Labor Day is often seen as the unofficial end of summer — a long weekend for barbecues and family gatherings. But before enjoying the day off, we should remember the people whose work makes our daily lives possible. As a mail carrier, I see this every day. Behind every functioning neighborhood are workers who quietly keep life moving, including teachers, nurses, first responders, sanitation crews, farmers, and caregivers. Many work early mornings, late nights, and holidays. We often notice their work only when something goes undone.
As an Ahmadi Muslim, I was taught that serving others is an essential expression of faith. That value guides me on my route every day. Labor Day reminds us that our nation was not built by famous names alone, but by ordinary people willing to work, serve, and contribute — often without recognition. This Labor Day, let’s take a moment to thank those who keep our communities running. Every honest worker deserves our respect.
Farid Ahmad, Easton
Walk the walk
Inga Saffron’s column about being car-free or car-light was interesting and positive. We moved here in 2021 to eventually be car-free as we aged and are car-light now. We have volunteered with Save Our Train to keep the Chestnut Hill West line running. We take all forms of SEPTA and appreciate very much what is available. But I have to wonder how much continual advocacy transit, in all forms, has with our City Council and with our state representatives. Do Council members and their staff take transit, bike, or walk to work frequently? If not, it should be a requirement. If they had, maybe the new work on Broad Street would have been more thoughtful for pedestrians and bicyclists. Same question for Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and her staff. Perhaps she could take a page from New York’s mayor. The same goes for our state representatives. Our elected officials need to make it possible for people of all ages to get out of cars. If they only know a car-centric life, how do they effectively advocate for transit?
Liese Sadler,Philadelphia
More like Daffy
Recently leaked information from the Pentagon reveals that leaders of the U.S. European Command, the U.S. Pacific Command, and the U.S. Southern Command, along with the Navy’s top admiral, all formally disagreed with the administration’s Iran war conduct and planning. Troops and vessels are unevenly distributed, critical munitions are running out, and even homeland defense is weakened. This revealing show of no-confidence is a point when serious, competent civilian leadership should make a rational and considered about-face.
At a time when the more than 1.3 million people in active-duty service look to their commander in chief for strong, coherent leadership, this will assuredly not be happening. Over the weekend, Donald Trump instead reposted on his Truth Social account a meme showing a troop of rifle-toting Trump-like geese guarding his newly named “Lake America” from the Canadians, titled “Protected by Donald Ducks.” It is beyond shocking that while in violent war, our president, so frustrated and infuriated by his own incompetence, will simply hide in this absurd renaming fantasy for amusement. This is who we have in the dangerous real world where the rest of us live.
Joseph B. Baker,Honey Brook
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.
Temple almost reached a bowl game during K.C. Keeler’s first season. The Owls began their 2025 campaign 5-3 and needed one more win to be eligible, but four consecutive losses left them short of their first bowl appearance since 2019.
Keeler enters his second season with a revamped roster, higher expectations, and uncertainty at the sport’s most important position. Temple added 22 players through the transfer portal and plans to play quarterbacks Ajani Sheppard and Jaxon Smolik in its season opener on Saturday against Rhode Island at Lincoln Financial Field (2 p.m., ESPN+).
Before kickoff, here are five things to know about Temple’s key players, newcomers, schedule, and preseason expectations.
Both quarterbacks will get an opportunity
Temple’s well-documented quarterback battle will continue in the season opener.
Smolik and Sheppard have battled for the starting job since the spring and it has persisted through preseason camp. Both quarterbacks have seemingly struggled and thrived in unison, making any decision difficult for the Owls coaching staff.
Keeler has shown little urgency in naming a signal caller.
“Early on, I think it was sort of a battle, but they weren’t playing great,” Keeler said. “The quarterback play was just OK. Now, all of a sudden, they’ve both made dramatic improvements. I think we feel like we can live with two quarterbacks. I’m going to ask one of those guys to go out there and start the game, obviously. But I think it’s a little bit like last year — we had no idea. We had to go out there and put some stuff down, see where they were, and let somebody steal that job and give us some peace of mind.”
Jaxon Smolik will split reps in pocket with Ajani Sheppard in the season opener on Saturday.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
Neither candidate has extensive college experience. Smolik appeared sparingly during three seasons at Penn State and never attempted a collegiate pass. Sheppard played in five games across two seasons at Rutgers, completing both of his attempts for 23 yards, before missing the entire 2025 season at Washington State because of an injury.
Keeler faced a similar decision last season with Evan Simon and Gevani McCoy. Both were expected to play in the opener against Massachusetts, but Simon seized the job by throwing six touchdown passes in a 42-10 victory. Keeler will again lean on game action to produce separation.
Brown is healthy … kind of
Sam Brown enters Saturday’s matchup as the Owls’ starting running back, a role he carved out for himself in spring and fall camp.
Brown has been primarily healthy through the past six months, which is notable considering the fifth-year senior has yet to compete in a full season of his collegiate career. He suffered injuries in 2022, 2024, and 2025 at Rutgers.
Over the past two weeks — and for the first time since joining the Owls — Brown has been limited in practice. He did not participate in team or contact drills after taking a hard hit on Aug. 20.
Sam Brown will be Temple’s starting running back as long as he’s healthy.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
“It’s one of those things where we’re trying to protect Sam from Sam, because Sam is a compulsive worker,” Keeler said. “When you get into those situations, you just try to back him off. That’s what we’re trying to do — back him off a little bit and have a fresh version of him when we get to game day, and if we had a game today, he’d be playing.”
Assuming Brown takes the field on Saturday, it’ll be a huge boost for the offense.
Entering his second season, Keeler added several transfers and recruits in the offseason, but kept nearly all his returning starters, which is considered rare in today’s college football climate.
