Rabbi Linda Holtzman’s op-ed about suspending military aid to Israel crucially omits the role of Hamas and the trauma of Oct. 7, 2023, presenting an incomplete and troubling framework. Rather than presenting a legitimate criticism of Israeli policy, Rabbi Holtzman depends on contemporary anti-Zionism that denies Jewish people the same right to safety, self-determination, and moral consideration afforded to others.
Hanukkah commemorates the Jewish people’s struggle for survival, religious freedom, and self-determination in our ancestral homeland, values many Jews hold close. This holiday should not be used to argue for policies that leave Israel vulnerable to continued terror and violence.
Both Palestinian and Jewish lives are precious, and the impact of the war is felt by all. Any path toward peace must reject extremism and uphold the right of Jews to live in safety and dignity.
Our community is strengthened not by absolutism, but by nuance, responsibility and a shared commitment to human dignity for all.
Winston Churchill called the Battle of the Bulge “the greatest American battle of the war.” It was the German offensive launched against the U.S. Army in World War II in a snowbound Belgium forest during the Christmas season of 1944. Known as America’s Greatest Generation, thousands fought in that historic military operation so that future generations could live in a society where tyranny has no place and the authority of government depends on the consent of the governed.
Eighty-one years later, America is once again engaged in a fight to preserve our representative democracy. Voting, democracy’s most fundamental right, is under siege by Republican lawmakers seeking to corrupt the electoral process through manipulative gerrymandering.
Since our nation’s founding, countless Americans have fought in defense of self-governance. Let’s not desecrate the graves of the fallen by turning a blind eye to an assault on the freedoms they died to protect.
Jim Paladino, Tampa, Fla.
Who’s the more foolish?
As the adage goes, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Sadly, judging from the description of President Donald Trump’s recent rally in Mount Pocono, there are still plenty of folks willing to believe Trump’s lies. It was well known before the election that he is a liar and a cheat, but that didn’t seem to matter to the folks who voted for him last November and still support him. I’ve been accused of being woke, but I’d much rather be woke than asleep.
Carol Sundeen, Lower Makefield
Join the conversation: Send letters to letters@inquirer.com. Limit length to 150 words and include home address and day and evening phone number. Letters run in The Inquirer six days a week on the editorial pages and online.
When the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services quietly altered the nameplate on Rachel Levine’s official portrait during the recent government shutdown — replacing her legal first name with the one assigned to her at birth — it might have seemed to some like an insignificant gesture.
But symbols matter. Names matter. And, as we are constantly reminded by the pioneering example of Levine — the first openly transgender person confirmed for a government role by the U.S. Senate — identity matters.
And the deliberate act of using a transgender or nonbinary person’s birth name (or a previous name) after they’ve chosen a new one — a demeaning practice known as “deadnaming” — is more than just an insult to one nationally recognized medical leader. It’s a signal about what our health system is becoming.
It tells every transgender clinician, trainee, staff member, and patient: Your identity is provisional here. Your legitimacy is negotiable. Your name can be taken from you. For a profession that depends on psychological safety, this is no small thing.
Imagine training as a transgender medical resident and watching the federal government manipulate the image of one of the country’s most illustrious physicians — someone who helped lead Pennsylvania through the opioid epidemic, someone who oversaw critical COVID-19 responses, and someone so accomplished that they hold the rank of admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service.
Then-Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Rachel Levine meets with the media at The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Harrisburg in May 2020.
Imagine treating transgender youth in a climate where federal agencies publicly invalidate the very concept of gender identity.
Imagine being a transgender patient, already vulnerable, and seeing your government insist that who you are is, at best, a clerical preference and, at worst, a threat to national security.
We sometimes tell ourselves that culture wars don’t reach the clinic. They do.
They show up when patients avoid care because they fear being misgendered or judged.
They show up when medical students stay closeted to avoid being targeted, derailing careers before they begin.
They show up when clinicians feel pressured to hide their families or their own identities in order to survive training environments already marked by burnout, moral injury, and hierarchy.
They show up in public health, where trust is essential — whether in vaccines, harm-reduction programs, or pandemic response. When government institutions themselves engage in targeted stigmatization, entire communities disengage.
And they show up in professional integrity. A health system that claims to uphold evidence yet endorses policies contradicted by every major medical association — including the treatment of gender dysphoria — erodes its credibility. When science is invoked only when politically convenient, clinicians feel the ground shift under their feet.
Levine showed grace by calling the deadnaming “petty.” In a sense, she’s right: The act is juvenile. But if the rest of us don’t call it out, we risk missing the larger threat.
Professional erasure begins with symbolic gestures — the removal of names, the reclassification of identities, the retelling of who someone “really” is. History is rife with examples of how stripping titles, credentials, or names precedes efforts to diminish authority and restrict participation.
A physician’s portrait is not just a piece of decor. It is a public acknowledgment of service, expertise, and contribution. Altering it is an attempt to rewrite not only identity but legacy.
If medicine is to retain its moral center, clinicians must resist the temptation to disengage. This is not “politics” in the partisan sense. It is professional ethics.
We can start by naming the harm clearly. Deadnaming is not a clerical correction; it is a form of psychological violence aimed at delegitimizing identity.
We must also educate our colleagues, many of whom underestimate the downstream effects of identity-based policies on patient trust, engagement, and health outcomes.
