Itâs a longstanding question: Where does South Jersey start? Is the dividing line the same as where Eagles fans stop and Giants fans begin? Is it based on your area code? Is there someother sign that youâve crossed from the North to the South?
The Inquirer is posing that very question to readers, along with one other hotly debated item: Is there such a thing as Central Jersey?
A high-end gym is taking over the former Buy Buy Baby space in the Ellisburg Shopping Center. Club Studio Fitness is expected to open a 30,240-square-foot gym in spring 2027. Club Studio Fitness, the boutique-style gym from parent company LA Fitness, is known for its premium amenities like cryotherapy and red-light therapy, a juice bar, stretch stations, and locker rooms, in addition to its fitness and wellness offerings. Memberships at Club Studio Fitnessâ only other New Jersey location, in Edgewater, range from $189 to $249 per month.
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the township is hosting two service events in the coming week. On Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m., volunteers will help with trail maintenance throughout Croft Farm. And on Monday, kids 11 to 17 can participate in a youth leadership workshop with the police department. Advanced registration is required.
Two Cherry Hill residents are among the 2026 Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Medal recipients, awarded by Camden County. Artist Giselle Brown and Col. Ted Gallagher, director of veterans affairs for Camden County, will be recognized alongside nine other recipients next Wednesday. Brown is a 17-year-old whose work has been recognized at the local, state, and national level, and Gallagher is a decorated 28-year military veteran who went on to work at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services before joining the county.
Broadway show Suffs is currently in town and has two South Jersey connections, one far less obvious than the other. The touring musical, which is at the Academy of Music through Sunday, was created by playwright, composer, and actor Shaina Taub, whose mother is a Cherry Hill native. It follows the suffrage movement and centers on South Jersey Quaker activist Alice Paul, who was born in Mount Laurel. The Inquirerâs Rosa Cartagena dives into what inspired the Tony Award-winning production.
Washington, D.C.-based Cozen OâConnor Public Strategies has named a new principal to its Cherry Hill office. Braxton Plummer will help grow the government relations firmâs practice throughout New Jersey and the region.
Park Royal Orthodontics recently opened at 921 Haddonfield Rd. at Towne Place at Garden State Park. The practice offers orthodontic care for all ages.
A clarification: We notedin last weekâs newsletter thatAppliances Outlet will be moving into the space occupied by Whole Hog Cafe and Wine Legend. Appliances Outlet will only take over part of the space, and neither of the current businesses are slated to close.
đŤ Schools Briefing
There are no classes Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
There will be a preschool information session next Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at Westâs new auditorium.
Chickâs Deli got a shout-out from BestofNJ.com as one of the best sandwich shops in New Jersey. The website noted specialty sandwiches like the chicken cheesesteak with broccoli rabe and sharp provolone âreally shine.â It also suggested trying the mushroom cheesesteak.
đł Things to Do
â Napkin Wars: Battle of the Zodiac!: Represent your zodiac sign during this fun ânapkin warâ party, where three DJs will spin tunes. â° Saturday, Jan. 17, 9 p.m.-2 a.m. đľ $19.03 đ Vera
đŠââď¸ Game Plan for Wellness: Jefferson Cherry Hill Hospitalâs community health expo will include wellness stations and tables, healthcare screenings, cooking and exercise demos, and more. â° Sunday, Jan. 18, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. đľ Free đ Jefferson Cherry Hill Hospital
đ§ Valentineâs Day Cupcake Decorating: Registration opens tomorrow for this event geared toward kids in sixth through 12th grade. â° Sunday, Feb. 8, 2-3:30 p.m. đľ Free đ Cherry Hill Public Library
The kitchen island has cabinetry which contrasts with the slate-gray cabinets throughout the rest of the space.
Located in the Olde Springs neighborhood, this four-bedroom, three-and-a-half bathroom home blends classic and modern design elements. Its first floor features include a dining room, a multipurpose room with a tiled fireplace, a laundry and mudroom, and an open-concept kitchen and living room. The kitchen has a large island with white cabinetry that contrasts with the slate-gray cabinets throughout the rest of the space and matches the subway tile backsplash. It opens into a two-story living room. The bedrooms are upstairs, including a primary suite with a double vanity and soaking tub.
By submitting your written, visual, and/or audio contributions, you agree to The Inquirerâs Terms of Use, including the grant of rights in Section 10.
This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirerâs high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.
Lush landscaping and public art will soon line Broad Street, impromptu performances may pop up, and vehicular traffic will be calmed with a new Avenue of the Arts south streetscape about to take shape.
The project â estimated to take $150 million and a decade to realize â will begin modestly.
The groundbreaking ceremony was held Wednesday morning in front of the Kimmel Center and was attended by more than 200 dignitaries, including Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, City Council President Kenyatta Johnson, and other members of City Council, state representatives, and officials from groups along the Avenue of the Arts.
The actual construction is slated to start at the end of January on a small portion of the project: remaking the median strip between Spruce and Pine Streets. That phase is expected to be completed by June.
In 2027, after the end of an anticipated swell in tourism and street activity during the Semiquincentennial, sidewalk beautification will begin on both the east and west sides of that block.
Eventually, pending funding, all of the blocks between City Hall and Washington Avenue will be remade.
Looking north toward City Hall, a rendering shows the completed first phase of a South Broad Street streetscape project slated to break ground in January 2026.
The current streetscape of planters, pavers, and retro light fixtures was designed and installed more than three decades ago. In addition to the wear and tear of the existing scheme, the thinking around public space has evolved since then, said Carl Dranoff, board chair of Avenue of the Arts, Inc., which is overseeing the project.
âItâs become somewhat aged and dog-eared,â said Dranoff. âIn 1993 you didnât need to have outdoor cafes. We need to activate the street, not just make it palatable. We have the opportunity to really elevate the Avenue of the Arts into one of the worldâs great streets.â
The project was announced in July 2024 at $100 million, but inflation and a more detailed cost analysis has now put the total price tag at about $150 million â $15 million per block. These numbers include not just the planters, lighting, public art, street furniture, and aesthetic elements, but also infrastructure work beneath the surface, said Dranoff.
