This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

The pot is only getting sweeter in Pennsylvania. The commonwealth’s Gaming Control Board announced record gaming revenue for the fifth straight year in 2025. The nearly $6.8 billion in revenue marks a 27% increase in iGaming revenue over the previous year.

It’s not just the hep cats that dig jazz, baby - so do the Owls. Temple University’s Jazz Band won the 2026 National Collegiate Jazz Championship in New York this week, bringing home a $10,000 award in the process. The winning funds will support the school’s jazz education programs.

Former Hillandale Farms CEO Orland Bethel is the gift that keeps on giving for the University of Pittsburgh. Bethel, a Greensburg resident diagnosed with spinal stenosis in 2014, received care from UPMC and has donated nearly $100 million to the university since 2018. His latest pledge, another $53.5 million, will further support the Orland Bethel Family Musculoskeletal Research Center. 

For the first time in years, Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education was flat-funded in the most recent state budget, despite asking for a 6.5% increase. While the system had been bracing for a potential funding freeze, it may have to soon grapple with enrollment challenges due to a shrinking number of high school graduates, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Dozens of Central Pennsylvania residents have been charged in what Dauphin County prosecutors call a sprawling SNAP trafficking operation, in which the accused fraudulently traded government nutrition benefits for cash and other non-allowed alternatives. While Quick Stop Convenience in Steelton and its owner are believed to be the focus, prosecutors are widening the investigation.

In a 39-page ruling, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently supported the Court of Judicial Discipline’s decision to suspend former Philadelphia County Judge Mark Cohen over partisan posts made on Facebook that appeared to support policies and politicians in the Democratic Party. The court’s majority opinion stated that the “volume and tone of his posts cast him as little more than a spokesperson for the Democratic Party.”