Olivia Ponce left her native Mexico for South Philly in 2001, with a young daughter and no extended family; she strongly felt the lack of a support system.
Putting her own health and personal growth on the back burner to give her child a better life, she worked unceasingly in the restaurant industry for more than a decade. A phone number on a light pole offering English classes changed her life.
The digits belonged to the Garces Foundation, created in 2012 by Ecuadorian American chef Jose Garces and Cuban dentist Beatriz Garcesafter the death of a friend who had avoided seeking medical care out of fear of deportation.
Since then, the organization has helped Philadelphians from 26 countries in 12 languages, providing access to English classes, free healthcare, and support as they adapt to their new home, regardless of insurance or immigration status.
Now, to honor its communal sentiment, the foundation has changed its name from Garces Foundation to Comunidad Garces, beginning Tuesday.
As the organization approaches its quinceañera, the new name is just one change. The agency is expanding its free community health days from Philly to Kennett Square, where more than 28% of the population is foreign-born.
For Beatriz Garces, the new name responds to the way people have already come to see the organization: as a community.
“We felt like, given everything the community is going through at this moment, it was even more important to evolve the name to something that really feels welcoming to all immigrants,” she said.
Although the word comunidad is Spanish for community, BeatrizGarces said, the sentiment and their doors are open to people from all walks of life.
For years, Comunidad Garces has been holding Community Health Days about every other monthin Philly to make medical and dental care free and accessible for people who otherwise would not have it.
Since 2021, the foundation has treated about 5,000 people through medical assistance and the dental program, Beatriz Garces said.
Colon and prostate cancer screenings are now available, as well as mammograms through Penn Medicine’s mobile mammography program.
Now, these services will expand to Kennett Square in partnership with Laurel Dental of West Grove.
“It’s the first time we expanded beyond Philadelphia,” Jose Garces said. The first Kennett Square community health day was held Saturday.
“Just on our first day, we discovered five abnormalities in women through our mammogram screening and were able to pass them on to Penn Medicine to continue their evaluation, so day one already making an impact.”
In the last two years, Comunidad Garces has been expanding to adapt to the needs of a growing immigrant community living through challenging times,Beatriz Garces said.
Since 2025, the foundation has also offered digital literacy classes, even providing computers so folks can enroll in the program.
Ponce herself learned English, got her GED certificate, discovered and treated her prediabetes, and found a support system through the organization.
“Immigration always leaves pain in us, but there is something about the power and resistance we find through this community,” Ponce said. At the South Philadelphia-headquartered foundation, “it feels like you are loved, like there is this family vibe.”
Most recently, Ponce was hired as a case manager at the foundation. She now helps community members find housing, employment, and schools and manage their healthcare visits.
The expansion to Kennett Square is, in part, a way to make sure immigrants have access to what they need to build their new lives in the United States, Beatriz Garces said.
As the name change unfolds, Jose Garces hopes the community feels more included and welcome.
“Our name is changing, but the world remains the same,” he said. “Comunidad means community, and that means our door is open to everybody.”
I feel like I need to apologize for a column a couple of months ago when I compared the current president of the United States to Caligula, the possibly mad Roman emperor who is said to have nominated his trusted horse for high office. I need to apologize to Caligula. From pitching his triumphal D.C. arch as a storage shed for deadly snipers’ bullets to banning reporters from the White House in a narcissistic rage, Donald Trump is losing his grip on reality. This is unsustainable.
Worried about AI killing humans? Bad news: It already is.
A cleric takes a photograph earlier this month at the shattered Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, southern Iran. It has become a place of mourning and a memorial to those killed in a U.S. airstrike on Feb. 28.Vahid Salemi
Which is it?
Are the robots of AI, or artificial intelligence, so smart that they’re on the verge of holding a secret meetup in the darkest corner of the dark web and developing a plot to kill all humans through germ warfare, to make sure we don’t kill them first by pulling the plug?
Or is AI so dumb — artificial stupidity, despite the billionaires of Silicon Valley showing up daily on our TV screen to brag about the sky-high IQ of their son, Claude — that the thing that will murder us is a crazy hallucination that will turn a false alarm into World War III?
The fact that we can’t answer this should give us pause, but maybe we aren’t even asking the right question. Maybe the real issue is how easy we’ve made it to kill off the human race — a capability that was already created by people even before we invented the computer.
One thing is certain. Artificial intelligence has already been an accessory to mass murder, and if we do nothing, it will kill again.
Remember the very first days of the now seemingly endless Iran war, and the news that two missile strikes had obliterated a school for young children in the Iranian coastal city of Minab, in an apparent “double-tap” strike in which the second attack from the skies killed young girls and boys and their teachers as they huddled in a prayer hall?
Those bombings, which killed 156 people on Feb. 28, caused the United Nations’ Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran to report last week that it found “reasonable grounds to believe that the United States committed a war crime by launching indiscriminate attacks …” The U.S. government has never taken responsibility for the bloodshed, despite overwhelming visual evidence that the bombs were precision-guided U.S. Tomahawk missiles.
It didn’t take long for additional speculation that an AI program had mistakenly targeted the school, perhaps using outdated maps and info from an earlier time when its buildings were attached to an Iranian military complex. After all, the Pentagon has been openly bragging about the death and destruction facilitated by its use of Palantir’s Smart Maven System and also Anthropic’s Claude.
Last week, Bloomberg News reported that the Pentagon’s overreliance on AI, and specifically the Palantir Maven program, was a major factor in the school tragedy, along with the outdated intelligence about the Minab site — the “garbage in.” Its exposé noted that U.S. military planners were racing to identify some 1,000 Iranian targets in the early hours of the war, giving humans little time to double-check the list. Kindergartners were slaughtered as a result.
This was hardly the first time robots have been linked to human death, both in war — in 2024, +924 Magazine reported the Israel Defense Forces were using an AI program code-named “Lavender” to target sites amid the mass killing in Gaza — and in peace, as shown by numerous accounts of robots helping troubled people die by suicide.
And yet, it could have been much, much worse. At the same time as the Bloomberg report on the AI link to the mass killing in Iran, the world also learned that a false report generated by robot intelligence nearly sparked a conflict between the United States and China that could conceivably have spiraled into major fighting.
