The daughter of a Northeast Philadelphia man who prosecutors say ran a human-trafficking ring for years that trapped vulnerable women, supplied them with drugs, then forced them to have sex with men across the region pleaded guilty Friday to helping manage the finances of the criminal organization.
Natoria Jones, 30, pleaded guilty to promoting prostitution after prosecutors with the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office said she helped her father, Terrance Jones, manage the payments of his sex-trafficking scheme for at least three weeks in 2023.
In exchange for Jones’ plea, Senior Deputy Attorney General Zachary Wynkoop withdrew felony charges of conspiracy, participating in a corrupt organization, and promoting unlawful activities.
Wynkoop asked Common Pleas Court Judge Zachary Shaffer to defer Jones’ sentencing until after the June trial of her father, Terrance Jones — the alleged ringleader of the criminal enterprise — and three of his associates.
The plea marks the latest development in the sweeping indictment brought by the attorney general’s office in 2024 in which officials charged Terrance Jones, 54, and several of his associates with operating a human-trafficking ring across the region for more than a decade.
For 12 years, Terrance Jones, of Lawndale, marketed what he called “GFE” or “the Girlfriend Experience” online and recruited women in their 20s — many battling addiction and struggling to find stable housing or income, authorities said.
When women contacted the operation, prosecutors said, Terrance Jones would impersonate a woman, raising the pitch of his voice and introducing himself as “Julie” or “Julia” to build trust. He promised to send a driver to pick them up for “dates” where they could earn more than $250 and obtain drugs, officials said. He used the women to lure other victims who were addicted to drugs into the scheme, telling one confidant that he “could ‘wash em up’ and make money with them,” according to the affidavit of probable cause for Jones’ arrest.
“He made these women feel worthless. He controlled them, manipulated them, and, in a way, programmed them to feel like this was their only option,” then-Attorney General Michelle Henry said in announcing the charges.
Prosecutors and Pennsylvania State Police began investigating in 2021 after a woman who they said had been trafficked by Terrance Jones reported the abuse.
After meeting with the woman, officials conducted wiretaps, acted as undercover sex workers and buyers, and tracked down his clients, the affidavit said. Across the three-year investigation, officials said they found that the operation crossed through the Philadelphia suburbs and into New Jersey, and that over just 10 days in 2023, Terrance Jones arranged 78 “dates” — and pocketed most of the funds.
He was charged with trafficking individuals, involuntary servitude, running a corrupt organization, conspiracy, and related crimes. He remains in custody, held on $2 million bail.
Three of Terrance Jones’ business partners — Thomas Reilly, Joseph Franklin, and Raheem Smith — are charged with running a corrupt organization, conspiracy, and related crimes, and are scheduled to go to trial with him in June.
Another associate, James Rudolph, a driver who officials said transported women to their “dates,” pleaded guilty to conspiracy to promote a house of prostitution last year. He’s scheduled to be sentenced later this month.
In a rare move, prosecutors as part of the indictment also criminally charged 16 men who paid Terrance Jones for sex with the women. While the charges against some of the men have been dismissed, at least nine have pleaded guilty to promoting or patronizing prostitution and are scheduled to be sentenced next month.
Among Terrance Jones’ business partners, was also his daughter, Natoria, who handled some of the financials and payments between the women and customers. Her attorney Jonathan D. Consadene declined to comment Friday.
Senior Deputy Attorney General Erik Olsen said several factors influenced the plea agreement.
“There’s some mitigation as to how she got pulled into this,” Olsen said, adding that more details would emerge at trial in June.
The Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute President Donald Trump’s critics entered a new phase this week, when federal prosecutors failedto indict six Democratic lawmakers who recorded a video reminding military service members of their duty to refuse illegal orders.
Department lawyers, under pressure from the president, previously targeted several of Trump’s most outspoken foes, including former FBI director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Both faced since-dismissed charges last year over alleged conduct unrelated to their politicalviews.
But the case federal prosecutors put before a grand jury Tuesday — seeking to charge Sens. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.), Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich.) and four others over their90-secondvideo message — marked the first time the department has directly soughtto classify critical speech from prominent Trump detractors as a crime.
The other lawmakers who participated in the video included Reps. Jason Crow, a former Army ranger from Colorado, and Maggie Goodlander, a Navy veteran from New Hampshire, as well as Chrissy Houlahan, a former Air Force officer, and Chris Deluzio, a former Navy officer, both from Pennsylvania.
Grand jurors roundly rejected the effort, the Washington Post reported. But legal observers and the lawmakers at the center of the probe have argued in the days since that the panel’s decision is almost beside the point.
Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich.) and Sen. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.) speak during a news conference Wednesday on Capitol Hill.
“This is not a good news story,” Kelly, a retired Navy captain and astronaut, told reporters during a news conference this week. “This is a story about how Donald Trump and his cronies are trying to break our system to silence anyone who lawfully speaks out against them.”
The attempt to charge the lawmakers represents an evolution of the campaign that began last year with cases against James and Comey, said Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College.
“Prosecuting people for speech criticizing the president is in some ways even more dangerous,” Nyhan said, “especially given these are legislators acting in their public role and especially given that they were calling for the military and national security state to follow the law.”
Still, some Trump allies in Congress, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.), defended the administration’s efforts. He told reporters that Slotkin, Kelly, and the others “probably should be indicted.”
“Any time you’re obstructing law enforcement and getting in the way of these sensitive operations, it’s a very serious thing, and it probably is a crime,” he said.
The Justice Department’s criminal investigation intothe lawmakers began after the video organized by Slotkin, a former CIA analyst, was posted online in November. In it, she and the others, all of whom served in the military or with intelligence agencies, reminded service members of their duty, spelled out in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to resist unlawful directives.
“This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens,” the lawmakers said. “Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders.”
The video did not single out any specificTrump administrationpolicies. But Slotkin and Kelly, both of whom serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee, have sharply criticized the president for military strikes he authorized on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean and his decision to deploy the National Guard to cities run by Democratic officials.
Their video drew an immediate reaction from Trump, who demanded on social media that the lawmakers face prosecution for sedition and suggested they should even, perhaps, be punished with execution.
“SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” Trump wrote in one social media post soon after the video was posted. He said in another: “IT WAS SEDITION AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL, AND SEDITION IS A MAJOR CRIME.”
Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, a former Air Force officer and a Democrat who represents Chester County, was one of six lawmakers targeted over a 90-second video message.
The messages echoed another Trump post from last year in which he, in a missive addressed to “Pam,”an apparent reference to Attorney General Pam Bondi, insisted the Justice Department move swiftly to prosecute Comey, James, and others.
“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” he wrote then, adding, “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
Within months,James was indicted on counts of mortgage fraud, while Comey was charged with lying to Congress. Both denied the accusations and their cases were later dismissed by a federal judge over technicalissues with the appointment of the prosecutor who had charged them.
Slotkin, Kelly, and the other lawmakers have maintained they did nothing wrong — even as top administration officials have accused them of using the video to encourage service members to take actions tantamount to mutiny.
Earlier this month, four of the lawmakers in the video disclosed that they had been approached by FBI agents and declined to give voluntary interviews to prosecutors.
“It was clearly, when our lawyers sat down with them, just about checking a box and doing what the president wanted them to do,” Slotkin said Wednesday. “Their heart wasn’t even in it.”
It is not clear whether the FBI took other steps to investigate. But on Tuesday, prosecutors under the supervision of D.C.’s U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, a former Fox News host and staunch Trump ally, presented a case against the lawmakers to the grand jury.
Two political appointees led that presentation, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sealed court proceedings.
The prosecutors — Steven Vandervelden, a former colleague of Pirro’s in the district attorney’s office in Westchester, New York, and Carlton Davis, a former staffer for House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.) — sought to charge the lawmakers with a felony crime that makes it illegal to “interfere with, impair, or influence the loyalty, morale, or discipline of the military or naval forces of the United States,” the people said.
But when it came time to vote, none of the grand jurors agreed there was sufficient probable cause to charge any of the lawmakers with a crime, one of the people familiar said.
Spokespeople for the Justice Department and for Pirro have declined to comment on the matter in the days since. Amid that silence,the effort has drawn an impassioned response from Capitol Hill.
“The fact that they failed to incarcerate a United States senator should not obviate our outrage,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D., Hawaii) said during a heated session Wednesday in which Democratic senators implored their Republican colleagues to openly condemn the Justice Department’s actions. Senate Democrats held a special caucus meeting Thursday morning to further discuss the situation.
“They tried to incarcerate two of us,” Schatz said. “I am not entirely sure the United States Senate can survive this if we do not have Republicans standing up.”
Sen. Thom Tillis (North Carolina) has emerged as one of the few Republicans to publicly rebuke the department. He described the failed attempt to prosecute as exactly the type of weaponization of the justice system that the Trump administration has said it is fighting against.
“Political lawfare is not normal, not acceptable, and needs to stop,” Tillis wrote in a post to X.
At their news conference Wednesday,Kelly told reporters that he and Slotkin learned about the attempt to indict them Tuesday through media reports.
“If things had gone a different way, we’d be preparing for arrest,” Slotkin said.
Since then, lawyers for several of the targeted lawmakers have sent letters to Pirro and Bondi seeking assurances that the investigation is over and that prosecutors will not seek to indict them again. They’ve also instructed the department to retain all records of the investigation threatening potential legal action for violating the lawmakers’ free-speech rights.
In a separate suit filed by Kelly, a federal judge Thursday halted Defense Department efforts to formally censure the senator over his video remarks, saying the effort to do so “trampled on Senator Kelly’s First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees.”
“The intimidation was the point — to get other people beyond us to think twice about speaking out,” Slotkin said Wednesday. “But the real question is if the president can do this to us — sitting senators — who else can he do it to?”
The Trump administration spent more than $40 million last year to send hundreds of migrants to at least two-dozen countries that are not their own, a tactic Senate Democrats described in a report Friday as a costly strategy aimed at sowing fear and intimidation in the president’s mass deportation campaign.
The 30-page analysis from the minority members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee accuses the administration of entering into opaque financial agreements with foreign governments — including some with poor records on corruption and human rights — to rapidly expand a program for “third country” removals that once had been reserved for exceptional circumstances.
Its authors contend that the State Department has failed to conduct sufficient oversight to ensure that payments to those countries are not being misspent and that migrants transferred to their custody are not being abused or mistreated.
The administration “has expanded and institutionalized a system in which the United States urges or coerces countries to accept migrants who are not their citizens, often through arrangements that are costly, inefficient and poorly monitored,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the committee, wrote in a letter to colleagues. “Deporting migrants to countries they have no connection to … has become a routine instrument of diplomacy.”
Administration officials have said they have no choice but to partner with foreign governments that are willing to accept undocumented immigrants whose native nations are not willing to take them back. In most cases, the migrants have criminal records, authorities said, though public records have shown that some have not been convicted of crimes in the United States.
The report from Senate Democrats, which provides the most comprehensive look at the administration’s third-country removal program, found that the U.S. government has sent migrants to two-dozen third countries. The analysis focused primarily on five nations — El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, Eswatini, and Palau — with which the Trump administration has entered into direct financial payments totaling $32 million, a committee member involved in the report said. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the analysis ahead of its release.
Under those agreements, U.S. authorities sent about 250 Venezuelan migrants to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador last spring, while 29 migrants have been deported to Equatorial Guinea, 15 to Eswatini, and seven to Rwanda, the report said. None has been sent to Palau.
The report also estimated that the administration has spent more than $7 million in costs related to deportation flights to 10 of the third countries.
“Millions of taxpayer dollars are being spent without meaningful oversight or accountability,” Shaheen wrote in her letter. “And speed and deterrence are being prioritized over due process and respect for human rights.”
Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesman, said the report shows the “unprecedented” work the administration has undertaken in its first year to enforce immigration laws.
“Astonishingly, some in Congress still want to go back to a time just 14 months ago when cartels had free rein to poison Americans and our border was open,” Pigott said in a statement. “Make no mistake, President Trump has brought Biden’s era of mass illegal immigration to an end, and we are all safer for it.”
The third-country strategy has provoked public blowback and legal challenges that have slowed the administration’s efforts and, in some instances, forced it to change course.
