A former employee at a Hatboro daycare injured a child with special needs by slamming him, hard, into a chair and, later, onto the floor, Montgomery County prosecutors said Wednesday.
Thomas Coleman, 42, of Holland, Bucks County, has been charged with endangering the welfare of a child and simple assault in connection with the March 23 incident involving a 4-year-old boy at KinderCare on Warminster Road.
Coleman remained in custody Wednesday with bail set at $25,000. His attorney, Stephen Jones, did not return a request for comment.
Coleman had been the subject of two previous investigations of his conduct toward children at KinderCare, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest. Those incidents involved him “putting a kid down on a mat too hard and yelling at students,” the affidavit said.
Administrators at KinderCare placed Coleman on leave after the earlier incidents, the affidavit said, but they allowed him to return to work after completing training.
After the latest incident, however, he was fired, the affidavit said.
KinderCare’s director, Ashley Ross, did not return a request for comment Wednesday.
Hatboro police learned of the alleged assault when the boy’s parents contacted them in March, the affidavit said.
The mother said another parent had seen Coleman pick up her son, who is autistic, by his arms and roughly place him in a chair, hitting the boy’s neck on the back of the chair, and then forcefully push the chair into a nearby desk, the affidavit said.
The boy then got out of his seat and walked to a carpeted area of the room, according to the parent who witnessed the assault. Coleman, appearing frustrated, than grabbed the boy by his chin and slammed him down onto the floor, the parent said.
When the boy’s mother picked him up from daycare, she said, she noticed scratches and marks on his neck. Coleman told her the injuries were self-inflicted but would not provide more details, the affidavit said.
Later, the woman had her son examined by a chiropractor, who told her the boy’s hips were out of alignment.
Coleman is scheduled to appear before a district judge for a preliminary hearing on July 2.
Abington is planning to tear down and replace its flagship library building.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education announced more than $11 million in grants in April for libraries across the state. Abington Township received $749,750 “to plan and design a library facility that is sustainable, accessible, efficient and tailored to the needs of the community.”
Town officials are now hard at work doing just that, Abington Township Public Library executive director Elizabeth Fitzgerald said.
The library has already put out a call for a fundraising consultant who will help raise the roughly $50 million total that township officials think they’ll need to replace the main library at 1030 Old York Road with something bigger. The consultant will be paid with private donations from the library’s endowment, Fitzgerald said.
Officials hope some of that money will come from state and federal sources, too. Fitzgerald asked state Sen. Art Haywood about possible funding through the Pennsylvania’s Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program, according to minutes from the May library trustees meeting.
The 1954 building was previously a Best and Co. department store. Abington took over the property in the mid-1970s.
A 1957 image of the Best and Co. department store in Abington held at the Library of Congress.
Maintaining the 72-year-old structure has “caused countless interruptions in services and building closures,” Fitzgerald wrote in a statement announcing the grant.
And the community has now outgrown it, the library director said. Earlier this month, the library hosted author Pam Jenoff at a Penn State building down the road in order to fit some 125 attendees.
Nearly 24,000 people attended over 800 library programs in 2025, Fitzgerald wrote in the grant announcement. “Abington Township needs a new, 21st century library building that can accommodate the needs of our community for generations to come.”
Next steps include hiring an architectural engineering firm using the state grant money, Fitzgerald said. The town expects to demolish the current structure sometime after September 2027 and rebuild on the same land.
In the meantime, officials will seek community input on the project “with surveys, focus groups, town halls, and one-on-one conversations,” Fitzgerald wrote.
“The planning is not in my hands,” she said. “This is the community’s library.”
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KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces struck a major natural gas processing plant and two key satellite communications centers in their latest nighttime attacks on Russia, Ukraine’s General Staff said Wednesday.
In response, Moscow has ordered the redeployment of some air defense systems from Russian regions to the capital and to Crimea’s Kerch Bridge, a crucial link for supplying Russian troops, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said. The bridge connects the Crimean Peninsula with the Russian mainland.
“It is important that as many Russians as possible come to understand that it is the Russian leadership’s rejection of diplomacy that is prolonging the war,” Zelensky said on X.
Zelensky has accepted an unconditional ceasefire demanded by President Donald Trump but Russian President Vladimir Putin has refused.
Ukraine says the stricken gas plant was among the world’s largest
The overnight attack hit the Orenburg Gas Processing Plant, which is part of a complex that also houses the only helium plant in Russia, the General Staff said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app. The attack set the complex on fire, it said.
Orenburg, in the southern Urals near Russia’s border with Kazakhstan, is more than 750 miles behind the front line in eastern and southern Ukraine.
The plant is one of the largest gas complexes in the world, according to the General Staff. It produces helium, used in liquid-fuel rocket engines and guidance systems, and ethane, a key component in producing solid rocket fuel and gunpowder, it added.
Overnight attacks also hit two satellite communication centers used by the Russian military, according to the General Staff.
One was the Dubna Space Communications Center near Moscow, which it described as Russia’s largest ground-based satellite communications complex, and the other was in the Vladimir region east of the capital.
It was not possible to independently verify the General Staff’s report, and Russian officials made no immediate comment.
The General Staff’s statement did not say whether the military used drones or missiles in the assault, but drones have recently been used to strike Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Ukraine keeps hammering Crimea
Ukraine has recently focused its drone and missile attacks on Crimea, aiming to cut off the vital Russian-held peninsula, and overnight drone strikes knocked out power in Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, the city’s Moscow-installed governor, said Wednesday.
Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, sits in a strategic location on the Black Sea. It has naval bases and also provides an important supply line to Moscow’s forces inside Ukraine.
Ukraine recently destroyed more than 60,000 tons of Russian ammunition when it hit a Baltic Fleet arsenal near St. Petersburg, Zelensky said.
Ukraine is trying to disrupt military supply lines in Crimea and strike the peninsula’s power grid at the height of the summer tourist season. Kyiv hopes the campaign will embarrass Putin and increase public pressure on him to end the war, according to Western analysts.
