Josh Shapiro denies Jewish heritage cost him VP spot; Kamala Harris turns to famed Philly Twitter king to troll Trump

Former officials in Donald Trump’s administration have been helping Philly-area billionaire Jeffrey Yass work to prevent a ban of TikTok, according to the New York Times.

Yass’ Bala Cynwyd-based trading firm, Susquehanna International Group, reportedly owns a 15% stake in ByteDance, according to the Wall Street Journal. Yass is the richest man in Pennsylvania. Based on his assets, Forbes estimates his net worth at $28.5 billion while Bloomberg estimates it at nearly $45 billion.

Former Vice President Mike Pence reiterated that he doesn’t back and won’t endorse former President Donald Trump’s campaign.

“I cannot endorse this growing abandonment of our allies on the world stage that’s taken hold in parts of our party,” Pence said at a conservative conference hosted by talk show host Erick Erickson. “I cannot endorse ignoring our national debt, which reached $35 trillion just in the last week. I cannot support marginalizing the right to life.”

A top Philadelphia election official resigned last month to take a job in Montgomery, but she abruptly reneged after Mayor Cherelle L. Parker intervened as November’s critically important election approaches, according to two sources familiar with the situation.

Stephanie Reid, Philadelphia’s director of election administration, is responsible for overseeing day-to-day administrative operations for the Philadelphia City Commissioners, the three-member board tasked with running the election in the largest city in the state that is poised to decide the presidency.

Tim Walz kept his apartment spotless, but the place definitely wasn’t nice.

It was 2007, and Walz was a freshman member of Congress who’d hit it off with another brand-new representative: Patrick Murphy, of Bucks County. The two had a shared history of military service and were each raising young families, so, for more than a year, they shared a Washington, D.C., apartment when they were in town for work.

Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden next week are slated to make their first campaign stop together since Biden announced he would not seek reelection.

Harris and Biden will appear Thursday in Maryland, where they will "discuss the progress they are making to lower costs for the American people," the White House said. Additional details about the planned stop were not immediately available.

Gov. Josh Shapiro has rejected the idea that his Jewish faith played a role in Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to choose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz over him as a running mate.

“I can tell you that antisemitism had no impact on the dialogue between the vice president and me, period,” Shapiro said in an interview with the Washington Examiner.

It turns out, sometimes you still feel a pull to roll your eyes abour your mom — even on national television.

While hosting on Jesse Watters Primetime on Fox News Thursday night, Watters, a Philly native, discussed the new wave of excitement Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign is drawing.

In a definite campaign first, a tweet from the viral X (formerly Twitter) account run by a Philadelphia man has made its way into presidential election campaign materials.

The Harris-Walz office slammed opponent Donald Trump’s Thursday news conference in a voicey release that evening titled: “Donald Trump’s Very Good, Very Normal Press Conference” and likened Trump’s remarks to a “public meltdown.”

Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, continue their battleground state tour Friday with a rally in Arizona.

The event will take place later this evening at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Ariz., according to the Arizona Republic. Harris is expected to speak around 8 p.m. Eastern Time.

Following a campaign event with autoworkers in Michigan, Vice President Kamala Harris said she’s “glad” Donald Trump agreed to debate and said she would schedule her first major interview as the party's nominee before September.

Harris took questions from the traveling pool after Trump held a long-winded and falsehood-filled press conference earlier in the day, accusing her of dodging reporters’ questions.

A Democratic-aligned political action committee has mounted a legal challenge that could block Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent candidate for president, from appearing on Pennsylvania’s ballot in November.

Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and longtime vaccine skeptic, has been working to secure ballot access in all 50 states. He filed paperwork for the Pennsylvania ballot in June.

Of course, ice cream was involved.

President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, hosted a thank you event on Thursday for hundreds of staffers who worked on the reelection campaign that he chose to exit nearly three weeks ago.

Fatim Byrd didn’t know much about Tim Walz until Vice President Kamala Harris chose him as her running mate Tuesday.

Once Byrd read up on the two-term Minnesota governor, he quickly got excited: Walz spent two decades as a social studies teacher in public high schools from the 1990s through 2006. He coached football and he was the first faculty adviser to the Mankato West High School Gay Straight Alliance, a position he took after one of the first openly gay students at the school approached Walz and asked for help.