Pennsylvania has an opportunity to lead the nation in righting a long-standing wrong in our housing laws.
A group of legislators has introduced the PA Fair Future Act — landmark legislation that would end the state’s enforcement of one of the most damaging and overlooked barriers to housing: the Thurmond Amendment.
Enacted in 1988 during the height of the war on drugs, the Thurmond Amendment allows landlords and property sellers to deny housing solely on the basis of a drug distribution conviction — regardless of how long ago it occurred, the person’s current circumstances, or how much they’ve rebuilt their lives.
Imagine making a mistake as a teenager or young adult — getting caught up in drugs, serving your sentence, and spending years working hard to turn your life around.
Despite holding a steady job, maintaining good credit, and having a clean rental history, you still find yourself legally locked out of housing because of a decades-old conviction.
Some landlords won’t return your calls. Others reject your application outright, no questions asked.
That’s the reality for thousands of Pennsylvanians.
Take the case of Jonathon Jacobs, who was convicted of marijuana distribution when he was 19. For years, Jacobs faced rejection in the housing market or was forced to pay exorbitant security deposits because of his record.
His punishment didn’t end with his sentence — it extended into every aspect of his life, including his ability to provide stable housing for his family.
Ironically, had Jacobs been convicted of a violent crime, he would not be facing this same legal barrier.
In 2016, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued guidanceurging housing providers to consider criminal records in context — taking into account factors like rental, credit, and employment history.
But the Thurmond Amendment creates an explicit carveout: Anyone with a drug distribution conviction is excluded from these protections. It’s a loophole that leaves people like Jacobs permanently locked out of fair housing opportunities.
The law’s impact in Pennsylvania is staggering.
Since 1988, over 80,000 Pennsylvanians have been convicted of drug distribution offenses — many for small amounts. In fact, the most frequently charged amount is less than 1 gram, barely more than a sugar packet.
In 2022, the U.S. House voted to help roll back the war on drugs that as proportionately targeted people of color.
Had many of these cases occurred in today’s legal and political environment, they likely would have been charged as simple possession, and those convicted would have retained their housing rights.
These aren’t major traffickers being excluded from housing; they’re mostly people punished for low-level mistakes, often made in their youth, that carry lifetime consequences.
Black Pennsylvanians are five times more likely than white residents to receive a distribution conviction.
By denying housing based on old records, the Thurmond Amendment reinforces systemic racial disparities and perpetuates cycles of poverty, incarceration, and family instability — all without contributing to public safety.
Thankfully, there’s a path forward.
While federal efforts to repeal the Thurmond Amendment continue, as our governor is fond of saying, “We’re getting stuff done here in Pennsylvania.”
State Rep. Josh Siegel has introduced legislation in Harrisburg to repeal the amendment’s effect at the state level, restoring fair housing protections to those with drug distribution convictions.
House Bill 1492 passed committee on Monday, Sept. 29 and is expected to come to the House floor in the coming weeks.
This is an opportunity for Pennsylvania to lead. It’s a chance to affirm that people should be judged not by their past, but by whom they are today.
Stable housing isn’t just a second chance; it’s the first step toward a better life. Let’s make it accessible to everyone.
Anjelica D. Sanders is a policy advisor and community reporter focused on public health and policy.Yusuf Dahl is CEO of The Century Promise and founder of the Real Estate Lab in Allentown, Pa.
There’s a military saying that “piss-poor planning means piss-poor execution.”
Unfortunately, the execution of how the Trump administration is using America’s military to conduct its counter-drug operations in the Caribbean Sea has had poor planning.
First, 100% of fentanyl comes across the U.S.-Mexican land border — usually carried by U.S. citizens — while almost three-quarters of U.S.-bound cocaine sails via the Pacific Ocean.
The residual cocaine begins a Caribbean transit, but only 3% is en route to our water borders. Most sail to Central America or Mexico for land transport to America. The first five small vessels our military has struck, killing 32, were in the transit zone for cocaine destined not to the United States, but for islands that forward it to Europe and West Africa.
As a result, the administration’s current approach in the Caribbean makes any meaningful interdiction of drugs headed to America unlikely in what is an already tough hunting ground: 100,000 or more vessels — including unregistered or unbeaconed watercraft — are normally at sea in the Caribbean. I experienced this vast challenge while supporting a U.S. Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment (LEDET) onboard my ship, understanding why the Coast Guard’s interdiction rate hovers between 7%-15%.
Moreover, drug cartels recruit vulnerable U.S. citizens to be the primary “mules” for fentanyl because they are less likely to be inspected at legal U.S. border crossings. That is where substantial interdiction must occur if the administration is serious about stopping drugs from coming to the United States.
Similarly, the cartels elicit the impoverished — such as poor fishermen — to do their seaborne smuggling. Criminals? Yes. “Narco-terrorists”? According to the administration, yes, after President Donald Trump designated eight drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs).
Just as it did for al-Qaeda and ISIS, an FTO designation makes drug-runners and carriers “unlawful combatants” in a “Non-International Armed Conflict (NIAC).”
Also, like them, to be legally labeled as an FTO, the drug cartels must: 1) exhibit “politically motivated violence,” 2) execute a combination of frequent and/or severe hostilities, and 3) have an extensive command and control structure.
However, the administration’s two principal justifications for meeting these three criteria were the number of U.S. drug overdose deaths (80,000 last year) and that the cartels’ violent activities are undermining the stabilization of the Western Hemisphere.
The appropriateness of these justifications has consequences for military commanding officers: U.S. and international law forbid them to use deadly force against both American and international civilians. Operational officers go through rigorous training regarding this “principle of distinction.”
Moreover, since the Navy operates on the “public commons” of the seas, it issues the Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations that makes it clear it is “manifestly illegal” to comply with “an order directing the murder of a civilian [or] a noncombatant.”
Adm. Alvin Holsey, commander of U.S. Southern Command overseeing the counter-drug interdictions, recently resigned, reportedly because he deemed the strikes as possibly illegal.
It’s unquestionably disconcerting to be given a new legal interpretation of “political violence” and “severe hostilities” that suddenly changes who has always been a “civilian” into a “combatant.”
It’s disquieting because it’s already tough “out there” in terms of ensuring wise judgment. For example, in 1988, a Navy cruiser in the Persian Gulf shot down an Iranian airliner with the loss of 290 civilians because it had mistaken it for a fighter plane in peacetime.
A few years later, as I entered the Strait of Hormuz, an Iranian warplane took off from a nearby airfield and headed for my ship. My crew was well-trained, with missiles ready if “hostile intent” was determined. It flew low overhead — the first time the Iranian military had done so — then continued on its way, much as Chinese warplanes have done.
