TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s currency hit a record low Monday as Washington prepared to announce new sanctions it said would add further pressure on an economy already battered by previous sanctions and a U.S. naval blockade.
The rial dropped to 2.02 million to the U.S. dollar as trading opened on currency markets. Iran’s official Central Bank rate stood at around 1.5 million rial to the dollar, but the market rate is what most Iranians pay.
The currency had already been under pressure before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, as Iran faced double-digit inflation and negative growth, but has repeatedly hit new lows as nearly six months of war have taken an even greater toll.
Iranians find daily staples increasingly unaffordable. Since the war began, rice is up some 60% and prices of beef are more than 150% higher. The International Monetary Fund forecasts that GDP will contract more than 5%.
Still, economic pressure has not yet translated into political pressure. Iran retains a key strategic advantage: Its attacks and threats on ships in the Strait of Hormuz have brought traffic in the vital waterway to a near halt, damaging the world economy and heaping pressure on U.S. President Donald Trump ahead of congressional elections.
The war, as a result, has devolved into a fight over who controls the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil transited before the conflict. Iran is now refusing to fully reopen it unless it can charge ships.
Iran and Oman, which is on the opposite side of the strait, are reportedly in the final stages of agreeing upon a plan for joint management of the waterway. Oman’s foreign minister is set to visit Iran on Tuesday.
In an attempt to break the impasse, Trump’s administration promised even stronger sanctions than those already in place would be announced Monday, including secondary sanctions on countries that continue to do business with Iran.
“President Trump decimated Iran’s economy to a point where the rial has never been weaker and inflation has rarely been higher,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wrote Sunday in an opinion piece in the Financial Times. “The regime’s final refuge now lies in the self-deception of fearful nations that still believe accommodating aggression can secure a durable peace.”
Already last week, the United Arab Emirates announced that it was suspending all trade with Iran. The UAE has long been one of Iran’s largest trading partners and its biggest source of imports.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told reporters in Tehran on Monday that “any escalation of this situation will undoubtedly bring about consequences.”
“Our hands are not tied,” he added.
Pakistan, which played a key role in brokering a 60-day ceasefire in June, sent a high-level delegation to Iran on Monday to discuss ending the war, the military said.
In downtown Tehran, 73-year-old Sadegh Mahmoudi did not hold out hope for a resolution. He joined a line of about a dozen people to purchase U.S. dollars with his remaining savings to hedge against further declines.
KYIV, Ukraine — European leaders joined President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Monday for official celebrations marking Ukraine’s Independence Day as Russia pushes on with its 4-year-old invasion of the country.
One of President Vladimir Putin’s key goals in starting a war with Russia’s neighbor in February 2022 was to place Kyiv in Moscow’s orbit. Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly for independence in 1991.
With no significant changes on the front line for months and no apparent progress after more than a year of U.S.-led peace efforts, the warring countries are locked in a spiral of escalating aerial attacks that are killing civilians and smashing infrastructure.
EU leaders rally around Ukraine
U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham, on his first overseas trip since taking office last month, on Monday joined almost a dozen other European leaders, as well as other dignitaries including European Council President Antonio Costa, in Kyiv.
“For Ukraine, independence is not an abstract idea. We defended it against all odds,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on social media. “In times like these, nations learn how important it is to have allies by your side.”
Burnham was to co-chair a meeting of the so-called Coalition of the Willing group of countries helping Ukraine resist Russia’s onslaught, with the leaders of France and Germany expected to join online.
The visiting leaders took to Kyiv pledges of further military and financial support. Burnham is expected to announce that the U.K. Government has agreed to allow defense company MBDA to release classified information relating to British components used in the SCALP long-range missile, according to his office. That would pave the way for France and Ukraine to advance plans for local production of the weapon in Ukraine.
SCALP is the French version of the UK’s Storm Shadow missile, with both systems incorporating shared French and British technology.
Ukraine has leaned heavily on NATO countries for help fighting Russia’s bigger army, although relations with the United States have been cooler under President Donald Trump.
Both Russia and Ukraine are trying through long-range strikes to inflict economic pain, disrupt military supplies and erode public morale.
Ukraine’s long-range drones have repeatedly hit facilities in Russia’s vital oil industry, causing fuel shortages, and have also engaged in a campaign against Russia’s largest online retailer Wildberries.
Ukrainian strikes kill 3 teenagers
Three teenagers were killed and six children were wounded in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar, Russia’s children’s rights ombudswoman Maria Lvova-Belova said Monday, as Ukraine attacked several warehouses of Ozon for the third straight day, according to officials and the company.
Ozon is one of Russia’s major e-commerce retailers. The company said a large fire raged at an Ozon logistics facility in the suburbs of Krasnodar following the overnight attack.
A drone also hit the grounds of an Ozon logistics center in the southern Russian region of Adygeya, regional governor Murat Kumpilov said, though the company said its Adygeya warehouse wasn’t damaged.
In all, four Ozon premises appeared to have been targeted.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defenses overnight intercepted and destroyed 351 Ukrainian drones over eight Russian regions, as well as occupied Crimea and the waters of the Azov and the Black Seas.
The ministry also said that its forces overnight continued to strike Ukrainian ports and vessels delivering cargo for the armed forces.
Forget student fun runs, PTA bake sales and Saturday morning car washes.
The future of public-school fundraising may soon look more like a payroll deduction. Or perhaps door-to-door campaigns each tax season asking filers to earmark donations to support nearby public schools.
When President Donald Trump’s tax overhaul known as the One Big Beautiful Bill last year created the first national school-voucher-style program to help families pay for private schools or home-school costs, it allowed public schools to benefit as well. According to U.S. Treasury guidelines released in June, the program allows specific nonprofits to collect donations that people direct from their federal taxes for a vast array of public school costs, such as transportation or tutoring.
Sara Hazel, president of the Denver Public Schools Foundation, the fundraising arm for Colorado’s largest school district, is among a small but growing number of district leaders who have said they plan to take advantage of the financial opportunity. She said she plans to tell potential donors, “Do you want that money going to the IRS or going to local kids?”
