“I did not see anything that concerned me about the condition, because there are some marks, but I can’t portray where they are from, and I do not believe that they’re in a worsened condition now,” Judge Cynthia M.Rufe told reporters after spending about 30 minutes in the storage facility, which is controlled by the National Park Service even though the center is not part of the agency.
After the inspection, Rufe ordered the government to safeguard the removed exhibits and mitigate any potential harm to them.
The suit came after National Park Service employees took down educational panels about slavery from the President’s House at Independence National Historical Park on Jan. 22.
It also follows a hearing in federal court Friday in which city attorneys and U.S. attorneys sparred over the removal of the exhibits. During the hearing, Rufe, a George W. Bush appointee, chastised a U.S. attorney representing President Donald Trump‘s administration for talking out of “both sides of his mouth” and making “dangerous” arguments.
Rufe issued an order Monday preventing further removals or changes to the President’s House until further notice. The judge also instructed the city to file a new injunction request to clarify what it is seeking, and gave the U.S. attorney’s office another week to respond.
Michael Coard, leader of advocacy group Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, which helped develop the President’s House in the early 2000s and is providing legal backing to the city’s suit, told reporters that he didn’t see any damage to the panels, but “there was desecration.”
What he saw was“completely disrespectful, demoralizing, defiling, and desecration,” Coard said, noting that the signs, many of which are fragile, were not cushioned and that some were against the wall on a cement floor.
Coard joined the judge and attorneys in the storage facility as a representative for the coalition’s legal support of the lawsuit.Members of the press were not allowed to review the exhibits.
Before going to the storage facility Monday, Rufe and the attorneys gathered in the lobby of the Constitution Center, which has a direct view to Independence Hall from Arch Street to Chestnut.
Rufe invoked the iconic building Friday to set the stakes for the city’s suit against Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, acting National Park Service Director Jessica Bowron, and their respective agencies.
“It’s threatening to think that that could happen to Independence Hall tomorrow,” Rufe said during the hearing. “It’s frightening to think that the citizenry would not be involved in such an important change.”
After having been in limbo for months, the informational panels were removed by Park Service employees using wrenches and crowbars onorders from the Trump administration, provoking outrage from Philadelphians. The displays were then piled into the back of a pickup truck and transported to the storage facility.
Mijuel Johnson (left), a guide with The Black Journey: African-American Walking Tour of Philadelphia, shows Judge Cynthia Rufe (right) around the President’s House in Independence National Historical Park on Monday.
The exhibits are stored by the National Parks Service in a room accessible through the National Constitution Center, but the civics-nonprofit “does not oversee that space, and Center staff have no knowledge of what materials may be stored there,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
After reviewing the removed exhibits for roughly 30 minutes, Rufe and her law clerks walked across Independence Mall toward the President’s House, a block away at Market Street. The judge stood at the site of the former home of Presidents George Washington and John Adams, as a guide from The Black Journey explained the historical significance of the slavery exhibit.
“This is the first of its kind memorial on federal property to the enslaved people of the United States,” said Mijuel Johnson, who led the tour.
Johnson directed the judge’s attention to panels telling the story of the presidency and the enslaved Africans who lived on the property, part of the routine tour script, but the walls were bare.
Rufe asked questions about the removed panels and what exhibits could be further removed. She walked around the site, still not cleared of the previous weekend’s snow, to review a wall in which the names of the President’s House enslaved residents are etched into the stone.
Judge Cynthia Rufe views the “Memorial to Enslaved People of African Descent in the United States of America,” during a visit to the President’s House in Independence National Historical Park on Monday. This exhibit was not removed with other panels at the site on Jan. 22. The judge visited the site while hearing the Parker administration’s suit to have President Trump’s administration restore the panels.
Outside the location that served as the slaves’ quarters, adjacent to the Liberty Bell, Rufe paused and took out her glasses to read a memorial panel.
“This enclosed space is dedicated to millions of men, women and children of African descent who lived, worked and died as enslaved people in the United States of America,” the panel read. “They should never again be forgotten”
Relevant to the core disagreement in the lawsuit, about who has the right to change the site, the bottom of the memorial panel bears the names of two entities: the National Park Service and the City of Philadelphia.
It was so cold Monday at Farrell Elementary, a Philadelphia public school in Northeast Philadelphia, that middle schoolers — a group seemingly constitutionally averse to bundling up — were wearing coats indoors.
That was just one example of trouble for the Philadelphia School District amid the prolonged frigid spell bearing down on the region, with a number of schools plagued by burst pipes, broken heaters, and other issues.
Furness High, in South Philadelphia, moved to virtual instruction Monday “due to ongoing heating challenges.”
“The safety and comfort of our staff remains our top priority,” wrote Teresa Fleming, the district’s chief operating officer. “Moving to virtual instruction for the day allows necessary work to continue while allowing minimal disruption to learning.”
Though Farrell’s heat was on the fritz for the third school day in a row, the district did not pivot to virtual learning there. Instead, it was one of four schools that dismissed early due to heating issues. For much of the day until classes ended, Farrell students and staff were forced to either bundle up or find space to relocate in more-adequately heated spots in the overcrowded school, according to staffers who asked not be named because they are not authorized to speak to the media.
Six Farrell classes camped out in the auditorium, including one class of 38 eighth graders. But the auditorium had to do double duty because the unplowed state of the yard where students typically play meant that students who’d typically be in the yard before or after eating lunch had to be in the auditorium also, Farrell employees said.
Meaningful learning was “absolutely not” going on in the auditorium, one staffer said. “It’s almost impossible.” Students were instructed to complete work on Google Classroom, and teachers were balancing crowd control and working with students individually.
In other cases, teachers and students just stayed in cold rooms, bundled up. Small-group instruction had to happen in hallways because of the population overflow; the hallways were also freezing.
“It’s just ridiculous,” said the Farrell staffer, of the school conditions.
They and others were frustrated that though district officials knew Farrell was plagued by heating issues, students and staff were required to be in the building, especially while other schools were permitted to go virtual.
District students had a snow day last Monday, learned virtually on Tuesday and Wednesday, then went back for in-person instruction on Thursday, though conditions were tough in many schools. In some places, heating issues have resolved.
“The safety and well-being of our students and staff remain our highest priorities,” district spokesperson Monique Braxton said. “Due to sustained frigid temperatures following the recent snowstorm, combined with the age of some School District of Philadelphia facilities, several schools are experiencing heating-related challenges.”
In addition to Farrell, Greenberg Elementary, another school in the Northeast, dismissed early because of heating issues, Braxton said. So did the U School and Parkway Center City Middle College, two district high schools.
District workers and independent contractors are “actively addressing both ongoing and newly identified facilities issues to ensure that all students can safely return to a full day of in-person instruction as soon as possible,” Braxton said.
At Farrell, one teacher brought in their own heater to try to keep warm, a staffer said, and one teacher known for wearing shorts every day finally broke down and wore pants.
And then there were the middle schoolers.