Ukraine’s Security Service said Wednesday it struck two military airfields and destroyed missile systems in Crimea.
Attacks kill at least 6 people
Two staff members of Norwegian People’s Aid were killed during a Russian attack in Ukraine, the demining organization said Wednesday, although local officials said only one person was killed.
Four other workers with the organization were injured, two of them critically, according to the head of the southern Kherson region’s military administration, Oleksandr Prokudin.
Two people were killed and two others wounded overnight in a Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, east of Moscow, regional Gov. Gleb Nikitin said. Also, a Ukrainian drone strike killed one person overnight in Russia’s Belgorod border region bordering Ukraine, local officials said.
Ukraine’s air force, meanwhile, said Russia launched 101 long-range attack drones overnight.
Russian drones attacked the city of Balakliia in northeastern Ukraine, killing a 56-year-old woman, according to Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration. Also, a 57-year-old streetcar driver man died as a result of a Russian guided aerial bomb that hit the outskirts of Sumy, said Oleh Hryhorov, head of the regional military administration.
In addition, the death toll rose to four from Tuesday’s ballistic missile strike using cluster munitions on Kryvyi Rih, Zelensky’s hometown, after a 62-year-old woman died from her injuries, said Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the city administration, said.
A former Delaware County woman tied to an extremist group known as the Zizians has been charged with killing her parents, execution-style, inside their Chester Heights home in December 2022.
Michelle Zajko, 33, has long been a person of interest in the slayings of her parents, Richard and Rita Zajko. After years of investigation, Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse filed first-degree murder charges Wednesday and accused her of shooting the couple on her 30th birthday.
New information obtained in the last few months, including ballistics evidence and an extensive download of text messages and other data from Zajko’s cell phone, allowed prosecutors to piece together the case against her, according to the affidavit of probable cause for her arrest.
Rouse, in announcing the charges Wednesday, said he believes that while Zajko planned and carried out the killings, she likely did not act alone. The investigation is continuing, he said.
Building the case against her, he said, took years of skilled and disciplined police work as investigators interviewed dozens of people and connected threads of information in several states.
“I want to emphasize — I cannot stress this enough — this is just about as exhaustive of an investigation that I’ve been a part of in my 16 years as an attorney,” Rouse said. “We don’t have a smoking gun. It is piece after piece after piece of evidence that has been collected painstakingly over many years.”
Investigators say Zajko, an alumna of Cardinal O’Hara High School and Cabrini University, drove to her childhood home on Highland Circle in Chester Heights with a plan to kill her parents. She shot them both in the head, leaving their bodies for police to find days later, after a concerned friend reported they had missed an appointment to care for Rita Zajko’s elderly mother.
The motive for the killings remains unclear.
Rita and Richard Zajko, seen here in a 1993 family portrait.
Zajko told friends she had a difficult relationship with her mother, and accused her of years of emotional abuse. In online writings, Zajko said her mother criticized her constantly, arguing with her over religion and her desire to be vegan.
That strained relationship was detailed in the final text messages Zajko sent her father days before authorities say she killed him, according to the affidavit.
“Every time I interact with mom in a nonsuperficial way she spends the time insulting a life she knows nothing about, makes assumptions that imdoing nothing, etc,” Zajko wrote, the document said. “Itsuncalled for. I don’t want to speak to someone who treats me like that.”
But Rita Zajko, just nine hours before she was killed, attempted to reconcile with her daughter, sending her a happy birthday text and apologizing for whatever she had done to alienate her, according to the affidavit.
On Wednesday, Rosanne Zajko, the wife of Richard Zajko’s brother, stood alongside the prosecutor as he announced the charges against her niece. Losing her brother- and sister-in-law, she said, was “like the lights going out of our lives.”
“We don’t know yet if the trial will begin to heal the void in our lives and the ache in our hearts,” she said. “But we do know that the detectives, the DA’s office, and we, the family, have done everything possible to achieve justice for Rick and Rita.”
Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse announces murder charges Wednesday against Michelle Zajko. Zajko’s aunt, Rosanne (left) spoke briefly about the impact the killings has had on her family.
Michelle Zajko, for her part, has said she had been unjustly accused.
In a sprawling, handwritten letter sent to The Inquirer and other news outlets last year, Zajko insisted she did not kill her parents. Rosanne Zajko said Michelle Zajko told her at the couple’s funeral in January 2023 that she had not killed her parents, but said she knew who did. She would not name the killer, her aunt said.
“I’m viscerally reminded of the witch hunts, of the Satanic Panic, of the mob that burned Joan of Arc at the stake, and of the mob that ripped apart Hippolyta,” Michelle Zajko said in the letter, written in a jail cell in Maryland, where she is awaiting trial on trespassing, gun, and drug charges. “The papers are lying. … I did not murder my parents.”
Sources familiar with the investigation say it is possible that, as an only child, Zajko may have expected to inherit her parents’ substantial estate. The value of the estate has not been made public, but the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing case, say it is worth several million dollars.
A person close to Zajko said she had contacted an attorney in the weeks after her parents were killed to discuss how she could access her parents’ estate.
Zajko remains in custody in western Maryland with two other members of the Zizians, including the cultlike group’s leader, Jack “Ziz” LaSota, who identifies as female.
Zajko is also charged with illegally supplying the guns used by other members of the Zizians in a fatal shootout with a U.S. Border Patrol agent weeks before her arrest in Maryland.
In her letter from jail, Zajko said she and her friends were innocent of all criminal charges they face. She said they were being targeted by other members of the Bay Area tech community seeking to discredit them.
Members of the Zizians — a group whose philosophy encourages making decisions through reason and logic, rather than emotion — are connected to six killings across the country, authorities say. Prosecutors have denounced the group as extremists and accused them of using violence when their worldview is challenged.
For years, the deaths of Richard and Rita Zajko remained the only ones tied to the Zizians that remained unsolved.
