TUCSON, Ariz. — Law enforcement agents have been gathering more potential evidence as the search for Today show host Savannah Guthrie‘s mother heads into its third week.
Nancy Guthrie, 84, was last seen at her Arizona home on Jan. 31 and was reported missing the following day. Authorities say her blood was found on the front porch. Purported ransom notes were sent to news outlets, but two deadlines for paying have passed.
Authorities have expressed concern about Nancy Guthrie’s health because she needs vital daily medicine. She is said to have a pacemaker and have dealt with high blood pressure and heart issues, according to sheriff’s dispatcher audio on broadcastify.com.
Here’s what to know about her disappearance and the intense search to find her:
Video of masked man
The Federal Bureau of Investigation released surveillance videos of a masked person wearing a handgun holster outside Guthrie’s front door in Tucson the night she vanished. A porch camera recorded video of a person with a backpack who was wearing a ski mask, long pants, jacket, and gloves.
On Thursday, the FBI called the person a suspect. It described him as a man about 5 feet, 9 inches tall with a medium build. The agency said he was carrying a 25-liter “Ozark Trail Hiker Pack” backpack.
Investigators initially said there was no surveillance video available since Guthrie didn’t have an active subscription to the doorbell camera company. But digital forensics experts kept working to find images in back-end software that might have been lost, corrupted, or inaccessible.
Studying DNA
Investigators collected DNA from Guthrie’s property which doesn’t belong to Guthrie or those in close contact with her, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said. Investigators are working to identify who it belongs to.
Evidence requiring forensic analysis is being sent to the same out-of-state lab that has been used since the beginning of the case, the department said.
Investigators found several gloves, the nearest about 2 miles from Guthrie’s home, and submitted them for lab analysis, the sheriff’s department said. It did not specify what type of gloves.
The sheriff stressed his department is working closely with the FBI.
Sorting through tips
The Pima County sheriff and the FBI announced phone numbers and a website to offer tips. Several hundred detectives and agents have been assigned to the case, the sheriff’s department said.
The FBI said it has collected more than 13,000 tips since Feb. 1, the day Guthrie was reported missing. The sheriff’s department, meanwhile, said it has taken at least 18,000 calls.
The sheriff’s department has not said whether any tips have advanced the investigation.
Intensive searches
Late Friday night, law enforcement sealed off a road about 2 miles from Guthrie’s home as part of their investigation. A parade of sheriff’s and FBI vehicles, including forensics vehicles, passed through the roadblock.
The two agencies also tagged and towed a Range Rover SUV from a Culver’s restaurant parking lot. The restaurant is just over 2 miles from Nancy Guthrie’s home. This activity took place at the same time the sheriff’s office closed a road just north of the Guthrie home.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department confirmed Saturday that a federal court-ordered search warrant was executed at the home Friday in connection with the Guthrie case. The warrant was based on a lead the agency had received. No arrests were made.
A traffic stop was also conducted, and while someone was questioned, no arrests were made, the sheriff’s office said.
No additional information was released Saturday.
On Tuesday, sheriff deputies detained a person for questioning during a traffic stop south of Tucson. Authorities didn’t say what led them to stop the man but confirmed he was released.
The same day, deputies and FBI agents conducted a court-authorized search in Rio Rico, about an hour’s drive south of the city.
Family pleas
Savannah Guthrie, her sister, and her brother have shared on social media multiple video messages to their mother’s purported captor.
The family’s Instagram videos have shifted in tone from impassioned pleas to whoever may have their mom, saying they want to talk and are even willing to pay a ransom, to bleaker and more desperate requests for the public’s help.
The latest video on Thursday was simply a home video of their mother and a promise to “never give up on her.”
A quiet neighborhood
Nancy Guthrie lived alone in the upscale Catalina Foothills neighborhood, where houses are spaced far apart and set back from the street by long driveways, gates, and dense desert vegetation.
Savannah Guthrie grew up in Tucson, graduated from the University of Arizona, and once worked at a television station in the city, where her parents settled in the 1970s. She joined Today in 2011.
In a video, she described her mother as a “loving woman of goodness and light.”
LONDON — Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned by the Kremlin with a rare and lethal toxin found in the skin of poison dart frogs, five European countries said Saturday.
The foreign ministries of the U.K., France, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands said analysis in European labs of samples taken from Navalny’s body “conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine.” It is a neurotoxin secreted by dart frogs in South America that is not found naturally in Russia, they said.
A joint statement said: “Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to administer this poison.”
The five countries said they were reporting Russia to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for a breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention. There was no immediate comment from the organization.
Navalny, who crusaded against official corruption and staged massive anti-Kremlin protests as President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe, died in an Arctic penal colony on Feb. 16, 2024, while serving a 19-year sentence that he believed to be politically motivated.
“Russia saw Navalny as a threat,” British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said. ”By using this form of poison the Russian state demonstrated the despicable tools it has at its disposal and the overwhelming fear it has of political opposition.”
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot wrote on X that the poisoning of Navalny shows “that Vladimir Putin is prepared to use biological weapons against his own people in order to remain in power.”
Navalny’s widow says results confirmed her accusations
The European nations’ assessment came as Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, attended the Munich Security Conference in Germany, and just before the second anniversary of Navalny’s death.
She said last year that two independent labs had found that her husband was poisoned shortly before he died. She has repeatedly blamed Putin for her husband’s death. Russian officials have vehemently denied the accusation.
Navalnaya said Saturday that she had been “certain from the first day” that her husband had been poisoned, “but now there is proof.”
“Putin killed Alexei with chemical weapon,” she wrote. She said Putin was “a murderer” who “must be held accountable.”
Russian authorities said that the politician became ill after a walk and died from natural causes.
U.K. has accused Russia of previous attacks
Epibatidine is found naturally in dart frogs in the wild, and can also be manufactured in a lab, which European scientists suspect was the case with the substance used on Navalny. It works on the body in a similar way to nerve agents, causing shortness of breath, convulsions, seizures, a slowed heart rate, and ultimately death.
