Philadelphia local news, sports, jobs, cars, homes

Category: News

Latest breaking news and updates

  • Mexican Navy medical flight lost communication for several minutes before Texas crash

    Mexican Navy medical flight lost communication for several minutes before Texas crash

    Air traffic controllers lost communication for about 10 minutes with a small Mexican Navy plane carrying a young medical patient and seven others before it crashed off the Texas coast, killing at least five people, Mexico’s president said Tuesday.

    Authorities initially believed the plane had landed safely at its destination in Galveston, near Houston, before learning it had gone down Monday afternoon, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said. A search-and-rescue operation in waters near Galveston pulled two survivors from the plane’s wreckage, while one remained missing, Mexico’s Navy said.

    U.S. authorities are investigating the cause, but the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday that it could take a week or more to recover the aircraft,

    Four Mexican Navy officers and four civilians, including a child, were aboard the plane, according to the country’s military. Two of the passengers were affiliated with a nonprofit that helps transport Mexican children with severe burns to a hospital in Galveston.

    “My condolences to the families of the sailors who unfortunately died in this accident and to the people who were traveling on board,” Sheinbaum said in her morning press briefing, without elaborating on a possible cause. “What happened is very tragic.”

    U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Luke Baker said at least five aboard had died but did not identify which passengers.

    The twin turboprop Beech King Air 350i crashed Monday afternoon in a bay near the base of the causeway connecting Galveston Island to the mainland. Emergency responders rushed to the scene near the popular beach destination about 50 miles southeast of Houston.

    Sky Decker, a professional yacht captain who lives about a mile from the crash site, said he jumped in his boat to see if he could help. He picked up two police officers who guided him through thick fog to a nearly submerged plane. Decker jumped into the water and found a badly injured woman trapped beneath chairs and other debris.

    “I couldn’t believe. She had maybe 3 inches of air gap to breathe in,” he said. ”And there was jet fuel in there mixed with the water, fumes real bad. She was really fighting for her life.”

    He said he also pulled out a man seated in front of her who had already died. Both were wearing civilian clothes.

    It’s not immediately clear if weather was a factor. The area was experiencing foggy conditions over the past few days, according to Cameron Batiste, a National Weather Service meteorologist. He said that at about 2:30 p.m. Monday a fog came in that had about a half-mile visibility.

    Teams from the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board were at the crash site Monday, the Texas Department of Public Safety said. An NTSB spokesperson said in an email that investigators will gather flight track data, recordings of any air traffic control communications and review maintenance records and weather forecasts, with a preliminary report expected within 30 days.

    Mexico’s Navy said the plane was helping with a medical mission in coordination with the Michou and Mau Foundation. In a social media post, the foundation offered condolences to the families and said it shared their grief “with respect and compassion.”

    The charity was founded after a mother died trying to save her kids from a fire. One child succumbed to his injuries because he didn’t receive highly specialized medical care, while another survived after receiving treatment at Shriners Children’s Texas in Galveston. Over 23 years, the foundation has helped transfer more than 2,000 patients to that hospital and other medical facilities with burn expertise, according to the charity’s website.

    The charity’s director didn’t immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment.

    Shriners Children’s Texas said in a statement that it learned of the crash with “profound sadness” but wasn’t able to provide any information about the child’s condition because the child hadn’t yet been admitted.

    This latest crash comes amid a year of intense scrutiny on aviation safety after a string of high-profile crashes and the flight disruptions during the government shutdown driven by the shortage of air traffic controllers.

    The January mid-air collision between an Army helicopter and an airliner near Washington D.C. was followed by the crash of a medical transport plane in Philadelphia. This fall’s fiery UPS plane crash only added to the concerns. Still, the total number of crashes in 2025 was actually down a bit from last year and experts say flying remains safe overall.

  • Student loan borrowers in default may see wages garnished in 2026

    Student loan borrowers in default may see wages garnished in 2026

    WASHINGTON — The Trump administration said on Tuesday that it will begin garnishing the wages of student loan borrowers who are in default early next year.

    The department said it will send notices to approximately 1,000 borrowers the week of January 7, with more notices to come at an increasing scale each month.

    Millions of borrowers are considered in default, meaning they are 270 days past due on their payments. The department must give borrowers 30 days notice before their wages can be garnished.

    The department said it will begin collection activities, “only after student and parent borrowers have been provided sufficient notice and opportunity to repay their loans.”

    In May, the Trump administration ended the pandemic-era pause on student loan payments, beginning to collect on defaulted debt through withholding tax refunds and other federal payments to borrowers.

    The move ended a period of leniency for student loan borrowers. Payments restarted in October of 2023, but the Biden administration extended a grace period of one year. Since March 2020, no federal student loans had been referred for collection, including those in default, until the Trump administration’s changes earlier this year.

    The Biden administration tried multiple times to give broad forgiveness to student loans, but those efforts were eventually stopped by courts.

    Persis Yu, deputy executive director for the Student Borrower Protection Center, criticized the decision to begin garnishing wages, and said the department had failed to sufficiently help borrowers find affordable payment options.

    “At a time when families across the country are struggling with stagnant wages and an affordability crisis, this administration’s decision to garnish wages from defaulted student loan borrowers is cruel, unnecessary, and irresponsible,” Yu said in a statement. “As millions of borrowers sit on the precipice of default, this Administration is using its self-inflicted limited resources to seize borrowers’ wages instead of defending borrowers’ right to affordable payments.”

    ___

    The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

  • Delaware state trooper killed while responding to active shooter at DMV

    Delaware state trooper killed while responding to active shooter at DMV

    A Delaware State Police trooper was shot and killed while responding to a report of an active shooter on Tuesday in Wilmington.

    “One Delaware State Trooper has been confirmed killed during this incident,” Delaware State Police said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “We are continuing to assess additional injuries.”

    The suspected shooter was also “confirmed deceased,” Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer wrote on X.

    “Today is a tragic one for our State,” U.S. Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester said in a statement Tuesday evening.

    “The holiday season should be about joy and celebration, not senseless acts of violence,” she said. “I am thankful for the swift and courageous action by law enforcement who worked immediately to counter the threat.”

    “This officer put on their uniform this morning and went to work to make our community safer. Now, they will never come home. This is devastating for their family, their fellow officers, and our entire state,” said U.S. Sen Chris Coons in a statement. “Our law enforcement community is a strong one — knit together through courage and a determination to serve. I’m grateful for their brave actions today that likely saved lives.”

    State police first posted on X around 2 p.m., saying there was an active shooter at the Department of Motor Vehicles bureau on Hessler Boulevard, close to Interstate 495 and Route 13.