âA lot of it is things you donât see. Thereâs a lot of underground construction,â he said. âRight now water is leaking from the median strip into the subway concourse. One of the reasons we got support from SEPTA and PennDot and [the Philadelphia] Streets [Dept.], is as we are building the median strips, we are improving deficiencies in the street in each block.â
In addition, some utilities will have to be moved. One PECO relocation, for instance, will cost the project $250,000, he said.
Dranoff has a vested interest in the vitality of the Avenue of the Arts. He has led several development projects on South Broad Street, including Arthaus, which is on the same block as the first phase of the new streetscape, and, one block south, Symphony House. He compares the investment in the new streetscape to the ones made in the Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia Navy Yard, Kimmel Center, and Schuylkill River Trail.
âIf we donât make investments in the future, which are going to increase revenue and population, we are relegating ourselves to second-place status.â
The new $15 million streetscape in the block from Spruce to Pine, which includes a $1 million endowment fund to underwrite maintenance, native-species plants, a rainwater-collection cistern, lighting, curved raised planting beds, public art, seating, way-finding devices, and artist-designed banners.
Of the $15 million needed, $5 million has been raised so far: $3 million from the city over two budget years, $1 million from the state, and $1 million from private donors. Other funding requests are pending, which planners call âvery promising.â
A sidewalk garden on the east side of Broad Street between Pine and Spruce Streets is planned for installation in 2027 as part of a new Avenue of the Arts streetscape.
Dranoff says that construction of the median between Spruce and Pine â which is the block occupied by the Kimmel Center and defunct University of the Arts â wonât cause âa lot of disruption. Theyâre only working business hours, not on weekends.â Any blocked lanes will be reopened after work is done for the day, he said.
The next block to be redesigned hasnât been decided, but it will likely be north of Spruce Street, Dranoff said. âPart of it will depend on funding. If we get a donor, someone whose offices are near the Academy of Music and is donating $15 million for that block to be next, we might accommodate that,â he said.
Funding for the entire project is expected to be a mix of public money, corporate and individual donations, and foundation support, he said.
The goal isnât to have the mile-plus between City Hall and Washington Avenue end up with a streetscape that looks uniform, Dranoff said. Instead, design firms Gensler and OJB Landscape Architecture may come up with different ideas for different blocks.
âYou donât need a master plan thatâs set for 10 blocks. Every block is different, the institutions are different. It lends itself to block-by-block planning tied together by a common theme.â
Dranoff said once the block from Spruce to Pine is done, it will show the potential, which he expects will spur fundraising to complete the streetscape for the entire Avenue of the Arts south.
âThe difference between now and the first block being finished is, youâre going to be driving down a tree-lined boulevard.â
The article has been updated with details from the groundbreaking ceremony.
Weâve asked where South Philly starts, and about the Eagles-Steelers divide, but now it's time to answer an even more controversial question: Where does South Jersey end and North Jersey begin?
Itâs a toughie, even entire movies have tried to answer this question. Is it just Eagles country vs. Giants country? Or maybe area code based? Turnpike exits? Or just simple geography of towns and counties? We want to hear from you.
story continues after advertisement
Use the sliders below to draw the dividing line. Submit your pick and see how other Inquirer readers voted.
The Rest of New Jersey
Central Jersey
South Jersey
You think South Jersey includes south_city_marker.
If we averaged out the votes from Inquirer readers, South Jersey would include south_city_average.
Weâre not done yet, though. Now youâve told us where South Jersey starts, we have another question for you: If it exists, where does Central Jersey start?
selection_answer
Of those that voted, central_votes believe there is a Central Jersey. The average Inquirer reader placed north_city_average in North Jersey and central_city_avg in Central Jersey.
Thank you for taking our quiz. If you want to weigh in more (like Pork Roll or Taylor Ham) let us know!
Staff Contributors
Design, Development, and Reporting: Garland Fordice
Editing: Sam Morris
Copy Editing: Brian Leighton
Illustration: Julia Duarte
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When Cherelle L. Parker was a City Council member, she championed a strict residency rule that required city employees to live in Philadelphia for at least a year before being hired.
Amid protest movements for criminal justice reform in 2020, Parker said stricter residency requirements would diversify a police force that has long been whiter than the makeup of the city, and ensure that officers contribute to the tax base.
âIt makes good common sense and good economic sense for the police policing Philadelphia to be Philadelphians,â she said then.
But today, under now-Mayor Parker, more police live outside Philadelphia than ever before.
About one-third of the police departmentâs 6,363 full-time staffers live elsewhere. That share â more than 2,000 employees â has roughly doubled since 2017, the last time The Inquirer conducted a similar analysis.
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Today, the percentage of nonresidents is even higher among the top brass: Nearly half of all captains, lieutenants, and inspectors live outside the city, according to a review of the most recent available city payroll data.
Even Commissioner Kevin Bethel keeps a home in Montgomery County, despite officially residing in a smaller Northwest Philadelphia house that he owns with his daughter.
Most municipal employees are still required to live within city limits. Across the cityâs 28,000-strong workforce, nearly 3,200 full-time employees listed home addresses elsewhere as of last fall. Most of them â more than 2,500 â are members of the police or fire departments, whose unions secured relaxed residency rules for their workers in contract negotiations. About a quarter of the fire department now lives outside the city.
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel speak before the start of a news conference.
Proponents of residency rules in City Hall have long argued they improve rapport between law enforcement and the communities they serve, because officers who have a stake in the city may engage in more respectful policing.
But experts who study public safety say there is little evidence that residency requirements improve policing or trust. Some say the rules can backfire, resulting in lesser quality recruits because the department must hire from a smaller applicant pool.
A survey of 800 municipalities last year found that residency requirements only modestly improved diversity and had no measurable effect on police performance or crime rates.
âItâs a simple solution thrown at a complex problem,â said Fritz Umbach, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. âIt doesnât have the impact people think it will.â
Parker, a Philadelphia native who lives in the East Mount Airy neighborhood, says she would still prefer all municipal employees live in the city.