Navalny was the target of an earlier poisoning in 2020, with a nerve agent in an attack he blamed on the Kremlin, which always denied involvement. His family and allies fought to have him flown to Germany for treatment and recovery. Five months later, he returned to Russia, where he was immediately arrested and imprisoned for the last three years of his life.
The U.K. has accused Russia of repeatedly flouting international bans on chemical and biological weapons. It accuses the Kremlin of carrying out a 2018 attack in the English city of Salisbury that targeted a former Russian intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, with the nerve agent Novichok. Skripal and his daughter became seriously ill, and a British woman, Dawn Sturgess, died after she came across a discarded bottle with traces of the nerve agent.
A British inquiry concluded that the attack “must have been authorized at the highest level, by President Putin.”
The Kremlin has denied involvement. Russia also denied poisoning Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian agent turned Kremlin critic who died in London in 2006, after ingesting the radioactive isotope polonium-210. A British inquiry concluded that two Russian agents killed Litvinenko, and Putin had “probably approved” the operation.
In recent years, a string of the state’s iconic diners have shuttered their doors. New state legislation aims to keep the lights on at those still in business.
The bill, which was introduced in the New Jersey Senate in January, would provide some diners and other historic restaurants with tax benefits.
“Diners, and specifically historic diners, are a cornerstone of our great state, having served residents and visitors for many decades. They are part of our culture and our history, and we have a duty to help them thrive,” State Sen. Paul Moriarty of Gloucester County, a sponsor of the bill, said in a statement Thursday.
The legislation, which would establish a registry of historic diners and restaurants, would give the businesses a tax credit of up to $25,000. Only diners and family-owned restaurants operating for at least 25 yearswill qualify.
The bill has been referred to the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee.
“It has been heartbreaking to see so many of these well-known establishments close or dramatically cut their hours,” Moriarity said.
Where have diners closed in New Jersey?
The origin of the modern diner can be traced back to a horse-drawn lunch wagon in 19th-century Rhode Island and the model has evolved since then. New Jersey has been coined the “diner capital” of the U.S. but has seen closures in recent years due to increased operating expenses, the challenge of finding employees, and the impact of the pandemic.
The Cherry Hill Diner closed in 2023 after 55 years in business and following the co-owner’s unsuccessful search for a buyer. South Jersey’s Gateway Diner in Gloucester County closed that same year amid construction of the Westville Route 47 Bridge and the state’s acquisition of the site. The Red Lion Diner in Burlington County also sold, making way for a Wawa.
In January 2024, the Star View Diner in Camden County closed. Last year, the Collingswood Diner shut its doors in August, to be replaced by a marijuana dispensary.
The trend extended in Philadelphia where the Midtown III closed in 2020. Last year, the Mayfair Diner in Northeast Philadelphia was listed for sale.
Bob Borzillo has a deal with his wife Terri: She puts everything in the dishwasher, but he has to unload it.
That’s what he was doing on a night in November, after the couple had arrived back home in Willistown from Barcelona. He was putting the very last thing — a wine glass — away. That’s where the 65-year-old’s memory stops.
But for Terri Borzillo, also 65, that’s where a terrifying ordeal began.
She had been just a few feet away, writing in her journal as her husband unloaded the dishwasher in the background. She heard him groan and glass shatter. She got up to help him, expecting to find him picking up glass shards. Instead she found him on the floor, unresponsive.
What they did not know then was that a piece of plaque had broken off, completely blocking his artery. He was in cardiac arrest — not breathing, no pulse. After having walked around Barcelona, averaging 18,000 steps a day, he had no symptoms, no warning signs, until he collapsed in their kitchen.
More than 350,000 people annually experience cardiac arrestoutside hospitals, and only one in 10 survives, said Jeffrey Salvatore, the vice president of community impact for the American Heart Association of Greater Philadelphia.
The association has been leading a campaign to teach more teens and adults hands-only CPR to increase bystander response rates. Nationally, 40% of those who experience cardiac arrest each year are helped by a bystander. The rate in the Philadelphia region is significantly lower: less than 26%.
The association also holds telecommunicator CPR training, so dispatchers can instruct people over the phone on how to provide CPR, said Salvatore.
“Cardiac arrest is 100% fatal without any intervention. If nobody does anything for the person, there’s no chance of survival,” he said. “By just calling 911 and just doing compressions, you can still double someone’s chance of survival.”
Terri Borzillo immediately went into action, calling 911.
“I think my husband’s having a heart attack,” she remembers screaming to the dispatcher.
Calmly, the Chester County dispatcher, Kayla Wettlaufer, had Borzillo describe her husband’s condition.
“She said, ‘OK, lady, get control of yourself. We’re going to do this together,’” Borzillo recalls. “By the command in her voice, and because there was no option, I had to do this.”
Wettlaufer led Borzillo through CPR over the phone — telling her where to place her hands, when to compress. Wettlaufer even told her when it was time to unlock the front door so the nearby first responders could get in.
“It was horrible to watch my husband in that condition, and it was horrible to know that I had the balance of his life in my hands,” Borzillo said.
With Wetlaufer guiding her — and, she swears, every doctor in heaven — she did compressions until the EMTs arrived, using paddles to restart his heart.
As the EMTs wheeled Bob Borzillo out, Terri Borzillo retrieved the bottles of holy water they had picked up at Our Lady Lourdes in Barcelona. She sprayed her husband and the EMTs.
It got her an odd look, but, she said, “For somebody who has deep faith, I know all the angels and saints were there with us, and we’re smiling today instead of crying,” she said.
Bob Borzillo, left, takes a photo with two first responders who arrived to his home in November when he was in cardiac arrest.