“Even the older ones have on coats,” the staffer said. “It’s so cold that they wore coats.”
Younger students, the staffer said, are more curious.
“They say, ‘Why is it so cold in my classroom?’“ said the Farrell staffer.
By lunchtime, word started to spread that both Farrell and Greenberg were dismissing early, staff there said.
But that late call came with its own set of headaches — while some parents would be able to react to the news quickly and pick up their children early, others may be stuck at work and unable to get to school at dismissal.
Arthur Steinberg, Philadelphia Federation of Teachers president, remained frustrated and angry by the district’s call. Steinberg said last week that the district’s return to buildings was “dangerous” given conditions in some places.
“They shouldn’t have brought people in if they knew the buildings were going to be this cold,” Steinberg said.
As to why one school was permitted to be virtual while others were brought in with inadequate heat, Steinberg was stumped.
As Train 9710 pulled out of the Trenton Transit Center at 7:25 a.m. Monday, something looked out of place.
Five passenger coaches in the Philadelphia-bound Regional Rail train bore foreign “MARC” logos and orange-and-blue markings, all pulled by a properly labeled SEPTA electric locomotive.
The substitute cars initially will be running on the Trenton and West Trenton lines, where riders for months have endured packed trains due to a shortage of available 50-year-old Silverliner IVs.
The transit agency is paying $2.6 million to lease the new coaches for a year.
SEPTA’s records show it canceled at least 2,544 Regional Rail trips in the last three months of 2025. Delays and skipped stops also have plagued commuters for months.
SEPTA is using its ACS-64 electric locomotives, which it bought in 2019, to pull the MARC coaches and its own fleet of 45 coaches.
Silverliner cars do double duty; they carry passengers and have motors that provide their own locomotion through electricity drawn from overhead wires.
SEPTA said in a statement that the schedules will add trips on the Wilmington, Trenton, and Chestnut Hill East lines and increase the frequency of service from Wayne Junction directly to the Philadelphia International Airport on the Airport line.
He walked toward the cellblock in Riverside Correctional Facility, pulling a cart of books behind him.
For a moment, it was quiet. The only sounds that echoed off the jail’s cinder block walls were the squeaks of his cart’s wheels.
But as a heavy door to a busy unit swung open, Seth Williams’ work was set to begin.
“Chaplain up!” one of the inmates inside yelled.
Williams smiled at the crowd of prisoners who began walking toward him and his squeaky cart, which was filled with Bibles, Qurans, and other religious texts.
“Step into my office,” he said, placing his hand on an inmate’s shoulder.
The role’s expectations are modest. He offers spiritual counseling and religious programming to the 600 or so prisoners held at Riverside. It is part-time and pays about $21 per hour.
Still, for Williams, the position was uniquely appealing. After putting people in jail as the city’s top prosecutor, then spending five years in federal prison as an inmate himself, he believes he can use what he learned from that journey to help young men avoid committing crimes in the future.
“I can be a better advocate, a better vessel, to help prevent crime and reduce recidivism … by helping people learn the skills they need to keep jobs and de-escalate conflict,” Williams said. “The best use of my experience … is helping people who are incarcerated the way I was.”
Williams believes his efforts now can help reduce recidivism among young men in jail.
It is a long way from the halls of power that Williams once inhabited as the city’s first Black district attorney — and from his standing as a politician who was viewed as a possible future mayor.
Still, Williams says, he is fulfilled by this more humble form of service. And becoming chaplain is not the only role he has taken up behind bars: For the last two years, he has also volunteered at Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility, teaching weekly classes on career preparedness and poetry, and at State Correctional Institute Phoenix, where he directs a volunteer program about Christianity.
Last month, Williams agreed to allow an Inquirer reporter to join him inside the city’s jails as he counseled inmates. He shared stories about his time in prison, delivered socks and toothpaste to indigent inmates, gathered a group to recite the rosary, and gave books to men who expressed interest in spiritual counseling.
He was energetic, open, and passionate. He spoke openly about his past misdeeds, but remained defiant about his federal prosecution — saying he was wrong for not reporting gifts he received as DA, but insisting that he did not sell his office to his benefactors, as the U.S. Attorney’s Office alleged.
Williams acknowledged that his path to becoming a jailhouse chaplain and volunteer has been unusual. He pointed out, for instance, that the room where he teaches his Career Keepers course is just down the hall from the jail’s print shop — which once printed the DA’s letterhead with his name at the top.
Prisons Commissioner Michael Resnick said Williams’ transformation is one of the key attributes he brings to the job.
“He just has a passion for this work, to get people on the right path,” Resnick said.
And Williams said he feels as if he is doing more to help people now than he ever has.
“What if the worst thing that happens in your life,” he said, “could be used for good?”
From rising star to ‘criminal’
To understand where Williams is now, it helps to recall where he came from.
After he was elected district attorney in 2009, Williams, then 42, promised to reform the office where he had spent a decade working as a line prosecutor. He said he would assign lawyers to handle cases by neighborhood, place greater emphasis on charging crimes correctly at the outset, and divert minor offenses into community-based treatment programs.
His policy positions were part of his appeal, but he also leaned into a compelling personal story: Abandoned in an orphanage at birth, Williams was adopted at age 2 and raised in Cobbs Creek. He went on to graduate from Central High School, Pennsylvania State University, and Georgetown University’s law school before returning to his hometown to work as an assistant district attorney.
When he ran to become the city’s top prosecutor in 2009 — his second attempt after a narrow loss four years earlier — he had a campaign slogan that matched his aspirations: “A new day, a new D.A.”
Williams thanks supporters after winning the Democratic primary for district attorney in 2009.
And for a while, some political observers said, he was living up to that mantra. In addition to engineering an ambitious restructuring of the office, he made headlines during his first term by charging West Philadelphia doctor Kermit Gosnell with killing babies during illegal late-term abortions, and by charging Msgr. William Lynn, a top official in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, with shielding sexually abusive Catholic priests.
Charismatic and camera-friendly, Williams was easily reelected to a second term in 2013, and homicides began falling to their lowest levels in decades. Some began wondering if he might leverage his success as DA into a run for City Hall.
Williams and then-Mayor Michael Nutter at a press conference in 2010.
Beneath the surface, though, challenges in Williams’ personal life began to mount.
He now admits he was also drinking too much, “numbing myself from the daily trauma with too much Jack Daniel’s and martinis and Yuenglings.”
By 2015, the FBI was investigating whether he had been misusing campaign funds to live beyond his means. And two years after that, he was indicted on charges of wire fraud, honest services fraud, and bribery-related crimes.
Federal prosecutors said he not only misspent political money but also sold the influence of his office to wealthy allies who showered him with vacations, clothing, and a used Jaguar convertible.
Williams outside of federal court, where he was charged with bribery and related crimes.
Williams insisted he was not guilty and took his case to trial. But midway through the proceedings, he accepted an offer from prosecutors to plead guilty to a single count of violating the Travel Act.
