Good afternoon everyone,

It’s Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026, and welcome back to another edition of the Keystone Labor Report. 

Sorry for the later than normal send. It’s been a busy few days, and I was in the field covering Gov. Josh Shapiro’s press conference in Berks County earlier this afternoon. 

Were you able to make it through President Donald Trump’s MAGA-style speech at the State of the Union address on Tuesday? Don’t worry if you didn’t (because like some of the attendees in the room), I decided to sleep through the whole thing and catch up the following day.

(Aimee Dilger/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

If you ever watched the light leave someone’s eyes because of what was said during an interview or TV segment, then you understand how US House Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Luzerne) felt when he found himself in an awkward moment on Tuesday.

Bresnahan, who was caught selling hundreds of thousands of health care related stocks and bonds while Republicans were pushing through Trump’s $1 trillion cuts to Medicaid, invited a local registered nurse as his guest to Trump’s State of the Union address. While there, she spoke out against the working conditions health care professionals are dealing with in the current moment.

And Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, who is challenging Bresnahan for his seat, noted just how hard health care hits are on Pennsylvania communities.

“[Bresnahan’s] record on health care is especially devastating: He has unleashed a health care crisis on NEPA by gutting Medicaid, slashing funding for Pennsylvania hospitals, and jacking up health care premiums. We are tired of politicians lying to us and leaving us behind – our community deserves so much better,” Cognetti said in a statement. 

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Health care workers from across Pennsylvania delivered an open letter on Wednesday asking US Sen. Dave McCormick to reject Ben Landa’s ambassadorship to Hungary.

Landa, a scandal-plagued nursing home magnate, was recently nominated for this ambassadorship after donating $5 million to Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC in August.  

Across the country, Landa’s nursing homes have been accused of fraud, human trafficking, and poor care for seniors. In Pennsylvania, his nursing homes were involved in multiple wrongful death lawsuits, wage law violations, and violating resident rights, among a laundry list of complaints. 

“I’ve worked at my nursing home for 10 years and when Ben Landa was one of the previous owners, we really suffered from understaffing and a lack of supplies,” Lindsey Burns, a licensed practical nurse, said in a statement. 

“When we were understaffed, it was really tough to give our residents the dignified care they deserved. We were constantly stretched thin, which wore us down. During the pandemic, we didn’t have enough PPE, so we had to reuse masks, sometimes for about a week at a time.”

(Sean Kitchen / The Keystone)

While speaking in Berks County on Thursday, Gov. Josh Shapiro promised to explore every avenue possible in order to prevent the US Department of Homeland Security from converting two empty Pennsylvania warehouses into controversial immigration detainment centers, potentially designed to house thousands of people. 

DHS purchased these buildings in secrecy from state, local, and federal officials, but potential infrastructure issues in the communities hosting the facilities may hamper the permitting process from state agencies. 

“ I want to be very clear. I don’t want either of these sites here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. While the federal government has enormous power to place these across the country, I want you to know we are not powerless here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and I intend to use every tool at my disposal to stop these facilities from coming here,” Shapiro told reporters at a press conference in Berks County on Tuesday.