White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CBS News to air an interview with President Donald Trump in full or face a lawsuit, according to an audio recording of the exchange reviewed by the Washington Post.
“He said, make sure you guys don’t cut the tape. Make sure the interview is out in full,” Leavitt told new CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil, relaying a message from the president ahead of the interview last week. “He said, if it’s not out in full, we’ll sue your ass off.”
Dokoupil responded with levity: “He always says that!”
The New York Times first reported on the exchange. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“The moment we booked this interview we made the independent decision to air it unedited and in its entirety,” a CBS spokesperson wrote in a statement.
Before winning reelection in 2024, Trump sued CBS News for its editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, then the vice president and Trump’s rival in the election. Trump’s lawsuit said the edited version was intended to “confuse, deceive, and mislead the public” and deliver the Nov. 5 election to Harris. CBS maintained that Harris’ answer was edited for time considerations only, a long-standing practice in television, just as space considerations come into play for other media outlets. In July, CBS settled the lawsuit out of court for $16 million.
Later in the summer, CBS News’ parent company, Paramount, was purchased by Skydance, whose CEO, David Ellison, is the son of billionaire Trump ally and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. In October, the Paramount Skydance chief executive arranged the joint company’s purchase of the conservative opinion website the Free Press, run by former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss, and installed Weiss as editor in chief of CBS News, reporting directly to him.
Weiss’s early tenure has been marked by layoffs and consternation among staffers about their new leader’s direction, story ideas, and deference to the government. In December, Weiss faced staff blowback at 60 Minutes for shelving a segment on the El Salvador prison CECOT because the production team was unable to secure an on-camera interview with an administration official.
Dokoupil, who became the anchor of CBS’s storied evening news program earlier this month, has made a point of taking a different tack on the air, saying “People do not trust us like they used to.”
Trump has expressed criticism of CBS News since it came under the new owners and Weiss’ editorship began. “THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP, who just paid me millions of Dollars for FAKE REPORTING about your favorite President, ME!” Trump wrote on Truth Social in December. “Since they bought it, 60 Minutes has actually gotten WORSE!”
WASHINGTON — Republican lawmakers are scrambling to contain President Donald Trump’s threats of taking possession of Greenland, with some showing the most strident opposition to almost anything the Trump administration has done since taking office.
They gave floor speeches on the importance of NATO last week. They introduced bills meant to prevent the U.S. from attacking Denmark. And several traveled to Copenhagen to meet with Danish counterparts.
But it’s not clear that will be enough, as the president continues to insist that he will take control of the Arctic island. It’s raised fears of an end to NATO — a decades-old alliance that has been a pillar of American strength in Europe and around the globe — and raised questions on Capitol Hill and around the world about what Trump’s aggressive, go-it-alone foreign policy will mean for world order.
“When the most powerful military nation on earth threatens your territory through its president over and over and over again, you start to take it seriously,” Sen. Chris Coons told the Associated Press.
The Delaware Democrat organized the bipartisan trip to Denmark to “bring the temperature down a bit,” he said, as well as further talks about mutual military agreements in the Arctic. Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska accompanied a handful of Democrats on the trip. Also, Republican lawmakers joined in meetings in Washington last week with the Danish foreign minister and his Greenlandic counterpart where they discussed security agreements.
Yet it’s clear Trump has other ideas. He said Saturday he will charge a 10% import tax starting in February on goods from eight European nations because of their opposition to his Greenland plans.
Trump said on social media that because of modern weapons systems “the need to ACQUIRE is especially important.”
The pushback to Trump’s Greenland plans
Key Republicans have made clear they think that forcefully taking Greenland is out of the question. But so far, they’ve avoided directly rebuking Trump for his talk of possessing the island.
Tillis on social media called Trump’s tariff plans “bad for America, bad for American businesses, and bad for America’s allies.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) told reporters Thursday, “There’s certainly not an appetite here for some of the options that have been talked about or considered.”
In a floor speech, Thune’s predecessor as Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), warned that an attempt to seize Greenland would “shatter the trust of allies” and tarnish Trump’s legacy with a disastrous foreign policy decision.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike see an obvious path to bolstering American interests in Greenland while keeping the relationship with NATO ally Denmark intact.
In a meeting with lawmakers Thursday, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and his Greenlandic counterpart Vivian Motzfeldt discussed how the countries could work together to develop critical mineral industries and military cooperation, Coons said. The diplomats also told the senators there is no evidence of Chinese or Russian activity in Greenland.
Trump has made the argument that the U.S. should take Greenland before China or Russia do, prompting worry across Europe. Troops from several nations have been sent to Greenland in support of Denmark.
Murkowski said on social media that “our NATO allies are being forced to divert attention and resources to Greenland, a dynamic that plays directly into Putin’s hands by threatening the stability of the strongest coalition of democracies the world has ever seen.”
What can Congress do?
Lawmakers are looking at a few options for taking a military attack on Greenland off the table. Still, the Trump administration has shown little if any willingness to get congressional approval before taking military action.
Lawmakers, including Republicans like Murkowski, are pushing legislation that would prohibit Department of Defense funds from being used to attack or occupy territory that belongs to other NATO members without their consent.