That effort comes from a culture shift in the wake of Keeler’s hiring. The Owls broke their streak of four consecutive 3-9 seasons last year.
In 2026, Keeler and company will be tasked with taking another step forward.
“I’ve driven this team really hard — maybe as hard as any team I’ve ever driven,” Keeler said. “I strongly believe in them. We have a lot of new players, and we had to get them up to the culture and how we do things. I don’t want to get to game day and, all of a sudden, we’re under some adversity or strife and don’t know how to handle those things. As a collective group — and me in particular — we pushed this team quite hard. I don’t think you push a team hard if you think its ceiling is right there. You push it hard when you think the ceiling is really high.”
Almost every great Temple football team has been spearheaded by a strong, gritty linebacker corps.
In the mid-2010s, Temple boasted names like Tyler Matakevich and Avery Williams. Al Golden’s teams featured Tahir Whitehead, while even Wayne Hardin’s 1970s glory-day teams had former pros, including Mike Curcio.
Now, the 2026 defense will be led by linebackers Eric Stuart and Curly Ordonez. Stuart was also selected as a defensive captain and awarded a single-digit for the season.
Linebacker Eric Stuart returns as Temple’s lead tackler from the 2025 season.Isaiah Vazquez / For The Inquirer
The defense wreaked havoc throughout preseason camp. On the defensive line, Keeler and defensive coordinator Brian Smith are planning to regularly rotate 10 players during games. The safety room is also deep, with Avery Powell and former Illinois defensive back Saboor Karriem leading the room.
“I feel like we have one of the best rooms,” Ordonez said. “We have guys and can go three or four deep. I just feel like there is no slack off. That’s one thing I see in our room, just how ready everyone is, no matter what, whenever we need them.”
A telling September awaits
After six months of facing each other, the Owls will finally get their first game action against Rhode Island. It will be a measuring stick for Temple’s nonconference schedule as the Rams are one of the FCS’ best squads.
Then, Temple will face No. 18 Penn State in Philadelphia in Week 2.
The rest of September includes a Week 3 matchup with one of the Mid-American Conference’s best teams, Toledo, which will also be Temple’s first road game. The Rockets won eight games last season and punched a ticket to the Boca Raton Bowl. Toledo was selected third in the MAC preseason coaches’ poll.
The month will conclude with Temple’s American Conference opener against Army at Lincoln Financial Field. The Owls lost, 14-13, in West Point, N.Y., last season after a potential game-winning field goal was blocked in the final seconds.
By the end of September, the Owls could show if they’re capable of reaching a bowl game.
Welcome to Shackamaxon, a weekly politics column focused on what’s happening at City Hall and in Harrisburg. It is named for the place where the Lenape chiefs would meet to conduct the people’s business, which is now known as Penn Treaty Park.
This week’s edition covers sinkholes, the embrace of “slopulism,” the ongoing struggle over the future of the Cecil B. Moore Library branch, and the loss of a venerable museum.
Signage marks a hole in the road on the 1600 block of South Lawrence Street on Tuesday. Neighbors have been complaining about the street’s integrity for more than a decade.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
Sinkhole street
How long does it take for a 311 request to be resolved? For residents of the 1600 block of South Lawrence Street, it has been 13 years — and counting. In the meantime, city officials have repeatedly ignored their emails and offered excuses.
It all began with a 2013 complaint about road instability. According to residents, their block once hosted a factory, which means that when their homes were built and their street was initially paved, it had to be filled in. Their concern is that, over time, this fill may have eroded, leading to the repeated formation of sinkholes and putting their buried utility pipes at risk.
Given that one of the neighbors who contacted me, Tim Dunn, is a civil engineer, I would say this is a credible worry.
While the city paid to fix three water laterals after the main broke, the neighbors believe three or four additional laterals were damaged and should have been covered, too. They also report that the laterals the city replaced experienced issues almost immediately. The block is scheduled to be repaved next year, and if underlying problems remain, the effort could be futile.
You would think that would lead officials at the city’s Streets and Water Departments to investigate. But until this week, that wasn’t the case.
The neighbors have compiled a timeline, complete with notes and evidence, of their efforts to get the departments to take their concerns seriously. Councilmember Mark Squilla, who represents the street, confirmed their account. Even he had trouble getting emails answered about this situation.
Out of 36 requests from Squilla or residents for help or information, 19 went unanswered. Adding insult to injury, the neighbors told me the city has repeatedly deployed no parking signs, only to not send anyone to do any work. This was perceived as an intimidation tactic.
When I reached out to the city to get their side of the story, they said they are now on top of the situation. On Tuesday, after my initial outreach, they finally sent a sewer operations team to investigate exactly what is happening underground.
Changes in how we get around and how we shop have had an impact on our streets. When these homes were built back in the 1920s, cars were rare in Philadelphia. The most popular model, Ford’s famous Model T, weighed up to 1,500 pounds. People increasingly use SUVs and heavy-duty trucks as their daily rides, putting strain on roads created without them in mind. The total weight rating for a loaded Amazon delivery van can be almost 10,000 pounds. This is part of why Mayor Cherelle L. Parker proposed a “pothole tax” on deliveries.
More money, however, would not fix what went wrong on South Lawrence Street. If existing communication and coordination issues aren’t resolved, residents will understandably see the pothole tax as yet another cash grab from City Hall.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro speaks during a news conference at the state Capitol, Aug. 18.Marc Levy
Shapiro’s slopulism
One of the most frustrating parts of post-pandemic politics is the rise of “slopulism.” Short-form videos make it easy to build support for ideas that pander to our biases but are either not factual or impractical. From inciting claims about voter fraud to the idea that we can “just make transit free,” no one wants to read the boring evidence when there’s a cool, colorful video that tells them what they want to hear.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, a dedicated performer in the TikTok and Reels sphere, has embraced slopulism before. During his 2022 gubernatorial campaign, he promised to pursue “gas tax rebates,” an idea that would have depleted the state’s reserves and disproportionately sent cash to wealthier households. Mercifully, it doesn’t seem to have come up since he won.
