After graduating law school in the 1950s, Joseph H. Rodriguez was told he wouldn’t go far and should consider changing his last name.
He ignored that advice and went on to becomeNew Jersey’s first Hispanic federal judge — and its longest serving. He recently retired after 40 years as a jurist.
He was among the first Hispanic lawyers in Camden, and New Jersey as a whole. He also served asthe state’s public defender and advocate.
Rodriguez mentored countless aspiring lawyers and judges, and as his stature rose nationally he never forgot his humble roots. Associates dubbed him“a gentle giant.”
“He served with humility, grace, wisdom, and humor,” said Chief U.S. District Judge Renee M. Bumb, who met Rodriguez as a federal prosecutor. “We all looked up to him.”
U.S. District Judge Joseph H. Rodriguez, 94, sits for an interview at his daughter’s law office in Cherry Hill, N.J. U.S. District Judge Joseph H. Rodriguez, 94, was the first Hispanic federal judge in New Jersey. His father, Mario Rodriguez, survived the 1918 sinking of the SS Carolina.
Rodriguez became a senior judgein 1998,which reduced his workload, but he continued to preside over trials and write opinions, filing his last decision about three weeks before he retired.
‘I just wanted to slip into the shadows’
Rodriguez decided last month to quietly retire. He left the Mitchell Cohen Courthouse in downtown Camden after an emotional send-off with fellow judges and friends.
“I just wanted to slip into the shadows.” hesaid in a recent interview. “What I’ve done some people were in favor of it, some were not. It’s there as a public record. I stand by it.”
Rodriguez was born in 1930 in Camden and grew up a few blocks from the courthouse where he would later preside.
His father, Mario, a Cuban national raised in Puerto Rico, was aboard the passenger ship SS Carolina when it was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of New Jersey in June 1918.
The New York Times front page story about the sinking of the SS Carolina in 1918. U.S. District Judge Joseph H. Rodriguez has a copy of the paper because his father survived the sinking.
The Germans targeted six ships on what was known as Black Sunday. The Carolina sunk, and Mario Rodriguez spent two days on a lifeboat before swimming ashore in Atlantic City.
Rodriguez would later have a full circle moment, when scuba divers made a claim in federal court to salvage the vessel. He said hegranted sole rights after the divers presented a brass “C” from the ship’s name on the stern and a china dinner plate with its logo.
Mario raised four sons and a daughter in Camdenwith his wife, Carmen, and worked in a tobacco factory.
The couple, among the first Hispanic families to settle in Camden, was highly respected in the community, and often served as interpreters and gave advice to other Hispanic residents.
As a youngster, Rodriguez recalled hearing his father recite the U.S. Constitution to study to become a citizen, which he did in 1939 — in the same courtroom where his son later became a judge.
The memory stuck with Rodriguez and became a guiding principle in his legal career. His parents and sister were killed in a car accident in 1973.
When he landed his first job at a real estate firm, the agent urged Rodriguez to change his name to Joe Roddy.
“I was told with that name I could never go far,” he recalled. “I would never change my name.”
An undated Army photograph of Joseph H. Rodriguez, now 94, and his wedding photo.
Rodriguez was hired as an attorney at Brown & Connery, one of the oldest law firms in South Jersey. He earned a reputation as a tough trial lawyer and specialized in medical malpractice. He later became the first Hispanic president of the New Jersey Bar Association.
Rodriguez was pressed into action when unrest erupted in Camden in 1971, after a Hispanic man was killed while in police custody. The Hispanic community demanded an investigation. A protest turned into days of rioting in front of City Hall.
Then the only known Hispanic lawyer in Camden, Rodriguez met with then-Mayor Joe Nardi to negotiate a settlement. The police officers were eventually indicted by a grand jury, but acquitted.
The Courier-Post edition pictures a riot at Roosevelt Plaza at Camden City Hall Aug. 20, 1971.
“He was the calm in the eye of the storm,” said Gualberto “Gil” Medina, who organized a student protest at the time. “He made it clear that the cause was just but the means had to be tempered.”
Rodriguez eventually left Camden for the suburbs but remained connected to the city. He was one of the original organizers of Camden’s San Juan Bautista Parade.
“He became the respected patriarch of the Hispanic community,” said Medina.
`A public conscience’
Rodriguez advocated in manyprecedent-setting cases for New Jersey’s disenfranchised residents. They includea landmark product liability case that resulted in the state Supreme Court ruling in 1965 that a mass builder could be held liable for a defective hot water system that severely scalded a child.
As chairman of Camden Legal Services, he brought a lawsuit that resulted in a requirement for municipal judges to appoint a lawyer to represent defendants facing possible jail time. Another case established tenant rights.
Then-Gov. William T. Cahill named Rodriguez chairman of the State Board of Higher Education in 1972, and later chairman of the State Commission of Investigation, where he investigated organized crime.
Although Rodriguez wasa Democrat, former Republican Gov. Thomas Kean appointed him as the state’s Public Advocate in 1982.
In that role, Rodriguez filed the complaint that lead to Mount Laurel doctrine, through which the New Jersey Supreme Court outlawed local discriminatory zoning regulations and required municipalities to provide affordable housing.
“He always had a public conscience,” said Carl D. Poplar, a lawyer and longtime friend.
Judge Joseph H. Rodriguez, 94, posed for a portrait with his daughter Lisa Rodriguez at her law office in Cherry Hill this month.
Rodriguez also was involved in the landmark right-to-die case of Karen Ann Quinlan, whose parents waged a fight to have her removed from a respirator.
“We didn’t go around looking for trouble. If it had to be done and people had to be helped, you help them,” Rodriguez said.
President Ronald Reagan appointed Rodriguez to the federal bench in 1985.
Rodriguez was known as an easygoing andfair judge. U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist dispatched Rodriguez to Montgomery, Ala., in 1999 to preside over a desegregation case.
“It was like going to heaven working for him,” said Carl Nami, his court reporter for 18 years. “I don’t how I was so fortunate.”
Nicknamed “Joe Rod,” Rodriguez was a role model for other judges, said retired U.S. Magistrate Joel B. Rosen. He could always be counted on for jokes and bad puns at their weekly lunch gatherings, he said.
“He’s always been a gentleman and what in my view what a judge should be: knowledgeable and fair,” Rosen said.
Said Robert Kugler, another retired federal judge: “He kept the courthouse going.” The jury room was named in honor of Rodriguez.
