A man was hospitalized Wednesday morning and in critical condition after being shot by police in North Philadelphia.
Two officers responded to a 911 call for a “person screaming” on the 1800 block of North Bailey Street about 2:50 a.m. Wednesday. Upon arriving, police said, they found a man, 31, armed with a knife, standing over a 30-year-old woman.
According to the Philadelphia Police Department, the man moved toward police, jumping over a sofa while still armed, which led one officer to shoot the man once in the chest. The man was taken to Temple University Hospital, where he underwent surgery.
Police said the woman was not injured.
The case is now under investigation by the police department’s officer-involved shooting investigation unit and internal affairs bureau, and the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office. Under police protocol, the officer who shot the man has been placed on administrative duty pending the outcome of the investigation.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are planning to spend $100 million over a one-year period to recruit gun-rights supporters and military enthusiasts through online influencers and a geo-targeted advertising campaign, part of what the agency called a “wartime recruitment” strategy it said was critical to hiring thousands of new deportation officers nationwide, according to an internal document reviewed by the Washington Post.
The spending would help President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation agenda dominate media networks and recruitment channels, including through ads targeting people who have attended UFC fights, listened to patriotic podcasts, or shown an interest in guns and tactical gear, according to a 30-page document distributed among officials in this summer detailing ICE’s “surge hiring marketing strategy.”
The Department of Homeland Security has spoken publicly about its fast-tracked effort to significantly increase ICE’s workforce by hiring more than 10,000 new employees, a surge promoted on social media with calls for recruits willing to perform their “sacred duty” and “defend the homeland” by repelling “foreign invaders.” The agency currently employs more than 20,000 people, according to ICE’s website.
But the document, reported here for the first time, reveals new details about the vast scale of the recruitment effort and its unconventional strategy to “flood the market” with millions of dollars in spending for Snapchat ads, influencers and live streamers on Rumble, a video platform popular with conservatives. Under the strategy, ICE would also use an ad-industry technique known as “geofencing” to send ads to the phone web browsers and social media feeds of anyone who set foot near military bases, NASCAR races, college campuses, or gun and trade shows.
The document was also distributed among ICE officials in the days after the agency published a request for bids seeking contractors who could use “precise audience targeting, performance media management, and results-driven creative strategies” to “accelerate the achievement of [its] recruiting goals.” The language in the published bid closely mirrored language in the strategy document. That same month, DHS awarded two marketing firms nearly $40 million to support ICE’s public affairs office “recruitment campaign,” according to federal awards data.
It’s unclear how much of the spending and strategy have been carried out. But the plans outlined in the document have coincided with a rush of recruitment ads online seeking Americans who will “answer the call to serve.”
The rapid-recruitment approach is unlike anything ICE has ever pursued, said Sarah Saldaña, a director of ICE during the Obama administration, who recalled the agency filling its open positions through local police departments and sheriff’s offices with appeals to officers’ interests in federal public-safety work.
She said she worries that the speed with which ICE is racing to bring on new hires — coupled with the ad campaign’s framing of the jobs as part of a war — will raise the risk that the agency could attract untrained recruits eager for all-out combat.
The appeal to law enforcement should not be “the quicker we get out there and run over people, the better off this country will be,” she said. “That mentality you’re fostering tends to inculcate in people a certain aggressiveness that may not be necessary in 85 percent of what you do.”
ICE deferred comment toTricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokeswoman, who did not dispute a detailed list of claims and financial figures sent by the Post andsaid she was “thrilled to see the Washington Post highlight … [the] wildly successful ICE recruitment campaign, which isunder budget and ahead of schedule.”
The agency, she said, has received more than 220,000 job applications in five months and has issued more than 18,000 tentative job offers. More than 85% of the new hires had experience in law enforcement, she added.
Tricia McLaughlin, spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, is flanked by Madison Sheahan, second in command at ICE, and Todd Lyons, acting ICE director, at a May 21 news conference in Washington.
Congress this summer tripled ICE’s enforcement and deportation budget to about $30 billion by passing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, helping to start a hiring spree that officials have said would be necessary to carry out the Trump administration’s promise of the biggest mass deportation in American history. Officials set a goal of 1 million deportations within the first year of Trump’s term.
To bolster its recruiting, the agency has removed its age limits for applicants and offered signing bonuses of up to $50,000. A job listing on a federal hiring board said the salaries for many deportation officers could range from $50,000 to $90,000 a year.
Recruitment ads have proliferated across TV, radio, print and podcasts directing viewers to an ICE hiring website that portrays immigration as an existential threat. “America has been invaded by criminals and predators,” reads the website, which includes an image of Uncle Sam. “We need YOU to get them out.”
On social media, administration accounts have mixed immigration raid footage with memes from action movies and video games to portray ICE’s mission as a fight against the “enemies … at the gates.” “Want to deport illegals with your absolute boys?” one post says. “Are you going to cowboy up or just lay there and bleed?” says another.
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent is seen in Park Ridge, Ill., on Sept. 19.
But to reach ICE’s “rapid hiring” goal of about 14,000 new Enforcement and Removal Operations officers, Homeland Security Investigations agents, ICE lawyers and support staff, the strategy document also calls for deploying more finely targeted digital advertising tools that can home in on viewers’ interests and lifestyles.
ICE recruitment ads, the plan said, would be shown to people with an interest in “military and veterans’ affairs,” “physical training,” or “conservative news and politics” and would target people whose lifestyles are “patriotic” or “conservative-leaning.”
The strategy said to target listeners of conservative radio shows, country music and podcasts related to patriotism, men’s interests and true crime, as well as any accounts that resemble users with an interest in “conservative thought leaders, gun rights organizations [and] tactical gear brands,” the document said.
To further attract recruits, the strategy called for spending at least $8 million on deals with online influencers whose followers are largely Gen Z and millennials and who were in the “military families,” “fitness,” and “tactical/lifestyle enthusiast communities.”
The document did not name specific influencers but said it would focus on “former agents, veterans and pro-ICE creators” who would be expected to host live streams, attend events and post short- and long-form videos and other content to Facebook, Instagram, Rumble, X and YouTube. Blogs, Substack newsletters, and Threads accounts would also be targeted for more “niche communities,” the document said.
The objective, it said, is to build trust through “authentic peer-to-peer messaging” and to “normalize and humanize careers at ICE through storytelling and lived experiences.” The document said it expected more than 5,000 applicants would come through the influencer program, costing ICE about $1,500 per application.
ICE has run ads on Google, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook, targeting the latter to military veterans and “entry-level job” seekers, according to the companies’ ad libraries, which share public data on the platforms’ ad campaigns. Millions more in advertising was slated for delivery to gaming consoles, connected TV devices and streaming services such as ESPN, Fox News and Paramount+, as well as across newspapers, billboards and box trucks, the strategy document said.
Listeners on Spotify have heard ICE ads calling on recruits to “fulfill your mission,” leading to hundreds of complaints on the music service’s message board. One NASCAR viewer who saw the ads on live streams said in a Reddit post that they changed the channel, and separately told the Post that they had “never felt such distaste for our government airing such ads.”
Natalia Banulescu-Bogdan, a deputy director at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan Washington think tank, said ICE’s ads harked back to World War I recruitment posters by using symbols like Uncle Sam.
The war rhetoric is in line with the Trump administration’s broader efforts to push mass deportations as critical to American security and immigration officials’ work as heroic, she said. But the ads also allow ICE to gloss over the “messy realities of immigration enforcement,” including “the public backlash, the legal pushback and the very real operational constraints.”
“We’ve never seen immigration agencies kind of strip down the policy debates to this level of raw imagery and symbolism,” she added.
The strategy document features on the cover ICE’s second-in-command, Madison Sheahan, who worked as an aide to DHS Secretary Kristi L. Noem when she was governor of South Dakota. In the photo, Sheahan, 28, wears a “police” vest and an ICE badge under the words “Defend the Homeland.”
The document called for spending “$100 million within one year” as part of an “aggressive” recruitment program that would “saturate digital and traditional media” and prioritize “speed, scale, and conversion at every level.”
Public ad-tracking figures from Google and Meta show ICE’s digital ad spending so far is a fraction of the strategy’s proposed budget for their platforms. McLaughlin, the DHS spokeswoman, did not respond to questions about how much money had been spent already or whether the strategy had changed.
Beyond demographic targeting, the strategy document also identified New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago, and Boston as “key locations” for finding recruits. The cities have been the targets of intense ICE sweeps and major anti-deportation protests over the last year.
The largest local recruitment target, seeking up to 1,000 removal officers, is slated for the New Orleans field office. The state of Louisiana has one of the country’s biggest immigrant detention populations, second only to Texas, and the New Orleans field office manages all nine detention facilities in the state.
ICE has hosted hiring events around the country, including at a Texas job fair earlier this year, during which a former mixed martial arts fighter told the Post he was eager to “work with these guys that are going to arrest you, slam your face on the pavement and send you home.”
But the strategy has also called for boosting recruitment at major gatherings and sporting events, including a booth at the NASCAR Cook Out Southern 500 in South Carolina in August; a “gym-based recruitment” event with “influencer-style content” at the UFC Fight Night in Las Vegas in November; and a planned sponsorship devoted to “patriotism, strength [and] grit” at the National Finals Rodeo this month in Las Vegas.
