Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania community outraged over transgender student with ‘hit list’ beating female student – Washington Examiner
Parents and students of North Penn School District in North Wales, Pennsylvania, called out teachers and administrators after a transgender student, a biological male identifying as a female, brutally beat an unidentified middle school girl with a Stanley cup in the school cafeteria last week.
The victim was hit so severely that she was hospitalized due to a head injury.
Emily, a female student at Pennbrook Middle School and a friend of the victim, told the school board last Thursday that she was “second on his hit list” and recounted that she had begged for help from school officials numerous times before the attack.
“Wednesday morning, I went to the guidance counselor and told her, since I was second on the hit list, knowing that something was going to happen because there was a girl she was targeting every day at lunch. And they would go to the counselor and tell them every day that this is going to happen,” she said.
The student continued, “And Wednesday, I went with two others, and each of us filled out a whole paper full of what’s going to happen and why it’s going to happen.”
She shared that after reporting their concerns, she received a warning to “watch her back” because “he is going to come for you and the other girl at lunch.”
The student said she was “terrified” and told guidance counselor Colleen Fattori again about her concerns.
“I told Miss Fattori that that was happening and she said, ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s not going to happen,’” the student claimed the counselor said
The girl then described witnessing a bloody attack by the transgender student attacking her friend in the cafeteria.
“I was in lunch and all of the sudden, I hear all of this screaming and everybody running. And I see Mel running in after somebody, and everyone’s screaming and running,” she described the beginning of the incident.
She said the attacker went after the victim who was “faced backwards” and didn’t see the student coming up behind her.
“All of the sudden, you just hear these terrible, like, loud bangs of the Stanley bouncing off her head. And then you see Mel grabbing her hair and hitting her against the table, and just repeatedly hitting her with the Stanley,” the student told the school board.
She added, “There was blood going everywhere. I was at the table right behind and all you see is blood everywhere.”
The Pennbrook student shared that the seventh grade assailant repeatedly yelled, “I’m going to murder you” while hitting her friend’s head with the cup.
She grew tearful as she described seeing her friend’s blood being cleaned up off the tables and ground.
“We had to watch them take her out with blood dripping down her face and I will never forget that,” she cried.
She said the attack went on in front of the students for 28 minutes. However, the school district claims that security cameras revealed that the incident lasted eight minutes. At the school board meeting, the student disputed the school’s claim of “eight minutes” because she “timed it.” Parents at the meeting demanded to see the security tape to verify the claims of the school.
The middle school student said she laid awake in her bed that night upset that they “shouldn’t have had to” witness the attack.
“I don’t get it. You could have stopped it. It was five hours from when I told you it was going to happen… it was five whole hours. I don’t get how you couldn’t have stopped that,” she demanded at the board meeting.
She said the guidance counselor had assured her that the attack was “not going to happen” because they had the trans-identifying student “under control,” to which the student pointedly said to the school board, “Clearly, you didn’t.”
A Pennbrook student’s mother, Alyssa Santiago, confirmed to a local radio show that the violent student was known to be a biological male and there were yearbook photos of the student before transitioning to a transgender female.
The mother said the transgender student had been transferred to the school “two days” before the incident happened on Wednesday and by Tuesday, the students knew of a “hit list.”
“I would say by Tuesday lunch time, everybody in the school knew that my daughter was going to be ‘curb stomped’ or made to ‘bite the curb’ or jumped,” she said of the “school talk” prior to the attack.
Another mother told the school board that the transgender student “had multiple reports of violence” and she didn’t understand how that went unchecked.
“As a parent, your worst fear comes to light when you get that call from your kid crying, ‘Help, Mom! I’m scared. There’s blood everywhere!’ And you can’t get to them fast enough. And they hang up on you because teachers and staff are yelling at them to hang up their phones, not to call their parents,” she tearfully said to the board. “I told my child to always call me in an emergency no matter what.”
The mother demanded that the board assure her that this student does not return to their school because this is “not the student’s first violent attack.”
She recounted how parents from numerous other local schools have dealt with this student’s “documented violence,” both in and out of school. The mother claimed that the student had violently attacked another student in an elementary school.
During the meeting, School Superintendent Todd Bauer called the attack “deeply disturbing.”
“This was avoidable and the district truly failed to protect the students at Pennbrook,” a parent said. “What are we supposed to say to our children after this? How do I send him back to school?”
Nick Taylor, Pennbrook Middle School principal, sent a letter to parents saying that, “the safety of our students is of the utmost importance… I ask that parents speak with their children about the consequences of fighting.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Pennbrook parent Stephanie Palovcak clapped back at the principal’s comment.
“This isn’t a fight. This is an assault,” Palovcak said.
Pennsylvania
When is the deadline to register for the Pennsylvania primary?
(Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images)
PENNSYLVANIA – The 2026 midterm elections will decide control of the next U.S. Congress and key state leadership, including Pennsylvania’s statewide offices.
Before the general election, each state will hold primaries to determine which candidates appear on the November ballot.
By the numbers:
In Pennsylvania, the May primary will narrow the field of candidates who will compete in the November general election for several important posts, per Ballotpedia.
- U.S. House of Representatives — All 17 districts will hold primaries to choose nominees.
- Pennsylvania Governor — Although both major parties’ current frontrunners are effectively unopposed in their primaries, the contest sets the stage for the November race between incumbent Gov. Josh Shapiro and Republican Stacy Garrity.
- State Legislature — all 203 seats in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and half of the State Senate seats are up for election, with primaries deciding many general election matchups.
Dig deeper:
Pennsylvania is considered a key battleground state in the 2026 midterms, with several congressional districts expected to be highly competitive and potentially pivotal in determining which party controls the two chambers of Congress.
As of April 2026, the Republican Party controls both chambers of Congress.
On Nov. 3, voters will cast ballots for all 435 U.S. House seats, 35 U.S. Senate seats and numerous state and local positions, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Voters will decide 33 regularly scheduled Senate seats, plus two special elections to fill the seats vacated by J.D. Vance of Ohio and Marco Rubio of Florida, who left Congress to serve as vice president and Secretary of State, respectively.
Voter registration and deadlines
What you can do:
Voters in Pennsylvania who want to take part in the state’s 2026 primary must register by Monday, May 4, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State. This deadline applies to both new registrations and updates to existing voter registrations.
The primary election will be held on Tuesday, May 19. The mail-in ballot request deadline is Tuesday, May 12.
Voters are encouraged to check their registration status and ballot information well before these dates to ensure participation in both the primary and the November general election.
The Source: Information from the Pennsylvania Department of State, Ballotpedia, the Bipartisan Policy Center and previous FOX 5 NY reporting.
Pennsylvania
Multiple Reports Of Fireball Sighting In Eastern PA Skies
Multiple people in the Philadelphia region reported seeing a fireball in the sky Tuesday.
The American Meteor Society listed the event in its meteor sighting database, saying it had received nearly 150 reports from across the region, including in Eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut about the fireball.
According to the database, reports of the fireball came in from Doylestown, Lansdale, Willow Grove, King of Prussia and more.
Nick Brucato of Whiting shared video of it in The Pine Barrens group on Facebook and with Patch. “Took this video as fast as I could today in Whiting at 2:34 PM. Heard the loud boom minutes later,” he said.
“We were out on our deck and my wife saw it,” a Waretown resident said on the Tri-County Scanner News post. “She said it was bright white ball and then it broke apart into several pieces and then it was gone. Then the sonic boom hit!”
A meteor is the flash of moving light that becomes visible when a meteoroid — a chunk of an asteroid or a comet — hits the Earth’s atmosphere, according to the American Meteor Society.
In mid-March another meteor was the likely cause of a large boom that was felt over parts of Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio.
The National Weather Service in Pittsburgh said it received reports from numerous people across Western Pennsylvania of the tremendous noise and a fireball in the sky on March 17.
A weather service employee caught the cause of the boom and the weather service posted it. MORE: Meteor Causes Tremendous Boom Over Parts Of PA
With reporting by Karen Wall
Pennsylvania
Pa. data centers: How lawmakers are responding, from electricity and water use to tax breaks
What data centers think of Matzie’s bill
The Data Center Coalition is watching bills like Matzie’s closely. The coalition represents companies including Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, Anthropic, CoreWeave and OpenAI.
Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy with the group, said the coalition is open to special utility rates for large electricity users that force these customers to pay for any grid upgrades their operations require while insulating other ratepayers from these costs. But the group opposes bills like Matzie’s that apply specifically to data centers, rather than to all electricity users over a certain size.
“If it’s a transmission line or if it’s a substation, if it’s a generating asset, of course, data centers should pay for that and will pay for that,” Diorio said.
But “no specific end user should be singled out for disparate treatment,” he said.
The coalition also opposes mandating data centers to curtail energy use during times of peak demand or bring their own new, clean power, preferring instead incentives that reward data centers for voluntarily doing so, Diorio said.
“Things like having to take interruptible service … you could see projects move across to a different state line where they didn’t have that requirement, while doing nothing to solve the ultimate shortfall within [the regional grid],” he said.
Pennsylvania lobbying records show the Data Center Coalition spent $19,632 on lobbying at the state level on the topic of “energy, information technology and utilities” during the last three months of 2025.
“Pennsylvania is a very strong, growing and important market for the data center industry,” Diorio said. “We understand concerns, and we want to be an engaged stakeholder to address those concerns, but also keep the state strong for development. And I think we can do that — I think we can find a good middle ground.”
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