When President Bill Clinton deplaned in Islamabad, the sleight of hand became clear.
A decoy jet with all of the markings of Air Force One touched down in view of the news media, and a Secret Service agent resembling the president emerged. Then, an unmarked plane landed, and the real president disembarked.
It was March 2000, and Susan Page, a White House reporter covering the trip for USA Today, was one of a small group of people who knew about the ruse.
Before the India-to-Pakistan flight, White House officials called Page, then the White House Correspondents’ Association president, and summoned her for an off-the-record conversation. There, White House press and security officials explained the operation, informing her of the president’s location and safety measures in place for journalists on the trip, Page said in messages with the Washington Post.
“They told me about the extraordinary security procedures being taken because of the dangers in flying there, including use of the decoy plane,” she said. “Of course, the dangers threatened the journalists covering the trip as well as President Clinton.”
Page’s briefing, which has not been previously reported, meant at least one journalist in the traveling press corps knew the president would not be aboard Air Force One.
More than 25 years later, the White House faced a similar security dilemma — but handled the press very differently.
On Monday evening, the Post reported on an extraordinary maneuver in which security personnel in Turkey secretly moved President Donald Trump from a plane marked as Air Force One to a smaller, unmarked Air Force plane, using an airport catering truck. The operation, which took place last month, was prompted by a credible Iranian threat to Trump, the Post reported.
As the swap took place, reporters aboard the decoy plane, who were instructed to lower their window shades, were unaware of the president’s maneuver, according to the Post’s reporting.
The incident could further degrade the already-fraught rapport between the Trump White House and the press corps, a relationship marked by name-calling, threats, legal restrictions, and lawsuits from Trump.
Page, now USA Today’s Washington bureau chief, declined to comment on the newly revealed incident but broke a decades-old agreement with the Clinton White House to describe her experience.
“I haven’t spoken about this episode before, because of the off-the-record ground rules of that discussion,” Page said in a text message. “But since more than a quarter-century has passed — and since the ruse became evident as soon as President Clinton disembarked in Pakistan — I think it’s OK for me to relay it now.”
Jacqui Heinrich, current president of the WHCA, declined to comment.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the operation’s impact on the journalists aboard the decoy plane.
“As the President has said recently, there are many enemies of America who have their sights on him, and we use every tool at our disposal to address those threats,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung previously told the Post.
The White House press pool consists of a rotating group of journalists who send reports, photos, and footage of the president’s activities for the entire press corps. This formal system has existed since 1937, though the White House first brought in a pooler in 1881 after President James Garfield was shot. Associated Press reporter Franklin Trusdell sat outside of the president’s room, monitoring his breathing and sharing updates with his colleagues.
The system is designed to ensure that someone from the press is present to observe the president’s movements and activities, giving the public an independent accounting.
Because the press was seemingly in the dark about the operation, Garrett Graff, a journalist and historian, said that the Post’s reporting describes an event that is probably unprecedented in modern presidential history.
“That the White House would lie to the press corps in its entirety about where the president is,” he said. “That’s a new Rubicon that’s being crossed.”
The breach was not merely one of journalistic access, according to Graff. The details of the threat that prompted Trump’s operation are unknown, so it’s impossible to calculate the risks to the press pool. However, the reporters aboard the plane were probably exposed to the very threat that had prompted the extraordinary security measures, Graff said.
“Knowing that this was a series of actions that the White House and the military took precisely because of a threat that they were deeply worried about, it makes it all the more egregious that the press was kept out of the loop,” he added.
Former CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr said that the press fully understands and respects the security requirements of covering the president.
But, she said, “there will be a level of distrust now that we have not seen before … their own lives were potentially at risk without them even knowing it, without them having the option of making a different choice of how to get home.”
Politico reporter Megan Messerly was the print pooler on the day of Trump’s trip. “We are wheels up from Ankara as of 8:43 p.m.,” she reported. “We have been advised to keep our window shades in the press cabin closed. See you on the other side.”
After landing, she wrote that the flight was “uneventful” with “no visitors to the press cabin.”
Hours later, a reporter peppered Trump with questions about whether there was a security threat to Air Force One that warranted the shades being closed, according to Messerly’s pool report.
“Well, I have a threat all the time. I’m number one on their list, before you,” Trump responded. “But if I go, you go. Right? Perhaps someday you want to change professions.” Messerly did not respond to a request for comment.
The disclosure quickly prompted a scramble among White House reporters for more information.
“We (and no doubt every other newsroom in Washington) are asking the White House and sources for more info,” NBC chief White House correspondent Garrett Haake wrote on X.
ABC’s Michelle Stoddart, who was the TV pool producer aboard the flight, sent WHCA members additional details on the trip, following the Post’s reporting.
“Upon arrival to the airport, the events did not seem particularly out of the ordinary to the travel pool,” she wrote. “Our photographer noted that the stairs were quickly pulled away as the press loaded.”
She said that a photographer seated behind her opened a shade on board and was quickly instructed to close it again by a White House staffer who said it was a “request from Secret Service.”
One White House reporter, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly, said that they were outraged to learn about an operation that might have put the press corps in danger.
“When you sign up to work at the White House, even as a civilian, part of your job is to defend the president,” the reporter said. “That’s not my job. I cover the president. Reporters take risks as part of the job, but not on behalf of the president.”
Angela McDonald caught her breath on the sidewalk at the intersection of South 58th and Delancey Streets in Cobbs Creek, a few feet from where her son, Mark Ringgold, was killed last year in a hit-and-run crash by a speeding driver in a Jeep Cherokee.
She wants someone to answer for her son’s death and for the city to install speed bumps on the streets and other road-design changes to slow drivers down. And surveillance cameras.
“This is what my purpose is now,“ McDonald said Friday, a year after the crash. ”I will fight until God calls me home.“
Ringgold, 33, was crossing Delancey Street after leaving a friend’s house shortly before 3 a.m., when he was hit and left in the street. The family calls it a blessing they were able to say goodbye to him in the hospital before he died.
