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  • The Delco jail chief resigned after just months on the job

    The Delco jail chief resigned after just months on the job

    The chief warden of the George W. Hill Correctional Facility in Delaware County has resigned after less than six months on the job, according to a statement released by the county government.

    Willie Bonds’ decision was motivated by family considerations and the opportunity to pursue other interests, according to the Delco officials. Bonds will continue to serve as the chief of the facility until an interim warden is appointed.

    The George W. Hill facility has been mired by scandal in recent years. The last chief to run the facility was ousted following a no-confidence vote by the labor union representing the prison’s guards. In the last two years, guards have been charged with smuggling fentanyl and K2 into the facility; inmates were accidentally released; and an inmate was killed by his cellmate, who was considered high-risk and supposed to be placed alone.

    Bonds was appointed to his position as chief of the facility in February. Last year, he served as the interim warden of the facility and he has worked in the facility since 2024, starting as deputy warden of security and training. He began his career in the New Jersey Department of Corrections in 1998.

    During his time as deputy warden, a federal lawsuit alleged that county officials fired guards without due process.

    After the Pennsylvania Prison Society conducted a walk-through of the facility and interviewed inmates in 2025, Bonds responded to the facility’s detailed shortcomings in a letter. The nonprofit advocacy group characterized his response, which added details about the prison’s conditions, as candid.

    The group said in a report that the facility had made significant improvements with a $50 million commitment from the county in 2025, but noted that the prison did not have enough staff for the number of inmates in the facility. At the time that the report was researched, there were 1,125 inmates, according to a response sent by Bonds. The total staff number was not reported.

    The Prison Society‘s report noted “the fundamentally unsafe conditions that Bonds now has the responsibility for fixing — conditions will not be fixed with building repairs alone but will require major shifts in organizational culture.”

    Delaware County hopes to continue efforts to improve the facility, the county’s statement said.

  • Roundup cases led to eye-popping Philly verdicts. Will that change because of the Supreme Court?

    Roundup cases led to eye-popping Philly verdicts. Will that change because of the Supreme Court?

    The largest verdict issued by a Philadelphia jury in recent years came out of a trial in which a Pennsylvania man accused agricultural giant Monsanto’s weedkiller, Roundup, of causing his blood cancer.

    The jury awarded John McKivison $2.25 billion in 2024.

    The Lycoming County man was not the only one who has sued the German company. Thousands of cases are pending against Monsanto nationwide, including 462 active lawsuits in Common Pleas Court in Philadelphia alone.

    But on Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court limited the types of claims that people who believe they developed cancer because of Roundup can argue in state courts.

    Here is what you need to know about the Monsanto Co. v. Durnell ruling and how it will affect Monsanto litigation in Philadelphia.

    What did the Supreme Court decide in ‘Monsanto v. Durnell’?

    In a 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court held that lawsuits against Monsanto in state courts cannot include a failure-to-warn claim.

    The case arose out of Missouri, where a state court jury found that Roundup use caused John Durnell’s cancer, and that Monsanto should have included a cancer warning on the product’s label. Durnell was awarded $1.25 million for the company’s failure to warn him.

    Monsanto appealed, arguing that the Environmental Protection Agency had concluded that glyphosate — the main chemical in Roundup — is not cancer-causing, so the label did not need a warning.

    The case went all the way to the highest court in the land, which decided that states cannot force Monsanto to add anything to the EPA-approved label. So failure-to-warn claims cannot proceed in state courts, the Supreme Court said.

    “In sum, federal law requires Monsanto to sell Roundup with the label that EPA approved at the initial registration and that EPA has subsequently reapproved on multiple occasions — that is, the label without a cancer warning,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote for the majority.

    When it comes to pesticide labeling, Kavanaugh said, federal law preempts any state labeling requirement because it would force companies to deviate from the EPA-approved label.

    Not all justices agreed. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a dissent, which Justice Neil M. Gorsuch joined, that adding a cancer warning would be in line with the federal law’s prohibition on misbranding.

    What does the ruling mean for lawsuits in Philadelphia?

    The ruling does not erase the 462 lawsuits in Philadelphia overnight.

    Lawyers usually included multiple claims in each lawsuit in an attempt to advance different theories that could convince a jury a company is liable.

    In the $2.25 billion case, the jury found that Monsanto did not adequately warn McKivison of Roundup’s cancer risk. But jurors also found that the company was negligent and that it sold a defective product.

    While the ruling prohibits failure-to-warn claims from moving forward, Monsanto can still face lawsuits under other claims.

    The Supreme Court ruling “narrowed the playing field,” said Tom Kline, the Kline & Specter attorney who represented McKivison. But “it’s not the end. It’s not lights out. It’s not game over,” he said.

