When Congress created the Commission of Fine Arts more than a century ago, its members were intended to be “well-qualified judges of the fine arts” who would review and advise on major design projects in the nation’s capital, lawmakers wrote. The initial slate of commissioners included Daniel Burnham and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., architects and urban planners who designed much of Washington.
Now, the 116-year-old commission is set to include its newest, youngest member: Chamberlain Harris, a 26-year-old White House aide and a longtime executive assistant for President Donald Trump, who is slated to be sworn in at the panel’s next public meeting on Thursday.
Trump’s selection of Harris — who was known as the “receptionist of the United States” during the president’s first term and has no notable arts expertise — comes amid the president’s push to install allies on the arts commission and another panel, the National Capital Planning Commission. Both commissions are reviewing Trump’s planned White House ballroom and are expected to review his other Washington-area construction projects, such as his desired 250-foot triumphal arch.
Trump has said he hopes to complete the projects as quickly as possible, despite complaints about their size, design, and potential impact on Washington. A historical preservation group has sued the administration over the ballroom project, saying that Trump should have consulted with the federal review panels before tearing down the White House’s East Wing annex and beginning construction on his planned 90,000-square-foot, $400 million ballroom.
A federal judge weighing whether to halt the ballroom project in December had instructed the White House to go through the commissions before beginning construction.
Asked about Harris’s qualifications to serve on the fine arts commission, the White House on Tuesday touted her as a “loyal, trusted, and highly respected adviser” to the president.
“She understands the President’s vision and appreciation of the arts like very few others, and brings a unique perspective that will serve the Commission well,” Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, said in a statement. “She will be a tremendous asset to the Commission of Fine Arts and continue to honorably serve our country well.”
Harris, who holds the title of deputy director of Oval Office operations, received a bachelor’s degree in political science in 2019 from the University at Albany, SUNY, with minors in communications and economics, according to an archived copy of her resumé on LinkedIn. She continued working for Trump as an executive assistant when he was out of office.
Harris was one of seven fine arts commissioners Trump appointed during a 19-day spree in January. The president had left the commission empty for months after firing all six members in October but raced to restock the panel ahead of the agency’s January meeting when the ballroom project was first added to the agenda.
Former fine arts commissioners said they could not recall a commissioner in the panel’s history with as little prior arts experience as Harris. Several former commissioners also noted that Trump has installed multiple appointees with minimal arts and urban planning expertise on both panels set to review his construction projects remaking Washington.
“It’s disastrous,” said Alex Krieger, an architect and professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, who was chosen for the commission in 2012 by President Barack Obama and served a second term in the first Trump administration. “Some of these people just have no qualifications to evaluate matters of design, architecture, or urban planning.”
Past commissioners have included Billie Tsien, an architect currently working on Obama’s library, and Perry Guillot, a landscape architect who redesigned the White House Rose Garden during Trump’s first term.
Witold Rybczynski, an architect who was chosen for the Commission of Fine Arts by President George W. Bush and served a second term under Obama, wrote in an email that President Joe Biden also reshaped the panel by firing Trump appointees before their terms had concluded. He also noted that past presidents installed some political appointees and lesser-known experts to the panel, too.
“The degree of expertise … has varied,” Rybczynski wrote in an email. He is the Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor Emeritus of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania.
The fine arts commission on Thursday is slated to review the latest ballroom designs and may vote to advance the project. The White House has said it hopes to win formal approval from both review panels by March and begin aboveground construction of the ballroom as early as April.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has issued new subpoenas in a Florida-based investigation into perceived adversaries of President Donald Trump and the U.S. government response to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
An initial wave of subpoenas in November asked recipients for documents related to the preparation of a U.S. intelligence community assessment that detailed a sweeping, multiprong effort by Moscow to help Trump defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
Though the first subpoenas requested documents from the months surrounding the January 2017 publication of the Obama administration intelligence assessment, the latest subpoenas seek any records from the years since then, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to the Associated Press to discuss a nonpublic demand from investigators.
The Justice Department declined to comment Tuesday.
The subpoenas reflect continued investigative activity in one of several criminal inquiries the Justice Department has undertaken into Trump’s political opponents. An array of former intelligence and law enforcement officials have received subpoenas in the investigation. Lawyers for former CIA Director John Brennan, who helped oversee the drafting of the assessment and who has been called “crooked as hell” by Trump, have said they have been informed he is a target but have not been told of any “legally justifiable basis for undertaking this investigation.”
The intelligence community assessment, published in the final days of the Obama administration, found that Russia had developed a “clear preference” for Trump in the 2016 election and that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an influence campaign with goals of undermining confidence in American democracy and harming Clinton’s chance for victory.
That conclusion, and a related investigation into whether the 2016 Trump campaign colluded with Russia to sway the outcome of the election, have long been among the Republican president’s chief grievances and he has vowed retribution against the government officials involved in the inquiries. Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted by the Trump administration Justice Department last year on false statement and obstruction charges, but the case was later dismissed.