Terri Borzillo’s faith runs back to their first date, more than 40 years ago. It was 1982, she was single, and her coworker asked her if she’d like to meet a nice guy. What do I have to lose? she thought. Acting as an intermediary, that colleague — a friend of Bob Borzillo’s family — told Bob about Terri. The young man’s father happened to know Terri’s father. He told his son, “Call that girl.” Bob listened.
On their blind date, Terri Borzilloknew he was the one. There was something to how he talked, explaining — of all things — turbine generators.
He really was a nice guy, she thought. (“I was a nerd,” he said.) She felt something click. Dear God, she thought, let him ask me out again.
One big Italian wedding, three sons, and seven grandchildren later, the two have lived in Chester County for more than 40 years.
This experience has made him proud to be a county resident, Bob Borzillo said. After he was released from the hospital a few days later, Borzillo went to the firehouse and met the first responders. He and his wife met Wettlaufer, and toured her workplace.
Wettlaufer, an operator who has been with the county for almost five years and was honored by the county this month, was the start of a well-oiled machine, Borzillo said. Their proximity to the firehouse and Paoli Hospital helped get him professional care quickly.
“If the Eagles offense executed that efficiently, we would have been in the Super Bowl,” he said.
Terri Borzillosaid meeting Wetlauferhelped ease the trauma of the situation.
“She’s beautiful. And what they do there is amazing, and they get all of the credit,” she said.
Saturday marks three months since Bob Borzillo’s cardiac arrest. He and his wife are in Florida while he recovers, and will celebrate Valentine’s Day with friends from Chester County.
“Certainly the heart and what Valentine represents has a special meaning this year, and I am blessed to be here to celebrate it,” he said in an email.
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.
But inthe Philadelphia region, only 26% of people suffering cardiac arrest receive bystander intervention, saidJeffrey Salvatore, the vice president of community impact for the American Heart Association of Greater Philadelphia. That’s much lower than the national average of40%.
Though often used interchangeably, a heart attack and a cardiac arrest are not the same, and they warrant (slightly) different responses.
A heart attack is a “plumbing issue,” where there’s some blockage in the arteries that supply blood to the heart, Salvatore said.
But a cardiac arrest is an “electrical problem;” the heart pumps through an electrical system, and when something misfires or stops, that’s when a cardiac arrest occurs. It necessitates CPR.
“When the heart stops doing its job, we have to take over, and that’s when CPR comes into play,” he said.
Someone in cardiac arrest is unresponsive, and requires immediate intervention to prevent death.
You can check for unresponsiveness by tapping someone on the shoulder, rubbing their chest, or yelling loudly. If they don’t respond, call 911, and begin hands-only CPR, pressing hard and fast in the center of the chest.
In many cases,911 operators have been trained to walk callers through delivering CPR.
A heart attack can lead to cardiac arrest, but it can also happen separately, and never result in the heart stopping, Salvatore said.
If someone is exhibiting signs of a heart attack — chest discomfort; or discomfort in other areas of the upper body, such as arms, back, neck, jaw and stomach; shortness of breath; cold sweats; light-headedness; rapid or irregular heartbeat — call 911, Salvatore said.
The American Heart Association is seeking to expand training in hands-only CPR for adults and teens, to increase low bystander-intervention rates.
Just doing chest compressions — no mouth-to-mouth contact required — and calling 911 can double someone’s chance of survival, Salvatore said.
“They are the first responder before EMS gets to the scene,” he said.
For more information, or to get CPR certified, you can go to cpr.heart.org
In the note, he finally filled in the blank: “Ok apparently I need to address the Miami incident.”
For eight months, the “Miami incident” hovered over the franchise without much other information. It was a turning point, but no one outside the clubhouse knew why.
Now we know his side of the story: After being pulled late in a June game in Miami, he brought a can of Presidente into the dugout and confronted Rob Thomson about what he saw as inconsistent standards. Teammates took the beer before he drank it. He apologized. The next day, his starting streak ended. And after that, the relationship was never the same.
But still, this ending lands with nostalgia.
This was the guy who turned tragic news cycles into accidental baseball folklore. The timing of his biggest hits was just uncanny. The day I-95 collapsed, or the day a president was shot at, or the day another dropped out of a race.
Then there was Liam, andthe joy of getting to experience Red October with his son in the stands. Back-to-back postseason multihomer games with his kid watching. Whatever else you thought about Castellanos, those nights felt special.
He was never boring, and that counts for something.
Northeast Philadelphia’s Delilah Dee walks through Bad Bunny’s halftime show stage at Santa Clara’s Levi’s Stadium, on Feb. 8 2026
An Eagles fan from Fishtown spent weeks rehearsing in a 50-pound grass suit, keeping the secret, grinding through 12-hour days, then waddling past Pedro Pascal and Cardi B on global television. A Northeast Philly marketing pro manifested her way onto the field crew and helped execute one of the most high-pressure seven-minute turnovers in live entertainment.
The plant story is peak Philly optimism: “The Eagles didn’t go, so I went for them.” That’s delusional in the best way. That’s Broad Street confidence. The field-team story hits deeper. In a halftime show centered on Latino pride and visibility, a Mayfair native who’s built community through Latin culture here in Philly ends up helping pull off the mechanics of the moment.
Would it have been better if it were an Eagle-and-Benito Bowl? Obviously. But Philly showed up anyway. Grass suit. Stage crew. Go Birds.
It hits 40 degrees and Philly declares emotional spring: A-
People are planning vacations, talking about the Cherry Blossom Festival, and declaring the worst is behind us while carefully sidestepping three-foot snowbanks and skating past frozen crosswalks. Someone said, “It’s gorgeous out,” and meant it sincerely.
Diane and John Davison (back, right), who met here in 1969, laugh with other attendees at McGillin’s on Feb. 3, 2026. Attendees gathered for a book talk on “Cheers to McGillin’s: Philly’s Oldest Tavern.”