    In a follow-up post, police said one suspect was in custody. They asked people to avoid the area during their investigation and said further updates would follow.

  • Philly DJ killed in hit-and-run remembered for creating ‘sanctuary on the dance floor’

    Philly DJ killed in hit-and-run remembered for creating ‘sanctuary on the dance floor’

    June Rodriguez, 54, was riding his bike home after his shift at Bob & Barbara’s Lounge early Saturday morning — he refused to own a car in order to stay in shape — when he was killed in a hit-and-run.

    Rodriguez was turning onto North 56th Street from Lancaster Avenue in Overbrook around 3:45 a.m. when the driver of a red SUV swerved into him and drove away, according to Philadelphia police.

    In between angry sobs, his mother, Miriam Rodriguez, described a violent death that ran so counter to the way her son lived. She said his chest was crushed, his spine severed, and the driver just left him on the cold street.

    “Growing up, he was always a good kid and everybody loved him, he had that kind of charisma,” she said. “It’s hard for somebody to come and hit him with a car and not do nothing about it.”

    Police are investigating, looking for tips that could lead to an arrest.

    Meanwhile, the sudden death of the longtime DJ, a decades-long presence at Bob & Barbara’s, has left a hole in Philly’s queer community and the house music scene.

    Born in the Bronx, Rodriguez was always into music, his mother said. He took to the oldies and the salsa music his mother would play when cleaning the house. His love of music spread to dance, and he eventually got into breakdancing.

    Rodriguez’s love of music was contagious, according to those who knew him, and garnered him many friends when he arrived in Philly around the mid-aughts.

    Though straight, Rodriguez was a longtime member of the drag show DJ team at Bob & Barbara’s and well-known among Philly’s LGBTQ+ community, playing at Pride events.

    June Rodriguez (L), 54, and his son Skye Rodriguez. The older Rodriguez was a beloved Philly house DJ and well-known ally and presence in the LGBTQ community. He was killed in a hit-and-run.

    When Rodriguez’s only son, Skye, came out to his father as transgender, the DJ was “fully on board” and seamlessly began introducing him as his son, Skye Rodriguez said. Rodriguez was even trying to get his son to leave Reading and move to Philly, where he would have access to a larger LGBTQ+ community.

    “He wanted me to be as happy as possible,” Skye Rodriguez said. “He was like, ‘You know, I’ll do anything I can to get you here.’”

    In the days after his death, longtime friends and acquaintances have flooded social media with remembrances.

    Bob & Barbara’s mourned Rodriguez in a Facebook post. He’d had a decades-long relationship with the bar, working as door greeter, security, and occasional barback over the years. His latest venture there was learning how to tend bar, according to the lounge.

    “His passion for music radiated through every part of his life and he created an expansive and diverse community through his art,” the post read.

    Cameron Guthrie, a longtime friend who met Rodriguez in the now-closed Liaison Room, said Rodriguez was so beloved because of how supportive he could be, even to borderline strangers.

    “He was everybody’s biggest fan,” said Guthrie, who also DJs, and remembers how Rodriguez was constantly telling him he should be playing in New York City, especially when his music wasn’t finding an audience in Philly.

    “When others would read you to filth, he’d root for you.”

    The community Rodriguez built has been visible in the days following his death. Outside of the online tributes, his son said a local music festival, called Departed, dedicated proceeds from its after-hours party Saturday to his funeral expenses. Rodriguez had been slated to play the after-hours event.

    “I didn’t realize how many friends and people loved him until I went to the set that he was supposed to play the other night, and saw how many people showed up for him,” his son said.

    Guthrie and other DJ friends organized a similarly popular dance party Sunday at Penn Treaty Park. A GoFundMe that said Rodriguez created “a sanctuary on the dance floor” has raised more than $17,000 for funeral expenses.

    Safe-streets advocates, meanwhile, are calling attention to the dangerous conditions on the strip of road where Rodriguez was killed.

    A long stretch of Lancaster Avenue has long been identified, by the city’s own calculations, as one of the most dangerous in Philadelphia, part of the 12% of city streets that account for 80% of traffic deaths and serious injuries. It has been listed on what is called the high-injury network for years.

    Just in September, a 77-year-old pedestrian was killed in a hit-and-run at 54th Street and Lancaster Avenue, not far from where Rodriguez was killed.

    The strip does have a bike lane, but advocates say it should be protected to prevent reckless drivers from using it as a shoulder or turning lane.

    “The frequent appearance of one road on the high-injury network is proof that the current configuration is unsafe for everyone, and PennDot, who controls the street, is not doing enough to fix it,” Philly Bike Action said in a statement, adding Rodriguez’s death was the seventh cyclist fatality in the city this year.

  • Federal judge says Trump administration must restore disaster money to Democratic states

    Federal judge says Trump administration must restore disaster money to Democratic states

    PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to reallocate federal Homeland Security funding away from states that refuse to cooperate with certain federal immigration enforcement.

    U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy’s ruling on Monday solidified a win for the coalition of 12 attorneys general that sued the administration earlier this year after being alerted that their states would receive drastically reduced federal grants due to their “sanctuary” jurisdictions.

    In total, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency reduced more than $233 million from Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. The money is part of a $1 billion program where allocations are supposed to be based on assessed risks, with states then largely passing most of the money on to police and fire departments.

    The cuts were unveiled shortly after a separate federal judge in a different legal challenge ruled it was unconstitutional for the federal government to require states to cooperate on immigration enforcement actions to get FEMA disaster funding.

    In her 48-page ruling, McElroy found that the federal government was weighing states’ police on federal immigration enforcement on whether to reduce federal funding for the Homeland Security Grant Program and others.

    “What else could defendants’ decisions to cut funding to specific counterterrorism programming by conspicuous round numbered amounts — including by slashing off the millions-place digits of awarded sums — be if not arbitrary and capricious? Neither a law degree nor a degree in mathematics is required to deduce that no plausible, rational formula could produce this result,” McElroy wrote.

    The Trump-appointed judge then ordered the Department of Homeland Security to restore the previously announced funding allocations to the plaintiff states.

    “Defendants’ wanton abuse of their role in federal grant administration is particularly troublesome given the fact that they have been entrusted with a most solemn duty: safeguarding our nation and its citizens,” McElroy wrote. ”While the intricacies of administrative law and the terms and conditions on federal grants may seem abstract to some, the funding at issue here supports vital counterterrorism and law enforcement programs.”

