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A Delco man is on trial for the ‘random, terrifying, senseless’ murder of a teenage boy he didn’t know

Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse told a panel of jurors Tuesday that he needed to be “very, terrifyingly clear” with them about the killing of Michael Garr.

“There is no backstory. There is nothing that led to this,” Rouse said of the 15-year-old’s fatal stabbing.

“This is the type of random, terrifying, senseless act of violence that we need to pretend doesn’t happen,” he added. “But we know it does.”

Garr, a sophomore at Upper Darby High School, was killed in April 2023 by Marson Weh, a man to whom the teenager had “no earthly connection,” according to Rouse. After stalking Garr for more than a mile as the teen walked through Drexel Hill, Weh, 26, allegedly stabbed him 11 times, including once in the neck,according to prosecutors.

Weh, of Clifton Heights, is on trial this week on murder and related crimes. The motive, if Weh had one, is unclear, Rouse said.

Michael Garr was killed in April 2023 as he walked to his home in Upper Darby.Handout

His attorney, Ian McCurdy, urged jurors to withhold judgment until they see all of the evidence in the case.

“These allegations are horrific. They are heartbreaking. They are gut-wrenching; a 15-year-old boy is dead,” McCurdy said. “But at this time, they are only allegations.”

Extensive surveillance footage allowed investigators to track both Garr and Weh before, during, and after the stabbing, according to testimony Tuesday.

Garr, walking home from Clifton Field with his girlfriend, eventually split off from her and continued alone. Weh can be seen following him, at some points sprinting to catch up with him.

As the two approached Brunswick Avenue near Bridge Street in Drexel Hill, Weh attacked Garr with a knife, and then sprinted from the scene. Garr, mortally wounded, ran in the opposite direction, desperate for help.

Around that same time, Ian Coughlan was driving home from Philadelphia. As he paused to make a left turn, Garr ran up to him, clutching his neck tightly.

The teen was struggling to speak, Coughlan said Tuesday. When he lifted his hands from his neck, blood began to pour out.

“He couldn’t speak, but he was able to squeeze out three words,” Coughlan testified. “’He stabbed me.’”

A recording of Coughlan’s 911 call, played in court, captured the chaotic scene, with him begging for dispatchers to send medics as he urges Garr to stay with him.

Shortly after police arrived at the scene, Garr went into cardiac arrest and died.

“I have a son, and he’s 15 now. It’s just scary for something like this to happen,” Coughlan said outside the county courthouse after his testimony. ”I tried to help, but it didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to.

“I think about him every day.”

As Garr’s family wept inside the courtroom, some having to be excused as the 911 call was played, Weh sat with his eyes cast down, mumbling wordlessly to himself.

The same surveillance footage that recorded Weh pursuing Garr helped investigators identify him through facial recognition software, according to prosecutors. Officers then conducted surveillance on Weh’s home over the next few days and observed him at various times wearing clothing matching what was seen in the video.

Weeks later, officers stopped Weh as he left his home, taking him into custody in connection with an active arrest warrant out of Ohio for a carjacking.

Weh denied killing Garr. But a dried blood stain on thermal underwear he was wearing tested positive for the teen’s DNA — Rouse, the prosecutor, said it was in the exact location where the pocket of his pants would have been.

A knife found in Weh’s backpack had been wiped clean. But a detective separated the blade from its handle, revealing dried blood that had seeped underneath.

It was a match for Garr’s.

Weh’s trial is expected to last through Thursday before Judge G. Michael Green.

Later this year, he is scheduled to appear before Green in a separate trial for attempted murder for allegedly slashing a pregnant woman’s throat and stabbing her in the abdomen during a robbery that took place two months before Garr’s killing.

September 22, 2026
Trump officials cut 760,000 enrollees from ACA, claiming fraud

Vice President JD Vance and administration officials on Tuesday announced that they are removing about 760,000 enrollees from Affordable Care Act coverage, saying that they were fraudulently enrolled in the government health program.

Speaking at a White House press briefing, Vance said that officials would perform “additional verification” on about 419,000 people that they suspected to be fraudulently enrolled, too. The administration also is suspending some brokers found to have wrongly signed up enrollees for ACA coverage.

Officials said that the moves would collectively save $2.2 billion in federal spending. The White House anti-fraud task force, which is led by Vance, is working with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on the crackdown.

“This is what the fraud task force is all about,” Vance said, flanked by CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz and other senior officials. “Saving the American taxpayers money, and on the other hand, ensuring that these programs that are very important” are protected from waste and fraud.

Oz said that the fraudulent enrollees were identified based on their lack of healthcare use and other factors, and that officials concluded many were fictitious. He also announced a six-month moratorium on allowing new insurance brokers to sell ACA plans.