CNN and other outlets have reported that a U.S. special operations command analyst working with AI generated an urgent report that a Chinese ship bound toward the Middle East was carrying components for a nuclear weapons system, which caused military leaders to scramble jets and assemble a team to seize the vessel.
Only at the last minute did the Pentagon dig deeper and learn the AI-generated report was completely false, a hallucination — one that nearly triggered a violent conflict between the world’s two largest military powers.
The two disturbing reports about the use, or misuse, of AI by the U.S. military in a time of war did make news but didn’t get nearly as much attention — either in the media or on sites like Bluesky or X — as warnings from both whistleblowers and CEOs in Silicon Valley that a swarm of robots could decide on their own and without any human intervention or awareness to try to kill off our so-called civilization.
The fear of an unprompted attack from AI secret agents is real, based on several incidents that have already occurred, including a well-planned and partly successful operation by OpenAI’s robot agents to hack into a company called Hugging Face.
Still, it says something about human intelligence that we are captivated by the unknown and mysterious possibility of a random attack, while the fact that people are currently misusing AI to cause death and suffering is a less compelling story. I noted in this space last week that the threat to humankind from climate change is arguably even more real — and yet this gets denied by many and ignored by others.
It’s also striking to me as a boomer born in 1959 that a generation that wasborn into a time of constant terror — backyard bomb shelters, “duck and cover” drills in the classroom, and sci-fi horror at the drive-in that an atomic arms race could kill us at any moment — is suddenly back to where we started.
The fact that civilization managed to — so far — pause the number of world wars at two has given us the space and the false bravado to create new and much more insidious killing machines, and the threat from invisible robots on a hidden dark web is somehow even scarier than the radioactive mushroom cloud that we more or less understand.
Boomers who went to bed as kids in the 1950s and ’60s praying we wouldn’t die before we woke are now spending our senior-citizen-discount years fearful that something stranger than science fiction is coming for our children, or grandchildren. Over the course of a lifetime, the arc of that moral universe has not bent at all.
Still, humans were able, somehow, to prevent nuclear annihilation so far, and now it’s past time to get to work on the actual threats from AI and start on those workarounds. For example, the articles I’ve read speculating on how the robots plan to kill us frequently mention the prospect of AI agents developing bioweapons and releasing them, either on their own or prompted by a bad actor. (In theory, human development of bioweapons has been banned for a half century.)
From everything I’ve read so far about AI, it sounds like we’d have better luck safeguarding or eliminating the components that could make a biological agent rather than stopping the robots. Likewise, AI agents would not be able to start an atomic apocalypse if our human politicians went to work at finally eliminating nuclear weapons. Artificial intelligence won’t kill little girls in an Iranian school if humans don’t start dumb wars in the first place.
If Silicon Valley’s prophets of doom are serious, there’s no fix that’s too big or too ambitious. But understand that the biggest problem isn’t that AI wants to murder us, but that since 1942 we humans have been busy creating all the suicidal weapons AI agents could use.
Can you even “duck and cover” from a killer robot? I don’t intend to find out, and I don’t want my yet-to-be-born grandchildren to have to even think about it.
Yo, do this!
I’ve always been a big fan of filmmaker Barry Levinson, whose trilogy of Baltimore movies (Diner, Tin Men, Avalon) defined postwar American nostalgia. Now Levinson, along with his codirector Robert May, has come north to the Philly burbs to catch up with our divisive 21st century in a five-part documentary, Bucks County, U.S.A. If you’ve been reading The Inquirer these last six years, you know howthe communities just north of Philadelphia — where cosmopolitan suburbs meet the rolling fields of Trump Country — have become ground zero for culture wars around the COVID-19 response, book banning, and LGBTQ pride. Bucks County, U.S.A.began streaming on PBS Monday night. It’s getting mixed reviews, but I plan to check it out myself.
With the exception of my growing obsession with A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, I’ve struggled the last few years to find new podcasts that excite me. But I’ve been enjoying Dan Taberski’s Manifesto on Audible, which is the award-winning, prolific podcaster’s six-part look at the role that these impassioned declarations have — or haven’t — played in reshaping our troubled world, from Occupy Wall Street to Big Tech utopianism to the online rant of murderous ex-LA cop Christopher Dorner.
Ask me anything
Question: What is the reason for the boat strikes? Do they really think they are carrying drugs? — David Poe (@culthero12.bsky.social) via Bluesky
Answer: David, your question is well-timed. Just this week, Ben Saul, the U.N. special rapporteur monitoring human rights in the context of counterterrorism, issued a report that U.S. boat strikes off South America in the Caribbean and the Pacific that have killed more than 220 people so far violate international law and plausibly constitute crimes against humanity. Based on the reports I’ve read about the deadly drone strikes, it’s true that small fishing boats in the region are sometimes drafted for a supporting bit role in drug trafficking. Yet, it seems powerfully likely that some murdered in the U.S. attacks were innocent fishermen, and there’s no evidence these bombings have made any real dent in the flow of drugs. Most importantly, since when did minor involvement in drug smuggling become a capital offense? The only thing as troubling as these American war crimes is the silence on Capitol Hill. The next Congress must hold hearings and create the momentum for shutting this down.
What you’re saying about …
Oops, maybe I should have read my emails before writing another column about the problems with artificial intelligence. Based on the lack of responses to last week’s question about the AI threat, this is clearly not a topic that excites my readers like the betrayals by Sen. John Fetterman or the mainstream media. A couple of frequent correspondents did weigh in, including Mary Ann Petro, who is very concerned over reports of unauthorized hacking by AI agents, and Joe Stepansky, who thinks the risks are somewhat overblown. “This is all deflection from data center opposition and the stock market bubble,” he wrote. “Just remember there are humans behind all of this, humans who may be amoral at best (I used to work with some) and malicious at worst (them too).”
