Mastriano’s announcementWednesday now clears the way for State Treasurer Stacy Garrity, who was endorsed by the state GOP last fall as the party’s best pick to challenge Gov. Josh Shapiro this November.
“We believe, with full peace in our hearts, God has not called us to run for governor,” Mastriano said in a Facebook Live video stream alongside his wife, Rebbie.
He did not endorse Garrity as part of his announcement, nor did he mention her by name.
“For you to have a Republican governor here, the grassroots is going to have to back the candidate,” Mastriano said, referring to Garrity.
Republicans chose Garrity early — endorsing her more than a year before the 2026 election — in an effort to avoid a crowded primary like the one that eventually led to Mastriano’s nomination in 2022. They hope that a candidate like Garrity, who has won statewide elections twice and dethroned Shapiro for receiving the most votes of any state-level candidate, will have a better chance at beating Shapiro, or at least, preventing a down-ballot blowout in an election that already is likely to favor Democrats.
Mastriano, a two-term state senator representing Gettysburg and the surrounding area, publicly criticized the state party for endorsing Garrity so early, and has repeatedly said that their endorsement would not deter him from getting in the race.
In a statement, Garrity said she respected Mastriano’s decision not to run, calling him a “strong voice for faith, family and freedom.”
“I look forward to working with him to restore integrity, fiscal responsibility, and common-sense leadership in our commonwealth,” Garrity added.
Mastriano, a former U.S. Army colonel with top-secret clearance, built a grassroots online following during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic for his resistance to business shutdowns. That support continued to grow after the 2020 presidential election as he promoted President Donald Trump’s false claims that Pennsylvania’s election results were rigged. He has remained a staunch supporter of Trump ever since.
Trump’s advisers, however, feared that Mastriano’s presence on the ticket would hurt Republicans up and down the ticket despite him leading Garrity in private polling by 21 points, Politico reported in July.
Mastriano and his wife spent much of his 20-minute announcement on Wednesday reminiscing on their movement since 2020: their daily virtual fireside chats during COVID-19 closures and their other attempts to reopen the state’s businesses amid the pandemic, their efforts to overturn Pennsylvania’s 2020 election results for Trump, Mastriano’s 2022 gubernatorial run, and the GOP’s electoral successes in 2024.
However, things are different now, the couple said. The grassroots supporters aren’t as unified as they once were, and the state party overstepped in its early endorsement.
“Bottom line is: They don’t have the last say,” said Rebbie Mastriano, in a reminder to their supporters. “You have the last say.”
In the 2022 primary, the state GOP declined to endorse candidates in the gubernatorial or U.S. Senate races. That led to a crowded, nine-candidate GOP primary ballot for governor that was advantageous for Mastriano, who had built name recognition through his anti-lockdown and 2020 election efforts.
The state Democratic Party responded to Mastriano’s announcement with fresh attacks on Garrity, calling her a “far-right, toxic candidate” and noted some of the areas where she and Mastriano agree, including that she denied the 2020 election results and her past opposition to abortion. (She now says she would not support a state abortion ban.)
As of Wednesday, no GOP candidate had announced their candidacy for lieutenant governor. Garrity told The Inquirer last month she was vetting candidates and planned to announce who she’d endorse as her running mate in February, ahead of the next state GOP meeting.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced Wednesday that the Trump administration will take control of all existing flows of oil from Venezuela for the foreseeable future as it struggles to persuade U.S. firms to invest in expansive drilling operations there.
Speaking at a Goldman Sachs energy industry event in Miami, Wright said the United States will allow Venezuelan oil under U.S. sanctions to flow again, but only to U.S. refineries. He said the sales will be “done by the U.S. government and deposited into accounts controlled by the U.S. government.”
“From there, those funds can flow back into Venezuela to benefit the Venezuelan people,” Wright said. “We need to leverage and control those oil sales to drive the changes that must happen in Venezuela.”
Wright’s comments followed an announcement from President Donald Trump on Tuesday night that tens of millions of barrels of Venezuelan oil currently blocked by a U.S. embargo will be shipped to refineries in the U.S. The directive enables revenue to start flowing to Venezuela, but even that arrangement could be complicated because those refineries get abundant oil from North America.
On Wednesday, Wright framed the effort as crucial to re-establishing a viable oil industry in Venezuela. He said the revenue generated could be used to help rebuild the badly rotting oil infrastructure in that country and to help lure U.S. firms to invest there. He said the U.S. will control Venezuelan oil flows “indefinitely.”
The unorthodox arrangement puzzled some analysts. The reason oil had not been flowing to the U.S. refineries was that U.S. sanctions prohibit it. If the sanctions were lifted, they say, market forces would already guide most of the Venezuelan oil to the U.S., which has refineries specially equipped to handle the heavy type of crude pumped there.
“So much Venezuelan oil is exported to China, India, and other markets because of sanctions,” said Ben Cahill, an energy markets scholar at the University of Texas at Austin. “If the goal is to redirect it to U.S. refiners, sanctions relief could do that on its own.”
