Nothing so perfectly demonstrates Donald Trump’s reckless approach to waging war on Iran than his rebuff of Ukraine’s offer to share drone technology that could save U.S. military lives.
Clearly, the president had little idea what he was getting into when he joined Israel in bombing Iran and killing its top leadership. This was a war of choice — the ugly Iranian regime posed no immediate threat to the U.S. — but Trump thought the effort would be easy.
As his tsunami of Truth Social verbiage and endless stream of comments to reporters show, he expected a quick victory — either a popular uprising leading to regime change, or a Venezuela-type win in which the ouster of a dictator (or ayatollah) let him dominate the country and its oil.
How any president could be so willfully blind is a question for psychiatrists, but Tehran ain’t Caracas. POTUS failed to foresee the obvious: that Iran would likely retaliate by closing the Strait of Hormuz to oil exports from the Persian Gulf for the very first time.
Voila! U.S. gas is at over $4 a gallon, and the entire world economy is threatened if the strait isn’t reopened. Now, Trump faces only bad options in a war he clearly doesn’t understand.
Despite his claims, indirect U.S. contacts with Tehran via Pakistan are likely going nowhere since the president is demanding total surrender, and Israel keeps wiping out potential Iranian negotiators.
President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Dover Air Force Base, Del., on March 18 to attend the casualty return for the six crew members of an Air Force refueling aircraft who died when their plane crashed in western Iraq while supporting operations against Iran.Julia Demaree Nikhinson
Most scary, as POTUS keeps dispatching more troops to the Mideast, he seems oblivious to the nature of the war in which he has enmeshed our conventional forces. For the first time, the United States is facing the new style of hybrid warfare that Ukraine has been waging for four years against Russia.
Neither the White House nor the Pentagon is ready. Yet, Trump keeps rejecting President Volodymyr Zelensky’s offers of vital help.
The Iran war has exposed how unprepared the United States still is for modern conflicts in which large numbers of inexpensive unmanned drones and smaller, cheaper missiles can be used asymmetrically against pricey U.S. conventional weapons.
Over the past four weeks, Gulf allies and U.S. forces have been downing Iranian Shaheds, drones that cost $20,000 to $50,000, with Patriot interceptors and other multimillion-dollar systems meant for targeting ballistic or cruise missiles.
The U.S.-made Patriots are in increasingly short supply, as the demand for them mounts in Europe, including Ukraine, and Asia — as well as among Gulf allies whose infrastructure is now being attacked by Tehran.
In the first four days of the Iran war, according to figures published by Philadelphia’s Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Gulf allies used up 618 Patriot PAC3 missiles, the equivalent of a whole year’s production by Lockheed Martin.
In those first four days, the Pentagon likely fired about $5.7 billion worth of interceptors to shoot down Iranian ballistic missiles — and drones.
President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky shake hands at the start of a joint news conference following a meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in December.Alex Brandon
It is infuriating, then, that Trump keeps rejecting help from the country that knows better than any other how to counter drone attacks, especially Iranian Shaheds.
It was Iran that first sent Russia the Shahed drones Moscow has used relentlessly to attack Ukrainian soldiers and cities. Vladimir Putin, in turn, has upgraded those drones and is transferring drone technology and satellite intelligence to Tehran to help target U.S. soldiers in the region. (Yet, Trump still insists on giving Russia a pass.)
Zelensky offered nearly a year ago to share Ukraine’s experience and technology, and to send drones and interceptors that have been tested and constantly updated on Ukraine’s front lines. In return, he requested U.S. air defense missiles that Europe would pay for.
“Today, Ukraine has more experience than anywhere in the world to defend against drones,” I heard the Ukrainian president tell European leaders at the Munich Security Conference in February. “Iranian Shaheds are killing our people. Our world of drones is your world of drones. Our ability to stop this sabotage is yours.”
But POTUS keeps turning the Ukrainian leader away.
Sneering at Kyiv’s offer, Trump insisted in March that the U.S. military didn’t need Ukrainian expertise. “No, we don’t need their help. We know more about drones than anybody,” the president boasted in a Fox News interview. That simply isn’t true.
If U.S. Marines and soldiers try to take Iran’s key oil depot on Kharg Island, or attempt an extremely risky effort to unearth buried stores of enriched uranium at Isfahan, they will provide rich targets for drone warfare. The island is only around 21 miles from the Iranian mainland, within easy reach of waves of Shaheds.
Plumes of smoke and fire rise after debris from an intercepted Iranian drone struck an oil facility, according to authorities, in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, March 14.Altaf Qadri
Landing craft and vehicles make easy targets. And even though the U.S. has sunk Iran’s navy, its small boats can launch drones at American ships. Recall that Ukraine drove Russia’s Black Sea fleet out of its waters and back to home ports using unmanned sea drones, some of which could fire missiles.
Iranian drones are now also targeting the infrastructure of Arab allies and U.S. bases in those countries. More than two dozen U.S. troops were injured by an Iranian missile and drone strikes at the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia on March 24, proving their reach. And the six U.S. Army Reserve soldiers who were killed in Kuwait on March 1 were victims of a drone attack.
That is why those Gulf states, unlike Trump, have been eagerly courting help from Ukrainian drone experts. In mid-March, according to Zelensky, 201 drone defense specialists had been deployed to Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, where the Ukrainians are setting up anti-Shahed defenses for a U.S. military base.
It gives me chills to think of Trump sending U.S. troops to launch a ground war in Iran when he is so blinkered about his goals or the necessary means to achieve them. He enjoys using force, but wants easy wins, and is clearly uneasy with complex challenges. He is hinting he may quit this war without Iran regime change, or removing enriched uranium, or reopening the Strait of Hormuz, leaving the whole region in chaos and the global economy in peril as energy prices continue to soar.