âWhen I grew up in Philadelphia, it was a badge of honor to have police officers and firefighters and paramedics who were from our neighborhood,â she said in a statement. âThey were part of the fabric of our community. I donât apologize for wanting that to be the standard for our city.â
âWhere they lay their heads at nightâ
What qualifies as âresidencyâ can be a little pliable.
Along with his wife, Bethel purchased a 3,600-square-foot home in Montgomery County in 2017 for over a half-million dollars. Although he initially satisfied the residency rule by leasing a downtown apartment after being named commissioner by Parker in late 2023, he would not have met the pre-residency requirement the mayor championed for other city employees while she was on Council.
Today, voter registration and payroll data shows that Bethel resides in a modest, 1,800-square-foot rowhouse in Northwest Philadelphia, which he purchased with his daughter last year. While police sources said it was common for Bethel to sleep in the city given his long work hours, his wife is still listed as a voter in Montgomery County.
Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel speaks during the 22nd District community meeting at the Honickman Learning Center on Dec. 2, 2025.
Sgt. Eric Gripp, a spokesperson for the department, said in a statement that Bethel is a full-time resident of Philadelphia, and that while he owns a property outside the city, his âmain residenceâ is the home in Northwest Philly.
Although sources say it was not unheard of for rank-and-file officers to use leased apartments to satisfy the requirement on paper, Gripp said âonly a small numberâ of residency violations had required formal disciplinary action following an investigation by the departmentâs Internal Affairs Division.
That likely owes to officersâ increasing ability to reside elsewhere legally. The Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, which represents thousands of active and retired Philadelphia Police officers, won a contract provision in 2009 allowing officers to live outside the city after serving on the force for at least five years.
The union didnât respond to a request for comment.
Few of the cops who left the city went very far.
While Northeast Philly and Roxborough remain the choice neighborhoods for city police, the top destinations for recent transplants were three zip codes covering Southampton, and Bensalem and Warminster Townships, according to city payroll data.
A few officers went much farther than the collar counties.
Robert McDonnell Jr., a police officer in West Philadelphiaâs 19th district with 33 years on the force, has an official address at a home in rural Osceola Mills, Pa., about 45 minutes north of Altoona in Centre County.
A person who answered a phone number associated with McDonnell â who earned $124,000 last year between his salary, overtime, and bonus pay â declined to speak to a reporter.
Asked about the seven-hour round-trip commute McDonnellâs nominal residence could entail, Gripp said the department doesnât regulate the manner in which employees travel to and from work.
âOur members serve this city with dedication every day,â he said, âregardless of where they lay their heads at night.â
A long and winding history
Versions of residency rules can be found as far back as the 19th century, when police recruits were required to live in the districts they sought to work in.
But when Mayor Joseph S. Clark pushed to reform the city charter in the 1950s, he sought to abolish the rules as an impediment to hiring, saying âthere should be no tariff on brains or ability.â
Instead, City Council successfully fought to expand the restrictions. And, for more than five decades, the city required most of its potential employees to have lived in Philadelphia for a year â or obtain special waivers that, in practice, were reserved for the most highly specialized city jobs, like medical staff.
Many other big cities enacted similar measures either to curb middle-class flight following World War II or to prioritize the hiring of local residents. But the restrictions were frequently blamed for causing chronic staff shortages of certain hard-to-fill city jobs.
Officers Azieme Lindsey (from left), Charles T. Jackson, and Dalisa M. Carter taking their oaths in 2023.
Citing a police recruit shortage in 2008, former Mayor Michael A. Nutter successfully stripped out the prehiring residency requirement for cadets. Recruits were required only to move into the city once they joined the force.
A year later, the police union attempted to have the residency requirement struck from its contract entirely.
Nutterâs administration objected. But an arbitration panel approved a compromise policy to allow officers to live elsewhere in Pennsylvania after five years on the job. By 2016, firefighters and sheriffâs deputies secured similar concessions.
But experts say thereâs little research showing that to be true.
âI am unsure if requiring officers to reside in the city is a requirement supported by evidence,â said Anjelica Hendricks, an assistant law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who worked for the cityâs Police Advisory Commission. âEspecially if that rule requires a city to sacrifice something else during contract negotiations.â
FOP leaders have long opposed the rule and said it was partly to blame for the departmentâs unprecedented recruitment crisis and a yearslong short-staffing problem that peaked in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2022, facing nearly 1,500 unfilled police jobs, former Mayor Jim Kenney loosened the prehire residency rule for the police department again, allowing the force to take on cadets who lived outside the city, so long as they moved into Philadelphia within a year-and-a-half of being hired.
Since then, recruiting has rebounded somewhat, which police officials attribute to a variety of tactics, including both the eased residency rules and hiring bonuses. The force is still short 20% of its budgeted staffing and operating with 1,200 fewer officers than it did 10 years ago.
Umbach, the John Jay professor, said the impact on recruiting is obvious: Requiring officers to live in a city where the cost of living may be higher than elsewhere amounts to a pay cut, which shrinks candidate pools.
âWhenever you lower the standards or lower the appeal of the job, youâre going to end up with people who cause you problems down the road,â he said. âA pay cut is just that.â
HARRISBURG â As the rural reporter at The Inquirer for about the last decade, Iâve cuddled bear cubs, rattlesnakes, and alligators, trembled in fear at horses, and been punched by the scent of deer urine farms.
Still, nothing scares me more than the mushroom burger at the Pennsylvania Farm Show.
I havenât really missed a show since I began covering rural Pennsylvania, and I probably never will, regardless. If youâve been there, you know. If you havenât, take my advice from last year: Pull your kids out of school, and go there this week. The show runs through Saturday at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex & Expo Center in Harrisburg, and itâs free to get in. Itâs an agricultural spectacle youâll never forget, a place to see show rabbits, hogs, goats, and cows, all while learning where your food comes from.
Itâs also a place to eat, with a gargantuan food hall filled with offerings Iâm still uncovering. Shannon Powers, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture I pester often during the show, smartly said she didnât have a favorite meal there.