    McElroy notably cited the recent Brown University attack, where a gunman killed two students and injured nine others, as an event where the $1 billion federal program would be vital in responding to such a tragedy.

    “To hold hostage funding for programs like these based solely on what appear to be defendants’ political whims is unconscionable and, at least here, unlawful,” the Rhode Island-based judge wrote in her ruling, issued little more than a week after the Brown shooting.

    Emails seeking comment were sent to the DHS and FEMA.

    “This victory ensures that the Trump Administration cannot punish states that refuse to help carry out its cruel immigration agenda, particularly by denying them lifesaving funding that helps prepare for and respond to disasters and emergencies,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell in a statement.

  • ‘It’s a war’: Inside ICE’s media machine

    ‘It’s a war’: Inside ICE’s media machine

    For the Immigration and Customs Enforcement public affairs team, the nighttime operation across metro Houston in October was a gold mine.

    An ICE video producer shadowed agents as they pulled over and handcuffed more than 120 suspected undocumented immigrants, then sent the footage to a private team chat room.

    — — —

    ICE official 1, Oct. 29, 2:10 p.m.: Arrests are wonderful!

    ICE video producer 1, Oct. 29, 2:13 p.m.: Great shooting!

    — — —

    Across thousands of internal ICE messages reviewed by the Washington Post, this kind of celebration has become commonplace. The messages show how the team has worked closely with the White House, which has urged them to produce videos for social media of immigrant arrests and confrontations to portray its push for mass deportation as critical to protecting the American way of life.

    Before officials could post the Houston video, they had to figure out how to frame it. Officials did not know if all the arrestees had criminal records, they wrote in the chats, undermining a slogan the team had worked to promote on social media: that ICE targeted the “Worst of the Worst.”

    — — —

    ICE video producer 2, Oct. 29, 2:36 p.m.: We made several dozen arrests today very quickly. Not sure if these all had criminal histories beyond being in the U.S. illegally.

    — — —

    After some discussion, the team decided on a compromise.

    — — —

    ICE official 2, Oct. 29, 6:30 p.m.: I’d like to try to put this out without focusing on the aliens or their crimes, but to demonstrate that we’re out working hard.

    — — —

    Instead of arguing they’d snared hardened criminals, officials wrote a caption saying the arrests showed the dangers of “illegal aliens … behind the wheel.”

    Then, to maximize the video’s chances of going viral, they needed a soundtrack.

    — — —

    ICE video producer 1, Oct. 30, 1:13 p.m.: think country songs … this is Houston after all.

    Emily Covington, ICE assistant director for public affairs, Oct. 30, 1:39 p.m.: I feel like we need something a little more hard-core

    — — —

    They settled on a rap song by Nbhd Nick, which his label would later tell the Post was used without permission, that starts, “Oh, you thought this was a game, huh?”

    The video was posted to ICE’s social media channels, where it has been viewed more than 1 million times in total.

    For years, this ICE team had run like a routine government communications shop, dispensing public service announcements and news releases few Americans would see. But during President Donald Trump’s second term, ICE’s public affairs arm has rapidly transformed into an influencer-style media machine, churning out flashy videos of tactical operations and immigration raids.

    The internal communications reviewed by the Post show how the ICE team has coordinated with the White House, working to satisfy Trump aides’ demands to “flood the airwaves,” as one official urged in the messages, with brash content showing immigrants being chased, grabbed and detained.

    They also show federal officials mocking immigrants in crass terms and discussing video edits that might help legitimize the administration’s aggressive stance. The team also knowingly used copyright-protected music without permission from the rights holders, among other techniques designed to boost their online attention.

    Six current or former officials at the Department of Homeland Security, which runs ICE, told the Post that the video effort had broken from the more careful and methodical work of past administrations. They spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.

    The Post reviewed chats and other materials provided by people familiar with internal discussions. They did so on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the disclosures.

    David Lapan, the first DHS press secretary during Trump’s first term and a longtime critic who has argued the second Trump administration politicized the agency, said the current strategy is unrecognizable compared to the more “professional and buttoned-up” operations under past presidents that worked to describe law enforcement activities clinically and apolitically, for fear of inflaming anger against agents in the field.

    “We were supposed to present the facts, not hype things up. But this veers into propaganda, into creating fear,” said Lapan, a retired Marine Corps colonel. “We didn’t have this meme-ification of various serious operations, these things that are life or death. … It’s not a joking matter. But that’s the way they’re treating it now.”

    White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said, “President Trump and his entire team are working at breakneck speed to keep our promises, deport criminal illegal aliens, and get information out to the public — that’s a good thing and the American people deserve no less.”

    DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said the White House had given the communications wings of DHS and ICE “autonomy to create content that is effectively reaching the American public.” The social media posts that used copyrighted material without permission had been preapproved by administration lawyers, she said.

    DHS public affairs officials, she added, were proud to break with the strategies of past administrations because their work has proved more successful at getting people’s attention.

    “They were irrelevant,” she said, “and we’ve made it matter.”

    ‘Feed the beast’

    Launched after the Sept. 11 attacks, ICE and DHS had always functioned as traditional law enforcement agencies focused on public safety and with minimal tools for self-promotion.

    Their public affairs divisions employed small teams of video producers, mostly for unexceptional tasks: facilitating TV interviews, running the cameras at workforce retirement ceremonies, recording safety commercials for the Super Bowl. Some producers traveled to make videos when DHS agents took down sex abusers or crime rings. Video producers would film targeted operations, a current DHS official said, but immigration enforcement was only a fraction of the workload.

    After the start of Trump’s second term, however, ICE’s ranks swelled as federal agents were diverted to immigration enforcement and the One Big Beautiful Bill tripled the agency’s annual budget to deliver on the White House’s promises to secure the southern border and speed up deportations. ICE’s average arrest count jumped from around 300 a day last year to more than 800 a day since Trump took office, according to a Post analysis of ICE data released by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California at Berkeley.

    DHS’s media operation was no exception. Public affairs teams were injected with a new crew of political appointees who had orders from the White House to treat immigration as their top priority and produce dramatized visuals of ICE operations and arrests to command user attention, the current and former officials told the Post. The video teams’ workload exploded, and immigration became the only topic anyone could pursue, according to interviews.

    “We’re not doing child pornography cases. We’re not doing human trafficking cases,” one current DHS official told the Post. “Everything is immigration.”