Honestly, I don’t know which would be worse: sending ground troops to Kharg or to the Iranian mainland, with a high likelihood of disaster and/or a quagmire, or the president pulling a TACO (Trump always chickens out) and leaving ill-equipped Arab and European allies to cope with a global economic mess.
I do know that it is criminal to reject the help of Ukrainians who stand ready to aid U.S. troops against the asymmetrical warfare that a weakened Iran can still muster. If more U.S. troops die from Iranian drone strikes that Kyiv could have helped counter, then their blood will be on Trump’s hands.
KINMEN, Taiwan — From this tiny outer island of Taiwan, which lies less than two miles from the Chinese mainland, one can view the high-rise towers of the Chinese port city of Xiamen.
Looking out over an extensive beach and through the mist at China, I realize Xiamen could probably be reached from where I stand by a good swimmer. From this vantage point, it’s easy to imagine Chinese leader Xi Jinping pursuing his obsession to “reunify” with the self-governing island democracy of Taiwan — whether by so-called peaceful means, by blockade of the Taiwan Strait, or using more direct force.
I traveled to Taiwan because President Donald Trump was supposed to meet Xi in Beijing this week. POTUS had previouslysignaled he might weaken long-standing U.S. support for Taiwan out of his desire to cozy up to the Chinese leader and sign an advantageous trade deal. Moreover, the White House has frozen a deal Trump had already endorsed for Taiwan to purchase around $11 billion to $13billion worth of U.S. defensive weapons, so as not to upset Xi before the visit.
But Trump’s poorly planned war on Iran (he apparently never considered how Tehran would retaliate) has caused a postponement of the long-awaited trip until mid-May. As the erratic POTUS sinks into a potential Iran quagmire, lacking any cohesive strategy to thwart Tehran’s partial closure of the Strait of Hormuz, he is even less likely to focus strategically on the Taiwan issue.
Yet, any potential Chinese blockade of the Taiwan Strait in the next few years could present an equal or even greater security threat to the United States than Iran’s blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s oil trade flows.
To understand why, it helps to know a bit about Kinmen’s history.
President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands before their meeting at Gimhae International Airport in Busan, South Korea, in October.Mark Schiefelbein
Until 1993, Kinmen was off-limits to visitors because it was a closed military zone, and locals lived under martial law from 1956 to 1992. Most of the 120,000 Taiwanese troops have been withdrawn, although a small garrison remains.
Yet, an endless row of rusty anti-landing spikes along the beach line stand as a reminder of the 1949 civil war Battle of Guningtou between the Communist People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists, who were defeated on the mainland and had retreated to Taiwan. With U.S. backing, the Nationalists set up the Republic of China (ROC) government on Taiwan’s main island, roughly 110 miles from Kinmen, and held off the PLA.
Those Americans who are old enough may recall the 1958 battle of Quemoy, as Kinmen was formerly known. During that battle, massive PLA shelling along with a Chinese blockade of the Taiwan Strait tested U.S. support for the ROC government. But President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent ships to break the blockade and repel the missiles. A local war museum displays huge photos of U.S. troops arriving on Kinmen.
Since the U.S. formally recognized the Beijing government in 1979, and cut diplomatic ties with Taipei, Taiwan has existed in a diplomatic grey zone. China treats it as a renegade province and only a handful of countries recognize it as an independent country.
But the U.S. insists that differences between Beijing and Taipei be settled peacefully, and is committed to providing Taiwan with defensive weapons. Moreover, U.S.-Taiwan relations are close: few Americans realize that Taiwan is America’s fourth largest trading partner, due to its technological prowess.
As for Kinmen, these days China tempts its youth with the glitzy shopping malls of Xiamen, reachable by a 30-minute ferry ride, while a massive new international airport, built on a man-made island, cuts the sea distance between China and Kinmen to roughly one mile.
Kinmen has become a tourist destination, with its beaches, war museums, and preservation of historic Qing dynasty homes. Mainland Chinese visitors pour into Kinmen, and the Beijing government heavily promotes the purported advantages of “reunification” to the Kinmen public — including jobs and entertainment sites — as part of its effort to win Taiwan citizens to its side.
Taiwanese flags in Kinmen, Taiwan, in 2024.I-Hwa Cheng
So it’s not surprising that the Taiwanese government has blocked construction of a bridge that would connect the airport directly to Kinmen, presumably to prevent both the escalation of propaganda and the security threat of a direct link.
“Kinmen is at the front line of geopolitical conflict,” said youthful local Councilor Tung Sen-pao, as he greeted visitors in a curio shop. “We are a small lens through which you can view a much larger conflict between the U.S. and China and Taiwan and China.” As he spoke, the sound of military target practice reverberated outside.
Indeed, in recent months, China has been conducting the largest-ever live military fire drills all around Taiwan, and simulating a total blockade of its largest and smaller islands. An aggressive Xi refuses to rule out using force for “reunification.” Locals speculate what he might do by 2027, when he has ordered the PLA to be ready to invade (without making a commitment to do so).
This month, the U.S. intelligence community’s 2026 Annual Threat Assessment report determined that China does not plan to invade Taiwan in 2027 (although the report is published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, whose gutting of the intel community raises the question of whether its reports can be trusted).
That trust factor becomes critical, as does American preparedness to respond if Xi does try to limit traffic or impose a full blockade of the Taiwan Strait, given its centrality to international trade.
Taiwanese Councilor Tung Sen-pao.Courtesy of Mark F. Nelson
An estimated 20% of global maritime trade passes through the Taiwan Strait, and it is the main maritime route for technology and consumer goods from South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan to U.S. consumers.