Last spring, President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely used law targeting enemy combatants, which provided the administration’s legal rationale to send the Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador. Administration officials accused many of being members of the Tren de Aragua transnational gang, though some of their families and attorneys disputed that contention.
The men were later transferred from El Salvador to Venezuela under a prisoner swap. On Thursday, a federal judge in Washington ruled thatthe administration must bring some of the Venezuelan deportees back to the United States as they pursue legal challenges to their removals.
“It is worth emphasizing that this situation would never have arisen had the Government simply afforded Plaintiffs their constitutional rights before initially deporting them,” Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg wrote in his ruling.
The analysis from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee minority was put together over a period of more than eight months, based on conversations with foreign government and U.S. government officials, attorneys for deportees and immigrant rights organizations, according to the committee staffer.
The staffer said the goal of the report is to highlight the costs of the administration’s approach at a time when Democrats are concerned that the U.S. government is “entering a new phase” of speeding up the number of third-country agreements, along with the pace of deportations.
The report faults the administration for pursuing its deportation policies at the expense of other U.S. interests, including promoting human rights and punishing corrupt foreign regimes.
The authors said the Trump administration’s payment of $7.5 million to Equatorial Guinea to accept immigrants was more than the amount of foreign assistance the United States provided to that country in the previous eight years. They cited a 2025 State Department report on human trafficking that cited U.S. concerns about “corruption and official complicity in trafficking crimes” in that country.
The report also said the Trump administration was moving hastily to carry out third-country removals without trying to negotiate with the home countries of some deportees. In one case, a man initially deported to Eswatini was later sent to his home nation of Jamaica, where government officials said they had never told the United States that they were unwilling to accept him.
“As a result, the Trump Administration has, in some cases, paid twice for migrants’ travel — once to remove them to a third country and then again to fly them to their home country,” the report says.
WASHINGTON — A shutdown for the Department of Homeland Security appeared certain Thursday as lawmakers in the House and Senate were set to leave Washington for a 10-day break and negotiations with the White House over Democrats’ demands for new restrictions had stalled.
Democrats and the White House have traded offers in recent days as the Democrats have said they want curbs on President Donald Trump’s broad campaign of immigration enforcement. They have demanded better identification for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal law enforcement officers, a new code of conduct for those agencies and more use of judicial warrants, among other requests.
The White House sent its latest proposal late Wednesday, but Trump told reporters on Thursday that some of the Democratic demands would be “very, very hard to approve.”
Democrats said the White House offer, which was not made public, did not include sufficient curbs on ICE after two protesters were fatally shot last month. The offer was “not serious,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Thursday, after the Senate rejected a bill to fund the department.
Americans want accountability and “an end to the chaos,” Schumer said. “The White House and congressional Republicans must listen and deliver.”
Lawmakers in both chambers were on notice to return to Washington if the two sides struck a deal to end the expected shutdown. Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters that Democrats would send the White House a counterproposal over the weekend.
Impact of a shutdown
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said after the vote that a shutdown appeared likely and “the people who are not going to be getting paychecks” will pay the price.
The impact of a DHS shutdown is likely to be minimal at first. It would not likely block any of the immigration enforcement operations, as Trump’s tax and spending cut bill passed last year gave ICE about $75 billion to expand detention capacity and bolster enforcement operations.
But the other agencies in the department — including the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Secret Service and the Coast Guard — could take a bigger hit over time.
Gregg Phillips, an associate administrator at FEMA, said at a hearing this week that its disaster relief fund has sufficient balances to continue emergency response activities during a shutdown, but would become seriously strained in the event of a catastrophic disaster.
Phillips said that while the agency continues to respond to threats like flooding and winter storms, long-term planning and coordination with state and local partners will be “irrevocably impacted.”
Trump defends officer masking
Trump, who has remained largely silent during the bipartisan talks, noted Thursday that a recent court ruling rejected a ban on masks for federal law enforcement officers.
“We have to protect our law enforcement,” Trump told reporters.
Democrats made the demands for new restrictions on ICE and other federal law enforcement after ICU nurse Alex Pretti was shot and killed by a U.S. Border Patrol officer in Minneapolis on Jan. 24. Renee Good was shot by ICE agents on Jan. 7.
Trump agreed to a Democratic request that the Homeland Security bill be separated from a larger spending measure that became law last week. That package extended Homeland Security funding at current levels only through Friday.
Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York have said they want immigration officers to remove their masks, to show identification and to better coordinate with local authorities. They have also demanded a stricter use-of-force policy for the federal officers, legal safeguards at detention centers and a prohibition on tracking protesters with body-worn cameras.
Democrats also say Congress should end indiscriminate arrests and require that before a person can be detained, authorities have verified that the person is not a U.S. citizen.
Thune suggested there were potential areas of compromise, including on masks. There could be contingencies “that these folks aren’t being doxed,” Thune said. “I think they could find a landing place.”
But Republicans have been largely opposed to most of the items on the Democrats’ list, including a prohibition on masks.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., said Republicans who have pushed for stronger immigration enforcement would benefit politically from the Democratic demands.
“So if they want to have that debate, we’ll have that debate all they want,” said Schmitt.
Judicial warrants a sticking point
Thune, who has urged Democrats and the White House to work together, indicated that another sticking point is judicial warrants.
“The issue of warrants is going to be very hard for the White House or for Republicans,” Thune said of the White House’s most recent offer. “But I think there are a lot of other areas where there has been give, and progress.”
Schumer and Jeffries have said DHS officers should not be able to enter private property without a judicial warrant and that warrant procedures and standards should be improved. They have said they want an end to “roving patrols” of agents who are targeting people in the streets and in their homes.
Most immigration arrests are carried out under administrative warrants. Those are internal documents issued by immigration authorities that authorize the arrest of a specific person but do not permit officers to forcibly enter private homes or other nonpublic spaces without consent. Traditionally, only warrants signed by judges carry that authority.
But an internal ICE memo obtained by The Associated Press last month authorizes ICE officers to use force to enter a residence based solely on a more narrow administrative warrant to arrest someone with a final order of removal, a move that advocates say collides with Fourth Amendment protections.