Multiple government reports, including bipartisan congressional reviews and a criminal investigation by former special counsel Robert Mueller, have found that Russia interfered in Trump’s favor through a hack-and-leak operation of Democratic emails as well as a covert social media campaign aimed at sowing discord and swaying American public opinion. Mueller’s report found that the Trump campaign actively welcomed the Russian help, but it did not establish that Russian operatives and Trump or his associates conspired to tip the election in his favor.
The Trump administration has freshly scrutinized the intelligence community assessment in part because a classified version of it incorporated in its annex a summary of the “Steele dossier,” a compilation of Democratic-funded opposition research that was assembled by former British spy Christopher Steele and was later turned over to the FBI. That research into Trump’s potential links to Russia included uncorroborated rumors and salacious gossip, and Trump has long held up its weaknesses in an effort to discredit the entire Russia investigation.
A declassified CIA tradecraft review ordered by current Director John Ratcliffe and released last July faults Brennan’s oversight of the assessment.
The review does not challenge the conclusion of Russian election interference but chides Brennan for the fact that the classified version referenced the Steele dossier.
Brennan testified to Congress, and also wrote in his memoir, that he was opposed to citing the dossier in the intelligence assessment since neither its substance nor sources had been validated, and he has said the dossier did not inform the judgments of the assessment. He maintains the FBI pushed for its inclusion.
The new CIA review seeks to cast Brennan’s views in a different light, asserting that he “showed a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness” and brushed aside concerns over the dossier because he believed it conformed “with existing theories.” It quotes him, without context, as having stated in writing that “my bottom line is that I believe that the information warrants inclusion in the report.”
In a letter last December addressed to the chief judge of the Southern District of Florida, where the investigation is based, Brennan’s lawyers challenged the underpinnings of the investigation, questioning what basis prosecutors had for opening the inquiry in Florida and saying they had received no clarity from prosecutors about what potential crimes were even being investigated.
“While it is mystifying how the prosecutors could possibly believe there is any legally justifiable basis for undertaking this investigation, they have done nothing to explain that mystery,” the lawyers said.
New Jersey prosecutors are dropping racketeering charges against Democratic power broker George E. Norcross III, ending a high-profile case that law enforcement officials had framed as a reckoning on the state’s culture of corruption.
Acting Attorney General Jennifer Davenport, an appointee of Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill, will not appeal a January appellate court ruling that upheld a judge’s decision to dismiss charges against Norcross and five codefendants, the attorney general’s office said Tuesday.
Davenport could have asked the state Supreme Court to review the Appellate Division’s decision, but prosecutors concluded that their resources “would be best spent on other matters,” Sharon Lauchaire, a spokesperson for the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, said in a statement.
A three-judge panel said in a Jan. 30 decision that several of the racketeering conspiracy and extortion charges were time-barred under the statute of limitations. Other counts failed to state a crime, were untimely, or both, the panel said.
Norcross, 69, is a former longtime member of the Democratic National Committee, founder of insurance brokerage Conner Strong & Buckelew, and chair of Cooper University Health Care. He was accused of using threats of economic and reputational harm — and his purported control of Camden’s government — to obtain valuable property on Camden’s waterfront from a developer and a nonprofit.
His spokesperson on Tuesday portrayed the case against Norcross — announced in June 2024 by then-Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin — as a politicized abuse of the law similar to the Trump Justice Department’s targeting of perceived enemies.
“We always knew that Matt Platkin brought this case for reasons other than its legal merits — and now multiple judges and Platkin’s successor as AG agree the allegations simply weren’t true,” Norcross spokesperson Dan Fee said in a statement.
“The question now is whether Platkin’s supporters who cheered him on will take a serious look at what he did and whether other authorities will do the same,” he said. “We will certainly be making the case that he and anyone else who used lawfare against George should be held to account, no differently than Pam Bondi and her DOJ should.”
Platkin, who was appointed to the post by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, has denied pursuing the case for political reasons. He noted on Tuesday that the case “was presented to a grand jury by career prosecutors over several months.”
“Out of respect for the men and women who do brave work holding corruption to account, I won’t comment further — other than to say I remain proud to have supported their efforts at a time when trust in government is at an all-time low and I will never apologize for believing that everyone should be held to the same standards, no matter how powerful they may be,” Platkin said in a statement.
Notwithstanding the decision to drop charges, Lauchaire said the attorney general’s office “remains committed to prioritizing public corruption prosecutions in this time of deepening mistrust in government.”
“Wrongdoing by public officials undermines faith in our institutions, and the public rightfully demands and deserves that officials perform their duties with integrity and in accordance with the law,” she said. “We will never shy away from holding public officials accountable when they betray the public’s trust and behave unlawfully.”
The prosecution faced an earlier setback last February, when a Superior Court judge found that the charges were not timely and said that even if the allegations in the indictment were proven true, they amounted to hard bargaining in real estate deals and did not cross the line into unlawful threats.
Prosecutors appealed that ruling, arguing that the judge should review evidence presented to the grand jury before deciding whether the indictment was valid.
The appeals court affirmed the trial judge’s order, though the panel focused on the statute of limitations violations and largely sidestepped the question of whether the threats underpinning the indictment met the legal requirements for alleging conspiracy to commit extortion.
