Abigail Tuttle O’Keeffe, 55, the former owner of Narrow Way Farm, entered guilty pleas to aggravated cruelty to animals, neglect of animals, and related crimes late last month. She was spared from prison by entering a diversionary program, prosecutors said Monday. O’Keeffe must attend substance-abuse and mental-health counseling, and is barred from owning animals.
Her attorney, Josh Buchanan, declined to comment Monday.
In August 2024, the Bucks County SPCA served a search warrant on O’Keeffe’s property after a farm manager notified the agency that a sheep had been found dead, according to the affidavit of probable cause for her arrest.
Abigail Tuttle O’Keeffe was extradited to Bucks County in September 2025 by the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force. In this photo provided by the U.S. Marshals Service, her face was obscured.U.S. Marshals Service
Officers rescued more than 100 pigs, goats, and sheep, many suffering from infections, parasites, and other chronic medical conditions. One severely emaciated goat died while investigators were searching the property. Another one was so malnourished and riddled with parasites that it had to be euthanized after weeks of intensive care, the affidavit said.
Volunteers at Narrow Way who spoke with The Inquirer in 2024 said O’Keeffe, who holds a doctorate in developmental psychology, did not have the skills to match her ambitions of running a working farm.
Most of O’Keeffe’s workforce also had little to no farm experience, and the 36-acre property was in disarray, to the detriment of the livestock she kept there, according to some of those volunteers.
In one incident, workers botched the dehorning of a calf, leaving the animal with permanent nerve damage.
Word of the conditions at Narrow Way spread quickly: The owner of a nearby farm said O’Keeffe was not “a real, active farmer,” shied away from the work that required of her, and ran the operation like a cult, comparing her farmhands to “disciples.”
But when local investigators came to the farm, O’Keeffe was thousands of miles away. Prosecutors said she moved to Belize, where she was arrested in April 2025 on gun charges.
U.S. Marshals extradited her to Bucks County months later.
Staff Writer Jesse Bunch contributed to this article.
The meeting in the Oval Office between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a diplomatic car crash.
“Your country is in big trouble. You’re not winning,” Trump said, dressing down Zelenskyy in front of the world’s media. “You don’t have the cards.”
The blowup in February 2025, three years into the war, was more than just a heated public exchange: The Ukrainian delegation was asked to leave the White House, and Washington briefly suspended intelligence sharing with Kyiv. In the ensuing months, as Russia made slow but steady gains on the battlefield, Trump warmly welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska and seemed ready to push Ukraine into an unfavorable peace deal, including forcing it to give up territory.
But even as Zelenskyy sat next to Trump, his forces were preparing an operation that would reveal Ukraine’s ability and ambition to take the war to Russia: Months later, drones smuggled into the country attacked Russian bombers, destroying or damaging planes worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Since then, Kyiv has ramped up a campaign of longer-range strikes inside Russia and in areas Moscow has seized, increased production of weapons, targeted Russian air defenses, and hit oil infrastructure and the warehouses of a major retailer in a bid to ensure ordinary Russians feel the impact of the conflict.
In an embarrassment to Putin, Ukrainian drone strikes sent thick plumes of smoke billowing over St. Petersburg shortly before the opening of an international economic forum in June. Concern over Ukraine’s attacks led Russian authorities to scale down the May 9 military parade commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany. Strikes on oil refineries have caused a summer fuel crisis.
By the time Trump and Zelenskyy met at a NATO summit in July, the American president said the Ukrainian leader had “been very effective” in the war. “We’ve actually developed a good relationship,” Trump added.
In the first six months of the year, 1,396 civilians were killed in Ukraine, according to the U.N. Meanwhile, the world body said Russian authorities reported 250 civilians killed in the same period. On Monday, a strike that Ukraine said hit an oil refinery in Russia killed 13 people, according to local officials.
And while Ukraine’s effort appears to have shifted the narrative about the war in Washington, it’s still not clear if it will be able to push Putin toward the negotiating table.
Ukraine’s strikes are aimed at undermining the idea that Russia can afford to “just let this roll,” said Jack Watling, a senior research fellow at the London-based RUSI think tank.
The question of whether it will succeed depends on how much pain Ukraine can exact. “Logically, above a certain threshold, it does work but whether they can reach that threshold is an interesting question” — and one that depends at least partly on factors outside Kyiv’s control, like continued European financial support, he noted.
Ukraine brings the war to Russia
While most of Ukraine’s strikes have a range of less than 200 kilometers (125 miles), its longer-range attacks have increased dramatically this year. It launched three times as many of those strikes in July as it did in January, according to data from ACLED, an independent conflict monitor. Repeatedly hitting deep into Russia has forced its military to stretch air defenses over a larger area.
Many of its strikes have focused on four key categories of targets, according to an Associated Press analysis of hundreds of Ukrainian attacks this year — compiled from statements by Russian officials and state media and the Ukrainian military.
As the Iran war pushed up energy prices, leading the U.S. to ease sanctions on Russian oil, Kyiv ramped up strikes on oil infrastructure to deny the Kremlin revenue from fuel exports and force shortages on ordinary Russians. It is also striking defense manufacturing to damage Russia’s long-term ability to produce weapons, targeting air defenses to clear a path for its own arms, and hitting retail warehouses to bring the effects to ordinary Russians.
— As part of the campaign against oil infrastructure, Kyiv said it hit Russia’s largest oil refinery, more than 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) from Ukraine.
— Kyiv has also targeted defense manufacturing centers. It hit a factory making navigation systems multiple times, including with its own Flamingo missile.
— In July and August, Ukraine struck Wildberries warehouses. Kyiv said the company helps supply the Russian military. Moscow denies that.
— Many of Ukraine’s strikes on Russian air defenses and radar are around Russian-held Crimea and are often carried out with drones.
Maj. Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, the commander leading Ukraine’s drone war, told the AP its strikes in Crimea are also aimed at rendering the peninsula unusable as a staging ground for Russian forces.
Starlink gives Ukraine an advantage — for now
It’s not always clear if Ukraine’s attacks are effective — and some may have resulted in minimal or no damage. In May and June, Ukraine said it hit several satellite, reconnaissance or signals intelligence facilities in Russia, but satellite images analyzed by AP did not show major damage.
Still, Ukraine has one advantage that can help it strip back Russian air defenses and make its drone strikes more precise.
It has access to Elon Musk’s satellite communications service Starlink — which means its operators can control drones in real time in Russian-held Ukrainian territory. Russia has been blocked from using Starlink.