McGillin’s proves love doesn’t need an algorithm: A
The 166-year-old pub gathered dozens of couples this month who found love under its low ceilings and tinsel hearts. Some have been married 50-plus years while others are newlyweds who matched over wings and Yuenglings. The upstairs bar looked like a class reunion for romantics.
In a city that loves to argue about everything, this one’s hard to fight: Proximity still works. (Eye contact and beer don’t hurt, either).
There’s something deeply comforting about the idea that the most reliable matchmaker in Philly isn’t an app. It’s a place with oak tables, framed liquor licenses from the 1800s, and bartenders who’ve seen it all. At some point, the legend becomes self-fulfilling. If everyone believes McGillin’s is where love happens, eventually it does.
Pennsylvania watching eagle eggs hatch on a livestream: A
There is something deeply Pennsylvania about thousands of people spending their morning refreshing a live webcam of a bald eagle nest in an undisclosed Lancaster County tree.
More than 100 live viewers at mid-morning, with nearly 700,000 views last year. The chat section is full of viewers who are emotionally invested in avian domestic life.
There’s something quietly moving about it. Bald eagles were nearly wiped out here with just eight known active nests in 1990. Now there are more than 300.
Spring is coming. And until baseball starts, this is what we’ve got.
FILE – His son, and former heavyweight boxer Marvis Frazier (right), and Rev. Blane Newberry from Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church bless a 12-foot-tall 1,800-pound bronze statue of “Smokin’ Joe” Frazier after it was unveiled Saturday, September 12.2015 at XFinity Live in South Philadelphia.
The Art Commission voted unanimously to relocate Frazier’s 12-foot bronze statue from the sports complex to the base of the museum steps — the spot Rocky has occupied for two decades. Rocky, meanwhile, is headed back to the top.
On one level, the move feels overdue. Frazier wasn’t a metaphor. He was a real Philadelphian, an Olympic gold medalist, a heavyweight champion, the man who handed Muhammad Ali his first professional loss. Meanwhile, Rocky, beloved as he is, is a fictional character who may have beeninspired in part by Frazier’s life.
There’s something quietly powerful about visitors encountering Joe first, before heading up top to take a selfie with a myth.
Yes, there are valid conversations about symbolism, especially in Black History Month, about a real Black champion standing below a fictional white character. The city’s explanation is practical: Frazier’s statue is physically larger and not structurally suited for the top. Rocky’s footprint is smaller and easier to manage up there.
Logistics matter, but narrative does too, and this move reshapes the narrative. You climb the steps for the movie moment, but you pass the real champion on the way.
World Cup wants 4 a.m. last call. Philly isn’t sure it even wants 2: B-
On paper, this is easy. The World Cup is coming, and along with it comes half a million tourists and a global spotlight. Other host cities pour until 4 a.m. Philly shuts it down at 2.
The pitch is simple: if Brazil and Haiti kick off at 9 p.m., and knockout games can run long, why send thousands of fans back to their hotels when Miami and New York are just getting started?
The last time Pennsylvania tried this, during the 2016 DNC, the response was tepid, reported Philly Voice. Businesses had to deal with expensive permits and confusing rules, and the result wasn’t exactly a citywide bacchanal. And even now, bar owners quietly admit the late-night crowds aren’t what they used to be.
There’s also the Philly tension underneath this: We want to be global, but we also want to sleep. Would it be cool to say Philly partied like a World Cup city? Sure.
But it’s also true that if bars will be pouring until sunrise, at least half the neighborhoods would immediately be on 311, complaining about all the drunk and noisy tourists.
The sleek, modern offices of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, sit on the southernmost edge of Independence Square. The enormous glass windows of a conference room called the Marketplace — a nod to the “marketplace of ideas” — perfectly frame Independence Hall.
The view is no coincidence. The free-speech organization, founded in 1999 and long known for decrying illiberalism and so-called cancel culture on American college campuses, is deliberate in the stories it tells.
In addition to the thousands of case submissions FIRE receives each year, staffers scour social media and news reports for compelling free-speech violations, partly looking, as legal director Will Creeley explained, for “cases you can tell a story with.”
For years, FIRE warned about threats to free speech, primarily on college campuses. Now the crisis it was preparing for has arrived.
The issue today is no longer one of cultural differences — students protesting controversial speakers or agitating for more diverse curricula.
Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old doctoral student at Tufts University, was detained by Department of Homeland Security agents in March, an arrest captured by security camera footage.
Instead, the full power of the federal government is trained on universities and individual students who disagree with it. The stakes have grown exponentially, as became clear early on when federal agents detained Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University Ph.D. student on a visa, after she cowrote an op-ed in a student newspaper. She then spent 45 days in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention in Louisiana. (FIRE submitted an amicus brief in Ozturk’s ongoing federal case, in which a federal judge ruled last month that the administration had no grounds to deport her.)
More recently, federal agents arrested and charged journalist and former CNN anchor Don Lemon with federal civil rights crimes for his coverage of an anti-ICE protest inside a Minnesota church. Of his arrest, the organization wrote, “FIRE will be watching closely.”
Journalist and former CNN anchor Don Lemon talked to the media after being detained for covering a protest inside a Minnesota church.
The question FIRE faces today is whether it can effectively meet the moment, and overcome skepticism from the left and from other free-speech advocates, some of whom argue the group helped lay the groundwork for an authoritarian crackdown.
Those critics say the present free-speech crisis is partly the predictable result of FIRE stoking a conservative panic over campus politics, effectively handing the federal government a well-crafted rationale for suppressing progressive voices.
FIRE’s leaders say they were not wrong before about cancel culture. Things were bad, they argue. But this is far worse.
“The threats we’re seeing right now, to me, often feel damn near existential,” Creeley, 45, said in a recent interview. “The incredibly important distinction is that what we’re seeing now from the right is backed by the power of the federal government.”
FIRE described the federal government’s demands on Harvard as “wielding the threat of crippling financial consequences like a mobster gripping a baseball bat.”