U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond showed no mercy — jailing Williams immediately, then imposing a five-year prison term, the maximum allowed by law. The judge called Williams a “criminal” who surrounded himself with “parasites” and “fed his face at the trough” of public money.
A mentor in solitary
During the first five months of Williams’ incarceration, he was held in solitary confinement at Philadelphia’s Federal Detention Center. That was intended to protect him — former law enforcement officers can become targets behind bars — but it left him confined to a cell for 23 hours a day.
The Federal Detention Center, at 7th and Arch Streets.
Beyond the once-monthly 15-minute phone call he was allowed to make to his daughters, Williams said, there was one thing that helped him endure isolation: Friar Ben Regotti.
Regotti, then a resident at Center City’s St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church, served as the detention center’s chaplain. And when Williams was in solitary, he said, Regotti came to his cell every day and offered an escape: praying with him through a slit in the thick steel door, hearing his confession, and offering him books, including the Bible, which Williams — who was raised Catholic — said he finally read cover-to-cover for the first time.
“I’d lost everything,” Williams recalled. “But Father Regotti was the kindest person to me.”
When he was transferred to a prison camp in Morgantown, W.Va., Williams continued his spiritual journey by attending weekly Masses, Bible studies, and services for other religions. He also completed substance abuse classes, taught classes to help prisoners get high school diplomas, and learned how to play the saxophone.
He made some unlikely friends while he was locked up, including Michael Vandergrift of Delaware County, who is serving a life sentence plus 20 years for killing a rival drug dealer as part of a hired hit; and Bright Ogodo of Brooklyn, N.Y., who was sentenced to more than six years in prison for running a sophisticated identity-theft ring out of TD Bank branches.
Williams said Ogodo later told him he was considering taking his own life — he had even written a letter to his family, convinced they would be better off without him. But when Ogodo saw that Philadelphia’s former DA was in jail, too, Williams said, Ogodo changed his mind.
“He said, ‘I saw you walking with your head up, and [thought], if you can survive, so shall I,’” Williams said.
Three years ago today, I walked out of prison. My friend Bill, picked me up in Morgantown, WV and drove me home. In many ways being incarcerated was less difficult than Re-Entry. I am grateful for all that I have learned. Thank you God. 🙏🏽 pic.twitter.com/393p8KQXmg
Williams was released from prison in 2020, but said almost no one was willing to help him get back on his feet. Before he was incarcerated, he said, he had visited the governor’s mansion and taken his daughters to the Easter egg roll on the White House lawn. But afterward, few people would even take his calls.
“Nobody would hire me,” he said, describing people’s default position toward him as “the Heisman,” the college football statue with an arm extended to keep opponents away.
So Williams — whose law license was suspended when he was convicted — found work at a Lowe’s Home Improvement store in Havertown, unloading trucks and fulfilling online orders from 7 p.m. until 5:30 a.m.
Most of his coworkers, he said, had also recently been released from prison. And while working, he said, he was “kind of providing pastoral care [to them] daily,” similar to his teaching of GED courses in prison, or participating in Bible studies.
In time, he said, he began developing his ideas about self-improvement into formal programs for nonprofits, providing ways for recently incarcerated people to learn the skills needed to maintain consistent employment — developing a resumé, for instance, but also focusing on topics like conflict de-escalation.
Much of his motivation for doing that work, he said, came from research showing that recidivism is greatly reduced among people who receive substance abuse counseling, career coaching, and regular spiritual practice.
“What all three have in common,” Williams said, “is changing the hearts and minds of people.”
Federal Supervised Release ended Friday. First time at the beach since 2016. First time going outside of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania WITHOUT having to ask for permission since ‘17 made me cry! If you want to know my thoughts on Judge Diamond or federal prosecution ask me pic.twitter.com/pwzb9Qa0IR
In 2023, he ran into Terrell Bagby, then a deputy commissioner in Philadelphia’s jail system, and the two discussed the possibility of bringing Williams’ teachings into the jails. That’s how he ended up bringing his volunteer courses — Career Keepers and Prison Poets — into Curran-Fromhold, the city’s largest jail, he said.
In a recent session of Career Keepers, Williams was at the head of the class as nine prisoners sat at a U-shaped table around the room. They took turns practicing public speaking by delivering updates on the weather, sports, and news, then discussed topics including how to reward positive behavior — rather than linger on bad choices — and how to display gratitude.
In the moments after the prisoners were escorted back to their blocks, Williams said the men he has taught over the years have often been more open and vulnerable than he expected. Some have shared stories about traumatic experiences — such as being shot or sexually abused — and then discussed how those experiences affected their lives.
“I spent all this time trying to get out of prison,” he said, “and then I found myself loving being there, trying to help the inmates themselves.”
Becoming a presence
Inside his spare chaplain’s office at the jail, Williams has a desk, a few shelves, and scores of religious books. He keeps packs of white T-shirts, socks, and toothpaste to put into care packages for prisoners and, before making his rounds, keeps a list of people he wants to see.
His time on the cellblocks can be brief. During his rounds on a recent day, his presence did not always seem to have much of an impact. As he passed through each unit’s main expanse, where dozens of prisoners have cells overlooking a bustling common area, some prisoners were more interested in getting their lunch or hanging out by the phones than in checking out what Williams had to offer.
But other times, during several different stops, Williams sat and prayed with prisoners. And the care packages he hands out have become a frequent request, he said.
He wound down his shift in a room near the law library, reciting the rosary with a half-dozen men who had expressed interest in praying with him.
Williams’ chaplaincy is centered at the Riverside Correctional Facility in Northeast Philadelphia.
Regotti, the chaplain Williams had encountered in solitary, said in an interview that even though they first met while the former DA was behind a thick steel door, Regotti could immediately sense his curiosity, intellect, and desire to better himself.
“Going from feeling absolutely desperate to finding ways to cope, it was kind of a mark of his own personal resilience,” Regotti said. “He really developed into somebody that was in touch with God’s grace.”
Williams said he now aspires to be for people what Regotti was for him — a comforting presence in a dark place, and someone who, he hopes, can help provide guidance that can last well beyond someone’s time in confinement.
“The cheapest way to do that is by spreading the gospel,” he said. “People don’t want you to preach to them. They just want your presence — they want you to be there.”
A decorated U.S. Army veteran from Montgomery County was arrested Friday for participating in a protest at a St. Paul, Minn., church, just two days after a video of him speaking out against the Trump administration went viral.
Ian Austin, 35, of Bryn Athyn, is one of nine people facing felony charges for their involvement in a Jan. 18 protest at Cities Church in St. Paul. Former CNN host Don Lemon, who was covering the protest, is also a defendant. Lemon’s arrest, and that of another journalist who attended the protest, has brought criticism from media and civil rights advocates.
The Department of Justice indicted Austin for conspiring to interrupt a church service and “injure, intimidate, and interfere with exercise of right of religious freedom” at a place of worship, federal court documents state.
