Kelly N. Moore, 46, of Burlington Township, award-winning clinical psychologist, founder of Moore Wellness LLC, director of the Center for Psychological Services at Rutgers University, graduate school clinical associate professor, former fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety, mentor, author, mental health activist, volunteer, and 2026 Willingboro High School Hall of Fame inductee, died Thursday, Aug. 20, of kidney cancer at Virtua Voorhees Hospital.
Adept at treating anxiety, depression, trauma, and perinatal disorders, Dr. Moorebecame director of the Rutgers Center for Psychological Services and a clinical associate professor in the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology in 2020. As CPS director, she mentored hundreds of doctoral students regarding academic requirements and clinical procedures, and supervised the center’s community mental health clinic.
She significantly expanded the center’s services and outreach, Rutgers colleagues said in a Facebook tribute, and forged important partnerships on campus and in the community. Colleagues said: “Her warm demeanor, melodic voice, vibrant spirit, and calming presence made all who met, and were fortunate enough to know her, feel seen, welcomed, and heard.”
She spent two years as a fellow at Penn’s Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety after earning her doctorate in clinical psychology at Rutgers in 2011. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she founded Moore Wellness LLC and focused on helping women, children, and clients of color.
“Wellness does not mean you will never experience challenges,” Dr. Moore said in an online profile for Psychology Today magazine. “Rather, it means having the tools to manage the challenges when faced with them.”
Dr. Moore was an outspoken activist for mental health education and services. She spoke with groups often, organized workshops, and was featured in newspapers and magazines and on TV and podcasts. “Just trying to get people to understand as much as they can about the impact their mental health and well being have on their day-to-day lives,” she said in a 2026 podcast interviewwith the Multicultural Counseling Institute.
She belonged to the American Psychological Association and the New Jersey chapter of the Association of Black Psychologists. She was active with the Therapy for Black Girls podcast and the Leadership Institute for Women in Psychology.
Dr. Moore was a cheerleader and lacrosse player, and graduated from Cornell University in 2002.Courtesy of the family
She earned leadership and achievement awards from the New Jersey Psychological Association, the National Council of Schools and Programs of Professional Psychology, and other groups. She was president and a board member of the Burlington County chapter of Jack and Jill of America Inc. Colleagues there called her “a beautiful example of leadership, service, grace, and love.”
Kelly Nicole Walker was born Aug. 20, 1980, in Philadelphia. Her family moved to Willingboro when she was 2, and she graduated from Willingboro High School in 1998.
She was a cheerleader and played lacrosse and viola as a teenager. Her mother, Diana, was a social worker, and she showed Dr. Moore up close how one person could impact their community.
“I was just fascinated by this concept,” Dr. Moore told the Multicultural Counseling Institute in the podcast interview. “It was already set at a young age that this was the kind of work I should be doing.”
She earned a bachelor’s degree in human development at Cornell University in 2002 and a master’s degree in education at Penn in 2003.
She met Melvin Moore through friends, and they married in 2004 and had sons Miles, Mason, and Matthew. They lived in Marlton and Delanco, and, since 2015, in Burlington Township.
Dr. Moore was a longtime member and dance choreographer at the Gospel Tabernacle Church. She joined Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. at Cornell in 2000 and was on the executive board of its Pi Mu Omega chapter in Willingboro.
Friends noted her “warmth, generosity, and kindness,” and called her “genuine” and “quietly brilliant” in online tributes. One friend said: “She sure made me proud to be from Willingboro.”
Dr. Moore and her husband, Melvin, married in 2004 and had three sons. Courtesy of the family
Dr. Moore doted on her sons and called them her “M & M’s.” She was an avid reader and led several book clubs.
She liked to garden, play piano, take photos, cook, and crochet. She was diagnosed with renal medullary carcinoma about a year ago and was determined, her husband said, to reach her 46th birthday. She did it.
Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America, a bipartisan campaign founded by philanthropists Olivia and Tom Walton, announced a $100 million pledge Thursday to make giving birth in the United States safer.
The five-year commitment aims to cut the maternal mortality rate in the United States in half by 2031.
“For millions of moms in America, maternal health is bad and getting worse,” Olivia Walton told The Associated Press in an interview. “There’s just so much bipartisan consensus around wanting to fix this. I really think the political will is there, and part of our job is to help surface that with an information campaign.”
According to the most recent data available, the United States has one of the highest maternal mortality rates among wealthy nations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 688 people died in 2024 during pregnancy or shortly after giving birth. The maternal mortality rate rose to 19 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2024, up from 18.6 the year before.
Improving data collection and accelerating hospitals’ reporting of deaths is an important pillar of the new Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America initiative, Walton said. The most recent state-level data on maternal mortality is still from 2022, with annual totals based on provisional data available through 2024.
“You can’t fix what you can’t measure,” she said, adding that the Waltons’ nonprofit Heartland Forward partnered with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in May to collect more data on maternal and infant health outcomes from 220 hospitals around the country called the Perinatal Improvement Collaborative.
The U.S. maternal mortality issue is ‘eminently solvable’
Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America President Neel Shah said that, unlike many medical issues, maternal mortality is “eminently solvable.”
“The biggest cause of suffering isn’t a lack of knowledge,” he said. “It’s a lack of execution on the knowledge. … This is a matter of will.”
The initiative will focus on expanding access to maternal health in rural areas, training midwives and expanding postpartum care, and helping states use strategies that have proved successful, Shah said. He points out that California has managed to reduce its maternal mortality rate by half by combining strategies with investments. He said New Jersey, which previously ranked 47th among states in maternal mortality, has improved its outcomes by focusing on the cities where the needs are greatest.
Walton said states are “in the driver’s seat” for making changes to maternal and infant healthcare, in part because about 40% of births are paid for by Medicaid.
“I’ve got blue-state solutions of what works, red-state solutions of what works, and purple-state solutions of what works,” she said. “It’s really possible.”
Using the $100 million initiative to generate more funding
For that reason, Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America plans to fund these care improvements by focusing on states. Walton plans to use the $100 million commitment as a way to encourage state governments to match the nonprofit’s investment. She hopes that corporations and other funders also contribute to the cause.
“Taking on risk and going first is a great use of philanthropic capital,” she said. “The goal is to prove that this works and then have state funding take it over.”
The focus on states, however, doesn’t mean the initiative won’t seek federal solutions as well.
Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America is supporting bipartisan Congressional legislation, including the Rural Obstetrics Readiness Act and the NIH IMPROVE Act, which would expand access to maternal care.
“It’s unacceptable that in 2026 in the U.S., maternal mortality rates are moving in the wrong direction,” Republican Sen. Katie Britt, of Alabama, said in a statement. “It’s imperative we work together across both the public and private sectors to reverse this alarming trend.”
Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, of New Jersey, said poor maternal health outcomes don’t just hurt families.