    Juries will have to answer fewer questions moving forward, Kline said.

    Whether the ruling affects trial outcomes remains to be seen. So far Monsanto has lost four of the seven Roundup trials held in Philadelphia.

    The ruling could also affect other product liability lawsuits against pesticide manufacturers, such as those against manufacturers of weedkillers that contain paraquat, a toxic chemical that has been linked to Parkinson’s disease.

    “I think it’s part of a larger part of an industrywide strategy to piece-by-piece dismantle the tort liability for defective products,” Kline said.

    What is Monsanto saying about the ruling?

    The company said that the ruling would result in a dismissal of failure-to-warn claims, which according to Monsanto make up the “vast majority” of the litigation.

    Bill Anderson, the CEO of Monsanto’s parent company, Bayer, said in a statement that the decision provides “regulatory clarity” and brings “overdue justice on an issue that should have been clarified much earlier.”

    “This litigation has enormous costs for the company and has impacted public trust,” Anderson said.

    The executive affirmed the company’s commitment to a proposed nationwide class-action settlement of up to $7.25 billion as part of the company’s “multi-pronged containment strategy” on Roundup lawsuits.

    How does ‘Monsanto v. Durnell’ relate to the MAHA movement?

    The case has put President Donald Trump’s administration in an uncomfortable position with the Make America Healthy Again movement.

    Trump courted the movement during his campaign by recruiting Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom he later appointed as his Department of Health and Human Services secretary. Before his turn to politics, Kennedy was an environmental lawyer who, in 2018, helped secure a $289 million verdict in the first Roundup cancer trial.

    And while the Trump administration has adopted some of the MAHA movement’s rhetoric on ultraprocessed foods, it took a different approach to pesticides.

    Trump’s solicitor general, John Sauer, filed briefs to the Supreme Court in support of Monsanto’s position on behalf of the White House, which drew the ire of MAHA supporters.

    After the ruling, MAHA influencers expressed anger at the administration.

    Kelly Ryerson, who is known online as Glyphosate Girl, posted Thursday on X that “never in history has an administration so blatantly and willingly sold out our fertility, vitality, and health to corporate interests.”

    Vani Hari, another MAHA influencer who posts to millions of followers as the Food Babe, said on Instagram she was “devastated” by the ruling.

    “We will remember who fought with us and who didn’t.”

  • SEPTA approved contracts with the transit police union and other workers

    SEPTA approved contracts with the transit police union and other workers

    The SEPTA board on Thursday approved new labor contracts with the Fraternal Order of Transit Police Lodge 109 and three unions representing workers in the Regional Rail Division.

    Transit police officers had threatened earlier this month to walk off the job while Philadelphia was hosting World Cup soccer matches, Major League Baseball’s All-Star week and events celebrating the 250th birthday of the U.S.

    Lodge 109 and SEPTA agreed on a three-year deal that gives the officers a 12% raise over the life of the contract, as well as a $2,500 signing bonus, longevity bonuses, and an increase in differential pay for evening and overnight shifts.

    Union members ratified the contract last week.

    Omari Bervine, president of Lodge 109, said the agreement was “fair to the hardworking men and women of the transit police” and thanked SEPTA General Manager Scott A. Sauer for helping restart negotiations.

    The transit police union represents 203 patrol officers who protect the regional agency’s transit and commuter rail networks, trolleys, buses and property, including stations and transportation hubs.

    “Historic reductions in crime over the last two years have come amid an unprecedented effort to bolster our transit police,” Sauer said at the board meeting. “Staffing is at its highest level in more than a decade.”

    Fifteen new officers joined the force this month after graduating from the police academy, and 18 cadets are scheduled to start their studies next month, SEPTA says.

    Officers had been working without a contract since March 31.

    The new agreement is retroactive to April 1 and runs through March 31, 2029.

    Lodge 109 members will receive a 5% increase in their hourly rates Sunday, with 3½% raises in June of each of the following two years. Longevity bonuses will range from $2,901 for officers with three years of experience, up to $9,552 for those who have 25 years or more of service.

    SEPTA’s board also approved new two-year contracts with the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers that together represent about 145 rail vehicle mechanics, welders, millwrights and maintenance custodians working on Regional Rail.

    The board also ratified a new contract with the Transportation Communications Union, which represents 76 Regional Rail clerical staff.

    Each deal with the three Regional Rail unions is for two years and gives workers raises totaling 7%, the same as the contract reached last year with the Transport Workers Union Local 234, SEPTA’s largest.

  • Measles detected in two more counties in Pennsylvania as health department recommends early vaccination

    Pennsylvania health officials have now detected measles cases in York and Northumberland Counties as cases in Lancaster County, the center of an ongoing outbreak, continued to rise.