While Shapiro’s critics will often say that the Ambitious Abingtonian watches the polls like a hawk, he’s mostly avoided relapsing into slopulism as governor. At least, until recently.
First came his about-face on data centers. Now he’s indicated support for a ban on automatic license plate readers known as Flock cameras.
There are real concerns about their misuse. Many feel uncomfortable with a private company like Flock Safety playing such a big role in law enforcement, and there have been troubling instances of police officers using the devices to stalk ex-romantic partners. Guardrails must be established.
At the same time, automatic license plate readers and other cameras have become an essential law enforcement tool. They can help identify stolen cars, track shooters after an incident, find hit-and-run drivers, and ensure detectives get the right perpetrator. While a spokesperson made clear that the governor’s statements were not meant as an endorsement for any particular piece of legislation currently before the General Assembly, Shapiro must ensure whatever restrictions are placed on the technology don’t curtail the important gains in reducing violence and solving crimes.
People in the community come out for a meeting and cookout to discuss the funding and renovations for Cecil B. Moore Library on Aug. 29.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
Limited library
One politician who can’t be accused of following the polls is Jeffery “Jay” Young, City Council’s quarrelsome contrarian. After years of conversation, Young has agreed to allow renovations at the Cecil B. Moore Library in North Philadelphia to move forward. There’s just one big problem: His plan is only a fraction of what neighbors had asked for.
Instead of adding a teen space, a private study room, new computers, and other physical improvements for which proponents had raised $8 million, the library will get a bare-bones approach. Young prefers building a new library and has so far been unwilling to reconsider that vision.
Residents, for their part, are passionate and organized about saving their original plan. Sadly, councilmanic prerogative, the tradition that keeps Council members from second-guessing each other’s decisions, gives neighbors next to no recourse to stop Young.
The Dinosaur Hall at the Academy of Natural Sciences’ museum.Peter Dobrin
Use it or lose it
Since 1828, the Academy of Natural Sciences’ museum has offered visitors a glimpse into the planet’s living past. Like many Philadelphians, I have gawked at the massive, reconstructed Tyrannosaurus rex many times. The museum, however, has announced it may go the way of the dinosaurs.
This set off a firestorm of criticism of both the Academy and Drexel, its partner. How could they do this to us? Why don’t we have more time? Did anyone ask for help?
Almost in response, longtime civic leader and former Mayor Ed Rendell lieutenant David L. Cohen revealed that he had been trying to save the Academy for some time — and was close to a deal to keep the Academy in the city, even if the museum closes.
While his efforts are welcome, this closure and the financial struggles at the Philadelphia Museum of Art are a reminder that a critical part of keeping these illustrious institutions around is showing up.
After all, declining ticket sales and attendance are a running thread in this post-pandemic world. As much as the ornate stone buildings these collections reside in suggest permanence, they can and do close when support is not offered. I’ll include myself in saying that all of us need to appreciate and utilize the tremendous legacy past Philadelphians have left behind before it is gone.
Chief Justice John Roberts and his conservative majority like to cosplay as historians when they write court opinions that determine what rights we get to have and exercise. In August, though, Roberts tried the real thing. He took to the In Pursuitproject’s Substack to write a brief history of a man he admires: former president and chief justice, William Howard Taft.
Roberts’ version of Taft is a sober, steady president (1909-1913) to be hailed for his refusal to unduly use executive power. And for Roberts, Chief Justice Taft (1921-1930) is “one of [the nation’s] great Chief Justices” because he started modernizing the Supreme Court by growing the institution’s status and constitutional authority — a project Roberts continues to make his own.
But Roberts’ history of Taft is irresponsibly shoddy; he cherry-picks facts, ignores narratives that don’t fit with his rosy portrait of Taft’s presidency, and he completely omits Taft’s damning record on race relations and civil rights.
In truth, Taft was a white supremacist. He admitted as much on the campaign trail in 1906, when he told Republican voters in North Carolina that Black people were “a class of persons so ignorant” and likened them to the “mental stature” of children.
Taft’s racism was partly opportunistic. In 1908 he was running as the Republican standard-bearer against Democrat William Jennings Bryan to succeed President Theodore Roosevelt. Since Reconstruction, the southern states had voted exclusively for Democrats. But Taft believed he could find a way to “break” the “Solid South” by luring away racist white voters to vote Republican. His preferred tactic was a racist dog-whistle.
And so, while Taft once lamented the arsenal of racist laws that disenfranchised Black Americans throughout the country, he didn’t think Jim Crow discrimination was a very big deal. After all, it was merely “the ignorant colored voter,” he believed, who was being kept away from the polls — downplaying the violence that upheld disenfranchisement. Perhaps things might change, he added, if Black men got smarter and worked harder. For Taft, Black Americans needed to earn the vote and prove to white society that they could be entrusted with that privilege.
Taft’s electoral strategy never panned out. Even though he handily won the 1908 election, the “Solid South” stuck with Democrats. Nonetheless, as president, Taft continued to side with white supremacy.