Deputies escort Michelle Zajko, left, Daniel Blank, right, and Jack LaSota, in orange, from the Allegany County Courthouse in Cumberland, Md. in January.
Almost immediately after the killings, investigators in Delaware County learned that Zajko had been at her parents’ home on the night they were shot — a neighbor’s Ring security camera recorded someone screaming “Mom!” shortly before police believe the fatal shots were fired.
The couple were found in their daughter’s childhood bedroom, which had remained virtually unchanged since she had moved out of the house decades earlier, the affidavit said.
The gun used to kill the couple was the same caliber as, and a similar model to, one Zajko had purchased in Vermont weeks earlier, investigators said. She was labeled a person of interest in the case as a consequence. But authorities said there was not enough evidence to prove she had committed the crime.
That changed this week, prosecutors said.
When investigators spoke with Zajko at her home in Vermont after her parents’ killings, she showed them a different type of ammunition from the kind found at the Chester Heights home, the affidavit said. However, while serving a subsequent search warrant there, detectives found cartridges that were an exact match — and that they said Zajko had hidden from them.
Initially, forensic investigators said they were unable to determine if the shell casings found near Rita and Richard Zajko’s bodies had been fired from their daughter’s gun. But late last fall, other casings found near trees behind Michelle Zajko’s home in Vermont, which she had used for target practice, had been fired by the same gun that killed her parents, authorities said.
Another crucial piece of evidence, investigators said, was a list found on Zajko’s cell phone titled “There are so many things we f— up” that detailed missteps, including not taking shell casings from the homicide scene, according to the affidavit.
The murder charges mark an unexpected turn for Zajko, whom friends and loved ones described as an ambitious, accomplished young woman with a keen interest in science. In her early 20s, Zajko pursued a career in bioinformatics and conducted research at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia with colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania.
At the same time, Zajko became immersed in the Zizianmovement through online message boards, and met some of the group’s members while interning with NASA in California.
The Chester Heights, Delaware County home where Richard and Rita Zajko were murdered on New Years Eve 2022.
In 2021, partly in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic, Zajko abandoned her scientific research and moved to rural Vermont, where she lived with other Zizians and grew close to LaSota, the group’s leader.
Zajko, in her prison letter, said that she rejects the characterization of LaSota as her “leader” and that the group does not refer to themselves as Zizians. Instead, she said that she and LaSota are close friends, and that she loves LaSota “infinitely more than I could ever express.”
Investigators now believe that Zajko, LaSota, and Daniel Blank, another Zizian, traveled to Chester Heights together on the day Zajko’s parents were killed, and intentionally left their cell phones in Vermont to prevent authorities from tracking their movements, according to the affidavit.
The three made that trip a second time weeks later, in January 2023, so Zajko could attend her parents’ funeral in Marple Township. Pennsylvania State Police troopers investigating her parents’ killings briefly detained Zajko and Blank at a hotel where they were staying in Chester.
LaSota, however, refused to answer the troopers’ questions, was charged with obstruction of justice, and remained in custody in Delaware County for months before being released on unsecured bail.
LaSota did not show up for subsequent hearings, and a bench warrant for her arrest was still active when Maryland State Police took her into custody last year alongside Zajko and Blank.
As Zajko awaits trial in both cases, Rouse, the prosecutor, said her crimes “go beyond comprehension and circumstance.”
“This is a child who killed her parents, who walked into her childhood home, took her mother to her childhood playroom, and executed her,” Rouse said. “There aren’t words or emotions that can capture it.”
DALLAS — Camp Mystic filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization on Wednesday, nearly a year after catastrophic floods killed 25 campers and two teenage counselors at the Christian camp for girls along the Guadalupe River in Texas.
Camp Mystic has been under increasing pressure since the July 4 disaster. Owners had planned to reopen the Texas Hill Country camp this summer for its 100th anniversary but reversed course in April amid outrage from victims’ families and lawmakers. Victims’ families filed lawsuits accusing the camp of failing to protect the girls as the powerful floodwaters approached.
Camp Mystic’s owner, Richard Eastland, also died in the flood.
The camp listed its debt at more than $10 million, according to the filing made in federal bankruptcy court in Houston. An attorney for Camp Mystic has not responded to an email and a phone message seeking comment.
“Bankruptcy will not stop all responsible parties from being held accountable,” Paul Yetter, a lawyer who represents multiple families of campers and counselors who died at Camp Mystic, said in a statement. “These innocent girls deserve justice.”
For decades, Camp Mystic was a summer staple and an institution for generations of families, who dropped off their girls at the sleepaway camp to ride horses, canoe, fish and attend Bible studies. Other summer camps in Kerr County, west of Austin, did not take on such devastating flooding and in some cases have reopened.
All told, the destructive flooding killed at least 136 people along a several-mile stretch of the river, raising questions about how things went so terribly wrong.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, the Eastland family spent months determined to reopen the camp this summer, pointing to enhanced safety measures that included flood warning river monitors and putting two-way radios enabled with national weather alerts in every cabin.
By the spring, Camp Mystic’s attorney said it was ready to reopen for business for nearly 900 campers.
But assurances of safety did not convince victims’ families and some Texas lawmakers. State regulators found nearly two dozen deficiencies in the emergency operations plan submitted by the owners, including in proposals for flood warning evacuations and safety training.
The decision not to reopen followed weeks of testimony in court hearings and legislative investigations that laid bare the camp’s lack of detailed planning for a flood emergency and its reliance on poorly trained staff.
Families of the victims packed the hearings, some wearing “Heaven’s 27” pins with photographs of their daughters. They listened to the details of missed flood warning signs, the descriptions of the flood and the decision to leave the girls in their cabins until it was too late. Testimony included video of the raging floodwaters as a girl repeatedly screamed “help!” somewhere in the distance.
Before halting the reopening plans, Camp Mystic invited journalists and lawmakers to review safety improvements at the camp and promised that no camp activities would take place in the low-lying area that was devastated by the flood. The Eastland family also stressed that hundreds of families wanted to return.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision to limit Philadelphia prosecutors’ ability to seek to overturn old convictions not only took aim at one of District Attorney Larry Krasner’s defining initiatives — it altered the work of an office he will one day leave behind.