But Austin’s parents in Bryn Athyn say their son’s actions are in keeping with his sense of duty to his country, and his determination to help others however he can.
“Those are things he cares about more than political party,” his mother, Paige Austin, said. “It’s more about what does it mean to be human, and to treat people justly and kindly, regardless of where you live.”
In a video clip dated Jan. 20 and posted online days before his arrest, Austin said that he believed as an Army veteran it was his duty to travel to Minnesota.
“We took an oath to the Constitution, and it’s just being shredded right now,” Austin said in the video, which racked up hundreds of thousands of likes across multiple social media platforms.
“This has all of the signs from every fascist movement in history that we’re going to lose the opportunity to resist,” he said. “So that’s why I’m here.”
The protesters said they targeted the church because one of its pastors, David Easterwood, leads the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) St. Paul field office. The church’s website lists David Easterwood as a pastor, and news outlets have reported that his personal information appears to match that of the David Easterwood identified in court filings as the acting director of the ICE St. Paul field office.
In the video, Austin said he’d previously been detained for protesting outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building before being released without charges. It was during that detainment, he said, that a Department of Homeland Security officer questioned him about why someone “from Philadelphia” would be in Minneapolis.
“And I’m like, ‘Well, because the nation that I was willing to die for is being systematically oppressed with men in military uniforms, a private army told by the president that they have no other laws to follow than his, and they’re systematically attacking and even killing our neighbors — in the United States of America,” Austin said.
This undated photo shows Ian Austin and other U.S. Army soldiers.
Valorous service
Austin grew up in Huntingdon Valley, a couple miles outside of Philly in Montgomery County. His parents, Kenneth and Paige Austin, said he went to Academy of the New Church high school, where he excelled at baseball and wrestling, earning a spot in the J. Robinson Intensive Wrestling Camp in Minnesota.
“It’s brutally hard,” Kenneth Austin said in an interview with The Inquirer. “It’s like boot camp. He did very well. I think that planted a seed for the military.”
Austin graduated from high school in 2008, celebrated the Phillies’ World Series win with family and friends, and weeks later, shipped out to Army basic training.
His parents confirmed that as a member of the U.S. Army’s elite 1st Ranger Battalion, Austin served six combat deployments in Afghanistan. In 2013, he was awarded a Joint Commendation Medal with Valor device, according to a news report.
The valor device is given to soldiers who displayed “an act or acts of heroism by an individual above what is normally expected while engaged in direct combat with an enemy of the United States, or an opposing foreign or armed force, with exposure to enemy hostilities and personal risk,” according to a military website.
This detail shot of an undated family photo shows Ian Austin while serving in the U.S. Army 1st Ranger Battalion.
After his Army contract ended in 2014, Austin returned home, his parents said. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and he threw himself into his recovery process with the same passion he put into his training, Kenneth Austin said. He had his share of setbacks; in 2021, Austin pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and fighting after refusing to leave a local bar, his parents noted.
But as Austin took college classes at La Salle University and elsewhere, he became increasingly interested in social justice and helping others.
During the 2020 George Floyd protests in Philly, Austin packed his backpack with medical supplies and water, Paige Austin said. “He would go down there and sort of join the protest, but he was there also to help, because part of the Ranger training was emergency medical training.”
Kenneth Austin recounted that his son even carried a backpack full of water, snacks, and first aid supplies during the parade after the Philadelphia Eagles’ 2025 Super Bowl victory, earning him the nickname “headquarters” from some of those out celebrating.
“It was a little much for me,” his father said. “But it really struck me, like, he’s … here to have fun, but he’s also looking out for everyone, and becoming buddies with everyone, and making sure everyone’s OK.”
A protest in a church
A few weeks after ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, Austin told his parents he was going to Minnesota. Three hours later, his truck was packed, and after a 17-hour drive, he was out protesting.
Austin is being held in the Sherburne County Jail in Minnesota, county records show. His attorney, Sarah Gad, said that she took on his case pro bono after seeing agents arrest him Friday. Gad said that based on what she’s seen in similar cases, she expects him to be released on his own recognizance as early as Monday.
Video of the protest shows protesters in the church chanting “Renee Good,” “Don’t shoot,” and “ICE out,” while a pastor shouted “shame on you” into a microphone. As the protest continued, many congregants can be seen leaving the church, while others stayed put or filmed the takeover. A few church attendees struck up conversations with protesters.
“I understand that what has happened is wrong, and I agree with that,” one congregant said to the person filming. “But this can’t happen. This is the house of the Lord.”
The federal indictment states that between 20 and 40 “agitators” occupied the main aisle and front of the church and yelled at the pastor and congregants. The indictment alleges that some protesters intimidated church members and prevented them from moving about freely in the church.
Austin, the indictment states, stood with other protesters, “approached the pastor and congregants in a menacing manner, and near the end of the operation, loudly berated the pastor with questions about Christian nationalism and Christians wanting their faith to be the law of the land.”
News reports have noted that Cities Church has ties to prominent Christian nationalists and powerful figures in the MAGA movement. Slate reported that its founder, Joe Rigney, is now a pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. That church is run by Doug Wilson, who wants America to become a theocracy, according to a New York Times interview. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends an affiliated church.
Austin’s attorney said this is a unique case, but it doesn’t surprise her that the Department of Justice would want to make an example of anti-ICE protesters who were allegedly disrupting a place of worship.
“I think that this is being taken very seriously by the United States attorney,” Gad said, though she added, “federal cases often look much more alarming at the front end than they turn out to be.”
Conservator Angela Paola is lying on her back under the 16-ton gunboat, picking debris from between its nearly 250-year-old planks. She is wearing blue surgical gloves, grimy white coveralls, and a half-face respirator.
Dust floats in the beam of her headlamp, and the light reveals bits of the original oakum and pitch used to seal the bottom of the Philadelphia before it was sunk in battle by the British in 1776.
As she pokes a tool between the planks, clumps of hardened sediment fall on her. “It’s dirty,” she says. “But it is really satisfying work. And it’s really exciting to see it slowly start to show itself through all the mud and the years.”
Texas A&M University research assistant Marissa Agerton works on the project to preserve the gunboat Philadelphia at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington on Jan. 13.
The Philadelphia is the country’s oldest surviving intact warship, according to the Smithsonian Institution. It was launched on July 30, 1776, a few weeks after the Declaration of Independence was adopted. And as the nation prepares for its 250th birthday this summer, experts are grooming the old vessel for its place in the celebration.
“It’s one of the most important objects — movable objects — of the Revolution, flat out,” Anthea M. Hartig, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, said in an interview at the museum this month.
The gnarled boat has survived battle, sinking, the elements, wood-eating bacteria, rodents, misguided attempts at preservation, tourists, and almost 250 years in the country it helped found.
It’s “one in a million,” Paola, the conservator from Texas A&M University, said through her respirator last week.