The program doesn’t officially start until the new year, but its resemblance to private-school vouchers has inspired opponents of school choice to line up against it. Still, supporters and even cautious critics say the Republican-backed initiative could mean a financial boon for public schools.
The program works like this: Taxpayers can contribute up to $1,700 to what’s known as a scholarship-granting organization and receive a credit on their federal income taxes. It’s a dollar-for-dollar credit, meaning every pledged dollar reduces what an individual owes to the Internal Revenue Service by the same amount.
These new intermediaries could be formed by an array of nonprofits, including public-school foundations, with approval from their state. The scholarship-granting organization would then pass on the money to private school and home-school applicants in the form of scholarships — or to school districts so they could cover certain services for student applicants.
Marguerite Roza, a school finance expert, has advised school districts — many of which have bandaged their slashed budgets by shuttering campuses or issuing pink slips — that they can’t afford to ignore this new source of funding. “Any time there’s an available revenue source, generally we don’t see districts saying, ‘No thank you,’” said Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University.
States must opt into the program, and so far, 30 states have done so. Now it’s up to individual school district leaders in those states to decide if they want to try to tap into the money.
School finance experts suggest the scholarships could help districts access funding comparable to 3 percent of their entire budget. But tapping into this unexpected revenue risks political backlash and logistical headaches. Governors and superintendents may face fierce resistance from teachers unions, which in many states have portrayed the new program as a Trojan horse for the expansion of vouchers in education because it also allows money to be funneled to families to pay for private school.
Some opponents also raise concerns about creating a new funding system that could favor school districts with a ready pool of wealthy donors over those in low-income communities where few residents may owe enough in federal taxes to contribute to the scholarships.
“In low-income areas, you’re going to find it’s not easy for school districts to raise this money,” said Thomas Toch, director of the think tank FutureEd at Georgetown University.
He said he worried that the inclusion of public school districts in the legislation was little more than a ploy, a shrewd political strategy to further school choice in states otherwise unlikely to support it.
“It was designed to make the case that this program can support the public sector in order to win support in blue states,” Toch said.
The mechanics of the tax credit scholarships represent a dramatic departure from how the federal government supports schools.
The money for the scholarships never flows through federal Department of Education coffers, entirely bypassing Congress and its spending decisions.
Treasury regulators will soon issue formal rules to set additional guardrails for the program. But the law suggests the scholarships could be used to cover an expansive list of expenses that public schools often struggle to fund including costs such as field trips, textbooks or support services.
The inclusion of public schools now places some governors, superintendents and school boards in a new dilemma: Do they choose to tap into a Trump-backed program that could boost their bottom line, or leave the tax-credit cash on the table for others to claim?
“The reality is this program exists, and if there are dollars on the table that can go to our children and families, I don’t understand the purpose of not trying to do everything we possibly can,” said Justin Dayhoff, chief financial officer for Nevada’s Clark County School District, which includes Las Vegas.
His district, like many around the country, is strapped for cash as health insurance and other costs increase and fewer students enroll in public school due to population decline. Enrollment in Clark County — the nation’s fifth-largest district — has dwindled by more than 35,000 students, or 11 percent, since before the pandemic and it laid off five dozen staff ahead of this new school year.
How big a financial difference the voucher-style program would make for school districts remains to be seen.
Some school finance experts expect soliciting donations could be as simple as districts partnering with employers to enroll their workers in the tax credit program, perhaps as another form in their regular HR paperwork. (Many employers already partner with nonprofits like United Way to collect pretax donations from paychecks.)
Roza, of Georgetown, estimated a district could bring in about $200 per student by enrolling its own employees into the program. Convincing major companies to do the same — directing proceeds to nonprofits supporting students who attend local public schools — could push that figure higher. City and county governments might participate as well.
“Local employers are an absolutely critical piece of this puzzle,” said Hazel, with the Denver Public Schools Foundation.
Her organization hasn’t officially approached any of its corporate partners yet about enrolling their employees in the tax credit program. (Past donors to the foundation have included Chevron, the Colorado Rockies and United Airlines.) But Hazel’s already thinking about whether Denver Public Schools will have to compete with other Colorado districts attempting to woo the same business leaders.
“We’re the largest school district in Colorado, so we already have an advantage,” Hazel said. “But how can we go to a company and say, ‘Your employees must choose between all these great school districts?’”
But her new fundraising plans will come with steep operational hurdles.
Under the new law, at least 90 percent of all donations to scholarship-granting organizations like Hazel’s must go directly to student scholarships, leaving relatively little to cover marketing, staff, annual independent audits and payment processing. Fees already take 4 percent of each credit card transaction, Hazel said.
Yet even as she awaits further clarity from Treasury on how organizations can collect donations, she’s imagining what the money could mean for Denver schools.
“My dream is I can give every second grader a tutor and we get everyone to grade-level reading and math,” Hazel said. “There are things like that that are so scalable and would support every student.”
This story about the One Big Beautiful Bill was produced by the Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.
WASHINGTON — The war in the Middle East is increasingly unpopular. So is the president as his numbers dip perilously — a common development in the sixth year of a presidency. Congressional Republicans are embroiled in unsavory scandals. Americans are shelling out big bucks for gas while economic anxiety runs high.
The grim backdrop for November’s midterm elections has created a steep challenge for Republicans and opportunities for Democrats that look much the same as those they encountered in 2006. Back then, congressional Republicans faced the voters at the midpoint of President George W. Bush’s second term, with the public roiled by the war in Iraq, high fuel prices and a series of ugly accusations against members of the GOP majority on Capitol Hill.
“It is striking,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader and chief architect of his party’s Senate campaign strategy this year and two decades ago. “The analogy is amazing.”
The parallels are not perfect, since politics and campaigns have both changed radically over 20 years. But the comparisons are instructive, as officials in both parties stare down the final months of an election that will determine who controls Congress for the remainder of President Donald Trump’s term.
“This is 2006 2.0,” said Rahm Emanuel, who in 2006 was an ambitious Democratic House member from Illinois and Schumer’s counterpart across the Capitol as the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “The similarities are eerie.”