The Venezuelan oil will be flowing at a time forecasts project the U.S. refining market will have more than enough oil.
“I don’t see how this benefits the American people,” said Amos Hochstein, managing partner at the investment holding company TWG Global, who was a senior economic and national security adviser in the Biden White House. “If anything, we may have an oversupply, which is why oil prices are in multiyear lows and declining. Nor do I see how this helps the people of Venezuela.”
An oil tanker is docked at El Palito Port in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, last month.
The effort is underway as Wright also runs point on the White House effort to coax U.S. oil companies to invest in Venezuela, according to industry officials. As the companies express reticence, the White House is working aggressively to try to lure them.
Trump has started telling reluctant oil company leaders that he might make it worth their while.
Within days after sending Special Operations forces into Venezuela to arrest Nicolás Maduro, Trump suggested that U.S. taxpayers could help foot the bill to drill the vast reserves of the Latin American nation.
“A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent, and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue,” he told NBC on Monday.
Using taxpayer-funded cash subsidies to incentivize oil companies to pump abroad would be unprecedented, industry analysts say. But the White House faces a steep challenge persuading firms to drill in a politically and economically unstable country that has burned them in the past by expropriating assets worth billions and then leaving U.S.-built oil infrastructure to rot.
The firms themselves are still working out what they want to request from the White House, according to a half-dozen individuals close to the companies who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk speak frankly.
Since Monday, Wright has talked with the CEOs of the three major oil companies that would be positioned to drill there: Chevron, the sole remaining U.S. firm that has operations in Venezuela; ConocoPhillips, which is still owed some $8 billion after its assets were taken when it exited nearly two decades ago; and ExxonMobil, which also previously operated in Venezuela and is owed about $1 billion. The Energy Department said in an email that Wright would meet privately with executives from the firms at the Goldman Sachs event Wednesday.
ConocoPhillips said in a statement that “it would be premature to speculate on any future business activities or investments.” The other companies did not respond to requests for comment.
The White House declined to answer detailed questions.
According to one lobbyist close to the conversations, some company officials have been pondering the possibility of proposing a joint venture with the U.S. government, in which American taxpayers would invest in drilling in return for a stake in any profits.
The conversations are focused on how to make it viable to invest tens of billions of dollars in such a high-risk country at a time when oil prices are low and there are many other safer, more attractive places for them to drill, such as nearby Guyana.
“The companies are scrambling right now,” said a senior oil industry executive who has been involved in conversations with the administration. “I don’t think this was on anybody’s bingo card when they were making their [corporate] budgets for 2026.”
“I have talked to all of the CEOs at companies that could be in a position to engage there,” said the executive. “There were no conversations between the industry and the White House or the president about what would happen. Maybe the president said something to somebody, like ‘be ready’ at some casual conversation. If it happened, it happened months and months ago.”
The executive was also skeptical that companies would want subsidies, because partnering with the U.S. government carries its own risks. The next administration could be hostile to fossil fuels, and the companies would find themselves tied to it financially, as these agreements would pencil out only if they were in place for at least a decade or two. “We are a free-market industry,” the executive said. “We have benefited from not having state control of oil companies.”
Still, the firms, indebted to a White House that has been a relentless booster of the industry, are under considerable pressure to deliver in Venezuela, even as company officials warn privately that Trump’s vows that expanded pumping will begin in as soon as 18 months are out of touch with reality.
Despite other corporate partnerships undertaken by the administration around the world, it’s unclear how serious officials are about providing financial help for oil producers. Involving U.S. taxpayers is politically fraught and would probably confront opposition in Congress, industry analysts said.
“These companies being asked by the Trump administration to dive into Venezuela are confronting enormous risks,” said Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group, a research firm that serves the industry. “It is like walking into a factory left to rot for 2 1/2 decades, or like asking yourself, ‘How bad is this house we just bought?’ I imagine they would want to mitigate those risks however they can.”
The administration has offered financial incentives elsewhere around the world to entice companies and countries to align with the White House. In Ukraine, it struck a deal to create a Reconstruction Investment Fund, through which companies that invest in that country can tap into a fund generated with the help of natural-resource revenue from Ukraine.
Ted Posner, a partner at Baker Botts, a global law firm that advises major oil companies, said the Trump administration could do something similar for U.S. corporations investing in Venezuela “as a way of demonstrating that the U.S. government has skin in the game. It’s here by your side.”
But the levels of industry investment the White House wants to see in Venezuela — estimated at as much as $100 billion — dwarf what is being considered in Ukraine, and it is unclear if such partnerships would help sway oil company executives and their reluctant shareholders.
“There are carrots available” to entice companies to drill, Posner said. “What I don’t know is if there are enough.”
One oil company executive who has firsthand experience with the challenges in Venezuela warned that the administration’s rosy projections ignore realities on the ground.