Last year, 28 pedestrians were killed in hit-and-run crashes in Philadelphia, according to the city’s count.
“Don’t wait for it to come to your door before you do something. Nobody knows what’s coming. Make change now,” said McDonald, 62, a retired Philadelphia police officer.
Angela McDonald and other traffic-safety advocates held a community walk in memory of her son Mark, who was killed by a hit-and-run driver. Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
A group of family, neighbors, and traffic safety advocates walked the streets Friday in heat brushing triple digits as thunderstorms rolled in.
Cobbs Creek Parkway, a state-designated highway not far away, is listed on the High Injury Network, one of the 12% of city roads where 80% of traffic crashes have occurred. Many of those streets are thoroughfares or state highways, like Broad Street (Route 611).
South 58th Street is not on the map, though there are speed bumps near a recreation center at South 58th and Spruce Streets.
And the city is working on a Neighborhood Slow Zone nearby, about five square blocks bounded by 52nd Street, 57th Street, Spruce Street, and Baltimore Avenue. The program imposes a 20 mph speed limit on residential streets and adds traffic-calming infrastructure such as speed cushions, narrower pedestrian crossings at intersections, and other elements.
“We have a lot of traffic violence on streets in regular Philadelphia gridded neighborhoods, not just on the High Injury Network or thoroughfares,” said Andrew Goodman, director of equitable development in the office of Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who is working on getting some safety treatments for South 58th Street and Delancey Street.
“We get calls from people asking for speed bumps consistently,” Goodman said. “There are so many needs, so much demand. Driver behavior seems to be getting worse by the day.”
McDonald wants the neighborhood to get consideration. Speed-enforcement cameras are limited, with installations requiring specific authorization by the state legislature.
But she wonders about police surveillance cameras. If there is a hit-and-run crash, they might be able to capture the image of the driver. Police have recoveredthe car that hit her son, but there is no footage of the driver and there has been no arrest.
“As long as I have been traveling this road, since I was a young girl, 58thStreet has always been a racetrack,” McDonald said.
“Speed bumps aredefinitely going to slow people down, because if you don’t, you’re going to tear your car up,” she said. “You may flip yourself over.”
One year after a fatal hit-and-run took the life of Angela McDonald’s son, Mark, she and other traffic-safety advocates are pushing for traffic-calming improvements.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
Do rich guys have to ruin everything? Apparently so. There came a time about 15 years ago when my soccer obsession got to the point where I felt I needed to pick an English Premier League team to root for, in addition to the U.S. national teams and the Union. Long story, but I went with Liverpool, in a city many consider the Philadelphia of the U.K., and it’s been a good ride, including a couple of trophies. On Monday, it was reported Amazon gazillionaire Jeff Bezos is buying 30% of the team. I’m officially out. Go, Leeds!
When did Trump’s ballroom become a national security fortress? We need answers.
Construction continues on a helipad and the White House ballroom on the South Lawn of the White House on Aug. 5.Tierney L. Cross
Donald Trump’s originally stated 2025 scheme to demolish the East Wing of the White House to make way for an oversized ballroom to hold state dinners and whatnot was bad enough: an unneeded, unwanted, gilded, and presumably tacky callback to Louis XVI, a massive monument to a modern let-them-eat-cake regime.
A year later, the project is better describedasan alleged ballroom — another bait-and-switch scam by America’s first grifter president. The fact that the public really doesn’t know how much this project actually costs — estimates have soared from the initial lowball of $300 million to now at least $600 million, but possibly more — or how much of that will be dumped on U.S. taxpayers is just the beginning of the problem.
Nearly 10 months after the president shocked Washington, D.C., and the rest of America by taking a wrecking ball to the history-packed East Wing, Trump has all but stopped talking about a black-tie party venue and instead rebranded the project as essential to national security.
When the D.C. federal appeals court on Friday ordered the White House, which never got congressional approval for either the demolition or the ballroom addition, to halt aboveground construction, Trump took to Truth Social and described the ruling as akin to treason.
“The Military and Secret Service are viewing this horrendous, politically motivated, and unlawful ruling as a National Security threat to our Nation in that the entire Complex is being built for the protection of our Country and, additionally, all future Presidents,” Trump posted, using language that’s probably never previously in human history been used to describe a “ballroom.”
Trump didn’t say in his post anything about crystal chandeliers, or great acoustics, or things you might expect in a world-class ballroom. Instead, he said the facility will have bomb shelters, a state-of-the-art hospital, top-secret military facilities, protective missile-resistant steel, columns, roofs, and beams, drone-proof ceilings and roofs, military-grade venting, and bullet-, ballistic-, and blast-proof glass.
It sounds like somebody is expecting a last tango in Washington.
Trump’s post was alarming — shocking, really — but in case anyone missed the point, or doesn’t know how to read, he also posted some AI-created renderings, which again did not depict waltzing diplomats, but instead showed a rooftop “DronePort” that was packed to thegills with ominous-looking military drones, manned by troops and also with armored vehicles that somehow drove up there. The vibe was Darth Vader’s Death Star, except with “military-grade venting” this time around.
There are two very different ways to look at all of this, and let’s start with the more benign one. Ever since the beginning of his second crack at the presidency, Trump — when he’s not pursuing his main projects of making billions of dollars, punishing his enemies, and staying out of prison — has been obsessed with placing his personalist stamp on Washington. Maybe that’s for his legacy, or maybe he just wants a Mar-a-Lago-by-the-Potomac to comfort his octogenarian mind.
Trump might not be able to crash weddings as he does at his Palm Beach, Fla., estate, but his ballroom idea would be close enough. Although he’s also sought and received donations for the project from the usual suspects of friendly billionaires and favor-seeking corporations, Trump also wants both additional dollars and — more importantly, in light of the appeals court ruling — a stamp of approval from Congress. That’s been a thwarted agenda item for GOP leaders on Capitol Hill for months.
