to the (county) commissioners’ meetings. We wanted to know why our kids were suddenly going to be kept out of school through long quarantines, why they were suddenly going to have their faces (covered) by forced masking, and instead of having our questions answered, our county commissioners bullied us, they called us names.”

Brock also claimed that county commissioners “actually blocked my phone number,” preventing her from contacting them.

After a long process, Brock won her right-to-know request at the state level.

“However, instead of giving those records, Bucks County sued me three times and sued Jamie Walker twice to withhold records,” said Brock. “This is a huge issue for every citizen in Bucks County, regardless of political affiliation.”

“Transparency is not a political issue,” Brock said. “It is an issue that protects the foundation of our constitutional republic. And it is a right of every citizen to know what is going on behind closed doors.”

“The public deserves to know how local county and state governments made decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Coleman argued. “As chairman of the Senate intergovernmental operations committee, my primary concern is understanding the decision-making process and how much independence the county health director had.”

DVJournal asked Coleman if his committee plans to subpoena the county commissioners to testify. “We certainly have the ability to do so,” said Coleman.

“Under decades of Republican leadership, this county never sued a citizen to hide the commissioners’ actions,” Walker said. “In a few short years under Democratic leadership, these types of lawsuits have now become commonplace in our county.”

“I asked for the emails under Commissioner (Diane) Marseglia’s second, unpublished county email address,” said Walker. “I won these emails already. The county refuses to release them to me. They’re making me hire an attorney and fight them in court. Bucks County residents’ tax dollars are being used to fund the frivolous lawsuits, and this is not how our government should operate.”

“Commissioner Marseglia herself said she will not stop the appeals because she wants to protect her friends,” said Walker. “All I want is the truth. I want to understand what was going on with our county’s highest elected officials during the creation of the health guidance in 2021. This guidance impacted 80,000 children.”

The guidance “endangered children. It contributed to massive learning loss. And it’s contributing to the current mental health crisis of our children today.”

The commissioners are “asking a judge to change the transparency law. They’re asking a judge to make the entire state of Pennsylvania less transparent for all of its citizens. Citizens are entitled to find out how our elected officials make decisions, especially when those decisions impacted so many children in Bucks County.”

Walker’s case is listed for trial on May 30. She is also represented by Schnee but not by Judicial Watch.

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Bucks County officials filed a class action late Tuesday over the harm they claim Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube are inflicting on kids. The move makes Bucks the first county government entity in the nation to file that kind of litigation.

“It’s very personal to me,” said Solicitor Joseph Kahn, who noted he is also a parent. “What this lawsuit addresses is a mental health crisis that severely impacts children everywhere, particularly in Bucks County. Like parents everywhere, I have been wondering, what am I going to do about this?”

Kahn was joined by Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub, Commissioners Chair Robert Harvie, and Commissioners Diane Marseglia and Gene DiGirolamo.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco claims, “Youth mental health problems have advanced in lockstep with the growth of social media platforms deliberately designed to attract and addict youth to the platforms by amplifying harmful material, dosing users with dopamine hits, and thereby driving youth engagement and advertising revenue.

“Defendants Facebook, Instagram, Snap, TikTok, and YouTube all design, market, promote, and operate social media platforms for which they have especially cultivated a young audience. They have successfully grown their platforms exponentially over the past decade, from millions to billions of users, particularly children, and teens.”

And those young people have suffered, the lawsuit alleges, raising costs for county taxpayers who pay for their mental health and other services.

“Bucks County residents have borne painful witness to all of this, firsthand, to devastating effect,” the lawsuit says. “For instance, in October 2022, a 15-year-old boy in Bucks County was arrested after threatening to ‘shoot up’ Central Bucks High School West via a Snapchat message. The boy also used TikTok to share videos of other mass shootings.”

Meta, the parent company for Facebook and Instagram, released a statement touting its efforts at promoting responsible social media use.

“We want teens to be safe online,” said Meta’s Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis. “We’ve developed more than 30 tools to support teens and families, including supervision tools that let parents limit the amount of time their teens spend on Instagram, and age verification technology that helps teens have age-appropriate experiences.

“We don’t allow content that promotes suicide, self-harm, or eating disorders, and of the content we remove or take action on, we identify over 99 percent of it before it’s reported to us. We’ll continue to work closely with experts, policymakers, and parents on these important issues.”