“The economic consequences are equally alarming,” Booker said in a statement, estimating a cost of $165 billion each year.
Walton said the issue is a personal one for her and her husband, Tom, grandson of Walmart founder Sam Walton, who live in Arkansas.
“I’m a mom myself and I just had three kids in the last eight years,” she said. “I live in a state with the worst maternal mortality in the country.”
However, she also believes the issue has broad, national implications.
“I have an overarching belief that if you take care of mom, she’ll take care of everything else,” Walton said. “Healthy moms lead to healthy families. Healthy families lead to healthy communities. Healthy communities lead to a healthy economy.”
In just a few days, Lincoln Financial Field will be filled with screaming fans. But on Thursday morning, Kylie Kelce brought some casual fun to the stadium with an on-site taping of her podcast, Not Gonna Lie.
The episode featured Eagles offensive linemen Lane Johnson, Jordan Mailata, and Landon Dickerson — aka her husband, Jason’s, former teammates — as well as their wives, Kelsey, Niki, and Brooke. The roughly hourlong episode ran the gamut in topics from game day superstitions, first impressions, and Jason Kelce crash outs to a low-stakes version of The Newlywed Game. Mailata, Jason Kelce, and Johnson’s Philly Specials Christmas albums also came up, and Johnson said those “are on standby.”
As the Kelces and Eagles prepare for Week 1, Kylie and the O-linemen shared some of their good-luck practices. Kylie even brought a wooden spoon to the field, just in case she needed to knock on wood to ward off any bad Eagles luck.
“Game day rituals usually include a very specific T-shirt,” Kelce said. “It means whatever T-shirt I take out that has a new Eagle — which is not the old-school Eagle, that one has not worked out for me in the past. … I’ve tracked it.”
And pro tip: She says not to tag her in social media posts or send her messages, especially pregame. On game days, “Life is not happening. The Eagles are happening, and that’s what we’re focused on,” she said. That’ll include Sunday, when she plans to be at the Linc for the season opener vs. the Washington Commanders.
Some other rituals included eating the same meals before games, though Mailata now says he’s “tired of being a prisoner of superstition.”
“I’d have the same pasta order for like seven years,” said Mailata, who was drafted in 2018 but is entering his seventh NFL season. “Even breakfast, the same breakfast. I wasn’t even hungry, but I’d force down eight eggs and four pancakes. Now, just four pancakes because I just prioritize the carbs.”
Johnson was less devoted to his rituals, but he admitted that he sometimes looks away when a game isn’t going the Eagles’ way. Kelce has gone as far as rotating a full 180 degrees in her seat at the Linc rather than watching.
Even as a veteran entering his 14th season, there’s still an element of unknown entering the season opener for Johnson.
“The first game is always weird because nobody’s playing in preseason,” Johnson said. “Like, you have some things you see, but it’s really like you’re going to learn it in the first couple drives, series, what their cards are.”
Jason Kelce and his fellow offensive linemen help Jalen Hurts sneak for a first down.David Maialetti / Staff Photographer
The players discussed their feelings about longstanding rivalries, like the Cowboys (and their thoughts on the “America’s Team” branding), as well as other contenders like the San Francisco 49ers, Kansas City Chiefs, and Los Angeles Rams.
“My husband is on record saying that Aaron Donald is the guy he least looked forward to playing up against,” Kylie Kelce said, receiving a chorus of agreement about the Rams star.
“Yeah, him and his teammate Myles [Garrett],” Johnson added.
The wives appeared later in the episode and shared similar sentiments about their nerves watching the games and being immersed into NFL life.
“When I think of my ‘welcome to the NFL’ moment,” Niki Ikahihifo-Bender Mailata said, “Jordan got injured early on, and I remember being like, ‘Oh my gosh, oh my gosh!’ And then they’re like, ‘No, it’s OK, it’s OK. It’s only bad if the cart comes out,’ and then the cart came out.”
DALLAS, Texas — Just steps away from a Republican midterm convention that she slammed as a “farce,” U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean (D., Montgomery) said Thursday she was “gravely disappointed” with Democratic U.S. Sen. John Fetterman’s participation in the event — as well as a range of other issues that she said indicate his abandonment of democratic values.
“What I wish he was doing was — back home in Pennsylvania — making sure, like I am, that Pennsylvania will see more Democratic members of the House to uphold the values that he originally ran on,” Dean said after Fetterman appeared in a video at the convention Wednesday night that praised President Donald Trump.
Fetterman’s appearance was a remarkable and rare turn for a Democratic lawmaker, even one who has frequently crossed the aisle to support the opposing party like he’s done since Trump returned to office.
In a video that served as an introduction to a speech by U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.), Fetterman said he and McCormick are able to “work with President Trump to fight and defend the steel way of life” in Pennsylvania.
As he’s done repeatedly, he also denounced socialism and what he considers the “anti-American way of life” that the leftist wing of his party represents. That message fit nicely into some of Republicans’ most prominent attacks on Wednesday as they tried to motivate their base to turn out for GOP candidates in the midterm elections — including in several Pennsylvania key races.
On Thursday, a web page soliciting donations to Fetterman’s campaign committee included a link to the video and said Fetterman would “keep standing his ground, speaking his mind, and putting Pennsylvania first.”
Fetterman said in a statement later that he made the video to support McCormick, who has become a staunch ally and one of his biggest defenders. He also said, as he has for months, that would not switch parties.
“That’s entirely on John,” Dean said Thursday when asked by a reporter if Fetterman should remain in the Democratic Party. “I will tell you, from the ground, from suburban Philadelphia, my constituents are livid. Those who went out and knocked doors for him, they are absolutely livid.”
Dean was in town on the second and final day of the convention alongside four other House Democrats who blasted what they were hearing from the gathering, which has largely been a celebration of Trump.
But Dean was quickly asked by reporters about the convention’s most surprising turn so far — the appearance of Pennsylvania’s controversial Democratic senator.
Dean has, historically, had a closer relationship with Fetterman compared to some of the other Democratic members of Pennsylvania’s U.S. House delegation. The pair briefly ran against each other in the 2018 lieutenant governor primary, which Fetterman won. Dean said it was then that she grew to “really like him and his family, and his values.”
Those values, she said, have taken a turn in more ways than one. She criticized his convention video as a “stunt” while saying she was mostly disappointed by his work ethic, his decisions to back Trump policies, and his “blind support” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attacks in Gaza.
“All I want is for his good health, his well being. And that has been my worry,” Dean said in an interview after the press conference, referring to Fetterman’s well-documented health struggles.
“But I think you have to look at his record, and his record of not working, of not participating, and not caucusing with Democrats, of not being active in his committees — alongside what he is active on, [which] is voting alongside Mr. Trump, and enabling this corruption of chaos,” she said.
Dean is one of several Pennsylvania Democrats who have ramped up their public concerns about Fetterman, with some essentially promising to oust him if he runs for reelection in 2028.