📮 This week’s question: The big story for several days has been the fallout from Donald Trump’s rash decision to ban three news outlets — CNN, MS NOW, and Politico — from the White House grounds, in a move that experts agree is a violation of the First Amendment. Do you think the entire presidential press pool should walk out in solidarity, or do Americans need audio and video of what their president is up to? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “White House press corps” in the subject line.
Backstory on George W. Bush’s betrayal of democracy
Former President George W. Bush reacts while watching players from the U.S. team practice before the Walker Cup golf matches against Great Britain and Ireland at Cypress Point Club in Pebble Beach, Calif., earlier this month.Jeff Chiu
For those of us who experienced a political reawakening during those dreadful years between the U.S. Supreme Court’s coronation of a president in the disputed 2000 election and the shock-and-awe carpet bombing of Baghdad in 2003, today’s frequent refrain is incredibly grating. “I never thought I’d say this,” says some self-proclaimed Democrat, often a boomer, “but I’m feeling nostalgic for George W. Bush.”
To be sure, the 43rd president wasn’t nearly as nakedly corrupt as Donald Trump and his family, not as crude and boorish, and also more determined to at least make it look like what he was doing was constitutional. There were flashes of goodness — like Bush’s support for fighting the AIDS epidemic in Africa — which stand out today because there are so few of them. But his lies — and there were a lot of them, even if he could never match Trump — were more diabolically purposeful.
The stench of dead bodies in Fallujah had barely lifted when none other than Joe Biden came to Philadelphia to drape the Liberty Medal around Bush’s neck. When Trump descended on his gilded escalator in 2015 to finish the job of trashing America that had started in Iraq, Bush said nothing other than to let it be known that he’d left his 2016 ballot blank. When even his despised vice president Dick Cheney came out in 2024 and said a second Trump term would be a disaster for democracy, Bush again said nothing, insisting that he has “retired from presidential politics.”
Apparently congressional politics is another story. On Monday, it was revealed that Bush and his fellow Texan Sen. John Cornyn — a lame duck after losing a primary to Trump-backed Ken Paxton — have teamed up to throw a massive fundraiser in Dallas for six GOP Senate candidates in battleground states. The touting of Bush as a “special guest” at the event is meant to lure conservative donors. The New York Times, in its scoop on the evening, played up the fact that the event is not raising money for Paxton, going with the angle of a Texas-sized political feud.
Just like the Democrats who are willing, in the Trump era, to turn a war criminal into an icon of civility, the Times is missing the point. Electing these GOP Senate candidates in states like Iowa and Maine will give Trump the ability to extend aspects of his dictatorship for two more agonizing years. The would-be senators Bush is raising money for would rubber-stamp new MAGA judges and allow Trump to replace Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas with younger far-right zealots. Senate committees would lack the power to investigate the president’s high crimes and misdemeanors. That could finish the job Bush started when he lied to Congress about Iraq “weapons of mass destruction” that did not exist: The implosion of U.S. democracy.
What I wrote on this date in 2009
It’s weird now to read what survives of my early Attytood blog posts from the late 2000s, when many days I published just a quick hit while I worked on longer news articles for the Daily News. On Sept. 22, 2009, I quoted a prediction from internet guru Clay Shirky that seems incredibly prescient 17 years later. Shirky said that “the ongoing shrinkage of newspapers is likely to create a ‘giant hole’ that will not be filled for some time. He said he has a vision of communities of 10,000 people or fewer becoming rife with ‘casual endemic corruption,’ as newspapers are no longer able to fulfill their traditional watchdog roles.” He nailed it.
Nothing has been more troubling in 2026 than the assault on the First Amendment that’s been taking place from Donald Trump’s Oval Office to our hometown council meetings, and even our football palaces. In my Sunday column, which was written before the president booted three news organizations from the White House, I looked at the growing hostility and even violence toward working journalists, including arrests, physical assaults, and Trump’s rants toward Black female journalists. Tolerance of these abuses is a mark of a dying democracy. Over the weekend, I shifted gears and tackled the Eagles’ silence over the team’s reported role in the cancellation of hip-hop’s pro-Palestinian Macklemore from the Ed Sheeran tour that stopped at Lincoln Financial Field on Saturday. How can free speech be censored in a city-owned stadium?
Speaking of those Birds, the city’s $10 billion NFL franchise was conveniently hundreds of miles away in Nashville as pro-Palestinian protesters descended on the Linc this weekend. The Eagles eked out a last-second victory by the seat of QB Jalen Hurts’ pants, over the seemingly hapless Tennessee Titans. The unimpressive showing cemented the notion that it’s impossible to know what to make of Philly’s 2-0 footballers after their narrow wins over mediocre opponents, but The Inquirer is on the case. Our extensive coverage looked at the good (standout performances from Hurts and No. 1 wide receiver DeVonta Smith), the bad (the subpar play of a battered and aging offensive line), and the unexpected (the return of Super Bowl hero Zack Ertz due to injuries in the tight-end corps). Ace columnist Mike Sielski recently went deep, as usual, with a humanitarian look at guard Landon Dickerson’s tortured decision to try to play through the pain. The Inquirer’s sportswriters are likely to rack up more wins this fall than an iffy team, so why not subscribe and read every word.
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Philadelphia School District school bus drivers, cleaners, and building engineers have approved a new contract — and will get 9.5% raises over the three years of the deal.
Workers, who met to vote in person at Benjamin Franklin High on Friday, will also get $2,350 in bonuses.
Other details include a pay bump for maintenance mechanics performing asbestos work, more career-advancement opportunities, and protections against subcontracting.
32BJ SEIU District 1201 represents 2,000 employees who are among the lowest-paid in the district.The contract was approved Friday by a vote of 800-80.
Tim Finucan, 32BJ’s state director, called the contract “life-changing” for the union’s members.
“The wage increases, healthcare protections, and other gains recognize the essential contributions these workers make to our schools and communities,” Finucan said in a statementMonday. “We appreciate the district’s partnership in reaching an agreement that will help workers keep pace with rising costs, create opportunities for career growth, and attract and retain talented employees for years to come.”
Members’ current pay scale ranges from bus attendants, who are paid $30,762 annually under the existing contract, to building engineers, whose pay rate starts at $51,155 and tops out at $77,832. The union’s best-paid employees are building construction workers, whose salary maxes out at $77,832.
