Two hundred and fifty years ago, a group of ordinary men walked into a brick building in Philadelphia and signed their names to the most consequential document in American history, the Declaration of Independence. Throughout this year, and all across the nation, Americans are gathering to celebrate those first steps toward freedom.
Last month, while I listened to the concerts on the Parkway and watched the fireworks over the Art Museum, I found myself thinking about the people who have kept it going ever since.
Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst is shown along Route 539, Whiting-New Egypt Road, Manchester Township, N.J. The author has served nearly all of his 26-year Air Force career at the 514th Airlift Wing at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.Doug Hood/Asbury Park Press
I have spent nearly my entire 26-year Air Force career right here, at the 514th Airlift Wing at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in South Jersey, affectionately known as the Freedom Wing. That name has always meant something to me, but this anniversary year, it carries a particular weight.
Freedom is not a monument or a date on a calendar. Freedom is a daily act of service, renewed by ordinary people who choose to do an extraordinary thing: raise their right hand and pledge to lay it all on the line for their fellow citizens.
The members of the Freedom Wing are your neighbors. Truly and literally. They teach your children in Philadelphia classrooms. They run toward the smoke when your house is on fire. They wear a SEPTA uniform in the morning and a flight suit in the evening. They are nurses, corporate executives, police officers, and small-business owners. They coach Little League in the summer and strut down Broad Street on New Year’s Day.
And then, when the nation calls or the mission demands, they put on the uniform and get to work. They leave their families, their jobs, and their routines, and they go where they’re needed. No questions asked.
In the Air Force Reserve, we call them citizen airmen. I call them my chosen family and the best people I have ever known.
Since this wing was originally designated in 1949, our citizen airmen have answered the call in every major conflict our country has faced — Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan — and in humanitarian missions across the globe. The Freedom Wing has never sat on the sidelines of history.
Task Force McGuire-Dix Airmen prepare personal protective equipment to aid in the arrival of Afghans in support of the U.S. Department of State-led Operation Allies Refuge at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey in 2021.U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Joseph Morales
After more than a quarter century standing alongside these individuals, what strikes me most is not the mission accomplishments, though they have been extraordinary — it’s the sacrifice that surrounds each one.
It’s the spouse who holds the household together for a sixth month of deployment. It’s the firefighter who tells his crew he has to leave again, and the crew that jumps to cover his shifts. It’s the teacher who builds training plans instead of lesson plans in the back of an aircraft at 30,000 feet, and the students who send hand-drawn cards and care packages.
The uniform isn’t what makes these people and their loved ones remarkable. Their character does. Their grit does. This city is known for it, and so are our citizen airmen.
As Philadelphia continues to celebrate 250 years of this improbable, magnificent country, take a moment to consider how we got here.
Look around for the people who have dedicated their lives to preserving our freedom — they are already among you. Tell them you see them. That recognition costs nothing, and to a citizen airman who has given up more than most will ever know, it means everything.
The truest way I know to celebrate Freedom 250 is not just to enjoy the freedoms we have inherited, but to honor the people who are still out there, right now, making sure we keep it.
Col. Thad Amundson is the deputy wing commander of the 514th Airlift Wing, the “Freedom Wing,” at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey. The Philadelphia resident has flown combat sorties in Operations Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom, New Dawn, and Inherent Resolve. He is a command pilot with over 4,000 flying hours, 800 hours flown in combat, and more than 5,000 flying hours as a civilian airline pilot.
The executive order, like the rest of the anti-vaccination crusade led by the president and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., rests on vibes, superstitions, and folklore. It would be tempting to compare it to witchcraft if not for the risk of defaming witches.
Trump’s directive seeks to reduce the number of vaccines recommended for children by more than a third, from 18 to 11, exposing many more to the worst outcomes of hepatitis B, influenza, and COVID-19. It also recommends that each vaccination be administered in a separate appointment, and that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) shot be split into immunizations for each of the three diseases, which are not available as such in the United States.
Reprising an earlier Health and Human Services policy that was blocked by a federal judge, Trump’s order is on dubious legal as well as scientific footing. But even if it doesn’t survive judicial scrutiny, the administration’s continued muddling of vaccination messages has obvious risks.
Likewise, making child immunizations that much harder for working parents by requiring more appointments can only bolster the president’s remarkable success in making America measly again. More people have already contracted measles under this administration than in all the preceding years of this century combined.
Cases of pertussis, also known as whooping cough and commonly prevented by a combination vaccine, hit a 13-year high in 2025. This year, a flu outbreak sickened hundreds of Air Force trainees and killed one after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made vaccinations optional. It’s all too foreseeable given Trump’s disastrous mismanagement of the pandemic, which killed more than a million Americans.
Childhood vaccinations, meanwhile, saved more than a million lives over the past three decades. A federal study found that they also prevented 32 million hospitalizations, half a billion illnesses, and $2.7 trillion in direct and indirect costs.
So why is the White House so determined to undermine what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called “one of the greatest achievements of biomedical science and public health”?
Apart from the endlessly debunked myth that vaccines cause autism, Trump, Kennedy, and Co. seem strangely preoccupied with the number and volume of shots. This week, they claimed that the previous schedule subjected children to a total of 57 shots — or 72 or 94. The president said that entails “large amounts of, like, vats” of fluid “pumped into your child’s body.”
That is about as medically sound as his infamous Clorox cure for COVID. The most expansive understanding of the shots required to attend school yields about 35 doses over the first five years of a child’s life. At about half a milliliter each, that amounts to a bit more than a tablespoon.
Trump has acknowledged that his objection to the measles, mumps, and rubella shot is “based on what I feel.” Asked this week to explain his contention that the injection could be “quite lethal,” contradicting half a century of use and study of the vaccine, he replied, “What I’ve heard is that there are some people that say it is that way.”
But no one has to believe what the president heard some people say when it comes to the lethality of measles itself: The disease has already killed two unvaccinated children on his watch. How many more will follow?