DHS did not say whether all the events proposed in the strategy were carried out, but their ads did accompany several of the events on TV. “ICE commercial during the UFC event tonight?! How gross,” one X user said in October. ICE also posted a bid in November seeking a firm to “identify suitable event locations” for “recruitment and outreach events.”
The recruitment ads run separately from other large-scale DHS campaigns that celebrate Trump’s immigration agenda and urge undocumented immigrants to leave the U.S. DHS has awarded more than $200 million in contracts this year to People Who Think and Safe America Media, two marketing firms linked to Republican political consultants, federal contracting records show. Representatives from the firms did not respond to requests for comment.
Those efforts, too, have relied on ad-targeting techniques more commonly used by corporate marketing campaigns. The ad library for Meta, which runs Facebook and Instagram, shows that DHS has spent more than $1 million on “self-deportation” ads in the last 90 days targeted to people interested in “Latin music,” “Spanish as a second language,” and “Mexican cuisine.”
On a message board for the music streaming service Pandora, some users were furious about the ads they called “fearmongering … propaganda.” One user, who said she is a U.S. citizen who likes listening to reggaeton, said she had been overwhelmed by DHS commercials “implying I am an undocumented immigrant and instructing me to ‘go home’” that played in “nearly every other ad slot I hear.”
ICE’s ads have drawn criticism from some Democrats, who have called them overly inflammatory. The Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), said in October that ICE’s “polarizing recruitment ads” would “only attract MAGA radicals.”
And some of the platforms on which the ads have run have expressed their own reservations. Earlier this month, a transit operator in Long Beach, Calif., removed ICE recruitment ads from its buses and apologized for the “uncertainty and fear” they may have caused, as was first reported by the Long Beach Watchdog, a local news source.
Americus Reed, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, said the ICE strategy reminded him of the “Army of One” campaign that the military once used to build up recruits as mighty warfighters critical to safeguarding the American way of life.
“They’re aiming for that sweet spot of people who’ve got something to prove, who want to have that power, under the guise of patriotism,” he said.
In 2025, Philadelphians said goodbye to a beloved group of broadcasters, radio personalities, sports heroes, and public servants who left their mark on a city they all loved.
Some were Philly natives, including former Eagles general manager Jim Murray. Others, including beloved WMMR host Pierre Robert, were transplants who made Philly their adopted home. But all left their mark on the city and across the region.
Pierre Robert
Former WMMR host Pierre Robert, seen in his studio in 2024.
A native of Northern California, Mr. Robert joined WMMR as an on-air host in 1981. He arrived in the city after his previous station, San Francisco’s KSAN, switched to an “urban cowboy” format, prompting him to make the cross-country drive to Philadelphia in a Volkswagen van.
At WMMR, Mr. Robert initially hosted on the weekends, but quickly moved to the midday slot — a position he held for more than four decades up until his death.
— Nick Vadala, Dan DeLuca
Bernie Parent
Former Flyers goaltender Bernie Parent, seen at his home in 2024.
Bernie Parent, the stone-wall Flyers goalie for the consecutive Stanley Cup championship teams for the Broad Street Bullies in the 1970s, died in September. He was 80.
A Hall of Famer, Mr. Parent clinched both championships with shutouts in the final game as he blanked the Boston Bruins, 1-0, in 1974 and the Buffalo Sabres, 2-0, in 1975. Mr. Parent played 10 of his 13 NHL seasons with the Flyers and also spent a season in the World Hockey League with the Philadelphia Blazers. He retired in 1979 at 34 years old after suffering an eye injury during a game against the New York Rangers.
He grew up in Montreal and spoke French as his first language before becoming a cultlike figure at the Spectrum as cars throughout the region had “Only the Lord Saves More Than Bernie Parent” bumper stickers.
— Matt Breen
David Lynch
David Lynch, seen here at the Governors Awards in Los Angeles in 2019.
David Lynch, the visionary director behind such movies as Blue Velvet and The Elephant Man and the twisted TV show Twin Peaks, died in January of complications from emphysema. He was 78.
Mr. Lynch was born in Missoula, Mont., but ended up in Philadelphia to enroll at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1965 at age 19. It was here he developed an interest in filmmaking as a way to see his paintings move.
He created his first short films in Philadelphia, which he described both as “a filthy city” and “his greatest influence” as an artist. Ultimately, he moved to Los Angeles to make his first feature film, Eraserhead, though he called the film “my Philadelphia Story.”
— Rob Tornoe
Ryne Sandberg
Former Phillies manager Ryne Sandberg, seen here at spring training in 2018.
Ryne Sandberg, the Hall of Fame second baseman who started his career with the Phillies but was traded shortly after to the Chicago Cubs in one of the city’s most regrettable trades, died in July of complications from cancer. He was 65.
Mr. Sandberg played 15 seasons in Chicago and became an icon for the Cubs, simply known as “Ryno,” after being traded there in January 1982.
He was a 10-time All-Star, won nine Gold Glove awards, and was the National League’s MVP in 1984. Mr. Sandberg was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005 and returned to the Phillies in 2011 as a minor-league manager and, later, the big-league manager.
— Matt Breen
Bob Uecker
Bob Uecker, seen here before a Brewers game in 2024.
Bob Uecker, a former Phillies catcher who later became a Hall of Fame broadcaster for the Milwaukee Brewers and was dubbed “Mr. Baseball” by Johnny Carson for his acting roles in several movies and TV shows, died in January. He was 90.
Mr. Uecker spent just six seasons in the major league, two with the Phillies, but the talent that would make him a Hall of Fame broadcaster — wit, self-deprecation, and the timing of a stand-up comic — were evident.
His first broadcasting gig was in Atlanta, and he started calling Milwaukee Brewers games in 1971. Before that, he called Phillies games: Mr. Uecker used to sit in the bullpen at Connie Mack Stadium and deliver play-by-play commentary into a beer cup.
— Matt Breen and Rob Tornoe
Harry Donahue
Harry Donahue, seen here at Temple University in 2020.
Harry Donahue, 77, a longtime KYW Newsradio anchor and the play-by-play voice of Temple University men’s basketball and football for decades, died in October after a fight with cancer.
His was a voice that generations of people in Philadelphia and beyond grew up with in the mornings as they listened for announcements about snow days and, later, for a wide array of sports.
— Robert Moran
Alan Rubenstein
Judge Rubenstein, then Bucks County district attorney, talks to the media about a drug case in 1998.
Alan M. Rubenstein, a retired senior judge on Bucks County Common Pleas Court and the longest-serving district attorney in Bucks County history, died in August of complications from several ailments at his home in Holland, Bucks County. He was 79.
For 50 years, from his hiring as an assistant district attorney in 1972 to his retirement as senior judge a few years ago, Judge Rubenstein represented Bucks County residents at countless crime scenes and news conferences, in courtrooms, and on committees. He served 14 years, from 1986 to 1999, as district attorney in Bucks County, longer than any DA before him, and then 23 years as a judge and senior judge on Bucks County Court.
“His impact on Bucks County will be felt for generations,” outgoing Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Schorn said in a tribute. U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.) said on Facebook: “Alan Rubenstein has never been just a name. It has stood as a symbol of justice, strength, and integrity.”
— Gary Miles
Orien Reid Nix
Orien Reid Nix, seen here being inducted into the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia Hall of Fame in 2018
Orien Reid Nix, 79, of King of Prussia, retired Hall of Fame reporter for KYW-TV and WCAU-TV in Philadelphia, owner of Consumer Connection media consulting company, the first Black and female chair of the international board of the Alzheimer’s Association, former social worker, mentor, and volunteer, died in June of complications from Alzheimer’s disease.
Charismatic, telegenic, empathetic, and driven by a lifelong desire to serve, Mrs. Reid Nix worked as a consumer service and investigative TV reporter for Channels 3 and 10 in Philadelphia for 26 years, from 1973 to her retirement in 1998. She anchored consumer service segments, including the popular Market Basket Report, that affected viewers’ lives and aired investigations on healthcare issues, price gouging, fraud, and food safety concerns.
— Gary Miles
Dave Frankel
Dave Frankel in an undated publicity photo.
Dave Frankel, 67, a popular TV weatherman on WPVI (now 6abc) who later became a lawyer, died in February after a long battle with a neurodegenerative disease.
Mr. Frankel grew up in Monmouth County, N.J., graduated in 1979 from Dartmouth College, and was planning to attend Dickinson School of Law to become a lawyer like his father. But an internship at a local TV station in Vermont turned into a news anchor job and a broadcast career that lasted until the early 2000s.
— Robert Moran
Lee Elia
Former Phillies manager Lee Elia, seen here being ejected from a game in 1987.
Lee Elia, the Philadelphia native who managed the Phillies after coaching third base for the 1980 World Series champions and once famously ranted against the fans who sat in the bleachers of Wrigley Field, died in July. He was 87.
Mr. Elia’s baseball career spanned more than 50 seasons. He managed his hometown Phillies in 1987 and 1988 after managing the Chicago Cubs in 1982 and 1983.
After his playing career was cut shot by a knee injury, Mr. Elia joined Dallas Green’s Phillies staff before the 1980 season and was coaching third base when Manny Trillo delivered a crucial triple in the clinching game of the National League Championship Series. Mr. Elia was so excited that he bit Trillo’s arm after he slid.