Far from agreement
Thune, R-S.D., said were “concessions” in the White House offer. He would not say what those concessions were, though, and he acknowledged the sides were “a long ways toward a solution.”
Schumer said it was not enough that the administration had announced an end to the immigration crackdown in Minnesota that led to thousands of arrests and the fatal shootings of two protesters.
“We need legislation to rein in ICE and end the violence,” Schumer said, or the actions of the administration “could be reversed tomorrow on a whim.”
Simmering partisan tensions played out on the Senate floor immediately after the vote, as Alabama Sen. Katie Britt, the chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees Homeland Security funding, tried to pass a two-week extension of Homeland Security funding and Democrats objected.
Britt said Democrats were “posturing” and that federal employees would suffer for it. “I’m over it!” she yelled.
Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, the top Democrat on the Homeland spending subcommittee, responded that Democrats “want to fund the Department of Homeland Security, but only a department that is obeying the law.”
“This is an exceptional moment in this country’s history,” Murphy said.
WASHINGTON — A key measure of inflation fell to nearly a five-year low last month as apartment rental price growth slowed and gas prices fell, offering some relief to Americans grappling with the sharp cost increases of the past five years.
Inflation dropped to 2.4% in January compared with a year earlier, down from 2.7% in December and not too far from the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. Core prices, which exclude the volatile food and energy categories, rose just 2.5% in January from a year ago, down from 2.6% the previous month and the smallest increase since March 2021.
Friday’s report suggests inflation is cooling, but the cost of food, gas, and apartment rents have soared after the pandemic, with consumer prices still about 25% higher than they were five years ago. The increase in such a broad range of costs has kept “affordability,” a topic that helped shape the most recent U.S. presidential election, front and center as a dominant political issue.
And on a monthly basis, consumer prices rose 0.2% in January from December, while core prices rose 0.3%. Core inflation was held down by a sharp drop in the price of used cars, which fell 1.8% just in January from December.
“Inflation continues to decelerate and is not threatening to move back up, and that will enable more rate cuts by the Fed,” said Luke Tilley, chief economist at Wilmington Trust.
There were signs in the report that retailers are passing on more of the costs of President Donald Trump’s tariffs to consumers for goods such as furniture, appliances, and clothes. But those increases were offset by falling prices elsewhere. In other areas, Trump has delayed, scrapped, or provided exemptions to his duties.
Furniture prices jumped 0.7% in January from the previous month and are up 4% from a year ago. Appliances rose 1.3% in January though are only slightly more expensive than a year earlier. Clothing price rose 0.3% in January from December and have increased 1.7% in the past year.
Some services prices also rose: Airline fares soared 6.5% just in January, after a 3.8% jump in November, though they rose only 2.2% from a year earlier. Music streaming subscriptions increased 4.5% in January and are 7.8% higher than a year ago.
Yet those increases were largely offset by price declines, or much slower price growth, in other areas, including many that make up a greater share of Americans’ spending.
The cost of used cars, for example, plunged 1.8% in January, the biggest decline in two years. Gas prices fell 3.2% last month, the third drop in the past four months, and are down 7.5% from a year earlier. Grocery prices rose just 0.2% in January, after a big 0.6% rise in December, and are up 2.1% from a year ago. Hotel prices ticked down 0.1% in January and have fallen 2% from last year.
Rental prices and the cost of owning a home, which make up a third of the inflation index, both rose just 0.2% in December, while rents increased only 2.8% from a year earlier. That is much lower than during the pandemic: Rents rose by more than 8% in 2022.
The tariffs have increased some costs and many economists forecast companies will pass through more of those increases to consumers in the coming months. A study released Thursday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that U.S. companies and consumers are paying nearly 90% of the tariffs’ costs, echoing similar findings in studies by Harvard and other economists.
Yet the increases haven’t been as broad-based as many economists feared.
Tilley said that the higher tariffs have pulled some consumer spending away from other services, which has forced companies to keep those prices a bit lower as a result.
“We don’t think consumers are in a place to take on price increases across the board, so you’re not seeing those price increses,” he said. Hiring was particularly weak last year, slowing wage growth, and many Americans remain gloomy about the economy.
Some economists note that the rental figures were distorted by October’s six-week government shutdown, which interrupted the Labor Department’s gathering of the data. The government plugged in estimated figures for October which economists say have artificially lowered some of the housing costs.
Companies are still grappling with the higher costs from Trump’s duties, though some have benefited from tariffs being delayed or scrapped.
Arin Schultz, chief growth officer at Naturepedic, which makes organic mattresses in Cleveland, breathed a sigh of relief when Trump postponed import duties on upholstered furniture until 2027. They would have substantially pushed up the cost of the headboards the company imports.
Schultz welcomed the decision to lower tariffs on imports from India to 18%, from 50%. Naturepedic sources a lot of the cotton fabrics and bedding that it sells from India. When that reduction kicks in, he said, the company could even cut some prices.
Still, Naturepedic’s costs jumped because of duties on imports from Vietnam and Malaysia, where it sources its organic latex, which can’t be grown in the United States. Naturepedic makes its mattresses in the United States at a factory in Cleveland and employs about 200 workers.
“We’re paying more now for that,” he said, and the company raised its prices about 7% last year as a result. “Tariffs are awful. We are less profitable now as a company because of tariffs.”
If inflation gets closer to the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%, it could allow the central bank to cut its key short-term interest rate further this year, as Trump has repeatedly demanded. High borrowing costs for things like mortgages and auto loans have also contributed to a perception that many big-ticket items remain out of reach for many Americans.
Inflation surged to 9.1% in 2022 as consumer spending soared as supply chains snarled after the pandemic. It began to fall in 2023 but leveled off around 3% in mid-2024 and remained elevated last year.
At the same time, measures of wage growth have declined as hiring has cratered. With companies reluctant to add jobs, workers don’t have as much leverage to demand raises.
Bert Bell pulled the defunct Frankford Yellow Jackets out of bankruptcy, and started a new NFL franchise in Philadelphia in 1933.
His wife, actress Frances Upton Bell, paid her husband’s share of $2,500 (more than $60,000 in today’s money) to seal the deal.