But Russia is also building its own version of Starlink, and is installing jamming systems that hamper Starlink connectivity, Brovdi said.
Ukraine is investing heavily in weapons production
Even before the Oval Office meeting, Ukraine scrambled to invest in new weapons — but that moment was “a real wake-up call,” said a European military official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the front-line situation in detail. It became clear that U.S. support could be stopped “from one day to the next.”
Ukraine doubled down on production, churning out a growing array of weapons in larger numbers and shortening traditional research and production cycles from decades to years or even months.
Even so, Ukraine is still not able to produce as many missiles as it needs. It also took Ukraine time to make systems that could target facilities precisely enough that Kyiv felt comfortable using them to strike deep into Russia, Watling said.
And while Ukraine has begun to resolve navigational issues with its missiles, such as the Flamingo, those weapons are still not as accurate — or as stealthy — as their Western analogues. That often means hundreds of drones must be fired to overwhelm Russian air defenses to allow a missile to get through.
It’s an expensive and time-consuming way to wage war since only 5% to 9% of what Ukraine fires gets past Russian air defenses, according to Watling.
But, although Russia’s weapons are more powerful, Zelenskyy suggested at the NATO summit that Putin is “losing the initiative” in the war as Ukraine has moved the fight from the stalled battlefield to the sky.
Sitting next to Trump at the summit, the Ukrainian leader even cracked a joke, demurring when Trump asked him if he would accept Moscow as a venue for peace talks, as Putin has suggested.
“There are a lot of Ukrainian drones in the air,” Zelenskyy said. ”It would be dangerous.”
It’s possibly the most important job of any Israeli prime minister: maintain good relations with the United States while pushing back on demands seen as undermining Israel’s security.
On Sunday, Netanyahu rejected Trump’s latest plan to advance the stalled ceasefire in Gaza, saying Israel will not withdraw from any of the roughly 60% of the territory it controls until Hamas has been completely disarmed — something the militant group controlling the other 40% has long resisted.
Netanyahu risks angering Trump, who he has repeatedly said is the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House. But even a hint of compromise with Hamas could be fatal for Netanyahu’s reelection in a country deeply traumatized by the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that happened on his watch.
Trump, meanwhile, is under pressure to deliver on his promise of being a global peacemaker as talks with Iran stall and gas prices stay elevated ahead of U.S. congressional elections in November.
Netanyahu: No progress on Gaza ceasefire until Hamas disarms
The Gaza plan announced by Trump last month grew out of his October ceasefire deal, which ended major Israeli military operations there and brought about the release of all remaining hostages but has otherwise largely stalled.
Under the latest agreement, Hamas would gradually give up its weapons while Israeli forces halt their attacks and begin withdrawing from Gaza. Hamas accepted the deal, even as the group linked the surrender of its heaviest weapons to the creation of a Palestinian state, something Israel’s current government and most of its political class adamantly reject.
Netanyahu rejected the plan, saying Israel would not retreat from any of its positions in Gaza until Hamas has been completely disarmed. That would leave other elements of the ceasefire, including the deployment of international forces and any reconstruction of the devastated territory, on hold.
At the same time, the Israeli military seems to have eased off on its strikes on Gaza that have killed over 1,250 people since the ceasefire came into effect, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Israeli media reported that the authority for carrying out strikes has been limited to the army’s chief of staff, apparently in a quiet gesture toward Trump’s ceasefire efforts. The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment.
“We are focused on actions, not rhetoric or politics,” an official with the Board of Peace, the Trump-led entity overseeing the ceasefire, told the Associated Press. “There have been some results on the ground in the last few days,” the official added, including “restraint from strikes” and new Israeli military procedures.
“There is constructive cooperation behind the scenes and our conversations continue,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the ongoing discussions.
Oct. 7 looms over a tough campaign for reelection
In his election campaign, Netanyahu has boasted of Israel’s military achievements in the wars that followed the Oct. 7 attack. Israeli forces have seized territory in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, and launched two major air wars against Iran and its disputed nuclear program.
But the “total victory” Netanyahu promised in Gaza has yet to materialize. Many Israelis blame him for the security failures that led to the initial attack, as well as previous attempts to contain Hamas that at times included allowing Qatar to deliver suitcases filled with cash to Gaza.
Netanyahu’s far-right allies, who will likely be crucial to his Likud party’s ability to form a government after the elections, have welcomed his rejection of the Trump plan.
Trump “wants to see real steps taken toward rehabilitating Gaza, while Netanyahu’s two right-wing partners and the Likud’s faltering election campaign is keeping him from yielding even a millimeter,” wrote Jonathan Lis, the diplomatic correspondent for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.
Ghaith al-Omari, a former Palestinian negotiator who is now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that even if the White House ignores Netanyahu’s rejection of the plan, Trump is still stuck unless he can persuade the Israeli leader to change course.
Hamas is meanwhile winning the “blame game” by appearing to be the more reasonable of the two sides, he said.
Trump’s standing in Israel has fallen
Trump was wildly popular in Israel during his first term, when he lent unprecedented support to Israel’s claims to territory seized in war, including by moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.
The trend continued in his second term, as he backed Israel’s actions in Gaza and joined it in bombing Iran. The alliance was particularly beneficial to Netanyahu, whose political future remained uncertain. The prime minister relied on Trump to improve his image at home.
But the allies’ interests diverged last spring, as Israel pressed for further strikes on Iran and against Hezbollah in Lebanon, while Trump looked to wind down the regional conflict in order to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to ease pressure on the world economy.
Since then, Trump has said that he would “likely” endorse Netanyahu ahead of the Israeli election but has not yet given his full backing. And while a formal endorsement from a U.S. president still carries weight in Israel, the rift between the two leaders suggests it could also complicate Netanyahu’s campaign.
“A few months ago, a significant majority of Israelis assumed that when President Trump is making decisions, he’s taking Israeli security interests into account. This is no longer the case,” said Yohanan Plesner, head of the Israel Democracy Institute, a think tank in Jerusalem.
The closeness between Netanyahu and Trump “used to be an asset,” he said, but not anymore.
Netanyahu has defied past U.S. presidents
Netanyahu has a long history of defying U.S. presidents, particularly Democratic ones. During his first term, in the late 1990s, he resisted efforts by President Bill Clinton to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians. He clashed publicly with President Barack Obama over the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
But that approach carries greater risks now, as Israel’s military campaigns have left it increasingly isolated diplomatically and upended its historic support among Democratic voters in the U.S., leaving Trump as one of Israel’s few strong allies.
Netanyahu’s dependence on Trump is “tremendous,” Plesner said, and voters will punish him if he is seen as mismanaging the key relationship.