“He’s not going to be a senator after 2028 — mark my words,” U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio, an Allegheny County Democrat who is a potential candidate for the seat, after the video.
Dean did not comment on the next election other than saying “voters will have to decide whether that is appropriate” for Fetterman to conduct himself the way he has, including associating closely with Israeli leadership.
Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who has clashed with Fetterman but hasn’t heavily criticized his job performance as a senator, said Thursday he did not see the video. The governor said at an event in Chester he was “not going to get distracted” from his duties as governor and his reelection campaign.
WASHINGTON — U.S. airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi militants from late 2023 to mid-2025 killed 213 civilians, according to a report released Thursday by the Costs of War Project at Brown University.
Most of the casualties — 208 deaths and 341 wounded — occurred during President Donald Trump’s second term as his administration pursued the Iran-backed group.
The Pentagon has not publicly acknowledged civilian deaths in the 2024 attacks but has reported that it killed 153 civilians and wounded 243 in Yemen in 2025.
In October 2023, President Joe Biden ordered retaliatory airstrikes in Yemen after Houthi fighters attacked a Navy destroyer in the Red Sea, and again in January 2024 after Houthi missiles and drones targeted civilian vessels in the region.
The latter series of strikes continued until just weeks before Biden left office.
Trump ordered strikes on Houthi fighters in March 2025 in response to attacks on commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea launched from Yemen.
Beyond the loss of life, the report said hundreds of Yemenis lost farms, shops, factories, and small businesses in the attacks, leading to increased homelessness and worsening poverty among people who were already desperately poor.
“There’s a myth that an airstrike is going to strike a military target and kill a militant and it’s over,” said Stephanie Savell, an anthropologist and director of the Costs of War Project. “But what this report highlights are the reverberating, indirect, human costs of war. The report looks precisely at civilian infrastructure that’s targeted, not military infrastructure or outposts.”
Two U.S. attacks were particularly devastating, according to the researchers.
On April 17, 2025, the researchers said, U.S. forces killed 80 civilians in an attack on a port facility in the Houthi-controlled province of Hodeida.
Less than two weeks later, a U.S. attack on three warehouses used to detain African migrants killed 68 civilians.
Most of the workers killed at the port were the main breadwinners for their families, who have since slid deeper into poverty and hunger, according to Savell.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Costs of War Project is a collective of scholars who research the consequences of U.S. wars launched after the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. The project published the report with Mwatana for Human Rights, which did research inside Yemen and coproduced the report.
Investigators collected evidence by conducting interviews, analyzing weapon remnants and collecting documents including death certificates.
While the Pentagon has carried out many airstrikes in Yemen targeting al-Qaida fighters since the Sept. 11 attacks, the most recent U.S. strikes in the country have targeted the Houthis, who are part of the so-called Axis of Resistance led by Iran, along with the armed groups Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
According to the report, the Pentagon launched 930 airstrikes in Yemen from Dec. 18, 2023, to January 2025.
Then in March 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth launched Operation Rough Rider against the Houthis. By the end of April, the cost of Hegseth’s campaign was more than $1 billion.
Trump, frustrated with the lack of progress, halted the operation on May 5.
Brian Finucane, a former State Department attorney who advised on the law of war, said, “There are more significant civilian casualty incidents over the Rough Rider campaign than all the previous attacks during the Biden administration.”
He added that the Trump administration “launched two to three times the number of strikes Biden did.”
“Trump was also willing to bomb targets in more densely populated areas than Biden was,” he said. “Additionally, the migrant detention facility that was bombed in April 2025 had routinely been visited by officials from the Red Cross and should have been understood by Central Command as off-limits for attack.”
A Defense Department report on military operations for 2025 acknowledged the civilian death toll from the attacks on the port and the migrant detention facility, along with a strike in Sanaa, the capital, on April 6 that killed five civilians and wounded 25.
Condolence payments to survivors and the families of those who were killed, the report noted, were “determined to not be appropriate” in all three cases.
Just days after Hegseth took office in January 2025, the Army announced that it planned to close an office dedicated to reducing and mitigating civilian harm during combat operations. The office was reduced in March of that year from roughly 200 people to 11. At the time, Hegseth’s office declined to answer questions about the reductions.
When a traffic light turns green, Dan Kroushl is unlikely to be the first driver out of the gate. He won’t floor the gas pedal, and he never drives over the speed limit.
Instead, he eases forward by lightly pressing the accelerator, and the moment he sees a yellow light, he gently taps the brakes.
These techniques and others make Kroushl, 61, a so-called hypermiler, a driver who squeezes as many miles as possible out of each gallon of gas. And after a summer of soaring gas prices driven by the war in Iran, hypermilers like Kroushl say their strategies can help drivers who are feeling pinched at the pump make the most of every gallon.
“People think when they are pumping gas: I can’t do anything about it,” Bradlee Fons, 74, a fellow hypermiler, said of the increased gas prices. “I tell them, ‘You’re in total control.’ People can control their fuel costs.”
Bradlee Fons, 74, a self-proclaimed hypermiler, stands next to his 2017 Toyota Prius parked near a gas station in Jackson, Wis., on Sept. 6.Sara Stathas
Hypermilers mostly aim to maximize fuel efficiency by driving smoothly, without hard stops or starts. But sometimes they employ more extreme measures, like not using air-conditioning or removing a vehicle’s interior door panels to reduce its weight.
It’s both a lifestyle choice and a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the hypermilers say, but they think some of their strategies could be useful to regular, everyday drivers looking to save on fill-ups.
Gas prices have risen sharply since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, freezing the flow of energy from the Persian Gulf. As fighting in Iran intensified last week, diesel fuel prices hit a record high in the United States, with gas prices up nearly 34%, according to AAA.
As of Thursday, regular gas costs an average of $4.27 per gallon, though prices vary in different states. The average in Pennsylvania was $4.45 a gallon for regular gas and $4.36 in New Jersey, according to AAA.
With a few tweaks, Fons said, drivers can easily save 30% or more on their gas bill.
“Drivers do not have to be at the mercy of the government, the high gas prices or anything else,” he said. “They have options.”
The 2017 Toyota Prius that Fons drives in his home in Jackson, Wis., just north of Milwaukee, is estimated to achieve 52 mpg, according to its official EPA rating. But, Fons said, he gets 83.2 mpg by driving with fuel economy in mind.
Fons, who started a nonprofit organization called Drive Smart Wisconsin, keeps a list of simple techniques that he said any driver can use to save money on gas. At the top of the list is “nonaggressive driving,” which he defined as moving smoothly and purposefully. Other strategies include completing multiple errands in one trip so the car does not use extra fuel to warm up, and keeping up with vehicle maintenance.
