John L. Micek, Pennsylvania Capital-Star

Barletta, the former mayor of Hazleton, and then a Republican member of Congress from Pennsylvania, was one of Trump’s earliest Keystone State backers, and went to bat for him in the race against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

No more.

On Friday, Barletta took to Twitter, where he called on Trump’s current (and currently undeclared) rival for the GOP White House nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, to make it official and just jump into the race already. ...

A Pennsylvania lawmaker forcibly removed, and then stepped over, a protester who was blocking his access to a pricey fundraiser held by a fellow lawmaker on Tuesday morning.

Sen. Mike Regan, R-York, declined to answer questions after he left the event, held on behalf of Sen. Scott Martin, R-Lancaster, at Rubicon, a restaurant just steps from the state Capitol in Harrisburg.

The protester, who identified himself as Michael Bagdes-Canning, of Butler County, told the Capital-Star that he was “in a bit of pain,” after his confrontation with Regan, a former U.S. Marshal, and was already contending with back issues. ...

The number of botched executions also reached an “astonishing” level, according to the resech by the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington D.C-based clearinghouse that tracks developments in capital law and executions nationwide.

Seven of the year’s 20 execution attempts, or 35 percent, were “visibly problematic,” according to the report, either as a result of executioner incompetence, a failure to follow execution protocols, or defects in the protocols themselves.

“After 40 years, the states have proven themselves unable to carry out lethal injections without the risk that it will be botched,” the center’s executive director, Robert Dunham, said in an email. “The families of victims and prisoners, other execution witnesses, and corrections personnel should not be subjected to the trauma of an execution gone bad.” ...

Just a week ago, Pennsylvania voters stood up for democracy, rejecting an election-denier vying to become the state’s chief executive, and saying ‘no thanks’ to Denier-in-Chief Donald Trump’s handpicked candidate for U.S. Senate.

It was an echo of results around the country that saw election-deniers lose key races for offices in every 2020 battleground state, as the Washington Post reports, and as strong an affirmation as you were likely to get for the legitimacy of elections, and the sanctity of the ballot box.

The reaction from Pennsylvania House Republicans? Hold my beer. ...

Fetterman, who is recovering from a stroke, and needs closed-captioning to compensate for auditory processing challenges, warned at the beginning of last Tuesday’s debate that he might mush together words or misspeak.

And now there’s an answer: A new New York Times/Siena College poll out Monday shows Fetterman with a 5-point lead, 49-44 percent, over Oz as the race heads into its final week.

The polls, which also show Democratic slight leads in the key states of Georgia and Nevada, come at a good time for Democrats, who are eyeing the 50-50 upper chamber as their best chance to retain a majority on Capitol Hill. ...