The United States has no treaty commitment to defend Taiwan, only a strategic necessity to prevent its forcible seizure by China. Little Taiwan, with 23 million people, produces 90% of the world’s most sophisticated semiconductor chips. If cut off, it could be disastrous for U.S. civilian and military needs.
Moreover, if Taiwan falls, the security of U.S. allies in Seoul, Tokyo, and Manila, with whom America does have military commitments, would be at deep risk.
Equally troubling, Trump’s Mideast war has drained missile interceptor stockpiles, including Patriot missile batteries and other weapons that are vital to dissuade Xi from taking rash steps. It is hard to believe a president who has acted so fecklessly on Iran strategy has any adequate plan for handling a meeting with China’s leader, except possibly to cave on supporting Taiwan.
Meantime, Councilor Tung admits that Kinmen will have little say over its future. “We are a tiny island,” he said with a wry smile. “There is now no way for us to counter an attack if China tries to invade Kinmen.”
However, he also believes “a direct attack on Taiwan in a conflict is more likely than targeting offshore islands such as Kinmen.”
The 50,000 or so permanent residents of Kinmen just hope the status quo can endure for a few more years.
Dawn Pierce felt heartbroken last spring when she learned that Crozer-Chester Medical Center was closing.
The hospital had long been a lifeline in a city with limited healthcare services. Many Chester residents, like Pierce, were unsure where to turn for care when the hospital’s for-profit owner, California-based Prospect Medical Holdings, declared bankruptcy and shut down Crozer and Taylor Hospital in Ridley Park last spring.
“I don’t think of myself as one that will sit around and watch things happen, but I felt hopeless,” Pierce said.
Nearly a year later, Pierce and other residents say the community was left with major healthcare gaps: There are no primary care doctors or pediatricians in town. Locals who received routine care at the hospital had to switch to doctors outside the city, dealing with long drives or rides on public transportation. Some are going without care.
And many worry about whether they can make it to another hospital in time during a medical emergency.
Janice Cimabue, left, and Jamie Blair, center, with Put People First PA, after a news conference outside of the recently closed Crozer Medical Center in Delco, in Philadelphia, May 15, 2025. Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
These concerns have emerged through grassroots canvassing by One Pennsylvania, which shared its findings at a news conference this month. In recent months in Chester, organizers have knocked on 4,300 doors to gauge residents’ thoughts on Crozer’s closure and encourage them to advocate for better healthcare options in the city.
The membership group focuses on issues including housing rights and environmental justice. Originally founded as part of a 2011 Pittsburgh campaign by the labor union SEIU, it became an independent organization in 2015 and expanded into the Philadelphia area in 2016.
Pierce, who heads its Chester chapter, counts herself relatively lucky: While she saw specialists at Crozer, her primary care physician was at a different health system. But her brother and his significant other spent most of last year looking for a new doctor after Crozer closed.
“I do think they finally found someone, but at this point those visits are not near Chester. They’re 20 to 30-plus minutes away,” Pierce said.
Residents told One Pennsylvania organizers they felt relief that Chester officials did find a solution for EMS services lost in the closure. The city contracted with VSMC, an ambulance company, for higher-level care on the go, including blood transfusions.
“The restoration of EMS services and ambulance for our city — this matters,” Pierce said at the event held outside a downtown church on a recent Saturday. “However, EMS is a bridge. It’s not the final destination.”
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Chester Mayor Stefan Roots told residents at the news conference that he met recently with representatives from the Crozer property’s new owner, for-profit Chariot Equities, which says it wants to restore medical services to the campus.
Roots said he couldn’t provide many details about a plan for the 64-acre campus that straddles Chester and Upland Township in Delaware County, which Chariot purchased last month for $10 million. Chariot said at the time it planned to operate a “right-sized” hospital and emergency department at the facility.
The new ownership comes after government-supported efforts failed to convince other local health systems last year to form a new nonprofit to run Crozer-Chester and other Crozer Health facilities.
Chester Mayor Stefan Roots told city residents that he met recently with representatives from the Crozer property’s new owner, for-profit Chariot Equities, which says it wants to restore medical services to the campus. Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
Roots said the new owner has impressive plans, but it could take years to bring back medical services, if successful. “It’s going to take some time, it’s going to take some money, and all we can do right here is to readjust,” he said.
Delaware County Council voted Wednesday to end a disaster declaration over lost EMS services in the wake of Crozer’s closure, since communities left without services, like Chester, had been able to contract with other EMS providers, WHYY reported.
Chester resident Andrea Robinson say she’s still feeling the impact of the lost medical services.
Robinson had to find new doctors after the closure, and a family member is now traveling farther to receive care for a mental health condition once treated at Crozer. And while other area hospitals are taking patients from Chester, the influx of new patients has at times led to long wait times elsewhere.
“We are truly in need of medical services now,” she said.
Philadelphia, Bucks, Delaware, and eastern Montgomery Counties, and all of New Jersey and Delaware, are currently under blizzard warnings through 6 p.m. Monday. That’s prompted by forecast wind gusts of up to 45 mph, combined with the heavy snow. The western suburbs are covered by a winter storm warming, with slightly lower wind speeds forecast.
The storm is expected to begin as rain before shifting to snow by midday Sunday. It’s forecast to strengthen overnight, possibly at a rate of more than 2 inches an hour, which would make driving dangerous and nearly impossible.
The last time the city experienced more than two feet of snow was 2010, when nearly 29 inches fell in early February 2010. Over a five-day period, the city was buried under 44 inches of snow, which thankfully isn’t expected this time due to a warm-up in the middle of next week.