    And the state health department is now recommending early measles vaccinations for infants beginning at 6 months in affected areas in an effort to protect them against the spread of the highly contagious disease, which is particularly risky for young children. The same precautions should be taken by families with infants traveling to these areas.

    Six Pennsylvania counties have now seen measles cases since an outbreak was first confirmed in Lebanon County in April. In all, the state has reported 81 measles cases across eight counties in 2026, more than five times the cases reported in 2025.

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    State health officials said it was too early to tell how the latest cases in York and Northumberland Counties are connected to others in the region, but that contact tracing investigations are continuing. All cases were among people who had not received at least two doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) or whose vaccination status was unclear.

    As of Wednesday, six cases had been confirmed in Northumberland County, to the north of Dauphin County, and one case had been detected in York County, along Lancaster’s western border.

    Lebanon County has reported 20 cases and Dauphin and Berks Counties have reported two cases each.

    Lancaster County has seen 38 cases of measles since late April, with health officials confirming seven cases in the last two weeks. The area was at the center of a prior measles outbreak in January, when state health officials confirmed eight cases in Lancaster County and an additional four between Chester and Montgomery Counties.

    Vaccination rates among kindergarteners have decreased across Pennsylvania in recent years, and some counties affected in the current outbreak have particularly low rates, including Lancaster, where about 88.5% of kindergarten students are vaccinated. Health experts say that 95% of a community must be vaccinated to prevent the spread of the disease.

    A map showing vaccination rates in kindergarteners for the 2024-2025 school year. Counties in yellow have vaccination rates between 95% and 90%. Counties in red have vaccination rates below 90%. To halt the spread of measles, at least 95% of a community must be vaccinated against the disease.John Duchneskie

    Health officials have been conducting contact tracing to detect as many cases as possible. In the current outbreak, they have twice warned Lancaster residents that they could have been exposed to measles.

    Shoppers and employees at a local Kohl’s were potentially exposed to the virus over four days after a staffer tested positive in late May, LancasterOnline reported. And a person with measles visited the Lancaster County Courthouse on June 3.

    But doctors in Lancaster County say they fear some measles cases are going unreported, either because patients don’t understand the importance of tracking measles cases or because they fear repercussions.

    No cases have been confirmed in the Philadelphia region during this outbreak. But Delaware County health officials said last week that they had detected measles in two wastewater samples, indicating that someone with measles had used a bathroom connected to the county’s public water supply. It was unclear if that person lived in the county or was passing through.

    Early vaccination recommended

    On Wednesday, a statewide health alert urged physicians to accelerate vaccination schedules to protect children against measles. Officials had said they were considering the measure earlier this month as cases continued to rise.

    Measles can infect nine in 10 unvaccinated people who are exposed to it, and can linger in the air for up to two hours and incubate in patients for three weeks. The disease typically presents with a fever and a rash but can cause brain inflammation and pneumonia in serious cases.

    Typically, children receive the first of two MMR vaccines at 1 year old, then a second between 4 and 6 years old.

    But children as young as 6 months can receive an additional “dose zero” to protect them from the disease amid an outbreak. In its alert, the state health department said parents should vaccinate infants between 6 and 11 months with the “dose zero” if they live in affected areas or if they’re planning to travel there.

    Those children should then receive additional MMR doses at 12 to 15 months and 4 to 6 years.

    This “dose zero” is less effective than doses given at 1 year old, officials cautioned. But it’s 58% effective against measles when given at 6 to 8 months, and 83% effective when administered at 9 to 11 months.

    “Early MMR vaccination is safe and provides modest protection when measles is spreading,” officials wrote in the alert.

    Children older than 12 months who haven’t been vaccinated should get an MMR dose immediately, and a second 28 days later, health officials said. Unvaccinated adults, or those without evidence of immunity, should also get two MMR doses.

    And anyone who has received one dose of the MMR vaccine in the past should get a second at least 28 days after their first, officials said.

    Usually, children who received a first dose at around 12 months wait to get their second dose until they’re 4 to 6 years old. But in an outbreak situation, those children should get their second doses early — at least 28 days after their first shot.

    Adults born before 1957 are typically considered immune, but healthcare workers in that age group who don’t have lab evidence of immunity or prior infection should consider getting vaccinated, state officials said.

    Adults who received an inactivated measles vaccine between 1963 and 1967 are considered unvaccinated during an outbreak, and should also get two doses of the current MMR vaccine.

    Pregnant people, people with severely weakened immune systems, and people who have a history of experiencing severe allergic reactions, like anaphylaxis, to a vaccine ingredient or to a previous dose of MMR cannot receive the vaccine.