Tradespeople — bricklayers, HVAC mechanics, electrical mechanics, plumbers, and roofers — receive $62,899 at the top of the pay scale.
With the astronomical summer about to call it a season, the atmosphere is executing an equinoctial flip to mark the arrival of fall with impacts that could last several days.
With an unusually early nor’easter due to form off the Atlantic coast this week, strong onshore winds in combination with the approaching full moon could result in coastal flooding and significant beach erosion at the Shore in what is likely to be the coolest week since early May.
The National Weather Service office in Mount Holly has issued a flood advisory for the Shore areas for minor flooding late Tuesday afternoon, and a watch for the potential of moderate flooding late Wednesday afternoon into the evening.
In addition, it said, “Moderate tidal flooding could continue through at least Friday evening’s high tide or perhaps longer.”
An advisory for minor flooding along the Delaware River in Philly likely will be added Wednesday into Thursday, said weather service meteorologist Eric Hoeflich.
Potent winds from the northeast could persist through the weekend from the Outer Banks of North Carolina to the Jersey Shore, said Brian Hurley, senior branch forecaster with the federal Weather Prediction Center, in College Park, Md.
When winds and rains may arrive in the Philly region
The nor’easter likely won’t develop until Wednesday, said Hurley, but rain and strong onshore winds aren’t going to wait for the party to start.
Showers are likely Tuesday throughout the region, with winds from the northeast gusting to 45 mph at the Shore, starting Tuesday and continuing into late Sunday night. They are likely to generate beach-eating storm waves. Inland, gusts in the range of 35 mph are forecast for the immediate Philly region, lasting about as long.
It should be dry in South Philly Tuesday night when the Phillies host the Milwaukee Brewers, but it literally will feel like October, with temperatures around 60 degrees at game time. Readings the rest of the week aren’t expected to get out of the 60s, several degrees below normal.
Rain is possible Friday, but how much falls later in the week and during the weekend will depend on how intense the coastal storm becomes and precisely how it tracks.
If you’ve lived around here for a while, that may sound familiar.
“It’s not different from what we talk about in the winter when we try to determine where the snow” is going to fall, said Dan Pydynowski, forecasting supervisor at AccuWeather Inc.
What is all but certain is that those beach-eroding and flood-inciting onshore winds are going to have staying power.
What’s going on up there?
An area of strong fair-weather high pressure, over heavier air, over southeastern Canada is forecast to hold its ground for the next several days. Said Pydynowski, this is “a very strong high for this time of year.”
As the storm intensifies to the south, it also will be stirring up onshore gusts across the region. Winds blow counterclockwise around storm centers, and areas to the northwest of the center experience northeast winds. That’s why they are called “nor’easters.”
Between the two systems, the region is in for a major wind-fest.
Regardless of whether the system becomes a significant rainmaker, said Hurley, “I think we’re going to have coastal flooding erosion issues from the Outer Banks all the way up through the Delmarva and the Jersey Shore for several days in a row.”
In addition to the winds, the areas along I-95 will experience so-called cold-air damming, the result of chilly northeast winds being dammed in by the Appalachian Mountains to the west.
“It’s a very weird time of year to get it,” Pydynowski said.
Philadelphia International Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport were still experiencing some delays and cancellations Tuesday after an air traffic control equipment issue had grounded all incoming flights the day prior.
As of Tuesday afternoon, there were 90 delays and 30 cancellations in place at Philadelphia’s airport, out of more than 700 scheduled flights, said PHL spokesperson Heather Redfern.
“We remind all passengers with plans to fly today to check with their airlines for the most up-to-date flight information,” Redfern said.
Newark airport has experienced 137 delays and 61 cancellations as of Tuesday afternoon, according to FlightAware data.
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered the ground stoppage Monday for all flights coming into Philadelphia after the region’s air traffic control center began experiencing issues with radio frequencies. The ground stop was lifted at about 5 p.m. Monday.
Homeowners whose jobs involve heavy tools and machinery may have to make a choice between getting a separate studio or a different home.
For Joe Carlough and Katie Haegele, writers and musicians who also cut vinyl records, the second option made sense.
So they are leaving their East Falls home for a larger one in Swarthmore.
“We were very attached to that house,” Haegele said, but there just wasn’t enough room in East Falls.
The sitting room of Joe Carlough and Katie Haegele’s home in East Falls, Philadelphia, as shown in a for-sale listing in September 2026.Zillow Media Experts/Rich Walker
The 1,752-square-foot house has four bedrooms and 2½ bathrooms.
Recent maintenance updates include a gas-fired 40-gallon hot water heater, washer, and dryer in 2025; a Whirlpool dishwasher in 2024; basement waterproofing in 2023; re-rubbering and resealing the roof in 2021, and a new central air and heating system in 2020.
The eat-in kitchen has slate floors and a deep sink.Zillow Media Experts/Rich Walker
On the first floor, the living room has hardwood floors and 12-foot ceilings, with space that could be used for a dining area.
The eat-in kitchen has a gas range, built-in microwave, granite counter space, slate floors, and a deep sink.
French doors lead to the backyard and a separate back door leads to a locked alleyway. There are heated floors in a half bathroom.
Carlough and Haegele used the middle room of their first floor as a sitting room, but it could also serve as a dining room.Zillow Media Experts/Rich Walker
The second floor has the primary bedroom. An en suite bathroom has two vanities, an oversized tile surround shower, and privacy windows. A second room can be used as a bedroom or an office.
The third floor has two more bedrooms, each with ample closet space, and a hall bathroom with tile flooring and shower over tub.
There is storage space in the unfinished, sealed basement.
The primary bedroom has an en suite bathroom with heated floors.Zillow Media Experts/Rich Walker
The house is close to the East Falls Regional Rail station on the Norristown Line, Kelly Drive, the Schuylkill River Trail, and the East Falls campus of Thomas Jefferson University.
It is listed by Jenn Flynn of BHHS Fox & Roach Chestnut Hill for $419,000.