The cuts affect people who enrolled in coverage through healthcare.gov, the federally run ACA marketplace. The Affordable Care Act allowed states to create their own marketplace or use the federal marketplace, healthcare.gov.

Pennsylvania and New Jersey are among 21 states that operate their own marketplaces. The District of Columbia also operates its own ACA marketplace.

A spokesperson for Pennie said people who enroll in coverage through Pennsylvania’s ACA marketplace are not affected.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the administration’s push to remove the ACA enrollees and suspend some insurance brokers. Administration officials told the Washington Post earlier this year that the anti-fraud task force was examining the issue of ACA enrollment fraud.

About 19 million people are enrolled in health plans offered through the ACA’s exchanges, HHS officials said in June. Enrollment in the program, which shot up under President Joe Biden, has shrunk by more than 1 million people since President Donald Trump took office and is expected to fall by millions more this year.

Vance and the anti-fraud task force have targeted healthcare programs in their push to trim federal spending by billions of dollars. Vance and Trump have also long criticized the ACA, a sweeping health law established by then-President Barack Obama and Democrats in 2010. The law’s expansion of health coverage is credited with driving the nation’s uninsured rate to historic lows, and past GOP efforts to target the program helped Democrats win back seats in Congress.

Democrats and some health policy experts have argued that Trump’s polices, including ending pandemic-era subsidies that widely lowered the cost of ACA coverage, have forced people off the program and put them at risk of losing access to care.

Jason Levitis, who was a senior Treasury Department official in the Obama administration, during which he helped craft and implement ACA policies, credited Trump officials for taking steps to confront fraud in the program. But he criticized Tuesday’s announcement as “chaotic” and questioned whether some people would wrongly lose coverage as a result of the sweeping crackdown.

“Throwing three quarters of a million people into this bucket of ‘Your coverage is canceled’ and then having to figure it out later is a big concern,” said Levitis, who is now a senior fellow at the Urban Institute.

He said the administration could have adopted a more structured approach, such as taking lessons from states that run their own ACA insurance exchanges and have reported less fraud in their programs.

Some also called Vance’s announcement a distraction ahead of the midterm elections, comparing the administration’s fraud crackdown to its efforts to cut spending on Medicaid and other healthcare initiatives.

“Families need coverage they can afford and count on when they get sick,” Brad Woodhouse, president of Protect Our Care, a liberal-leaning advocacy group, said in a statement Tuesday. “Vance’s task force won’t accomplish that.”

Republicans contend that dwindling ACA enrollment is the result of necessary initiatives to cut waste and fraud after Democrats focused on growing the program but did too little to scrutinize who was signing up.

Some conservative lawmakers and policy experts had recently pushed for another crackdown, saying that fraudulent ACA enrollment had spiked after pandemic-era initiatives that made it easier to sign up for coverage — and created incentives for bad actors to take advantage of the program.

Brian Blase, the founder of the Paragon Health Institute, a conservative think tank that has driven attention on ACA enrollment fraud, welcomed the administration’s move.

The think tank estimated earlier this year that about 6 million ACA enrollees were fraudulent, a number that includes “phantom enrollees” either unaware they’d signed up or fabricated by brokers.

“The Trump administration actions to suspend brokers engaged in these activities and disenroll phantoms is welcome and will save taxpayers billions of dollars each year,” said Blase, who was an economic aide to Trump in his first administration.

Oz, who runs CMS, which oversees the ACA, has previously said that his agency believes perhaps one-third of ACA enrollment is improper.

“If you care about the ACA, then you’ll want us to take the fraud out,” Oz said at a White House news briefing in June.

At Tuesday’s event, Oz also singled out several convicted insurance executives who had wrongly enrolled tens of thousands of people into the ACA and used the profits to fund their lifestyles.

One fraudster has “a very punchable face,” Oz said, as Kim Brandt, a senior CMS official who is helping oversee the fraud crackdown, held up a photo.

Trump officials also have said that they have adjusted the government’s fraud-fighting tactics, shifting from a long-standing “pay and chase” approach — in which agencies would pay out claims before identifying fraud and then try to claw the money back — to a “stop and caught” model. That strategy has been powered by the use of AI analytics and pattern recognition to spot fraudsters, they added.

“We’ve learned something: Fraud doesn’t stand still,” Chris Klomp, a senior HHS official, said at Tuesday’s briefing.

Staff writer Sarah Gantz contributed to this article.

September 22, 2026
Wonderland Pier showing signs of collapse; Ferris wheel will be ‘torched’ and cut into pieces, developer says.

The wall under the decking of Wonderland Pier is caving in and showing signs of collapse, say owner Eustace Mita and Ocean City inspectors.