“His judicial demeanor and temperament are unrivaled,” said civil rights attorney Stanley O. King. “The likes of him I don’t know if can ever be replaced or replicated.”
U.S. District Judge Joseph H. Rodriguez performed the marriage ceremony of his granddaughter Taylor Jacobs to Cole Sutliff. It was held in the same courtroom where Rodriguez presided in federal court in Camden for years.
Before stepping down, Rodriguez performed a final act as a sitting judge. He performed the wedding ceremony for a granddaughter, Taylor, in his courtroom. He also recently married a grandson, Quinn, in a beach ceremony.
Rodriguez said he plans to spend more time with his wife of 71 years, Barbara, and his four daughters, 10 grandchildren, and seven great-children. He enjoys cooking for them, especially paella, his specialty dish.
U.S. District Judge Joseph H. Rodriguez performed the marriage ceremony of his grandson Quinn Jacobs and Brittany Peters at the Jersey Shore.
Asked what he would like his legacy to be, Rodriguez choked back tears. His daughter, Lisa Rodriguez, an attorney with Dilworth Paxson, passed him a tissue.
“You can’t do it all, but you should never stop trying,” he said. “If everyone backs away you’re just giving up.”
The remainder of Cheltenham High’s football season has been canceled as officials deepen an investigation into alleged hazing by team members, which the school district said involves “inappropriate physical contact.”
Superintendent Brian Scriven told families late Sunday night in an email that officials made the call “with a deep sense of regret” as the district extends its investigation.
“We do not condone or tolerate hazing or abuse of any kind in our sports programs or in our schools,” Scriven wrote. “It is our duty and obligation to protect and prioritize student safety and well being, even when we know that our decisions may come with consequences and disappointment.”
Scriven canceled Friday’s home football game — the team was supposed to play Bristol Township’s Harry S. Truman High School at nearby Springfield High, as Cheltenham’s field was unavailable — hours before the game was to begin. At that time, he called it a temporary suspension of the season.
The decision caused shock and anger. Senior Night was scheduled, with recognition ceremonies planned for athletes and members of the cheerleading, pep band, color guard, and drum line programs.
“We are very sensitive to the emotions of those most directly impacted,” Scriven wrote.
Only one game remained on the schedule — Friday at Quakertown.
Officials learned of multiple incidents
News of the alleged hazing came three weeks ago, Scriven said, when someone reported that a student was assaulted in the football locker room.
Officials alerted ChildLine, the state’s abuse-reporting system, which they are legally mandated to notify when alleged abuse happens. They also notified Cheltenham police, which began its own investigation.
At the time, they believed the incident to be isolated, Scriven said in the letter.
But as the investigation developed, “additional information came to light indicating that hazing and/or inappropriate physical conduct may be occurring more broadly in the program. Last Friday, we received additional information, including reports indicating multiple team members engaged in hazing through physical contact.”
That’s when officials decided to temporarily suspend the season and investigate further. The district began working with an external consultant over the weekend, Scriven said, and the investigation remains ongoing.
The police investigation is alsoongoing, said Scriven, who urged anyone with information to contact Cheltenham police. He said the district is cooperating with police and has also been in touch with the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office.
“Hazing is a very serious and significant issue in school athletic programs and can lead to criminal charges,” Scriven wrote. “We ask for continued patience and respect for our obligation to thoroughly investigate these allegations. We also ask that our school community not rush to judgment against any of our student-athletes or coaches.”
Saving Senior Night
Senior Night will be recreated in some ways, Scriven said — for those football players, cheerleaders, and members of the pep band, drum line, and color guard uninvolved in the alleged hazing.
“We will do our very best to involve students as we develop new plans to honor our seniors,” Scriven said.
“As a parent, educator, and former coach and student-athlete, I am troubled by this matter on numerous levels,” Scriven said. “This decision is not one that was made lightly. I will continue to communicate as openly as possible as we work through this in the coming days and weeks.
“We must move forward as a district and school community committed to student safety and respect, and do all we can to uphold those values.”
The Philadelphia region is once again back in the spotlight at HBO, this time courtesy of Task, from the makers of Mare of Easttown. The show was spotted last year filming everywhere from Center City to Coatesville.
And, boy, did we make the cut.
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With the show underway, it's clear that the Philadelphia region is integral to Task. Here, we'll be rounding up all the local spots — sans private homes — we can identify in Task, updating each Sunday after episodes air. Check out the map below to see what locations wound up in the show, and why the series takes us there.
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Coatesville
High Bridge
This instantly recognizable Coatesville landmark serves as the location for where County Chief Dorsey (Raphael Sbarge) appears to seal Grasso's (Fabien Frankel) fate with the Dark Hearts.
Media
Delaware County Courthouse and Government Center
Courtesy of Delaware County Government Center and Courthouse
Here, Tom (Mark Ruffalo) gives a touching family statement at a court hearing for his son, Ethan (Andrew Russel), in what is the emotional climax of the series. As The Inquirer reported last year, the production took over Courtroom 15 for filming.
West Chester
Stroud Preserve
David Swanson / Staff Photographer
The last we see of Maeve (Emilia Jones) in the series, she is driving past Stroud Preserve's Creek Road parking lot with her cousins in tow. Where they're heading is anybody's guess, but we hope it's somewhere with fewer Dark Hearts members.
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That was every location we could spot in this week’s episode. Let us know below if we missed anything.
Otherwise, explore the map of all locations featured to date. Tap onHover overa pin to learn more.
What did we miss?
Did you spot any locations in this week’s episode that we missed? Let us know.
That's it for Task. But rest assured, if HBO decides to focus on Philly again, we'll be back. Until then, see youse later.
Staff Contributors
Design and Development: Sam Morris
Reporting: Nick Vadala
Editing: Emily Babay
First seen in episode
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Bucks County Republicans are stoking fears about crime in Philadelphia even as violent crime in the city steadily drops from its high during the pandemic.
Republicans in the purple collar county hope the message will boost the GOP incumbents, District Attorney Jen Schorn and Sheriff Fred Harran, as they face off this fall against their respective Democratic challengers, Joe Khan and Danny Ceisler.
“We’re letting anarchy take over our country in certain places, and that’s not something we want in Bucks,” said Pat Poprik, the chair of the Bucks County Republican Party.
“Democrats are far more enthusiastic about voting precisely because they see what’s happening on the national level. They are really infuriated by what Donald Trump is doing,” State Sen. Steve Santarsiero, who chairs the Bucks County Democratic Party, said. “They’re going to make their displeasure heard by coming to the polls.”
