Inquirer.com – Zurich DR

Blog

  • How GI Bill veterans, trade schools extracted millions in sham-class schemes

    How GI Bill veterans, trade schools extracted millions in sham-class schemes

    SAN DIEGO — At Blue Star Learning, a vocational school that defrauded taxpayers of $29 million in GI Bill funds, learning was not the point.

    Over four years, more than 1,100 military veterans packed Blue Star Learning’s classrooms next to a Jack in the Box fast-food joint here, ostensibly to learn basic computer skills. In reality, most enrolled just to collect a GI Bill housing allowance of about $3,000 per month, according to court documents and law enforcement records obtained by the Washington Post as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

    Veterans logged 18 hours in class a week to conjure the illusion that they were full-time students entitled to housing subsidies. Most spent the time snoozing, scrolling through YouTube or “just hanging out,” Justin Foose, Blue Star Learning’s former admissions director, told federal agents.

    Meanwhile, Blue Star’s instructors pretended to teach while the school received millions of dollars in GI Bill tuition from the federal government, according to investigators’ files.

    Foose said the hoax revealed itself when a government regulator showed up unexpectedly and poked his head in a classroom. “Clear as day, everybody’s on videos, and there’s one instructor up there, picking his nose,” Foose told the agents in a recorded interview. “You don’t even have to run a school or even be in education to walk into this place and realize that it’s a joke.”

    Blue Star Learning was what federal agents call a “ghost” or “shell” school. Before its owner was convicted of fraud and sent to prison in 2020, Blue Star was in the vanguard of a GI Bill racket that has since been mimicked across the country, according to agents.

    Unlike fraudulent GI Bill trade schools that exploit veterans by charging the government sky-high tuition to teach simple skills like grass-growing or rock-making, ghost schools rely on vets to be complicit in their schemes.

    Since the first Trump administration, the Justice Department has won criminal convictions or imposed civil penalties against the operators of least 12 ghost schools for defrauding the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) under the GI Bill, according to federal court records and law enforcement files. All were for-profit vocational programs in which large numbers of students habitually skipped class or showed up while doing little to no work, the documents show.

    Investigators told the Post that they suspect they’ve uncovered only a fraction of the ghost schools that are cheating the federal government. They noted that ghost operations can be surprisingly difficult to detect, in part because GI Bill students who profit from such scams are unlikely to file complaints.

    Besides defrauding taxpayers, such rackets undermine the legitimacy of the GI Bill and make it harder for other veterans to trust that they can get a quality education from any school bearing the government’s stamp of approval.

    Since the GI Bill’s passage toward the end of World War II, its purpose has been to help former service members gain skills to join the civilian workforce. The $11 billion-a-year program run by VA funds 36 months of tuition for veterans at a college or trade school.

    VA also pays a housing subsidy directly to student veterans based largely on the cost of living in their area. Last year, the median subsidy nationwide was $2,161 per month, according to VA data. In some parts of the country, the monthly allowance can exceed $4,000.

    For veterans who are eligible for the GI Bill but don’t want to further their education, ghost schools have provided a benefits shortcut.

    “Some veterans maybe aren’t that interested in getting their education,” Michelle Wasserman, then a federal prosecutor who oversaw the investigation into Blue Star Learning, said during a court hearing. “They go to a school like this, where they don’t have to do very much or not very much is asked of them. It’s kind of a fakey education and everyone is happy. The school owner gets a bunch of money and the veterans get to keep their benefits.”

    Lax oversight has contributed to the problem. Under federal law, VA auditors are required to visit schools funded by the GI Bill every two years to examine financial records and student files. But a July report by VA’s Office of Inspector General found that of roughly 7,600 schools nationwide, 479 had not received a routine compliance visit in more than three years — and 153 others had never had one.

    In addition, few standards exist to ensure that trade schools are delivering a quality education. Most colleges that grant degrees must obtain academic accreditation to qualify for GI Bill money, but trade or vocational schools are not required to do so.

    Ten of the 12 schools that the government took action against were unaccredited, according to federal court records and law enforcement files.

    While some ghost-school owners and operators have gone to prison, veterans have almost never been prosecuted for participating in such ruses. The Post could identify only one case in the past decade in which veterans faced criminal charges for swindling VA out of housing money by enrolling at a ghost school.

    In that instance, the Justice Department won a fraud conviction in 2019 against the owner of a California truck-driving school — an Army veteran — who pleaded guilty to running a $4.2 million phantom-class racket. Two school employees also pleaded guilty to fraud.

    More than 100 veterans enrolled in courses at the trucking school that never took place, according to the Justice Department. Federal authorities left it to the California attorney general’s office to determine whether to file state criminal charges against veterans who allegedly collected housing stipends under false pretenses.

    Ultimately, California prosecutors charged 35 of the veterans with conspiracy to commit grand theft, forgery and other fraud-related counts. The rest were not charged.

    To charge veterans who enrolled in such programs, authorities must prove intent to defraud, not just that students were lazy or failed to complete coursework.

    VA Inspector General Cheryl Mason, whose office acts as an independent watchdog that investigates cases of suspected fraud, said it can be difficult to distinguish between veterans who con VA for housing money and those who enroll in unchallenging schools just so they can pad their resumes.

    “While veterans can be colluding in these cases,” she told the Post in an interview, “oftentimes the veteran is a target. And they’re sold on it as, you know, this easy thing. ‘Oh, it’s easy. You can do this. And let’s go tell all your friends.’”

    To better understand the ghost-school schemes, the Post sought GI Bill enrollment and complaint databases from VA under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), as well as records from law enforcement investigations conducted by the inspector general’s office.

    The government denied the requests, citing privacy exemptions. But the Post sued to compel the release of the material, arguing that it was in the public interest. After a year-long legal battle, VA and its inspector general’s office released some of the databases and thousands of pages of law enforcement files. The Post also reviewed court records from ghost-school prosecutions across the country.

    The Post made multiple requests with VA to interview Kenneth Smith, the executive director of its Education Service. The department declined. VA officials also declined to respond directly to written questions about the problem of ghost schools and the abuse of GI Bill housing benefits by some veterans.

    In a statement, VA Press Secretary Quinn Slaven said a White House anti-fraud task force led by Vice President JD Vance “is moving at unprecedented speed and ferocity to root out the waste, abuse and criminal exploitation of government programs in these areas and others.” Earlier this year, he added, VA created a tool that assigns a fraud risk score to schools and started a compliance and enforcement division to refer cases to the inspector general’s office.

    At the same time, he blamed state governments for enabling fraud within the GI Bill program in general. “The problem is that many state-level bureaucrats have looked the other way for years as fraudsters robbed government programs blind,” he said.

    VA has contractual arrangements with state governments to help approve and monitor GI Bill schools. Some states, in turn, have blamed VA and federal lawmakers for not doing more to deter fraud and for not giving them more resources to conduct oversight.

    In the case of Blue Star Learning, a staffer working for the California Department of Veterans Affairs, or CalVet, in 2016 became the first regulator to report signs that the school might be a sham, according to law enforcement records. But it took three more years until federal and state officials jointly forced Blue Star to close.

    CalVet declined to respond directly to written questions from the Post about ghost schools in the state. A spokeswoman, Kate Hoit, released a statement saying that California veterans “deserve programs that deliver real training and opportunity.”

    “CalVet takes any allegation of fraud involving GI Bill benefits seriously and is committed to protecting both veterans and taxpayers through rigorous oversight, accountability, and close coordination with state and federal law enforcement, and oversight partners,” she added.

    A 230-mile commute

    During the first Trump administration, the VA inspector general’s office formed a specialized unit to ferret out education fraud with sophisticated data-analysis tools.

    Under GI Bill rules, colleges and universities can teach classes online, but veterans enrolled at trade schools must attend in person. Federal agents had grown suspicious that many vets were abusing the rule so they could collect housing benefits.

    Using public records and other databases, analysts examined vocational school rosters to pinpoint where students lived. At some schools, they discovered that large numbers of students lived unusually long distances from campus — often in another state, according to Michael Missal, who served as VA inspector general from 2016 to 2025.

    “They’re supposed to be in class, but how could somebody in Hawaii be showing up for a class in Kansas, you know, every Tuesday?” Missal told the Post in an interview. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

    One of the most blatant examples was California Technical Academy, a computer-training school that taught hundreds of veterans at three hubs near Los Angeles and San Diego. In 2020, analysts determined that about 40 percent of its GI Bill students lived more than 75 miles away from the school’s campuses, a clue that they were probably not meeting VA’s requirement that students attend 18 hours of class in person each week, according to investigators’ files.