Even the firms that are owed billions of dollars, the executive said, will be reluctant to return, because recouping their investments would almost certainly require them to spend billions more.
The reimbursement for seized assets would be the obligation of the Venezuelan state oil company, and it won’t have the funds if Venezuela does not restore its production capacity, which has collapsed after decades of neglect.
“The only way to recoup that funding is through [pumping] crude oil,” the executive said. “But that will not happen overnight. Will you be fully compensated at the end of the day? Maybe. Maybe not.”
“The U.S. government is going to have a hard time making this sales pitch,” this individual said. “Some companies are going to say, ‘We appreciate this, but we have our shareholders to think about and just cannot do it.’ Other companies will make demands to the U.S. that they want to be made whole if something happens. … How can you commit the U.S. Treasury to backstop these issues in Venezuela? Think about all the geopolitics around that. That alone could be tied up with lawyers for a year.”
As oil executives grapple with all of this uncertainty, Trump continues to indicate that he expects all of them to align with his plans.
On Tuesday he told reporters that he will personally be meeting with companies. “You know what that’s about,” he said, alluding to Venezuela. “We got a lot of oil to drill, which is going to bring down oil prices even further.”
NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is standing behind a newly appointed housing official as she faces backlash for years-old social media posts, including messages that called for the seizure of private property and linked homeownership to white supremacy.
Cea Weaver, a longtime tenant activist, was tapped by the Democrat last week to serve as executive director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants. The mayor has vowed to expand and empower the office to take “unprecedented” steps against negligent landlords.
The posts, which were circulated on social media in recent days by critics of Mamdani, included calls to treat private property as a “collective good” and to “impoverish the *white* middle class.” A tweet sent in 2017 described homeownership as “a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building public policy.’”
Eric Adams, the city’s former mayor and a fellow Democrat, said the remarks showed “extreme privilege and total detachment from reality.”
Asked about the controversy on Wednesday, Mamdani did not address the substance of Weaver’s posts but defended her record of “standing up for tenants across the city and state.”
Weaver said in an interview with a local TV station that some of the messages were “regretful” and “not something I would say today.”
“I want to make sure that everybody has a safe and affordable place to live, whether they rent or own, and that is something I’m laser-focused on in this new role,” she added.
The discussion comes after Mamdani last month accepted the resignation of another official, Catherine Almonte Da Costa, after the Anti-Defamation League shared social media posts she made over a decade ago that featured antisemitic tropes.
While Mamdani had said he was unaware of Da Costa’s messages, Weaver’s past social media posts were known to the administration, according to a mayoral spokesperson, Dora Pekec.
Weaver previously led the Housing Justice for All coalition, which was widely credited with helping to convince state lawmakers to pass a sweeping package of tenant protections in 2019.
As leader of the city’s tenant protection office, she would play a key role in achieving one of Mamdani’s most polarizing campaign pledges: identifying negligent landlords and forcing them to negotiate the sale of their properties to the city if they are unable to pay fines for violations.
The “public stewardship” proposal has drawn consternation from landlord groups and skepticism from others in city government.
But the early days of his administration have brought signs that the new mayor is not backing off on the idea.
In a press conference immediately following his inauguration last week, Mamdani said the city would take “precedent-setting” action against the owner of a Brooklyn apartment building that owed the city money and was currently in bankruptcy proceedings.
He then announced Weaver’s appointment, drawing loud cheers from the members of a tenants union gathered in the building’s lobby.
“It is going to be challenging,” Weaver acknowledged. “New York is home to some of the most valuable real estate in the world. Everything about New York politics is about that fact.”
RIO DE JANEIRO — Former President Jair Bolsonaro was granted a brief leave Wednesday from his 27-year prison sentence for a coup attempt so that he could undergo medical tests at a hospital in the capital after he fell from his bed.
Police escorted Bolsonaro, 70, from the federal police’s headquarters in Brasilia to the nearby DF Star hospital where he arrived at around midday for three brain tests.
At about 4:30 p.m. local time, Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle, said on Instagram that the exams had been carried out and that they were awaiting results. Her husband went back to prison, she said.
Later, DF Star hospital said in a brief statement that the tests showed “mild soft-tissue thickening in the frontal and right temporal regions” due to the trauma, but that no additional treatment was needed.
Bolsonaro fell in his cell overnight from Monday to Tuesday while sleeping. His wife, and Bolsonaro’s son Carlos, said on social media Tuesday that the far-right politician needed medical attention and expressed frustration that Bolsonaro hadn’t been sent to the hospital on Tuesday.
In his decision authorizing the trip to the hospital Wednesday, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes cited a health report conducted by the federal police on Tuesday. Bolsonaro reported mild head trauma, according to the report. Upon examination, the former Brazilian leader was found to be conscious and lucid, with a superficial cut to his face.
De Moraes authorized a tomography, brain scan and a brain wave test requested by Bolsonaro’s lawyers. The Supreme Court justice said that his transfer to the hospital should be conducted in a “discreet manner,” and that federal police were responsible for Bolsonaro’s security and his return to prison.