In addition to Norcross, prosecutors are dropping charges against his brother Philip Norcross, CEO of the law firm Parker McCay; attorney William Tambussi; former Camden Mayor Dana L. Redd; Sidney R. Brown, CEO of logistics firm NFI; and John J. O’Donnell, an executive at residential developer the Michaels Organization.
“We are pleased and gratified that this misguided, baseless prosecution has been finally laid to rest,” said Kevin H. Marino, a lawyer for Philip Norcross.
Henry Klingeman, an attorney for Redd, said his client “is relieved that this unjust and unnecessary ordeal is over.” The former mayor has “continued her unswerving commitment to bettering Camden,” Klingeman said.
Brown said he was “innocent of these baseless charges” and added that Tuesday’s decision showed “justice was carried out based on the facts.”
“Since its inception, this case was unfounded and attacked those of us who believed in the future of a thriving Camden,” the NFI CEO said in a statement.
Tambussi’s lawyers, Jeff Chiesa and Lee Vartan, said their client “engaged in the routine practice of law.” They said Platkin’s attempted prosecution “did damage to the profession” and “was rightly rejected by both courts.”
One night in early December, the phones of Radnor High School students started buzzing. Some freshmen girls were getting disturbing messages: A male classmate, they were told, had made pornographic videos of them.
When one of the girls walked into school the next morning, “she said everyone was staring at her,” said her mother, who requested anonymity to protect her daughter’s identity. “All the kids knew. It spread like wildfire.”
So-called AI deepfakes — pictures of a real person manipulated with artificial intelligence,sometimes with “nudify” features that can convert clothed photos into naked ones — have become the talk of school hallways and Snapchat conversations in some area schools.
As Pennsylvania lawmakers have pushed new restrictions cracking down on deepfakes — defining explicit images as child sexual abuse material, and advancing another measure that would require schools to immediately alert law enforcement about AI incidents — schools say they have no role in criminal investigations, and are limited in their ability to police students off campus.
But some parents say schools should be taking a more proactive stance to prepare for AI abuse — and are failing to protect victims when it happens, further harming students who have been violated by their peers.
In the Council Rock School District, where AI-generated deepfakes were reported last March, parents of targeted girls said administrators waited five days to contact the police about the allegations and never notified the community, even after two boys were charged with crimes.
“They denied everything and kind of shoved it under the rug and failed to acknowledge it,” said a mother in Council Rock, who also requested anonymity to protect her daughter’s identity. “Everybody thought it was a rumor,” rather than real damage done to girls, the mother said.
Council Rock spokesperson Andrea Mangoldsaid that the district “recognizes and understands the deep frustration and concern expressed by parents,” and that a police investigation “began promptly upon the district’s notification.”
Mangold said that current laws were “insufficient to fully prevent or deter these incidents,” and that the district was “limited in what we know and what we can legally share publicly” due to student privacy laws.
In Radnor, parents also said the district minimized the December incident. A district message last month said a student had created images of classmates that “move and dance,” and reported that police had not found evidence of “anything inappropriate” — even though police later saidthey had charged a student with harassment after an investigation into alleged sexualized images of multiple girls.
A Radnor spokesperson said the alleged images were never discovered and the district’s message was cowritten by Radnor police, who declined to comment.
The district “approaches all student-related matters with care and sensitivity for those involved,” said the spokesperson, Theji Brennan. She said the district was limited in what it could share about minors.
In both Radnor and Council Rock, parents said their daughters were offered little support — and were told that if they were uncomfortable, they could go to quiet rooms or leave classes early to avoid crossing paths with boys involved in the incidents.
“She just felt like no one believed her,” the Radnor mother said of her daughter.
How an investigation unfolded in Radnor
In Radnor, five freshman girls first heard they were victims of deepfakes on Dec. 2, according to parents of two of the victims who requested anonymity to protect their daughters’ identities. They said boys told their daughters that a male classmate had made videosdepicting them sexually.
In a Snapchat conversation that night, one boy said, “‘Nobody tell their parents,’” a mother of one of the victims recalled. Reading her daughter’s texts, “it quickly went from high school drama to ‘Wow, this is serious.’”
The girls and their parents never saw the videos. In an email to school officials the next morning, parents asked for an investigation, discipline for the students involved, and efforts to stop any sharing of videos. They also asked for support for their daughters.
Schooladministrators began interviewing students. The mother of one of the victims said her daughter was interviewed alone by the male assistant principal — an uncomfortable dynamic, given the subject matter, she said.
One mother said the principal told her daughter that it was the boys’ word against hers, and that he was “so glad nothing was shared” on social media — even though no one knew at that point where videos had been shared, the mother said.
The principal said the school had no authority over kids’ phones, so the girl and her family would need to call the police if they wanted phones searched, the mother said.
Brennan, the Radnor spokesperson, said that administrators contacted Radnor police and child welfare authorities the same day they spoke with families. “The district’s and the police department’s investigations have found no evidence that the images remain or were shared, posted, or otherwise circulated,” she said.
The male classmate acknowledged making videos of the girls dancing in thong bikinis, the parents said police told them. But the app he used was deleted from his phone, and the videos were not on it, the police told them.