    ICE’s public affairs team included several dozen public affairs officers, producers, and strategists, scattered between its Washington headquarters and local field offices across the country, current DHS officials said. Members of ICE’s visual communications team, embedded in the public affairs division and known as “viscom,” began recording in the field more frequently, accompanying officers on raids and removal operations, shooting video day and night, interviews and chats showed. Any video producer who witnessed a particularly cinematic scene was expected to alert their supervisors, so the agency and the White House could promote it on their social media channels. Employees on ICE’s “digital engagement” team then raced to edit and post the footage on social media in hopes of securing a viral win.

    Emily Covington, ICE’s assistant director for public affairs, frequently requested “good arrest videos” and asked the team to devote its energy to capturing “high profile arrests,” the internal messages show. Laszlo Baksay, a deputy assistant director, asked the public affairs team in the chat to flag stories where “aliens with criminal history are being employed,” to counter media reports that the agency was grabbing “ordinary aliens just trying to earn a living.”

    Covington and Baksay declined to comment further on the chat messages.

    The team began working like a professional influencer operation, creating a “social media check list” of caught-on-camera arrests, sharing metrics with senior officials, using paid social media tracking tools and cataloguing all of their Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, and X posts, ranked by impressions and engagement rate.

    Covington pushed the team in internal chats in late May to be more “proactive” in pushing out videos.

    — — —

    Emily Covington, ICE assistant director for public affairs, May 21, 7:52 p.m.: What PR tactics can we deploy that we don’t typically? Should we feed info to an influencer? … Using judgment to ID something likely to go viral or bubble up and gain attention. Right now we are learning from the media, let’s feed the beast first with the good work ICE is doing each and every day.

    — — —

    A week after Covington’s message, in late May, the team got its first viral video. The clip showed ICE agents leaping out of an SUV and confronting men on the curb of a home improvement store in Baltimore. The men were shoved face down onto the street and handcuffed while an agent said, “Calle la boca” — in Spanish, “shut your mouth.” In an X post, ICE called the video “action-packed.”

    — — —

    ICE official 3, May 28, 11:57 a.m.: 2.1M views and nearly 7,000 shares in 13 hours! Awesome work!

    — — —

    But the real celebration came shortly after, when the White House reposted the video on its Instagram and X accounts, labeling it an “EPIC Takedown.”

    — — —

    ICE official 4, May 28, 3:22 p.m.: White House just ran with it!

    — — —

    The post, from one of the team’s political appointees, led to a burst of hearts and shock-face emojis.

    As the media operation ramped up, DHS posted several videos containing clear errors around their operations, using misleading footage that showed scenes recorded thousands of miles away from where the video described, the Post has previously reported.

    Other edits were aimed at presenting events in ways that supported the administration’s narratives. In May, Covington asked, at the White House’s request, whether a video of a deportation flight from Texas could be re-edited so that the clips “don’t feature tons of females?” An ICE official responded that a video producer would “re-edit the b-roll to exclude the females,” the chats show.

    Officials worked to find ways to describe many of the people arrested as the “Worst of the Worst,” a slogan DHS and ICE began using in January to argue that their agents hunted only the most dangerous criminals. When one official asked in the chat what producers should say in their videos when arrestees had no criminal history, another responded that they should work to find something else “newsworthy” to highlight, like an “egregious immigration history.”

    Public affairs officers were told to rewrite their news releases and online posts with stronger, more aggressive language if they wanted the agency’s main communications channels to promote them, one said in an interview. “If the truth of the operation does not match the narrative of the ‘worst of the worst,’ it’s going to be killed,” the official said.

    The team gave right-wing media figures premium access to immigration operations and received favorable coverage. In June, about three months before he was killed, right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk posted what he said was “exclusive footage” of ICE officials arresting a “thug.” Covington highlighted the moment in the team’s chat, thanking one official “for getting great footage on today’s arrest.”

    Right-wing influencers with large followings, including “Dr. Phil” McGraw and Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichik, were regularly invited to ride along with law enforcement agents and interview senior officials, according to the Post’s review of their coverage. The pro-Trump influencer Benny Johnson donned a Border Patrol tactical vest to watch a raid at a Walmart in the Chicago area alongside Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem. His X clip celebrating the “amazing” operation’s “wild scenes” has been viewed 1.6 million times.

    A Libs of TikTok representative declined to comment on the relationship. Representatives for Turning Point USA, the organization founded by Kirk, and Johnson did not respond to requests for comment. A representative of McGraw said he had been invited by White House border czar Tom Homan to document ICE enforcement in Chicago and Los Angeles earlier this year.

    In pursuit of more viral video, DHS brought in new public affairs staff members with atypical backgrounds and authorized them to “go out and capture content,” as a chat message said. A MAGA women’s lifestyle influencer, an L.A.-based wedding videographer and a Canadian-born actor who played a “mountain man” in a cable-TV show joined the team.

    DHS encouraged the hires to become intimately involved with agency affairs, the chats and interviews showed. In June, when ICE agents were raiding farms in rural Missouri, the former actor noted it would be a prime chance to make a video. “Would be great to get something like that on film,” he wrote in the chats, suggesting a tagline: “We are everywhere, we will find you.”

    Later, when ICE officials complained about negative media coverage, he worked to bolster their spirits.

    — — —

    ICE official 4, June 20, 12:18 p.m.: The good news is half the country is seeing it, and equally as frustrated. those in the “middle” are who we will continue to slowly reach … It’s a war!

    ‘Flooding the airwaves’

    By June, the public affairs team had for weeks been showing signs of overwork, with some employees consistently working overtime to help satisfy the White House’s constant demands for more content, the chat messages showed.

    The team had discussed bringing on contract videographers to help address outstanding tasks — like a new request to shadow every operation of ICE’s Special Response Team, the elite SWAT-like unit that handles its most dangerous arrests.

    — — —

    Emily Covington, ICE assistant director for public affairs, May, 9 10:42 a.m.: All- as expected, I am getting pressure now about our video capabilities. I need ALL video our PAOs and videographers have captured this week ASAP in one link. This should be the only priority for right now.

    — — —

    But when protests over mass deportation swept L.A. and Trump ordered the deployment of the National Guard in June, the White House ramped up the pressure yet again. Top officials wanted ICE’s public affairs unit to produce more visuals, messages from June 10 show.

    — — —

    ICE official 5, June 10, 12:33 p.m.: We need all hands on deck to start “flooding the airwaves” per White house direction on ALL ICE arrests nationwide today. The request is to flood social and traditional media with imagery of ICE arrests.

    Laszlo Baksay, ICE deputy assistant director, June 10, 12:41 p.m.: How many socials do we have in the que that we paused from the last 2 days?

    ICE official 6, June 10, 12:42 p.m.: “TONS” He said there’s stuff loaded and ready to go

    Laszlo Baksay, ICE deputy assistant director, June 10, 12:42 p.m.: do we have enough to post every 30 mins? Until midnight?