Most cars are at peak fuel efficiency between 45 and 65 mph. Hypermilers recommend staying in that range and not going over the speed limit on the highway. Driving faster causes the vehicle’s drag to increase, reducing fuel mileage at an exponential rate.
Hypermilers also avoid unnecessary braking, which eats up fuel, and they accelerate slowly when starting from a complete stop. They anticipate slowdowns ahead.
“You work the gas so you’re barely holding the speed you want to hold,” explained Bruce Gregersen, 79, a hypermiler who lives in St. Cloud, Minn. “It takes a little more concentration, but once you get used to it, you’ll do it automatically.”
Hybrid cars, which combine a traditional gasoline-powered engine with one or more electric motors and a battery pack, offer greater fuel efficiency and are the vehicle of choice for many hypermilers.
Bob Winger, 71, of Williamsburg, Va., is part of a group of hypermile enthusiasts who have set multiple world records for fuel efficiency, including one for the lowest consumption of fuel in a non-hybrid vehicle driving through all 48 contiguous states. Winger said they had set that record by using techniques such as “ridge riding,” in which the passenger-side wheel moves along the white paint stripe on a highway because the friction is lower there than on the asphalt.
Such extremes are not necessary unless one is trying to set a world record, Winger said. Instead, he said, drivers can achieve greater mileage by doing simple things like making sure their tires are properly inflated, which helps decrease resistance. Using full synthetic oil reduces friction within the engine, he added.
“You don’t have to do crazy stuff,” he said. “Just driving conservatively, you can save without really pulling out all the tools in the toolbox.”
Two major Latino civil rights groups, a voting rights organization, and the city of Denver sued the Trump administration on Thursday to keep armed immigration enforcement agents away from polling places, invoking a Civil War-era criminal law that generally prohibits federal officials from bringing “troops or armed men” to places where elections are held.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., comes eight days before in-person early voting begins in some states, such as Minnesota and South Dakota. It asks a judge to declare it unlawful for the administration to send armed agents to polling sites.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said at a Sept. 1 news conference in New York that ICE agents would not patrol polling places, but that they would go to one if there were a threat there or if they were serving a warrant on someone they had been tracking. “If we’re serving a warrant, we will be where we need to be,” he said.
DHS has said in statements to media following Mullin’s comments that it “is not planning operations targeting polling locations,” but added that people could be arrested at a polling place if an active public safety threat arose there.
Democratic lawmakers and election officials have grown increasingly worried in recent months that armed federal officers or troops could be sent to polling sites. Local officials in states such as Arizona and Minnesota have gone as far as preparing emergency court filings and training personnel on how to respond.
Those fears have been fueled by calls among some allies of President Donald Trump — including at least three Republican gubernatorial candidates in different states — for sending armed federal agents and the National Guard to voting sites.
The lawsuit cites a year of public comments by Trump administration officials and allies. In February, former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon said, “We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November.” Days later, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters she “can’t guarantee that an ICE agent won’t be around a polling location.” And in March, then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is now attorney general, asked at a conservative gathering, “Why is there objection to sending ICE officers to polling places?”
The plaintiffs argue that pattern, capped by Mullin’s recent remarks, amount to a policy and plan by the administration.
The lawsuit Thursday was filed on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens, UnidosUS, Common Cause, and the city and county of Denver.
It relies on an 1865 law that makes it a felony for any federal official to order “troops or armed men” to places where an election is held, unless the force is needed to “repel armed enemies of the United States.” Violators face up to five years in prison and disqualification from holding federal office. In 1909, Congress removed the law’s other exception — allowing armed men to “keep the peace at the polls.”
The plaintiffs argue that armed federal agents at polling places would intimidate voters — particularly Latinos and naturalized U.S. citizens — and could turn voting sites into places of confrontation.
“The right to vote is foundational to our democracy and yet this administration continues in its endless attempts to weaken the very institutions it is entrusted to protect,” said Juan Proaño, CEO of LULAC. “The outcomes of elections define the future for all of us, and in America, voters should be able to cast their ballots without fear of intimidation by armed ICE officers at polling places.”
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The military has drawn a clearer line. Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D, Mich.) in an Aug. 28 letter that the Joint Force “has no plans” to send federal troops or federalized National Guard members to polling places, or to use them to seize ballots or voting machines.
“I have neither received nor anticipate receiving any unlawful order concerning the role of the Joint Force in the upcoming November 2026 midterm elections,” Caine wrote.
Trump has made sweeping claims of election fraud without evidence, alleging that large numbers of unauthorized immigrants will vote in November absent federal intervention. In March he signed an executive order directing the U.S. Postal Service to restrict how mail ballots are handled and instructing DHS to build lists of U.S. citizens and share them with states. The Supreme Court allowed parts of the order to move forward last month, and the administration returned to the Supreme Court this week for a third time after a federal judge in Boston blocked the Postal Service rule.
The lawsuit invoked an 1865 law advanced by then-Democratic lawmakers angered by the Lincoln administration’s deployment of Union troops interfering in presidential elections in Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware, according to legal historians.
That statute has never been tested, said University of Houston law school professor Chris Mirasola. No court has interpreted what counts as a place where an election is held, according to a Brennan Center for Justice analysis published in July, leaving unanswered whether the law reaches ballot drop boxes, election offices, and counting facilities as well as polling sites.
“The statute is incredibly old, and there is no case law about it, so all of this is going to be before the courts for the first time,” he said. “That always leaves questions about how it’s going to be interpreted.”
The plaintiffs, represented by attorneys with Democracy Forward, argue Congress explicitly banned armed federal officers from election sites to “provide and preserve free and fair elections, the rule of law, the right to vote, and Americans’ confidence in the sanctity of the ballot box.”
DHS’s “disregard for that statutory framework threatens our upcoming election,” the complaint said.
Mirasola said the law was a reaction to multiple instances of Union soldiers detaining Confederate-aligned candidates and blocking voters with ballots favoring those candidates during the wartime election in border states. Though the bill authors at the time were in the throes of a specific armed conflict, the rhetoric of the congressional debates were just as contemporary then as they are now, Marisola said. Lawmakers were hyper-focused on preserving the integrity of the electoral system.
“This lawsuit is alleging that what we are seeing in the lead-up to the midterms is the same kind of election interference because the administration has been dangling the possibility that there might be a deployment of armed federal agents,” Mirasola said.
The only exception for armed officers that has withstood time is in order to “repel armed enemies” of the United States. Lawmakers in the 1860s imagined those being Confederate soldiers. But the Trump administration could try to make a narrow argument identifying a different enemy, Mirasola said.
Plaintiffs will face another obstacle, according to Mirasola. The U.S. Supreme Court has significantly narrowed the avenues for the federal courts to issue prospective nationwide injunctions.
The complaint cited Justice Department actions to remove a manual explicitly stating the long-standing position of the government that armed federal agents are prohibited from election sites. They also pointed to the gutting of the department’s public integrity section, which wrote the document and advised law enforcement on legal matters during elections.
