Pennsylvania
'Educators for Biden-Harris' launches in Pennsylvania with focus on teacher pay • Pennsylvania Capital-Star
PITTSBURGH — When her daughter was born, Valerie Williams had already had her on a waitlist for childcare for six months, hoping she’d have a spot lined up before it was time for her to go back to her job as an early childhood educator. She eventually found a child care program, but said she had to work extra jobs just to pay the $1,400 monthly bill— the equivalent of a second mortgage or rent payment, Williams said.
“I was a pretty good teacher working for untenably low wages, teaching in a local Pittsburgh area child care center making $12.40 an hour — that’s $496 a week before taxes, or $25,792 a year — from which my own health care premiums were also deducted, a few hundred dollars each month,” Williams said. “So I worked two additional jobs at that time, routinely working seven days a week.”
But then she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. While it was ultimately benign, at the time of her diagnosis Williams had no idea how she was going to manage or how much medical care she would need. Then she was hit with another shock: She could not afford the deductibles and copays under the health care plan provided by her teaching job.
“I realized that my wages were so low, I couldn’t afford to use my own health care,” Williams said. She made her comments at the Friday launch in Pittsburgh of an “Educators for Biden-Harris” initiative for Pennsylvania, joined by state Sen. Lindsey Williams (D-Allegheny) and Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers president Bill Hileman.
Sen. Williams, who is minority chair of the state Senate Education Committee, said the launch was “about mobilizing educators, school staff, parents and everyone in the community who cares about public education in this country.”
For many teachers, Sen. Williams said, the pandemic pause on student loan payments — which began during former President Donald Trump’s administration — and the recent loan forgiveness initiatives were the only ways they could afford to remain in their classrooms.
First lady and teacher Jill Biden launched the national Educators for Biden-Harris initiative April 19 in Minnesota, joined by the presidents of the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The two national teachers’ unions, which have already endorsed President Joe Biden, have nearly five million combined members with local affiliates in all 50 states.
As part of its student loan debt forgiveness initiatives, the Biden administration in March announced it would forgive about $6 billion in student loan debt for 78,000 public service workers including teachers, nurses and social workers.
Vice President Kamala Harris visited Philadelphia earlier this month to tout a new round of student debt forgiveness from the administration, and spoke with educators who described how having their loans canceled had changed their lives for the better.
VP Kamala Harris in Philadelphia to tout Biden administration’s latest student debt relief proposal
To date, the Biden administration has canceled or forgiven a total of $144 billion in student loan debt for more than 4 billion borrowers, Harris said.
Campaigns’ education plans
Trump, the presumptive 2024 GOP nominee for president, has criticized the Biden administration’s student debt relief efforts, calling them “very, very unfair to the millions and millions of people who have paid their debt through hard work.”
On his campaign website under a “Protect Parents Rights” section, Trump outlines his education plan if he wins another term, which includes “reward[ing] states and school districts that abolish teacher tenure for grades K-12 and adopt Merit Pay, cut the number of school administrators, adopt a Parental Bill of Rights, and implement the direct election of school principals by the parents.”
Under his 2025 budget request, Biden proposes $12 billion to “fund strategies to lower college costs for students,” according to a White House fact sheet accompanying the budget request. And during his 2024 State of the Union address in March, Biden echoed an earlier call to increase pay for public school teachers.
Valerie Williams said she ultimately left her teaching position and took a full-time role with her second job for better benefits and pay. “I still think about those children and their families and how frustrating it was to have to make that call,” she said Friday. “If I’d been making more money and had the benefits I needed, I would have been able to stay at the job I loved so much.”
LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. (WHP) — Pennsylvania State Police is investigating an incident in Salisbury Township on Saturday.
Lancaster County dispatch confirmed that troopers were called to the 4900 block of Strasburg Road for an incident that was reported around 11 a.m.
Fire and EMS was called to the area but have since been cleared, dispatch said.
This is a developing story. CBS 21 is working to learn more.
Pennsylvania
What’s old is new again in Pennsylvania as the Penguins and Flyers renew a long-simmering rivalry
PITTSBURGH, Pa. — Sidney Crosby would not take the bait, even though the smile on his face and the gleam in his eye hinted that maybe the Pittsburgh Penguins captain kind of wanted to.
Told that Philadelphia Flyers coach Rick Tocchet – an assistant with the Penguins when Pittsburgh won back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2016 and 2017 – knew his current team was going to have to “get after” Crosby and longtime running mates Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang when the cross-state rivals open their first-round series on Saturday night, Crosby just grinned.
“I mean, to be expected, what else can you expect me to say?” the 38-year-old future Hall of Famer said with a small laugh. “We’re all out there competing. We all are after the same thing. That’s how it works.”
Technically, that’s how it always seems to work whenever the Flyers and Penguins get together, regardless of circumstance. Things only figure to be ramped up considerably during the eighth – and perhaps most unlikely – playoff meeting between two teams separated by 300 miles geographically and considerably more in terms of postseason success.