Summer lingers as fall pop music season gets underway, with outdoor shows still happening in Camden, South Philly, and Fairmount Park into early October. And then the calendar quickly fills up with indoor nights in arenas, theaters, and small clubs in Philadelphia and throughout the region.
Besides the Phoebe Bridgers, Johnny Blue Skies, Olivia Rodrigo, and Dojo Cat tours highlighted below, there are still more big names coming to Xfinity Mobile Arena: Jonas Brothers on Oct. 2, Teddy Swims on Oct. 10, and Sombr on Nov. 19.
The Met has Beck on Oct. 18, Rawayana on Nov. 1, and Orville Peck on Nov. 11, and the Fillmore has Chief Keef on Oct. 6, Horsegirl on Oct. 23, Yebba on Oct. 30, and the Menzingers on Nov. 20. Penn Live Arts shows at the Annenberg Center include TM Krishna on Oct. 15 and Bela Fleck on Nov. 15.
There are lots of choice dates in cozier venues. Laura Veirs and Karl Blau are at Nikki Lopez on Oct. 9; Mirah, Evan Greer, and Sad13 play PhilaMoca on Oct. 10; and Mannequin Pussy plays First Unitarian Church Oct. 28.
That aside, here’s your list of 30 shows not to miss.
Gorillaz play Freedom Mortgage Pavilion in Camden on Sept 27.Reuben Bastienne-Lewis
Gorillaz
Sept. 27, Freedom Mortgage Pavilion
Gorillaz co-creators Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s plan to make an album shaped by experiences visiting India took grief-stricken shape when both men’s fathers died within a week of each other. On The Mountain, the virtual band as usual employs many guests, including Anoushka Shankar, Black Thought, Asha Puthli, and Johnny Marr. It also features collaborations from Dennis Hopper and Bobby Womack who collaborated with the Gorillaz before their deaths. freedomortgagepavilion.com
Phoebe Bridgers
Sept. 28, Xfinity Mobile Arena
Three years after she sold out the Mann Center with her boygenius bandmates Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers is bigger than ever. She stoked the ardor of her fan base with pop-up shows around the U.S. in the lead-up to the release of the moody, compelling, and intensely personal Lost Weekend, whose many guests include Havertown’s own Alex G. xfinitymobilearena.com
AC/DC — with Brian Johnson on the left, and Angus Young on the right — will bring their Power Up tour to Lincoln Financial Field on Sept. 29.Courtesy of the Artist
AC/DC
Sept. 29, Lincoln Financial Field
The last big blowout at the Linc this year — other than the Eagles putting a hurting on opponents — will be the final date on the Australian hard rock band’s “Power Up Tour.” The “Back in Black” band will be powering down after two and a half years on the road. Taylor Momsen’s the Pretty Reckless opens. lincolnfinancialfield.com
Public Image Ltd
Oct. 2, Union Transfer
The Sex Pistols is touring with Frank Carter cosplaying as Johnny Rotten, so John Lydon couldn’t resist hitting the road again with his other band, whose “This Is Not the Final Tour” arrives a week after the Pistols play the Fillmore. utphilly.com
Beabadoobee brings her Powerlines Tour to the Liacouras Center on Oct. 2.Erika Kamano
beabadoobee
Oct. 2, Liacouras Center
Filipino and British songwriter Beatrice Lau’s “Powerlines Tour” is in support of her fourth album, Pylon, a bracing follow-up to 2024’s Rick Rubin-produced This Is How Tomorrow Moves. liacourascenter.com
Phish will play three nights at Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City on Oct. 2-4.Courtesy of the Artist
Phish
Oct. 2-4, Boardwalk Hall
Phish comes in threes. Last year, the jam band’s troika of shows were at the Mann; the year before the Trey Anastasio-fronted quartet’s Mondegreen fest was in Dover, Del. This year, the band returns for indoor shows in Atlantic City, where it was last seen on the beach in 2022. boardwalkhall.com
Shaboozey performs during the Roots Picnic at the Mann Center in Philadelphia on June 2, 2024.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
Shaboozey
Oct. 6, Skyline Stage at Highmark Mann
Shaboozey played the Mann at the Roots Picnic in 2024, just as “Tipsy (A Bar Song)” was turning him onto a star. Now he’s back, behind The Outlaw Cherie Lee & Other West Tales, his ambitious concept album that is also a comic book. highmarkmann.org
The Chicks
Oct. 7, Met Philly
Texas country trio the Chicks — singer Natalie Maines and sisters Emily Strayer and Martie Maguire — is celebrating the 20th anniversary of Taking the Long Way. That 2006 album was the band’s first after it was essentially banned from country radio after Maines criticized then-President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. themetphilly.com
Sugar
Oct. 12-13, Union Transfer
Hüsker Dü cofounder Bob Mould has carried on a relentlessly rocking career with 14 uncompromising albums under his own name. But he hasn’t worked with Sugar, his power trio featuring bassist David Barber and drummer Malcolm Travis, since the mid-1990s. utphilly.com
Philly band Sweet Pill will play the Philly Music Fest. Juliette Boulay
Philly Music Fest
Oct. 12-18, various venues
The genre-spanning all-Philly showcase at independent venues kicks off with two nights of Gregory Alan Isakov at Ardmore Music Hall and concludes with Upper Darby-raised jazz sax star Immanuel Wilkins at Solar Myth. In between, attractions during the 10th anniversary of the fest include Sweet Pill, Owen Stewart, RJD2, Sug Daniels, Roberta Faceplant, and Mo Lowda & the Humble. phillymusicfest.com
Brennan Wedl plays Johnny Brenda’s Oct. 13.Blaire Beamer
Brennan Wedl
