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  • The other ‘insane’ thing about Trump and Venezuela | Will Bunch Newsletter

    The Eagles are who we thought they were. A team that consistently disappointed its fans despite winning the NFC East in defense of its Super Bowl crown put in a disappointing one-and-done playoff performance under a clueless offensive coordinator, with a banged-up O-line and some stars (cough, cough…A.J. Brown) perhaps past their peak. But this is what Philly fandom is all about: one battle after another.

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    Dirty, toxic oil from Venezuela is the last thing that America needs

    John Beard drives near a liquid natural gas facility in Port Arthur, Texas. In addition to LNG facilities, Port Arthur is surrounded by oil refineries and petrochemical plants. Beard says Black and brown communities like Port Arthur are having to bear much of the risk posed by the facilities.

    You could say that crude oil is in John Beard Jr.’s blood. His dad worked for more than 44 years at a giant Gulf Oil refinery in the heady 20th-century days of the South Texas energy boom, and Beard then followed his father’s footsteps by working 38 years at a rival Exxon facility in Beaumont, before heading home to sleep in the shadow of Port Arthur’s own dense row of dozens of refineries.

    But today, Beard — a longtime civic activist and political leader in Port Arthur’s large Black community — is fighting to keep oil out of his neighbors’ blood, literally.

    “It was nothing to wake up the next morning and find a yellow stain against the side of your house with something had been released in the air,” Beard told me last week on the phone as he talked about growing up surrounded by tall refinery stacks. “You may have smelled it, or you may have slept through it and all and come to find out that it stained your house or whatever.”

    Although the Gulf Coast city of 55,000 was dubbed Texas’ “cancer belt” decades ago, it wasn’t until 2010 — when Beard heard about a report that Port Arthur residents are 40% more likely to develop cancer than similar towns just 25 miles upwind — that Beard became a tireless environmental activist.

    “You know how you say when the refinery has a sneeze, we get pneumonia?” he asked. “But no, we don’t get pneumonia. We get cancer.” The most-feared disease has touched pretty much every family that Beard knows in the economically struggling town.

    This was all before last week’s lightning bolt of news: that the U.S. military had bombed Venezuela and seized its indicted strongman leader Nicolás Maduro. It was quickly followed by Donald Trump announcing a scheme to bring some 30-to-50-million barrels of oil to the United States — meaning the backyards of Beard and his neighbors.

    Indeed, experts have tagged Valero’s big refinery in Port Arthur that towers over Beard’s home — heavily invested in specialized equipment to process the sour, heavy crude that comes from Venezuela — as most likely to benefit from Trump’s proposed gambit.

    Environmentalists say any new refinery jobs and U.S. corporate profits will be swamped by increased pollution of both the toxic chemicals that have already sickened Port Arthur, and greenhouse gases that threaten us all through climate change.

    When America woke up 10 days ago to news that Trump had ordered the dead-of-night assault on Venezuela and seized Maduro, there was one word that echoed among Democratic lawmakers asked for a comment. “Is anyone going to just stop for a second and be honest?” U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts told CNN. “This is insane. What the hell are we doing?”

    But the first wave of critics like Moulton focused mainly on the rank illegality of Trump’s maneuver — failing to get congressional approval or even consult its leaders, over an act of unlawful aggression that killed as many as 100 people on the ground, and which seemed to lack any planning for how to deal with the aftermath of taking Maduro.

    Those problems have been amplified in the days since Moulton and others branded the operation as “insane.” It is indeed insane when Trump declares to the world that the United States is “in charge” of Venezuela and a few days later his State Department says the country is unsafe for Americans because of violent roving gangs. For that matter, it’s also meshugana to upend the global order that has reigned since the end of World War II, when the U.S. led efforts to ban wars of aggression.

    But we’re not talking nearly enough about what’s maybe most whacked-out about Trump’s splendid little war in Latin America — that by making his operation all about taking the oil, he seeks to endanger the entire planet by accelerating climate change. One expert told the Associated Press that increasing production of Venezuela’s thick, dirty crude by a target of 1 million barrels a day would also add roughly 360 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year from the production process — a significant spike in the gases that are warming our planet.

    That Trump made it clear that his goal in making war against Venezuela was all about grabbing its oil on the one-year anniversary of the deadly Los Angeles wildfires — perhaps the most dramatic of the floods, amped-up hurricanes, and other weather catastrophes exacerbated by a hotter planet — was especially disgusting.

    Michael E. Mann, director of the Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, told me that while Trump’s initial target for Venezuelan oil seems modest, experts believe the South American nation could harbor a whopping 300 billion barrels under ground. He has written that Trump aims to make America a “petrostate,” allied with other bad actors such as Russia and Saudi Arabia in working to undermine any global consensus around fighting climate change.

    Less than a week after the Venezuela strike, the New York Times reported that Trump’s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is dropping its longtime requirement to weigh the cost on human lives — early deaths, or chronic diseases like asthma — in regulating key air pollutants, including those from oil refineries. As a matter of policy, the U.S. government now values the dollars that Valero or Exxon can make from burning dirty oil over the very existence of Beard and his Texas community. That’s not surprising from the crew that’s dismantled an entire generation of EPA programs that once targeted the environmental racism that dumps pollutants on disadvantaged Black and brown communities like Port Arthur.

    Indeed, the 100 fatalities caused by the Trump regime’s militarism against Venezuela — although a human-rights outrage — will likely pale over time against the canopy of death and destruction that historians will blame on the president’s obsession with doubling down on fossil fuels while other nations focus on green energy such as wind or solar.

    A preview of the world’s coming attractions is arguably taking place right now on the blood-soaked streets of Tehran, where experts believe months of severe drought that sometimes left poorer neighborhoods in the Iranian capital with little or no running water has been a key trigger for the collapse of social order.

    While foreign policy experts aren’t wrong to worry about U.S. expansionism triggering World War III, Trump’s backward-looking energy policies could cause a similar or worse toll through civil war and mass migration. While top energy officials — including the Exxon Mobil CEO who called Venezuela “uninvestable” — say Trump’s Venezuela dreams are economically unrealistic, the time lost for America to reduce its greenhouse gas pollution is a clear and present danger for civilization.

    History is almost sure to judge that “insane” was far too generous a word to describe it.

    Yo, do this!

    • I’ve written about this before but I can’t say enough about the essentialness of Andrew Hickey’s long-running podcast, A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, which currently is up to around 1969 on its long, strange trip. His latest episode — about Jimmy Cliff, “Many Rivers to Cross,” and the invention of reggae — proved unexpectedly prescient when Cliff died at age 81 just before its release. Now, the passing of the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir has me dredging up his recent episode about the Dead, “Dark Star,” and the rise of an almost spiritual cultural phenomenon.
    • In the world of media, the mid-2020s will be remembered as the moment that intrepid independent journalists stepped up and did the work that traditional newsrooms are suddenly too cowed or too compromised to perform. Since ICE and the Border Patrol amped up their immigration raids last summer, I’ve become a big fan of Amanda Moore (@noturtlesoup17.bsky.social on Bluesky), who has birddogged Greg Bovino and his goon squad from the Big Easy to the frigid streets of Minneapolis. Check out her coverage of the far right for Mother Jones.

    Ask me anything

    Question: Please explain how the “anti-elite” [MAGA] base can continue to support all the elite personnel in charge of America’s economy in this regime? Just ONE recent example: [Pennsylvania Sen. Dave] McCormick’s wife’s Facebook promotion in charge of….“sovereign relations concerning AI…“. — @tim215.bsky.social via Bluesky

    Answer: Tim, I think the ascension of Dina Powell McCormick — the former Trump 45 aide who is also married to Pennsylvania’s Republican junior senator — to the job of president of Facebook’s parent company Meta has profoundly troubling implications. This is neither to say that Mark Zuckerberg’s new hire lacks qualifications, nor that Senate spouses should be barred from the private sector. But the move surely reflects Silicon Valley’s determination to curry favor with the personalist Trump regime by any means necessary. What bothers me even more, as a Pa. voter, is that I see the issues surrounding Meta — especially the currently unchecked rise of artificial intelligence, or AI — as requiring clear-eyed leadership. How can anyone now expect Sen. McCormick to be an honest broker?

    What you’re saying about…

    Last week’s question about the attack on Venezuela drew a robust response, as I expected, and — also as I expected — almost unanimous opposition to Trump’s policy for the troubled country. Most of you saw the military operation as illegal and unconstitutional, and share my befuddlement (see above) on the president’s assertion that taking Venezuela’s oil was the prime reason, except for Jon Elliott, who wrote: “I absolutely endorse Trump’s Pirates of the Caribbean excursion with one proviso — he performs Maduro redux in North Korea.” More typical was Tom Lees: “I was born in June 1945, two months before the dropping of the atomic bombs. The world order that has prevented WWIII seems to be in the process of being dismantled by people who should be imprisoned (Donald Trump) or institutionalized (Stephen Miller).”

    📮 This week’s question: Given the uproar over the killing of Renee Good, is “Abolish ICE” now the mainstream position, and do you support it? If so, how should the U.S. enforce its immigration laws? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “Abolish ICE” in the subject line.

    Backstory on the end of Newsom’s WH dreams

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during his State of the State address Thursday in Sacramento, Calif.

    One of the most anticipated stories of 2026 isn’t supposed to happen until the waning weeks of the year, when the votes from the midterm election have been counted and top Democrats beginning lining up for their shot at following Donald Trump as the 48th president. But the most consequential early moment in that Dem primary race may have already happened. On Monday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom faced a career-defining choice between the growing populism of his party’s anxious voters, or the Silicon Valley moguls who’ve been there for him in the past.