âBut on a cold day, a cup of trout chowder hits the spot,â she told me.
Trout stew? Who knew? Thereâs also goat stew.
There’s a mind-boggling number of things on the menu at the Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg.
I do have favorites, though, including the sugared German almonds I end my day with every year. I went on opening day, Saturday (never go on opening day), and took my daughter, sampling some old standbys and interviewing folks about some popular foods there.
4-H brisket sandwich
As a man of tradition, if I like a certain item on a menu, Iâll get it over and over again, for the rest of my life. I still have dreams about the â90s-era Wawa hot roast beef and cheese sandwiches I ate religiously.
Anyhow, I get a brisket sandwich every year from a 4-H stand thatâs actually not in the food hall but rather the main hall, where the famous butter sculpture is. Get a map, seriously. Youâll need it.
Look for the pig in the Main Hall, and you’ll find the 4-H brisket sandwich, plus pork chops on a stick.
Brisket has a special place in my heart. I ate it for Thanksgiving and New Yearâs Eve, and this year, I paid $14 for thick-sliced brisket on a roll, which I slathered in BBQ sauce, while squatting on the floor.
Then, I followed it up with a flu shot, another Farm Show tradition.
This sandwich was not better than my holiday briskets, but Iâm easy. Almost everything Iâm willing to eat is âpretty good.â
I assumed proceeds of the sales go to Pennsylvania 4-H clubs. The folks cutting the brisket didnât know, though my receipt credits the Pennsylvania Livestock Association.
If you want to save a few bucks at the 4-H booth, the pork chop on a stick is $8.
Mushroom burger
I know mushrooms grow underground, and that Chester County is one of the nationâs top producers, but I assumed they come from even deeper places.
Pennsylvania is the nation’s top producer of mushrooms, most of them coming from Chester and Berks Counties.
Iâm not a fan and canât be convinced, though I did have somewhat of a revelation about the mushroom burgers for sale at the Mushroom Growers of Pennsylvania booth.
They are âblendedâ with beef, specifically for big babies like me.
âItâs an introduction, an easy introduction. Itâs 75% ground beef and 25% chopped mushrooms,â said Gale Ferranto, of Mushroom Farmers of Pennsylvania. âWould you like to try one?â
I declined.
There are more mushroom offerings, too, something called a âmushroom salad,â which I probably wouldnât eat for less than $500.
âSomebody back home in Philly wanted the mushroom salad. Sheâs pregnant, like 7 months pregnant, so you have to do what she says,â said attendee Mark Soffa.
Grilled cheese
The Pennsylvania Dairymenâs Association offers up a lot of food during the week, and when I saw grilled cheeses â a parentâs best friend â I grabbed one for my daughter, along with a chocolate milk.
The combo is wallet-friendly, too, just $7.
âChocolate milk comes from brown cows,â I told my daughter.
Sheâs too smart for that joke and rolled her eyes, like her mother.
The PA Dairymen’s Association sells grilled cheese, cheese cubes, and, of course, the ubiquitous milkshakes.
The grilled cheese crew actually had crockpots full of melted butter, slathering white bread before sending it off to the grill. You can choose American or pepper jack.
âWeâll at least make a few thousand today,â the cashier told me. âWe made 500 yesterday, and that was a half day.â
My daughterâs verdict: âVery gooey.â
Pierogies and sweet potatoes
Iâm cheating a bit here, including two items from the PA Cooperative Potato Growers, Inc., which is the oldest potato cooperative in the United States.
I planned on focusing entirely on the sweet potato, which is swimming in butter and brown sugar, with some cinnamon on the side. Itâs basically a dessert.
The sweet potato at the Pennsylvania Farm Show is basically a dessert.
My Polish heritage requires that I never turn down a pierogi, though, or never fail to mention their wholesome goodness. I grew up on them, in the way other folks may have grown up on mac and cheese or PB&J. I actually prefer mine fried a bit, but the Farm Show serves them drowning in butter and onions: 5 for $4.
You canât really mess up a pierogi, particularly in the Keystone State.
âThese arenât like Maryland pierogies,â a woman from Maryland told me.
The potato growers told me they sell 6 tons of baking potatoes at the show, plus 8 to 10 tons for french fries, and about 1.5 tons of sweet potatoes.
Plus, there are potato doughnuts.
The milkshakes
The most well-known must-have item at the Pennsylvania Farm Show are the milkshakes offered up by the Pennsylvania Dairymenâs Association since 1953.
Three generations with 10 milkshakes at the Pennsylvania Farm Show.
On Saturday, the lines were a bit bonkers, more than 100 deep on each of the dozen or so cash registers in the various locations where theyâre sold at the farm show complex. Iâve had them before, and Iâll say they are âthick and creamyâ as advertised.
Are they different than any other soft-serve-style milkshake in America? I have to work with these people, so yes, Iâll say theyâre different.
A colleague who had a milkshake at the Farm Show told me she didnât âget the hype.â
I ran into a mother and daughter who had ordered 10 of them.
Either way, you have to have one while youâre there.
MINNEAPOLIS â Federal officers dropped tear gas and sprayed eye irritant at activists Tuesday during another day of confrontations in Minneapolis, while students miles away walked out of a suburban school to protest the Trump administrationâs bold immigration sweeps.
Meanwhile, the fallout from the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an immigration agent reached the local U.S. Attorneyâs Office: At least five prosecutors have resigned amid controversy over how the U.S. Justice Department is handling the investigation, according to people familiar with the matter.
Separately, a Justice Department official said Wednesday thereâs no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation. An FBI probe of Renee Goodâs death is ongoing.
Strife between federal agents and the public continues to boil, six days since Good was shot in the head while driving off in her Honda Pilot. At one scene, gas clouds filled a Minneapolis street near where she died. A man scrubbed his eyes with snow and screamed for help after agents in a Jeep sprayed an orange irritant and drove off.
Itâs common for people to boo, taunt and blow orange whistles when they spot heavily armed immigration agents passing through in unmarked vehicles or walking the streets, all part of a grassroots effort to warn the neighborhood and remind the government that theyâre watching.
