Josh Shapiro

Josh Shapiro is governing and campaigning simultaneously, and both lanes run through his confrontation with the Trump administration. On Aug. 3 he sued to block federal access to personal data of SNAP recipients, calling it an unlawful seizure, and joined a 20-attorney-general coalition challenging an HHS rule the coalition says weakens the ACA by expanding narrow-coverage plans. These are part of more than two dozen suits his office has filed against the administration in 18 months. When Trump touted economic gains at a Mack Trucks plant in Macungie on June 23, Shapiro countered that the vast majority of Pennsylvanians are hurting from the President's economic policies, reprising his chaos, cruelty, and corruption attack line. He also declined to commit Pennsylvania to the Trump-aligned Great American State Fair on the National Mall, citing politicization, high taxpayer costs, and lack of sponsors. His aggressive opposition to DHS mass-detention warehouses in Berks and Schuylkill counties contributed to DHS offloading seven warehouses across five states including the two Pennsylvania sites.

On the ballot, Shapiro faces Republican State Treasurer Stacy Garrity on Nov. 3 with a roughly $38 million to $3 million fundraising edge. The sharpest policy divide is marijuana legalization: Shapiro wants a state-run adult-use program under the Dept. of Agriculture with a 26% sales tax generating an estimated $200M annually for healthcare and education, plus $10M for restorative justice. Garrity opposes legalization, calls marijuana a psychoactive drug, and vows a veto. Garrity has also attacked his voluntary GRID data-center standards as too lenient and called for a total pause on new data center projects.

On data centers and AI, Shapiro launched GRID standards May 27 requiring developers seeking state support to bring their own power and reach 32% clean energy by 2035. The House codified them in a bipartisan June vote, though critics call the standards voluntary since hyperscalers can bypass them by declining tax breaks. He faces conflict-of-interest allegations over his Team Pennsylvania Foundation board seat, which fiscally sponsors an industry-led AI Strike Team that includes his cabinet secretaries. His administration separately sued Character Technologies over AI chatbots posing as licensed medical professionals with false Pennsylvania license numbers; a Spotlight PA probe found similar chatbots on five additional platforms, and a state Senate bill requiring chatbots to disclose they are not human now awaits a House committee vote.

The $50.8 billion state budget passed ahead of the June 30 deadline, a sharp acceleration from last year's 135-day delay, but it is balanced on paper by deferring Medicaid expenses amid a structural deficit from phasing out corporate net income taxes. Shapiro proposed a 5% spending increase relying on uncertain revenue from marijuana and skill-game taxes; the state Supreme Court has since ruled skill games unlawful. The Independent Fiscal Office warns the surplus and $8 billion rainy-day fund could be depleted by 2027-28. Shapiro supports a House-passed cap on investor-owned utility profits tied to U.S. Treasury bonds but has not declared a position on the paired elimination of Pennsylvania's 5.9% electricity sales tax, projected to be the largest state tax cut in history, creating a $1.7 billion deficit.

Shapiro is also refusing to publicly release a 2023 Office of State Inspector General report on the Department of Aging's oversight of 52 county aging agencies. His spokesperson calls the report confidential, while Secretary of Aging Jason Kavulich denies knowledge of it and former employees allege retaliation for reporting oversight deficiencies. On the Abraxas Alliance facility housing unaccompanied immigrant children in Morgantown, Shapiro's office declined advocate calls to close the site, arguing closure would return children to federal custody and strip state oversight, even as Pennsylvania Democratic Reps. Summer Lee and Chris Deluzio press the Trump administration to suspend the $9.2M federal contract over abuse allegations.