Not good enough, Bucks County officials say, pointing to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing a surge in depression and suicidal thoughts among American teens between 2011 and 2021. That coincided with the explosion of social media use by teens.

“A Pew Research Study found that almost half of U.S. teenagers aged 13 to 17 say they are online ‘almost constantly,'” the lawsuit reads.

The county is asking for monetary damages and an injunction against the social media companies, officials told DVJournal during Wednesday’s press conference.

The county has a long history of providing mental health services to children and teenagers paid for by taxpayers. The lawsuit asks the court to make the social media companies pay, Kahn explained, adding the companies violate Pennsylvania’s fair trade practices law.

Bucks County isn’t the only government entity to sue social media companies over the alleged harm their products inflict on users. The Seattle public school system is suing several large social media companies. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox has announced plans to sue as well.

Given the extremely deep pockets of social media companies like Facebook and YouTube, what chance does Bucks County have of winning this suit?

Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub said, “I do liken it to a David versus Goliath situation, where we’re David. We’re taking on these enormous companies…They’ve not only taken advantage of our children, but they’ve preyed on our children.”

The mental health agencies have a “literal and figurative line out the door,” said Weintraub. “And it’s filled with our young people. We intend to win. We intend to stake our claim.”

Villanova law Professor and Vice Dean Michael Risch said the David vs. Goliath comparison is overly optimistic.

“David at least had the stone, right? But this David has nothing. The sling is empty,” Risch told DVJournal.

Risch pointed to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which protects internet providers from just this sort of liability for the content that third parties post on their sites. A case recently heard by the U.S. Supreme Court claimed that Google is liable for terrorist videos, and the high court appeared unlikely to rule against the search site, he said.

“Here’s something one of your friends posted,” said Risch. “These are not terrorist videos. So, even if Google were to lose in the Supreme Court, it’s unclear whether the behavior of the tech companies is similar to serving up recruitment videos for terrorists because it’s harmful to kids to see other kids primping and doing whatever else they do.”

“This, by the way, is completely accepting these sites are harmful,” he added.

But if the case is allowed to progress, regardless of the final outcome, it could still be problematic for the social media giants.

“I can’t wait to begin discovery,” said Commissioner DiGirolamo. “Where we dig into the emails of the people who work for these companies. They knew what they were doing. ‘Not harmful and not addictive.’ Where have we heard that before? We heard it from the drug companies for many, many years. And (they) pushed these drugs on society.

“I think we’re going to find out these social media platforms knew exactly what they were doing and were preying on our young people. And we’d like to put an end to it, and we’d like to hold them accountable.”

A spokesman for TikTok said he could not comment on litigation but noted the company has various safeguards for underage users including limits on screen time.  Snapchat did not respond to a request for comment.

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Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub is embarking on a new campaign—for Common Pleas Judge.

The Republican DA was re-elected to his second term in 2021.

“It’s my intention to make my First Assistant Jen Schorn succeed me as Bucks County DA. By running for judge in the middle of my term, she gets to be DA for two full years before she then would stand for election herself. It’s like a live audition for the job. I had this advantage to prove myself as DA,” Weintraub said in a statement.

“This way, the county gets a fantastic District Attorney while I continue to serve the public as a judge. It’s a win-win,” Weintraub added. “I predict that with her leadership and dedication to our mission, Jen will far exceed me as Bucks County District Attorney, and it’s not fair for me to stand in her way any longer. She’s ready, and so am I.”

Weintraub has the support of Bucks County Republican Chair Pat Poprik. “We’re very happy he’s expanding on his legal work. His legal work in Bucks County has been very exemplary and people would like to see him move up and become a judge.”

Weintraub began his career as an intern in the DA’s office while in law school. After he graduated from Temple Law in 1993, he was hired as an assistant district attorney.

Weintraub grew up in Southampton, one of four children. He played basketball for the William Tennent Panthers.

He was born with hearing loss in both ears and wore hearing aids as a child.  According to his biography,  because of that disability, he learned to stick up for himself.

He was greatly affected by the death of four of his high school classmates in a drunk driving accident which led him to become interested in law and justice and, ultimately, embarked on a career as a prosecutor.