The Alaska senator also suggested Congress could act to nullify Trump’s tariffs. Murkowski and several other Republicans have already helped pass resolutions last year meant to undo tariffs around the globe, but those pieces of legislation did not gain traction in the House. They would have also required Trump’s signature or support from two-thirds of both chambers to override his veto.
Democrats have also found some traction with war powers resolutions meant to force the president to get congressional approval before engaging in hostilities. Republicans last week narrowly defeated one such resolution that would prohibit Trump from attacking Venezuela again, and Democrats think there could potentially be more Republicans who would support one applying to Greenland.
“What I’ve noticed is these war powers resolutions, they do put some pressure on Republicans,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat who has forced votes on several similar resolutions. He said the tactic has also compelled the Trump administration to provide lawmakers with briefings and commitments to get congressional approval before deploying troops.
Still, while dismissing the Venezuela war powers resolution on Wednesday, Republican leaders made the argument that the legislation should be ruled out of order because the Trump administration has said there are currently no U.S. troops on the ground in Venezuela.
That argument may set a precedent for future war powers resolutions, giving Republicans a way to avoid voting against Trump’s wishes.
“If you don’t have boots on the ground, it’s a moot point,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, a South Dakota Republican, about war powers resolutions in general. He also argued that the prospect of taking Greenland over the objections of Denmark is nothing “more than a hypothetical.”
Other Republicans have expressed support for Trump’s insistence that the U.S. possess Greenland, though they have downplayed the idea that the U.S. would take it by force.
That’s left the strongest objections on the Republican side of the aisle coming from a handful of lawmakers who are leaving Congress next year.
Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican, told the Omaha World Herald that an invasion of Greenland would lead to Trump’s impeachment — something he would “lean” towards supporting.
Tillis, another retiring Republican, has directed his criticism at Trump advisers like White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
“The fact that a small handful of ‘advisers’ are actively pushing for coercive action to seize territory of an ally is beyond stupid,” he said.
The Arctic is warming around four times faster than the rest of the globe, exposing natural resources, opening up potential shipping routes and prompting an increase in activity among military powers. The changing landscape has created a region ripe for opportunity — and potential conflict — factors that may play a role in President Donald Trump’s sudden quest to obtain Greenland.
Though he has called climate change a “hoax,” part of the value Trump has described in the Danish autonomous territory’s location is a result of the environmental shifts.
“It’s partly the melting of sea ice making it more attractive for the economic development that he’d pursue in Greenland,” said Sherri Goodman, a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council and the former deputy undersecretary of defense for environmental security.
Trump has said he wants the territory because of its strategic location and untapped natural resources, including diamonds, lithium, and copper.
The president announced tariffs Saturday on countries that have sent troops to Greenland in recent days. Talks this week between the foreign ministers of Greenland and Denmark and U.S. officials ended in “fundamental disagreement,” according to Denmark’s top diplomat, Lars Lokke Rasmussen.
The prospect of the United States using military force against the NATO ally, as Trump has floated, could end the decades-old defense pact. His bid for the territory is one of the most concrete examples of how climate change is influencing geopolitics. As the northernmost parts of our planet continue to warm, the effects could change the ways the international community operates.
“The freeing of the Arctic from sea ice, at least seasonally, will create an entirely new theater for economic and security competition,” said Joseph Majkut, the director of the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “And while we’ve known that is going to be the case for some time, it seems we’re at an inflection point.”
Arctic sea ice typically peaks in March, as ice forms and spreads through the depth of winter, before beginning to melt to its lowest extent, usually in September. Over approximately the past five decades, changes in Arctic ice cover have revealed pathways for shipping and commerce, as parts of the region stay ice-free for longer. There’s the northern sea route along Russia’s coast, and the northwest passage along northern Canada. Analysts note icebreakers, or vessels with the capability to chomp through thinning ice, have begun passing through a “central route,” over the top of the Arctic.
In October, a Chinese container ship used the northern sea route to shave about 20 days off its typical journey through the Suez Canal to Europe.
If the region becomes ice-free in future summers, it could reshape global trade. That reality is mere decades away, though exact predictions depend on whom you ask and how quickly the planet warms.
A 2021 study in Nature modeled future open-water periods based on different warming thresholds. It found that if the planet warms 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1850-1900 average, that period lengthens by 63 days, while if the planet warms 3.5 degrees (6.3 degrees Fahrenheit) above the average, nearly the entire Arctic would have at least three months of open water each year.
But it’s hard to predict the exact timeline of the rate of melting, and either way, continued escalations or jockeying won’t really depend on the pace of warming, Majkut said.
They also may be underestimating the hazards of a melting Arctic, scientists warn. Regardless of when an ice-free summer comes, it will remain an extreme environment.
“It’s going to be a long time before we’re arguing over beachfront property or protecting people from crocodiles up there,” Majkut said.
Without sea ice, communities could lose crucial protection, said Zack Labe, a climate scientist who studies regional climate risks.
“Typically, the ice would act as a buffer for high wind and waves,” he said, especially in the fall when the region experiences typhoons in the Pacific that bring huge swells. That ice protects people against erosion and flooding.
The melting Arctic could produce unpredictable ocean conditions, like changes in the wind and the waves. And if there is an emergency, there are few accessible ports.
“It could become more hazardous for ships to go into these areas rather than less,” said Labe.