Hurrah for Jonathan Zimmerman’s recent column on the settlement of an antisemitism lawsuit by Haverford College. As a Jew, a supporter of Israel, and a strong opponent of Benjamin Netanyahu’s domestic policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians, Zimmerman has given voice to many of us. When Palestinians say “From the river to the sea,” it sounds a lot like a sentiment expressed by Netanyahu’s supporters — but it has a different meaning. My personal support for a two-state solution does not make me antisemitic or anti-Zionist.
William Eisen,Philadelphia
Remember when
I’m 67 years old, and these are the things I remember. I remember when gambling was considered a vice and a moral failing. Now I can gamble on pretty much anything. And I’m encouraged to do so by celebrities and athletes.
I remember when Congress would present legislation to the president, and he would sign it into law. Now we have a Congress that puts forward no new legislation and seems completely content to let the president govern through executive orders. That is not democracy; that is dictatorship.
I remember a Congress and Supreme Court that fulfilled their roles as powers equal to those commanded by the White House. I now see a Congress and Supreme Court more interested in appeasing the current president than in doing their jobs.
I remember a time when the president acted … well, presidential. We now have a president who lies constantly and denigrates and vilifies anyone who disagrees with him.
But a pause treats the symptom. We are adding enormous demand to a grid we have stopped building.
Look at what else happened this year. The federal government paid about $4 billion to energy companies to cancel offshore wind projects, including $1.2 billion to RWE this month, with the money redirected into liquefied natural gas. We are spending public funds to keep power off the grid. Then we act surprised when power gets expensive.
China added more than seven times the solar capacity we did last year, and close to 15 times the wind. It now has twice as much wind and solar under construction as the rest of the world combined. Whatever you think of the AI boom, the country that can generate the electricity is going to host the industry.
So we have managed the worst of both worlds. We block the demand, and we cancel the supply. One of those is a local decision made by neighbors trying to protect each other. The other is a national decision made by people who do not pay our electric bills.
Barry Vernick, Philadelphia
Join the conversation: Send letters to letters@inquirer.com. Limit length to 150 words and include home address and day and evening phone number. Letters run in The Inquirer six days a week on the editorial pages and online.
I didn’t have Peeping Tom drones on my bingo card for 2026.
But then, on July 14, the West Brandywine Police Department let residents of Wallace Township in Chester County know, via Facebook, that for a month or so, they’d been investigating (and had witnessed) a drone flying over homes along several roads in my neighborhood at night, between 8 and 11 p.m.
“It has been reported that this drone may be photographing properties, including inside the homes,” stated the police department’s Facebook page. “Those residents that live in that area are being urged to be mindful of this aircraft, and to be diligent, especially if you have skylights on the roof. These drones can be equipped with high resolution cameras and have extreme zoom capabilities.”
Huh. Creepy.
Since we don’t have young children whose images, captured without our consent, might find their way onto the more sinister reaches of the web, and since our house isn’t full of luxury goods to be cased, I didn’t worry much.
Maybe if the drone operator chanced to peep through our windows, he’d take pity seeing the proliferation of dust bunnies and proactively book us a deep-cleaning service appointment?
But the West Brandywine Police Department’s Aug. 10 update upped the ante: “We have seen the comments that [the drone] may be looking for a ‘pet’ or some other legitimate reason. This is NOT the case.”
Screen capture of the West Brandywine Police Department’s Facebook post on Aug. 10 updating residents of Wallace Township on the continued drone sightings.Screen capture
It is particularly disconcerting because Pennsylvania regulations stipulate that for nighttime flying the drones “need to remain within line-of-sight of the remote pilot on the ground.” Even if you aren’t unnerved at the idea of someone deploying a little electromechanical spy to look into your windows at night (when the lights inside make people and things clearly visible in a way they wouldn’t be during the day), the idea that the person doing so is on your property — or close enough to keep the drone in sight — should be.
I can easily imagine folks who already feel vulnerable — the elderly, women living alone, or people who have experienced domestic partner abuse or who have filed for protection orders — being terrified by that prospect.
The thing is — despite the West Brandywine Police Department’s gratifyingly proactive approach to residents’ privacy concerns — it is the Federal Aviation Administration that’s in charge. The state reports that some 11,000 people have an FAA remote pilot rating, and if this peeping drone is flown by a registered pilot, there may be little anyone can do.
Responses to West Brandywine PD’s Facebook posts about this have been predictably mixed in this libertarian-leaning corner of the county. Outrage and worry about surveillance and invasion of privacy, of course, but also lots of drone-flying enthusiasts who chafe at any talk of curtailing their ability to pilot their unmanned craft wherever and whenever — property owners be damned.
Also, since there are a lot of hunters in this neck of the woods, there are a good number of comments about shooting the drone down if it is sighted. I hasten to add that — as tempting as it might be to shoot the flying snoop right between its blinking red lights — drones are considered aircraft, and it is a federal felony to damage or disable them — punishable with a fine of $250,000 and up to 20 years imprisonment.
If you think none of this should matter to you because, hey, you don’t live in Wallace Township and no drone has been haunting your nights, think again. Aerial surveillance by drones is widespread, and largely unregulated. According to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, there are “no clear rules protecting individual privacy against drone surveillance. Despite the fact that drone surveillance implicates significant First Amendment and Fourth Amendment interests and common law privacy rights, the law around conducting aerial surveillance very much remains in a gray area.”
Regardless of what happens at the federal level, I hope that what has been unfolding in Wallace Township prompts Pennsylvania legislators to reconsider Act 78’s limits on local regulation of unmanned aircraft in order to better protect residents from unwarranted and nuisance drone surveillance.
Meantime, the West Brandywine Police Department wants residents to contact them if they see the drone on their property.
“Each home that this drone enters, are additional counts of offenses and if the pilot is identified sanctions will be levied, including criminal charges, confiscation of drone and revocation of their license, (if licensed),” the police department wrote in its latest Facebook post. “The use of a drone to invade someone’s personal privacy, (especially home space), will not be tolerated and the maximum, allowable penalties will be pursued.”