Ocean City has sent Mita a “Notice of Unsafe Structure,” along with a request for an engineer’s report and a plan of corrective action, city spokesperson Doug Bergen said.

“It’s an emergent condition,” Bergen said. The wall is toward the rear of the structure and is “not anywhere near where the public would walk by,” he said.

The decking is caving in on the landlocked Wonderland Pier in Ocean City, prompting Ocean City to issue a notice of unsafe structure. The city says the cinder-block wall below one of the decks toward the rear of the property is unstable.Courtesy Eustace Mita

“The city’s only involvement is with the cinderblock wall that’s caved in and falling over,” he said.

Mita, meanwhile, was sounding the alarm that the conditions of the pier and the iconic Ferris wheel were dire.

He said Monday that he was consulting engineers and that the Ferris wheel would need to be “literally torched” and cut into pieces to be taken down.

“It’s going to take a long time and a lot of engineering,” he said.

“The original plan was to dismantle the Ferris wheel and reassemble it,” Mita said.

However, the steel company that dismantled the Morey’s Piers Ferris wheel for refurbishing told Mita that would not be possible for the Wonderland Ferris wheel.

Mita said “even the bolts that hold it together” are beyond dismantling, permanently welded in place, “because of the conditions of being oceanfront, and non-operable for so long.”

The Giant Wheel Ferris wheel and Raiders (right) interactive maze with tunnels, bridges, and slides.on the final day for the beloved Wonderland Pier in Ocean City Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer

Mita is negotiating with Ocean City to build a hotel on the site, which was declared “in need of rehabilitation,” in part because of the deterioration of the pier.

While Mita used the condition of the pier to justify a designation that would allow him to build the hotel without zoning changes, community members have contended that, as the owner, Mita was responsible for allowing the pier to deteriorate.

The amusement pier, owned for decades by the family of Mayor Jay Gillian, closed for good in October 2024. Despite community opposition, City Council approved the rehabilitation designation in June, triggering ongoing negotiations over Mita’s project.

A rendering of the proposed new Icona in Wonderland Resort, to be built on the site of the old Wonderland Pier. The proposal for a 252-room resort includes saving the iconic Ferris Wheel and carousel.Courtesy Icona Resorts

His original plan for a seven-story hotel included preserving the Ferris wheel and the historic carousel, in addition to several other kiddie rides. He said Monday he was still trying to save the carousel.

Mita said he would try to “limit the damage as best we can” to the pier.

“We can’t make repairs because it’s imploding,” he said.

Eustace Mita talks about the construction of this beachfront Achristavest home on 116th Street in Stone Harbor on Tuesday, August 18, 2026.Vernon Ogrodnek / For The Inquirer

Mita told the Ocean City Sentinel last week his latest design proposal called for the hotel to be set back from both the Plaza Place neighborhood at the rear of the property and the boardwalk in front.

He described a hotel that gets higher toward its center, with a public plaza in front, and a building that will be about 23 feet higher at the rear border than the 50-foot high log flume that is currently there. “It will have a beautiful plaza, which will be open to the public and will have firepits and the like,” he told the Sentinel. “That’s really where we’re at.”

The old Wonderland Pier site on the boardwalk in Ocean City, N.J. as seen from Wayne Avenue on Jan. 6, 2026. The beloved amusement pier shut down in October 2024. A developer wants to build a luxury hotel. A report put the cost of repairing the Ferris wheel, Carousel and log flume at as much as $6.5 million.Amy S. Rosenberg / staff

September 22, 2026
Penn receives $22.5 million gift for endowed scholarship, professorships

The University of Pennsylvania’s College of Arts and Sciences received a $22.5 million gift for an endowed scholarship for undergraduates and endowed professorships across history, political science, and economics, the university announced Tuesday.

The gift comes from Gabriel Gilinski, a 2008 graduate, and his wife, Stephanie Gilinski.

It will help more students afford a Penn education and advance academics, university officials said.

“Penn is at its best when we bring talented students together with outstanding faculty and give them the opportunity to learn from one another,” Penn president J. Larry Jameson said in a statement. “Gabriel and Stephanie’s generous commitment expands access to a Penn education while investing in the scholars whose outstanding teaching and research enrich our academic community.”

The gift specifically will support undergraduate students financially, including those educated in Latin America, and it will establish two professorships and a visiting professorship, the school said.

Gilinski, who obtained his degree in political science with a minor in economics, chairs the board of Grupo Nutresa, a Latin America food company with more than 50,000 employees and 45 factories in 17 countries. Gilinski and his wife live in Miami.

“Across Latin America, access to education creates lasting change for families, and I’ve seen the ripple effect it can have, shaping not just one life but an entire community,” Gilinski said in a statement. “Penn gives international scholars a place to bring their own perspectives and experiences, and they leave shaped by everything they’ve learned from the classmates around them. That’s part of what makes a Penn education so special to me.”