    Agents knocked on the door of one veteran’s residence in Las Vegas — about a 230-mile drive from the campus in Riverside where he purportedly attended classes. When they questioned whether he was really driving all that way to go to school, he replied unconvincingly that he was, according to the agents’ notes.

    The veteran ended the interview by stating, “I hope I am not going to prison for this.” (He did not.)

    Investigators theorized that California Technical Academy became a magnet for ghost students because of its location, according to law enforcement files. At the time, veterans attending school in Southern California typically received GI Bill housing subsidies exceeding $3,000 per month.

    Analysts cross-checked another set of databases and discovered that 56 veterans who were registered as full-time students at California Technical Academy also held full-time jobs working for the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to law enforcement files.

    While it was conceivable that people were putting in a combined 60 to 80 hours a week at school and the office, agents concluded it was more likely that the VA employees were skipping class and double-dipping to get their full-time paychecks and housing money.

    Undercover agents placed the school’s campuses under surveillance and conducted surreptitious interviews. Staffers acknowledged that few veterans showed up for class. They also told agents that the academy falsified transcripts and enrollment records before submitting them to VA, according to law enforcement files.

    In 2022, federal agents raided the three campuses and seized the academy’s financial assets. The next year, the school’s chief executive and two other administrators pleaded guilty in federal court to defrauding VA in a scheme that involved nearly 1,800 veterans and lasted a decade.

    The federal government said its losses from California Technical Academy totaled about $105 million, two-thirds of it on housing subsidies and the rest on tuition. The Justice Department said it was the costliest GI Bill scam of any kind since lawmakers expanded the program in 2008.

    During sentencing, defense attorneys for the two other administrators sought leniency from the judge on the grounds that their clients were uneducated or unsophisticated, court records show.

    One, Philip Abod, a longtime instructor, had dropped out of ninth grade with a 0.25 grade point average; the other, Eric Bostock, a former janitor who served as director of student services, had “cognitive limitations” and an IQ of 82, according to court filings and statements by their lawyers. Each was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. Neither responded to requests for comment.

    Michael Bostock, the school’s chief executive and founder, and brother of Eric Bostock, pleaded guilty in 2022 to conspiracy to commit fraud. He admitted falsifying transcripts and attendance records to deceive VA and received a five-year sentence. A judge ordered him to pay $105 million in restitution.

    In an interview last year with the Post while serving part of his sentence in home detention in Idaho, Bostock said California Technical Academy provided a legitimate education to those who wanted it. “We knew that there was cheating going on and things like that and we just, I made my instructors focus on the students that really wanted to be successful,” he said.

    But he acknowledged that many veterans signed up just to receive housing allowances. He said he told the staff to let those veterans skip class under the guise that they were conducting “independent study,” an arrangement that violates GI Bill rules. Veterans who did little or no academic work still received passing grades so they could sign up for more courses, he added.

    Typically, Bostock said, those students were in their late 50s or 60s and had no motivation to learn because they were already settled in their careers or retired.

    “They were very open about it. They’d say, ‘We want, I want the easiest program. What’s the least amount I can do?’ And several of them would enroll in that program,” he recalled. “And then they would stay there as long as they could.”

    Bostock received a five-year sentence in the case, and a judge ordered him to pay $105 million in restitution. Kyle Green

    ‘We’re here to earn, not to learn’

    At other ghost schools across the country over the past decade, operators did little to conceal the bogus nature of their classes. In some cases, they offered kickbacks to recruiters who signed up veterans, according to court records and law enforcement files obtained under FOIA.

    In Hawaii, a massage school owner pleaded guilty last year in federal court to defrauding VA of more than $9 million. Brian Matsudo, who ran the Elite Massage Academy in Honolulu, admitted arranging kickbacks for recruiters who enrolled no-show vets in courses that cost VA as much as $21,455 in tuition per student.

    In Virginia, the owner of a small welding school paid a recruiter to induce veterans to register for fake courses in “fine arts welding” and “exotic welding,” then charged VA as much as $34,200 per course, according to court records and investigators’ files. In comparison, welding classes at a nearby community college cost between $500 and $1,000, the files show.

    Undercover federal agents staked out the school — the Hampton Roads Skills Center in Newport News — and spied students clocking in and then, a few minutes later, clocking out, the files show. Other times, agents found the school doors locked during the day and the parking lot empty.

    One veteran who purportedly received 600 hours of instruction told agents that he didn’t put on a welding mask even once. “I never had no interest in no welding,” he admitted, law enforcement files show.

    The owner, Wilbert J. McNair Jr., a church pastor, pleaded guilty in 2017 to defrauding VA of $1.4 million in tuition for 83 students. He was sentenced to more than three years in prison and ordered to repay the money.

    In court filings, prosecutors called Hampton Roads Skills Center “a sham school.” They calculated that veterans enrolled there received a combined $1.2 million in housing subsidies. Yet none of those veterans faced charges for accepting that money.

    One veteran signed up for nine welding classes so he could collect $46,000 from VA for housing and books — even though he already had worked as a professional welder for nearly a decade and as a welding instructor at another school, according to McNair’s plea agreement.

    Six of the ghost schools that the federal government has investigated over the past decade were barber or cosmetology programs.

    In Mississippi, a hairstyling school called April’s Mane Attraction certified to VA that veterans received 1,500 hours of instruction to prepare for the state barbering exam. Federal agents, however, discovered that classes were rarely taught, that some registered students lived hundreds of miles away from the school, and that the coursework included word puzzles designed for children learning their colors, according to investigators’ files.

    The GI Bill requires schools to charge veterans and civilians the same tuition. Yet the hairstyling academy billed VA $22,400 per student — about 10 times more than what it charged nonveterans, investigators’ files show.

    In 2024, a judge ordered the school and its owner, April Tucker Beard, to pay more than $900,000 in civil damages and penalties after the Justice Department sued, alleging violations of the False Claims Act. Beard did not respond to messages seeking comment.

    In Chesapeake, Va., the College of Beauty and Barber Culture served veterans who, on paper, were looking to launch careers as hairstylists. Most collected about $1,500 from VA for housing each month and up to $1,000 annually for books and supplies, according to court records and investigators’ files.

    But of the more than 350 veterans who enrolled in the college, only seven were able to pass a state exam to obtain a barber or cosmetology license, the files show.

    Veterans later admitted to federal agents that the school was full of “ghosts” and that their unofficial motto was, “We’re here to earn, not to learn.” They said students were instructed to sign attendance logs each day so VA auditors would think that classes were taking place, according to investigators’ files.

    The school’s husband-and-wife owners, William and Katherine Grobes, pleaded guilty to defrauding VA of $4.5 million in tuition. Each was sentenced in 2017 to five years in prison and ordered to repay that amount of money. They did not respond to requests for comment.

    Prosecutors said veterans who attended the school received a total of $10.5 million in GI Bill money for housing, books and supplies.

    None of the students faced charges.

    ‘We were desperate’

    Before veterans flocked to it, Blue Star Learning was a tiny IT service business that taught basic hardware and software courses in a strip mall north of downtown San Diego. Most of Blue Star’s clients were private companies or state agencies with entry-level personnel looking to improve their computer skills.

    The San Diego building at right was home to Blue Star Learning, a vocational school that defrauded taxpayers of $29 million in GI Bill funds.Craig Whitlock

    The owner, Nimesh Shah, told the Post in an interview that he bought the school in 2010 for $50,000 but struggled to make ends meet. After two years, Blue Star was generating just $3,500 a month in revenue, he said. Some weeks, Shah couldn’t find enough students to hold a class. “We were just sitting there,” he recalled.

    Around 2012, a consultant suggested that Shah seek VA approval to offer computer training for veterans under the GI Bill. Shah said he knew “nothing” about the GI Bill then but was aware San Diego was a military town with lots of veterans. He paid the consultant about $4,000 to prepare Blue Star’s application.

    “I was like, doesn’t hurt,” he said. “We were desperate.”

    In 2013, VA cleared the school to accept GI Bill students. A handful of veterans signed up for three-month courses that cost between $2,000 and $5,000, and the school’s finances stabilized, Shah said. “We were able to pay the rent,” he added.

    Then, in 2015, Blue Star’s fortunes transformed almost overnight. One evening, a Navy veteran walked in and offered to triple Blue Star’s business by rustling up scores of his old Navy buddies.

    “He’s like, ‘Look, I have 80 to 100 folks and we are happy to bring them over to you,’” Shah recalled. There was just one catch. Instead of attending classes Monday through Friday, these veterans could come only twice a week because most had full-time jobs.