Before going to Temple Law, Weintraub attended Ursinus College. He resides in Doylestown Township with his wife Kathleen, daughters Shayna and Chloë, and Buddy the dog.

As Bucks County DA, Weintraub leads a department of about 100 employees. He garnered widespread attention for a murder case where four young men were killed on a farm in Solebury Township.

During his tenure as DA, he’s started many popular programs, including a gun safety program so that parents know the importance of storing guns safely and the availability of gun locks, supplying Narcan to police departments to revive those who overdose, and supporting a countywide criminal DNA database.

His motto is: “We’re here to serve justice.”

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Now that she has been sworn into her first term in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to serve the people of Bucks County, Rep. Kristin Marcell (R-Richboro) said she is ready to get to work.

“I’m honored to represent the residents of the 178th District, and I thank them for placing their faith in me to share their concerns and craft legislation to solve those problems,” Marcell said.

Before Marcell was elected to the House, she was a communications professional, Council Rock School Board member, and community volunteer. She is also a lifelong Bucks County resident and graduated from Council Rock High School in 1995.

Rep. Kristin Marcell and family

“As a native of Bucks County, I believe we need to bring people together to find common ground, establish relationships based on trust and respect, and get things done,” Marcell said. “Regardless of policy differences, we can work together to tackle difficult problems and take action to move forward for our communities – all without vitriol and personal attacks.”

Marcell brings extensive experience from both the public and private sectors to Harrisburg. After graduating from college, Marcell worked in Washington, D.C. at the U.S. Department of Transportation as the communications director of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

Marcell’s experience in the private sector included two decades of providing strategic and communications counsel to businesses in the energy, environmental, and utility industries.

“I’m passionate about ensuring people have a voice in government. Unfortunately, that was lost during the pandemic, something we must never lose as a democracy,” Marcell said. “Beyond that, there are many issues important to my constituents, including public safety, improving education, getting our economy moving again, and a host of local issues that I want to focus upon.”

In 2014, Marcell attended her first school board meeting as a concerned parent advocating alongside other community members to save their local elementary school from closure.

“During that community-driven effort, I realized there was more I could do to help all our children,” Marcell said. “That’s why I ran for the Council Rock School Board – to advocate for students, ensure parents have a say in their kids’ education, and focus on real priorities to protect homeowners and taxpayers.”

While on the school board, Marcell learned working together and taking action can make all the difference, whether as a small group like the school board or in a body of 203 members like the Pennsylvania House.

“From my vantage point on the Council Rock School Board, I saw firsthand how decisions in Harrisburg during the pandemic impacted our students, families, and small businesses,” Marcell added. “Our community deserves a strong voice fighting for them in the capital.”

In addition to her work on the school board, Marcell served on the Middle Bucks Institute of Technology’s Executive Council. Marcell’s educational background includes a BA in political science from Penn State and a master’s degree in public policy from George Washington University.

Marcell lives in Wrightstown with her husband, Steve, and their two children. Outside of work, Marcell enjoys spending time with friends. She is an avid Penn State and Philadelphia sports fan.

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A Bucks County employee already embroiled in controversy over his partisan politics is now in hot water over a profane tweet targeting Republicans in Congress.

Eric Nagy is director of policy and communications for Bucks County. His background is working as a Democratic political operative. And it showed when, amid the GOP’s battle to pick a new Speaker of the House, Nagy tweeted, “House Republicans simply can’t decide which sniveling little s**t they want to get behind, but they are determined to keep trying.”

Asked about the propriety of Nagy’s tweet, James O’Malley, a spokesperson for Bucks County, said, “You’re asking about a personnel matter, and the county does not comment on personnel matters. Accordingly, the county does not have a comment, except to say that it’s been handled internally.”

Nagy is a longtime party functionary who has served as a Democratic committeeman. He has a long history of working on Democratic campaigns, including those of Bucks County Commissioners Diane Ellis-Marseglia and Chair Bob Havie. He joined county government after the Democrats took control in 2019.

According to his LinkedIn page, Nagy’s specialties are political organization and campaign management, not public health or county government.

Now he is at the center of an ongoing scandal over Bucks County’s refusal to release documents that might confirm the county’s COVID-19 policy was issued not by county Health Director Dr. David Damsker but by Nagy.