  • Three injured in a fire at Delta’s Monroe Energy refinery in Delco

    Three injured in a fire at Delta’s Monroe Energy refinery in Delco

    A fire involving a process unit pump, a device that moves fluids, broke out Thursday morning inside the Monroe Energy refinery in Trainer, Delaware County, according to the company.

    At least one person suffered burn injuries in the fire, which began about 11:30 a.m., county spokesperson Michael Connolly said. The individual had to be airlifted to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital; their condition remained unclear. Monroe later confirmed it was an employee who suffered non-life-threatening injuries that were treated off-site. The county later said two other people experienced heat-stress-related injuries, which were not expected to be critical.

    “Our understanding is that it’s contained to a small location and is under control,” Connolly said.

    Local police and fire could not immediately be reached for details regarding the blaze and how many people were in the facility when the fire broke out, but the large black plumes rising from the refinery raised alarm among area residents.

    “As of now all we know is that there is a fire at the refinery all personnel are working on locating the fire and extinguishing it!!” read a Facebook post by the Trainer Borough Police Department from around noon.

    Amid the chaos, at least one individual sought guidance on how to reach out to someone working inside in the comments of the post.

    Just last week, the refinery stopped its two 100,000-barrels-per-day crude-oil distilleries because of a leak, though a Delta Air Lines spokesperson — the airline owns the refinery and uses much of it to produce jet fuel — said there was no danger to the public.

    Delta’s Monroe Energy refinery in Delco shuts due to internal leak

    Connolly said it was unclear if the leak was connected to the fire, directing questions to Monroe.

    The company, which employs about 500 workers, did not say whether the leak played a role.

    “Our on-site Fire Response Team was immediately activated, deploying multiple emergency response resources, including fire and foam tanker vehicles, mobile deluge guns, and stationary high flow firewater suppression systems,” a company statement said.

    The company said air monitoring showed there was no current risk to the community.

    Police said air quality was at a “nuisance level” and it was recommended for people up to half a mile from the refinery to shelter in place. The county lifted the order at 3:15 p.m.

    “The specific cause of the incident will be investigated,” the company said.

  • Philly area set to receive record-breaking $322M in state and federal money for trails

    Philly area set to receive record-breaking $322M in state and federal money for trails

    Philadelphia and its surrounding counties are set for what could be a record-breaking $322 million in federal and state funding to go toward building new trails segments, say trail advocates.

    Projects in line for funding include the much-anticipated Spring Garden Connector in Philly. And it would include the Newtown Rail, Chester Creek, and Parkside-Wynnefield-Cynwyd trails in the suburban counties.

    The money is part of a larger $8.2 billion pool of transportation funding updated through the federal Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) for 2027 and spread over four years.

    “We consider this to be potentially record breaking,” said Patrick Monahan, vice chair of the Circuit Trails Coalition in Pennsylvania. “It’s proof that the trails are being treated as essential infrastructure, making it safer and easier to walk and bike in the region.”

    In 2024, Pennsylvania received $200 million for trails under TIP.

    Pennsylvania gets its TIP plan updated every two years and the majority of money goes to highways, bus and rail systems, trolleys, and ferries. It is part of an agreed-upon list of priority transportation projects. That list includes 344 projects.

    In all, this year’s proposed $322 million in funding for trails would advance 27 bike and pedestrian projects across Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties.

    The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) is set to vote on approving the allocations in July.

    The trails, either begun or being planned, are part of the Circuit Trails, a network of hundreds of miles of multiuse trails throughout the Philadelphia region including southern New Jersey, which updates its TIP funding in alternate years.

    A sample of the trail projects in line for funding include:

    • $11 million for the second phase to extend the Schuylkill Banks trail in Philadelphia south from near 61st Street to Passyunk Avenue that would include a new park at the base of the Passyunk Avenue Bridge.
    • $58.5 million for Philadelphia’s Spring Garden Connector project that would link trail systems along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers and make Spring Garden Street safer for cyclists and pedestrians.
    • $50 million to improve safety for roadway users, including pedestrians and cyclists, on PA 291 from Irving Street to Ridley Creek. The project includes building a multiuse side path that will be designated as part of the East Coast Greenway, a trail system linking Maine to Florida.
    • $8.5 million for the Chester Valley Trail, a multiuse trail along the alignment of the former Philadelphia and Thorndale Branch, a former freight train route, including renovation of the Whitford Bridge and Downingtown Trestle Bridge for bicycle and pedestrian use.
    • $10 million to develop a segment in Whitemarsh Township, Montgomery County, that would run from the existing Wissahickon Trail in Fort Washington State Park to the existing Cross County Trail near SEPTA’s Fort Washington Station.