— Matt Breen
Gary Graffman
Gary Graffman, seen here playing at the Curtis Institute of Music Orchestra Concert at Verizon Hall in 2006.
Gary Graffman, a celebrated concert pianist and the former president of the Curtis Institute of Music, died in December in New York. He was 97.
The New York City-born pianist arrived at Curtis at age 7. He graduated at age 17 and played roughly 100 concerts a year between the ages of 20 and 50 before retiring from touring due to a compromised right hand. Diagnosed with focal dystonia (a neurological disorder), he went on to premiere works for the left hand by Jennifer Higdon and William Bolcom.
Mr. Graffman returned to Curtis as a teacher in 1980, became director in 1986, and was named the president of the conservatory in 1995, with a teaching studio encompassing nearly 50 students, including Yuja Wang and Lang Lang among others. He performed on numerous occasions with the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1947 to 2003.
— David Patrick Stearns
Len Stevens
Len Stevens was the co-founder of WPHL-TV Channel 17.
Len Stevens, the cofounder of WPHL-TV (Channel 17) and a member of the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia Hall of Fame, died in September of kidney failure. He was 94.
Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Stevens was a natural entrepreneur. He won an audition to be a TV announcer with Dick Clark on WFIL-TV in the 1950s, persuaded The Tonight Show and NBC to air Alpo dog food ads in the 1960s, co-owned and managed the popular Library singles club on City Avenue in the 1970s and ’80s, and later turned the nascent sale of “vertical real estate” on towers and rooftops into big business.
He and partner Aaron Katz established the Philadelphia Broadcasting Co. in 1964 and launched WPHL-TV on Sept. 17, 1965. At first, their ultrahigh frequency station, known now as PHL17, challenged the dominant very high frequency networks on a shoestring budget. But, thanks largely to Mr. Stevens’ advertising contacts and programming ideas, Channel 17 went on to air Phillies, 76ers, and Big Five college basketball games, the popular Wee Willie Webber Colorful Cartoon Club, Ultraman, and other memorable shows in the late 1960s and early ’70s.
— Gary Miles
Jim Murray
Former Eagles general manager Jim Murray (left), seen here with Dick Vermeil and owner Leonard Tose following the 1980 NFC championship game in January 1981.
Jim Murray, the former Eagles general manager who hired Dick Vermeil and helped the franchise return to prominence while also opening the first Ronald McDonald House, died in August at home in Bryn Mawr surrounded by his family. He was 87.
Mr. Murray grew up in a rowhouse on Brooklyn Street in West Philadelphia and watched the Eagles at Franklin Field. The Eagles hired him in 1969 as a publicist, and Leonard Tose, then the Eagles’ owner, named him the general manager in 1974. Mr. Murray was just 36 years old and the decision was ridiculed.
But Mr. Murray — who was known for his wit and generosity — made a series of moves to bring the Eagles back to relevance, including hiring Vermeil and acquiring players like Bill Bergey and Ron Jaworski. The Eagles made the playoffs in 1978 and reached their first Super Bowl in January 1981. The Eagles, with Murray as the GM, were finally back.
— Matt Breen
Michael Days
Philadelphia Daily News Editor Michael Days celebrates with the newsroom after word of the Pulitzer win.
Michael Days, a pillar of Philadelphia journalism who championed young Black journalists and led the Daily News during its 2010 Pulitzer Prize win for investigative reporting, died in October after falling ill. He was 72.
A graduate of Roman Catholic High School in Philadelphia, Mr. Days worked at the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers before joining the Daily News as a reporter in 1986, where he ultimately became editor in 2005, the first Black person to lead the paper in its 90-year history. In 2011, Mr. Days was named managing editor of The Inquirer, where he held several management roles until he retired in October 2020.
As editor of the Daily News, Mr. Days played an essential role in the decisions that would lead to its 2010 Pulitzer Prize, including whether to move forward with a story about a Philadelphia Police Department narcotics officer that a company lawyer said stood a good chance of getting them sued.
“He said, ‘I trust my reporters, I believe in my reporters, and we’re running with it,’” recounted Inquirer senior health reporter Wendy Ruderman, who reported the piece with colleague Barbara Laker. That story revealed a deep dysfunction within the police department, Ruderman said, and led to the newspaper’s 2010 Pulitzer Prize win.
— Brett Sholtis
Tom McCarthy
Tom McCarthy, seen here in 2002.
Tom McCarthy, an award-winning theater, film, and TV actor, longtime president of the local chapter of the Screen Actors Guild, former theater company board member, mentor, and veteran, died in May of complications from Parkinson’s disease at his home in Sea Isle City. He was 88.
The Overbrook native quit his job as a bartender in 1965, sharpened his acting skills for a decade at Hedgerow Theatre Company in Rose Valley and other local venues, and, at 42, went on to earn memorable roles in major movies and TV shows.
In the 1980s, he played a police officer with John Travolta in the movie Blow Out and a gardener with Andrew McCarthy in Mannequin. In 1998, he was a witness with Denzel Washington in Fallen. In 2011, he was a small-town mayor with Lea Thompson in Mayor Cupcake. Over the course of his career, Mr. McCarthy acted with Zsa Zsa Gabor, Harrison Ford, Kristin Scott Thomas, Cloris Leachman, Robert Redford, Donald Sutherland, John Goodman, and other big stars.
— Gary Miles
Carol Saline
Carol Saline, seen here at her Philadelphia home in 2021.
Carol Saline, a longtime senior writer at Philadelphia Magazine, the best-selling author of Sisters, Mothers & Daughters, and Best Friends, and a prolific broadcaster, died in August of acute myeloid leukemia. She was 86.
On TV, she hosted a cooking show and a talk show, was a panelist on a local public affairs program, and guested on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Inside Edition, Good Morning America, and other national shows. On radio, she hosted the Carol Saline Show on WDVT-AM.
In June, she wrote to The Inquirer, saying: “I am contacting you because I am entering hospice care and will likely die in the next few weeks. … I wanted you to know me, not only my accomplishments but who I am as a person.
“I want to go out,” she ended her email, “with a glass of Champagne in one hand, a balloon in the other, singing (off key) ‘Whoopee! It’s been a great ride!’”
— Gary Miles
Richard Wernick
Richard Wernick, seen here before a concert at the 2002 Festival of Philadelphia Composers.
Richard Wernick, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, acclaimed conductor, and retired Irving Fine Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania, died in April 25 of age-associated decline at his Haverford home. He was 91.
Professor Wernick was prolific and celebrated as a composer. He wrote hundreds of scores over six decades and appeared on more than a dozen records, and his Visions of Terror and Wonder for a mezzo-soprano and orchestra won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for music. In 1991, his String Quartet No. 4 made him the first two-time winner of the Kennedy Center’s Friedheim Award for new American music.
“Wernick’s orchestral music has power and brilliance, an emphasis on register, space, and scale,” Lesley Valdes, former Inquirer classical music critic, said in 1990.
— Gary Miles
Dorie Lenz
Dorie Lenz, seen here on Channel 17 in 2015.
Dorie Lenz, a pioneering TV broadcaster and the longtime director of public affairs for WPHL-TV (Channel 17), died in January of age-associated ailments at her home in New York. She was 101.
A Philadelphia native, Ms. Lenz broke into TV as a 10-year-old in a local children’s show and spent 30 years, from 1970 to 2000, as director of public affairs and a program host at Channel 17, now PHL17. She specialized in detailed public service campaigns on hot-button social issues and earned two Emmys in 1988 for her program Caring for the Frail Elderly.
Ms. Lenz interviewed newsmakers of all kinds on the public affairs programs Delaware Valley Forum, New Jersey Forum, and Community Close Up. Viewers and TV insiders hailed her as a champion and watchdog for the community. She also talked to Phillies players before games in the 1970s on her 10-minute Dorie Lenz Show.
— Gary Miles
Jay Sigel
Jay Sigel, seen here after winning the Georgia-Pacific Grand Champions title in 2006.
Jay Sigel, one of the winningest amateur golfers of all time and an eight-time PGA senior tour champion, died in April of complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 81.
For more than 40 years, from 1961, when he won the International Jaycee Junior Golf Tournament as an 18-year-old, to 2003, when he captured the Bayer Advantage Celebrity Pro-Am title at 60, the Berwyn native was one of the winningest amateur and senior golfers in the world. Mr. Sigel won consecutive U.S. Amateur titles in 1982 and ’83 and three U.S. Mid-Amateur championships between 1983 and ’87, and remains the only golfer to win the amateur and mid-amateur titles in the same year.
He won the Pennsylvania Amateur Championship 11 times, five straight from 1972 to ’76, and the Pennsylvania Open Championship for pros and amateurs four times. He also won the 1979 British Amateur Championship and, between 1975 and 1999, played for the U.S. team in a record nine Walker Cup tournaments against Britain and Ireland.
— Gary Miles
Mark Frisby
Mark Frisby, seen here in the former newsroom of the Daily News in 2007.
Mark Frisby, the former publisher of the Daily News and associate publisher of The Inquirer, died in September of takayasu arteritis, an inflammatory disease, at his home in Gloucester County. He was 64.