Oct. 13, Johnny Brenda’s
Minnesota-born singer Brennan Wedl — a former leader of queercore band Dazey & the Scouts — impressed as the opening act of the Waxahatchee and MJ Lenderman tour that played the Met this year. Now she’s playing her first Philly headlining gig, behind her self-titled debut album, which was produced by Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield and Brad Cook. johnnybrendas.com
Sturgill Simpson performs on Nov. 12, 2024, at the Met. Simpson is coming to the Xfinity Mobile Arena with his band Johnny Blue Skies.Jose F. Moreno / Staff Photographer
Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds
Oct. 15, Xfinity Mobile Center
“I want to make America not suck again,” Sturgill Simpson sings on the frisky lead track of Mutiny For the Masses, the always-unpredictable maverick songwriter’s second album as Johnny Blue Skies that makes rebellious rock and roll, country-soul, and funk fun again. xfinitymobilearena.com
Pinhead Gunpowder
Oct. 16, First Unitarian Church
Big-name rock star in a tiny space: Pinhead Gunpowder is a Green Day side project of sorts. Along with Billie Joe Armstrong, the current version of the band includes Green Day touring guitarist Jason White. r5productions.com
Sienna Spiro plays the Fillmore on Oct. 17.Mathias Apap
Sienna Spiro
Oct. 17, the Fillmore
Powerhouse vocalist Sienna Spiro’s name rhymes with “pyro.” Sam Smith has called her “the voice of a generation.” The stylish 20-year-old “Die on the Hill” singer, who displays the influence of fellow throwback soul Brits like Amy Winehouse and Duffy, played the Foundry in March. She has since won raves at Coachella and Lollapalooza. She’s back at the Fillmore in October, but in the big room this time. thefillmorephilly.com
Mike D 5D
Oct. 19, Union Transfer
Beastie Boys’ Adam Horowitz and Mike Diamond have been largely inactive since the death of bandmate Adam Yauch in 2012. Now Diamond — aka Mike D — has returned with Thank You, a solo album of hip-hop electro punk. He’s touring backed by a band that includes his sons Skyler and Davis Diamond. utphilly.com
L7
Oct. 22, Brooklyn Bowl
L7 was a key player in the alt-rock late 1980s and early 1990s, and the grunge-adjacent all-female band was also a precursor to the riot-grrrl movement. The “Pretend We’re Dead” and “S— list” band fronted by Donita Sparks and Suzi Gardner is carrying on with its “Last Hurrah Tour” despite the loss of bassist Jennifer Finch, who died of brain cancer this year. Finch’s memoir, Shooting Up and Making Out, is due in January. brooklynbowl.com/philadelphia
Singer-songwriter Jesse Welles performs March 10 with members of his band in Detroit. He plays the Met on Oct. 23. Ted Anthony
Jesse Welles
Oct. 23, the Met
Jesse Welles’ resistance songs like “Join ICE” and “United Health” — along with whimsical ones such as “At the Zoo” — have fueled a steady growth in popularity. The self-styled Dylanesque folk singer has collaborated with Joan Baez and Philly’s Mt. Joy, with whom he did a pop-up show in June at Race Street Pier. themetphilly.com.
Ashley McBryde
Oct. 24, Lansdowne Theater
Arkansas country songwriter Ashley McBryde has always leaned into rock and roll going back to her 2018 debut Girl Going Nowhere. But she really turns up the volume on the new Wild, which is a song cycle about a journey toward sobriety. thelansdownetheater.com
Allison Russell plays the Colonial Theatre on Oct. 28. Dana Trippe
Allison Russell
Oct. 28, Colonial Theatre
Canadian-born and Nashville-based songwriter Allison Russell says her new album In The Hour Of Chaos, is about “connecting our hearts and voices in the same space in real time.” Its many guests include Brittany Spencer, Norah Jones, and Delco soul singer Devon Gilfillian. thecolonialtheatre.com
Afro Cuban All Stars
Oct. 30, Miller Theater
Juan de Marcos Gonzalez is a vocalist, impresario, and musician whose specialty is the Spanish tres guitar. He has been a key player in the Buena Vista Social Club. This tour continues the ongoing work of bringing Cuban music to the world. ensembleartsphilly.org
Vince Staples at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, on Feb. 24, 2022. The Long Beach, Calif., rapper plays Franklin Music Hall on Oct. 30. Daniel DeSlover / MCT
Vince Staples
Oct. 30, Franklin Music Hall
Long Beach, Calif., rapper Vince Staples is back on top of this game on Cry Baby, his pointedly political album that blends rock riffage and soulful funk into the mix. franklinmusichall.com
Built to Spill & Quasi
Oct. 30-31, Ardmore Music Hall
Doug Martsch is an indie rock guitar hero stretching back to Built to Spill’s 1993 debut Ultimate Alternative Wavers. These days, Martsch is joined by bassist Melanie Radford and drummer Teresa Esguera. Also on the bill is Quasi, the rollicking band of ex-spouses Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss, formerly the drummer of Sleater-Kinney. ardmoremusichall.com
Geese play the Fillmore on Nov. 8 and 9.Lewis Evans
Geese
Nov. 8-9, Fillmore
Incredibly brilliant indie art-pop band or nefarious industry plant that owes its success to TikTok payola? The debate around Geese’s breakthrough as (almost) universally praised critics’ darlings is silly. After the band led by Cameron Winter — the subject of a forthcoming Paul Thomas Anderson concert film — played a super sold-out Union Transfer last year, it’s back with two shows in a larger space. thefillmorephilly.com
Kamasi Washington at the Met Philly in 2019.
