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  • Journalist Don Lemon is charged with federal civil rights crimes in anti-ICE church protest

    Journalist Don Lemon is charged with federal civil rights crimes in anti-ICE church protest

    LOS ANGELES — Journalist Don Lemon was released from custody Friday after he was arrested and hit with federal civil rights charges over his coverage of an anti-immigration enforcement protest that disrupted a service at a Minnesota church.

    Lemon was arrested Thursday while across the country in Los Angeles, while another independent journalist and two protest participants were arrested in Minnesota. He struck a confident, defiant tone while speaking to reporters after a court appearance in California.

    “I have spent my entire career covering the news. I will not stop now,” Lemon said. “In fact there is no more important time than right now, this very moment, for a free and independent media that shines a light on the truth and holds those in power accountable.”

    3 people involved in a Minnesota church protest are arrested

    The arrests brought sharp criticism from news media advocates and civil rights activists including the Rev. Al Sharpton, who said the Trump administration is taking a “sledgehammer” to “the knees of the First Amendment.”

    The four were charged with conspiracy and interfering with the First Amendment rights of worshipers during the Jan. 18 protest at the Cities Church in St. Paul, where a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official is a pastor.

    In federal court in Los Angeles, Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Robbins argued for a $100,000 bond, telling a judge that Lemon “knowingly joined a mob that stormed into a church.” He was released, however, without having to post money and was granted permission to travel to France in June while the case is pending.

    Defense attorney Marilyn Bednarski said Lemon plans to plead not guilty and fight the charges.

    Lemon, who was fired from CNN in 2023 following a bumpy run as a morning host, has said he has no affiliation to the organization that went into the church and he was there as a solo journalist chronicling protesters.

    “Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done,” his lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement. “The First Amendment exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable.”

    Attorney General Pam Bondi promoted the arrests on social media.

    “Make no mistake. Under President Trump’s leadership and this administration, you have the right to worship freely and safely,” Bondi said in a video posted online. “And if I haven’t been clear already, if you violate that sacred right, we are coming after you.”

    ‘Keep trying’

    Since he left CNN, Lemon has joined the legion of journalists who have gone into business for himself, posting regularly on YouTube. He hasn’t hidden his disdain for President Donald Trump. Yet during his online show from the church, he said repeatedly: “I’m not here as an activist. I’m here as a journalist.” He described the scene before him, and interviewed churchgoers and demonstrators.

    A magistrate judge last week rejected prosecutors’ initial bid to charge the veteran journalist. Shortly after, he predicted on his show that the administration would try again.

    “And guess what,” he said. “Here I am. Keep trying. That’s not going to stop me from being a journalist. That’s not going to diminish my voice. Go ahead, make me into the new Jimmy Kimmel, if you want. Just do it. Because I’m not going anywhere.”

    Georgia Fort livestreamed the moments before her arrest, telling viewers that agents were at her door and her First Amendment right as a journalist was being diminished.

    A judge released Fort, Trahern Crews, and Jamael Lundy on bond, rejecting the Justice Department’s attempt to keep them in custody. Not guilty pleas were entered. Fort’s supporters in the courtroom clapped and whooped.

    “It’s a sinister turn of events in this country,” Fort’s attorney, Kevin Riach, said in court.

    Discouraging scrutiny

    Jane Kirtley, a media law and ethics expert at the University of Minnesota, said the federal laws cited by the government were not intended to apply to reporters gathering news.

    The charges against Lemon and Fort, she said, are “pure intimidation and government overreach.”

    Some experts and activists said the charges were not only an attack on press freedoms but also a strike against Black Americans who count on Black journalists to bear witness to injustice and oppression.

    The National Association of Black Journalists said it was “outraged and deeply alarmed” by Lemon’s arrest. The group called it an effort to “criminalize and threaten press freedom under the guise of law enforcement.”

    Crews is a leader of Black Lives Matter Minnesota who has led many protests and actions for racial justice, particularly following George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis in 2020.

    After Trump administration officials said earlier this month that arrests would be coming in the church protest, Crews told the Associated Press there’s a “tradition” of Black activists and leaders being targeted or subjected to violence.

    “Just as being a Black person, you always have to have that in mind,” Crews said.

    Protesters charged previously

    A prominent civil rights attorney and two other people involved in the protest were arrested last week. Prosecutors have accused them of civil rights violations for disrupting the Cities Church service.

    The Justice Department launched an investigation after the group interrupted services by chanting “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good,” referring to the 37-year-old mother of three who was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis.

    Lundy, a candidate for state Senate, works for the office of Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty and is married to a St. Paul City Council member. Lemon briefly interviewed him as they gathered with protesters preparing to drive to the church on Jan. 18.

    “I feel like it’s important that if you’re going to be representing people in office that you are out here with the people,” Lundy told Lemon, adding he believed in “direct action, certainly within the lines of the law.”

    Church leaders praise arrests in protest

    Cities Church belongs to the Southern Baptist Convention and lists one of its pastors as David Easterwood, who leads ICE’s St. Paul field office.

    “We are grateful that the Department of Justice acted swiftly to protect Cities Church so that we can continue to faithfully live out the church’s mission to worship Jesus and make him known,” lead pastor Jonathan Parnell said.

  • Tens of thousands face another arctic blast without power as East Coast preps for a new storm

    Tens of thousands face another arctic blast without power as East Coast preps for a new storm

    BELZONI, Miss. — As tens of thousands of people endured nearly a week with no electricity, another storm loomed on the East Coast where residents braced for near-hurricane force winds, heavy snow, and potential flooding.

    More than 230,000 homes and businesses were without electricity Friday, with the vast majority of those outages in Mississippi and Tennessee, according to the outage tracking website poweroutage.us.

    In Mississippi’s Lafayette County, where about 12,000 people were still without electricity midday Friday, emergency management agency spokesperson Beau Moore said he knows not everyone will get power back before the cold hits.

    “It’s a race against time to get it on for those we can get it on for,” Moore said.

    Workers are attacking the project by ground and air. A video on the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Facebook page shows a worker sitting on the skids of a hovering helicopter so they can repair a giant power structure.

    Arctic air moving into the Southeast was expected to cause already frigid temperatures to plummet into the teens on Friday night in cities like Nashville, where many still lacked power nearly a week after a massive storm dumped snow and ice across the eastern U.S., the National Weather Service said.