In 1911, the Ninth Cavalry Regiment of Black troops — the famed “Buffalo Soldiers” — were stationed in San Antonio, where they encountered Jim Crow streetcar laws that mandated segregated seating. The troops refused to obey, destroying the segregation signs and standing up to streetcar conductors who demanded compliance. Democratic congressman and future Vice President John Nance Garner lobbied Taft to punish the U.S. soldiers, and the Taft eagerly complied, dispatching the Buffalo Soldiers to the desert to monitor the U.S.-Mexican border.
President Taft also did nothing to confront the lynching epidemic that claimed roughly 250 Black lives during his presidency. In his first Annual Message to Congress — the forerunner to today’s State of the Union address — Taft explained that he sympathized with those who might choose to become part of the lynch mob. Yes, he conceded, lynchings involved “lawless violence and cruelty.” But Taft excused this, arguing that white people conjured the lynch mob because they were sick and tired of waiting for the ponderous court system to deal with Black people that supposedly broke the law. Faced with this “injustice,” the white lynch mob’s actions were justified, according to Taft.
Taft’s forgiving attitude toward the lynch mob wasn’t just theoretical. On April 20, 1911, a white lynch mob in Livermore, Kentucky murdered a Black pool hall manager named Will Potter inside the local opera house. For the supposed crime of kicking white ruffians out of the pool hall, Potter “was dragged before the footlights and his body riddled with bullets from the guns of an audience of half a hundred determined avengers,” according to the New York Times. Rumor had it that witnesses were charged admission. Those who wanted to be part of the firing squad had to pay extra. When the shooting stopped, “the lights were then extinguished, the curtain lowered, and the mob then filed out.”
The NAACP’s executive committee dispatched a plea to leading government officials, including Taft, demanding action. An NAACP committee even visited Taft to request that he condemn lynching. According to an NAACP internal document dated June 11, 1911, “The President assured the Committee that he could do nothing, that it was a matter to be left to the individual states.”
Taft’s refusal to use executive authority to confront lynching is shocking. However, it is this type of inaction that Chief Justice Roberts believes made Taft a model chief executive. Roberts’ favorable interpretation of the Taft presidency highlights his restraint. “Steady competence, self-restraint, and respect for the other branches were the hallmarks of the Taft Administration,” writes Roberts.
Taft’s contemporaries were less impressed with his presidency.
Taft was one of the few incumbent presidents to lose reelection, somehow coming in third in what should have been a two-way race in the 1912 contest. He’d promised to lower tariffs but ended up raising them, and Taft’s unwavering support for an ultra-conservative Supreme Court all but doomed progressive reforms in areas like labor rights. So dire was Taft’s record that his former mentor, Teddy Roosevelt, came out of retirement to challenge him for the Republican nomination. In the general election, Democrat Woodrow Wilson trounced Roosevelt — running as the Progressive Party candidate — as well as Taft and Socialist Eugene Debs.
Roberts reserves his greatest appreciation for Taft’s contributions as chief justice between 1921 and 1930, which grew the “prestige” and “authority” of the Supreme Court. Namely, Taft pushed passage of the Judiciary Act of 1925, “which gave the Supreme Court control over its own docket,” and oversaw construction of the court’s august building on Capitol Hill.
But what about the Taft Court’s actual decisions? Here Roberts has little to say, but recent scholarship by law professors Nikolas Bowie and Daphna Renan shows that, at best, Taft and most of his colleagues had a studied disinterest in civil rights. At worst, Taft used his opinion in the 1926 case Myers v. United States to stamp the Supreme Court’s imprimatur on the white supremacist version of the history of Reconstruction.
The case concerned a Reconstruction-era law that prevented President Andrew Johnson from firing federal officers committed to implementing the Reconstruction Acts after the Civil War. For Taft, Reconstruction wasn’t an attempt to use the law to right the wrongs of slavery and legislate equality, but an attempt “to reverse” the Constitution.
Of all his contributions on the bench, this was the decision of which Chief Justice Taft was most proud. Taft’s prized decision was of a piece with an emerging white supremacist revisionist history of the Civil War and Reconstruction seen, for example, in D.W. Griffith’s film Birth of a Nation (1915) and in the explicitly pro-slavery, pro-Confederacy approach to writing American history pioneered by William Dunning and his students, whose work was used to bolster Jim Crow.
Made By History sponsors. FOR USE ON MADE BY HISTORY STORIES ONLY.Inquirer Staff
So the question, then, is: why did Roberts write this fluffy, mythological history of Taft? Is it because Roberts’ selective historical method ignored Taft’s abysmal record on civil rights and lynching? Or perhaps Roberts has never heard of Taft’s Myers decision.
A less generous answer might be that while Roberts chose to airbrush Taft’s race relations and civil rights story out of his history, the current chief justice knows more than he’s letting on. After all, in cases like Callais v. Louisiana (2026), Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021), and Shelby County v. Holder (2013), Roberts led the charge to destroy the single most significant civil rights legislation ever enacted: the Voting Rights Act.
If Taft’s legacy was to retrench the freedoms won during the Civil War and Reconstruction, Roberts’ legacy may one day be recognized as an assault on the victories of the Civil Rights Movement.
It doesn’t take much digging in the history of race relations and civil rights to see that Taft’s executive restraint and court stewardship that Roberts so admires served the agenda of perpetuating Jim Crow white supremacy. This is bad history. But perhaps Roberts’ methodological sins of omission tell us exactly why the sitting chief justice sees so much to admire in his predecessor.
Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of The Inquirer.
It appears harmless, but the stubborn ragweed can grow almost anywhere, and it relentlessly torments allergy sufferers every year.
We’re in the midst of its peak season for high volume, and all that recent rain may have given it a boost, too. Just one single tooth-leaved plant can produce billions of pollen particles.
🌿 Intensity can be tough to predict. In the Philly region, the season tends to spike in early and mid-September, but high pollen levels can last into the autumnal equinox. Our pollen-counting network has also shrunk, making it harder to know just how much is in the air.