Ami Taf Ra & Kamasi Washington
Nov. 5, City Winery Philadelphia
Moroccan vocalist Ami Taf Ra collaborated with maximalist jazzman Washington on The Prophet and The Madman, her 2025 spiritual jazz debut that bears the influence of Sun Ra and mixes Arabic music with gospel and jazz. citywinery.com/philadelphia
The Hooters
Nov. 5-6, Keswick Theatre
Last year, the Hooters’ annual Keswick shows were introduced, as always, by Pierre Robert, the WMMR-FM (93.3) radio legend who died a few days later. This will be an emotional weekend for the longstanding Philly rock band and its fans. keswicktheatre.com
Daniel Villarreal
Nov. 6-7, Solar Myth
Panama-born drummer Daniel Villarreal made his name on the Chicago music scene with a mixture of jazz and funk and a range of Latin music styles. The now-Philly-based synthesist will lead a five-piece band in a two-night residency. arsnovaworkshop.com
Olivia Rodrigo performs at the Daisy Chain Fields Music Festival on Aug. 29 at Great Park in Irvine, Calif.Chris Pizzello
Olivia Rodrigo
Nov. 7, Xfinity Mobile Arena
On “The Cure,” the second single from her third album You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, Olivia Rodrigo repeats the words “I’m unraveled,” as she reels from a breakup. That lyric leads us to “The Unraveled Tour,” the second arena trek from the former Disney star who hosted her own all-woman Daisy Chain Fields festival in August. xfinitymobilearena.com
Low Cut Connie at Concerts Under The Stars in King of Prussia on Aug. 1, 2025. Left to right: Rich Stanley, Nick Perri, Adam Weiner, Jarae Lewis (on drums, partially hidden), Amanda “Rocky” Bullwinkel, Kelsey Cork.Dan DeLuca
Low Cut Connie & Ben Vaughn
Nov. 20, Union Transfer
Two generations of Philly rock and rollers team up on this bill, which finishes off a leg of the tour for Low Cut Connie’s party plus protest album Livin In the USA. LCC’s Adam Weiner is a sweaty, over the top showman, while radio host-producer Vaughn — who has a new album, Magnetic East: The Deer Tick Sessions due in October — prefers an understated, semi-ironic approach. WXPN-FM 24 Hour Song Challenge winners the Flying Vees open. utphilly.com
Doja Cat performs during the 2025 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on Nov. 8, 2025, at L.A. Live in Los Angeles. She plays Xfinity Mobile Arena on Nov. 29. Chris Pizzello
Doja Cat
Nov. 29, Xfinity Mobile Arena
Rapper and singer Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini — otherwise known as Doja Cat — plays the penultimate show of a world tour that began in New Zealand last year in support of her disco-pop fifth album, Ma Vie. “Big Energy” Atlanta rapper Latto opens. xfinitymobilearena.com
Goosemas
Dec. 12-13, Boardwalk Hall
Every holiday season, the Connecticut-born yacht rock jam band throws a Christmas party. This year, it’s in Atlantic City. The show in support of the band’s new Big Modern! is a benefit for Western Sun Foundation, which supports grassroots nonprofit organizations. boardwalkhall.com
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — After a summer spent packing away sockeye salmon, Alaska’s heftiest brown bears are ready to throw their weight around.
Online voting began Tuesday for Fat Bear Week, the annual contest that pits the rotund residents of Katmai National Park and Preserve against each other for the title of most oversized ursine.
Last year’s winner, Chunk — known officially as Bear 32 — is hungry for a repeat. Chunk’s weight in 2025 was estimated at 1,200 pounds, which gave him a narrow victory. This year he’s back and facing corpulent competition like Gully — aka Bear 903 — the offspring of two-time champion Grazer.
The contest, which is in its 12th year, celebrates the resilience of the 2,200 brown bears that live in the preserve on the Alaska Peninsula, which extends from the state’s southwest corner toward the Aleutian Islands. The animals gorge on the abundant salmon that return to the Brooks River, sometimes chomping the fish in midair as they make their way upstream to spawn.
The event this year features 16 bears facing off in a single-elimination, bracket-style tournament. All voting is done online at www.fatbearweek.org, with the winner declared Sept. 29. The public can watch the bears on explore.org’s livestream cameras before deciding on their favorite.
“Fat bears are successful bears,” the nonprofit’s website says. They gorge on salmon starting in late June in order to accumulate fat reserves to prepare for winter hibernation, when they do not eat or drink and lose one-third of their body weight.
Adult male brown bears typically weigh 600 to 900 pounds (about 270 to 410 kilograms) in midsummer. By the time they are ready to hibernate after feasting on migrating and spawning salmon — each eats as many as 30 fish per day — large males can weigh well over 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms). Females are about one-third smaller.
Voters in the online contest can review before-and-after photos of the bears, lean at the start of summer and fattened at the end. The bears are not actually weighed — imagine that process — and some fans choose their favorite based on their looks or backstory.
To be featured in the contest, the bears must frequent the area around the river.
The live cameras at Brooks Falls captured the moments in 2024 when mother bear 128 Grazer ‘s cub slipped over the waterfall and floated into the fishing spot occupied by Chunk, who attacked and injured the cub. Grazer fought Chunk, but the cub ultimately died. After the dramatic fight, voting fans handed Grazer a victory over Chunk. Then Chunk returned in 2025 to take the title.
Fat Bear Week was started in 2014 as an interactive way to inform the public about brown bears, the coastal cousins of grizzlies.
NEW YORK — President Donald Trump is set to address the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday at a tumultuous moment for the world — and for his presidency.
The global economy has been shaken by his decision to launch a war against Iran. Anxiety about the social impact being wrought by artificial intelligence is surging. And questions linger about the future of the United Nations itself with Trump’s scaling back U.S. financial support for the United Nations.
He’s also set to meet with leaders and senior officials from Gulf Cooperation Council nations — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates — to discuss the way ahead with the war in Iran and growing concern about recent Iran-backed rebel attacks on Saudi Arabia.
The visit to the U.N. comes when Trump’s foreign policy approach — particularly his decision to start a war with Iran — has become a drag on his fellow Republicans’ hopes of retaining control of both chambers of Congress during the coming midterm elections. Nevertheless, administration officials signaled Trump will make the case in his address that the world is better off for his leadership.
“We expect the president will highlight how he has and his administration have confronted complex problems head-on around the world,” Ambassador Mike Waltz, Trump’s chief envoy to the international body, told reporters.
Waltz also suggested that Trump might revisit some of his long-held criticism of the United Nations. The president has criticized the body as being ineffectual on issues of war and peace, has claimed the organization is perpetuating a “con job” by emphasizing the need to address global warming, and has asserted the U.N. has promoted the “invasion” of migrants into Europe.
He returns to the General Assembly nearing the seven-month mark of a new war against Iran that he insists is necessary to address a nuclear threat posed by Iran.
The war has grown more complicated even though strikes by the United States and Israel have killed much of Iran’s top leadership and destroyed its air force and navy, while a U.S. blockade of Iranian oil has left Tehran in economic shambles.