    Forecasters say the subfreezing weather will persist in the eastern U.S. into February and there’s high chance of heavy snow in the Carolinas, Virginia, and northeast Georgia this weekend, possibly up to a foot in parts of North Carolina. Snow is also possible along the East Coast from Maryland to Maine.

    On Saturday night and early Sunday, forecasters expect wind and snow that could lead to blizzard conditions before the storm starts to move to sea.

    Snow should pile up in the Carolinas

    Several inches of snow, possibly 1 foot in some locations, were forecast statewide, particularly in eastern counties.

    Hundreds of state National Guard soldiers were ready to help. State workers have also been preparing roads.

    In Myrtle Beach, S.C., a town more accustomed to hurricanes, traffic jams and tourists, the National Weather Service predicted 6 inches of snow.

    The city has no snow removal equipment. Mayor Mark Kruea said they will “use what we can find” — maybe a motor grader or bulldozer to scrape streets.

    “With a hurricane you can storm proof many things,” Kruea said Friday. “But at a place like this, there is only a few things you can do to get ready for snow.”

    In North Carolina, several inches of snow, possibly 1 foot in some locations, were forecast statewide, particularly in eastern counties.

    In Wake Forest, N.C., people filled propane tanks Friday at Holding Oil and Gas, where employee Stanley Harris disconnected one tank, set it aside with a clank and then hooked up another.

    In Dare County to the east, home to much of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, longtime resident Bob Woodard said he’s worried about that more unoccupied houses in communities like Rodanthe and Buxton could collapse into the Atlantic Ocean.

    Hypothermia risks grow

    With the wave of dangerous cold heading for the South, experts say the risk of hypothermia heightens for people in parts of Mississippi and Tennessee who are entering their sixth day trapped at home without power in subfreezing temperatures.

    “The body can handle cold temperatures briefly very well, but the prolonged exposure is a problem,” said Hans House, University of Iowa professor of emergency medicine.

    People who are more vulnerable — the elderly, infants and those with underlying health conditions — may have started experiencing hypothermia symptoms within hours of exposure to the frigid temperatures, explained Zheng Ben Ma, medical director of the University of Washington Medical Center’s northwest emergency department. That can include exhaustion, slurred speech, and memory loss.

    “Once you get into days six, seven, upward of 10, then even a healthy, resilient person will be more predisposed to experiencing some of those deleterious effects of the cold temperature,” he said.

    Frostbite is also a concern in southern states, where people might not own clothes for northern winters, said David Nestler, an emergency medicine specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

    Mississippi and Tennessee still seeking full power

    Mississippi officials say it’s the state’s worst winter storm since 1994. About 80 warming centers were opened in one of the nation’s poorest states. National Guard troops were delivering supplies by truck and helicopter.

    Yazoo Valley Electric Power Association workers, some of whom don’t have power at their own homes, are working 16-hour days to restore electricity in Mississippi. Workers cut their way through downed trees to reach some areas for repairs, said Michael Neely, CEO and general manager.

    Worker Ethan Green, 21, said he feels pressure to get the job done quickly. “We can only go so quick,” he said. “In order to do it safely, we have to take our time.”

    In Tennessee, crews were also distributing supplies, said Gov. Bill Lee.

    The governor on Friday also said he has shared “strong concerns” with Nashville Electric Service leadership, saying communication with customers and power restoration efforts must improve.

    Tennesseans “need a clear timeline for power restoration, transparency on the number of linemen deployed, and a better understanding of when work will be completed in their neighborhood,” Lee said.

    Nashville residents’ criticisms have grown louder over their utility’s storm preparations and recovery, as more than 60,000 homes and businesses it serves remained powerless with frigid temperatures expected. Nashville Electric Service has defended its approach, saying it was an unprecedented storm. At the peak, about half of its customers in and near the capital city lost power.

    Nearly 90 people have died in bitter cold from Texas to New Jersey. Roughly half the deaths were reported in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana. While some deaths have been attributed to hypothermia, others are suspected to be related to carbon monoxide exposure. Officials have not released specific details about how some of the people died.

    The arctic cold was expected to plunge as far south as Florida.

  • The Justice Department released 3 million pages from its Jeffrey Epstein files

    The Justice Department released 3 million pages from its Jeffrey Epstein files

    NEW YORK — The Justice Department on Friday released many more records from its investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein, resuming disclosures under a law intended to reveal what the government knew about the millionaire financier’s sexual abuse of young girls and his interactions with rich and powerful people such as Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.

    Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department would be releasing more than 3 million pages of documents in the latest Epstein disclosure, as well as more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. The files, posted to the department’s website, include some of the several million pages of records that officials said were withheld from an initial release in December.

    Included in the batch were records concerning some of Epstein’s famous associates, including Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Britain’s Prince Andrew, as well as email correspondence between Epstein and Elon Musk and other prominent contacts from across the political spectrum.

    The documents were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted after months of public and political pressure that requires the government to open its files on the late financier and his confidant and onetime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. Lawmakers complained when the Justice Department made only a limited release last month, but officials said more time was needed to review an additional trove of documents that was discovered and to scour the records to ensure no sensitive information about victims was inadvertently released.

    “Today’s release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people and compliance with the act,” Blanche said at a news conference announcing the disclosure.

    Friday’s disclosure represents the largest document dump to date about a saga the Trump administration has struggled for months to shake because of the president’s previous association with Epstein. State and federal investigations into the financier have long animated online sleuths, conspiracy theorists and others who have suspected government cover-ups and clamored for a full accounting, demands that even Blanche acknowledged might not be satisfied by the latest release.

    “There’s a hunger, or a thirst, for information that I don’t think will be satisfied by the review of these documents,” he said.

    After missing a Dec. 19 deadline set by Congress to release all the files, the Justice Department said it tasked hundreds of lawyers with reviewing the records to determine what needed to be redacted, or blacked out. But it denied any effort to shield Trump, who says he cut ties with Epstein years ago despite an earlier friendship, from potential embarrassment.

    “We did not protect President Trump. We didn’t protect — or not protect — anybody,” Blanche said.

    Among the materials withheld is information that could jeopardize any ongoing investigation or expose the identities of potential victims of sex abuse. Women other than Maxwell were redacted from videos and images being released Friday, Blanche said.