Bolsonaro had previously left the hospital and returned to prison last Thursday, a week after undergoing double hernia surgery.
Bolsonaro has been hospitalized multiple times since being stabbed at a campaign event before the 2018 presidential election.
Bolsonaro and several of his allies were convicted in September by a panel of Supreme Court justices of attempting to overthrow Brazil’s democratic system following his 2022 election defeat.
The plot included plans to kill Lula, Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and de Moraes. There was also a plan to encourage an insurrection in early 2023.
Bolsonaro was also convicted on charges that include leading an armed criminal organization and attempting the violent abolition of the democratic rule of law. He has denied any wrongdoing.
Two new schools are coming to the Philadelphia School District.
Both schools, a K-8 and a high school,district officials said Wednesday, will have resources to help eliminate long-standing achievement and opportunity gaps for kids from underresourced communities.
They’ll be part of the “North Philadelphia Promise Zone,” Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. announced. Watlington said they would be the first schools in the United States to replicate the success of the acclaimed Harlem Children’s Zone, with the blessing of its founder, Geoffrey Canada,who pioneered a model that takes a birth-to-career approach to tackling generational poverty.
Watlington said the schoolswould be “true year-round schools.” They would bring a new approach to the new Philadelphia public schools, where prior attempts to replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone blueprint have shown mixed results.
Harlem Children’s Zone runs charters in New York City, but the proposed Philadelphiaschools will be run by the district using the organization’s educational model,which includes extra resources and a longer school day and school year, as well as extensive social service supports.
Members of the West Philadelphia Marching Orange & Blue perform before Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker speaks on the state of Philadelphia schools during a gathering at Edison High School in Philadelphia, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026.
“We’re going to be partners in opening these two state-of-the-art schools,” Watlington said at his state of the schools address, held Wednesday at Edison High School in North Philadelphia.
The district has big hopes for the schools, which officials said will be opened in existing Philadelphia school buildings — no new school structures will be involved.
“Not only will they get better, but get better faster than our district average. We’re going to make sure the school is staffed with the very best, most effective principals,” Watlington said. “We’re going to ensure that these schools are staffed with the very best, most effective teachers.”
They will be schools of choice, meaning parents can opt into having their children attend rather than basing enrollment on where students live.
The schools will also pull in Temple University; Watlington said that via the Temple Future Scholars program, “every single one of these graduates from this K-8 and high school” will be college-ready.
Many details were not clear Wednesday, including when the schools will open, what the year-round model will look like, the exact relationship with Harlem Children’s Zone, how the schools will be funded, and who will staff them. The district said it could not give more details immediately.
News of the new schools caught an important partner off guard. Arthur Steinberg, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, said Watlington’s speech was the first he heard of the initiative.
“Any changes in working conditions must be negotiated with the PFT,” Steinberg said. “We will not agree to anything that requires members to work additional days or hours.”
Watlington said the K-8 school will open first, and he has tapped Aliya Catanch-Bradley, the respected principal of Bethune Elementary in North Philadelphia, to lead the efforts to open the North Philadelphia Promise Zone schools.
Catanch-Bradley said it was too soon to discuss the particulars about the schools, which will be built with significant community involvement.
But, she said, North Philadelphia is a prime location for the cradle-to-career Harlem Children’s Zone model.
“We know that it’s not a food desert, because food… deserts are natural,” she said of North Philadelphia. “It is food insecure by design, right? And so, we now know that you have a resource drought there, to which it’s going to take an intentional pouring of all types of resources to wrap around a community, to help expand and become a very successful ecosystem.”
Philadelphia district officials will take time to study Harlem Children’s Zone, “but also to understand the landscape of Philadelphia, what needs to be augmented to echo the needs of this community,” Catanch-Bradley said.
Mayor Cherelle L.Parker campaignedon the promise of year-round schools, and her administration has put extended-day, extended-year programs into 40 district and charter schools. But those programs are essentially before- and after-care and summer camps, paid for with city funds and offered free to 12,000 students, rather than traditional year-round education.
Harlem Children’s Zone schools have longer school days and longer school years. It’s not clear what form the proposed North Philadelphia Promise Zone schools might take, and how these efforts would differ from prior attempts around the country to replicate the success of the Harlem Children’s Zone. Former President Barack Obama in 2010 highlighted the model and selected20 communities, including Philadelphia, to start “Promise Neighborhood” programs that would improve access to housing, jobs, and education. Those efforts were met with varying degrees of success, and no schools opened in Philadelphia.
Watlington’s new-school announcement capped a two-plus-hour, pep-rally-style event where he and others underscored progress the district has made in the past year — and since the superintendent came to Philadelphia four years ago.
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker (left), Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. (center), and school board president Reginald Streater during a ceremony on the state of Philadelphia schools at Edison High School on Wednesday.
