This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

For the second straight week, Pittsburgh restaurants land on our winners’ list. This time it’s the Austro-Hungarian boîte Titusz, the sole Pittsburgh establishment to score a coveted spot on the New York Times’ 2026 America’s Best Restaurants list. It was joined by Philadelphia’s Bomb Bomb, widely lauded as a refined homage to South Philly’s Italian-American red-sauce tradition.

Eight years ago, Pittsburgh was the site of America’s deadliest-ever antisemitic attack, a shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue. The movement born out of that trauma, Eradicate Hate, has since become a global advocate for stronger anti-hate policy and action – and at this week’s annual global summit in Pittsburgh, the organization turned its focus to advising another Jewish community with a similarly grim status: Australia, which last Hanukkah witnessed that country’s worst-ever antisemitic attack with the Bondi Beach shooting.

At a time when too many are often focused on what could go wrong with voting, six Dauphin County voters were recently celebrated for their civic engagement. The voters – Barbara Jean Gallagher, Robert J. Gallagher, Leonard J. Bennett, Thomas F. Burns, James R. Akers and Stanley Carl Segal – were recently inducted into the Pennsylvania Voter Hall of Fame, an honor that bestowed upon commonwealth voters who have voted in 50 consecutive November elections. Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt congratulated the voters on their “good citizenship” and said they “embody a patriotic commitment to our electoral process.”

Some of the loudest criticisms of Republican gubernatorial candidate Stacy Garrity aren’t coming from her general election opponent, but rather from show hosts at 1210 WPHT, a Philadelphia conservative talk radio station. Ever since Garrity asked what Flock cameras were during a radio appearance, the Pennsylvania Democratic Party has been clipping and sharing the hosts’ criticisms of the GOP nominee, which include suggesting she “stop saying dumb things” and encouraging the Pennsylvania Republican Party to “put up better candidates.” Ouch.

In a 40-page document released this week, U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond recommended a criminal investigation into Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, suggesting that Krasner and a top deputy in his office may have pressured prosecutors to lie in court. According to 6abc, at the heart of the issue is a 2009 case in which a man named Dennis Johnson is seeking to have his murder conviction thrown out. The referral marks the latest headache for the progressive district attorney, who was impeached by Republicans in the state House of Representatives in 2022, but ultimately remained in office after the state Supreme Court ruled that the effort to impeach him improperly stretched across two separate legislative sessions. 

It was a bad week for the commonwealth's criminals – and a good one for the system holding them accountable. Among the miscreants were Jonathan Hunter Kramer of Butler County, who’s facing a federal firearms charge for amassing weapons for an ISIS-inspired terrorist attack; Zachary Conroy, a Perry County man who’s now facing the death penalty for raping and beating his mother to death in 2024; and a dozen people charged by Attorney General Dave Sunday with trafficking marijuana and high-potency THC products in stores across Pennsylvania, then laundering the profits.