But if Trump can’t sway Congress, he hopes to win over a U.S. Supreme Court where he has appointed three of the nine members. The White House knows that both Congress and the high court tend to fall in line whenever national security is invoked, while there is no constitutional right to foxtrot. So maybe all the military bluster is just political posturing for Trump’s latest real estate development.
But as the project enters its second year, it seems to have morphed into something a lot more disturbing than that. The pictures, descriptions, and accounts of Trump’s game here are sounding a lot more like the impregnable mountain lair of a Bond villain.
This is a man who fomented an attempted coup the first time he was asked to leave 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and who saw how South Korea’s corrupt right-wing president was ousted after a massive throng of protesters overwhelmed key government buildings. Wasn’t it Chekhov who said you don’t put drones up on the roof unless you intend to deploy them by the third act? The two most likely scenarios for actually using Trump’s bunker — Civil War II, or World War III — are less than optimal.
This national security bunker isn’t the only thing that’s worrisome as Trump looks to the second half of what’s supposed to be his final term. As noted in this space recently, Trump has also extended the presence of National Guard troops in Washington through Jan. 20, 2029, which coincidentally is the scheduled last day of his term.
Since their arrival last year, the Guard troops — many from units in pro-Trump red states, and costing U.S. taxpayers at least $1.4 billion and possibly more — have often been spotted hanging around, or picking up trash as a kind of busywork. But residents and some advocates like Scott Michelman, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia, are already complaining Trump is “treating [D.C.] like a police state.”
It raises the same questions as the alleged “ballroom.” The president is entitled to state-of-the-art security, and while the public doesn’t need to know all of the operational details, American taxpayers also can’t be expected to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars for these projects without truly knowing what they are for.
Democrats on Capitol Hill need to start demanding answers. On Monday, there was an encouraging report by the New Republic’s Greg Sargent that the opposition party is working to demand communications from the Justice and Interior Departments to explain why several people were wrongly criminally charged with vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool when the actual damage was a botched repainting contract.
Congress can, and should, also flex its muscles over this ballroom fiasco — first by denying any public money for the project, and then by launching a similar investigation into the hasty demolition, the political fundraising, and the sketchy purposes for the project. Someone owes America the truth, and it’s not going to come from the current regime without a fight.
Whatever happens, the woman or man who hopefully succeeds Trump and sends those guard troops back to their own private Idaho in January 2029 is also going to have a giant mess in their backyard. But it’s better to have the ruins from a botched, halted construction project than from the Battle of Armageddon.
Yo, do this!
The California journalist Gil Durán has been paying attention to the political craziness coming out of Silicon Valley years before anyone else was, and now comes the big payoff in the form of a book that is not only incredibly timely but has the best title of the year: The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy. Durán explores the strange beliefs of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and their friends, their obsession with building their own private “networked cities,” and their unlikely alliance with Donald Trump. I’ve been waiting on this one for a while.
August is always a great month for books. While Durán drills down on the high-tech enemies of liberty, the great writer Dave Zirin has a new tome about one of democracy’s heroes, the late historian Howard Zinn, his former mentor. Public intellectuals are still arguing about the merits of Zinn’s 1980 masterwork, A People’s History of the United States, but nobody disputes his influence on the national conversation. Zinn rejected American exceptionalism, but also spotlighted everyday heroes like labor leaders or civil rights activists who expanded our freedoms over two centuries. I’m looking forward to reading The People’s Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn.
Ask me anything
Question: Data centers are the flashpoint but the root problem is the unregulated AI that is sweeping up every keystroke and every written document then repackaging it as if original thought. How do we get a federal government mired in 2020 to begin legislating on AI? — Suzi (@wanderponder.bsky.social) via Bluesky
Answer: Great question, Suzi, and I think we all know the main reason why the body politic — and I’m talking about both Democrats and Republicans — have been so painfully slow to respond to voters’ widespread anxiety not only about noisy, polluting, resource-wasting data centers, but also to artificial intelligence itself. The reason is money. Silicon Valley AI developers have raised an unbelievable $220 million to spend on November’s election, and — while there are some disagreements within Big Tech about policy — most of the cash will go to the politicians least likely to regulatean industry badly in need of it. Cognitive computing is not only stealing our intellectual property, as you noted, but also our jobs, as well as our children’s ability to learn.The good news is that public backlash against AI is so strong that even a quarter-billion dollars may not be able to stop the movement. But it’s way past time to get money out of politics.
What you’re saying about …
I should have guessed that newsletter readers don’t have much more of a clue than Donald Trump about what to do about the giant mess in the Persian Gulf. I did get one thoughtful response from an emailer with a “cbluff” handle (Reminder: Please sign your real name to these responses) who said the Trump regime needs to send skilled negotiators — and be realistic. “I believe the U.S. will have to cede the Strait of Hormuz, allow Iran and Oman to collect protection money, remove sanctions and pay them so we can declare victory and leave,” they wrote. It’s hard to disagree. Once again, the United States has lost a war.
📮 This week’s question: Since the Democratic Senate primary win by Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed last week, the mainstream media has been obsessed with the question of whether this year’s progressive surge, including candidates (although not El-Sayed) tied to the Democratic Socialists of America, is hurting the Democrats. What do you think? Are leftists bringing needed energy to a moribund party, or are they too out there to defeat the GOP in November? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “Democrats and the left” in the subject line.
Backstory on the day Trump left his press corps for dead
Catering trucks are parked at Air Force One on the tarmac as the motorcade carrying President Donald Trump arrives to depart following the NATO summit, at Ankara International Airport in Ankara, Turkey, on July 8.Alex Brandon
It was appalling enough back in late July when we watched a room full of some of America’s highest-profile journalists break bread with Donald Trump at the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, where the president got up and hurled crude insults at several of the media members. Many of us were disgusted that some of the nation’s most respected journalists would platform a man who has repeatedly called a free press “the enemies of the people.” But the White House press corps was in the dark about an even more disturbing plot twist.