The complaint also points to three encounters involving immigration officers at voting sites during this year’s primaries: ICE officers converging on a traffic stop outside a San Antonio early voting site, where the county sheriff told them to leave; ICE vehicles outside a vote center in Simi Valley, California; and two federal agents entering a Syracuse, New York, library to warn a poll worker about an Instagram post naming the ICE agent who fatally shot Renée Good in Minneapolis.
LULAC, the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organization, has registered and mobilized Hispanic communities to the polls for nearly a century. Its hundreds of thousands of members have communicated worries that any federal presence could dampen turnout and fuel fears of racial profiling.
LULAC pointed to reporting by ProPublica, which found that immigration agents had detained more than 170 U.S. citizens, including more than 50 — nearly all of them Latino — who were held after agents questioned their citizenship.
Election workers across the country have been preparing for months. Some are being trained on de-escalation techniques in case of run-ins with federal agents and what hotlines to call to report potential disturbances.
In Denver, the clerk and recorder is already preparing to retrain the election judges who check in voters and empty the city’s 48 ballot drop boxes. The training covers how to de-escalate an encounter with federal agents, how to document what they do, and how to identify agents who are in plainclothes, according to the complaint. Election officials are also drawing up contingency plans to move voters to alternative polling sites.
The election judges are temporary workers, and Denver says it struggles to recruit enough of them for every election. Some, the city told the court, may now decline the job altogether.
“Stationing ICE agents near polling places is only meant to scare people and suppress votes,” Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said in a statement. “We’ll fight tooth and nail to prevent it.”
SCHUYLKILL HAVEN, Pa. — Brett Sell had a bad feeling about coming to work on July 28. The painting contractor was part of a small work crew rehabbing a two-story commercial property in Orwigsburg — a borough of just over 3,000 people in the heart of east-central Pennsylvania’s coal country — and workers had seen what looked like an unmarked law enforcement vehicle circling the site the day before.
“Yo, look up!” Sell said to his fellow painter, Orlando Rivera.
Police cars from Orwigsburg and neighboring Schuylkill Haven, lights flashing, blocked off the street while agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in tactical vests swarmed the work site. Sell was stunned as he and four other workers were quickly handcuffed by ICE agents — even though Sell and Rivera are native-born U.S. citizens.
Rivera, a biracial Puerto Rican who grew up in Bethlehem and now lives in another Schuylkill County borough, Tamaqua, said he was “embarrassed” as he stood in handcuffs while locals came out into the street to gawk. “I do a lot of work in that town,” he said, adding that “it made me feel like I was portrayed as a criminal.”
And he’s convinced he was handcuffed — even after offering to show the agents his ID — because of his race. “I get that my skin tone is tan,” he said, “but with the Fourth Amendment, they can’t go off my skin color, you know?”
Two workers were detained. One was later released, but the other — Catarino Hernandez Velasquez — a Mexican native who’s lived in Pottsville for at least 14 years, and a well-known contractor who poured concrete for the just-reopened 1928 Miners Hotel — was taken away and sent to ICE’s Moshannon Valley Detention Center in Central Pennsylvania, known for its overcrowding and complaints about lousy food and medical neglect. Kevin Medina, a leader of the local Latino community, bemoaned the arrest of a “very hardworking gentleman with a stable contracting business in the area … very busy.”
Now, gone … in a matter of minutes.
Painting contractors Brett Sell (left, white painting outfit) and Orlando Rivera are handcuffed during an ICE raid on a job site in Orwigsburg, Pa., on July 28. The men — both native-born U.S. citizens — were released without charges.Facebook
The Orwigsburg raid was a dramatic moment, yet such scenes are becoming increasingly common this summer in Schuylkill County, Pa., a constellation of rusty boroughs where coal was king in the 20th century, and Donald Trump got 71% of the vote in 2024.
‘In Schuylkill Haven, they can’t go there’
Since the start of the year, ICE — flush with a whopping windfall of $170 billion shoveled by Congress to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to amp up immigration raids and detention — has dangled pledges to many tiny police departments. In Schuylkill County, which locals call “the Skook,” more than $1.5 million has been distributed to law enforcement. The police chief and pols all but publicly salivated at the chance — under the controversial program known as 287(g) — to buy a desperately needed new cruiser or other cop tools in return for working with ICE to arrest and hold local immigrants for the feds.
Some 14 law enforcement agencies — the most of any of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties — have inked 287(g) pacts with ICE, launching a new era of beat cops making immigration arrests that has roiled daily life in Schuylkill County. Practically overnight, cops were setting up truck inspections on a busy rural bypass or running checkpoints at places like the Freeze, a popular ice cream joint on the main drag, Route61. Officers were pouncing on immigrants who showed up at the county courthouse in Pottsville, or assisting ICE on workplace raids like the one in Orwigsburg.
Arrests leading to ICE detention and deportation cases skyrocketed across Schuylkill County — more than 100 since the start of the year, with most the result of ICE cooperation under 287(g) — leaving families torn apart while creating a climate of fear among what had been a rapidly growing Latino community in and around Pottsville. Suddenly, essential workers or their loved ones grew terrified that a busted taillight or failing to signal while shifting lanes could turn their world upside down.
One borough with just over 5,000 residents — Schuylkill Haven — has seen at least 59 immigration arrests in about four months, a staggering number. The figures come from Chicago-based ICE watcher Andrew Thrasher, a law-firm staffer and data expert who regularly crunches federal statistics obtained by the Deportation Data Project through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
“People are afraid to go out,” Medina — who immigrated to Schuylkill County from Honduras, became a U.S. citizen and a notary and insurance agent, and formed a local Latino support group, Puentes de Apoyo — told me when we met in a Hispanic-owned Pottsville pizza joint. “I’ve got one contractor who told me they’ve got to change routes because now they know that in Schuylkill Haven, even they can’t go over there. And the stress, mentally, that I’m seeing in these families of, ‘What am I goingto do if this happens?’”
A map, provided by immigration statistics expert Andrew Thrasher, showing 13 current Schuylkill County localities that have signed 287(g) cooperation agreements with ICE. A 14th, Mahanoy Township, is inactive.Andrew Thrasher
The wave of arrests has put Schuylkill County — mostly rural, mostly conservative, and far removed from the glare of media or the kind of organized ICE resistance you see in big cities — on the cutting edge of an aggressive new strategy for mass deportation. This approach is bringing a xenophobic Donald Trump regime closer to fulfilling its once-unthinkable goal of removing one million immigrants from the United States every year.
Trump Country embraces 287(g)
The tag team of local cops and tactical-gear-wearing ICE agents is the biggest reason why federal immigration arrests spiked in July to a Trump-era high of 49,571, or about 1,600 every day. Statisticians who are tracking mass deportation said that 287(g) arrests — named for the section of a 1996 law that authorized the program — involving local police went from less than 3% of the total under Joe Biden to about 15% now, and will only climb higher as hundreds of new departments sign up.