    Newsom chose the billionaires.

    At issue is a citizen initiative to place a wealth tax on California’s richest of the rich — those with a net worth of more than $1 billion — to pay a one-time levy equal to 5% of their assets, with most of the revenue targeted toward keeping troubled hospitals open and other healthcare costs. Backed by a powerful labor union, the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the ballot measure reflects growing global rage over economic inequality and the current zeitgeist among Democrats likely to vote in the 2028 primaries. Not surprisingly, the push has angered Silicon Valley’s increasingly right-wing tech titans and investors like Peter Thiel or Google co-founder Larry Page who’ve threatened to move to red states like Florida or Texas.

    Newsom, who is term-limited and leaves the governor’s mansion at year’s end, has long walked a tightrope between boosting his White House ambitions by relentlessly needling Donald Trump on social media while — with considerably less fanfare — catering to the high-tech poobahs who’ve funded his campaigns and who, Newsom insists, would damage the Golden State economy by leaving. On Monday, the governor told the New York Times that he firmly opposes the proposed wealth tax and will use his bully pulpit to fight the measure if it reaches the ballot.

    “Hey idiots: You’re rich,” the independent journalist Hamilton Nolan wrote in a riposte to Thiel and Co. posted hours before Newsom’s decision. “Enjoy your lives. Pay your taxes and count your blessings. Is this the perfect life that you dreamed of for yourself — performatively kissing the ass of a dictator, giving up your home to flee the taxman, earning the enmity of your fellow man, all in service of money you will never spend?”

    Nolan’s piece may have targeted the 0.1%, but it also seemed to carry a message that Newsom and any other Democratic presidential hopefuls need to hear. Running as a performative kind of center-left Trump with viral social media posts will get you attention but not the White House. The core of rank-and-file Democrats — especially the 7 million who took to the streets last summer for the No Kings protest — wants radical changes they’re not seeing in Newsom’s California. These include limits on artificial intelligence, a major overhaul of the Supreme Court, and — especially — an end to the gross unfairness of economic inequality. Hopefully Newsom’s pals in Silicon Valley can find him new work, because 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. already looks above his future pay grade.

    What I wrote on this date in 2019

    One of the many similarities between today and the United States seven years ago is that Democrats and other progressives were already deeply divided over how best to respond to Donald Trump and threats against democracy. On this date in 2019, I put forth my own idea that I’m not sure I’d endorse in hindsight: that Bernie Sanders was the most inspiring figure in U.S. politics, yet should stand down from the 2020 election. I wrote about “a sense that white dudes from the baby-boomer-and-older generation have been running things for far too long, and that America needs some new blood.” Instead, we got the two oldest presidents in American history. Read the rest: “Bernie Sanders is the leader America needs now. Just NOT by running for president in 2020.”

    Recommended Inquirer reading

    • Late last year, I predicted that Trump’s plummeting popularity would cause him to double down on autocracy. For once, I was right. In my Sunday column, I wrote about the shocking ICE Minneapolis murder of 37-year-old poet and mom Renee Nicole Good and the broader war for the truth that was defined by the Trump regime’s instant smears against the victim. Over the weekend, I looked at how 2026’s shocking start from Caracas to the Twin Cities was punctuated by Trump’s jarring comments to the New York Times — that nothing can stop him but “my own mind” and “my own morality.” I stressed that he can and will be stopped — by our morality.
    • The nation remains on edge nearly one week after the ICE agent gunned down Good in the streets of Minneapolis, and already the resistance movement to ICE has seen some twists and turns. None has been more dramatic in Philadelphia than the unexpected return of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, an iconic social movement that thrived in the late 1960s and early ‘70s before a government crackdown. When several armed members of the Black Power group demonstrated against ICE near City Hall on Thursday, The Inquirer’s Brett Sholtis jumped on the story and followed up with an in-depth profile of the small group, whose Philly leader, Paul Birdsong, said Good’s killing “wouldn’t have happened if we were there.” Sholtis is part of the paper’s jacked-up weekend news coverage that is supported by your subscription dollars. Local journalism is a bulwark against tyranny. Become a part of it by subscribing to The Inquirer today.

    By submitting your written, visual, and/or audio contributions, you agree to The Inquirer‘s Terms of Use, including the grant of rights in Section 10.

  • Trump now a tyrant restrained only by ‘my own morality.’ We stop him with our own.

    Trump now a tyrant restrained only by ‘my own morality.’ We stop him with our own.

    Vladimir Lenin, who famously (may have) said there are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen, probably would have been flabbergasted by the century that took place in the first week of January 2026.

    America’s battered psyche had barely processed Donald Trump’s dictate to illegally bomb Venezuela — killing as many as 100 people — and capture its ruler when a political earthquake struck Minneapolis, where an ICE agent’s stone-cold killing of a 37-year-old mom in her SUV, captured on multiple videos, shook the national conscience.

    These two seismic stories sandwiched a grotesque effort by the Oval Office to whitewash the fifth anniversary of Trump’s attempted Capitol Hill coup on Jan. 6, 2021. Yet I would argue that American historians will look back and see the most consequential moment — amid seven more days that shook the world —occurred on the quiet hiss of a New York Times journalist’s tape recorder.

    The nation’s 47th president insisted to anyone listening that he believes there are no limits to his power, other than those that he himself sets in a brain clogged by decades of Big Macs.

    A dictatorship, if he can keep it.

    In the White House last Wednesday, Trump was asked by four New York Times reporters during a wide-ranging interview whether he believed there are any limits on his own powers. “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

    His morality? The man who, as found by juries of his peers, sexually abused a woman in a department-store changing room and committed massive business fraud as a real-state developer, while palling around with the most notorious sex-trafficker on Planet Earth? That morality?

    His mind? The one that is increasingly revealing its age after nearly eight decades of intermittent use, from the president’s increasingly incoherent news conferences to getting up and gazing out the window during important White House meetings, when he’s not boasting about his ability to distinguish a giraffe from a hippo? That mind?

    God help the United States of America.

    As America’s self-proclaimed paper of record, the Times gets a lot of well-deserved criticism for its news judgment, but it was absolutely right to splay Trump’s kingly pronouncement across the top of the front page — even in a week that seemed like the end of the world as we know it. This actually was the most important story — a unitary dictatorship theory that binds Caracas with the Twin Cities.

    There’s an understandable yet somewhat misguided tendency to label Trump’s most impulsive and outrageous actions as “a distraction” from deeper long-term problems. And, to be sure, the president’s MAGA inner circle probably doesn’t mind when TV’s talking heads are talking about Venezuelan crude oil and not the flagrant lawbreaking of blocking the mandated release of the Jeffrey Epstein Files, with 99% still outstanding.

    Demonstrators gather along Market Street to honor the memory of Renee Good and to protest against ICE in Center City, on Saturday.

    But these so-called “distractions” are, in reality, the very essence of Trump’s “red Caesar” vision for his personalist, authoritarian governance of America and his perceived sphere of domination in the Western Hemisphere. It is a regime that believes in the raw power of brute force and its ability to murder people with “absolute immunity,” whether it’s an 80-year-old grandmother who lived too close to Nicolás Maduro or a 37-year-old mom whose SUV is in the way of its masked secret police.

    The independent journalist and author Jonathan M. Katz summed it up best: “Everything is a distraction and everything is the crisis.”

    That crisis aims to eliminate the perceived constraints on the regime’s lethal conduct — traditions of America morality that are very different from what dwells in Trump’s clouded brain — by outrageously lying about the present and altering the factual narratives of the past.

    Any high-school student struggling to understand George Orwell’s 1984 (just kidding…they don’t read books in high school anymore) could have simply turned on the news last Tuesday, when the Trump regime threw the truth about the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021 down the memory hole with a fictionalized rewrite of what happened — thus seeking to control the future by controlling the past.

    Although published some 78 years ago, Orwell’s novel is proving an even better roadmap to the deeper truths of the Trump regime than the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. It predicted the meaninglessness of past political alliances (“We were at war with Greenland. We had always been at war with Greenland.”), the Two Minutes Hate that is Trump’s Truth Social Feed, and the deepfake altering of reality that turns a part-time poet with three kids into “a domestic terrorist.”

    What Orwell was describing was essentially totalitarianism — government with no real objectives or moral force beyond the whims of its Dear Leader and the violent social control that’s required to keep that from unraveling. Less than one year after his inauguration, Trump is claiming this worldview as his own. If he had bothered to crack open his high-school French book, he might have told the Times, “L’État, c’est moi.”

    In a screen grab from footage circulating on social media, anti-regime protesters dance around a bonfire as they take to the streets, in Tehran, Iran, Friday.

    Yet the most chilling part of this regal declaration from the Oval Office was when Trump said his own values and intellect are the only thing that can stop him — presumably from killing again in Caracas or South Minneapolis or the middle of Fifth Avenue. In fact, the institutions that have restrained less-ambitious presidential overreach in the past seem to have vanished in the face of an actual dictator.

    For sure, there are some members of Congress willing to meet the moment, but they are drowned out by the fear-laden paralysis of Democratic leaders and the zombie-like obedience of Republicans on Capitol Hill. There are some judges insisting that the rule of law is still in play, but their decisions are sucked into a rogue Supreme Court. There are remarkable independent journalists fighting tear gas and pepper balls in the street, but too many people get their news from in-the-tank billionaire-owned outlets that are functioning as a kind of state media.

    Speaking of which, there was one other passage in the New York Times this week that was also striking. It read: “On state television, an anchor warned that protesters could be risking their lives by taking to the streets. ‘Tonight is the night for parents to stop their children from going out,’” he said. “‘If something happens, if someone is injured, if a bullet is fired and something happens to them, do not complain.’”