The three Cups that Crosby has won during his 21-year career are one more than the Flyers have in the franchise’s nearly six-decade history, and yes some are still keeping track of Philadelphia’s long nuclear winter since its last championships.
The chances of either club being the last one standing when NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman hands the Cup to the victors in early June are slim. Oddsmakers put the resurgent Penguins in the middle of the pack to win it all, while the Flyers – who needed a 14-4-1 sprint to the finish to return to the postseason for the first time since 2020 – are among the longest shots in the 16-team field.
Not that any of that will matter when the puck is dropped and the venom that has long defined the contentious relationship between the clubs bubbles back up to the surface.
That venom on Philadelphia’s side has long been targeted at Crosby, who has beaten the Flyers three times in four playoff meetings, with the one loss coming during a frantic six-game series in 2012. Almost all the faces from those teams are gone.
Except, of course, for perhaps the most important one. Crosby, the only player in NHL history to average a point a game in 21 straight years, remains a threat and highly motivated by the return to the playoffs following a three-year absence.
“We have a ton of respect for Sid,” Tocchet said. “He’s an unbelievable person and player. But we’ve got to get him in the ditches right? We’ve got to make it hard on him.”
A long-awaited debut
Rasmus Ristolainen’s agonizing wait to feel the vibe of playoff hockey is over.
The Flyers defenseman will make the first postseason appearance of his 13-year, 820-game career when he hops over the boards at PPG Paints Arena on Saturday night.
Ristolainen’s wait before his playoff debut is the third-longest in NHL history. The 31-year-old even played in the Olympics before a postseason game. He won a bronze medal in February while playing for Team Finland at the 2026 Milan Cortina Games.
“Just really excited to play meaningful games this time of year,” said Ristolainen, who played in just 44 games this season while battling elbow injuries. “It’s been a really, really fun last month or so.”
Skinner or Silovs?
First-year Pittsburgh coach Dan Muse has flip-flopped between goaltenders Stuart Skinner and Arturs Silovs since the Penguins acquired Skinner in a trade with Edmonton in December.
Whether that will continue in the postseason is anybody’s guess. Skinner has a decided advantage over Silovs in playoff experience, having backstopped Edmonton to consecutive Cup appearances in 2024 and 2025.
Yet Muse has kept his thoughts close to the vest, and statistically speaking, Silovs and Skinner posted nearly identical numbers, none of them particularly great. Silovs finished the year with a .887 save percentage and a 3.07 goals against average while Skinner had a slightly worse save percentage (.885) and a slightly better goals against (2.99).
“We’re looking at all factors,” Muse said. “As I’ve said multiple times, I think both guys have been great for us. Both guys are a big part of why we’re here today preparing for Game 1.”
What’s old is new again
Philadelphia forward Sean Couturier has played for the Flyers for so long that he was actually teammates with his boss, general manager Danny Briere.
Couturier was once a key cog during a previous rebuilding phase in Philadelphia, back when he was the eighth overall pick in the 2011 draft. Couturier made his debut that season and has largely remained a steady presence in the lineup – save for back injuries that cost him the 2022-2023 season – and is the only Flyer still around from the franchise’s last home playoff series victory against, yes, the Penguins in 2012.
Couturier, Travis Sanheim and Travis Konecny are the only three Flyers on the roster to have played in a home playoff game, back in 2018.
“We were for a lot of years kind of in the middle, competing hard,” said Courtier, who had 12 goals and 24 assists this season. “We had some good teams. Just always missing a little something to get to the next step. I think it was maybe time to take a step back and rebuild. I’m just glad with how everything’s gone, honestly.”
___
AP Sports Writer Dan Gelston in Philadelphia contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2026 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Pennsylvania
Western Pennsylvania man takes Terrible Towel to Mount Everest as tribute to late friend
The Pittsburgh Steelers’ Terrible Towel is a symbol of celebration known around the world, but it was recently taken to new heights.
Allen Dean, a Steelers fan from Sewickley, recently took a Terrible Towel with him as he climbed Mt. Everest.
“I had to show myself that I can do whatever I set my mind to,” says Dean, who spoke with KDKA-TV’s Barry Pintar after his climb from Pokhara, Nepal, near Mt. Everest. “By doing that, I was an example to my kids that, through all the hardships our family has gone through, if you put your mind to something, you can do it, and if it is something as big as Everest, whatever it is, that if you put your mind to it, you can do it.”
Allen says a man called “Big Mike” was a long-time father figure who died a few months ago. His window gave Allen Big Mike’s Terrible Towel. It was then, by way of tribute, that an idea was born.
“She asked me, ‘Allen, would you be able to take the terrible towel to Everest if you make it?’ I said, ‘Absolutely, for Big Mike, anything,’” Dean recalled. “Big Mike was like my last father figure that I had around, so it meant a lot to me to just bring peace. It just meant a lot to me to finalize the loss of such a male role model in my life.”
Allen says he trained vigorously for this climb, often spending weekends taking his kids to hike just about every regional state park imaginable.
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