Other news from the state of Philadelphia schools event
Parker, who led off the event, said she was pleased with the state of schools.
“The school district has continued to make steady and meaningful progress,” Parker said. “Test scores are rising, attendance is rising. Dropout rates are declining, and those gains are real, and they reflect what happens when we invest in our students.”
Parker emphasized her desire to have the city take over a list of abandoned district buildings. The school board took the first step in December, voting to authorize Watlington and his administration to begin negotiating with the city to do just that.
Parker said thatsome of the buildings have been vacant for as long as 30 years. The district has not yet released a list of buildings to consider transferring, but the mayor said it includes at least 20 former schools.
“I want you to be clear about what my goal and objective is,” Parker said. “It’s not OK for me to have 20, 21 buildings consistently vacant, red on the school district’s balance sheet, generating no revenue and not at all working at their best and highest use. We’re going to find a way to do what has never been done in the city of Philadelphia before — develop a plan for those persistently vacant buildings.”
Watlington alsoran down a laundry list of accomplishments, including ongoing fiscal stability and improvementson the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation’s report card.
He said the district would “retire” its structural deficit completely by 2029-30 though declined to give details.
He and Reginald Streater, president of the city’s school board, said the district still has a ways to go but has made strides. More than half of all district students still fail to meet grade-level standards in reading and math.
But, Watlington said, “I can assure you we’re making progress. We’re going to double down. More for our children, not less. More opportunities, more access, more exposure, more good things to come in 2026.”
WASHINGTON — CIA turncoat Aldrich Mr. Ames, who betrayed Western intelligence assets to the Soviet Union and Russia in one of the most damaging intelligence breaches in U.S. history, has died in a Maryland prison. He was 84.
A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons confirmed Mr. Ames died Monday.
Mr. Ames, a 31-year CIA veteran, admitted being paid $2.5 million by Moscow for U.S. secrets from 1985 until his arrest in 1994. His disclosures included the identities of 10 Russian officials and one Eastern European who were spying for the United States or Great Britain, along with spy satellite operations, eavesdropping and general spy procedures. His betrayals are blamed for the executions of Western agents working behind the Iron Curtain and were a major setback to the CIA during the Cold War.
He pleaded guilty without a trial to espionage and tax evasion and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Prosecutors said he deprived the United States of valuable intelligence material for years.
He professed “profound shame and guilt” for “this betrayal of trust, done for the basest motives,” money to pay debts. But he downplayed the damage he caused, telling the court he did not believe he had “noticeably damaged” the United States or “noticeably aided” Moscow.
“These spy wars are a sideshow which have had no real impact on our significant security interests over the years,” he told the court, questioning the value that leaders of any country derived from vast networks of human spies around the globe.
In a jailhouse interview with The Washington Post the day before he was sentenced, Mr. Ames said he was motivated to spy by “financial troubles, immediate and continuing.”
Mr. Ames was working in the Soviet/Eastern European division at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Va., when he first approached the KGB, according to an FBI history of the case. He continued passing secrets to the Soviets while stationed in Rome for the CIA and after returning to Washington. Meanwhile, the U.S. intelligence community was frantically trying to figure out why so many agents were getting discovered by Moscow.
Mr. Ames’ spying coincided with that of FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who was caught in 2001 and charged with taking $1.4 million in cash and diamonds to sell secrets to Moscow. He died in prison in 2023.
Mr. Ames’ wife, Rosario, pleaded guilty to lesser espionage charges of assisting his spying and was sentenced to 63 months in prison.
A veteran Vineland educator has been named the state-appointed superintendent to oversee the Camden school system, state Education Commissioner Kevin Dehmer announced Wednesday.
Alfonso Q. Llano Jr. was selected after a national search that began in June. He will begin heading the troubled South Jersey school system starting March 1.
He will be the first Hispanic superintendent to lead the district. Demographics in Camden have shifted in recent years, and 56% of its traditional public school students are now Hispanic, 42% are Black, and 1.2% are white.
Dehmer made the long-awaited announcement at the monthly state Board of Education meeting in Trenton. The board unanimously approved the appointment.
“I’m honored for the opportunity to serve the Camden City School District,” Llano said. “Together, we’re going to work through transparency and tough times. We’re going to achieve great things.”
Llano will receive an annual salary of $260,000 under a three-year contract.
In Vineland, he was the highest-paid superintendent in Cumberland County with an annual base salary of $206,000.
Carstarphen and other officials praised Llano’s appointment in a statement released Wednesday. The mayor lauded the state “for identifying someone who will bring meaningful change for Camden’s students.”
“I am confident he will be an excellent leader who prepares our students for the future and always puts our students’ academic interest first,” Carstarphen said.
N’Namdee Nelson, president of the Camden City Advisory School Board, said: “We want to ensure that every child in the school district has access to a great school.”
Others, like former longtime school board member Jose E. Delgado, wished Llano well but were less optimistic. He said the selection of a Hispanic superintendent was “long overdue.”