This time around, the Jersey Shore is expected to be hit hardest, with snowfall totals in and around Toms River forecast to reach as high as 30 inches.
The National Weather Service puts out forecasts for every few square miles of land in the United States four times a day through a system called the National Digital Forecast Database.
The maps below display that data. Use it to find how much snow is expected anywhere in the eastern United States. It will show the most recent forecast over the next few days.
The recent state Supreme Court ruling that a receiver can’t unilaterally sell the Chester Water Authority to a for-profit company was a big win for its customers. But it complicated a plan to use the sale to bail out the city of Chester.
While the court ruling is the final word on the sale, there is more to be done to safeguard utility customers across the commonwealth and help the residents of Chester.
The best way to protect all utility customers in Pennsylvania would be for the General Assembly to repeal Act 12. The misguided legislation, spearheaded by lobbyists, opened the door in 2016 for the sale of municipal water and sewer systems.
The law was supposed to help distressed utility systems. Instead, for-profit companies have largely purchased well-run systems and massively and routinely increased the rates that customers pay.
Since Aqua Pennsylvania purchased the sewer system in New Garden Township in Chester County in 2020, for example, residents have seen their rates increase 200%, according to a consumer group fighting the sales. Other cities and towns have seen their bills go up by 100% or more.
In short, Act 12 has failed to accomplish what it was allegedly designed to do.
To his credit, State Sen. John Kane, a Democrat who represents parts of Chester and Delaware Counties, has proposed repealing Act 12, but few lawmakers in Harrisburg are brave enough to stand up to the influential for-profit water companies.
Short of a repeal, lawmakers must reform Act 12. At the very least, the law should be amended to require that the sale of any public utility be put to a vote. The residents who pay for the utility should decide whether to sell it, not the local politicians. If residents approve a sale, the utility should be put out to a public bid and not negotiated in private.
Such reforms, while not perfect, would give residents some protection from local elected officials selling off public utilities for short-term gains without their input.
The Chester City Council voted in 2021 to sell the Chester Water Authority to Aqua Pennsylvania for $410 million. In January, the state Supreme Court ruled the sale could not go through.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer
The court was right to rule that the city of Chester could not sell the water authority. After all, the authority serves roughly 200,000 people in more than 30 municipalities across Chester and Delaware Counties.
It is understandable that the city wanted to sell the water authority. The City of Chester, which has about 34,000 residents, filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy in 2022.
Aqua offered to buy the water authority in 2017 for $320 million. Two years later, the for-profit company increased its offer to $410 million.
The board that oversees the water authority unanimously rejected the offer, but the city council in Chester viewed the sale as a way out of its financial problems.
But any short-term gain for the city would likely have resulted in a sharp increase in water bills for customers. This would have put more financial stress on residents in Chester, which has a poverty rate of 30%, making it one of the poorest municipalities in the state.
Residents in Chester and Delaware Counties would have also seen steep increases in their water bills. The water authority is already well run, so there is little to be gained by a sale.
However, the court’s ruling leaves the city of Chester in a bind. There is a vehicle in place to help Chester. Act 47, known as the Municipalities Financial Recovery Act, supplies funding to help municipalities in financial distress.
The city of Harrisburg, the city of Chester, and the borough of Newville are already part of the Act 47 program. State lawmakers should increase funding for Act 47 to help the commonwealth’s distressed municipalities.
That is the best solution to a thorny problem. It also avoids the sale of public utilities that will only result in bigger bills coming due for ratepayers.
Just ask the residents in New Garden and other towns whose local elected officials sold them out to for-profit companies.
A far-reaching winter storm blanketed the Mid-Atlantic in an icy brew of snow and sleet Sunday, with preliminary totals exceeding two feet in parts of Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia International Airport received its biggest snow of the season, and in 10 years, with 9.3 inches of snow and ice recorded by 12 a.m., after precipitation ended, according to the National Weather Service.
Philadelphia ranked near the middle of the pack of regional totals. A survey of five regional National Weather Service offices showed PHL’s total ranked 228th of 768 storm total reports made by Monday morning.
The Philadelphia metropolitan region generally received between six and 12 inches of snow by Sunday evening, according to National Weather Service reports.
Among the highest totals outside of the city:
East Nantmeal- 12.8 inches
Malvern- 12.5 inches
East Rockhill – 12.3
Skippack – 12.2 inches
Gardenville – 12.0 inches
Farther north, as much as 24 inches was reported in Laurel Summit in Somerset County, Pa. Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C., reported 7.8 inches of snow and ice as of the morning. New York City’s Central Park piled up 11.4 inches.
Use the map and chart below to find preliminary snow totals in your area. Hover over dots on the map to reveal more information, or search for Philadelphia-area totals below.
Philadelphia is expected to see its most significant winter storm in years this weekend, with nearly a foot of snow and ice expected from a formidable low-pressure system sweeping across the eastern United States.
Official National Weather Service forecasts say six to 18 inches of snow is possible across most of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia as the storm pushes through the region Saturday night to early Monday morning. More than 21 states are expected to experience at least moderate impacts from the storm, the weather service said.
Forecasters said that mixing with sleet and freezing rain could hold down overall snow totals across Philadelphia and South Jersey, but the storm is likely to hinder if not halt most travel on Sunday, regardless.
The National Weather Service puts out forecasts for every few square miles of land in the United States four times a day through a system called the National Digital Forecast Database.
The maps below display that data. Use it to find how much snow is expected anywhere in the eastern United States. It will show the most recent forecast for the next three days.
A considerable amount of freezing rain and sleet may also fall during the storm, leading to icing concerns. The map below displays the forecast for ice accumulation, or accretion, over the next three days.