âWho doesnât have a whistle?â a man with a bag of them yelled.
Brita Anderson, who lives nearby and came to support neighborhood friends, said she was âincensedâ to see agents in tactical gear and gas masks, and wondered about their purpose.
âIt felt like the only reason theyâd come here is to harass people,â Anderson said.
In Brooklyn Park, Minn., students protesting the immigration enforcement operation walked out of school, as students in other communities have done this week.
Goodâs death has ripple effect
The departures in the U.S. Attorneyâs Office include First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson, who had been leading the sprawling prosecution of public fraud schemes in the state, according to people who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.
With the Department of Homeland Security pledging to send more than 2,000 immigration officers into Minnesota, the state, joined by Minneapolis and St. Paul, sued President Donald Trumpâs administration Monday to halt or limit the surge.
The lawsuit says Homeland Security is violating the First Amendment and other constitutional protections by focusing on a progressive state that favors Democrats and welcomes immigrants.
âWhat we are seeing is thousands â plural â thousands of federal agents coming into our city. And, yeah, theyâre having a tremendous impact on day-to-day life,â Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said.
A judge set a status conference for Wednesday.
Homeland Security says it has made more than 2,000 arrests in the state since early December and is vowing to not back down. Spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, responding to the lawsuit, accused Minnesota officials of ignoring public safety.
Trump defiant
In a social media post, Trump defended the aggressive immigration enforcement actions being carried out across Minneapolis as part of his deportation agenda.
The president asserted in the post that the anti-ICE activity is also shifting the spotlight away from alleged fraud in the state and said, âFEAR NOT, GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA, THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!â
Trump blames what he calls âprofessional agitatorsâ for the widespread protests. He has not provided evidence to support his claims.
In response, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz posted on X: âTrump admits that this is nothing but political retribution. Minnesota voted against him three times and now heâs punishing us â putting lives at risk and wasting enormous resources in the process.”
ICE tactics on docket
In a different lawsuit, a judge said she would rule by Thursday or Friday on a request to restrict the use of force, such as chemical irritants, on people who are observing and recording agentsâ activities. Government attorneys argued that officers must protect themselves.
The Trump administration has repeatedly defended the immigration agent who shot Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, saying he acted in self-defense. But that explanation has been widely panned by Frey, Walz, and others based on videos of the confrontation.
State and local authorities are urging the public to share video and any other evidence as they seek to separately investigate Goodâs death after federal authorities insisted they would approach it alone and not share information.
In Wisconsin, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez is proposing that the state ban civil immigration enforcement around courthouses, hospitals, health clinics, schools, churches and other places. She is hoping to succeed Gov. Tony Evers, a fellow Democrat, who is not running for a third term.
âWe can take a look at that, but I think banning things absolutely will ramp up the actions of our folks in Washington, D.C.,â Evers said, referring to the Trump administration. âThey donât tend to approach those things appropriately.â
David Zandstra, the former Marple Township pastor acquitted last year in the 1975 murder of an 8-year-old girl in Delaware County, has died, and a federal lawsuit has been filed alleging misconduct by two Pennsylvania State Police investigators in the case.
The lawsuit said the 85-year-old Zandstra, who lived in Georgia, âhas passed and his family seek redress for this extreme and immoral prosecution.â
No further information about his death was included in the complaint. The Delaware County Daily Times, citing his death certificate, reported that Zandstra died Dec. 15 at a hospice, and the cause of death was skin cancer.
Mark Much, one of Zandstraâs lawyers during the trial but who is not an attorney on the lawsuit, said in an e-mailed statement Tuesday night that âZandstra passed away last month, peacefully, and surrounded by his loving family.â
Much said that Zandstra âwas a God-fearing man, unsuspecting and trustful of law enforcement, naive of their unscrupulous interrogation tactics, all in the name of âsolvingâ a cold case.â
The defendants in the lawsuit, filed Jan. 10 in Philadelphia, are Andrew Martin and Eugene Tray, who were the most recent state police investigators for Gretchen Harringtonâs murder.
Gretchen Harrington, 8, was found dead in 1975.
Tray declined to comment on the lawsuit. Martin could not be reached for comment.
The plaintiff is Margaret Zandstra, the administrator of the estate of David Zandstra, who allegedly had his civil rights violated by the defendants, the lawsuit states.
Zandstra, who was held in custody for 18 months, was found not guilty in January 2025 by a Delaware County jury of murder and kidnapping in the killing of Gretchen Harrington. The jury took about an hour to deliberate after a four-day trial.
In 2023, Zandstra was charged after he confessed to driving Gretchen to a secluded section of Ridley Creek State Park and beating her to death. The lawsuit says the investigators âillegally coerced an admission of guilt from Mr. Zandstra, a then-83-year-old stroke and cancer survivor.â
Mark Much argued during the trial that state police investigators had coerced and manipulated Zandstra into confessing to a crime he did not commit. There was no physical evidence linking him to the crime and DNA found on Gretchenâs clothing belonged to two unidentified men and one unidentified woman.
Testimony during the trial revealed that before Zandstraâs confession, the state police had developed several other suspects in the decades since Gretchenâs body was found.
The lawsuit provides alleged details about what the investigators did before finally going after Zandstra.
âThese Defendants caused evidence of the alternative suspects and Mr. Zandstraâs exclusion as a contributor of DNA to be withheld until the eve of trial, after Mr. Zandstra had been incarcerated and his cancer had returned and gone untreated,â according to the complaint.
Zandstra was the pastor at Trinity Chapel in Marple Township, a Christian reform church near the Harrington family home. On Aug. 15, 1975, Gretchen was last seen walking to the church for the final session of vacation Bible school before disappearing.
Her unclothed body was found two months later near a walking trail in Ridley Creek State Park. An autopsy revealed she died from blunt-force trauma to the head.
Deputy District Attorney Geoff Paine said during the trial that two state police investigators interviewed Zandstra after a woman who was a lifelong friend of Zandstraâs daughter told police in 2022 that he had groped her at a sleepover at his home in 1975, days before Gretchenâs disappearance. At the time, Paine said, the woman was the same age as Gretchen and looked like Gretchen.