If this is a hemispheric war — and not peacetime — Congress should constitutionally “declare war” rather than an abrupt renaming of civilian drug runners as “narco-terrorists.” Otherwise, the sudden denial of “civilian-ship” after years of legal and moral training places our military leaders’ judgment into its own legal and moral quandary.
This is especially pertinent coming after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s recent admonition to senior military leadership that there should be “no more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.”
This followed the secretary’s removal of the head of each service’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps (the military’s legal branches), as well as his closure of the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, established to minimize civilian casualties in military operations.
Finally, with a tenth of all deployed U.S. Navy combatant forces now dedicated to drug interdiction — a nuclear submarine, a three-ship amphibious ready group, and five surface combatants — there is a cost to warfare training. We should be focused on our responses to threats from sophisticated subs, missiles, ships, aircraft, and space — especially as coordination is jammed and cyberattacked within a carrier battle group of ships.
Losing this type of training has come when warfare readiness is already poor: 40% of the U.S. attack submarine fleet is out of commission for repairs — double the Navy’s target rate, overall amphibious ship readiness for war is just 41%, and while surface combatant readiness has risen, it is only 68%.
If, as reported, the less adept — although deadly — Caribbean operation is intended as a prelude to force Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from office, the American people should know why their military men and women are sailing in harm’s way.
Trust in a commander — or commander in chief — is the military’s most precious asset. And while trust might be the biggest deficit in politics, it is not in warfare.
How and why this Caribbean Sea operation is being conducted — either as a professional drug interdiction operation or as a prelude to an intervention in another country — has endangered this trust.
As the top operational commander’s resignation appears to confirm.
Joe Sestak is a former Navy vice admiral, a former U.S. representative for Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District on the House Armed Services Committee, and director for defense policy of the National Security Council staff.
When my family wanted to add a 700-square-foot addition to our ordinary existing home, we had to provide architectural plans, submit them to the local zoning board, and appear at a hearing to state why our plans conformed to local laws and adhered to the character of our neighborhood. President Donald Trump lives in a historic property loaned to him by the people of the United States for use as a temporary residence during his tenure in office. Yet, without any approvals, he is demolishing part of this borrowed home and permanently changing its character.
When Trump first floated the plan to add a 90,000-square-foot ballroom, he provided assurance that the White House footprint would not change. In August, Trump paved over the historic Rose Garden. This past Tuesday, Trump invited Republican senators to lunch at the new concrete “Rose Garden Club,” granting the senators a chance to bear witness to the bulldozers that — in the midst of a government shutdown — were plowing down Trump’s promise to preserve the East Wing. In the meantime, the National Trust for Historic Preservation haplessly was asking for time to review Trump’s architectural plans.
As average U.S. citizens, we are bound by rules and regulations and expected to be truthful. Our president lies about his intentions, openly defies historic preservation, demolishes part of our White House, and does so while thumbing his nose at the decent folks who are just trying to get by day by day.
In Trump World, there is no zoning board, and there are no guardrails. This is a snapshot of our new world order. What will the historians write?
P. Bookspan,Philadelphia
. . .
The East Wing of the White House, built in the 1940s, undoubtedly has asbestos and lead throughout. Were tests done, and remediation actions taken? Take a look at the records for other Donald Trump projects: Profits are more important than the health of workers and the community at large.
Victoria M. Gillen, Browns Mills
. . .
My heart broke seeing the clawlike machine tearing down the East Wing of the White House. Living in Hatfield Township, we had a similar issue about five years ago on a much smaller scale. The last farm in our township was sold. A demolition crew was hired by the new owner to remove the farmhouse. However, the demolition crew halted after the removal of siding exposed walls made of logs from the mid-1700s. After professional historians looked over the siding, they determined the house was one of the earliest structures in the township. After hundreds of people attended meetings concerning the house, it was decided to carefully take the farmhouse apart to be reassembled later at a different location. Unlike our little township, all I saw concerning our beloved People’s House was Donald Trump declaring that in no way would the White House be touched during the construction of his big beautiful ballroom. That could turn out to be a bigger lie than his saying he won in 2020.
Joseph Obelcz, Hatfield
. . .
Instead of destroying the People’s House to build a billionaire’s ballroom, Donald Trump should turn it into a soup kitchen for all the people who will no longer be receiving SNAP benefits.
Cheryl Rice,Erdenheim
Canadian comparisons
I very much appreciated Daniel Pearson’s column on Montreal and how it compares with Philadelphia. I have been to Montreal 11 times, and I have observed many of the same things: Centreville is the business center of Montreal, yet it has residential dwellings, retail, and other sorts of establishments, and therefore does not feel as hollow as some downtown areas in American cities. It is known for being very clean and orderly. Yet, everybody seems like they are relaxed and having a good time, even in this predominantly business district.
Montreal also has ethnic enclaves such as Chinatown, and it also has strong West African, Lebanese, Moroccan, and other communities. Some of these communities are long-established. Montreal’s Old City section by the St. Lawrence River equates to our Old City section. It’s an area of history and tourism woven into one. Montreal has some of the greatest educational establishments in the world, especially McGill University, which dominates a lot of the intellectual thought of the city. Where Montreal differs from Philadelphia is in its ability to keep extreme economic disparities at bay. Some neighborhoods are doing better than others, but you don’t have a sense of dread if you accidentally get off at the wrong Metro station. The subway trains have rubber tires and are quieter than our subway trains, plus the stations are kept in a presentable manner.
Women are very prominent in the civic life of Montreal. The misogyny and misandry that often infects our society aren’t prevalent there. Montreal does not have the tension with the provincial capital, Quebec City, that Philadelphia has with Harrisburg. Too often, I find that Philadelphia tries to learn from other American cities that are experiencing the same difficulties. With a similar layout and a similar population, Montreal might be a better example. Perhaps we need to start emulating a winning strategy. Let’s find out what they do correctly that can be replicated here.
David W. Wannop, Philadelphia
Filibuster, anyone?
The truth about the current shutdown is that the Republicans can end it without Democratic help at any time. All they need to do is change the Senate rules regarding the filibuster. They did this in September to get 48 of Donald Trump’s government nominees approved. To change the rules only requires 50 votes. The reason they won’t do it is that politically, they would rather blame the Democrats than negotiate with them. Democrats should hold firm and point this out next time John Thune and Mike Johnson try to blame them on TV. The opposition party that controls no part of the government is under no obligation to help the other party.
Warren Kruger, Abington
Too young to remember
From news articles, it appears many of the Donald Trump supporters are young people in their early 20s — too young to remember the terrible first Trump administration. Some perspective that may make some of us feel old: Today’s college seniors were in seventh grade when Trump was first elected nine years ago.