The local races in the key county, which Trump narrowly won last year,will be a temperature check on how swing voters are responding to Trump’s second term and will gauge their enthusiasm ahead of the 2026 midterms, when Shapiro stands for reelection.
As the Nov. 4 election approaches, early signs indicate Democrats’ message might be working — polling conducted by a Democratic firm in September found their candidates ahead, and three weeks before Election Day, Democrats had requested more than twice as many mail ballots as Republicans.
“I think the Republican Party has the same problem it always does. … They turn out when Trump’s on the ticket, but when he’s not, there’s less enthusiasm,” said Jim Worthington, who has run pro-Trump organizations in Bucks County. “Truth be told, the Democrats do a hell of a job just turning out their voters.”
State Treasurer Stacy Garrity, a Republican running for Pa. governor, poses with Bucks County elected officers following her campaign rally Sat the Newtown Sports & Events Center. From left: Bucks County Sheriff Fred Harran; Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Schorn; Garrity; and Pamela Van Blunk, Bucks County Controller.
GOP warns of ‘dangerous’ policies
Republican messaging in the two races focuses on the idea that Bucks County is safe, but its neighbors are not.
GOP ads, which have run over the course of four months, suggest that Khan and Ceisler would enact “dangerous” policies in Bucks County such as “releasing criminals without bail” and “giving sanctuary to violent gang members.”
They frame Harran and Schorn in stark contrast to their opponents as lifelong Bucks County law enforcement officers with histories of holding criminals accountable.
“I think it resonates beyond the Republican base,” said Guy Ciarrocchi, a Republican analyst, who contended frequent news coverage of Krasner makes the message more viable.
Khan, a former assistant Philly district attorney who unsuccessfully ran against Krasner in the 2017 primary, has noted that he campaigned “very, very vigorously” against Krasner and challenged his ideas on how to serve the city.
“I accept the reality that I didn’t win that election,” said Khan, whose platform in 2017 included a proposal to stop prosecuting most low-level drug offenses. “Unlike my opponent, who seems to basically enjoy the sport of scoring political points by sparring with the DA of Philadelphia.”
Schorn, however, is adamant that politics has never played a role in her prosecutorial decisions. Her mission, she said, is “simply to get justice.”
A lifelong Bucks County resident who has been a prosecutor in the county since 1999, Schorn handled some of the county’s most high-profile cases and spearheaded the formation of a task force for internet crimes against children.
Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Schorn speaks at a Republican rally at the Newtown Sports & Events Center in September.
“This has been my life’s mission, prosecuting cases here in Bucks County, the county where I was raised,” she said. “I didn’t do it for any notoriety. I didn’t do it for self-promotion. I did it because it’s what I went to law school to do.”
Harran spent decades as Bensalem’s public safety director before first running for sheriff in 2021. He is seeking reelection amid controversy caused by his decision to partner his agency with ICE, a move that a Bucks County judge upheld last week after a legal challenge.
“Being Bucks County Sheriff isn’t a position you can learn on the job. For 39 years, I’ve woken up every day focused on keeping our communities safe,” Harran said in an email to The Inquirer in which he criticized Ceisler as lacking experience.
Although Ceisler has never worked directly in law enforcement, he argues the sheriff’s job is one of leadership in public safety. That’s something he says he’s well versed in as a senior public safety official in Shapiro’s administration who previously served on the Pentagon’s COVID-19 crisis management team.
Harran, who described his opponent as a “political strategist,” criticized “politicians” for bringing “half-baked ideas like ‘no-cash bail’” into law enforcement. The concept, which is repeatedly derided in the GOP ads, sets up a system by which defendants are either released free of charge or held without the opportunity for bail based on their risk to the community and likelihood of returning to court.
Khan and Ceisler each voiced support for the concept in prior runs for Philadelphia district attorney and Bucks County district attorney, respectively.
Both say they still support cashless bail. Neither, however, would have the authority to implement the policy if elected, though Khan as district attorney could establish policies preventing county prosecutors from seeking cash bail in certain cases.
Joe Khan, a Democratic candidate running for Bucks County DA, walks from his polling place in Doylestown, Pa. in April 2024 when he was running for attorney general.
“When a defendant is arrested and they come into court, every prosecutor answers this question: Should this person be detained or not?” Khan said. “If the answer is yes, then your position in court is that this person shouldn’t be let out, and it doesn’t matter how much money they have. And if the answer is no, then you need to figure out what conditions you need to make sure they come to court.”
Democrats claim to ‘keep politics out’
Even as Democrats view voter anger at Trump as a key piece of their path to victory, they are working to present themselves as apolitical.
Democraticads attack Schorn for not investigating a pipeline leak in Upper Makefield and Harran as caring about nothing but himself. Positive ads highlight Ceisler’s military background and Khan’s career as a federal prosecutor.
Khan and Ceisler, the Democratic Party’s ads argue, will “stop child predators, stand up to corruption, and they’ll keep politics out of public safety.”
The jet fuelcase was turned over to the environmental crimes unit in Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday’s office. And prosecutorial rules bar Schorn from discussing the alleged abuse.
“During the last, I don’t know, 13 years when [Khan] has been pursuing politics, I’ve been a public servant,” Schorn said.“For someone accusing me of putting politics first, he seems to be using politics to further his own agenda.”
At a September rally in Newtown for Treasurer Stacy Garrity, a Republican running for governor, Harran cracked jokes about former President Joe Biden’s age as he climbed onto the stage and falsely told voters that they will “lose [their] right to vote” if they don’t vote out three Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices standing for retention.
“I’m a cop who ran to keep being a cop. This isn’t about politics for me — it’s about doing everything I can to keep my community safe,” Harran said.
Harran’s opponent, Ceisler, paints a different picture as he draws a direct line between the sheriff and the president.
Danny Ceisler, a Democrat, is running for Bucks County sheriff.
Trump, Ceisler said, has inserted politics into public safety in his second term, and he contended that Harran has done the same.
“[Harran] used his bully pulpit to help get the president elected, so to that extent he is linked to the president for better or worse,” Ceisler said in an interview.
Ceisler has pledged to take politics out of the office and end the department’s partnership with ICE if elected.
At an event in Warminster last month, voters were quick to ask Ceisler which party he was running with. Ceisler asked them to hear his pitch about how he would run the office first.