While Trump is pursuing Greenland, he hasn’t publicly acknowledged climate change’s role in what he perceives to be its value. A staunch climate change denier, the president has moved to cut funding to many climate initiatives including Arctic research.
But to some, that could be bad geopolitical strategy.
“Climate change is a significant national security risk,” said Goodman. “The openings of sea lanes, the changing ice conditions, are contributing to the intense geopolitical situations we’re experiencing.”
The Pentagon has ordered about 1,500 active-duty soldiers to prepare for a possible deployment to Minnesota, defense officials told the Washington Post late Saturday, after President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in response to unrest there.
The soldiers are assigned to two infantry battalions with the Army’s 11th Airborne Division, which is based in Alaska and specializes in cold-weather operations.
The Army placed the units on prepare-to-deploy orders in case violence in Minnesota escalates, officials said, characterizing the move as “prudent planning.” It is not clear whether any of them will be sent to the state, the officials said, speaking like some others on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military planning.
The White House said in a statement that it’s typical for the Pentagon “to be prepared for any decision the President may or may not make.” Sean Parnell, a spokesperson for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, said in a statement Sunday that the Pentagon is “always prepared to execute the orders of the Commander-in-Chief if called upon.” Two officials said that the orders are unrelated to Trump’s recent rhetoric about the United States needing to take control of Greenland.
The development was reported earlier by ABC News.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey on Sunday called the federal government’s surge of immigration enforcement officials, and the possible deployment of active-duty soldiers, an attempt to “bait” protesters in the city.
“We’re not going to give them an excuse to do the thing that clearly they’re trying to set up to do right now, which is these 1,500 troops,” Frey told CNN. “I never thought in a million years that we would be invaded by our own federal government.”
The Insurrection Act, a federal law dating to 1807, permits the president to take control of a state’s National Guard forces or deploy active-duty troops domestically in response to a “rebellion.” Invoking the act would be an extraordinary move and mark the first time a commander in chief has done so since President George H.W. Bush called on the military during the Los Angeles riots of 1992 that killed dozens of people and caused widespread destruction.
Typically, invoking the Insurrection Act is considered a last resort, when law enforcement personnel are unable to keep the peace during times of civil unrest.
Trump threatened Thursday to invoke the law, saying on social media that unless officials in Minnesota could stop protesters from “attacking” agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he would “institute the INSURRECTION ACT” and “quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State.”
On Friday, Trump seemed to cool his rhetoric, saying there wasn’t a reason to invoke the law “right now.” He added, “If I needed it, I’d use it.”
The Trump administration has turned up the pressure on Gov. Tim Walz and other Democratic leaders in Minnesota, with the Justice Department launching an investigation into whether Walz and Frey have impeded immigration enforcement. Walz, Frey, and other Democrats have said the move is an act of authoritarianism intended to silence critics of the administration’s actions.
On Sunday, Frey said his office had not yet received a subpoena in the investigation, calling the probe “deeply concerning.”
“This whole investigation would ultimately be the product of one of the most basic, foundational responsibilities that I have as mayor, which is to speak on behalf of my constituents,” he told ABC News.
Walz and Frey have pleaded for protesters to remain peaceful. On Saturday, Walz also mobilized the Minnesota National Guard to support local authorities, but he has not deployed those troops.
Minnesota has been a preoccupation of the Trump administration since at least December, when the Department of Homeland Security launched Operation Metro Surge, a multiweek immigration crackdown that has led to the arrest of hundreds of people and has been marked by clashes between federal agents and protesters.
ICE agents have shot two people there this month, killing Renée Good, an American citizen, and wounding a Venezuelan migrant, Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, after they attempted to detain him.
Minnesota officials have sued the Trump administration over the operation, alleging the surge in law enforcement there is a politically motivated violation of the Constitution. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) said he is seeking a restraining order and called the operation a “federal invasion.”
Other domestic military deployments ordered by Trump have been legally contested, with mixed results. In the most significant of those actions, Trump seized control of the California National Guard in June over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democratic political rival. About 4,000 Guard members were deployed to Los Angeles along with a battalion of about 700 active-duty infantry Marines after protests against ICE turned violent in a few instances.
In December, Trump said he would end his efforts to keep National Guard troops deployed in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland, Ore., following a 6-3 ruling by the Supreme Court that found the administration failed to identify a legal way in which the military could “execute the laws in Illinois.” At issue in those jurisdictions was whether the deployments violated the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law that prohibits U.S. troops from carrying out civilian law enforcement actions.
Trump also has deployed more than 2,600 members of the National Guard to D.C., and administration officials recently extended that mission through the end of 2026. While that deployment remains legally contested, the president has more authority to deploy National Guard members there because it is a federal jurisdiction.
Delicate snowflakes painted Philadelphia white Sunday morning, leaving icy roads and sidewalks to shovel. The storm will also leave behind a cold holiday.
“We have only seen round one; round two is on its way,” said Paul Fitzsimmons, a lead meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Mount Holly.
Through Sunday, Fitzsimmons predicted a total of 2 to 4 inches of snow, with the second wave of flurries picking up after 1 p.m., possibly mixing with rain after 2 p.m.
Rain is not certain, but there is a 70% chance of showers, according to the National Weather Service. Couple that with a cloudy day, winds around 5 mph, and temperatures in the mid-30s (35 degrees being the warmest Philly will see today), and drivers are in for some hazy driving conditions.
