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  • Homeland Security paid $464M for airplanes, then it parked them

    Homeland Security paid $464M for airplanes, then it parked them

    WASHINGTON — Starting last fall, the Department of Homeland Security spent $464 million on a no-bid contract to buy 10 used airplanes from a firm in northern Virginia.

    That was an enormous price tag, but the department said it had no time to consider other offers. The planes were needed urgently for deportation flights.

    But since then, the department has barely used this new fleet — for deportations, or anything else.

    Three of the aircraft are luxury business jets. Just months after acquiring them, the department sought to loan or lease two to other agencies, including one for the use of FBI Director Kash Patel, according to a letter to the department sent Wednesday by top Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

    The other seven are older Boeing 737 passenger jets, which the government has left parked at an airport in Lake Charles, La., for months at a time. An internal government document, obtained by the New York Times, said the agency did not have the staff necessary to operate them.

    The acquisitions were part of a surge of rushed contracts handed out recently by the Homeland Security Department, which has repeatedly used the need for “urgency” to bypass regular contracting procedures. The idled planes highlight the risks of that approach. The agency rushed headlong to spend nearly half a billion dollars, only to end up with planes it did not fly.

    The contract also illuminated a broader trend within the second Trump administration: no-bid contracts awarded to people with connections to Trump or his cabinet secretaries. The company that received this contract, Daedalus Aviation Corp., is led by a chairperson who had donated to a political committee supporting the previous Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem.

    The department’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has long outsourced its deportation flights by chartering planes from private companies. It also uses military and Coast Guard aircraft. Because of that, former immigration officials said, there seemed to be little need for the department to take on the expense of buying and maintaining a significant number of its own aircraft.

    “If you asked me to write a list of the things ICE needed to increase the number of deportations, buying its own fleet of airplanes would absolutely not make the top 10,” said John Sandweg, a former acting director of ICE during the Obama administration.

    In a written statement, the Homeland Security Department sought to shift responsibility for the contract to Noem. President Donald Trump fired her in March, and appointed Markwayne Mullin, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, as secretary.

    “The contract for Daedalus was made and approved by department leadership before Secretary Mullin was sworn in,” the department said in a statement. The agency said it “reserves the right to adjust course in an environment with evolving requirements and demands.”

    A spokesperson for Noem sought to place the responsibility on Mullin instead, saying the purchase was “finalized” under his leadership.

    Contracting records show that the size of the contract increased by $303 million on the day that Mullin was sworn in as secretary.

    The agency said that the idle 737 passenger jets had been undergoing maintenance checks, and that there were plans for two of them to begin deportation flights later this month.

    The situation with the planes was reminiscent of the department’s about-face on a plan to acquire warehouses to hold detainees. The department spent heavily on those when Noem was secretary, but reversed itself just months later under Mullin. The department is now giving away or selling seven warehouses that it bought for more than $700 million.

    A letter sent to the department Wednesday by Democratic Sens. Patty Murray of Washington and Christopher Murphy of Connecticut, who sit on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Homeland Security officials had already conceded to the committee that most of the planes would not be used for deportations.

    “The American people deserve a full accounting of this gross misuse of their tax dollars,” the letter, which was reviewed by the Times, said.

    The senators asked for details about the purchase price of each plane and how they would be used.

    Federal law generally requires government agencies to seek competing bids before awarding a contract, to ensure taxpayers get the best deal. But the department sidestepped that requirement for the planes contract, by invoking an exemption for cases of “unusual and compelling urgency.”

    That exemption can be used only when delaying the contract would result in “serious injury, financial or other,” to the government. Historically, it has been used during natural disasters, war, and the coronavirus pandemic.

    The department declined to answer questions about what serious injury it was trying to prevent. Contracting regulations require agencies to publish the rationales for no-bid contracts, but the department refused to release this one, saying it “would compromise national security or create other security risks.”

    The department has invoked the urgency exemption to justify more than $29 billion in spending across about 500 contracts awarded during Trump’s second term, according to an analysis of federal data by the Times. Much of that total came from border wall spending. Urgency claims were also used to justify projects like the $220 million in media contracts awarded to firms tied to Noem and her allies, scrutiny over which contributed to her ouster.

    The exemption accounts for nearly two-thirds of the $34 billion that the department has spent on contracts signed in 2026. That’s up sharply from past years. In 2025, the figure was about one-quarter. In 2024, it was less than 1%.

    No other major agency has used the exemption for urgency as frequently as Homeland Security, even in an administration that has turned to no-bid contracts repeatedly — for event planning, fountain repair, and the troubled makeover of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

    Lorna Tedder, a retired contracting expert who spent more than three decades at the Defense Department, said that, “Some things truly are urgent — people are going to die if you don’t do this.” But if agencies claim the exemption all the time, “it will eventually be abused.”

    The contract for the planes was first awarded in late November. At the time, the government was already paying other contractors hundreds of millions to operate a network of charter flights called “ICE Air.”

    The immigration agency has chartered about 25,800 flights in Trump’s second term, shuttling immigrants between detention centers domestically and deporting them abroad, mainly to Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the ICE Flight Monitor tracking project at Human Rights First, a nonprofit advocacy group. The department sometimes has 25 or more planes in the air in a day, according to the nonprofit’s tracking.

    But at the time, the Homeland Security Department said it still needed its own planes.