    You can’t be blamed for thinking that the “state television” being quoted was CBS News under its now pro-Trump billionaire owner and his muse, Bari Weiss, but of course the Times was describing that other country where people are risking getting shot to protest: Iran.

    In New Orleans and across U.S., anger over ICE raids sparks a 2nd American Revolution | Will Bunch

    There are no coincidences in this already incredible year of 2026. The slow moral rot of the backwards-looking, theocratic regimes behind the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the Reagan revolution of 1980 has finally decayed to the point where thousands of people are out in the streets of Tehran, Minneapolis, Tabriz, and Philadelphia.

    “People are saying we have nothing left to lose.”

    Again, this is a quote from an Iranian anti-regime journalist named Elyar Kamrani, but it’s a vibe that is also deeply felt by the thousands who marched this weekend all across America. One imagines that the gunfire of Tehran was echoing in the mind of the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire when he told a candlelight vigil Saturday that he’s instructed his clergy to get their affairs in order and make sure their wills are completed. “It is time to put our bodies between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable,” Rob Hirschfeld said.

    You’ve almost got to hand it to Trump for being honest about his warped agenda, and for understanding what the war for the soul of America is really all about.

    Morality.

    If the American Experiment dies, it will be because we didn’t stop the immorality of a white supremacy that calls Somali refugees “garbage” and a patriarchy that mutters “f—ing bitch” as it murders a woman in ice-cold blood. If it lives, it will be because we embraced the higher morality of empathy and compassion for our neighbors — and for people we don’t even know.

    The world must choose between the morality of one man’s damaged soul and those ancient hierarchies, or that of the millions who are risking bodily harm and even death out in the streets, here and on the other side of the world. There is no longer any middle ground.

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  • 14 events to look forward to in Philly this year that aren’t the World Cup or the 250th

    14 events to look forward to in Philly this year that aren’t the World Cup or the 250th

    You can’t turn around these days in Philly without someone telling you this is going to be a big year for the city, including me. You get it, things are happening, people are coming, but I bet you mostly just want to know how you can either join in on the parties or figure out how much they’re going to annoy you.

    I usually try to temper my expectations — one, because I’ve learned a few things in 18 years here and two, because I like to be pleasantly surprised. But I’ve recently found myself imagining what the big moments will be like: the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament in March; the PGA Championship in May; the FIFA World Cup and MLB-All Star games this summer; and the yearlong celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

    Antoine Watts, back left, and Michael Clement, front center, participate in the Red, White, and Blue To-Do Pomp & Parade at Independence Hall in 2024.

    I have big hopes and some worries for Philadelphia, just like I do for everything I love.

    And while the stuff above is a lot, it’s not everything going on here this year, not even close. So if you’re seeking alternatives to the big to-dos, looking to keep your calendar full all year long, or just hoping to run into Mark Ruffalo, here are 14 more Philly happenings to look forward to this year.

    (Dates are subject to change. Check related websites for updates.)

    Jan. 30: Philly is Unrivaled

    The first big event features incredible athletes you won’t see in any of the major sporting events I mentioned above: women.

    Unrivaled, a three-on-three format women’s basketball league, is holding a doubleheader at Xfinity Mobile Arena to kick off its first tour later this month.

    Rose BC guard Chelsea Gray (12) drives past Lunar Owls wing Rebecca Allen (9) in their Unrivaled 3-on-3 basketball game Jan. 5 in Medley, Fla.

    The games will undoubtedly hype up fans for when Philly gets its own WNBA expansion team in 2030 and prove to any doubters that Philly is a women’s sports town (we even have a shirt that says it).

    Some tickets remain. The games will also be televised on TNT and truTV.

    Feb. 6 — 22: The Winter Olympics

    The Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics in northern Italy will feature a host of local athletes and at least one famous Philly podcaster. Watching it also doesn’t require you to leave your house, so win-win.

    Four Philadelphia Flyers will be playing Olympic hockey: Travis Sanheim for Canada, Rasmus Ristolainen for Finland, Dan Vladar will represent Czechia, and Rodrigo Abols will take the ice for Latvia.

    People take photos in front of the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics and Paralympics rings, in Cortina D’Ampezzo, Italy.

    Other local athletes will undoubtedly qualify, but I don’t have a full list yet so don’t email me asking why I didn’t mention your cousin-in-law on the U.S. Curling Team.

    Kylie Kelce will also serve as a digital content creator for NBCUniversal’s Creator Collective and she’ll have on-the-ground access to the games to produce social media content.

    Go Birds. Go Team U.S.A.

    Feb. 14: ‘Universal Theme Parks: The Exhibition’

    How much fun can learning about theme parks be without the roller coaster rides, immersive lands, or concession stands? Philly will find out next month when the Franklin Institute premieres: “Universal Theme Parks: The Exhibition.”

    An artists’ conceptual rendering of the Franklin Institute’s “Universal Theme Parks: The Exhibition,” which is slated to open Feb. 14.

    The new exhibit spans eight galleries and tracks the history and world-building of Universal’s theme parks. It was created by the team at the Franklin, who hope it will introduce young visitors to science and tech careers in the theme park industry.

    I’m hoping there’s a section about whatever alien incantation protects the E.T. Adventure ride, which opened in 1990 and is the last remaining original ride at Universal Studios Florida. The high-tech stuff is awesome, but there’s nothing that beats the nostalgia of that flying bicycle ride and the flashlight-fingered alien.

    March 14: Ministry of Awe opens

    The more I hear about the Ministry of Awe the less I understand it, and the more intrigued I become.

    The permanent, six-story immersive art experience helmed by Philly muralist Meg Saligman inside of Manufacturers National Bank in Old City “transforms an abandoned 19th-century bank into a fantastical, seemingly impossible institution that trades in the many enigmatic facets of humanity,” according to its website.

    Guests will be encouraged to question what they value and to wander the multimedia art space, which will lean into a banking theme and includes a room for counterfeiting. Actors will be on hand to enliven their experiences.

    Muralist Meg Saligman inside of the still-under-construction Ministry of Awe in November. Opening date is March 14.

    “There’s a teller that smells you. You will walk through and be delighted and surprised along the way,” Saligman told The Inquirer.

    The Ministry of Awe says we all already have accounts open there and one thing is for certain, my interest rate is sky-high.

    April 14 — May 31: ‘1776 The Musical’

    There are not many musicals set in Philadelphia and the one thing you can say about 1776 is that it’s one of them.

    The production about the events that led to the signing of the Declaration of Independence never became a juggernaut like Hamilton and didn’t produce any smash songs. But after rewatching the film version last Independence Day, I can safely say it’s still a pretty good musical. Especially if you hate John Adams, or love watching people hate on him.

    While it would have been epic if this production could have been staged at Independence Hall this year, seeing it at the Walnut Street Theatre — the country’s oldest theater, which opened just 32 years after 1776 — is a close second.

    April 16: Cruise ships begin sailing out of Philly

    For the first time in nearly two decades, cruise ships will return to the region this spring, offering locals a chance to seas the day with an aquatic trip abroad.

    Construction of the Port of Philadelphia (PhilaPort) Cruise Terminal began last month in Tinicum Township, Delaware County, at a site adjacent to the Philadelphia International Airport that was formerly known as the Hog Island Dock Terminal Facility.

    (How’s that for a local word salad — a Philly port in Delco at a dock named after the place that may have inspired the word hoagie.)

    A conceptual rendering of the future PhilaPort Cruise Terminal, a 16-acre site adjacent to Philadelphia International Airport.

    Norwegian Cruise Lines has exclusive rights to sail out of the PhilaPort Cruise Terminal through March 2033. According to its website, the first voyage will be a seven-day round-trip to Bermuda.

    Fear not the Bermuda Triangle, my fair Philadelphians, for we’ve weathered far stranger things here following Super Bowl wins, and on an average Tuesday.

    April 18: Monster Jam at the Linc

    If you think the Birds are beasts on their home turf, buckle up, because 12,000-pound trucks are coming to Lincoln Financial Field this spring as part of Monster Jam’s Stadium Championship Series.

    Foam teeth line the front of the Megalodon monster truck at Monster Jam at Lincoln Financial Field in 2023.

    When I hear Monster Jam my first thought is “It’s probably boysenberry,” or “I wonder if it’s as fun as a mash?” but if you have little ones who love things that go vroom — or you do — this auto be wheelie good time.

    May: The Greyhound station reopens

    Slated to come back from the dead this spring like it was Kenny or Jon Snow will be Philly’s intercity bus terminal, formerly known as the Greyhound station.

    The Philadelphia Parking Authority will operate the terminal on behalf of the city, which has gone more than two years without a facility since Greyhound left the terminal at 10th and Filbert Streets in 2023 after 35 years.

    Corner of the former Greyhound station at North 10th and Filbert Streets in 2018.

    In the aftermath, buses used public street curbs to pick up travelers, who were forced to wait outdoors in the elements and had very little access to basic amenities, like bathrooms. The whole situation was bus-ted and I’ll be glad to see it fixed.

    June 12: ‘Disclosure Day’ premieres

    Filmed in parts of South Jersey last year and featuring Philly’s own Colman Domingo, Disclosure Day is an alien thriller from director Steven Spielberg that I can’t wait to get my tentacles on.

    I love good sci-fi and this one has a screenplay by David Koepp, who also wrote the screenplay for Jurassic Park, one of my favorite movies of all time. The trailer for Disclosure Day is intriguing, unsettling, and reveals little about the plot, but I already find the movie authentic: If aliens were to land anywhere, South Jersey seems like a fitting place.

    At the end of the trailer, a nun says “Why would He make a vast universe yet save it only for us?” which hearkens to a famous Carl Sagan quote: “The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.”