“Roads are icy today: People should exercise extra caution, leave extra time to leave wherever they are going, and drive slower than normal,” Fitzsimmons said.
The weather prompted PennDot to advise drivers to avoid unnecessary travel. Commercial vehicles must stay in the right lane, PennDot said.
Stick to the speed limit even if the roads seem treated, because at the moment, PennDot’s main goal is to only keep them passable, not completely free of ice and snow, the department said.
PennDot’s crews will continue to treat roads throughout the day, but there is a slight chance of more snow coming before 8 p.m., with temperatures dropping as low as 20 degrees, and a 20% chance of rain, according to the weather service.
David Bond, of West Chester, walks his dog, Todd, in the snow at Okehocking Preserve in Newtown Square on Sunday, Jan. 18, 2026.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Monday arrives a bit sunnier, and with no snow, yet colder than Sunday, Fitzsimmons said.
Skies are expected to be fully clear, with a low of 14 and a high of 35 degrees. Do be mindful of the wind, as the National Weather Service expects gusts as high as 20 mph by Monday night.
That low would be the lowest of the season so far, with an even lower 10 degrees forecast for Tuesday.
“It’s going to be cold overall, so bundle up,” Fitzsimmons said.
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BERLIN — The eight European countries targeted by U.S. President Donald Trump for a 10% tariff for opposing American control of Greenland blasted the move Sunday, warning that his threats “undermine trans-Atlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral.”
The joint statement by some of America’s closest allies signaled a possible turning point in the recent tensions over sovereignty and security nearly 24 hours after Trump’s threat.
It was also the most forceful rebuke of Trump from the European allies since he returned to the White House almost a year ago. In recent months, Europeans have mostly opted for diplomacy and flattery around him, even when seeking an end to the war in Ukraine. Sunday’s statement, as well as some European countries sending troops to Greenland for a Danish military training exercise, appeared to be a step away from that strategy.
The unusually strong joint statement from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland said troops sent to Greenland for operation Arctic Endurance pose “no threat to anyone.”
Standing in solidarity with Denmark, Greenland
Trump’s Saturday announcement sets up a potentially dangerous test of U.S. partnerships in Europe. He appeared to indicate that he was using the tariffs as leverage to force talks over the status of Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark that he regards as critical to U.S. national security.
“We stand in full solidarity with the Kingdom of Denmark and the people of Greenland,” the group said. “Building on the process begun last week, we stand ready to engage in a dialogue based on the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity that we stand firmly behind. Tariff threats undermine trans-Atlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral.”
There are immediate questions about how the White House could try to implement the tariffs because the European Union is a single economic zone in terms of trading. It was unclear, too, how Trump could act under U.S. law, though he could cite emergency economic powers that are currently subject to a U.S. Supreme Court challenge.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said China and Russia will benefit from divisions between the U.S. and Europe. She added in a post on social media: “If Greenland’s security is at risk, we can address this inside NATO. Tariffs risk making Europe and the United States poorer and undermine our shared prosperity.”
Europe has been trying to keep Trump on its side to ensure U.S. support for Ukraine, including Washington sharing intelligence with Kyiv and its involvement in security guarantees if a peace agreement is reached with Russia.
Rasmus Søndergaard, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, called Trump’s announcement “unprecedented” because tariff threats normally stem from trade disagreements, not territorial disputes between allies.
“That’s of course why we’re seeing the response from European countries saying ’enough is enough,’” he told the Associated Press. “I think there’s in part probably a strategic calculation, of course, from the governments in these countries that if you give in to Trump on this, what will be the next thing? And at some point you have to sort of push back.”
Søndergaard also said Trump leveled the playing field for Europe with the tariff threat. Europeans cannot compete militarily, but the EU can wield an economic weapon through reciprocal tariffs.
“The EU has the ability to really strike back with force if they want to, and it will hurt European economies,” he said. “It will hurt American economies. The challenge for Trump is he has midterms coming up and it’s not going to help him if the U.S. goes into more of an economic recession or more of an economic turmoil than is already the case.”
Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte wrote on social media Sunday that he’d spoken with Trump. Rutte has been criticized in recent days for largely sidestepping questions about Trump and Greenland and any NATO tensions over the island.
“We will continue working on this, and I look forward to seeing him in Davos later this week,” Rutte said.
U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, a former U.S. Navy pilot and Arizona Democrat, said Trump’s threatened tariffs on U.S. allies would make Americans “pay more to try to get territory we don’t need.”
“Troops from European countries are arriving in Greenland to defend the territory from us. Let that sink in,” Kelly wrote on social media. “The damage this President is doing to our reputation and our relationships is growing, making us less safe. If something doesn’t change we will be on our own with adversaries and enemies in every direction.”
Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said he supports the United States ultimately owning Greenland, but not how Trump is trying to accomplish it.
He said he had concerns whether Trump had the constitutional authority to impose unilateral tariffs on NATO allies, as well as about a threat of a military invasion. Trump’s current position threatens “to fracture that strong relationship, not just with Denmark, but with all of our NATO allies,” Pence said on CNN’s State of the Union.