The new owner of the defunct Crozer-Chester Medical Center wants to restore hospital and emergency services to the 64-acre campus that straddles Chester and Upland Township in Delaware County.
Newly formed Chariot Equities completed the $10 million purchase Wednesday. The for-profit entity said it expected within six months to have an agreement with a health system that would operate a “right-sized” hospital and emergency department at the facility that had been the county’s largest provider of those services before closing last year.
The idea is then to open the first phase within two years, Chariot said in a statement.
Chariot did not say how much it would spend on refurbishing Crozer-Chester, which had suffered from years of neglect under its two previous owners.
Chariot’s partner at Crozer-Chester is Allaire Health Services, a Jackson, N.J.-based for-profit operator of nursing homes.
The partners said they are in talks with regional and national nonprofit health systems regarding an operating partnership, but provided no details. The amount of money needed for the project would likely depend on what prospective tenants would want to do at the property.
“Our belief in Delaware County’s future, and the community’s need for sustainable healthcare access, made this an effort worth committing to well before the finish line,” said Yoel Polack, Chariot’s founder and principal.
Little is known about the new owners. Polack worked in healthcare real estate in the New York City area before setting his sights on redeveloping Crozer-Chester.
Federal records list Allaire’s CEO Benjamin Kurland as an owner of 20 nursing homes, including three in the Philadelphia area. Chariot’s statement said Allaire owns a total of 29 facilities in five states.
Main Line Health has been involved in discussions about reopening emergency services at three former Crozer hospitals — Crozer-Chester Medical Center, Springfield Hospital, and Taylor Hospital — at the request of state lawmakers and the property owners, Ed Jimenez, CEO of Main Line Health, said Wednesday at a Riddle Hospital event.
Jimenez said he would “entertain the concept” of restoring emergency services at one of the hospitals as part of a partnership with other health systems, but only if it can be done on a break-even basis.
All three of the former hospital buildings visited by Main Line officials are in poor condition and were stripped of medical equipment after the closures. Main Line’s experts estimated it would cost between $15 million and $20 million just to make the emergency department at Taylor functional, Jimenez said.
ChristianaCare, Delaware’s largest health system, considered acquiring Crozer in 2022. Instead, it took a different path to expansion in Southeastern Pennsylvania. It is planning to open two micro-hospitals in Delaware County. The nonprofit system also took over five former Crozer outpatient locations. Its credit rating was recently downgraded by one notch because of lower profitability.
The importance of Crozer-Chester
Crozer-Chester closed in early May during the bankruptcy of owner Prospect Medical Holdings Inc., a for-profit company based in California, and after the failure of government-supported efforts to form a new nonprofit owner for Crozer-Chester and other Crozer Health facilities.
Crozer-Chester was particularly important as a safety-net provider for a low-income area of Delaware County that has few other nearby options. The Crozer system, which had four hospitals, was the county’s largest health system and largest employer for many years.
Two local Democratic officials, State Rep. Leanne Krueger and Delaware County Council member Monica Taylor, said they were encouraged by the approach being taken by Chariot and Allaire.
At Taylor Hospital, the other Crozer hospital that closed last year, new owners are also looking for healthcare tenants. Local investors bought the Ridley Park facility for $1 million. It is less than four miles from Crozer-Chester.
The same group agreed last week to pay $1 million for Springfield Hospital, another facility that had previously shut down under Prospect ownership.
John Linehan and Kobe Bryant used to talk. A lot. This would not have been unusual for other AAU teammates, but these two were fierce high school rivals.
Linehan was a scrappy point guard for Chester. Bryant was a relentless shooting guard for Lower Merion. Both were competitive, almost to a fault, and in the days leading up to big games, they’d get chippy.
The week before the 1996 PIAA Class AAAA District 1 title game, for example, the players talked every day on bulky landline phones, with Bryant often calling Linehan at his home in Chester.
“I just said, ‘You know, John, I haven’t won a championship yet, and you have,’” Bryant told The Inquirer in 1996.
Linehan knew what his friend was doing. The future NBA star did the same thing a few weeks later, on March 19, a day before the teams met again in the state semifinal.
“He was trying to get me to trash talk,” Linehan said. “I think he needed a little edge. I didn’t want to give him too much. I was like, ‘Man, you crazy.’”
The late Kobe Bryant, a former Lower Merion basketball star, announcing he will go directly into the NBA draft out of high school.ALEJANDRO A. ALVAREZ / Staff Photographer
Lower Merion wasn’t a basketball school when Bryant arrived in the fallof 1992. It paled in comparison to the local powerhouses like Simon Gratz, Coatesville, and Chester.
But Bryant changed that. Even in his freshman year, a season in which the Aces went 4-20, he brought a new standard, working out before class and introducing a level of toughness that was foreign to his teammates.
Bythe mid-1990s, Lower Merion was among the best high school teams in the Philadelphia area. Its players were more confident, celebrating after big shots, and talking loud on the court.
The Aces didn’t play as many games against Coatesville, a rising power led by Rip Hamilton. They couldn’t consistently measure themselves against Gratz, which didn’t participate in the PIAA playoffs untilthe 2004-05 season.
But they could against Chester. And so, a decades-long rivalry was born.
From 1996 through the mid-2010s, Chester and Lower Merion put on some of the greatest high school basketball games in the area. They’d often sell out venues like the Palestra and Villanova’s Pavilion. Some fans would even scalp tickets.
Their communities were almost diametrically opposed. Chester was predominantly Black; Lower Merion was predominantly white. Chester was plaguedby poverty; Lower Merion was considered affluent.
Chester, with its Biddy League, had a legacy of basketball greatness, and a steady pipeline of talent. Lower Merion had nothing comparable. But these differences melted away on the court.