    Last fall, Tricia McLaughlin, a department spokesperson, told the Washington Post that purchasing the planes would allow “ICE to operate more effectively, including by using more efficient flight patterns.” McLaughlin has since left the agency. The department did not respond directly to a question asking about her comments.

    Daedalus, the Arlington, Virginia-based company the government hired to find the planes, had not previously held a federal contract. However, a company spokesperson said it had worked as a subcontractor to other companies evacuating Afghans who had done work for the U.S. government.

    Daedalus’ chair is William Walters, a doctor who until 2021 led a State Department office that evacuated Americans from outbreaks of Ebola, COVID-19, and other crises. In 2024, after leaving government, Walters donated $10,000 to a political committee connected to Noem, then the governor of South Dakota.

    Last year, with Noem in charge, the agency gave a separate company run by Walters a contract worth nearly $700 million to encourage immigrants to leave the U.S. voluntarily.

    A Daedalus spokesperson said that Walters was unaware that the political committee was tied to Noem.

    Daedalus declined to say how much each of the 10 planes had cost, or what its profit margin was for acting, essentially, as a broker. It provided a written statement that it was proud to provide “the best value to the American taxpayer.”

    One of the planes is a Boeing 737 luxury jet, now painted in the color scheme of Trump’s new Air Force One. Two others are smaller Gulfstream business jets, each seating about 14 people.

    Those planes flew only sporadically after the agency acquired them, according to flight records from airplanes.live, an independent flight tracking service. And the department soon moved to jettison two of them to other agencies, according to the account from Senate Democrats and the internal document reviewed by the Times.

    One of the luxury jets “has already been leased to the FBI for 12 months to support director Patel’s travel — despite the fact that the FBI already has its own jets to support the director’s travel,” the Senate Democrats wrote.

    The FBI confirmed that it is using one of the Gulfstream jets, saying it was paying the Homeland Security Department significantly less than it had paid a private company to lease a similar plane and that the aircraft was being used to support a range of agency operations, in addition to Patel’s travel.

    The Homeland Security Department also wanted to lend the larger Boeing luxury jet to the Pentagon, according to the senators’ letter and the internal document. But a Pentagon spokesperson said no agreement had been signed.

    One Gulfstream jet will remain with Homeland Security, for the use of its top leaders, according to the letter.

    The other 737s seemed more suited for deportation flights. Flight records show they had been in active use by Avelo Airlines, a low-cost carrier that also flew charter flights for ICE.

    But when the government bought them, it parked them.

    Daedalus said that two were used briefly to evacuate Americans from the Middle East at the outbreak of the Iran war in early March.

    Senate Democrats said they were told by Homeland Security staff that four of the 737s were no longer expected to fly detained immigrants. The senators said the department said it would use them to fly members of Congress on overseas trips, a job now handled by commercial carriers or military aircraft.

    For the long term, the agency said it needs a contractor to provide crews and mechanics to operate its new fleet. A recent solicitation said that contract would start next summer.

    This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

  • Meet Soupy Island’s longtime caretaker | Inquirer South Jersey

    Good morning, South Jersey. It’s Friday! It looks like a mixed bag in the weather department this weekend. Saturday seems promising, but storms (potentially severe) are forecast for Sunday.

    Have you heard of Soupy Island? It’s a fun, quirky play spot for kids in West Deptford that is open only about one month a year. One man has been running it for nearly 30 years.

    Speaking of children, young athletes will participate next week in an international baseball tournament in Marlton.

    Plus, nearly 30 dead sharks washed ashore in Sea Isle City, and more news of the day.

    — Ellen Dunkel (southjersey@inquirer.com)

    P.S. Thank you for your continuing support. We want your thoughts! Tell us your opinion of the newsletter by taking our survey or replying to this email.

    If someone forwarded you this email, sign up for free here.

    A quirky hidden oasis for children

    Armando Roberto Perez, 70, is the caretaker for Soupy Island, a public pool and park in West Deptford. It is known for its century-old carousel, free soup, and the tall, enclosed slide guests glide down on wax paper, crashing into sand.

    Perez, fondly called Mr. Soupy, has been running Soupy Island for 28 years. It’s a family calling. His father-in-law was the previous caretaker and his grandfather-in-law before that.

    Part of Soupy Island’s appeal is that it’s open only about one month a year, three days a week from July to mid-August. Admission is free. Not surprisingly, soup is on the menu.

    Inquirer reporter Sarah Nicell explored Soupy Island with Perez.

    Very young international athletes

    International competition doesn’t usually involve 8-year-olds, most of whom are prepping for second or third grade.

    But next week, young athletes will be playing in an international youth baseball tournament in Marlton.

    The field in the 2026 Cal Ripken 8U World Series will include 11 U.S. teams as well as teams from Mexico, Curaçao, Bonaire, and Latin America.

    Inquirer reporter Becca O’Reilly has the details.

    What to know today

    🧠 Trivia time

    Where is Michelin headed for its 2026 award ceremony?

    Hint: Sorry to say, but it’s not near us

    A) Chicago

    B) New York City

    C) Baltimore

    D) Los Angeles

    Think you know? Check your answer.

    What we’re …

    🏠 Touring: The Underground Railroad Museum of Burlington County.

    🛍️ Shopping for: Unique decor at Clutter Vintage in Collingswood.

    🏺 Exploring: Cafes and cozy inns in Lambertville and Stockton.