    Aug. 30: Philadelphia Cycling Classic returns

    If there’s one thing Philadelphians love doing, it’s partying while watching other people exercise and this year they’ll get to do it again at the Manayunk Wall when the Philadelphia Cycling Classic returns after a 10-year hiatus.

    Held for 30 years before it was canceled in 2016 due to lack of sponsorship, the race follows a 14.4-mile course from Center City to Manayunk, where cyclists must climb the “Manayunk Wall,” a stretch of Levering Street with a 17% gradient.

    Women cyclists pedal up Levering Street, aka the “Manayunk Wall,” during the Liberty Classic TD Bank International Championship race in 2011. The race is returning this year as the Philadelphia International Cycling Classic.

    Back in the day, people partied like it was Two Street on New Year’s along the route in Manayunk, particularly at the Wall. As bikers cycled through the course, spectators cycled through kegs and cowbells, with some folks on Levering Street charging admission to their house parties and others hanging beer banner ads on their porches for a fee.

    Also slated in 2026, but dates remain unknown:

    A conceptual rendering of FloatLab, set to be installed at Bartram’s Garden on the Schuylkill in 2026.
    • Opening of Mural Arts’ FloatLab: Located in the Schuylkill at Bartram’s Garden, FloatLab is a 75-foot installation and environmental center that will be “a convergence of art, architecture, and nature,” according to its creator, J. Meejin Yoon. The sloped, ADA-compliant circular platform, which allows visitors to look eye-level at the river while standing in it, will serve as both an educational and artistic space.
    • Gimme my Philly money: To mark the nation’s 250th, the U.S. Mint is releasing quarters with Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell on them this year and I’m going to need some of those for my piggy bank. Just to be clear, this does not change the fact that I’m still salty at the Mint for stopping penny production. What will people put in their loafers? How will Penny from Pee-Wee’s Playhouse see? It’s just cents-less.
    This new design for the quarter commemorates the U.S. Constitution and depicts Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution were signed. The other side of this quarter has a depiction of President James Madison.

    Rumored in 2026, but in no way confirmed:

    From left: Thuso Mbedu (Aleah Clinton), Fabien Frankel (Anthony Grasso), Alison Oliver (Lizzie Stover), and Mark Ruffalo (Tom Brandis) in “Task.”
    • Task season 2: The Delco-set HBO thriller starring Mark Ruffalo was renewed for a second season and I’m hoping they start filming around Philly’s weirdest suburb this year (though creator Brad Ingelsby may have to write the script first). While it’s unclear if Ruffalo will reprise his role as FBI agent Tom Brandis, one of my resolutions this year is to frequent more local hoagie shops in the hopes of running into him, but also because I love hoagies.
    • Stranger Things spinoff?: Philly was named-dropped in the finale of the beloved sci-fi show, which got fans hypothesizing that the home of one of the greatest urban legends of all time — the Philadelphia Experiment — might be the setting for one of the confirmed spinoffs. Or it could just be subliminal advertising for Netflix House Philadelphia (which is actually in King of Prussia). An Instagram post from the show and Netflix on Wednesday only fueled rumors, with its caption: “meet me in philly.”
  • As in the case of George Floyd, the role of race hangs ominously over the shooting of Renee Good

    As in the case of George Floyd, the role of race hangs ominously over the shooting of Renee Good

    The shooting death of Renee Good by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis will likely spark the kind of outrage that we witnessed after the murder of George Floyd.

    Not just because Good — a 37-year-old wife and mother — was a U.S. citizen whose shooting by a federal agent was captured on several videos. Not even because those videos indicate that the government’s initial account of the shooting is false. Good’s death will trigger outrage because she was a white woman, and in America, the lives of white women are valued more than most.

    It’s haunting, really. Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent about a mile from where Floyd was killed by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin in 2020. Video of both incidents circled the world in seconds. And while Good was a white woman and Floyd was a Black man, the role of race hangs ominously over both incidents.

    Floyd was a victim of the disproportionate police violence leveled against Black people, and Good — a white woman — was a casualty of Donald Trump’s war on Black and brown immigrants.

    The confrontation that killed Good occurred after the Trump administration sent more than 2,000 federal agents and officers to Minnesota as part of a large enforcement operation targeting Somali immigrants. The surge of federal agents, which took place on the heels of fraud allegations leveled at Somalis, was met with protests.

    Hundreds of demonstrators rallied outside City Hall on Thursday to protest the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis.

    Good, who was in a maroon Honda near one such protest, was approached by ICE agents in other vehicles. An agent walked up to her vehicle, pulled her door handle, and yelled, “Get the f— out of the car!”

    Good first tried to back up, and then drove forward, veering around an ICE officer who shot into the vehicle. Good died from her injuries.

    Trump claimed Good caused the shooting because she tried to “run over” the ICE agent, according to the New York Times.

    Kristi Noem, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, claimed the ICE agent shot Good in self-defense after Good tried to commit an “act of domestic terrorism.” A Homeland Security spokesperson went further, accusing Good of trying to use her vehicle as a weapon to kill the agent. Noem even called Good an anti-ICE rioter, which makes no sense, since it would be difficult to riot from inside a stationary vehicle.

    Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey was having none of it. He called the claims of self-defense “bullshit,” and demanded that ICE get out of Minneapolis.

    “We’ve dreaded this moment since the early stages of this ICE presence in Minneapolis,” Frey said during a news conference. “Not only is this a concern that we’ve had internally, we’ve been talking about it. They are not here to cause safety in this city. What they are doing is not to provide safety in America. What they are doing is causing chaos and distrust.”

    Just as importantly, the death of a white woman at the hands of ICE is bringing clarity. This heartbreaking shooting lets us know that no one is exempt from the violence this administration is apparently willing to unleash to uphold its anti-immigrant policies.

    I have no doubt Good’s death will be extensively covered, because police shootings of white women are rare. In fact, the Washington Post database of police shootings indicates that between 2015 and 2024, white women comprised less than 1% of police shooting victims each year.

    Still, there’s more to it than that. White women in America are valued, and when they go missing or are victimized, media attention is so overwhelming that social scientists use a specific term to describe it: Missing White Woman Syndrome.

    With that in mind, here is the ugly truth: America’s racial hierarchy will assuredly seek justice for Good. And while I hate that she senselessly lost her life at the hands of her government, and was demonized by the president and his cabinet members, I am nonetheless hopeful for change.

    If this brutal incident wakes Americans to the danger of this moment, Renee Good did not lose her life in vain.

  • Trump’s imperial Venezuela policy based on lies and delusions

    Trump’s imperial Venezuela policy based on lies and delusions

    No one should mourn for Nicolás Maduro, and the U.S. military extraction of the Venezuelan dictator was a military tour de force.

    Those are the only two positive things to be said about President Donald Trump’s latest made-for-TV foreign operation, which has squandered American guns and taxpayer money on a lunatic venture based entirely on lies.

    Contrary to prior White House claims, the removal of Maduro had nothing to do with drug cartels, terrorism, or threats to U.S. security. Nor was it meant to restore democracy to Venezuela (as Trump stiffs exiled opposition leaders and stifles talk of future elections).

    Instead, based on the president’s own words, this monthslong exercise was aimed at taking control of Venezuela’s oil. It was also aimed at reinforcing Trump’s personal role as virtual emperor of the Western Hemisphere (and expediting the collapse of Cuba).

    Trump’s emperor complex has also renewed threats to seize Greenland or bludgeon longtime NATO ally Denmark into selling the autonomous island.

    In truth, the administration’s Venezuelan adventure threatens to drag America into another foreign quagmire and undermine U.S. security around the world.

    Smoke rises from Fort Tiuna, the main military garrison in Caracas, Venezuela, after multiple explosions were heard and U.S. aircraft swept through the area Saturday.

    After years of denouncing GOP hawks and Democrats over regime change gone bad in Baghdad and Kabul, Trump now says he intends to “run” Venezuela and manage its oil — indefinitely. While he fixates on the derring-do of the Maduro extraction, the president’s proposals for follow-up are incoherent and contradictory. His intense focus on our hemisphere distracts U.S. attention from the growing Russian and Chinese threats in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

    As Anne Patterson, a former U.S. ambassador to Colombia and Ecuador who also served as assistant secretary of state for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, asked, in frustration: “What is a carrier strike group doing in the Caribbean?

    “We’ve been fighting this drug war for decades,” she recounted, “but it is a huge public health problem, not a security threat. It is nothing like China circling around Taiwan” with warships and planes.

    Instead of facing reality, the White House is trying to sell Trump’s fantasies to the public with an endless stream of falsehoods and fake facts.

    For starters, the Venezuelan regime change will hardly affect the U.S. drug problem. Fentanyl is the drug that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and Venezuela neither makes nor exports fentanyl. That drug is manufactured in Mexico using precursor chemicals from China. (Some cocaine passes through Venezuela, but it goes mainly to Europe.)

    A government supporter holds an image of President Nicolás Maduro during a women’s march to demand his return in Caracas, Venezuela, on Jan. 6, three days after U.S. forces captured him and his wife.

    In other words, the fentanyl problem Trump claims to be addressing can only be resolved via negotiations with Mexico and China.

    Moreover, the U.S. Department of Justice has just dropped criminal charges that Maduro led a drug cartel. The reason for this shift? As Latin America experts have long contended, the so-called Cartel de los Soles — cited by Trump officials as a terrorist threat — was not a real organization at all. It is a Venezuelan slang term used for officials corrupted by drug money, including the Maduro regime.