The high court’s ruling adds an extraordinary new layer of oversight to an issue that helped make Krasner one of the nation’s most prominent progressive prosecutors: correcting what he has described as injustices of decades past.
But the newly established changes to the appellate processes in Philadelphia will outlive Krasner’s tenure and reshape the way the office reviews post-conviction cases for years to come. It could not only apply to high-profile exonerations in murder convictions, but also extend to cases that even Krasner’s more conservative predecessors were eager to undo, like drug and gun convictions linked to corrupt cops.
It also deepens a yearslong conflict between Krasner and his critics in the justice system. Several justices, in dissenting opinions, raised concerns that the change could inject politics into a high-stakes legal process.
Since taking office in 2018, Krasner has made post-conviction review a centerpiece of his reform agenda. His office said it has overturned the wrongful convictions of 59 people — almost all of them Black men. It has also struck deals that allowed defendants to plead guilty to lesser charges in dozens of other cases in which prosecutors did not say those charged were innocent, but agreed their original trials were unfair, often because of prosecutorial or police misconduct.
But the high court, in a forceful majority opinion written by Justice Kevin Dougherty, said Krasner’s prosecutors had misled judges in several of those cases, that the prosecutors were not acting as the necessary adversaries to test the cases’ merit, and that the courts could no longer trust his prosecutors’ word when deciding whether to overturn a conviction.
Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Kevin Dougherty greets supporters during an election night party in November 2025.
Moving forward, the justices ruled, if the district attorney’s office agrees to alter a sentence or overturn a past conviction, judges must ask the state attorney general’s office to review the case before proceeding. The ruling applies only to Philadelphia; prosecutors in every other Pennsylvania county can continue to evaluate cases on their own.
Krasner declined to comment this week. While it was not immediately clear whether he had a legal path to challenge the ruling, he said in a video statement last week that it “undermines the value of a vote in Philadelphia.”
He compared criticism of his post-conviction review efforts to attacks that have been leveled against other social and racial justice movements.
“We know where we are in the fight,” he said, “and once we get past the fight, we all win.”
But the Supreme Court’s ruling sharply curtails part of that effort, and it is expected to significantly reshape — and likely slow — one of the most consequential parts of Krasner’s agenda.
It was “an extraordinary remedy for something the court thought was an extraordinary problem,” said Aaron Marcus, chief of the appeals division at the Defender Association of Philadelphia.
But, he added, “the remedy might go beyond what was necessary in the court’s mind to address the problem in front of it.”
While the decision gives the attorney general broader authority to intervene when city prosecutors support post-conviction relief, it remains unclear how often — or when in the process — it will weigh in.
Brett Hambright, a spokesperson for the office of Attorney General Dave Sunday, a Republican, said in a statement this week that officials were still evaluating the order and its potential impact. Because of the many unknowns, he said, “it may be difficult to fully assess … until the process truly begins.”
Still, on Wednesday, Sunday’s office filed a notice of intervention in a murder case that Philadelphia prosecutors helped overturn just last month — setting up a potential test case for the new legal landscape around the issue.
Marcus, of the Defender Association, said the ruling could cause confusion — and delays — in cases that the conviction integrity unit does not typically handle, such as weapons and drug-possession cases, as well as more routine matters, like correcting prison sentences that had been miscalculated.
“There’s already too few attorneys with too little time and insufficient resources,” he said.
Marissa Boyers Bluestine, assistant director of the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania’s law school, said that because the courts did not set a timeline for how quickly the attorney general’s office must review each case, the added oversight could draw out an already yearslong appellate process filled with delays. And, she said, it could create “confusion on who exactly is representing the state.”
“Now you have two entities who are potentially in opposition to each other,” she said. “It raises confusion and diminishes the real trust in the criminal legal system.”
Dozens of people have been released from prison in Philadelphia after prosecutors agreed their trials were unfair. In this 2021 photo, Christopher Williams, center, gathered outside the Criminal Justice Center to announce a lawsuit against the city of Philadelphia, police and prosecutors. Williams was exonerated and released from prison in February 2021 after more than 25 years on death row.
Several defense lawyers who handle post-conviction cases were similarly concerned about the unknowns of the ruling — and said the majority opinion did not address the decades of problematic police and prosecutorial behavior that led to this moment.
Michael Wiseman said Krasner’s office has opposed most of his clients’ petitions over the years. Like other district attorneys before him, Krasner is not perfect, Wiseman said, but the high court “is vexing in its willingness to ignore all the times when Krasner’s office got it right.”
At the same time, he said, “It is similarly vexing for not recognizing the imperfections of past administrations, who, unlike Krasner, defended every conviction without regard to innocence or unconstitutional convictions.”
Adding to the complexity of the issue, some justices believed the majority’s decision could threaten to reignite long-running feuds between Krasner and prosecutors he has clashed with in the past.
In one of his first actions after taking office in 2018, Krasner fired dozens of veteran prosecutors, effectively describing them as unfit to serve in a reform-oriented administration. Some who were ousted then went on to work in the state attorney general’s office, and Krasner, in a remark that was widely criticized, jokingly referred to that office as “Paraguay,” a South American country where Nazis fled after World War II.
Justice Christine Donohue warned in a dissenting opinion that the majority’s ruling could threaten to inject personal disputes between rival lawyers into a process that is supposed to be unbiased. In addition, she said, giving the attorney general’s office authority in those cases could give some state prosecutors a role in defending convictions they helped obtain when they worked for the city.
“This is in stark contrast to acting as a friend of the court,” she said.
Ben Lerner, a former Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge and former chief defender, said Krasner deserves credit for creating a meaningful system to revisit convictions — something he said previous administrations largely failed to do.