And maybe, just maybe, the fines accrued cumulatively will be enough to make drone operators think twice before unleashing their propeller-driven ghouls to hang around our windows in the middle of the night.
While the world is focused on the failures of Donald Trump’s warmongering in Iran and “peacemaking” in Gaza, too little attention is being paid to a potential new Mideast flash point sparked by messianic Israeli settlers on the occupied West Bank.
I have witnessed such settler violence during reporting trips over the years, but it is reaching unprecedented heights (or depths) as Bibi courts right-wing votes before Israeli elections in October.
Far-right extremists are even encouraging Jewish-Arab violence atop the Temple Mount, the most sacred site in Judaism and the third holiest in Islam, which could ignite anti-Israel religious violence and terrorism in the region.
The extremists’ goal — as clearly spelled out in a “Decisive Plan” by current Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also oversees administration of the West Bank — is to present the Palestinians with three choices: legalized apartheid and repression, massive ethnic cleansing (labeled “voluntary emigration”) from the West Bank, or death if Palestinians resist.
The quibble over language that feeds debate over Israel in the United States — as in whether to call what’s happening in Gaza “genocide” — only distracts from the central problem. When Palestinians are offered nothing — meaning no political future or rights — they have nothing to lose. Unfettered occupation and ethnic cleansing will provoke resistance and terror attacks. It will be untenable in the long run.
What is more likely to happen is a third uprising on the West Bank, followed by massive bloodshed between Palestinians and settlers. It would guarantee a disastrous end to Trump’s Gaza project and to his Abraham Accords, which were meant to advance peace between Israel and Gulf Arab states. Yet, the president is clearly blind to how quickly his Mideast peace efforts are sliding toward disaster.
In desperation, 600 retired Israel Defense Forces generals and colonels, as well as retired intelligence and foreign service officers, recently wrote to Trump urging him to press Bibi to halt the West Bank violence.
I spoke to one of the group’s organizers, Nimrod Novik, a senior adviser to former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, a deeply experienced negotiator and distinguished fellow at the Israel Policy Forum, about his fears for the future if Israel’s policy toward Palestinians doesn’t change.
“What we will see in the West Bank in the next 90 days [before the Israeli election], you haven’t seen ever,” he warned. “The whole ideological right-wing extremist group, helped by the government, fears this is their last opportunity [to advance Smotrich’s goals]. If the Netanyahu government is ousted, the next government would deal harshly with Jewish terrorism.”
President Donald Trump listens as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, Dec. 29, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla.Alex Brandon
I would add a caveat: It isn’t clear how much a coalition of opposition parties, even if they were able to push Bibi out, would change policy toward Palestinians. The two largest opposition parties are against any future Palestinian state alongside Israel. But a new Israeli prime minister would likely try to reassert Israeli army control over army reserve units that support extremist settlers who regularly attack Palestinian civilians. And he might have less patience with radical groups of settler youths who roam unchallenged and even attack Israeli soldiers who try to block their violence.
Novik had a stark warning about what could happen if the violent settlers were allowed to continue their rampage. In certain security circles, he told me, “They think the settlers want to provoke a security crisis, and the West Bank might be the best opportunity.” He believes Jewish settler terrorism will produce revenge-seeking by Palestinians who are defending their families. Israeli security agencies, he added, are worried about a possible effort to provoke large-scale violence on the Temple Mount.
I still recall how a 1982 plot by Jewish religious terrorists to blow up the third holiest mosque in Islam atop the Temple Mount was discovered only at the last minute. “Even if they don’t bomb the mosque,” Novik pointed out, violence could still explode. Only recently, “one thousand Israelis in one day violated the status quo by praying on the mount.”
The status quo between Israel and Arab states, in place since the 1967 war, prohibits such praying, which is also banned by Israel’s rabbinate for religious reasons. Palestinians fear it indicates an imminent takeover of the holy site by Israeli Jews.
And unless a newly elected leadership permits the rebuilding of the West Bank’s Palestinian Authority, the body which technically governed Palestinians, there is no authority to counter Hamas. Bibi did everything he could to destroy and bankrupt the Palestinian Authority. What would happen with a new government is unclear.
What is clear is that Bibi’s tolerance of Jewish terror is leading to a clash in the West Bank, and is aimed at driving the population of Gaza out into the Sinai Desert by keeping two million Palestinians underfed, without schools or medicine, and living in tents.
Even liberal Israelis are still traumatized by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, slaughter, and a new government will still tilt rightward. But a recent Israeli survey by the Israeli Democracy Institute shows that the largest share of respondents — among left, center, and even center-right — said authorities treat violence by Jews against Palestinians in the West Bank too leniently, with perpetrators rarely arrested and hardly ever punished.
Whether or not that poll hints at a particular voter response is also unclear.
However, Trump has a chance to stop his being labeled a complete loser in the Mideast by backing the opposition to Bibi, which may still carry weight with many Israeli voters. Yet no one should rely on Trump’s awakening to reality.
It will be up to Israeli voters to decide whether or not they accept Smotrich’s vision — and the consequences that are bound to follow if they do.
It’s been said that a social movement can start with the smallest gestures. Ten years ago this month, a simple act by Colin Kaepernick sparked a movement. He chose to protest the playing of the national anthem by sitting and later kneeling, breaking with the norm of showing respect and pride by standing. On Aug. 26, 2016, during a preseason game, Kaepernick was photographed sitting on the bench as the anthem was being played. When questioned by reporters, Kaepernick explained:
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color … To me, this is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
Numerous professional athletes joined in his protest and spoke out to call attention to the history of anti-Blackness in the United States. African Americans were inspired to continue organizing and protesting — specifically around a series of high-profile killings of Black people, including Trayvon Martin in 2012, Michael Brown in 2014, and Freddie Gray in 2015.
In this Oct. 2, 2016, file photo, (from left) San Francisco 49ers outside linebacker Eli Harold, quarterback Colin Kaepernick, and safety Eric Reid kneel during the national anthem before an NFL football game against the Dallas Cowboys in Santa Clara, Calif.Marcio Jose Sanchez
However, a poll conducted during that season labeled him the most disliked player in the NFL. Kaepernick became an easy target of political conservatives, including Donald Trump, who said, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners — when somebody disrespects our flag — to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out, he’s fired.’”