“He’s stepping into a very dysfunctional environment that will require a wide array of fiscal, administrative, and educational skills,” Delgado said.
The changing educational landscape in Camden poses the biggest challenge. Thousands of students have left the city’s traditional public schools for Renaissance and charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run and now lead the district’s enrollment.
Camden is the only district in New Jersey with three school types. Charters enroll 3,236 students, and Renaissance schools have 6,664 students.
Last spring, McCombs cited the declining enrollment in part for a $91 million budget deficit. She cut more than 100 positions and laid off teachers and support staff in a massive restructuring.
Camden Education Association president Pamela Clark, who represents more than 1,000 teachers and support staff, said she hopes to meet with Llano soon to discuss concerns about possible layoffs and school closures.
“I will continue to advocate fiercely to protect my members’ jobs and school closures, and I hope the new superintendent brings fairness, transparency, and unity to our city,” she said.
During a meeting in June, the Vineland board was bitterly divided over whether to renew his contract. The board must give six months’ notice if it plans to terminate a superintendent. The motion to not renew it failed, and it was unclear what direction the board would pursue.
In Vineland,Llano oversaw a diverse district of more than 10,200 students enrolled in 16 schools. About 63% of the students are Hispanic, 14% are Black, and 18% are white. About 17.4% of its students are multilingual learners.
Vineland has some of the same issues as Camden schools — low test scores and chronic absenteeism. The majority of the students in the sprawling 68-square-mile community are economically disadvantaged.
Llano also spent 10 years in the Trenton school system, most recently as the interim schools chief for nearly a year prior to moving to Vineland. He previously was the district’s chief academic officer for six months. He also was an assistant superintendent and principal in Trenton.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Llano also had stints in the Readington Township and Howell Township school districts in a career spanning 27 years.
He is pursuing a doctoral degree in education at Seton Hall University. He holds master’s degrees from New Jersey City University and Kean University, and a bachelor’s degree from Rowan University.
Interim State-appointed Camden school Superintendent Davida Coe-Brockington.
Coe-Brockington said Llano’s reputation precedes him and that she was looking forward to working with him to “focus on the progress we’ve made in the district and focus on creating better outcomes for the students and families of Camden City.”
It was unclear Wednesday whether Coe-Brockington would remain in the central office when Llano takes over or return to Creative Arts High School, where she has been principal since it opened in 1999.
Philadelphia police are searching for a man they say tried to steal a package from the front steps of a Feltonville home, then exchanged gunfire with both the homeowner and responding officers before fleeing Sunday evening.
Security camera footage from a home in the 400 block of East Rockland Street shows a man approaching the front steps and attempting to take a package, police said. The homeowner, a 50-year-old man, came outside carrying a handgun and confronted him, police said.
The homeowner fired a shot into the ground, police said, prompting the man to run. As he fled, the man fired a gun at the homeowner, they said.
Officers who had been called to the area after reports of a crowd and a person with a weapon on the 4900 block of D Street heard the gunfire and ran toward it, police said. When they encountered the man, police said, he fired his weapon at one of the officers, and the officer fired back.
The man escaped, police said. Officers later recovered a .40-caliber handgun and a jacket on Rockland Street.
Police described the suspect as light-skinned with a stocky build, and a possible goatee. He was last seen wearing a brown coat, black pants, and gray sneakers.
Police ask that anyone with information about the man or the shooting call or text police at 215-683-1866.
The Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction.
The officer who fired his weapon has been placed on administrative duty, as is customary, pending an internal investigation, police said. His name has not been released.
After more than 40 years behind bars, reputed former Black Mafia leader Lonnie Dawson has been freed from prison, ending a decades-long legal drama that includes state and federal convictions for crimes, including drug trafficking and murder.
Dawson’s release, though weeks old, went viral on social media in recent days thanks to video clips appearing to show his first moments as a newly free man. The widely shared video shows a man exiting the gates of a prison and immediately kneeling on a sidewalk in prayer.
Dawson, also known as Abdul Salim, was freed from SCI Smithfield in Huntingdon County on Dec. 22 following a successful petition under the Pennsylvania Post Conviction Relief Act, his attorney, David B. Mischak, told The Inquirer. The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections confirmed Dawson’s release date, noting that he had been held in that state prison for three months before he was freed. The bulk of his incarceration, however, was served in federal prison.
“Mr. Dawson has spent the majority of his adult life behind bars,” Mischak said in a statement posted to his law firm’s website. “After more than 40 years of incarceration, Lonnie Dawson is grateful for the opportunity to live out his remaining years with dignity and peace.”