“Don’t hold it against me,” he quipped as he ultimately admitted to one voter he’s a Democrat.
Staff writer Fallon Roth contributed to this article.
This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.
DNA analysis confirmed that the body recovered in the woods behind Ada H.H. Lewis Middle School in East Germantown is that of Kada Scott, the young woman who officials say was kidnapped two weeks ago, law enforcement sources said Sunday, and new details emerged about what led investigators to find her corpse.
An anonymous tipster contacted police Friday night, adamant that Scott’s body was on the grounds of the school.
Police had missed it in their earlier searches, the tipster said, and they should look along the old wooden fence that divides the school from the recreation center next door, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
“GO BACK YOU MISSED HER,” the tipster wrote, according to the sources.
And so, investigators returned to the school on Saturday morning, freshly scouring an area police had focused much of their search efforts on throughout the week after cell phone location data placed Keon King — the man suspected of kidnapping Scott, 23, from her workplace on Oct. 4 — nearby on the night she disappeared.
Days earlier, they had found Scott’s debit card and pink phone case behind the school, but nothing else.
Sources say DNA evidence has confirmed that police discovered the body of Kada Scott in a wooded area near Awbury Recreation Center on Saturday.
Officers were walking through the densely wooded area again on Saturday afternoon, the sources said, when one stepped on a patch of earth that felt softer than the rest — leaves, sticks, and debris scattered loosely on top.
Police excavated the area, and, a few feet down, they found Scott’s body.
It’s not yet clear how she died. It could take days or weeks for the Medical Examiner’s Office to determine the cause of death.
But new video evidence suggests that Scott was likely killed within just 30 minutes of her leaving her workplace the night she went missing, the sources said.
The discovery of the shallow grave, two weeks after Scott disappeared, came after anonymous tips that grew more detailed with each passing day, the sources said, coupled with location data from Scott’s Apple Watch, and finally, new surveillance footage recovered near the school.
Scott, a vibrant young woman from the Ivy Hill section of Mount Airy, disappeared from her workplace, a nursing home in Chestnut Hill, on the night of Oct. 4.
Investigators believe she and King, 21, had been texting, and that night, she walked out of work to meet him shortly after 10 p.m. but never returned.
Police are still investigating the nature and extent of Scott’s relationship with King.
After detectives identified King as a suspect, they pored over the location data from his and Scott’s phones. It showed that King was the last person in touch with Scott on Oct. 4, that his phone traveled with hers briefly before her phone was turned off, and that he was in the area of Awbury Arboretum later that night, a law enforcement source said.
Late last week, police learned that Scott had been wearing an Apple Watch on the night she disappeared. Location data showed that, around 1 a.m., the watch was in the parking lot of the Awbury Recreation Center, said the source.
Police discovered a grave containing female human remains in the area of Ada H. H. Lewis Middle School, a closed school facility near the Awbury Arboretum in Germantown on Saturday.
Investigators went to the recreation center on Friday and recovered new surveillance footage that showed King pull into the parking lot around 10:30 p.m. on Oct. 4 in a Hyundai Accent that had been reported stolen, two sources said. He left the car there that night — most likely with Scott’s body inside, the sources said.
The footage appeared to show King return to the car two days later and retrieve and move what they believe to be Scott’s body, the sources said. It’s not clear whether he acted alone.
The next day, the sources said, the car was set on fire behind homes on the 7400 block of Ogontz Avenue. King’s cell phone data placed him there at the time of the blaze, the source said. (Police had initially been searching for a gold Toyota Camry that King was seen driving but no longer believe that car was used in the crime, the sources said.)
The district attorney’s office said prosecutors would wait for additional information from police and the medical examiner before determining whether to charge King in connection with Scott’s death.
King is expected to be charged with arson in the coming days for allegedly setting the car on fire in West Oak Lane, according to the sources.
Police don’t know the identity of the tipster who steered them to the location of Scott’s body. But if King had help moving it, the sources said, the accomplice may have confided in others, and one of those people may have contacted police.
The investigation is continuing.
Staff writer Maggie Prosser contributed to this article.
Michael Days, a pillar of Philadelphia journalism who championed young Black journalists and was beloved among reporters who worked for him at the Daily News and Philadelphia Inquirer, died suddenly on Saturday at 72 in Trenton.
A devout Catholic who grew up in North Philadelphia, Mr. Days was instrumental in developing talent among Philadelphia’s journalism community, leading with a kind but direct approach that nurtured journalists and caused reporters to break out in spontaneous applause when he returned to the Daily News in 2011 after an interim stint at the then-rival Inquirer.
Mr. Days was also respected beyond Philadelphia, receiving Hall of Fame honors from the National Association of Black Journalists and the Pennsylvania News Media Association. He was a past president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists (PABJ) and at the time of his death was president of NABJ-Philadelphia, which formed as an alternative to PABJ.
Mr. Days’ wife, Angela Dodson, said Sunday afternoon she was comforted by the outpouring of support and love from journalists who knew him.
“He was the kind of person who wanted to serve,” Dodson said. “People could talk to him, and he had something wise to say.”
Michael Days (right), Editor, Philadelphia Daily News and Trailblazer Award winner with his wife, Angela Dodson (left)
Dodson, a journalist and author, said she and her husband had a long-running disagreement over where they had first met. She believes it was in Rochester, N.Y., when they were working for rival newspapers. But Mr. Days believed he’d met her a year earlier, at an NABJ convention.
“People loved him,” Dodson said. “He commanded such respect that I used to say, people would elect him president of anything.”
In recent years, Dodson enjoyed listening as her husband took long phone calls from journalists seeking advice. “What we all need is somebody who listens to us, and he was a master at that,” Dodson said.
Former Daily News reporter and current Inquirer journalist Stephanie Farr recounted Mr. Days’ infectious laugh and his habit of adding Post-it notes to clips of reporters’ articles to tell them they had done a good job, sometimes with simple messages like “amazing quote!” that gave reporters a little extra pride in their work.
“You didn’t get one every day, but when you got one, you were on top of the world,” Farr said.
She still has a box full of these “Mike-O-Grams,” as they became known, and many others do, as well. “The small gestures, in the end, are really the big ones,” Farr said.
Tributes and condolences poured in Sunday from journalists who were shaped by Mr. Days’ leadership.
“It is with a very heavy heart that NABJ Philadelphia mourns the sudden passing of our President Michael I. Days, a respected journalist, mentor and cherished friend whose legendary career and commitment to excellence inspired us all,” wrote Inquirer education reporter and NABJ-Philadelphia Vice President Melanie Burney.