    🏖️ Down the Shore

    This “Ask Down the Shore” feature appears as part of our weekly summertime series from Shore reporter Amy S. Rosenberg. Subscribe to her free Down the Shore newsletter here.

    A reader asked what effect all the teardowns of smaller cottages were having on the Shore. We asked our Shore Line texters. Here’s a sampling of the replies, lightly edited.

    1. The classic old shore homes are disappearing. It is sad. Most of the new homes look alike. We should try to protect the old charm. It can’t be replicated.
    2. The shore is already overbuilt and has been for years. Adding ginormous sized houses only depletes the natural resources that make the shore unique. When my family drove to the shore when I was a kid in the ’60s you could smell the sea air before you could see anything that looked like the shore on the Expressway. I remember that smell fondly (mostly) and miss it greatly. I can’t pinpoint when it stopped. It gradually decreased in the ’90s and now it no longer exists.
    3. It is unrealistic to expect people not to tear down older homes. Yes there will be more traffic but maybe that will be self limiting.

    What do you think? Do you like the look of the old homes? Do you prefer the newer houses? Is it realistic to ask homeowners to update older homes? Be part of conversation and email Rosenberg at downtheshore@inquirer.com.

    📸 Photo of the week

    Teacher Grey Hamilton (on his back) instructs students in the Cooper River Yacht Club’s summer Learn-to-Sail program on the Cooper River in Collingswood. Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer

    Enjoy your weekend!

    By submitting your written, visual, and/or audio contributions, you agree to The Inquirer’s Terms of Use, including the grant of rights in Section 10.

  • Three Philly men stole government checks worth $68 million and then resold them online, feds say

    Three Philly men stole government checks worth $68 million and then resold them online, feds say

    Three Philadelphia men worked together to steal about $68 million worth of government-issued checks out of the mail and then reroute them to buyers they found online, according to federal prosecutors.

    The U.S. Attorney’s Office said in an indictment filed last month that Nyeem Anderson stole hundreds of Treasury Department checks between 2024 and 2026 — checks that were printed and to be mailed from a facility in Philadelphia, and that were intended for people expecting payments from the Internal Revenue Service, Social Security Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, or other federal agencies.

    Prosecutors did not specify how Anderson came to possess the checks, saying only that he received them “from an unknown source.” But once he had them, they said, he advertised them for resale online, including on a Telegram channel he oversaw, where he would post pictures of the checks and large piles of envelopes containing others.

    Once he negotiated a sale price, prosecutors said, Anderson worked with Zaahir McGough and Qadir Pettus to mail the stolen checks to their chosen buyers, who would often send payments to accounts he had with systems such as Cash App or Zelle.

    Prosecutors did not say how much the trio made from their scheme. But they said the checks were often sold for a fraction of their face value. Last May, for example, Anderson agreed to sell a check worth nearly $11,000 to an unidentified buyer for $299.

    And sometimes Anderson would advertise multiple checks for sale at once, with the checks’ face values occasionally exceeding $200,000, prosecutors said.

    Anderson’s attorney declined to comment Friday. Attempts to reach McGough’s lawyer were not immediately successful, and Pettus did not have an attorney listed in court records.

    In a document filed this week, prosecutors said that when Anderson was arrested last week, he appeared to realize he was facing significant trouble.

    Authorities found him holding $16,000 in stolen checks, prosecutors said. And as he was taken into custody, they said, he made a parting remark to onlookers.

    “They finally got me,” Anderson said, according to prosecutors. “Tell everyone I am going away for a long time.”

  • 70-year-old man shot and killed in East Germantown, police say

    70-year-old man shot and killed in East Germantown, police say

    A 70-year-old man was shot and killed in East Germantown on Friday morning, authorities said.

    The shooting took place around 8:30 a.m. on the 5900 block of Ogontz Avenue, according to police.

    Responding officers took the victim ― whom police did not identify ― to Jefferson Einstein Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after arrival.

    A man is in custody and is being questioned by investigators with the homicide unit, police said.

    Anyone with information is urged to call the Philadelphia police tip line at 215-686-TIPS (8477).

  • Kids keep getting hurt and killed on e-bikes. Should parents be held responsible?

    Kids keep getting hurt and killed on e-bikes. Should parents be held responsible?

    NEW YORK — As traumatic injuries and deaths surge among children involved in crashes on e-bikes and other electrified vehicles, one California prosecutor is cracking down by pursuing criminal charges against some of the young riders’ parents.

    It is just one way officials across the country are trying to tackle the growing issue, while families navigate a patchwork of local laws and guidance on what kind of souped-up cycles and scooters are safe or even legal for their kids to ride.

    New York City’s mayor recently sent cease-and-desist notices to dozens of online retailers for selling products marketed as “e-bikes” that aren’t street legal after a 17-year-old died in a crash on an illicit vehicle. In neighboring New Jersey, new regulations require e-bike riders to be at least 15 and obtain a license and vehicle registration.

    But do the measures hit the mark? Cycling advocates worry regulations might be too broad — demonizing low-powered e-bikes instead of speedier motos — while some parents question whether localized, piecemeal strategies are enough.

    Monica Stafford, a San Francisco-area mother whose teen daughter fractured her skull falling off an e-bike, said officials are “missing the mark” if they’re seeking to lay the blame solely on parents. The San Rafael resident said a unified, national set of rules is needed.