It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that Kaepernick’s protest began in August. Among many activists, August is referred to as “Black August” — a nod to numerous historical milestones in our community, from the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in America in August 1619, to the March on Washington in August 1963, to the assassinations of members of the Black Panthers in California prisons in August of 1970 and 1971.
One social justice group describes the month as being “a celebration of freedom fighters past and present.” It is also meant to honor the lives and sacrifices of Black political prisoners and martyrs of the Black Freedom Struggle while calling attention to the plight of African Americans, particularly those in prisons — a recognition that Black people remain incarcerated at disproportionately high rates. The efforts of these freedom fighters are a modern rendering of the Black radical tradition.
The same is true for many Black athletes whose protests came at a cost to their careers and livelihoods.
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf was suspended for one game during the 1995-96 season for refusing to stand during the national anthem. Former NBA commissioner David Stern was the one who made the call.AP FILE
Folks like Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, whose NBA career was cut short for protesting the anthem.
Or Muhammad Ali, who lost his prime earning years and was stripped of his heavyweight title when he refused to fight in the Vietnam War.
Or Paul Robeson, whose career and freedom were derailed not only for naming anti-Black racism, but for organizing against it — and Jackie Robinson, of all people, played a role in discrediting him.
Kaepernick experienced a version of all of the above, too — months after he started his protest, he opted out of his contract, became a free agent, and was not signed by another NFL team. He later alleged in a lawsuit that the league’s owners colluded to keep him out of the game; that suit was settled in 2019.
That is the role of the freedom fighter: to advocate on behalf of oppressed people everywhere in ways that disrupt the status quo. Their advocacy marks the line of demarcation between those who fight for freedom no matter the cost, or work to continue the legacy of global oppression and exploitation.
Colin Kaepernick made that already divided line even more stark.
Inarguably, Kaepernick’s legacy is that he inspired others, athletes included, to find their voice in advocating for social justice.
Colin Kaepernick is presented with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Ralph Ellison Award for Defenders of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in the Arts, Business, Science, and Sports by Deborah Archer at the ACLU’s 2026 Biennial Leadership Conference on July 24 in Washington.Kevin Wolf
Kaepernick, who now works as a civil rights activist, joined the aforementioned athletes as part of what sports writer Howard Bryant calls “the heritage”: the tradition of Black athletes using their public visibility and star power to speak out against racial injustice, even at professional and personal cost.
These athletes throughout history have made their positions clear. Whether we’re talking about Black lives in America, lives in Palestine, Congo, Sudan, Haiti, or Cuba, you’re either working on the side of empowering or exploiting. Kaepernick made clear where he stood 10 years ago.
To sufficiently honor his costly protest — and the protests of so many others — during Black August, we must ask ourselves if we can say the same.
Rann Miller is an educator and freelance writer based in Southern New Jersey. His “Urban Education Mixtape” blog supports urban educators and parents of children attending urban schools. urbanedmixtape.com@UrbanEdDJ
As a retired federal employee, I am proud of my years of public service and the opportunity I had to serve the American people. Like many retirees, I planned my retirement carefully, expecting the benefits I earned to help provide financial security throughout my retirement.
Unfortunately, retirees under the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) do not receive the same full annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) as retirees under the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) or many Social Security beneficiaries. During periods of high inflation, that difference can significantly reduce the purchasing power of a retiree’s earned annuity, making it more difficult to keep up with the rising costs of housing, groceries, healthcare, and other everyday necessities.
The Equal COLA Act (HR 491/S 624) would correct this inequity by providing FERS retirees with the same full annual COLAs received by CSRS retirees. It’s a matter of fairness for the men and women who devoted their careers to serving our nation.
Bob Downey,Marlton
ICE success
Rosemary McDonough from Narberth submitted a letter to the editor that rightfully complimented Luis F. Carrasco’s recent column on immigration. In that letter, she asked an excellent question: If U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were succeeding in arresting the “worst of the worst,” why isn’t this front-page news? The answer to McDonough’s question is clearly not that ICE has been unsuccessful. If anyone chooses to access the ICE website, they would find a section that identifies 27,400 of the “worst” illegal immigrant criminals it has apprehended. There are 3,425 pages (eight per page).
The answer to her question appears to be that the media is unwilling to cover that side of the ICE situation — preferring to align themselves with the liberal narrative that demonizes the people working so hard to resolve the ponderous immigration situation they created.
I read Jonathan Zimmerman’s column on the Cheltenham hazing incident and was struck by what was left out. Although I don’t disagree with what Zimmerman said, what he left out is important to fully wrap our heads around this heinous story. Nowhere did Zimmerman mention that we elected as our president a man who stated he could grab a woman’s private parts whenever he wants and was convicted in civil court of sexual assault. Despite that, he was elected twice and is still defended by followers, including many elected officials. Zimmerman’s right: This is who we are. If we want different, we must all fight for the change we want, and not just at one moment of trauma or in one school district.
Really? This, after recruiters inform men and women during the enlistment process that their families would enjoy immigration benefits.
It is beyond outrageous and cruel. And once again it shows that Donald Trump has no regard for our service members. Of all persons, he who dodged the draft is condoning this action.
“Duty, honor, country” is the motto of the U.S. Military Academy. “… to keep our honor clean” is in the Marine Corps hymn (I served as an officer). I imagine the other military services have similar promises they make to America. Trump and his enablers have no concept of honor, and we Americans and the whole world know it.
Luis W. Morales,Paoli
Shared blame
Now that hearings are underway to look at the crowd control tactics of the police during Pride in June, Police Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel seems to be taking all the heat. His police force, his responsibility. But it would seem there are other players we should be looking at. Mark Squilla is the City Council member for that district. Where was he in the decision-making process over whether or not to close the streets in the Gayborhood? Rue Landau is leading the inquiry over the event. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, does she not have contacts in the Gayborhood? Did she not consult them? The rest of City Council? Hell, where was Mayor Cherelle L. Parker throughout this? Did anyone reach out to the bar and other business owners for input? I’m not attempting to minimize Commissioner Bethel’s responsibility over his officers. I’m just saying he shouldn’t bear it all.
