The Philadelphia Police Department is forming an “auxiliary” unit that may be ready as early as next year, according to a department spokesperson, adding to its ranks volunteer members who will assist officers at large public gatherings.
Auxiliary police will not carry weapons and will not be assigned typical law enforcement duties, according to Sgt. Eric Gripp, a department spokesperson. They will not be authorized to make arrests.
But the department wants the unit to act as a link between the public and police, participating in community engagement and, according to Gripp, serving as additional “eyes and ears” for officers on the ground.
As Philadelphia prepares to host a series of widely attended events in 2026 — the country’s 250th July Fourth anniversary celebration, FIFA World Cup matches, and more — the police department will be tasked with maintaining order amid an influx of visitors.
An auxiliary unit would assist police during those types of events, according to Gripp. He said the department had tasked its academy recruits with similar duties during citywide celebrations after the Eagles’ Super Bowl victory in February.
It is unclear whether the auxiliary unit will be ready in time for the summer.
The department does not have an official estimate on when it plans to introduce the unit; the idea is still in the planning stages and targeted for 2026, Gripp said. The only confirmed requirement is that recruits must be 18 years old to apply.
Police departments in municipalities large and small have used auxiliary units, sometimes called reserve units, for years.
The New York Police Department has maintained its auxiliary unit for more than half a century; major cities like Baltimore also have reserve officers, as do smaller townships like Cranford, N.J.
Criminologists and former law enforcement officers say police departments use these units to assist with traffic management, crowd control, and community engagement, and for reporting more serious issues to officers who have the authority to intervene.
Experts say the units are a boon to departments facing recruitment and retention issues, providing unpaid assistance from those who are already curious about life as a police officer and who often hail from the communities they are assigned to.
But departments must invest time, money, and adequate training into auxiliary units for them to be successful.
Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and criminal justice instructor at Pennsylvania State University’s Lehigh Valley campus, said the New York department often uses its 3,700-member auxiliary unit for crowd control during “fun events” like parades and street fairs.
Most importantly, Giacalone said, departments should not view their auxiliary unit as a crime-fighting tool; members should be provided uniforms that are recognizable to the public, he said, distinct from those of actual police officers.
“We’re not talking riots,” Giacalone said of situations in which auxiliary officers are useful. “We don’t want them really identifying things such as drug dealing, dens of prostitution, things like that. We can get that from ordinary intelligence — we don’t want ordinary citizens doing that.”
Still, auxiliary members may help officers with other duties.
During Giacalone’s tenure with the department, the NYPD’s auxiliary unit proved beneficial when members reported quality-of-life issues such as abandoned vehicles and broken traffic lights, he said.
Given the potential danger that accompanies police work, Giacalone said, he hopes the Philadelphia department’s plan includes extensive training for auxiliary recruits — as well as protective gear.
The former sergeant still recalls a harrowing day in 2007 when two unarmed New York auxiliary officers were shot and killed by a gunman in the city’s Greenwich Village neighborhood while out on patrol.
Gripp, the Philadelphia department spokesperson, said the city’s auxiliary unit would not conduct foot patrols. He said members would be trained by the department’s internal staff.
Meanwhile, New York auxiliary officers must pass hours of training courses in first aid, self-defense, and patrol technique; in Giacalone’s experience, those trainings require more experienced officers to sacrifice time and energy to the project.
By the former sergeant’s estimate, for Philadelphia, “it’s going to take a while to get this up and running.”
HONG KONG – At least 36 people were killed and 279 were missing on Wednesday after Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in three decades ripped through high-rise residential towers sheathed in flammable bamboo scaffolding, authorities said.
More than 10 hours after the fire started in the northern Tai Po district, flames and thick smoke still engulfed the 32-story towers as rescue workers swarmed the site and shocked inhabitants watched nearby.
The cause of the blaze was not immediately known, but it was fanned by green construction mesh and bamboo scaffolding which the government began phasing out in March for safety reasons.
Firefighters work to extinguish a blaze that broke out at Wang Fuk Court in Hong Kong on Wednesday.
Working through the night, firefighters were struggling to reach upper floors of the Wang Fuk Court housing complex, which has 2,000 apartments in eight blocks, due to the intense heat.
One 71-year-old resident surnamed Wong broke down in tears, saying his wife was trapped inside.
A firefighter was among the 36 killed, and 29 people were in hospital, Hong Kong leader John Lee told reporters. Some 900 people were in eight shelters.
“The priority is to extinguish the fire and rescue the residents who are trapped. The second is to support the injured. The third is to support and recover. Then, we’ll launch a thorough investigation,” Lee told reporters. Harry Cheung, 66, who has lived at Block Two in one of the complexes for more than 40 years, said he heard a loud noise about 2:45 p.m. (6:45 GMT) and saw fire erupt in a nearby block.
“I immediately went back to pack up my things,” he said.
“I don’t even know how I feel right now. I’m just thinking about where I’m going to sleep tonight because I probably won’t be able to go back home.”
A firefighter was among those killed, the director of Fire Services said.
China’s XI urges ‘all-out’ effort against fire
Frames of scaffolding were seen tumbling to the ground as firefighters battled the blaze, while scores of fire engines and ambulances lined the road below the development.
From the mainland, China’s President Xi Jinping urged an “all-out effort” to extinguish the fire and to minimize casualties and losses, China’s state broadcaster CCTV said.
Hong Kong’s sky-high property prices have long been a trigger for social discontent in the city and the fire tragedy could stoke resentment towards authorities ahead of a city-wide legislative election in early December.
The cause of the blaze was not immediately known, but it was fanned by green construction mesh and bamboo scaffolding which the government began phasing out in March for safety reasons.
Hong Kong’s Transport Department said that due to the fire, an entire section of the Tai Po road, one of Hong Kong’s two main highways, had been closed and buses were being diverted.