    Shah said he knew that arrangement might conflict with VA rules, which required veterans enrolled in trade schools full-time to attend in person 18 hours each week.

    He said he didn’t think it was feasible to teach nine hours at a clip. He also wondered how these veterans could juggle a heavy class load while staying employed full-time. So he proposed a compromise: classes three days a week, for six hours each. The Navy veteran agreed, Shah said, adding: “Right there and then, he’s like, ‘You’re on!’”

    Privately, Shah figured it was too good to be true. But the following Monday, he said, Navy veterans swamped Blue Star with phone calls and emails, wanting to register for class. The school immediately had to scramble to find more classroom space.

    Things snowballed, and within a year, the number of veterans enrolled at Blue Star nearly quadrupled. In 2016, VA paid the school $7.4 million to cover their tuition, investigators’ files show.

    “Word of mouth got out really quick, and five guys brought five guys, and they each brought five guys. It was just insane,” Foose, the school’s former admissions director, told federal agents. “It was like 800-something people. They didn’t even fit in the school because they would just line up out the door.”

    What soon became apparent, however, was that these GI Bill students were not there to learn, according to Shah and Foose. They said most were men in their 50s and 60s who had good-paying government jobs: at the post office, at the VA medical center in La Jolla, or at nearby military bases as defense contractors. Others were retired and collecting military pensions, as well as disability compensation from VA.

    “When you start teaching them, they were nonchalant about it,” Shah recalled. “They’re like, ‘OK, fine. You know, teach me, don’t teach me. I don’t care.’” They didn’t explicitly say they just wanted their GI Bill housing money. But Shah and his staff caught on. “We got the point,” he said.

    As he became more savvy about the GI Bill, Shah said he realized the school could charge much higher prices for undemanding classes as long as he didn’t exceed VA’s annual tuition cap. He increased tuition fourfold, to more than $20,000 per course — about three times what San Diego State University charged in tuition for a full year of classes, court records show.

    To obtain VA’s approval for the tuition increase, Blue Star had to certify that it was obeying two federal regulations: that it was charging veterans and nonveterans the same amount, and that at least 15 percent of the students in every course were civilians. Those requirements for GI Bill schools are based on the logic that if at least a small number of civilians were willing to pay full tuition, then the class must be legitimate.

    In his interview with the Post and in court records, Shah admitted that he and Blue Star repeatedly lied to VA about following the rules because it couldn’t find enough civilians to pay the higher tuition. It took regulators years to uncover the extent of his deceit, despite obvious warning signs that Blue Star had become a fraudulent operation.

    Fake companies and burner phones

    In 2016, while Shah was vacationing in Mexico, a senior education specialist with the California Department of Veterans Affairs named Shane Ferrebee arrived at Blue Star for an unannounced visit.

    Under an arrangement with VA, California officials were responsible for monitoring GI Bill schools in the state and ensuring they adhered to regulations.

    Blue Star had recently submitted an enrollment form stating that it had 700 GI Bill students, according to an account Ferrebee later gave to investigators. He said he thought that was fishy because Blue Star only had a few classrooms, according to an account he later gave to investigators.

    His suspicions were already heightened because he had warned Shah the year before that the ratio of veterans to civilians at Blue Star was out of balance. “I never trusted the guy,” Ferrebee recalled in an interview with federal agents. “He was just too nice, and just too friendly and just [had] too many veterans.”

    He decided he had grounds to conduct a surprise inspection.

    Ferrebee looked in a classroom and found 50 students watching videos and “just hanging out,” with no instruction taking place, investigators’ files show. He also determined that Blue Star was still violating the 15 percent rule because it had too few civilians. Soon after, he notified the school in writing that it was being removed from the GI Bill program.

    Shah knew he had been breaking the rules, he told the Post. He said he was forced to lay off most of his staff.

    But Blue Star had become dependent on GI Bill money, so Shah hatched a risky and complex plan to get back in, court records show.

    To persuade VA and California officials that the school now had enough civilian students, Shah submitted falsified enrollment data, according to court records and investigators’ files. He included a spreadsheet with the names of recent graduates and their employers — but most of the names and companies were fake, the records and files show.

    Shah also paid someone to create individual websites for 30 phony companies. He had a Blue Star staffer buy 30 cell phones so that if regulators called the contact numbers listed on the websites, his staff could answer, court records show.

    The gambit initially worked. In 2017, one year after removing Blue Star, California and VA officials readmitted the school to the GI Bill program. Veterans eager to cash in their housing allowances returned in droves, according to investigators’ files.

    But the following year, Blue Star caught the attention of investigators working for VA’s inspector general.

    As they did with California Technical Academy, analysts cross-checked names of Blue Star students with a database of VA employees. They found 50 people who were claiming to be studying full time at Blue Star while collecting full-time paychecks from VA.

    Over several months, agents secretly interviewed former students and employees. Many described the computer classes as a farce and said that it was an open secret that veterans enrolled just to get their housing benefits, according to investigators’ files.

    One former administrator told them about the list of fake names and companies that Shah maintained, the files show.

    In June 2019, agents working for VA’s inspector general and the FBI raided Blue Star’s offices. Other agents arrived at Shah’s home to question him. He promptly confessed to falsifying records, according to investigators’ files and court records.

    “I admitted it because, see, once you have the feds kicking in your door, there’s no point in lying,” Shah told the Post.

    He also acknowledged that he was driven by greed. “It was lucrative,” he said. “I mean, there’s no ifs, ands or buts.”

    In November 2019, Shah pleaded guilty in federal court to wire fraud and making false statements. Prosecutors calculated that VA lost $29 million in the Blue Star scam. Of that, $11 million was tuition paid to the school and $18 million was housing money paid to veterans.

    At Shah’s sentencing the next year, his attorney, Michael Lipman, said Blue Star was “not a total sham” because some courses were actually taught, even if veterans were not paying attention. But he acknowledged that Shah “chose to do something really stupid” and that he “lied repeatedly,” including by inventing “totally fictitious students” to increase the number of civilians enrolled.

    At the same time, Lipman argued, veterans who attended Blue Star just for housing allowances were culpable, too — and he criticized prosecutors for not going after them.

    “The government doesn’t appear to be interested in making any attempts to get back any of the money from these people,” he said.

    Wasserman, the lead prosecutor, acknowledged in court that “some of the veterans are complicit here.”

    That prompted U.S. District Judge John A. Houston to ask why the Justice Department hadn’t charged any veterans as co-conspirators.

    “They are taking money from the government, knowing that they didn’t earn it,” he said, adding later: “There have been veterans who caused Americans and taxpayers to lose as well, and there has been no look-see into that.”

    “It’s a difficult case to bring,” Wasserman responded. She said it was part of a pattern that federal authorities were seeing around the country but suggested that it was easier to hold ghost school owners accountable than veterans.

    “The scheme is, in part, scammy schools and veterans who are willing to go there” for the housing benefits, she said. “And that’s unfortunate.”

    The judge sentenced Shah to 45 months and ordered him to pay $29 million in restitution.

    Nate Jones and Caitlin Gilbert contributed to this report.

    Methodology

    The Washington Post obtained comprehensive records spanning 2018 to 2024 from the Department of Veterans Affairs’ GI Bill Comparison Tool via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and merged them with VA’s 2025 Comparison Tool data pulled from the Internet Archive. Data is current as of May 2025.

    The Post grouped non-degree-granting schools into categories — such as unaccredited trade specialization or flight schools — based on their accreditation status, facility codes and specific course offerings. VA tracks two separate enrollment statuses, counting all GI Bill participants and those who served after 9/11. Unless specified, enrollment figures were based on whichever figure was higher in the data. Tuition rates were based on post-9/11 enrollment because tuition figures were available only in post-9/11 data. Information on unaccredited and vocational programs is often incomplete, so reporters used school addresses found in the FOIA data to query the Google Places API and gather missing business statuses and classification types.

    Unaccredited trade schools, by category
  • More flooding downpours are possible in the Philly region. A heat advisory is in effect through Saturday.

    More flooding downpours are possible in the Philly region. A heat advisory is in effect through Saturday.

    Skin-clinging humidity, random downpours, heat indexes in triple figures, steamy nights. Welcome to Miami North.

    The heat advisory for the entire region has been extended to 8 p.m. Saturday, with more random showers likely. As to when something resembling comfort returns to Philly? “That’s the million-dollar question,” said Matt Benz, senior meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc.

    Similar conditions could persist into late next week, he added.

    Highs might not get much past 90, but with the atmosphere this steamy, the heat index in Philly had reached 102 at 2 p.m. (In Miami, it was down to 82, thanks to a cooling thunderstorm.)