The 53-foot-long boat, hastily built of green oak, was sunk by British cannon on Oct. 11, 1776 at the Battle of Valcour Island, on Lake Champlain. But historians say the small fleet it was part of helped thwart British plans to invade the colonies from the north, and furthered the cause of independence.
The boat, powered by oars and sails, spent 159 years sitting upright in 60 feet of water at the bottom of the lake until it was raised in 1935. It then became a tourist attraction: admission 50 cents, according to an old advertising poster, and was carried from place to place on a barge.
After almost 30 years, it came to Washington in 1961 as one of the early arrivals at what was then the National Museum of History and Technology. It was hoisted inside while the building was still under construction and has been there ever since.
Since July, the museum has had the Philadelphia partially cordoned off in a special conservation lab on the third floor of the East Wing.
There, experts from the Smithsonian and Texas A&M are working with vacuums, brushes and dental tools to give it a state-of-the art cleaning and look for lost artifacts in areas they said have never been probed before. Visitors can watch the work through a large viewing window.
A portion of the Philadelphia.
The vessel rests in a huge cradle. Arrayed around it are its lower mast, rudder, two anchors, three big cast-iron guns, gun carriages, swivel guns, and the 24-pound British cannon ball that helped sink it.
The Philadelphia’s biggest weapon was an 8-foot-long, 3,800-pound cannon made in Sweden. It sat on a wooden rail at the front of the boat and fired a 12-pound iron ball. The gun still had a projectile in its mouth when it was discovered.
The boat was raised on Aug. 9, 1935 by history enthusiast and salvage engineer Lorenzo F. Hagglund and yachtsman J. Ruppert Schalk. When it came up, it contained a trove of more than 700 artifacts, according to John R. Bratten’s 2002 book, The Gondola Philadelphia & the Battle of Lake Champlain.
It also had a handful of human bones.
According to salvage reports, “there were a couple of arm bones … some teeth and a partial skull that were found on board the boat itself,” said Jennifer L. Jones, director of the museum’s Philadelphia gunboat preservation project.
“We know there were a lot of injuries,” she said in an interview at the museum this month.
Angela Paola goes through debris as she works on the Philadelphia.
The Oct. 11 battle was a daylong shootout with both sides firing iron cannon balls that could sink a ship or tear off a limb.
Less than two years after the start of the Revolutionary War, the British had been planning an attack from Canada south along the lake between New York and Vermont to try to split the colonies.
They quickly assembled a fleet of about two dozen vessels near the lake in Canada for the task.
The Americans countered, building and gathering a fleet of 16 vessels, including the flat-bottom Philadelphia and seven others like it, said Peter D. Fix, of Texas A&M, the lead conservator on the gunboat preservation project.
The two sides met in a narrow channel of the lake between the New York shore and Valcour Island, about five miles south of Plattsburgh, N.Y.
“It was a very bloody battle,” Jones said.
From the American hospital ship, “Enterprise,” crewman Jahiel Stewart wrote in his journal: “The battel was verryey hot [and] the Cannon balls & grape Shot flew verrey thick.”
“I believe we had a great many [killed] … Doctors Cut off great many legs and arm and … Seven men [were thrown] overbord that died with their wounds while I was abord,” he wrote.
Each side suffered about 60 men killed and wounded, Bratten wrote.
Jones said it is possible the limbs found on the ship had been amputated. Their whereabouts are unknown, she said.
The Philadelphia was commanded by a young Pennsylvania army officer, Benjamin Rue. He had 43 men from many walks of life under him.
“We have a wretched, motley crew in the fleet,” American Gen. Benedict Arnold wrote before the battle. “The refuse of every regiment, and the seamen, few of them, ever wet with salt water.”
Texas A&M University research assistant Alyssa Carpenter works on the Philadelphia this month in D.C.
Arnold, who commanded the patriot fleet, later deserted the American cause and went to fight for the British in 1780. He died in England in 1801. One of the crewmen on the Philadelphia, Joseph Bettys, also switched sides. He was later captured and hanged.
The Oct. 11 battle was a stalemate. The British withdrew; the Americans, bottled up in the channel, escaped that night. But two days later, the British force tracked down the Americans and destroyed most of their fleet.
Only a handful of American ships survived the fight. The Philadelphia was not one of them.
The ship is now “heavily degraded,” said Fix, the lead conservator,
The hull still bears three holes made by British cannon balls. A wooden cross piece near where the mast stood is charred, probably from the ship’s brick fireplace. The hull planks have lost about three-quarters of an inch in thickness to bacteria, Fix said.
Care of the boat “is a huge undertaking, of which the conservation is one part,” he said. “The conservation, the preservation, is kind of the avenue to learn all this other extra stuff, which has been great.”
“Our main task, as we were assigned, was ‘let’s make sure we make it last for another 250 years,’ ” he said.
Back under the vessel recently, conservator Paola put chunks of fallen debris in an orange bucket, to be sifted for artifacts later. She said it was amazing that the Philadelphia had survived.
“She lasted,” she said. “We’re really lucky.”
Texas A&M University research assistants Alyssa Carpenter, Marissa Agerton, and Angela Paola work on the gunboat Philadelphia, preparing it for the United States’ 250th birthday celebration this summer.
As Philadelphia endured another day of historically frigid temperatures, outreach workers on Friday fielded hundreds of calls for shelter as warming centers filled with people seeking respite from the cold.
In the mazelike concourse at Suburban Station, a Project HOME outreach worker hugged clients and encouraged them to head inside.
At the Hub of Hope, the nonprofit’s drop-in center in the concourse for people experiencing homelessness, dozens lined up for hot meals. Later that night, as they had for the last several days, staff would set up cots for up to 80 people with nowhere else to go.
Typically, the Hub closes in the early evening. But amid the ongoing freeze, it’s open 24-7 as city officials and homeless services providers work to keep vulnerable Philadelphians safe.
Last month, the city declared a “Code Blue,” a designation that opens additional shelter beds and other resources. Ever since, the nonprofit’s hotline has fielded more than 6,000 calls, an average of more than 500 a day.
Normally, it receives about 140 a day.
“Many calls are concerned citizens who see someone who is homeless and want a team to go and check on them. Some are people who are literally homeless right now and need a place to go. Some are facing eviction and scared, reaching out for their options,” said Candice Player, the nonprofit’s vice president of advocacy, public policy, and street outreach.
“The extreme cold challenges us and pushes us even harder.”
City officials navigate a lengthy cold snap
When the wind chill makes it feel like it’s 20 degrees outside or lower for more than three days, the city can declare what is called an enhanced Code Blue. The distinction opens up furtherresources, including daytime and nighttime warming centers.
Cheryl Hill, executive director of the Philadelphia Office of Homeless Services, describes these periods as an all-hands-on-deck situation. Hill said that “every city entity can be outreach” during this time, and that work can also be aided by members of the public, who have been quick to call for help.
“We are all basically helping our neighbor, in essence — we see them out on the street, we want to help,” Hill said. “As a result, outreach is getting a lot more calls to go and check on those individuals.”