Tim Reed, Philadelphia
RINOs and sheep
We have to be honest about what happened around the appointment of a permanent U.S. attorney general. Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas, both of whom will be leaving the Senate, got absolutely nothing in terms of concessions from the White House after threatening to oppose the nominations. In the end, they caved — plain and simple. No one can legitimately say they stood up to President Donald Trump. They merely gave cover to all the vulnerable Republicans in Congress who, for obvious political reasons, were reluctant to vote on the nomination. Tillis and Cornyn, it should be remembered, are first and foremost Republicans in Trump’s Republican Party. As has been the case since Trump was reelected in 2024, Republican leaders doth protest too much. At first, they feign concerns, and then acquiesce when the critical vote comes. Enough said. Please stop insisting Tillis and Cornyn are heroes; they are cowards — RINOs in sheep clothing. They represent what is wrong with politics in the age of MAGA.
Richard Cherwitz, Austin, Texas
Pandemic amnesia
Anthony Fauci, a public health researcher, has served under seven presidents. The current and former president, Donald Trump, awarded him a presidential commendation on the last day of his first term. Today, the 85-year-old Fauci must have full-time security. The secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., copied Fauci’s diaries so Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul could distribute them so they would become available to the public. Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has possession of Fauci’s phone and is investigating its contents.
As the witch hunt continues, and while the nonscientists on the Republican side of the aisle run a revisionist history of the COVID-19 scourge, there are a few pieces missing. More than one million Americans died of COVID. Many spent their last days and hours on ventilators as their families watched them die through hospital windows. Body bags were sent to freezer trucks in some cities. Some still suffer from the debilitating effects of long COVID. The coronavirus was novel and contagious and deadly. Fauci steered us through this scary time as we all navigated this together. He exercised extreme caution, steered us away from crackpot quick fixes, and with the help of the vaccine, helped us get beyond it. But the crackpots have taken over. Fauci is paying the price. We only have to watch the measles statistics and the scary trip down the produce aisles to recognize that the Trump administration and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services are putting us all at risk for worse to come.
Elliott Miller,Bala Cynwyd
Join the conversation: Send letters to letters@inquirer.com. Limit length to 150 words and include home address and day and evening phone number. Letters run in The Inquirer six days a week on the editorial pages and online.
Do rich guys have to ruin everything? Apparently so. There came a time about 15 years ago when my soccer obsession got to the point where I felt I needed to pick an English Premier League team to root for, in addition to the U.S. national teams and the Union. Long story, but I went with Liverpool, in a city many consider the Philadelphia of the U.K., and it’s been a good ride, including a couple of trophies. On Monday, it was reported Amazon gazillionaire Jeff Bezos is buying 30% of the team. I’m officially out. Go, Leeds!
When did Trump’s ballroom become a national security fortress? We need answers.
Construction continues on a helipad and the White House ballroom on the South Lawn of the White House on Aug. 5.Tierney L. Cross
Donald Trump’s originally stated 2025 scheme to demolish the East Wing of the White House to make way for an oversized ballroom to hold state dinners and whatnot was bad enough: an unneeded, unwanted, gilded, and presumably tacky callback to Louis XVI, a massive monument to a modern let-them-eat-cake regime.
A year later, the project is better describedasan alleged ballroom — another bait-and-switch scam by America’s first grifter president. The fact that the public really doesn’t know how much this project actually costs — estimates have soared from the initial lowball of $300 million to now at least $600 million, but possibly more — or how much of that will be dumped on U.S. taxpayers is just the beginning of the problem.
Nearly 10 months after the president shocked Washington, D.C., and the rest of America by taking a wrecking ball to the history-packed East Wing, Trump has all but stopped talking about a black-tie party venue and instead rebranded the project as essential to national security.
When the D.C. federal appeals court on Friday ordered the White House, which never got congressional approval for either the demolition or the ballroom addition, to halt aboveground construction, Trump took to Truth Social and described the ruling as akin to treason.
“The Military and Secret Service are viewing this horrendous, politically motivated, and unlawful ruling as a National Security threat to our Nation in that the entire Complex is being built for the protection of our Country and, additionally, all future Presidents,” Trump posted, using language that’s probably never previously in human history been used to describe a “ballroom.”
Trump didn’t say in his post anything about crystal chandeliers, or great acoustics, or things you might expect in a world-class ballroom. Instead, he said the facility will have bomb shelters, a state-of-the-art hospital, top-secret military facilities, protective missile-resistant steel, columns, roofs, and beams, drone-proof ceilings and roofs, military-grade venting, and bullet-, ballistic-, and blast-proof glass.
It sounds like somebody is expecting a last tango in Washington.
Trump’s post was alarming — shocking, really — but in case anyone missed the point, or doesn’t know how to read, he also posted some AI-created renderings, which again did not depict waltzing diplomats, but instead showed a rooftop “DronePort” that was packed to thegills with ominous-looking military drones, manned by troops and also with armored vehicles that somehow drove up there. The vibe was Darth Vader’s Death Star, except with “military-grade venting” this time around.
There are two very different ways to look at all of this, and let’s start with the more benign one. Ever since the beginning of his second crack at the presidency, Trump — when he’s not pursuing his main projects of making billions of dollars, punishing his enemies, and staying out of prison — has been obsessed with placing his personalist stamp on Washington. Maybe that’s for his legacy, or maybe he just wants a Mar-a-Lago-by-the-Potomac to comfort his octogenarian mind.
Trump might not be able to crash weddings as he does at his Palm Beach, Fla., estate, but his ballroom idea would be close enough. Although he’s also sought and received donations for the project from the usual suspects of friendly billionaires and favor-seeking corporations, Trump also wants both additional dollars and — more importantly, in light of the appeals court ruling — a stamp of approval from Congress. That’s been a thwarted agenda item for GOP leaders on Capitol Hill for months.