NABJ President Errin Haines said she first met Mr. Days when she moved to Philadelphia in 2015 to work for the Associated Press. Haines said she was struck by his seemingly boundless energy for helping younger reporters. She remembered him as a universally respected leader, and someone who had shown other Black journalists a path to success.
“It was seismic in the industry, and a huge point of pride for NABJ,” said Haines.
Philadelphia Daily News reporters Barbara Laker (left) and Wendy Ruderman, and editor Michael Days react as they hear the news that the two reporters won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.
As editor of the Daily News, Mr. Days played an essential role in the decisions that would lead to its 2010 Pulitzer Prize win for investigative reporting, said Inquirer senior health reporter Wendy Ruderman. She and her colleague Barbara Laker won the prize.
“You could walk into his office anytime and talk to him,” Ruderman said. “He just was very approachable — but also, you respected him.”
Ruderman recounted sitting in Mr. Days’ office late one evening, alongside Laker and a company lawyer, as they discussed whether to move forward with a story about a Philadelphia Police Department narcotics officer. The story, the lawyer said, stood a good chance of getting them sued.
With a “directness and sincerity” that were his hallmark, Mr. Days turned to the reporters.
“He said, ‘I trust my reporters, I believe in my reporters, and we’re running with it,’” Ruderman said. That story revealed a deep dysfunction within the police department, Ruderman said, and led to the newspaper’s 2010 Pulitzer Prize win.
Retired Daily News managing editor Pat McLoone remembered Mr. Days as a quietly authoritative presence, and a leader who brought elegance and class to everything he did — even as he had to preside over the early days of the news industry’s difficult shift from print to digital media.
“He was the best possible boss to work for,” McLoone said. “He was in the 100th percentile as a human being.”
Michael Days (far right) with other former presidents of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists in 2021. He served as president in the 1980s.
After graduating from Roman Catholic High School in Philadelphia, Mr. Days earned degrees from College of the Holy Cross and the University of Missouri. He worked at the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers before joining the Daily News as a reporter in 1986.
In 2011, Mr. Days was named managing editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he held several management roles until he retired in October 2020. Inquirer Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar said Sunday that Mr. Days was a “leading light in Philadelphia journalism.”
“Mike was a son of Philadelphia, a believer in the power of journalism to do right, and a mentor to scores of young journalists who benefited over many decades from his attentive guidance,” Escobar wrote in an email to Inquirer staff. “He spent his life fighting for better journalism because he understood its limitations and, when it came to diversity, its flaws.”
After his own retirement, Mr. Days’ work mentoring Black journalists didn’t stop, said retired journalist Linda Wright Moore.
“He had all the things you need,” Wright Moore said. “He was steady. Principled. He could do tough. He balanced what the craft demands of all of us with the fact that we’re humans, and not perfect.”
Wright Moore had known Mr. Days when she was a columnist at the Daily News from 1985 to 2000. But they stayed in touch over the years and saw one another every year at the annual NABJ convention.
In August, the NABJ celebrated its 50th anniversary — a historic moment for the organization and for Wright Moore, whose late husband, Acel Moore, was one of the group’s founding members.
For her and Mr. Days, it demonstrated the significance of the group’s survival, a half century later, despite the ongoing dismantling of DEI programs at many organizations.
“I could just feel how proud he was to be there, to have made it to this point,” Wright Moore said.
Mr. Days is survived by Dodson, three adopted sons, Edward, Andrew, and Umi, and three grandchildren. Mr. Days is predeceased by his adopted son Adrian.
Services for Mr. Days will be held Oct. 25, at Sacred Heart Church, 343 S. Broad Street, Trenton, N.J. The Viewing will be held from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. followed by Mass at noon.
Former Talking Heads front man David Byrne, in Philadelphia for a three-night stop on his latest tour, joined the “No Kings” protest in Philadelphia on Saturday to show support for the anti-Trump movement and snap a few photos with fans along the way.
Several marchers posted photos of themselves on social media with Byrne, who rode a bike during the march, which went from City Hall to Independence Mall.
Ryan Godfrey, a 54-year-old software solutions engineer, was among those who chatted with Byrne, shortly after surreptitiously taking a photo of Byrne behind him.
Godfrey attended one of Byrne’s concerts on Thursday and recognized the singer when he saw him on his bicycle alongside marchers on Market Street.
“I knew he was a big bike guy — and we had just seen him on Thursday,” Godfrey said. He decided to introduce himself.
“I said, ‘Hi, I really appreciated your concert the other night. It was amazing; thank you so much for that.’ He said, ‘Of course, thanks for enjoying it,’ and then I said, ‘And also thank you very much for being here today — this is very important, that you’re doing this,’” Godfrey recalled.
“And he said, ‘Of course. I wanted to be here for this.’”
West Philadelphia residents Ryan Godfrey and Jessica Lowenthal pose for a selfie, surreptitiously photographing singer David Byrne in the background on the left, during the “No Kings” march on Oct. 18, 2025, on Market Street in Philadelphia.
Godfrey regretted not asking Byrne one question: How were the videos at his concert projected around the stage and on the floor without the performers casting shadows on them?
“It was a kind of magic trick that I don’t really understand,” Godfrey said. Godfrey has been a fan of Byrne’s since the ‘80s, but his interest was renewed when he saw the 1984 Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense in a theater last year.
“I was sorry that I had waited that long because it was almost certainly the greatest concert film I’ve ever seen,” he said.
He said Byrne was anything but aloof with marchers.
“He was very genial, very kind and very friendly and open to interactions from everyone around him,” he said
Another fan quoted Byrne in the sign they carried in the march, then got to hold the sign next to a laughing Byrne. The message? “Love & acceptance are now ‘punk ideologies.’”
Byrne has been critical of Trump both in his music and in interviews and writings. During Saturday’s show, he mentioned the “No Kings” rally, drawing applause from the crowd, according to social media posts.
One Bluesky poster said Byrne — who can be seen carrying a camera during the protest — showed photos of himself and his band at the march on the stage backdrop during Saturday night’s concert.
Asylum denials in Philadelphia’s immigration court have spiked through the first seven months of President Donald Trump’s administration, according to an Inquirer analysis of the latest available government data.
The court has denied 74% of asylum claims in the first seven months of Trump’s second term, compared with a 61% denial rate during the last seven months of the Biden administration, mirroring national trends.