Mr. Frisby joined The Inquirer and Daily News in November 2006 as executive vice president of production, labor, and purchasing. He was recruited from the Courier-Post by then-publisher Brian Tierney, and he went on to serve as publisher of the Daily News from 2007 to 2016 and associate publisher for operations of The Inquirer and Daily News from 2014 to his retirement in 2016.
Mr. Frisby was one of the highest-ranking Black executives in the company’s history, and he told the Daily News in 2006 that “local ownership over here was the big attraction for me.” Michael Days, then the Daily News editor, said in 2007: “This cat is really the real deal.”
— Gary Miles
Leon Bates
Leon Bates, seen here at the Settlement Music School in Germantown in 2018.
Leon Bates, a concert pianist whose musical authority and far-reaching versatility took him to the world’s greatest concert halls, died in November after a seven-year decline from Parkinson’s disease. He was 76.
The career of Mr. Bates, a leading figure in the generation of Black pianists who followed the early-1960s breakthrough of Andre Watts, encompassed Ravel, Gershwin, and Bartok over 10 concerts with the Philadelphia Orchestra between 1970 and 2002. He played three recitals with Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and taught master classes at Temple University, where he also gave recitals at the Temple Performing Arts Center.
In his WRTI-FM radio show, titled Notes on Philadelphia, during the 1990s, Mr. Bates was what Charles Abramovic, chair of keyboard studies at Temple University, described as “beautifully articulate and a wonderful interviewer. The warmth of personality came out. He was such a natural with that.”
— David Patrick Stearns
Lacy McCrary
Lacy McCrary in an undated photo.
Lacy McCrary, a former Inquirer reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize at the Akron Beacon Journal, died in March of Alzheimer’s disease at his home in Colorado Springs, Colo. He was 91.
Mr. McCrary, a Morrisville, Bucks County native, won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize in local general or spot news reporting as part of the Beacon Journal’s coverage of the May 4, 1970, student protest killings at Kent State University.
He joined The Inquirer in 1973 and covered the courts, politics, and news of all sorts until his retirement in 2000. He notably wrote about unhealthy conditions and fire hazards in Pennsylvania and New Jersey boardinghouses in the late 1970s and early ’80s, and those reports earned public acclaim and resulted in new regulations to correct deadly oversights.
— Gary Miles
Roberta Fallon
Roberta Fallon, seen here in an undated photo.
Roberta Fallon, 76, cofounder, editor, and longtime executive director of the online Artblog and adjunct professor at St. Joseph’s University, died in December at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital of injuries she suffered after being hit by a car. She was 76.
Described by family and friends as empathetic, energetic, and creative, Ms. Fallon and fellow artist Libby Rosof cofounded Artblog in 2003. For nearly 22 years, until the blog became inactive in June, Ms. Fallon posted commentary, stories, interviews, reviews, videos, podcasts, and other content that chronicled the eclectic art world in Philadelphia.
— Gary Miles
Benita Valente
BENI26P Gerald S. Williams 10/18/00 2011 Pine st. Philadelphia-based soprano Benita Valente has sung all over the world. At age 65, she is making her Oct. 29 performance with the Mendelssohn Club at the Academy of Music her last. 1 of 3: Benita goes over some music at the piano in her upstairs music room.
Benita Valente, a revered lyric soprano whose voice thrilled listeners with its purity and seeming effortlessness, died in October at home in Philadelphia. She was 91.
In a remarkable four-decade career, Ms. Valente appeared on the opera stage, in chamber music, and with orchestras. In the intimate genre of lieder — especially songs by Schubert and Brahms — she was considered one of America’s great recitalists.
The Kennedy Center adopted bylaws earlier this year that limited voting to presidentially appointed trustees, a move that preceded a unanimous decision this month by board members installed by President Donald Trump to add his name to the center.
The current bylaws, obtained by the Washington Post, were revised in May to specify that board members designated by Congress — known as ex officio members — could not vote or count toward a quorum. Legal experts say the move may conflict with the institution’s charter.
Trump took over the Kennedy Center in February, purging its board of members he had not appointed. The months that followed saw struggling ticket sales and programming changes that began to align the arts complex with the Trump administration’s broader cultural aims, culminating with the annual Kennedy Center Honors hosted by the president.
Days later, on Dec. 18, the board voted to add the president’s name to the institution, and within 24 hours it was on the website and the building itself: “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”
Several artists have announced cancellations at the center as the unprecedented move drew public scrutiny and backlash. Democratic lawmakers and legal experts said it was illegal for the board to alter the name of the living memorial to Kennedy that Congress established. Democrats also claimed that one ex officio member, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D., Ohio), was muted when she attempted to speak out during the Dec. 18 vote.
Roma Daravi, the center’s vice president of public relations, told the Post that ex officio members have never voted.
“The bylaws were revised to reflect this longstanding precedent and everyone received the technical changes both before the meeting and after revisions,” Daravi wrote in an email to the Post. “Some members (including ex officio) attended in person, others by phone, and no concerns were voiced, no one objected, and the bylaws passed unanimously.”
The Kennedy Center lists 34 presidentially appointed board members, including Trump himself as chair, and 23 ex officio seats. The center’s president, Richard Grenell, is also an officer of the board.
The federal law that established the Kennedy Center designates specific government and federal positions — including the librarian of Congress; the mayor of Washington, D.C.; the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; and the majority and minority leaders of the Senate — to serve as ex officio members.
The law identifies them as part of the board of trustees, which it directs to maintain and administer the facility as a living memorial. But it does not distinguish between voting and nonvoting members, which has been a point of ambiguity in the days following the vote to rename the Kennedy Center.
The center’s original bylaws didn’t distinguish voting powers, either. But its most recent tax filings list 59 “voting members” of its governing body — a total that includes both general and ex officio members.
A former Kennedy Center staffer with knowledge of board proceedings, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution, told the Post that ex officio members were “always included in debate and discussion” during their tenure, but the person did not recall a time when those members’ votes were counted.
“Theoretically they could vote, but our practice was not to have them vote or count toward quorum,” the person said, noting they were not aware of the new leadership’s practices at the center.
For this report, the Post reached out to all ex officio members with questions about their voting authority and any known changes to it. Some told the Post or other outlets that they understood their current role to be nonvoting, though none addressed whether they were aware of any prior changes to that status.
“Like a lot of things, this seems to be in dispute,” said one person with knowledge of board proceedings, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) told a reporter Dec. 18: “I don’t have a vote. I don’t know enough about it.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) told the Post that he became an ex officio member this year after he became the lead Democrat on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works — another ex officio seat designated by Congress — but was not invited to board meetings until his committee began investigating the Kennedy Center last month.
Whitehouse said the statute “makes no distinction between ex officio and presidentially appointed Trustees when it comes to members’ rights and responsibilities on the board, including voting,” and he accused the Trump-appointed board of attempting to “illegally change the bylaws to silence dissent.”
A spokesperson for the Smithsonian Institution said that Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III does not vote or attend the meetings. It was unclear whether he had since assuming his role in 2019, but it is not uncommon for high officials serving on influential Washington boards to attend by proxy or not at all.
Copies of the Kennedy Center’s May and September board meeting minutes, obtained by the Post, showed that many ex officio members were absent or sent a staffer in their place.
Beatty, who sued the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees Dec. 22 to stop it from adding Trump’s name to the institution, declined to comment for this story. But her lawsuit argues the center’s statute makes her a “a full voting member.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.) leaves a protest of the Kennedy Center name change in Washington on Dec. 20.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), who is listed as an ex officio member on the Kennedy Center’s website, said he is no longer part of the board. “I was on the Kennedy Center board … in the last Congress,” he told the Post. “So their website is not caught up because I was told when Democrats lost control of the Senate and the Republicans became the majority that I fell off.” (The charter calls for three additional Senate members appointed by the president of the Senate and three House members appointed by the speaker to serve in ex officio seats.)
Many in high-ranking roles, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D., N.Y.), did not respond to requests for comment.
The offices of D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and the acting librarian of Congress, Robert Newlen, declined to comment.
Other changes from the May revision state that the general trustees “serve at the pleasure of the President.” (Previously, that language appeared in the bylaws and the federal statute only in reference to the Advisory Committee on the Arts, a separate body that makes recommendations to the board.)
They also added language about the ability of officers to make certain appointments, including stating that the chair may appoint the center’s president to act as chief executive.
The vote by the Kennedy Center’s board to add Trump’s name to the institution marked the most overt effort to date by the president and his allies to remold the storied performing arts center in his image.
In the days since his name was added to the building, several lawmakers have vowed to fight the change.
During a rally outside the Kennedy Center on Dec. 20, Van Hollen said he and his colleagues would work to “reverse” the move when Congress returns to session in January. “The day we get back, we can put an amendment on the … Interior appropriations bill to reverse this outrage,” he told the crowd.
Beatty’s lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claimed that the vote exceeded its statutory authority and requested that a judge declare it to be void.
“Because Congress named the center by statute, changing the Kennedy Center’s name requires an act of Congress,” the lawsuit says, adding that “Congress intended the Center to be a living memorial to President Kennedy — and a crown jewel of the arts for all Americans, irrespective of party.”
President Donald Trump, shown attending a showing of “Les Misérables” in June, has made himself a marquee element of the Kennedy Center.
Last week, Rep. April McClain Delaney (D., Md.) introduced legislation to remove Trump’s name.
Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine, the top Democrat on the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Kennedy Center, along with more than 70 lawmakers in Congress, called for Trump to reverse the renaming effort and remove his name from the building immediately.
“No board vote nor social media post has the legal authority to change the name without an act of Congress,” the members wrote.
“We’ll be working to block this disgraceful renaming effort at every possible opportunity and restore the Kennedy Center’s rightful place as our nation’s cultural center without the burden of vanity projects or political influence,” they wrote.
Roger Colinvaux, a law professor at Catholic University, said his read of the statue establishing the center was “not quite as demonstrative” as Beatty’s, but “I’d argue that the statute does not differentiate among types of trustees in terms of powers and obligations, which would include voting.”
Colinvaux added that “basic governance principles” “do not allow for the ‘muting’ of members” of an entity’s governing body, which is a “deliberative body.”
Phil Hackney, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh and a specialist in nonprofit tax-exempt organizations, said it’s worth noting “how ex officio trustees have traditionally operated” at both the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian, of which the Kennedy Center is technically a bureau. He said that a court would also need to consider whether trustees are supposed to be able to remove ex officio members’ powers by amending bylaws.
That said, the statute says the trustees “have the usual powers,” and “it still strikes me, under what I see so far, that it is reasonable to believe that ex officio trustees might have the right to vote,” he said.
Ellen Aprill, senior scholar at UCLA School of Law, who has written about the Kennedy Center’s legal status, said even if the bylaws limit voting to general board members appointed by the president, “I believe there is a strong argument that such a bylaw provision violates the Kennedy Center’s charter.”
Aprill stressed that the charter includes a variety of public servants, and both majority and minority members of Congress in the Kennedy Center’s governance. “Clearly the intent of the charter provisions was to entrust Kennedy Center guidance to a broad group, not just those appointed by the president,” she said.
Still, the Kennedy Center’s relatively ambiguous legal status as a public-private entity “makes it difficult to predict how a judge faced with the issues in the case beyond standing would decide,” she said, noting the situation “is likely to give any judge a great deal of freedom in making any decision.”
Former Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbellof Colorado, who overcame a hardscrabble childhood to become the first Native American chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and a leader of the effort to build the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, died Dec. 30. He was 92.
Mr. Campbell died surrounded by his family, his daughter, Shanan Campbell, told the Associated Press. A cause of death was not provided.
Mr. Campbell, a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe, represented the western slope of Colorado for three terms in the U.S. House, starting in 1987, and served two terms in the Senate beginning in 1993.In each chamber, he was the only American Indian in office at the time.He immersed himself in public lands, water, and mining issues but made Indian causes the centerpiece of his legislative career.
In the button-down environs of Capitol Hill, Mr. Campbell stood out by arriving at work on a motorcycle, wearing a ponytail and a bolo tie with a handmade silver and turquoise clasp. His unusual resumé further set him apart from the many former lawyers in Congress.
In his youth, Mr. Campbell was a member of the first U.S. Olympic judo team. He became a Teamsters union truck driver, an Air Force military police officer, a trainer of champion quarter horses and a successful jewelry designer before entering public service, by his account, on a whim.
A fiscal conservative and social liberal, Mr. Campbell was elected first as a Democrat and made a high-profile switch to the Republican Party in 1995. He joined the Republicans, in part, he said, to protest Senate Democrats’ defeat of a GOP-backed proposed constitutional amendment to balance the budget.
He continued to support abortion rights and opposed attempts by some Republicans to cut spending for the federal school lunch program. The program sometimes accounted for “the only meal I got when I was a kid,” he said, recalling a childhood that also included years in an orphanage during the Depression.
Republicans had recently taken control of the Senate when Mr. Campbell joined their caucus, and they rewarded him with a seat on the Appropriations Committee, which controls government spending. In 1997, he was selected to chair the Indian Affairs Committee.
His involvement with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian dated to 1989, when he was a sponsor of legislation that authorized construction of a building on the National Mall and that required the Smithsonian to identify Indian remains and sacred objects in its vast collection and repatriate them to tribes requesting their return. The museum opened in 2004.
Unlike federal laws regarding water rights or tribal boundaries for Native Americans, the museum legislation “was about respecting their humanity,” said Kristen Carpenter, director of the American Indian Law Program at the University of Colorado.
John Echohawk, executive director of the Native American Rights Fund, a Colorado-based public interest law firm that has worked for decades to secure the return of Indian remains and sacred objects, said the legislation was a “key part of the process of educating” the publicabout Indian rights and sovereignty.
Fascination with judo
Benny Marshall Campbell was born in Placer County, Calif., northeast of Sacramento, on April 13, 1933.
His father, who dabbled in jewelry-making and ran a country store, tried to hide his Cheyenne Indian heritage in an era of rampant discrimination. “My father insisted we keep our Indian background a secret,” Mr. Campbell told his biographer, Herman J. Viola. “Don’t worry about it, we were told. Just keep your mouth shut. It doesn’t mean anything; don’t have anything to do with it.”
His mother, a Portuguese immigrant, suffered from tuberculosis and was in and out of healthcare facilities for much of his childhood. She struggled to look after Benny and his sister while their father,an alcoholic, spent long periods away on drinking sprees.
“It was all she could do, sick and weak herself, to take care of her little family,” Mr. Campbell recalled to Viola. Sometimes the only food in the house was a can of vegetables. “I remember one day, in fact, when my mother opened a can of peas and gave half of them to my sister and half to me,” he said. “All she kept for herself was the juice in the can.”
Mr. Campbell was 6 when his mother placed her children inan orphanage in Sacramento, an act that he said he never held against her, given the family’s struggles. They occasionally returned to her care when their father was home.
At roughlyage 12, Mr. Campbell began packing fruit at the many farms in the area. He worked alongside laborers of Japanese heritage and, in one heated moment, found himself ina fight with a young man Mr. Campbell assumedhe could easily knock to the ground.
Instead, to his shock, the man put him on the floor with a judo maneuver — and Mr. Campbell became a “convert” to the sport, he said. He joined a judo club established by Japanese residents in Placer County, and the sport became an obsession.
Heleft high school in 1950, during his junior year, to enlist in the Air Force at the start of the Korean War. He chose to be a military police officer,in part, because the training included judo lessons.
He completed his high school equivalency diploma in the Air Force and, after he left the service, used the GI Bill to enroll at San Jose State College (now university), partly because of its winning judo team. His biographer wrote that Mr. Campbell’s first marriage, which was annulled within months, and his second, to Elaine Morgan, ended, in part, because he “put judo first.”
After graduating in 1957 with degrees in physical education and fine arts, Mr. Campbell taught art and industrial arts at an elementary school near San Jose. When he learned in 1960 that judo would be introducedin the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, hequit his job, sold his house and car, and moved to Japan to enroll in a renowned judo program at Meiji University.
To support himself in Tokyo, he taught English and landed bit parts in Japanese movies. He won a gold medal at the 1963 Pan American Games in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
The next year, Mr. Campbell was part of a four-man U.S. Olympic team, but a knee injury forced him to drop out during the competition. Stunned and in pain, Mr. Campbell wept openly when he had to forfeit the match, according to his biographer.
Returning to California, hetook a job as a high school physical education teacher near Sacramento.
In 1966, he married Linda Price, and they had two children, Colin and Shanan. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.
Entering politics
In the late 1960s, a period of protest and cultural resurgence among American Indians, Mr. Campbell joined thousands of Native American young people searching for their roots. He located relatives in the Northern Cheyenne tribe in Montana, became a member of the tribeand took the name Nighthorse.
Soon, Mr. Campbell moved his family to a ranch in Southwest Colorado and began raising champion show-ring quarter horses. He also made award-winning jewelry with Indian themes, using skills he learnedfrom his father, whotaught him how to carve wood and bone and shape metal from coins and tobacco tins.
With a thriving jewelry business, Mr. Campbell acquired a pilot’s license and purchased a single-engine plane to ease travel to jewelry shows and competitions around the country. One day in 1982, he found himself grounded by weather in Durango, Colo., and met up with a friend who was attending a Democratic Party gathering to nominate a candidate for the state House of Representatives.
Mr. Campbell, who had not been active in politics, volunteered when no one else agreed to run. He won election that November, with 54% of the vote, and served two terms before narrowly unseating one-term incumbent U.S. Rep. Mike Strang in 1986 in a congressional district that included the cities of Pueblo, Grand Junction, and Durango.
In the U.S. House, Mr. Campbell successfully co-sponsored legislation to rename the Custer Battlefield National Monument in Montana, which became the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. The change, according to the National Park Service, was intended “to recognize indigenous perspectives” on the American Indian victory over Lt. Col. George A. Custer and his 7th Cavalry in June 1876. The legislation also authorized a prominent memorial to the warriors who died there.
In 1987, Mr. Campbell generated support to remove from theHouseInterior Committee hearing room a century-old painting, titled Death Whoop and depicting an Indian holding a bloody knife in one hand and a settler’s scalp in the other.
“It’s out of touch with the sensitivity of Indians,” Mr. Campbell told the Associated Press at the time. “It plays on the prejudice of man.”
After three terms in the House, Mr. Campbell ran in 1992 for an open Senate seat and won the general election with support from organized labor, energy interests, ranchers and Hispanic voters.