🤧 Sensitive to pollen? You are in the company of roughly several hundred thousand people in the region. To help the side effects, limit time outdoors on dry, windy days. When outside, wear a dust mask. When indoors, keep windows shut, and shower before going to bed.
Fairmount Park has become a favorite target of illegal tire dumpers with U-Haul trucks, frustrating park-goers and the city as it engages in whack-a-mole.
From roller skating to festivals, immersive exhibits, and more over Labor Day weekend around Philadelphia, we rounded up the best family-friendly things to do.
Only Pennsylvania separates departments for managing fish and wildlife. Combining them could save $34 million a year.
Officials are weighing a settlement that would significantly preserve more of Chester County’s sprawling Rock Hill Farm — but still allow for development.
The Trump administration has proposed giving a small parcel of land in Yosemite National Park in California to a private developer, the New York Times reports.
🐛 Your outdoorsy experience
Reader Barbara B. sent in another snap from her adventures:
A bug’s-eye view from a summer meadow. This was taken at Idlewild Farm Natural Lands Preserve in Gladwyne.
Thanks for sharing.
📥 I’d love to see your photos, too. What are you doing or seeing out there? Send me an email, and you may see your stories and/or pictures featured right here.
🎤 Now we’re passing the microphone to Tony Wood, our resident weather expert.
If you perceive that the Philadelphia region has had an extraordinary number of flood events this summer, you are not hallucinating.
The National Weather Service in Mount Holly has set a record for issuing flood warnings this year with 147 in its coverage area from Delaware to northern New Jersey, including 76 in the Philadelphia region,and monthly records in July and August. And an Inquirer analysis documented that among 2,200 U.S. counties, Philly and six of its neighboring counties rank in the top 25 for warnings issued this year, most of which have been followed by actual floods.
In addition, with four months to go, The Inquirer analysis found, the region already has had nearly triple the annual average for flood warnings, during the 18 years in which it has been using its current methodology.
All this without a whiff of a tropical-storm remnant, and the region still emerging from drought conditions. — Anthony R. Wood
Mikiah Roberson expected to receive her federal $6,700 student loan disbursement sometime between May 27 and June 3, just in time to make her rent and car payments. Instead, June 3 came and went. Days, weeks and finally over a month passed.
Roberson, a graduate student in University of Maryland Global Campus’s digital forensics and cyber investigation program, said the stress only compounded as her eight-week summer semester continued without any of her expected financial aid. As a disabled veteran, Roberson’s tuition is covered, but she relies on federal student loans to pay for living expenses while in school.
“It had a major impact on my mental and emotional health,” Roberson said, as she struggled to get clear answers on when or if she might receive the money. “Just constantly stressing out whether an eviction notice would be coming, if my lights would be turned off, if my car would be repossessed.”
Federal student loan disbursements for many students, like Roberson, were delayed over the summer session after new federal rules kicked in on July 1 that required major updates to the systems colleges use to administer aid. While no one is tracking the full scale of the problem, experts are worried about whether delays will persist into the fall semester that is underway. That could have severe impacts for the nearly 60 percent of students who already experience some form of housing or food insecurity.
When loan money gets held up, students have no recourse against either their school or the federal government. Instead they must find ways to temporarily cover personal budget gaps of thousands of dollars — at a time when the cost of housing and other basic needs are rising rapidly.
Delayed student loan disbursements are “incredibly significant in terms of whether a student is able to remain enrolled and remain housed and cover their own basic needs,” said Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director at Protect Borrowers, a nonprofit that advocates for student loan borrowers. “Everything is more expensive, and so that just makes financial aid and the loans that these students are eligible for and entitled to even more consequential.”
Experts, advocates and financial aid administrators place the blame on atypical planning from Congress when it passed the One Big Beautiful Beautiful Bill Act. The legislation didn’t give the Education Department enough time to issue full guidance on new student loan regulations, leaving many colleges struggling to adapt. In some cases they are waiting on third-party software vendors to make needed changes or are calculating and administrating aid by hand.
Ellen Keast, a spokesperson for the Education Department, said in an email that the department worked within the deadlines set by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which required the changes to take effect on July 1, 2026.
“Congress gave the Department less than a year to implement these changes,” Keast said.
She noted that the agency released the final rules in May, which she said provided “time for schools to prepare.”
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Michigan), chairman of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, said in an emailed statement that the legislation significantly overhauled a “broken system” and praised the work the Education Department had done.
“Delaying needed reforms would have negative consequences for students and taxpayers,” he said.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Donald Trump on July 4, 2025, includes a number of provisions that reshape federal student loans, including a new lifetime borrowing limit and lowered limits on outstanding aggregate debt for graduate students. The bill also placed new limits on Parent PLUS loans and eliminated the Graduate PLUS loan program. Another provision, starting the 2026-27 school year, requires schools to prorate loan amounts based on how many credits a student is taking. Altogether, the changes are expected to impact a significant number of the roughly 13 million students annually who rely on federal financial aid.
When students don’t receive their money on time, the delays set off an avalanche of financial problems.
One student in National University’s graduate program in marriage and family therapy told The Hechinger Report she expected a $5,000 disbursement sometime around June 1. The student (whose name is being withheld out of concern of retaliation from her university) relies on these disbursements every three months to cover two months of rent, as she slowly saves up to pay the third month’s rent through her part-time job as a nanny.
“I had to reach out to family members and get help, and that was also really stressful for them because I was hoping to be able to pay them back with my refund, and nobody knew when the refund was coming,” she said. “And so that just kind of created a cascade of tough situations.”