When the government becomes the censor
It can sometimes feel as if FIRE has been involved in nearly every major free-speech flash point of the last year — part of an intentional strategy to build the organization’s profile and raise awareness about speech violations, said Alisha Glennon, 41, the group’s chief operating officer.
Among dozens of ongoing cases, FIRE is suing Secretary of State Marco Rubio in federal court over the administration’s targeting of international students who reported on or participated in pro-Palestinian campus activism.
FIRE has also been outspoken in its defense of Harvard University. After the Trump administration sent Harvard a list of demands this spring — including banning some international students based on their views, appointing an outside overseer approved by the federal government to ensure “viewpoint diversity,” and submitting yearly reports to the government — the university refused to comply. Trump then sought to cut off billions of dollars of federal funding in response.
Harvard sued, and FIRE submitted an amicus brief supporting the university, noting that because of its own “longstanding role as a leading critic” of Harvard as a center of cancel culture, it was not less but more alarmed by the government’s “wielding the threat of crippling financial consequences like a mobster gripping a baseball bat.”
FIRE is also preparing to potentially sue Texas A&M University after the university instructed a philosophy professor in January to remove some teachings of Plato from an introductory philosophy course, citing new rules barring public universities in the state from offering classes that “advocate race or gender ideology.” FIRE wrote to the university, calling the move “unconstitutional political interference.”
Removing Plato from an intro philosophy class is the type of absurd, taken-to-the-extreme free-speech dispute that has long been FIRE’s bread and butter, and Creeley was particularly agitated about it.
Will Creeley, FIRE’s legal director, pictured here at the FIRE offices in Philadelphia. He was drawn to First Amendment work partly because his father was a poet.
“What the hell is ‘race and gender ideology’?” he said. “That’s a term so vague you could drive a truck through it.”
He had seen commentary about how 2,400 years ago, Socrates was put to death for corrupting the youth of Athens — and now administrators were, in effect, trying to run Socrates’ student out of College Station, Texas, too.
Creeley was almost laughing, but he was also feeling apocalyptic.
He has been half-joking with his staff that FIRE’s entire litigation program could be dedicated just to Texas. Yet he was also stewing over a decision by the University of Alabama in December to suspend two student publications, one focused on fashion and the other on Black culture and student life.
The university said both violated the Justice Department’s guidance on diversity, equity, and inclusion by narrowly appealing to female students and Black students. FIRE sent an outraged letter to the school, often a precursor to litigation.
“It’s one thing to say, ‘Hey, administratively, we’re not going to have an office of DEI,’” Creeley said. But to say, “‘And students can’t talk about these things.’ … That just drives me nuts.”
Off campus, FIRE is suing Perry County, Tenn., on behalf of Larry Bushart, a retired police officer who spent 37 days in jail after reposting a meme following the assassination of right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk. The meme depicted then-presidential candidate Donald Trump urging people to “get over” a separate shooting the year before.
Defending free speech is notoriously unpopular, and FIRE has leaned hard into a narrative of itself as a pure, principled defender of free speech, regardless of the consequences.
“We always say we just call balls and strikes, no matter what team is up to bat,” Glennon said. “If you are being criticized by both sides and praised by both sides every single day — well, then, that’s something that I wear as a point of pride.”
“Sometimes, if everybody’s criticizing you, you are screwing up,” Creeley acknowledged, and they both laughed. “But here I would say we’re doing it right.”
In 2022, FIRE expanded its purview beyond college campuses, including through a massive media campaign. One of its billboards is pictured here, visible heading north on I-95, in 2023.
From scrappy watchdog to national player
FIRE is insistently nonpartisan; staffers acknowledge the organization’s erstwhile conservative reputation but say it was never accurate.
And under the second Trump administration, it has become one of the most outspoken voices in the country for free expression. The nonprofit has a $32 million budget, about 130 staffers, and roughly 12,000 members paying a $25 annual fee.
Both Creeley and Glennon have been with the organization for nearly two decades, helping it grow from a small advocacy group into one garnering increasing mainstream attention. They said FIRE based itself in Philadelphia, not Washington, so that it would remain free from political interference. (One of the cofounders of the organization, Alan Charles Kors, an emeritus history professor at the University of Pennsylvania, is also based in Philly.)
At the Philly office, copies of the Wall Street Journal and the Chronicle of Philanthropy greet visitors. The conference rooms are named after free-speech references. (“It’s a little kitschy, but it’s cute,” Glennon said of the “Crowded Theater” room.)
One afternoon this fall, Glennon, in an oversized tan blazer, black pants, and stilettos, her blond hair loose, and Creeley, in a white button-down and purple tie, his auburn beard neatly cropped, were quick to laugh, prone to peppering famous quotes about free speech throughout the conversation.
They appeared to be true believers — in free expression, in their work, in America.
Glennon said she fears “that people will become accustomed to a society that is less free, and that with every generation, we’re losing a little bit of that love for American exceptionalism and what free speech is.”
Creeley nodded.
“What’s the Kors quote? ‘A nation that does not educate in liberty will not long enjoy it, and won’t even know when it’s lost,’” he said, paraphrasing a quote from FIRE’s cofounder.
“‘Won’t even know when it’s lost,’” Glennon echoed. “Gave me chills.”
FIRE’s legal director Will Creeley and FIRE’s chief operating officer Alisha Glennon, pictured here at the Philly offices in November, have both been at the organization for nearly two decades.
From pressure campaigns to the courtroom
FIRE was founded by two civil libertarians who wrote one of the defining campus-panic books of the 1990s, The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses, which Publishers Weekly at the time described as a polemic about how “the ‘political and cultural left’ is today the worst abuser of the principles of open, equal free speech.”
Creeley joined FIRE as a law school intern before becoming a full-time staffer in 2006. He comes from a long line of pacifist Quakers and was involved in the campus Green Party as an undergrad at New York University. He said he was drawn to First Amendment work because his father was a poet; words were important.