    “We’re in a total Wild West of laws,” Stafford said. “Being for common sense laws doesn’t mean that you’re against e-bikes, just like you can be for cars but not think that it’s safe to put keys in the hands of a 10-year-old.”

    E-bike injuries disproportionately impact children, experts say

    The two-wheeled machines have become nearly ubiquitous in recent years, from packs of teens zipping around California beach towns to the army of delivery drivers dodging traffic on the congested streets of Manhattan.

    Hospital visits for injuries from e-bike, e-scooter and other motorized rides have, as expected, soared as they have grown in popularity, study after study has shown. But researchers stress that the more concerning trends are the severity of the injuries and the fact that they’re especially pronounced among children.

    “The big takeaway is that people are generally more severely injured than they would be if they were on a traditional, pedal bicycle,” said Dr. John Austin, a doctor at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine who led a recently published statewide study. “Overall, these patients tend to be younger, they tend to be unhelmeted and, in turn, be more severely injured.”

    Recent youth deaths prompt officials to take action

    Most e-bikes are classified as nonmotorized vehicles akin to traditional bicycles under federal law, meaning riders don’t need a license, insurance or to even wear a helmet. Most states, though, have enacted additional requirements for higher powered machines, including minimum age and helmet requirements.

    In New York City, the death of the 17-year-old just steps from City Hall has spurred renewed debate about the bikes. Gabriel Nacato had been riding a vehicle advertised as an “e-bike” but wasn’t legal on city streets.

    Earlier this month, Mayor Zohran Mamdani warned more than 40 online retailers, including Amazon, Walmart and Target, that they could face fines of up to $2,000 for each sale of an e-bike that exceeds city regulations.

    New York state requires riders of all forms of e-bikes to be at least 16, and New York City imposes additional restrictions, including a 15 mph speed limit. California, in contrast, has no statewide minimum age for lower-powered bikes, though riders must be at least 16 to use e-bikes that can go up to 28 mph.

    New Jersey and Illinois are among the states that have enacted statewide regulations recently, and Massachusetts is weighing measures. Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in June vetoed a 10 mph speed limit and other e-bike regulations, saying the measures would lead to “enhanced surveillance” of citizens.

    Other jurisdictions seek to hold parents accountable

    In Southern California, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer says his office has more than two dozen open investigations against parents after launching a new unit focused on e-bike and e-motorcycle cases involving children.

    The office has already brought charges against four, including the mother of a 14-year-old boy accused of killing an elderly pedestrian while riding an e-motorcycle.

    That mother’s attorney declined to comment, but Mitchell Krems, the lawyer for another parent, dismissed the charges against his client as “absurd,” suggesting his client was being made a “scapegoat.”

    Richard Eyssallenne pleaded not guilty to child endangerment charges after prosecutors say he bought his 12-year-old son an e-motorcycle and helped him illegally modify it to make it go faster. The boy ran through a red light and was injured by a car.

    Other jurisdictions have also taken steps to hold parents liable. In Ohio, a Columbus suburb recently issued new e-bike rules making it clear that parents who knowingly allow their children to break the rules are subject to the same penalties as the rider.

    Cycling advocates blame electronic motorcycles

    PeopleForBikes, a national bicycle advocacy group that tracks state e-bike regulations, stressed that many of the problematic vehicles are actually electronic motorcycles with heavy frames, sturdy tires and sizable motors that are falsely marketed as e-bikes.

    Lower-powered and pedal-assisted e-bikes have been used safely for decades on U.S. streets and are key to reducing society’s reliance on cars, advocates argue.

    “Many of the dangerous behaviors people cite — running red lights, riding on sidewalks, not wearing helmets — are already illegal,” added Chloé Lauer, executive director of the San Diego County Bike Coalition. “We’d rather see those laws enforced than add new restrictions that limit mobility for kids who are riding responsibly.”

    Anya Dalal, a San Francisco-area high school senior who has been advocating for better safety measures, believes the problem requires multiple solutions, including setting age limits.

    “It should be a mix of parental accountability, accountability from the manufacturers and retailers and also education for kids to understand e-bike laws and road rules,” said the 17-year-old Hillsborough resident.

    Sharon Franke, a San Diego-area mother, agreed, though she said the first step starts at home, with parents doing their research, accompanying their children on rides and reinforcing safety once they set off on their own.

    “We want them to have fun, but we also want them to come back safe and we don’t want them to hurt anybody,” she said as her 15- and 12-year-old sons prepared to attend a safety training last weekend. “How do you balance all of it? It’s just overwhelming right now.”

  • Cheltenham made a deal with a developer to build a $4.5M pool complex. A lawsuit alleges they’re breaking bidding rules.

    Cheltenham made a deal with a developer to build a $4.5M pool complex. A lawsuit alleges they’re breaking bidding rules.

    Cheltenham Township is buying a pool complex from a private developer for up to $4.5 million, which a resident’s lawsuit alleges violates public bidding rules.

    The township commissioners approved a contract last month to lease 2.7 acres by Ashmead Road and Front Street to Melrose Pool LLC for $10 per year. Cheltenham agreed to pay up to $4.5 million for three public pools and a 5,000-square-foot building that Melrose Pool will build under the lease agreement.