“If Trump will insist on carrying on, I think Netanyahu will have no choice but to tag along rather than take on the president, since he’s left Israel with very few diplomatic cards to maneuver.”
DAMASCUS, Syria — A Syrian court sentenced ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad along with his younger brother to death in absentia on Tuesday for crimes against humanity and war crimes during Syria’s 14-year conflict that left about half a million people dead.
The sentences at the Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus are the first against Assad or members of his inner circle since the Assad family’s five decades in power came to an end 20 months ago.
“Bashar Assad used state agencies to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity,” said judge Fakhareddine al-Aryan during a court session that was aired live on state TV.
Also sentenced to death in the same case was Assad’s maternal cousin Atef Najib, who was convicted of overseeing a crackdown in the southern province of Daraa that led to the uprising and later the civil war.
Amid tight security, Najib stood inside a cage wearing a prisoner’s uniform as the judge read the sentence. A crowd of people gathered outside the courthouse in central Damascus to hear the verdict.
Assad and his brother Maher fled to Russia after the government’s fall in December 2024 and received political asylum. Syria’s new rulers have asked Russia to hand the Assads over.
Najib, who was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in April 2011, was later detained and is one of the highest-ranking officials to be put on trial.
Najib is a former Syrian army brigadier general who was head of the Political Security Branch in southern Syria’s Daraa province under Assad in 2011.
During his tenure, more than a dozen teenagers who scrawled anti-government graffiti on a school wall in Daraa were arrested and tortured. The case became a catalyst for mass protests against the repressive policies of Assad’s security forces.
The protests were met by a brutal government crackdown and spiraled into a 14-year civil war that ended with Assad’s ouster in a lightning rebel offensive.
Maher Assad was a former commander of the Syrian military’s 4th Armored Division — which Syrian opposition activists have accused of killings, torture, extortion and drug trafficking, in addition to running its own detention centers.
Two Republican senators on Monday released the first in a trove of text messages from Anthony S. Fauci’s former government cell phone, including a discussion with health officials about whether the COVID vaccine posed a risk for pregnant women.
The messages were released by Sens. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) and Rand Paul (R., Ky.), who lead panels investigating Fauci, the longtime infectious-disease scientist who left government at the end of 2022 after becoming a highly visible official helping lead the pandemic response.
The texts appear to show an exchange between Fauci and top health officials in January 2021 related to the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine for pregnant women.
In one message, according to screenshots the senators released, Fauci wrote: “Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose. this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester.”
“Definitely a good point, esp after dose two,” then-Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky responded.
In a news release, the senators pointed to several subsequent public statements from Fauci and other administration officials in which they said the benefits of pregnant women getting vaccinated appeared to outweigh the risks.
In February 2021, for instance, Fauci said the Food and Drug Administration has “found, thus far — and we’ve got to be careful — but thus far, no red flags about that, about pregnant women.”
Some of the statements cited by Johnson and Paul occurred after the CDC officially recommended pregnant women get the vaccine in August 2021, citing an agency analysis that found no increase in miscarriage in pregnant women.
In a statement, Johnson said the release of the texts “could have an immediate impact on public health.” He added that “you don’t wait a day, months, or years, to inform the public of potential dangers.”
The CDC states that with more than a million pregnant women vaccinated globally, studies have not shown increased risk for complications like miscarriage, preterm delivery, and more. Health officials have said such past exchanges reflect the evolving nature of the science and debate at the time.
Fauci declined to comment on the released messages. Walensky and Vivek H. Murthy, at the time a member of President Joe Biden’s COVID advisory board who was also included in the texts, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Pregnant women are historically excluded from clinical trials, including those for the coronavirus vaccine. But it became clear that contracting the virus during pregnancy could be associated with increased risk of preterm birth and other adverse outcomes, and so health officials concluded that the benefits of vaccination appeared to outweigh the risks, according to a former public health official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly.
The senators said the texts are among more than 34,000 recovered from a copy of Fauci’s former iPhone. It also contains 522 voicemails, they said. The phone was obtained from the Department of Health and Human Services, now led by fellow Fauci critics, including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“Now that we have the documents and Fauci’s government-issued phone, my investigation has only just begun,” Johnson, the chairperson of the Senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations, wrote Monday on social media.
As part of Paul’s investigation of Fauci, HHS also turned over years of Fauci’s personal diary entries that were collected from government servers.
Last week, a Senate committee that Paul chairs voted along party lines to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress after he declined to answer its questions and accused Paul of trying to wrongly entrap him. The Justice Department, which is not obligated to prosecute Fauci, said it received Paul’s letter referring the matter but did not confirm whether it planned to pursue any criminal charges.
In April 2021, a New England Journal of Medicine article written by CDC officials stated that preliminary findings “did not show obvious safety signals” among pregnant women who received the vaccines — meaning there wasn’t an unusual number of adverse events — but added that more follow-up was needed.
“Our societies [American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine] were strongly recommending and advocating for pregnant women to have access to COVID vaccines in the earliest stages of the pandemic because those of us who were dealing withCOVID in pregnancy were seeing exceptionally high rates of complications,” said Neil S. Silverman, a member of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine’s Infectious Disease and Emerging Threats Committee and maternal-fetal medicine faculty at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
Fauci has faced numerous legal threats from Republicans, including Paul and Johnson, who accuse him of covering up his agency’s funding of risky coronavirus research in Wuhan, China, before the virus was first detected there. Fauci has dismissed those claims as “preposterous.”
Kennedy, his allies, and some Republicans in Congress have expressed concerns about vaccine safety.
Kennedy, the founder of a prominent anti-vaccine group, has been an outspoken critic of mRNA-based shots, and once called the coronavirus shots “the deadliest vaccine ever made.” Medical experts say COVID-19 vaccines are effective at protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying.
Last year, Kennedy sought to no longer recommend the coronavirus vaccine for healthy pregnant women. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said it was “concerned” and “extremely disappointed” by the move, and the medical society has continued to recommend the shot for pregnant women.
On Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that called for cutting the number of recommended childhood vaccines, spacing out those shots and making other changes that would upend decades of federal guidance on vaccines for children.
Speaking in the Oval Office, the president reiterated his long-held claim that childhood vaccines have led to a rise in U.S. autism cases, an idea that outside researchers have largely debunked.
Over the past few weeks, President Donald Trump has made it clear that he will not take Supreme Court decisions as the final word on some of his most cherished priorities.
