MONROE UNFILTERED: THE DAILY BUZZ | Sept. 8
A Successful StroudFest, a Fatal Shooting, and DC's Ballot Fight Returns
Tuesday, September 8, 2026
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DAILY WEATHER FOR A SHORT WORK-WEEK AHEAD
Summer is unofficially over, and we’re back to work today. Expect a high near 81°F, partly cloudy, with just a slim 7 percent chance of rain and a low around 57°F overnight. Wednesday holds close, a high near 84°F, still partly cloudy, with only a low chance of an overnight shower. Thursday is the one to watch, with a high near 83°F and roughly a coin-flip shot of afternoon or evening showers. Friday clears out nicely, sunny and 77°F to close out the week.
STROUDFEST TURNS 20 WITHOUT INCIDENT
StroudFest’s 20th anniversary went off Saturday exactly as planned. The Sherman Theater hosted the festival, which ran 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. downtown, with multiple stages, more than 170 vendors, and free admission, and WNEP’s own post-event coverage confirmed no reported incidents. The organizer had projected “over 20,000” attendees ahead of the event. No official post-event count has surfaced, but I was down there for the festivities Saturday afternoon, and there wasn’t a parking spot to be found.
This was downtown Stroudsburg’s first big public gathering since the Aug. 29 Main Street takeover. The curfew imposed afterward was in effect through 5 a.m. Friday, just in time for the big event.
THE DAILY RUNDOWN
State Police Fatally Shoot Man in Middle Smithfield. State troopers responding to a disturbance call on Marshalls Creek Road shot and killed an adult man Friday evening, just before 6 p.m. Police are calling it an isolated incident with no immediate threat to the public. The troopers involved are on administrative leave, standard procedure after a shooting, while Troop N’s Major Case Team investigates alongside the Monroe County District Attorney’s office. The victim had not been publicly identified as of this writing.
THE VIEW FROM THE 8TH
$96 Million for Trains, None of Them Here. Sens. John Fetterman and Dave McCormick announced Sept. 3 that Pittsburgh Regional Transit and SEPTA (Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) are splitting a combined $96 million in federal Rail Vehicle Replacement Program grants for new rail cars, a genuinely bipartisan move. No impact on Monroe County unless you happen to be traveling to Philly or Pittsburgh. And what about us?
Getting a Train to East Stroudsburg. Unfortunately, there’s not much of an update on when we’d actually get the rail service people have been waiting for, in some cases for decades. To recap, there are three separate pieces required to restore passenger rail between Scranton and New York. Piece one: NJ Transit is rebuilding the old Lackawanna Cut-Off from Port Morris Junction to a new station in Andover, New Jersey, targeted for late 2026. The tunnel itself is nearly finished, per the most recent reporting, though the station work still ahead has no firm date. That’s the only piece where a contractor has actually been doing visible work, and it still ends about 20 miles short of the Pennsylvania line. Piece two: getting from Andover to the state line means relaying track across the rest of New Jersey and eventually rehabilitating two century-old viaducts over the Paulinskill and Delaware rivers, and by NJ Transit’s own account, that piece has no funding and no timetable. Piece three: once the missing track reaches Pennsylvania, service would run the existing Scranton-to-Slateford freight line, with new stops proposed at Mount Pocono and East Stroudsburg. That’s a separate federal planning process, the FRA’s Corridor ID program, now in the second of three steps, with a public meeting held back in February and no construction date attached. Bottom line: nothing currently underway gets a train closer to Monroe County.
DC’s Ballot Fight Is Back at the Supreme Court. Remember our Aug. 25 story about the fight over Trump’s mail voting order? On Aug. 24, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an unsigned, 6-3 ruling that let the administration move forward on parts of that order, while leaving the fight over the Postal Service’s own piece of it to play out separately. A federal judge in Boston blocked that Postal Service piece on Aug. 27, then issued a full preliminary injunction on Sept. 4 keeping it blocked for this November’s election while Pennsylvania and other states’ lawsuit plays out, though the fight over that injunction is not over either. The Trump administration has now gone back to the Supreme Court twice trying to get it lifted, most recently this past Sunday. The states challenging it, Pennsylvania included, have to file their response by tomorrow, Wednesday, at 4 p.m. Gov. Josh Shapiro’s office says nothing has changed for how Pennsylvania residents vote by mail, and that remains true today. Pennsylvania is accepting applications now for the Nov. 3 election, due by 5 p.m. Oct. 27, with completed ballots due back to county election offices (a postmark doesn’t count) by 8 p.m. on Election Day, and with Pennsylvania’s own 8th District rated one of the most competitive U.S. House races in the country, the stakes are real.
One clarification: Monroe County voters can already apply for a mail-in or absentee ballot for the Nov. 3 election, but the county hasn’t said when it’ll actually start mailing them. Pennsylvania counties only have to begin processing applications by Sept. 14. That’s not a mailing date. North Carolina has already sent its first ballots, but Monroe County’s aren’t out yet, and once they are, whatever the Supreme Court decides about the Postal Service is going to matter immediately.