    Matthew Areman, president of the seven-member Cheltenham commissioner board, vowed this week that the township would share additional details in the “coming weeks and months,” but a lawsuit filed July 22 in Montgomery County Court by Cheltenham resident Sam Thacker alleges the agreement is illegal. He claims it bypasses competitive public bidding laws that would normally apply to a town’s public pool, and wants a county judge to void the contract and issue an injunction to halt the project.

    A Montgomery County judge has given Cheltenham and Thacker until Aug. 21 to file their legal arguments, but time is short: Under the lease, the township has to decide on a final pool plan by the end of August.

    What the suit alleges

    Areman said last year the pool parcel is worth several million dollars, according to the commissioner board’s meeting minutes.

    If the township is leasing that land to the developer for just $10 per year, Thacker said, he believes the lease agreement also violates Cheltenham’s township code, which requires the use of “a system for obtaining independent appraisals … to assure that the township is obtaining adequate compensation” when skipping bidding on real estate leases. Thacker told The Inquirer he was unable to find a fiscal assessment for the pool project through Right-to-Know requests or a town spokesperson.

    Township officials declined to explain the legal reasoning behind the leaseback agreement with Melrose Pool.

    But in an FAQ posted this week, officials wrote Cheltenham had “received estimates from multiple pool consultants indicating that constructing a comparable standalone replacement pool would cost approximately $6-8 million.”

    Holly Fishel, the policy and research director for the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors, who did not comment on Cheltenham specifically, said she had heard of leaseback agreements with townships before but was not sure of the legal mechanisms. In situations where a township is doing construction work on land it owns, “you would need to be doing the bid,” Fishel said.

    But in this case, a private company is doing the work on land it has leased.

    “That can’t be right that you can just evade public bidding requirements by saying something is a lease when it’s clearly a public construction project,” Thacker said.

    Cheltenham is paying up to $4.5 million for three pools

    A preliminary plan for the Melrose plot includes three pools of different sizes, but the July 15 lease notes that the developer is to provide a final plan by this week.

    The township will then have two weeks to approve or deny the final pool plan.

    Upon completion of the work, Cheltenham would pay up to $4.5 million for the new pools, or pay an additional rent up to $382,500 per year until the township comes up with the $4.5 million.

    The two-week timeline for the township to approval a final pool plan is what led Thacker to file his lawsuit.

    “The contract is structured essentially to rush this forward as quickly as possible,” Thacker said. “We have no idea if $4.5 million is a good price.”

    The figure is cheaper than the $6.1 million estimated in 2023 to redo the Conklin Pool, which the Melrose pools would replace in 2027. The township has one other public pool, in Glenside.

    But other residents have questioned whether it is even possible to build three public pools for $4.5 million, given the Conklin pool estimate.

    Private development planned beside pool

    The pool is part of a larger redevelopment of the former Melrose Country Club — at 116 acres, one of the largest properties in Cheltenham — that includes new townhouses and commercial space.

    The lower price tag for the new Melrose pool comes in part from construction efficiencies, Cheltenham wrote this week, since the property will already require site preparation, grading, and utilities for the new buildings.

    The property’s developer, an LLC associated with BG Capital, gave the township the 2.7 acres for free last December to advance public welfare and for an unspecified “advantage” to the developer.

    BG Capital and the LLC’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment, but court filings Tuesday for Melrose Pool LLC argued that the bidding process Thacker cited under the state’s procurement code does not apply “to the landlord/tenant relationship” between Cheltenham and the LLC because the code applies only to state agencies.

    Melrose Country Club project changed

    Some residents, including Carl Freedman, have raised concerns at public meetings about the larger project. An earlier plan included both a pool and a community center, Freedman said, and would have allowed more much-needed commercial space.

    Cheltenham’s recently approved long-term township plan calls for bringing in more business to bolster the struggling tax base.

    Freedman, an architect who sits on the Cheltenham Planning Commission, said the panel no longer supports the project and is sending the township a letter to that effect.

    “The loss of the community center is what is making the retail unmanageable,” Freedman said, because the center would have drawn potential shoppers to the site. “This project has taken a left turn.”

    Chloe Mohr of the Montgomery County Planning Commission, which reviews local development projects and offers recommendations, said the county commission plans to release a new review of the revised plans late next week.

    This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.

  • Nolan’s women in The Odyssey may be truer to history than Homer

    Nolan’s women in The Odyssey may be truer to history than Homer

    Christopher Nolan’s new film The Odyssey has generated tremendous debate over, among other things, the casting of non-white actors, including Lupita Nyong’o, who portrays Helen. The argument that these choices don’t honor the original epic has been leveled at the portrayal of the women in the film more generally as well. As one scholar has written, Nolan’s Odyssean women “lack the sexual and intellectual complexity of Homer’s poem. Their desires, agency and choices are either not as vibrant or lost.”

    It is true that in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey women are relatively empowered. They are not often under the thumb of men, not threatened, endangered or cowed. And yet Nolan’s creative choices about women, while differing from the ancient texts, do come closer to capturing the actual historical truth of women’s lives in the ancient Greek world.

    Homer’s epics offer a variety of fascinating and often powerful female characters throughout: from Helen to Andromache, along with the goddesses who strut through Olympus and down to Troy and Ithaca, female characters often seem nearly as empowered as their husbands, lovers, and brothers. There is only the occasional hint at a power imbalance, such as when Zeus threatens to hurl Hera from heaven, or in cases where a woman has been enslaved, such as for Briseis, Achilles’ “prize” in the Iliad.