But if Trump can’t sway Congress, he hopes to win over a U.S. Supreme Court where he has appointed three of the nine members. The White House knows that both Congress and the high court tend to fall in line whenever national security is invoked, while there is no constitutional right to foxtrot. So maybe all the military bluster is just political posturing for Trump’s latest real estate development.
But as the project enters its second year, it seems to have morphed into something a lot more disturbing than that. The pictures, descriptions, and accounts of Trump’s game here are sounding a lot more like the impregnable mountain lair of a Bond villain.
This is a man who fomented an attempted coup the first time he was asked to leave 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and who saw how South Korea’s corrupt right-wing president was ousted after a massive throng of protesters overwhelmed key government buildings. Wasn’t it Chekhov who said you don’t put drones up on the roof unless you intend to deploy them by the third act? The two most likely scenarios for actually using Trump’s bunker — Civil War II, or World War III — are less than optimal.
This national security bunker isn’t the only thing that’s worrisome as Trump looks to the second half of what’s supposed to be his final term. As noted in this space recently, Trump has also extended the presence of National Guard troops in Washington through Jan. 20, 2029, which coincidentally is the scheduled last day of his term.
Since their arrival last year, the Guard troops — many from units in pro-Trump red states, and costing U.S. taxpayers at least $1.4 billion and possibly more — have often been spotted hanging around, or picking up trash as a kind of busywork. But residents and some advocates like Scott Michelman, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia, are already complaining Trump is “treating [D.C.] like a police state.”
It raises the same questions as the alleged “ballroom.” The president is entitled to state-of-the-art security, and while the public doesn’t need to know all of the operational details, American taxpayers also can’t be expected to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars for these projects without truly knowing what they are for.
Democrats on Capitol Hill need to start demanding answers. On Monday, there was an encouraging report by the New Republic’s Greg Sargent that the opposition party is working to demand communications from the Justice and Interior Departments to explain why several people were wrongly criminally charged with vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool when the actual damage was a botched repainting contract.
Congress can, and should, also flex its muscles over this ballroom fiasco — first by denying any public money for the project, and then by launching a similar investigation into the hasty demolition, the political fundraising, and the sketchy purposes for the project. Someone owes America the truth, and it’s not going to come from the current regime without a fight.
Whatever happens, the woman or man who hopefully succeeds Trump and sends those guard troops back to their own private Idaho in January 2029 is also going to have a giant mess in their backyard. But it’s better to have the ruins from a botched, halted construction project than from the Battle of Armageddon.
Yo, do this!
The California journalist Gil Durán has been paying attention to the political craziness coming out of Silicon Valley years before anyone else was, and now comes the big payoff in the form of a book that is not only incredibly timely but has the best title of the year: The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy. Durán explores the strange beliefs of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and their friends, their obsession with building their own private “networked cities,” and their unlikely alliance with Donald Trump. I’ve been waiting on this one for a while.
August is always a great month for books. While Durán drills down on the high-tech enemies of liberty, the great writer Dave Zirin has a new tome about one of democracy’s heroes, the late historian Howard Zinn, his former mentor. Public intellectuals are still arguing about the merits of Zinn’s 1980 masterwork, A People’s History of the United States, but nobody disputes his influence on the national conversation. Zinn rejected American exceptionalism, but also spotlighted everyday heroes like labor leaders or civil rights activists who expanded our freedoms over two centuries. I’m looking forward to reading The People’s Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn.
Ask me anything
Question: Data centers are the flashpoint but the root problem is the unregulated AI that is sweeping up every keystroke and every written document then repackaging it as if original thought. How do we get a federal government mired in 2020 to begin legislating on AI? — Suzi (@wanderponder.bsky.social) via Bluesky
Answer: Great question, Suzi, and I think we all know the main reason why the body politic — and I’m talking about both Democrats and Republicans — have been so painfully slow to respond to voters’ widespread anxiety not only about noisy, polluting, resource-wasting data centers, but also to artificial intelligence itself. The reason is money. Silicon Valley AI developers have raised an unbelievable $220 million to spend on November’s election, and — while there are some disagreements within Big Tech about policy — most of the cash will go to the politicians least likely to regulatean industry badly in need of it. Cognitive computing is not only stealing our intellectual property, as you noted, but also our jobs, as well as our children’s ability to learn.The good news is that public backlash against AI is so strong that even a quarter-billion dollars may not be able to stop the movement. But it’s way past time to get money out of politics.
What you’re saying about …
I should have guessed that newsletter readers don’t have much more of a clue than Donald Trump about what to do about the giant mess in the Persian Gulf. I did get one thoughtful response from an emailer with a “cbluff” handle (Reminder: Please sign your real name to these responses) who said the Trump regime needs to send skilled negotiators — and be realistic. “I believe the U.S. will have to cede the Strait of Hormuz, allow Iran and Oman to collect protection money, remove sanctions and pay them so we can declare victory and leave,” they wrote. It’s hard to disagree. Once again, the United States has lost a war.
📮 This week’s question: Since the Democratic Senate primary win by Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed last week, the mainstream media has been obsessed with the question of whether this year’s progressive surge, including candidates (although not El-Sayed) tied to the Democratic Socialists of America, is hurting the Democrats. What do you think? Are leftists bringing needed energy to a moribund party, or are they too out there to defeat the GOP in November? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “Democrats and the left” in the subject line.
Backstory on the day Trump left his press corps for dead
Catering trucks are parked at Air Force One on the tarmac as the motorcade carrying President Donald Trump arrives to depart following the NATO summit, at Ankara International Airport in Ankara, Turkey, on July 8.Alex Brandon
It was appalling enough back in late July when we watched a room full of some of America’s highest-profile journalists break bread with Donald Trump at the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, where the president got up and hurled crude insults at several of the media members. Many of us were disgusted that some of the nation’s most respected journalists would platform a man who has repeatedly called a free press “the enemies of the people.” But the White House press corps was in the dark about an even more disturbing plot twist.