But state and federal courts have repeatedly raised concerns about the office’s methods, he said, including allegations that prosecutors excluded investigating officers and former trial attorneys from parts of the review process, and focused disproportionate attention on cases tied to prosecutors Krasner had clashed with during his years as a defense lawyer.
“In my view, it’s a shame,” he said, “because this was basically a very important thing that he was doing that previous district attorneys had had no interest in doing.”
This inaugural citywide arts festival has been running strong since late-May, but the coming weeks offer a deep slate of programming ahead of the July 4 weekend.
Launched to “foreground our city’s artists as interpreters of this complex moment in American history,” the multidisciplinary festival includes puppetry, dance, music, books, film, and more through July 2.
The lead-up to Independence Day features multiple exhibitions and events, many of them free, making it an affordable way to celebrate the nation’s milestone birthday.
The Brandywine Valley Symphony will perform “Masterworks 3: Made in America” in the open-air venue at Longwood Gardens. Before the concert, organizers for Dare to Declare will attempt the region’s largest public reading of the Declaration of Independence.
🕒 June 25, 7 p.m., 💵 $20-$65, 📍 1001 Longwood Road, Kennett Square, PA 19348, 🌐 bvsymphony.org
Play trivia, test your knowledge against a historian, and attend a town hall on the “shared principles at the heart of the American idea.” It’s all free and part of the weeklong lead-up to July 4, when the National Constitution Center celebrates America’s 250th birthday.
🕒 June 29-July 4, times vary, 💵 Free, 📍 525 Arch St., Philadelphia, PA 19106, 🌐 constitutioncenter.org
Headlined by 20-time Grammy winner Kirk Franklin, this two-hour gospel music celebration features a choir of more than 250 voices against the backdrop of Independence Hall. Seating is first-come, first-served.
🕒 June 28, 7 p.m., 💵 Free, 📍 599 Market St., Philadelphia, PA 19106, 🌐 july4thphilly.com.
A worker prepares to raise the head of a fire-breathing dragon lantern in preparation for the Philadelphia Chinese Lantern Festival at Franklin Square this year.
The festival is back with a special nod to the global events arriving in Philadelphia this summer. Handmade sculptures take over Franklin Square, with nightly performances held on three stages: face-changing, table foot-juggling, and head-balancing.
🕒 Open daily between now and Aug. 2, 💵 Adults $28-$32, with discounts for children and seniors, 📍 200 N. Sixth St., Philadelphia, PA 19106, 🌐 phillychineselanternfestival.com
Cam Gorman, 23, of Gilbertsville, Pa., cheering with Philly Sports Guy at the FIFA Fan Festival at Lemon Hill, as USA beats Australia on June 19.
With the U.S. team still battling for a title, what better way to celebrate the lead-up to 250th birthday than by cheering on the team in the World Cup?
The tournament, with several matches hosted in Philadelphia, has transformed the city into a summer-long party. Much of the action centers on the Fan Festival at Lemon Hill, where visitors can enjoy music, food, drinks, and watch parties. Admission is free, though preregistration is required.
Two Round of 16 matches are scheduled for July 4, at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m., though the participating teams have yet to be determined. The 5 p.m. game will be played at Lincoln Financial Field.
🕒 Various dates and times, 💵 Free (registration required), 📍 Lemon Hill Park, 1 Lemon Hill Drive, Philadelphia, PA 19130, 🌐 phillyfwc26.com.
Philadelphia’s Historic District goes all out with a full day of events welcoming visitors to America’s “most historic square mile.” Highlights include a giant human Liberty Bell, plus a block party and street music festival featuring more than two dozen acts. At 7 p.m., Queen Latifah performs with the Army Field Band and Soldiers’ Chorus on Independence Mall. A 13-minute drone show follows later that evening.
🕒 July 2, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., 💵 Free, 📍 Philadelphia’s Historic District, 🌐 july4thphilly.com
Dan St. Mary poses for a portrait with his bubble dispenser during the Salute to Independence Parade on July 4, 2025, in Center City.
This year’s parade features an extended route, along with 50 marching bands, 19 floats, and tributes to all 50 states and U.S. territories. The event begins at 5th and Chestnut Streets and winds through Center City before ending near Broad and Chestnut Streets. Feel like skipping the crowds? Catch it live on NBC 10.
🕒 July 3, noon to 4 p.m., 💵 Free, 📍 Independence Hall to Benjamin Franklin Parkway, 🌐 july4thphilly.com
The Philly Pops are joined by Broadway legend Idina Menzel for a two-hour concert on the eve of Independence Day. A pre-show block party featuring food trucks and giveaways begins at 5 p.m. Seating is first-come, first-served.
🕒 July 3, 7 p.m., 💵 Free, 📍 599 Market St., Philadelphia, PA 19106, 🌐 july4thphilly.com
Musket firing will be a part of the Independence Day Celebration at Valley Forge National Historical Park.
Valley Forge marks 50 years as a national historical park with three days of commemorative programming, including Revolutionary War reenactors, musket firings, and artillery demonstrations.
SEPTA Bus 125 will get you to the park, and a park shuttle runs throughout the celebration from July 3-5. Plus, there are bike rentals on-site. All events are free to attend, and you can find a complete schedule of the weekend’s events at the National Park Service website.
🕒 July 3-5, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, 💵 Free, 📍 North Outer Line Drive in Valley Forge National Historical Park, 🌐 nps.gov.
A three-day slate of activities begins July 3 with extended First Friday hours at the Heritage Center and an evening car show at the East Greenville Fire Co. The next day features a parade, a reading of the Declaration of Independence, performances by the Brandywine Colonials Fife and Drum Corps and the Red Hill Band, followed by fireworks. On July 5, the Heritage Center hosts a free family-friendly event from noon to 4 p.m. with exhibits and refreshments.
🕒 July 3-5, times vary, 💵 Free, 📍 Various locations, 🌐 schwenkfelder.org.
In addition to musical performances from Yolanda Adams and DJ Diamond Kuts, a collection of speakers — including Philly Mayor Cherelle L. Parker — are slated to reflect on the nation’s history on the morning of its 250th birthday.