The president has introduced new tariffs, renewed efforts to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, and issued new executive orders to limit birthright citizenship. While experts said the moves do not signal outright defiance of the high court, they nonetheless push the limits of the rulings that Trump lost earlier this summer.
“Without question, President Trump is challenging the bounds of the court’s opinions,” particularly regarding Cook’s firing and birthright citizenship, said Richard Lazarus, a law professor at Harvard University.
The high court’s opinion affirming that nearly everyone born in the United States is a citizen does not allow Trump to create exceptions like some set out in his recent executive orders, Lazarus said. Those orders say children are ineligible for birthright citizenship if born to “alien enemies,” foreign terrorists, foreign lobbyists, or people who fraudulently request tourist visas in order to give birth in the U.S.
In signing the orders, Trump referred to the Supreme Court decision on birthright citizenship, saying, “We’re ending it a different way.”
The Trump administration has always followed court orders, said White House spokesperson Lauren Bis. “All actions taken by the president since the recent Supreme Court rulings are consistent with the holdings and analysis set forth by the court,” she said.
As for Cook, the justices ruled that she deserved notice and a chance to respond before being fired, and Trump’s latest move seeks to provide that. The White House sent a letter to Cook last week renewing the threat to fire her, giving her 21 days to respond, and directing her to submit any response to the White House by Aug. 26.
“The Supreme Court’s ruling on the Cook case required notice and an opportunity for a hearing in considering whether the president should take certain adverse employment actions,” Bis added. “The president’s notice sent to Fed. Governor Cook offers exactly that within the precise structure enunciated by the Court.”
Still, Trump’s underlying rationale for dismissing Cook — that she engaged in mortgage fraud — remains unproved, and she has not been charged. While the renewed push to fire her does not “repudiate” the Supreme Court’s opinion, Lazarus said, it “certainly confronts it by challenging its limits.”
Trump is not the first president to look for ways around adverse Supreme Court rulings. Most recently, when President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive student loan debt was struck down by the Supreme Court, Biden within hours announced a separate plan to forgive the debt.
Two decades earlier, President George W. Bush wrestled with the court over procedures for detainees seeking freedom from the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
But such instances appear to be historical exceptions rather than the rule, said David Super, a professor at Georgetown Law.
“Most presidents treated Supreme Court rulings as dispositive of the issues involved rather than as technical documents to be evaded,” Super said.
That includes an earlier version of Trump. During his first term, the president was more willing to accept losses at the Supreme Court and move on, Super said. He cited rulings against Trump’s efforts to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and to add a question on citizenship status to the 2020 Census.
“The second-term President Trump appears to have much less regard for the other branches of the federal government than the first-term one did,” Super said.
Similarly, the Trump administration last month imposed new tariffs on U.S. imports from 60 economies under an authority different from the one the Supreme Court rejected in February. The new duties, imposed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, purport to penalize countries that fail to curb imports produced by forced labor.
That does not directly go against the Supreme Court’s decision. But critics call the forced-labor rationale a pretext for reimposing the sweeping tariffs struck down by the court, and small businesses have sued to block them for that reason.
Some experts say Trump, far from challenging the Supreme Court, is working within the bounds of the justices’ rulings.
“The court ruled against Trump in these three big cases, and all of them sort of left openings to do something else — and in all three cases he did something else,” said Josh Blackman, a law professor at South Texas College of Law at Houston.
“Trump is more aggressive because he views rulings as political,” Blackman added. “He’s willing to push back, especially with conservative judges, three of whom he appointed.”
Still, Trump has added to the sense that he is challenging the court by using heated rhetoric against it.
After the court overturned his tariff regime in February, the president called the conservative justices who ruled against him “fools and lapdogs.” Last week, when Trump introduced his new birthright measure, he called the court’s decision “a bad decision, very unfair decision,” saying the “country suffers because of it.”
President Barack Obama criticized the court in his 2010 State of the Union address, though he did so in a more genteel manner. “With all due deference to the separation of powers,” Obama said in criticizing the Citizens United decision (which lifted limits on independent political expenditures by corporations and unions), the court has “reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests.”
The Trump administration has also had a tense relationship with the federal judiciary more broadly.
A Washington Post analysis last year found that Trump and his appointees were accused of flouting the courts in more than a third of the 160-plus lawsuits against the administration in which a judge had issued a substantive ruling. The administration has also sparred with the judiciary over Trump’s picks to lead federal prosecutor’s offices.
But Mike Fragoso, a former chief counsel to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), said Trump’s responses to the Supreme Court’s most recent decisions do not appear out of the norm.
Instead, particularly with regard to the new birthright order, Trump appears to be adopting the longtime conservative view that a Supreme Court decision binds the president only to the specific case at issue, not necessarily to its broader reasoning, he said.
Fragoso, now an attorney at Torridon Law, pointed to President Abraham Lincoln’s rejection of the Supreme Court’s logic in its infamous 1857 decision Dred Scott v. Sandford, which held that African Americans were not citizens.
“On birthright, it’s a question testing the limits of what the Supreme Court said” while not being inconsistent with the opinion, Fragoso said, adding that Trump’s actions could be described as “Lincolnian.”
P.S. Our journalists want to solve the local mysteries that keep you up at night. Submit any questions you might have about the region to Curious Greater Abington, and we’ll see if we can dig up some answers in a future story.
Cheltenham Township’s new comprehensive plan lays out challenges and recommendations for homes, businesses, transportation, community services, and historical assets over the next 10 to 15 years.
Among the dilemmas facing the township is navigating the need for more tax revenue while avoiding too big a boom of new residents. That’s because many of the large estates in Cheltenham belong to non-property-tax-paying institutions.
The Cheltenham School District remains embroiled in controversy as families in the township allege safety issues aren’t confined to the high school. Here’s the latest:
Superintendent Brian Scriven resigned last week after two violent assaults in the high school locker room led to charges against four football coaches and six players. But Cheltenham High School football families repeatedly warned against the former head coach’s hiring because of allegations that he allowed bullying to fester in his prior coaching position at Abington Senior High School.
Cheltenham Elementary parents now say they’ve been raising concerns to administrators since last October over multiple alleged physical or sexual incidents affecting students. The district has not commented on the status of any other administrators. Its school board meets tonight.
Lynnewood Hall, the 110-room estate in Elkins Park thought to be the second-largest surviving Gilded Age mansion in the country, will soon welcome the public for the first time in 80 years for a floral exhibition inspired by HBO’s The Gilded Age, NBC10 reports.
