US approves Taiwan drone purchase as arms sales escalate

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Waiting Game: Luzerne County turnout at least 66% but will grow

In a call to WILK Newsradio&rsquo;s Frank Andrews on Tuesday evening with Election Day in full swing, President Donald Trump pledged to put an end to Luzerne County&rsquo;s controversial stormwater fee.
				&ldquo;We&rsquo;re getting rid of that, it&rsquo;s going to be done,&rdquo; Trump said in regard to the fee, commonly referred to as the &ldquo;rain tax.&rdquo; &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve started the process &#8230; I&rsquo;m looking to see if we could end it with an executive order.&rdquo;
				The stormwater fee was proposed in 2017 as a result of 32 local municipalities to participate in a regional stormwater pollution reduction project requiring the municipalities to reduce sediment, nitrogen and phosphorous runoff into the Chesapeake Bay over a five-year span.
				The fee has been met with criticism since bills started being sent out in January of 2019, and caught the attention of U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Dallas, who the president said brought the issue to him. Andrews told the president that he thought 90,000 votes could be locked up by pledging to end the stormwater fee.
				&ldquo;I heard about it, and I thought it was the craziest tax I&rsquo;d ever heard,&rdquo; Trump said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s one of the most ridiculous and unfair taxes.&rdquo;
				The call from Trump came into WILK around 5:40 p.m. Tuesday evening, in the final hour of Andrews&rsquo; show.
				&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve been flooded with calls from 3:00 until now,&rdquo; Andrews said before taking Trump&rsquo;s call. &ldquo;Now the calls aren&rsquo;t coming because people are anticipating the president.&rdquo;
				Over the course of the roughly 10-minute conversation, Andrews and Trump also touched on jobs, law enforcement and Trump&rsquo;s chances in several battleground states, including Pennsylvania.
				When the president asked Andrews what he thought about Trump&rsquo;s chances of carrying Pennsylvania over his opponent Joe Biden, Andrews told Trump that &ldquo;based on my callers and what I&rsquo;ve seen, I&rsquo;m thinking it&rsquo;ll be a landslide.&rdquo;
				Trump pledged to bring jobs back to Northeastern Pennsylvania, and that he had already been seeing great jobs numbers before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
				&ldquo;We were doing great, and then the plague from China hit,&rdquo; Trump said. &ldquo;They could have kept it out, but they didn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
				As he signed off, the President praised Meuser for the work he&rsquo;s done, and brought the call back to the stormwater fee.
				&ldquo;We&rsquo;re going to end it, it will be done,&rdquo; Trump said. &ldquo;You call Dan [Meuser], and you tell him to give me a call.&rdquo;

Trump pledges to ‘end rain tax’ in WILK interview