This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

The recently fraught relationship between Reese’s founding family and Hershey seems to be smoothing out. Weeks after Brad Reese, the grandson of Reese’s candies’ inventor, called out Hershey for allegedly not using real milk chocolate, the company responded by making a family-size compromise: it will return to using “classic milk and dark chocolate recipes” in all of its products by 2027 – a sweet victory for all the confection connoisseurs. 

There’s a contest up in Northeast Pennsylvania. In the congressional race for PA-3, Cook Political Report has officially shifted its projection from “Lean R” to “Toss Up,” meaning Scranton Mayor and Democratic candidate Paige Cognetti is gaining ground on first-term U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan. Cook cites Bresnahan’s prolific stock trading as an issue that’s opened him up to easy attack ads. 

Fresh leadership is coming to two commonwealth campuses. After a two-year search, HACC – formerly known as Harrisburg Area Community College – welcomes new president Dan Lufkin, who most recently led a Texas community college. Meanwhile, Ursinus College looked closer to home in naming Gundolf Graml, its interim leader and former provost, to succeed ousted ex-President Robyn Hannigan and continue his turnaround of the small liberal arts school, which has run budget deficits for nearly a decade amid declining enrollment. Graml, an Austria-born German Studies scholar, has reduced full-time positions by 23%, cut nonessential spending and updated academic offerings.

Wharton MBA graduates now have an answer to the eternal question posed by Austin Powers: Who does Number Two work for? The business school of the University of Pennsylvania – and, as President Trump loves to remind us, his undergraduate alma mater -– slipped a notch, ranking second to the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University in this year’s U.S. News & World Report rankings of the best business schools. While there is no shortage of reasons for casting a gimlet eye toward the accuracy of the publication’s lists, there will also be no shortage of applicants looking to pony up for Wharton’s $92,820 annual tuition. 

Pittsburgh’s vaunted steel industry is reeling from a high-profile slight by its tariff-wielding champion, President Trump, after it transpired that the $400 million-and-counting White House ballroom would be built with $37 million in donated European-made steel from Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal – the world’s second-largest steelmaker – rather than steel from a stateside producer like U.S. Steel, currently No. 3. The choice has prompted charges of hypocrisy for Trump, whose “America First” economic ethos – flaunted in last year’s steel-specific tariffs on foreign competitors – apparently doesn’t apply to his own construction projects.

It’s not just subpar ingredients: Hershey’s told investors this week that Americans are buying fewer snack products because so many people’s appetites are being un-whetted by GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, the use of which has doubled over the past year. While sales of Jolly Ranchers and soon-to-be-reformulated Reese’s peanut butter cups are down, Hershey’s does see a bright spot in its Ice Breakers gum, whose minty flavor soothes the digestive side effects of diet drugs.