The data were published by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a data gathering and research organization that regularly acquires and analyzes such data from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the agency responsible for overseeing the nation’s immigration courts system.
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And it’s not just that denials are up: The volume of cases has risen substantially as well. The Philadelphia court heard twice as many cases over Trump’s first seven months, compared with Biden’s final seven: 1,059 vs. 513.
Local immigration attorneys say that’s no coincidence.
“Absolutely. They’re pushing cases to go forward,” said Brennan Gian-Grasso, founding partner of Philadelphia’s Gian-Grasso & Tomczak Immigration Law Group, when asked whether the two trends may be connected. “Additionally — and I think this is probably the big difference — prosecutorial discretion.”
Under the Biden administration, Gian-Grasso said, immigration officials often gave asylum seekers who may not have necessarily qualified for asylum the opportunity to remain in the United States by putting a case on hold or otherwise allowing individuals to continue to stay in the United States so long as they did not have a criminal record or other derogatory characteristics.
“That’s gone,” said Gian-Grasso. “Every case is going forward now.”
The administration has been open about its efforts to push cases through the system. Last month, EOIR issued a news release trumpeting a shrinking backlog of immigration court cases — claiming a decrease of 450,000 pending cases since Trump’s inauguration.TRAC data indicate a slight decrease for Philadelphia’s backlog since the start of the current fiscal year last October.
Emma Tuohy, a partner at Philadelphia’s Landau, Hess, Simon, Choi & Doebley and a recent past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s Philadelphia chapter, suggested the rising number of decisions and denial rates wereconnected to another recent trend: surging arrests and detentions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“Denials in detained settings have always been higher,” Tuohy said, explaining that attorneys face particular obstacles when representing detained clients.
The Inquirer reported in August that the number of people detained in ICE custody in New Jersey and Pennsylvania was up about 68% in July compared with figures at the start of Trump’s administration.
Historically, asylum denial rates are vastly higher for those individuals who were in custody at the time a decision was rendered in their cases. Since the start of the 2000 fiscal year, about 99% of detained individuals in Philadelphia’s immigration court were denied asylum, compared with 63% of individuals who were detained at some point but later released and 58% of those who were never detained since the start of fiscal 2000. Similar, though smaller, gaps exist nationally.
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“[Cases] move much, much quicker — within just a couple months — as opposed to non-detained cases which can take a few years. It’s a much shorter timeline to put together extensive documentation and it’s obviously quite a bit harder to work with clients, given they are not as accessible as normal,” said Tuohy. “It’s much harder for individuals in detention to collect documents, to call people they need to speak with, to prepare their statements, to request letters from witnesses. We’re relying mostly on families that are outside and they may not have all the information nor access.”
Officials at EOIR did not respond to requests for comment.
A flurry of policy changes have made winning cases tougher
The substantial increase in denial rates since Trump’s inauguration has been accompanied by a succession of policy changes at EOIR.
The first came in a February memo issued by Sirce Owen, the Trump-appointed acting director of EOIR. Unlike typical federal judges, immigration court judges are not independent judicial branch officials but executive branch employees within EOIR. The directive rescinded a 2023 memo meant to better ensure that individuals in asylum proceedings are provided with adequate interpretation and translation services.
Gian-Grasso explained that access to interpretive services can be critical to an asylum seeker’s ability to properly plead their case.
“Just in my own experience, I’ve had clients who could not speak a word of English — and were illiterate even in their own language — but in translation during testimony could very, very effectively and intelligently articulate their fear of return to their country and their asylum case,” he said.
Gian-Grasso worried the policy shift would put some asylum seekers at a severe disadvantage.
“Limiting that kind of access dooms asylum cases because if you can’t tell your story, what does the judge have to go on?” he said.
Historically, asylum denial rates are significantly higher for those individuals who don’t speak English. In Philadelphia’s immigration court, about 62% of non-English speakers were denied asylum, compared with 51% of English speakers, since the start of fiscal 2000.
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Attorneys have cited a second memo, issued in April, as likely to have an even greater effect on asylees.
That memo essentially encouraged immigration judges to order an asylum seeker removed before providing them with an opportunity for a full hearing of their case — an action known as pretermission — if a judge believes that an applicant has failed to present sufficient corroborating evidence at the outset of their proceedings.
Tuohy described the practical effect of the policy as telling judges to throw out cases over paperwork errors.
“These [cases] are not being pretermitted because there’s not corroborating evidence or there’s not an affidavit or there’s a credibility issue where they don’t believe a person’s story on the merits,” Tuohy said. “This is just because someone has not fully filled out a form.”
Gian-Grasso said the new memo will likely be particularly difficult on individuals navigating the immigration system without an attorney.
“Asylum is highly technical. It’s very difficult to put together an asylum case,” Gian-Grasso said. “You can have a valid asylum case, but if you don’t know how to put it together legally — now judges are being told to look to pretermit in these situations.”
Historically, asylum denial rates are markedly higher for those individuals who don’t have access to an attorney. In Philadelphia’s immigration court, about 82% of asylum applicants without representation were denied asylum, compared with 57% of those who did. An even larger gap exists nationally.
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Denial rates vary by president, and, locally, by judge
While recent denial rates are the highest on record, increases and decreases in the rate of asylum denials are nothing new.
While Philadelphia’s recent denial rate marks the highest since data became available a quarter century ago,rates have fluctuated over time, with notable shifts depending on who’s in the White House.
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In addition to notable partisan gaps, the data reveal another factor in success for an asylum speaker: the judge assigned to the case.
From the 2019 through 2024 fiscal years, the Philadelphia judge with the lowest denial rate denied asylum in 33% of cases, compared with the judge with the highest denial rate, 85%.
Tuohy expressed frustration over that chasm in case outcomes.
“There’s just absolutely no way that those judges are being assigned such fundamentally different cases that their grant rates should be so different so unfortunately yes, it makes a huge difference what judge you get assigned to,” Tuohy said.
Gian-Grasso agreed, arguing it’s one more reason that asylees without an attorney are penalized.
“You know as an attorney what you’re getting when you go in with these judges and how to structure your case,” said Gian-Grasso. “But, again, that goes back to our [unrepresentedasylum seekers]. They have no idea and they’re similarly disadvantaged for having this lack of knowledge at the end of the day.”
Voters will decide whether the Pennsylvania Supreme Court should be transformed for years to come when they are asked next month whether they should retain three justices for another 10-year term or oust them.