At least six schools will be closed on Thursday due to the fire and traffic congestion, the city’s Education Bureau said.
It was Hong Kong’s worst fire since 41 people died in a commercial building in the heart of Kowloon in November 1996.
That fire was later found to be caused by welding during internal renovations.
A public inquiry yielded sweeping updates to building standards and fire safety regulations in the city’s high-rise offices, shops and homes.
Dozens of shocked residents and onlookers in Hong Kong watched from nearby walkways as smoke funneled up from the complex.
Bamboo scaffolding being phased out
Hong Kong is one of the last places in the world where bamboo is still widely used for scaffolding in construction.
The government moved to start phasing that out in March, citing safety. It announced that 50% of public construction works would be required to use metal frames instead.
Wang Fuk Court is one of many high-rise housing complexes in Hong Kong, one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Tai Po, located near the border with mainland China, is an established suburban district with some 300,000 residents.
Occupied since 1983, the complex is under the government’s subsidized home ownership scheme, according to property agency websites. According to online posts, it has been undergoing renovations for a year at a cost of HK$330 million ($42.43 million), with each unit paying between HK$160,000 and HK$180,000.
Owning a home is a distant dream for many in Hong Kong, one of the world’s most expensive housing markets and where residential rents are hovering around record highs.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story included a photograph of a woman who had been a victim of the scheme and she was identified as such in the caption. The photo was removed because the juxtaposition of the headline and the image made it appear as the victim was the perpetrator.
The Pennsylvania attorney general has issued a six-figure fine to the former CEO of ABC Capital, a failed real estate firm behind an $82 million scheme that saw overseas investors snap up hundreds of homes in the city’s poorest neighborhoods — only to leave them to rot.
During the 2010s, ABC facilitated the sales of over 1,900 distressed homes billed as “turnkey rental” opportunities to investors in Asia, Europe, and South America. The company promised to purchase, renovate, and manage the rentals in exchange for up-front cash, but often reneged — bilking investors out of their money and sometimes stranding tenants in crumbling rental homes.
Tenants rights advocates and lawsuits from investors later described the business as a “scam” or “Ponzi scheme.”
Attorney General Dave Sunday said on Tuesday that former ABC Capital CEO Jason “Jay” Walsh had violated the terms of a 2024 settlement agreement negotiated by the attorney general’s office in response to these complaints.
That agreement, which described ABC’s business practices as “deceptive and unfair,” prohibited Walsh from managing and maintaining rental properties in Pennsylvania. But a Common Pleas Court judge earlier this week ruled that Walsh violated the agreement by continuing to perform “management services for a property he owned,” communicating with tenants, and providing “inaccurate information” to the attorney general’s office.
Sunday issued a $350,000 fine in response.
“We are grateful that the Court recognized blatant breaches of this agreement, and imposed a serious penalty against Mr. Walsh,” Sunday said in a prepared statement. “We will continue to hold Mr. Walsh accountable under this agreement that clearly prohibits him from managing properties in the Commonwealth.”
Walsh could not be reached for comment. His attorney did not immediately respond to requests for information or comments.
Walsh’s crumbling empire was chronicled in 2022 reports by The Inquirer and the Baltimore Banner. His company decamped to the latter city as rising property values made the City of Brotherly Love less attractive to investors seeking cheap real estate.
But during the 2010s, ABC facilitated more than $82 million in property sales involving 600 different companies in Philadelphia alone, Inquirer reporting showed. Walsh and his partners — Israeli expats Yaron Zer and Amir Vana — later faced numerous lawsuits filed by investors alleging the company left units unfinished or fell far short of promised 40% returns on investment, leaving them saddled with debt.
Some of the homes that were ostensibly renovated, leased, or managed by ABC eventually became uninhabitable, due to either shoddy work or poor maintenance, according to tenants, investors, and the attorney general.
“It’s almost always in poor communities, with high rates of people of color,” Karla Cruel, a former staff attorney at Tenant Union Representative Network, told The Inquirer in 2022. “But they were screwing over the tenants and the investors at the same time. It was just a big old scam.”
Last September, the Banner reported, Walsh was convicted of acting as an unlicensed contractor in Baltimore and ordered to pay $20,500 in restitution — the only criminal action brought against him to date.
The Pennsylvania civil settlement — brokered by Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry in 2024 — banned Walsh and his wife, Blanca, from acting as landlords without the use of a third-party property manager. The duo, who appeared to have decamped to Aruba by 2024, were also not to have any contact with tenants for periods of 25 and 15 years, respectively.
But court filings show that Walsh violated that agreement by continuing to directly lease out and manage two properties not far from the company’s defunct headquarters in Northern Liberties.
One was his former residence, and another was a property he acquired under the moniker Nolo Investments LLC. Walsh had reported to the attorney general that while he and his wife co-owned both properties, they were managed by an outside company called “My Mega Realty.”
While Walsh did discuss such an arrangement, the company’s owner said he never completed the deal. Former tenants also reported to the attorney general that Walsh and his wife were directly managing the property and collecting rent.
Jean E. Corrigan, 70, of Roslyn, Montgomery County, retired fleet and operations manager for the Montgomery County Department of Assets and Infrastructure, onetime constituent services representative for then-State Rep. Josh Shapiro, hair salon owner and operator,disability services advocate,and award-winning volunteer, died Saturday, Nov. 22, of non-alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver at her home.
A lifelong resident of Glenside and nearby Roslyn, Mrs. Corrigan was vice chair of the Abington-Rockledge Democratic Committee from 1995 to 2013, and served as Gov. Shapiro’s constituent service agent when he represented the 153rd Legislative District in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 2004 to 2012.
“Jean was the very first volunteer on my very first campaign,” Shapiro recalled. “We knocked doors together, met our neighbors together, and, after winning, served our community together.”