And while the rivalry is not what it once was, it lives on today.
“The pride and the intensity and the history will never fade,” said Lower Merion coach Gregg Downer. “I mean, if we played them tomorrow night, that would be an intense game.”
The Bryant-Linehan era
When Downer was named head coach in 1990, he already was well-aware of Chester’s tradition. He’d played youth basketball growing up in Media and had heard about the stars who’d come out of the Biddy League.
It was obvious that his team would have to go through the Clippers to win any sort of accolade. But it wasn’t until Bryant’s arrival that Downer’s aspirations became a real possibility.
The shooting guard, who was the son of former 76er Joe “Jelly Bean” Bryant, was mature for his age. He’d demand more, mentally and physically, of older teammates. Doug Young, a former Lower Merion forward, remembered seeing Bryant leaving the locker room at 7 o’clock one September morning in 1993.
He’d been at the high school gym since 5 a.m., working out by himself. To the Lower Merion basketball team, this was a “crazy” concept, so Young and his cohorts decided to join him.
In the District 1 championship game against Chester, Kobe Bryant goes to the hoop over the Clippers’ John Linehan.Jay Gorodetzer / Staff Photographer
They arrived the next day at 5:06 a.m. The players knocked on the door. Bryant didn’t answer.
“He wouldn’t open it,” said Young, who graduated in 1995. “You’re either there or you’re not. We were six minutes late.”
His teammates waited outside until 6:30 a.m., when the school opened. They made sure to show up before 5 a.m. from that day on.
Downer was wired the same way. The coach — and his NBA-bound pupil — would push the team in practice. Losses were particularly tough. The players would go through endless sprints and rebounding drills that sent them running to the trash can.
It wasn’t fun. But over time, the method created a newfound tenacity.
“No one walked into high school saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I want to win a state championship,’” Young said. “But [Kobe] knew what that was. He was like, ‘I don’t know any other way. If we’re not going to win a championship, what the heck are we playing for?’”
Chester was always going to be an obstacle, so Downer tried to play into the battle. He’d use analogies for the tough, hard-nosed team, comparing it to an animal stalking its prey.
The coach began to screen movies to underscore this point. Together, in a Lower Merion classroom, Downer’s players watched Jaws and other tales of survival, like The Edge, a 1997 thriller about a plane that crashes in the Alaskan wilderness.
“This bear is stalking them, and the couple is saying, ’What are we going to do about this bear?’” Downer said. “And one of them says, ‘The only thing we can do is kill the bear.’
“And I remember being like, ‘We can do this.’ But the only solution is to — not to be overly graphic — but to kill them.”
(The bear in this analogy was Chester.)
He added: “We tried everything humanly possible to get through to this team.”
The first few games were ugly. In 1995, Lower Merion met the Clippers in the District 1 championship, only to lose by 27 points. But they came back with a renewed focus the following year, in 1995-96, going 25-3 in the regular season to earn a district final rematch against Chester.
The Aces showed up at the arena with “27″ printed on their warmup shirts. Bryant, armed with fresh bulletin board material from Linehan, dropped 34 points against the Clippers en route to a 60-53 Aces win.
The shooting guard scored 39 points later that month — with a broken nose — in a 77-69 state semifinal win over Chester. Lower Merion went on to beat Erie Cathedral Prep, 48-43, to win its first state championship since 1943.
Kobe Bryant celebrates after defeating Chester at the Palestra in 1996 to advance to the state final.Ron Cortes / Staff Photographer
To Linehan, the difference Bryant made was obvious. He joked that he’d “never heard of Lower Merion” before his friend arrived. But once he did, Chester realized it would have to go to great lengths to prepare for the phenom.
Ahead of a big game against Lower Merion in the mid-1990s, the coaching staff reached out to Clippers alumnus Zain Shaw. He played at West Virginia and in Europe and possessed some of the same characteristics as Bryant — a tall frame and an athletic build with strong ballhandling skills.
The Clippers invited Shaw to practice, where he played the role of Bryant (to the best of his ability).
“Kobe was so special, we had to bring in a pro to help us prepare,” said Linehan, who later starred at Providence.
But there was another impact the future Lakers star had, one that had nothing to do with his own prowess. Linehan noticed that Bryant’s Lower Merion teammates started to take on some of his qualities. Suddenly, they were playing brash, confident basketball.
“We didn’t have reason to believe, until Kobe got there, that we belonged on the court with Chester,” Young said. “The fear was real. Teams were afraid of Chester because they’d run you out of the building.
“The idea of Lower Merion being on the court in a meaningful game against [them] was such a crazy thought. But then, you started to believe.”
The buzzer-beater heard ’round Chester
Bryant never got over the rivalry, even after he embarked on his Hall of Fame NBA career in 1996. Sometimes, he’d call the coaching staff before big games against Chester, leaving expletive-laden voicemails to use as motivation.
The Lakers shooting guard also created an incentive structure for his former team.
“You couldn’t get a pair of Nike sneakers unless you qualified for the playoffs,” Young said. “If you don’t earn it, you don’t get it.”
He became especially involved in 2005-06. After a lull in the early 2000s, Chester and Lower Merion found themselves neck-and-neck again. The Aces were led by the duo of Ryan Brooks and Garrett Williamson, and the Clippers boasted a deep roster, headlined by Darrin Govens. All of them eventually played in the Big 5.
(Chester was so stacked that it brought a 1,000-point scorer off the bench in Noel Wilmore.)
Students from the class of 2005 show their support as Chester and Lower Merion play in the state final. Hinda Schuman / Staff Photographer
The rivals met in the state championship on March 19, 2005. Despite strong performances from Williamson and Brooks, the Clippers pulled away in the second half thanks to a dominant third quarter from Govens. Chester won, 74-61.