The parents didn’t believe the admission.
“I don’t think a 14-year-boy would report a TikTok video of girls in bikinis,” said one of the mothers, who said her daughter was told she was naked and touching herself in videos.
The police told parents they did not subpoena the app or any social media companies, making it impossible to know what was created.
Radnor Police Chief Chris Flanagan declined to comment, as did the Delaware County District Attorney’s Office.
In a message sent to the district community Jan. 16 announcing the end of the police investigation, officials said a student, outside of school hours, had taken “publicly available” photos of other students and “used an app that animates images, making them appear to move and dance.”
“No evidence shared with law enforcement depicted anything inappropriate or any other related crime,” the message said.
A week later, the police released a statement saying a juvenile was charged with harassment after an investigation into “the possible use of AI to generate non-consensual sexualized imagery of numerous juveniles.”
Asked why the district’s statement had omitted the criminal charge or mention of sexualized imagery, Brennan said the statement was also signed by Flanagan, who declined to comment on the discrepancy.
Brennan said the district had provided ongoing support to students, including access to a counselor and social worker.
Parents said the district had erred in failing to initiate a Title IX sexual harassment investigation, instead telling parents they needed to file their own complaints.
“They kept saying, ‘This is off campus,’” the mother said. But “my daughter could not walk around without crying and feeling ashamed.”
Parents say girls were ‘not supported’ in Council Rock
In Council Rock, a girl came home from Newtown Middle School on March 17 and told her mother a classmate had created naked images of her.
“I’m like, ‘Excuse me? Nobody contacted me,’” said the mother, who requested anonymity to protect her daughter’s identity. She called the school’s principal, who she said told her: “‘Oh, my God, I meant to reach out to you. I have a list of parents, I just have not gotten to it’ — you know, really downplaying it.”
The mother and other victims’parents later learned that administrators were alerted to the images on March 14, when boys reported them to the principal. But instead of calling the police, the principal met with the accused boy and his father, according to parents. Police told parents they were contacted by the school five days later. The Newtown police did not respond to a request for comment.
Mangold, the Council Rock spokesperson, declined to comment on the specific timing of the school’s contact with police.
Police ultimately obtained images after issuing a subpoena to Snapchat; in total, there were 11 victims, the parents said.
Through the Snapchat data, police learned that a second boy was involved, the parents said, which made them question what was created and how far it spread.
Parents said they believe there are more pictures and videos than police saw, based on what their daughters were told — and because the delayed reporting to police could have given boys an opportunity to delete evidence.
“That’s kind of what the fear of our daughters is — like, what was actually out there?” said one mother, who also requested anonymity to protect her child’s identity.
Manuel Gamiz, a spokesperson for the Bucks County district attorney, said Newtown Township police had charged two juveniles with unlawful dissemination of sexually explicit material by a minor. Gamiz said the office could not provide further information because the case involved juveniles.
Juvenile cases are not public, but victims’ parents said both boys were adjudicated delinquent. While the boys had been attending Council Rock North High School with their daughters, the district agreed to transfer both after their cases were resolved, according to a lawyer representing four of the parents, Matthew Faranda-Diedrich.
“How can you let this person be roaming the halls?” said Faranda-Diedrich, who said it took formal demand letters in order for the district to transfer the boys.
He accused the district of mishandling the incident and “protecting the institution” rather than the victimized girls.
“They’re putting themselves above these students,” Faranda-Diedrich said.
Parents said school leaders warned their daughters against spreading rumors, and never sent a districtwide message about the incident.
“These girls were victims,” one of the mothers said, “and they were not supported.”
She and the other mothers who spoke to The Inquirer said the incident has deeply affected their daughters, from anxiety around what images may have been created — and how many people saw them — to a loss of trust in school leaders.
Some of the girls are considering switching schools, one mother said.
State law changes and a debate around education about deepfakes
Those changes came in 2024 and 2025, after a scandal over deepfakes of nearly 50 girls at a Lancaster private school.
Another bill that passed the state Senate unanimously in November would require school staff and other mandated reporters to report AI-generated explicit images of minors as child abuse — closing what prosecutors had cited as a loophole when they declined to bring charges against Lancaster Country Day School for failing to report AI images to the police. That legislation is now pending in the House.
Schools can also do more, said Faranda-Diedrich, who also represented parents of victims in the Lancaster Country Day School incident. He has pressed schools to conduct mandated reporter training for staff. “By and large they refuse,” he said.
In Radnor, parents urged the school board at last week’s committee meeting to make changes.
Parent Luciana Librandi walks back to her seat after speaking during a Radnor school board committee meeting last week.
Luciana Librandi, a parent of a freshman who said she had been “directly impacted by the misuse of generative AI,” called for timelines for contacting police following an AI incident, safeguards during student questioning, and annual education for students and parents on AI.
Others called for the district to communicate the criminal charge to families, to enforce existing policies against harassment, and to independently review its response to the recent incident.
Radnor officials said they are planning educational programming on the dangers of making AI images without a person’s consent.