In addition to breaking down bureaucratic delays and solving all kinds of constituent problems for Shapiro, Mrs. Corrigan doggedly championed fair wages, reproductive freedom, increased funding for special education and disability services, and improved healthcare. Colleagues called her a “super volunteer” and a “campaign mom” because she helped so many candidates win elections.
Gov. Shapiro said Mrs. Corrigan “made her neighbors’ lives better.”
She hosted visiting campaign workers at her home for years, took charge of distributing lawn signs and sample ballots, and organized other preelection events at her dining room table. She was named the local committee’s Democrat of the Year in 2002 and earned several awards from community service organizations.
“Through that work, I got to see just how much of herself she gave to others,” Shapiro said. “Where there was a need in the community, she worked to address it. When someone needed help, she lent a hand. She made her neighbors’ lives better, and I will forever be grateful for her life of service.”
In 2001, Mrs. Corrigan ran unsuccessfully for Abington Township commissioner, finishing second among three candidates and losing to a long-entrenched incumbent. In a preelection profile in The Inquirer, she listed “responsible growth” as a top value and “maintain integrity of Abington Township” as a main goal.
“Jean was passionate about serving others,” her family said in a tribute. “She believed that politics and civic activism could make a positive difference in people’s lives.”
Mrs. Corrigan was called a “super volunteer” by colleagues and friends.
At work, Mrs. Corrigan managed Montgomery County’s fleet of vehicles from 2015 to her retirement in 2022. She joined the county’s assets and infrastructure department in 2012 as operations manager for public property and supervised the county’s building services, construction carpenters, project collaboration, and computer-aided design.
She studied beauty science and hair styling in high school, attended the Willow Grove Beauty Academy, and ran her own salon called Shears to You from 1993 to 2001. As a volunteer, she was one-time president of the Abington School District Special Education Parent Advisory Council, copresident of the Abington Junior High School parent-teacher organization, and chair and vice chair of several Abington Township community initiatives.
She raised funds for school events and served on the board of the Abington YMCA. “Jean was selfless, empathetic, blunt, affectionate, caring, plainspoken, honest, and incredibly hard-working,” her family said. “There was no ego, no vanity.”
Jean Elizabeth Fanelli was born Aug. 30, 1955, in Abington Township. She grew up with a brother, Angelo, and graduated from Abington High School in 1973. She was interested in clothing design as well as beauty culture and took classes at Temple University.
Mrs. Corrigan stands with her husband, Peter, and son David
After a brief marriage to Bruce Cunningham was annulled, she married Peter Corrigan — an usher at her first wedding — in 1977, and they had sons Joseph and David and a daughter, Pauline. They lived in Glenside for decades, in the same house in which she grew up, and moved to Roslyn a few years ago.
Mrs. Corrigan enjoyed shopping trips with her daughter and baking holiday cookies. She liked to entertain and cook for everybody.
She doted on her two granddaughters and spent memorable summers near Arrowhead Lake in the Pocono Mountains. She could talk to anybody, her family said.
“She was a wonderful mother,” her daughter said. “I learned to have respect and manners from her.”
Mrs. Corrigan (front right) enjoyed time with her family.
Her son David said: “She taught me to be considerate and understanding of everyone I encounter, a lesson I will never forget.”
Her son Joseph said: “She was incredibly generous with her time and resources. She could build relationships, and a theme of her life was caring for people.”
Her husband said: “She was one of a kind.”
In addition to her husband, children, granddaughters, and brother, Mrs. Corrigan is survived by other relatives.
A private celebration of her life is to be held later.
Donations in her name may be made to Hedwig House Inc., 1920 Old York Rd., Abington, Pa. 19001.
Mrs. Corrigan’s smile could light up a room, her family said.
President Donald Trump has argued with the architect he handpicked to design a White House ballroom over the size of the project, reflecting a conflict between architectural norms and Trump’s grandiose aesthetic, according to four people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations.
Trump’s desire to go big with the project has put him at odds with architect James McCrery II, the people said, who has counseled restraint over concerns the planned 90,000-square-foot addition could dwarf the 55,000-square-foot mansion in violation of a general architectural rule: don’t build an addition that overshadows the main building.
A White House official acknowledged the two have disagreed but would not say why or elaborate on the tensions, characterizing Trump and McCrery’s conversations about the ballroom as “constructive dialogue.”
“As with any building, there is a conversation between the principal and the architect,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. “All parties are excited to execute on the president’s vision on what will be the greatest addition to the White House since the Oval Office.”
McCrery declined an interview request through a representative who declined to answer questions about the architect’s interactions with Trump in recent weeks.
Trump’s intense focus on the project and insistence on realizing his vision over the objections of his own hire, historic preservationists and others concerned by a lack of public input in the project reflect his singular belief in himself as a tastemaker and obsessive attention to details. In the first 10 months of his second term, Trump has waged a campaign to remake the White House in his gilded aesthetic and done so unilaterally – using a who’s-going-to-stop-me ethos he honed for decades as a developer.
Multiple administration officials have acknowledged that Trump has at times veered into micromanagement of the ballroom project, holding frequent meetings about its design and materials. A model of the ballroom has also become a regular fixture in the Oval Office.
The renovation represents one of the largest changes to the White House in its 233-year history, and has yet to undergo any formal public review. The administration has not publicly provided key details about the building, such as its planned height. The 90,000-square-foot structure also is expected to host a suite of offices previously located in the East Wing. The White House has also declined to specify its plans for an emergency bunker that was located below the East Wing, citing matters of national security.
On recent weekdays, a bustling project site that is almost entirely fenced off from public view contained dozens of workers and materials ready to be installed, including reinforced concrete pipes and an array of cranes, drills, pile drivers and other heavy machinery, photos obtained by The WashingtonPost show.