  • Supreme Court clears way for Trump administration to revive restrictive immigration policy

    WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court cleared the way Thursday for the Trump administration to potentially revive an immigration policy once used to turn back migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.

    The justices, in a 6-3 decision, overturned a lower court order blocking the practice that limited the number of people who could apply for asylum each day, first under the Obama administration and then expanded during President Donald Trump’s first term.

    Advocates said the tactic created a humanitarian crisis as thousands of people settled in unsafe makeshift shelters to await their turn. The Trump administration said it was necessary to deal with an increase of asylum seekers at the border.

    The policy is not in place now, though authorities have imposed other restrictions on asylum seekers. The Department of Homeland Security did not say if they plan to revive it, but applauded the ruling. “This decision opens up an important tool to continue securing our southern border,” said James Percival, the agency’s general counsel.

    The administration argued that metering is a critical tool that’s been used by presidents of both parties and should stay available. Federal attorneys say people turned away at the border could come back later, though lines were thousands of people long when the policy was in place before.

    The case is one of several immigration suits the court is considering this term, including Trump’s push to end restrict birthright citizenship. The high court also allowed his administration to end deportation for migrants fleeing instability and armed conflict on Thursday.

    Under federal law, migrants who arrive in the U.S. must be able to apply for asylum and be screened for fear of persecution in their home countries.

    The Justice Department argued that people stopped by authorities haven’t arrived in the country, so immigration agents don’t have to let them apply.

    The court’s conservative majority agreed. “A guest does not arrive in a house when he knocks on the front door,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote.

    But attorneys for people seeking asylum say the law has long meant anyone arriving at a port of entry should be screened, and blocking arrivals disregards the nation’s ideals.

    Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the bench, saying that the majority’s opinion “regrettably and tragically extinguishes the light of the torch of the Statue of Liberty.”

    In an unusual exchange, Alito voiced a response after she finished speaking. He expressed surprise that she had read her dissent out loud and defended his opinion by pointing out that the policy had been used during two presidential administrations. “I won’t add anything more to that,” Alito said.

    Metering was first used under President Barack Obama when large numbers of Haitians appeared at the main crossing to San Diego from Tijuana, Mexico. It was expanded to all border crossings from Mexico during Trump’s first term in the White House.

    It ended in 2020 when the government introduced greater restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic, and President Joe Biden formally rescinded it in 2021.

    The same year, a California-based federal judge found that metering violated the asylum seekers’ rights and the law requiring screening. A divided appeals court panel affirmed the ruling but nearly half of judges on the full San Francisco-based court voted to rehear it, a strong signal that might have caught the attention of the Supreme Court.

    Attorneys with the group Democracy Forward first brought the case, and condemned Thursday’s ruling. “We are disappointed in the Court’s decision and call on all Americans to demand that our government protect the families the Court today decided to keep in harm’s way,” said President and CEO Skye Perryman.

    They represented the group Al Otro Lado, whose executive director said the decision would mean a “hardening of borders to keep out the most vulnerable,” that is “sure to result in many more lives lost.”

    U.S. law allows people seeking refuge to apply for asylum once they are on American soil, regardless of whether they came legally. To qualify for asylum, they must show a fear of persecution in their homeland for specific reasons, like race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.

    People who are eventually granted asylum can’t be deported. They can legally work, bring in immediate family, apply for legal residency and seek citizenship.

  • Supreme Court allows Trump administration to end legal protections for Haitians, Syrians

    WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Trump administration to end legal protections for migrants fleeing violence and natural disaster in Haiti and Syria, exposing hundreds of thousands more people to potential deportation.

    The 6-3 decision overturns lower court orders and allows the Department of Homeland Security to swiftly end temporary protected status, a program that protects a total of 1.3 million people from 17 countries.

    It marked another victory at the high court for Republican President Donald Trump’s sweeping crackdown on immigration. Though the conservative-dominated court has put the brakes on some of Trump’s immigration policies over the last year, it handed him a second win Thursday in a decision clearing the way for the revival of a policy restricting immigrants seeking asylum.

    The court’s conservative majority found that immigration authorities have sole authority over the program, and the law doesn’t allow judges to intervene.

    The majority opinion from Justice Samuel Alito also brushed aside arguments that derogatory comments from Trump about Haitians showed the decision was unlawfully tinged by prejudice. He called the statements “insufficient to show that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was based on the race of the Haitian people.”

    Justice Elena Kagan forcefully disagreed, calling Trump’s comments “so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print.” She pointed out that Trump had said Haitians in the U.S. “probably have AIDS,” and he also amplified false rumors during the 2024 campaign that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were abducting and eating dogs and cats.