    Now that the Justice Department plans to bring Maduro to trial, perhaps Attorney General Pam Bondi realized she could not present fake facts about cartels under oath. Maduro is a corrupt thug who no doubt made money off drug dealers, but he did not lead a terrorist cartel.

    Again, a distinct downgrade from the monster threat the White House has painted as justification for its raid.

    The Trump team has also put forward no plan for a transition from Maduro’s corrupt, repressive government to one that might curb what drug dealing does go on. He has not even spoken to opposition leaders in exile who won the 2024 election before Maduro stole it.

    Delcy Rodríguez meets with her brother, National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez, at the Foreign Ministry in Caracas, Venezuela, in 2023. Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president, has been sworn in as the leader of Venezuela.

    Instead, the president has chosen to recognize Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, and her brutal interior and defense ministers, who have increased repression against political opponents since Maduro was taken.

    “In fact, the government remains the same,” I was told by Venezuelan native Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, the head of the Washington Office on Latin America. “Are we seeing a transition without a transition for another strongman more conducive to American interests? Venezuelans want an answer.”

    In truth, Trump is himself acting like a strongman, insisting he will “run” Venezuela indefinitely. He seems to believe that by enforcing U.S. (and his personal) control of all Venezuelan oil sales and revenues, in a cockamamie scheme that appears both illegal and unmanageable, the repressive regime in Caracas can be forced to do U.S. bidding.

    When asked by the New York Times whether the U.S. would “remain Venezuela’s overlord” for more than a year, the president replied, “I would say much longer.”

    Why? What possible reason is there for Trump to expend U.S. resources on running Venezuela? Even the lure of oil money makes little sense.

    Demonstrators march along North Broad Street reacting to U.S strikes on Venezuela on Saturday.

    The president insists there are fortunes to be made if U.S. oil firms return to develop its enormous oil reserves. But apart from Chevron, which has remained in the country, large U.S. companies are reluctant. That’s because it will take tens of billions of dollars in investment to make the country’s neglected fields viable, global oil is abundant, prices are low, and Venezuela’s future is uncertain.

    If Venezuela pumps more oil and drives global prices down further — as Trump is demanding — it will negatively affect the interests of oil producers on the U.S. mainland. In fact, large producers’ interest in Venezuela is so tepid that Trump is actually offering to use taxpayer money to subsidize the return of U.S. companies to the country.

    To sum up, neither drugs, nor cartels, nor terrorism, nor oil are valid or legitimate reasons for taking out Maduro, especially as we are leaving his thuggish government in place.

    What’s worse, his Venezuelan venture appears to be inspiring Trump to fantasize about other snatch operations or military takeovers — in tragic imitation of a Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping.

    Asked in the Times interview if there were any limits on his global powers, Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

    These are the words of a wannabe dictator.

    If they don’t awaken more GOP legislators to vote to curb his future use of military force in Venezuela — via a bipartisan bill now under Senate debate — then they will be complicit in the trashing of U.S. security by an egomaniac who believes his own lies.

  • Good intentions don’t build housing in Philly, and mediocre campaigns don’t win races in Pa. | Shackamaxon

    Good intentions don’t build housing in Philly, and mediocre campaigns don’t win races in Pa. | Shackamaxon

    This week’s column looks into what happens when City Council members try to use a bad practice to serve the public good, and the beginning of Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race.

    Good intentions

    In the first few months of this column, much of the toughest criticism has been leveled at Councilmembers Jeffrey “Jay” Young and Cindy Bass. While every district legislator participates in the tradition to some degree, these two have been the most egregious practitioners of councilmanic prerogative, which gives district Council members absolute discretion over land use and transportation questions within their districts.

    Even worse, Young and Bass often struggle to offer coherent explanations for their actions. Over the past few years, I have spoken with a range of community members, local politicos, and development experts who have expressed total bewilderment about what exactly it is the pair is seeking to accomplish.

    That’s not the case with 3rd District Councilmember Jamie Gauthier. Her values are clear. When Gauthier leans into prerogative, she’s not seeking to micromanage minor decisions. She even went as far as creating an exemption for her entire district that removes the need to secure a city ordinance for outdoor dining. Gauthier legislates because she wants to produce more affordable housing and prevent displacement. In many ways, it is a bold and admirable approach.

    Still, when it comes to public policy, good intentions are not enough.

    University Place Associates is planning a 495-spot parking garage in Councilmember Jamie Gauthier’s district in West Philadelphia.

    Middling MIN

    Gauthier’s signature policy is her push for what she’s called the Mixed Income Neighborhoods overlay, or MIN. The policy, enacted in parts of both Gauthier and Councilmember Quetcy Lozada’s 7th District, builds off an existing city program, the Mixed Income Housing Bonus. Under the bonus program, developers could exceed current zoning limits in exchange for supporting affordable housing. This could be done either by building affordable units or by making a payment to the city’s housing trust fund.

    MIN, however, is mandatory. It also does not come with any bonuses. For larger development projects (10 or more units), builders are required to set aside 20% of the units for low-income households. The idea is to increase the city’s stock of statutorily affordable housing, promote income integration, and allow poorer households to move to and remain in high-opportunity areas, all without costing the city a dime.

    All of that sounds wonderful … in theory.

    In practice, things have not panned out the way advocates had hoped. Instead of producing significant amounts of affordable housing, the zoning requirements have stifled development overall. Of the 18 major projects considered by the city’s Civic Design Review Board, only two are located within the boundaries restricted by the policy. One of those projects doesn’t include any housing at all, instead supplying nearly 500 parking spots adjacent to the Market-Frankford Line.

    In an interview with Gauthier last fall, she told me she would stand by the results of MIN against the voluntary program or any other zoning program in the city of Philadelphia. Planning Commission data, however, tells a different story. In 2024, the most recent year studied, the MIN resulted in the completion of just five affordable units. The bonus program, on the other hand, created 63 affordable units and generates millions of dollars in bonus payments.

    This, of course, only looks at one factor, which is the impact on affordable housing programs. It doesn’t answer the question of how many market-rate units would have been built without the requirement. Housing costs no longer affect just the poorest, as 90% of Americans live in counties where home prices and rents rose faster than income. For most people, whether they are University of Pennsylvania students or longtime residents, this private market is where they will find housing. Without enough construction to meet demand, prices will continue to rise.

    The experience of cities like Austin, Texas, where rents are falling despite a surging population, demonstrates that new construction can help alleviate that pressure.

    There’s also the economic impact. Development projects employ skilled workers and provide money for the city’s affordable housing programs. Without more research, we have no idea how much MIN has impacted city coffers. Before Gauthier’s program expands to more communities, the city should undertake a comprehensive investigation.

    State Treasurer and Republican candidate for governor Stacy Garrity holds a rally in Bucks County at the Newtown Sports and Events Center in September.

    Maximum meh

    With State Sen. Doug Mastriano officially out and Gov. Josh Shapiro officially in, the Pennsylvania governor’s race has begun. With no other Republicans or Democrats expressing an interest in the position, a November matchup between Shapiro and State Treasurer Stacy Garrity looks certain.

    Shapiro’s campaign launch video begins as you’d expect, with the rapid reconstruction of I-95 after a fire damaged several lanes in 2023 — a reminder of how the governor gets, uh, stuff done.

    Garrity, who announced all the way back in August, has a steep challenge on her hands. Besides Tom Corbett, no Pennsylvania governor has lost a reelection bid since the ban on consecutive terms was dropped from the state constitution in 1967. Shapiro has a record $30 million on hand for his reelection bid, three times more than what he started with four years ago, the previous record. He also has a 3-0 record in statewide elections and a 60% approval rating.

    This means Garrity will need to sell voters on her own ideas, rather than just banking on people souring on Shapiro. So far, it is worth asking what those ideas are.

    As treasurer, Garrity’s main job is to manage the commonwealth’s bank accounts, not exactly the kind of thing that stirs the electorate. Garrity’s campaign video focuses on her biography, which notes her service in Iraq. It also lines up multiple hits on Shapiro, including on his not-entirely subtle pining for the presidency. But when it comes to the biggest issues facing Pennsylvanians, Garrity has yet to supply any answers.

    Instead, the challenger used an interview with CBS 21 in Harrisburg to declare that Pennsylvania is “mediocre.” So far, that label seems more appropriate for Garrity’s campaign consultants than the commonwealth.

  • Minneapolis ICE murder is Trump’s Waterloo in America’s war for the truth

    Minneapolis ICE murder is Trump’s Waterloo in America’s war for the truth

    “You might murder a freedom fighter … but you can’t murder the freedom fight.”

    — Fred Hampton shortly before his own assassination by the U.S. government in 1969

    The Honda Pilot family SUV with the glove compartment crammed with a 6-year-old’s adorable stuffed toys and its deployed airbag and headrest drenched in fresh red blood hadn’t even been towed from the Minneapolis murder scene on Wednesday before the full force of the U.S. government attacked Renee Nicole Good a second time.

    After the three deadly bullets came a fusillade of outrageous and morally reprehensible lies.

    Tricia McLaughlin, the already notoriously fact-averse spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, didn’t even know the identity of the 37-year-old Colorado native — let alone any details of her intricate life or her beautiful, award-winning poetry — when the DHS flack smeared Good as “one of the violent rioters” who’d “weaponized” her SUV against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who shot and killed her, and called it “an act of domestic terrorism.”

    Just moments later, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem — the absurdity of her words only ratcheted up by her ridiculously oversized cowboy hat at a Texas border press hit — joined the verbal pile on and amplified the “domestic terrorism” angle, even though the investigation of what had actually happened on snowy Portland Avenue had barely begun. This was all just a warm-up for America’s prevaricator-in-chief.