Just 16 days earlier, Trump had left some of those journalists for dead — at least potentially — as human decoys who might be blown from the skies in a feared Iranian plot.
The stunning story came out late Monday night as I was writing this newsletter, with a scoop by the Washington Post, matched shortly, with some additional details, by the New York Times. The articles revealed a modern-day Air Force One kind of thriller that essentially involved a shell game with three different aircraft. It was triggered by what officials deemed was a credible Iranian assassination threat against the president when he traveled to a NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey — just over 700 miles from the border with the U.S. enemy.
This launched a series of events, beginning with a plan to abandon Trump’s new, $400 million gift-from-Qatar iteration of Air Force One for an older version that actually has more advanced defensive capacities. Trump was filmed boarding the replacement Air Force One, followed by the White House press corps and some traveling aides for the departure from Ankara to a U.S. air base in Great Britain. What those passengers could not have imagined was that Trump had somehow been spirited out “via a catering container that had been lifted to the opposite side of the plane,” and switched to a C-32A military plane for the flight to the U.K.
Then they kept the unwitting journalists and aides on the ground for a couple of hours before it was revealed POTUS was safely in Britain and the Iranians had been thwarted and … haha, of course that’s not what really happened. No, the press corps took off as human decoys — the latest sitting ducks in an idiotic war that never should have been launched in the first place. Thankfully, no one was hurt … this time. Journalists wondered why they’d been ordered to keep the airplane’s window blinds closed, which inspired this now ironic exchange between Trump and some journalists when they reunited for the flight from Britain back to the U.S.
Trump lied that he didn’t know of any specific plot against Air Force One, and then added: “I’m No. 1on their list, before you. But if I go, you go. Right?”
Apparently not.
Even as I write this in the middle of the night just hours after the Post and Times scoops, the internet is already flooded with memes depicting Trump crammed into one of those airport serving carts, or pigging out on the adjacent airline food. It’s funny to see that your president isn’t Harrison Ford punching out the terrorists, but, in reality, slinking away in a food truck, leaving other Americans in the line of fire, right?
No, it’s not funny at all. This whole episode is a grand metaphor for a careless president who smashes up things before retreating into his money or whatever keeps him going — not thinking twice about the fate of human beings in a squalid ICE detention camp or an Iranian girls’ school. Or bantering with the gaggle of journalists whom he abandoned after drawing a big target on their backs. The first media question at the next Oval Office event ought to be, “Why did you treat me like cannon fodder?” But I wouldn’t bet on that happening.
What I wrote on this date in 2016
It’s almost funny now, in a dark-comedy kind of way, to look back on the fateful summer of 2016 and remember what it felt like to be stubbornly convinced that something, anything, was bound to happen to stop the obvious insanity of a Donald Trump presidency. It seems so incredibly naive now to read what I believed exactly one decade ago, when I actually thought the success of a diverse and incredibly talented U.S. Olympics team in Brazil would expose the Big Lie of Trump’s racism. I wrote, “The exclamation point is the remarkable women’s gymnastics team led by individual gold medalist Simone Biles — so dominant you will easily forget they also celebrate the kind of diversity that is America’s best feature, not the bug that’s described by the bitter and the disaffected back home.”
The fight for America’s future is waged on many fronts, and I’m trying to keep up. Last week, I wrote about a fascinating political development that’s been largely flying under the radar screen: a movement out west to knock off GOP incumbents by creating one-on-one contests with feisty, populist independents. That means long-shot Democrats need to drop out — which has happened in Nebraska, Idaho, and South Dakota, but not in Montana. It’s both a bold plan to end the Republican majority on Capitol Hill and a sad commentary on the failed Democratic Party brand in the American heartland. This weekend, I wrote about the Trump regime’s latest assault on higher education — denying loans for students who major in fields linked to lower-income jobs — and the increasingly bleak future of a liberal arts education. I wondered why Democrats won’t fight harder to end runaway careerism and preserve college campuses as bastions of critical thinking.
This August feels like the calm before the storm in Philadelphia sports. Some of that is the excitement over the Eagles finally beingback in training camp and looking to regain that Super Bowl mojo as 76ers fans try to process, if that’s the right term, a once-in-a-lifetime offseason rebuilding project. But much of it is angst over the Phillies, who are clinging by their fingernails to a playoff spot despite adding the National League’s batting champ to a lineup that already includes home run king Kyle Schwarber, future Hall of Famer Bryce Harper, and one of baseball’s best pitching rotations. None of that matters when the Phillies don’t have a relief pitcher who can carry a lead past the 7th or 8th inning. The Inquirer’s ace sports columnists like David Murphy and Marcus Hayes have all asked the same question: Can this team be saved? The answers are just over the paywall, and you can leap over it just like Saquon Barkley at the first-down marker; all you need to do is subscribe to The Inquirer.
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It’s time America goes on the offensive regarding Donald Trump’s lies about his winning in 2020 and his unfounded statements about weakness in the security of our elections. He presented little or no evidence to support his claims. Immediately after Trump’s speech, some GOP pols were pushing for the passage of the SAVE America Act, which is a blatant attempt to stop some citizens from voting.
In Trump’s second term, the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force has been shut down, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has been cut back sharply, and a task force that warned against foreign meddling and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have been gutted.
In 2020, Christopher Krebs was fired by President Trump as head of the cybersecurity agency known as CISA after contradicting the president’s baseless claims of widespread election fraud. The same people who perpetuated the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen are now embedded in the White House and throughout the federal government.
I suggest we call our federal and state senators and representatives and demand they publicly denounce Trump’s lies about him winning in 2020 and his baseless allegations of fraud in our elections.
Steve Clifford, Langhorne, hs12@verizon.net
Power paradox
The blindness community has always had a certain degree of smugness, particularly around energy sources. Using mass transit or various forms of power transit, we did not contribute significantly to the use of fossil fuel. We were not the ones going up to the gas station and driving off — polluting all the way. We frequently worked from home and did not clog the highways. We weren’t the ones snarling traffic. Most blind people have some usable vision, but for those of us with next to no vision, we would often turn off the lights and do whatever tasks needed to be done. Then artificial intelligence came along.