Damsker proposed more parent-friendly, less-restrictive guidelines for the county’s schools. But his recommendations were overridden, replaced with stricter state guidelines for masking, quarantines, and vaccinations. Data indicate the new guidelines came from Nagy. Bucks County is still in court fighting open records requests for more information about this case.

Bucks County GOP Chair Pat Poprik said she isn’t surprised by Nagy’s nasty comments.

“Since the day he was hired, we have said this was a political operative, and here is proof. At 3:37 p.m. on a work day, he’s making very partisan comments, hardly governmental. He’s a political operative given a cushy government job he’s not qualified for. He has time to comment during the work day. How inappropriate.”

Kim Bedillion, president of the Pennridge Area Republican Club, agreed.

“While Mr. Nagy is free to express his personal opinion on his own time, even a distastefully worded one such as this, I am concerned that he did so on the taxpayer’s dime,” said Bedillion. “The timing of the tweet suggests that he made it while in the course and scope of his employment as Bucks County’s director of policy and communications. One would hope that his bosses, Bucks County commissioners Diane Ellis-Marseglia and Bob Harvie, would hold him accountable if he did so. However, given that Mr. Nagy served as campaign manager for the Democratic commissioners, Ms. Ellis-Marseglia and Mr. Harvie, and appears to have been awarded his current position as a political favor, that does not seem likely.”

Despite being in the public information business, Nagy did not respond to a request for comment.

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As we end the year and the 2022 election cycle, it is important that we look back at the most important lessons and takeaways.  The next election is never too far away, and 2022 can teach us a lot of what success looks like for the Republican Party here in Southeast Pennsylvania in 2023.

First, let’s look at the results here in Bucks County. After years of failing to beat our Republican state representatives and senators at the ballot box, Democrats took it upon themselves to try and beat us through the redistricting process. The maps they produced were a blatant partisan power grab.

Despite the best efforts of Harrisburg Democrats, Bucks County elected five Republican state representatives and two Republican state senators this year.  This represents a critical voting bloc in a Pennsylvania House which, as I write this, is under Democratic control by just a single seat. Maintaining this presence for our party in the House is just one of the keys to judging our success in 2022.

This success was due in no small part thanks to the next topic I’d like to discuss, which is candidate quality. This election proved that after all this time, candidate quality is still an absolutely crucial factor in a campaign’s success. Here in Bucks County, we were proud to have a wonderful slate of candidates up and down the ballot, who worked hard and fought every day to represent our community and its values.

When the new Pennsylvania House and Senate and U.S. Congress are sworn in, Bucks County will be home to the majority of Republican state representatives and senators in our region, and the only Republican congressman to represent the Delaware Valley.  This is thanks in part to the quality of men and women who go out and make their case to their neighbors on behalf of themselves and the party.

The final important lesson we must take away from 2022, and one that I am hopeful we as a party are quickly learning, is the clear need to make better use of early voting. While I would like to see Act 77 repealed as much as the next person, we must recognize that early voting is not going away any time soon.

For too long, too many in our party refused to make use of early voting, whether in person at your local Board of Elections office, or by mail. Democrats start with hundreds of thousands of votes in the bank, and we spend just one day playing catch up. Here in Bucks County, we started an early vote program back in 2021, and have seen great success. It’s time to expand that across the Commonwealth.

As we all prepare for our county and local elections in 2023, we cannot soon forget the lessons from both our successes and failures in 2022. We know what we must do to win, and we are fired up and ready to go in the new year.

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Jamie Cohen Walker is the Bucks County mom who beat Attorney General Josh Shapiro in the state Supreme Court.

The Chalfont resident, a former certified reading specialist, is now a stay-at-home mom to her 16, 14, and 11-year-old children. During the COVID-19 classroom lockdowns, she was active in the Reopen Bucks movement to get kids back in school.

She says she is a politically moderate former Democrat, but she may be a model of the “mama bear” voter Republicans need to win in this year’s midterms.

“I’m Jewish. I was a Democrat. I would not be a Democrat now. I don’t think I could do it after seeing what they’ve done to our kids,” said Walker, a guest speaker at a recent rally for GOP gubernatorial candidate state Sen. Doug Mastriano.