Dawson’s path to release was a long and circuitous one that stretches back to a 1975 murder of which he was twice convicted at the state level — and sentenced to life. In the 1980s, federal convictions on drug distribution and related charges followed, leading to a staggering 134-year federal sentence. Here is how The Inquirer and Daily News covered it:
Article from Aug 10, 1982 Philadelphia Daily News (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) <!— –>
The murder of Herschell Williams
In November 1975, a purported drug dealer and Black Mafia member named Herschell Williams — also known as the “Jolly Green Giant” due to his 6-foot-6 frame — was gunned down near his Mount Airy home. Shortly after the murder, Dawson, along with fellow reputed Black Mafia members Roy Hoskins and Joseph Rhone, were arrested in connection with the slaying while driving on the Schuylkill Expressway, reports from the time indicate.
Investigators later linked Williams’ murder to a dispute over cocaine, and authorities alleged that Hoskins and Rhone carried out the shooting while Dawson, whom they said ordered the killing, served as the getaway driver, The Inquirer and Daily News reported. Several months later, both Dawson and Hoskins were convicted of murder in separate cases and sentenced to life in prison, while Rhone, who jumped bail following his arrest, remained a fugitive.
The convictions stuck until July 1978, when the state Supreme Court ordered new trials due to legal errors during the initial proceedings. Following their arrests, both men had been questioned by then-Detective Michael Chitwood, and Dawson’s conviction was overturned in part because his attorney was not allowed to cross-examine Chitwood. Dawson alleged Chitwood had fabricated a confession used during the trial, according to Inquirer reports.
The retrial, however, did not work out in either man’s favor. Dawson, for his part, was again convicted in August 1982 and later sentenced to life for a second time, despite having maintained at trial that he was busy giving one of his children a haircut about 20 blocks away at the time Williams was killed, according to Inquirer and Daily News reports.
Article from Dec 14, 1982 The Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) <!— –>
A federal conviction
As Dawson awaited retrial in the Williams case, more legal issues were added to his docket. In April 1982, an FBI affidavit alleged that Dawson and Hoskins quickly took over the Black Mafia after the state Supreme Court overturned their convictions, and revealed that both had been investigated over the past year by federal authorities.
That, however, only came to light after Dawson, Hoskins, and several others were arrested following a high-speed car chase on I-95 in which a car was riddled with bullets in an apparent attempt to kill a federal informant, Inquirer and Daily News reports from the time indicate.
The informant, Lawrence D. Simons, who said he was a member of the Black Mafia, was unharmed in the chase, which concluded after his would-be killers crashed their vehicle into a tree, the Daily News reported.
Federal grand jury indictments followed, with Dawson and his alleged cohorts facing a lengthy list of charges, including obstruction of justice, conspiracy, drug, and gun counts. Authorities alleged Dawson was the Black Mafia’s leader, and said the group was linked to drug trafficking throughout Philadelphia and Delaware County, The Inquirer reported.
After a three-week trial, Dawson was found guilty on a number of counts, and sentenced to a 134-year prison sentence and $230,000 in fines — though a later appeal dropped that sentence to 65 years and $100,000. Hoskins faced a similarly stiff penalty.
U.S. District Judge Louis C. Bechtle in his ruling referred to both men as “major drug manufacturers” who were a “danger to the community.” The sentences, the Daily News reported at the time, were the harshest ever imposed by a federal judge in the Philadelphia area for drug trafficking.
Dawson in court denied he was involved in a major drug ring and called the charges “a bunch of malarkey,” the Daily News reported.
Article from Dec 21, 1984 Philadelphia Daily News (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) <!— –>
‘Ain’t calling too many shots now’
While Dawson was imprisoned in the early 1980s, a report from the Daily News alleged that he remained in control of drug sales in Philadelphia — particularly in North Philadelphia, Germantown, and Mount Airy. An unnamed FBI source told the People Paper that despite Dawson being jailed, his drug trafficking activity did not slow down, and said he regularly met with organized crime figures to orchestrate sales.
The Daily News later reported that Dawson was placed in administrative segregation in prison. The move, an unnamed associate told the paper, diminished Dawson’s alleged stature in the drug trade, and as a result, he “ain’t calling too many shots now.”
In late 1984, Dawson responded to the Daily News’ reporting directly in a letter to the paper in which he denied controlling drug sales anywhere. While in prison, he said, he had never met with organized crime figures to discuss drug manufacturing or sales, and said claims were floated by reporters “in hope of getting some type of promotion and/or attention.”
“Why must I be the sacrificial lamb?” Dawson wrote. “Why?”
Michael Reagan, a longtime political commentator for radio, TV and print media, and the eldest son of President Ronald Reagan, died Jan. 4 from cancer, a conservative group affiliated with the former president said Tuesday. He was 80.
A longtime Republican like his father, Mr. Reagan espoused conservative opinions, advocating antiabortion views, stressing adherence to Christianity and expressing skepticism about green policies. Like many in his party, he was initially a critic of President Donald Trump, describing him as an “egomaniacal billionaire” and a “political train wreck” who had little chance of winning in 2016. When Trump defied the odds and won, Mr. Reagan embraced him, decrying the “liberal media” that he said hated Trump.