Now there are data centers that use a lot of energy and water. AI tools, such as smart glasses and advanced GPS units, are marketed heavily to blind people. Many blind people have devices that tell them what is in their environment and describe things around them.
Blind people are beginning to take photos and videos. AI is able to tell them when something is in the center of the photo frame. It’s also easier to get information off the web by using a chatbot. I find that my ability to cook has been enhanced. I can pick up a package from my spice cabinet and have my smart glasses identify the item. The possibility of needing to open the package and smell it to identify it has been eliminated. I can ask my smart glasses about cooking times and proportions. If I need to find something in my apartment, I no longer need to feel around or think about where I might have put something. The smart glasses can help me find the item.
This has all been very useful to me, yet I still have concerns about data centers and their power and water usage. I sometimes feel guilty about using AI to do many of these tasks. I used to accomplish so much without AI, but now it’s becoming a default. I do have one question for those technology experts out there: With artificial intelligence and quantum computing becoming so much more advanced every day, why don’t we ask these advanced technological wonders to solve their own energy dilemma? Perhaps quantum computing and AI can figure out how they should be empowered. Perhaps the energy and environmental solution to the data center difficulty can be solved by the very technology that requires the data centers.
David W. Wannop,former music business worker, Philadelphia
Join the conversation: Send letters to letters@inquirer.com. Limit length to 150 words and include home address and day and evening phone number. Letters run in The Inquirer six days a week on the editorial pages and online.
I oppose its current leadership and its policies in Gaza and the West Bank. But I support its right to exist as a Jewish state. And I reject the idea that Zionism is inherently racist or malevolent.
That’s why it’s important for me to hear from people who see Israel differently than I do. I need them to question, provoke, and challenge me. That’s how I learn.
And that’s also why I’m worried about the settlement Haverford College announced last week, pledging to protect Jewish students from antisemitic speech. In a statement, Haverford president Wendy Raymond declared that the college would not tolerate “discrimination, harassment, and bias” against “students who identify as Jewish” or “those who support Zionism.”
So does that mean you won’t be able to say “Zionism is racism” or “Israel is an apartheid state”? The lawyer representing Jewish students who sued the school — and who said she was “very pleased” with the settlement — seemed to think so.
“It’s a new form of antisemitism, saying, ‘Oh, no, I don’t hate Jews, I just hate Zionists,’” she said. “For a Jew to hear that was incredibly painful.”
I’m sure that it was. I’m Jewish, and anti-Zionist rhetoric is hard for me to hear, as well.
But that’s why I should hear it. Zionism is probably the most contested question on our campuses right now. Unless everyone can address it, freely and openly, we’ll never get a good purchase on it.
Wendy Raymond, president of Haverford College, pledged that the college would not tolerate “discrimination, harassment, and bias” against “those who support Zionism.”Jose Luis Magana
Ditto for Columbia, where I went to college 40 years ago. Back then, you could argue about anything. But now Zionism, too, is effectively off the table.
That’s because the university adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. According to the IHRA, “claiming the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israel policy to that of the Nazis” are antisemitic.
But a competing standard, the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, argues that “criticizing or opposing Zionism as a form of nationalism” or offering “evidence-based criticism of Israel as a state” are not, on their face, antisemitic. Haverfordʼs settlement seems to lean entirely on the first definition and ignores the second, which has not been adopted by the college or most other institutions, but was endorsed by Bucknell University’s faculty last year.
Under the IHRA definition, would a student or professor who said Israel was committing genocide in Gaza — like the Nazis did in Europe — face punishment at Columbia? I don’t think Israel’s action in Gaza constitutes genocide, but I know other historians do. And again, I need to hear from them.
In their 2024 lawsuit against Haverford, Jewish students complained that a professor called supporters of Israel “racist genocidaires.” I can understand why they felt “pain and harm” about these kinds of comments, as Raymond acknowledged at the time.
But you can censor anything — literally, anything — on those grounds. During the 2016 presidential campaign, students at Emory University said they were harmed by campus chalk messages backing Donald Trump. “Supporting him, repeating his catchphrases [is] an implicit attack on the Muslim, Latinx, Black, and other communities at Emory and across the country,” protesters declared. “This is not political expression; it is hate speech.”
And in 2021, Harvard biology professor Carole Hooven caused an outcry when she told Fox News that gender could take any number of forms, but sex is binary: male or female. After a colleague denounced Hooven’s “transphobic and hateful” comments on Twitter (now X), she became a campus pariah. Her mental health plummeted, and she resigned.
Like Zionism, the biology of sex is a hugely contested and complicated matter. And we won’t be able to learn more about it if we inhibit discussion of it.
How many people celebrating the new restrictions on anti-Zionist speech at Haverford would be OK with prohibiting claims that sex is binary? Likewise, would any of the critics who pushed out Hooven rest easily if critics of Israel were silenced, too?
We all want to have our own say, of course. But when we feel pained or harmed by someone else’s political expression, we call it hate speech. And we try to blot it out.
To be clear, nobody should be subject to threats of physical violence. Whatever you think of Zionists on campus, you can’t say you’re going to assault or murder them. That’s against the law, and our colleges should be vigilant in enforcing it.
But at Haverford, it would now appear, you can’t say anything negative about Zionism. Period. If you don’t think Israel should exist, you’re an antisemite. And you need to keep your big mouth shut.
I know some people on campus have been “deeply hurt” by anti-Israel rhetoric, as Raymond said in her statement last week. But once that becomes the barometer for what the rest of us can say, we won’t be able to speak — or listen — across our differences. Isn’t that why we gather at universities in the first place: to learn from each other?
Either you believe in free expression for everyone, or you don’t believe in it at all. Period.
Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of “Schooling Citizens: How Education Can Save Democracy,” which will be published next spring by the American Philosophical Society Press.