    — — —

    The National Guard deployment presented a challenge for a unit trained to cover preplanned and targeted operations: a vast, citywide video shoot where clashes with protesters could flare up at any time.

    In the chats, the team strategized how to stretch out its content.

    — — —

    ICE official 5, June 10, 12:45 p.m.: My thought would be for locals to post and the HQ can re-tweet, unless there is something really juicy that would get more push coming from HQ.

    Laszlo Baksay, ICE deputy assistant director, June 10, 12:50 p.m.: fire away!

    — — —

    Around 1 p.m., Covington, the ICE public affairs assistant director, instructed her team to highlight arrests in Los Angeles at the White House’s request.

    — — —

    Emily Covington, ICE assistant director for public affairs, June 10, 1:18 p.m.: On White House Call — we need to be highlighting worst of worst LA arrests across relevant accounts/channels. I will be getting a LOT of content from all federal partners today. All flowing through me now.

    — — —

    ICE began to post a flurry of tweets on X in quick succession — almost every half hour. They included visuals of recent immigration raids and mug shots of people the agency said were undocumented immigrants with a criminal history.

    ICE tweeted 38 times over 11 hours. Earlier in the day, the account had posted only three times.

    Officials also floated more ideas to maximize coverage, including pulling in military videographers, known as “combat cameras,” to offer “direct support of designated hotspots.” One official warned the idea came with too many risks, in part because they had been trained for battle, not protests. “It’s different than war photography in a few distinct ways,” the official said.

    The White House directive around the L.A. protests forced the agency to play more of an “attack-dog” role online to keep up with the administration’s demands, one former worker on the DHS media team told the Post.

    “That was the turning point to get even more aggressive with their messaging, and to paint pictures of these places as war-torn,” he said. “There was a much more blustery edge, and a need to put stuff out as quickly as you can. You’re steamrolling everything.”

    The White House has benefited from this symbiotic relationship: The most-watched video on its TikTok account, with more than 45 million views, included DHS operational footage, a photo of a crying arrestee and the caption, “Ahhh that deportation feeling …” (It has since been removed, but the White House declined to say why.)

    In the weeks after the June 10 directive, many National Guard troops left L.A., but the ICE public affairs team kept working at a rapid pace, the chats showed. As plainclothes ICE agents began ramping up arrests of immigrants at courthouses, an ICE official urged the team to “flood all your local social with the imagery from the arrests!”

    The pace became so demanding that one official complained of overwork.

    — — —

    ICE official 7, June 20, 11:53 a.m.: DHS knows we have very little staff right? I know it has been discussed but there has been no change to our staffing and they keep wanting more and more.

    — — —

    When video producers weren’t available, public affairs officers were sent into the field to record ICE activities on their phones — a footage “force multiplier,” one DHS official said in an interview. Officers were traveling more to fill the White House’s almost insatiable demand for visuals, another official said.

    The push, however, left some of the officials fearful for their safety in the field. In July, DHS said, an ICE public affairs specialist was sent to the emergency room with a bloodied hand after being hit by a thrown rock outside a California marijuana farm.

    During an all-team meeting attended by public affairs officers, an official said he had been sent in a T-shirt to scenes where agents were wearing body armor, an ICE official recalled. (An ICE spokesman said the agency now ensures that public affairs officials have protective equipment, including body armor and first aid kits.)

    Still, public affairs officials have participated in the immigration operations. In September, Covington said in an internal chat message that she had been on a ride-along with federal agents when an immigrant from Venezuela was apprehended. “Target was a runner — I spotted him and we made the arrest,” she wrote.

    She uploaded photos of the man in handcuffs and asked in the chat whether he had been a known gang member, saying he “had some interesting tats.” An ICE legal associate told her their files showed no evidence of gang membership. Some of her colleagues congratulated her nonetheless. “Go [Public Affairs Office] Go!” one replied.

    The White House’s frenzy for more content, and DHS officials’ scramble to produce, led the team to push the boundaries in ways that disturbed some of its employees.

    ICE’s X account posted a video of a bound protester in Portland, Ore., being wheeled into custody face down on a flatbed cart, with the background lyrics, “they see me rollin’.” DHS’s account posted a clip of Illinois protesters and said, “Get a job you imbecilic morons.” It also shared a Halloween-styled montage of arrestees’ mug shots and warned there would be “no sanctuary for creatures & criminals of the night.”

    “They just went nuts,” a recently departed DHS producer told the Post. “It was no limit. … It was like if someone from Reddit took over.”

    Some prosecutors in U.S. attorneys’ offices complained to public affairs officials that the brash social media posts could jeopardize their cases by raising questions about bias or tainting the jury pool, one official said. (McLaughlin, the DHS spokeswoman, said she’d not heard this and said that if officials are so concerned about it, they should convey it to her, not journalists.)

    But that style of crass humor was also common in the ICE team’s internal chats. Four days after Trump’s inauguration, an official shared a meme that read like a warning to migrants inside the country: “Hide Yo Wife. Hide Yo Kids.” Another official poked fun at a migrant’s mug shot, labeling him an “MS13 heart throb” in reference to the gang.

    In June, after Los Angeles Dodgers officials said they had blocked ICE agents from accessing their parking lots, one ICE official made a joke about the team’s Japanese superstar pitcher, who has played for American teams since 2018.

    — — —

    ICE official 8, June 20, 11:41 a.m.: Can we double check Shohei Ohtani’s immigration paperwork???

    — — —

    McLaughlin said that every organization has “conversations that you don’t think are going to get out to the public” but that she is not “going to lose sleep over” anything in the messages.

    ICE’s shifting attitude toward public messaging was especially noticeable in its use of music without the artists’ or labels’ permission, current and former DHS officials said, which past administrations had been far more cautious about. Some officials said in the chat that they were indifferent to the potential perils. When one employee raised concerns about copyright violations, another wrote back, dismissing them.

    At least five DHS and ICE videos have been taken down from X in recent months following complaints from representatives of the comedian Theo Von, the band MGMT, and rappers Jay-Z, Joey Valence, and Chamillionaire. Other companies and creators have complained that their intellectual property was used without permission, including the Pokémon Co., whose cartoon style was mimicked for a DHS video captioned “Gotta Catch ‘Em All.”

    Trump administration officials have defended the intensity of their media operation to reporters by saying it’s what Americans want: visual proof that Trump is fulfilling his promise to deport millions of immigrants nationwide.