These youngsters are also way too young to know what it was like to fear polio and see your friends put in an iron lung. What a relief it was to have a polio vaccine. And what do these young people of today know of World War II and the fight to save the world from the fascism that had taken control of Germany and Italy? With few World War II veterans remaining, most young people will not have a grandfather or father who faced the horrors of fighting to save democracy.
When I was a youngster, it was required that I have several vaccinations (MMR — measles, mumps, rubella) in order to attend school. My parents did not question this policy — they accepted it as a measure to keep their children safe, and they were grateful for it. Today, I am grateful for the additional vaccines that are available for me — pneumonia, shingles, and, in particular, the flu and COVID-19 vaccines. It’s distressing to now see that many vaccines are no longer recommended, and may become unavailable or only stocked in limited supplies. It appears the scientific progress made in the last century and decades is being rejected by two men, neither of whom is a doctor or scientist.
When will today’s young people bother to consider how the current administration is sabotaging their future as well as that of their parents and grandparents? If the luck they depend on holds, they will grow old, but will they still have vaccinations, healthcare, Social Security, food, and a safe environment? Who will they blame when these are gone? Will they look in a mirror?
Carol Sundeen,Lower Makefield
Do the right thing
Republican House leader Mike Johnson says he will bring back the Republican House members when Democrats do the right thing. What Johnson means by the “right thing” is for Democrats to allow 22 million people on the Affordable Care Act to have their premiums doubled, and for 15 million people on Medicaid to lose their health insurance. I, for one, am glad that Democrats refuse to do Johnson’s “right thing.”
Dave Posmontier,Elkins Park
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 only thing more shocking than Donald Trump having dozens of people killed on his word — no trial, no jury, just execution — is that more than 70% of voters seem to be fine with this. Even when broken down by political identification, 89% of GOP supporters, 67% of independents, and 56% of Democrats are all right with the U.S. military blowing up civilians.
Well, maybe.
The polling that produced those stomach-turning results comes from a Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll released earlier this month, with a headline takeaway that most voters support Trump’s strikes on boats smuggling drugs.
As the administration escalates its attack on alleged smugglers in international waters, this wide approval is bad news for anyone who cares about (in alphabetical order) human rights, international law, and the Ten Commandments.
However, I am counting on something I usually rail against — how uninformed most people are — to optimistically dismiss these poll numbers as a bad question about an abhorrent policy.
You see, the question in the poll was, “Do you support or oppose the U.S. destroying boats bringing drugs into the United States from South America?” Asked in that manner, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people were torn between answering “Absolutely!” or “Totally!” After all, who wouldn’t want to stop dangerous drugs from coming into the country?
Of course, the way that question should have been asked is, Do you support or oppose the U.S. destroying boats nowhere near the United States and killing their crew under the mere suspicion they are traveling with drugs?
I hope the answer to that question would have been “Hell no!”or, as U.S. Sen. Rand Paul more elegantly put it when speaking on Fox Business recently, “You cannot have a policy where you just allege that someone is guilty of something, and then kill them.”
Unlike the voters who were presented with an anodyne version of the president’s actions, the Republican senator from Kentucky knows the deadly reality. At least 42 people have been killed across 10 reported strikes on boats as of Friday; eight bombings occurred in the Caribbean, and two in the Pacific.
The administration’s legal rationale seems to be that the drug cartels (allegedly) running these boats are designated foreign terrorist organizations, and represent a clear and present danger to the American people, and must be dealt with accordingly. Or, as the president so chillingly put it at a news conference Thursday: “I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. OK? We’re gonna kill them. They’re gonna be, like, dead.”
Like, yikes.
A combination image shows screen captures from a video posted on the White House X account in September depicting what President Donald Trump said was a strike on a Venezuelan drug cartel vessel.
Where do you start? A motorboat that (maybe) is carrying drugs 1,000 miles from a U.S. coastline is hardly an imminent threat, and most of the strikes have involved Venezuelan vessels, a country that plays a very small role in drugs that reach the U.S.
Even if these are drug runners, trafficking is not a capital crime. And let’s say that it was, you must prove a crime has been committed before you pass sentence, yet all we have to go by are the administration’s claims. Forgive me for doubting, but this is the same bunch who sent hundreds of immigrants to a Salvadoran torture prison, saying they were the “worst of the worst,” only for it to come out that their only sin was having the wrong kind of tattoos.
For Trump’s supporters, didn’t the president run on keeping us out of foreign entanglements, on America no longer being the world’s policeman? Because this sounds a lot like a police officer who’s way out of his jurisdiction deciding to shoot someone for loitering.
If there were any doubts about the real motives of Trump’s strikes, consider the fate of two survivors of the U.S. attack on Oct. 16. If you think these two men were detained, questioned, and booked for processing as dangerous members of a foreign terrorist organization who merit death on sight, then you will be sadly disappointed to hear they were released.
Responsible members of Congress have tried to rein in the administration’s blatant lawlessness.
An Oct. 18 resolution to block the U.S. military from engaging in hostilities with “any non-state organization engaged in the promotion, trafficking, and distribution of illegal drugs and other related activities” without congressional authorization was voted down in the Senate.
While most Republican senators went on the record with allowing the president to freely continue killing, U.S. Sens. Paul and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted their conscience. On the Democratic side, Pennsylvania’s own John Fetterman, we must assume, also voted his when joining the GOP majority.
Folks like Fetterman have no excuse. They know what the administration is doing and condone it. My hope is that as more people learn the details of what’s happening, as voters pay attention to what is being done in our name, they will respond accordingly.
The only principled reaction to what Trump is doing should be revulsion.
Just before 9 p.m. on Oct. 15, Tracy pulled up outside the townhouse on the west side of Chicago. She ushered Juliana and her 6-year-old, Yori, into the back seat and headed for Union Station — the overnight train to New York City, their best shot at safety.
For a month, mother and daughter had barely opened the door of their one-room apartment. Yori stopped attending first grade. Juliana stopped cleaning houses. Neighbors left groceries at the threshold.
In mid-September, during a construction site raid, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agentsdetained José, Juliana’s husband and Yori’s father, and deported him to Venezuela. He was “lucky”: at least he wasn’t lost in detention purgatory or sent to a prison in El Salvador.
From Venezuela, José texted me about conditions at the Broadview Detention Center, where he had been held before deportation, calling them inhumane.
He asked for only one thing: “Please help my family leave Chicago. It’s too dangerous for them there.”
One of the text messages between José and the author, after José had been deported to Venezuela. His phone number has been obscured by The Inquirer, leaving Venezuela’s international country code as verification of the provenance of the call.
I first met José outside my local grocery store, Jewel-Osco, in Wilmette,one of Chicago’s North Shore communities. He held up a sign, seeking odd jobs. Many Venezuelan immigrants who congregated around the Jewel ended up there when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott bused them to Wilmette shortly after they crossed the border in late2023.