There is somedebate on whether to teach children about “nudify” apps and their dangers, said Riana Pfefferkorn, policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, who has researched the prevalence of AI-generated child sexual abuse material. Alerting kids to the apps’ existence could cause them “to make a beeline for it,” Pfefferkorn said.
While “this isn’t something that is epidemic levels in schools just yet,” Pfefferkorn said, “is this a secret we can keep from children?”
One of the victims’ parents in Radnor said education on the topic is overdue.
“It’s clearly in school,” the mother said. “The fact there’s no video being shown on the big screen in your cafeteria — we don’t live in that world anymore.”
The city’s teachers union has significant concerns with the Philadelphia School District’s sweeping facilities plan, and it has taken them to a City Council committee.
Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr.’s $2.8 billion proposal “does not provide sufficient detail or data to inform binding decisions about school closures, co-location, re-purposing, or widespread impact and disruption that will be incurred,” Philadelphia Federation of Teachers president Arthur Steinberg wrote in a letter to Council’s education committee obtained by The Inquirer.
The appeal, sent late last week, comes as the district prepares for a Tuesday Council hearing on the school blueprint, which currently calls for 20 school closings, six colocations, and 159 modernization projects.
Council members are not the decision-makers — Philadelphia’s school board will ultimately vote on the plan sometime this winter — but as one of the district’s main funders, “you hold powerful levers that may be used to encourage the district to craft a more equitable [plan] that achieves our shared goals of improving student learning conditions and educators’ working conditions,” Steinberg wrote.
About 40% of the district’s nearly $2 billion budget comes from local revenue and city funding, which City Council and Mayor Cherelle L. Parker must approve in the annual city budget by the end of June.
What does the PFT letter say?
Before any decisions are made about what to do with the district’s buildings, the PFT wants system officials to do better by “showing their work and providing all data used to reach their determinations and recommendations for school improvement,” Steinberg wrote.
The teachers union also flagged compliance inconsistencies with the district’s own standards, implementation questions, and “substantial problems with data interpretation and application.”
The conclusions came after Jerry Roseman, the PFT’s longtime director of environmental science, scrutinized the plan. Roseman has decades of experience working with district officials on environmental issues.
The PFT and Roseman want access to all data. The district has released some details officials used to make their calls, but some remain opaque.
“How is the district ensuring that decisions regarding closing and receiving schools are based on comprehensive, up-to-date, and easily verifiable facility data (e.g., lead, asbestos, ventilation, overall condition)?” Steinberg wrote.
The PFT also wants to “definitively show that the facility condition of receiving schools is not, in fact, worse than the facilities thatare slated to close. If students are moving to a facility with worse current conditions, what will happen at the facility to improve it prior to students being moved there?”
District officials outlined some modernization and renovation plans ahead of Tuesday’s Council hearing, but some remain a mystery to the public. Watlington has promised all projects will be detailed before Feb. 26, when he’s scheduled to formally present the plan to the school board.
Don’t close schools or displace students based on incomplete data, PFT says
The school system’s own data contains some inconsistencies, Steinberg said — including some schools judged to be in “good” or “fair” building condition by the district’s metrics that have “severely inadequate” critical systems, such as roofing, windows, or electrical and plumbing systems.
And though the district said it could modernize all 85 school buildings currently in poor or unsatisfactory condition for $2.8 billion, the PFT questioned that price tag as overly optimistic. (City and district officials had previously put the system’s total deferred maintenance cost at $7 billion or more.)
“The cost to fully repair poor-inadequate buildings and systems could actually exceed $3.5 billion,” the PFT said.
The teachers union also highlighted the inequitable distribution of adverse conditions, noting that “Black and brown children and children from economically disadvantaged families are more vulnerable — to health risks, learning disruptions, and the long-term effects of instability and displacement.”
While the information the district has made public is “useful and has value as a ‘baseline,’ it is insufficient for its use in supporting the proposed conclusions, recommendations and other plan details released,” Steinberg said.
U.S. District Judge Cynthia M. Rufe issued a ruling Monday requiring the federal government to “restore the President’s House Site to its physical status as of January 21, 2026,” which is the day before the exhibits were removed.
The order does not give the government a deadline for the restoration of the site. It does require that the National Park Service take steps to maintain the site and ensure the safety of the exhibits, which memorialize the enslaved people who lived in George Washington’s Philadelphia home during his presidency. The exhibits were abruptly removed in January following months of scrutiny by the Trump administration.
Rufe, a George W. Bush appointee, compares the federal government’s argument that it can unilaterally control the exhibits in national parks to the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984, a novel about a dystopian totalitarian regime.
“As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984 now existed … this Court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims — to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts,” Rufe wrote. “It does not.”
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration filed a federal lawsuit against Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and acting National Park Service Director Jessica Bowron, and their respective agencies, the day the exhibits were dismantled. The complaint argued dismantling the exhibits was an “arbitrary and capricious” act that violated a 2006 cooperative agreement between the city and the federal government.
The federal government has the option to appeal the judge’s order. The Interior Department and National Park Service did not immediately comment on the ruling, which fell on Presidents’ Day, a federal holiday. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania declined to comment.
