Lancaster

Thursday

Kate Andrews

What went wrong for MAGA in Pennsylvania

What’s changed in Lancaster, Pennsylvania? The Republican-leaning district in a purple state has been turned on its head by a surprise win for the Democratic party: for the first time since the late 1970s, a local Democratic mayor, James Malone, will take up a place in the State Senate, after a special election was held on Wednesday this week.  This is not just an overturn of decades’ worth of party consensus. It seems to be a monumental shift away from the consensus in Lancaster just four months ago, when Donald Trump won the district by 15 points. It was only a one-point drop from his 16-point margin in 2020, when he won the county and lost the state.

pennsylvania

Monday

Addison Del Mastro

The sad demise of Amish family-style restaurants

Every time I visit Pennsylvania Amish Country, it feels a little less like Amish Country. My parents were aghast when, in the mid-2000s, they visited for the first time since the 1980s (and for the first time with me) and found a massive outlet center along the main commercial drag. When my wife and I visited in 2017 — my first time since that childhood family trip — I was dismayed to see that the field in front of the Amish Farm and House had become a Target and its attendant parking lot. (I was only a little less dismayed when the landmark Congress Inn, with its out-of-place capitol-dome sign, met the wrecking ball.