    Both Camden and Delaware Counties have posted “code red” heat advisories, even though conditions are not expected to approach the official criteria of two consecutive days of highs of at least 95 degrees.

    Waves of air from the Gulf Stream and the gulf itself continue to wash over the Mid-Atlantic region, said Brian Hurley, senior branch forecaster at the federal Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Md., adding that the situation is going to persist.

    (function(){function e(){window.addEventListener(`message`,function(e){if(e.data[`datawrapper-height`]!==void 0){var t=document.querySelectorAll(`iframe`);for(var n in e.data[`datawrapper-height`])for(var r=0,i;i=t[r];r++)if(i.contentWindow===e.source){var a=e.data[`datawrapper-height`][n]+`px`;i.style.height=a}}})}e()})();

    On the plus side, drought conditions continue to ease, and officially in Philadelphia, rainfall since Jan. 1 is now about normal, recent rains having wiped out a significant deficit.

    Officially, both the entire state of New Jersey and Chester County are under state-imposed “drought warnings,” but changes may be in the wind and the clouds.

    Three months ago, all of New Jersey was in at least “moderate drought,” according to the interagency U.S. Drought Monitor, but with Thursday’s update, less than half the state was so designated. As for Chester County, the percentage of the county in “severe drought” has dropped from 90% to 37% in the same period.

    However, the recent rains have come in fits and starts and have been less generous in some areas and overly generous elsewhere, and have had a knack for outwitting science.

    Those random downpours are going to continue

    “Multiple rounds of showers and thunderstorms each afternoon and evening may become strong to severe,” the National Weather Service in Mount Holly warned Thursday.

    Don’t expect much notice.

    Case in point: Around 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, the weather service posted a missive: “The threat for flooding has diminished tonight.”

    Shortly thereafter, flood warnings went up for portions of all four of Philly’s neighboring Pennsylvania counties.

    That followed afternoon downpours that caused extensive road flooding in Philly and neighboring areas as a corridor of heavy rain cut through the city.

    Michael Silva, a meteorologist in the Mount Holly office, was among those who had not seen it coming.

    “Before work, I was about to go out twice for walks,” Silva said. “Then I looked at the radar.”

    Despite all the rain, and probably as result of the antecedent dryness — heading into July, Philadelphia had experienced 16 consecutive months of below-normal rainfall — stream and river levels remain well below the danger zones.

    And so far, the trees appear to be holding their ground, said Shane Farrell, arborist with the Davey Tree Expert Co., and to date he has not seen the type of “mud slurry” that might coax them out of their roots, barring severe-storm gusts.

    Showers are likely to be numerous and widespread on Friday, said AccuWeather’s Benz.

    The outlook for the weekend for Philly and the Shore

    Saturday is expected to be a clone of Thursday, as a so-called Bermuda high-pressure system over the North Atlantic continues to lure steamy air northward. Winds circulate clockwise around centers of high pressure; thus, areas to the west of the center, where Philly happens to be, experience winds from the south and southwest.

    Benz sees an outside chance that an approaching front will provide a very temporary and modest measure of relief on Sunday. Don’t bet on it, however. He said it is going to encounter a whole lot of resistance along the way.

    The outlooks are similar for the Jersey Shore, which is likely to be quite a popular destination this weekend.

  • Fauci contempt vote reflects the enduring politics of COVID

    Fauci contempt vote reflects the enduring politics of COVID

    NEW YORK — Dr. Anthony Fauci is sitting before Congress, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is on TV debating COVID lockdowns, and Americans can’t agree on what science to trust.

    You might think it’s 2020 again.

    Six years after COVID-19 thrust the world into the fear and uncertainty of a global pandemic, Republicans in power aren’t leaving it in the past. Instead, they’ve returned its familiar political arguments to center stage for new scrutiny, demanding accountability for the scientists and media figures whom they feel deceived and mistreated Americans years ago.

    The efforts ramped up last week, when a Republican-led Senate committee chaired by Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul subpoenaed the now-retired, 85-year-old Fauci to testify about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The former National Institutes of Health immunologist repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment, after accusing the lawmakers of trying to coerce him to perjure himself to justify criminal charges. In response to his choice, on Thursday, the committee passed a vote to hold Fauci in contempt, a stunning move that could motivate the Justice Department to initiate an investigation.

    Separately, Kennedy, a politically independent former anti-vaccine activist who now serves as the Republican President Donald Trump’s health secretary, spent part of his weekend in a combative live debate with CNN host Dana Bash about the pandemic’s management and the media’s role.

    Political scientists and historians say the focus on COVID grievances half a decade after the virus’ peak demonstrates how some wounds it opened have never been closed. Democrats, meanwhile, have slammed the federal government’s blaming of Fauci as a performative distraction that’s not based in facts.

    While both Paul and Kennedy have spent years airing their frustrations about COVID, the Republican takeover of Congress and the White House last year created a new platform for them to steer how America remembers the pandemic, and who is held responsible for it, according to Matt Dallek, a political scientist at George Washington University.

    It’s also allowed them to use the administration’s resources to surface new information.

    “The response to COVID has become a touchstone for Trump’s Republican Party,” Dallek said. “They’re using their power now to argue they were right all along.”

    Pandemic grievances have simmered for years

    When the coronavirus began spreading widely in 2020, under Trump’s first administration, groups of Americans revolted against requirements imposed by local authorities and businesses telling people to wear masks and stay at home to control the spread of the virus.

    Vaccines supercharged those sentiments. Figures like Kennedy, then a leader of the anti-vaccine movement, accused the federal government of trampling on personal liberties by supporting vaccine mandates and social media takedowns of dissenting ideas.

    While Trump has long expressed pride in his first-term Operation Warp Speed effort to disseminate COVID-19 vaccines quickly, saving millions of lives, his second administration has taken a different tone.

    Under Kennedy’s leadership, U.S. regulators have limited the availability of COVID-19 vaccines for Americans. Kennedy on CNN on Sunday questioned whether the COVID-19 vaccines protected children, even as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says on its website that they “help keep children from getting really sick from COVID-19.”

    Frances Lee, a Princeton University political scientist, said debates over COVID-19 have erupted on the fringes for years. Now that some of the leaders of those debates are in power, they’re hashing it out on the national stage — something she said needed to happen eventually.

    “There are aggrieved parties, people who have a sense that they were done wrong during the pandemic and that there’s never been an accounting for that,” Lee said. “Most people don’t want to think about this topic, but nevertheless there are constituencies – so Congress is speaking to those constituencies.”

    Lee said Kennedy’s decision to surface numerous diary entries that Fauci had made on a government computer – and Paul’s decision to publicize them last week – created an opening for “the first real showdown” in years around the pandemic’s handling.

    While some of the entries – including Fauci’s uncertainty in the pandemic’s earliest days about how best to curb the virus — already were reflected in a 2024 memoir and in interviews at the time, they have nonetheless drawn attention from people who blame Fauci for policies they believe infringed on their rights as hundreds of thousands of people were dying.

    Also discussed at Fauci’s hearing last week was whether NIH-funded research in China played a role in how the pandemic started. The day of the hearing, Trump’s White House also directed social media followers to a federal website that used to feature information on COVID vaccines, testing and treatment that now promotes the theory that the pandemic originated with a lab leak.

    Many scientists believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to people, coming to light when it spread at a wildlife market in the Chinese city of Wuhan. There’s no new scientific evidence supporting the theory that the virus might instead have leaked from a laboratory, a theory Paul champions. A GOP-led subcommittee that studied the question in 2024 found no evidence linking Fauci to wrongdoing.

    Fauci has long said publicly that he was open to both theories but that there’s more evidence supporting COVID-19’s natural origins.

    Republican lawmakers aren’t stopping at the contempt vote. Sen. Ron Johnson said Thursday that Kennedy’s department had given a subcommittee he chairs a copy of Fauci’s cellphone from his time in government. Johnson indicated he intended to investigate it.

    “Hopefully, this device will address many of the questions he refused to answer at last week’s hearing,” he wrote on social media.

    Many doubt that Republicans’ COVID fact-finding is genuine

    As Republicans hold up scrutiny of Fauci as important accountability, Democrats have called it disingenuous. Paul said Thursday he’d invited Fauci to appear for a private, transcribed interview, but Democrats accused him of not allowing the full, bipartisan committee to be present for it.

    Paul also referred the committee’s contempt vote directly to the Justice Department, instead of to the full Senate. He said he did not “want to waste time” with that route, while Democrats insisted all senators should get a chance to vote.