Emanuel and Schumer both have good reason to look back fondly on 2006, when Democrats triumphed in a blue wave.
Exceeding expectations that year, Democrats picked up six seats in the Senate, taking control of the chamber. In the House, where the Republican majority seemed to have exhausted itself after a dozen years, Democrats gained 31 seats and installed Nancy Pelosi, who is now retiring, as the first woman speaker. Bush, another victim of the six-year presidential itch, famously branded the outcome “a thumping.”
This year, the Senate map is stacked against Democrats — they would need to win at least four Republican-held seats to take control, all but one of them in states that Trump won in 2024. And not all of the most competitive races have gone as party leaders had hoped. But Democrats have benefited from some political twists in places where they had not anticipated being competitive, such as in Texas, where Trump’s primary endorsement of the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, over Sen. John Cornyn, put that seat in play.
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report on Thursday moved its ratings of the Texas and Iowa Senate races from leaning Republican to a toss up, underscoring the expanding battleground that Democrats would need in order to replicate 2006. Democrats say that they believe they are also increasingly competitive in other states carried by Trump two years ago, including Kansas.
While clear similarities exist this year, significant differences are present as well — not the least of which is that Americans consume and process political content far differently than they did 20 years ago, with an emphasis on digital media rather than traditional television advertising.
Other structural changes have taken place that could influence the results. The two parties this year engaged in a redistricting war that could help stem some of the House losses Republicans might have suffered in a midterm year that traditionally runs against those in power. Polarization runs deeper, making it harder to shake voters from their party identification. Trump’s hold on his base seems stronger than Bush’s was in 2006, though it is potentially weakening amid a backlash to the war with Iran.
In the Senate and the House, the Democratic establishment did not get its preferred candidates through the primaries in some key races, including in Maine and Michigan. And the rise of far-left socialist candidates has Republicans seeing an opening to try to brand Democratic contenders across the country as part of a movement out of step with typical Americans.
For those reasons and more, Republicans say the comparison between the two elections comes up short.
“Democrats are running with a radically different party on a dramatically different map, and the fundamentals are stacked against them,” Mike Marinella, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a statement. “Republicans have stronger candidates, a historic fundraising advantage and a more favorable battlefield, while Democrats are letting socialists hijack must-win races from Michigan to Colorado, Arizona, California and Maine.”
In 2006, the war with Iraq was the central issue in the campaign as Americans soured on Bush’s handling of the conflict, particularly after his main justification for the invasion — the claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction — turned out to be false. Trump’s conflict with Iran has not gone on nearly as long, nor has it produced the same level of casualties. But Bush had significantly more support at the start. Public opposition helped drive approval numbers for the two presidents below 40%, a dangerous midterm level, as both wars also drove up fuel costs.
Then as now, Democrats tried to capitalize on kitchen-table economic concerns with the potential to drive voters. In 2006, it was Bush’s proposal to privatize Social Security, which never came to pass. Now, it is the Republican-written law slashing Medicaid and other safety net programs to pay for large tax cuts, as well as the GOP’s decision to allow healthcare subsidies to expire, sending premiums soaring.
“We found an issue early,” Schumer said, recalling 2006. “Rahm and I did Social Security. Now we found the costs issue, particularly led by healthcare.”
Another undercurrent of the 2006 campaign has an equivalent today: the image of disturbing Republican misconduct. Twenty years ago, Democrats campaigned against a “culture of corruption,” pointing to a series of financial and sex scandals that led to resignations and jail time for a series of senior Republicans.
Then, in September 2006, it was disclosed that Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., had sent sexually suggestive messages to male House pages, and that Republican leaders had failed to take action even when they had been alerted to his actions, putting a cloud over the party two months before the election.
This year, Republicans have again had to contend with high-profile sexual misconduct accusations against multiple House members, though Democrats have had their own to deal with as well, a difference from 20 years ago.
Top Democrats have sought to emphasize Republican conduct on Capitol Hill and in an administration in which the president, his family and his allies have faced scrutiny for profiteering. In an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” this month, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, said a central element of the Democratic campaign agenda was “pushing back against the corruption that has been unleashed on the American people, and holding the crooks accountable beginning on day one in January of next year.”
It is not clear whether it will all add up to a repeat of 2006. But Nathan Gonzales, editor of the nonpartisan Inside Elections, sees the potential for the factors working against Republicans building into a resounding voter backlash against the party in power, as they did two decades ago.
“I remember 2006 when everything snowballed against Republicans,” Gonzales said. “Ordinarily unrelated events got lumped together under one umbrella. Everything was Bush’s fault. The war with Iraq and Mark Foley really had nothing to do with each other, but it cultivated an appetite for change. I could see that happening again.”
In early July, before the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, Texas Democrat James Talarico preached on the proper place of religion in politics. In his sermon, he argued for the importance of the separation of church and state while emphasizing that religion could still inform a person’s approach to and involvement in politics. He stressed how Christianity should shape the tone of one’s politics. Drawing on Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan, Talarico claimed that loving one’s neighbor includes respecting people of different faiths.
Many of these politicians, including Talarico, Trone Garriott, and Hamilton, have emphasized their religious faith not only as a part of their overall message, but they have situated their Christianity at the core of their identity. While there’s nothing “new” about Democratic politicians whose religious identity is central to their politics — this was common a century ago with progressives such as William Jennings Bryan and Barbara Jordan during the Civil Rights era (and still is quite common among African American politicians) — today’s candidates do represent a departure from the trend of the past four decades of Democratic Party politics.
It hasn’t always been this way. Prior to the 1980s, candidates conversant in religion were common and unremarkable. At the time, evangelical and “mainline” Protestants were not aligned with political parties in the way they are today. As social scientist Ryan Burge has pointed out, in the 1970s most white evangelicals were Democrats and evangelicals helped elect “born again” Jimmy Carter in 1976 — the so-called “Year of the Evangelical.”