    President Donald Trump took to his so-called Truth Social to offer his own, further-embellished version — insisting to the nation that the still-at-that-moment unidentified woman had “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over” ICE officers, blaming “the Radical Left,” and even claiming that the ICE gunman was recovering in the hospital.

    A deployed airbag and blood stains are seen in a crashed vehicle on at the scene of a shooting in Minneapolis on Wednesday.

    In reality, the violent, reckless actions by masked agents of an American secret police were nothing new, and neither was the government’s massive assault on the truth of what happened in Minneapolis, ripped from the pages of a fascist playbook.

    But this time, millions of Americans could see what really happened to Good, thanks to multiple videos taken on that south Minneapolis street by everyday citizens with a righteous distrust of their own government. It’s the deep skepticism that began with three gunshots and a blurry home movie in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963. Now, the digital clarity of three gunshots at 9:30 a.m. on Jan. 7, 2026, may have marked a kind of Waterloo, a righteous turning point in our existential war over the truth.

    Americans could believe their elected president, or the completely different reality they could see with their own eyes.

    The citizen videos showed Good — it’s unclear whether she was a volunteer observer of the amped-up ICE raids in Minneapolis, or just filming the agents on a whim — parked at an angle across Portland Avenue when an ICE SUV approached. Two agents hopped out and approached Good’s Honda while a third — the soon-to-be shooter — moved in from the opposite side. One agent screamed, “Get out of the f— car,” but Good, with her window now open and her partner in the passenger seat, slowly backed up and then started a sharp right turn, seeking to leave the scene.

    But the third federal officer, seen adjacent to the left front fender, had already drawn his gun and fired a shot through the windshield as Good turned her Honda away from him. The videos then show the agent — now a few feet from the vehicle and clearly not in danger — firing two more times into the open window, as the vehicle and the mortally wounded Good traveled halfway down the block and into a parked car.

    The shooter — the agent the president claimed had been run over and hospitalized — was filmed walking around the murder scene, apparently unharmed. Meanwhile, the government’s crusade to dehumanize Good was already well underway, as agents were shown blocking a physician who pleaded to aid the dying woman before they finally dragged her away by her limbs.

    The senseless killing of Good was exactly the tragedy that state and city officials had feared when DHS declared at the start of the new year that it was flooding Minnesota — whose large community of Somali American refugees had been viciously slurred by Trump as “garbage” — with some 2,000 armed, masked immigration agents.

    The national spotlight ensured wall-to-wall cable news coverage when agents killed a white U.S. citizen and a mother of three on the second day of the surge in and around Minneapolis, but all of this has happened before. In the last four months, according to the New York Times, federal agents have fired their weapons in nine separate incidents — each time into a vehicle. And often the initial story from DHS collapses under the weight of truth.

    In October, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents involved in Chicago’s “Operation Midway Blitz” claimed they were boxed in by as many as 10 cars — again, not supported by video — and fired at least five shots at Mirimar Martinez, who was not seriously injured, but was then indicted, along with her passenger, on assault and attempted murder charges. Martinez was not charged with a gun crime — despite an initial DHS claim that she’d brandished a semiautomatic weapon — and soon the entire case crumbled, and now all charges have been dismissed.

    Federal agents are only allowed to fire into a moving car when they believe the driver is trying to kill or maim them or other bystanders. As videos of Good’s killing circulated Wednesday afternoon, an unnamed DHS official told NBC News that the agents’ actions — from approaching the vehicle from the front to firing the fatal shots — went against their training. But how can the public expect sound decision-making from a surge of inexperienced new hires that ICE recruits on social media, or in slick ads during NFL games, with plans to target gun shows and military enthusiasts?

    People gather for a vigil on Wednesday evening after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a woman hours earlier in Minneapolis.

    What’s more, why would the Trump regime tell the truth about killing Good when its entire Minnesota operation — along with everything else about its immoral mass deportation drive — is built atop a foundation of despicable lies, from the White House racist slander of Somali refugees seeking a better life in Minnesota to the gross exaggerations (spiked by a dishonest viral video) about a childcare fraud scandal?

    “GOOD MORNING MINNEAPOLIS,” DHS tweeted from its official account Monday as it began an unwarranted, unwelcome operation that is making no one safer, especially not the children of Minnesota. A local coalition of childcare operators called Kids Count on Us reported Wednesday that ICE agents have been swarming their facilities as operators report that little kids are frightened, adding, “We are terrified.” After Good’s death, protesting students at nearby Roosevelt High School were pepper-sprayed by federal agents. And now a 6-year-old child, whose military veteran father had already died in 2023, is an orphan.

    Exactly who are the violent rioters committing acts of domestic terrorism here?

    In New Orleans and across U.S., anger over ICE raids sparks a 2nd American Revolution | Will Bunch

    Minneapolis is a great American city that has been bombarded with needless tragedies throughout the 2020s, beginning on May 25, 2020, when George Floyd was murdered under the knee of police officer Derek Chauvin, just 0.7 miles from where Good was killed. That homicide also began with official lies that were absurdly false, until a brave citizen’s video showed America what really happened.

    Wednesday’s ICE murder carried the grim echoes of past government killing across the upper Midwest — an icy wind that blows from the massacre at Wounded Knee through the 1969 assassination of Black Panther Fred Hampton and over Floyd’s senseless demise. Yet, there is also reason to feel that, this time, a change is in the air.

    For one thing, true leaders like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey — who stunned a national TV audience when he bluntly told ICE, “Get the f— out of Minneapolis” — and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz made it clear they are fed up with the performative violence and the blatant lies. “Maybe we’re at their McCarthy moment,” Walz told a news conference. “Do you have no decency? Do you have no decency? We have someone dead in their car for no reason whatsoever. Enough. Enough is enough.”

    But there was something even more critical on this frigid prairie morning: brave everyday citizens willing to put their lives on the line for neighbors they don’t even know, and to risk everything in pursuit of the truth. America knows what really happened to Good because courageous people ran toward the scene with their phones aloft to bear witness, not knowing if ICE would kill again.

    It’s the revolutionary spirit we’ve been seeing all across America for months — regular folks from the community blowing whistles, filming ICE raids, and telling the world that our citizens will defend their communities even when all the big institutions and their overpaid leaders will not. Authoritarian governments only thrive in their own manufactured reality, gaslighting the masses that their hardworking, brown-skinned neighbor is a rapist, or that an uninjured federal agent is instead in the emergency room.

    Mark down Jan. 7, 2026, as the day America started turning off the gas, and the masks came off. No wonder it came out Thursday morning that the FBI is not cooperating with Minnesota state authorities on the investigation, in a pathetic, too-late effort at covering this mess up.

    I was one of many on Wednesday who couldn’t stop thinking about another unprovoked government killing: the Kent State Massacre and the murder of four college students on May 4, 1970. That moment caused Neil Young to write these words that still feel so relevant: “What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?/ How can you run when you know?”

    Good Americans who still believe in truth and justice ran into the danger on Portland Avenue, and we are a better place for that. Some day, and probably soon, there will be a statue on that spot in honor of Renee Nicole Good, an American hero whose bigger freedom fight could not be murdered by tyrants.

  • 2026 Mercedes GLE 450 SUV: Showing the others how it’s done

    2026 Mercedes GLE 450 SUV: Showing the others how it’s done

    2026 Genesis GV80 Coupe 3.5T E-supercharger vs. 2026 Land Rover Defender 130 V-8 vs. 2026 Mercedes-Benz GLE 450 4Matic SUV: Off-roading in high style.

    This week: Mercedes-Benz GLE 450 SUV

    Price: $79,100 as tested.

    What others are saying: “Highs: A powertrain for every need, well-appointed and spacious interior, legitimately capable; Lows: Rivals offer smoother rides and better handling, Benz charges extra for ubiquitous features.” — Car and Driver

    What Mercedes is saying: “It’s innovative. Intelligent. And just a bit indulgent.”

    Reality: Cushy, yet satisfying.

    What’s new: The GLE 450 SUV carries on fairly unchanged since the 2024 model year, when it received tech updates and available hybrid power.

    Competition: In addition to the GV80 Sport and the Defender, there are the BMW X5, Lexus RX, Lincoln Nautilus, and Toyota Land Cruiser.

    Up to speed: The GLE 450 is powered by a 3-liter inline six-cylinder engine with a mild hybrid system. It creates 375 horsepower. It gets to 60 mph in 5.3 seconds, according to Car and Driver.

    I never found the GLE lacked power, but it definitely seemed sedate. I used it in Sport mode, and nobody ever felt planted in their seats during test maneuvers. Strange how it was almost an exact match with the GV80’s 5.2-second time, but somehow the Genesis felt much more exuberant.

    Shifty: Mercedes originated the latest incarnation of the column shifter, with a bump up for Reverse and down for Drive. Shifting of the 9-speed automatic transmission happens through steering wheel paddles.

    On the road: The GLE handled about as I expected from a Mercedes — very smooth, almost to a fault. Pennsylvania’s ruttiest roads, including Route 202 around King of Prussia, could send the GLE into jumping fits, but the rest of the time the SUV felt serene, quiet, cushy.

    Speaking of cushy, that’s where the GLE handling lives — don’t expect this SUV to perform feats of derring-do on country roads. But stay within its limits and life is pleasant.

    At least when you’re in Sport mode. The vehicle defaults to Comfort mode, and that has a sway and bounce that takes cushy into nauseating.

    The interior of the 2026 Mercedes-Benz GLE 450, on the other hand, could very well win several beauty contests.

    Driver’s Seat: Ooo, aaah. Great leather coverings, not too firm, not too soft. The front seats are wide as well, perfect for large dinners at fancy restaurants.