The teams reconvened the following season with their competitive spark fully reignited. They faced each other three times that year. Chester took Round 1, a one-point regular-season victory on Dec. 27.
Round 2 was in the district final on March 3. Before the game, in front of a packed crowd at the Pavilion, Chester sophomore Karon Burton walked up to the layup line.
Lower Merion’s student section caught his ear with a chant about coach Fred Pickett’s stout stature.
The dig didn’t intimidate Burton. If anything, it fueled him. He grew up playing street ball in Chester and always loved trash talk.
Instead of cowering, like the crowd hoped, the sophomore delivered an unforgettable outing. The game went into overtime, and was tied at 80 with only a few seconds remaining.During a timeout, assistant coach Keith Taylor pulled Burton aside.
“He was like, ‘Hey, listen,’” Burton said. “They’re going to double Darrin. If you get that ball, do your thing.’”
Taylor’s words proved prescient. As Lower Merion’s defenders swarmed Govens, the Clippers inbounded the ball to Burton.
He took a pull-up jumper from beyond the arc and drilled it for an 83-80 win. The Chester fans stormed the court. Burton, who later joined Wilmore in the 1,000-point club, said he felt like a celebrity in his hometown.
“It was like watching a buzzer-beater in the NBA,” he said. “I just ran to my teammates, they picked me up. It was a crazy feeling.
“I’m a big Kobe fan, too. Kobe’s my favorite player ever. So when I came and I hit the game-winner on that team …”
Round 3 took place a few weeks later, in a state semifinal rematch at the Palestra on March 22. Bryant called Lower Merion’s coaches before the game.
“I don’t remember specifically what he said, but I’m sure there were a lot of [expletives] dropped,” said Young. “Like, ‘Don’t call me back if you don’t beat those [expletives].’ That was a line we heard from him a couple times.”
This one didn’t go Chester’s way. After trailing the Clippers, 47-37, at the end of the third quarter, the Aces came roaring back in the fourth and put up 33 points to eke out a 70-65 win.
The celebration in the locker room was cathartic. Water sprayed into the air. Players sat atop each other’s shoulders and turned the showers into a slip ‘n slide. Bryant called in, again, as other members of the 1996 team filtered through.
Darrin Govens scored his 1,000th point for Chester against Lower Merion in the state championship in 2005.Hinda Schuman / Staff Photographer
This was not how Govens wanted to end his high school career. And a few months later, when he arrived at St. Joseph’s on a basketball scholarship, he saw a familiar foe.
It was Williamson, his new Hawks teammate.
“We were sitting on the opposite side of the bench,” Govens said. “I didn’t want to sit next to him; he didn’t want to sit next to me. We’d kind of avoid each other and just head nod.
“Even in running drills, it was a competition. He looked to the left. I looked to the right. We tried to beat each other in sprints. But then we realized, ‘All right bro, we’re teammates now.’”
‘Hero status’
Chester had always rallied around its high school basketball team. Linehan said it was akin to playing for the Sixers. The teenagers were treated like professional athletes — especially those who had been a part of big wins.
The Clippers’ public address announcer, James Howard, called this “hero status.”
“All of a sudden, your money’s no good,” he said. “Barbers take care of you, make sure your hair looks nice before games. Free food. Little kids look up to you and ask for your autograph. That’s how it is.”
In Chester, there were plenty of heroes to draw from. There was Linehan, but also Jameer Nelson, who met a young Burton in the late 1990s. Nelson, a friend of Burton’s cousin, gave the aspiring basketball player a gift before he left for St. Joe’s: his MVP medal from the Chester summer league.
“He was one of the biggest guys in our city,” Burton said, “so it’s definitely something that I’ll always remember.”
By the early 2010s, when the rivalry was reignited for a third time, Lower Merion had built more of a basketball tradition. Aces guard Justin McFadden said he’d get stopped in Wawa before big games against the Clippers.
Chester celebrates its win over Lower Merion for the state championship in 2012. Steven M. Falk / Staff Photographer
“It became a community thing,” he said. “People would be asking, ‘What do you guys think about Chester? Do you think we can get it done?’”
In 2012, the schools met in the state championship for the first time since 2005. Junior forward and future NBA starter Rondae Hollis-Jefferson put up a double-double to lead the Clippers to a resounding 59-33 win over the Aces. It was their second straight title and their 58th straight victory.
A year later, after going 17-0 in the Central League, the Aces met the Clippers in the state final again. Chester had won 78 straight games against in-state opponents. Snapping that streak would be daunting, but Downer had a plethora of motivational tactics at his disposal.
Just as they had in the 1990s, The Aces again spent pockets of the season watching Jaws, The Edge, as well as an addition: Al Pacino’s “Inch by Inch” speech in Any Given Sunday.
“He would have that fired up on YouTube, ready to go,” McFadden said. “Looking back, [your reaction] is a chuckle, but in the moment, it worked. We knew that this was the hill that needed to be climbed.
“And every time they played that speech, we got goose bumps. We were ready to fire.”
Chester got out to an early lead, but Lower Merion rallied behind a 22-point, 11-rebound performance from B.J. Johnson, who later starred at La Salle. The Aces snapped the streak and won their seventh state title with a 63-47 victory.
Lower Merion’s Jaquan Johnson goes to the net as Diamonte Reason guards him in the Chester-Lower Merion state championship game in 2013.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer
The Clippers then were coached by Larry Yarbray. Pickett, who was diagnosed with cancer in2010, was in declining health. Just before he died in 2014, Downer decided to say goodbye.
He and his former assistant coach Jeremy Treatman drove out to Pickett’s home in Chester. They went to his bedside.