“I remember the first couple years, I was like, ‘Boy, I’m doing this free-speech work, I’m defending an awful lot of evangelical conservative Christians who I really don’t have much in common with,’” Creeley said. But that was the principle of the thing.
FIRE’s chief operating officer Alisha Glennon in “The Marketplace” conference room overlooking Independence Hall. All the conference rooms are named after free speech references.
Glennon, who was born and raised in Mayfair, joined FIRE around the same time. She had recently graduated from the College of William and Mary and was waitressing while applying for development jobs. “I was like, ‘Free speech! Everybody likes free speech!’” she said, laughing.
For more than a decade, FIRE focused exclusively on advocacy, aiming to “make rights violations so painful for a school that they just would abandon it,” Creeley said. Litigation was plodding and costly, and the awareness campaigns seemed to have an impact.
In 2008, for example, a student-janitor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis was accused of racial harassment after a coworker saw him reading Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan, a nonfiction book that depicted robed Klansman and burning crosses on the cover. FIRE took up the cause, and the university eventually apologized to the janitor.
Other early advocacy cases included defending a professor at a New Jersey community college over a photo he posted of his daughter wearing a Game of Thrones T-shirt, and intervening on behalf of a University of Alaska Fairbanks student newspaper accused of sexual harassment for publishing a satirical article about a new building shaped like a vagina.
Then in 2014, FIRE began suing schools. The effort launched with four cases, including one about an unconstitutional “free speech zone” at a college in California and one on behalf of students at Iowa State University who were told they could not use the university’s name while wearing T-shirts representing their chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
FIRE eventually won all four.
These days, staffers at the ACLU of Pennsylvania and FIRE work closely together, talking weekly and sometimes daily.
“I honestly don’t remember a time where we had a disagreement about how to analyze the case,” said Witold Walczak, the ACLU of Pennsylvania’s legal director.
Despite its ideologically broad legal work, FIRE perhaps became most famous in the mainstream for its conservative-leaning culture work. In 2015, executive director Greg Lukianoff cowrote an Atlantic article — and later a book — titled The Coddling of the American Mind, arguing that efforts to create “safe spaces” on campuses had gone awry. Cowritten with social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, the book portrayed campus identity politics as bordering on the surreal.
That was also the year Lukianoff helped to disseminate one of the defining “cancel culture” artifacts of the decade. He filmed a Yale student, who came to be known online as “shrieking girl,” screaming at a professor in the middle of a simmering debate on campus over what constituted racially sensitive Halloween costumes. The video made national news, eventually racking up nearly 2 million views on FIRE’s YouTube page.
The campus of Yale University in New Haven, Conn.
The rankings — and the reckoning
These days, the organization tracks speaker disinvitations and scholars and students “under fire” through its public databases. Since 2020, it has also published annual “free-speech rankings” based on the databases and student surveys — rankings that have repeatedly placed Harvard at or near the bottom for free speech.
Those efforts underpin one of the central critiques of FIRE: that it has focused not only on government restrictions but also on the actions of private actors, including students.
“The rankings are based on those ideas of ‘cancel culture’ and shaming others and so on. And they’re not based on the First Amendment,” said Charles Walker, a retired attorney based in Maryland who published multiple critiques of FIRE’s rankings last year. “First Amendment law restricts what the government can do with regard to individual speech. It doesn’t address individuals speaking to each other.”
Bradford Vivian, a professor at Pennsylvania State University and the author of Campus Misinformation: The Real Threat to Free Speech in American Higher Education, described FIRE’s databases as “totally subjective, arbitrary, politically motivated tools.”
He argued that FIRE cherry-picks sensational incidents that do not necessarily have anything to do with true First Amendment violations, and prioritizes rankings that will make headlines over those that would be more accurate.
“FIRE has produced misinformation that others can easily use for nefarious purposes,” Vivian said.
FIRE for years whipped up a frenzy over liberal excess on elite college campuses, Vivian and other critics say. The Trump administration seized on that frenzy to slash federal funding and even imprison its detractors. Yet FIRE staffers do not see themselves as part of that story.
Even as FIRE insists it merely “calls balls and strikes,” critics note that state legislatures and the Trump administration have cited FIRE’s rankings as justification for punitive actions against universities.
Adding insult to injury, FIRE staffers have not always expressed much sympathy for the universities that now find themselves in the administration’s crosshairs.
“Administrators, colleges, universities have in some ways done plenty to bring this on themselves,” Sean Stevens, FIRE’s chief research adviser, told The Inquirer. “There was a lot of downplaying or ignoring of the concerns about the homogeneity of politics among the professorate or some of the curriculums.”
Still, Stevens, who oversees the annual rankings, said he disagrees with the Trump administration using his work to cut funding or shut down certain speech or academic departments. “That’s not anything we would advocate for,” he said.
In December, Lukianoff doubled down, publishing what amounted to an “I told you so” essay, arguing that universities now face a “worst of both worlds” scenario, in which government pressure combined with lingering cancel-culture dynamics are producing the “bleakest speech landscape imaginable.”
Creeley and Glennon said they never anticipated their work being used to justify repression.
“It’s galling to me to see our work invoked to justify that kind of illiberal crackdown,” Creeley said, pointing specifically to U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.), who previously said she was a free-speech ally, using FIRE’s rankings in her anti-higher education campaigns.
If onetime allies now seem to have never cared much about free speech to begin with, that’s not on FIRE, they said.
“What we had been saying over the years was true‚” Glennon said. “We’re to blame now for the government overreach? I don’t think it’s a fair assessment.”
“I mean, that’s all we can do: Call out the abuses as we see them,” Creeley said. “If somebody wants to use our work for bad ends, we’ll fight you on it.”
FIRE was based in Philadelphia to avoid the political interference of Washington, D.C.
Can a referee still matter when the rules change?
At FIRE’s daily morning meetings to discuss pressing free-speech problems across the country, the agenda has grown longer. The scope, severity, volume, and nature of the cases they are seeing have changed, Creeley said. (He noted — twice — that an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez presidency would likely keep FIRE busy as well.)