Much told the jury that another suspect who was investigated was Gretchenâs sister, Zoe Harrington, who in 2021 claimed to have killed her sister with a rock during an incident involving her father, who was also a pastor, and members of the congregation he led.
Much said the state police at one point considered Harold Harrington, Gretchenâs father, a potential suspect. Harold Harrington died in 2021.
The prosecutor told the jury that Zoe Harringtonâs confession wasnât credible because she had a history of mental-health illness.
According to the lawsuit, Andrew Martin, one of the defendants, went to the first assistant district attorney in Montgomery County to seek a court order to allow a secretly recorded conversation between Zoe Harrington and her father, who was in poor health at the time.
After several interviews with Zoe Harrington â including with another state trooper who is not named as a defendant â Martin signed an application to the court for a wiretap authorization on Aug. 9, 2021, according to the lawsuit. The next day, however, Zoe Harrington allegedly backed out because she said she was too afraid.
The lawsuit states that when Martin and Tray provided their sworn affidavit supporting the arrest of Zandstra, they summarized their August 2021 activity in the investigation as: âOn Aug. 9, 2021, investigators conducted an interview of Zoey HARRINGTON (sister of Gretchen HARRINGTON) relative to this investigation. Zoe HARRINGTON related that ZANDSTRA was the minister at the time, and his daughter was Gretchenâs best friend.â
The lawsuit also says the state police had another suspect, Richard Bailey, who was investigated in 2017. Bailey was a convicted child rapist and kidnapper, who was seen a mile from where Gretchen disappeared on the day she was abducted. Bailey died in state prison in the 1990s.
On March 2, 1955, a 15-year-old Black high school junior named Claudette Colvin boarded a segregated city bus in Montgomery, Ala., taking a window seat near the back. When the driver ordered her to give up her seat so a white woman could be more comfortable, Ms. Colvin â who had been studying Black history in class, learning about abolitionists like Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth â did not budge.
âHistory had me glued to the seat,â she said later, recalling how it felt as though Tubman and Truth had their hands on her shoulders, giving her âthe courage to remain seated.â
History would record that it was Rosa Parks, the longtime secretary of the local NAACP, who helped kick-start the modern civil rights movement by refusing to give up her seat on a crowded Montgomery bus.
Yet it was Ms. Colvin, nine months earlier, who engaged in one of the first defiant challenges to the cityâs Jim Crow transit system, remaining in her seat until police dragged her backward off the bus.
While Parksâ stand proved far more consequential, leading to a year-long bus boycott that thrust the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to national prominence, Ms. Colvinâs arrest inaugurated what King described as a pivotal period for Black people in Montgomery. Community leaders formed a committee to meet with city and bus company officials, calling for improved treatment for Black passengers. Those discussions proved fruitless, King recalled in a memoir, but âfear and apathyâ gradually gave way to âa new spirit of courage and self-respect.â
Historian David Garrow said in an interview for this obituary that âColvinâs experience proved a major motivating force for adult Black activistsâ including Jo Ann Robinson, who helped launch and sustain the bus boycott. Another leading figure in the boycott, lawyer Fred Gray, brought the federal lawsuit that overturned bus segregation, with Ms. Colvin serving as a plaintiff and star witness.
âI donât mean to take anything away from Mrs. Parks,â Gray said, âbut Claudette gave all of us the moral courage to do what we did.â
Ms. Colvin, who died Jan. 13 at 86, was almost forgotten in the annals of civil rights. Overshadowed by Parks and other activists, she spent decades in obscurity, caring for elderly patients as a nurseâs aide before gaining late-in-life recognition through the efforts of historians and writers such as Phillip Hoose, whose 2009 biography, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, won the National Book Award for young peopleâs literature.
âYoung people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasnât the case at all,â Ms. Colvin told the New York Times in 2009. âMaybe by telling my story â something I was afraid to do for a long time â kids will have a better understanding about what the civil rights movement was about.â
A movie based on her life, Spark, was announced in 2022, with actor Anthony Mackie lined up to make his directorial debut, and Saniyya Sidney slated to star.
In the days after Ms. Colvinâs arrest, civil rights leaders in Montgomery wondered if her case might offer a chance to put segregation itself on trial. But, as Robinson later wrote in a memoir, âopinions differed where Claudette was concerned.â
Some deemed her too young and immature, saying she was prone to profane outbursts. (Ms. Colvin said she never cursed.) There were also concerns about her class and background: She was looked down upon, Montgomery activist Gwen Patton once recalled with frustration, because she âlived in a little shack.â
The deciding factor was the discovery by labor organizer E.D. Nixon, the local NAACP president, that Ms. Colvin was expecting a child. She later said that she became pregnant in the months after the bus standoff as a result of an encounter with a married man, which she described as statutory rape.
âEven if Montgomery Negroes were willing to rally behind an unwed pregnant teenager â which they were not â her circumstances would make her an extremely vulnerable standard-bearer,â author Taylor Branch observed in Parting the Waters, a Pulitzer Prize-winning civil rights history.
Ms. Colvin often said Nixon and other organizers were right to rally around Parks, who exuded a quiet authority, was familiar to activists from her work in the NAACP, and had an appeal that crossed class divisions through her job as a department-store seamstress.
But Ms. Colvin remained frustrated by what she described as a lack of support and recognition in the years after she was arrested, when she struggled as a single mother to find work and eventually left Alabama for New York.
âThey wanted someone, I believe, who would be impressive to white people. ⌠You know what I mean? Like the main star,â she told the Guardian in 2021. âAnd they didnât think that a dark-skinned teenager, low income without a degree, could contribute. Itâs like reading an old English novel when youâre the peasant, and youâre not recognized.â
âI had had enoughâ
Claudette Austin, as she was then known, was born in Birmingham, Ala., on Sept. 5, 1939. Her father, C.P. Austin, left the family when she was young.