Plans for the addition as of Tuesday had not been submitted to the National Capital Planning Commission, a 12-member board charged by Congress with overseeing federal construction projects and now led by Trump allies. A preliminary agenda for the commission’s next meeting, scheduled for Dec. 4, does not include the ballroom project under projects expected to be covered at the meeting or reviewed by the body in the next six months. White House officials say that the administration still plans to submit its ballroom plans to the commission at “the appropriate time.”
The administration’s rapid demolition of the East Wing annex and solicitations from companies and individuals to fund the new construction have caused controversy over the project, which Trump believes the White House needs to host special events. Democrats, historical preservation groups and some architects have criticized the project’s pace, secrecy and shifting specifications. The White House initially said this summer that the ballroom would cost $200 million and fit 650 people, while Trump in recent weeks asserted that it could cost $300 million or more and would fit about 1,000 people.
McCrery has kept his criticism out of the public eye, quietly working to deliver as Trump demanded rushed revisions to his plans, according to two of the people with knowledge of the conversations. The president – a longtime real estate executive who prides himself on his expertise – has repeatedly drilled into the details of the project in their Oval Office meetings, the people said.
McCrery has wanted to remain with the project, worried that another architect would design an inferior building, according to a person with knowledge of his thinking.
McCrery, a classical architect and the founder and principal of McCrery Architects, had designed works like the U.S. Supreme Court bookstore and the pedestal for President Ronald Reagan’s statue in the U.S. Capitol. The ballroom was the largest-ever project for his firm, which has specialized in designing churches, libraries and homes.
Trump hired McCrery for the project on July 13. Eighteen days later, the White House announced the ballroom project, with officials promising to start construction within two months and finish before the end of Trump’s second term.
Trump also appointed McCrery in 2019 to serve a four-year term on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, which provides advice to the president, Congress and local government officials on design matters related to construction projects in the capital region.
Democrats have pressed the White House and its donors for more details on the planned construction and what was promised to financial contributors. The ballroom is being funded by wealthy individuals and large companies that have contracts with the federal government, including Amazon, Lockheed Martin and Palantir Technologies. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)
Several donors have cast the decision in statements as an investment in the future of a building that belongs to the American people, pushing back on the suggestion that their largesse sought to curry favor with Trump.
A donor list released by the White House of 37 businesses and individuals who underwrote the ballroom is not comprehensive, administration officials acknowledged, leaving open the possibility that millions of dollars have been funneled toward the president’s pet project with no oversight.
“Billionaires and giant corporations with business in front of this administration are lining up to dump millions into Trump’s new ballroom – and Trump is showing them where to sign on the dotted line,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) said in a statement last week. Warren andhercolleagues also introduced legislation that would impose restrictions on White House construction and require more transparency from donors.
Atlantic City Police are investigating the deaths of two New Yorkers who were found dead in a casino hotel room Sunday afternoon.
Police were called to the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa around 5 p.m., where they found the bodies of Baoyi Bowie Zheng, a 36-year-old woman from Staten Island, and Wei Guo Liang, a 68-year-old man from Brooklyn.
An autopsy determined Bowie Zheng died of a broken neck. Guo Liang was found to have died from self-inflicted stab wounds.
Many details regarding the individuals, including their connection, if any, and how long they’d been at the Borgata, had not been made public as of Wednesday, when the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office encouraged people with information about the incident to call in.
A spokesperson for the hotel could not be reached for comment.
In the early ’90s, Colleen Mazzella walked into a newly opened pizzeria and met the man who would become not only her boss, but her husband.
She was visiting a friend who had been hired at Italian Affair in Stafford, and owner Dominick Mazzella, then a recent Staten Island transplant, offered her a job, too.
They soon became a couple, and a year later, in May 1995, opened A Slice of Heaven across from Fantasty Island Amusement Park on Long Beach Island. The building at 7th Street and Bay Avenue in Beach Haven had housed a car wash, candy store and photo shop through the years, and when the two met with owner Peter Buterick, “he said ‘I’m going to take a chance on you. I’ve got a good feeling about this,’” Mazzella said.
They made a name for themslves, thanks to a menu of dishes like stuffed cheesesteak pizza, scratch-made meatballs and cheesesteaks.
Thirty years later, the building is full of memories that became precious to Mazzella after Dominick died just days before his 50th birthday in 2024. She recalls the Stanley Cup being brought to the restaurant (“My husband was a gigantic hockey fan,” she said), staying open to serve pizza until 4 a.m. and borrowing ingredients from other restaurant owners to get through busy days.
Dominick Mazzella is pictured behind the counter of A Slice of Heaven, the Long Beach Island pizzeria he opened with his wife, Colleen, in 1995.
She remembers when a family who lost their father stopped in for his favorite pizza before spreading his ashes on the beach, rebuilding after Superstorm Sandy sent four feet of water into the dining room and making pizza by flashlight during a power outage.
The restaurant is also where Dominick taught his son to make pizza, a legacy the 18-year-old — also named Dominick — has dreamed of continuing.
But it will have to happen somewhere else, as A Slice of Heaven closed earlier this month. The Mazzellas leased their restaurant space and the building has been sold.
“The plan was to take this place over,” Mazzella said of her and her husband’s plans for their son, a third-generation pizza maker whose grandfather emigrated from Naples, Italy, and owned restaurants in New York before opening the Stafford pizzeria with Dom.
A Slice of Heaven’s last day in business was Nov. 17, and Mazzella must vacate the building by the end of the month. She has been searching for a new location since learning of the impending sale several years ago, and while she wants to keep the restaurant on Long Beach Island, rentals that will work for her business are hard to come by, she said.
“My intention is to be on the island,” said Mazzella, who grew up in Brant Beach and now lives in Cedar Run on the mainland. “I love the people here. I grew up here. I love everything about it.”