Philadelphia declared an initial Code Blue on Jan. 18 and an enhanced Code Blue on Jan. 20.
The city has about 3,500 shelter beds, which can become open as people get placed in longer-term housing.
If the beds reach capacity, the city has additional overnight spaces at warming centers, primarily in recreation centers. People who spend the day at warming centers that close overnight can receive transportation to a nighttime center.
People who need a ride to a warming center can ask for transportation at their local police district, city officials said.
On average, the overnight warming centers have provided shelter to about 300 to 400 people across the city per night. Last Monday night, after 9.3 inches of snow had blanketed Philly, warming centers sheltered just shy of 450 people.
Last year, peak usage of warming centers hovered around 150 people, Hill said.
Still, helping the city’s most vulnerable off the streets can be difficult even in the best of circumstances.
On Friday afternoon, a sign posted at the South Philadelphia Library informed people visiting to get out of the cold that they could eat and sleep in a section designated as a warming center. Librarians and community support groups collect and provide snacks, along with hand-warmers and other essentials, for those who need them.
Even so, only a handful of people sat in the area. A woman yelped in pain as she rubbed a blackened toe. Children played with blocks in another corner of the library as others checked out books.
The homeless services office tries to have medical staff at warming sites, but more serious cases get sent to the hospital.
In extreme cold, as a last resort, people with serious mental illnesses who refuse to come inside and are underdressed could be involuntarily committed.
Homeless services providers said they are working around the clock to care for clients exhausted by the struggle of simply staying warm.
“The experience of being homeless in this brutal cold is awful, and the folks who come in are just worn down,” Playersaid.
At shelters run by the Bethesda Project, staff are trying to keep residents’ spirits up and encouraging them to stay inside as much as possible, said director of shelter Kharisma Goldston. “One of our guests was doing haircuts last night,” she said. “We try to do a lot so guys don’t feel like they’re trapped inside.”
Staffers set up additional beds to accommodate more clients, she said.
“We do our best to set up however many beds we can,” she said. “When it’s this cold, it takes a very short amount of time for hypothermia to set in.”
Rachel Beilgard, Project HOME’s senior program manager for outreach, said that outreach teams have encountered several people suffering from frostbite who were involuntarily committed. Some, she said, risked limb amputations if they had stayed outside any longer.
But many people who typically refuse offers for shelter from outreach teams are now accepting help, Beilgard said. “We’ve had a lot of folks this winter who say, ‘Once it starts snowing, come find me,’” she said.
Tim Neumann works with people experiencing housing instability, in Philadelphia.
The count, taken every year at the behest of federal housing officials, happens over one night in January; city workers and volunteers fan out across the city to physically count people sleeping on the street and those in shelters. Federal officials use the count to gauge funding allocations, and city officials look to it to understand the needs on the streets.
The Jan. 22, 2025, count was also taken during a Code Blue, although temperatures were not as frigid as they were last week. It found that homelessness rose by about 9% between 2024 and 2025, after a 38% jump the year before. In Kensington, the number of homeless, unsheltered people dropped by about 17%.
The number of people experiencing chronic homelessness rose by 49%. This is a designation tightly defined by the federal government as a homeless person with a disability who lives in a shelter or in a place that is not meant for habitation, and who has been homeless for a full year, or homeless at least four times in the last three years for a total of 12 months.
The category also includes people who fit these criteria but have entered jail, rehab, or another care facility in the last three months. Most of Philadelphia’s chronically homeless residents were living in emergency shelters.
City officials and providers said a number of factors likely contributed to the increase.
People with substance use disorder and mental health issues are vulnerable to becoming chronically homeless, especially in Philadelphia, where a toxic drug supply causes wounds and intense withdrawal that keep many from seeking shelter. But a lack of affordable housing, low wages, job loss, or a major health issue can also put residents at high risk for homelessness, stressed Crystal Yates-Gale, the city’s deputy managing director for health and human services.
Hill also said that in recent years, Philadelphia has lost bids to receive competitive housing funds from the federal government.
“We’ve been working really intentionally to make sure that our programs will get funded” in the future, Hill said.
Yates-Gale also pointed to Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s December executive order directing city officials to add 1,000 beds to the shelter system by the end of January. As of last week, the city had added 600 winter shelter beds that are crucial during the enhanced Code Blue and will eventually become available year-round, she said.
Anecdotally, neighborhoods have reported decreases in homelessness since last year, Hill said, although officials will have to wait until February to conduct the count this year.
The count had originally been set for Wednesday, but the city canceled it due to the cold — and because too many outreach staffers were at work getting people inside.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect that library staff and supporters provide people using daytime warming centers with snacks.
Every day, sometimes several times a day, the 7-year-old girl wants to talk about the mother she lost in the Northeast Philadelphia plane crash.
“She’s missing her all the time and she’ll ask me, `Do you think I look like my mom? Do you think I dress like my mom? Do you see my bag? This is my mom’s bag,’” said 35-year-old Shantell Fletcher, the girl’s godmother.
It has been a year since a medical jet crashed on Cottman Avenue near the Roosevelt Mall, killing all six people onboard. The explosion cast a plume of plane shrapnel and fire over the neighborhood. At least 16 homes were severely damaged and about two dozen people were injured that night.
The girl’s mother, Dominique Goods Burke, and her fiance, Steven Dreuitt Jr., along with Dreuitt’s 10-year-old son, Ramesses Dreuitt Vazquez, were driving on Cottman Avenue on Jan. 31, 2025, just after 6 p.m. when the plane slammed into the ground at more than 278 mph, within feet of their car.
Flames instantly engulfed the vehicle. Dreuitt, 37, trapped in the car with his legs crushed beneath the steering wheel, died at the scene, but Goods Burke and Ramesses escaped with severe burns.
A floral photo of Dominique Goods Burke is carried out after the funeral service as family, friends and community members gather outside at Tindley Temple UM Church in Philadelphia, Pa., on Thursday, May 8, 2025. Dominique passed away at Jefferson hospital on April 27 due to the critical burns from the Roosevelt Mall Learjet crash along Cottman Avenue.
Goods Burke, 34, died of her injuries in April at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, leaving behind her daughter and her 16-year-old son, Dominick Goods. (The family asked The Inquirer to withhold her daughter’s name to protect her privacy.)
On Saturday evening, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and other city officials planned to place a wreath at the crash site. About 100 people gathered inside Engine 71 Fire Station on Cottman, the station closest to the crash site.
The plane’s impact had left a bomb-like crater in a driveway apron between a Raising Cane’s restaurant and a Dunkin’ Donuts. The 8-foot-deep hole has since been filled in and paved over, but the loss and devastation are irreparable.
“I don’t know how we made it through a year. It feels fresh, raw. Sometimes it’s hard to breathe,” said Fletcher, who was Goods Burke’s first cousin and best friend. “Losing her, I’ve felt alone and empty. I miss laughing with her. I miss joking with her. I miss celebrating life with her.”