I spoke with José and hired him to do some repairs and painting. He traveled by subway two hours each way for work, Juliana and Yori in tow. While José worked, I drew with Yori.
Yori explored the West Loop of Chicago in July with Tracy, one of the residents of Wilmette. Yori was drawn to the impressive mural of a woman who looked like her and her family. She loved posing in front of it, and the mural made her feel more at home in her new city.
One warm summer day after José finished working, we all walked to the edge of Lake Michigan, where Yori made sand castles.
These were good people who faced difficult circumstances. It felt right to help them.
José was a proud craftsman, and I recommended him to other friends, including Tracy — one of the three of uswho would later make sure Juliana and Yori had some money and helped arrange their transportation to New York after José’s deportation.
What happened last month is not the 1930s. But as a Jewish woman, I can’t ignore the echo of that dark period.
In Adolf Hitler’s Berlin, families packed by day and moved quietly toward the border by night, clutching papers that might open a path to New York, a city that, for many, meant survival.
José helps with a neighborhood construction project.
They wrote to cousins, begged for affidavits, queued at consulates, and measured hope in stamps and signatures. The promise was simple: make it to New York, and you can gain freedom from terror.
Our family, led by my great-uncle Max Berg, had settled in New York City after immigrating from Poland. On the eve of World War II, letters began arriving from people in Europe desperate to escape Hitler. They wrote because they shared his last name — Berg — hoping for a connection that might save them.
The author’s great-uncle, Max Berg, standing, third from right, was a Jewish immigrant from Poland, the third of seven children. He became a successful lawyer in New York and, on the eve of World War II, sponsored 49 families to enter the U.S. These individuals wrote to him because they shared a common last name, though it remains unclear whether they were actual relatives. Many of those he sponsored became judges, writers, and leaders in their respective fields.
Max never knew whether any of the 49 families were actually relatives, but he sponsored them all, buying their passage and covering their first month’s rent so they could begin new lives.
The differences matter, of course. Hitler engineered annihilation; today’s migrants are not facing that. But the moral test feels painfully familiar.
When government policy makes ordinary life like work, school, or a doctor’s visit unsafe for families who pose no threat, do we widen the circle of protection or narrow it? In the 1930s, too many Germans hid behind drawn curtains rather than opening their doors.
As residents of Philadelphia and other American cities steel themselves for the possible deployment of immigration agents, Chicago offers a bleak preview of this chilling and shameful moment in our nation’s history.
My hometown has faced an onslaught of immigration enforcement as part of Operation Midway Blitz. Chicago has responded to the crisis by widening its circle of protection. Our neighbors are already organizing.
Yori, who loves to draw, illustrates her spelling lessons.
Rapid-response networks canvass homes and storefronts, sharing “know your rights” cards and training witnesses to safely document encounters with ICE — even here in the affluent North Shore, where there are few immigrant residents but many immigrant workers.
We also hold peaceful protests, which include clergy and citizens from across Illinois, to exercise our right of free speech.
An ICE agent watches protesters as a Lenco BearCat vehicle drives to the scene in the Brighton Park neighborhood of Chicago, on Saturday, Oct. 4, 2025, after protesters learned that U.S. Border Patrol shot a woman Saturday morning on Chicago’s Southwest Side.Protesters stand and chant in the Brighton Park neighborhood of Chicago earlier this month, after protesters learned that U.S. Border Patrol agents shot a woman hours earlier on the city’s Southwest Side.
And we record encounters whenever possible. In some instances, Chicagoans have faced down multiple ICE agents wielding weapons during an attempted arrest. In one such incident, aman, once pinned to the ground, was released because bystanders gathered to document and demand accountability.
However, ICE agents are using aggressive tactics, often crossing the line into violence directed at protesters and people who document their activities.
On Sept. 19, federal agents, who appearedlike snipers perched on a rooftop at the Broadview Detention Center, shot a local pastor in the head with a pepper ball and then teargassed him.
A federal agent throws a tear gas canister toward protesters in Chicago earlier this month.
In recent footage, rows of agents in tactical gear surround protesters and push their faces into the pavement. On Oct. 10, a producer with a local television news program was thrown to the ground, handcuffed, and detained without cause.
These are not “isolated incidents,” but rather tactics intended to intimidate and provoke. Chicago feels combustible — one itchy trigger finger from our own Kent State massacre.
The real suffering isn’t confined to the protesters, of course, but to the detainees inside Broadview’s walls. In Lake County, Ill., immigration attorney Kimberly Weiss described the case of her client, Juan —who, like all the immigrants included in this commentary, was willing to be included in this essay only if his surname was withheld. (Likewise, some of the native-born U.S. citizens I interviewed agreed to participate only if their surnames were withheld, for fear of retribution.)
Juan isa widowed father of four U.S.-born children, ages 12 to 20,detained by ICE outside his home. “His children contacted me terrified,” Weiss said.
That same night, she filed emergency motions to stop his deportation and request bond, with a hearing set for the next morning. “It would have been a strong case,” she said. “He entered legally, held valid documents, like a work permit, Social Security number, and driver’s license. He’s a union roofer, a widower caring for his U.S. citizen children. He qualified for lawful status under a widower petition.”
But before the hearing could take place, Juan was gone. Weiss said her client described Broadview Detention Center as so inhumane that he couldn’t endure another night. Detainees had no access to water. The air was so thick and suffocating that Juan witnessed others gasping for breath.
Officers threatened Juan into signing his deportation papers, using an ICE agent as a “translator” to deceive him. Without his glasses and terrified, he finally signed. By the next afternoon, Juan was across the border.
“There’s no accountability for what happens inside Broadview,” Weiss said. “It’s overcrowded, filthy, and cruel. There is no oversight, even when the conditions amount to torture.”
Stories like these ripple far beyond detention centers. Dread doesn’t stop at the gates of Broadview. Anxiety seeps into neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools, touching even those who are U.S. citizens.
During a recent nighttime raid in a South Shore neighborhood, Blackhawk helicopters dropped armed federal agents on top of an apartment building, as dozens of masked ICE agents arrived in trucks.
Hundreds of agents moved through the building, kicking in doors, setting off flash-bang grenades, and rounding up residentsas they slept. Children were separated from parents, zip-tied, and held in vans for hours.
Imagine being a child, awakened in the middle of a peaceful slumber, snatched from your parents, and restrained. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security proudly boasts about the raid, but dozens of those arrestedwere U.S. citizens.
We’ve now reached the point where friends of mine, Indian American physicians named Shila and Ravi, make sure they and their 14-year-old daughter always leave the house with their driver’s licenses and U.S. passports, in case they are stopped by ICE.