The passage of oil from other Gulf countries through the Strait of Hormuz has improved in recent weeks with the help of the U.S. Navy helping guide commercial vessels through the narrow waterway. Still, the flow of oil is significantly below pre-war levels. And Brent crude continues to hover around $100 per barrel, up from about the $70 range in the weeks before the start of the war.
But the energy market continues to be spooked. Saudi Arabia earlier this month shuttered a key pipeline that acted as a relief valve for oil blocked in the Gulf. The kingdom made the move after the pipeline came under attack by Iran-backed militants in Iraq.
At the same time, territorial grabs by the Yemen-based Houthi rebels, another Iranian-backed group, near the Bab al-Mandab Strait has now made it treacherous for oil carriers to use that Red Sea shipping lane.
Majed al-Ansari, chief spokesman for the Qatari Foreign Ministry, said Monday that Qatar and other mediators are trying to penetrate a “deep deficit of trust” between the U.S. and Iran and get the sides back to negotiations.
“What we’re trying to say is that, ‘Listen, this will end at the negotiating table,” said al-Ansari, speaking at the Concordia Annual Summit, a global affairs forum taking place during the U.N.’s high-level week. “Either we sign a deal now or sign a deal 10 months away. The only difference is the number of dead and destruction that we see.”
The administration will sign a Greenland deal
At last year’s General Assembly, Trump touted his record as a peacemaker and claimed that “everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize” for his administration’s efforts mediating several conflicts around the globe.
This year, his administration is set to sign an agreement on the sidelines of the General Assembly with Danish and Greenlandic leaders that aims to set the pathway for the expansion of the U.S. military’s footprint on Greenland.
The deal, announced last week, came together after Trump repeatedly threatened to “take over” Greenland, a territory of NATO-ally Denmark, by military force if necessary.
Under the deal, Greenland remains Denmark’s territory. “I’m looking forward to the meeting tomorrow. I think we have reached a good agreement,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told Danish broadcaster TV2 Denmark.
Trump’s frustration with Russia-Ukraine war mounts
The president has routinely expressed frustration about the conflict. He hasn’t obscured that his patience is being tested by Ukraine’s targeting of Russia’s diesel refineries — an issue that’s added to oil markets’ volatility — and Russia’s targeting of Ukraine’s energy grid.
Trump last week asserted that he got the two sides to agree to not target each other’s energy infrastructure. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was willing to go along with Trump’s plan if Russia abided by it. Russia said it could only go along with Trump’s energy truce proposal if Western energy sanctions on Moscow were lifted first.
The two sides have continued carrying out strikes on refineries and other energy infrastructure. Trump on Monday, before departing for New York, expressed his frustration with targeting of energy infrastructure.
“Russia has unfortunately lost control of its Diesel Oil Industry due to its War with Ukraine,” Trump posted on social media. He added, “This ridiculous and never ending War with Ukraine must be ended.”
Trump to hold critical talks with UK, Japan and Venezuela leaders
The president is set to hold his first face-to-face meeting with Burnham, the center-left Labour Party leader who became prime minister in July.
With elevated oil prices dragging the British economy, he may also be eager to discuss ways to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz. He announced on Monday that he would send a Royal Air Force plane to the Mideast to help Saudi Arabia repel attacks from Houthi rebels. The plane will refuel Saudi planes during defensive missions.
Trump’s meeting with Japan’s Takaichi comes as he prepares to welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping later this week to Washington for a state visit.
The historically complicated Japan-China relationship became even more fraught after Takaichi said last year that Japan’s military could intervene if China were to take action against Taiwan, a semi-autonomous island democracy that Beijing considers its own territory. The tensions have spilled over into the China-Japan economic relationship.
Trump’s engagement with Rodriguez, Venezuela’s interim president, will be the first meeting between the two leaders since Trump in January ordered a U.S. military operation to capture then-President Nicolás Maduro and swept him off to New York City to face federal narco-terrorism and drug trafficking charges. Maduro’s lawyers have objected to the U.S. military action that snatched him from power.
BOSTON — A lawyer for Lindsay Clancy is asking a judge to investigate the conduct of the lone juror who wanted to convict the Massachusetts mother of murder in the deaths of her three young children.
In a motion filed Friday but made public Monday, Clancy’s lawyer asked the court to question juror Michael Desronvil about his alleged use of a cellphone during deliberations, his truthfulness on a questionnaire that prospective jurors filled out before the trial began, and his truthfulness when jurors were questioned by the judge a day before the trial ended.
Among other things, lawyer Kevin Reddington asked the court to obtain a record of any calls or texts Desronvil made between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. on each day the jury deliberated. Phone use during deliberations is prohibited in the state.
The judge declared a mistrial Sept. 4 after the jury insisted it couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict, despite days of trying. Eleven of 12 jurors were ready to clear Clancy of criminal responsibility, with the majority feeling that she was in the grip of a rare condition called postpartum psychosis when she strangled her kids.
But Desronvil sided with the prosecutors, who had argued that Clancy knew what she was doing.
Desronvil hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with his service on the jury, though some other jurors complained that he was inflexible in his opinion that Clancy was guilty. In a statement released by his lawyer last week, Desronvil said he “didn’t have any doubts.”
Prosecutors have yet to say whether they plan on putting Clancy on trial again. She remains charged with murder and is in a psychiatric hospital until her case is resolved.
In another motion on Monday, another lawyer for Clancy, Martin Weinberg, asked the judge to take the unusual step of dismissing the criminal case, rather than putting on a new trial, on the grounds that a mistrial shouldn’t have been declared in the first place.
Weinberg argued that the judge should have replaced Desronvil with an alternate during the deliberations after the jury foreperson complained he was refusing to listen to the law on reasonable doubt.
“Contrary to the court’s stated belief at the time, it did have viable choices other than declaring a mistrial,” Weinberg wrote.
A spokesperson for Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz would not comment on the motions.
At the trial, jurors heard from psychologists and clinicians who treated Clancy for several months before the killings, when she was suffering from worsening mental health problems that emerged after the birth of her youngest child. She was released from a psychiatric hospital less than three weeks before she killed her children.