He also emphasized the importance of the liberal arts and critical thinking skills he acquired at Penn.

September 22, 2026
Raucous student housing has plagued a Chesco neighborhood. A new measure will hold landlords responsible.

A new ordinance seeks to give Tredyffrin officials more power to address unruly student tenants, after quality-of-life issues have plagued a Chester County neighborhood for years.

In a unanimous vote Monday, the municipality’s seven elected officials voted to approve a new ordinance regarding student housing that changes the enforcement mechanism, allowing them to go after the landlords who rent to students — rather than the students themselves.

“I hope this makes a difference, and I hope that we can hold the landlords or the companies, whoever own the property, responsible for this,” said board member Carlotta Johnston-Pugh.

The updated ordinance comes as neighbors — young families, lifelong residents, and aging seniors — on Mount Pleasant Avenue have struggled for years to live alongside a rotating cohort of Villanova University students.

Residents have said previously that they have walked out in the morning to find vomit on their cars, beer cans strewn across the streets and yards, and students passed out on the porch. They’ve been kept up by loud parties, rideshare cars speeding down the street, or a lost drunk student trying to kick in the door.

With Villanova’s new 112-acre Cabrini campus off Upper Gulph Road, putting it now within walking distance to the houses and the parties, residents worry that the problems could intensify.

At least seven houses are rented to students, several along Mount Pleasant, and a few on nearby Henry Avenue, township officials said previously. Another house where students live isn’t zoned properly, which the township has been trying to address, officials said previously.

Board member Hans van Mol said it bothered him, when he first joined the board less than a year ago, that the Mount Pleasant community felt that the township wasn’t responding to their concerns.

“Our ordinance wasn’t suited to keep up with the issues that were going on that needed to be remedied,” he said. “I’m very glad that we finally got to this point here, if not even just for the potential that the township can actually promote a safer, stronger community, but that people can actually feel we’re working on it.”

Tredyffrin first adopted a student housing ordinance more than a decade ago in response to concerns. The measure limited household occupancy to three students and prohibited the houses from being too close together, though the properties along Mount Pleasant were grandfathered in. But its power was somewhat limited.

The new ordinance — a much more robust measure — notes that the owner of the student house will be “directly responsible” for the behavior of student tenants and their guests. It gives the township the ability to inspect the home, if there are suspicions that there are more than three students living in the house. It allows the township to direct the landlord to evict students if three violations occur within the same year. Landlords can be fined up to $1,000 for violations of the ordinance.

Residents should keep calling the police when issues arise, “so that they can properly document it to be used against the landlord enforcement of this ordinance,” said board vice chair Sharon Humble.

For some of the residents, it was a promising effort.

“Yes, I have been one of those that have come and … voiced my concern about what has been going on,” said Mount Pleasant resident Shawn Jackson. “I read through the ordinance, and it’s very comprehensive, and I’m very happy about that.”

Kevin Stroman, a longtime resident of the neighborhood who now runs a mentoring program at the historic Carr School/Mount Pleasant Chapel across the street from one of the student houses, has long tried to offset negative relationships with the students and the residents.

“I think the climate in Mount Pleasant is so bad right now because of certain students getting out of control,” he said. “I like the idea [of the ordinance] because no doubt the owners have to have something that will make them look at who they rent to.”

Others wished it went further. G. Hayward Simpson, a Mount Pleasant resident who lives in the Montgomery County portion, said that the students “have no need, want, will to be part of any community.” He wanted to see student housing entirely excluded from the neighborhood.

“I’m not saying this with any kind of malice, or I don’t want these kids to have a good time. I just don’t want them to live on the block. I want to see single families,” he said.

Jeff Hilliard, a landlord with a student rental on Mount Pleasant, said he “lay[s] down the law” with his tenants.

When he first purchased the house for rentals, Hilliard said he gave his number to the neighbors so they could call him if they ever had a problem with the students. They’ve never contacted him, he said, but he knows the police have been called and “literally driven away because there was no issue whatsoever.”

“So unfortunately, I think it’s just a couple bad tenants and a couple bad landlords that are causing this for these nice people of Mount Pleasant,” he said.

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

September 22, 2026
Trump says U.S. and Iranian officials met Tuesday, shortly after warning he may ‘annihilate’ Iran

UNITED NATIONS — President Donald Trump said U.S. and Iranian officials met on Tuesday, an unexpected engagement that came even as he threatened in his address to the U.N. General Assembly that he may “annihilate” the Islamic Republic if a deal isn’t reached soon to end the nearly seven-month war.

Trump told reporters that his chief envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, met with the Iranian officials on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders but he offered few details about how the discussions transpired or the substance of the exchange.