Just 16 days earlier, Trump had left some of those journalists for dead — at least potentially — as human decoys who might be blown from the skies in a feared Iranian plot.
The stunning story came out late Monday night as I was writing this newsletter, with a scoop by the Washington Post, matched shortly, with some additional details, by the New York Times. The articles revealed a modern-day Air Force One kind of thriller that essentially involved a shell game with three different aircraft. It was triggered by what officials deemed was a credible Iranian assassination threat against the president when he traveled to a NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey — just over 700 miles from the border with the U.S. enemy.
This launched a series of events, beginning with a plan to abandon Trump’s new, $400 million gift-from-Qatar iteration of Air Force One for an older version that actually has more advanced defensive capacities. Trump was filmed boarding the replacement Air Force One, followed by the White House press corps and some traveling aides for the departure from Ankara to a U.S. air base in Great Britain. What those passengers could not have imagined was that Trump had somehow been spirited out “via a catering container that had been lifted to the opposite side of the plane,” and switched to a C-32A military plane for the flight to the U.K.
Then they kept the unwitting journalists and aides on the ground for a couple of hours before it was revealed POTUS was safely in Britain and the Iranians had been thwarted and … haha, of course that’s not what really happened. No, the press corps took off as human decoys — the latest sitting ducks in an idiotic war that never should have been launched in the first place. Thankfully, no one was hurt … this time. Journalists wondered why they’d been ordered to keep the airplane’s window blinds closed, which inspired this now ironic exchange between Trump and some journalists when they reunited for the flight from Britain back to the U.S.
Trump lied that he didn’t know of any specific plot against Air Force One, and then added: “I’m No. 1on their list, before you. But if I go, you go. Right?”
Apparently not.
Even as I write this in the middle of the night just hours after the Post and Times scoops, the internet is already flooded with memes depicting Trump crammed into one of those airport serving carts, or pigging out on the adjacent airline food. It’s funny to see that your president isn’t Harrison Ford punching out the terrorists, but, in reality, slinking away in a food truck, leaving other Americans in the line of fire, right?
No, it’s not funny at all. This whole episode is a grand metaphor for a careless president who smashes up things before retreating into his money or whatever keeps him going — not thinking twice about the fate of human beings in a squalid ICE detention camp or an Iranian girls’ school. Or bantering with the gaggle of journalists whom he abandoned after drawing a big target on their backs. The first media question at the next Oval Office event ought to be, “Why did you treat me like cannon fodder?” But I wouldn’t bet on that happening.
What I wrote on this date in 2016
It’s almost funny now, in a dark-comedy kind of way, to look back on the fateful summer of 2016 and remember what it felt like to be stubbornly convinced that something, anything, was bound to happen to stop the obvious insanity of a Donald Trump presidency. It seems so incredibly naive now to read what I believed exactly one decade ago, when I actually thought the success of a diverse and incredibly talented U.S. Olympics team in Brazil would expose the Big Lie of Trump’s racism. I wrote, “The exclamation point is the remarkable women’s gymnastics team led by individual gold medalist Simone Biles — so dominant you will easily forget they also celebrate the kind of diversity that is America’s best feature, not the bug that’s described by the bitter and the disaffected back home.”
The fight for America’s future is waged on many fronts, and I’m trying to keep up. Last week, I wrote about a fascinating political development that’s been largely flying under the radar screen: a movement out west to knock off GOP incumbents by creating one-on-one contests with feisty, populist independents. That means long-shot Democrats need to drop out — which has happened in Nebraska, Idaho, and South Dakota, but not in Montana. It’s both a bold plan to end the Republican majority on Capitol Hill and a sad commentary on the failed Democratic Party brand in the American heartland. This weekend, I wrote about the Trump regime’s latest assault on higher education — denying loans for students who major in fields linked to lower-income jobs — and the increasingly bleak future of a liberal arts education. I wondered why Democrats won’t fight harder to end runaway careerism and preserve college campuses as bastions of critical thinking.
This August feels like the calm before the storm in Philadelphia sports. Some of that is the excitement over the Eagles finally beingback in training camp and looking to regain that Super Bowl mojo as 76ers fans try to process, if that’s the right term, a once-in-a-lifetime offseason rebuilding project. But much of it is angst over the Phillies, who are clinging by their fingernails to a playoff spot despite adding the National League’s batting champ to a lineup that already includes home run king Kyle Schwarber, future Hall of Famer Bryce Harper, and one of baseball’s best pitching rotations. None of that matters when the Phillies don’t have a relief pitcher who can carry a lead past the 7th or 8th inning. The Inquirer’s ace sports columnists like David Murphy and Marcus Hayes have all asked the same question: Can this team be saved? The answers are just over the paywall, and you can leap over it just like Saquon Barkley at the first-down marker; all you need to do is subscribe to The Inquirer.
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EASTERN UKRAINE — The commander leading Ukraine’s drone war says his country’s recent strikes in Crimea are the first phase of a campaign aimed at rendering the peninsula — illegally annexed by Russia in 2014 — unusable as a staging ground for Russian forces.
Maj. Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, one of Ukraine’s most prominent commanders among a new generation of soldiers, said his forces could strike seven times more military targets in Crimea if the money pledged by Western allies came faster.
“Crimea falls within the key conceptual pillars on the path to ending the war,” Brovdi told the Associated Press in an interview.
Despite that shortfall, Ukraine’s summer campaign in Crimea has already inflicted significant damage: striking rail bridges, oil depots, and power infrastructure to disrupt supply lines and blind Russian air defenses as drones fly in.
Brovdi said his forces are equipped at just 14% of what they would need to carry out the Crimea campaign at full capacity.
A firm believer in numbers since his past life running an international grain trading business, Brovdi joined Ukraine’s territorial defense as a volunteer in the war’s opening days. He rose quickly, commanding one of the country’s most effective drone brigades before being tapped to lead a force with no precedent before this war — Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces.