President Ronald Reagan prays with National Association of Evangelicals President Arthur Gay, left, following his address to the organization’s convention asking for help in winning approval of a constitutional amendment permitting prayer in school in Columbus, Ohio, March 7, 1984.Barry Thumma
But evangelicals’ rejection of Carter for reelection in 1980 signified an important shift for both parties. Explanations for white evangelicals’ turn away from Christian politicians like Carter and toward Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party — newly perceived as a reliably religious unit — usually point to several events in the 1970s.
By 1972, the number of delegates at the Democratic National Convention identifying as agnostics, atheists, or people who almost never attended church had grown to 24% (compared to 5% of Americans who listed “no religion” on the General Social Survey.) These delegates helped to add progressive positions on women and gay rights into the party platform at a time when they were to the left of mainstream America’s sensibilities.
Then in 1978, the IRS targeted mostly white private elementary and secondary schools, sometimes known as “segregation academies,” many of them religious, that had formed in response to desegregation, threatening their tax-exempt status unless they could demonstrate non-discrimination toward Black students. Additionally, by this time, the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade began to galvanize evangelical activists in a space that had been historically dominated by Catholic priests and laypeople.
Both of these issues came together in the 1980 election, the latter thanks in part to the attention Francis Schaeffer drew to the issue in his writings and speeches across America and the organizing of Jerry Falwell Sr.’s Moral Majority. Because of the growing number of Democrats who self-identified as atheist, agnostic, or non-church attending, white Democrats tended to cede the religious political ground to the new Religious Right, even though plenty of Democrats were religious. Over the next decade, this helped create a binary between a “religious traditionalist” Republican Party and a “secularist progressive” Democratic Party.
The Rev. Jerry Falwell speaks at his Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va., in a 1999 photo.
Demographic trends over the next 40 years reinforced this shift. In 1975, 30% of Americans were part of the Protestant “mainline” (e.g. United Methodist, Evangelical Lutheran, Presbyterian USA, Episcopal Church, American Baptist, Disciples of Christ, and United Church of Christ). Today the mainline only accounts for between 9% and 13% of Americans. Theories for this decline abound, including loss of identity, aging congregations, poor retention of children as they grow into adulthood, controversies over sexuality, ordination of women and LGBTQ clergy, and same-sex marriage, which led to conservatives joining more evangelical churches.
Over this same period, the number of Americans identifying as “unaffiliated” (the so-called “nones”) rose from 5% to nearly 30%.
Factors driving this growth include people being more willing in a secularizing environment to admit they aren’t religious, young people who choose not to identify with any religion, and the general population becoming less religious over time. Democrats have enjoyed a decided advantage among the voting “nones” going all the way back to the 1984 election.
For Black Americans, there has also been a more modest decline in affiliation with historically Black churches (e.g. National Baptist, Church of God in Christ, and AME Zion). Yet these churches have maintained a continued source of relevance for Black Protestants, playing a vital role in Black life as a source of social support, political organizing, community engagement, aid to the needy, and defense against racism and ethnic solidarity. Today, 53% of African Americans are still associated with historically Black Protestant churches, which probably accounts for the persistence over the past 40 years of progressive Black politicians with ministerial credentials.
Meanwhile, evangelicals shifted from a slight majority favoring the Democratic Party before the 1980s toward a reliable core of the Republican Party, at a moment when their numbers were increasing. By the end of the 20th century, evangelicals grew to represent nearly 30% of all Americans, in part by having larger families, retaining their children in the church at higher rates, and maintaining cultural and theological distinctiveness.
Collectively though, these trends meant the Democratic Party became less beholden to a religious demographic within its own constituency, and consequently, religiously-oriented politicians seemed less relevant to the Democratic Party.
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The exception was the African American wing of the party, where Christianity remained central to most voters’ identities. Here, a political figure like U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock (senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta, a historically Black mainline church that Dr. Martin Luther King Sr. and Jr. pastored) is not exceptional. The Black church’s historic emphasis on social issues and inequality allowed for adherents’ continued support of Democratic candidates who were white and less religious, even as it did lead to some tension over progressive social goals, such as same-sex marriage.
In fact, it was the emergence of a Black politician in 2004, then-Senate candidate Barack Obama, who helped call attention to the dearth of religiously-conversant Democratic politicians, arguing that his party needed to reengage religiously-affiliated voters. From 2004 to 2008, the Democratic Party emphasized outreach to religious voters in a concerted way. But after the 2008 election, and Obama’s win, this focus for the Democrats declined so much so that, by 2016, Michael Wear and others involved in rallying Democratic religious voters for Obama had become frustrated at the lack of dedicated outreach.
So, does the emergence of Democratic politicians such as Talarico, Trone Garriott, and Hamilton signal a new shift on the order of what happened in the 1970s?
It may be too early to tell.
It may be, as Wheaton College Professor Esau McCaulley has argued, that the emergence of these politicians is linked to the backlash growing among Protestants tired of MAGA evangelicals defining what Christianity means in America today. Or, perhaps, these candidates are simply the culmination of a growing recognition within the Democratic Party of its need to reengage Christian voters.
Regardless, it’s not an accident that the new crop of ordained Democratic candidates are located in regions of relative mainline Protestantism vibrancy in the Midwest and South.
With the exception of Presbyterian Pastor Matt Schultz of Alaska, all 12 of the ordained candidates are running in Midwest or Southern states. Perhaps, politicians such as Talarico will succeed in reshaping how Christianity functions in the political space and reclaim a lost politics of religion within the Democratic Party. Time will tell if they are part of a new vanguard, or only a brief aberration.
Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of The Inquirer.
When Gregory Williams stepped into Ravitz ShopRite in Cherry Hill, he was on a mission, carefully selecting fresh fruit to add to his shopping cart.
After stocking up on strawberries, peaches, nectarines, and a pineapple, Williams moved quickly to the meat section to peruse his options.
“I’m on the healthy side,” said Williams, 29, of Camden.
Williams got a ride recently to the ShopRite courtesy of a new program that offers free door-to-door transportation to the supermarket to Camden residents.