He did not seek reelection in 2004, citing poor health. He had been treated for prostate cancer the previous year.
Yet it was his vigor that most colleagues recalled.
On one occasion, he chased down a mugger who had accosted him. In 1995, when he was 62, he used his martial arts skills to help subdue a homeless man who had shoved 92-year-old Sen. Strom Thurmond (R., S.C.) and then attacked a Capitol Police officer.
Alluding to his colleague’s physical prowess, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) wryly observed when Mr. Campbell retired that “many senators became a little more inclined to vote for his amendments after that.”
Isiah Whitlock Jr., an actor who made frequent memorable appearances on the HBO series The Wire and Veepand in five films with director Spike Lee, died Tuesday. He was 71.
Mr. Whitlock’s manager Brian Liebman told the Associated Press in an email that the actor died in New York after a short illness.
Mr. Whitlock played openly corrupt State Sen. Clay Davis on 25 episodes across the five seasons of The Wire.
Davis, a fan-favorite character, was known for his profane catchphrase — “sheee-it” — delivered by Mr. Whitlock in moments of triumph and blunt honesty. The actor first used the phrase in his first film with Lee, 2002’s The 25th Hour, when his detective character discovers a cache of drugs hidden in a couch.
“It’s a big, big, big loss,” Lee said in a phone call with the AP on Tuesday night. “I’m going to miss him for the rest of my life.”
Mr. Whitlock went on to appear in five other Lee films, including 2004’s She Hate Me, 2012’s Red Hook Summer, 2015’s Chi-Raq, 2018’s BlacKkKlansman, and 2020’s Da 5 Bloods.
“We vibed over all those years,” Lee said. “We clicked from the jump.”
Lee said he has especially sweet memories of the extended time he spent with Mr. Whitlock shooting Da 5 Bloods on location in Thailand, and he fondly remembered the last time he saw Mr. Whitlock — Lee and his daughter, Satchel, sat with him at a screening of Kiss ofthe Spider Woman earlier this year.
“He was just a beautiful, beautiful soul,” Lee said. “If you were around him, he made everybody feel good in his presence. He would radiate. I would put that over his acting.”
Lee pointed to Mr. Whitlock’s comic talents both on screen and off.
“He was hilarious,” Lee said. “That was just his nature, he made people laugh. Everybody was in on the joke.”
Mr. Whitlock is the second significant star of The Wire to die in recent weeks after the death of actor James Ransone.
A native of South Bend, Ind., Mr. Whitlock went to Southwest Minnesota State University, where he played football and studied theater. Injuries pushed him to study acting, and he moved to San Francisco to work in theater.
He began appearing in small television guest roles on shows including Cagney and Lacy in the late 1980s, and he had very small roles in the 1990 films Goodfellas and Gremlins 2: The New Batch.
After The Wire, Whitlock moved on to another HBO show, the political satire Veep, where he played Secretary of Defense George Maddox for three seasons. The character ran against Julia Louis-Dreyfus′ Selina Meyer in presidential primaries.
The Wire creator David Simon also paid tribute to Mr. Whitlock in a post on Bluesky.
“As fine an actor as he was,” Simon said, “Isiah was an even better spirit and the greatest gentleman.”
Philadelphia juries issued only three verdicts of $10 million or more in 2025, less than a third of the so-called nuclear verdicts awarded in 2024. The decline was so pronounced, it knocked the city’s Court of Common Pleas from the top spot on an annual “judicial hellhole” list.
The overall amount doled out by Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas jurors declined by more than $3 billion this year compared to 2024, according to court data up to Dec. 19. The nearly $120 million awarded in 74 plaintiff verdicts represents largely a return to pre-pandemic norm.
Even the American Tort Reform Foundation, a group tied to an association that advocates for reform of civil litigation and represents business interests, took notice. Last year, the foundation blasted Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, along with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, as the nation’s top “judicial hellhole.”
In the 2025-26 report, the Philadelphia court was dethroned and ranked fifth. (The Pennsylvania Supreme Court had its own entry this year, making the group’s “watch list.”)
“2025 did not bring the same level of activity, but this decline is not the result of positive reforms or improved legal activity, but rather a reduction of trials,” the report says on the fewer number of large verdicts in the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court.
This year had roughly 70 fewer trials that went to verdict, and no mass tort trials at all.
Mass tort is the umbrella name for how courts handle a large volume of cases that all allege similar injuries. For example, the dozens of lawsuits in Philadelphia accusing Roundup weedkiller of causing blood cancer. The cases are consolidated under one judge, and “bellwether trials” are held to get a sense of what the cost of a global settlement might be, if an agreement is ever reached.
Mass tort trials are scheduled for 2026, starting in January, and with them large verdicts could trend up again.
Attorneys say there is more to the story than counting trials, as the large verdicts of 2024 and 2023 shaped how cases are handled behind the scenes. And fewer large verdicts don’t necessarily mean that defendants in Philadelphia are paying less.
Robert J. Mongeluzzi, the founder of Saltz Mongeluzzi Bendesky, said defendants and insurers are agreeing to large settlements before any verdicts are delivered.
“Defendants and their insurance carriers have resolved catastrophic cases by offering tens of millions of dollars to resolve these cases in advance of trial,” Mongeluzzi said via email.
John Hare, a defense attorney with Marshall Dennehey, said that the large verdicts of recent years are prompting defendants to pay more, and more often, than they otherwise would.
“There is a correlation between a rise in nuclear verdicts and a rise in nuclear settlements,” Hare said.
The attorney also credits the court’s effort to mediate settlements in medical malpractice cases as one driver of the decline. But the key context is the historically high verdicts in 2023 and 2024, Hare said.
“I don’t think the era of nuclear verdicts is over,” he said.
With the election behind him and the top law enforcement job in Bucks County ahead, Joe Khan says he’s ready for his next challenge.
In January, Khan, a former federal prosecutor and onetime Bucks County solicitor, will become the first Democrat to serve as district attorney in the county since the end of the Civil War. (That’s not counting Ward Clark, a Republican who switched parties to run as a Democrat in 1965 and immediately switched back to his GOP roots after he won.)
Khan, 50, is also the first candidate from outside the district attorney’s office to win the top post after several decades in which voters routinely replaced outgoing district attorneys with successors from among inside the ranks of the office.
To claim that mantle, Khan decisively beat Jen Schorn, the Republican incumbent and a career prosecutor in the district attorney’s office, winning 54% of the vote in the November election, which broke a 20-year record for voter turnout.
County political leaders say Khan’s victory signals voters’ desire for regime change in the once GOP-dominated suburb.
“Democrats came out because they felt like it was necessary to push back on what Trump was doing,” said State Sen. Steve Santarsiero, the chair of the Bucks County Democratic Party. “And in the case of Joe, they recognized him as someone who is going to stand up to an administration that has shown it’s willing to flout the law.”
Khan, for his part, says politics is in the rearview mirror as he prepares for his new job.
“I don’t care what political party you’re from, I don’t care who you voted for president or for district attorney,” he said in a recent interview. “What I care about is that you’re here to support the mission of keeping Bucks County safe and seeking justice every day.”
Joe Khan greets and signs a poster for supporter Phyllis Rubin-Arnold as he waits for a meeting with the Buckingham Township Police chief. Khan says that politics has no role in his plans for the district attorney’s office.
And he said he would expand that work — Khan tapped Kristin McElroy, one of Schorn’s top deputies, to serve as his first assistant.
Drawing on his experience in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia, Khan said he would pursue environmental crimes and prosecute cases involving violations of workers’ rights.
“We have seen all kinds of advances in terms of the powers that DAs have in Pennsylvania, so I think it’s great to have an opportunity to look at things with fresh eyes,” he said.
Khan grew up in Northeast Philadelphia, where his father settled after emigrating from Pakistan. Like his brother, State Rep. Tarik Khan (D, Philadelphia), he took an early interest in public service. He followed those aspirations to Swarthmore College and, later, the University of Chicago Law School.
Khan said he was drawn to Bucks County later in his career, and has made it his home in the 14 years he has lived with his sons, Sam, 14 and Nathan, 11, in Doylestown Township. He and the boys’ mother are divorced but co-parent amicably, he said, and live a few doors down from each other.
After stints in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and the U.S. Attorney’s Office — where he specialized in prosecuting gun crimes and locking up child predators — Khan ran for the top prosecutor’s job in Philadelphia in 2017, losing the race to Larry Krasner.
Joe Khan (center) is seen here in March 2023 alongside County Commissioners Diane M. Ellis-Marseglia and Robert J. Harvie Jr. as they announced a lawsuit filed against multiple social media companies for “fueling a mental health crisis among young people.”
Three years later, Khan took over as Bucks County solicitor. He developed an interest in local politics, he said, after watching the culture-war debates over library books and allegations of abuse that embroiled the Central Bucks School District, where his kids are enrolled.
“It’s really central to my view of what parents need from their government,” he said. “They need people in roles like this that are going to make life easier, not harder, and that are going to help them with the challenges that they’re facing.”
Not long after taking over the office, Khan challenged Trump’s efforts to dismiss mail-in ballots during the 2020 election. He also waged legal battles, taking on companies including 3M, DuPont, and Tyco by filing lawsuits over the “forever chemicals” that had leached their way into residents’ water supplies.