She didn’t receive her funds until mid-July. By that point, she’d paid rent late in June and July, with a $100 late fee each time.
National University did not respond to requests for comment.
When it comes to disbursing financial aid, the relationship between the federal government and higher education institutions is complex. To help mitigate that, the Higher Education Act lays out a “master calendar,” which outlines formal dates and deadlines the Education Department must follow.
Under the master calendar, the department has to start the rulemaking process a full year and a half before the academic school year starts. After negotiations, months of public comment and department review, a final rule needs to be issued in November of the preceding year. But because the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was signed in July 2025 with an effective date of July 1, the department couldn’t follow this timeline. And that gave colleges less time to adjust.
Colleges normally spend the months between November and the start of the next academic year understanding any new regulations, getting clarifying questions answered by the Education Department, and making sure their software vendors have what they need to update their systems, according to Sarah Austin, a policy analyst at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
“Just having enough time to get the information, make sure the software vendors have the information, make sure they can then reprogram everything, getting the specs that they need — all of that takes time,” Austin said. “What we’ve seen here is a condensed version of that.” As of August, some of the major software vendors used by colleges still weren’t caught up, she noted.
The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators and over 40 other higher education organizations had previously called on the Education Department to delay implementation until July 1, 2027, to allow the process to follow the normal timeline.
“That is not a minor inconvenience. It is a fundamental breakdown in the infrastructure that supports federal student aid delivery,” wrote Kenneth Ferreira, then-president of the Eastern Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, in an April op-ed.
Institutions also say that the federal government has been slow to roll out guidance and clarifications about some of these changes, and some details are still up in the air, said Austin. The Department released formal guidance on prorating loans for students who aren’t enrolled full-time, for instance, in early August, just a couple of weeks before classes began at many institutions.
Some of the guidance has also been conflicting, with differing information across some of the Education Department’s written materials and webinars, according to the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. On Aug. 20, a group of 16 congressional Democrats sent a letter calling on the Education Department to issue additional guidance clarifying how schools should prorate loans.
“We ended up seeing a lot of last-minute changes, and not enough guidance. And the reason why we have a master calendar provision is it is difficult for colleges to adapt to new regulations when there’s not enough time,” said Mark Kantrowitz, a student loan and financial aid expert.
To Keast, though, the final rule should not have come as a surprise to any colleges. She noted that last November, the department reached consensus on the proposed rules, an early stage in the process.
“If institutions waited until the final rule was issued to start preparing, that was their decision,” Keast said. She also pointed to available published guidance, Q&As, webinars and other resources from the department.
This rift between the department and many of the major organizations representing colleges and financial aid administrators is trickling down to students like Roberson.
“There was a whole lot of passing the buck,” Roberson said on her attempts to get answers on what happened to her financial aid. University of Maryland Global Campus directed her to the Education Department’s Federal Student Aid office. Employees there told her to contact her school.
“Nobody had answers for when the funds would be released,” said Roberson, who said she often received conflicting information.
In an emailed statement, Kaitlin O’Connor, vice president of University Communications at the University of Maryland Global Campus, said the university has been working on the federally required processing changes.
“The university has continued processing and awarding aid, reviewing individual student cases and working closely with federal and higher education partners to ensure compliance with applicable requirements while supporting students throughout the process,” the statement said.
Roberson negotiated partial payments with her landlord and entered payment arrangements for other bills. But the wait stretched into its second month. “You’re telling them, ‘Hey, the money’s coming,’ but weeks are passing and nothing changes,” she said. “I kept pushing out the dates and saying next month I’ll be good, and then here we are at month two, and it’s like now things are getting very detrimental.”
Roberson continued, “You have to start to decide between do I pay a bill or do I get groceries? Do I get gas or do I get food?”
Meanwhile, the stress took a toll on her studies. “I knew that I didn’t want to fail, but it was very, very hard,” she said. “Me and a lot of my classmates were expressing to each other how difficult it is to focus on schoolwork when you have bills piling up and all these things you need to pay.”
Experts predict the crunch will continue into the fall semester as schools try to catch up with the new rules.
Nick Prewett, executive director of financial aid and scholarship services at Stony Brook University and the president of the Eastern Association of Financial Aid Administrators, said so far the delayed disbursement has mostly impacted the school’s medical students, who start in the summer.
But with fall semester underway at most schools, he said, “I think we’re going to see some delays in aid getting out to students. And I think you’re going to hear that kind of message across the country that students, particularly graduate students, are waiting,” Prewett said.
Prewett added that for students enrolled part-time, Stony Brook plans on waiting until the end of the add/drop period (a couple of weeks after school starts) to adjust student loans based on the number of units students end up with. “And I think that’s going to cause a little bit of confusion and maybe a little bit of panic on behalf of the student,” he said.
Roberson eventually received her summer disbursement in mid-July, about six weeks late into an eight-week summer program. She’s supposed to receive another $6,700 disbursement in early September, but she’s no longer counting on getting those funds on time. She’s taking on work as a delivery driver for Amazon — a challenge with her back pain from her disability.
“I’m nervous because I don’t know if we’re going to hit this situation again,” Roberson said. “It’s very nerve-racking just trying to prepare ahead of time for if an issue arises, which is unfair when you’re trying to focus on class.”
This story about student loan changes was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he was appointing Adam R. Telle, the official overseeing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, to take over as the acting Army secretary, following the resignation of Daniel P. Driscoll earlier this week.
Driscoll, formerly the civilian leader of the Army, resigned Monday after clashing repeatedly with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the purge of top generals in the Army. Under the nominal chain of command, Michael Obadal, the undersecretary of the Army and principal deputy to Driscoll, would have become acting secretary in Driscoll’s place.