This year, about 58% of the people nabbed by cops and turned over to ICE under 287(g) have no criminal record or pending charges, a higher rate than the typical ICE arrestee. Thrasher found the number for Pennsylvania is even higher, about 70%.
While not as numerous as inbig and heavily conservative states like Texas and Florida, the Keystone State’s 1,216 arrests under the 287(g) program in the first seven months of 2026 rank the commonwealth fourth in the nation — on a Top 15 list made upof states almost exclusively south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Pennsylvania’s outlier status is punctuated by the fact that two large bordering states — New York and Maryland — have moved, with some bumps, to ban their police agencies from signing 287(g) agreements. Almost all of the Pennsylvania arrests came from smaller cities, exurbs, or rural areas — especially the south-central and northeastern regions of the state, and a smattering of western localities — that voted heavily for Trump and his anti-immigrant message.
The small-town nature of this renewed push for mass deportation is a defining feature of the Trump regime strategy, and not a bug. The race among Schuylkill County’s police departments — many with just three or four cops, including the chief — to sign up for 287(g) and its pumped-up pile of cash came exactly as the two Minneapolis murders of U.S. citizens by immigration cops were fueling growing public outrage.
As a brutal ICE winter ended, the Trump regime ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and the notorious field general Greg Bovino, and ended an era of loud, publicity-seeking operations with catchy names in large blue cities that stirred up local protesters who blew whistles and filmed every move by the masked, armed agents.
Immigrants’ rights advocacy group members and their supporters hold up letters that read “The people vs 287(g)” during a rally last September in Doylestown against the Bucks County sheriff’s efforts to implement a 287(g) program.Daniella Heminghaus | Bucks Coun
Under new DHS boss Markwayne Mullin, ICE and its allies are focused on what you might call small-batch immigration busts — in courthouses or on airport security lines, and thanks to 287(g), at local traffic stops or truck inspections. No one is blowing whistles, and few of these busts get caught on video. Yet, even here in blood-red Trump Country, some locals are troubled by the intense police focus on immigrants and what it’s doing to the moral fabric of their community.
‘Arrest them like the Gestapo’
“No one’s telling you not to arrest people — I’m telling you not to hunt for them, to do stops on the side of the road and arrest them like the Gestapo,” a Democratic city council member in Pottsville, Andy Wollyung, told me after he tried and failed to stop the county seat from joining 287(g). He later fretted that immigration arrests “will drive a wedge in people, you know? These aren’t unknown people. These are our neighbors.”
“When local police officers serve as a force multiplier for ICE, we know that people become more afraid to report crime,” Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council, told me. “They become less willing to cooperate with local law enforcement when it comes to investigations, including things like homicides. And there’s an overall mistrust of public institutions.”
The irony is that today’s Schuylkill County was built on the backs of immigrants — initially a wave of Irish who dug the 19th-century coal mines and were also persecuted, including six members of the infamous Molly Maguires who were hanged in Pottsville in 1877. They were followed by Eastern Europeans who filled the local mining towns like Mahanoy City and Shenandoah.
Those who stayed behind after the mines started closing in the 1950s and kept its hillside towns of striking Victorian architecture and utilitarian rowhouses alive got a booster shot in the 21st century with an unexpected new wave: Latinos. Many landed in Schuylkill County when seeking a place with cheaper housing and more job opportunities for hard workers than big cities like New York or Philadelphia.
Schuylkill Haven, with a population of just over 5,000, has arrested at least 59 people and turned them over on federal immigration charges since signing a so-called 287(g) agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) this spring.Will Bunch
Four years ago, Pastor Luis Rivera and his wife bought a historic local church building in Pottsville and rechristened it as Iglesia Cristiana El Kairos, under the umbrella of the Evangelical New Life Church, to serve a Latino community now growing by leaps and bounds.
“You see a lot of traffic,” the pastor told me. “You see people remodeling more houses. And a lot of the stores are opening around here … It was really dead before, you know?” Today, it’s estimated that about 1,000 of Pottsville’s 14,000 residents are Latino.
A ‘stable’ life is upended
Six of the more recent arrivals were Venezuelan-born Carlos Moreno, his wife, Wendy Martínez, and their blended family of four teenagers. They’d been on the run from government persecution and armed conflict across South America when they came to America in 2023, and stayed in a cramped public shelter in New York City as the family sought asylum and obtained work permits.
When they moved to a narrow rowhouse on a rugged patch of Norwegian Street on the steep hillside up from downtown Pottsville, the couple found jobs at the county’s large Amazon warehouse and even started a small cleaning business, even though Moreno, 37, is legally blind and has severe hearing problems.
“For the first time in years, it felt like our lives were finally becoming stable,” Martínez would later write. “Then, in the fall of 2025, we learned that I was pregnant. It was an unexpected surprise, but a very welcome one.”
Wendy Martínez, whose husband, Carlos Moreno, a Venezuelan refugee, has been detained by immigration authorities since May after losing a misdemeanor noise complaint at the Schuylkill County Courthouse. She is holding her baby Noah, who was roughly 6 weeks old.Will Bunch
A bigger and less welcome surprise awaited. This spring, a neighbor called police to complain about noise —music from a small boom box — and Moreno received a summons. He decided to challenge it at the Schuylkill County Courthouse a few blocks away, and when he lost, he paid a fine, walked out of the courtroom — and right into ICE agents waiting to arrest him. He was sent to detention in the Cambria County Jail and stayed there as massive earthquakes halted deportations to Venezuela. He was locked up when his son, Noah, was born — on the Fourth of July.
Martínez was alternately rocking and bouncing her then-6-week-old son when I joined Medina in visiting their cluttered, narrow rowhouse in August. The windows were covered with thick blankets that let in only a sliver of light, and Martínez was bookended on a sofa by her two daughters, on their phones, who rarely leave home.
“They told him that he was a dangerous person,” Martínez said in Spanish, interpreted by Medina, as her baby babbled. “There hasn’t been any situation where he was against the law, or anything.” Struggling to pay her bills and support the five children, Martínez launched a GoFundMe page, but has only raised $2,695 of her $4,000 goal. Her husband was recently moved to ICE detention in Louisiana.
In August, Schuylkill Haven officials said they’re expecting a federal check for $152,000 — money the police department wants to spend on buying the currently leased police headquarters, pictured here.Will Bunch
Like most immigration arrests since 287(g) swept across Schuylkill County, there is an element of mystery about what exactly happened to Moreno. I twice called the Schuylkill County sheriff, Shawn Butler, to ask if his department — the first county agency to join 287(g), back in January — was involved, but he did not get back to me. Not once in a month of reporting did a police chief or municipal official return a call or email from this out-of-town columnist. Secrecy, and a lack of accountability, seems to be baked into the 287(g) program.