    The number of documents subject to review ballooned to roughly 6 million, including duplicates.

    Epstein’s famous friends

    The latest batch of documents include correspondence either with or about some of Epstein’s friends.

    Mountbatten-Windsor’s name appears at least several hundred times in the documents, sometimes in news clippings, sometimes in Epstein’s private email correspondence and in guest lists for dinners organized by Epstein. Some of the records also document an attempt by prosecutors in New York to get the former prince to agree to be interviewed as part of their Epstein sex trafficking probe.

    The records also show that Musk, the billionaire Tesla founder, reached out to Epstein on at least two separate occasions to plan visits to the Caribbean island where many of the allegations of sexual abuse purportedly occurred.

    In a 2012 exchange, Epstein inquired how many people Musk would like flown by helicopter to the island he owned — Little Saint James in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

    “Probably just Talulah and me,” Musk responded, referencing his partner at the time, actress Talulah Riley. “What day/night will be the wildest party on our island?”

    Musk messaged Epstein again ahead of a planned trip to the Caribbean in December 2013. “Will be in the BVI/St Bart’s area over the holidays,” he wrote. “Is there a good time to visit?” Epstein responded by extending an invite for sometime after the New Year holiday.

    It’s not immediately clear if the island visits took place. Spokespersons for Musk’s companies, Tesla and X, didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

    Musk has maintained that he repeatedly turned down the disgraced financier’s overtures.

    “Epstein tried to get me to go to his island and I REFUSED,” he posted on X in 2025 when House Democrats released an Epstein calendar with an entry mentioning a potential Musk visit to the island.

    The documents also contain hundreds of friendly text messages between Epstein and Steve Bannon during Trump’s first term.

    Bannon, a conservative activist who served as Trump’s White House strategist earlier in the president’s first term, bantered over politics with the financier, discussed get-togethers with him over breakfast, lunch or dinner and, on March 29, 2019, asked Epstein if he could supply his plane to pick him up in Rome: “Is it possible to get your plane here to collect me?”

    Epstein told him his pilot and crew “are doing their best” to arrange that flight but if Bannon could find a charter flight instead, “I’m happy to pay.” Apparently in France at the time, Epstein followed up with a text saying: “My guys can pick you up. Come for dinner.” The exchange did not show how that played out.

    On one occasion in December 2012, Epstein invited Howard Lutnick — now Trump’s commerce secretary — to his private island in the Caribbean for lunch, documents released Friday show. Lutnick’s wife, Allison Lutnick, enthusiastically accepted the invitation and said they would arrive on a yacht with their children. On another occasion in 2011, the two men had drinks, according to a schedule shared with Epstein.

    Lutnick has tried to distance himself from Epstein, saying in a 2025 interview that he cut ties decades ago and calling him “gross.” He didn’t respond to a request for comment Friday.

    During Trump’s first term, Epstein emailed Kathy Ruemmler, a lawyer and former Obama White House official, to warn that Democrats should stop demonizing Trump as a Mafia-type figure even as he derided the president as a “maniac.”

    A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs, where Ruemmler serves as general counsel and chief legal officer, said in a statement that Ruemmler “had a professional association with Jeffrey Epstein when she was a lawyer in private practice” and “regrets ever knowing him.”

    Building on the earlier release

    The Justice Department released tens of thousands of pages of documents just before Christmas, including photographs, interview transcripts, call logs and court records. Many were either already public or heavily blacked out.

    They included previously released flight logs showing Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet in the 1990s, before they had a falling-out, and several photographs of Clinton. Neither Trump, a Republican, nor Clinton, a Democrat, has been publicly accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. Both have said they had no knowledge he was abusing underage girls.

    Epstein killed himself in a New York jail cell in August 2019, a month after he was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges.

    In 2008 and 2009, Epstein served jail time in Florida after pleading guilty to soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18. At the time, investigators had gathered evidence that Epstein had sexually abused underage girls at his Palm Beach home. The U.S. attorney’s office agreed not to prosecute him in exchange for his guilty plea to lesser state charges.

    In 2021, a federal jury in New York convicted Maxwell, a British socialite, of sex trafficking for helping recruit some of his underage victims. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence at a prison camp in Texas, after being moved there from a prison in Florida. She denies any wrongdoing.

    U.S. prosecutors never charged anyone else in connection with Epstein’s abuse of girls, but one of his victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, accused him in lawsuits of having arranged for her to have sexual encounters at age 17 and 18 with numerous politicians, business titans, noted academics, and others, all of whom denied her allegations.

    Among those she accused was Britain’s Prince Andrew, who was stripped of his royal titles amid the scandal. Andrew denied having sex with Giuffre but settled her lawsuit for an undisclosed sum.

    Giuffre died by suicide last year at age 41.

  • New Epstein files show years of email exchanges with Sixers co-owner Josh Harris

    New Epstein files show years of email exchanges with Sixers co-owner Josh Harris

    Jeffrey Epstein and Sixers co-owner Josh Harris had an ongoing business relationship that included numerous phone calls and at least one visit to Epstein’s home in Manhattan, according to emails released Friday by the U.S. Department of Justice.

    The emails do not contain any indication that Harris was involved with sexual misconduct. The records — buried within the three million documents made public Friday as part of the congressionally ordered release of the Epstein files — shed light on a yearslong correspondence that occurred after Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea for solicitation of prostitution with a minor, but before his 2019 arrest on child sex trafficking charges.

    Harris and Epstein moved in similar circles among Wall Street financial brokers. Harris, cofounder of the investment firm Apollo Global Management, exchanged multiple emails and phone calls with Epstein between 2013 and 2016.

    Jonathan Rosen, a spokesperson for Harris, noted that many of Epstein’s entreaties over the years went nowhere. He said the Sixers owner “never had an independent relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.”

    “Harris sought to prevent Epstein’s attempts to develop a corporate relationship with Apollo,” he said. “As these emails indicate, Harris sought to avoid meeting with Epstein, canceling meetings and having others return his calls.”

    Evidence of one meeting between Epstein and Harris was detailed in earlier records released by the DOJ, and first reported by the Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper at the University of Pennsylvania. Harris is an alumnus of Penn’s Wharton School.