Trump has elevated Telle, the assistant secretary for civil works, which oversees the Army’s public engineering and construction projects. The Army Corps of Engineers is one of the principal agencies involved in building dams, sea walls and other structures meant to reduce flooding. Earlier in the summer, Army engineers erected miles of temporary barriers to protect Juneau, the capital of Alaska, from flooding.
Last year, the Trump administration directed the Army Corps of Engineers to fast-track approval of fossil fuel projects such as pipelines, mines and power plants as part of Trump’s demand to increase U.S. oil, gas and coal production.
Before his Army post, Telle was the chief of staff to Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn. In Trump’s first term, Telle served as the president’s chief liaison to the Senate as the head of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs’ Senate team.
Four of the most influential musicians the world has ever seen had a concert to play in West Philadelphia on Sept. 2, 1964. But they needed an inconspicuous way to get in.
Philly’s finest knew exactly what to do to get the Beatles into Convention Hall.
“They came in a Hackney’s fish truck,” Lit said.
Here comes the sun
The Beatles were playing in Philly nearly eight months after their February appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, which introduced the Fab Four to the U.S. audience.
By September 1964, the band’s first U.S. tour and Beatlemania were in full swing.
Lit was promoting the band’s Philly appearance at Convention Hall, at 34th Street and Civic Center Boulevard, on behalf of popular radio station WIBG-AM.
More than 12,000 fans paid $2.50 to $5.50 to take part in the festivities, which also featured opening performances from Clarence “Frogman” Henry and Jackie DeShannon.
Which songs the Beatles played that night are almost irrelevant, as the songs were accompanied by a chorus of teenagers shrieking.
A hard day’s night
Frank Rizzo hadn’t yet risen to the rank of police commissioner.
In 1964, he was second-in-command to Commissioner Howard Leary. But he ranked high enough to meet the band that had galvanized his city, and to help smuggle them into Philly and Convention Hall.
Lit told Jasner that it was Rizzo who came up with a plan to fake out the crazed fans.
Rizzo arranged for a couple of buses and a police escort to divert attention, while sneaking the band into what we now call University City in a very non-posh accommodation.
An airborne virus. Case numbers ticking up. A debate over the efficacy of vaccines.
This year’s major measles outbreak represents a far different public health crisis than COVID-19. But the political tussle over how government should respond rhymes with the fights over the pandemic, and is now feeding into a new line of attack in the governor’s race this year.
Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s decision to personally announce the two measles-involved deaths in Lancaster last week is giving “lots of people flashbacks to” COVID, particularly conservatives who believed there was government overreach, said one GOP consultant.
Shapiro’s Republican gubernatorial challenger, State Treasurer Stacy Garrity, has sought to strengthen that association — and used it to attack Shapiro over new Department of Health regulations proposed earlier this year.
Eagles starting quarterback Jalen Hurts is not known for partying or sloppy behavior off the field. But he does have a different liability that he appears to be actively working to change ahead of his seventh season with the Eagles: his introversion.
With reporters and teammates, Hurts has been trying to let his guard down, sources told The Inquirer, sitting down for longer interviews and organizing team outings. By all accounts, he’s also embraced changes to offensive strategy to try to shake off last season’s disappointing performance.
But change is hard.
When asked about the pressures he’s under as he starts a critical year given his contract realities with the Eagles, Hurts gave one of his signature, cryptic answers: “No narratives are new. Just recycled.”
President Donald Trump agreed to commute the prison sentence of John “Johnny Doc” Dougherty, the former Philadelphia labor leader convicted of bribery and embezzlement, Dougherty’s lawyer said on Thursday.
Campbell’s Co., the soup, snack, and sauce slinger headquartered in Camden, cut 13% of its workforce and plans to raise prices amid declining sales.
Mighty Writers, a Philly educational nonprofit that provides tutoring, after-school care, and other support for low-income families, is temporarily suspending its offerings due to funding difficulties.
A Guinean man who has lived legally in the United States for nearly 20 years and resides in West Oak Lane may be deported to a different country — Ghana.
Welcome back to Curious Philly Friday, our forum for readers to ask about the city’s quirks and then we report the answers.
This week, we’re resurfacing an explainer from 2024 on a burning question facing many Philly-area commuters: Why don’t SEPTA’s Regional Rail trains have restrooms?
Pittsburgh Regional Transit has them. So does New Jersey Transit.
SEPTA’s communications department said the trips its trains take are not long enough to require facilities onboard, but the full story is a bit more complicated.
🇺🇸 Collecting. Who needs a bobblehead of the Phanatic riding a bald eagle?Inquirer columnist Stephanie Farr wrote up all the most over-the-top commemorative tchotchkes rolled out this summer for America’s 250th.
🚣 Wishing for. After a summer packed with novel sporting events in the city, Inquirer sports editor Kerith Gabriel has this wish list of five more he’d love to see return to Philly.
🎧 Reading…err, listening to. If you find book clubs too sedentary and hiking clubs too social, this New Jersey bookstore has melded the two to make a unique third thing. The Inquirer’s Sam Stewart takes us to a meeting of its audiobook walking club.
🧩 Unscramble the anagram
Hint: Thisauthor, activist and feminist icon passed away on Wednesday at the age of 92.
Cheers to Alisa Giardinelli, who correctly guessed Thursday’s anagram: Bruno Mars. Fans braved stormy weather to see the entertainer play two back-to-back nights in his “The Romantic Tour” at the Linc. “It was a pleasure to spend a few hours with such a world-class entertainer, even on a thunderstorm-soaked South Philly summer night,” wrote Inquirer pop music critic Dan DeLuca.