At the same time, we have an obligation to actively support trainees and colleagues — especially those who are transgender or gender-expansive — who may feel newly unsafe or exposed within training environments and workplaces.
Defending evidence-based care is essential: Transgender medicine is medicine. Period. And we must insist that federal agencies speak truthfully about science.
A selective invocation of “scientific reality” is not reality at all; it is ideology masquerading as evidence. Medicine is facing a pivotal question: Are we willing to let political ideology dictate whose identities are valid within our clinics, hospitals, and public health institutions?
Rachel Levine’s portrait matters because deleting her name is an invitation to delete others. It is an attempt to redefine professional legitimacy by biology rather than biography — by chromosomes rather than contributions.
Yet her life is proof that gender identity neither diminishes competence nor negates service.
When a government tries to rewrite that narrative, the medical profession must ask itself: If we do not stand up for the integrity of our colleagues, who will stand up for the integrity of our patients?
Arthur Lazarus is an adjunct professor of psychiatry at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University.
In the aftermath of the shocking killing of Rob Reiner and his wife, it’s clear that only person in this horrible scenario who has Trump Derangement Syndrome is Donald Trump himself. The president’s unhinged rant after the couple’s death, blaming this terrible family tragedy (their son, who has a history of drug addiction, has been arrested) on alleged “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (his made-up term for alleged “obsession” with Donald Trump) should be the final proof that the president needs to be removed from office under the 25th Amendment. His incredible personal insults (calling female reporters “piggy,” “stupid,” a “terrible person” etc.), his rambling and incoherent comments on “affordability” at the Mount Airy Casino last week, his tearing down part of the White House to build a party room — these actions are proof of his inability to perform the functions of the job.
This is the man who has his finger on the nuclear button. For the love of God, somebody please invoke the 25th Amendment already. While we still can.
Linda Falcao, Esq., Baltimore
Gridlocked
The Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland Interconnection, the powerful but little-known operator of our region’s electric grid, is currently tasked with managing the increased energy demand from data centers. Just last month, PJM’s own watchdog filed a complaint saying it will not be able to manage all of the proposed data centers without restrictions.
Later this month, PJM’s board will vote to decide how and whether to accept these electricity-hungry data centers into our grid, and what (if any) restrictions will be put in place. One option is that the Big Tech companies behind many of these sites could be asked to dial back their power use for a few dozen hours a year.
This would mean that at the rare moments when our grid is peaking, data centers could slow down, preventing blackouts for everyday ratepayers. It would also save Pennsylvanians on our energy bills if fewer of these expensive “peaker” plants had to be built. Finally, this proposal would be better for our lungs and the planet, as the energy sources that data centers bring online are usually gas plants. PJM should prioritize people over data centers and decide on some restrictions before it welcomes them to our grid.
The September 2025 unemployment rate was 4.4%. A year prior in September 2024, it stood at 4.1%. The inflation rate for this September was 3.0%, while exactly a year earlier it was 2.4%. Although Trump likes to claim that gas prices are down, they are in fact little changed from a year ago. On the other hand, healthcare costs are skyrocketing, and the Republicans in Congress are deliberately making the problem worse. The stock market indexes are doing well this year, but they rose by a greater percentage in both 2023 and 2024.
If Trump really believes that he deserves an A+++++ for the economy, then he should add a few more pluses for Joe Biden.
Bill Fanshel, Bryn Mawr
Profits over safety
For every tragic shooting, a profit has been made, on both the gun and the bullet. When a person’s life is taken, whether a targeted individual or a bystander, a profit was made. When a child is shot, a law enforcement officer is gunned down, an individual is slain in a domestic violence related incident, or a mass shooting occurs at a school, college, or religious gathering, at some point, a profit was made on the sale of the gun and the sale of the ammunition.
The issue is not about Second Amendment rights or gun rights, but about profits. There is too much money to be made to stop the traumas, the disabling injuries, and the killings. The National Rifle Association, gun and ammunition manufacturers, and retailers lobby lawmakers to keep the cash flowing. Legislators must put public safety above profits and pass gun safety legislation for assault weapons, require background checks for all gun purchases and more. We need to do whatever we can to stop this needless slaughter.
Gerald Koren, Exton
A ceasefire resonates
I would like to express my enthusiastic appreciation for the powerful opinion piece by Rabbi Linda Holtzman, which I found both deeply moving and thought-provoking. It strikes a perfect balance between principled passion and rational, fact-based arguments.
The issues need to be brought out into the open, as Rabbi Holtzman does masterfully.
Our family members are longtime subscribers who greatly appreciate your commitment to the highest quality journalism.
Helene Pollock, Philadelphia
…
For 75 years, the idea of safety for the Israeli people has been tried in one way and has not succeeded. Rabbi Linda Holtzman recognizes this and argues that the world desperately needs another model. We need to hear more nonviolent proposals for how this sacred land can be a home for all of the people who live there — a home defined by safety and peace. And it requires us all to support that process and not allow violence and hatred from either side to prevail.
Joan Gunn Broadfield, Chester, broadfieldje@gmail.com
Who owns public schools?