“It’s not that the production capacity of Ukrainian manufacturers doesn’t allow us to make the necessary quantities” of drones, Brovdi said. “It’s the banal problem of untimely financing, which our partners do allocate, but which moves significantly slower than our plans.”
A lover of the arts
A devoted patron of the arts, Brovdi works in an underground command post that resembles a museum, with pieces of Ukrainian art on display, including by renowned painter Maria Prymachenko — each with small placards noting their titles and a QR code linking to more information. “Please don’t touch the sculpture,” reads a sign beneath one piece.
The artwork sits against a backdrop of dozens of screens streaming live footage from the front, along with real-time data that drives decisions on the battlefield. Soldiers can grab good coffee, pick a book, work out, or rest in sleeping pods — a culture that feels closer to a Silicon Valley office than a war room.
They work around the clock to try to prevent Crimea from functioning as a staging ground for the Russian military, said Brovdi, whose call sign, Magyar, nods to his ethnic Hungarian roots in Zakarpattia, the western Ukrainian region bordering Hungary.
He pointed to one sign of progress — in four recent large-scale Russian missile barrages from the peninsula, only five missiles were launched in total, a drop he credited to the systematic destruction of Russian air defenses there. The AP couldn’t independently verify the claim.
To open that “window” for drones to strike the peninsula without being shot down en masse, his forces destroyed more than 300 air defense assets over recent months — surface-to-air systems, radar stations, electronic warfare equipment.
The window metaphor sends him into a sidetrack about something personal — he loves sleeping with one open, a pleasure he rarely gets anymore as one of Russia’s most hunted men, who spends most of his time in underground bunkers.
Forcing Russia out of Crimea
Much of Russia’s Soviet-era air defense hardware runs on the power grid, which is one of the reasons Crimea’s electrical infrastructure has become a recurring target. Russian soldiers become “blind,” left with just machine guns and rifles, he said. The tactic has also impacted access to power for civilians, and Brovdi said he has twice publicly apologized to Ukrainians living in Crimea for the disruptions.
Wherever Starlink connectivity reaches across Crimea, his forces can now destroy even the most heavily defended target using an average of just three drones, mixing munitions with different characteristics and warheads depending on what’s being hit. He described the strikes as deliberately calibrated — different munitions for a bridge pier than for a fuel truck or a moving train — and said his forces avoid hitting civilian infrastructure.
“Creating conditions that make it impossible for any kind of military capability … to remain there will make Crimea uninteresting … as a military staging ground,” he said.
Ukraine is also working to dismantle Crimea’s role as a naval base — a blow to Russia’s presence near NATO’s borders, he added.
The campaign’s early results have not been made public, Brovdi said. But roughly two weeks into the offensive that began in late June, he said Ukrainian intelligence indicated Russian authorities had ordered all military commands and security services to relocate off the peninsula, along with a covert order to remove secret archives and artworks. The AP could not independently verify the account.
Threats from Russia
Meanwhile, Russia is working to counter Ukraine’s edge. It is installing jamming systems at a scale that will, to some degree, degrade Starlink connectivity, Brovdi said.
Russia is also building its own satellite communications system to rival Starlink, he said. “This is a risk for the entire planet,” Brovdi said, “because a dictatorship will gain access to information across the whole globe.”
He also pointed to other threats facing Ukraine. The concentration of jet-powered Shahed drones, which are much harder for Ukraine to shoot down, has increased 2½ times in recent weeks, he said.
Russia’s military can currently fire a simultaneous salvo of 77 ballistic and cruise missiles, he said, and plans to increase that to 200. That is one of Ukraine’s most vulnerable points, since the country is running short of interceptors for the U.S.-made Patriot — the only system Ukraine has in its arsenal against ballistic missiles — meaning dozens fired by Russia during mass barrages get through and hit their targets.
“Even if they only manage half of that, it will all be flying at us,” Brovdi said. The only way to bring the number down, he said, is by striking every facility involved in producing those missiles — underscoring the importance of Ukraine’s long-range strikes deep inside Russian territory.
Ukraine’s plan for Russia’s Wildberries
Ukraine has increasingly targeted Wildberries, Russia’s largest online marketplace, sometimes described as the country’s answer to Amazon, and Brovdi named it as a target.
“Wildberries is, first of all, a supply platform — it’s the war’s quartermaster,” he said, noting the company runs a dedicated section selling goods for Russia’s military.
At the same time, Brovdi said, the strikes on Wildberries are meant to make ordinary Russians feel the war directly, in hopes the resulting desire to end it could weigh on Russia’s ability to keep fighting.
Brovdi declined to give a timeline for the Wildberries campaign, saying only that the strikes will continue “until it becomes impossible for it to recover quickly.”
“Ultimately, Wildberries is, forgive the expression, a consumer gambling addiction,” he said, arguing that losing access to it — like restrictions on social media — creates an intrusion on one’s personal life that most Russians feel.
“It turned out to be a sensitive sensor of the comfort of Russia’s massive population — people who consider themselves completely untouched by the actions of the aggressor country,” he said.
The future star of The Matrix and John Wick franchises made three memorable movies — Point Break, My Own Private Idaho, and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. He also met his friend Robert Mailhouse, whom he’s still playing music with 35 years later in a band that has three shows in the Philadelphia region in the next week.
Dogstar, the alternative rock band that Reeves and Mailhouse play in along with singer-guitarist Brett Domrose, will perform in support of their new album All in Nowat Union Transfer on Wednesday, at Sounds Waves at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City on Friday, and at the Hershey Theatre on Aug. 18.
Reeves, who was born in Beirut and raised in Toronto, was a standout hockey player in high school. At age 20, he moved to Los Angeles, where he introduced himself to Mailhouse in a grocery store.
“We lived in the same neighborhood, and we went to the same grocery store,” recalled Reeves, who plays bass, talking via Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. “And he was wearing a Detroit Red Wings sweatshirt. I asked him if he knew where there was a pickup game.