Fletcher is helping to raise Goods Burke’s daughter and her son, Dominick, an 11th grader at Imhotep Institute Charter High School in East Germantown. Dominick’s father was Dreuitt, so he lost both parents.
“My godson doesn’t have his mother or his father. My goddaughter doesn’t have her mamma,” Fletcher said. “Other than them coming back, nothing could ever give us a reprieve from the pain.”
Ramesses Dreuitt Vazquez, 10, spent months in a Boston hospital recovering from burns to more than 90% of his body when the car he was riding in caught fire in the Jan. 31, 2025 plane crash in Northeast Philadelphia.
“I have my moments of still struggling. It’s been really tough,” said Dreuitt’s 61-year-old mother, Alberta “Amira” Brown, whose grandchildren are Ramesses and Dominick. “The life that we once had, we can never get it back.”
An irreplaceable booming voice
Dreuitt worked as a kitchen manager and team leader at the Philadelphia Catering Co. in South Philadelphia for more than seven years. Co-owner Tim Kelly said it was Dreuitt’s job to call staffers to lunch, which the company served to its 45 employees each day at noon.
“Steve would always call lunch, which basically was him just yelling, ‘LUNCH,’ three times loudly,” Kelly said. “His deep booming voice. Many of the guys here have tried to replicate it, but to no avail.”
“Time does help. It softens the blow,” Kelly said. “It was very difficult for a long time for a lot of us, but we’re at the point where we can remember him with a little less sadness and we can smile a bit.”
Goods Burke, whom loved ones affectionately called “Pooda” and colleagues called “Dom,” worked at High Point Cafe as a day bakery manager for years.
Cafe founder Meg Hagele said the staff treats her former work space, dubbed “Dom’s table,” with a shrine-like reverence. Seeing Goods Burke’s handwriting on recipes, scribbles in margins, stirs memories of her vibrancy and creativity.
“She’s very present with us still,” Hagele said. “This accident was just a shock to the entire city, but to be touched so personally by it is just freakish and profound.”
NTSB investigation continues
The National Transportation Safety Board is still investigating the crash’s cause. The plane — a medical transport Learjet 55 owned by Jet Rescue Air Ambulance, headquartered in Mexico City — had taken off at 6:07 p.m. from Northeast Philadelphia Airport. It climbed to 1,640 feet before nosediving just three miles away around 6:08 p.m.
NTSB investigators recovered the cockpit voice recorder at the scene, but after repairing it and playing it back, they found the device “had likely not been recording audio for several years,” according to a preliminary report released in March.
Brown, of Mount Airy, said she got a letter from the NTSB a few weeks ago saying investigators were making progress.
“That’s hope right there,” Brown said in a recent interview. ”It will help to know exactly what happened to make that plane come down. Does it change anything? No.”
Alberta “Amira” Brown remembers her son, Steven Dreuitt Jr., who died in the Jan. 31, 2025, plane crash in Northeast Philadelphia. In November, Brown attended a memorial service at Oxford Presbyterian Church in North Philadelphia.
The cremated remains of the six Mexican nationals who died aboard the plane were returned to loved ones in Mexico City last spring. Among the passengers were 11-year-old Valentina Guzmán Murillo and her 31-year-old mother, Lizeth Murillo Osuna. They were returning home after Valentinahad spent four months undergoing treatment for a spinal condition at Shriners Children’s Philadelphia.
Also killed were the pilot, Alan Montoya Perales, 46; his copilot, Josue de Jesus Juarez Juarez, 43; a Jet Rescue doctor, Raul Meza Arredonda, 41; and paramedic Rodrigo Lopez Padilla, 41.
Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Jeffrey Thompson (from left) Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, and Police Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel ring a ceremonial bell at the one-year anniversary memorial observance of the Northeast Philly plane crash Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026, at Engine 71 Fire Station on Cottman Avenue in Philadelphia.
In the moments after the crash, hundreds of firefighters and rescue workers swarmed the area to put out homes and cars on fire from the jet fuel or burning pieces of aircraft that struck them.
Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Jeffrey Thompson, a 36-year veteran of the city’s fire department, said the plane crash “was without a doubt the biggest thing that I’ve ever responded to.”
In an interview on Thursday, Thompson recalled rushing to the scene from his Fishtown home, filled with dread and adrenaline.
“I remember it was dark. It was cold, and it was raining — it was like something out of a disaster movie,” Thompson said. “As I got closer, I could just see a sea of lights.”
He arrived to find multiple homes and cars on fire. Pools of jet fuel everywhere. And so many pieces of debris that he initially had no idea of the plane’s size. He said he and other first responders will never forget seeing body parts strewn among the wreckage.
“This still affects all of us. Just to see that is so unnatural,” Thompson said. “And the work that they did that night — that’s indelibly etched in their memories.”
More than 150 firefighters scoured “blocks and blocks” of homes, entering each one and every room, to make sure everyone was accounted for. He said he is amazed how multiple agencies worked together to bring “order to chaos.”
“That just gives me goose bumps,” Thompson said. He added, “This is actually therapeutic — me talking to you has been therapeutic because there was a lot there that night and I don’t often talk about this.”
Miracles, luck, and skill
As tragic as that night was, Thompson said, there was some miraculousness, including the fact that the plane struck a patch of empty pavement between two busy restaurants.
“Sometimes in this life, there’s luck,” Thompson said. “It was rush hour. You had a shopping mall and a densely populated neighborhood. It could have been infinitely worse.”
Lashawn ‘Lala’ Hamiel, Andre “Tre” Howard III, and his family cheer on the Eagles during Super Bowl LIX.
Andre Howard Jr. had just picked up his three kids — then ages 4,7, and 10 — from aftercare at Soans Christian Academy. They headed to Dunkin’ for strawberry doughnuts. As they were leaving the parking lot in Howard’s car, the plane exploded a few feet away. A plane part crashed through the car’s window. Howard’s 10-year-old son, Andre “Tre” Howard III, used his body to shield his 4-year-old sister and a piece of metal struck his head.
Tareq Yaseen, a neurosurgeon at Jefferson Torresdale Hospital, was having dinner with his family, including his kids, ages 10 and 6, at Dave & Buster’s at Franklin Mall when he rushed back to the hospital to perform emergency surgery on Tre.
The boy had two gashes in the right side of his head, and his skull had been shattered into more than 20 pieces, Yaseen recalled.
“My son is the exact age as Tre, which made things very personal and emotional to me,” Yaseen said. “He’s gonna die. He was basically losing consciousness and going in a bad direction.”
“I felt for a moment that I would not be able to help him,” Yaseen said. “I was very scared that I’m gonna fail. There’s too much on the line and it’s a little boy.”
Yaseen said he worked fast to relieve the pressure on Tre’s brain and remove bits of broken skull. The surgery was a success. More than 60 relatives and friends in the hospital waiting room hugged and thanked him, Yaseen recalled.
“It’s a moment that would happen in the movies,” Yaseen said. “I was very lucky to take part in saving his life.”