“In some places, the law is just getting flat-out ignored,” he said.
After two decades defending the First Amendment, Creeley has begun to reflect on whether placing his faith in the collective commitment to the law and the Constitution was the right choice. Still, he remains an optimist. He believes that such a commitment will prevail. That’s the whole promise of the country.
FIRE continues to see itself as a principled referee. Whether a referee still matters when the most powerful player insists the rules no longer apply — that remains an open question.
I don’t know why this scene caught my eye. I have seen graffiti-tagged walls on roll-down metal storefronts and yes, even panel trucks and vans before.
And in the past few weeks since our biggest snowfall in a decade — followed by a brutal freeze that locked in all the plowed piles — I have certainly seen enough streets lined with snowed-in vehicles. Maybe it was the combination of the two.
I was stopped because the dirty snowpack on street shoulders reduced traffic lanes and created gridlock. But while I waited through not one or two, but three traffic light cycles, I had the time to look, pick up my phone, roll down my window and take a picture.
Not the kind of image I usually look for.
Then that got me thinking, “What kinds of pictures do I like? What came first, the snow or the graffiti?” (I was at that light a long time.)
I clearly like photographing people. That’s why I got into journalism.
Highlights editor Judy Burke, last month at the editorial offices of America’s most beloved and respected educational magazines for kids.
When doing portraits on assignments I have always tried to get people comfortable with being themselves. I have always had a hard time “directing” them. It is especially difficult when the story I’m trying to illustrate is not about them, but about where they work, or what they are doing.
Trying avoid posing subjects by saying “just do whatever you’d be doing if I — and a reporter, and the public relations person(s) — wasn’t here,” doesn’t help. And just makes it awkward for all of us.
Employee Alex Costa (right) assists Alessandra Bruno as she tries out purses with husband Luke Baur and their 20 month-old daughter Rosalina at the Coach store at the Cherry Hill Mall on Monday.
Walking into a room where everyone is ready and waiting to be photographed — but unsure of what the photographer will do — is also hard for them. If possible I get them to interact with each other, even if it’s just sharing what they had for breakfast. In public spaces I will often enlist customers or passersby, asking if I can photographed over their shoulders. Then wait — and hope — for a genuine moment. Like in the mall retail shop, a customer interaction is much better than five salespeople standing among the merchandise looking at the camera.
That is also why I most enjoy assignments where I am just there, observing an event trying to capture something that will make readers click on a link or pause to read a story. And I keep myself enthused while doing it. Like the many public appearances of our mayor.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has the whole room of business leaders standing with her and her “One Philly” chant as she finishers her keynote address at the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia’s Annual Mayoral Luncheon Wednesday.
That goes for ordinary people too, not just politicians or executives or sports or entertainment celebrities. And what is more normal and everyday than stopping at your regular convenience store?
I also photographed Wawa’s excursion into Sheetz land in 2024. For decades, it was assumed there were unspoken boundaries in Pennsylvania between Wawa in the East and Sheetz in the West. But representatives of both chains deny they are rivals and as my colleague Stephanie Farr points out, they have worked together to support various nonprofits.
Next stop for me (soon, I hope) a photographic road trip to the nearest Buc-ees.
Since 1998 a black-and-white photo has appeared every Monday in staff photographer Tom Gralish’s “Scene Through the Lens” photo column in the print editions of The Inquirer’s local news section. Here are the most recent, in color:
February 9, 2026: Walking through a corrugated metal culvert called the “Duck Tunnel,” a pedestrian navigates the passageway under the SEPTA tracks on the Swarthmore College campus. February 2, 2026: A light-as-air Elmo balloon rolls along a sidewalk in Haddonfield, propelled by the wind as Sunday’s heavy snow starts to turn to ice and sleet. January 26, 2026: The President’s House in Independence National Historical Park hours Jan, 22, after all historical exhibits were removed following President Trump’s Executive Order last March that the content at national parks that “inappropriately disparage” the U.S. be reviewed. The site, a reconstructed “ghost” structure titled “Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation” (2010), serves as a memorial to the nine people George Washington enslaved there during the founding of America.January 19, 2026: A low-in-the-sky winter sun is behind the triangular pediment of the “front door” of the open-air President’s House installation in Independence National Historical Park. The reconstructed “ghost” structure with partial walls and windows of the Georgian home known in the 18th century as 190 High St. is officially titled, “Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation” (2010). It is designed to give visitors a sense of the house where the first two presidents of the United States, George Washington and John Adams, served their terms of office. The commemorative site designed by Emanuel Kelly, with Kelly/Maiello Architects, pays homage to nine enslaved people of African descent who were part of the Washington household with videos scripted by Lorene Cary and directed by Louis Massiah. Deepika Iyer holds her niece Ira Samudra aloft in a Rockyesque pose, while her parents photograph their 8 month-old daughter, in front of the famous movie prop at the top of the steps at the Philadelphia Art Museum. Iyer lives in Philadelphia and is hosting a visit by her mother Vijayalakshmi Ramachandran (partially hidden); brother Gautham Ramachandran; and her sister-in-law Janani Gautham who all live in Bangalore, India.January 5, 2026: Parade marshals trail behind the musicians of the Greater Kensington String Band heading to their #9 position start in the Mummers Parade. Spray paint by comic wenches earlier in the day left “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers” shadows on the pavement of Market Street. This year marked the 125th anniversary of Philly’s iconic New Year’s Day celebration.Dec. 29, 2025: Canada geese at sunrise in Evans Pond in Haddonfield, during the week of the Winter Solstice for the Northern Hemisphere. December 22, 2025: SEPTA trolley operator Victoria Daniels approaches the end of the Center City Tunnel, heading toward the 40th Street trolley portal after a tour to update the news media on overhead wire repairs in the closed tunnel due to unexpected issues from new slider parts.December 15, 2025: A historical interpreter waits at the parking garage elevators headed not to a December crossing