Populist allies of Trump criticize tariff threat
Six of the countries targeted are part of the 27-member EU, which operates as a single economic zone in terms of trading. It was not immediately clear if Trump’s tariffs would impact the entire bloc. EU envoys scheduled emergency talks Sunday evening to determine a potential response.
The tariff announcement also drew blowback from Trump’s populist allies in Europe.
Italy’s right-wing premier, Giorgia Meloni, considered one of Trump’s closest allies on the continent, said she had spoken to him about the tariffs, which she described as “a mistake.”
The deployment to Greenland of small numbers of troops by some European countries was misunderstood by Washington, Meloni said, adding it was not a move against the U.S. but aimed to provide security against “other actors” that she didn’t identify.
Jordan Bardella, president of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party in France and a European Parliament lawmaker, posted that the EU should suspend last year’s tariff deal with the U.S., describing Trump’s threats as “commercial blackmail.”
Trump also achieved the rare feat of uniting Britain’s main political parties — including the hard-right Reform UK party — all of whom criticized the tariff threat.
“We don’t always agree with the U.S. government and in this case we certainly don’t. These tariffs will hurt us,” said Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, a longtime champion and ally of Trump. His social media post stopped short of criticizing Trump’s designs on Greenland.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who leads the center-left Labour Party, said the tariffs announcement was “completely wrong” and his government would “be pursuing this directly with the U.S. administration.”
PASSHE includes the 10 state-owned public universities. (State-related universities, including Pennsylvania State and Temple, are funded separately.)
Cheyney University, which is part of the system, got a special $5 million earmark “to develop and implement an enhanced transfer and workforce development initiative in partnership with a community college.” Cheyney, a historically Black college in Delaware and Chester Counties, and Community College of Philadelphia recently announced a partnership that will allow students to transfer seamlessly from CCP to Cheyney and earn bachelor’s degrees while remaining on CCP’s Philadelphia campus.
The state system had asked the state for a 6.5% increase in its general appropriation, which currently stands at $625 million. That would have brought in an additional $40 million for the 10-university system, said Christopher Fiorentino, chancellor of the system.
But he said the system has been preparing for the possibility of a funding freeze and had increased tuition this year for the first time in seven years, raising an additional $25 million.
“We knew it was going to be difficult, given the revenue situation in the commonwealth,” he said. “We weren’t blindsided by this.”
He said he was grateful for the system’s appropriation.
“That’s a huge amount of money,” he said. “… It is a significant commitment to public higher education, and we really appreciate that support.”
The system has requested a 5% state funding increase for 2026-27, which would allow universities to freeze tuition again, Fiorentino said.
But Kenneth M. Mash, president of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties, the faculty union, said that would not be enough if tuition is to be frozen. And he has concerns about the freeze in state funding this year.
“Too often, we go in there and act as if this is what we need to maintain the status quo, but the status quo is not good,” he said, citing technology and program needs. “We don’t have the support for students that we should have. We need to start paying attention to the quality of education and make sure it doesn’t suffer.”
The system has been in a state of readjustment as it has lost about a third of its enrollment since 2010, including merging six of its universities into two entities. The system’s universities are: Cheyney, Commonwealth, East Stroudsburg, Indiana, Kutztown, Millersville, Penn West, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock, and West Chester.
Planning for a drop in enrollment
Another enrollment cliff is expected to begin this year as the population of high school graduates begins to drop.
“The demographics right now going forward are unfavorable, so we have to continue to be prepared for the fact that even if we maintain our market share, we’re going to see declines in enrollment,” Fiorentino said.
The system is attempting to recruit in new markets and bring back to college those who have some credits but no degree, he said. Older students may want more weekend, night, and online courses, and that is something the system is reviewing, too, he said.
The system also is contemplating partnering with area doctoral institutions, such as Temple, to bring in doctoral students to teach at the system’s universities. That would save money on faculty hiring, while cultivating new potential talent for the system, he said.
And the system is reevaluating its programs, he said. Ninety-five percent of students are graduating from half the programs the system offers, he said. Some of the larger enrollments are in business, education, health, and engineering, he said.
But only 5% of students are enrolled in the other half of the system’s programs.
“We have to take a look at that,” he said. “How do we redeploy the money that we currently are receiving to make sure that we’re supporting the programs that are critical to the success of the commonwealth?”
Mash, the union president, said that bringing in doctoral students would createa viable stream of quality candidates, and that, under the contract, the system is permitted to employ a certain number of adjuncts. But he is concerned about eliminating programs with lower enrollments.
“We should be providing as broad of a spectrum of opportunity for students as we can,” he said.
Fiorentino said he was pleased to see Cheyney get the additional funding. The school, which has struggled with enrollment, saw an increase of 234 students — nearly 38% — this year, the highest percentage increase of any school in the system. Cheyney enrolls 851 students this year, its highest enrollment since 2014.
The new effort will allow Philadelphia students to get a Cheyney degree without having to travel to the rural campus, he said.
“A lot of their market is Philadelphia,” Fiorentino said of Cheyney, “and for a lot of the Philadelphia students, transportation has become more and more difficult.”
Temple and Penn State were flat-funded again this year. Temple said in a statement that it was grateful to see the budget pass.
“We also continue to be deeply grateful for the ongoing financial support that the university receives to reduce tuition costs for Pennsylvania residents,” the school said.