Bell spotted a billboard for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, which included the insignia of a bald eagle, and decided this new team should be called the Philadelphia Eagles.
The NFL back then was a nine-team league. And for players it was a free market. The best and brightest could join whichever team they saw fit.
The Eagles were the worst. And in 1935, Bell tried to sign Stan Kostka, a 6-foot-2 fullback from the University of Minnesota. After failing to close the deal, he decided there had to be another way.
Bell came up with an idea whereby each team had a fair shot at the top players. His solution was a draft, in which teams would select from a pool of new players entering the league.
And the key idea: The order of player selection would be in reverse order of the previous year’s standings. So the worst-performing franchise would pick first, and the league champions would pick last.
They called it “the selection of players.” And the first iteration would be held during the owners’ meetings, Feb. 8 and 9, 1936.
It made sense to hold the event in Philadelphia. It was a midway point among the nine cities, and Bell’s father owned the hotel.
On the clock
The Eagles held the first-ever pick in the NFL draft.
They selected Jay Berwanger, Heisman Trophy-winning halfback from the University of Chicago. But his salary demands were high, reported at $1,000 per game. (That would be $25,000 per game today.)
So immediately the team tradedhim to the Bears for veteran tackle Art Buss.
Berwanger, unimpressed with the Bears’ contract offer, took a job with a rubber company instead.
He never played a minute in an NFL game.
In that hotel room, the nine owners drafted 81 players over nine rounds, kicking off what would become an industry unto itself and the league’s third marquee event, behind the NFL’s opening weekend and the Super Bowl.
Think you know your news? There’s only one way to find out. Welcome back to our weekly News Quiz — a quick way to see if your reading habits are sinking in and to put your local news knowledge to the test.
Question 1 of 10
There will be one Tun Tavern opening in Old City, now that a long-running dispute over the name of one of Philadelphia’s most storied colonial landmarks has been resolved. What’s the historical significance of the Tun Tavern?
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
The Tun Tavern served as the first recruiting station for what became the Marine Corps in 1775. Now that a long-running dispute over the name of one of Philadelphia’s most storied colonial landmarks has been resolved, the Tun Legacy Foundation — a nonprofit led by Marine veterans and Philadelphia-area organizations whose origins trace back to the original Tun Tavern — will use the full name on its planned historic reproduction on Second Street.
Question 2 of 10
This building at LOVE Park (with a space-themed nickname), could soon get a reboot after years of sitting dormant:
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
The Saucer building, also referred to as the UFO, was added to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places last year. Built in 1960, the building predates LOVE Park, and first served as the city hospitality center. It later housed offices for park staff. Now it’s looking at a long-awaited reboot.
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Question 3 of 10
Which Philly-based bronze statue is slated to be relocated to the base of the Art Museum’s steps, taking Rocky’s place?
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
Creative Philadelphia, the city’s office for the creative sector, presented and had approved a proposal at an Art Commission meeting to have the “Smokin’” Joe Frazier statue take over the Rocky statue’s current home at the base of the Art Museum’s steps. Last month, the commission approved the Rocky statue coming back to the top of the steps, where it supposedly will permanently stay starting in the fall and following its first-time display inside the museum.
Question 4 of 10
Just two blocks from Independence Hall, Carpenters Hall is where Pennsylvania declared its independence from Britain in June 1776. To celebrate America’s 250th birthday, what will be installed outside of Carpenters Hall in June?
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
On June 18, as part of the celebration, a blue historical marker will be installed outside the hall in addition to a three-part virtual lecture series on Pennsylvania’s constitution.
Question 5 of 10
Northeast Philly’s Delilah Dee, who runs a local social community for Latina women, worked on Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show as a part of the field team, coordinating walkthroughs and set breakdowns. Where was she when she learned she got the job?
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
Dee applied for a job at the Super Bowl in November. On Dec. 31, she was accepted for a position with the field team. She learned while she was at the gym and started crying. For the last two weeks, she was in Santa Clara for rehearsals.
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A landmark deli in Cherry Hill closed after 25 years without notice, filing for bankruptcy. What was it called?
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The Kibitz Room in Cherry Hill shuttered without notice. Now, former owners say they want to revive the business, founded in 2001.
Question 7 of 10
This department store in Bala Cynwyd is closing after decades in business:
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Saks Fifth Avenue will be closing its Bala Cynwyd location in April. Saks Global, which owns Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, announced the impending closure in a statement Tuesday, a month after the luxury clothing retailer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Question 8 of 10
Which iconic Philly bar hosted a reunion for couples who found love there?
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McGillin’s Olde Ale House, the 166-year-old pub in Center City long owned by the same family, has leaned especially hard into being, in its own description, the place where more couples have met than anywhere else in Philadelphia. The bar hosted its first reunion for such couples this month.
Question 9 of 10
What issue sparked dueling lawsuits between Gov. Josh Shapiro and his neighbors?
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The lawsuits center on a security fence and a disputed property line. Shapiro’s neighbors in Abington Township, Jeremy and Simone Mock, accuse the governor and his wife, Lori Shapiro, of illegally occupying part of their yard. The Shapiros filed a countersuit.
Question 10 of 10
Born in a puppy mill in Peach Bottom, Lancaster County, this 6-week-old toy poodle was one of many cute stars in last week’s Puppy Bowl:
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The puppy, Oscar, who was nursed back to health after being severely undernourished, traveled to Glens Falls, N.Y., to participate in the October taping of the 22nd annual Puppy Bowl. The annual special raises awareness for animal rescues across the United States. Every one of the 150 dogs in the competition — between Team Ruff and Team Fluff — comes from a rescue.
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Mejia will compete with Joe Hathaway, the former Randolph mayor who ran unopposed in the Republican primary, in an April special election. While Hathaway is far from supporting Mejia’s call for an end to ICE, he has also voiced support for making changes to the agency.
The encounter that has brought their views into focus happened Tuesday in Morris County. The incident, in whichan ICE agent fired a gun in Roxbury, is under investigation by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office. The attorney general’s office said no one was injured.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said the officer shot at an undocumented immigrant’s tires in self-defense during a targeted effort to detain him.