    Visibility up front could be a bit challenging. I raised the seat up quite high and still was unsatisfied with what I could see in the corners. But I did ace a couple head-first parking lot episodes, which normally I find can be rather difficult in SUVs, so maybe it’s better than I think.

    The interior is fancy like a Mercedes should be, but the trim around the HVAC vents leaves something to be desired. They come in a contrasting color and look like I could pop them out with a small screwdriver, if I were so inclined. Why offer this?

    Friends and stuff: The other couple you bring along to show off your Mercedes (practice saying it like Cary Grant in North by Northwest — “Laura’s Meh-seddies”) will definitely be impressed. The seat is awesome, and there’s so much room to spread out, you’ll feel like you’re being chauffeured.

    A third row is optional.

    Cargo space is 33.3 cubic feet in the back and 74.9 with the seat folded.

    Towing capacity maxes out at 7,700 pounds, just 500 less than the Defender and more than 1,500 over the GV80.

    In and out: The GLE 450 sits up a little high so entry and exit are not the easiest in the world, but it sure beats the Defender.

    Play some tunes: Sound from the system is delightful, an A veering close to A+ territory.

    My ratty old iPhone plugged in and just worked, a nice touch. I’m forever getting defaulted to Bluetooth in various vehicles and then I have to fight and do dances to get it to link. But this one worked every time.

    The screen offers a simple CarPlay tab and another main tab. Console controls are also available, for those who are used to them.

    Keeping warm and cool: A row of silver toggles underneath the infotainment system looks sharp and operates with ease. I could change the temperature and the fan speed without looking after a couple tries, as it should be.

    Large vents provide plenty of airflow but never seemed to blast us.

    Fuel economy: That mild hybrid is definitely mild, as the GLE averaged 18.5 mpg for me. Gulp, but still the winner among the three tested.

    Where it’s built: Vance, Ala. Germany supplies 34% of the parts; Mexico 17%.

    How it’s built: Consumer Reports predicts the GLE SUV reliability to be a 3 out of 5.

    In the end: I felt a little bad about setting up this trio, as they do aim in different directions. But the Genesis fell short in so many areas that had nothing to do with its size — comfort and handling among them. The Land Rover really was quite nice, but their reliability reputation makes that a gamble.

    Fortunately, the Mercedes was hands down the nicest among the three, slightly sippier, more comfortable, and nice to drive. And there’s enough money left over among the three to consider a hybrid model.

  • Between Grok, Trump, and RFK Jr., it’s a dangerous time to be a child in America

    Between Grok, Trump, and RFK Jr., it’s a dangerous time to be a child in America

    It is a terrible time to be a child in America.

    From removing protections from newly resurgent communicable diseases to investing good money after bad into industries that will make the planet more inhospitable during their lifetimes, we adults have wholly abdicated our responsibilities to Gen Alpha (and the infant Gen Beta). We’ve especially failed them by ceding to our own most juvenile inclinations — we elect the irresponsible and reward the feckless — and abandoning them to what we’ve wrought.

    You grok? Yeah, that used to mean “to understand profoundly and intuitively,” but thanks to the sots that run the social media site X, it now refers to the artificial intelligence assistant that is, as we speak, actively degrading children by allowing users to take any innocently posted photo and, via prompt, have Grok edit and return the same image with the children stripped of their clothing, sometimes with other sexually suggestive details added.

    When first called out, the AI assistant itself claimed the offending, nonconsensual, manipulated images were isolated cases.

    But after outcry from ordinary folks and from officials from France, the United Kingdom, India, and others globally, Elon Musk — the CEO of X’s holding company, who initially posted laughing emojis about some of the more innocuous manipulated images — has now, according to the Guardian, posted that “anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”

    Nevertheless, as of yesterday, the degrading images were still being generated and posted, the Guardian noted.

    It’s not only children. The majority of the nonconsensual AI manipulated images created this way between Dec. 25 and Jan. 1, according to an analysis by a French forensic nonprofit, are of women under the age of 30, with only 2% involving minors under the age of 18. Still, it is particularly troubling that some of the minors subjected to this kind of image editing are allegedly as young as 5 years old.

    Sorry, MAGA Christians, you aren’t the only ones praying | Sabrina Vourvoulias

    The creation of these deepfakes isn’t, unfortunately, limited to X. According to a recent article by Wired, Google’s and OpenAI’s chatbots also enable users to manipulate existing images nonconsensually this way.

    As the adults in the room, our gravest fault in all this isn’t that we’ve given puerile middle-aged tech leaders like Musk the space to ply generative products that retcon our children’s images in gross and nonconsensual ways, though that’s certainly bad enough. No, it’s the cumulative harms to our children we’re enabling across the board and right under our noses.

    Elon Musk holds up a chain saw he received from Argentina’s President Javier Milei (right) as they arrive to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Md., in February.

    The generative AI that fuels the nonconsensual pornification of our children’s visages for entertainment purposes is part of what empowers Big Tech funding support of the Trump administration. An administration that is working mightily to restrict the image our children themselves can choose to present in the world, and to deny the bodily autonomy of anyone younger than 19.

    It’s an administration that has thwarted the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, despite the calls to do so from the women who were preyed upon and victimized when they were young girls. The same administration that has cut the SNAP benefits that feed millions of young people, and has dismantled educational resources for disabled students. An administration that, under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s direction, has narrowed access to healthcare, blamed Tylenol for autism, and curtailed gold-standard vaccines for children rather than expanded them.

    In the longer term, the same Big Tech responsible for the development of generative AI is responsible for the explosion of data centers, which we adults welcome because, sure, they create jobs for us now. But since each one consumes up to five million gallons of freshwater per day, the world we are shaping for Gen Alpha and Gen Beta children to inhabit will have drastically diminished, or contested, capacity to support human life.

    Ale Ayiti: Philly’s Haitian Americans celebrate a rare World Cup bid | Sabrina Vourvoulias

    There are so many other examples of how we, the adults in the room, are choosing to be callow and cavalier about the future. So can we really bristle when we hear members of Gen Alpha (or even Gen Z) say we’ve ruined the world?

    If we want the younger generations to be mistaken about that, we must change course now. And the opportunity to flex on the Grok grotesquerie is staring us in the face. Let’s push to close it down altogether until the coding is modified, and no one can prompt the AI assistant to strip our children of their clothes, their dignity, and their agency. We owe them that.

    Then we can get started on fixing all the rest.

  • The en(bleep)ification of the Epstein Files | Will Bunch Newsletter

    In the beginning, God created the 12 days of Christmas and the bacchanalia of New Year’s Eve to get us through the dark and frigid endless nights of winter. That wasn’t nearly enough for us shivering and depressed humans, so God sent us the NFL playoffs. The hope is that the Eagles last long enough to get us to the balmy breezes of baseball’s spring training.

    If someone forwarded you this email, sign up for free here.

    Delay, deny, distract, divert attention: Inside the Epstein Files coverup

    Pages from a totally redacted New York grand jury file into Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, released by the U.S. Justice Department, are photographed last month in Washington.

    I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover up or anything else if it’ll save it — save the plan.

    — Richard Nixon, White House tapes, March 22, 1973

    The newish word that best captures the 2020s is one that I’m not allowed to use in a family newspaper like The Inquirer. In 2022, the social critic Cory Doctorow coined this scatological term that I’m calling “en(bleep)ification” (it won’t take much imagination) to describe the way that products, but especially consumer-facing websites, gradually degrade themselves in pursuit of the bigger goal, higher profits.

    For example, writer Kyle Chayka wrote a popular New Yorker essay in 2024 about what he called the, um, en(bleep)ification of the music site Spotify as it devolved, in his opinion, from a place for the songs and albums you want to hear to pushing playlists that they want you to hear.

    In the political world, no product rollout had been more anticipated than the December release, forced by law upon the Donald Trump regime’s Department of Justice, of the Jeffrey Epstein Files — the investigative trail of documents about the late financier and indicted sex trafficker who also palled around with Trump in the 1990s and early 2000s.

    No one with any familiarity of Trump’s modus operandi should have been shocked by what happened when the congressionally mandated deadline for release of all of this massive cache of paperwork finally arrived on Dec. 19 — or by what has happened in the two-and-a-half weeks since then.

    Needless to say, the Epstein Files have not offered the seamless user experience that its readers — especially those hoping for bombshells that would expose the tawdry secrets of Trump’s friendship with a man who allegedly abused more than 1,000 young and sometimes underaged women — had anticipated. In the hands of the president’s minions at Justice, the Epstein Files have been en(bleep)ified.

    How so? Here’s the diabolical part. The MAGA Gang that normally can’t shoot straight managed to hit the coverup bullseye this time, not with one dramatic act to rile people up — like Nixon during Watergate with his notorious Saturday Night Massacre — but with a blend of tactics and dodges designed to frustrate and exhaust truth-seekers.

    Delay. The law, which Trump signed to avoid an embarrassing defeat on Capitol Hill, required the release of every single document — with appropriate blacked-out redactions to protect things like the names of Epstein’s victims — by that December deadline. But suddenly the Justice Department — which once had as many as 200 staffers combing the papers last spring before its original botched plan to squelch the files — lacked energy and manpower, claiming it was working as fast as it could in an initial release of just about 40,000 pages, which would seem to be a tiny fraction of more than 5 million pages believed to exist.

    The DOJ’s small-batch cooking came in two small servings right before Christmas, when most Americans consume the least news, and information about any new releases in the new year has suddenly dried up, with maybe 99% of the files still outstanding.

    Deny. The papers that have been released have included major redactions — including the completely blacked-out pages of Manhattan grand jury testimony pictured above — that violate the spirit if not the letter of the law, which demanded that any hidden passages only protect victims and not Epstein’s powerful associates and clients.