    Lawyers said Haitian immigrants would be in serious danger if they are sent back. “Simply put, the Supreme Court’s ruling will directly result in thousands of innocent people dying violent, needless deaths,” Geoff Pipoly and Andy Tauber said.

    They urged the Senate to approve an extension of deportation protections for Haitians that’ passed the House on a rare bipartisan vote in April.

    “Families are here, kids are going to school, parents are going into work, folks are trying to commute, and it’s like the Supreme Court just put all those activities on stop and put folks in limbo,” said Viles Dorsainvil, who runs a support center for Haitians in Springfield, Ohio.

    Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, called the “a devastating betrayal of Haitian families who have lived, worked, and contributed to this country for years — only to be cast out based on anti-Black immigration sentiment.”

    Haitians with TPS are also a key part of the workforce in long-term care facilities. “This would be a dreadful loss for all seniors in our community,” said Rita Siebenaler, a resident at Goodwin Living, a senior living community in Virginia.

    The Justice Department appealed to the Supreme Court after judges postponed the end of the program for about 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. The high court sided with the administration before and allowed the end of the program for people from Venezuela.

    Federal authorities deny prejudice played a role. They also cited a Supreme Court decision from Trump’s first term that rejected bias claims based on his social media posts and upheld a travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries.

    James Percival, DHS general counsel, applauded Thursday’s ruling. He said the program had, in many cases, become “de facto amnesty. This is a win for the rule of law and common sense.”

    Since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, Homeland Security has ended the protections, including some that had been in place for more than a decade, for people from 13 countries.

    The terminations were made even though countries such as Haiti and Syria remain dangerous, immigration lawyers said. Four Haitian women who were deported from the United States in February were found beheaded and dumped in a river several months later, lawyers said in court documents.

    The United States first granted protections to Haitians in 2010 after a catastrophic earthquake and extended them multiple times amid ongoing gang violence that has displaced more than a million people, according to court documents.

    Syrians were first granted protected status in 2012, during a civil war that lasted for more than a decade before the fall of President Bashar Assad’s government in late 2024.

    “Today, many of our community members they feel lost,” Farrah AlKhorfan of Immigrants Act Now said about Syrian immigrants losing TPS protections. “They are trying to understand … what this decision means for them and how it will be implemented and how much time they will have to prepare for what comes next.”

    The program was created by Congress in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters, civil strife and other instability. It allows people already in the country to stay with work permits in increments of up to 18 months, but it does not provide a path to citizenship.

  • David Clayton-Thomas, powerhouse lead singer of Blood, Sweat & Tears, has died at 84

    NEW YORK — David Clayton-Thomas, the lead singer of Blood, Sweat & Tears, whose husky, high-strung tenor on “Spinning Wheel,” “And When I Die,” and other hits helped make the so-called “brass rock” band among the most popular acts of the late 1960s, has died at age 84.

    Spokesperson Eric Alper said that Mr. Clayton-Thomas died “peacefully” Wednesday at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. Alper did not cite a specific cause.

    Mr. Clayton-Thomas was a onetime street fighter and petty thief from Canada who briefly became a rock superstar, the front man of a nine-member group that sold millions of records and won two Grammys for Blood, Sweat & Tears, which beat out the Beatles’ Abbey Road for best album of 1969. Calling out amid a jazzy parade of horns, keyboards, and percussion, Mr. Clayton-Thomas’ urgent shout was a signature voice of the era, preaching love on the Motown cover “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy,” a lasting legacy on Laura Nyro’s “And When I Die,” and a cool head on his own “Spinning Wheel.” Meanwhile, Blood, Sweat & Tears helped inspire a wave of horn-led bands, among them Chicago, the Electric Flag, and Ten Wheel Drive.

    “A lot of the guys [in Blood, Sweat & Tears] would play a Broadway show matinee, then go up to Harlem and play Latin music or R&B and funk at night, or come down to the Village and play pure jazz the next night,” Mr. Clayton-Thomas told bestclassicbands.com in 2023. “I was just a blues player: give me three chords and I’ve got a song.”

    At its peak, Blood, Sweat & Tears’ appeal was so broad it helped lead to the band’s downfall.

    Hip enough to perform at the 1969 Woodstock festival, where they were among the highest paid acts, they also were known enough to the establishment to tour Eastern Europe the following year on behalf of the State Department. When Mr. Clayton-Thomas and other band members denounced the Communist regimes on the other side of the Cold War, Rolling Stone’s David Felton wrote that “the State Department got its money worth.” Yippies would turn up at a 1970 Blood, Sweat & Tears show at Madison Square Garden, carrying obscene banners outside and dumping manure by the front gate.