“From that came a fast friendship. I had a house that had a drum set and bass amp and a guitar amp, and Robert was playing drums and keyboards. So that’s the genesis of the rhythm section.”
“Keanu was a goaltender, which was really hard to find in Los Angeles,” said Mailhouse, picking up the story. An actor who has had roles in Days of Our Lives and CSI, he also joined the call from his own home in L.A.
“I remember I went back to the Thursday night skate in Burbank and told the guys, ‘I think I might have found a goaltender.’ And then when Keanu showed up, he was really good.”
Before Mailhouse, now 64, and Reeves, 61, played music, they played hockey. Dogstar was first fronted by singer Greg Miller, who led the band on a 1995 tour opening for Bon Jovi in Australia and New Zealand. But by the time the band’s debut album, Our Little Visionary, came out in 1996, Miller had left the band and Domrose — a former member of legendary punk band the Nuns — had taken over frontman duties.
That version of Dogstar released one more album, Happy Ending, in 2000, and then lost momentum, breaking up two years later.
The cover image for Dogstar’s album “All in Now.”Dillon Street Records
The split wasn’t caused by tension among the musicians, said Domrose, 57, a film composer who joined the Zoom call from his house in L.A. “We’d been going through the meat grinder with different record labels. It wears you out.”
There was also a little hiccup.
“Keanu had a movie career that was taking off to a new level” — the actor played Neo in the first Matrix movie in 1999 — “so we just felt like maybe it was time for a break.”
The trio remained friends, with Reeves briefly playing bass in another Mailhouse band called Becky. But they mainly pursued other paths, until the pandemic.
“You rethink your life,” said Mailhouse. “You get together and find you have all this time and less distractions. That put us all in a good mood to get back and try some stuff.”
Reeves says he never had rock-star ambitions, other than “playing air guitar on a tennis racket,” a la his character in the Bill & Ted movies. “But when I was 22, I went down to the Guitar Center on Sunset and bought a bass.”
He’s an anomaly among actors — unlike say, Jared Leto’s in 30 Seconds to Mars or Jamie Foxx and Kiefer Sutherland, who have recorded under their own names — in that he stays out of the spotlight, content to simply play bass and sometimes sing backup vocals.
Reeves’ rumbling bass is the first thing heard as All in Now kicks off with “Math.” But he’s essentially a supporting player in a power trio that refers to itself as “a brotherhood.” There’s a parallel there to the position Reeves favored in hockey, which also put the good of the team ahead of individual glory (and wore a mask).
“It is kind of a similar thing,” Domrose said to Reeves. “You are the last line of defense as a bass player and a goalie. If the bass player drops out, you’ve got nothing.
“He’s the melody of the team,” said Mailhouse.
“Oh my God —,” Reeves said, jokingly expressing discomfort at being analyzed by his bandmates as he sat in a bookshelf-lined room, bass by his side. “Enough about the bass player! We’re coming to Philly! We’re gonna rock! August 12!”
When Domrose, Mailhouse, and Reeves got together to play during the pandemic, Reeves says, they realized “we all missed it.”
“We plugged in, and Robert picked up his sticks and Brett put on his guitar … There it was.”
Alt-rock band Dogstar (from left): Bass player Keanu Reeves, drummer Robert Mailhouse, and singer-guitarist Brett Domrose. They play Union Transfer on Wednesday, the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City on Friday, and Hershey Theatre on Aug. 18.Zachary Gray
“You slide into your old comfortable slippers,” said Domrose. “I felt it right away.”
Dogstar released its third album, Somewhere Between the Power Lines and the Palm Trees, in 2023. Since then, the band has been a steady concern, headlining shows and doing festival dates in the U.S. and Europe.
All in Now is a rugged yet melodic grunge-adjacent album that would sound right at home in the mid-1990s alongside Bush, Stone Temple Pilots, and early Radiohead.
When asked what favorite bands they have in common, Domrose cites David Bowie and Reeves names the Replacements, referring to the Paul Westerberg-fronted 1980s rock band, not the 2000 football comedy he starred in.
All in Now was recorded with veteran producer Nick Launey, who outfitted Dogstar with a hard-hitting if not terribly original sound. The band is genuinely thrilled that such an esteemed producer signed up with them.
“I mean all this work he’s done with Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and more recently, Amyl and the Sniffers,” said Mailhouse. “All these great bands, and now little old Dogstar. I think we got lucky.”
Reeves’ movie-star career continues apace: He’s due in director Tim Miller’s Shiver next year. “Sharks, time machine, Groundhog Day … Fun!” is how the actor has summed up the movie, in which he plays a Caribbean smuggler.
But the friends are also committed to keeping Dogstar going as a working band.
All in Now’s title sounds like a statement of commitment, “but it’s not really a narrative of us,” said Domrose. “But unconsciously it does reflect where the band is now.”
“It’s got an energy to it, right?,” said Reeves. “All in Now is f— awesome! I think we came off tour and we were like ‘Let’s rock!’
“Making music can be so much fun,” he said. “The creativity, being together, the three of us in a room. To be able to make a record, and then to tour and do it again. I feel really grateful. This is our second album since we got back together. It’s exciting. So let’s make a third. Keep it going!”
Dogstar at Union Transfer, 1026 Spring Garden at 8 p.m. Wednesday, utphilly.com; Hard Rock Hotel Casino, 1000 Boardwalk, Atlantic City, at 9 p.m. Friday, casino.hardrock.com; and Hershey Theatre, 15 E. Caracas Ave., Hershey, at 8 p.m. Aug. 18, hersheyentertainment.com.
An I-95 ramp in Northeast Philly is set to close for good next week.
The ramp from Bridge Street to I-95 North is slated to shut down at 8 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 21, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation announced Monday.
The closure will make way for construction of a new I-95 entrance from Tacony Street and the Delaware Avenue extension, which the agency expects to open in late 2027.