“It was a very good meeting,” Trump said. The president later added that the Iranian officials were “not the highest level, but it’s something.”

The engagement comes after months of U.S.-Iran communications languishing following the collapse of a short-lived ceasefire that was brokered in June. U.S. and Iranian negotiators met separately with Qatari and Pakistani mediators in Doha in early July for indirect talks.

Earlier Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Trump is open to meeting with Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, while he’s in New York for the General Assembly.

“This is a president that will meet with anybody for the most part, because he believes that engaging with people is important if you’re going to solve problems,” Rubio said on NBC’s Today show. “It doesn’t mean you’re going to end up agreeing with them, but it’s important.”

Trump also met on Tuesday with leaders and senior officials from Gulf Cooperation Council nations — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates — as well as Jordan to discuss the way ahead with the war in Iran.

In his address to the General Assembly, Trump made the case that he’s shown fortitude while other leaders have equivocated as he defended his decision to start a war with Iran.

But Trump also suggested that he could be at a crossroads in the conflict even as he called on the Islamic Republic to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz and return to the negotiating table to find a settlement to end the conflict.

“I have a big decision to make,” Trump said. “Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before, maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world? Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?”

The president’s comments came in his wide-ranging address to the international body in which he also celebrated this year’s U.S. military operation to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power and a new agreement to expand the U.S. military presence in Greenland, and pushed back against calls for greater regulation of the artificial intelligence industry.

But at the heart of the address was a fulsome defense of the war and pushback on the notion that Iran has shown a measure of resilience.

“The terrorist regime is behaving badly, not because they are strong and confident, but because they are weak and desperate,” Trump said.

Most of Iran’s delegation walked out of the chamber as Trump railed against the Islamic Republic.

Trump’s speech began a busy day of diplomacy

After his speech, Trump gathered with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen on the sidelines of the General Assembly to sign a new security agreement.

The deal, announced last week, came together after Trump repeatedly threatened to “take over” Greenland, a territory of NATO-ally Denmark, by military force if necessary. Trump said Tuesday the U.S. will immediately begin the process of developing a larger military presence in Greenland including “building two very major military bases.”

Under the deal, Greenland remains Denmark’s territory.

Trump also held talks with new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He was expected to hold a more informal meeting on Tuesday evening with Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez, according to the White House.

Trump also took part in an event on the Shield of Americas, an initiative Trump launched with Latin American countries earlier this year focused on combatting violent cartels.

Iran war looms large at General Assembly

The visit to the U.N. comes as Trump’s foreign policy approach — particularly his decision to start a war with Iran — has become a drag on his fellow Republicans’ hopes of retaining control of both chambers of Congress during the coming midterm elections. Nevertheless, Trump made the case in his speech that the world is better off for his leadership.

“I have no interest in leaving dangers to grow for another day,” Trump said.

In last year’s address at the U.N., Trump claimed the U.S. had “demolished” Iran’s nuclear capabilities after he ordered the June 2025 bombardment of three key facilities.

He returned to the General Assembly nearing the seven-month mark of a new war against Iran that he insists is necessary to address a nuclear threat posed by Iran.

The war has grown more complicated even though strikes by the United States and Israel have killed much of Iran’s top leadership and destroyed its air force and navy, while a U.S. blockade of Iranian oil has left Tehran in economic shambles.

The energy market continues to be spooked by the war and oil prices remain elevated. Saudi Arabia earlier this month shuttered a key pipeline that acted as a relief valve for oil blocked in the Gulf. The kingdom made the move after the pipeline came under attack by Iran-backed militants in Iraq.

At the same time, territorial grabs by the Yemen-based Houthi rebels, another Iranian-backed group, near the Bab al-Mandab Strait has now made it treacherous for oil carriers to use that Red Sea shipping lane.

Trump’s frustration with Russia-Ukraine war mounts

In his address, the president also touched on Russia’s continuing war against Ukraine — a conflict that during his 2024 campaign he predicted would be resolved on Day One of his second term. He once again expressed hope that the conflict will soon be resolved.

Trump hasn’t obscured that his patience is being tested by Ukraine’s targeting of Russia’s diesel refineries — an issue that’s added to the global oil markets’ volatility — and Russia’s targeting of Ukraine’s energy grid.

Trump last week asserted that he got the two sides to agree to not target each other’s energy infrastructure.

Zelensky had said he was willing to go along with Trump’s plan if Russia abided by it. Russia said it could only go along with Trump’s energy truce proposal if Western energy sanctions on Moscow were lifted first.

The two sides have continued carrying out strikes on refineries and other energy infrastructure.

Trump noted that last week he signed a new sanctions bill targeting Moscow. It empowers him to impose up to 100% tariffs on the top five importers of Russian oil or natural gas.