    One reason for this variety and complexity of female characters might be that, in the archaic period (c. 800 – 500 BCE) of ancient Greece, women were not viewed as particularly threatening. Within the aristocratic system, where powerful families ruled the roost, women had a significant and socially acceptable role to play, unlike in the more male-centered world of the classical Greek polis, in which the bonds of male citizenship were considered crucially important, and familial or female interference was understood as a risk to these bonds. Homer’s epics belong to the archaic period where women were not so systematically feared as they came to be later, and thus there was space for more interesting and complex characterizations.

    Yet Nolan takes a different approach than Homer, presenting his female characters as facing greater danger and with less agency. Most notably, he depicts the face of Helen (Nyong’o) as having been half mutilated. It is her husband Menelaus who exposes the terrible scarring to half her face, thrusting it toward Odysseus’ son Telemachus with an angry and mocking gesture that suggests he was the perpetrator of the violence that left her so disfigured.

    Second, he shows the witch Circe (Samantha Morton) as terrified of rape and violence, particularly at the hands of soldiers, a nod surely to Madeline Miller’s trenchant take on the character in her novel Circe. Third, he portrays Penelope (Anne Hathaway) as under pressure to remarry by a collective of unseen elders who are absent from Homer’s Odyssey. Finally, even Athena (Zendaya), who appears at Odysseus’ side through most of the film, is revealed to have been a young priestess of Athena—perhaps a shade or a representation of the hero’s guilt—who was the victim of savage slaughter in the sacking of Troy.

    In Homer’s Odyssey, by contrast, Helen appears in Sparta to be in fine form and unscathed by the war or its domestic aftermath; Circe is formidable, cunning, and in control, and not apparently afraid of any man; Penelope is not under the thumb of any Ithacan elders, though she does face a great deal of pressure from the suitors; and Athena is in no danger of butchery.

    So how are Nolan’s choices justified? He may have decided to follow the historical record in this regard, rather than be true to the literary text. Though the realities faced by ancient Greek women garner precious little space in the early written record, we can glean from Greek tragedy that some of the harsher realities portrayed in Nolan’s Odyssey would have rung true.

    From Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, first produced in 458 BCE, we have a description—practically a vision—by Clytemnestra of Troy’s downfall as savage and violent. We find, too, a portrait of Athena’s priestess Cassandra as victimized and destroyed by the god Apollo, only then to be enslaved (for sex, it is insinuated) by her master Agamemnon.

    Euripides’ play, Trojan Women, produced in 415 BCE, digs even deeper into the painful realities of women when their homeland has been destroyed. Here we have Cassandra driven mad by the rape she suffered at the hands of a Greek “hero.” We watch the baby of the widow Andromache ripped from her arms to be thrown from the Trojan ramparts. We learn that the old queen Hecuba will endure a life of servitude to none other but the wily Odysseus. In Euripides’ play Hecuba, she evades this fate by casting herself into the sea—but only after having two of her own children brutally murdered by her former allies and enemies.

    There are countless other examples to be found in Greek literature of women victimized at the hands of men and their brutal whims: Antigone is thrown into a tomb by her uncle so that she will die of starvation, a fate she too evades by suicide; Danae is cast into a trunk by her own father with her infant to die at sea, though she is eventually saved; Coronis, a woman in a lyric poem by Pindar, is burned alive for daring to sleep with a mortal man after she has been bedded by Apollo.

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    Although there is a certain degree of ghoulish spectacle in these tales, nothing from our historical record of the period suggests they are unrepresentative of women’s actual reality in ancient times. First, there is the extreme and unremarkable likelihood of widespread domestic violence, referred to jokingly in Old Comedy and in images from vases. Moreover, it was known and accepted practice that when a city-state was defeated in war—a widespread fact of life—its male population was eliminated, while its female population was systematically raped and enslaved, a reality that comes up frequently in the histories of both Herodotus and Thucydides. Indeed, the enslaving of a young woman, explicitly for the purpose of rape, is the inciting incident of both Homer’s Iliad and Herodotus’ Histories.

    And such forms of repression and violence have persisted long since ancient times. Rape and brutality against women have been common forms of violence for as long as there have been wars. Incidents of femicide within families (often accompanied by infanticide) also persist.

    It is truly fascinating to experience Homer’s strong and dazzling women; everyone should pick up a translation and do so. But in removing the agency from female characters that Homer gave them, Nolan reveals at greater depth their vulnerability and humanity in a way that is much closer to the historical truth of how women actually lived in the ancient Greek world.

    Sarah Nooter is the Edward Olson Professor of Classics and Theater and Performance Studies at the University of Chicago. She is the author, most recently, of Greek Poetry in the Age of Ephemerality.

    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.

  • Hurricane warning is issued for the Big Island of Hawaii as Tropical Storm Lala approaches

    Hurricane warning is issued for the Big Island of Hawaii as Tropical Storm Lala approaches

    HONOLULU — Tropical Storm Lala formed Thursday in the Pacific Ocean and is expected to become a hurricane while approaching the Big Island of Hawaii, where it could bring heavy rain and flooding this weekend, forecasters said.

    The storm is forecast to bring rain to the Hawaiian Islands starting late Friday as well as high winds and dangerous surf, the National Hurricane Center said.