    Exchanges about this meeting, which have not been previously reported, began with a series of emails between Epstein’s and Harris’ schedulers on plans to meet at Epstein’s home in 2013, along with former Apollo CEO Leon Black and billionaire Marc Rowan, apparently to discuss financial affairs and investments.

    “Just reconfirming Leon, Josh and Marc will all go see Jeffrey at his home, 9 East 71st Street between 5th and Madison tomorrow, Tues. Oct. 22nd at 7am for a breakfast meeting,” a scheduler for Epstein wrote in an email from October 2013.

    Rowan, a major University of Pennsylvania donor who also chairs the Wharton School’s advisory board, declined to comment.

    Years later, it would emerge that Black had paid Epstein $158 million for “financial advice” despite the financier’s conviction on sex trafficking charges, leading to his ouster as head of the company.

    It is unclear if the 2013 meeting took place. Harris later apologized to Epstein for having “rescheduled on you a few times.”

    Correspondence between Harris and Epstein carried on.

    Emails from January 2014 then show Epstein’s assistant following up on a request for Harris to pull together a series of organizational documents at Epstein’s request.

    A June 2014 email features Epstein describing a proposed $2.4 million payment apparently from Harris to Black’s former executive assistant, Melanie Spinella.

    Details surrounding the payment, or if it ever occurred, were not clear.

    Later in 2014, Harris’ and Epstein’s schedulers e-mailed yet again to arrange a different visit to Epstein’s home.

    This time, Epstein proposed another breakfast, involving Black, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, tech investor Reid Hoffman, and Ron Baron, the founder of Baron Capital.

    “Jeffrey Epstein would like to invite Josh to breakfast on Dec. 5th at Jeffrey’s home in NY… Bill Gates will be in attendance. The breakfast will be intimate…less than 6 people,” one email invitation read.

    The pair also discussed the meeting directly.

    “Sorry i missed you. Crazy week,” Harris wrote to Epstein in November 2014. “U around any time from now to sunday? Whats this Bill Gates thing about? Tks for thinking about me.”

    “I thought you might like to schmooze,” wrote Epstein in response, asking Harris to call him. “nothing but fun friday 5th breakfast.”

    That meeting does appear to have taken place, based on subsequent emails, with Harris in attendance.

    “Did you have fun at breakfast?” Epstein wrote to Harris, about a week after the meeting was scheduled to take place.

    “Yes very much,” he responded. “Thank you for inviting me.”

    In another typo-laden email, Epstein later bragged to Bank of America president Paul Morris about the breakfast meeting.

    “as you might know I had a recent breadkfst at the hosue with ron baron. josh harris, and billgates,” he wrote in January 2015.

    Epstein’s relationship with Black and Apollo would eventually disintegrate over a legal dispute about his tax and estate planning fees. Harris and Epstein continued to email sporadically until at least 2016.

    In September of that year, Epstein e-mailed Harris again directly asking him to call him about an unspecified issue.

    “Any conversation that you prefer to stay between just us. will. its my financial confessional booth for jews,” Epstein wrote.

    “Will do Jeff,” Harris responded. “Happy to catch up. Thx.”

    Days later, Robert Bodian, managing partner at the Mintz law firm, reached out to Epstein, indicating he was contacting him at “Josh’s request,” apparently regarding a tax issue.

    Staff writer Gina Mizell contributed to this article.

  • Sharpies, colored paper, and sandwich boards become resistance art at the President’s House site

    Sharpies, colored paper, and sandwich boards become resistance art at the President’s House site

    The resistance was born on a Friday morning at the Gen. George A. McCall School photocopy machine.

    The copier spat the message out on yellow, purple, and orange paper — page after page amplifying the same sentiment scrawled on each in big black letters: Learn all history.

    In the aftermath of the removal of the slavery exhibit at the President’s House Site on Jan. 22, fourth-grade social studies teacher Kaity Berlin wanted to convert her rage into something productive, she said. She quickly thought of the words on one of her shirts: “Teach all history.” So she gathered some teacher friends, took to the photocopier, and headed to Independence National Historical Park.

    Berlin wasn’t the only one who saw the shallow silver frames at the President’s House as a void screaming to be filled.

    The exhibit included a series of signs describing what life was like for those enslaved by George Washington at the site and his complicated relationship with the institution of slavery. The exhibit was dismantled last week, several months after President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum issued an order requiring the review and potential removal of displays at the national parks that “inappropriately disparage” the United States.

    The city asked a federal justice to order that no more exhibits be removed from the President’s House and that the exhibits that were already removed be kept safe. In a hearing Friday, judge Cynthia M. Rufe didn’t issue a ruling but asked the Trump administration attorney that the exhibits remain untouched so she can review them Monday.

    Over that first weekend colorful signs populated the walls, reenactors donned historic garb and positioned themselves along the red brick pillars with a flourish, some people held giant replica signs of the ones that were removed, and others laid flowers delicately across the facility.

    To Berlin, whose school is a few blocks from the President’s House, posting the colorful signs was just a quick action she could take in her 45-minute prep period.

    “It was just a cathartic way to be like ‘Ugh, this sucks,’” Berlin said.

    But it soon became the first of numerous forms of activism and art that filled the space as more and more Philly-area residents yearned for a similar way to express their opposition to the removal of the plaques.

    Media ranged from cardboard to poster board. Tools included Sharpies and pens. Many of the more informal signs were affixed with painter’s tape to nooks in the brick structure and empty metallic shells where the original signs hung. Some more official-looking signs included QR codes and printed messages balanced on easels. Others were replicas of the signs that were there made with assistance from professional printing services.

    Ted Zellers, a property manager in North Philly, took a more full-body approach to his protest. He found a high-resolution image online of one of the removed signs, titled “Slavery in the President’s House,” got it printed twice, fashioned a sandwich board out of the posters, and became “a living sign,” he said.

    It was an educational tool he could wield, but it doubled as a warning.

    “I hope people will think about what other information is under threat of being disappeared,” Zellers said.

    He expected to be the only person in the park with a sign, but was heartened to see a few dozen others there withstanding the 17-degree air interspersed with sharp winds slicing through the open air exhibit.

    Albert DerMovsesian from Willow Grove, who came to the site equipped with one vertical sign detailing the labor that took place in the house and a horizontal one titled “The Dirty Business of Slavery,” found himself similarly pleased to see so many like-minded others around him.