During a hearing last month, Rufe called the federal government’s argument that a president could unilaterally change the exhibits displayed in national parks “horrifying” and “dangerous.” She ordered the federal government to ensure the panels’ safekeeping after an inspection and a visit to the President’s House earlier this month.
Monday’s ruling follows an updated injunction request from the city that asked for the full restoration of the site — not merely that the exhibits be maintained safely — and a brief from the federal government arguing the National Park Service has discretion over the exhibits and that the city’s lawsuit should be dismissed on procedural grounds.
The federal government’s brief also argued there could be no irreparable harm from the removal of the exhibits because they are documented online and replacement panels would cost $20,000.
But the judge found the city is likely to prove its case that the removal was unlawful, and the panels should be restored while the litigation continues.
“If the President’s House is left dismembered throughout this dispute, so too is the history it recounts, and the City’s relationship to that history,” Rufe wrote.
The judge also found that the cooperative agreement between Philadelphia and the National Park Service remains in “full force,” even though the contract is technically expired.
Rufe’s memo named the nine enslaved Africans owned by Washington, and noted that two — Oney Judge and Hercules Posey — escaped. The removed displays recognize their struggles and the nation’s “progress away from the horrors of slavery,” the judge wrote.
“Each person who visits the President’s House and does not learn of the realities of founding-era slavery receives a false account of this country’s history,” the judge wrote.
The injunction does not resolve the underlying lawsuit, and is in effect for the duration of the litigation. In a January hearing, Rufe said she wouldn’t let the case drag into the summer, recognizing the 250th anniversary celebration being planned for Independence Mall.
Attorney Michael Coard, leader of the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, speaks with the news media Monday after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore the slavery exhibits that the National Park Service removed from the President’s House last month. The group was on the site for an annual gathering for a Presidents’ Day observance when they learned of the order.
Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, the main advocacy organization leading the fight to protect the President’s House, was less than an hour into its Presidents’ Day event at the site when leaders got wind of their victory.
The group’s leaders, excited and completely in shock, congregated behind the site’s Memorial Wall to soak in the news before announcing it.
Moments later, Michael Coard, an attorney and the coalition’s leader, emerged before the crowd of about 100 people and told them: “Thanks to you all, your presence and your activism, I have great news: We just won in federal court.”
The crowd erupted in cheers and chants of “When we fight, we win!” and “We have won!”
Coard told reporters there was “no other blessing that we could have gotten today.”
The coalition has led dozens of rallies and town halls meant to energize the public in opposing the Trump administration’s ongoing scrutiny of the President’s House. The Black-led advocacy group helped develop the site in the early 2000s before it opened in 2010.
Dana Carter, the group’s head organizer, said she was in disbelief when she heard about the ruling.
“After we figured out that it really was the truth, I am just moved. My heart is overflowing with love for the judge who made the ruling, as well as the people who have been with us since the beginning … and also the people who have joined us in this fight to restore the President’s House,” Carter said.
But the fight is not over, advocates said, with Coard expecting the Trump administration to appeal or ignore rulings.
“This is a lawless administration. The people are going to have to take over to force them to do the right thing,” Coard said.
The Trump administration’s attempt to alter the President’s House was part of a wider initiative to remove content from national parks that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living,” following an executive order from Trump. For instance, Park Service employees removed signage about the mistreatment of Native Americans from the Grand Canyon.
The fate of the President’s House exhibits was in limbo for months until they were removed by Park Service employees with wrenches and crowbars on Jan. 22. Meanwhile, advocacy groups and creatives behind the President’s House cultivated support for their cause to protect the site. Philadelphia City Council issued a resolution condemning the censorship of the exhibit.
“Judge Cynthia Rufe made it clear that historical truth cannot be dismantled or rewritten, and that the federal government does not have the authority to erase or alter facts simply because it has control over a national site. … We can not let President Donald Trump whitewash African-American history. Black history is American history,” City Council President Kenyatta Johnson said in a statement Monday.
Mijuel Johnson (left), a tour guide with The Black Journey: African-American Walking Tour of Philadelphia, leads Judge Cynthia Rufe (right) as she visits the President’s House in Independence National Historical Park on Feb. 2.
Attendees at Monday’s event were invigorated by the ruling.
Mijuel Johnson, a tour guide leader with the Black Journey who led Rufe through the site earlier this month, said he was “enjoying the moment for now” but then he would be back to work.
“This is a great win for this movement,” Johnson said.
CROAKER, Va. — George Washington’s chin is crumbling. His cheeks are streaked with sooty grime. His blackened nose is peeling, an apparent victim of frostbite and sunburn. Still, America’s first leader looks nicer than usual. In the winter months, wasps aren’t nesting in his eyes.
“Just beautiful,” observed Cesia Rodriguez, a 32-year-old massage therapist gazing up at the Founding Father — or what remained of him.
She’d pulled on rain boots, driven about an hour and trudged through the mud of what her tour guide called “an industrial dump” early Saturday with dozens of other tourists to see “The Presidents Heads,” a private collection of every ex-POTUS’s sculpted likeness from Washington to George W. Bush. They’re arranged in haphazard rows, with Andrew Jackson occupying a prime front spot simply because the owner likes his hair. The vibe is Stonehenge-meets-The Walking Dead.