At the start of her 26th year as a kindergarten teacher in Cinnaminson, Maureen Coller comforts Logan Santos on the first day of school at the New Albany School Wednesday. After hugging him, Coller showed him a photo on her phone of his sister, who is two years ahead of him at the school. His grandmother is also a lunchtime cafeteria worker, so he was fine. Coller graduated from the district in 1997 and was inducted into the Educator Hall of Fame this week.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
I feel you, bud! But the long weekend is almost here.
See you all on Saturday morning 👋
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Think you know your news? There’s only one way to find out. Welcome back to our weekly News Quiz — a quick way to see if your reading habits are sinking in and to put your local news knowledge to the test.
Question 1 of 10
Gov. Josh Shapiro announced this week that a local company plans to spend $1.2 billion to expand its manufacturing operations at a facility in Pennsylvania:
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
Chobani, the yogurt company, plans to expand its operations at a manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania, which it is buying from Keurig Dr Pepper for $125 million. The company, which bought Philly-founded La Colombe in 2023 for $900 million, plans to convert the 1.5-million-square-foot site into a dairy plant, and expects to add 900 workers over the next five years in the Lehigh Valley.
Question 2 of 10
This eatery has been recently forced to stop its dinner service entirely following a failed health inspection:
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
South Philly butcher shop Heavy Metal Sausage Co. indefinitely paused its after-hours Italian dinners last week following a failed health inspection that ordered the shop to remove all indoor seating. Co-owners Patrick Alfiero and Melissa Pellegrino say the resulting loss of revenue could close the business. An inspector with Philadelphia’s Department of Public Health ordered the shop to remove its eight seats and cease all food prep in the basement on Aug. 21.
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Question 3 of 10
What band or artist is releasing a 2016 recording of its performance in Philadelphia on vinyl?
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
Pearl Jam is releasing Ten Live, a three-sided vinyl LP that captures live versions of the 13 songs from the band’s 1991 debut album, which includes songs that have long been centerpieces of the band’s repertoire, such as “Even Flow,” “Alive,” and “Jeremy.” The live album recorded April 29, 2016, in the building that is now known as Xfinity Mobile Arena comes out Nov. 27, or Record Store Day Black Friday.
Question 4 of 10
An established local business is opening a tasting room dedicated to this delicacy in Kensington:
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
Fishtown Pickles is expanding, opening a larger production facility in Kensington, complete with a 500-square-foot pickle tasting room, where customers can sample varieties, buy pickles by the pound or jar, shop for pickle-themed merchandise, and eventually take classes and production tours. They are aiming for a summer 2027 opening. A pickle tasting room? Think brewery, only with cucumbers. The owners say customers will be able to sample the goods while watching production, calling the concept a “brinery.”
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Question 5 of 10
Before he played Anthony Bourdain in the coming-of-age biopic Tony, Dominic Sessa’s first brush with fame was working in Ocean City, N.J., washing dishes and making:
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
Born in Cherry Hill, Sessa grew up in Egg Harbor Township and Ocean City, where he spent four summers working in the kitchen at Cathy’s 14th Street Bakery, which serves thousands of doughnuts a week. When Sessa started as a dishwasher there in 2016, he was 13. By the time he worked his last shift in 2019, he had worked his way up to a full-fledged baker, responsible for opening the shop and preparing batches of Cathy’s famous powdered and cream-filled doughnuts from scratch.
Question 6 of 10
When Gloria Steinem, who died this week at age 92, visited Philadelphia in 1982, she made plenty of stops, including the King of Prussia Mall at the furniture department of this store:
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
As Steinem spoke, an entourage pored over her frenetic schedule, which had her popping up in places as disparate as the Women Organized Against Rape offices in Center City and the furniture department in Bloomingdale’s King of Prussia emporium.
Question 7 of 10
A man has been charged with attempted burglary of which famous Philadelphia athlete’s Chester County home?
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
Jabir Parker, 24, is accused of attempting to burglarize Saquon Barkley's home in July. Parker allegedly stole nearly $800,000 in jewelry from two other homes.
Question 8 of 10
After 205 years, this famed magazine, which was founded in Philadelphia, will stop printing:
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
The Saturday Evening Post, the famed magazine that printed its first issues on Ben Franklin’s Old City printing press and whose Norman Rockwell covers defined the optics of quintessential 20th-century Americana, will print its last issue early next year. The magazine catapulted Rockwell to fame. It was published from the Curtis Building at Sixth and Walnut Streets, from 1910 until 1969, was one of the standouts of 19th-century Philadelphia publisher Cyrus Curtis’ portfolio.
Question 9 of 10
A very stormy night put this performer’s Philadelphia tour stop in jeopardy, with several lengthy delays. But ultimately, they came on for a late but dazzling concert:
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
By the time Bruno Mars got around to singing “It Will Rain” at Lincoln Financial Field on Tuesday, the thunderstorm had already passed. That was following a two-hour delay that cut opener Raye’s opening act down to one song.
Question 10 of 10
At Mr. Edison’s, customers can order a _____ covered in caviar for $88.
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
The “blackout” crab au gratin stuffed baked potato, which comes covered in caviar at Mr. Edison draws a lot of curiosity. But food writer Kiki Aranita says it’s not worth the hype. Still, she notes, it’s one of several baked potatoes available across Philly right now.
Your Results
You have skipped .
You scored XX out of 10.
The average reader scored XX out of 10
Seems like you’ve been skimming more than reading there, buddy. There’s always next week.
You’ve read some articles (or made some educated guesses) but we wouldn’t come to you first for our local news recaps. Better luck next week!
Do you work here? You’re a local news stan with the latest updates on Philly happenings. Your friends definitely ask you for summaries on what’s going on and it shows.