“This is a public safety issue,” Mejia said in an interview. “Abolishing ICE, to me, is the only reasonable step forward, because it is clear that ICE’s and DHS’s recruitment practices are clearly failing the American people. Their oversight and training is clearly failing the American people, and they have zero accountability.”
In Roxbury, a township of about 20,000 people, roughly 40 miles from New York City, local residents recently protested a proposed ICE facility, which Democratic politicians and the all-Republican town council alike oppose.
The township, which contains mostly Republican and unaffiliated voters, falls right outside of Sherrill’s former district, which includes other parts of the same county and has become fairly reliably blue.
Mejia said Tuesday’s confrontation raises concerns about guns going off in residential neighborhoods or near schools, and that it shows the “recklessness” of the Department of Homeland Security. She said she’s been in conversation with local Democratic officials who question DHS’s accountof the incident.
Hathaway disagrees with Mejia’s views on ICE, but he also stopped short of defending DHS when asked about Tuesday’s incident. He said in an interview that he needs more information to comment.
“I think it’s generally not a good thing when politicians try to stick our nose in and stoke the flames and politicize these kinds of things before we know the facts,” he said. “I certainly don’t want to do that in this case.”
A New York Times and Siena University poll published in late January found that a “sizable majority” of voters believe ICE “has gone too far,” while roughly half support Trump’s deportations and handling of the southern border.
DHS said the undocumented person driving the car in Roxburyhad a criminal history of drug trafficking charges, drug possession, and driving under the influence, and that a judge issued an order of removal for him in 2021. The federal agency said he “rammed into a law enforcement vehicle and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run an officer over” while trying to “evade arrest.”
“Following his training, the officer defensively used his firearm and shot out the tires of the vehicle to stop the threat,” an unnamed DHS spokesperson said. “Thankfully, no one was injured.” The driver was arrested and taken into ICE custody, DHS said.
The attorney general’s office requested that any witnesses share video footage of the incident. The request came right before Sherrill’s administration launched an online portal for New Jerseyans to submit videos of ICE, which she initially announced on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. Video footage shared by bystanders contradicted the Trump administration’s account of two recent deadly shootings by federal agents in Minnesota.
Mejia argued during her campaign that ICE cannot be reformed and should be replaced with something else, such as a more efficient system of processing asylum or citizenship applications.
“I’m not calling for open borders,” she said Wednesday. “I’m not calling for the eradication of a system. I’m actually calling for the cease and desist of the violence of the occupation of American cities, of the overreach from this administration, and the erosion of constitutional protections.”
She said she believes Congress, in the short term, should stop funding ICE, reallocate funds for the agency that came as Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act slashed funding for social services, stop surveilling and collecting data from Americans, and end qualified immunity for agents.
Senate Democrats blocked a funding bill for DHS Thursday amid unsuccessful negotiations with the White House to make changes to immigration enforcement operations following the shootings in Minneapolis.
Hathaway said he is “willing, absolutely, to come to the table to reform” how ICE operates, but that he also wants to see changes to sanctuary policies.
Sherrill’s administration has not provided more information about the Roxbury incident, citing an ongoing investigation.
“We recognize that matters of this nature raise concerns within our communities… it is my duty to protect the safety of residents of this state and uphold the Constitution. I will do everything in my power to fulfill this responsibility,” Acting Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said.
On Wednesday, Sherrill signed an executive order prohibiting ICE from operating on state-owned private property unless there’s a judicial warrant and launched a “know your rights” guide for residents interacting with immigration agents.
Mejia, who grew up in Elizabeth and lives in Glen Ridge in Essex County, said that as an Afro-Latina, she feels less safe during Trump’s immigration crackdown and that she takes precautions like carrying her passport or being careful where she speaks Spanish.
“It happening close to home is, of course, troubling, but this is an escalation that we have been seeing for years,” said Mejia.
Confronted with the possible closure of their beloved school, the Motivation High community came prepared to fight back.
As community members entered their Southwest Philadelphia school’s auditorium Wednesday night, students waving signs and carrying blue-and-yellow pompoms handed out leaflets: on one side were Motivation’s stats — building condition, graduation rate, attendance, suspensions.
On the other were stats for Bartram High, the school they would be assigned to attend if their school closes in 2027, as proposed under the Philadelphia School District facilities plan. The data for Motivation, a magnet, are stronger across the board, sometimes starkly so — Bartram is a neighborhood school with no admissions criteria, and its attendance and graduation rates are lower, and its suspensions higher.
Motivation High students hold signs they made to protest the Philadelphia School District’s planned closure of their school.
Motivation has only 150 students enrolled this year. The school system cited low enrollment as one reason for the closure. But district officials have been clear: The recommendation was also driven by a desire to reinvigorate struggling neighborhood high schools.
“Why are we put in with Bartram to make Bartram look good, when we stand out on our own?” one Motivation student asked district staff pointedly.
The opposition from the Motivation community lays bare an issue at the crux of the school system’s plan: To reach its stated goal of advancing all students, the district says it must displace some. Often, that has pitted communities against one another.
Residents in a restless crowd at Motivation on Wednesday, including one of the state’s most powerful politicians, PennsylvaniaHouse Speaker Joanna McClinton (D., Philadelphia), said they were not having it.
“It’s like you want us to water flowers that just weren’t growing from the beginning,” one parent told officials. “You want to uproot kids who have found their place. You can count my child right out of that plan. She ain’t going to Bartram.”
‘It’s the lottery system’
Motivation began as a Bartram program, housed in a separate building, for academically talented students. But in 2004, Motivation became its own school, eventually moving to the former Turner Middle School building at 59th and Baltimore.
The district that year moved to a centralized lottery system, taking away from principals any discretion over who got admitted to the schools. It said it did so for equity reasons andto solve for demographic mismatches at some schools — though Motivation’s student body had been representative of its neighborhood and the city as a whole.
In the past, schools like Motivation filled most of their ninth-grade classes with students who met the district-set criteria, and also admitted students who were close but came with a strong recommendation from another school, or had compelling personal circumstances that explained why they missed meeting the magnet standards.
Those extra admissions ended with the district policy change, and Motivation’s enrollment plummeted. It was never a huge school, by design — topping out at 400 students prior to the pandemic.