‘You don’t answer anything’
“Any Right-to-Know requests, any FOIA requests, anything — you defer that right down to the Department of Homeland Security,” Jody Long, the then-police chief in Mahanoy Township, told the Pottsville City Council when it was voting on a 287(g) agreement in May. “You don’t answer anything with that. That’s right from their legal team.”
In early September, I attended the bimonthly meeting of the Schuylkill Haven borough council hoping to ask Police Chief Jeffrey Walcott, Mayor John Williams, or other officials how and why their small borough just south of Pottsville had managed to make at least 59 immigration arrests since signing a 287(g) pact with ICE on April 5. I didn’t get very far.
In a brief conversation, Walcott suggested, interestingly, that commenting on 287(g) might bring protesters to Schuylkill Haven. When I asked Williams about the program after the meeting, the police chief interrupted our conversation to say there should be “a unified response,” and then later told me any information would need to come from Homeland Security or a FOIA request.
Schuylkill Haven Mayor John Williams (left) at a borough council meeting on Sept. 2. Next to him are borough secretary Kaitlyn Tinari (center) and council president Thomas Gordon (right). Williams said Schuylkill Haven’s cooperation with federal immigration enforcement is going well, but declined to elaborate.Will Bunch
Most of what citizens and the media in Schuylkill County know about the 287(g) programs comes from borough or township council meetings in which a police chief tells elected officials about all the sweeteners that cash-flush ICE added to the program when Congress and Trump enacted the so-called Big Beautiful Bill in 2025.
Police departments or county sheriffs who join the most common 287(g) Task Force model get $100,000 for vehicles or other equipment and $7,500 for each officer who undergoes 40 hours of mostly online training, as well as additional dollars for their time on immigration matters — all contingent on making actual arrests. In August, Schuylkill Haven officials said they’re expecting a federal check for $152,000 — money the borough wants to spend on buying the currently leased police headquarters.
The cash incentives have sparked a kind of deportation arms race across Pennsylvania, which has gone from just a few 287(g) programs at the start of the year to more than 130, with new ones coming online every day. Most of the council debates tread lightly on the question of liability for an officer who makes a bad arrest — a problem ICE is belatedly looking to fix with a proposal to insure each officer up to $500,000 — or the elevated risk that a traffic stop could lead to violence.
Fighting in the Schuylkill
That’s already happened. On May 20, a Schuylkill Haven cop stopped a car on Route61 after he claimed the driver had illegally dark-tinted windows. ICE agents who were in the borough and arrived at the stop ran the license of 34-year-old Yensy Rafael Santana Alvarez of New York City and determined he had an immigration removal order.
According to the Skook News, a court affidavit said the man handed over his car keys and stepped out of his car — then ran for it. Alvarez led the law officers on a wild foot chase across the Schuylkill and back, getting tased once, and allegedly pulling one officer underwater as another suffered minor injuries. He was eventually arrested, and felony charges were filed but then dropped.
Some local critics also questioned whether minimally trained cops making immigration arrests is a good idea in a county where some departments have a history of police abuses. “In northern Schuylkill County, over the last 10 years, we’ve had horrendous police … acting very unprofessional in different departments,” John Hampton, a lawyer who has worked with Mahanoy Township, told me.
A heated and emotional debate over the federal 287(g) immigration enforcement program dominated Monday night’s Pottsville Council meeting.
After initially failing in a 3-2 vote, the resolution was reopened moments later and ultimately passed following a council member changing… pic.twitter.com/kSW1QXhgqS
In 2022, two then-police officers in the borough of Minersville were indicted on still-pending federal police brutality charges for allegedly severely beating a man during a traffic stop and falsifying police reports to cover it up. That didn’t prevent ICE from signing a 287(g) agreement with Minersville police in May.
That same month, local activists pleaded with the Pottsville City Council during a meeting that lasted more than five hours not to join the 287(g) program, arguing that immigration arrests would make tourists and new businesses not want to come there. They thought they’d won in a 3-2 vote, only to have GOP council member Scott Price change his position and demand a revote that flipped the outcome, saying that, in the end, “I have to side with our police officers.”
One of the few pro-287(g) advocates who spoke at that May hearing was Mahanoy Township’s Long, who said his department had been “the leader in the county” by making 10 immigration arrests, mainly at what he called a truck-safety inspection point. “ICE does not come in and tell you what to do,” Long insisted. “We tell them what to do.”
He was joined by one of his officers, Anthony Maldonado, who cited his own heritage as a Puerto Rican to insist there is no racial profiling. “I have family members who are light-skinned, dark-skinned, everywhere in between, so I would take it very personally if we conducted ourself unprofessionally to that effect,” he said.
‘Because you look like a Mexican’
The room in Pottsville did not hear from Moe Montalvo, a gutter contractor from nearby Tamaqua who, in mid-April, passed through the checkpoint on Burma Road operated by cops from Mahanoy Township and assisted by adjacent Ryan Township officers. He said he was part of a two-truck convoy, and the first one with two white occupants was waved through, while his was stopped to allow the officers to ask Montalvo, a 28-year-old U.S. citizen who is half Puerto Rican and half Egyptian, for his ID and grill him about his identity.
Montalvo posted that day on Facebook that when he told an officer he was born in Montgomery County, the cop replied: “Are you sure? Because you look like a Mexican.” Montalvo also quoted the officer: “Why are you worried? The only thing you should be worried about is when I take my Taser out, because I’m going to aim right for your nose piercing.” I confirmed the incident with Montalvo, who told me that “it seems like there was no doubt that racial profiling was involved here.”
Weeks later, the Mahanoy Township Police Department went dark, at least temporarily, after Long, Maldonado, and its other officer all quit in a disagreement with supervisors. One of the supervisors, Republican Tony Merchlinsky, confirmed to me the entire force had resigned after a dispute with supervisors over its refusal to wear body cameras. He said it was triggered by a civilian complaint over an arrest that did not involve immigration, although he added that “it may have involved racial profiling.”
Maldonado took to Facebook to give his side of the story, saying that a different supervisor had told the township officers they were making too many arrests, and that, as quoted by Maldonado, he preferred “a [B]arney Fife department and have his police drive around and wave at people instead of making arrests.” Merchlinsky confirmed that Mahanoy Township — which recently hired a new, albeit part-time, police chief — has yet to see one dime from the feds of the more than $100,000 that was promised.
The checkpoint drama and police tensions in Mahanoy Township demonstrate some of the many problems when beat cops are drafted to join Trump’s mass deportation crusade. Are police really making their towns safer when one part of the community is taking long traffic detours and covering up their windows in terror of any contact with cops? Is the economic gloom over Pennsylvania’s fading coal country really going to be lifted by clamping down on immigrants who’d been flocking there to pour concrete and rehab old buildings?