The School District of Philadelphia recently approved a resolution authorizing its superintendent to negotiate the transfer of up to 20 vacant school buildings to the City of Philadelphia, potentially at no cost. Philadelphia has a reputation for property thefts in which law enforcement threatens severe penalties. However, it is essential to note that neither private nor public properties can be sold by individuals who do not hold ownership. Ultimately, the people retain ownership of the schools, which are funded through the capital budget using taxpayer monies. The public allows the board to lease those buildings, and when they are finished with them, they should be required to return them.
Leon Williams, Philadelphia
Drowning in medical debt
Congressional Republicans are having trouble coming up with a coherent proposal as an alternative to the Affordable Care Act. One reason for their difficulty is that the act itself is modeled after the Republican plan that was enacted in Massachusetts after the Universal Care Act of 1993 was defeated by a coalition of conservatives in Congress and lobbyists for the healthcare and insurance industries. As costs continue to spiral out of control and national health metrics decline, there is now, more than ever, a need for comprehensive universal healthcare in this country. Nations with such plans have lower costs and better healthcare outcomes, compared to the United States. There is no nation in the world other than ours in which hundreds of thousands of people are bankrupted by the cost of their medical treatments. Increasingly, many Americans simply choose to decline medical care because they can’t afford it. It is time for our elected representatives to act for the benefit of the people, for a change.
Patrick J. Ream, Millville
Join the conversation: Send letters to letters@inquirer.com. Limit length to 150 words and include home address and day and evening phone number. Letters run in The Inquirer six days a week on the editorial pages and online.
Sometimes a terrible year can end with a moment of uplift. This actually happened in the last days of 1968, when Apollo 8 took the first humans in orbit around the moon and sent wonder back to a planet struggling with assassinations and riots. Alas, 2025 seems not such a year. A world already reeling from two mass shootings half a world apart learned Sunday night that Hollywood icon Rob Reiner and his wife Michele had been murdered in their home, allegedly by their own son. Boomers like me saw our own journey in that of Reiner — playing a young campus liberal, then taking down the pomposity of classic rock before both an unprecedented streak of classic movies and unparalleled social and political activism. He had more to give, and leaves a void that can’t truly be filled.
Americans fear AI and loathe its billionaires. Why do both parties suck up to them?
Time’s 2025 person of the year are the architects of AI, depicted in this painting by Jason Seiler. The painting, with nods to the iconic 1932 “Lunch atop a Skyscraper” photograph, depicts tech leaders Mark Zuckerberg, Lisa Su, Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei, and Fei-Fei Li.
“This is the West, sir. When the facts become legend, print the legend.” — journalist in the 1962 film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The top editors at Time (yes, it still exists) looked west to Silicon Valley and decided to print the legend last week when picking their Person of the Year for the tumultuous 12 months of 2025. It seemed all too fitting that its cover hailing “The Architects of AI” was the kind of artistic rip-off that’s a hallmark of artificial intelligence: 1932’s iconic newspaper shot, “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper,” “reimagined” with the billionaires — including Elon Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman — and lesser-known engineers behind the rapid growth of their technology in everyday life.
Time’s writers strived to outdo the hype of AI itself, writing that these architects of artificial intelligence “reoriented government policy, altered geopolitical rivalries, and brought robots into homes. AI emerged as arguably the most consequential tool in great-power competition since the advent of nuclear weapons.”
OK, but it’s a tool that’s clearly going to need a lot more work, or architecting, or whatever it is those folks out on the beam do. That was apparent on the same day as Time’s celebration when it was reported that Washington Post editors got a little too close to the edge when they decided they were ready to roll out an ambitious scheme for personalized, AI-driven podcasts based on factors like your personal interests or your schedule.
The news site Semafor reported that the many gaffes ranged from minor mistakes in pronunciation to major goofs like inventing quotes — the kind of thing that would get a human journalist fired on the spot. “Never would I have imagined that the Washington Post would deliberately warp its own journalism and then push these errors out to our audience at scale,” a dismayed, unnamed editor reported.
The same-day contrast between the Tomorrowland swooning over the promise of AI and its glitchy, real-world reality felt like a metaphor for an invention that, as Time wasn’t wrong in reporting, is so rapidly reshaping our world. Warts and all.
Like it or not.
And for most people (myself included), it’s mostly “or not.” The vast majority understands that it’s too late to put this 21st-century genie back in the bottle, and like any new technology there are going to be positives from AI, from performing mundane organizing tasks that free up time for actual work, to researching cures for diseases.
The most recent major Pew Research Center survey of Americans found that 50% of us are more concerned than excited about the growing presence of AI, while only 10% are more excited than concerned. Drill down and you’ll see that a majority believes AI will worsen humans’ ability to think creatively, and, by a whopping 50-to-5% percent margin, also believes it will worsen our ability to form relationships rather than improve it. These, by the way, are two things that weren’t going well before AI.
So naturally our political leaders are racing to see who can place the tightest curbs on artificial intelligence and thus carry out the will of the peop…ha, you did know this time that I was kidding, didn’t you?
It’s no secret that Donald Trump and his regime were in the tank from Day One for those folks out on Time’s steel beam, and not just Musk, who — and this feels like it was seven years ago — donated a whopping $144 million to the Republican’s 2024 campaign. Just last week, the president signed an executive order aiming to press the full weight of the federal government, including Justice Department lawsuits and regulatory actions, against any state that dares to regulate AI. He said that’s necessary to ensure U.S. “global AI dominance.”