“And we talked,” Downer said. “And we held hands. It was a really touching moment for me. This is a man that carried Chester on his back. That tried to carry Lower Merion on his back. And I knew it was the last time I was going to see Fred.
“We walked out the door, and we told each other that we loved each other. And I never thought he would say that to me, or vice versa. But it was just kind of like, ‘You know what? We’ve had some amazing battles, and there’s a lot of respect there.’”
Keeping the tradition alive
In recent years, the Chester-Lower Merion rivalry has diminished.
There was a brief period when the teams were in different classifications. Both programs have lost players to private schools that can recruit, and the addition of the Philadelphia Catholic League to the PIAA has made the state playoffs more competitive.
One place the Aces and Clippers could meet is in the district tournament, where they reunited in 2024. But they haven’t played each other since. And Howard says the contests don’t have the same feel.
“Both teams have lost D-I talent,” he said. “It’s not as high-flying, above the rim, as it was in the past. But still a great game. Sold out at Lower Merion, and at Chester, same thing.”
The history will always be there, though, and Burton is doing his best to keep it alive. His 8-year-old son, Karon Burton Jr., is playing in the Biddy League. His father is his coach.
Sometimes, they go on YouTube and watch old Clippers games. Junior’s favorite, of course, is the 2006 district final.
Burton believes that his son has a promising future, but isn’t sure of where he’ll go to high school yet. He doesn’t want Karon Jr. to feel obligated to follow his father’s path.
But if it worked out that way, what a story that would be.
“I’d love to be the first father and son to have 1,000 points,” Burton said. “With the same name? That would be crazy.”
Tanner Rouse will be Delaware County’s new top law enforcement officer, but he’snot new to the work.
Rouse will be sworn in on Jan. 5 as district attorney after his predecessor, Jack Stollsteimer, steps down to assume the county judgeship he won in November. Rouse, 42, will finish out the final two years of Stollsteimer’s term after working as his first assistant since 2020.
In a recent interview, Rouse discussed the strides in reducing violent crime he and his colleagues have made under Stollsteimer — the first-ever Democrat to serve as district attorney in Delaware County — as well as how he plans to continue those advances.
The short answer: Keeping the same playbook, but “putting a personal stamp on it,” as an offensive coordinator does when he takes over as head coach, said Rouse, an avid Eagles fan and ambitious Little League coach.
A former Philadelphia prosecutor under Seth Williams, Rouse credited the lessons he learned from investigating gun violence in the city, along with the recruitment of several former colleagues he brought over the county line, withimproving the way crime is prosecuted in Delaware County.
“We have demonstrated you can reform the criminal justice system and that it doesn’t have to come at the expense of stopping violent crime,” Rouse said. “They’re not mutually exclusive.”
Who is Tanner Rouse?
Rouse, a Phoenixville-area native, is the son of the late Willard Rouse III, the prominent Philadelphia developer behind One and Two Liberty Place. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin and Fordham Law School, Rouse spent seven years in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, prosecuting crimes in Center City and North Philadelphia.
Rouse left the office in 2017, months before Larry Krasner took over. He practiced civil law for a time and ran an ultimately failed campaign to unseat then-State Sen. Tom McGarrigle before Stollsteimer called and offered him the first assistant job.
At the time, Rouse said, the offer was unexpected. But, looking back, he now considers it one of the greatest opportunities of his career.
What is Rouse most proud of from his tenure as first assistant?
The most notable achievement of his tenure to date in the district attorney’s office, Rouse said, is the steep reduction of gun violence in Chester.Shootings are down 75% since 2020. Rouse credits community outreach efforts for that, especially through the Chester Partnership for Safe Neighborhoods program, overseen by veteran homicide prosecutor Matt Krouse, whom Rouse worked with in Philadelphia and recruited to join him in Delaware County.
The partnership’s fundamental philosophy is a combination of focused deterrence programs Rouse helped oversee in Philadelphia that target repeat offenders, as well as community outreach efforts run by trusted neighborhood figures.
Rouse said he never wanted to be a faceless presence in the county and made it his priority to get out and form relationships in all of the municipalities he served, visiting community meetings, block parties, and even a few pickup basketball games.
“I don’t do this job from behind a desk,” he said, speaking in his county courthouse office. “And I think demonstrating that commitment and that care by being more present in those communities, and not just being kind of the big, scary law enforcement agency on a hill is incredibly important.”
Rouse said he is proud of other reforms including creating a diversionary unit in the office, revamping its drug court and instituting a special “child’s court,” created by Kristen Kemp — Rouse’s chosen first assistant and an expert in special-victims’ cases — that allows young victims to testify against adult offenders in a more comfortable environment.
The county’s jail population is down 50% as well, something Rouse says is a result of approaching prosecuting crimes in a humane, logical way.
What are his priorities as district attorney?
Rouse said he plans to create a similar community outreach program in Upper Darby, a community he said is “on the verge of some big things.”
“It’s not as if we’re saying, ‘We’re coming in here to take on Upper Darby and what goes on there,’ but more of, ‘Guys, look, we’re not just the people you pick up and call when there’s a crime.’”
He also expressed interest in creating reciprocity agreements with his counterparts in the other collar counties around Philadelphia, specifically when it comes to handling drug cases and providing treatment to the people caught up in them.
How has his time in Philadelphia influenced his work in Delco?
Rouse said he cut his teeth in the city working alongside veteran prosecutors, and he’s worked to bring that environment of mentorship to Delaware County.
He said he and his more senior deputies often sit in on trials, giving feedback to younger staff members just as his mentors did for him nearly two decades ago.
“That’s how I got better, and that’s one of the roles I most cherish here,” he said.