“It’s just a fact of finding a place to land,” she said. “It’s been tough. I just have to keep believing that the places that I found that didn’t work out didn’t work out for a reason, and that it’s because we’re waiting for the right place.”
“We’ll find something,” she said. “I gotta believe that.”
Since announcing the closing date in early November, Mazzella has seen an outpouring of support online and in person, with customers sharing memories and well wishes.
One spoke of how the elder Dominick fulfilled her request to spell “It’s a boy!” in pepperoni on a pizza for her gender reveal. Another customer wrote of how the restaurant’s delivery driver checked on her elderly father when she couldn’t reach him. Dozens more said A Slice of Heaven’s pizza is part of their vacation tradition.
For Mazzella, it is stories like these that make giving up not an option.
WASHINGTON – A prosecutor on Wednesday dropped all criminal charges in Georgia against U.S. President Donald Trump for interference in the 2020 presidential election, ending a high-profile racketeering case that once seemed like a significant threat to the Republican.
The decision by Peter Skandalakis, a state official who recently took over the prosecution, was a stinging defeat for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who brought the case in 2023 but then lost control of it amid ethics complaints by defense lawyers.
It was one of four criminal prosecutions that Trump faced in the years since losing his 2020 presidential re-election bid to Democrat Joe Biden. Only one of them — a New York case over a hush-money payment to a porn star during his 2016 campaign — went to trial. Trump was found guilty in that case but has asked for it to be thrown out.
The dismissal highlighted how Trump’s return to the White House this year, a political comeback unparalleled in U.S. history, dismantled a thicket of legal cases that once seemed set to define his post-presidency era.
Trump’s political career had appeared to be over after his false claims of election fraud led a mob of supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a failed bid to overturn his 2020 defeat.
Skandalakis said in a court filing that “there is no realistic prospect that a sitting President will be compelled to appear in Georgia to stand trial,” so it would be “futile and unproductive” to push forward with the case.
Skandalakis said his decision, which was approved by a judge on Wednesday morning, “is not guided by a desire to advance an agenda but is based on my beliefs and understanding of the law.”
Steve Sadow, a lawyer for Trump, praised the dismissal, saying the case should have never been brought.
Willis had brought the case against Trump and 18 co-defendants, charging a sweeping criminal conspiracy to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results after a recording surfaced in the media of Trump asking Georgia’s top electoral official to “find” him enough votes to win the state.
The co-defendants included former Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, who like Trump pleaded not guilty.
An appeals court removed Willis, an elected Democrat in Atlanta, from the case last year. The court said she had created an “appearance of impropriety” by having a romantic relationship with the special prosecutor she had hired to lead the case.
Skandalakis heads the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, a government agency that supports the state’s local prosecutors. Earlier this month, he appointed himself to lead the case, saying he had been unable to find another prosecutor willing to take it over.
Anthony Michael Kreis, a Georgia State University law professor, said Skandalakis’s decision to drop the charges was not surprising. The agency he oversees does not have the resources to prosecute such a complex case with several co-defendants, Kreis said.
In his second term, Donald Trump has turned a campaign pledge to punish political opponents into a guiding principle of governance.
What began as a provocative rallying cry in March 2023 — “I am your retribution” — has hardened into a sweeping campaign of retaliation against perceived enemies, reshaping federal policy, staffing and law enforcement.
A tally by Reuters reveals the scale: At least 470 people, organizations and institutions have been targeted for retribution since Trump took office — an average of more than one a day. Some were singled out for punishment; others swept up in broader purges of perceived enemies. The count excludes foreign individuals, institutions and governments, as well as federal employees dismissed as part of force reductions.
The Trump vengeance campaign fuses personal vendettas with a drive for cultural and political dominance, Reuters found. His administration has wielded executive power to punish perceived foes — firing prosecutors who investigated his bid to overturn the 2020 election, ordering punishments of media organizations seen as hostile, penalizing law firms tied to opponents, and sidelining civil servants who question his policies. Many of those actions face legal challenges.
At the same time, Trump and his appointees have used the government to enforce ideology: ousting military leaders deemed “woke,” slashing funds for cultural institutions held to be divisive, and freezing research grants to universities that embraced diversity initiatives.
Reuters reached out to every person and institution that Trump or his subordinates singled out publicly for retribution, and reviewed hundreds of official orders, directives and public records. The result: the most comprehensive accounting yet of his campaign of payback.
The analysis revealed two broad groups of people and organizations targeted for retaliation.
Members of the first group – at least 247 individuals and entities – were singled out by name, either publicly by Trump and his appointees or later in government memos, legal filings or other records. To qualify, acts had to be aimed at specific individuals or entities, with evidence of intent to punish. Reuters reporters interviewed or corresponded with more than 150 of them.
Another 224 people were caught up in broader retribution efforts – not named individually but ensnared in crackdowns on groups of perceived opponents. Nearly 100 of them were prosecutors and FBI agents fired or forced to retire for working on cases tied to Trump or his allies, or because they were deemed “woke.” This includes 16 FBI agents who kneeled at a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020. The rest were civil servants, most of them suspended for publicly opposing administration policies or resisting directives on health, environmental and science issues.
Most common were punitive acts, such as firings, suspensions, investigations and the revocation of security clearances.
Reuters found at least 462 such cases, including the dismissal of at least 128 federal workers and officials who had probed, challenged or otherwise bucked Trump or his administration.
The second form was threats. Trump and his administration targeted at least 46 individuals, businesses and other entities with threats of investigations or penalties, including freezing federal funds for Democratic-led cities such as New York and Chicago.
Trump openly discussed firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for resisting interest rate cuts, for instance. Last week, he threatened to have six Democratic members of Congress tried for sedition – a crime he said is “punishable by DEATH” – after the lawmakers reminded military personnel they can refuse “illegal orders.” This week, the Defense Department threatened to court-martial one of them, U.S. Senator Mark Kelly, a former Naval officer.