It doesn’t seem fair, said Nehemiah Bumpers, a Motivation 10th grader.
“Why are you guys moving us for having low enrollment scores?” Bumpers said. “It’s the lottery system that drastically changed our enrollment.”
McClinton, who attended the Wednesday meeting, was similarly frustrated.
“When you talk about the enrollment being diminished, it’s because you changed the playbook for principal Teli,” McClinton said of veteran Motivation principal Rennu Teli-Johnson, whom the Housespeaker praised.
“She knows every one of these kids,” said McClinton, whose House district includes both Motivation and Bartram.
This week, most Motivation students walked out of school, staging a protest over the district’s plan.
Students walk out of Motivation High School in Southwest Philadelphia on Monday, protesting that their school is one of 20 that the Philadelphia School District has tagged for closure.
Zanaya Johnson-Green, an 11th grader, said students were beside themselves, even those who will graduate before the school is planned to be folded into Bartram in the fall of 2027.
“Motivation has given me so many opportunities, and I don’t want to see it go,” Johnson-Green said. “No one wants the school to close. This is having a bad effect on all of us.”
The district has, in recent years, invested millions in sprucing up the Motivation building, which if the school does close would become district “swing space” — a place where schools can move to accommodate building repairs or other overflow needs.
“Why spend all that money just to push us into Bartram and use this school as a swing space?” Bumpers asked.
Motivation High School in Southwest Philadelphia, on Baltimore Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia, is shown in this 2025 file photo.
But much of the energy at the meeting was spent talking about the safety at Bartram — with parents and students pressing the district on how they could guarantee staff and student welfare, and district officials saying they would use a planning year and community wisdom to address concerns.
“Disaster!” someone in the audience shouted when Associate Superintendent Tomás Hanna talked about his hope that those with worries would step up to the plate to help plan for a Bartram transition.
A Motivation student shook her head.
“Why do we have to reap what you sow when you stopped paying attention to neighborhood schools all those years? Why do we have to suffer the consequences, lose opportunities?” the student said.
Monica Allison, a Cobbs Creek neighbor and ward leader, made it clear that though she was fighting against the Bartram closure, wounds inflicted from prior school closures, dating back to John P. Turner Middle School and George Wharton Pepper Middle School, were also on people’s minds.
“You closed John P. Turner and you didn’t ask us,” Allison said. “Now we’re back with another closure. It’s ridiculous. You keep talking about elevating Bartram at the expense of other kids. The neighbors are really tired of this.”
The speaker speaks out
John Young, a Motivation teacher for the last decade, said his students were living their civics lesson by protesting the district’s plan. The district is in a tough spot, he said — coping with the fallout of charter schools that took students from traditional public schools, dealing with its own decision to create greater high school choice.
But, Young said, “this decision is going to continue that trend of pushing our students to homeschool, pushing our students to charter schools. This decision is not going to solve the problem, it is going to hollow us out.”
Pa. House Speaker Joanna McClinton blasted the Philadelphia School District at a public meeting Wednesday night, saying its officials had disadvantaged Motivation High by changing rules around special admissions, then used low enrollment as one reason to close the school.
A visibly upset McClinton spoke last on Wednesday night.The district must invest in both schools, she said — not just one.
The district officials she addressed all had good jobs, McClinton emphasized. They could afford to send their children to whatever kind of school they felt was best for them. Southwest Philadelphiaparents might not be wealthy, but they deserve to make choices, too, the speaker said.
“It’s not fair that you’re pitting Black children in Bartram against Black children in Motivation,” McClinton said. “Not one of your children go to Motivation or Bartram. I don’t get millions of dollars in Harrisburg for you to waste it away to make this a swing space.”
Sitting onstage in an echoeyhistoric synagogue, next to a U.S. senatorand a cardboard cutout of his newly released memoir, Gov. Josh Shapiro reflected on the Pennsylvanians who give him hope.
As he had in other stops on his book tour up and down the East Coast, Shapirooften referred to his book’s title, Where We Keep The Light, and the ways he finds hope in the “extraordinary impact” of Pennsylvanians. Among them, he said, were those who were sexually abused by Catholic priests in crimes covered up by the church until they were illuminated by the victims’ unrelenting quest for justice.
“I find hope in the people I met who were abused over years and years and years,” Shapiro told U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.) last month at an event at Sixth and I, a synagogue in Washington, “who still had the courage to show up in a grand jury room to testify and to challenge me to do something to make sure we righted a wrong and brought justice to them.”
The nearly 900-page report was lauded as the most comprehensive review of clergy abuse across a single state and prompted new laws clarifying penalties for failure to report abuse and allowing survivors more time to pursue criminal or civil cases against their abusers.
But a key step in delivering justice to those survivors — establishing a two-year window for the filing of lawsuits over decades-old abuse that falls outside the statute of limitations under existing law — remains unfinished.
The proposal has become one of the most fraught issues in Harrisburg. After a devastating clerical error by Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration killed a proposed constitutional amendment in 2021, lawmakers have been unable to come together on a new path forward. Republicans who control the state Senate have tied the proposal to policies Democrats will not support. All the while, the Catholic Church and the insurance industry have lobbied hard against it.
Nearly a dozen interviews with survivors, their family members, and advocates reveal a deep frustration with the inaction in Harrisburg. Even as Shapiro renews calls for the Senate to act, survivors are divided over whether he has done enough to use his power as governor to advocate for them.
A key pledge in Shapiro’s bid for reelection — and his pitch to a national audience — is that he can “get stuff done” by working across the aisle. But some abuse survivors in Pennsylvania say the unfinished business in getting justice for them brings that record into question.
“He got to where he’s at on the back of victims and survivors, and now he’s forgotten,” said Mike McIlmail, the father of a clergy abuse victim, Sean McIlmail, who died of an overdose shortly before he was supposed to testify in a criminal case against his alleged abuser.
Shapiro, his spokesperson Will Simons said, has fought for survivors “publicly and in legislative negotiations” since 2018. He has promised to sign any bill that reaches his desk establishing the window.
With a reelection campaignunderway and his eyes on flipping the state Senate, the governor renewed that fight earlier this month. He used his budget address to blame Senate Republicans for the inaction thus far.