This is a problem when his constituents clearly want AI to be regulated. But it’s just as big a problem — perhaps bigger — that the opposition party isn’t offering much opposition. Democrats seem just as awed by the billionaire grand poobahs of AI as Trump. Or the editors of Time.
Also last week, New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul — leader of the second-largest blue state, and seeking reelection in 2026 — used her gubernatorial pen to gut the more-stringent AI regulations that were sent to her desk by state lawmakers. Watchdogs said Hochul replaced the hardest-hitting rules with language drafted by lobbyists for Big Tech.
As the American Prospect noted, Hochul’s pro-Silicon Valley maneuvers came after her campaign coffers were boosted by fundraisers held by venture capitalist Ron Conway, who has been seeking a veto, and the industry group Tech:NYC, which wants the bill watered down.
It was a similar story in the biggest blue state, California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2024 vetoed the first effort by state lawmakers to impose tough regulations on AI, and where a second measure did pass but only after substantial input from lobbyists for OpenAI and other tech firms. Silicon Valley billionaires raised $5 million to help Newsom — a 2028 White House front-runner — beat back a 2021 recall.
Like other top Democrats, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro favors some light regulation for AI but is generally a booster, insisting the new technology is a “job enhancer, not a job replacer.” He’s all-in on the Keystone State building massive data centers, despite their tendency to drive up electric bills and their unpopularity in the communities where they are proposed.
Money talks, democracy walks — an appalling fact of life in 2025 America. In a functioning democracy, we would have at least one political party that would fly the banner of the 53% of us who are wary of unchecked AI, and even take that idea to the next level.
A Harris Poll found that, for the first time, a majority of Americans also see billionaires — many of them fueled by the AI bubble — as a threat to democracy, with 71% supporting a wealth tax. Yet few of the Democrats hoping to retake Congress in 2027 are advocating such a levy. This is a dangerous disconnect.
Time magazine got one thing right. Just as its editors understood in 1938 that Adolf Hitler was its Man of the Year because he’d influenced the world more than anyone else, albeit for evil, history will likely look back at 2025 and agree that AI posed an even bigger threat to humanity than Trump’s brand of fascism. The fight to save the American Experiment must be fought on both fronts.
Yo, do this!
I haven’t tackled much new culture this month because I’ve been doing something I so rarely do anymore: Watching a scripted series from start to finish. That would be Apple TV’s Pluribus, the new sci-fi-but-more-than-sci-fi drama from television genius Vince Gilligan. True, one has to look past some logistical flaws in its dystopia-of-global-happiness premise, but the core narrative about the fight for individualism is truly a story of our time. The last two episodes come out on Dec. 19 and Dec. 26, so there’s time to catch up!
The shock and sorrow of Rob Reiner’s murder at age 78 has, not surprisingly, sparked a surge of interest in his remarkable, and remarkably diverse, canon of classic movies. His much-awaited sequel Spinal Tap II: The End Continuesbegan streaming on HBO Max just two days before his death. Check it out, or just re-watch the 1984 original, which is one of the funniest flicks ever made, and which is also streaming on HBO Max and can be rented on other popular sites. Crank it up to 11.
Ask me anything
Question: What news value, not advertising value, is accomplished by publicizing every one of Trump’s insane rantings daily? — @bizbodeity.bsky.social via Bluesky
Answer: This is a great question, and the most recent and blatant example which I assume inspired it — Trump’s stunningly heartless online attack against a critic, Hollywood icon Rob Reiner, just hours after his violent murder — proves why this is a painful dilemma for journalists. I’d argue that Trump’s hateful and pathologically narcissistic post was a deliberate troll for media attention, to make every national moment about him. In a perfect world, it would indeed be ignored. But it was highly newsworthy that his Truth Social post was so offensive that it drew unusual criticism from Republicans, Evangelicals, and other normal supporters. We may remember this is as a political turning point. Trump’s outbursts demand sensitivity, but that Americans elected such a grotesque man as our president can’t easily be ignored.
What you’re saying about…
It’s been two weeks since I asked about Donald Trump’s health, but the questions have not gone away. There was not a robust response from readers — probably because I’d posed basically the same question once before. Several of you pointed to expert commentary that suggests the president is experiencing significant cognitive decline, perhaps suffering from frontotemporal dementia. Roberta Jacobs Meadway spoke for many when she lambasted “the refusal if not the utter failure of the once-major news outlets to ask the questions and push for answers.”
📮 This week’s question: We are going to try an open-ended one to wrap up 2025: What is your big prediction for 2026 — could be anything from elections to impeachment to the Eagles repeating as Super Bowl champs — and why. Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “2026 prediction” in the subject line.
Backstory on how I covered an unforgettable year
Rick Gomez, who travelled 65 hours by bus from Phoenix, Ariz., holds an AI photo composite poster of Donald Trump, in Washington, the day before Trump took the Oath of Office to become the 47th president of the United States.