Camden resident Gregory “Baby Face” Williams arrives to take a van to the ShopRite in Cherry Hill Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026. Pastor Amir Khan (left) is on a mission to help residents eat healthier, as Camden is a food desert and doesn’t have any grocery stores. With a grant from FEED NJ, Khan is picking up residents and transporting them free of a charge to the suburban store.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
It’s funded by a grant from Food Equity and Economic Development in New Jersey, or FEED NJ, which seeks to provide residents in food deserts like Camden and Salem with better access to fresh, affordable, and healthy food options not always available in their local community.
Camden, a nine-square-mile city of about 71,000, has not had a full-service supermarket since 2013, when the Pathmark store on Mount Ephraim Avenue closed. The city tops the state’s list of 50 food desert communities.
Those with cars or access to public transportation travel to nearby suburban communities or shop at pricey neighborhood corner stores or bodegas with fewer healthy options.
After efforts to bring a supermarket to Camden fell short, Pastor Amir Khan launched the free shuttle service with a $487,000 FEED NJ grant awarded earlier this year from the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA). He purchased three vans to transport Camden residents to the supermarket along with equipment for a pantry.
“I knew that this was what was best for people of Camden,” Khan said. “God blesses us to be a blessing to others.”
Van driver Lonnie Watkins helps Camden resident Agripina Vega unload her cart after shopping at the ShopRite in Cherry Hill Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026. Camden is a food desert and doesn’t have any grocery stores. Pastor Amir Khan is on a mission to help residents eat healthier. With a grant from FEED NJ, Khan is picking up residents and transporting them free of a charge to the suburban store.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
The grant was made through a $30 million state pilot program that awards funds for projects to improve food access and food security in the New Jersey communities most in need, said Tara Colton, chief economic security officer at NJEDA.
Nearly $9 million was awarded to projects such as urban farming and fresh markets in Camden, Colton said, and statewide, 72 organizations received grants.
“Food security is crucial to the state’s economic success,” Colton said. “We need to ensure that everyone has their basic needs met.”
Agripina Vega, 75, was happy to get transported from the Riverview Towers, a building for senior citizens in Camden. Normally, she has to wait until her daughter-in-law can pick her up.
“I love it,” Vega said, standing in front of ShopRite waiting for a ride home after purchasing meat, fruit, and dog food.
Khan operates the shuttle through his New Beginnings Behavioral Health, a faith-based nonprofit that helps unhoused people, people recovering from addiction, and returning citizens transition back into society.
In addition to the shuttle service, the center provides a community food bank and pantry. It also has several shelters, provides job training and placement, and offers mental health and drug counseling.
Khan believes his mission is “changing and transforming lives.” He encourages clients to follow a motto on a sign in the lobby that reads: “Accept what is. Let go of what was. Have faith in what will be.”
Jay Rutherford, the program’s supervisor, hopes others will learn from his life. He was released from prison in 2023 after serving 31 years for felony murder.
“I was in a bad situation,” said Rutherford, 52. He was 19 when he went to prison.
Khan said his work at New Beginnings was inspired by his father, a doctor in Camden who often provided free treatment to patients unable to pay. His goal is to help residents choose healthier lifestyles.
The shuttle service to ShopRite is available to Camden residents only, said Lorene Watkins, a director at Khan’s organization. It operates Mondays through Fridays, and occasionally on Saturdays to meet demand, she said. About 25 people are transported weekly, she said.
Camden resident Ryan Crews (right) shops at the ShopRite in Cherry Hill Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026. Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
“It’s terrible that there’s no supermarket here,” Watkins said. “These are people, too, and they should have a supermarket.”
Colton said there are “promising efforts” to eventually locate a supermarket in Camden, perhaps with a smaller footprint. Meanwhile, the state is funding food access programs to help meet the need, she said.
The state is not “giving up the goal of a full-service supermarket,” Colton said.
Watkins said a mobile market stocked with groceries will be added to the New Beginnings fleet in a few months. It will make stops around Camden and residents can purchase items from the van, she said.
Since it began a few weeks ago, the shuttle service has added stops at Walmart and Aldi stores in Cherry Hill to the routes, Khan said.
“We want to be a convenience,” he said. “Anything we can do to get people to eat healthier.”
The family-owned ShopRite supported the shuttle grant, said Jason Ravitz, vice president of operations for the Ravitz Family Markets. It has also donated food gift cards, Watkins said.
“Hopefully, people’s dollars can go further,” Ravitz said. “We were always taught you have to be there for the community.”
Camden residents Gregory “Baby Face” Williams (left) and Ryan Crews (right) shop at the ShopRite in Cherry Hill Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026. Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
First-time shopper Benjamin Moore, 33, picked up fresh fish, chicken, and dairy products. He typically shops at a corner store.
“There’s a lot more stuff here, more of a variety,” he said.
Kathy Mason, 65, made a shopping list before traveling to the store and pulled it out to make sure she didn’t forget anything. She navigated the massive store picking up items.
“I don’t have that much money at all,” Mason said. “For the whole month, it’s really tight.”
Camden resident Kathy Mason displays her shopping list at the ShopRite in Cherry Hill Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026. Camden is a food desert and doesn’t have any grocery stores. Pastor Amir Khan is on a mission to help residents eat healthier. With a grant from FEED NJ, Khan is picking up residents and transporting them free of a charge to the suburban store.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Like many of the other riders, Mason receives Social Security or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program food assistance benefits. They try to make healthy choices and stretch their dollars.
“Sometimes, if there is something I really want, I can’t get it,” said Williams, who receives $277 a month in food assistance. “You have to pay your bills.”
To schedule a pickup with New Beginnings Behavioral Health’s shuttle, call 856-588-0807.
Bus operators say they worry passengers frustrated over changed routes that take them by surprise and unexpected delays will yell at, curse, or assault them. It has been a persistent problem in recent years.
In some cases, riders accustomed to staying on one bus route will need to transfer to other buses or the subway and elevated trains. That increases the chances of missed connections and delays. And angry people.
“You’re upset because you had counted on the bus,” said Keya Sampson, 52, a bus driver for 12 years. “You have to be at this appointment or you’ve got to punch in on time.”
She is sympathetic, even though delays are outside her control.