Does a region whose very DNA is handed down by the immigrants who once came here to shovel anthracite now want to be known in the 21st century as a “show me your papers” police state?
Few of these questions are being asked as one former coal burg after another races to embrace a Trumpian bargain with the 287(g) program. The latest is Mahanoy Township’s next-door neighbor, Ryan Township, which in June voted conditionally to join the ICE mass deportation program, citing as the biggest incentive its need to replace its run-down Ford Explorer, one of the oldest police cars in Schuylkill County.
The Philadelphia Fringe Festival returns for its 30th year
A performer for Bearded Ladies Cabaret, a queer arts organization that partnered with FringeArts for a string of cabaret shows for the 2025 Philadelphia Fringe Festival.Courtesy of John Jarboe
More than 350 bold, alternative shows will be staged throughout the region for the month-long festival. This year’s lineup features uncensored works by new and independent artists through Sept. 27.
The lineup includes the Philadelphia premiere of Kramer/Fauci by director Daniel Fish, who was behind Broadway’s Oklahoma!. There will also be world premieres by Philly-based institutions such as the Nichole Canuso Dance Company, Ninth Planet and The Bearded Ladies Cabaret.
🍯 A sweet time in Germantown: The Philadelphia Honey Festival is coming to Wyck Historic House and Gardens this Saturday. The day includes honey extractions, bee beard demos, honey tastings, and a conversation led by head beekeeper Jeff Eckel.
🍷 A taste of wine delight: Stop by Girard College on Saturday for the Philly Black Wine and Spirits Festival. The daylong event features live music, curated bites, and wine and spirits from Black-owned makers.
🍄 Have a little fungi: Make your way to Kennett Square, home to the “Mushroom Capital of the World,” this weekend. The Kennett Square Mushroom Festival offers two days of fungi-themed activities, food, live entertainment and shopping along State Street.
🎺 Jazz and rhythm in Northwest Philly: Jazz will fill the streets of West Oak Lane on Thursday for the return of the Uptown Rhythm Festival. The event will be hosted by radio legend Patty Jackson and headlined by homegrown jazz band Breakwater.
The scene by the food tents along the waterfront at the Mexican Cultural Center tent during the Mexican Independence Day Festival at the Independence Blue Cross RiverRink at Penn’s Landing Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
The celebration will feature mariachi music, local artisans, family-friendly activities and the “El Grito” ceremony led by the consul of Mexico in Philadelphia.
This free event will take place from 2 to 7 p.m. at the Independence Blue Cross RiverRink at Penn’s Landing.
🎉 Rave at Subaru Park: Breakaway Music Festival takes off at Subaru Park this weekend. The two-day festival will feature EDM performers and DJs such as Marshmello, SOFI TUKKER, Tiësto, and others from Friday to Saturday.
🐎 High-jumping horsemanship: Make a stop in Chester County for the 13th annual Devon Fall Classic, where equestrians will put their skills to the test over four days inside the historic Dixon Oval.
🎃 Who says it’s too soon for Halloween?: The Nightmare Before Christmas Pop Up returns to Craftsman Row Saloon starting Friday. The Jewelers’ Row bar will be adorned in Halloween decor from door to door. Don’t get spooked.
📷 Keep your eyes peeled: The 10-day 20/20 Photo Festival will bring photographers from across the region and beyond. Highlights include photographer Mike Klusek’s Fishtown Photo Walk on Thursday, Ron Tarver’s new exhibition, The Long Ride Home: Black Cowboys in America, on Friday, andthe Photo Book Fair at Cherry Street Pieron Saturday.
Staffer picks
Here’s pop music critic Dan DeLuca’s list of the best concerts this weekend.
🎵Thursday: Actress and musician Alicia Witt, who first rose to stardom as Alia in David Lynch’s Dune, is on the road in support of her album, Between Heaven and Earth. She performs at World Cafe Live on Thursday.
🎤Friday: British-born superstar Charli XCX, who released her latest album, Music, Fashion, Film, in July, will touch the Xfinity Mobile Arena stage with opener and San Francisco-bred artist Underscores.
🔊Saturday: Florida rapper Rod Wave, who’s amassed millions of fans with his blend of auto-tuned confessions and melodic trap songs, is hitting the stage at Xfinity Mobile Arena on Saturday.
🎸Sunday: Glam rock band Julez and the Rollerz will perform at MilkBoy on Sunday. The Los Angeles-based quartet will be joined on stage by Philly-based musicians Ripley, Erin Fox, and Squiggler
Temple’s leading scorer from last season, Derrian Ford, has been practicing with the team and is on track to play for the Owls in the 2026-27 men’s basketball season after a recent court ruling in Louisiana paved the way for a fifth season of eligibility, sources told The Inquirer.
Ford, a guard who transferred to Temple from Arkansas State prior to the 2025-26 season, averaged 18.1 points and 4.3 rebounds in 35.6 minutes last season with the Owls.
The Arkansas native was among a group of athletes who challenged in a Louisiana court the NCAA’s newly adopted rule that will grant five full years of eligibility to college athletes moving forward but did not include the high school class of 2022 who had already completed four seasons. The court ruled in their favor, granting them a temporary restraining order against the NCAA.
Derrian Ford is a key returner for the Owls in the 2026-27 season.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer
Ford did not sign a professional contract, unlike football players Zxavian Harris and Dae’Quan Wright, a tight end who spent part of training camp with the Eagles. Harris and Wright’s attempts to join the roster at LSU have been at the center of the latest legal and ethical issues in college athletics. A Louisiana judge issued a preliminary injunction last week that appeared to make the players eligible to join the LSU football team, but the school is proceeding without adding them, a move that came after LSU’s conference, the SEC, threatened to hold a vote to expel the school from the conference.
Ford is unlikely to face the same type of legal hurdles in order to play in 2026-27. Other members of the Louisiana case have already made their first appearances after the ruling. Jazmin Ferguson and Jocelyn Ollivierre, two LSU soccer players, have made three appearances with their team so far this season. Ferguson, according to the Business Journal, testified in court recently that she was paid $4,500 by a USL team but returned the money when playing again at LSU became a possibility.
Ford had interest from professional teams, according to sources, but did not sign a contract.
He is not the only Big 5 men’s basketball player who successfully challenged in court for an additional season. Villanova center Duke Brennan was part of a lawsuit in California that ended with him and others receiving additional eligibility. Brennan will play his final college season at Oklahoma.
As of Thursday afternoon, Ford was not one of the 14 players listed on Temple’s official roster on the school’s athletics website. The Owls return a few players from the 2025-26 season, most notably Gavin Griffiths, who averaged 10.1 points. Coach Adam Fisher retooled the roster in the transfer portal, and while the Owls made some key additions, none of them may have the impact that Ford’s return will.
Temple has not yet announced its 2026-27 schedule, but the college basketball season begins in early November.