Barring the outbreak of World War III — something you always need to say these days — this is my final newsletter, or column, of 2025, as I use up my old-man plethora of vacation days. To look back on America’s annus horribilis, I thought I’d revive a feature from my Attytood blogging days: a recap of the year with the five most memorable columns, not numbered in order of significance. Here goes:
A year that many of us dreaded when the votes were counted in November 2024 began for me with a sad reminder that the personal still trumps the political, when my 88-year-old father fell ill in the dead of winter and passed away on March 11. I wrote about his life, but also what his passion for science and knowledge said about a world that, at the end of his life, was slipping away: Bryan H. Bunch (1936-2025) and the vanishing American century of knowledge.
Still, Donald J. Trump could not be ignored. On Jan. 19, I put on my most comfortable shoes (it didn’t really help) and traipsed around a snowy, chilly Washington, D.C. as the about-to-be 47th president made his “forgotten American” supporters wait on a soggy, endless line for a nothingburger rally while the architects of AI and other rich donors partied in heated luxury, setting the tone for a year of gross inequality: American oligarchy begins as Trump makes billions while MAGA gets left out in the rain.
One of the year’s biggest stories was Trump’s demonizing of people of color, from calling Somali immigrants “garbage” to his all out war on DEI programs that encouraged racial diversity, when the truth was always far different. In February, I wrote about the American dream of a young man from Brooklyn of Puerto Rican descent and his ambition to become an airline pilot, who perished in the D.C. jet-helicopter crash. His remarkable life demolished the MAGA lie about “DEI pilots.” Read: “Short, remarkable life of D.C. pilot Jonathan Campos so much more than Trump’s hateful words.”
If you grew up during the 1960s and ‘70s, as I did, then you understand the story of our lifetimes as a battle for the individual rights of every American — for people to live their best lives regardless of race or gender, or whether they might be transgender, or on the autism spectrum. I wrote in October about the Trump regime’s consuming drive to reverse this, to make it a crime to be different: From autism to beards, the Trump regime wages war on ‘the different’
A grim year did end on one hopeful note. Trump’s push for an authoritarian America is faltering, thanks in good measure to the gumption of everyday people. This month, I traveled to New Orleans to chronicle the growing and increasingly brave public resistance to federal immigration raids, as citizens blow whistles, form crowds and protest efforts to deport hard-working migrants: In New Orleans and across U.S., anger over ICE raids sparks a 2nd American Revolution
What I wrote on this date in 2021
On this date four years ago, some of us were still treating Donald Trump’s attempted Capitol Hill coup of Jan. 6, 2021 like a crime that could be solved so that the bad guys could be put away. On Dec. 16, 2021, I published my own theory of the case: that Team MAGA’s true goal was provoking a war between its supporters and left-wing counterdemonstrators, as a pretext for sending in troops and stopping Congress from finishing its certification of Joe Biden’s victory. That didn’t happen because the leftists stayed home. More than 1,000 pardons later, check out my grand argument: “A theory: How Trump’s Jan. 6 coup plan worked, how close it came, why it failed.”
Recommended Inquirer reading
Only one column this week, as this senior citizen was still recovering from that grueling trip to New Orleans. On Sunday, I reacted with the shock and sadness of seeing a mass shooting at my alma mater, Brown University. I wrote that in a nation with 500 million guns, it’s a virtual lock that some day our families — nuclear or extended, like the close-knit Brown community — will be struck by senseless violence. And I took sharp issue with Trump’s comment that “all you can do is pray.” There is much that can and should be done about gun safety.
Sometimes the big stories are the ones that play out over decades, not days. When I first started coming regularly to Philadelphia at the end of the 1980s, the dominant vibe was urban decline. The comeback of cities in the 21st century has altered our world, for good — but a lot of us old-timers have wondered: Just who, exactly, is moving into all these new apartments from Center City to Kensington and beyond? Last week, The Inquirer’s ace development reporter Jake Blumgart took a deep dive into exactly that — highlighting survey results that large numbers are under 45, don’t own a car, and moved here from elsewhere, and telling some of their stories. Local journalism is the backbone of a local community, and you are part of something bigger when you subscribe to The Inquirer. Plus, it’s a great Christmas gift, and you’ll get to read all my columns in 2026. See you then!
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Two horrific mass shootings over the weekend offered a contrasting study in political leadership.
In Australia, after a father and son allegedly killed at least 15 people and injured more than two dozen others who gathered on a Sydney beach to celebrate the start of Hanukkah, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called an emergency meeting and announced immediate reforms to the country’s already strict gun laws.
In the United States, after a shooter killed two students and injured nine others at Brown University, President Donald Trump essentially shrugged and said, “Things can happen.”
Trump then showed his distinctive lack of empathy by offering the victims and their families his “deepest regards and respects from the United States of America.” For good measure, he lamely added “and we mean it.”
It did not seem as if Trump could get hollower than that. But hours later he showed his bottomless capacity to go lower.
After Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife were found stabbed to death in their home, Trump turned the tragedy into a narcissistic social media post that suggested the deaths were all about him.
The Reiners’ son Nick, who battled addiction, was arrested, but any motive for the killings remains unknown.
Yet, Trump claimed without evidence that Reiner, 78, a successful actor and director who was active in Democratic politics and critical of Trump, died because of “the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS.”
Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner arrive on the red carpet at the State Department for the Kennedy Center Honors gala dinner in Washington in December 2023.
Amid a weekend of unspeakable violence, Trump managed to make things worse. So, don’t expect any leadership, let alone efforts to unite or console the country, during times of crisis or tragedy.