Elkins Park resident John Matthews sets out today on a five-day, 425-plus-mile fundraising bike ride to benefit Ride Hard Breathe Easy, a nonprofit he founded after losing his mother, Kathleen, to lung cancer, Glenside Local reports.
A mid-century abode designed by Carlos Joseph Alvaré, a protégé of esteemed 20th-century architect Louis Kahn, recently sold for more than $1 million in Rydal. It features 10-foot glass walls, exposed Douglas fir beams, and a Japanese-inspired garden complete with a koi pond, according to Dwell.
🏫 Schools briefing
In the wake of the fallout from the Cheltenham locker room assaults, Inquirer columnist Mike Sielski unpacks the incidents through the lens that they are yet another example of failed adult leadership in youth and high school sports.
University of Pennsylvania education professor Jonathan Zimmerman shares a perspective on the prevalence of hazing at institutions across the U.S. over the years.
Valencia Peterson, who has more than a decade of experience working in violence prevention through youth sports, pens an op-ed about how the Cheltenham incidents should prompt schools and athletic organizations nationwide to ask, “Could this happen here?”
🍽️ On our plate
Mazaj, a Yemeni- and Saudi-inspired cafe slinging coffee, pastries, and za’atar-topped flatbreads and pizzas, recently opened in Willow Grove. It plans to debut a drive-through later this month.
🎳 Things to do
📚 Silent Book Club: At this dream event for introverts seeking new pals, get comfy with a good book and read alongside your neighbors. ⏰ Friday, Aug. 14, 4-6 p.m. 💵 Free 📍 Jenkintown Library
🎞️ Movie Under the Moon: Take a trip back to good ‘ol 1993 with an outdoor viewing of The Sandlot projected on the big screen. ⏰ Friday, Aug. 14; movie starts at dusk 💵 Free 📍 Conway Field, Abington
🎲 Game Night: Show off your skills or learn to play a variety of board and card games. ⏰ Monday, Aug. 17 at 6:30 p.m. 💵 Free 📍 Elkins Park Free Library
Tucked away on a tree-lined street in Cheltenham, this stone-and-brick house comes complete with a fireplace, partially finished basement, and details such as exposed beams and a bay window. It has five bedrooms and four bathrooms, including a private first-floor suite with a full bathroom and separate entrance.
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Hours before Mohamed Coulibaly was found dead in his Gloucester County home, one of his alleged victims said, the 23-year-old entrepreneur had been desperately seeking a $75,000 loan.
A recent Barron’s investigation alleged Coulibaly defrauded three former NFL players out of $1 million in an e-commerce scheme involving fake Shopify stores. Now others who invested in the venture or lent Coulibaly money were blowing up his phone. They wanted to know if Jalen Carter and several former members of the Eagles, including Nakobe Dean and Terrell Edmunds, were even real clients, a claim Coulibaly made on promotional materials.
Above all, these people wanted their money back.
The morning of his death, July 31, Coulibaly solicited money from a New York man, who agreed to speak with The Inquirer on the condition of anonymity to protect his family’s privacy. He is one of at least 10 people, including the three former NFL players, alleging Coulibaly scammed them out of more than $5 million through phony investments over the last year.
Coulibaly, who lived in Mullica Hill, a section of Harrison Township, promised to send a Lamborghini, two gold Rolexes, and a signed Lionel Messi cleat as collateral for what was to be a weeklong loan.
Coulibaly still owed the man $1 million for a bridge loan due in March. Yet he insisted the additional loan somehow would make it possible to return the initial money owed. His alleged victim said he figured he could only gain from the arrangement — if the collateral proved to be real.
But a driver — not in a Lamborghini — arrived at his doorstep with two fake watches, an unauthenticated signed cleat, along with an insurance card and a bill of sale for the promised luxe car, according to the man.
The man called off the loan.
“[Coulibaly] then started to cry hysterical on the phone,” the victim said. “He said, ‘I’ve lost it all, please help me here, please help me here.’”
Coulibaly was found dead later that day.
Mohamed Coulibaly attends Milan Fashion Week on Jan. 19 in Milan, Italy.Dave Benett/Getty Images
The Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office is leading the investigation into Coulibaly’s death and declined to comment. No charges have been filed in connection to the alleged scams Coulibaly is accused of spearheading.
Coulibaly’s death has only added a layer of uncertainty for his allegedly defrauded clients, who now believe they were unwitting participants in a Ponzi scheme. New so-called investments went toward paying off other clients. But the chain could not be sustained.
“In terms of his death, it sounds rather brash or harsh, but the only reason I’m upset for his passing is that he’s not able to go to jail and suffer,” the bridge loan investor said.
The Inquirer spoke with four victims, all but one of whom asked to remain anonymous citing lingering shame, privacy concerns, and, in one case, safety considerations. They provided alleged contracts Coulibaly gave them, text messages, screenshots of their purported Shopify store sales, and a whistleblower report sent to federal and Pennsylvania financial regulators.
In hindsight, the business always seemed too good to be true. The young entrepreneur convinced them they could rake in millions each month selling vacuums, printers, desktop humidifiers, and silicone trays on Shopify, an e-commerce platform similar to Amazon.
At first, investors said they had no reason to question Vent Motion LLC, also known as Motion Venture. Shopify alerted the victims to a steady stream of sales through their phone apps.
But at least two Shopify stores victims bought into were fake, full of transactions a Barron’s analysis suggests are also a sham. Shopify did not respond to requests for comment.
The alleged victims say Coulibaly lured them in by highlighting purported investor relationships with wealthy and connected people. His pitch deck listed several former members of the Eagles and the NBA as clients. Representatives for the current and former Eagles declined to comment or could not be reached.
“A selling point [Coulibaly] gave me was, ‘Hey, we only have about 90 to 100 people in this,’ insinuating you can make it behind the velvet rope because everybody involved is celebrities or athletes, and this is just a venture they do,” said another of the defrauded investors, requesting anonymity because family and friends do not know about the scam.
Yet as more victims have found one another in the wake of Coulibaly’s death, it has become clearer the scheme was not limited to targeting NFL players.
It involved everyday investors from Arizona, Pennsylvania, and New York who now want to know if any of it was real.
A ‘magnetic’ man with the digital footprint of a business phenom
Coulibaly knew how to sell the image of a successful entrepreneur.
His story always hit the same beats: Coulibaly was a professional soccer player. He made $4 million reselling rare sneakers before he turned 21. His success was largely attributed to “building connections” with athletes and influencers. Grinding was the key to success.
But much of that was embellished.
A database for American high school sports coverage noted Coulibaly played soccer for Roxborough High School.