Until then, drivers will be detoured to Tacony Street and State Road/New State Road, where they can get on I-95 North via the Milnor Street ramp.
The rerouting is part of a larger I-95 rehabilitation, which includes nearly $268 million of Northeast Philly improvements, including the reconstruction of the viaduct over Bridge and Tacony Streets.
In addition to the ramp closure, I-95 North drivers will experience a traffic shift from 8 p.m. Aug. 21 to 5 a.m. Aug 22. They will be temporarily rerouted to southbound lanes as northbound reconstruction begins at the Bridge Street Interchange. PennDot expects to complete that project in 2028.
The agency advises drivers in the area to allow for extra time, as backups and delays are expected due to the ramp closure.
The Michelin Guide is taking its Northeast restaurant awards back to New York.
Michelin said Tuesday that its 2026 Michelin Guide Northeast Cities ceremony will be held Dec. 14 at the Glasshouse in Manhattan, where it will disclose its latest restaurant selections for Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington.
Jean-Georges Vongerichten and chef Marc Vetri greet each other as Megan Vetri looks on during the cocktail hour at the Michelin Guide announcements at the Kimmel Center on Nov. 18, 2025, in Philadelphia.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer
Restaurateurs should treat this as a reminder that Michelin’s famously anonymous inspectors are on the prowl.
The 2025 ceremony was held at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, as Philadelphia and Boston joined the guide for the first time. Michelin, which hosted ceremonies in New York in 2023 and 2024, said last year that it planned to hold the annual ceremony in different cities.
A representative of the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau was not immediately available Tuesday to say whether Philadelphia had sought to host the event again.
Last year’s ceremony, attended by culinary glitterati from around the world, gave Philadelphia its first Michelin stars. Friday Saturday Sunday, Her Place Supper Club, and Provenance each received one star, while 31 other Philadelphia restaurants — including three cheesesteak shops — received Michelin recognition. Ten earned Bib Gourmands, Michelin’s designation for restaurants offering good food at a good value, while 21 were Recommended. Pietramala, the vegan restaurant in Northern Liberties, also received a Green Star for its sustainability practices. (Don’t expect more Green Stars this year; the award category was retired in May.)
The Philadelphia chefs flooding the stage at the Michelin Guide announcements on Nov. 18, 2025.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer
Michelin’s stars denote increasing levels of distinction: One star signals very good cooking that is “worth a stop,” two stars indicate excellent cooking “worth a detour,” and three stars represent exceptional cuisine “worth a special journey.”
The French tire company introduced its first North American guide in New York in 2005 and has expanded rapidly since. Chicago followed in 2011 and Washington in 2017, while California, Florida, Toronto, Vancouver, Colorado, Atlanta, Mexico, Texas, and Québec were added in subsequent years.
The expansion has accelerated recently. Michelin added the American South, Boston, and Philadelphia in 2025 and the Southwest and a statewide Florida guide in 2026. An American Great Lakes guide is scheduled to debut in 2027.
Philadelphia’s inclusion is part of a partnership with the Convention and Visitors Bureau, which has not disclosed how much it is paying Michelin.
WASHINGTON — Russia has released an American military veteran who spent more than four years in prison on disputed charges under abusive conditions and was said to be gravely ill and at risk of dying, a group advocating for him said Tuesday.
Robert Gilman was on his way to a U.S. military hospital in Texas, where he will be medically and psychologically assessed and treated, said Eric Lebson, chief strategy officer of Global Reach, a group that’s been working to free him and other American detainees abroad. Gilman’s family has flown to Texas to be with him, including his mother, who was in Russia attempting to see him at a hospital.
Gilman, a 32-year-old teacher detained since 2022, was initially handed a 3½-year sentence when he was convicted of beating a police officer after being taken off a train for causing a disturbance. He later was convicted of attacking a prison inspector during a cell check, beating an investigator, and assaulting a guard, and he was sentenced in October 2024 to eight years and one month. His sentence was extended last year to 10 years after he was found guilty of assaulting prison guards.
Gilman’s sister, Lexie Hudson, credited President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts with bringing about the former Marine’s release.
“There is no other reason that Robert is alive today other than that President Trump heard about the case and took action,” said Hudson, who thanked Markey “for leading our advocacy efforts in Congress.”
“The Russians treated my brother so badly,” Hudson said. ”They hurt him for no reason, other than that he was both an American and a Marine. What did they get out of this? Why did they do this to such a wonderful person?”
The State Department said that Gilman, who had been determined recently to have been wrongfully detained, was released on humanitarian grounds and “was not part of an exchange, and no other concessions were provided.”
“This as a welcome step that we hope leads to the release of Americans unjustly held in Russia, such as wrongful detainee Stephen Hubbard,” it said.
Before Gilman was flown out of Russia, he had been in “a dissociative stupor” for 47 days due to the abuse he has suffered in prison, Lebson said. Gilman had been moved from a prison to a civilian hospital, where he was hooked up to a feeding tube and handcuffed to a bed.
Hospital reports conveyed Gilman’s condition “as dire and life-threatening,” pushing the U.S. government into action and leading to “a unilateral humanitarian release” by Russian officials, Lebson said.
Markey had called on Russia and the U.S. to work together to get the Massachusetts resident released. Gilman was among at least eight Americans who remained in Russian custody after a series of high-profile prisoner exchanges with the U.S. in recent years.
Markey blamed Russia for Gilman’s poor health, saying his return to the U.S. was long overdue.
“It is a tragedy that it took Robert’s near-death condition for his case to receive the attention that it required for his release to be negotiated,” Markey said. “Throughout his detention, Robert was subjected to physical torture, forced medication, and provocations by Russian authorities. There is no doubt that his treatment by Russian authorities is the reason Robert is in this precarious state today.”
The Associated Press was making efforts to get comment from Russian officials on Gilman’s release.