“Show me your papers” is a demand one might expect from the Gestapo, Hitler’s secret police, but as Americans, we do not expect this, and should never accept it.
“Being a brown-skinned woman in America means constantly proving my right to belong,”Shila told me recently. “My citizenship and contributions never seem enough to erase the question — ‘Where are you from?’ — that marks me as foreign. I’ve learned to live with this othering, but seeing my child inherit it breaks my heart.”
“What was once an occasional ‘Go back home’ has become a deeper threat: ‘I’ll make sure you get home,’” she added. “But where is home when this is the only one we’ve ever known? Nothing can shield us from the fear that belonging can be questioned or revoked at any moment.”
When ICE occupied Los Angeles and the National Guard was deployed, José and I exchanged texts so that I could better understand his asylum case.
José then called me at the end of August. I could feel his embarrassment reaching through my phone, but he asked: Could he and his family move in with us? He’d heard about the planned ICE buildup and wondered whether his family would be safe in the predominantly Latino neighborhood where they were living.
I declined. I thought of families in Europe who hid neighbors in attics and back rooms, and felt the weight of closing my door to him. My daughters were still home from college, and there wasn’t space for anyone else. I also wanted time with my girls before they left.
And truthfully, I wasn’t sure José and his family would be any safer in my predominantly white suburb. I suspected my next-door neighbors were Trump supporters, and worried they would report him.
One of the text messages between José and the author, before José’s deportation. His last name has been obscured by The Inquirer.
Still, I told myself that by mid-September, when the girls returned to school, I would offer them refuge.
But when I finally texted him, it was too late. He had already disappeared.
When Juliana and Yori finally arrived at Penn Station, they carried two small suitcases with everything they could fit. They left behind their clothes, furniture, toys, traces of a life they built from nothing.
With the help of an acquaintance, they found a family shelter in New York City, a place that feels more like exile than arrival. The noisy streets outside, thick with strangers and sirens, overwhelm them. Yori cries every day; she misses her father. Juliana leaves the room only to buy food. She had hoped to find work, but even mastering the city’s subway system seems like an impossible task.
She once dreamed her daughter would breathe freely, run in the open air, play on a jungle gym. Instead, they live in a small room where safety feels borrowed.
Yori playing in the park in Chicago before her father was deported.
Watching Juliana and Yori struggle to rebuild their lives, I realize that what failed them wasn’t only my courage, but our collective conscience. The duty to offer refuge doesn’t belong to governments alone; it begins in the smallest places — on our streets, in our homes, within ourselves. Compassion is not a policy, but a choice, a door we decide to open or keep closed. The question is no longer who will offer them refuge, but who we become when we hide behind our curtains.
I still replay that call, wondering whether borders are drawn only on maps, or instead, inside of us.
Jennifer Obel is a founding member of the New Trier Rapid Response Team and coleader of Sukkat Shalom’s immigration task force.
We refuse to be enemies. We refuse to hate each other. We are two mothers, one Jewish American and one Palestinian American, who have found in each other a friend with whom to cry, to dream, to learn, to laugh, to heal, and to grow.
Going against the grain of deep-seated conditioning requires vulnerability, an essential and universal human quality. Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable shatters the conception that another person is “enemy,” and opens us to seeing the other’s fears, insecurities, wounds, hopes, and needs.
We first met in May 2024 while planning a women’s peace vigil at City Hall sponsored by Sisters Waging Peace, a Philadelphia chapter of the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom that brings together Jewish and Muslim women. The seed of friendship we have planted and watered with tears has taken root. We are actively creating a new “us” — one conversation, one peace vigil, one moment of understanding at a time.
Now that there is a ceasefire in Gaza, we can breathe for a moment, but we cannot rest. A ceasefire halts the bombs, but does not end the underlying structure of injustice. The work to end the occupation must continue with even greater intensity. We must remember that the status quo was not peace, and going back to it would bring us back to the cycle of destruction and loss.
Sisters Waging Peace, the Philadelphia chapter of American Friends of Combatants for Peace, and others will next bear public witness on Oct. 27, at City Hall from 4 to 5 p.m. Please come join us, wearing white, to pray for a just peace in Palestine and Israel, to bring a spirit of peace to our city, and to honor our humanity.
Pennsylvania’s diversity has always been one of our commonwealth’s greatest strengths, but it has also frequently played a prominent role during political disputes. Whether the divide is rural vs. urban, wealthy vs. struggling communities, or along racial and ethnic differences, these fault lines become flashpoints when difficult decisions must be made.
During budget negotiations, as Philadelphia’s transit system faced devastating service cuts, Republican Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman of Indiana County spoke on the Senate floor about his rural Western Pennsylvania upbringing, quoting John Mellencamp’s “Small Town” before stating: “Human nature suggests, why should I do anything to help? I don’t ever get any help for my region. Why should I do anything to help the southeast part of the state?”
This framing of regional interests in opposition to one another is nothing new to our statehouse. The tension runs deep and cuts both ways: a Democratic legislator responded by proposing to split state tax revenue by region, noting Philadelphia generates more revenue than it receives and subsidizes public services in counties that can’t afford them.
The best antidote to division in our politics is common understanding, and that’s precisely why the statewide reporting of Spotlight PA is so important.
As an independent, nonprofit newsroom, Spotlight PA seeks to better connect communities with what’s happening (or not) in Harrisburg, and to better connect communities to one another. The newsroom shares all its stories at no cost with more than 125 partner news outlets across the state dedicated to informing their local communities, including The Inquirer.
The less we understand about life across Pennsylvania — people’s challenges, economic conditions, and their daily realities — the more susceptible we all become to politics that emphasize our differences rather than our shared interests.
Finding common ground requires first understanding the ground others stand on — and that’s impossible without quality local news coverage from throughout the state.
Christopher Baxter, CEO and president, Spotlight PA
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.
A few years ago, he was driving with his then-11-year-old daughter when she asked where roads came from.
“The government,” Gibbons responded.
“What’s the government?” his daughter asked.
That led to a longer explanation and eventual father-daughter trip to a Gloucester Township meeting so she could see the government in, ah, action. Having covered many local government meetings and school boards long ago, I can attest that Gibbons went beyond any parental or civic duty.
Gibbons continued to attend the meetings when a proposal to dissolve the Municipal Utilities Authority (MUA) caught his attention. He feared the township was planning to sell the water and sewer system.
But during sworn oral testimony in a May 2023 teleconference, an attorney representing the township said there was no expectation the utilities would be sold within the next five years. Mayor David Mayer agreed.
Yet, a year later, the township council voted to sell the sewer system to the highest bidder.
“They lied to us,” Gibbons said.
The township received two bids from large for-profit water companies: Aqua offered $52 million, and New Jersey American Water bid a whopping $143 million, plus a promise to make an additional $90 million in capital improvements to a system that only needed an estimated $25 million in repairs.