    But ICE’s social media onslaught appears to have done little to change Americans’ attitudes en masse. The share of Americans saying immigration is a good thing for the country leaped to 79% in July, a record high, a Gallup poll found in July. About 62% of Americans said they disliked how Trump was handling the issue.

    Despite this, the media operations at DHS show no signs of slowing down. Inside the ICE team, the chats showed, many were proud of their work — and committed for the long haul.

    In August, after an ICE official shared census numbers showing the country’s immigrant population had dropped by 2 million, an ICE legal associate responded simply: “Only 40 million to go.”

  • CEO of South Philadelphia Bitcoin mining company defrauded investors out of $48.5 million, regulators say

    CEO of South Philadelphia Bitcoin mining company defrauded investors out of $48.5 million, regulators say

    For years after the abrupt folding of a South Philadelphia-based company that promised big returns on cryptocurrency, investors who lost thousands of dollars had two questions — where was the firm’s elusive CEO, and when would he be held accountable?

    A lawsuit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission this month is offering answers.

    Danh C. Vo, the 37-year-old founder of the now-defunct VBit Technologies Corp., was accused last week of misappropriating more than $48 million of investor funds in a nationwide scheme that affected 6,400 people. Vo’s alleged victims, many of them in the Philadelphia region, gave him money to maintain highly advanced computers they believed would generate passive income through the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

    But Vo, whose company lured potential investors into a multilevel marketing program with sports cars and luxury watches, instead ran something of a one-man shadow company, according to the SEC’s 28-page complaint, filed in federal court last Wednesday.

    While Vo possessed some of the computers — devices that process cryptocurrency transactions and reward the owner with a fraction of Bitcoin in exchange for maintaining the costly technology — SEC investigators found VBit’s customers did not own the computers Vo said he had sold them.

    That was hardly the only alleged fabrication in VBit’s four-year existence.

    In all, Vo raised more than $95 million from investors and kept much of the Bitcoin the company generated in a personal account before fleeing the Philadelphia area to Vietnam in 2021, SEC investigators say.

    Weeks earlier, Vo had learned he was the subject of a federal investigation.

    As customers grew increasingly suspicious of VBit’s supposed sale that winter to an “Asia-based company” — an organization the SEC now says existed only on paper — Vo blamed his lack of communication on mysterious health issues, the complaint says.

    All the while, the company’s day-to-day operations ground to a halt and investors found they were no longer able to withdraw their money.

    The complaint also names a handful of Vo’s family members, who are not accused of wrongdoing but have been ordered to return investor funds.

    Investigators say that before he fled the country, Vo gifted $5 million to his wife and others close to him.

    Vo has yet to hire an attorney, court records show. The complaint does not show whether investigators know his current location. He could not be reached by phone, and a number for his wife was disconnected.

    Bitcoin ‘without the headaches’

    Before the cryptocurrency industry’s rise in the public eye, Bitcoin and other digital tokens were considered niche financial tools used by only the most devout believers.

    Then, in the thick of the pandemic, crypto was seemingly everywhere, from Matt Damon-assisted Super Bowl commercials to the portfolios of billion-dollar hedge funds and international banking institutions.

    When used for making transactions or storing value, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can serve legitimate purposes.

    But companies like VBit took the hype a step further. In the view of burgeoning executives like Vo, “mining” for Bitcoin with advanced computers offered the average person a near-mythic opportunity to get rich.

    Vo started VBit Technologies in 2018 with the uninitiated in mind. He set up shop in a redbrick office building on bustling Washington Avenue, keeping a small staff of employees there.

    The scene at 1625 Washington Avenue Tuesday Dec. 13, 2022. The sign reads “Advanced Mining” the business that acquired the cryptocurrency company VBit Technologies which is facing several new lawsuits in federal court after its customers claim the company froze them out of millions of dollars in assets this summer.

    An investigation published in The Inquirer in 2022 found some of Vo’s customers had little knowledge of how cryptocurrencies actually worked. SEC investigators say customers believed VBit would provide them with a “turnkey solution” for those complexities.

    Vo sold investors “hosting agreements” for the computers that, in some cases, cost upward of $100,000 per package, according to the complaint. VBit told customers that if they purchased one of the Bitcoin-earning computers, the company would pool together their devices’ collective computing power, generating even greater returns.

    Vo owned a building in rural Montana and leased facilities elsewhere to house thousands of the noisy devices, which use massive amounts of power and rarely make sense for an individual to operate at home.

    As the Bitcoin piled up, customers tracked their profits on digital portals that VBit had created for them.

    According to the SEC, those figures were nothing more than pixels on a screen.

    The complaint says the actual profits went directly into accounts that only Vo controlled. Meanwhile, customers had no way to know what exactly the CEO had even sold them.

    Investors were not provided serial numbers for their computers, and were largely barred from visiting the far-flung facilities that housed them, according to the complaint. Instead, Vo alone controlled the devices — and sold many more than he actually possessed.

    In 2021, the company’s peak sales year, VBit sold agreements to host more than 8,400 computers, according to the complaint. The company had just 1,643 on hand.

    Meanwhile, of the $48 million of investor funds Vo allegedly misappropriated, the CEO “gambled away” around $32 million on other cryptocurrency investments, the complaint says.

    For customers who did choose to cash in on their profits, Vo kept several million in a separate account to dole out. Still, the SEC found that VBit had never had enough money to back up the total value of the investments.

    And because many customers had only partially purchased their computers, using their newfound income to pay VBit back the balance they owed on the device, the scheme largely averted their suspicions.

    At least until the company’s final days.

    A mysterious exit

    On Oct. 19, 2021, Vo learned the SEC was investigating his company for selling unregistered securities, according to the complaint.

    The CEO soon began laying the seeds of a supposed sale of his company to a new firm, Advanced Mining Group.

    A website for Advanced Mining was registered on Nov. 1, and by January 2022, a news release went out to crypto-related news outlets announcing that VBit had been sold for more than $100 million.

    The sale would give Vo “peace of mind and freedom to focus on my health,” the CEO said in a cryptic statement.

    Meanwhile, investigators say, Vo began transferring investors’ money to his family and himself.

    More than $15 million went to Vo’s personal bank account, according to the complaint. His sister received $300,000, his brother, $500,000, and his mother, $100,000.

    Vo’s daughter, who is a minor, received $1 million in a trust fund. None of the family members provided services in exchange for the funds, the complaint says.

    The only person who received more than Vo’s daughter was his wife, Phuong D. Vo. The CEO gifted her $1.8 million over a monthlong period, according to the complaint.