If Trump cared about the safety and welfare of others beyond himself, he could offer sympathy rather than solipsism. He would condemn the carnage and vow to crack down on the gun epidemic that continues to kill, maim, and traumatize the United States.
Instead, taxpayers will get zero effort by Trump or any Republican state or federal lawmaker to do a damn thing about the mass shooting or nearly 50,000 annual suicides that have become all too routine. Sorry, “things can happen.”
This year there have been nearly 14,000 gun deaths and more than 25,000 injuries in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which also counts 392 mass shootings. (Important reminder: Despite Trump’s innuendo about crimes committed by immigrants and Black Americans, the majority of mass shootings are carried out by white males.)
There have also been at least 75 school shootings. The school shootings have become so routine at least two Brown University students had survived previous attacks and trauma when they were in high school.
It does not have to be this way.
A woman kneels in prayer at a memorial to shooting victims outside the Bondi Pavilion at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Monday, a day after a shooting.
But the powerful gun lobby spends millions to essentially buy off Republican elected officials and prevent the passage of gun measures. So the bloodletting in America continues.
While the mass shooting in Australia was heartbreaking, it was also rare.
In 1996, after a gunman killed 35 people, then-Prime Minister John Howard, a conservative, responded 12 days later with a sweeping overhaul of the country’s gun laws that included banning high-powered automatic weapons.
After gun reform and a massive gun buyback program believed to have taken about a million firearms out of circulation, the country did not have another mass shooting until 2018, when a man killed six members of his own family.
One day after the latest mass shooting, Australia’s elected leaders agreed to bolster gun laws already considered the gold standard by implementing a national registry and limiting the number of guns a person can own.
While Trump rambles on social media, real political leaders in Australia have already acted.
Nothing will change in the U.S. until voters fed up with mass shootings hold elected officials accountable.
Top federal officials talk about finding a cause for autism, generating more buzz by the day. More substantively, the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles gave an extraordinary sum — $50 million — to a local hospital to discover its cause and develop new treatments.
Each year, more than 120,000 young people with autism turn 18 and “age out” of pediatric medicine. They enter an adult system that is unprepared to help them. They enter a world with no standardized guidelines for care, no specialized training for physicians, and far less support. Families must navigate a cliff, not a bridge. More than five million adults now push past herculean obstacles for what is often worse care.
I view this crisis as a pediatric emergency medicine doctor and as the mother of a transition-age autistic son.
Fear for the future
We parents are terrified by what will happen to our adult children when we are no longer around to care for them. Parents weep — and sometimes wail — when I refer them to an alternate site for adult care. Our system can no longer remove an appendix or mount a crisis intervention once these children cross over.
As a doctor, I know how this change can cause unnecessary admissions and a loss of social work and case management. Caregivers must suddenly educate the provider on the patient’s basic needs. As a parent, I watch my son Alexander and others hop from one tiny island of support to another.
When Alexander broke his arm at age 6, surgeons were called in to pin his shattered bone and clean the wound where the disrupted muscle had burst through the skin. Alexander was ridiculously compliant and poised; I was less so.
His surgeons accidentally cut one of the three main motor nerves in the arm when they tried to stabilize his floppy elbow. It took many visits over eight weeks to get proper attention. By then, his arm was floppy from a medical error.
In our home, we work hard to protect him: Trampolines are forbidden, helmets always on, seat belts firmly buckled. Yet, I failed to anticipate how Alexander’s autism could hurt him. This label — his scarlet letter “A” — kept his surgeons at a dangerous distance.
I continue to teach Alexander to be responsible for his care so he will thrive when I cannot be beside him. In 2023, the National Institutes of Health formally designated people with disabilities as disadvantaged. I am relieved to see a growing acknowledgment of autistic people as a vulnerable group, at risk for health disparities, deserving of tailored care.
Justin Pierce (center), who has autism and is an account support associate, meets with his team at Ernst & Young offices in Chicago.
I have also gained confidence in my voice as an advocate for Alexander. I’ve become a “gang member.”
Senior staffers for Gov. Josh Shapiro respectfully dubbed my fellow autism advocates as “the mom gang.” It is reassuring only in this context that I present as intimidating. Our band of six wants to make sure that half-baked federal plans to create a national autism registry never happen in Pennsylvania without privacy safeguards.
Meanwhile, the autism community holds diverse opinions on what to do. Should profound autism be classified separately from other presentations? Is “cure” the right goal? Is Tylenol a risk factor?
While these conversations pull us in different directions, we must not lose sight of a common purpose to create a better system.
Autistic adults deserve accessible and affirming change. There are models, tools, and innovations in which to invest:
Training emergency, inpatient, and outpatient teams to recognize how autism presents in adults
Designing calming public environments that ease communication
Creating dedicated consult services — including behaviorists, communication specialists, and caregivers — available in person and via telehealth
Prioritizing prevention and de-escalation over restraint
Highlighting the voices of autistic individuals in policy decisions that affect them
And, critically, funding and scaling programs that treat autism across the lifespan
Lack of resources
Resources are scarce. Historic gifts fill some gaps from interrupted government funds pulled from disability and diversity programming. Casualties include the Department of Education’s “Charting My Path for Future Success” transition program, a research-based effort to help high school students with disabilities enter the workforce or higher education.