    A hurricane warning is in effect for Hawaii County and a tropical storm watch is in place for Maui County including the islands of Maui, Lanai, Molokai and Kahoolawe, forecasters said.

    Lala was about 455 miles east-southeast of Hilo, Hawaii, and about 670 miles east-southeast of Honolulu with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph while moving west-northwest, the Miami-based center said.

    Lala is forecast to strengthen into a hurricane as it approaches the Big Island. It’s expected to be near the island Saturday. A hurricane warning means hurricane conditions are expected, and it is typically issued 36 hours before potential tropical-storm-force winds.

    The system could bring rainfall totals of 8 inches to a foot across Maui and the Big Island, with as much as 25 inches possible across the Big Island, forecasters said. That could produce life-threatening flooding and mudslides, the center said.

    Also in the Pacific, Tropical Storm Hernan formed Thursday but wasn’t threatening land and was weakening while moving south.

    Hernan was about 1,505 miles west-southwest of the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula of Mexico with maximum sustained winds around 40 mph, the center said.

    In the Atlantic Ocean, former Tropical Storm Cristobal weakened and degenerated into a post-tropical remnant low on Thursday, the center said. It was about 500 miles west of the Azores and didn’t threaten land.

  • American missionary kidnapped in Niger said to be released from captivity

    American missionary kidnapped in Niger said to be released from captivity

    Kevin Rideout, an American missionary pilot who was seized in Niger last fall, is in U.S. custody and on his way to the United States, two U.S. officials said on Thursday.

    The release of Rideout, a 50-year-old pilot who was kidnapped in October outside his home in Niger’s capital, Niamey, while working with an evangelical group, has been a priority for the White House and the military’s Africa Command since his abduction.

    Details of how and precisely where Rideout was released were unclear late Thursday, said the two officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. It was also unclear which terrorist or criminal group held Rideout at the end of his captivity, as he may have been moved recently, one of the two officials said.

    Rideout was in FBI custody and in good health based on proof-of-live images that were provided to U.S. officials in the past 48 hours, one of the officials said.

    The White House and Pentagon did not respond immediately to requests for comment late Thursday.

    Rideout had been working in Niger as a Christian missionary for 19 years. He was also a pilot for Serving in Mission, an organization based in Charlotte, North Carolina, that describes itself as a “global mission family serving in 70 countries” with a focus on outreach to communities with few Christians.

    In the past year, the U.S. military has been helping neighboring Nigeria with training and surveillance in its fight against jihadis. Nigeria also allowed the United States to fly surveillance missions from its bases, in part to try to locate Rideout.

    In December, the United States carried out missile strikes in northwestern Nigeria that President Donald Trump said targeted Islamic State group fighters. That operation was in coordination with the Nigerian military, the Pentagon said at the time.

    Thousands of Christians and Muslims have been killed in Nigeria in land disputes, sectarian violence and terrorism, which Christian activists and Republican lawmakers in the United States have viewed as the persecution of Christians. There is no clear evidence to show that Christians are attacked more frequently than any other religious group in Nigeria, analysts say.

    In May, U.S. and Nigerian forces killed Abu Bilal al-Minuki, one of the Islamic State group’s highest-ranking leaders, in an operation in Nigeria.

    U.S. officials said that al-Minuki oversaw the Islamic State group’s global operations, media, recruitment and finances. In that position, the officials said, al-Minuki was directly involved in plots like the kidnapping of Rideout.

    This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

  • How Washington learned to pressure Iran without war

    How Washington learned to pressure Iran without war

    Since Israel and the United States bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025, President Donald Trump has vacillated between war, sanctions, and diplomatic negotiations in order to thwart Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Trump opened his second term by signing National Security Presidential Memorandum 2, which imposed maximum pressure on Iran as multiple rounds of indirect talks continued. In February, the U.S. and Israel struck Iran again, this time killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and targeting nuclear and military infrastructure.

    No U.S. missiles over the decades had ever directly struck the Iranian mainland itself.

    A ceasefire followed within days, but subsequent fighting and failed attempts at diplomacy have made it impossible to sustain.

    It is unsurprising that the Trump administration is struggling to reach a deal on nuclear proliferation with Iran that matches the scope of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), more commonly called the Iran nuclear deal. President Barack Obama’s negotiators secured not just Iran’s cooperation but also Russia’s, China’s, and Europe’s to effectively and broadly secure U.N. Security Council authorization and policy. In return for JCPOA-related sanctions relief, Iran reduced its enriched-uranium stockpile by 98%, capped enrichment at 3.67%, and accepted expanded atomic monitoring.

    Over the past three and a half decades, American presidents have created a system to pressure Iran that works through relationships with everyone but Iran.

    Sanctions let presidents extract cooperation, concessions, and leverage on a variety of issues from other nations and corporations in the process. War extracts nothing from anyone but Iran.

    The system of selective pressure against Iran took shape during the 1990s. After the Cold War came to a close, the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations worked with Congress to forge a range of options short of war for handling Iran. American sanctions traditionally traced a simple logic: punish whoever sold Tehran weapons and the means to build them.

    The first measures focused on proliferation. In the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq War, Congress worried that Tehran was rebuilding its military by acquiring sophisticated weapons and dual-use technology abroad. The 1992 Iran-Iraq Arms Non-Proliferation Act, signed by President Bush, made it U.S. policy to oppose transfers that could contribute to Iranian acquisition of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.