🕒 10 a.m. to 11 a.m., July 4, 💵 Free, 📍 599 Market St., Philadelphia, PA 19106, 🌐 visitphilly.com
The courtyard of the Betsy Ross House will be filled with animals on the morning of July 4, during the annual patriotic pet parade and costume contest. Pets will be judged in five categories — Most Patriotic, Best Betsy Ross Influence, Best Duo with Owner, Best Non-Canine, and Best in Show — so make sure they arrive dressed to impress.
🕒 10:30 a.m., July 4, 💵 Free (pet registration required), 📍 239 Arch St., Philadelphia, PA 19106, 🌐 historicphiladelphia.org
Christina Aguilera, pictured here in 2016 in Morocco, is one of several musicians performing at this year’s One Philly: Unity Concert for America on July 4.
This July 4 star-studded concert on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway features Christina Aguilera, The Roots, Jill Scott, Meek Mill, Will Smith, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Seal, and others.. Comedian Wanda Sykes serves as host. Doors open at 3 p.m., and performances begin at 5 p.m.
🕒 5 p.m. to midnight, July 4, 💵 Free, 📍 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, 🌐 visitphilly.com.
The Abington School District is reviewing security procedures after police charged a 25-year-old man with trying to rape a student who repeatedly let him into Abington Senior High School.
Police charged Raeem Grange-Allen of Philadelphia on Friday with attempted rape by force and attempted statutory sexual assault, among other charges. The student, a 14-year-old girl, told police she had met Grange-Allen at the high school.
Grange-Allen initially identified himself as a student and began communicating with the girl through text messages and social media, according to a police affidavit.
Grange-Allen later asked the girl to let him into the school “and requested she perform oral sex on him behind a stairwell,” according to the affidavit. The girl told police she “saw him or let him into the school approximately three to four times.”
In a message to families Tuesday, Abington Superintendent Jeffrey Fecher said the girl let Grange-Allen into the high school on two occasions in March, opening a back door during the school day.
“Video footage shows he was wearing a hoodie and was able to briefly blend in as a student while moving in the hallways,” Fecher said.
On March 27, Grange-Allen came to the girl’s home in Abington Township, where he held her down and attempted to rape her, according to the police affidavit. The girl screamed, and her mother caught Grange-Allen, according to the affidavit. The girl went to the police the next day.
Fecher said there were “numerous unresolved questions about this man’s presence in the high school, as well as, where and when he initially encountered the victim.”
The district is “launching a third-party internal investigation” and reviewing security protocols, Fecher said. While exterior doors are locked throughout the school day, “building occupants always have the ability to open them from the inside for evacuation purposes, as required by law,” he said.
Fecher said the district would be working with the Montgomery County Department of School Safety “to determine whether additional security measures can be put in place.”
“We share in the concern and shock that this information causes, and we are committed to addressing it effectively,” Fecher said.
As of Wednesday, Grange-Allen was being held at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility on $250,000 cash bail.
JDEIDAT MARJAYOUN, Lebanon — Looking out from a friend’s balcony, Milia el-Cheikh struggled to find her own home in the ruins of her now-deserted village, its entrances strung with barbed wire.
Her village of Dibbine is one of several Shiite-majority communities across southern Lebanon destroyed by Israeli forces battling the Iran-backed Shiite Hezbollah. Israel has occupied vast areas and fighting has raged through declared ceasefires. The latest truce — part of the interim peace deal between the United States and Iran — has largely held.
El-Cheikh, one of the few Christians from Dibbine, found shelter in another village but regularly visits Jdeidat Marjayoun, a mostly Christian village next to her hometown, to have coffee with a friend from church. Before the war, it was a comforting ritual. Now it takes place against a backdrop of loss and fear.
“I don’t know anything about my house,” she said. “Nothing is more agonizing than not being able to get to your home.”
Jdeidat Marjayoun is one of a string of towns and villages visited by the Associated Press on the blurry edge of the Israeli-occupied zone of southern Lebanon. The military has pushed out the mostly Shiite population, believing they harbor Hezbollah, and many towns have been demolished.
Residents of neighboring Christian, Sunni and Druze communities have been allowed to stay, but the conflict has transformed their lives. Their homes have been struck, road closures have isolated them from the rest of Lebanon, and nighttime raids by Israeli troops have terrified residents.
Israeli warnings against hosting Hezbollah fighters have effectively barred them from taking in displaced Shiites, driving a wedge between longtime neighbors and stoking political and sectarian tensions.
Lebanon is a linchpin for the Iran deal
The latest conflict began when Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel days after Israel and the U.S. launched their war on Iran on Feb. 28. Israel invaded Lebanon and has expanded its zone of control up to seven miles deep in places.
As troops advanced, Israel warned people to leave large areas of southern Lebanon, and in April published a list of 53 towns and villages — mostly Shiite — where residents are barred from returning. On Thursday, it added eight more predominantly Shiite villages.
Israel says its troops will remain in southern Lebanon for self-defense. It says Hezbollah was deeply entrenched and has released videos purporting to show tunnels and other military infrastructure in residential areas.
Iran says any wider truce must include Lebanon and that Israel must withdraw, while Hezbollah says it will resist occupation. Lebanon’s government has also called on Israel to withdraw.
They live in the Israeli military’s shadow
Mixed villages and towns on the edge of the security zone, spread over hills and valleys among orchards and olive groves, stand within sight of their devastated neighbors. Residents have vowed to stay.
The Shiite town of Khiam — now an empty white swath of flattened buildings controlled by Israel — can be seen from the Christian village of Qlayaa.
Qlayaa’s residents are effectively barred from reaching their olive groves in the valley between. “Now another season is lost,” said Hanna Daher, Qlayaa’s mayor.
A priest in Qlayaa was killed by shelling as he inspected an earlier strike, and a father and his two children were killed in a drone strike while driving to Qlayaa. Israel says it only targets militants.