Her mother, Mary Jane Gadson, was unable to support Ms. Colvin and her younger sister by herself, and turned the children over to her aunt and uncle, Mary Ann and Q.P. Colvin. The older couple lived on a farm in Pine Level â the rural Alabama community where, by chance, Parks had gone to elementary school â and gave the girls their last name.
When Ms. Colvin was 8, the family moved to nearby Montgomery, where her adoptive parents were hired by white families to do home and yard work. Her sister died of polio in 1952, shortly before Ms. Colvin started her first year at Booker T. Washington High School.
Ms. Colvin was still grieving her sisterâs death when her neighbor Jeremiah Reeves, an older schoolmate, was arrested and charged with raping a white woman. Following a confession he gave under duress and later retracted, he was convicted by an all-white jury, sentenced to death, and executed in 1958, at age 22.
His arrest âwas the turning point of my life,â Ms. Colvin said. As she saw it, the case embodied the hypocrisies of the legal system: Reeves was sent to death row as a juvenile because of a false confession, but when a white man raped a Black girl, âit was just his word against hers, and no one would ever believe her.â
Ms. Colvin told Hoose that on the day the bus driver asked her to give up her seat, ârebellion was on my mind.â
She was sitting in a row near the rear exit, joined by three schoolmates as the bus started filling up, and passengers stood in the aisle. Before long, a white woman was standing over Ms. Colvin and her peers. The driver asked for all four of their seats, so that the woman wouldnât have to sit in the same row as a Black passenger.
âI might have considered getting up if the woman had been elderly, but she wasnât,â Ms. Colvin recalled. âShe looked about 40. The other three girls in my row got up and moved back, but I didnât. I just couldnât.â
Ms. Colvin remained seated as the driver grew exasperated â âGimme that seat! Get up, gal!â â and hailed a transit policeman, who in turn summoned a squad car. Ms. Colvin said that as the police arrived, she began crying but remained defiant, telling the officers, âItâs my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, itâs my constitutional right!â
By her account, one of the officers kicked her as she was pulled off the bus. (One of the officers alleged that it was the other way around.) She was placed in handcuffs and put in a squad car, where, according to Ms. Colvin, the officers took turns trying to guess her bra size.
Bailed out of jail by her minister, she returned home to fears of retaliation. Her adoptive father didnât sleep that night, staying awake with a shotgun in case the Ku Klux Klan arrived. At school, classmates began to consider her a troublemaker, describing her as âthat crazy girl off the bus.â
Ms. Colvin was charged with assault and disorderly conduct in addition to violating the segregation law. Tried in juvenile court because of her age, she was found guilty of assault (a judge dismissed the other two charges), placed on indefinite probation and ordered to pay a small fine.
Over the next few months, other Black women defied Montgomeryâs segregated bus policy. The group included Lucille Times, who staged a one-woman boycott after an altercation with a driver, and 18-year-old Mary Louise Smith, who was arrested, convicted and fined after refusing to give up her seat.
As with Ms. Colvin, organizers worried that Smith wasnât right for a marquee case: Her father was said to be an alcoholic, and the family was deemed too low-class. It wasnât until Parksâs arrest on Dec. 1, 1955, that a citywide bus boycott was organized.
As the boycott progressed, Ms. Colvin became one of several plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, a federal lawsuit brought by Gray that challenged the city and state laws enforcing bus segregation in Montgomery. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ordered an end to bus segregation in late 1956.
Ms. Colvin gave birth to her first son, Raymond, earlier that year. She never publicly identified the father and said she was expelled from high school as a result of her pregnancy.
After passing a high school equivalency exam, she briefly attended Alabama State College in Montgomery and then moved in 1958 to New York, where she got a job as a live-in caregiver.
She had a second son in 1960 and moved back and forth between New York and Montgomery â where her adoptive mother helped care for her children â before settling in New York City in 1968 and receiving training as a nurseâs aide.
âThe only thing I am still angry about is that I should have seen a psychiatrist,â she told The Washington Post in 1998, reflecting on her life after the movement. âI needed help. I didnât get any support. I had to get well on my own.â
Ms. Colvinâs death was confirmed by Ashley D. Roseboro, a spokesman for the family and for the Claudette Colvin Foundation. He said she died in hospice in Texas but did not share additional details.
Her son Raymond died in 1993. Her younger son, Randy, worked as an accountant. He survives her, as do several sisters and grandchildren.
In 2021, Ms. Colvin successfully petitioned to have her juvenile arrest record expunged, a symbolic act recognizing the injustice of the segregation laws.
âIâm not doing it for me, Iâm 82 years old,â she explained to the Times. âBut I wanted my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren to understand that their grandmother stood up for something very important, and that it changed our lives a lot, changed attitudes.â
Donald Trumpâs administration said Tuesday it will end temporary protected status for immigrants from Somalia, the latest move in the presidentâs mass deportation agenda.
The move affects hundreds of people who are a small subset of immigrants with TPS protections in the United States. It comes during Trumpâs immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, where many native Somalis live and where street protests have intensified since a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent killed a U.S citizen who was demonstrating against federal presence in the city.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that affected Somalis must leave the U.S. by March 17, when existing protections, last extended by former President Joe Biden, will expire.
âTemporary means temporary,â said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, adding that the decision puts âAmericans first.â
The Congressional Research Service last spring said the Somali TPS population was 705 out of nearly 1.3 million TPS immigrants. But Trump has rolled back protections across multiple countries in his second presidency.
Congress established the Temporary Protected Status program in 1990 to help foreign nationals attempting to leave unstable, threatening conditions in their home countries. It allows the executive branch to designate a country so that its citizens are eligible to enter the U.S. and receive status.
Somalia first received the designation under President George H.W. Bush amid a civil war in 1991. The status has been extended for decades, most recently by Biden in July 2024.
Noem insisted circumstances in Somalia âhave improved to the point that it no longer meets the lawâs requirement for Temporary Protected Status.â
The 2025 congressional report stated that Somalis had received more than two dozen extensions because of perpetual âinsecurity and ongoing armed conflict that present serious threats to the safety of returnees.â
Trump has targeted Somali immigrants with racist rhetoric and accused those in Minneapolis of massively defrauding federal programs.