We may all agree there is an immediate need to build better supports for adults with autism.
I worry for my son. I need to know I have pushed every edge of possibility to smooth his way forward. I do this for my daughters, too, who learned from their earliest days their brother needs the same supports they are accustomed to, but he is often denied.
One day, they will take my place slaying this dragon.
Eron Friedlaender is a public health investigator, an emergency medicine physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and a board member of the Institute for Human Centered Design.
When any one branch of our federal government gains power, another loses some. For several years, the Supreme Court has expanded the power of the executive branch to the detriment of the legislative. President Donald Trump’s implementation of tariffs and his refusal to provide information to Congress about the military operations in the Caribbean, the Pacific, and off the Venezuelan coast are recent examples in which the White House has pushed the limits of its authority and sidestepped lawmakers.
A 90-year-old Supreme Court decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States upheld the independence of these executive branch agencies, the justices seem to be signaling that they intend to reverse this long-standing precedent.
Our founders wanted governing and decision-making to be done collaboratively with Congress, where the three branches work together, and no single individual wields too much control. We need to resist this ongoing shift in power and demand a return to a balance that best serves our ability to self-govern.
Joseph Goldberg, Philadelphia
Questionable buzzwords
There are many flaws in Rabbi Linda Holtzman’s op-ed which advocates limiting military aid to Israel, but the overriding flaw in this piece is its dishonesty. By using the buzzwords “Palestinian liberation” and “anti-Zionist,” she is cleverly avoiding stating the real aim of her organization and its allies, namely, the destruction of the state of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people.
She recognizes, of course, that saying this out loud would not fly with most readers of the Inquirer, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. The fact that the author is a rabbi and teacher at a Jewish institution gives no special credence to this extreme position, but may fool some readers to think that she speaks for mainstream Jewish opinion.
And speaking of liberation, my hope is that the Palestinian people will be liberated from the corrupt and hateful leaders whose rejectionist position over the years has denied them the opportunity to have a state of their own.
In the face of a fractured Congress and a seemingly complicit Supreme Court, it’s up to the free press to inform and empower everyday people to step up and denounce the inhuman and unjust treatment of our immigrant neighbors. Citizens have an important role to play in defending neighbors who contribute so much to our communities and our economy. Let us hope our fellow Americans will become as concerned with the deplorable treatment of other human beings as they are about the economy.
Sister Veronica Roche, Westmont
Join the conversation: Send letters to letters@inquirer.com. Limit length to 150 words and include home address and day and evening phone number. Letters run in The Inquirer six days a week on the editorial pages and online.
The Washington Post recently sparked a familiar debate by ranking the top sports cities in the country — and left Philadelphia off the list. While local journalists rushed to defend our passionate fandom, they missed the most important question: Does our city truly deserve the title of “Best Sports City” if we systematically deny our own children the chance to participate?
If we believe in the power of Philadelphia sports, it’s time for our professional teams and our famous citizens to commit to making every child a winner by funding athletics in the Philadelphia School District.
Angela McIver at the meeting of the Phiadelphia Board of Education in 2020.
I could not, in good conscience, vote for a budget that answered that question by allocating four times the amount of money for school police than it did for athletics programming.
I believe funding decisions like these are an indictment of our priorities.
For our students, the impact of this financial neglect is not abstract — it is a daily indignity. For example, while my children were on the Central High School swim team, the team routinely had to scramble for practice facilities. One of their regular practice pools was a therapeutic pool for children with disabilities, which kept the water temperature above 80 degrees — a condition dangerous for intense athletic training.
A swim team practices at the Marian Anderson Recreation Center, in South Philadelphia in 2022.
Across the district, our track teams often have no actual track, forcing students to run laps in crowded school hallways. Our baseball teams must clear rocks and debris off their own fields just to hold a practice session.
While school districts across this region consistently allocate between 1% and 1.5% of their budget to athletics, Philadelphia allocates a mere two-tenths of 1% (0.2%). Consider the scale: In 2023, when I wrote an op-ed about school budgets for The Inquirer,Lower Merion spent nearly $4 million on athletics for two high schools and three middle schools. Philadelphia spent a mere $9 million for 57 high schools and more than 150 middle schools.
Students and coaches from Steel Elementary, pictured here in March, were hoping to establish a track team —its first Philadelphia School District-sponsored extracurricular activity.
If the Philadelphia School District could allocate funding according to the formula used by our neighboring districts, we could transform thousands of students’ lives. Unfortunately, competing financial realities (like the cessation of COVID-19 funding and the critical need to address deteriorating facilities) relegate athletics to the bottom of the priority list.
A challenge to Philadelphia’s champions
We know the benefits of participation in sports are profound: lower rates of depression, better mental health, stronger self-regulation, and increased confidence. Investing in athletics develops students’ passions and talents.
Moreover, in a city grappling with gun violence, the impact is immediate and tangible: it keeps thousands of our students off the streets during the times when they are most likely to become victims of, or engage in, disruptive behavior.
Unfortunately, the reality is that this funding gap reflects a systemic financial disparity facing our city. I recognize the immense difficulty the current administration faces in allocating dollars while working with far less funding per student than wealthier suburban districts. If Philadelphia truly values its sports identity, it’s time for those who embody that spirit to step up.