The legislation includes an exception for countries that import less than 15% of Russia’s natural gas exports and have taken significant steps to reduce those imports. Trump, however, has yet to enact the stiff penalties.

“If necessary, I will have to use them,” Trump said. “It’s time to stop the killing.”

September 22, 2026
GOP Sen. John Curtis calls for probe of Trump Jr. after wedding party bankrolled by Russian oligarch

WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah is calling on the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate whether Donald Trump Jr. used his proximity to the presidency for financial benefit, after his recent wedding party was partially bankrolled by a Russian oligarch.

In a letter sent Tuesday, Curtis called on the committee to subpoena Trump Jr. over his business dealings, relationships with foreign individuals and entities, gifts, or other benefits he has received and any instances in which his relationship to President Donald Trump, a Republican, “was invoked or understood to provide value.” Curtis called for the same scrutiny of Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, a Democrat.

“The country should not have to accept one standard for the family of a Republican president and another for the family of a Democratic president,” Curtis wrote in the letter addressed to GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, chairperson of the committee, and Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the committee.

The letter comes as a few Republicans have shown a growing willingness to criticize Trump after largely avoiding public breaks with the president during much of his second term. The unpopular war in Iran, high gas prices, and mounting concerns about the GOP’s prospects in November’s midterm elections have brought increased scrutiny of the president from within his own party.

The Trumps say it was a generous gift from a dear friend

ProPublica first reported last week that Umar Kremlev, who has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, helped pay to rent a private island and for a fireworks show when Trump Jr. and socialite Bettina Anderson were married in the Bahamas in May.

In a subsequent post on her Instagram page signed by the couple, Bettina Trump wrote that Kremlev, head of the International Boxing Association, was a “dear friend” who “very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us AFTER our wedding.”

The president, who did not attend his son’s wedding, defended Kremlev’s involvement but said the money would be paid back.

Curtis calls the funding ‘corruption’

Curtis, first elected to the Senate in 2024, vowed upon taking office not to shy away from disagreeing with Trump. He has publicly broken with the president several times since, including rejecting Trump’s calls to eliminate the Senate filibuster. In a July Wall Street Journal op-ed, Curtis wrote that “under no circumstance” would he support efforts to end or alter the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to advance most legislation in the 100-member chamber.

Curtis’ criticism involving Trump’s son goes beyond those policy disagreements. Curtis last Friday called the gift “corruption” and vowed to say more in the coming days.

“A Russian oligarch paid for a lavish wedding after-party for Donald Trump Jr., which to me just stinks. It’s corruption. I don’t like it,” Curtis said in a video posted on social media.

On Tuesday, Curtis wrote on social media that Republicans “nearly wore out the subpoena machine investigating Hunter Biden’s foreign relationships” and that they “should not unplug it now.”

Any congressional committee can launch an investigation at any time. In 2017, Grassley led a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, including a meeting that Trump Jr. held with Russians in 2016. The panel has also conducted multiple investigations of Hunter Biden.

Clare Slattery, a spokesperson for the Senate Judiciary Committee, confirmed that the committee had received Curtis’ letter but indicated that a hearing before the end of the year would be difficult, citing the limited Senate schedule and the amount of time it takes to prepare for an investigative hearing. She did not say whether the committee will investigate.

Durbin said in a statement that Curtis had made a “good faith request” and that while Hunter Biden has given a sworn deposition in the past, Trump Jr. has not.

“For the Committee to ignore this matter is to run the risk of being complicit in a coverup. I will join in supporting Senator Curtis’ request,” Durbin said.

Republicans investigated the Bidens

Grassley worked alongside House Republicans in 2023 and 2024 to investigate whether Hunter Biden used his father’s name and political position to benefit his business dealings with foreign interests. The Biden family dismissed the investigations as politically motivated and denied any wrongdoing.

The GOP effort culminated in a report accusing Joe Biden of participating in a conspiracy to use his public office to enrich his family. But the House never voted on articles of impeachment against him.

“‘Trust us’ was not enough then, and it is not enough now,” Curtis wrote.

Democrats have foreshadowed plans to investigate Trump and his family if they win control of Congress in November, with particular scrutiny on the family’s financial interests. Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement that the revelations surrounding Trump Jr.’s wedding “may be the most serious allegation against you to date.”

September 22, 2026
Trump signs agreement between U.S., Denmark, and Greenland to bolster Arctic security

UNITED NATIONS — President Donald Trump has signed an agreement with Denmark and Greenland aimed at strengthening Arctic and North Atlantic security, easing tensions over his repeated calls for Greenland to become part of the United States.