“We’re going to end up in a tricky situation because we’re the face of SEPTA,” Sampson said. “They don’t have anybody else to scream at, unfortunately.”
Vulnerable riders
Carlos Guillen, who has worked for SEPTA for 19 years as an operator on buses and the Broad Street Line, noted that SEPTA advises Route 4 riders to take the B, SEPTA’s new name for the subway line,to avoid longer wait times.
“I can see how it can impact elderly and those with disabilities, especially moving down the sidewalk — they’re not the smoothest thoroughfares,” said Guillen, a safety officer for Transport Workers Union Local 234.
He noted a lack of ADA-accessible stations on the B north of City Hall.
Longer term, some bus operators are concerned about the possibility they could be replaced in the future by autonomous driving technology.
“Autonomously driven vehicles have no place in mass transit,” said Joe Coccio, secretary-treasurer of Local 234, which represents more than 5,000 SEPTA employees, including operators on buses, subways, and trolleys. “They’re flawed. They’re unpredictable.” He said they also can be hacked.
SEPTA says it has no plans to use robot bus operators and is hiring human ones as fast as it can. But a spokesperson also said the authority wants to keep its options open.
Most operators are anticipating some confused passengers at first, even though SEPTA has sent out teams to educate people about Phase 1 of the New Bus Network. Maps and cards illustrate the changes, translated into multiple languages.
New color-coded signage is part of SEPTA’s plan to communicate changes to bus routes that begin on Sunday. Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Some people won’t get the message.
“People right now don’t even read our destination signs to see if it’s the right bus,” said Ryan Stewart, who operates a Route 35 bus from the Midvale depot in Nicetown.
In the first wave of changes, 30 bus routes will be affected.
Some routes with low ridership or that duplicate nearby service have beeneliminated. Othershave been extended. Some will run more frequently, others less frequently, based on analysis of demand. Two new routeshave been added.
The people who pilot the buses on Philadelphia’s narrow streets know that some small and overlooked issues could undercut the New Bus Network program’s goal of quicker, more efficient service.
Sampson, for instance, has been driving the 63 for the summer. She will be back behind the wheel on Route 4, her regular run for the last four years, this week — as the changes begin.
Route 4 will have fewer buses running. So SEPTA is deploying 60-foot articulated buses, which carry more passengers.
SEPTA had been using 40-foot buses on the route, which has narrow streets and hairpin turns, especially in its northern reaches, where there is a longstanding detour that will not end until summer 2027. Operators think the longer buses will have trouble navigating the route.
Operators have asked SEPTA to look at the issue. “If there’s nothing they can do, it’s going to be a nightmare,” Sampson said. “We’re going to get stuck.”
She knows well the hard turn from Erie onto Rising Sun, an angled intersection with a pub that often has a beer truck parked on the curb. Only one articulated bus at a time can fit down that little stretch of Old York Road. And the church at 10th and Rockland Streets that has packed funerals, with cars parked to the corners.
“How do you ask someone who’s grieving, ‘Hey, move your car’? … At the same time, we do need to make the turn, and it does need to be safe.”
Time will tell
Paul Pollard, a veteran bus operator on Route 61, said he spends precious minutes stuck in traffic on Main Street in Manayunk on his way north to Roxborough during morning peak hours, as parents drop students off at school.
But the schedule assumes his bus can sail through.
“I’ve had people get off my bus, walk two or three blocks down, and go into their job,” Pollard, 49, said. “I’m still sitting in traffic.”
It is “virtually impossible” to meet the schedule safely, he said. The result: late buses and steamed customers.
Time will tell if worries become reality, but operators know that they will bear the brunt of any outrage.
“There’s nobody at SEPTA headquarters getting somebody throwing coffee on them, or spitting on them,” Pollard said.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has awarded more than $17 million in contracts, mostlyto businesses, in the Philadelphia area since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, with more than half of that money going to a firearms manufacturer in Montgomery County.
The local data, compiled by The Appeal, highlights the Trump administration’s spending related to raids and enforcement operations as the agency carries out the president’s mass deportation agenda, including its purchases of weaponry.
Geissele Automatics, a firearms manufacturer based in North Wales, has the largest and perhaps most consequential contract with ICE in the Philadelphia area.
The company — which specializes in selling high-grade, AR-15-style semiautomatic weapons and parts to consumers, law enforcement agencies, and the military — entered a contract with ICE for nearly $9.1 million in September 2025, according to federal data.
The payment was for the delivery of “precision long guns and accessories” to support ICE agents as well as the agency’s tactical programs, the data show. It’s unclear where the equipment is being used.
Neither the company’s founder, Bill Geissele, nor a representative from the company’s sales team returned a request for comment.
Nationwide,ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection has dramatically increased spending on firearms in Trump’s second term, according to a report earlier this year from U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), leading to outcry from Democratic officials and voters who say the agency has become a militarized force with little oversight or accountability.
That outrage continued this month when Democrats voiced their opposition to ICE’s plan to provide ICE officers with electric shock gloves. Schiff’s oversight report, released earlier this year, called ICE and CBP’s contracts for weaponry a “misuse of taxpayer dollars to maximally arm federal immigration agents.”
A spokesperson for Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that $17 million in contracts in the Philadelphia region is “simply not accurate” and “conflates nationwide ICE contracts” with spending in the area.
“ICE contracts with vendors across the country to support its law enforcement mission. The existence of a federal contract, a vendor located in a particular region, or a nationwide contract vehicle does not mean that the full value of that contract was spent in Philadelphia,” the spokesperson said
“Reporting should accurately distinguish between nationwide contract values, vendor locations, places of performance, and actual federal expenditures before presenting a misleading figure as fact,” they added.
The details on the contracts come as residents and advocates in the Philadelphia region and nationwide are continuing to remain vigilant of ICE’s presence in their communities. Earlier this year, ICE struck deals to retrofit warehouses in Pennsylvania and New Jersey into mass detention centers before later backtracking after residents and leaders in both states voiced opposition.
Bill Geissele — who hosts the manufacturer’s podcast Shots Fired in Anger —has donated to Republican elected officials in Pennsylvania, including U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick and U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser. Geissele’s contract, while not the company’s first with the federal government, is by far the most significant contract between the gun manufacturer and the federal agency on record.