“Stop cowering to the special interests, like insurance companies and lobbyists for the Catholic Church,” he said, his voice thundering in the House chamber. “Stop tying justice for abused kids to your pet political projects. And start listening to victims.”
Mike and Debbie McIlmail, parents of Sean McIlmail, in the office of (left) Marci Hamilton, in Philadelphia on March 29, 2022.
For most of the casesin the report, the statute of limitations had passed, leaving no legal recourse for survivors.
The report proposed that lawmakers create a two-year window to allow the filing of civil suits over cases that happened years, if not decades, ago. Despite Shapiro’s advocacy since releasing the grand jury report, the proposal has been trapped in a stalemate for years.
Pennsylvania trails more than 30 other states that have approved similar legislation.
Then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro speaks at a news conference in the state Capitol in 2018 about legislation to respond to a landmark grand jury report accusing hundreds of priests of sexually abusing children over decades stalled in the legislature.
“It’s maddening to have people say, ‘We’re committed to this, this is going to happen, we’re committed to it,’ from both sides of the political spectrum and nothing ever gets done,” said Jay Sefton, who says he was abused by a priest in Havertown as a middle schooler in the 1980s. “It does start to feel like these are lives being used as its own sort of theater.”
Gov. Josh Shapiro makes his annual budget proposal in the state House chamber Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026.
Speaking to journalists in Washington days before he targeted Republicans in his budget address, Shapiro tied the window’s prospects to Democrats’ ability to win the state Senate for the first time in more than three decades.
“I’m confident with a Democratic Senate that will be one of the first bills they put on my desk,” Shapiro said.
Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward, a Republican, leaves the House chamber following Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s annual budget proposal speech in Harrisburg on Feb. 3.
In an interview, Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R., Westmoreland) noted that the GOP-controlled Senate had approved a constitutional amendment to establish the window several times before, although it ultimately failed to ever reach the voters.
She declined to say whether the state Senate would take up the amendment up this year but said creating the window through legislation, as Shapiro requested, would be unconstitutional.
“He has decided that he’s going to be moral instead of follow the law. Look at his record in his own office,” Ward said, arguing Shapiro has a track record of fighting for some survivors but not others. She pointed to his office’s handling of sexual harassment allegations brought against a former top staffer and close ally. Documents showed that complaints about the staffer were made months before his abrupt resignation.
For some clergy abuse survivors, the blame lands squarely on Ward and her Republican allies as they insist on a constitutional amendment, which requires two votes by both the House and Senate along with a ballot measure.
“It’s the Republicans that are blocking it, and I think they’re blocking it because of the church,” said Julianne Bortz, a survivor who testified before the grand jury and whose experience was featured in the report.
A portrait of former Pa. House Speaker Mark Rozzi hangs alongside painting of other former speakers in hallway at the state Capitol.
Debate among survivors
Despite Shapiro’s recent statements, there is a sense among some survivors that lawmakers, and Shapiro, have forgotten about them.
Former state House Speaker Mark Rozzi, a Berks County Democrat and clergy abuse survivor, said Shapiro “betrayed” survivors and should be playing “hardball” with the Senate to ensure that the bill makes it to his desk.
“Talk is cheap. Unless you come to the table and cut a deal, nothing else gets done,” Rozzi said.
Then-Pennsylvania House Speaker Mark Rozzi, center right, embraces Arthur Baselice, the father of Arthur Baselice III, after he testified at a hearing in Philadelphia on Jan. 27, 2023.
Advocates have spent years pushing lawmakers in Harrisburg and have grown increasingly frustrated with the lack of movement.
“We, being the victims, have always held our end of the bargain. Always. We’ve always shown up when we’ve asked to, we’ve testified when we were asked to, we interviewed, we discussed the worst moments of our lives when asked,” said Shaun Dougherty, who said he was abused by an Altoona-Johnstown priest.
Now, he said, it’s the governor’s turn to get the work done.
Former State Rep. Bill Wachob, a Democrat who worked in politics after leaving elected office in the 1980s, is convinced the governor could make it happen through negotiations if he wanted.
“He and his team have made a calculated political decision that they have gotten as much mileage out of this issue as they’re going to get and they’re not doing anything more,” Wachob said.
In Shapiro’s memoir, however, he wrote he expected that going up against the Catholic Church in pursuing the 2018 report “was likely the end of the road for me politically.”
“I’d made my peace with being a one term Attorney General, if it meant that I could put my head on the pillow at night knowing I did my job and made good for these victims,” he wrote.
“I have no doubt that the governor has been doing what he can,” said Marci Hamilton, the founder of Child USA, which advocates for child sex abuse victims. She blamed the challenges in reaching a deal on Harrisburg’s partisan dynamics.
Recent criticism of Shapiro has driven division within the survivor community in recent weeks, said Mary McHale, a survivor who was featured in a 2022 Shapiro campaign ad.
“He cares. But he also has a state to run. This can’t be the No. 1 issue,” she said.
Diana Vojtasek, who said she was abused by the same Allentown priest as McHale, said she worries frustration is being misdirected at Shapiro instead of Republicans.
“I just don’t see the value in attacking the one who has vowed publicly that he will sign this legislation for us as soon as it’s across his desk,” she said.
Abuse survivor Shaun Dougherty (left) greets then-Gov. Tom Wolf in the State Capitol on Sept. 24, 2018.
“What the Epstein transparency act showed us is we are finally at a point where the protection of sexual abuse victims is nonpartisan,” Hamilton said. “I fully expect to see that that understanding for victims will happen in Harrisburg.”
Rep. Nathan Davidson, a Dauphin County Democrat who introduced the House legislation to create the window, has scheduled hearings in April to bring renewed attention to the issue.
Sefton, who said he was abused as a middle schooler in Havertown in the 1980s, will perform a one-man show about his experience in a theater just steps from the state Capitol the week of the hearings.
He is done hoping lawmakers will establish the window but said it would make the state safer if they did.
“Nobody is going to give anyone their childhood back. It can’t happen,” Sefton said.
“There’s always going to be a part of me that’s filled with some rage about people blocking the energy here. If that were to go through, it’s a piece of energy that gets finally freed up.”
