BY ELIANA JONSHON SEP 28 2026 --------------------- https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!08F3!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F926d31d4-cc0b-438a-8961-0da3db37a623_2048x1448.jpeg One way street sign (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images), Paige Cognetti (@PaigeGCognetti/X) Scranton mayor and congressional hopeful Paige Cognetti turned a stretch of the street she lives on into a one-way without properly notifying the city council, likely in order to reduce traffic from nearby businesses. But city residents are angry, the Free Beacon’s Collin Anderson reports. Scranton resident Les Spindler repeatedly raised concerns at council meetings after the change. One neighbor told him her daughter was “almost hit head on,” while another warned that “somebody’s going to get killed there.” Spindler also questioned whether fire trucks and ambulances could navigate the new route. “I mean, my five-year-old granddaughter could have designed that project better than whoever did it,” he said. Cognetti’s office told the council that the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation had suggested the change for safety reasons. PennDOT pushed back, saying the one-way proposal came from the city engineer and that Cognetti’s administration had failed to provide the written notice required under city code. The local coverage missed one detail: Cognetti herself lives on Euclid Avenue, according to property records reviewed by the Free Beacon. The change also hit Emiliani Trucking, a 90-year-old business nearby, whose co-owner says its 18-wheelers can no longer use their longtime route to North Main Avenue. “We can’t even pick our trailers up,” he said. “It comes right off of our profit for our trip.” The controversy comes as Cognetti campaigns for Congress on her record as mayor. At one council meeting, Spindler offered voters a solution of his own: “When it comes to November, everybody vote for Paige for Congress so we get her out of here.” READ MORE: Scranton Mayor Running for Congress Turned Her Own Street Into a One-Way, Angering Residents: ‘Somebody’s Going To Get Killed There’ []{} Elsewhere: Left-wing Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed recalled getting an unusually blunt lesson in American exceptionalism from his grandmother during a childhood summer in Egypt. After telling El-Sayed that his cousins were smarter, better looking, harder working, nicer, and more athletic, she finally told him what he had going for him: “You get to go back to America at the end of the summer. The rest of your cousins stay here,” El-Sayed said during an interview with the New York Times’s Ezra Klein. The lesson didn’t stick. Loony Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) is calling for Israel to release Marwan Barghouti, the prominent Fatah figure serving multiple life sentences after an Israeli court convicted him on five counts of murder for his role in attacks that killed Israeli civilians. “Releasing Barghouti does not provide him with a pardon or moral absolution of crimes he may have committed,” Khanna said, arguing that his release is nevertheless “needed to move peace forward.” U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee was less convinced. “Why on earth would @RoKhanna call for the release of Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian terrorist who orchestrated cold-blooded slaughter of innocent civilians?” Huckabee wrote in a post on X. “Ro, you are better than this.” Is he? The BBC has listed 53 dead Gazans as “journalists” despite evidence linking them to Hamas and other terror groups, the Telegraph reports. Twelve have already been removed from the Committee to Protect Journalists’ casualty list after CPJ determined they were either not journalists or members of the press or had participated in combat; others were memorialized by Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad or pictured in military fatigues holding weapons. The BBC says it is reviewing the names. Sound familiar? The Free Beacon reported last month that CPJ itself still carried at least 120 names with terror ties on its 209-person list of “journalists” killed in Gaza, including about 56 who were active, violent militants when they died, according to an HonestReporting audit. Check out our full Monday lineup below. Socialist Senate Hopeful Angie Nixon Slapped With Criminal Referral for Concealing Back Taxes and Student Loans From the Senate France’s Macron and the Law of the Jungle Scranton Mayor Running for Congress Turned Her Own Street Into a One-Way, Angering Residents: ‘Somebody’s Going To Get Killed There’ ‘I Am Always Intrigued by People Who Kill’: Far-Left Jeweler Hosting Talarico and Brown Fundraiser Calls US a Sh—thole, Runs Creepy Female Serial Killer Ads Iran at the Epicenter A Little More Conversation What a Piece of Work Is Man REVIEW: ‘The Color of Money’ The Summit with More at Stake Than You Think Thanks for reading the Washington Free Beacon! Subscribe for free to receive new posts.