    In the park he saw little kids writing on pieces of paper pasted to the walls, a woman leaving a sign with the names of those enslaved at the site, and people adorning the structure with flowers.

    “It reminded me that I wasn’t alone,” DerMovsesian said.

    “We don’t need 350 million Malcolm X’s to make the country better,” Zellers said. “We just need a lot of regular people who recognize that they’re part of networks and who can take some action and amplify what’s going on, pass it onm and get other people engaged.”

    The collage of images developed organically, but hearkened back to a long lineage of protest art that has become increasingly prevalent under the Trump administration, said Nicolo Gentile, an artist and adjunct faculty member at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture.

    Gentile likened the immediacy and style of the displays at the President’s House to the enlarged version of Trump’s birthday card to financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that popped up on the National Mall in Washington last month.

    A new protest art installation referencing the Epstein files and President Donald Trump was installed on Third Street SW along the National Mall.

    The assortment of papers reading “learn all history” gets its power from the relative anonymity of its author, Gentile said, as well as its use of repetition.

    “It starts to create a texture of sound of a greater voice the way that the many voices of a chant during protest does,” he said.

    While Berlin said she doesn’t see herself as an artist, she appreciates the punch of a stark and direct message through signage and art.

    “I do love the impact of a good simple piece,” she said.

    In some cases, political art can be used to “accelerate progress,” Gentile said, but sometimes its best use is halting regression and “to wedge our foot in the door as progress may seem to be closing.”

    “This work seems to be the foot in the door,” he said.

    People leave notes on the spaces at the President’s House site in Independence National Historical Park.
    Ted Zellers (right) wears a sandwich board with a replica of one of the removed slavery panels as people visit and protest at the President’s House site.
    Ted Zellers (left) wears a sandwich board with a replica of one of the removed slavery panels, joining Jenna and Gregory May (right) protesting at the President’s House.
    People leave notes and political satire cartoons in the spaces at the President’s House.
    People protest at the President’s House site.
    Al DerMovsesian holds replicas of some of the removed slavery panels as people visit the President’s House site.
    The President’s House in Independence National Historical Park.
    The President’s House in Independence National Historical Park.
    Michael Carver portrays Mordecai Sheftall as part of a “History Matters” guide at The President’s House.
    A sign was placed at the President’s House.
    A group of teacher taped posters along the now barren brick walls of the President’s House.
    A single rose and a handwritten cardboard sign (“Slavery is part of U.S. history learn from the past or repeat it”) are inside an empty hearth at the President’s House.
  • Israel reopening Gaza’s border crossing with Egypt on Sunday after long closure

    Israel reopening Gaza’s border crossing with Egypt on Sunday after long closure

    JERUSALEM — Israel said Friday that it will reopen the pedestrian border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt over the weekend, marking an important step forward for U.S. President Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan.

    COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of coordinating aid to Gaza, said in a statement that starting on Sunday a “limited movement of people only” would be allowed through the Rafah crossing, Gaza’s main gateway to the outside world.

    The announcement followed statements from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ali Shaath, newly appointed to head the Palestinian administrative committee governing Gaza’s daily affairs, that it would likely open soon.

    While COGAT said the passage will open in both directions on Sunday, Shaath said the first day will be a trial for operations and that travel both ways will start Monday.

    Israel as of Friday agreed to allow up to 150 people to leave each day — 50 medical patients with two family members, an official familiar with the situation told the Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were discussing diplomatic talks. Up to 50 people who fled during the war can return daily, the source said.

    Roughly 20,000 sick and wounded Palestinians need treatment outside Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry. Gaza’s health system was decimated in the war, rendering advanced surgical procedures out of reach.

    COGAT said both Israel and Egypt will vet individuals for exit and entry through the crossing, which will be supervised by European Union border patrol agents. In addition to screenings at the crossing, Palestinians leaving and returning will be screened by Israel in the adjacent corridor, which remains under Israeli military control.

    The crossing has been under a near complete closure since Israel seized it in May 2024, saying the step was part of a strategy to halt cross-border arms smuggling by Hamas. It was briefly opened for the evacuation of medical patients during a short-lived ceasefire in early 2025.

    Israel had resisted reopening the crossing, but the recovery of the remains of the last hostage in Gaza on Monday cleared the way to move forward. A day later, Netanyahu said the crossing would soon open in a limited and controlled fashion.

    Thousands of Palestinians inside Gaza are trying to leave the war-battered territory, while tens of thousands who fled the territory during the heaviest fighting say they want to return home.

    The reopening is one of the first steps in the second phase of last year’s U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement, which includes challenging issues ranging from demilitarizing Gaza to putting in place an alternative government to oversee rebuilding the mostly destroyed enclave.

    Netanyahu said this week that Israel’s focus is on disarming Hamas and destroying its remaining tunnels. Without these steps, he said that there would be no reconstruction in Gaza, a stance that could make Israel’s control over Rafah a key point of leverage.

    More deadly strikes in Gaza

    Palestinians in Gaza on Friday mourned friends and relatives who died earlier this week in Israeli strikes, which have slowed but not stopped since the return of the remains of the final hostage held in the territory.

    Three Palestinians were laid to rest in traditional Islamic funeral rites. Men gathered to pay their final respects, carrying the shrouded bodies through the streets before praying over them.

    Israel’s military said four people were killed in airstrikes Friday in central Gaza, saying they were armed and approaching troops near the ceasefire line dividing Israeli-held areas and most of Gaza’s Palestinian population.

    The most recent deaths Friday are on top of the 492 Palestinians killed since the ceasefire began in October, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in its figures. It maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts.

  • With ‘extreme cold’ expected Saturday, one Mummers band has already pulled out of the String Band Spectacular

    With ‘extreme cold’ expected Saturday, one Mummers band has already pulled out of the String Band Spectacular

    A month after dangerous winds led Mummers string bands to cancel their New Year’s Day Parade competition, one string band says it’ll be too cold to play a makeup show Saturday.

    “With extreme cold predicted for this weekend, our top priority is the health and safety of our members, and the forecasted conditions may put them at risk,” the Avalon String Band said on Facebook.

    The band was set to join other groups at the 2026 String Band Spectacular at Lincoln Financial Field Saturday afternoon.

    The Philadelphia Mummers String Band Association scheduled the event after the string bands canceled their New Year’s Day performances this year, when high winds destroyed props and sent five people to the hospital.