The signing Tuesday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York comes days after Trump announced the deal to bolster U.S. military presence on the vast, icy island but keep it under Danish control. The governments provided few details of the agreement before the signing.

“This is tremendous for Europe and for the United States and for everybody,” Trump said just before the agreement was signed. “And for Greenland, it’s going to be incredible.”

For months, Trump has expressed his desire for Greenland to become part of the United States and issued threats to seize the semiautonomous territory from Denmark, a NATO ally. On Tuesday, he did not respond to questions about whether a U.S. acquisition of Greenland was off the table.

U.S. has had a presence in Greenland for many years

Officials from the U.S., Greenland, and Denmark negotiated for months behind the scenes, searching for solutions to address some of Trump’s security concerns about the mineral-rich island.

Trump’s designs on Greenland strained relations within NATO, with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warning a U.S. takeover would amount to the end of the Atlantic alliance.

The standoff unsettled many of Greenland’s roughly 56,000 people and drove a wedge between the U.S. and Denmark and its European Union partners, who stepped up security exercises on and monetary support for the island.

Trade and hopes for a resource grab have all factored into concerns about Greenland’s future: About two-thirds of its territory sits inside the Arctic Circle, where melting sea ice has opened additional shipping routes

The United States was prominent in Greenland for decades but, since 1945, the U.S. military presence in Greenland has decreased from thousands of soldiers on 17 bases and installations to roughly 200 soldiers on the remote Pituffik Space Base in the northwest. The base supports missile warning, missile defense, and space surveillance operations for the U.S. and NATO.

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday morning, Trump provided a small window into details of the deal.

“We will immediately begin the process of developing a large military presence in the appropriate locations,” he said, including “building two very major military bases.”

Denmark’s parliament approved a bill last year to allow U.S. military bases on Danish soil, widening a 2023 military agreement made with the Biden administration that gave U.S. troops broad access to air bases in Denmark.

Trump previously insisted the U.S. needed to “take Greenland,” to prevent Russia or China from doing the same. Though Trump said he would rather “make a deal” for the territory, he added: “one way or the other, we’re going to have Greenland.”

All parties present the agreement as a positive move

Mikkel Runge Olesen, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute of International Studies, said Greenland and Denmark come away from the deal with the possibility of “ending the crisis without compromising on sovereignty,” while the U.S. gets a “somewhat more favorable” deal than under the existing defense treaty.

But relations overall between the U.S., Denmark, and Greenland “are likely to be haunted by this long after Trump leaves office, and the crisis is likely to have significant and lasting negative impact on trans-Atlantic relations more generally,” he said. “The lost trust will take decades to rebuild.”

Frederiksen said Tuesday that the deal being signed was a “deal that can last forever,” labeling it as good for the U.S., Greenland, Denmark, and the broader NATO alliance.

“Mr. President, you have been very clear: You don’t want adversaries to come too close,” she said. “I fully agree.”

Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Greenland’s prime minister, called it “a win-win-win agreement.”

“Your security is our security, and our security is your security,” he said Tuesday.

September 22, 2026
Man shot and detained by ICE hospitalized for partial paralysis, attorney says

The Venezuelan man shot by an immigration officer in Austin over the weekend was taken to a hospital late Monday after experiencing paralysis on the left side of his body, his lawyer said.

Attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch also has filed a lawsuit in Texas asking a federal court to order the immediate release of Wilber Garcés Pérez from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention and halt his potential deportation to Venezuela. U.S. District Judge Orlando L. Garcia scheduled an in-person hearing for Sept. 30 and ordered that Garcés be present, according to court records.

Garcés had been transferred from a local hospital to a federal detention facility four hours after he was shot by an ICE officer on Sunday, despite having a bullet still lodged in his back, Lincoln-Goldfinch said. She said doctors chose not to remove it because the bullet was too close to his spine but argued it was reckless to release him from the hospital that quickly.

Garcés, a 28-year-old delivery driver, told reporters on Monday by cell phone that he remained in pain and had spent the night sleeping on the floor in the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, about 130 miles southwest of Austin. His attorney said on social media that he was taken to another hospital late Monday after complaining of paralysis.

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D., Texas) said Tuesday that Garcés had been discharged and returned to the Pearsall facility. Castro said he and another lawmaker plan to visit Garcés on Wednesday to demand his release.

“It is nothing more than a prison,” he said of the detention facility. “None of this should have ever happened.”

Department of Homeland Security officials have not responded to questions about the shooting or the claims from Garcés and Lincoln-Goldfinch about his medical care and the events that led to the shooting. Earlier Monday, DHS said Garcés was in stable condition and in federal custody “pending removal” from the country. The agency said he is subject to a final deportation order.

Garcés’s supporters are calling on DHS to release any video footage of the incident and are demanding an independent investigation.