Something didn’t smell right. Even for a sewer system.
Keith Gibbons (middle) joined Ira Eckstein and Denise Coyne at a rally opposing a plan to sell a South Jersey sewer and water utility in October 2024.
Coincidentally, Mayor Mayer worked for American Water. In addition to his job as director of government affairs at the water company, his mayoral salary is $52,000.
To guard against any conflict of interest, Mayer recused himself from any discussion regarding the sewer sale.
Even still, American Water’s lucrative offer raised eyebrows. But generous bids are part of the for-profit playbook. Aqua offered Bucks County $1.1 billion for its sewer system, but the commissioners backed away after fierce public opposition.
For-profit water companies have been throwing big money at small towns in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and beyond in an effort to scale up. The utility systems may not seem sexy, but they are mini monopolies that generate steady cash flow.
In Pennsylvania, a 2016 change in the law essentially opened the door for local utilities to be sold at higher prices. Local politicians are often happy to get the utility systems off the books and use the windfall to fund other projects or avoid tax increases.
But often left out of the negotiations are the ratepayers.
After the sales go through, the for-profit companies often jack up the rates. In some towns, after a brief rate freeze, the water bills have increased by 100%.
Rates have also increased at government-owned utility companies, but not by nearly as much. For example, Philadelphia recently increased water rates by 9%.
As utility bills grow, residents have nowhere to turn. Aging infrastructure, climate change, and increased demand, including to cool computer data centers, are expected to further drive up water prices in the years to come.
From left: Denise Coyne, Nancy Kelly Gentile, Gloucester Township independent mayoral candidate Keith Gibbons, and Ira Eckstein canvass supporters in Clementon, N.J., in September.
For-profit companies say they offer professional management and resources to make long-deferred upgrades, as well as the ability to purchase materials in bulk and spread the risk across systems as they grow.
Mayer said in an interview that the sewer sale would have enabled Gloucester to reduce property taxes, eliminate its debt, and make other improvements.
But critics argue that handing control to for-profit companies seeking quick returns on investments is shortsighted and results in higher costs to consumers. After all, water and sewer utilities are supposed to be a long-term public good, not a profit center.
To its credit, Gloucester Township scheduled a referendum last November to let residents vote on whether to sell the sewer system or not. A public vote should be a requirement, but most towns avoid referendums because the last thing they want is for taxpayers to have a say in the utility system they own.
The referendum gave Gibbons time to mount a grassroots campaign against the sale. He knocked on doors, handed out yard signs, and used a podcast to raise awareness.
But Gibbons seemed overmatched. His group spent roughly $3,000 opposing the sale, while New Jersey American Water spent about $1 million.
Yet, David beat Goliath in a landslide. More than 80% voted against the sale.
Gibbons, 48, a Cinnaminson High grad, who ran a Christmas tree farm and worked for Live Nation but is now self-employed and serves on the school board, became somewhat of a local hero in a town of 66,000 residents.
Gloucester Township independent mayoral candidate Keith Gibbons holds promotional materials encouraging constituents to vote for him.
Residents soon urged him to run for mayor.
Gibbons, a former Republican, is running as an independent against Mayer, who has spent his life in South Jersey politics, working for former U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews in the 1990s before becoming chief of staff in the Camden County Clerk’s Office.
He also served as a New Jersey assemblyman before getting elected mayor in 2010. Mayer’s wife is a Camden County freeholder.
Mayer is part of the Democratic machine that has controlled South Jersey for decades, but has recently shown signs of losing its grip on power. In Gloucester Township, there are still twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans.
The election has turned nasty. There are allegations that the Democrats tried to recruit a “phantom candidate” to run as a Republican to siphon votes away from Gibbons.
Mayer said Gibbons has been on the school board for three years, and “I don’t know what he’s touting as his accomplishments.”
Other attempts to muddy Gibbons indicate that the Democratic establishment may be nervous.
Is it because Gibbons has a sophisticated field operation?
“I don’t even have a campaign manager,” he said.
Does Gibbons have deep-pocketed donors?
“I’ve spent about $5,000 on the election,” he said.
What’s his campaign message?
“I’m not a political person,” Gibbons said. “I just want to fix local problems.”
Can an outsider with no political experience win?
Gibbons believes voters are fed up with South Jersey’s entrenched political machine, in which jobs and contracts often go to cronies. He argues no one is looking out for taxpayers who are often too busy to get involved, or believe they can’t do anything to change the system.
But his efforts to block the sewer sale show that one person — and a motivated electorate — can make a difference.
Mayer counters that he is proud to be a Democrat, and that the party’s strength has benefited South Jersey. He pointed to a list of accomplishments as mayor, from creating community policing to adding open space, attracting new businesses, and opening an office for veterans, adding that no party boss tells him what to do.
For his part, Gibbons said he supports term limits and smart development. He plans to focus on fiscal responsibility and government transparency. If elected, he promised the water and sewer system would not get sold to a for-profit company whose main mission is to maximize shareholder value.
“I don’t claim to know everything, but I do know enough,” Gibbons said.
Now there’s a campaign slogan for an accidental candidate.
The most important election facing Pennsylvania voters on Nov. 4 involves whether to retain state Supreme Court Justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht.
While voters should vote yes to retain the three justices, there are some lower court judges who do not deserve another term.
Millions of dollars have been spent on the Supreme Court race, which will impact residents in cities and towns across the commonwealth. In recent years, the state Supreme Court has ruled on a variety of high-profile issues, including elections, redistricting, reproductive health, and education.
Going forward, the court is likely to continue to confront many of the same hot-button issues — especially if Republicans gain control of the state House, the governor’s mansion, or replace the three well-qualified justices on the high court with extreme partisans.
Voters need only look to Washington, D.C., to see the danger of a politicized, conservative majority on the bench, as the U.S. Supreme Court continues to ignore precedent and rubber-stamps Donald Trump’s abuses of the rule of law.
Republican control of the White House, Congress, and the U.S. Supreme Court has resulted in a rapid erosion of the system of checks and balances created by the founders.
In just a few short months, the GOP has deferred all power to Trump, who has shuttered the government, demolished part of the White House, sicced the U.S. Department of Justice on political enemies while pardoning cronies, celebrities, and insurrectionists, summarily killed alleged drug traffickers without any evidence, and deported people living in America without any legal due process.
He has forced out tens of thousands of career civil servants, imposed tariffs that have roiled the economy, slashed environmental, health, and worker safety regulations, appointed incompetent hacks throughout the government, pressured red state lawmakers to take steps to rig elections, and sent federal troops into cities for no legitimate reason — all while evading previous criminal indictments and embarking on dubious personal enrichment schemes.