Before they started sinking into the ground, the busts fashioned from concrete, plaster, and rebar — was that Styrofoam poking through some cranial holes? — stood abouttwice the height of a basketball hoop. They each weighed at least 5 tons. Time has not been kind. Chester A. Arthur’s entire jaw is missing. Ulysses S. Grant has lost a chunk of his right eyebrow. And Franklin D. Roosevelt was “scalped” in transit,the tour guide noted, by a Route 199 overpass.
These commanders in chief weren’t supposed to spoil. They were carved with patriotic love by a Texas sculptor who studied in Paris under a French modern master. They were the polished centerpieces of a $10 million parkthat in 2010 went bankrupt after six years. Not enough admirers wanted to see them back when they were pristine.
Now the wait list stretches into the hundreds. Demand didn’t spike, their owner said, until the heads were rotting. Not that their misfortune attracted haters. Quite the opposite.In the wreckage, guests said they could see their country and themselves with more tenderness than judgment. “That one’s me,” a 20-something chirped at jawless Arthur.
Rodriguez didn’t mull the symbolism when she learned about the spectacle on Facebook. Seeing spooky historical art, she figured, was a fun way to spend Presidents’ Day weekend. Up close, though, the oddities stirred something familiar.
She thought of the America she loved: her clients, who came from everywhere with stiff necks and bad backs. The nurses, teachers, soldiers, and everyone else on her massage table, resting up to go at it again.
“It’s the imperfections, for me,” she said.
The late sculptor, David Adickes, was an Army veteran who’d wanted his stony visages to gleam. On an early-aughts trip to Mount Rushmore, he’d contemplated the granite mugs of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln and thought: Why stop at four?
Adickes, who died last year at 98, hoped the 42 statues he chiseled at his Houston studio would land in the nation’s capital, he said on a 2022 podcast, but real estate was too costly. So in 2004, he and a business partner settled on a plot near Colonial Williamsburg, aiming to draw history buffs and stroller-pushing families. The Great Recession, overpriced tickets, and poor marketing dashed that vision.
After the busts went bust, a rental car company purchased Presidents Park and hired local builder Howard Hankins to help flatten it into a parking lot.
“I just couldn’t see crushin’ ’em,” Hankins recalled.
Instead, he loaded the abandoned dignitaries onto a fleet of flatbed trucks and escorted them (minus their pedestals) to his farm-slash-industrial dump. Storing them in a muddy field was meant to be temporary, he insisted. A presidential fanatic, Hankins envisioned building a new museum. But the 11-mile move alone cost him $50,000, he said. A decade and a half later, the idea exists only on drawings.
By 2019, Virginia photographer John Plashal caught wind of what was disintegrating on Hankins’ out-of-the-way acres. He pitched himself as a tour guide to the introverted contractor, and the two hatched a fresh back-road attraction. A few times per year, guests can pay $28.35 to marvel at what the website deems “neglect and decay.” As word spread on social media, Ozzy Osbourne stopped by. So did producers of a certain hit zombie series (though they filmed nothing on site). And the heads just kept deteriorating.
“Now they look like they’ve got leprosy,” Plashal told the Saturday crowd. “In the summer, they all have an active wasp nest in their eyeballs.”
Yet the place, he continued, has only grown more popular. Nearly 600 people showed up over the weekend, coming from as far as Germany and the Dominican Republic.
So what, he asked the group, is the rationale for rolling in now?
Up shot the arm of 10-year-old Evelyn Price.
“Because they are falling apart,” the Norfolk fourth-grader offered, “but, um, life is kind of like that.”
Mess is part of our heritage, her mother added, so wading through muck to engage with the past felt right.
“America is really, really good at getting things very, very wrong,” mused 41-year-old Treloar Price, a clinical psychologist, “and then working hard to try to fix it.”
The behemoth noggins reflected the transience of American power to Doug Tempest, a 46-year-old Navy veteran from Richmond.
Dictators overseas have clung to power for decades, but here, so far — though our current leader has riffed about a third term — no president has defied the Constitution or the will of voters to stay in the White House. Every four years, a new victor can shake things up, while the old Oval Office occupant’s influence tends to fade.
“One of the superpowers that our country has is we can change direction,” Tempest said.
For Caren Bueshi, a 62-year-old retired teacher from Naples, Fla., witnessing the sculptures sag into the dirt conjured what she feared the nation was losing. Constitutional literacy, for one. Recent reports of federal agents detaining immigrants with the right papers and clean criminal records disturbed her.
“We’re forgetting the foundation,” she said, wandering past Jackson’s splintering mane. “It’s a challenging time.”
“It always is,” interjected her mother, 91-year-old Pat Duke, clutching her arm. “From the beginning.”
Mom leaned right. Daughter leaned left. But they didn’t want to get into politics. The nonagenarian looked at the presidents and saw men. She saw mortality.
“My life is getting short now,” she said, “so I’m just enjoying it.”
A few heads over, Andrea Cote, a 44-year-old consultant, tried to turn the eerie scene into a history lesson for her 9-year-old daughter, June.