Coulibaly said he began his professional career with the New York Red Bulls soccer team, but a spokesperson said Coulibaly never had a contract.
A friend from Coulibaly’s days at Temple University said the sneaker venture Heatkickcity was also a scam that swindled students out of thousands. He asked not to be named out of safety concerns, saying Coulibaly often touted relationships with gang-affiliated people.
While Coulibaly told publications he was born in Mali, West Africa, and immigrated to the United States at a young age, while in college, he often intimated that he was a trust fund child and that his parents worked for the French government, the Temple friend said.
He added that may have helped induce so many of their peers to pay a $1,200 membership for monthly access to rare sneakers that ultimately never came.
“He’d be like, ‘It’s stuck in shipping,’ or ‘my assistant forgot to order them,’ or ‘my assistant’s slacking,’ and then he would just keep on extending it, extending it,” said the friend. “If you questioned him in any way, shape, or form about the product that you paid for, then he would switch to angry mode.”
The friend eventually got his money back after pressuring him for weeks but said Coulibaly continued his self-proclaimed pursuit of becoming a billionaire.
“He scammed his best friends,” the friend said. “Nobody was off-limits.”
Coulibaly’s next venture was fashion line Motion Apparelz. It was profiled in Forbes last year, where the author describes Coulibaly’s energy as “magnetic.” In the piece, Coulibaly name-drops artist friends, including rapper YG, who was later listed as an investor in Motion Venture promotional materials.
Rapper YG performs at the Coachella Music & Arts Festival in 2019.Amy Harris
YG’s agent could not be reached for comment.
Outside of the glowing profiles, a now-defunct Instagram account also detailed a lavish lifestyle full of run-ins with celebrities, boat jaunts on luxury yachts with city skylines in the background, and snapshots of Coulibaly in or in front of private planes. Often, Coulibaly could be seen wearing gold watches, what appear to be Van Cleef & Arpels bracelets, and diamond-studded chains.
Coulibaly’s digital footprint set the stage for an even bigger business pitch.
A business promising exorbitant returns
When it came to Vent Motion LLC, Coulibaly told clients he operated “factories in China and India with a combined team of 125 full-time employees,” according to a pitch deck he showed investors that was obtained by The Inquirer.
This allowed stores to operate without keeping any inventory and reducing overhead — a model known as drop-shipping.
The savings from eliminating the middlemen, he said, could then be reinvested into artificial intelligence-driven ads and “influencer amplification” to drum up more customers. Coulibaly’s company would set up and manage the Shopify stores on behalf of investors, pushing out additional advertising or swapping out products if sales slowed.
Clients would be charged a 20% to 25% service fee for that work, and even so, Coulibaly dangled extraordinary returns for those who joined the venture.
One Shopify store that began with a $550,000 investment in January 2024 had allegedly generated $2 million in revenue in April and a whopping $23 million in July of that year. By August, this particular store had generated a total of $84 million in revenue, according to the company’s unsubstantiated pitch deck.
Further sweetening the deal was an initial investment “protection” guarantee if their store did not generate profit within six months.
Former Arizona Cardinals General Manager Steve Keim says he was just as much of victim of Mohammed Coulibaly’s alleged scam.Darryl Webb
It’s what got Steve Keim, former general manager of the Arizona Cardinals, into the business.
Keim said he met Coulibaly through mutual Eagles acquaintances and by August 2025 he had bought his first Shopify store, which was recording sales at a pace that had him on track totriple his investment over six months. Keim bought into six more stores the following month, he said. His son and ex-wife would also buy into the business for at least a $1 million investment between all three.
Keim said he was soon offered the role of chief operating officer/chief growth officer, which he now sees as a way for Coulibaly to “legitimize his business.”
“I introduced him to people to sell stores to and that sort of thing,” said Keim, who describes fulfilling a figurehead role with no decision-making power. “He called me the COO but he also made promises to give me health insurance and to have some kind of bonus structure.”
The health insurance, bonuses, and exorbitant returns never materialized. Keim said he never had access to bank records and was never made aware of how many people gave money to Motion Venture. But by the start of the year, Keim claims, a flood of disgruntled investors were asking him for help getting their money back. Around this time, Keim said, he asked Coulibaly to stop using his name in promotional materials and told him he no longer wanted to be COO.
Keim contended he was as much of a victim as anyone else, holding onto hope that he could recover his money until Coulibaly’s death.
“This went downhill fast,” he said. “Not only did I get my name drug through the mud, I lost a lot of money since I was an investor.”
A Dubai deal
As more investors were demanding access to their Shopify funds in the fall, Coulibaly was telling them that the Dubai firm Middle East Venture Partners was interested in buying the operation for $215 million.
All they had to do was reach 175 online stores and meet other benchmarks by Aug. 1.
To back his claim Coulibaly produced a letter of intent dated Aug. 14, 2024.
Troubling for investors: The letter was dated more than a month before the company was registered in Pennsylvania.
The discrepancy was the biggest red flag for Barry Minkow, a convicted fraudster who now investigates scams on behalf of fraud victims. He started poking around the company at the start of the year for an investor who had put up $150,000.
“So here you are looking at a private equity company saying they’re going to buy up this company that doesn’t even exist for $200 million?” Minkow said in disbelief.
Middle East Venture Partners did not respond to an email to asking if a relationship existed with Coulibaly’s Vent Motion LLC.
With the permission of three of the alleged victims, Minkow submitted a 23-page whistleblower report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, FBI, and Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities. The report laid out victim accounts and flagged glaring issues with Motion Venture’s business model.
Minkow warned regulators in February thatintervention was essential to “halt ongoing solicitations, trace misallocated funds,” and stressed the importance of doing so “before the scheme inflicts further, irreparable harm.”
Minkow would prove to be right. Motion Venture was still actively recruiting new investors that month.
Picking up the pieces
Coulibaly’s college friend thinks he might have been one of the first victims of the Shopify sometime about three years ago. It involved less paperwork back then, more of a handshake deal. The friend put in $5,000 in a store with an investment protection promise in place, he said. Unlike that time in college, however, the friend only got half his money back.
The friendship with Coulibaly cooled after that.
“People just keep on saying he scammed NFL players,” said Coulibaly’s college friend. “No, anybody with money could be scammed, no matter how small.”
Coulibaly would insist money issues were the Dubai firm’s fault until his death, according to his alleged victims who shared screenshots and voice memos of conversations.
He ricocheted from distraught, lamenting the financial ruin that awaited him if he did not acquire more investors, to defiant, celebrating the Philadelphia 76ers’ LeBron James trade on X as he dodged investors.