Political consultant Albert Eisenberg of RedStateBlue, said, “Suburban, college-educated women have been up for grabs since the GOP transitioned from the party of Romney to the party of Trump. But now the Republican Party is in its post-Trump era and many of these moms are returning to the fold.

“They are seeing de facto Democratic policies of absolute radicalism — people who genuinely believe parents should have no say in their child’s education, people who are still forcing toddlers to wear masks, which is completely inhumane,” said Eisenberg. “Adding to this sharp left turn of the Democrats is the skyrocketing cost of living and eroding value of a dollar due to the Democrats’ insane economic policies — and the suburbs are certainly coming back, in places, to the GOP this cycle.”

Since the 2021 school board elections brought a conservative majority to the Central Bucks School Board, Walker said she is not concerned that the board would agree to shut down the schools again in case another epidemic happens.

But if Shapiro is elected governor, that’s another story.

“If Josh Shapiro wins, could he shut down schools? Absolutely. The only thing that would shut down schools is a governor’s emergency. Our (school) board is really good now, so they would not shut down schools. And our health director would not shut down schools.

“But Josh Shapiro could shut down schools. Absolutely. He fought to keep them closed,” said Walker.

Walker is one of the right-to-know warriors battling the school district for information about how it made decisions about COVID-related closings and mask mandates and finding out through a trove of emails that the district had kowtowed to teachers’ union demands.

“I won my first right-to-know appeal in January 2021. The district said it would give me all the records except three emails and took me to court,” Walker said. “That was when (attorney) Chad Schmee reached out to me and said, ‘I can win these records for you.’”

After Walker won, Supt. Dr. John Kopicki “just up and disappeared,” said Walker.  “The superintendent of the largest district in Pennsylvania decided to leave in March 2021. As soon as he left, I received my emails.”

“We have a local health department,” said Walker. “Dr. David Damsker is our health director.  When you have a local health department, they determine the mitigation for something. Also, a mask is actually a modified quarantine.

She points to an “email that Dr. Damsker wrote to all (Bucks) superintendents telling them you don’t have to be hybrid,” said Walker. “Every child can be in school. You don’t have the authority to do this. They broke the law. They did not have the authority.

“And Dr. Damsker said if you’re wearing a mask (when exposed to someone with COVID), you don’t have to stay home and quarantine,” said Walker. “But our school district wasn’t doing that. Our school district was sending healthy kids home. That was against the law, too.

“No one ever wrote about it. No one ever questioned it. They kept 1,100 kids home that were considered contacts, and no one was getting sick. They weren’t consulting the health department. They were just doing it on their own,” she said. “I don’t think people understand what they did to children. They missed so much school,” she said.

“In June 2021, Dr. Damsker came to our school district and said the kids don’t have to wear masks anymore, and we’re going to treat COVID like the flu and move on from COVID. Well, a lot went down in August.”

On Aug. 31, 2021, former state Health Director Alison Beam required school students and staff to wear masks again.

“So Central Bucks already started, and everybody was normal, all the kids were back to school normal,” said Walker. “So they said on Sept. 7, all the kids had to start wearing masks again.”

Beam put the “illegal mask mandate in, and I joined a few other parents to sue Allison Beam. It was Josh Shapiro who defended it, his office. We won in Commonwealth Court,” she said, but then Shapiro appealed to the state Supreme Court. “And we won. We beat him in the Supreme Court.”

Then in December, Beam resigned.

“Our health director (Damsker) put out health guidance on Aug. 15, then Alison Beam and the teachers’ union pressured our county commissioners to change the health guidance, then nobody ever heard from our health director again.”

“It’s really bad what went on here,” she said. “Some of the Democratic people hated Dr. Damsker. There were Facebook groups about him, ‘Ditch Dr. Damsker.’ They did such horrible things to him.”

At the Mastriano rally, Walker said, “Here in Bucks County, we saw first-hand how Democrats were willing to use COVID-19 as a political tool to strip away our personal freedom and exert their will over us. We watched our health director was silenced by Democrat bosses when the Wolf administration did not agree with his health guidance. They interfered with our health director’s legal authority to set health guidance during a pandemic. We lived with the effect of that illegal interference for two painful years. A group of us parents stood in their way. We acted as the opposition to the Wolf administration’s mandates.