    Last week’s hearing, at which Fauci pleaded the Fifth, came after the immunologist had repeatedly appeared before Congress over the years and talked about his thinking in the beginning of the pandemic and how it changed over time. Critics have raised concerns that the ordeal surrounding him will deter scientists from taking government jobs for fear of being similarly targeted.

    Paul has long argued that Fauci should be criminally investigated, based on his belief that the scientist has been dishonest to Congress about National Institutes of Health-funded research and COVID’s origins. Fauci’s attorney last week called Paul’s accusations about the scientist “false and disgraceful.” More than 150 infectious-disease experts also came to Fauci’s defense, writing that “no credible evidence has been produced to support these absurd charges.”

    Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute said the hearing didn’t represent legitimate truth seeking.

    “They were looking for a platform in which they could attack him, and he would not respond, and he would say ‘plead the Fifth’ over and over again,” Ornstein said.

    He said while some Republicans are likely true believers that Fauci committed crimes, bringing him to the forefront serves a dual purpose in a midterm election year — distracting voters from less favorable headlines, including on the economy and foreign conflicts.

    Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, said there are real lessons to learn from the pandemic, including more deeply examining which efforts to contain the virus worked and didn’t work. But he said Republicans in Congress aren’t chasing those.

    “A review of revisionist history will accomplish nothing,” he said. “We won’t be any better prepared for the next pandemic.”

  • FCC lifts the cap limiting the size of TV broadcasting companies

    FCC lifts the cap limiting the size of TV broadcasting companies

    The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted to eliminate a long-standing regulation constraining the size of large television broadcasting companies, a major deregulatory move pushed by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.

    The FCC’s commissioners voted 2-1 to replace the cap, which prevents a company from owning broadcasting stations that collectively reach more than 39% of U.S. households, with a case-by-case review. The agency has said that the new process would “empower the FCC to approve deals that promote the public interest while allowing the agency to reject any deals that do not meet that standard.”

    Carr already sidestepped the ownership cap earlier this year when the FCC approved Nexstar’s $6.2 billion merger with rival Tegna, which would give the country’s largest TV owner an 80% reach into American homes. That deal was subsequently blocked by a federal judge after DirecTV and several state attorneys general sued, alleging antitrust violations. The case is ongoing.

    In a July op-ed on the right-wing website Breitbart, Carr lamented that “New York and Hollywood interests” have become too powerful and have “steamrolled” local TV station owners. He added that the commission needs to remove the ownership cap so broadcasters can better compete with cable TV companies and large tech platforms.

    “The cap no longer constrains the power of national programmers,” he wrote. “Instead, it prevents local broadcasters from competing on a level playing field.”

    Anna M. Gomez, the lone Democratic FCC commissioner, said during the Thursday meeting that Congress has the authority to lift the ownership cap. She added that the change won’t solve competition problems for local stations.

    “Eliminating the cap does not free local broadcasters from economic pressure, it just changes who is doing the squeezing,” she said. “Trading a squeeze from Big Tech for a squeeze from Big Media does nothing to protect the communities this cap was designed to serve.”

    Former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R., Texas), who helped institute the 39% cap in 2004, made a similar point in a Monday op-ed for the conservative website the Daily Wire, writing that it’s up to Congress to change it — and not the FCC.

    “I am a Republican. I support deregulation and the Trump administration. But my ultimate loyalty rests with the Constitution, which gives certain prerogatives to Congress,” Delay wrote. “Regulatory agencies cannot defy or modify laws enacted by Congress. If Chairman Carr wants to raise the statutory cap, he should ask Congress to pass a law giving him authority to do that.”

    Since taking the helm of the FCC at the outset of President Donald Trump’s second term, Carr has initiated a bevy of investigations into media companies. His actions have garnered some criticism from fellow Republicans concerned about the government pressuring private companies over issues of speech. When Carr threatened Disney-owned ABC stations’ licenses in September over comments made by late-night host Jimmy Kimmel in the aftermath of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s murder, Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) called Carr’s comments “dangerous as hell.”

    That long-simmering fight between Carr and Disney has boiled over in recent weeks. Disney has alleged that the FCC’s early review of its eight ABC station licenses, probe of The View, and review of Disney’s diversity practices violate the media company’s free press protections under the First Amendment.

    The Republican discomfort with Carr, meanwhile, hasn’t abated. During a Senate Judiciary hearing on Wednesday, Sen. John Kennedy (R., Louisiana) expressed frustration about the commission’s actions. “Sometimes the FCC scares me right now,” he told FCC general counsel Adam Candeub. “I don’t like some of the stuff that is said on television, but what business is it of the FCC?”

    “All I’m saying is, y’all be careful,” Kennedy added. “You’re getting into the foothills of violating the First Amendment.”

    The nonprofit Free Press said Thursday that it plans to sue the FCC and challenge its authority to remove the cap.

    “Changing this limit requires congressional action, but Carr doesn’t care,” Matt Wood, the group’s vice president of policy and general counsel, said in a statement. “He’ll do whatever it takes to clear the way for Trump-aligned billionaires to swallow up stations wherever and whenever they please.”

  • Iran war renews concerns about the lasting toll of traumatic brain injuries to U.S. troops

    Iran war renews concerns about the lasting toll of traumatic brain injuries to U.S. troops

    WASHINGTON — When Joe Shearer was a Marine fighting in Iraq, a blast from an enemy mortar round knocked him down and made him vomit. He got up and kept going despite a searing headache.

    When a roadside bomb struck his Humvee convoy months later, the explosion’s shock wave swept through his body before headaches and sleeplessness set in for days.

    “As long as you got back up and could go back on patrol, that’s kind of what you did,” he said.

    Shearer, 40, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, links both events in 2005 to traumatic brain injuries, which were only recently diagnosed. He’s still plagued with symptoms ranging from dizziness and migraines to forgetting daily tasks and responsibilities to his wife and children.

    The lasting effects of traumatic brain injuries are raising fresh concerns about the toll of the Iran war on American troops who are suffering those wounds during a conflict without a clear end. Nearly 700 U.S. service members have been wounded by drone and missile attacks on bases in the Middle East and other fighting. Most have experienced traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs, and returned to duty, according to public statements from military officials.

    The Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, last month called the vast majority of injuries over a two-week period “minor concussions.”

    Doctors can’t predict who may have lasting effects from a TBI

    Concussions often are termed “mild” TBIs, and many people recover within weeks. But sometimes those with seemingly mild initial symptoms go on to have problems persisting for months or years, such as headaches, dizziness, or difficulties with memory or attention that’s sometimes called “brain fog.”

    Doctors have no way to predict who will suffer lasting problems, a vexing enough question that there’s medical debate over whether to retire the term “mild TBI.” Repeated blows are known to increase the chances of lasting problems, including a degenerative brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. It has gained attention for links to deaths in the National Football League and other sports.

    It’s imperative that people recover from a concussion before doing activities that put them at increased risk of another, said Dr. David Okonkwo, a University of Pittsburgh brain trauma specialist.

    Doctors also are still learning how explosive blasts injure the brain versus a physical blow.

    “The blast wave itself can be injurious,” said Dr. James Kelly, an emeritus professor of neurology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and chief medical scientist at the Invisible Wounds Foundation, which is focused on military brain injuries. “It’s a different cellular injury. Blast is a different thing than a blunt injury to the head.”

    Troops have been facing a new type of warfare with Iran in which drones may explode closer to their heads, as opposed to the ground-level roadside bombs and improvised explosives that were more common in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Democratic lawmakers are calling for an investigation into the care that wounded troops received following an Iranian drone strike in Kuwait that killed six U.S. soldiers early in the war. Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin pressed the military in a letter on Wednesday to release the findings of its investigation into the March 1 attack.

    “I spoke directly with Wisconsinites who sustained traumatic brain injuries from (President Donald) Trump’s war in Iran and went weeks without so much as a screening, let alone specialized care, for their injuries,” Baldwin said in a statement.

    Defense Health Agency spokesman Peter Graves said in an email that “it is policy that service members are screened for TBI.”

    Experts say the military has made strides in screening and treating TBIs, a signature injury in Afghanistan and Iraq. More than 500,000 service members were diagnosed between 2000 and 2025, with 82% of cases considered mild and not all of them related to combat. But advocates say the injuries could still be undercounted because symptoms often overlap with post-traumatic stress disorder and other conditions.

    A TBI diagnosis can emerge years later

    Neither of the two blasts Shearer experienced in Iraq produced obvious injuries, and medics prioritized Marines who were more badly hurt.