    Musicians with the Uptown String Band arrive on buses for the Mummers Parade Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026, after the String Band competition was suspended because of high winds that destroyed props and caused injuries during morning setup. The bands still marched and played their music, but did not carry props, and were not judged. The Uptown theme was “From Script to Screen.”

    Saturday a coastal “bomb cyclone” is expected to douse New Jersey and Delaware with snowfall, though forecasting models say Philadelphia won’t get hit. However, stinging winds and Arctic air will push temperatures down to zero Saturday morning, with windchills dipping as low as 10 degrees below 0.

    It’s unclear whether other bands will follow the Avalon String Band’s lead. A total of 14 bands make up the Philadelphia Mummers String Band Association, according to its website.

    Gift Share How the Eagles and other Philly pro sports teams stepped up after weather halted the Mummers Parade

    Twelve organizations are set to perform Saturday, said Philadelphia Mummers String Band Association President Sam Regalbuto Friday afternoon. He said workers are getting the stages and props ready.

    “Everyone’s on board,” Regalbuto said. “Everyone’s here. We’re good to go.”

    The event will begin a 2 p.m. Saturday with the Philadelphia Gay Men’s Chorus singing the national anthem. The event will be broadcast on WDPN-TV (MeTV2) at 8 p.m. and will be streamed on WFMZ.

  • Catherine O’Hara, Emmy-winning comedian of ‘Schitt’s Creek’ and ‘SCTV’ fame, has died at 71

    Catherine O’Hara, Emmy-winning comedian of ‘Schitt’s Creek’ and ‘SCTV’ fame, has died at 71

    LOS ANGELES — Catherine O’Hara, a gifted Canadian-born comic actor and SCTV alum who starred as Macaulay Culkin’s harried mother in two Home Alone movies and won an Emmy as the dramatically ditzy wealthy matriarch Moira Rose in Schitt’s Creek, died Friday. She was 71.

    Ms. O’Hara died at her home in Los Angeles “following a brief illness,” according to a statement from her representatives at Creative Artists Agency. Further details were not immediately available.

    Ms. O’Hara’s career was launched with the Second City comedy group in Toronto in the 1970s. It was there that she first worked with Eugene Levy, who would become a lifelong collaborator — and her Schitt’s Creek costar. The two would be among the original cast of the sketch show SCTV, short for “Second City Television.” The series, which began on Canadian TV in the 1970s and aired on NBC in the U.S., spawned a legendary group of esoteric comedians that Ms. O’Hara would work with often, including Martin Short, John Candy, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis, and Joe Flaherty.

    Ms. O’Hara would win her first Emmy for her writing on the show.

    Eugene Levy (from left), Annie Murphy, Daniel Levy, and Catherine O’Hara, cast members in the series “Schitt’s Creek,” pose for a 2018 portrait.

    Her second, for best actress in a comedy series, came four decades later, for Schitt’s Creek, a career-capping triumph and the perfect personification of her comic talents. The small CBC series created by Levy and his son, Dan, about a wealthy family forced to live in a tiny town would dominate the Emmys in its sixth and final season. It brought Ms. O’Hara, always a beloved figure, a new generation of fans and put her at the center of cultural attention.

    She told the Associated Press that she pictured Moira, a former soap opera star, as someone who had married rich and wanted to “remind everyone that (she was) special, too.” With an exaggerated Mid-Atlantic accent and obscure vocabulary, Moira spoke unlike anyone else, using words like “frippet,” “pettifogging” and “unasinous,” to show her desire to be different, Ms. O’Hara said. To perfect Moira’s voice, Ms. O’Hara would pore through old vocabulary books, “Moira-izing” the dialogue even further than what was already written.

    Ms. O’Hara also won a Golden Globe and two SAG Awards for the role.

    At first, Hollywood didn’t entirely know what to do with Ms. O’Hara and her scattershot style. She played oddball supporting characters in Martin Scorsese’s 1985 After Hours and Tim Burton’s 1988 Beetlejuice — a role she would reprise in the 2024 sequel.

    She played it mostly straight as a horrified mother who accidentally abandoned her child in the two Home Alone movies. The films were among the biggest box office earners of the early 1990s and their Christmas setting made them TV perennials. They allowed her moments of unironic warmth that she didn’t get often.

    Her co-star Culkin was among those paying her tribute Friday.

    “Mama, I thought we had time,” Culkin said on Instagram alongside an image from Home Alone and a recent recreation of the same pose. “I wanted more. I wanted to sit in a chair next to you. I heard you. But I had so much more to say. I love you.”

    Meryl Streep, who worked with O’Hara in Heartburn, said in a statement that she “brought love and light to our world, through whipsmart compassion for the collection of eccentrics she portrayed.”

    Roles in big Hollywood films didn’t follow Home Alone, but Ms. O’Hara would find her groove with the crew of improv pros brought together by Christopher Guest for a series of mockumentaries that began with 1996’s Waiting for Guffman and continued with 2000’s Best in Show, 2003’s A Mighty Wind, and 2006’s For Your Consideration.

    Best in Show was the biggest hit and best-remembered film of the series. She and Levy play married couple Gerry and Cookie Fleck, who take their Norwich terrier to a dog show and constantly run into Cookie’s former lovers along the way.

    “I am devastated,” Guest said in a statement to the AP. “We have lost one of the comic giants of our age.”

    Born and raised in Toronto, Ms. O’Hara was the sixth of seven children in a Catholic family of Irish descent. She graduated from Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute, an alternative high school. She joined Second City in her early 20s, as an understudy to Gilda Radner before Radner left for Saturday Night Live. (Ms. O’Hara would briefly be hired for “SNL” but quit before appearing on air.)

    Nearly 50 years later, her final roles would be as Seth Rogen’s reluctant executive mentor and freelance fixer on The Studio and a dramatic turn as therapist to Pedro Pascal and other dystopia survivors on HBO’s The Last of Us. Both earned her Emmy nominations. She would get 10 in her career.

    “Oh, genius to be near you,” Pascal said on Instagram. “Eternally grateful. There is less light in my world.”

    Earlier this month, Rogen shared a photo on Instagram of him and Ms. O’Hara shooting the second season of “The Studio.”