The third form was coercion. In at least a dozen cases, organizations such as law firms and universities signed agreements with the government to roll back diversity initiatives or other policies after facing administration threats of punishment, such as security clearance revocations and loss of federal funding and contracts.
It’s a campaign led from the top: Trump’s White House has issued at least 36 orders, decrees and directives, targeting at least 100 individuals and entities with punitive actions, according to the Reuters analysis.
Trump openly campaigned on a platform of revenge in his latest run for the presidency, promising to punish enemies of his Make America Great Again movement. “For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” he said in a March 2023 speech. Weeks later, while campaigning in Texas, he repeated the theme. “I am your justice,” he said.
Today, the White House disputes the idea that the administration is out for revenge. It describes recent investigations and indictments of political adversaries as valid course corrections on policy, necessary probes of wrongdoing and legitimate policy initiatives.
“This entire article is based on the flawed premise that enforcing an electoral mandate is somehow ‘retribution.’ It’s not,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said. There is no place in government for civil servants or public officials “who actively seek to undermine the agenda that the American people elected the president to enact,” she added. Trump is abiding by campaign promises to restore a justice system that was “weaponized” by the Biden administration, Jackson said, and “ensure taxpayer funding is not going to partisan causes.”
Trump’s actions have been cheered by his staunchest backers. Right-wing commentator and former Trump advisor Steve Bannon told Reuters the use of government power to punish Trump’s enemies is “not revenge at all” but an attempt to “hold people accountable” for what he said were unfair investigations targeting Trump. More is on the way, he said.
“The people that tried to take away President Trump’s first term, that accused him of being a Russian asset and damaged this republic, and then stole the 2020 election – they’re going to be held accountable and they’re going to be adjudicated in courts of law,” he said in an interview. “That’s coming. There’s no doubt.” There’s no evidence the 2020 election was stolen.
Trump’s allies point to actions former President Joe Biden took upon taking office. After Trump’s supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a failed bid to overturn his election loss, Biden revoked Trump’s access to classified information, a first for any former president. Biden also won a court battle to dismiss Senate-confirmed directors of independent agencies serving fixed terms, such as the Federal Housing Finance Authority, and removed scores of Trump-era appointees from unpaid advisory boards.
Yet the scale and systematic nature of Trump’s effort to punish perceived enemies marks a sharp break from long-standing norms in U.S. governance, according to 13 political scientists and legal scholars interviewed by Reuters. Some historians say the closest modern parallel, though inexact, is the late President Richard Nixon’s quest for vengeance against political enemies. Since May, for instance, dozens
of officials from multiple federal agencies have been meeting as part of a task force formed to advance Trump’s retribution drive against perceived enemies, Reuters previously reported.
“The main aim is concentration of power and destruction of all checks against power,” said Daron Acemoglu, Nobel laureate in economics and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which faces an ongoing federal investigation for embracing diversity and equity programs. “Retribution is just one of the tools.”
Dozens of Trump’s targets have challenged their punishments as illegal. Fired and suspended civil servants have filed administrative appeals or legal challenges claiming wrongful termination. Some law firms have gone to court claiming the administration exceeded its legal authority by restricting their ability to work on classified contracts or interact with federal agencies. Most of those challenges remain unresolved.
Investigating foes of Trump
The administration has moved aggressively against officials in the government’s legal and national security agencies, institutions central to investigations of Trump’s alleged misconduct during and after his first term.
At least 69 current and former officials were targeted for investigating or sounding alarms about Russian interference in U.S. elections. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded soon after the 2016 election that Moscow sought to tilt the race toward Trump, a finding later affirmed by a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report in August 2020. Acts of retribution tied to the Russia probe include the September 25 indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, a break from Justice Department norms meant to shield prosecutions from political influence.
Comey, who led the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign, was charged after Trump demanded his prosecution. The Justice Department has cast the case as a corruption crackdown. Comey and his lawyers said in court documents that the case was “vindictive” and motivated by “personal animus.” Comey, who pleaded not guilty, declined to comment. A federal judge dismissed the case on Monday, ruling that Trump’s handpicked prosecutor had been unlawfully appointed.
Acts of retribution tied to the Russia probe include the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey. His lawyers say he is the target of a “vindictive” prosecution.
At least 58 acts of retribution have targeted people Trump viewed as saboteurs of his election campaigns, including Chris Krebs, the top cybersecurity official during his first term. Trump fired him in 2020 for disputing claims that the election was rigged. In April, Trump stripped Krebs’ security clearance and ordered a federal investigation into his tenure. Krebs, still asserting that Trump’s defeat was valid, has vowed to fight the probe. He did not respond for this story.
Reuters documented 112 security clearances revoked from current and former U.S. officials, law firms and state leaders – credentials needed for work that involves classified information. In August, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced she was revoking 37 clearances.
In a response to Reuters posted on X, an agency spokesperson said Gabbard and Trump are working “to ensure the government is never again wielded against the American people it is meant to serve.” She added: “President Trump said it best, ‘Our ultimate retribution is success.’”
Leon Panetta, CIA director and defense secretary under former President Barack Obama, had his security clearance revoked in January along with others who signed an October 2020 letter suggesting Russia may have been behind reports about emails on Hunter Biden’s laptop. At the time, Joe Biden — Hunter’s father — was Trump’s Democratic rival in the 2020 election. An executive order Trump signed in January claimed: “The signatories willfully weaponized the gravitas of the Intelligence Community to manipulate the political process and undermine our democratic institutions.” Panetta has said he stands by signing the letter.
Panetta told Reuters he had already surrendered his clearance after leaving government nearly a decade ago. Trump’s retribution campaign is hurting CIA morale and wrecking the bipartisan trust that allows Washington to function, Panetta said. “What I worry about is that our adversaries will look at what’s happening and sense weakness,” he said. “This kind of political retribution leads to a loss of trust, which ultimately leads to a failure of governing.” The CIA did not respond to a request for comment.