The long-lost demo tape had always held a certain mythos in Charlotte Astor’s imagination.
For years, the Cherry Hill teen had heard stories about it, recorded about 30 years ago by her mother’s very loud, very short-lived, teenage hardcore band, Seed.
Shannon Astor, now 47, had been a vocalist for the group, just 14 or 15 years old, at a time when female representation within the genre was rare. Within a year or so, the group had disbanded — but before it did, the group, which typically practiced in a member’s parents’ basement, recorded a single demo. There had been only a few dozen copies produced back then, and they had all sold, scattering out around the South Jersey area.
For Charlotte, the tape became a kind of white whale — a relic of her mother’s hard-charging past, something the teen occasionally scoured the web for, to no avail.
She’d never heard her mother’s band. And she wanted to. Badly.
“Ninety-five percent of what I have about my mother is in the stories she tells me,” says Charlotte, 16, a junior at Cherry Hill High School East.
But a demo was something tangible. Something concrete.
“A demo,” she decided, “I can find.”
And so one night last spring, that’s what she set out to do.
She had little to go on: A rough estimate of when the demo would have been released (1993-94), a general geographic location (South Jersey), and a single lyric (“In the wind of the AM shadows cling to nearby trees as season shifts to satisfy the light from above”).
“I have been looking for this tape for 4 years,” she wrote in an appeal to her 1,000 or so Instagram followers, “… and it would mean the absolute world to me to find this tape.”
Butsomething about her search — this desire to connect with a parent, to bridge a gap three decades wide — resonated. It became, within the tight-knit confines of the hardcore music scene, a united pursuit.
At an age when most teenagers couldn’t get far enough away from their parents, here was one launching a quixotic quest to better understand hers.
A senior class photo of Shannon Astor in the 1996 Cherry Hill High School East yearbook. Now 47, Shannon was previously in a hardcore band called Seed.
Soon, strangers from across the country were digging through old boxes in basements, or tagging old running buddies from Jersey’s 1990s hardcore scene in social media posts. Some reached out to old producers from the area, wondering whether the demo might have made its way into some dusty studio corner.
Messages poured in, too — hundreds of them — with suggestions ranging from the plausible to the outlandish. Had she tried getting in touch with Bruce Springsteen’s people? You never know what the Boss might have stowed away in some mansion closet.
“I suddenly had communication with so many people who I thought I would never in my life have any connection with,” Charlotte said. “California to Jersey, and everything in between.”
The lead singer of a well-known Jersey straight-edge band of the era, Mouthpiece, joined the search, messaging Charlotte after others reached out to him about the tape. (He vaguely remembered her mother, Shannon, but not the band.)
Much of the outside help, Charlotte notes, has come from the hardcore community.
Indeed, much of Charlotte’s young life is rooted in the same hardcore music scene that her mother’s once was. Like Shannon before her, Charlotte spends many nights at hardcore shows around the area, photographing the scene for the magazine she self-publishes, “Through Our Eyes.” And like her mother previously, she’s a member of the “straight-edge” hardcore community, a group with a shared collection of ideals that includes abstaining from drinking or drugs. (Her first flirtation with teenage rebellion came when she snuck out of the house one night to go to her favorite record store.)
And though her mother does not necessarily share Charlotte’s zeal for locating the old tape — “I’m not waiting for some garage band demo to be unearthed,” Shannon joked — she understands what it would mean to her daughter to have it.
“It’s special to me only because of how much she needed to hear it,” said Shannon. “I’m just so pro-Charli and everything that she does … But this is her journey, and something that was intrinsically important to her.”
To those in the scene, meanwhile, the response has been very hardcore.
“A bunch of people banding together to help this random girl find her mom’s thing,” said Quinn Brady, 19, of New York, and a friend of Charlotte’s. “Most people assume that hardcore people are not very nice or friendly. [But] there’s this inherent kinship. It connects people across the nation in a way that not a lot of other genres of music do.”
A recent selfie by Charlotte Astor (right) and her mother, Shannon Astor, taken at Reading Terminal Market.
Those outside the hardcore scene have been no less enthralled, however.
In December, after NJ.com picked up the story, further extending its reach, a documentary filmmaker reached out about the possibility of doing a film on her quest.
Last year, after posting in some “old-head” hardcore Facebook groups about the tape, Shane Reynolds — a member of the Philly-based hardcore band God Instinct — stumbled upon what appeared to be the most promising lead yet.
“I found the guy who allegedly made the demo,” Reynolds said.
But when she got the man on the phone, Reynolds says, it proved to be a dead end.
The closest Charlotte came was last year, not long after she first posted about the demo on Instagram. Her mom’s former bandmate in Seed, convinced he must have kept something from that period, recovered from storage an old cassette that featured a recording of a single Seed practice session.
Charlotte took it home, pushed it into the stereo in her bedroom. She stared at the ceiling as the tape began to play and 30 years fell away.
For the first time, she could put a sound to the stories she grew up hearing.
“The first thing I heard was a few seconds of my mom talking,” Charlotte said. “That’s my mom, when she was 16. I’m listening to a clip of my mother, listening to her at the same age I am.”
Charlotte Astor, a junior at Cherry Hill High School East, and her vintage 35mm film Nikon camera in the school’s photography classroom.