And he made headlines for joining a national lawsuit against social media giants like TikTok, bidding them to address the mental health of their young users.
When now-Gov. Josh Shapiro left the state attorney general’s office, Khan stepped down to join a crowded primary to replace him, running in 2023 on a platform to “continue what has been a lifelong fight to keep people safe.”
After losing that race, Khan set his sights on the top law enforcement job in his new home, challenging the long-standing Republican machine that had controlled it for decades.
“I think that if you do a good job and you let people know why you’re doing the things that you’re doing, whether or not they agree with you on every political position, if they know that you’re honest, you got a pretty good shot at earning their vote,” he said.
“And I think that’s a big part of how we won this election.”
A voter walks past the election lawn signs, including one for Joe Khan and his running mate, Danny Ceisler, outside the Bucks County Senior Citizens polling location in Doylestown on Nov. 4.
Santarsiero, the county Democratic Party chair, said he was confident that Khan would make a fine district attorney.
Winning the post required political prowess, of course, but he said that is a dichotomy unique to the office: Politics are required every four years to secure a position that is apolitical.
Party affiliation aside, he said, Khan would work for the good of the county.
Khan, for his part, says he is ready to give it his all.
“We are here to keep people safe, and we’re going to do that in new and exciting ways,” he said. “I have my values, I wear them on my sleeve, and I’m very clear about the direction that we’re going to go to make sure that people who deserve a healthy environment for their families are getting a higher level of service than they’re used to.”
The decision was abrupt, apparently made without advanced input from Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.), who’d set up a commission to identify candidates to serve as the region’s top federal prosecutor.
Metcalf was 39 and, unlike many of his predecessors, didn’t have deep roots in the region — but did have some reported ties to officials who’d sought to help Trump adviser Roger Stone years earlier.
And the appointment was announced as Trump was openly pledging to “clean house” in the Justice Department and pull the agency more directly in line with the White House.
But in the months since Metcalf has assumed control over the office and its 140 lawyers, what has stood out so far has been the serious temperament the veteran prosecutor has brought to the role, and the relative lack of drama he’s overseen — particularly in comparison to nearby jurisdictions, where U.S. Attorney’s Offices have been embroiled in controversies over leadership appointments and whether to indict Trump critics.
During a recent interview with The Inquirer at his Center City office, his first since being appointed in March, Metcalf said his deliberate approach toward his first few months in the job has been influenced by his decade-plus career as a Justice Department lawyer — one that included stints in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.
He has met with a host of other local stakeholders since taking over — including Police Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and federal judges — and has avoided ushering in drastic upheaval within his office.
U.S. Attorney David Metcalf outside the federal courthouse in July, with Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel standing behind him.
Instead, he said, a key focus has been to encourage his prosecutors to pursue large, ambitious, complex investigations targeting violent crime, synthetic opioid abuse, and healthcare fraud — subjects he said were critical to public safety in the Philadelphia region.
“I do not feel some personal impulse to burn my brand on this office by restructuring and reorganizing it,” he said, later adding: “The greatest offices and the greatest cases come from prosecutors who are hunting them down and competing for them … and that’s the breed of prosecutor we’re trying to create here.”
Composed and self-assured, Metcalf was uninterested in commenting on the broader political landscape surrounding his job. He instead concentrated on the work of his office, whose lawyers prosecute matters including drug trafficking, political corruption, and terrorism across nine counties from Philadelphia to Allentown and west past Reading. They also litigate civil matters on behalf of the federal government.
“I don’t want to say that I’m … bound by precedent or a devotee to the status quo,” he said. “But I do believe in stability, and I’m certainly not going to change things just for the sake of changing them.”
Even Krasner — an outspoken progressive Democrat who rarely misses an opportunity to criticize Trump, and who was engaged in a long-running feud with a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney four years ago — said he had a “professional and pleasant lunch” with Metcalf earlier this year.
“We have always worked well with the career prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and our teams seem to be continuing to work well together,” Krasner said in an interview.
Rod Rosenstein, who was the deputy attorney general during Trump’s first term, said in an interview that he hired Metcalf a decade ago, when Rosenstein was the U.S. attorney in Maryland. And their paths continued to intersect over the years as their careers wound through the Justice Department.
Rosenstein said Metcalf had “superb legal skills” and “excellent judgment” — two qualities he views as critical for leading a U.S. attorney’s office.
“I think people recognize he’s got the right qualifications,” Rosenstein said.
U.S. Attorney David Metcalf in his Center City office.
‘An exhilarating vocation’
Metcalf grew up in northern Virginia and graduated from The Wakefield School, a private prep school about an hour west of Washington, D.C. His father was once an Army colonel, he said, and his grandfather was Joseph Metcalf III, the Navy vice admiral who led the 1983 invasion of Grenada.
Metcalf was a standout soccer player in high school, and was recruited to play by more than 80 college teams, the Washington Post reported in 2003. He used the situation to his advantage, the paper reported — making a deal with his mother that he could let his hair grow down past his shoulders once Division I colleges started sending him letters.
He ended up attending Princeton — playing soccer all four years — and then went on to graduate from the University of Virginia’s law school.
After clerking for U.S. Circuit Judge Albert Diaz, Metcalf spent a few years in private practice before becoming an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland under Rosenstein.
Metcalf said he didn’t have a single epiphany that made him realize he wanted to become a prosecutor. But he said he was quickly drawn to the work, which he found more interesting and important than other legal jobs.
“I thought it was really just an exhilarating vocation in a profession that doesn’t always have the most glamorous applications,” he said.
High-profile connections
From 2015 through 2022, Metcalf worked as a line prosecutor in Baltimore and, later, in Philadelphia — the office he now leads. The two years he spent here were unusual, he said, because they unfolded during the peak of the pandemic, when many aspects of the court system were disrupted and most people were working from home.
Metcalf also spent time during the first Trump administration in Washington, D.C. While there, he worked closely with prominent Justice Department officials including Rosenstein; Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen; Timothy Shea, the onetime U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C.; and then-Attorney General William Barr.
Attorney General William Barr and President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House on Nov. 26, 2019.
In 2022, Metcalf left the public sector and went to work as a corporate counsel for Amazon. But this March — after Trump was reelected for a second term — Metcalf was suddenly thrust back into the Justice Department, as the White House announced it was nominating him to be Philadelphia’s U.S. attorney.
From nominee to confirmation
The decision came as something of a surprise.
McCormick, Pennsylvania’s newly elected GOP senator, had made a point of publicly announcing that he’d formed a committee to review and vet potential candidates for federal law enforcement positions across the state. And other GOP-connected lawyers in the region had been jockeying for months to try to figure out who might be able carve a path toward the coveted position.
When the White House named Metcalf its permanent nominee, the process was effectively short-circuited.
Metcalf said he couldn’t speak to how or why the process played out the way it did. He said he applied for the job, and “had relationships with folks in the Trump administration” due to his time in Washington during Trump’s first term.
He didn’t specify who those people were. And some of his former bosses — particularly Barr — had fallen out of favor with Trump after his first term.
But Rosenstein said “it’s a mistake to think that people are the people they work for. It’s a big government, and not everyone agrees all the time.”
And in any case, Rosenstein said, he believed Metcalf was nominated “on merit, not on connections.”
Rod Rosenstein, deputy attorney general during President Donald Trump’s first term, says Metcalf has “superb legal skills” and “excellent judgment.”
William McSwain, who served as U.S. attorney during Trump’s first term, said he believed Metcalf was “extremely well-qualified for the position.”
It took the U.S. Senate six months to vote to confirm Metcalf along with a host of other Trump nominees, but by then, the Philadelphia region’s federal judges had already voted to extend Metcalf’s appointment indefinitely while the process played out.
That move stood in contrast to several other jurisdictions, including New Jersey, where the judiciary declined to extend the tenure of Trump’s nominee, Alina Habba. For months afterward, that office was thrust into turmoil as questions swirled about who could legally serve as its leader.
Pursuing notable cases
During his tenure so far, Metcalf said, he’s been seeking to focus his prosecutors on finding what he called “nationally significant” cases, particularly those targeting violence, drugs, and healthcare fraud, which he views as priorities for the region.
One of the first big indictments he announced was in October when FBI Director Kash Patel visited Philadelphia to help reveal that 33 people had been charged with being part of a Kensington-based drug gang. Metcalf said the case was the largest single prosecution in the region in at least two decades.
FBI Director Kash Patel helping announce the arrest of dozens of suspects in a Kensington drug case.
He also helped create a new program dubbed PSN Recon, an initiative designed to help Philadelphia Police more readily share intelligence with state and federal agencies about which groups or suspects should be investigated.
Prosecutions overall have increased on his watch, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research organization that collects federal courts records.
So far this fiscal year, prosecutions in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania were up 32% compared to last year, TRAC found, and were on their highest pace since 2019. The most common types of cases charged this year were immigration violations, drug offenses, and illegal firearm possession, according to TRAC.
Earlier this year, Metcalf was reportedly involved in one particularly significant case: an investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan and his role in producing an intelligence assessment about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Brennan went on to become a prominent Trump critic.
Former CIA director John Brennan testifies before the House Intelligence Committee in 2017.
Metcalf never commented publicly on his purported involvement in the Brennan case, and declined to do so again during his interview with The Inquirer. The investigation is now reportedly being handled by federal prosecutors in Florida.