    The band had practical reasons for going along with the government: Mr. Clayton-Thomas, who had allegedly wielded a gun at his girlfriend, had been denied a green card and faced deportation. But after topping the charts in 1970 with the album Blood, Sweat & Tears 3, their appeal soon faded. A burned out Mr. Clayton-Thomas left the group in 1972, and neither he nor the remaining musicians ever regained their old stature. Blood, Sweat & Tears would continue recording over the next few years, and even briefly reunited with Mr. Clayton-Thomas, who went on to release more than a dozen solo albums and tour on his own for decades.

    Mr. Clayton-Thomas was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1996. “Spinning Wheel,” covered by everyone from James Brown to TV star Barbara Eden, was voted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame a decade later.

    Mr. Clayton-Thomas is survived by his daughters, Ashleigh Clayton-Thomas and Christine Graham.

    Up from the streets

    Born David Henry Thomsett in Surrey, England, and raised near Toronto and Ottawa, he was the son of a Canadian World War II veteran and of a pianist-entertainer who helped inspire her son’s interest in music. Thomsett was lucky to have the chance. He fought violently with his father, was living in the streets by his mid-teens and by age 20 was serving time in a reformatory for vagrancy, assault and other crimes.

    An old guitar, left behind by a fellow inmate, changed his life. He taught himself to play and began spending extensive time in the early 1960s around Toronto’s Yonge Street music “strip,” where peers included the American rockabilly star Ronnie Hawkins, a mentor to Robbie Robertson and other future members of the Band and a guide for Thomsett early in his career.

    Anxious to reinvent himself, he changed his last name to Clayton-Thomas while leading his own groups. In the mid-60s, he released such albums as Sings Like It Is and had a hit single with the anti-war rocker “Brainwashed.” He would also befriend a rising star, Joni Mitchell, whose childlike “Circle Game” helped inspire “Spinning Wheel,” and the venerable John Lee Hooker, who would indirectly contribute to Mr. Clayton-Thomas’ breakthrough in the U.S.

    America beckons

    Hooker had encouraged Mr. Clayton-Thomas to move to New York, where the American bluesman had an engagement at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village. When Hooker unexpectedly departed for a tour of Europe, club owner Howard Solomon needed a replacement and recruited Mr. Clayton-Thomas.

    “So I played him a couple songs on the guitar,” Mr. Clayton-Thomas told bestclassicbands.com. “He said, ‘Do you have a band?’ I said, ‘Sure,’ and went out into Greenwich Village looking for anybody carrying a guitar case or even looking like a musician, and we put together a little band and we opened there that night. We ended up staying there for several months.”

    Around the same time, session man-producer Al Kooper was looking to a form jazz-rock group and was joined by such musicians as guitarist Steve Katz, drummer Bobby Colomby, and horn players Randy Brecker and Jerry Weiss. They called themselves Blood, Sweat & Tears, releasing the debut album Child Is Father to the Man early in 1968. Although praised by Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner as “a fine, exemplary group,” members were torn between those allied with Kooper and those who thought his vocals too weak to attract a substantial audience.

    By the end of the year, Kooper and others had departed, and the band was seeking a new singer. After Judy Collins saw Mr. Clayton-Thomas perform, she recommended him to Colomby.

    “I got home and just a couple of days later, Bobby Colomby called me up and said, ‘Hey, Kooper’s gone. We got four guys left out of the nine. And we still got a record contract with Columbia. Do you want to come down and try out for the band?”’ Mr. Clayton-Thomas told bestclassicbands.com. ”I said, ‘You’re damn right.’ I knew [bassist] Jim Fielder real well and I knew they were superb musicians. So I was on the next plane. We had a rehearsal that afternoon, an audition, and it was instant magic. We just knew right off the bat.”

  • New acting intel czar Bill Pulte starts trimming staff as Trump urged

    New acting intel czar Bill Pulte starts trimming staff as Trump urged

    Acting director of national intelligence Bill Pulte, installed Friday by President Donald Trump, has at Trump’s urging begun trimming his organization, which coordinates the nation’s 18 spy agencies.

    This week Pulte fired a half-dozen political appointees and notified several dozen career officers on loan to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that they were being sent back to their home agencies.

    Pulte’s immediate predecessor, Tulsi Gabbard, had already culled hundreds of personnel, boasting that she had slashed the staff by 40%. Trump has long been distrustful of what he calls the “deep state” intelligence community, and the cuts by Pulte are the latest in a series of shocks that have roiled the ODNI.

    Gabbard, who left office last week, had a stormy tenure, falling in and out of favor with Trump’s White House. Current and former officials criticized as ham-handed her release of files related to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. She selectively declassified data on Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election and other matters that supported Trump’s views.