Still, that small taste has only reinforced her devotion to unearthing the actual demo.
Charlotte remains realistic about her odds of finding it. No, it’s not likely to be found in some radio station’s studio. And no, Bruce Springsteen is almost certainly not in possession of a three-decades old demo tape from her mother’s teenage years.
But some graying hardcore fan from the ’90s, with a penchant for hoarding and a cluttered garage?
Stranger things have happened.
“I have confidence — unwavering confidence — that someone has it,” Charlotte says. “And that I will get my hands on it.”
The limousine door burst open, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of Dennis Kemp’s South Philadelphia school.
Kemp was 13 that day in October 1967, a member of the stage crew and the basketball team asked by the principal of Barratt Junior High to greet the school’s surprise special guest.
“In just about every Black household that I went into those days, there were three pictures hanging: Jesus, John Kennedy, and Dr. King,” said Kemp, now 72. “To actually meet this guy, it just blew me away.”
“What is your life’s blueprint?” King asked the students. “This is a most important and crucial period of your lives, for what you do now and what you decide now at this age may well determine which way your life shall go.”
The community will mark the historic moment Monday, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, with a showing of the speech in the auditorium of the school now known as Childs Elementary, then a day of service projects inside the building. One group hopes to apply to havea historical marker commemorating the visit placed outside the school.
Kemp is glad that people still view and discuss King’s speech. Although he was a child, he sensed that he was part of something significant.
Though nearly 1,000 students had packed into the Barratt auditorium, crowding into aisles and leaning over balconies, the room was silent save for King’s voice, Ben Farnese, then the school’s principal, told The Inquirer in 2006. In a nearby overflow room, 450 more students watched King on closed-circuit TV.
“I took it in,” said Kemp, who was in the auditorium. “I said, ‘I’m going to keep this with me as long as I live.’”
Charles Carter, a ninth grader who was in the auditorium, remembers the quiet.
“Just figure — kids can be a little rowdy,” Carter said. “But we were transfixed, we were glued. We weren’t rowdy that day.”
Jeffrey Miles, another Barratt student, had a good seat that day. He had heard a speaker was coming to school, and he was excited — he thought it might be Georgie Woods, the prominent DJ.
After he heard King speak, he couldn’t help himself.
“I had the end seat, and I jumped up out of my seat,” said Miles, who had turned 14 a few weeks before King spoke. “The speech was so exhilarating and so electrifying, I couldn’t control myself. He was walking down the aisle with [DJ] Georgie Woods, and I said, ‘Dr. King, can I shake your hand?’”
King said yes. Miles grabbed his hand, which was sweaty — a detail that sticks in his mind, along with the sound of the Barratt students clapping thunderously for King.
A belief in ‘somebodiness’
King was in town for a “Stars for Freedom” show at the new Spectrum, opened the prior month in South Philadelphia.
The Philadelphia Daily News recounted Martin Luther King Jr.’s visit to Barratt Junior High in October, 1967.
“I know you’ve heard of that new impressive structure called the Spectrum, and I know you’ve heard of Harry Belafonte and Aretha Franklin and Nipsey Russell and Sidney Poitier and all of these other great and outstanding artists,” King said. He told the students to urge their parents to attend. “And I hope you will come also, for it will be a great experience and, by coming, you will be supporting the work of the Civil Rights Movement.”
King did not use notes, Farnese said. He spoke for 20 minutes, an address that would eventually be known as his “What is Your Life’s Blueprint?” speech.
The Barratt students, seventh, eighth, and ninth graders, were poised to move into a time that would determine the course of the rest of their lives.
The great civil rights figure, who had by that time already won the Nobel Peace Prize, told the young people to have “a deep belief in your own dignity, your own worth, and your own somebodiness. Don’t allow anybody to make you feel that you are nobody.”
Take pride in your color, your natural hair, King told the students, most of whom were Black.
“You need not be lured into purchasing cosmetics advertised to make you lighter, neither do you need to process your hair to make it appear straight,” King said. “I have good hair and it is as good as anybody else’s in the world. And we’ve got to believe that.”
‘Learn, baby, learn’
King urged the crowd to set upon a path to excellence, whatever that looks like.
“I say to you, my young friends, that doors are opening to each of you — doors of opportunity are opening to each of you that were not open to your mothers and your fathers,” King said. “And the great challenge facing you is to be ready to enter these doors as they open.”
Kemp remembers being surprised that King came to South Philadelphia.
“Our neighborhood was pretty poor,” said Kemp, who grew up as one of nine children in a family that struggled. “There really wasn’t too much to look forward to in our neighborhood.”
King acknowledged the “intolerable conditions” faced by many of the children he addressed. But, he said, it was incumbent on them to stay in school, to build a good life.
“Set out to do a good job and do that job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn couldn’t do it any better,” King said. “If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures.”
The civil rights hero told students to commit to “the eternal principles of beauty, love, and justice. Don’t allow anybody to pull you so low as to make you hate them.”
King, who encouraged peaceful resistance, urged “a method that can be militant, but at the same time does not destroy life or property.”
“And so our slogan must not be ‘Burn, baby, burn,’” King said, referring to a chant that had become associated with the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles. “It must be ‘Build, baby, build. Organize, baby, organize.’ Yes, our slogan must be ‘Learn, baby, learn’ so that we can earn, baby, earn.