But Mr. Reagan’s political outspokenness and his famous father appeared to overshadow his lifelong struggle with scars suffered during a tumultuous childhood. He first heard at the age of 4 that he had been adopted, and he was sexually molested at the age of 7 by a camp counselor – experiences that molded his political views and prompted him to turn to religion for solace.
Mr. Reagan kept the molestation a secret for decades, partly out offear that revealing it could ruin his dad’s political career. Mr. Reagan finally told his father in 1987, as the president was nearing the end of his second term and when Mr. Reagan was writing a memoir. The book was going to contain the story, so Mr. Reagan felt compelled to tell his father beforehand.
“Now here I am at the ranch. Dad’s standing in front of me with his belt buckle on, and it looks like a brand new pair of cowboy boots. Nancy’s on my left side. Nancy and Dad say, ‘So what’s in the book we don’t know about?’ I had to tell Dad, and I couldn’t look at him,” he recalled in a later interview.
“The hardest thing was telling him the act. It was not enough to tell him, ‘Geez, Dad, I was molested,’ but the act … that was the toughest thing. I got all done. My dad looked at me and said, ‘Where’s this guy? I’ll kick his butt.’ My dad didn’t walk away, didn’t say he hated me. I thought to myself, Why didn’t I do this years ago? But I couldn’t have years ago. God brought me to the right moment in 1987.”
Michael Edward Reagan was born on March 18, 1945, in Los Angeles. Born to unmarried parents John Bourgholtzer, an Army soldier, and Essie Irene Flaugher, his birth name was John Charles Flaugher. The Reagans changed his name after adopting him. Mr. Reagan often joked that he was born German but became Irish at 3 days old, referring to the Reagans’ Irish roots.
Mr. Reagan first learned he was adopted from his 8-year-old sister Maureen. When Mr. Reagan asked their mother, actress Jane Wyman, what the word “adopted” meant, she first gave a stern look to Maureen before telling her son that he had been chosen so he was special. “Let’s not ever talk about it again,” Wyman told her children.
But when Mr. Reagan went to boarding school a few years later and told a classmate that he was special, he was bullied.
“He comes back to me, ‘You were not chosen; you’re illegitimate,’” Mr. Reagan said in a 2008 interview. “So the kids started teasing me in school that I wasn’t a real Reagan. I was the ‘Bastard Reagan,’ the illegitimate Reagan.”
Mr. Reagan didn’t understand what “illegitimate” meant. So he consulted the Bible, and found a verse that said “all the illegitimate children and their children until the 10th generation will never enter the kingdom of Heaven.”
“I closed the Bible. This is like 1951. [I] didn’t reopen the Bible until 1978.”
The pain pushed him toward self-hate and anger. His parents’ subsequent divorce and the crime he suffered at the hands of a child molester exacerbated the negative emotions. As a high school student, he told himself he was condemned and blamed himself for his molestation.
“I thought I was living a lie because no one knew what I had done. I questioned my sexuality, I stole money from my parents to buy prostitutes trying to convince myself I was straight,” he said in 2012. “I just didn’t know … I thought my birth parents gave me away because they knew I would be evil and I thought the Reagans would give me back if they found out.”
He briefly attended Arizona State University and Los Angeles Valley College, and attempted to follow his parents into acting, but ultimately became better known for the radio shows he hosted, starting in the late 1980s in Los Angeles, where he briefly rubbed elbows with conservative talk show star Rush Limbaugh. Mr. Reagan attributed Trump’s rise to his ability to cater to the millions who tuned into conservative radio talk shows.
Mr. Reagan became a frequent presence on television, radio and print as a political commentator, working as an analyst for the right-wing news outlet Newsmax during his final days.
Although Mr. Reagan repeatedly expressed dismay over Trump’s haphazard style of politics earlier in Trump’s political career, Mr. Reagan’s opinions appeared to veer increasingly closer to those of Trump.
Mr. Reagan initially denounced the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, calling them “wrong” and saying that they had “soiled [Trump’s] legacy forever.” But a year later, he was describing those arrested for allegedly participating in the events that day as “political prisoners.”
In 2024, he wrote a column titled “Democrats: The Enemy of Democracy.”
“While our streets and campuses are crawling with [left-wing protesters] and pro-Palestine vandals, Democrats are still yammering about the ‘insurrection’ of Jan. 6 and worrying about the existential threat Donald Trump supposedly poses to our democracy,” he said.
That year, Mr. Reagan welcomed Trump’s reelection, praising the president for building a broad coalition that included “blue-collar workers, blacks and Latinos” – those who have not traditionally voted Republican.
“With his historic political comeback and his MAGA movement, Trump has created the Republican Party of the future,” Mr. Reagan wrote in November 2024.
In his private life, Mr. Reagan cherished his relationship with his wife, Colleen, whom he married in 1975 after a short marriage to Pamela Putnam that ended in 1972. Mr. Reagan has publicly thanked his wife for persuading him to turn to religion. Survivors include his wife and two children.
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