When Keim and another investor flew into Philadelphia to meet with Coulibaly in late July, they spent a day and a half trying to figure out how much money was left, to no avail.
It was around that time that Coulibaly was soliciting the New York man for the $75,000 loan.
Coulibaly’s last post on X was a reshare a day before his death. “Trying to be everyone’s friend is a foolish behavior,” it read.
Whether any investor money remains is unclear. A now-defunct GoFundMe page put together by a man claiming to be Coulibaly’s brother raised more than $12,000 for the body’s “international transportation arrangements.”
Investors are also trying to figure out what legal recourse they might have, if any.
Coulibaly’s death has shattered any last remaining hope some victims had that a Dubai firm was to blame for cash-flow issues, and they are now seeking legal help.
It also left them feeling cheated one last time.
Staff writer Ryan W. Briggs contributed to this article.
An Iranian assassination threat against President Donald Trump prompted an extraordinary operation last month in which he flew secretly from Turkey on an alternate military aircraft while the White House said he was aboard Air Force One, the Washington Post has learned.
The clandestine mission, which has not been reported previously, was carried out unbeknownst to journalists and some White House staff members who believed they were on the same plane as the president, according to material reviewed by the Post, a U.S. official familiar with the operation, and another person with knowledge of the president’s travel. These people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the matter.
The administration has claimed that Trump departed Turkey on July 8 on the former Air Force One. Trump announced on social media that he would use the “former Air Force One” rather than the plane that flew him there, a newer Boeing 747-8 gifted to the United States by Qatar. The security of the Qatar-provided aircraft has been called into question, and Trump said last month after the trip that it would undergo additional upgrades.
In Ankara, Trump boarded the old Air Force One jumbo jet in view of television cameras. He was secretly shuttled minutes later to a smaller plane — an Air Force C-32A — via an airport catering truck typically used to load meals and other supplies preflight, according to the U.S. official and corroborating material reviewed by the Post. That made Air Force One a “decoy” with media and some White House staff aboard, the official said.
Trump had been in Ankara for a NATO summit with world leaders. The operation occurred a night after U.S. forces renewed military strikes on Iran at Trump’s direction following a breakdown of negotiations between Washington and Tehran to end their monthslong war.
The maneuver meant that Trump’s actual location was concealed from the American public and many senior U.S. officials for hours. Weeks later, it remains unclear how widely the administration has disclosed the operation.
The Post provided the White House with the details from its reporting, along with a list of questions. In response, White House communications director Steven Cheung issued a statement defending the jet gifted by Qatar.
“The new Air Force One is a state-of-the-art aircraft that has been fitted with high-level security protocols that ensure the safety of the President and his staff,” Cheung’s statement said. “As the President has said recently, there are many enemies of America who have their sights on him, and we use every tool at our disposal to address those threats.”
A spokesperson for the Pentagon referred questions to the White House. A Secret Service spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Air Force One sits on the tarmac as President Donald Trump switches planes at U.S. Air Force Base, RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk Eastern England, on his way back to Washington from the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey ,Wednesday, July 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)Alex Brandon
Publicly, the White House has repeated its account that the president left Turkey on the legacy blue-and-white Boeing 747 that served as Air Force One before Trump began using the former Qatari jet.
For decades, it has been rare for U.S. presidents to travel without members of the White House press corps accompanying them in their roles as proxies for the American public. Journalists have traveled into war zones with numerous presidents, including Trump, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush.
In the first hours after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Bush administration officials did not immediately disclose the president’s whereabouts, saying only that he had been taken to an “undisclosed location.” But they did not say he was somewhere he was not, and within hours officials revealed that he had been flown to a military facility in Nebraska.
The Trump operation unfolded quite differently, highlighting the depth of concern that U.S. security officials had about his safety leaving Turkey amid hostilities with Iran. Turkey, a key U.S. ally and member of the NATO military alliance, shares a border with Iran.
A credible threat to Trump involving Iran set the “deception operation” in motion, the U.S. official said. The New York Times and CBS News reported last month that intelligence officials flagged a specific threat of an attack on the president or his jet, triggering additional precautions.
There are decades-old concerns in the U.S. government of Iranian terrorism plots against American officials, including Trump. Those fears have escalated recently as a result of Washington’s role in the killing of Iranian military and political leaders.
The operation, and the Iranian threat, came days after the president began using the newer Boeing 747-8 gifted by Qatar for use as Air Force One. Trump flew to Turkey on that aircraft after the red, white, and blue jet underwent upgrades costing hundreds of millions of dollars. It was fielded by the Air Force in July but lacks some of the defensive countermeasures included in the legacy Air Force One.
To transport the president out of Turkey, U.S. officials relied in part on a technique that has occasionally become public knowledge. One such mission occurred in March 2000, when President Bill Clinton visited Pakistan. With television cameras recording in Islamabad, Clinton disembarked from a plain white jet that followed the blue-and-white Air Force One, clarifying where he had been.
There have been other times in the last 30 years when Air Force One served as a decoy for the president because of a serious threat or because he was flying to a dangerous location, another U.S. official said, declining to elaborate. The legacy jet is highly secure, but also highly visible, so putting the president on an alternate plane instead can be considered safer, that former official said.
Ronald L. Rowe Jr., a former acting director of the Secret Service, said that the president’s protection is paramount and that the details of his movements are shielded for good reason.
“We need to keep the ‘secret’ in Secret Service,” said Rowe, now with the Chertoff Group, a security advisory firm. “The public should know what the president is doing on a daily basis, but when it comes to the methods by which the Secret Service keeps the president safe, that should remain out of public view.”
When Trump first announced that he would leave Turkey on the legacy Air Force One, he touted the decision on social media as an opportunity for U.S. troops stationed in Britain to see the former Qatari aircraft. He would instead take “the former Air Force One” from Turkey for “old time’s sake,” Trump posted.
But that did not happen, according to the material reviewed by the Post and the U.S. official. Numerous people participated in the deception, some unwittingly, and journalists who thought they were traveling with the president aboard the legacy Air Force One were not notified that he had changed aircraft or made aware of the extent of the threat on Air Force One, the U.S. official said.
The new Air Force One jet gifted by Qatar departed Turkey first, early in the evening of July 8. Trump then boarded the legacy blue-and-white Air Force One at dusk, waving goodbye on camera.
To exit that plane without being seen by those uninvolved in the operation, Trump and several aides stepped aboard an airport catering truck, which was elevated planeside using hydraulics and positioned at a door on the opposite side of Air Force One’s entrance, according to the U.S. official and other corroborating material.
