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Three people, including a child, were injured Monday evening when a minivan plowed into a crowd at a festival in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, according to reports. The three-day Kipona festival was ending around 6 p.m. when a woman in a red minivan drove around parked cars and barricades before striking the crowd, the Harrisburg Bureau of Police told a local ABC station. Police said a child and two adults were injured. Mayor Wanda Williams noted that a 7-year-old boy was listed in critical condition as a result of the incident, the station reported. The two adults include a man who works...

An arsonist allegedly set fire to the Pennsylvania Governor’s Residence while Governor Josh Shapiro and his family were asleep inside. The incident occurred around 2 a.m., prompting a swift response from the Pennsylvania State Police, who safely evacuated the family from the residence. ​ According to the Democrat governor:

On Sunday evening police announced they arrested 38-year-old Cody Balmer in connection with the fire set to the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion. “Balmer will be charged with attempted murder, terrorism, aggravated arson and aggravated assault against an enumerated person,” Fox News reported. ...... Snip...... During a Sunday evening presser, Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens said Balmer hopped a fence before starting the fire. “He actively evaded troopers who were here to secure the residence,” Bivens said. “While [law enforcement] were searching is when he attacked at the residence, broke in and set the fires.” “So that was all playing...

The man who set the Pennsylvania Governor’s residence on fire on Sunday morning has been identified. Police arrested a suspect on Sunday. His name is Cody Balmer, he’s 38 years-old and he lives near the governor’s mansion. Balmer torched the governor’s residence during Passover. Shapiro is Jewish. Times Now reported: During a news conference, police confirmed that Balmer scaled fences, evaded state troopers, and ignited the fire. He was arrested in the Harrisburg area shortly after Governor Shapiro and his family were safely evacuated. Dauphin County District Attorney Francis Chardo stated that forthcoming charges will include attempted murder, terrorism, attempted...

Cody Balmer, the suspect arrested for arson after setting Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's house on fire on Sunday was reportedly angry with Shapiro after the state of Pennsylvania auctioned off Balmer's property. A court document of the auction from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania surfaced. Balmer will be charged with attempted murder, terrorism, aggravated arson, and aggravated assault, the Dauphin County District Attorney announced Sunday. Balmer, 38, was identified as the suspect of the fire by Colonel Christopher Paris, the Commissioner of Pennsylvania State Police at a press conference on Sunday afternoon. Commenting on the incident, George Bivens, the Deputy Commissioner of Pennsylvania...

Roughly 40 people at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex were being treated for heat-related illnesses leading up to the Donald Trump rally in Harrisburg on Wednesday, according to a city official. Harrisburg spokesperson Matt Maisel said the individuals who are being treated for heat-related conditions are in “fair to good condition” and advised nobody was taken to the hospital. LIVE COVERAGE: Trump visits Harrisburg A PennLive reporter at the rally said at least six ambulances are in the area. The Farm Show Complex also made an announcement saying medical professionals are available at first-aid tents for anyone who needs help....

President Joe Biden is expected to be among the special guests attending an ice cream social at his Harrisburg area campaign headquarters on Sunday. The event, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Biden-Harris headquarters in Lower Paxton Township, is by invitation only. It will be Biden’s first visit to the region since Labor Day 2020 when he stopped by the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO office in downtown Harrisburg. Biden was scheduled to speak before the National Education Association in Philadelphia on Sunday, but the campaign cancelled those plans following the National Education Association Staff Organization’s Friday announcement it was going on...

WASHINGTON — Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., is breaking with progressives on hot-button issues with his fiery support for Israel and calls for Democrats to engage on tougher immigration laws, disappointing some on the left as he shows an independent streak. He’s also continually scolding Democrats for not pushing Sen. Bob Menendez out of office after he was indicted on federal charges of taking bribes and acting as a foreign agent for Egypt, which the New Jersey Democrat denies. In the 2022 campaign, Fetterman's ties to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., prompted GOP opponent Mehmet Oz to tell voters he’d be a...

I'm looking for a couple of pictures that have been on FR in the last week or so. One is a picture of the fat guy wearing a tan shirt standing next to the guy with the horns and fur. He had a hammer and sickle tat on his hand. The picture I want is the one that is in dark clothes, but it's labeled "phillyantifa". I've looked everywhere even in my history and can't find it. I should have downloaded it when I saw it, but you guy usually produce in 10 minutes so I'll give ya'll a try....

The defendant in a Jan. 6. 2021 Capitol Hill protests-related case denied a claim by federal prosecutors that a boyfriend was jailed for plotting to shoot up a synagogue. Riley Williams’ filing Thursday came in response to one last week by federal prosecutors objecting to her request to loosen restrictions pending her trial. She is wearing an ankle monitor and is under house arrest at her mother’s home in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Prosecutors in that filing noted that Williams had lied last August about meeting a boyfriend; Williams was required to report all her meetings, and she had told people, including...