    She is survived by her husband, Bo Welch, a production designer and director who was born in Yardley; sons Matthew and Luke; and siblings Michael O’Hara, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Maureen Jolley, Marcus O‘Hara, Tom O’Hara, and Patricia Wallice.

  • The arctic cold persists, and so does Philly’s snowpack. Both may even go away some day.

    The arctic cold persists, and so does Philly’s snowpack. Both may even go away some day.

    It looks like the Philly region will evade any snow generated by that coastal “bomb cyclone” during the weekend, but the disruptive snowpack on the ground continues to melt at a glacial pace. Maybe ever slower.

    “For now, it’s not budging,” said David Robinson, the New Jersey state climatologist who is an international expert on snow cover.

    And, ironically, that has a whole lot to do with what happened in the hours right after the snow stopped around 11:30 a.m. Sunday.

    Add one of the more signifiant Arctic cold spells in Philadelphia’s period of record, and the entire region has endured a white and wintry week rarely experienced around here.

    As of Friday morning, the official snow depth at the airport still was 6 inches, about two-thirds of what was measured when the storm ended five days before.

    For perspective, the depth was 6 inches five days after a snowstorm in 2016 — after 22.4 inches had fallen.

    The cold won’t be as harsh during the workweek, but a thaw isn’t imminent, and some snow is possible Wednesday.

    Temperatures are forecast to drop deep into the single digits Saturday morning, flirting with records. It is not due to get into the 20s until Sunday, when backlash winds from the potent coastal storm are expected to drive wind chills below zero.

    Those winds may contribute to significant flooding at the Shore, where they could gust to 50 mph.

    About last Sunday in Philly

    About 7.5 inches of snow had fallen officially by 11:30 a.m. Sunday at Philadelphia International Airport, more in some other places, when it yielded to several hours of sleet that accumulated 2 to 3 inches, coating the snow with a sparkling, icy veneer.

    “You can’t help but recognize the beauty of it,” said Robinson, a Rutgers University geography professor and keeper of the Rutgers Snow Lab.

    While it may be an aesthetic pleasure, especially at night under the full “snow moon” rising this weekend, it has had a profoundly chilling effect on cleanup efforts.

    The sleet, liquid that freezes before it lands, literally put an ice cap on the snow. “Ice pellets are tougher to melt,” said PennDot’s Thomas Rogal, a maintenance supervisor for the Philadelphia district. In a melting race, a homely sleet ball wouldn’t have a chance against a six-sided snowflake.

    On Sunday, said Rogal, the sleet was a game-changer for the road crews. Instead of just plowing, crews were “scraping the road surfaces,” he said. Sleet added a stubborn stickiness to the mass of frozen material.

    It also contained about as much liquid as several inches of snow, said Robinson.

    The surprisingly cold temperatures, in the lower 20s and teens, inhibited the effectiveness of salt on Sunday. “The material just didn’t function,” said Rogal.

    In the city, the glacial mass has been especially disruptive, a royal, inconvenient pain for people living on side streets, for street crews, for anyone who has tried shoveling, and for the schools.

    In addition to the snow and ice challenges, the cold has stressed aging heating systems in the public schools, once they reopened.

    A thermometer in a Central High School classroom on Friday read 39 degrees. That’s colder than the normal high for the date in Philly — outdoors.

    When will all this go away?

    Philly hasn’t had a stretch of days like this in which the temperature has failed to reach 30 degrees since 1979, according to records tracked by the Pennsylvania state climatologist.

    And it likely is going to finish in the top 10 for consecutive days in which readings didn’t get past freezing, said Mike Silva, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Mount Holly.

    Low temperatures Thursday and Friday morning, 13 and 11, respectively, were several degrees above the forecasts. That probably was related to the winds at the airport, he said.

    It also may be related to the sleet, said Robinson: Ice doesn’t have quite the same chilling effect as fresh snow.

    Conditions Saturday morning — clear skies and lighter winds — should be more conducive for daytime heating (we use the term loosely) to radiate into space. Morning lows could approach the record of 3 degrees, set in 1948.

    Some moderation is expected with the workweek, but not much. “We were hoping to get to the mid-30s,” said Sliva, but “it looks like we may barely get to freezing.”

    Even at those temperatures, some melting should occur.

    The total daily solar energy beaming toward Philly now is about 30% higher than it was on Jan. 1, according to NASA’s calculations, and the sunrise-to-sunset time is increasing by about two minutes a day.

    Even the cold has a bright side, said PennDot’s Rogal. Potholes, it turns out, have something in common with a lot of humans: “They aren’t particularly fond of this weather.”

    “The freeze-thaw is what always gets us,” he said. “We’re actually in better shape when the cold sets and stays.”

    Even if it snows next week — “There’s a couple of systems that could affect us,” said Silva — based on 150 years of official record-keeping for Philly, it is going to warm up and the ground will reappear.

    Eventually.

  • Dan McQuade, award-winning writer, tireless community activist, and ‘Philadelphia institution,’ has died at 43

    Dan McQuade, award-winning writer, tireless community activist, and ‘Philadelphia institution,’ has died at 43

    Even as a child, Dan McQuade let his imagination run wild. “What are you doing?” his mother, Denise, would ask if she hadn’t heard any noise from his bedroom for a while. “I’m making stories,” he would reply.

    Later, as a young man about town, his compassion for fellow Philadelphians inspired his father, Drew. Dan volunteered to give blood often, donated brand-new sneakers to other guys in need, and continually reached out to people he saw struggling with drug abuse and homelessness. “His kindness was what I loved about him the most,” his father said.

    Dan McQuade was already an award-winning writer, blogger, and journalist when he met his future wife, Jan Cohen, online in 2014. To her, his jovial humor, wide-ranging intelligence, and shoulder-length hair made him unique in her circle. “I thought he was too cool for me,” she said.

    As it turned out, they were all spot on. Mr. McQuade used his quirky creativity to write memorable blogs and freelance stories about culture and sports for The Inquirer, the Daily News, the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and other publications. He was a cofounder and visual editor at Defector Media and worked previously for Deadspin, Philadelphia Magazine, Philadelphia Weekly, and other outlets.

    His empathy, likely inspired by his parents, his wife said, led him to toil tirelessly for charitable nonprofits such as the Everywhere Project, Back on My Feet, and Prevention Point. “Service was always part of his life,” his wife said.