    “You don’t want to be the guy who goes to sick call or says, ‘Oh, I’m hurt,’ because you’re away from your team,” Shearer said. “There’s this culture of you don’t want to be seen as lesser or weak, so you hide injuries inherently.”

    When he came home at age 19, he denied he had PTSD and didn’t know what a TBI was. Plagued by nightmares, sleeplessness and headaches, he initially turned to drugs to self-medicate and considered suicide.

    Shearer eventually got help for PTSD, but it took years for him to consider that he suffered traumatic brain injuries. He was working for the Wounded Warrior Project and screening fellow vets for TBIs when he realized he checked many of the same boxes.

    He’s since been diagnosed and received treatment. But challenges remain, including vertigo and light sensitivity. He also forgets important conversations with his family.

    “I know that some of that stuff is stereotypical, but for me, it’s got a different ring to it,” Shearer said. “There will be no memory of the conversation happening.”

    The brain can adapt with treatments and therapies

    Memory loss is something Army veteran Frank Sonntag also experienced following a TBI from a mortar blast in Iraq in 2004.

    He was in his 50s and training reservists when he felt a blast of wind against his ear from an explosion 70 feet (21 meters) away. He didn’t know he was hurt and didn’t seek treatment for two years, ignoring intensifying headaches and brain fog.

    It got to the point where it took 30 minutes to write an email, while colleagues told him he spoke one word every 10 seconds. He considered suicide and was diagnosed only after he got lost driving home. Neurologists prescribed medication for his migraines, among other treatments.

    “Speech therapy was one of the greatest things I had,” added Sonntag, 75, of Queen Creek, Arizona. “They taught me how to practice the words I was speaking and how to put sentences together again.”

    Kelly Parker, director of independent services at the Wounded Warrior Project, said it’s hard to predict an injury’s trajectory.

    “If you’ve seen one TBI, you’ve seen one TBI,” she said.

    Screening, early treatment and support can be crucial to returning to a more normal life. Physical, speech and art therapies can lead to improvements, she said.

    “There’s still so much we don’t know about the brain, but one thing that we do know is it can heal itself,” Parker said. “We know that new neural pathways can be created, and we absolutely believe that the brain can adapt. We’ve seen it happen.”

    Army veteran Spencer Milo said some people struggle to understand why he’s still dealing with migraines, seizures and forgetfulness after so many years out of uniform.

    His first TBI occurred in Iraq in 2008, when his Humvee smashed into a wall to evade fire. His second came from the blast of a suicide bomber in Afghanistan in 2011.

    “I’ve had fellow service members that were even with me on those days, and they’re like, ‘Dude, why can’t you just kick it?’” said Milo, 41, of Parker, Colorado. “I really wish it was that simple. It’s tough because when you can’t see something, it’s hard to believe that it’s really there.”

  • At least 230 Black boys died in jail. Their families want answers — and justice.

    At least 230 Black boys died in jail. Their families want answers — and justice.

    Phyllis Hammond knew she needed to act the moment she emerged from her walk through the woods. She climbed into her car, tears streaming, and said a prayer.

    God use me, in whatever and however way possible, to bring justice.

    A week earlier, Hammond, 69, had received a letter from a genealogist with an unsettling revelation.

    Her uncle, Amos Hammond, had died in 1921 at the age of 18 at the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children, a segregated juvenile jail in Maryland with a documented history of abuse and neglect. He was among hundreds of Black boys and teens the state buried across the road from the facility in a forest in Prince George’s County.

    Hammond had never heard of an uncle named Amos. But the more she learned, the more she realized Amos was family. This spring she visited the graves, marked by crumbling cinder blocks with no names, and left resolved: “I’m going to be that voice those boys didn’t have.”

    Hammond began that work this week, when she was recognized by Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown as a voting member of the state’s newly formed Commission on the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children — an investigative body created by lawmakers earlier this year to unearth buried truths the state ignored for more than a century.

    “We are determined to be the voice and to take a role in major decision-making throughout this entire process,” Hammond said Tuesday at the first commission meeting. “We are firm and committed in our belief that no decision should be made about our children without full engagement and participation with the families.”

    Hammond articulated her priorities: to ensure the commission is independent, unflinching and centered on the wishes of the boys’ living relatives as they weigh whether to exhume the remains, identify them, and determine the children’s true manner of death.

    The commission will be chaired by Brown, the first Black attorney general in state history, and is composed of two dozen voting members and another 10 nonvoting advisory members, all with interest or expertise in forensic anthropology, archaeology, state history, juvenile justice policy and civil rights law. Members include Sen. Will Smith (D-Montgomery) and Del. Jeffrie E. Long Jr. (D-Calvert), who sponsored the commission legislation, and Prince George’s County Executive Aisha Braveboy.

    In addition to Hammond, two other living relatives will serve on the commission: Dorothy Givens, 83, representing her uncle Fred Ames Jr., and Linda F. Gorham, on behalf of her cousin Richard Saunders.

    The Washington Post first reported on the abandoned and overgrown graves a year ago, after former leaders of the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services (DJS) made their existence public. A Post investigation found that at least 230 children died at the House of Reformation between 1870 and 1939, the most comprehensive public accounting to date based on state records, newspaper archives and death certificates.

    Black Caucus lawmakers visited the site last August, and its members later championed a law signed by Gov. Wes Moore (D) that allocates $1 million for the commission’s initial budget. The African American Heritage Preservation Program awarded another $200,000 in grant funding.

    “This is the state of Maryland, all of us, finally doing what should have been done long ago,” Brown said at the meeting, explaining that the body is expected to submit a preliminary report on its work by the end of 2027 and a final report in December 2029. He told members that the House of Reformation commission may be the most significant investigative body that Maryland has created in the past decade, especially as the Trump administration works to strip recognition of the legacy of racism from the nation’s history.

    “We’re meeting at a time when many in our federal leadership are turning away from acknowledging the history that made this country what it is,” Brown said. “That makes what we’re doing here more important, not less. The state of Maryland is choosing to look clearly at a painful chapter of its own history, not to perform accountability, but to actually pursue it.”

    The year since the House of Reformation gravesite’s public rediscovery has been both revelatory and fraught, a navigation of tensions over institutional racism, state power and the people impacted by both. Those tensions were made clear at the Tuesday afternoon meeting, where the families reminded commission members that for them, this process is personal.

    “We are mourning,” said Gorham, a licensed psychologist. “I know we talked about remains and records, but just know that … we have souls that need to be tended to.”

    Running parallel to the commission’s efforts is the Forgotten Children Initiative at Georgetown University — a first-of-its-kind research effort founded by youth justice advocate and former DJS deputy secretary Marc Schindler that is working to identify similar abandoned cemeteries nationwide. He and former DJS secretary Vincent Schiraldi oversaw the state’s earliest efforts in 2024 to uncover the House of Reformation’s history, and Schindler wanted to continue the work after he left the government.

    To date, the Forgotten Children Initiative’s lead genealogist, Malissa Ruffner, has contacted 73 potential living relatives for 24 of the boys. Family members for about a dozen of the boys have responded.

    Ruffner’s previous genealogical work includes helping to identify the living descendants of the 272 enslaved people who were sold in 1838 by Georgetown’s Jesuit founders. She said that she has been able to find some family members for the House of Reformation children within a few hours and others have taken days — a process that includes sifting through decades of birth and death certificates, state records, newspaper archives, census information and obituaries.

    The families identified so far have already developed an intense bond, forged by shared grief and righteous rage. In June, they visited the abandoned cemetery in the woods to hold a funeral — the kind of dignified ceremony the boys did not receive a century ago.

    So far, the families have met privately with Brown. They were not in attendance at a May ceremony at the Cheltenham juvenile detention facility where the House of Reformation once stood. That gathering, held by current DJS leaders, state lawmakers and the governor, served as a history lesson for the broader community and ended with the unveiling of a road marker that acknowledges the institution’s segregated past.

    “Loving your country does not mean lying about its history,” Moore said that day. “Loving your country does not mean pretending like the awful and dark and bad spots did not happen. It means being able to embrace everything, flaws and all, and say that every day is an opportunity for us to be better.”

    Moore said he was “committed” to honoring the boys, including locating the grave of each one in the woods.

    That work will likely take years and a great deal more money than the $1.2 million currently allocated, the attorney general said at Tuesday’s meeting. The commission will rely on the expertise of forensic anthropologists and archaeologists who have overseen similar investigations, including Erin Kimmerle, who led a years-long excavation project at the Dozier School for Boys in Florida, a reform facility where officials buried dozens of children who died in state custody.

    Kimmerle, an advisory commission member, told the group that they should approach this process with the sensitivity of a homicide investigation.