“We knew that keeping kids out of school would harm them, so we fought, and we fought extremely hard because the Democratic politicians and their allies, the teachers union, made us their enemy,” she said. The parents were called “domestic terrorists” and “jerks.”

“They weaponized the government against us,” Walker said.

Walker and another parent, Megan Brock, are in a legal battle with Bucks County over their right-to-know request about how the county issued its health directives, bypassing Damsker. The county sued the two moms to keep some of the commissioners’ emails private after Walker and Brock won an appeal to the state Office of Open Records.

“After decades of Republican control of Bucks County, these Democrat commissioners are the first Bucks County administration ever to sue a private citizen to hide their emails, their own words,” said Walker. “Those emails they’re trying to hide from us are about how Democrat politicians interfered with our children’s education.”

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Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano unloaded both barrels on his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, over soaring crime in the Keystone State.

“On his watch as the senior law enforcement official in the state, crime has gone up 40 percent, that alone is disqualifying,” he told some 700 people at the Fuge in Warminster on Saturday afternoon. “He doesn’t want to talk about 1,000 or more carjackings in Philadelphia, a record number of homicides…and he is a complete, utter, and ridiculous failure.”

They can’t keep up  (with digging) the graves with the young people killed in the crossfire, mostly 15, 18-year-old kids,” Mastriano said.

Participants chanted “Doug for Guv.” Mastriano spoke without notes for about 45 minutes, making his case for why voters should elect him governor.

A 30-year Army veteran, he repeated the classic quote, “Old soldiers never die. They just fade away.”

“There’s no time for us to fade away,” he said. “Our country needs every one of us.”

Mastriano said he has offered to debate Shapiro and would allow him to “bring Donna Brazile,” but “he’s chicken.”

Shapiro has turned his back on “mostly women” who are being sex trafficked in the state, Mastriano charged. Instead, Shapiro sued the Little Sisters of the Poor, spending millions in taxpayers’ money to lose in the U.S. Supreme Court, and sued to keep kids in masks and businesses shut down. On his watch, nearly 10,000 criminals were released from jail.

Mastriano promised, “On day one, woke is broke.”

“Parents will have their powers back,” he continued. “There will be full school transparency…all the pornographic books will be pulled out. On day one and done, Critical Race Theory will be thrown out the window. And maybe bring back civics, the constitution, and Pennsylvania history.”

Mastriano said he was being attacked as not supporting women’s rights and called on his wife, Rebbie, to speak.

Sen. Doug Mastriano and his wife, Rebbie. (Courtesy Tom Sofield, editor/publisher Levittown/Now.com)

She said Republicans support a woman’s right to be born, to have baby formula, to have a say in her child’s education, raise a child in “a safe community where the government enforces the law, prosecutes crime, and doesn’t let criminals out early.”

“And we believe, as Pennsylvanians, that it’s a woman’s right to the Second Amendment,” she added, drawing loud cheers and applause.

“And we believe it’s a woman’s right to compete in sports that are not dominated by men,” said Rebbie, who also serves as Mastriano’s campaign manager. “They’re trying to cancel us. I know each and every one of you can define a woman and tell some of those in your neighborhood what a woman is. Ladies, we’re going to get out that vote like you’ve never seen before.”

Mastriano said boys in girls’ bathrooms threaten public safety. He backed a bill to ensure only girls and women play women’s sports. Gov. Tom Wolf (D) vetoed that bill, and Shapiro filed an amicus brief opposing Virginia’s efforts to keep boys out of girls’ restrooms and locker rooms.

While the Republican nominee trails in the polls, he told the crowd he is waging a grassroots campaign. Since the primary, he has been to all 67 counties, with Bucks, one of the original counties founded by William Penn, as the last.

Mastriano recalled Washington’s “daring raid” crossing the Delaware River from Bucks County to New Jersey, changing the course of the Revolutionary War. He told his supporters they would do the same and “beat back the Democrats and that far, extreme radial, dangerous policy vision they have for our state and nation. We just say no to Shapiro.”

“The Democrats haven’t changed much,” he said. “They don’t have an argument to stand on, so they call names.”