Former CIA director Leon Panetta had his security clearance revoked along with others who signed a letter suggesting Russia may have been behind reports about emails on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The revenge effort also reaches deep into the civil service, punishing employees who speak out against Trump’s policies and turning forms of dissent that were tolerated by past administrations into grounds for discipline.
This summer, hundreds of Environmental Protection Agency staffers wrote an open letter protesting deep cuts to pollution control and cleanup programs. The fallout was swift. More than 100 signers who attached their names were placed on paid leave. At least 15 senior officials and probationary employees were told they would be fired. The rest were informed they were under investigation for misconduct, leading to at least 69 suspensions without pay. Many remained out of work for weeks.
“They followed all the rules” of conduct for civil servants, said Nicole Cantello, one of the signers and an officer with the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents many affected workers. She called the punishments an attempt to “quell dissent,” stifle free speech and “scare the employees.” In a statement, the EPA said it has “a zero-tolerance policy for career officials using their agency position and title to unlawfully undermine, sabotage, and undercut” administration policy.
At the Federal Emergency Management Agency, about 20 staffers were put on leave and now face misconduct investigations after signing a letter criticizing the agency’s decision to scrap bipartisan reforms adopted years ago to speed disaster relief.
Cameron Hamilton, a Republican who served briefly as acting head of FEMA, was fired in May, a day after telling Congress he didn’t believe the agency should be shut down, contradicting the administration.
Hamilton told Reuters he still supports Trump. But he said too many senior officials are firing people in the name of retribution, trying to impress the White House. “They want to find ways to really launch themselves to prominence and be movers and shakers, to kick ass and take names,” said Hamilton. “They’re trying to show the president ‘look at what I am doing for you.’”
In a statement to Reuters, the Department of Homeland Security, which includes FEMA, said it is building a “new FEMA” to fix “inefficiency and outdated processes.” Employees “resisting change” are “not a good fit,” the statement said.
Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, former head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, sees her firing in October — three weeks after filing a whistleblower complaint alleging politicization of research and vaccine policy — as a warning shot. She told Reuters the administration’s purge of dissenting health officials is breeding “anticipatory obedience” — a reflex to comply before being asked. “People know if they push back … this is what happens,” she said. The effect, she says, is an ecosystem of fear: those who stay in government self-censor; those who speak out are branded “radioactive, too hot to handle.”
The Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that oversees NIAID, did not respond to a request for comment.
Federal agency leaders have dismissed a wide array of officials they deemed out of step with Trump’s MAGA agenda, including employees involved in diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and those working on transgender issues.
David Maltinsky, a Federal Bureau of Investigation employee, says he was fired by Director Kash Patel for displaying a Pride flag at work — one of at least 50 bureau personnel dismissed on Patel’s watch. Maltinsky sued the FBI and Justice Department, alleging violations of his constitutional rights and seeking reinstatement. The Justice Department has yet to file a formal response.
In his 2023 book, “Government Gangsters,” Patel named 60 people that he said were members of an “Executive Branch deep state” that opposed Trump, including former Democratic government officials and Republicans who served in Trump’s first administration but eventually broke with him. He called for firings and said that anybody who abused their authority should face prosecution. In his 2025 confirmation hearing before Congress, Patel denied that it was an “enemies list.”
Under FBI Director Kash Patel’s watch, at least 50 FBI personnel have been dismissed. In this photo, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff speaks in front of an image of Patel at a Senate hearing on FBI oversight.
Reuters found that at least 17 of the 60 people on Patel’s list have faced some sort of retribution, including firings and stripping of security clearances. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.
Against perceived foes in the private sector, the administration has wielded financial penalties as leverage. At least two dozen law firms faced inquiries, investigations or restrictions on federal contracting, often for employing or representing people tied to past cases against Trump. Eight struck deals to avoid further action.
Nine media organizations have faced federal investigations, lawsuits, threats to revoke their broadcast licenses and limits on access to White House events. Trump has also suggested revoking broadcast licenses for networks whose coverage he dislikes.
The targets include universities, long cast by the president and his allies as bastions of left-wing radicals.
Officials froze more than $4 billion in federal grants and research funding to at least nine schools, demanding policy changes such as ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs, banning transgender athletes from women’s sports and cracking down on alleged antisemitism amid pro-Palestinian protests. Five universities have signed agreements to restore funding. Harvard University successfully sued to block a freeze on $2.2 billion in federal aid for the school, which Trump accused of “pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired” dogma. Harvard declined to comment.
The administration has described the funding freezes and other efforts to force policy changes at colleges and universities as a necessary push to reverse years of leftward drift in U.S. education. “If Reuters considers restoring merit in admissions, reclaiming women’s titles misappropriated by male athletes, enforcing civil rights laws, and preventing taxpayer dollars from funding radical DEI programs ‘retribution,’ then we’re on very different planes of reality,” said Julie Hartman, a spokesperson for the U.S. Education Department.
A historical parallel: Nixon’s enemies
It’s impossible to predict, of course, how far the Trump revenge campaign will go, or whether it will be affected by a recent slide in popular support. Trump has been hurt by public frustration with the high cost of living and the investigation into late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Nixon resigned in 1974 over the Watergate scandal, in which aides to his re-election campaign broke into Democratic Party headquarters and the president himself later directed a cover-up. While in office, he kept a list of more than 500 enemies. But while Trump has conducted his retribution campaign in the open, historians note, Nixon’s enemies list was conceived as a covert tool.
John Dean, chief counsel in the Nixon White House, wrote a confidential memo in 1971 addressing “how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.” The planned methods included tax audits, phone-tapping, the cancellation of contracts and criminal prosecution. Yet the execution faltered: IRS Commissioner Donald Alexander refused to conduct mass audits, and most targets escaped serious punishment.