    Stunningly, DOJ actually took back and attempted to bury some 16 files from the first release, including a photo of a photo that included Trump, before a public outcry led to that file’s republishing. Meanwhile, the department also claimed that 1 million additional Epstein files were discovered in New York after the legal deadline — an incredible claim that was immediately punctured by experts.

    Deflect. The initial batch was also larded with photos of Epstein with celebrities like Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, and Walter Cronkite as well as several of a Trump predecessor and longtime enemy, Bill Clinton. The pictures were dumped without any explanation and seemed to prove only that there’s a good reason the government normally doesn’t release raw investigatory files, especially about those not charged with any crime.

    The second batch also included a lurid and bizarre apparent letter from Epstein to a fellow famed accused sex offender, the gymnastic coach Larry Nassar, penned right around the time of his August 2019 jail-cell death. It seemed unbelievable, and just hours later the FBI said: Oh yeah, we looked at this and it’s a fake. The not-subtle subtext was essentially: “We don’t know what to believe in these files, and neither should you.”

    Nearly 53 years ago, Nixon’s plan to cover up Watergate with a mix of denials, delays, purchased silence and outright lies didn’t work. But Team Trump’s efforts to “save it — save the plan” by stonewalling the Epstein files is going just swell so far.

    If this moment feels familiar, it is very much like 2018 and the long-awaited Robert Mueller report on Russian influence in the 2016 presidential campaign and potential links to Moscow’s preferred candidate, Trump. There was a Mueller Report — much like there has been a “release” of the Epstein Files — that contained damning evidence, especially about potential obstruction of justice. But the information was dribbled out, downplayed, denied, and ultimately went nowhere.

    The Epstein Files have been destined to fail from Day One. It was always what Trump himself might call a “rigged deal” — with the papers in the possession of those with the most to lose, with many ways to make sure the worst stuff stays buried until at least 2029, if it hasn’t already been shredded. But the biggest truth has already been revealed.

    The outright defiance of the law demanding full release of the Epstein Files has exposed the utter brokenness of our democracy.

    The reason that Nixon’s coverup plan failed is because America had institutions stronger than his lies, including a Congress that cared more about its strength and independence than party ID, newspapers that were not just widely read but believed, and Supreme Court justices with an allegiance to the law and not the man who appointed them.

    Trump and his DOJ are daring a comatose Congress, a cowed news media, and a judiciary already in their back pocket to do something, but so far there is no indication that the en(bleep)ification of the Epstein Files can be undone. For now, they are more like the X Files, because the truth about Trump and his Palm Beach pal is out there…but beyond our weakened grasp.

    Yo, do this!

    • These days I find “vacation” is often just another word for catching up on household chores, but during my long December break I did watch a slew of movies, including some of the ones I’d recommended previously like One Battle After Another (very good, but flawed) and Eddington (meh). I ventured to an actual theater on New Year’s Eve and saw probably my favorite movie of 2025: Song Sung Blue, the bittersweet, based-on-a-true-story saga of a Neil Diamond cover band at the end of the 20th century. As the title implies, the movie is more than just a rousing feel-good pop musical, despite cathartic moments of exactly that. Kate Hudson deserves an Oscar for her Wisconsin Nice accent.
    • If you miss the glory days of not-formulaic-or-cartoonish movies — in the spirit of Song Sung Blue or One Battle After Another, only better — you should check out a new documentary on Netflix called Breakdown: 1975, by filmmaker Morgan Neville. The film spotlights an all-too-brief golden age of the mid-1970s with clips from the era’s classics like Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon, and Network, and interviews with the likes of Martin Scorsese and Albert Brooks. They could have done much more with this, but I’d still recommend it.

    Ask me anything

    Question: Do you think that there is enough of a media firestorm over Grok’s nude filter to kill it? — BCooper (@bcooper82.bsky.social) via Bluesky

    Answer: The recent, shocking news about the artificial-intelligence tool called Grok that was created for Elon Musk-owned X (formerly Twitter) is a classic example of an important story that so far has befuddled and fallen through the cracks of the mainstream media. In recent days, X users have been asking Grok to create partially clothed and sexualized AI photos of real, everyday people, including images of underage adolescents. And Grok has complied, in what would seem to be a violation of laws regarding child pornography, among other legal and ethical problems. Musk needs to shut down Grok immediately — arguably for good — but that is not enough for the harm that’s already been caused. In a nation that routinely prosecutes citizens for having this kind of material on their computers, Musk, his co-creators of Grok, and X as a corporation need to be hauled before a judge.

    What you’re saying about…

    The half-dozen or so of you who responded to December’s open-ended call for 2026 predictions had one big thing in common: Boundless pessimism. Readers of this newsletter expect the new year to bring economic collapse and a disastrous midterm election in November, either from Donald Trump stealing it to Democrats somehow blowing it in the ways that only Democrats can. Stephen R. Rourke predicted: “I believe that the American economy, and perhaps the world economy, will slide into a second Great Depression, the almost inevitable consequence of an over leveraged economy, and a lack of willingness across the board to make tough choices about how to address the American addiction to borrowed money…” Oof. Nonetheless, Kim Root stole my heart with this: “I think the Philadelphia Union will rise even with the personnel changes because they are a developer of young talent. DOOP.”

    📮 This week’s question: A no-brainer: Donald Trump’s lethal assault on Venezuela and his seizure of that country’s strongman leader, in defiance of U.S. and international law, marks a turning point in American foreign policy. Are you OK with Trump’s actions because a bad guy has been removed from power, or are you alarmed by a military assault with the stated goal of pumping more oil? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “Venezuela attack” in the subject line.

    Backstory on the growing crisis of ICE custody deaths

    The Federal Detention Center in Miami.

    Marie Ange Blaise, a citizen of Haiti, was 44 years old when she was arrested last February by Customs and Border Patrol officers as she attempted to board a commercial flight in Charlotte — one of the thousands swept up during 2025 amid the mass deportation drive of the Donald Trump regime.

    Just 10 weeks later, Blaise died inside a federal immigration detention center in Broward County, Fla. A South Florida public radio station reported that the Haitian woman had spoken to her son, who later told the medical examiner that “she complained of having chest pains and abdominal cramps, and when she asked the detention staff to see a physician, they refused her.” Another detainee reported Blaise’s care was “severely delayed,” even as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) insisted she’d been offered blood-pressure medication but refused.

    Blaise’s death was not an isolated incident. There was a sharp spike in ICE custody deaths during 2025, with the final tally of 31 fatalities nearly triple the 11 deaths posted during 2024, the last year of the Biden administration. Given the surge in immigration arrests after Trump took office last January, some increase was inevitable. Two of the 31 were killed by the gunman who fired on an ICE facility in Dallas. But immigration advocates say the crisis has been greatly exacerbated by inadequate medical care, bad food, and unsanitary conditions at detention centers.

    “This is a result of the deteriorating conditions inside of ICE detention,” Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network, told the Guardian, which recently published a comprehensive rundown of all 31 custody deaths. Many died from heart attacks or respiratory failure, with a few apparent suicides — although, in a number of cases, family members are disputing the official account. Only a few of those who died were senior citizens.

    There’s a bigger picture here. History has shown that authoritarian regimes can be hazardous to your health, and there is no American Exceptionalism. The MAGA movement’s low regard for the sanctity of human life is breaking through on multiple fronts, from the more than 100 deaths of South Americans on boats blown up by U.S. drones to the global crisis caused by the decimation of foreign aid through USAID (blamed for as many as 600,000 deaths by health experts) to the rising concern about fewer vaccinations and shrinking health insurance. A new generation is witnessing a grim reality: Dictatorship can be deadly.

    What I wrote on this date in 2021

    Jan. 6, much like Dec. 7 or Sept. 11, is a date which will live in infamy for most Americans. I had some health concerns five years ago that kept me from traveling to Washington to report on the insurrection — which I’ll always regret — but I did dash off an instant column before the smoke from Donald Trump’s failed coup had dissipated. I wrote, “When the future 45th president of the United States egged on the most violent thugs at his Nuremberg-style campaign rallies, when he yelled “get him the hell out of here” as white supporters roughed up a Black man in Birmingham, when he promised to pay the legal fees of brownshirts who beat up anti-Trump demonstrators, and when he said “I’d like to punch him in the face” to one rally insurrectionist, why are people still shocked when a riled-up mob takes Trump up on his own toxic words?” Read the rest: “Trump told us he would wreck America. Why didn’t we believe him the first time?”

    Recommended Inquirer reading

    • I returned from a long Christmas break this weekend with something brand new to write about: the Trump regime’s illegal attack on Venezuela, which killed as many as 80 people, including civilians, and resulted in the capture of that nation’s strongman leader, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife. I wrote that Trump’s war without the required constitutional approval or public support, in violation of international law against unprovoked military aggression, fulfills his ambitions to rule as a dictator. And a new world order based not on the rule of law but brute force makes all of us less safe.
    • Last June, the partially unclothed body of a young woman was discovered by police under a pallet in an overgrown lot in Philadelphia’s Frankford neighborhood. For weeks, the identity of this murder victim was unknown, which didn’t deter one determined homicide detective, the missing woman’s anguished family who’d been initially told not to file a missing-person report — or The Inquirer’s Ellie Rushing, who has written a moving account of the life and death of the woman eventually learned to be Anastasiya Sangret. This kind of essential local reporting takes time and resources, which means it needs your support. You do exactly that, and unlock all the journalism of one of America’s best newsrooms, when you start 2026 with a subscription to The Inquirer.

    By submitting your written, visual, and/or audio contributions, you agree to The Inquirer‘s Terms of Use, including the grant of rights in Section 10.