Now the justices will appear individually on Pennsylvania ballots, where voters will be asked “yes” or “no” on whether each should be retained for another 10-year term.
The GOP has spent millions to try to oust the three justices, while Democrats have spent even more to try to keep them on the bench. As of Friday, Republicans had spent or reserved nearly $2.5 million in ad buys, while Democrats had spent more than $7 million.
The Inquirer spoke with the justices about their last 10 years on the bench, what it has been like to campaign in a hyper-partisan environment for what is intended to be a nonpartisan election, and more.
Kevin Dougherty
A small group of volunteers gathered in aNortheast Philadelphia parking lot on a gloomy Saturday afternoon in early September to knock on doors and urge residents to retain the current members of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
Milling among the volunteers was Dougherty. Despite having been on the ballot for local or state office three times, Dougherty, of Philadelphia, never knocked on voters’ doors until this year.
And he was disgusted by the fact that it was necessary.
“Judges shouldn’t have to canvass,” Dougherty said several times over the course of the afternoon.
Justice Kevin Dougherty talks with volunteers before they head out the canvass in Fox Chase Sunday Sept. 7, 2025. Dougherty is one of three Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices up for retention.
He then proceeded to walk a Northeast Philly neighborhood alongside his son, State Rep. Sean Dougherty, a first-term Democrat who represents the area, and a family friend.
Before running for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Dougherty spent nearly 15 years on the Common Pleas Court bench in Philadelphia, with much of that time spent serving in the family division.
Justice Kevin Dougherty (right) canvasses with his son, State Rep. Sean Dougherty (left), in Fox Chase Sunday Sept. 7, 2025.
As a Supreme Court justice, Dougherty has highlighted his work on the autism in courts initiative as a key accomplishment. This program works to educate judges about the particular challenges people with autism spectrum disorder may face when dealing with the justice system, and has grown further into sensory-friendly courtrooms in more than a dozen counties.
The program, Dougherty said, was inspired by his own experience on the bench when a child stood in his courtroom for a delinquency case showing “all the signs of an incorrigible person.” Then, Dougherty said, the child’s mother pulled him aside and told him her son was on the autism spectrum.
“It was like a punch in my mouth because I had never been exposed,” Dougherty said. “You’re only ignorant once.”
Dougherty said he self-educated and began working in Philadelphia to reform the way the court interacts with individuals with autism and brought those efforts to a statewide focus as a justice.
Justice Kevin Dougherty (left) canvasses with his son, State Rep. Sean Dougherty (center), in Fox Chase Sunday Sept. 7, 2025, stopping at the home of voter Skip Nelson (right).
“You need to make the system fair,” Dougherty said.
On the court, Dougherty has often sided with the liberal majority. He recently wrote the majority opinion in a case that allowed local governments to use zoning law to limit where gun ranges could be located. In oral arguments, when attorneys get a chance to argue their cases before the Supreme Court’s seven justices, Dougherty often presses lawyers to refine their arguments.
Christine Donohue
Donohue is often the first justice to ask questions during oral arguments.
Her quick interjections are because of her 27 years as a trial attorney prior to her career on the bench, she said. She cannot help but be inordinately prepared when she puts on her judicial robes and sits on the state’s highest court.
“Thoroughness is one of my ‘things,’” she said, with a laugh.
Justice Christine Donohue speaks during a fireside chat at Central High School.
Donohue, 72, would be able to serve for only two years of another 10-year term. But it wasn’t even a question to her whether she should step aside sooner. She believes she has fulfilled her duty as a justice, and she is prepared to do so until she hits the voter-set maximum age for a justice, 75.
Donohue authored the court’s ruling last year that signaled some members of the court are prepared to find that the Pennsylvania Constitution secures the right to an abortion. But less discussed from that same opinion, Donohue said, she is proud to have shored up the state’s Equal Rights Amendment.
Pennsylvania was the first state in the nation to amend its constitution to enshrine that every person has equal rights that cannot be “denied or abridged” because of an individual’s sex in 1971, and the first state to show support for amending the U.S. Constitution to guarantee the same.
But a 1984 ruling by the state Supreme Court “diluted” the ERA in Pennsylvania, Donohue said. It wasn’t until the justices decided the Allegheny Reproductive Health case 40 years later that the court revisited the state’s Equal Rights Amendment to make it “perfectly clear that a biological difference cannot serve as the basis for a denial or an abridgment of a right,” she said.
“To me, I’m very proud of many of the decisions I’ve been able to be involved with, but that one really sort of sets the record straight,” Donohue said.
Outside her legal work on thestateSupreme Court, she has been an advocate to offer more young lawyers the opportunity to try a case before a jury, which has become less and less frequent in recent years. Ensuring that the next generation of lawyers knows how to try a case before a jury is critical to guaranteeing the right to a fair trial, and would prevent a potential competency gap for future lawyers.
David Wecht
Like many of the justices on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Wecht spends much of his free time thinking about legal questions or ethical dilemmas. Or going on walks and listening to podcasts that deal with the same issues. (He recommends Amarica’s Constitution by Yale Law professor Akhil Amar or any of the podcasts by Jeffrey Rosen at the National Constitution Center, among others.)
He works from his chambers in Pittsburgh each day, unless the court is at one of the state’s many satellite courtrooms for oral arguments. There are times when he is in his chambers reading and writing all day long, which he described as “very, very fun, and very, very interesting and exciting.”
Justice David Wecht speaks with moderator Cherri Gregg during a fireside chat on retention at Central High School.
“The work is interesting. It is varied, It is never stagnant. We deal with all areas of the law,” Wecht said. “I’m very grateful that the voters gave me this job 10 years ago, and I hope they’ll see fit to provide me an additional term.”
Wecht is a true student of the law and said he enjoys probing attorneys’ arguments and the back-and-forth between justices on the bench.
He sees his role on the court as to decide cases. “Nothing grander, and nothing more,” he said.
He and the whole court, he said, operate under a “philosophy of judicial restraint.”
The court’s liberal majority has faced criticism from Republicans during the last 10 years — especially during the COVID-19 pandemic — for decisions they claimed were made by an “activist court.”
But those rulings, Wecht said, were the justices’ best attempts at deciding what a law passed by the General Assembly means when the lawmakers left it ambiguous, or their best attempt to understand what the framers of the state constitution intended, even if he doesn’t agree with it.