Much of Trump’s unchecked power emanates from the ruling last year by the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court that effectively said presidents are above the law.
Voting rights activists gather outside the U.S. Supreme Court Building on Oct. 15 as the justices prepared to take up a major Republican-led challenge to the Voting Rights Act, the centerpiece legislation of the civil rights movement.
What does all of that have to do with the retention election of three Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices? Plenty.
The state is evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. Yet, the GOP controls the state Senate and all three row offices: attorney general, treasurer, and auditor general.
The Democrats have a narrow edge in the House, while Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, is up for reelection next year.
Essentially, Shapiro and the Supreme Court, which has a 5-2 Democratic majority, are the only bulwarks keeping Trump’s MAGA-fueled zealots from seizing total control of Pennsylvania.
If the GOP were to control the governor’s mansion and the high court, voting maps would get even more gerrymandered, voting rights, including mail-in balloting, would likely get curtailed, abortion rights would get dramatically rolled back, and pro-business groups — and polluters like gas drillers — would enjoy even less regulation. Funding for public education and transit would likely also be slashed.
Other inane red state laws could get enacted that attack science, limit teaching about race, or make it harder to get a divorce. More to the point, Pennsylvania doesn’t need a radicalized state Supreme Court like the Roberts Court, which has squandered its credibility.
Judicial retention voter material at a Republican candidate’s rally in Bucks County in September.
Donohue, Dougherty, and Wecht have demonstrated that they are fair, open-minded, and follow the law. They have restored respect to a high court that was plagued by scandals a decade ago.
But don’t just take this Editorial Board’s word for it.
The nonpartisan Pennsylvania Bar Association has a rigorous process for evaluating judges based on criteria like legal ability, integrity, and temperament. The process includes investigative panels that review the judge’s records, interview candidates, and gather input from attorneys.
After all that, both the Pennsylvania and Philadelphia Bar Associations recommended voting yes to retain Justices Donohue, Dougherty, and Wecht.
The Philadelphia Bar Association recommended voting no to retain five lower court judges. They are Common Pleas Judges Scott DiClaudio, Daine Grey, Frank Palumbo Jr., and Lyris F. Younge. The association also recommended not retaining Municipal Court Judge Jacquelyn Frazier-Lyde, the daughter of the late boxing champion Joe Frazier.
The association does not disclose the reasons for the recommendation, other than noting that three of the five judges did not participate in the review process, which includes surveying more than 500 lawyers to assess the judges for things like integrity, legal ability, temperament, and diligence.
Another 100 volunteer investigators interview the candidates, other judges, and lawyers, as well as scrutinize the judges’ written opinions, social media posts, and financial disclosures.
The Inquirer obtained the confidential surveys, which shed more light on how lawyers view the jurists. Inquirer reporter Samantha Melamed also reviewed opinions, interviewed some of the judges, and spent time in the courtroom.
It is not always easy for voters to be well-informed when it comes to selecting judges. But the intense focus (and misinformation) on the state Supreme Court election, combined with the nonpartisan work of the bar associations, other good government groups, and The Inquirer’s reporting, has framed the stakes.
Voters will now decide the fate of Pennsylvania’s courts — and of Pennsylvanians’ freedoms.
Perhaps we should start calling the Pentagon’s secretary of war “Baghdad Pete.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is trying to block the Pentagon press corps from using any information not explicitly authorized by his staff, even if it is unclassified. Shades of “Baghdad Bob,” the infamous Saddam Hussein mouthpiece who delivered the regime line daily to the international press when I was covering the 1991 Gulf War.
The Hegseth policy even requires an official to accompany accredited journalists visiting Pentagon areas where they were formerly allowed to walk freely. Reminds me of our assigned “minders” in Baghdad, whose job was to bar us from learning anything the regime didn’t want us to know.
Hats off to nearly all the Pentagon press corps — including conservative outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, the Washington Times, and the Daily Caller — who refused to forfeit their First Amendment rights by signing on to the new rules. They thereby lost their accreditation and their access to enter the building. Even more outrageous, they have been replaced with far-right outlets and slander-mongers known for promoting election denial, fake news, Russian propaganda, and deluded conspiracy theories.
Baghdad Pete is striving not only to stop accurate news coverage of the use or abuse of U.S. military operations. In his effort to tightly control Pentagon news, he has also decreed that Pentagon officials can’t interact with members of Congress without prior approval.
Much (though not all) of the news he is trying to hide is already self-evident, and so damaging to U.S. security that he won’t be able to plug future leaks.
Politico and the Washington Post have already published important details on President Donald Trump’s upcoming National Security Strategy, which will assign America’s top priority to “protecting” the U.S. homeland and the Western Hemisphere. This means making war on “the enemy within” in U.S. cities, as well as on immigration and drug cartels. As if those threats overshadow our fraught competition with China, and the very real threat from Russia.
The theatrical U.S. military attacks on alleged drug smugglers in small boats off Venezuela and in the Pacific off Colombia – which could easily be stopped by the U.S. Coast Guard – are clearly illegal.
But even more obvious, while this showy policy of killing a few unknown civilians at sea may be great for the White House video feed, it does nothing to combat America’s drug problem or drub the cartels.
U.S. citizens are dying in enormous numbers from fentanyl, which is neither produced in nor smuggled in from Venezuela or Colombia (most comes in via Mexico, made from Chinese precursors).
Indeed, Colombia has been one of Washington’s closest partners for decades in combating narcotics trafficking, and the U.S. strikes have infuriated Colombian President Gustavo Petro. Yet, Trump has now cut off all aid to Colombia and labeled Petro an “illegal drug leader.”
As for Venezuela, the Pentagon has assembled a force of 10,000 in the Caribbean off its coast for a supposed anti-terrorism mission, which many Latin American experts believe is really aimed at fomenting regime change in Caracas. Despite Trump’s dismal failure in his first term to oust Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, he is apparently trying again.
This upside-down set of priorities has reportedly upset top U.S. military officials.
It is hardly surprising, then, that Hegseth just announced that Adm. Alvin Holsey, a 37-year veteran, will quit his job as head of U.S. Southern Command — where he oversees all operations in Central and South America. (Could the fact that the highly qualified Holsey is African American have accelerated Baghdad Pete’s effort to get rid of him two years early?)
Thus, there is plenty of news for the now-banned Pentagon press to ferret out for the U.S. public, not just about why the armada was dispatched, but why Trump and Hegseth want to prioritize Latin America and drugs.
We know Trump has a thing about the Monroe Doctrine, the 1823 message to Congress by President James Monroe that warned off any other would-be colonizers from interfering in Latin America. Some wags now call it the “Donroe Doctrine.”
Trump has interpreted the doctrine to mean the United States’ sphere of influence should extend over Northern, Central and South America, while often seeming to concede Europe to Russia’s sphere of influence, and Asia to China’s.