My challenge goes out directly to:
Our professional sports teams (Eagles, Sixers, Phillies, Flyers, Union): If our city’s identity is tied to your success, then your success must be tied to our children. Commit a percentage of your organization’s substantial revenues to help close the school district’s athletics funding gap to finally bring parity with suburban districts.
Our celebrities and ambassadors: Every time Kevin Hart, Quinta Brunson, Hannah Einbinder, or Bradley Cooper says, “Go Birds!” on the red carpet, they use their platform to amplify Philadelphia pride. Now, we need them to use their wallets and voices to amplify opportunity. Commit to a sustained, philanthropic effort to fully fund athletics across our public schools.
We have amazing, talented children with gifts to share. A true “Best Sports City” doesn’t just celebrate its pros; it gives every child the chance to become one.
Let’s turn our fanatical passion into foundational funding.
Angela McIver served as a member of the Philadelphia school board from 2018-2021.
We are standing at the crosswalk of a bold new era in street design and management.
Streets make up roughly 30% of a Philadelphia’s land. Yet, most are locked into a single use: moving and storing cars. What if, instead, we treated them as dynamic public spaces capable of changing function and meaning depending on the time of day, the season, or the needs of the neighborhood?
That question guided a recent pilot project I helped lead in Chinatown, which will be unveiled next month. As part of “the Chinatown Stitch” — an ambitious effort led by the city’s Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems, with state and federal partners, meant to heal a neighborhood long divided by transportation infrastructure. Our team designed a movable market stall, a piece of street furniture that serves as both a vendor kiosk and a community gathering space.
During Chinese New Year or other festivals, when the streets overflow with people and energy, the stall slides into the roadway, transforming asphalt into a festive plaza. When the celebration ends, it retreats, making way for traffic once again.
For a neighborhood starved of public space, this small, movable structure has become a powerful symbol: The street itself can flex, adapt, and respond. It embodies what planners and landscape architects call the Flexible Street Strategy — a vision for cities that recognizes streets as living systems, not fixed infrastructures.
Open Streets
For more than a century, street planning has been governed by rigid right-of-way definitions. Sidewalks for walking. Lanes for driving. Curbs for parking. These rules answer only one question: what belongs where? The flexible street concept asks another: when? When should a street prioritize cars, and when should it belong to people?
Based on research my team completed last summer, the results have been stunning. Foot traffic soars. Businesses thrive. And, perhaps most tellingly, children return. On a normal day, we counted two kids passing through a block in 15 minutes. During one Open Streets event, that number jumped to 39.
It’s not just a statistic; it’s a story of safety, belonging, and joy. For once, the street was everyone’s.
Restaurants take over 18th Street as the streets around Rittenhouse Square are closed to vehicular traffic for pedestrian-only zones for the city’s Open Streets program.
When the Open Streets program began, its organizers expected bureaucratic hurdles — clashes between departments, debates over lost parking revenue. Instead, city agencies from streets to parking embraced it. Post-pandemic, there’s a new understanding: Streets are no longer merely conduits for cars. They are the connective tissue of civic life.
The success of the program, first launched in 2024 and revived last summer, has inspired plans to expand across downtown. But as encouraging as such pilots are, they still exist as exceptions to the rule. But the Flexible Street Strategy holds that flexibility should not require special permission. It should be baked into the DNA of how cities plan, design, and manage their streets.
This means rewriting the system itself. Instead of rigid right-of-way codes, cities need regulatory frameworks that acknowledge streets as time-based spaces — spaces whose use shifts dynamically according to demand, culture, and context.
To move from philosophy to practice, flexibility can now be managed with precision through technology.
Using digital twin models, IoT sensors, and AI-driven analytics, our team is building a data platform that identifies “flex windows” — hours when converting a street from traffic to pedestrian use offers the greatest benefit with the least disruption. The system integrates live data on street anchor activities (schools, restaurants, parks, etc.), traffic volumes, safety, and equity to recommend optimal transformation times.
A community stage
Still, the real power of the flexible street idea lies in its simplicity. It doesn’t require new infrastructure — just imagination, data, and a willingness to test. Its nonpermanent, pilot-friendly nature allows cities to experiment at low cost and low risk. Just like the market stall installed in Chinatown, which amplified existing street events and vividly showed how a street can transform into a stage for community life.
If the official Chinatown Stitch aims to reconnect neighborhoods divided by a sunken highway through large-scale infrastructure, our market stall serves as a micro-stitch — achieving the same goal on the scale of the city block by redefining the street as public space and reconnecting residents, shops, and everyday social life.
Although the Chinatown Stitch funding was cut by the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the project has still secured planning funds. Led by OTIS and PennDot, the whole design team is actively finalizing the design. The market stall pilot project is part of this work and serves as an important advocacy and outreach tool for the overall project, supported strongly by Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation.
At the end of the day, whether they recognize it or not, our cities no longer have the luxury of static infrastructure. Between climate change, social fragmentation, and changing mobility patterns, flexibility is not a design preference — it’s survival. The street of the future isn’t just paved for movement; it’s programmed for life.
If we want streets that truly belong to everyone, we must give them the freedom to change.
Yadan Luo is a landscape architect, lecturer in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design, and the creative director of YH LAB.