Tre was transferred to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he made a near-full recovery. He celebrated his 11th birthday in December.
“With time, he’ll grow up and forget about it. God gave us a gift to forget, which is great,” Yaseen said. “But I will never forget.”
Jefferson neurosurgeon Tareq Yaseen poses for a photo with Andre “Tre” Howard III and his mother, Lashawn “Lala” Hamiel at Jefferson Torresdale Hospital.
A memorial
At the memorial Saturday, Mayor Parker read aloud the names of all eight who perished that night.
“To all the families who continue to carry this grief everyday, that until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes, you can’t begin to understand what it’s like,” Parker said. “It is important for us to affirm that they know that Philadelphia stands with you today and we will always.”
She asked the victims’ family members in attendance to stand and be recognized, including Brown, her grandson, Dominick, and Lisa Goods, the aunt of Goods Burke.
The mayor said she plans to keep close tabs on Dominick.
“Now he knows he belongs to me — don’t try to take him from me,” Parker said as she looked at Dominick seated in the front row.
Parker also recognized first responders for their “extraordinary bravery and selflessness.”
“In a moment of unimaginable tragedy, you all ran towards danger to protect others.”
Alberta “Amira” Brown (center), the grandmother of 10-year-old Ramesses Dreuitt Vazquez, who was severely burned after a plane crashed into his North Philadelphia neighborhood last year at the one year anniversary memorial observance of the Northeast Philly plane crash Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026, at Engine 71 Fire Station on Cottman Ave., in Philadelphia
Nearly a month after dangerous winds snarled their New Year’s Day performances, a dozen Mummers string bands got their encore.
The slate of bands reimagined their Jan. 1 routines Saturday on the snow-covered Lincoln Financial Field. It was a break from the norm — but perhaps the start of a new tradition for the 125-year-old Mummers.
“This is how we do it in our city,” Mayor Cherelle L. Parker rallied the chilly but boisterous crowd. “When we set our minds to get something done, we won’t let the weather or anything stop us.”
The mayor suggested: “I think we might be on to something big.”
Folks applaud the bands during the 2026 String Band Spectacular at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026.
It was not the first disruption to the century-old holiday parade, but it was the first time that the popular string band division was suspended. The reenvisioned judged portion — dubbed the String Band Spectacular — on the Philadelphia Eagles’ home turf was announced weeks later.
“Thousands of people are out here cheering like it’s New Year’s Day all over again,” Sam Regalbuto, president of the Philadelphia Mummers String Band Association, said. “The cold isn’t keeping the fans away, and it’s definitely not keeping the energy down out on the field.”
Laksumi Sivanandan, 27, and Carter Davis, 30, of East Passyunk, were at the parade on New Year’s Day but were excited to see the string bands with different scenery — and have the rare opportunity to be feet from the Eagles sideline at an accessible price. (More than 5,000 tickets, ranging from $12 to $25, were sold, according to Regalbuto.)
“It’s fun to see it in a different environment — usually you’re sitting on a lawn chair on Broad Street.”
But the rescheduled event was not without its own weather woes: On Friday, at least one string band pulled out of the performance, citing the frigid temperatures. A total of 14 bands make up the Philadelphia Mummers String Band Association, according to its website, but only 12 were scheduled to take the stage Saturday.
A coastal “bomb cyclone” was expected to douse parts of New Jersey and Delaware with some snowfall this weekend, while stinging winds and arctic air in Philadelphia pushed temperatures into single digits and plunged wind chills to as low as 10 degrees below zero. At the height of the show Saturday, temperatures barely eclipsed 20 degrees at the open-air Linc.
For spectators, who were clustered in the stadium’s lower bowl and sprinkled in suites, the keys to staying warm: layers, hand warmers, and beer jackets.
But the event offered Mummers enthusiasts and newbies alike an opportunity to enjoy the bands’ jovial music, unique sound, and elaborate costumes — with performances taking the audience from the sights of Las Vegas to New Orleans, a funhouse, and the Beauty and the Beast mansion — outside of New Year’s revelry.
“This is the moment each of the string bands work so hard for, and we’re so thrilled,” Regalbuto said. “This all came together to give them their shining spotlight out on that field in an unprecedented way. We couldn’t be more excited.”
The Fralinger String Band performs during the 2026 String Band Spectacular at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026.
New Jersey Shore communities are forecast to see minor flooding Sunday, as an offshore storm is expected to bring high winds that will also cause another bitterly cold night for Philadelphia and its suburbs.
The biggest concern is the high winds, which are expected to bring gusts of up to 40 or even 50 mph in Cape May County, as well as Sussex County, Del., according to Amanda Lee, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service’s Mount Holly office. Sustained winds are forecast to be 20 to 25 mph.
“There’s potential for some minor coastal flooding with the high tide cycles,” Lee said. Sunday morning’s high tide looks to carry the greatest risk, she added, with the potential for more with the Monday morning high tide.
The threat of flooding is the result of two factors: the wind pushing water closer to the coast and the full moon.
“When we’re in full moons and new moons, the astronomical tides are higher as well,” Lee said. “So the combination of those factors are leading to the potential for the coastal flooding.”
While wind and flooding are the chief concerns, the Shore could also receive some snow — up to half an inch, she said.
Philadelphia and the region
The storm’s impact is expected to be felt much less in Philadelphia, with no snow and lower winds. But breezes could push the wind chill to minus 10 degrees, Lee said.
“It’s still certainly going to be a breezy day, particularly on Sunday. We’ll potentially see wind gusts up to around 30 miles an hour or so,” she said.
Sunday morning’s low is forecast to be in the high single digits to around 10 degrees, with winds picking up later in the day to keep things frigid.
“Again, still very much the same pattern we’ve been in: very, very cold,” Lee said.
Atlantic City gears up
Lee said that while any flooding along the Shore should be minor, that could still mean some full road closures. Conditions may be worse along the bays, where winds could push ice onshore.
One community gearing up for any high winds and floods is Atlantic City, said Scott Evans, the fire chief and emergency management coordinator. He said the city is expecting minor flooding, which may mean water on a few streets.
City public works crews have been out clearing drains, and were ready to salt icy roads, Evans said.
“Just a couple of our low-lying areas are going to experience what we call our nuisance flooding, but this … will be compounded because the temperatures will be well below freezing,” he said.
Evans encouraged Atlantic City residents to take steps, as they would ahead of other potential emergencies.
“Make sure you have your emergency preparedness kits, make sure you have your medications, your flashlights, extra batteries, cell phone chargers, and some of your basic things, some food and water, some other things should your power go out,” he said.
“Let’s hope for the best here,” Evans said.
The coming days
Beyond Sunday, it will remain cold this week, Lee said, “but in some ways a little bit warmer than we have been now.”
But not “warm” warm.
“We’re actually looking at potentially cracking above freezing, most likely on Tuesday,” Lee said. But even then, the highs will only be in the lower 30s. And another shot of cold is forecast for later in the week into the following week.