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In August 2024 for example, under former President Joe Biden’s administration, Geissele Automatics entered a $12,224 contract with ICE for equipment to support a “sniper sustainment” course, according to data compiled by The Appeal.
By 2025, when Trump returned to the White House and significantly ramped up ICE operations nationwide, those contracts ballooned.
On top of the $9.1 million contract that year, Geissele was paid $27,936 to provide training rifles and magazines for the agency’s Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs, as well as $16,544 for rifles and accessories required for testing and evaluation.
ICE also took its spending across the river to Burlington County in New Jersey, where it awarded George J. Petronis Enterprises Inc., a gun shop, slightly more than $505,000 since the start of Trump’s second term for training ammunition and ink cartridges for 9mm training ammo to support ICE’s Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs in Fort Benning, Ga.
George J. Petronis Enterprises Inc. did not return an email requesting comment.
The Appeal’s dashboard also shows a contract for rental of a firing range between ICE and the county’s fire academy, located in Conshohocken, that has existed since at least 2021. But Montgomery County officials said Friday that the contract is with the broader Department of Homeland Security — which ICE is a part of — and not with the federal immigration enforcement agency directly.
County Commissioner Jamila Winder, a Democrat, said that the academy is used by local, state, and federal agencies for law enforcement training but “this facility is not available for training for those engaged in immigration enforcement activities.”
Other contracts highlighted by The Appeal dashboard may also be directly tied to DHS, instead of ICE.
Earlier this year, Montgomery County’s Board of Commissioners passed a resolution restricting federal immigration enforcement from using county property or resources for noncriminal investigations.
Other local contracts with ICE include a roughly $50,000 contract with the Philadelphia Parking Authority for rental spaces for 16 vehicles and more than $78,000 to Ricoh USA Inc., an office technology company headquartered in Chester County that was also used under the Biden administration. Coast2Coast Shredding LLC, which is headquartered in Montgomery County but shreds documents in California, received more than $94,000 from ICE.
Autonomous drones may soon be delivering Amazon packages across South Jersey.
Amazon representatives have told local officials and emergency responders that the e-commerce giant plans to start drone-delivery service out of its West Deptford facility this fall, according to West Deptford Mayor James Mehaffey and Mantua Township Police Chief William Murphy.
The news comes days after Amazon announced a massive expansion of its Prime Air program, which already delivers packages via drone from launch sites in 11 U.S. cities, none of which are in the Northeast.
By the end of the year, Amazon wants to expand its drone coverage area to nearly 500 cities and towns nationwide, the company said, allowing tens of millions of customers to get products flown to their doorsteps in 30 minutes to an hour.
“We are always exploring new ways to get customers a wider selection at faster speeds,” Amazon spokesperson Smitha Rao said in a statement, in response to The Inquirer’s questions about the South Jersey meeting, which occurred last week.
“We are currently working with local officials and exploring opportunities to expand our fast, reliable drone delivery service to reach customers in areas across the country.”
According to local officials briefed on the Amazon plans, the company’s drones would fly out of the warehouse at 240 Mantua Grove Rd., a 650,000-square-foot facility that sits next to I-295 and is among the company’s largest in the region.
The Amazon Fulfillment Center in West Deptford, seen in 2019, is among the region’s largest.TIM TAI / Staff Photographer
The company’s drones can typically deliver to addresses within 175 square miles of each launch site.
In a Facebook post from the Mantua Township Police Department account, Murphy shared a screenshot of the local drone-delivery radius that he said Amazon shared during the Zoom meeting. The photo indicated that drones from the West Deptford site would be able to reach places within about a 15-mile radius — from Bellmawr to Mullica Hill in New Jersey, as well as parts of Ridley Park, Darby, Glenolden, and South Philadelphia across the Delaware River.
Amazon told local officials that the drones would operate from 15 minutes before sunrise to 15 minutes after sunset, according to Murphy, and be authorized to fly at altitudes below 400 feet, in accordance with Federal Aviation Administration regulations.
The company plans to start drone delivery from West Deptford as early as October, according to Murphy and Mehaffey.
Amazon’s drones can deliver groceries, cosmetics, medications, even iPhones — anything that weighs 5 pounds or less and fits in a large shoebox. Amazon says those characteristics apply to more than 60% of its most popular products.
Boxed orders are sorted at the Amazon Fulfillment Center in West Deptford in 2019.TIM TAI / Staff Photographer
Customers can browse drone-deliverable items the same way they search for any other Amazon products, according to the company, and select the best spot for a drone to leave the package.
Amazon Prime members can get complimentary drone delivery on orders of $50 or more, or pay an extra $2.99 on orders under $50. Nonmembers can pay $4.99 for drone delivery.
The drones are not monitored by humans in real time, according to Amazon. Instead, the devices use an autonomous system of cameras and sensors to navigate, avoid obstacles, and deliver the package safely.
Some South Jersey residents said they have questions about those cameras, as well as the impact Amazon drones may have on their quality of life, safety, and environment. As of Sunday, more than 100 people had signed a petition asking for public hearings and written disclosures about Prime Air and its data practices before the drones start flying in the area.
Amazon said in its expansion announcement that the drones’ cameras do not “track individuals or record movement.” The drones are electric, emit no exhaust, and make little noise, according to the company. The drones are quieter during drop-off than “an idling delivery truck,” Amazon said, and sound similar to a “window fan on low” while in flight. The company said people indoors cannot typically hear the drones outside.
In areas where the drones are already flying, company spokesperson Rao said, “the response from customers using Prime Air has been overwhelmingly positive.”
Mantua Township Mayor Bob Zimmerman told residents in a Facebook post that the Amazon drones were “forthcoming.”
“Please understand that whether you are for, or against deliveries of this kind by drones, we have no say over the matter,” wrote Zimmerman, who did not return a request for additional comment.
Amazon has not said whether it plans to fly drones from other warehouses in the Philadelphia area, and has not posted Prime Air job openings at other local sites.