    “For them, the past is the present,” she said of the families. “Historic justice and modern justice are interwoven.”

    Gorham emphasized that point.

    “It doesn’t matter that Richard, my cousin, died when he was 15 in 1935. I still feel it,” she said. “There’s a really deep thing that’s happening here. If you’re serving, I want you to feel it.”

    For Hammond, among the commission’s most important missions is using their power to ensure no child detained in state custody is ever treated the way her uncle Amos was. To crystalize that conviction, she read the room a poem she wrote after visiting the abandoned cemetery for the first time.

    “If these woods could talk, I wonder what they would say?” she read. “If these woods could talk, do you think they could share each of these boys’ tragic lives and deaths while entrusted in the hands of the juvenile system? If these woods could talk, could they share the pain and the scars that they endured across their fragile bodies?”

    “If these woods could talk,” she continued, “I wonder if these woods would have raised their voices loud and clear against the lawlessness of what they’d seen, heard and became a part of.”

    “If only these woods could talk,” she said, “maybe many lives could have been saved.”

  • Delco police chief sues town officials, saying her monthslong leave is racial discrimination

    Delco police chief sues town officials, saying her monthslong leave is racial discrimination

    Collingdale’s police chief had her duties of office stripped away by officials in the Delaware County borough in what her lawyer described in a federal civil rights lawsuit as a racist, sexist plot to force her out of her position.

    Shanee Mitchell, 44, has been on administrative leave since January, according to the lawsuit, filed this week in U.S. District Court. Officially, Mitchell has been placed on leave because of borough officials’ concerns over her not showing up for her scheduled 8 a.m.-to-4 p.m. shifts.

    But her attorney, Mark Schwartz, said the reasoning for her leave is bogus: He contends his client, a Black woman, is being discriminated against because of her race and gender, sidelined by Collingdale’s borough council and mayor until her contract ends in September.

    “Borough Council, the Mayor, and senior borough officials were aware of [Mitchell’s] complaints,” Schwartz wrote in the filing. “Rather than stop the interference or protect her from retaliation, borough officials, including but not limited to those named, permitted the hostile course of conduct to continue.”

    In his filing, Schwartz said that Mitchell’s contract allowed her to set flexible hours, given the expectation that, as chief, she would be attending meetings and other events outside of normal business hours.

    Mitchell’s lawsuit names Collingdale Mayor Donna Matteo-Spadea, as well as borough council president Felecia Coffee, borough council members Stephen Zane and Shannon Murphy, and borough manager Joseph G. Papaleo.

    Collingdale solicitor Deanna Williams declined to comment on the lawsuit.

    Mitchell’s leave was extended in April after borough officials told her she was the subject of a criminal investigation, but she said she was never interviewed by police and received no further details. Borough officials declined to comment on the alleged investigation for this article, and Mitchell has not been charged with any crimes.

    A former Delco police chief’s claims of racial discrimination are heading to trial in federal court

    Mitchell filed complaints about the discrimination she allegedly experienced with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission in November 2024, early in her tenure. Those reports went unanswered, Schwartz said, and Mitchell believes she was placed on leave in retaliation for them.

    Schwartz said Mitchell “inherited a police department in crisis,” modernized its technology, and improved community relations in the borough of 9,000 people that has struggled with officer shortages. In 2024, shortly before Mitchell took over, Pennsylvania State Police troopers were called in to help bolster overnight patrols.

    However, some local law enforcement officials have been critical of Mitchell’s tenure, particularly a public controversy that erupted over a part-time officer she chose to hire as he was being investigated for a violent road-rage incident.

    Mitchell was placed on administrative leave Jan. 6, the day after the defendants named in the lawsuit took control of borough council, replacing the council members who had voted to hire her.

    But the lawsuit asserts Matteo-Spadea had long wanted to terminate Mitchell, and had made offhand comments for months about how she “can’t wait until January.”

    Matteo-Spadea did not return a request for comment about the allegations in the filing.

    Matteo-Spadea, the lawsuit said, tried to suspend Mitchell on her first day for violating departmental policy. Among those violations was Mitchell’s refusal to wear a reflective vest and act as a crossing guard, something she felt was not her responsibility and was a deliberate attempt to demean her.

    In correspondence with Mitchell, obtained by The Inquirer, Matteo-Spadea defended the crossing-guard duty, saying she had Mitchell’s predecessor, Patrick Kilroy, fill in during the officer shortage. Matteo-Spadea, in issuing Mitchell a formal reprimand for having another officer serve as crossing guard instead, said that, as mayor, she has “full charge and control of the chief and the police department.”

    Matteo-Spadea also directed white, male officers not to listen to Mitchell’s orders and stymied her attempts to fill vacancies in the department’s ranks, the lawsuit said. Two officers Mitchell hired, who are Black, were fired in June during their probationary period with the department.

    The officers, Jerry Christian and Terrell Howard, both wrote in complaints to the EEOC that they believed they were being retaliated against for associating with Mitchell.

    But as Mitchell feuded with the mayor behind closed doors, she faced public scrutiny over one of the officers she hired. In January 2025, Kevon Darden, a part-time officer, was arrested by Pennsylvania State Police just days after joining the department for his alleged role in a road-rage incident.

    Darden, 30, was charged with terroristic threats, simple assault, and related crimes for pointing a gun at a dump truck driver on April 5, 2023, while driving on the Blue Route in Ridley Township, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest. His case is pending in county court.

    Mitchell defended Darden’s hiring in a statement to The Inquirer. But, privately, a top law enforcement official in the county chastised her in an email, accusing her of ignoring warnings not to hire Darden because of the pending criminal charges, according to a copy of that email obtained by The Inquirer.

    Law enforcement sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters, said the controversy over Darden only deepened concerns about Mitchell’s hiring, given the manner in which she had left her previous job.

    Before being hired by Collingdale, Mitchell served as the police chief in Selinsgrove, a central Pennsylvania borough about an hour north of Harrisburg. She resigned there after two years, amid what the Daily Item, a local newspaper, reported as concerns over her living situation: At the time, Mitchell lived in Pottstown, more than 100 miles away, and reported for her shifts only “sporadically,” according to the newspaper.

    Schwartz, Mitchell’s attorney, called those concerns in Selinsgrove overblown, unlike the treatment he said she has received in Delaware County.

  • HHS proposes cutting many federal education and health guidelines for Head Start

    HHS proposes cutting many federal education and health guidelines for Head Start

    The Trump administration unveiled a proposal Thursday to overhaul the regulations for Head Start, the early-education program that serves roughly 700,000 children across the country.

    The proposal would eliminate many existing federal rules, shifting some authority to states and local authorities; add new dietary and physical fitness requirements for students; and cap administrative overhead payments. The changes could free up $2.2 billion to serve as many as 268,000 more children, administration officials said.

    “It’s a program that works for the most vulnerable, of course, kids in our society,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told reporters. “And it’s really important we protect it.”

    Over the past few weeks, reports that the administration planned to eliminate many federal regulations have alarmed some Head Start advocates about the future of the program. In June, a report from the conservative Heritage Foundation called on the administration to deregulate the program and eventually eliminate it altogether. And an early draft of a White House budget last year reportedly proposed zeroing out the budget for Head Start, though the final version maintained funding for the program after widespread pushback.

    Also last year, the Government Accountability Office found President Donald Trump’s administration improperly withheld about $825 million from Head Start for months.

    The Trump administration, however, said the latest proposal is intended to eliminate red tape, cut administrative costs, and create more flexibility for programs.

    “We built this rule around trusting local leaders to make the decisions that are best for their local communities,” said HHS Assistant Secretary Alex Adams, who leads the Administration for Children and Families.

    Administration officials said the proposal would also strengthen dietary regulations to “provide nutrient-dense, whole foods” for children and require sites to give students at least 30 minutes of physical activity for every 3.5 hours in the classroom.

    They also said they hope to free up enough money to serve more children by eliminating other regulations and reducing the cap on administrative costs from 15% to 5%.

    “If we get this proposed rule right, we will grow the number of Head Start spots,” Adams said. Officials said the proposal would preserve requirements that programs involve families in children’s learning and recognize parents as children’s primary teachers.

    Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington), a longtime advocate for Head Start, immediately blasted the proposal to remove many federal regulations.

    “After Congress and the nation forcefully rejected Trump’s efforts to destroy Head Start, this administration now wants to quietly gut Head Start by eliminating the basic health and safety standards our kids rely on,” she said in a statement.

    Khari Garvin, who oversaw the Head Start program during the Biden administration, said he was deeply concerned by the Trump administration’s plans to eliminate many regulations, including those governing class size and teacher compensation.