    In recent months, the ODNI has seen a number of high-level resignations and a roller coaster of leadership announcements by Trump.

    The agency “is being so hollowed out that its new name might become DNR — do not resuscitate. It’s on life support already,” said Beth Sanner, a former ODNI deputy director who served as Trump’s intelligence briefer in his first administration.

    While a number of current and former intelligence officials note that there are merits to shrinking the ODNI, the Trump administration, they say, has gone about it in a haphazard way that could undermine the intelligence coordination that Congress created the agency to do.

    “Reasonable people can debate ODNI’s size and mission, but sacking dozens of seasoned officers in your first week isn’t reform — it’s performative firing to please a president who treats his own intelligence community as the enemy within,” said Julia Curlee, who served as a director for intelligence programs in Trump’s White House until last year and recently resigned from the CIA after 20 years as an analyst.

    Pulte asked program heads for a rank-ordered list of personnel to guide decisions on who could be let go, according to former intelligence officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

    One apparent casualty of the personnel moves that began under Gabbard is the National Intelligence Council, which was staffed primarily by career officers on loan from other agencies, such as the CIA. The NIC is considered the most authoritative intelligence analysis unit, producing in-depth reports on key topics for top government officials using information gathered by multiple spy agencies.

    About 20 NIC personnel have been removed or have chosen to leave, including several senior officers who oversaw the production of analysis on Russia, China, and Europe.

    The deputy director for mission integration, Will Ruger, who effectively led the council, was placed on administrative leave, according to three former intelligence officials.

    It is unclear whether and to what extent the vacancies will be filled. When the principal deputy intelligence officer for Russia left last year, the position was kept open.

    Trump told the Wall Street Journal this month that he’d like to see a “smaller” ODNI. “I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn’t be there,” Trump said, noting that he was referring to holdovers from the Biden and Obama administrations.

    Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton said on the Senate floor Wednesday that “mass firings” were not taking place. He said Pulte told him that “a small handful of front-office personnel” were leaving, “which is not at all uncommon when a senior leader leaves an agency or one comes into an agency.” He added that “around 45 or 50 career officers” were returning to their home agencies.

    “I think that’s a step in the right direction,” said Cotton, who has long called for shrinking the ODNI and last year proposed legislation that would cap its full-time staff at 650.

    Some agency insiders have heard that there could be subsequent rounds of cuts and that keeping each round relatively small will help avoid congressional blowback, according to one former intelligence official.

    Trump’s appointment of Pulte, who has no intelligence or national security experience, has alarmed Democratic lawmakers, as well as some Republicans. Some current and former intelligence officials fear he will use the post to further Trump’s agenda, including weaponizing intelligence against the president’s enemies.

    As head of a federal mortgage regulation agency, Pulte has launched mortgage fraud probes of people Trump considers adversaries, including Sen. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) and Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook.

    Government reorganization efforts under Trump have been marked by chaos and missteps, such as when Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency last year dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development and conducted mass firings at the State Department and other agencies.

    The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created by Congress in the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attacks, after investigations found that the CIA, the FBI and other agencies had failed to share critical information about al-Qaeda plots.

    The ODNI had a little more than 2,000 employees at the start of Trump’s second term. By the time Gabbard left last week, the number had shrunk to 1,300, according to congressional aides.

    Morale was shaken last year when Gabbard dismissed the chair and vice chair of the NIC after it produced a report that found that the Venezuelan government was most likely not directing the activities of Tren de Aragua, a criminal gang that Trump has vilified. The finding contradicted his rationale for invoking the Alien Enemies Act and deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members without due process.

    “Getting [the agency] smaller makes sense, but this isn’t the way to do it,” said John Sipher, a 28-year veteran CIA operations officer and former Moscow station chief, who has argued that the ODNI should be dismantled.

    Sipher said the ODNI’s problem is that it suffers not just from bureaucratic bloat, but from political interference. “The office that was meant to safeguard intelligence from fragmentation has become another perch from which intelligence can be politicized and bent toward partisan narratives,” he wrote in the Bulwark.

    This week’s cuts do not appear to have significantly affected the agency’s largest component, the National Counterterrorism Center, which was set up by Congress to be the government’s primary organization for analyzing international terrorism and which in its heyday had more than 1,000 personnel, according to former senior intelligence officials.

    Trump has nominated Jay Clayton, U.S. attorney and former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, to be the permanent director of national intelligence.

    But last week, Trump abruptly froze Clayton’s nomination, prompting the Senate to postpone a confirmation hearing, in a fit of pique over lawmakers’ failure to pass unrelated election legislation.