In Jdeidat Marjayoun, a house was bombed on suspicion that militants were using it. Rockets — believed to be from Hezbollah — damaged a church’s dome. In other places, solar panels, power transmitters and water stations have been hit.
El-Cheikh fled Dibbine with her neighbors in early March after Israel warned people to leave. In late May, following weeks of fighting, Israeli forces raided Dibbine before withdrawing in early June.
As the fighting raged, el-Cheikh’s friend, Lolitta Costantine, huddled with her husband in their home in Jdeidat Marjayoun, and at one point stayed with neighbors. Cracks caused by explosions run down the walls of her home. Windows were shattered and doors knocked loose. She keeps shrapnel as a reminder of the ordeal.
“We didn’t know where the danger was coming from,” Costantine said.
Tensions rise as the displaced are turned away
Shiites seeking shelter from the fighting have been turned away by those who fear Israeli strikes or eviction, aggravating tensions that have been mostly dormant since Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.
When a Qlayaa resident hosted a friend from a Shiite village in his orchard, his house was bombed, said Daher, the mayor. Other residents have asked Shiites seeking refuge to leave.
“We told them, we don’t want problems for you or for us,” Daher said.
Israel has warned Jdeidat Marjayoun’s municipality not to allow in people displaced from neighboring villages, saying it could put the town at risk or force it to be evacuated, the municipality said on social media.
“We were forced to ask some to leave the town,” said the parish priest, Father Philip Habib Okla. “It caused many disagreements and tension,” he added. “We are counting on faith to remain united.”
The Israeli military said it has warned people in parts of southern Lebanon not to allow Hezbollah to use their villages. It said Hezbollah operates in civilian areas, endangering residents.
During Israel’s 1982-2000 occupation of southern Lebanon, the area was a bastion of the South Lebanon Army, a mostly Christian militia working with the Israeli military. When Israel withdrew, some of them fled to Israel while others faced trial in Lebanon, where they were widely seen as collaborators.
Some residents worry they will be unfairly painted with that brush for staying in their homes. Few are willing to speak of the tensions openly, fearing retaliation by Israel or Hezbollah.
At a church visited by AP, a man shouted in exasperation that everyone had become suspicious of each other, even among Christians. He blamed Hezbollah for dragging Lebanon into the war, saying it had made a serious mistake.
‘It is like the West Bank here’
Late one night in March, Israeli forces surrounded a building in the mostly Sunni village of Halta. They burst in and arrested Chadi Abdel-Al, who screamed “my heart” as he was being beaten and dragged into a van, according to his mother, Ayesha al-Qaderi, who lives in the same building.
In the commotion, a 15-year-old relative, Mohammad Abdel-Al, ran through the dark in his pajamas toward the house, his grandfather, Hatem, said. The Israeli soldiers shot him dead. A neighbor, who was out on his balcony, was wounded.
The Israeli military said it had detained the commander of a local militant group and that its forces had opened fire at two individuals who it said had approached in a suspicious manner.
In a separate incident, Israeli troops detained three farmers from Halta during a raid on a nearby village.
They are among at least eight people detained by Israeli troops since March, according to Lebanese media. The Israeli military says they were suspected of involvement in militant activities and plots against its troops.
“We still don’t know why they kidnapped them. Maybe to instill fear in the village and to send a message that they see everyone,” said Issa Abdel-Al, the community’s leader.
“It has become like the West Bank here,” he added, referring to the occupied Palestinian territory.
Al-Qaderi, who has heard nothing about her son since he was spirited away, said: “I just want to know his fate.”
NEW YORK — Three Democrats who made criticism of Israel central to their political identities swept to victory in House primary races in New York City on Tuesday, signaling a new era of skepticism in their party toward the Jewish state and its actions.
The striking results reflected a fast-moving shift in liberal politics. Democratic voters are now more likely to be critical of Israel and its government than they are to be supportive, according to several recent polls, a monumental change in American sentiment.
And while many Democratic officials remain supportive of Israel, next year’s class of congressional Democrats is on track to be more wary about the United States’ relationship with Israel than at any other moment since the Jewish state was established after World War II.
The primary triumphs in deep-blue districts of Brad Lander, Claire Valdez, and Darializa Avila Chevalier came after each was endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York, whose advocacy for the Palestinian cause has been integral to his rapid political rise. At a rally for the candidates last week, he called the nation’s leading pro-Israel organization part of a group of “monsters” that he said were too powerful in American politics.
At Avila Chevalier’s victory party Tuesday night in Harlem, supporters chanted “free Palestine” while she pushed her campaign’s “babies, not bombs” slogan. She suggested in her victory speech that her win represented a shift in how Democrats in New York would operate.
“Today, we make it clear: The politics of the past ends today,” she said.
Super political action committees allied with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel group, have spent huge amounts of money on this year’s midterm elections to try to turn the tide in voter opinion. The organization has had some victories, saying in a statement Tuesday night that 180 Democrats and Republicans it had endorsed had advanced to the November election. The group congratulated a Maryland House candidate its allied super PAC spent millions backing and said this would “ensure this seat remains represented by pro-Israel leadership.”
But despite those successes, AIPAC has largely been on the defensive.
Polls show that support for Israel among Democrats has sharply and steadily eroded since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s subsequent destruction of most of the Gaza Strip. A New York Times/Siena survey this spring found that 60% of Democratic supporters said they were more sympathetic to Palestinians than Israelis, compared with 15% who were more supportive of Israel.
“You’re seeing more and more Democrats making it clear that we should provide no U.S. taxpayer support to the government of Israel,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.) said in an interview Tuesday. Next year, he added, “I hope we will see a Congress that doesn’t provide reflexive unconditional support to the government of Israel.”
Perhaps the most significant of the New York races pitted Rep. Dan Goldman, a two-term Democrat from Brooklyn, against Lander, the former New York City comptroller, who staked his campaign on opposing Goldman for being insufficiently critical of Israel.
