Ian Karbal, Pennsylvania Capital-Star

A Lehigh Valley man who voted twice for President Donald Trump in the 2020 election is facing prison time. On Wednesday, Matthew Laiss, who lives in Bethlehem, was convicted of felony voter fraud charges by a federal jury.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the 32-year-old Laiss moved from Ottsville, Bucks County, to Frostproof, Florida, around August 2020, where he registered to vote and cast a ballot on election day.

But Laiss also cast a mail-in ballot in Pennsylvania....

On Monday, President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. held a press conference claiming a link between Tylenol consumption during pregnancy and autism. It was the latest development in an effort promised in the early days of the Trump administration – to find a cause of what Kennedy has described as an autism “epidemic.”

While the claims drew immediate blowback from members of the scientific community, the way Trump and Kennedy have discussed autism over the past few months has also brought pushback from autistic people and their advocates in Pennsylvania and across the nation.

For example, in April, while announcing an initiative to study the environmental factors that may contribute to autism, Kennedy said the condition is a “tragedy” that “destroys families.”...

As Republicans face increasingly critical crowds in town halls or avoid them altogether, Rep. Scott Perry (R) held a telephone town hall to answer constituents’ questions.

Perry’s event came a week after a Democratic state Senate candidate won a special election in a Trump+15 District in Lancaster County, not far from his own congressional district. And on Tuesday, a liberal candidate for Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court beat a conservative opponent. It was a race widely seen as a referendum on Trump’s agenda, and in particular the role of billionaire megadonor Elon Musk, who poured millions into the contest.

Perry expressed both praise and skepticism of Musk and his role as the figurehead of the Department of Government Efficiency, which has led the Trump administration’s efforts to slash tens of thousands of federal jobs and cancel contracts across federal agencies – usually without warning. ...

Pennsylvania is home to an estimated 155,000 undocumented migrants, according to the American Immigration Council. And around 30,000 of them may work in the state’s agricultural sector, according to estimates from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.

With the state’s agriculture industry already facing a workforce shortage, President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to begin a mass deportation program at the start of his term next week could exacerbate the problem.

Lerae Kroon, a supervising attorney at the Pennsylvania Farmworker Project, said that a mass deportation program like Trump has pitched would “cause chaos and pain for everyone in the community.” ...

The chairman of the Republican National Committee said at a rally for former President Donald Trump in Allentown on Tuesday that the Trump campaign intends to file a lawsuit against Bucks County for turning away voters who had lined up to apply for mail ballots on demand.

“Folks, here’s what’s happening: Democrat election officials are seeing our numbers. They’re seeing our turnout. They are seeing us breaking early vote records across Pennsylvania. They are terrified. And they want to stop our momentum,” RNC Chairperson Michael Whatley said. “We are not going to let them suppress our votes. We are going to fight.”

Whatley told voters to stay in line at about 7:30 p.m. — two-and-a-half hours after the state deadline to accept mail ballot applications. ...