    “It’s the health, safety and quality benchmarks that the federal standards bring,” Garvin said. He said the HHS proposal would “take the program backwards significantly.”

    The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement that doing away with the regulations would violate the laws governing Head Start.

    “This proposed rule is an illegal attempt to dismantle the Head Start program by removing the very standards that Congress required to be in place to ensure children receive high-quality early education and comprehensive services,” said Ming-Qi Chu, deputy director of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. “The administration cannot defy the laws that Congress wrote simply because it disagrees.”

    The administration said it plans to formally publish the proposal in the Federal Register on Friday, kicking off a 60-day public comment period. Administration officials would then need to review the comments and issue a final rule, a process that can take months. Any changes could be delayed even further if the ACLU or another organization challenges the move in court.

    “This will take a lot of time to implement,” said Tommy Sheridan, deputy director of the National Head Start Association, a nonprofit that advocates for Head Start.

    The Head Start program was started more than 60 years ago as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. Local sites typically provide free early education, child care, health screenings, and other services for children up to 5 years old from low-income families. Though it has an educational component, Head Start is overseen by HHS, not the Education Department.

    Research on the program has found mixed results. A federal study of the modern Head Start program, released in 2010, found most of the benefits faded by the end of first grade. But another study in 2022 found the children of former Head Start participants saw meaningful increases in wages and graduation rates as adults, suggesting the program may have a positive impact across generations.

    Some conservatives have long sought to eliminate the program, saying it hasn’t produced enough tangible results to justify the annual $12 billion cost.

    “While the program should sunset, it is reasonable at this point to deregulate the program and provide more autonomy to local operators,” said ​​​​Jonathan Butcher, acting director for the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative group behind Project 2025, the policy blueprint that called for the government to “eliminate the Head Start program.”

    Trump administration officials also noted that Head Start has gradually shrunk over the years, including a reduction of roughly 100,000 slots for children during the Biden administration.

    Sheridan of the National Head Start Association said many sites have been forced to shrink over time because they haven’t received enough money to keep up with inflation. Garvin, the former director of the Office of Head Start, also noted that the Biden administration allowed some Head Start programs to add more infants and very young children, who require smaller class sizes. And some programs needed to spend more on compensation to help attract and retain instructors.

    Both the National Head Start Association and the First Five Years Fund, an advocacy group for early-childhood education, said they plan to review the Trump administration’s proposal closely and submit formal comments.

  • Brian Fitzpatrick leads letter urging Trump’s DHS secretary to extend protected status for Ukrainians

    Brian Fitzpatrick leads letter urging Trump’s DHS secretary to extend protected status for Ukrainians

    U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R., Bucks) led a bipartisan group of lawmakers in a letter asking Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to extend and expand temporary protected status (TPS) for Ukraine ahead of its expiration this fall.

    The government status allows immigrants to live and work in the United States if conditions are unsafe in their home countries. For Ukraine, which has been in a war waged by Russia for nearly five years, TPS is set to expire on Oct. 19.

    “More than 250,000 Ukrainians have sought safety in the United States after fleeing Russia’s brutal full-scale invasion,” lawmakers wrote in the letter, dated Aug. 4. “These individuals have become valued members of our communities, contributing to our economy, workforce, and tax base while complying with U.S. laws and rebuilding their lives in temporary safety.”

    U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle (D., Philadelphia) was also among the 27 lawmakers to sign onto the letter, but only three other Republicans joined Fitzpatrick’s effort.

    President Donald Trump’s administration let TPS expire for Haiti and Syria late last month and has promised to deport individuals who lose their legal status, and Ukrainians who fled the war and live and work in the United States under TPS could face a similar fate this fall if the designation expires.

    Ukraine has become a defining issue for Fitzpatrick, who represents all of Bucks County, which is home to more than 12,000 people from Ukraine or of Ukrainian heritage. And it has become one of the areas where the moderate, who is running for reelection in the crucial Pennsylvania swing district against Democratic challenger Bob Harvie, has frequently strayed from Trump.

    In a statement to The Inquirer on Thursday, Casey-Lee Waldron, a spokesperson for Fitzpatrick — who is a cochair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus and was stationed in the country as an FBI agent in 2015 — said the lawmaker “urges the Secretary to act without delay.”

    “Putin’s brutal unprovoked war continues to destroy communities, endanger innocent lives, and make any safe return impossible for Ukrainian families,” Waldron said.

    On Haiti, Syria, and next month’s expiration for El Salvador, Fitzpatrick’s position appears to be more nuanced.

    Waldron said that Fitzpatrick believes “upholding the rule of law and acting with compassion are not competing obligations,” and that temporary protected status for the three countries should be independently evaluated.

    “And where the standard established by Congress continues to be met and a safe return remains impossible, those protections should remain in place,” Waldron said.

    Last year, the Bucks County Republican, without naming the president, slammed Trump’s criticism of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Fitzpatrick also visited the country and met with Zelensky and soldiers on the front lines, and signed a missile to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    His support for Ukraine continued this week with the letter to Mullin, which argues that Ukraine continues to meet the statutory benchmarks for qualifying for a TPS designation. In addition to extending the Oct. 19 deadline, lawmakers are also calling on the DHS secretary to redesignate temporary protected status for Ukraine, meaning it would reset the country’s eligibility cutoff date, allowing more immigrants to apply for the protection.

    “Without both an extension and redesignation, many Ukrainians lawfully residing in the United States could be forced to return to a country where their lives and safety remain at serious risk,” lawmakers wrote.

    Iryna Mazur, an immigration attorney and honorary consul of Ukraine in Philadelphia, said it would be economically beneficial to the U.S. to extend and expand TPS for Ukrainians and emphasized the importance of the humanitarian efforts at the core of the law.

    She said that maintaining a united front among political parties on support for Ukraine is key.

    “I don’t think there would be anybody in their good mind with a good sense of justice in their heads who would say it’s a wrong thing to do right now under the circumstances,” Mazur said.

    “This is a very active phase of war, and it just would be inhumane not to extend this particular temporary measure.”

    Staff writer Jeff Gammage contributed to this article.

  • Europe maintains World Cup boycott threat after Gianni Infantino’s FIFA crisis meeting

    Europe maintains World Cup boycott threat after Gianni Infantino’s FIFA crisis meeting

    European soccer’s governing body has retained its threat to boycott FIFA competitions despite FIFA apologizing for its failed plan to sell stakes in the World Cup.

    UEFA on Thursday reiterated that it had lost confidence in FIFA president Gianni Infantino and said conditions to withdraw its boycott threat had not been met.

    “UEFA’s associations were very clear about the conditions attached to the non participation in FIFA competitions,” it said in a statement. ”First, the proposals to sell off the major competitions had to be withdrawn and secondly, assurances have to be made that such attempts to disfigure the game in this way will never be made again.

    “These conditions have not been met. In addition, UEFA made it abundantly clear in its statement on Saturday that it has lost confidence in Gianni Infantino’s presidency. That position holds.”

    FIFA president Gianni Infantino (center) with secretary general Mattias Grafstrom (left) and Moroccan soccer federation president Fouzi at a women’s Africa Cup of Nations game in Morocco on Wednesday.STR

    It was another bruising day for Infantino, with global soccer players union FIFPRO accusing him of “a profound abuse of presidential power.”

    The English Football Association has also withdrawn its support for Infantino’s reelection.

    Even Amnesty International said the “current crisis spotlights the need for governance reforms.”

    U.S. Soccer still isn’t saying much about the ongoing Gianni Infantino FIFA scandal

    FIFA and Infantino tried to present a united front following a high-level summit in Morocco on Wednesday when it announced the president had the full support of top staff in attendance.

    The world governing body also apologized for errors made over its controversial plan to sell profits in the World Cup through a commercial subsidiary and committed to “ensure they do not happen again.”

    FIFA said it hoped its meeting would “help restore confidence” in the organization after the turbulence created by Infantino’s now abandoned project, which provoked widespread condemnation.

    UEFA voted to abandon FIFA competitions if it went ahead. And even after Infantino’s hasty climbdown, Europe’s governing body said it had lost confidence in FIFA’s leadership — paving the way for a challenge to his presidency.

    In its defiant statement, UEFA made it clear its position still held.

    “Yesterday’s announcement that some people employed by the FIFA president (and whose careers depend on his favor) agree with him changes nothing,” it said.

    The next FIFA event on the calendar is the under-20 women’s World Cup from Sept. 5-27 in Poland.

    Inquirer staff writer Jonathan Tannenwald contributed to this article.