The Democrats are lying and “fearmongering,” he said. “It’s time to take the state back.”

The Democrats have a “laundry list” of things they do not want to talk about, like shutting down small businesses during COVID and the state deciding which could stay open.

“All the cabinet makers across Pennsylvania were shut down, except one. Wolf Industries,” he said. “You could go to strip clubs but not churches. Life under (Health Secretary Rachel) Levine and life under Shapiro.”

“I was in Germany behind the Iron Curtain in 1989 during the Cold War defending us from what the radical left is planning here,” he said. “The godlessness, the evil empire…The fight for freedom is still ongoing for our country, so our job is not done.”

“For our kids and grandkids, we have to win on the 8th of November,” he said. “Our motto is freedom.”

Conservative writer and commentator Jack Posobiec also spoke, saying he grew up in Norristown. He said when drugs flooded that small city, Shapiro was a Montgomery County commissioner and did nothing to help. Norristown has gotten so bad that Posobiec said he has never taken his two sons to see the street he grew up on.

“This (Democratic) cabal took from us, they took from our families, they want to destroy our families,” he said. “The only thing they care about is power.”

Mastriano’s message resonated with Eileen Storch of Newtown. She opposes boys in girls’ restrooms and biological boys competing in girls’ sports.

“That’s wrong,” she said.

David Fiori, Jr. of Yardley said Mastriano “makes a lot of good sense. He’s applying common sense to politics. He has great leadership skills. He relates to everybody. He understands what the stakes are, and he’s not afraid to face the issues of the day.”

A Montgomery Township woman who did not want to give her name said she supports Mastriano because of “schools, taxes, and the economy.”

Mastriano said he had spoken to 500 people in Chester County earlier in the day and had a second event with Gun Owners of America in Bucks County following the Fuge rally. Reports of the “early demise” of his campaign were utterly wrong, he said.

“You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

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From a press release

The Bucks County Commissioners today joined county emergency management officials to break ground on a $1.8 million modernization project at the county’s Emergency Services building in Ivyland.

Slated for completion next year, the enhancements will expand and update the existing Emergency Operations Center (EOC) to create a more efficient work environment optimized for modern disaster response.

“It became clear to all three commissioners early in the pandemic, when this building was ground zero for not just the disaster response, but also for a lot of our public messaging, that this facility badly needed some upgrades,” said county Commissioner Chair Bob Harvie. “Last summer’s flooding, tornadoes and hurricane only underscored that need.”

When activated, the EOC serves as the county’s emergency response nerve center during response and recovery from disasters – both natural and manmade – that require the mobilization and coordination of multiple emergency services, government and nonprofit agencies.

Changes to the facility will triple available meeting spaces and update technology, allowing multiple teams working on different aspects of a disaster response to meet and coordinate simultaneously – including with county 911, as well as outside agencies – without disruption to other efforts.

Planned improvements also include a press briefing room and a designated space for fielding and responding to public inquiry.

“In retrospect it seems obvious that we might need a dedicated space to brief the media and the public, or that more than one team might need a meeting space at one time,” Harvie added. “But unfortunately, that capacity was lacking under this facility’s existing design.”

Construction costs for the project are budgeted at $1.38 million. Technology and security upgrades are estimated to cost another $385,000. The county is paying for the improvements with federal COVID relief and Homeland Security funds.

The Board of Commissioners unanimously approved funding for construction during its May 18 public meeting.

“Each and every service our staff provides from this building is critical to keeping Bucks County safe,” said Emergency Services Director Audrey Kenny. “The Commissioners’ continued investment in us, and shared commitment to our cause empowers our Emergency Services and Emergency Management teams to be the best in the business.”

Construction is expected to last eight to 10 months, during which time the Emergency Operations Center will be housed within the Bucks County Health Department. To minimize disruption to 911 operations, the county’s emergency dispatchers will work out of an alternate facility in Doylestown.

The county has contracted with the following firms on this project: Holstein White, Inc. (Engineer); Matthew V. Piotrowski Architect, LLC (Architect); Magnum, Inc. (General Contractor); Palman Electric, Inc. (Electrical Contractor); Hirschberg Mechanical (Mechanical and Plumbing Contractor); Guy M. Cooper, Inc. (Fire Protection Contractor).

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