    This law continued a convention of giving Washington a way to penalize weapons transfers without going to war, but its limits soon became apparent. Weapons sanctions could harm suppliers after the transfer, but they did not necessarily deprive Tehran of the money to purchase the technology or expertise in the first place.

    By 1996, Congress went after ordinary trade. Congress and President Clinton increasingly viewed Iran’s energy sector as the financial bedrock that allowed Tehran to fund the actions Washington sought to deter. Rather than solely punish whoever supplied Iran with weapons, Congress sought to limit the revenue and investment.

    The Iran and Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) threatened any foreign company with complete exclusion from American credit, export licenses, and government contracts if it invested more than $40 million in Iran’s oil and gas sector — regardless of whether the company did anything weapons-related.

    For the first time, ordinary commerce with Iran became a foreign relations trigger with the United States. The leverage was not a naval blockade, but access to the American economy itself.

    The Russian-American relationship led to the testing and development of these new mechanisms. Washington and Moscow had three main issues over Iran: nuclear reactor technology and training, a multibillion-dollar natural gas field, and missiles.

    The two governments did not have identical agendas. Americans wanted to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapon expertise and missile technology, while also maintaining its relationship with Russia. Russians wanted to preserve valuable commercial and strategic ties with Tehran, including nuclear and energy contracts, without sacrificing its relationship with the United States.

    They both aligned on a functional U.S.-Russian relationship with some limits on proliferation, but differed sharply over how much Russian cooperation with Iran was acceptable.

    Nuclear reactors, gas, and missiles all received different political treatments. Classic diplomatic negotiations led to Russian President Boris Yeltsin agreeing to remove the uranium enrichment feature from Russia’s contract, even though the Bushehr reactor’s sale was legal under international law. As a light-water plant under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards, it fell under the long-standing international nonproliferation treaty, leaving the United States unable to block the sale but still able to negotiate parts.

    When Russia’s state-owned natural gas company Gazprom, alongside other international companies, sought a contract to develop the South Pars gas field, the largest natural gas field in the world, it put ILSA to its first real test. The $2 billion project involved several state-owned energy companies: France’s Total, Russia’s Gazprom, and Malaysia’s Petronas.

    In response, Clinton issued a waiver for the international gas companies investing in Iranian energy. The administration pointed specifically to increased cooperation from the European Union on counterterrorism and nonproliferation to issue the waiver.

    While the United States never formally used ILSA to sanction a company during this period, the atmosphere could then help the Clinton administration to negotiate with Russia on missile concessions.

    Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott captured the strategy in a sentence: “In a sense we are linking the two [missiles and energy], and in another sense we are not.” The vagueness was deliberate and useful for the differences in agendas on both sides.

    Talbott pressed Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov to blacklist Sanam, the Iranian missile entity attempting to acquire the technology, and the Russians did. Russia enacted new laws to pursue weapons and nuclear proliferation crimes, while increasing arrests and coordination between the FBI and Russia’s Federal Security Service. Clinton’s veto and the related tools gave American negotiators something to offer and Russia something to gain.

    These policies helped the American-Russian relationship endure. Every waiver, every delay, every selectively enforced sanction since 1992 had been less a negotiation with Iran than a negotiation with someone else about Iran.

    Waiving petroleum sanctions became the unspoken rule for the next 12 years. Until 2010, no American administration ever sanctioned a foreign company for investing in Iran’s energy sector.

    The ILSA was renamed the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) and expanded under the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act in 2010 (CISADA); the Iran Freedom and Counter-Proliferation Act of 2012 (IFCA) toughened the consequences even more. These later acts added stricter enforcement measures and sanctioned major non-Western oil providers from China, Belarus, and Venezuela, while a special rule exempted allied companies in exchange for promises to halt investments.

    By 2015, Washington could bargain with a sanctions system far broader than the ILSA. The JCPOA, or the Iran nuclear deal, either waived portions or removed designated Iranian institutions from the ISA, CISADA, and IFCA. The relief was substantial and conditional: Foreign firms and nations could again partake in specified oil, banking, shipping, and investment transactions with Iran while the underlying American statutes remained available if the bargain collapsed.

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    Meanwhile, sanctions tied to terrorism, human rights abuses, and ballistic missiles continued.

    Discretion applied to war, as well. Bush considered strikes and held back for more nuclear enrichment proof. Obama rejected the military option as a matter of philosophy by arguing that war would buy less than diplomacy and cost the international coalition to enforce sanctions. Trump himself, in his first term, ordered a strike and called it off 10 minutes before execution, and Joe Biden sought to de-escalate. These four administrations had varying rationales and scenarios, but all were aligned in keeping force as a reserve option.

    In his second term, Trump had access to the same policy options, including specific sanctions on industry sectors, supply-chain options laws, and relational pressure.

    The lesson? A mix of pressure and exemption — not blanket coercion — worked. It allowed American presidents to lean hard on some part of a foreign nation’s relationship with Iran while tolerating others. Even the JCPOA, for all the criticism it drew, followed this strategy: it converted decades of accumulated third-party pressure into a deal. War trades a system built on the compliance of others for a strike that compels nothing from anyone but Iran itself.

    Holly Harris is a doctoral candidate in history at Southern Methodist University, where she studies the collapse of the post-Cold War security relationship between the United States and Russia.

    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.