“And with a powerful commitment, I believe that we can transform dark yesterdays of injustice into bright tomorrows of justice and humanity.”
‘I’ll never forget it’
Some of the members of the Barratt class in the room that day soared: Kevin Washington, who was on the basketball team with Kemp, went on to become the first Black president of the national YMCA.
Kemp was bright, but his family’s economic struggles weighed on him, he said. He dreamed of college, but it wasn’t in reach. He ended up leaving South Philadelphia High without a diploma, eventually earning a GED.
He raised children, built a life working — often in maintenance. He spent time as a school basketball coach.
After suffering medical and marital issues, Kemp fell on hard times. He spent four months without a home, sleeping in parks and at 30th Street Station.
“Dr. King’s speech really helped,” he said. “That used to come to mind when I was on the street. I’ll never forget it.”
Kemp rallied; he now lives in an apartment in South Philadelphia.
Jeffrey Miles is photographed at his home in Philadelphia on Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. Miles was 13 in October 1967 when he shook the hand of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and witnessed a speech that altered the course of his life.
The speech also altered the course of Miles’ life.
“I was a member of a gang in South Philly,” said Miles, now 72. “I never paid attention to adults and teachers. But that day I paid attention to Dr. King.”
King’s words — reach for more, do your best, no matter your struggles — resonated. He buckled down at school, graduated from high school, from college. He became an optician and even taught students at Salus University.
“When Dr. King said, ‘instead of burn, baby, burn, learn, baby learn,’ that gave me a window,” said Miles, who lives in West Oak Lane. “It gave me hope.”
MINNEAPOLIS — Protesters for and against the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown clashed in Minneapolis on Saturday as the governor’s office announced that National Guard troops had been mobilized and stood ready to assist state law enforcement, though they were not yet deployed to city streets.
There have been protests every day since the Department of Homeland Security ramped up immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul by bringing in more than 2,000 federal officers.
A large group of protesters turned out in downtown Minneapolis and confronted a much smaller group of people attending an anti-Somali and pro-Immigration and Customs Enforcement rally. They chased the pro-ICE group away and forced at least one member to take off a shirt they deemed objectionable.
Jake Lang, who organized the anti-Islam and pro-ICE demonstration, appeared to be injured as he left the scene, with bruises and scrapes on his head. He said via social media beforehand that he intended to “burn a Quran” on the steps of City Hall, but it was not clear if he carried out that plan.
Lang was previously charged with assaulting an officer with a baseball bat, civil disorder and other crimes before receiving clemency as part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping act of clemency for Jan. 6 defendants last year. Lang recently announced that he is running for U.S. Senate in Florida.
In Minneapolis, snowballs, and water balloons were also thrown before an armored police van and heavily equipped city police arrived.
“We’re out here to show Nazis and ICE and DHS and MAGA you are not welcome in Minneapolis,” protester Luke Rimington said. “Stay out of our city, stay out of our state. Go home.”
National Guard ‘staged and ready’
The state guard said in a statement that it had been “mobilized” by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz to support the Minnesota State Patrol “to assist in providing traffic support to protect life, preserve property, and support the rights of all Minnesotans to assemble peacefully.”
Maj. Andrea Tsuchiya, a spokesperson for the guard, said it was “staged and ready” but yet to be deployed.
The announcement came more than a week after Walz, a frequent critic and target of Trump, told the guard to be ready to support law enforcement in the state.
During the daily protests, demonstrators have railed against masked immigration officers pulling people from homes and cars and other aggressive tactics. The operation in the deeply liberal Twin Cities has claimed at least one life: Renee Good, a U.S. citizen and mother of three, was shot by an ICE officer during a Jan. 7 confrontation.
On Friday a federal judge ruled that immigration officers cannot detain or tear gas peaceful protesters who are not obstructing authorities, including while observing officers during the Minnesota crackdown.
Living in fear
During a news conference Saturday, a man who fled civil war in Liberia as a child said he has been afraid to leave his Minneapolis home since being released from an immigration detention center following his arrest last weekend.
Video of federal officers breaking down Garrison Gibson’s front door with a battering ram Jan. 11 become another rallying point for protesters who oppose the crackdown.
Gibson, 38, was ordered to be deported, apparently because of a 2008 drug conviction that was later dismissed. He has remained in the country legally under what’s known as an order of supervision. After his recent arrest, a judge ruled that federal officials did not give him enough notice that his supervision status had been revoked.
Then Gibson was taken back into custody for several hours Friday when he made a routine check-in with immigration officials. Gibson’s cousin Abena Abraham said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials told her White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller ordered the second arrest.
The White House denied the account of the re-arrest and that Miller had anything to do with it.
Gibson was flown to a Texas immigration detention facility but returned home following the judge’s ruling. His family used a dumbbell to keep their damaged front door closed amid subfreezing temperatures before spending $700 to fix it.
“I don’t leave the house,” Gibson said at a news conference.
DHS said an “activist judge” was again trying to stop the deportation of “criminal illegal aliens.”
“We will continue to fight for the arrest, detention, and removal of aliens who have no right to be in this country,” Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.
Gibson said he has done everything he was supposed to do: “If I was a violent person, I would not have been out these past 17 years, checking in.”