Gov. Josh Shapiro Thursday boldly called on legislators to abolish Pennsylvania’s costly, ineffective and immoral death penalty. In urging legislators to act, an unprecedented move, Mr. Shapiro showed some sorely needed leadership from the governor’s office. Unless Mr. Shapiro engages the legislature, the death-penalty statute will endure. He needs to take the lead in persuading the Democrat-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate to approve bills that would repeal it. Former Gov. Tom Wolf refused to do that. In making his statement a month after his inauguration, Mr. Shapiro signaled that getting state government out of the business of killing people will...

From the hardscrabble hills of western Pennsylvania to the hardknock blocks of Northeast Philadelphia, children are getting inferior educations in underfunded school districts with low property values and incomes. Crowded classrooms in the state’s 100 most poorly funded districts deny children, who may enter kindergarten a year behind their more affluent peers, the attention they need. Those districts, including South Allegheny, East Allegheny, New Castle, Sharon and Philadelphia, educate one-third of the state’s 1.5 million students, two-thirds of its Black students, and nearly 60% of its poor students. Leaky roofs, obsolete and unsafe buildings, and broken laptops plague many of...

HARRISBURG — When Republican state legislator Jim Gregory nominated his Democratic friend and colleague Mark Rozzi to be speaker of the Pennsylvania House this month, the move stunned close political observers and seemed to offer new hope for bipartisanship. As with the nation, politics in this critical swing state, the country’s fifth-most populous, have become bitterly divided in recent years along ideological, geographical and racial lines. Donald Trump won the state in 2016, and Joe Biden took it back in 2020. False claims over the legitimacy of the 2020 contest became prominent Pennsylvania GOP rallying cries in 2022 and reinforced...

An experiment in bipartisan government in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives is less than a week old, and cracks are beginning to appear. If the compromise falls apart, the chamber will be plunged into chaos. Republican and Democratic leaders, at Speaker Mark Rozzi’s request, must find a way to move forward together, if they plan to serve the people of Pennsylvania this session. It’s time for Mr. Rozzi to honor the commitments he made in accepting the role of speaker, especially his pledge to change his registration from Democrat to Independent as a symbol of unity. After last week’s display...

HARRISBURG — If House Republicans are successful in getting the special elections for two Allegheny County-based House districts delayed until May, the results of a Senate special election could lead to a whole new level of chaos in the power struggle in the state House. Republicans are clinging to a 101-99 advantage, with three special elections looming in seats vacated by Democrats. If Democrats win all three of those races, as expected, the Democrats will reclaim the majority in the chamber for the first time in more than a decade. One of those special elections — to fill the vacancy...

Why has Gov. Tom Wolf’s Office of General Counsel paid nearly $400,000 of taxpayer money to several private law firms? It’s a simple question, and there may be a simple and reasonable answer. But the administration’s failure to answer it raises questions about what causes and activities the governor has used state resources to pursue, and why he didn’t use the state’s attorneys to do it. Secrecy always raises suspicions, even if they are entirely unwarranted. In terms of legal bills for complex institutional litigation, $367,500 spread across six firms is a pittance. The Office of General Counsel employs hundreds...

HARRISBURG – The General Assembly has sent the governor legislation that will create a new program to encourage the development of technology to convert fracked gas into hydrogen through $141.6 million a year in tax credits. The approval of House Bill 1059 came over the objections of environmental groups and some Democrats who said that the plan will keep Pennsylvania invested in fossil fuel production for decades even as much of the world turns toward renewable energy. “State lawmakers have clearly not learned from example after example of broken promises,” said former Secretary of Environmental Protection Patrick McDonnell, now the...

As if high school weren’t scary enough: a Harrisburg building once used as a secondary school will host a haunted house this fall. The Bridge Eco Village, which is located in a building that was once the Bishop McDevitt High School, has announced a haunted attraction in partnership with Rotten Concepts. The attraction will be called The Unholy Schoolhouse, and plays into the building’s past as a parochial school under the Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg. “We wanted to keep the theme of the school,” said Dennis Miller Jr., founder of Rotten Concepts. “We wanted to capitalize on what it was.”...

New York City Police are hunting a 22-year-old man who attacked two officers trying to arrest him in Manhattan after he allegedly raped four-year-old twins in Pennsylvania. Isaiah John Metz, 22 - also known as Decklyn McBride - of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, allegedly raped two four-year-old twins in Goldsboro, Pennsylvania, while on parole for assaulting an officer. Metz currently has 115 counts of sex-related charges against him in York County, including three counts of raping a child under 13, and 99 counts of sexual abuse involving picture and video, according to public records. Police received a tip that Metz was staying...

A man accused of raping 4-year-old twins in Pennsylvania attacked two officers who tracked him down to a Midtown homeless shelter Tuesday and then escaped, cops said. Suspected fiend Isaiah Metz, 22, was at the Antonio Olivieri Drop-In Center on West 30th Street near Eighth Avenue in Manhattan when an NYPD detective and an investigator from the city Department of Investigation – both part of the Regional Fugitive Task Force – showed up to arrest him about 4:15 a.m., police said. Metz fought the two officers – punching both in the head multiple times and biting the investigator on the...