    And on Nov. 19 — the day Vo began transferring the funds — he filed for divorce from his wife, the complaint says. The CEO’s travel records indicated he was headed for Vietnam the following day.

    For VBit’s customers, Vo’s secretive exit and the supposed sale to Advanced Mining began a period of decline and confusion.

    Customers who had been incentivized to recruit other investors through video-based information sessions soon began to lose communication with those higher up in the marketing chain.

    And for the sliver of investors who had been cashing in, withdrawals went from taking hours to weeks. By June 2022, customers found they were frozen out of their accounts entirely.

    Attempting to explain the chaos, representatives with Advanced Mining told customers through email that the company was having regulatory issues with the SEC. The agency declined to comment on any such probe at the time.

    In July, Advanced Mining promised refunds that investors say never came. By the fall, company communication had gone dark.

    Customers soon launched a series of unsuccessful lawsuits in multiple states, hoping to claw back their money via a judge. In Washington state, financial regulators opened a smaller-scale investigation into potential fraud on behalf of a group of residents.

    In group chats on the messaging app Telegram, hundreds of investors began to gather, finding solace that others, too, had allegedly been victims of Vo’s company. Members spent the months after VBit’s collapse speculating about the CEO’s whereabouts and the increasingly unlikely odds of getting their money back.

    The SEC’s lawsuit this month signals the first sign of closure in those customers’ yearslong quest for justice.

    There has not been a post in one of those chats, dubbed “PA Advanced Mining Lawsuit Group,” since 2023.

  • Lower Merion commissioners approve 8% tax hike, citing ‘looming cliff’ after 13 years of no increase

    Lower Merion commissioners approve 8% tax hike, citing ‘looming cliff’ after 13 years of no increase

    Lower Merion residents will see an 8% increase on their property tax bill in 2026, a move commissioners say is a necessary remedy to the “mistake” of keeping tax rates stagnant for over a decade.

    The township board of commissioners on Dec. 17 approved an 8% property tax increase for next year. The increase will bring the property tax millage rate from 4.462 mills to 4.819 mills. The median single-family homeowner in Lower Merion will pay around $1,386 in real estate taxes, a $103 increase from 2025.

    The 8% tax increase approved by commissioners is lower than the 9.5% increase proposed by staff and supported by board President Todd Sinai. The board landed on the 8% hike after a protracted discussion about how much of an increase residents could, and should, shoulder in 2026.

    Commissioners acknowledged the “sticker shock” of the tax hike but said years of stagnant tax revenue had put the township in an impossible position. Real estate taxes did not increase for 13 consecutive years in Lower Merion, from 2011 to 2024. The township voted to raise taxes by 6.5% for 2025, the first increase in over a decade.

    “Those years of no tax increase have proven to be a mistake, given that each year we were presented with a structural deficit and a looming cliff,” Commissioner Ray Courtney said. “By holding out on increases as long as we did, we have painted ourselves into a corner.”

    Under the proposed 9.5% tax hike, Lower Merion projected $83.8 million in general fund expenditures in 2026 against a revenue of $79.3 million. With the 8% tax hike passed by the board, revenue will be lower and the township will have to lean more heavily on its general fund reserves to cover the deficit.

    Around half of Lower Merion’s revenue comes from real estate taxes, yet township residents continue to pay taxes calculated on property values established in 1998, the last time Montgomery County conducted a property reassessment.

    The decades-old property values have kept tax revenue low, relative to the high market costs of a home in Lower Merion. The median sale price for a home in Lower Merion was $803,500 in 2024, according to data from Montgomery County.

    Notably, only 10% of Lower Merion residents’ property taxes goes to the township. Around 12% goes to Montgomery County and 78% goes to the school district.

    Montgomery County will be increasing taxes by 4% in 2026.

    In a Nov. 7 report addressed to the board of commissioners, Township Manager Ernie McNeely wrote that, while Lower Merion has weathered the post-pandemic economy with relative success, its general fund has run a deficit multiple times since 2020.

    McNeely’s report points to three major burdens on Lower Merion’s budget in 2026: healthcare premiums, staffing costs, and the Solid Waste Fund.

    The township is expected to see a 20% increase in healthcare premium costs in 2026. McNeely’s report said the increase is due, in part, to the costs associated with nondiabetic weight-loss drugs and other “specialty pharmaceuticals.”

    Lower Merion Township’s employment vacancy rate is also expected to fall in 2026. While a lower vacancy rate is good for departments needing to fill positions, each percentage-point improvement in the employment vacancy rate costs the township $520,000. On top of the falling vacancy rate, over 35% of township staff are set to receive a salary boost in 2026.

    And the town’s Solid Waste Fund is in dire straits. Even with the 5% solid waste fee rate hike planned for 2026, the fund is set to face a $700,000 deficit. Rising costs for disposal, equipment, and personnel, as well as a declining regional market of mills able to purchase paper recycling material, were identified as the main reasons for cost increases.

    The major challenges outlined by McNeely are set to the backdrop of persistent inflation, which is putting cost pressures on local governments.

    This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.

  • In Taylor Swift’s ‘End of an Era’ docuseries, Philly is everywhere

    In Taylor Swift’s ‘End of an Era’ docuseries, Philly is everywhere

    She may be a Chiefs fan now, but Taylor Swift can’t just shake off ties to her home state.

    In The End of an Era, the six-part docuseries about the pop star’s monumental “Eras Tour,” small nods to Philadelphia can be found laced throughout.

    The Disney+ series debuted Dec. 12 and its final two episodes dropped Tuesday.

    From a certain sweatshirt, to her audiobook of choice, to the series’ directors, here’s a quick look at all the connections we’ve spotted so far.

    1. The Eagles sweatshirt

    At the beginning of “Eras Tour” rehearsals, in a Before-Travis Kelce (BTK) timeline, the Berks County native is shown wearing a gray oversized Eagles sweatshirt as she walks into a practice space.

    Paparazzi have spotted Swift repping the crew neck before, which is fitting since she’s discussed at length over the years her memories of her dad watching Eagles games and her love for the team.

    In fact, on her first Philadelphia night of the “Eras Tour,” Swift sang “gold rush” as a surprise song and confirmed the lyric “my Eagles T-shirt hanging from the door,” was in fact about the team and not the band.

    “I love the band the Eagles, but guys, like, come on, I’m from Philly,” Swift said that night in 2023 (and yes, a celebratory Birds chant did break out from the crowd).

    It’s also worth noting that Swift’s Eagles sweatshirt appears to be unofficial — the team’s house style dictates that the eagle profile should always face left, with the plumage forming a subtle letter ‘E.’