In other words, a Big Man theory of politics expanding Monroe’s intended meaning, which presumes Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping can split up the world.
However, 2025 is not 1823, and a Donroe Doctrine doesn’t fit the world we live in. Some Latin American countries, such as Brazil, have become major forces in their own right. China, with its large-scale investments in Latin America, and helped by Trump’s tariff policies, is already an ever more powerful presence on the continent.
I see Trump’s Caribbean action as a distraction from his failures in handling China and Russia, as Putin and Xi run rings around him. It is far easier for Trump to carry out performative war off the South American coast — bang-bang on unknown boatmen about which he and Hegseth can chest thump — than to confront the real threats that endanger our country. (And he can still pretend he will tariff Xi into subservience when they meet in Seoul, South Korea, this week.)
Let me give just one example of how the boat bombs serve as a distraction. This week, they have obscured the president’s latest failure with his all-carrots approach to Putin, who stiffed him yet again on a ceasefire in Ukraine.
True, Trump has finally, after months of threats, imposed new sanctions on two big Russian oil producers. But if you read the text of the new sanctions, you will see he let Putin off the hook once more.
The new sanctions — which will not even take effect for four weeks — are levied against any U.S. firms or individuals who deal with Rosneft or Lukoil. But as the indefatigable Phillips P. O’Brien pointed out in his Substack, the U.S. does almost no business with either firm. And secondary sanctions against foreign individuals or companies who keep dealing with the named firms will not be automatically applied.
Indeed, the real issue is whether the president will try to squeeze China and India to halt their enormous purchases of Russian oil. Despite Trump’s claims, full Indian adherence isn’t likely, and forget about China.
And POTUS has already admitted he hopes the new sanctions will be short-lived.
If Trump had really wanted to pressure Putin, he would have sold Kyiv long-range Tomahawk missiles. But that would have been a hard choice, and might have disturbed some of his disciples.
Better to focus on Caribbean boom-boom and change U.S. security doctrine to fight a war against “enemies at home” and supposed threats from drug lords. And to prohibit the Pentagon press from interviewing disaffected military or civilians who would explain how this doctrine endangers the United States.
In his first term, Donald Trump appointed four judges to the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit — flipping the court’s ideological balance firmly to the right.
The 14-member court, which hears appeals from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, routinely handles disputes of national importance.
President Joe Biden had a chance to tip the balance back.
His nominee, Adeel Mangi, would have become the first Muslim American to serve on any federal appellate court. But facing bad-faith Republican attacks and tepid Democratic support, Mangi’s nomination was left to die on the Senate floor.
That failure, and Trump’s return to power, cleared the way for the rapid installation of two MAGA loyalists, Emil Bove and Jennifer Mascott, cementing an 8-6 conservative majority.
Less than a year into his second term, Trump has finished what he started in his first. His MAGA makeover of the Third Circuit is complete — and the people of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, and perhaps the country as a whole, will be living with its consequences for decades to come.
Emil Bove: The hatchet man
Trump’s first pick for the Third Circuit is also his most dangerous: Emil Bove.
Bove, the president’s former criminal defense attorney, lacks the culture war credentials required of nearly every other Trump judicial nominee. He never sued the Biden administration, or opposed same-sex marriage, or defended a state abortion ban. But he has one quality in spades: loyalty to Donald Trump.
Once installed in the U.S. Department of Justice, Bove wasted little time proving to Trump that he would do whatever it took to advance Trump’s agenda.
Donald Trump, flanked by attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove (right), at his criminal trial in Manhattan in 2024.
He fired the federal prosecutors and FBI agents who pursued cases against the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists. He clumsily sought to dismiss charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams to coerce him to aid Trump’s immigration crackdown. And, according to multiple credible whistleblower allegations, Bove told other DOJ lawyers that if courts tried to stop the administration’s deportations, they should tell “the courts ‘fuck you.’”
Now that Bove is on the Third Circuit — he was confirmed in July by a razor-thin 50-49 vote — he is moving with similar speed to show Trump he’s still on his side.
This week, in what appears to be Bove’s first vote as a circuit judge, he joined four other Trump appointees dissenting from the full court’s decision to deny the request of various Republican organizations to rehear the case holding Pennsylvania’s date requirement for mail-in ballots unconstitutional.
Of course, there never should have been a vacancy for Bove to fill.
Back in November 2023, President Biden nominated Mangi to the seat Bove now holds. Mangi had all the sterling credentials you’d expect from an appellate court nominee — degrees from Oxford and Harvard Law, and a long career at a white-shoe law firm.
But all Republicans could see was that he was Muslim, and they pulled out every Islamophobic trick in their very big book to disingenuously paint him as some antisemitic radical.
And what’s worse, some Senate Democrats fell for it, sinking Mangi’s nomination and handing this critical vacancy to Trump.
Jennifer Mascott: Am MAGA, will travel
Over the summer, Trump also nominated Catholic University law professor Jennifer Mascott to a second Third Circuit vacancy in Delaware.
Mascott’s résumé is dripping with connections to Trump and the MAGA legal movement. She clerked for then-D.C. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh (one of Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court) and Justice Clarence Thomas (one of Trump’s favorite justices).
Before joining Catholic Law last year, she taught at George Mason’s Antonin Scalia Law School, one of the most conservative in the country.
In the first Trump administration, she worked in Trump’s Justice Department and helped with Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s last-minute confirmation.
This time, she went to work directly for Trump as senior counselor to the president in the White House Counsel’s Office.
What Mascott lacks, however, is any genuine connection to Delaware.
She lives in Maryland and works in Washington, D.C. She is not admitted to the Delaware Bar, and she has little, if any, experience with Delaware’s sophisticated corporate law regime.
But Mascott admitted in her Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire that she made clear to Trump that she was willing to take any judgeship in which he “would be interested in having [her] serve,” historical tradition and judicial propriety be damned.
Even the timing of her confirmation reeks of political gamesmanship.
Mascott leapfrogged a half dozen other judicial nominees so she could join the Third Circuit in time to participate, and potentially cast the deciding vote, in a major Second Amendment case about New Jersey’s assault weapons ban.
With Bove and Mascott now seated, the Third Circuit may become the venue of choice for Trump’s allies looking to legitimize his most extreme policies, as right-wing litigants know they’ll find sympathetic ears in Philadelphia.
What was once a court known for its independence and moderation could soon become a proving ground for Trump’s legal movement — a place where loyalty trumps the law.
The only question left is how long it will take before the rest of the country starts feeling the consequences of the Third Circuit’s new MAGA majority.
John P. Collins Jr. is an associate professor at George Washington University Law School, where he researches and writes about federal judicial nominations.