Other recent presidents, to be sure, have been accused of seeking to punish opponents, though on a smaller scale. The Obama administration pursued “aggressive prosecution of leakers of classified information,” the Committee to Protect Journalists said in a 2013 report. Two IRS employees alleged they were retaliated against during the Biden administration for raising concerns about the handling of the tax-compliance investigation of Hunter Biden.
Nixon’s plotting remained a secret until the Watergate hearings exposed it, turning his enemies list into a symbol of presidential abuse. The secrecy reflected a political culture in which retaliation was whispered, not broadcast, and where institutional checks blunted many of Nixon’s ambitions.
Trump’s approach reverses that pattern, historians say. He has openly named his perceived enemies, urged prosecutions in public and framed vengeance as a campaign vow. Some say today’s “enemies list” politics are in that sense farther-reaching than Nixon’s, possibly signaling a shift toward a normalization of retribution in American political life.
Corey Brettschneider, a political science professor at Brown University who has written a book on power grabs by American presidents, said Nixon was ultimately checked and forced to resign by Congress, including members of his own Republican Party. “That’s just not happening now,” he said.
In his prime, Steve Sillman worked nights, Thursday through Monday.
And he was usually late coming in, despite only a 10-minute walk separating the front door of his impeccably preserved Fox Chase twin and the double red doors of Joseph’s Pizza Parlor.
The dayside managers would be tapping the toes of their dark work shoes, and Mr. Sillman would just glide in. He’d start turning radio dials in search of disco hits or a 1970s station, resetting the vibe with work-appropriate dancing to classic hits from Carole King and James Taylor. He’d remind anyone listening that he wanted disco played at his funeral.
And at the end of the night, hours after the other staff members had gone home, he’d pour himself a glass of red wine and close out the register, and then he’d call a few of the staffers and leave a message. He’d tell them to call back: “It’s important.” And when they called back, he’d say they missed a spot sweeping.
“You work with people so long,” said current Joseph’s co-owner Matt Yeck, “that you become like family.”
For the better part of four decades, and until the 70-year-old received a terminal brain cancer diagnosis earlier this year, Mr. Sillman was the face of the neighborhood’s trademark pizza place.
He started working there shortly after graduating from Northeast High School in the 1970s, and floated among the pizza parlor, neighboring Italian restaurant Moonstruck, and the once-wild Ciao nightclub above it.
He’d often speak of waiting on entertainment icon Elizabeth Taylor. (He would say he got lost in her transfixing blue eyes.) Over the course of those 40ish years, he became intimately familiar with the building’s quirks, and attended to its every need, from fixing broken faucets to decorating it for Christmas.
At the front of the house, he was the manager who would chat up customers before their order was ready. They always remembered his name, and sometimes he’d have to pretend to know theirs. In the back of the house, he was a peacekeeper, confidant, psychiatrist, dance partner, friend, and brother.
It was Mr. Sillman who raised an entire generation of neighborhood kids who came to Joseph’s for work. He watched them grow up, and then he folded them into his restaurant family.
He met his best friend of 40 years, Jane Readinger, through her siblings. They worked with Mr. Sillman at the restaurant, and over the years they folded him into their wider familial unit.
“A lot of his friendships came through that building,” said Jane, who is eight years younger. “And he had those friendships for life.”
It started with “P.L.P.’s,” or parking lot parties, after Joseph’s closed for the night. It grew into group ski trips and shared shore houses.
As his friendsstarted getting married and having kids and growing up, Mr. Sillman, a lifelong bachelor, bought a Sea Isle house so they all had a place to stay.
But it was the twin on the corner of Jeanes Street and Solly Avenue that was his legacy. His grandparents built the house in 1914, and only his family — three generations — had called it home. He maintained its original layout and finishes and flourishes from the turn of the 20th century.
The home was a marvel at Christmas, as Mr. Sillman would decorate his and the adjoining twin together. Draping them in handmade ribbons, and bestowing showstopper wreaths made of fresh fruit.
After he was diagnosed in the spring with glioblastoma, members of that restaurant family would stop and see him on Jeanes Street, even as Mr. Sillman could no longer climb the three flights of stairs, and after he transitioned from the recliner to a bed setup in the dining room.
Even the new owners came. Yeck and his partner, Jimmy Lyons, awkwardly inherited Mr. Sillman when they bought Joseph’s in 2021. But it didn’t take long for both to see his indistillable value.
“Steve came with the building,” Yeck said.
As Mr. Sillman took his last breaths on the morning of Sunday, Nov. 23, with Jane cradling his head in her arms, Carole King’s 1971 classic played through the house:“You’ve Got a Friend.”
The outpouring of support in person and on social media was a nice reminder to Jane that people don’t need to be blood to be family. There’s family you’re born with, and then there’s family you collect along the way.
“He was never alone during this fight,” Jane said. As a registered nurse, she volunteered to help attend to Mr. Sillman as he entered hospice care at home.
Mr. Sillman is survived by his sister-in-law, Harriet Sillman; nieces and nephews; great nieces and nephews; and generations of former co-workers. His neighbors are planning to decorate the twin Jeanes Street houses in his absence this holiday season.
Services for Mr. Sillman will be held Saturday, Nov. 29, at the Wetzel and Son Funeral Home, 419 Huntingdon Pike in Rockledge. The viewing will be held from 8 to 10 a.m., followed by a funeral ceremony.
And then his extended family will honor Mr. Sillman’s wishes with an appropriate send-off: They’re throwing a disco party.
Donations in his name may be made to the American Cancer Society, Box 970, Fort Washington, Pa. 19034, or to the Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, 333 E. Lancaster Ave., Suite 414, Wynnewood, Pa. 19096.