Metcalf did allow a short peek into his professional mindset when he was asked more broadly if he’d ever felt pressure from Washington to sign off on a decision he didn’t agree with.
After declining to comment on any discussions he may or may not have had with Justice Department leaders, he paused for a moment and added one final point.
“I will also say that I would be very surprised if that ever happened to me,” he said. “I don’t see it as a problem here.”
In mid-December, the nation’s leading workplace civil rights enforcer took to social media to pose a question: “Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex?”
Andrea Lucas, chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, appeared in the video, urging those who have to contact the agency “as soon as possible.”
“You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws,” she says in the video, which has amassed nearly 6 million views on X.
It was an unusual move, because the EEOC does not typically solicit complaints. But it underscores the sea change at an agency central to President Donald Trump’s civil rights agenda —one that began with executive orders gutting the last vestiges of affirmative action, and buttressed by his purge of the EEOC board anda newly installed Republican majority.
Now “fully empowered,” the agency will focus on stamping out “illegal discrimination” stemming from diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and “anti-American bias,” Lucas said recently in written responses to questions from the Washington Post. Enforcement, including a heightened emphasis on pregnancy and religious bias, will stress “individual rights over group rights,” she said, and eschew identity politics.
The EEOC’s new priorities come during a year of regulatory uncertainty — it lacked a quorum most of the year, limiting its functions — fueling confusion and uncertainty for employers, workplace experts say. And civil rights advocates contend this pivot detracts from its mission.
“Chair Lucas has chosen to elevate an asserted concern that lacks empirical support as a significant and widespread problem,” a group called EEO Leaderssaid in a statement Dec. 23, “diverting scarce enforcement resources from well documented and pervasive forms of workplace discrimination that harm millions of workers in America today.” The group comprises former EEOC and Department of Labor officials.
Andrea Lucas, testifying at a June hearing on Capitol Hill, was designated chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in November, after a 10-month stint as acting chair.
Lucas said her X post reflects the agency’s effort to “correct underreporting” of forms of discrimination that were neglected by the past administration, adding that “for too long, many employees thought they weren’t the ‘right’ kind of plaintiff, that our civil rights laws only protected certain groups, rather than all Americans.”
A restrained year
Founded in 1964 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, the EEOC is charged with enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a worker or job applicant on the basis of race, sex, religion, age, disability, and other factors. Most employers with at least 15 employees are bound by EEOC regulations, which apply to such workplace practices as hiring, firing, promotions, and wages. The agency has recouped billions in monetary rewards for victims of workplace bias and harassment during the last decade.
Days into his second term — in a break from precedent — Trump dismissed two Democratic members of the independent commission. As a result, it lost the quorum needed to pursue certain cases and overhaul guidance. That changed in October with the appointment of Commissioner Brittany Panuccio, who with Lucas gave the panel a 2-1 GOP majority and a quorum. Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal, a Democrat, rounds out the commission.
In past administrations, the EEOC typically filed 200 to 300 merit lawsuits — those in which the agency determined discrimination exists — a year, said Christopher DeGroff, an employment attorney with the firm Seyfarth Shaw. The 93 merit suits the agency filed in fiscal 2025 marked one of its lowest tallies in three decades, he noted in an analysis of its activity.
Still, the agency’s new priorities were evident in the cases that reached a public resolution or culminated in a lawsuit, DeGroff said. Merit suits alleging discrimination based on race or national origin — historically one of the EEOC’s busiest enforcement areas — hit a decade low in 2025, his research noted. And two of the three cases filed revolved around anti-American bias.
Meanwhile, 37 of the 93 merit lawsuits the EEOC brought pertained to sex or pregnancy discrimination. Of those, 10 were filed under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and/or the newly enacted Pregnant Workers’ Fairness Act, and included lawsuits against Delta Air Lines and meat processor Smithfield alleging they denied accommodations to pregnant employees.
Religious bias lawsuits were another focus in 2025, with the agency filing 11 merit suits asserting religious discrimination or failure to accommodate religious beliefs. One case was against Apple, over allegations it failed to accommodate a Jewish employee’s request not to work on the weekend due to his faith.
Apple declined to discuss the case but “strongly denied” the claims in a statement to the Post.
Disparate impact
One of the EEOC’s biggest pivots under Trump is to abandon cases filed under disparate impact, a legal theory holding that seemingly neutral policies — such as height or lifting requirements — can have discriminatory outcomes. It stems from the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1971 decision in Griggs v. Duke Power, where attorneys used statistical evidence to show how standardized tests prevented Black employees from advancing at a North Carolina energy company.
Disparate impact is central to civil rights litigation and a key lens though which the EEOC has tackled systemic discrimination, said Jenny Yang, who served as EEOC chair during the Obama administration and worked to expand the agency’s tool kit for addressing systemic discrimination.
In 2020 for example, Walmart settled a nationwide discrimination lawsuit brought by the EEOC over a “physical ability test” it used for grocery workers that “disproportionately excludes female applicants.” Walmart agreed to stop using the test and to pay $20 million into a settlement fund for women who were denied grocery order-filler positions because of the testing.
Disparate impact “advances the core principle that removing unjustified barriers to opportunity helps all Americans thrive,” Yang said.
In April, Trump signed an executive order barring use of disparate impact by agencies, calling it a “pernicious movement” that ignores “individual strengths, effort or achievement.” Dan Lennington, deputy counsel at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative think tank specializing in workplace issues, said the debate reflects the broader ideological divide on how to best protect workers’ civil rights.
“The minute you start saying all Black people this, all Hispanic people this, all women this, you’re just stereotyping,” he added. “The only thing that matters is the individual in front of you.”
Yang said it’s been “challenging” to see the Trump administration make such changes to an agency that historically ” really valued its bipartisanship and its independence to interpret antidiscrimination laws.” By moving away from disparate impact and targeting corporate diversity efforts, Yang said, the EEOC has been “weaponized to intimidate employers, to retreat from efforts designed to promote equal opportunity, and to really abandon its historic mission to protect some of our most vulnerable workers.”
‘Illegal’ DEI
Shawna Bray, general counsel at the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank, said that Lucas’ EEOC iscorrecting for past administrations that “used the tools in the toolbox to push things up to, and even over, the line because of their goals,”especially with DEIand other social issues.
DEI refers to practices companies use to ensure equal opportunity in their ranks, from recruiting and mentorship programs to antibias training and employee resource groups. Many companies began reconsidering such policies after the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision rejecting the use of affirmative action in college admissions.
After the Supreme Court struck down the use of racial considerations in college admissions in June 2023, many companies reassessed their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
The ruling sparked a wave of activist lawsuits aiming to replicate the order in the employment sphere. Much of corporate America has since opened identity-based programs, such as fellowships and employee resource groups, to people of all backgrounds, ended efforts like antibias training, and rebranded DEI programs with a focus on “belonging.”
Lucas and others in the Trump administration often refer to “illegal DEI,” but Bray said that she finds the term “a little frustrating” given that such programs only break the law if they show identity-based preference. She also thinks the phrasing has created confusion.
The EEOC should “have in mind an even application of our civil rights,” regardless of factors such as race, gender, and religious background, Bray said. “The desire to put a thumb on the scale was never consistent with that.”
While the agency has yet to file a lawsuit over a workplace DEI program under Lucas, DeGroff expects to see such “cases hit the docket” in 2026.
Valerie Wilson, director of EPI’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, said that priorities like dismantling DEI have “turned the mission of the EEOC on its head, in a way that weaponizes it against the people that it was intended to protect, given the long history of racial discrimination and exploitation” in the United States.
Lucas contends the EEOC is making up for past administrations that “went hunting for activist matters while closing [their] eyes to overt widespread discrimination occurring against groups it disfavored.” Earlier this year, it issued guidance encouraging workers to challenge DEI policies by their employers.
Among possible targets are 20 law firms from which the EEOC said it has requested information about their DEI and hiring practices going back nearly a decade.
Jason Solomon, director of the National Institute for Workers’ Rights, a think tank focusing on private workplace law, wonders whether there is much more for the EEOC to target, given that companies have largely gotten rid of identity-based programs.
“They may look at the changed landscape and say, ‘We can declare victory because we’ve gotten employers to change a lot of what they’ve done,’” Solomon said.
Backing away
Race-discrimination complaints are historically among the most common lodged with the EEOC — 29,000a year on average since 1997, according to a report from EPI — but 2025 marked “the lowest number of race/national origin-based filings by the EEOC in at least a decade,” Seyfarth’s report states.
Two of the lawsuits it pursued alleged bias against U.S.-born workers in favor of foreign ones, DeGroff said. One case involved a hotel and resort in Guam, LeoPalace Guam Corp., which agreed to pay $1.4 million to resolve claims that it favored Japanese workers over those from other countries, including the U.S.
The EEOC also has dismissed cases filed on behalf of transgender workers and stopped processing new gender-identitycomplaints to comply with Trump’s executive orderthat prohibits agencies from using federal funds to support gender-identity issues. It also removed “X” as a gender marker option on its discrimination charge intake form, making it harder for workers whose gender identity does not match their sexat birthto file complaints.
Over the summer, the agency resumed processing some transgender discrimination cases, although the complaints will be subject to a heightened level of review.