Imagery captured by the news media at the Turkish airport shows a staircase on one side of the legacy Air Force One and the catering truck on the other, with its container elevated to the level of the plane. Trump arrived in a limousine, climbed the staircase and waved toward the tarmac as he boarded, video shows.
A few minutes later, as members of the White House press corps boarded near the back of the plane, a man in a suit entered the catering truck’s cab, according to media pool video of the departure process. The container was lowered into the bed of the vehicle, which then pulled away from Air Force One and drove to the smaller C-32A nearby, the video appears to show. The truck is out of view for about 40 seconds when the camera pans away and is briefly hidden while behind the C-32A’s engines.
Catering trucks are parked at Air Force One on the tarmac as the motorcade carrying U.S. President Donald Trump arrives on the tarmac to depart following the NATO summit at Ankara International Airport in Ankara, Turkey, Wednesday, July 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)Alex Brandon
The video shows that the container was lifted to the level of the plane for several minutes. After the container was lowered, a person in a suit stepped out of the truck’s cab, which remained at ground level, and ascended the stairs leading up to the C-32A, disappearing from the camera’s view.
The blue-and-white C-32A, a modified Boeing 757 used to transport U.S. government officials, had been flown to Turkey along with the legacy Air Force One and the former Qatari jet to support the president’s visit, the U.S. official said. Like Air Force One jumbo jets, it is emblazoned with the words “United States of America” and can be used to transport the president or vice president. But it typically does so with the “Air Force One” or “Air Force Two” call sign, not a nondescript moniker.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth boarded the C-32A separately using external stairs, part of an attempt to make the flight appear typical, according to the U.S. official and other materials reviewed by the Post. Hegseth flew with Trump to Britain on the same plane, this person said.
As journalists boarded the legacy Air Force One, White House staff directed them to close their window shades, according to a media pool report.
The New York Times reported last month that the former Qatari jet lacks the defensive capabilities of legacy U.S. presidential transport jets. That report prompted the Trump administration to take the unusual step of issuing subpoenas to several journalists in a bid to learn the identities of their confidential sources.
Administration officials cast the government’s actions against the New York Times as necessary to investigate a national security breach, while the Times described the move as an effort to avoid transparency, intimidate journalists, and scare their sources. The administration later withdrew the subpoenas, acknowledging missteps in the case.
In deflecting criticism of the new jet, the White House also released a statement from the Air Force.
“The aircraft is safe, secure, and equipped with the most advanced technologies necessary to meet requirements of the presidential mission,” the statement said. “Those requirements were carefully crafted to prioritize mission over aesthetics, leaving much of the previous head of state interior layout minimally changed.”
“No risk was taken in security, safety, or mission communications, but the collective team made trades on some of the less commonly used mission sets that Boeing must deliver to support the next 40 years,” the statement added.
Though the 747 jumbo jets that carry the president are commonly referred to as “Air Force One,” the term is technically an air-traffic-control call sign for any plane which the president is aboard.
In this instance, however, the president’s whereabouts were obscured on the C-32A flight to Britain using the nondescript call sign “Reach 18” or “RCH18,” according to a person familiar with the mission and other material reviewed by the Post.
The aviation account “Thenewarea51″ noted the C-32A’s arrival in Britain and its call sign, reporting that night that systems allowing for the aircraft to be easily tracked while in the air had been switched off. “Reach” call signs are often used for personnel transport flights and those that haul military equipment, according those familiar with the mission.
Publicly available flight tracking data shows that the former Qatari jet flew to Britain’s Mildenhall air base while bearing the call sign “SAM 33,” using a common abbreviation for “special air mission.” It landed at Mildenhall at 6:26 p.m. local time on July 8, data shows.
The legacy Air Force One plane carrying White House staff and journalists appeared on radar near Istanbul on its way to Britain, initially with no call sign listed. Despite the president not being aboard, it then took the Air Force One call sign, “AF1,” midflight and arrived at Mildenhall about 10:29 p.m. local time, the tracking data shows. A media pool report that night said the flight was “uneventful” with “no visitors to the press cabin.”
No flight tracker data could be found for the C-32A, but videos posted by the YouTube accounts RankUpAviation and Military Aviation Channel show the former Qatari jet landing, followed by a C-32A hours later at about 10:20 p.m. and the legacy Air Force One several minutes later.
Videos show the legacy Air Force One, after landing, coming to a stop in a place where the C-32A had briefly been parked. The hobbyist videos on YouTube do not show Trump exiting the C-32A or entering the legacy Air Force One, as the stairway entries faced away from the plane spotters’ cameras.
It’s not clear how Trump moved from the C-32A to the legacy Air Force One after landing, but he appeared before television cameras and descended external stairs from the legacy Air Force One about 10:56 p.m., according to a media pool report.
After greeting U.S. service members, the president embarked on the newly gifted Air Force One to travel back to Washington, with staff and press aboard after a transfer from the legacy Air Force One, at about 11:01 p.m. A social media post from the White House that night said that Trump had landed at the British base “aboard the former Air Force One,” and included a picture of the legacy plane.
Aboard the new Air Force One, Trump spoke to journalists for about 15 minutes, highlighting the threat Iran poses but not acknowledging the subterfuge that had occurred earlier.
Asked why reporters had been instructed to lower the window shades on the plane in Turkey, Trump said that it was “because you’re probably on a dangerous flight because of the sleaze bags that we have to deal with.” Trump said that he has a “threat all the time” against his life, and that he is “number one” on Iran’s “list.”
“But if I go, you go. Right?” Trump suggested to reporters. “Perhaps someday you want to change professions.”
The parents of a 7-week-old girl were charged with aggravated assault and related offenses after an examination at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia revealed the infant had been seriously injured, police said Monday.
Secret McCleve-Sar, 21, and Tyrone Jones, 22, both of the 2500 block of North Front Street, were arrested on Sunday and also charged with kidnapping, criminal conspiracy, endangering the welfare of a child, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person, and obstructing justice, police said.
Bail for each was set at 10% of $1 million and both were still in custody on Monday, court records show.
A court-appointed lawyer for McCleve-Sar declined to comment on the case. The Defender Association of Philadelphia, which is representing Jones, also could not be reached for comment.
On Saturday shortly after 6:30 a.m. police responded to CHOP for a report of a prior assault involving the infant girl.
The girl had initially been taken to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital by her parents and then was transferred to CHOP, police said. The parents allegedly left the hospital with their infant prior to receiving the results of the medical evaluation.
The investigation remains ongoing by the Special Victims Unit.