The race between the two men, Jews who both describe themselves as liberal Zionists, symbolized how Democratic voters, especially younger ones, have shifted away from support for Israel.
But perhaps the most outspoken anti-Israel Democratic candidate who won in New York City, Avila Chevalier, defeated Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who has been a steadfast supporter of Israel in his decade in Congress. Avila Chevalier spoke often of having lived in the West Bank and attended a rally on Oct. 8, 2023, that was widely criticized for featuring speakers who appeared to justify the attacks a day earlier.
Like Lander and Valdez, Avila Chevalier is now the Democratic nominee in a solidly blue House district and is a heavy favorite to wind up in Congress come January.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani (left) congratulates Brad Lander after his victory in the Democratic primary election for the seat held by Rep. Daniel Goldman (D., N.Y.) in Brooklyn on Tuesday night.
The fights in New York became increasingly nasty in the final days of the campaign. A local coffee shop chain wrote on social media that Goldman, who is critical of Israel’s government but has opposed banning aid to the country, was not welcome because it did not serve “genocide enablers.”
Pitched midterm battles over Israel
The main super PAC tied to AIPAC, the United Democracy Project, has spent more than $25 million so far this year, in addition to at least $5 million it has funneled to create new super PACs.
That sum may be just a fraction of what is to come. The group started the year with more than $96 million, making it one of the best-funded PACs in the country.
Its most prominent spending battles so far have been in New Jersey and Illinois. But Israel also became a driving issue in several House primaries in California.
The results have been mixed. In the Chicago suburbs, Daniel Biss, the mayor of Evanston, Ill., won a House primary after explicitly attacking AIPAC. The group spent $7 million in the race, mostly aimed at defeating Biss, who is Jewish. But in the final days of the primary, when it became clearer that a candidate even more critical of Israel than Biss could win, the super PAC dialed back its attacks on him.
In New Jersey, the AIPAC-tied super PAC targeted Tom Malinowski, a popular former member of Congress who supported more restrictions on aid to Israel. But in an embarrassing turn for AIPAC, Analilia Mejia, a progressive organizer who was loudly critical of Israel, beat him in the special election and then won a later primary.
AIPAC has won victories, too. Two of its preferred candidates in Illinois won crowded primaries, even as another anti-AIPAC Democrat won in a Chicago district.
Democratic congressional candidate Claire Valdez speaks during a June 18 rally in Brooklyn ahead of New York’s primary election.
In Washington, defending Israel has fallen out of favor among many congressional Democrats, with a large majority of senators who caucus with the party voting this year to block some U.S. arms sales to Israel.
“Do I think the Overton window on Israel has shifted more in the last six months than my entire career?” said Amy Rutkin, the longtime chief of staff to Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, the longest-serving Jewish Democrat in the House, who is retiring. “It surely, absolutely has.”
The shift is part of a generational change after the retirements of longtime Democratic leaders such as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the longest-serving Democrat in the House, both of whom are stalwart supporters of Israel. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, is also a backer of Israel.
But among Democratic voters, support for Israel has crumbled. And even House Democrats who are broadly supportive of Israel are highly critical of Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s prime minister. Few enthusiastically support the right-wing Israeli government, and many are openly counting down until elections there, which are scheduled for October.
Shifting winds in New York
The Democratic shift on Israel has been particularly notable in New York, home to the country’s largest Jewish population and a mayor who has frequently focused on the plight of Palestinians.
“The monsters that we are up against, they take many different forms,” Mamdani said at a recent rally for his endorsed candidates, before adding that AIPAC believed “the only thing more frightening than democracy being allowed to run its course is an end to genocide and Netanyahu’s wars.”
Many Jewish leaders and groups criticized the remarks, arguing that they echoed antisemitic tropes at a time of increased hate crimes targeting Jews.
One of the candidates the mayor backed, Avila Chevalier, defeated Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He was the only candidate in New York who was explicitly backed by AIPAC’s super PAC, which transferred money to a separate group that supported him.
In the 10th Congressional District, which includes lower Manhattan and a large area of Brooklyn and is one of the most Jewish districts in the country, Goldman frequently argued that a focus on foreign policy was misplaced given voters’ domestic priorities. Those arguments fell flat: He lost badly, trailing late Tuesday by more than 30 percentage points.
Several Jewish Democrats who are most likely heading to the House, including Lander and Biss, have taken a more antagonistic tone toward the current Israeli government. But whether they will take radically different approaches to policy remains to be seen.
AIPAC as a litmus test
For decades, AIPAC was the leading voice of a bipartisan congressional consensus on the importance of the U.S.-Israel alliance. Now, many Democrats in contested primaries want nothing to do with it.
The organization has become a symbol of dark money, alongside organizations backing the cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence industries. And all three interest groups are spending money on many of the same races.
None of the advertisements paid for by the AIPAC super PAC even mention Israel, focusing instead on top-polling issues in each area.
In Maryland, the super PAC spent more than $5 million to back Adrian Boafo, a state legislator, in the primary to replace Hoyer. The ads focused on Boafo’s biography and his accomplishments in Annapolis. Cryptocurrency interests spent an additional $3.4 million to back Boafo, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm. He ended up finishing well ahead of a crowded Democratic field.
The next Democratic primaries to revolve around Israel will come in August, when Minnesota, Michigan and other states are holding competitive intraparty contests.
At a Democratic primary debate for Senate last week in Minnesota, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan declared that “I don’t take AIPAC money because my values don’t align with AIPAC.” Her opponent, Rep. Angie Craig, who has been endorsed by AIPAC in the past, replied that she had taken “not one penny” from the group and called for Netanyahu to lose his reelection bid in October.
The most divisive race, however, will be in Michigan, which has large Jewish and Muslim populations.
The Democratic Senate primary there includes Rep. Haley Stevens, a staunch backer of Israel, and Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive public health official who has called Israel’s actions a genocide and opposes any military aid to the country. A third candidate, State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, has tried to take a middle path on Israel, but is struggling in the polls.