A Gladwyne-based senior services organization is planning to build an independent living community on an estate in Radnor Township, a move the group says is necessary as demand for senior living services rises in the region.
Waverly Senior Services presented an early proposal to Radnor Township’s planning commission on Aug. 3 for a large senior living facility at 452 S. Roberts Rd., a historic estate owned by the Haverford School.
The proposal includes 208 multifamily housing units across 15 buildings, 16 twin homes, and a handful of administrative buildings, including a maintenance building and a welcome house.
Waverly Senior Services, a nonprofit organization, is in the process of purchasing the 43-acre property, which the Haverford School acquired in 2022.
Waverly operates Waverly Heights, a life care residence in Gladwyne, as well as in-home healthcare and personalized care management services.
Tom Garvin, Waverly’s president and CEO, told the Radnor planning commission that the organization is seeing “unprecedented demand” for life care facilities as baby boomers age and their housing and care needs change.
“There’s a woeful lack of senior housing across the country to serve that sort of bubble that’s coming in the population,” Garvin said.
The number of U.S. residents 65 and older grew nearly five times faster than the total population between 1920 and 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
More than 560,000 senior housing units will be needed to meet the demand for older adult housing, according to market research firm NIC MAP. Under current development rates, only 191,000 will be built.
Waverly currently serves around 365 residents, the vast majority of whom are local, Garvin said.
The Radnor site would primarily be home to independent living, with some additional care for residents who need it as they age in place. It will not be a skilled nursing facility.
Waverly representatives said that they are early in theprocess — they will still need to finalize the land sale and secure township approval — and that it could be three to five years before shovels hit the ground. However, Garvin said, the organization felt it had to jump on the opportunity in a region where it is difficult to find open space to develop.
“This opportunity for a piece of property that’s 43 acres, zoned institutional, in our primary market area is one we just couldn’t pass up,” he said.
The property is home to the Glencoe estate, built in 1907 for Thomas McKean Jr., and purchased by Samuel Robinson, founder of Acme Markets, in 1925, according to the Radnor Historical Society. In 1960, Robinson left the estate to Presbyterian Children’s Village, an orphanage run by a local Presbyterian group. The orphanage transitioned over time to become a residential treatment program for children with emotional and behavioral challenges, and in 2019 became Gemma Services after a merger with Silver Springs-Martin Luther School. Gemma Services is building a new campus in Plymouth Meeting.
The Haverford School purchased the property in 2022from Gemma Services for $19.88 million and said at the time that it did not have a specific plan for the site.
Waverly’s early proposal involved retaining the historic mansion and knocking down its dormitory buildings, which are in “poor shape,” said Marc Heil, Waverly’s vice president of campus development.
Heil said any new construction would “have that Main Line flair to it” and would not be “commercial looking.”
Planning commission members expressed an openness to having the site developed, but raised concerns about the early plans.
Commission member Stephen Varenhorst called the plan “chaotic” and “random” and encouraged the organization to reconsider its approach. Lane Vines, the commission’s chair, said he hoped more of the historic property could be retained.
Residents expressed concern about increased traffic in the quiet neighborhood, stormwater management, and a potential increase in ambulance traffic, especially if an EMS station is placed on the site, a possibility.
Waverly officials said they will submit plans to the planning commission, which will issue a recommendation to the Radnor Township commissioners, who will ultimatelyvote on whether to approve the project. Representatives from Waverly said the organization may also seek additional zoning reliefif they pursue renovations outside of the property’s institutional zoning classification, which would require a separate approval process through the zoning hearing board.
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A meat processing facility in Souderton that was slated for closure this week will remain open, downsizing its staff from about 1,700 to 400.
Global meat producer JBS announced in June that it would shut down the facility as part of a larger strategy focused on “growth, modernization, and long-term competitiveness in the United States.” This week, the company said it changed plans and will keep the plant open, transitioning the site to a new use.
“This outcome allows us to preserve 400 good-paying jobs, strengthen our case-ready business, and continue serving customers in a key consumer market,” said Wesley Batista Filho, CEO of JBS USA.
The plant has been one of Montgomery County’s top 25 employers, recently employing roughly 1,700 people. The majority of them are represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) Local 1776.
JBS plans to keep roughly 400 workers at the facility as it moves away from beef processing to become part of the business’ “value-added operation” arm. According to the company website, that side of the business is dedicated to “further-processed beef and pork products, and retail packaged meats.”
The plan includes investing over $30 million over the next 10 years to “modernize and enhance” the Souderton facility, the company said.
“This announcement provides stability for hundreds of workers and their families while creating a path for long-term success at the Souderton facility,” said Wendell Young IV, president of UFCW Local 1776.
JBS is the company behind food brands such as Pilgrim’s, and Just Bare. Most recently, the majority of the Souderton plant employees were in the fabrication department, which processes animal parts that move along a conveyor belt, according to the union.
The change in plans comes after discussions between the union, JBS, county officials, and Gov. Josh Shapiro, among other stakeholders.
“Pennsylvania’s agriculture and manufacturing industries have powered our economy for generations, and we’re making sure they continue to drive our future,” Shapiro said in a statement. “This facility will remain an important economic driver for Montgomery County.”
JBS has operated the Souderton facility since 2008, and had planned to distribute the work being done there among its other facilities.
Workers at the Souderton facility are among some 26,000 JBS employees who secured a new union contract last year with better wages and benefits including a more inclusive bereavement leave policy and the ability to accrue sick days.
The contract also established a pension plan for workers. That’s a rarity in the industry in recent decades, according to the union, which called the agreement “a new standard” in the meatpacking industry.
State Sen. Maria Collett, who represents Franconia Township,said in a social media post that the change in plans for the plant “came from the real collaboration of Governor Shapiro and his administration, the state Department of Agriculture, UFCW Local 1776, and countless Montgomery County officials.”
“No amount of job loss is something to celebrate, and harvesting operations at the plant will still wind down this week,” said Collett. “Some of our neighbors are facing a hard road.”