of the Delaware River, but an event at the National Constitution Center. General George Washington was on his way to an unveiling of the U.S. Mint’s new 2026 coins for the Semiquincentennial, December 8, 2025: The Benjamin Franklin Bridge and pedestrians on the Delaware River Trail are reflected in mirrored spheres of the “Weaver’s Knot: Sheet Bend” public artwork on Columbus Boulevard. The site-specific stainless steel piece located between the Cherry Street and Race Street Piers was commissioned by the City’s Public Art Office and the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation and created and installed in 2022 by the design and fabrication group Ball-Nogues Studio. The name recalls a history that dominated the region for hundreds of years. “Weaver’s knot” derives from use in textile mills and the “Sheet bend” or “sheet knot” was used on sailing vessels for bending ropes to sails. November 29, 2025: t’s ginkgo time in our region again when the distinctive fan-shaped leaves turn yellow and then, on one day, lose all their leaves at the same time laying a carpet on city streets and sidewalks. A squirrel leaps over leaves in the 18th Century Garden in Independence National Historical Park Nov. 25, 2025. The ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) is considered a living fossil as it’s the only surviving species of a group of trees that existed before dinosaurs. Genetically, it has remained unchanged over the past 200 million years. William Hamilton, owner the Woodlands in SW Phila (no relation to Alexander Hamilton) brought the first ginkgo trees to North America in 1785.November 24, 2025: The old waiting room at 30th Street Station that most people only pass through on their way to the restrooms has been spiffed up with benches – and a Christmas tree. It was placed there this year in front of the 30-foot frieze, “The Spirit of Transportation” while the lobby of Amtrak’s $550 million station restoration is underway. The 1895 relief sculpture by Karl Bitter was originally hung in the Broad Street Station by City Hall, but was moved in 1933. It depicts travel from ancient to modern and even futuristic times. November 17, 2025: Students on a field trip from the Christian Academy in Brookhaven, Delaware County, pose for a group photo in front of the Liberty Bell in Independence National Historical Park on Thursday. The trip was planned weeks earlier, before they knew it would be on the day park buildings were reopening after the government shutdown ended. “We got so lucky,” a teacher said. Then corrected herself. “It’s because we prayed for it.”
We’ll show you a photo taken in the Philly-area, you drop a pin where you think it was taken. Closer to the location results in a better score. This week is all about Valentine’s Day! Good luck!
Round #20
Question 1
Where did this Valentine’s Day wedding take place?
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ClickTap on map to guess the location in the photo
ClickTap again to change your guess and hit submit when you're happy
You will be scored at the end. The closer to the location the better the score
Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
Pretty good/Not bad/Way off! Your guess was from the location.Spot on! Your guess was exactly at the location. Here's also where a random selection of Inquirer readers guessed.
Every year on Valentine’s Day, the city holds ceremonies for ten couples to get married or renew their vows in front of the LOVEsculpture. Time slots are reserved on the Parks and Recreation website.
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Question 2
Where was this couple seen holding hands?
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Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
Pretty good/Not bad/Way off! Your guess was from the location.Spot on! Your guess was exactly at the location. Here's also where a random selection of Inquirer readers guessed.
This romantic stroll took place in front of a Chinatown mural.
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Question 3
Where did this cherry blossom-filled kiss take place?
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Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
Pretty good/Not bad/Way off! Your guess was from the location.Spot on! Your guess was exactly at the location. Here's also where a random selection of Inquirer readers guessed.
Springtime is right around the corner, which means the cherry blossoms will soon be blooming. This couple was photographed under the trees along Columbus Boulevard.
Your Score
ARank
❤️ Amazing work. You really love Philly geography!
BRank
❤️ Good stuff. You really love Philly geography!
CRank
C is a passing grade, but this quiz could use some love.
DRank
💔 D isn’t great. This quiz could use some love.
FRank
💔 We don’t want to say you failed, but you didn’t not fail.
You beat % of other Inquirer readers.
We’ll be back next Saturday for another round of Citywide Quest.
A Trenton man was sentenced to up to 60 years in Pennsylvania state prison for fatally shooting a bystander at a Morrisville strip club.
On Friday, Pedro E. Rodriguez, 29, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, discharging a firearm into an occupied structure, possession of an instrument of crime, and four counts of recklessly endangering another person in the killing of 28-year-old Mekhi Norman in August 2024.
According to the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office, Norman was shot at a Morrisville nightclub while acting as a Good Samaritan. He did not know Rodriguez but was helping the club’s staff following an altercation at the doorway.
Surveillance video shown during the sentencing hearing shows Rodriguez walking to his car, getting a handgun, loading it, and returning to the club, according to a district attorney’s office statement. Then, he fired into the building as security staff were attempting to remove his nephew, according to the statement.
Norman, who was helping the staff when he was shot, was struck in the back of the head, the left thigh, and under both armpits, as 17 patrons and employees remained at the club.
Rodriguez fled but later turned himself in and was held on $5 million bail at the Bucks County Correctional Facility. He now faces between 30 and 60 years in state prison.
Rodriguez’s nephew, 22-year-old Kevin Perez, entered a guilty plea in 2025 to several counts of simple assault, disorderly conduct, and harassment for assaulting staff. The Trenton resident was sentenced to 10 to 23 months in the Bucks County Correctional Facility, followed by a year of probation.
During the sentencing hearing, Deputy District Attorney Ed Louka described Norman as a good father, a good son, and a good friend who died being a Good Samaritan, according to the statement.
Offering an account of how life has changed, the mother of Norman’s daughter told the court that the child still cries waiting for her father to call in the mornings and nights, as he used to, according to prosecutors.
“While this sentence ensures that the defendant is held accountable for his senseless and violent actions, we know it cannot fill the void left in the lives of those who loved Mr. Norman,” District Attorney Joe Khan said.