    Of course as the docuseries progresses, we see an After-Travis Kelce (ATK) style evolution, and a lot more red and gold — gross.

    2. The audiobook

    At a point in the series where Swift is trying to calm her nerves, she lies on a couch and starts listening to an audiobook.

    It turns out, that book excerpt was from none other than South Philly author Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods.

    Moore and her book, which is a multigenerational mystery drama set in the Adirondacks, are having a good year. The God of the Woods was on multiple book club shortlists, including Barack Obama’s, and was just announced for a Netflix adaptation last week. Moore will serve as a co-showrunner, writer, and executive producer.

    Swift wasn’t alone in her book selection. The God of the Woods was the most checked-out print book of the year across all of Philadelphia’s library branches. (We don’t know about audiobook stats because those are managed by a third party.)

    3. Scenes from Philly shows at the Linc

    In the portion of the series that discusses the sheer pandemonium that the “Eras Tour” caused, with epic tailgates (known as Taylorgates), economic boosts, and overall good vibes, it seems only right that footage from outside the Philly shows were used as the ultimate visual aid.

    The docuseries even relies on a Philly voice to summarize things best:

    “I’ve never seen this before in my life,” Jon McCann, a local content creator who goes by The Philly Captain, says in a perfectly thick regional accent. “It’s like Woodstock but without the drugs.”

    4. The directors and post-production

    The End of an Era was directed by Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce, the local duo behind films including Rock School, Batman & Bill, and notably, Kelce — the documentary about Swift’s soon-to-be brother-in-law and former Eagle, Jason Kelce. The directors are both based in Philadelphia.

    All six episode credits also list Philadelphia as a post-production location.

  • A look at aging baby boomers in the United States

    A look at aging baby boomers in the United States

    The oldest baby boomers — once the vanguard of an American youth that revolutionized U.S. culture and politics — turn 80 in 2026.

    The generation that twirled the first plastic hula hoops and dressed up the first Barbie dolls, embraced the TV age, blissed out at Woodstock and protested and fought in the Vietnam War — the cohort that didn’t trust anyone over age 30 — now is contributing to the overall aging of America.

    Boomers becoming octogenarians in 2026 include actor Henry Winkler and baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, singers Cher and Dolly Parton and presidents Donald Trump, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.

    The aging and shrinking youth of America

    America’s population swelled with around 76 million births from 1946 to 1964, a spike magnified by couples reuniting after World War Two and enjoying postwar prosperity.

    Boomers were better educated and richer than previous generations, and they helped grow a consumer-driven economy. In their youth, they pushed for social change through the Civil Rights Movement, the women’s rights movement and efforts to end the Vietnam War.

    “We had rock ‘n’ roll. We were the first generation to get out and demonstrate in the streets. We were the first generation, that was, you know, a socially conscious generation,” said Diane West, a metro Atlanta resident who turns 80 in January. “Our parents played by the rules. We didn’t necessarily play by the rules, and there were lots of us.”

    As they got older they became known as the “me” generation, a pejorative term coined by writer Tom Wolfe to reflect what some regarded as their self-absorption and consumerism.

    “The thing about baby boomers is they’ve always had a spotlight on them, no matter what age they were,” Brookings demographer William Frey said. “They were a big generation, but they also did important things.”

    By the end of this decade, all baby boomers will be 65 and older, and the number of people 80 and over will double in 20 years, Frey said.

    The share of senior citizens in the U.S. population is projected to grow from 18.7% in 2025 to nearly 23% by 2050, while children under 18 decline from almost 21% to a projected 18.4%.

    Without any immigration, the U.S. population will start shrinking in five years. That’s when deaths will surpass births, according to projections from the Congressional Budget Office, which were revised in September to account for the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Population growth comes from immigration as well as births outpacing deaths.

    The aging of America is being compounded by longer lives due to better healthcare and lower birth rates.

    The projected average U.S. life expectancy at birth rises from 78.9 years in 2025 to 82.2 years in 2055, according to the CBO. And since the Great Recession in 2008, when the fertility rate was 2.08, around the 2.1 rate needed for children to numerically replace their parents, it has been on a steady decline, hitting 1.6 in 2025.

    Younger generations miss boomer milestones

    Women are having fewer children because they are better educated, they’re delaying marriage to focus on careers and they’re having their first child at a later age. Unaffordable housing, poor access to childcare and the growing expenses of child-rearing also add up to fewer kids.

    University of New Hampshire senior demographer Kenneth Johnson estimates that the result has been 11.8 million fewer births, compared to what might have been had the fertility rate stayed at Great Recession levels.

    “I was young when I had kids. I mean that’s what we did — we got out of college, we got married and we had babies,” said West, who has two daughters, a stepdaughter and six grandchildren. “My kids got married in their 30s, so it’s very different.”

    A recent Census Bureau study showed that 21st century young adults in the U.S. haven’t been adulting like baby boomers did. In 1975, almost half of 25-to-34-year-olds had moved out of their parents’ home, landed jobs, gotten married and had kids. By the early 2020s, less than a quarter of U.S. adults had hit these milestones.

    West, whose 21-year-old grandson lives with her, understands why: They lack the prospects her generation enjoyed. Her grandson, Paul Quirk, said it comes down to financial instability.

    “They were able to buy a lot of things, a lot cheaper,” Quirk said.

    All of her grandchildren are frustrated by the economy, West added.

    “You have to get three roommates in order to afford a place,” she said. ”When we got out of college, we had a job waiting for us. And now, people who have master’s degrees are going to work fast food while they look for a real job.”

    Implications for the economy

    The aging of America could constrain economic growth. With fewer workers paying taxes, Social Security and Medicare will be under more pressure. About 34 seniors have been supported by every 100 workers in 2025, but that ratio grows to 50 seniors per 100 working-age people in about 30 years, according to estimates released last year by the White House.

    When West launched her career in employee benefits and retirement planning in 1973, each 100 workers supported 20 or fewer retirees, by some calculations.

    Vice President JD Vance and Tesla CEO Elon Musk are among those pushing for an increase in fertility. Vance has suggested giving parents more voting power, according to their numbers of children, or following the example of Hungary’s Viktor Orban in giving low-interest loans to married parents and tax exemptions to women who have four children or more.

    Frey said programs that incentivize fertility among U.S. women hardly ever work, so funding should support pre-kindergarten and paid family leave.

    “I think the best you can do for people who do want to have kids is to make it easier and less expensive to have them and raise them,” he said. “Those things may not bring up the fertility rate as much as people would like, but at least the kids who are being born will have a better chance of succeeding.”