In December, Trump said he did not want Somalis in the U.S., saying they âcome from hellâ and âcontribute nothing.â He made no distinction between citizens and non-citizens or offered any opinion on immigration status.
He has had especially harsh words for Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat who emigrated from Somalia as a child. Trump has repeatedly suggested she should be deported, despite her being a U.S. citizen, and in his rant last fall he called her âgarbage.â
Omar, who has been an outspoken critic of the ICE deployment in Minneapolis, has called Trumpâs âobsessionâ with her and Somali-Americans âcreepy and unhealthy.â
DETROIT â President Donald Trump offered a full-throated defense of his sweeping tariffs on Tuesday, traveling to swing-state Michigan to push the case that heâs boosted domestic manufacturing in hopes of countering fears about a weakening job market and still-rising prices that have squeezed American pocketbooks.
Trump visited the factory floor of a Ford plant in Dearborn, where he viewed F-150s â the bestselling domestic vehicle in the U.S. â at various stages of production. That included seeing how gas and hybrid models were built, as well as the all-gas Raptor model, designed for off-road use.
The president chatted with assembly line workers as well as the automakerâs executive chairman, Bill Ford, a descendent of Henry Ford. âAll U.S. automakers are doing great,â Trump said.
He later gave a speech to the Detroit Economic Club that was meant to be focused on his economic policies but veered heavily to other topics as well. Those included falsely claiming to have won Michigan three times (he lost the state in 2020 to Joe Biden) and recalling the snakes that felled workers during U.S. efforts to build the Panama Canal more than a century ago.
âThe results are in, and the Trump economic boom has officially begun,â the president said at the MotorCity Casino. He argued that âone of the biggest reasons for this unbelievable success has been our historic use of tariffs.â
Trump insists tariffs havenât increased costs
The president said that tariffs were âoverwhelminglyâ paid by âforeign nations and middlemenâ â even as economists say steep import taxes are simply passed from overseas manufactures to U.S. consumers, helping exacerbate fears about the rising cost of living.
âItâs tariffs that are making money for Michigan and the entire country,â the president said, insisting that âevery prediction the critics made about our tariff policy has failed to materialize.â
But voters remain worried about the state of the economy. Tuesdayâs visit â his third trip to a swing state since last month to talk about his economic policies â followed a poor showing for Republicans in Novemberâs off-year elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and elsewhere amid persistent concerns about kitchen table issues.
The White House pledged after Election Day that Trump would hit the road more frequently to talk directly to the public about what he is doing to ease their financial fears. The president tried to drive that home on Tuesday, but only amid lengthy asides.
âI go off teleprompter about 80% of the time, but isnât it nice to have a president who can go off teleprompter?â he said, before mocking Biden, suggesting his predecessor gave short speeches and doing an impression that included a dramatic clearing of his throat.
Trump promised to unveil a new âhealth care affordability frameworkâ later this week that he promised would lower the cost of care. He also pledged to soon offer more plans to help with affordability nationwide â even as he blamed Democrats for hyping up the issue.
âOne of our top priorities of this mission is promoting greater affordability. Now, thatâs a word used by the Democrats,â Trump said. âTheyâre the ones who caused the problem.â
Trump eased some auto tariffs
Despite cheering tariffs, Trump has actually backed off the import taxes when it comes to the automobile sector. The president originally announced 25% tariffs on automobiles and auto parts, only to later relax those, seeking to provide domestic automakers some relief from seeing their production costs rise.
Ford nonetheless announced in December that it was scrapping plans to make an electric F-150, despite pouring billions of dollars into broader electrification. That followed the Trump administration slashing targets to have half of all new vehicle sales be electric by 2030, eliminated EV tax credits and proposed weakening the emissions and gas mileage rules.
While touring the assembly line, Trump suggested that a major North American trade agreement he negotiated during his first term, the United States-Mexico-Canada trade pact, was irrelevant and no longer necessary for the United States â though he provided few details.
The pact, known as the USMCA, is up for review this year.
Trump largely sidesteps Powell probe
The presidentâs attempt to shift national attention to his efforts to spur the economy comes as his Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, a move that Powell says is a blatant endeavor to undermine the central bankâs independence in setting interest rates.
Critics of the move include former Fed chairs, economic officials and even some Republican lawmakers. During the Michigan visit, Trump lobbed his often-repeated criticisms of Powell but offered little mention of the investigation.
Some good economic news for Trump arrived, though, before he left Washington, with new data from December showing inflation declined a bit last month as prices for gas and used cars fell â a sign that cost pressures are slowly easing. Consumer prices rose 0.3% in December from the prior month, the Labor Department said, the same as in November.
âWe have quickly achieved the exact opposite of stagflation, almost no inflation and super-high growth,â he said in his speech.
Other economic policy speeches
The Michigan stop follows speeches Trump gave last month in Pennsylvania â where his gripes about immigrants arriving to the U.S. from âfilthyâ countries got more attention than his pledges to fight inflation â and North Carolina, where he also insisted his tariffs have spurred the economy, despite residents noting the sting of higher prices.
Like in Michigan, Trump also used a casino as a backdrop to talk about the economy in Pennsylvania, giving his speech there at Mount Airy Casino Resort in Mount Pocono.
Trump carried Michigan in 2016 and 2024, after it swung Democratic and backed Biden in 2020. He marked his first 100 days in office with a rally-style April speech outside Detroit, where he focused more on past campaign grudges than his administrationâs economic or policy plans.
Democrats seized on Trumpâs latest visit to the state to recall his visit in October 2024, when Trump, then also addressing the Detroit Economic Club, said that Democratsâ retaining the White House would mean âour whole country will end up being like Detroit.â
âYouâre going to have a mess on your hands,â Trump said during a campaign stop back then.
Michigan Democratic Party Curtis Hertel said in a statement that âTrumpâs speech showed just how out-of-touch he is with reality, claiming that affordability is âfakeâ as Michiganders have less money in their pocketbooks because of the Republicansâ price-hiking agenda.â