    His coolness, as unconventional as it sometimes was, made those he encountered feel cool, too. Molly Eichel, an Inquirer editor and longtime friend, said: “He was annoyingly smart and incredibly kind.”

    Dan McQuade died Wednesday, Jan. 28, of neuroendocrine cancer at his parents’ home in Bensalem. He was 43. His birthday was Jan. 27.

    Mr. McQuade’s annual Wildwood T-shirt report was a favorite of his many readers and fans.

    “It’s incredibly hard for me to imagine living in a Philadelphia without Dan McQuade,” said Erica Palan, an Inquirer editor and another of Mr. McQuade’s many longtime friends. “He understood Philadelphians better than anyone because he was one: quirky and funny, competitive and humble, loyal and kind.”

    A journalism star at the University of Pennsylvania in the early 2000s, Mr. McQuade was a writer, sports editor, and columnist for the school’s Daily Pennsylvanian, and managing editor of its 34th Street Magazine. He earned two Keystone Press awards at Penn, was the Daily Pennsylvanian’s editor of the year in 2002, and won the 2003 college sports writing award from the Philadelphia Sportswriters Association.

    He went on to create Philadelphia Weekly’s first blog, “Philadelphia Will Do,” and was a finalist for the Association of Alternative Newsmedia’s best blogger award. He served an internship at the Bucks County Courier Times in Levittown and worked for a while at the Northeast News Gleaner.

    Often irreverent, always inventive, he filed thousands of notable stories about, among other things, the Wildwood T-shirt scene, the origin of “Go Birds,” sneaker sales, Donald Trump, Wawa hoagies, the Philly accent, parkway rest stops, the Gallery mall, soap box derbies, and Super Bowls. His stories sparkled with research and humor.

    An avid reader himself, Mr. McQuade enjoyed reading local tales to his son, Simon.

    “Dan was a truly authentic and engaging person,” Tom Ley, editor-in-chief at Defector, said in an online tribute. “His curiosity was relentless, and his interests were varied and idiosyncratic.”

    For example, Mr. McQuade wrote in Philadelphia Magazine in 2013 that Sylvester Stallone’s famous training-run montage in Rocky II — it started in South Philly and ended two minutes of screen time later atop the Art Museum steps — actually showed city scenes that would have had the actor/boxer run more than 30 miles around town. “Rocky almost did a 50K,” Mr. McQuade wrote. “No wonder he won the rematch against Apollo!”

    In 2014, he wrote in Philadelphia Magazine about comedian Hannibal Buress calling Bill Cosby a rapist onstage at the old Trocadero. The story went viral, and the ensuing publicity spurred more accusations and court cases that eventually sent Cosby to jail for a time.

    When he was 13, Mr. McQuade wrote a letter to the editor of the Daily News that suggested combining the Mummers Parade with Spain’s running of the bulls. Crossing Broad’s Kevin Kinkead said he had “an innate gift for turning the most random things into engaging reads.”

    This story about Mr. McQuade appeared in the Daily News in 2014.

    “Without Dan’s voice, Philly Mag wouldn’t be Philly Mag,” editor and writer Brian Howard said in a tribute on phillymag.com. “And, I’d argue, Philadelphia wouldn’t quite be Philadelphia.”

    Other colleagues called him “a legend,” “a Philadelphia institution,” and “the de facto mayor of Philadelphia” in online tributes. Homages to him were held before recent Flyers and 76ers games.

    “Sometimes,” his wife said, “he inserted himself into stories, so readers had a real sense of who he was because he was so authentic.”

    Daniel Hall McQuade was born Jan. 27, 1983, in Philadelphia. His father worked nights at the Daily News for years, and the two spent many days together when he was young hanging around playgrounds and skipping stones across the creek in Pennypack Park.

    Mr. McQuade (left) and his father, Drew, shared a love of Philly sports and creative writing.

    Later, they texted daily about whatever came to mind and bonded at concerts, Eagles games, and the Penn Relays. He grew up in the Northeast, graduated with honors from Holy Ghost Preparatory School in Bensalem, and earned a bachelor’s degree in English at Penn in 2004.

    He overcame a serious stutter as a teen and played soccer and basketball, and ran cross-country and track at Holy Ghost. He married Jan Cohen in 2019 and they had a son, Simon, in 2023. They live in Wissahickon.

    Mr. McQuade was a voracious reader and an attentive listener. “He never wanted to stop learning,” his wife said. He enjoyed going to 76ers games with his mother and shopping for things, his father said, “they didn’t need.”

    He was mesmerized by malls, the movie Mannequin, the TV series Baywatch, and his wife’s cat, Detective John Munch. During the pandemic, he and his wife binged all 11 seasons of Baywatch.

    Mr. McQuade doted on his wife, Jan, and their son, Simon.

    He could be loud, his mother said, and Molly Eichel described his laugh as “kind of a honk.” His friend and colleague Alli Katz said: “In 50 years I’ll forget my own name. But I’ll remember his laugh.”

    He was a vintage bootleg T-shirt fashionista, and his personal collection numbered around 150. He named Oscar’s Tavern on Sansom Street as his favorite bar in a recent podcast interview and said he would reluctantly pick a pretzel over a cheesesteak if that was the choice.

    Dan McQuade collected over 100 bootleg sports T-shirts and showed them off as art.

    In September, Mr. McQuade wrote about his illness on Defector.com under the headline “My Life With An Uncommon Cancer.” In that story, he said: “Jan has been everything. My son has been a constant inspiration. My parents are two of my best friends, and I talk to them every day. Jan’s parents have been incredible.”

    He also said: “I believe there are no other people on earth with my condition who are in as fortunate a situation. … For the past thousand words you have been reading about a bad break I got, but if only everyone in my position had it this good.”

    Mr. McQuade and his wife, Jan Cohen, married in 2019.

    His wife said: “He was truly the best guy.”

    In addition to his wife, son, and parents, Mr. McQuade is survived by his mother-in-law, Cheryl Cohen, and other relatives.

    Survivors give advice about mourning their loved ones, as told to The Inquirer’s obit writer

    Visitation with the family is to be from 9 to 10 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 5, at St. Martha Parish, 11301 Academy Rd., Philadelphia, Pa. 19154. Mass is to follow from 10 to 11 a.m.

    Donations in his name may be made to the Everywhere Project, 1733 McKean St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19145.