“It’s not our business whether we like them,” he said.
Early Vote Action, a Republican group, urges voters to vote against retaining the justices at a Republican rally in Bucks County on Sept. 25, 2025 at the Newtown Sports & Events Center. The event was headlined by Treasurer Stacy Garrity, a Republican running for governor.
Republican groups have attempted to mislead voters in mailers, Wecht has said, about the justices’ role in a 2018 decision that found Pennsylvania’s congressional maps were unconstitutionally gerrymandered. The GOP groups have had similarly misleading ads about the court’s actions on abortion and voting rights, even recently invoking the anti-Trump “No Kings” language to try to sway voters to vote “no.”
Wecht is a professor at Duquesne School of Law and the University of Pittsburgh, where he has been teaching for years. He is also a visiting professor at Reichman University in Israel each year, and regularly teaches continuing legal education courses for attorneys, which are courses that all lawyers must complete on an annual basis to maintain their active attorney’s license in Pennsylvania.
Joining demonstrators around the country, thousands gathered Saturday in Philadelphia to protest President Donald Trump’s actions that they contend are threatening to undermine 250 years of the nation’s democratic traditions.
“I think everybody needs to know that we’re not going to just sit back,” said Sherri King, who arrived at the “No Kings” rally in Center City wearing an inflatable chicken costume.
On a mild October afternoon when the weather was drawing no protests, the event began in a festive atmosphere with the sounds of clanking bells as participants gathered at City Hall — some, like King, wearing pre-Halloween regalia — and marched to Independence Mall.
Demonstrators gather for a’ No Kings’ rally in Philadelphia on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025.
“It’s a very large, orderly crowd,” said Police Capt. Frank Palumbo. The three-hour march and rally, which began at noon, actually ended on time.
Said Thomas Bacon, a 72-year-old Vietnam veteran from North Philadelphia: “It’s peaceful. No division. Just opposition.”
Under Trump, he said, “the whole world is turned upside down.”
Organizers of the more than 2,500 demonstrations nationwide say the shutdown in particular is a dangerous move toward authoritarianism.
Trump and congressional Republicans are blaming Democrats for refusing to vote on a reopening.
For his part, Trump spent the day of what fellow Republicans were calling “Hate America” rallies at his Florida mansion.
Demonstrators gather for a’ No Kings’ rally in Philadelphia on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025.
At the Philadelphia protest, Laura Murphy, a 74-year-old retiree, said she was struggling with the “Hate America” concept. “It’s ridiculous,” she said. “What could be more American than being against kings?”
Along with demonstrators, Democratic politicians were evident at events in Philly and elsewhere.
With Democrats hoping to make significant gains in the 2026 election, the presence of party elected officials was evident at rallies in Philly and elsewhere. Among those who showed up in Philadelphia were area U.S. Reps. Mary Gay Scanlon, Madeleine Dean, and Brendan Boyle, along with U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland.
Rallies were being held all over New Jersey, Pennsylvania, the region, the nation — even Spain, where a few hundred gathered in Madrid. About 5,000 people jammed the streets of West Chester.
In Philly, Jerry Lopresti, who said he never had attended a protest in his 64 years, said: “There has to be a show of numbers. It’s important to show up.”
Demonstrators gather for a ’No Kings’ rally in Philadelphia on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025.
Among those who showed up conspicuously was Michael Noonan, 48, of Northern Liberties. He was wearing a Tinky-Winky Teletubby costume as he walked off a Market-Frankford Line subway car.
He said his outfit was a counterpoint to suggestions that the demonstrations might turn violent. “Nobody’s here to fight anyone,” he said, “nobody’s here to kill anyone.”
Not everyone who showed up had issues with Trump.
Patrick Ladrie, 20, who lives in Camden County, stood out in his Trump hat and “ultra MAGA” T-shirt that proclaimed “I love our king.”
He said he crossed the Delaware River to “get a good viewpoint of what the American left is.”
After engaging in debate with three protesters on matters that included Christianity and conservatism, Ladrie reported that the environment was not so bad.
In fact, he said, it was one of the “most peaceful” debates he could recall. As one of his adversaries jogged away to meet up with his friends, Ladrie said, “Keep out of trouble.”
The protest was a decidedly intergenerational affair, with some parents describing the event as a teachable moment, while others said it was their progeny who came up with the idea to attend. Danielle Pisechko, 38, carried her youngest, who wore orange butterfly wings, on her shoulders.
Their sign read: “The only monarchs we want are butterflies.”
Demonstrators gather for a’ No Kings’ rally in Philadelphia on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025.
The participants included Center City resident Reed Oxman, 66. Although his disability limited his movement, he and his husband sat on a ledge near City Hall as evidence of the diversity of the crowd. “It’s [about] representation and clearing all the lies about who is coming to this,” Oxman said.
Lana Reckeweg, who lives at a North Philly women’s shelter, said her resources were seriously limited, but that didn’t stop her from finding cardboard and getting markers to make signs to give to other demonstrators.
She said that over the last several months a handful of undocumented women have found sanctuary in the place she calls home, and seeing their struggles made her want to attend the protest on their behalf.
“I have done a lot of crying. I see how it’s affecting them every day,” said Reckeweg, trying to keep her handwriting steady on a moving bus.
“I am here because they can’t be. People need to wake up and realize it’s getting a lot more serious more quickly than expected.”
As for what effect the rallies might have, “I would tend to doubt that the protests will have any immediate direct impact on the administration’s policies,” said David Redlawsk, chair of the political science and international relations department at the University of Delaware, but “they may work to embolden those who are opposed to Trump’s actions to continue to organize and respond.”
Sam Daveiga, 15, attended her first protest, the Women’s March, when she was 7 years old. This time, she brought along her father, Ed. “Every voice counts,” the Philly teen said.
“You can have a small voice, but the second you put it with everyone else who’s come out, it amplifies.”
Staff writers Emily Bloch, Scott Sturgis, and Rob Tornoe contributed to this article, which contains information from the Associated Press.
Fourteen blocks away from the “No Kings” rally on Independence Mall, Bert and Lynne Strieb stand (and sit) in silent protest Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025 outside their apartment building in the 1900 block of Chestnut Street, vicariously joining thousands of others in Philadelphia and in cities across the country in response to Trump’s masked ICE agents and the deployment of troops in American cities. The Striebs, both in their 80s, could not attend the June “No Kings” march as Bert was in the hospital, and Lynne said they “did not want to miss this one.”