The company has dozens of facilities across the region, with larger warehouses in Carneys Point and Logan Townships in South Jersey, and near Wilmington. Officials in those areas did not return requests for comment.
Amazon’s Logan Township warehouse is pictured in 2021.STEVEN M. FALK / Staff Photographer
Jason Bobst, township manager of West Norriton Township in Montgomery County, said the company has not been in touch about flying drones from its facility there.
“We have not been approached by Amazon regarding drone delivery operations from its West Norriton facility, nor have we received any indication that Amazon is currently considering that location for drone delivery service,” Bobst said in an email.
Bobst said township officials did have a preliminary conversation about Walmart looking to expand its drone delivery service in the area, but nothing formal has been presented.
In recent weeks, food-delivery apps Uber Eats, Grubhub, and DoorDash also have unveiled similar plans, but have not started flying to Philly-area customers.
ORANGEBURG, S.C. — The last time Pete Buttigieg was giving a political speech in South Carolina, it was to mark a distant finish in the state’s primary that effectively ended his campaign for president.
Returning this weekend as he mulls a second run for the White House, Buttigieg set out to reintroduce himself to the state and the Black voters he struggled to win in 2020. The results were encouraging.
There was a standing ovation in a Black church in South Carolina when Buttigieg was credited for helping bring millions of federal dollars to the area for a project as President Joe Biden’s transportation secretary. A second ovation came as Buttigieg gave a speech warning of a country in “big trouble” while laying out his own vision for what should come next.
“There is no such thing as again in real life. The only way out is through,” Buttigieg told the crowd of more than 200 people at an NAACP Freedom Fund Dinner. “If we recognize and embrace a future that is different from the past, we will do better.”
The warm applause was a markedly different reception than six years ago, when a fourth-place showing in South Carolina helped derail Buttigieg’s presidential campaign while exposing his failure to connect with Black voters. The state is likely to have an even greater say in his political future as the first contest in the Democratic presidential primary in 2028.
Starting the election calendar in South Carolina is intended in part to give Black voters a greater voice at the outset of the nominating process. For Buttigieg and other potential contenders, winning the support of this group that makes up a majority of South Carolina’s Democratic electorate is essential.
“You need to demonstrate that you can win Black voters,” said Jaime Harrison, a former Democratic National Committee chairperson and South Carolina Democratic Party chairperson. “If you can’t win Black voters, you can’t be the nominee of our party.”
2028 campaign is already coming to South Carolina
Buttigieg insists he has made no final decision about whether to run for president again.
“Right now, I’m totally focused on 2026,” he told reporters Saturday.
But his South Carolina trip — a week after visiting another early-voting state, Nevada — had all the trappings of a potential presidential bid.
He raised money Friday in Charleston with Nancy Lacore, a U.S. House candidate trying to flip a Republican-held seat. On Saturday morning, he spoke at a policy conference before traveling to Claflin University, a historically Black university in Orangeburg.
Davina Perry, a third-year student at Claflin, said she came away from Buttigieg’s visit thinking he would be a “good candidate” if he ran.
“Secretary Pete has definitely put himself on my radar for 2028 now, for sure,” Perry said. But, she added, “I do want to see more representation from people who look like me.”
That evening, Buttigieg attended a dinner at a church in Orangeburg, a nearly three-quarters Black city with a deep history in the Civil Rights Movement. The crowd included local NAACP leaders, ministers, and elected officials. Buttigieg worked the room, giving hugs and taking photos.
“He is responsible for the Railroad Corner,” said Orangeburg Mayor Michael Butler, referencing a project aimed at revitalizing the city’s downtown that received a $22.7 million federal grant. “Do I need to say any more? We need to stand and welcome the former secretary.”
Buttigieg used the speech that followed to make a broader case about the direction of the country, arguing that Democrats cannot separate Americans’ economic frustrations from a political system he described as increasingly broken.
“I have come to believe that the kitchen table cannot be improved unless we are also reforming the institutional and political floor on which that kitchen table sits.”
Black voters will have the first say for Democrats in 2028
For Buttigieg, the weekend offered signs of how much has changed since he came to South Carolina in 2020 as a 38-year-old Indiana mayor asking voters to take a chance on him. He points to what he delivered during four years in Biden’s cabinet, including specific projects in the state.
But Buttigieg said he also came to South Carolina “to propose something” about the country’s future. Butler, Orangeburg’s mayor, liked what he heard.
“His speech was what you talk about at the kitchen table. How America is going to survive all of this?” Butler said. “He brought hope to us.”
South Carolina Democratic leaders say the close, personal engagement with candidates is exactly what they hoped for. Those involved in the push to make South Carolina first envisioned the living-room conversations and retail politics long associated with Iowa and New Hampshire.
“You got to go listen. You got to go all over the place,” Harrison said. “You have to make meaningful investments. That’s how you win South Carolina.”
Buttigieg is hardly alone in his early trip to the state.
Other potential 2028 contenders, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna of California, and U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey have made trips to the state as what is expected to be a large Democratic field begins to take shape. Former Vice President Kamala Harris already has deep ties in the state.
The electorate they will encounter has changed from 2020, when Biden’s victory in the state resurrected his presidential campaign and put him on a path to ousting Republican President Donald Trump.
Four years later, Trump defeated Harris and returned to the White House, which Black leaders say has significantly hurt their community. Earlier this year, a Supreme Court decision weakened a core provision of the Voting Rights Act, threatening Black political representation across the South.
“We must start our process where democracy must still be fought for, in the full view of the nation,” former interim DNC chairperson Donna Brazile said in a speech this year advocating for South Carolina to go first.
Buttigieg addressed that anxiety directly Saturday night, describing efforts to weaken the Voting Rights Act as the culmination of a “multidecade effort.” He warned of a broader push “to demolish African American political power.”
Harrison said Buttigieg’s trip this weekend was a “good start,” but that Buttigieg and all the other potential 2028 candidates have a long road ahead to prove themselves to the state’s voters.
“It has to be a good start and then you got to continue,” Harrison said. “It can’t just be, ‘Oh, pop in and then I’m going to pop back out.’”