Garcés worked as a DoorDash driver and was making a delivery Sunday when an unmarked black truck operated by ICE sideswiped his car, Lincoln-Goldfinch said. After he attempted to make a U-turn to find a place to pull over, the ICE vehicle struck his car again before an officer shot him, she said.

Lincoln-Goldfinch has said that Garcés is the main provider for his young family. He has a young son with a disability and is responsible for the costs of his treatments.

In the lawsuit seeking his release, Lincoln-Goldfinch and attorney Kristin Etter argued that Garcés should be allowed to apply for a U visa for crime victims because he is a “victim of a violent crime, namely, being shot by a federal officer.” Deporting him would violate his constitutional right to due process, the attorneys said.

Congress members and his attorneys have also expressed fear for Garcés’ health in the ICE detention facility, alleging he may need surgery and requires further evaluation.

Garcés alleges that an ICE officer shot him in the torso at 12:56 p.m. on Sunday, in an intersection in Austin, according to court records his attorneys filed on his behalf. Hours later, he was discharged to ICE custody, his attorneys wrote, “with the bullet still lodged in his body.”

He was then “forced to sleep on a cement floor” until around 4 a.m. Monday, when ICE transported him to the Pearsall facility, according to the records.

After he spoke to the media that day, ICE revoked Garcés’s communication privileges and moved him from the infirmary into “an isolated room with a flat, nonadjustable bed,” Lincoln-Goldfinch said in a statement.

Around 5 p.m. Monday, she said Garcés became unable to move his left arm and was taken back to the hospital. During the transfer, she said ICE handled him “roughly, despite his gunshot injury,” placing him in handcuffs and shackling his ankles.

DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment about those claims.

Lincoln-Goldfinch said that the gunshot fractured Garcés’s clavicle and that he is suffering “significant swelling and pain,” and wearing a sling. At the hospital, she said, doctors gave him intravenous morphine for pain.

Garcés entered the country legally seeking asylum, Lincoln-Goldfinch said. An immigration judge issued him a final removal order after he missed a hearing. Lincoln-Goldfinch said officials sent a notice advising him of his upcoming court date to an old address.

The Associated Press reported Tuesday that more than 100 Democratic lawmakers are calling on Homeland Security officials to cease any efforts to interfere with a comprehensive investigation into the shooting.

The lawmakers said in their letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and acting ICE Director David Venturella they are deeply concerned ICE is attempting to swiftly deport Garcéss to impede an independent investigation.

“Mr. Garcés Perez is a key witness to this shooting, and given ICE’s history of obscuring the facts in similar investigations, he must not be removed,” the lawmakers wrote.

They said Garcés and the ICE agent who shot him must remain in Texas until a thorough investigation is complete.

The Democratic lawmakers called on DHS officials to respond by next Monday on why agents used deadly force, whether they followed policy requiring them to render medical aid, and whether ICE will release all bodycam footage.

September 22, 2026
Police ID man wanted in AR-15-style rifle robbery in Center City

Police on Monday said a 32-year-old man is wanted in connection with an armed robbery in Center City in which he allegedly was seen on surveillance video menacing the victim with an AR-15-style rifle.

An arrest warrant has been issued for Shakur Nichols, who police said was one of two masked men recorded on video robbing a man at gunpoint on the 1200 block of Sansom Street shortly after 2:20 a.m. Aug. 28. The victim was not injured.

Police were still trying to identify the second assailant in the video, which was posted by police on YouTube. The second man was armed with a handgun.

Anyone with information on where to find or Nichols or who knows the identity of the second suspect can contact police through 911, by calling Central Detectives at 215-686-3093 or -3094, or by submitting an anonymous tip at 215-686-TIPS (8477).

The two suspects robbed their victim after exiting a dark gray Nissan Altima, police said. They took the victim’s jewelry and watch and returned to the Altima, which was last seen heading north on 13th Street.

Both men were wearing black face masks and were dressed in all black, police said.

Police said Nichols may have been involved in other gunpoint robberies in Center City, NBC10 reported.

On Aug. 23 around 3 a.m., three men were outside talking on the 1500 block of Locust Street when three assailants stepped out of a gray Hyundai sedan and demanded the men’s belongings, police said last month.

Two men complied, but a third resisted and was struck in the face with a handgun, police said.

The robbers tool cell phones, watches, car keys, wallets, driver’s licenses, and cash, police said.

Surveillance video showed one of the victims on his knees on the sidewalk as two of the robbers pointed guns — including what appeared to be an assault rifle — at his head, police said.

A total of four men, including a getaway driver in the Hyundai, were involved in that robbery, police said.

The Hyundai had been stolen from Cheltenham Township and was located shortly after the robbery, police said.

September 22, 2026