“This is Chester A. Arthur missing his jaw,” she said, pausing in front of the gaping mouth. The rebar inside looked like rusted braces without teeth.
“Scary,” June said.
“And Thomas Jefferson was the one who didn’t like to publicly speak,” Cote deadpanned.
Jokes aside, the derelict skulls touched her. So many families braved the chill that day, she noticed, for a glimpse at American history, no matter what shape it was in. They were interested. They cared. They were coming together.
So Cote smiled whena fellow tourist with a fancy camera approached.
“If you squat right here,” he told her kid, “you can get a picture of the sun coming right through his mouth.”
June grabbed her mom’s phone and aimed it just so.
One Republican candidate to succeed Sen. Mitch McConnell introduced himself with an ad that shows a cardboard cutout of the longtime Senate majority leader in the trash.
Allies for a rival hit back with ads that noted the first candidate gave McConnell money.
And Daniel Cameron, the former Kentucky attorney general once considered a McConnell protégé, is now keeping his distance.
“I’m my own man,” Cameron said in an interview, later suggesting McConnell donors prefer one of his opponents.
The Senate primary to replace 83-year-old McConnell shows how profoundly the GOP base in his home state has soured on one of the most powerful and significant political figures in Kentucky history. McConnell drew low approval ratings for years but fended off challengers by flexing his raw clout and ability to deliver for his state.
While he at times expressed frustration or anger with President Donald Trump, McConnell used his political muscle to cement much of the president’s first-term legacy, including a 6-3 conservativemajority on the Supreme Court that has helped pave the way for an even more disruptive second term.
But many in the MAGA movement still view him as the embodiment of the GOP establishment that sought to holdTrump back.Three former interns for McConnell have distanced themselves while running to succeed him, pitching themselves as “America First” Republicans in Trump’s mold.
Cameron says voters don’t want a candidate who is “just bashing an old man” — a rebuke of his opponent Nate Morris, a businessman backed by national MAGA stars whose vociferous attacks on McConnell have alienated some Republicans in the state. Many operatives argued his initial assault went too far.
Still, it’s clear that ambitious Republicans have diverged from the towering conservative figure, who is set to retire next year after four decades in Congress.
“This is a fight for the future of the Republican Party … Donald Trump’s Republican Party,” said Morris, a friend of Vice President JD Vance, in an interview. “And certainly, if you’re with Mitch McConnell, you’re not part of that future.”
Terry Carmack, McConnell’s chief of staff, said the senator has secured more than $65 billion in extra federal funding for Kentucky over his career — for military bases, hospitals, law enforcement and more — and added that the state “deserves a Senator who will fill those shoes.”
“As Kentucky’s longest-serving Senator and the nation’s longest-serving Senate leader, Senator McConnell’s job stayed the same: ensuring Kentucky always punched above its weight,” Carmack said in a statement.
The primary is effectively a three-way race between Morris, Cameron and Rep. Andy Barr, who touts that he was the Kentucky chairman of Trump’s 2024 campaign. Whoever wins the May 19 GOP contest is likely to represent the solidly red state.
The fact that all three have ties to McConnell reflects how much in Kentucky GOP politics traces back to the senator. The state Republican Party headquarters bears his name, and he has helped many other GOP officeholders over the years.
“I challenge anybody who takes this seat to do what he’s done,” said Frank Amaro, the GOP vice chair for Kentucky’s 1st Congressional District.
The campaign jabs at McConnell have been frustrating to many who have worked with him over the years and say he deserves respect, pointing to his hardball tactics that pushed the courts nationwide to the right and the money he has steered toward Kentucky. The state got nearly $2.6 billion in extra federal funding this fiscal year, according to McConnell’s office.
“You don’t have to like someone for them to be your go-to to deliver results,” said Iris Wilbur Glick, a former political director for McConnell who called candidates’ positioning on the senator “very disappointing.”
But many Republicans are critical — especially of his relationship with Trump. Trump has repeatedly attacked him. McConnell held Trump “practically and morally responsible” for themob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, though his vote against impeachment helped enable Trump’s comeback.
After Trump won in 2024 and McConnell stepped down as majority leader, he opposed some of Trump’s most controversial Cabinet picks — casting the only GOP vote against Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of health and human services.
A December Economist-YouGov poll found that 21 percent of Republicans nationally had a favorable view of McConnell, while 55 percent had an unfavorable view. In interviews, Kentucky voters often knew little about the Senate race or the candidates — but knew they didn’t like McConnell.
“I want him out of there,” said Julie Jackson, a 56-year-old Republican.
Cameron, who once worked as McConnell’s legal counsel and rose in politics with his mentorship, launched his Senate campaign last year with an attempt to separate himself. Days after announcing, he put out a video rebuking McConnell for opposing Trump’s Cabinet picks.
“What we saw from Mitch McConnell in voting against Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard and RFK was just flat-out wrong,” Cameron said in the video. “You should expect a senator from Kentucky to vote for those nominees to advance the America First agenda.”
A year later, one of Cameron’s biggest challenges is raising money — a struggle some Republicans in the state attribute in part to his break with McConnell.
“Daniel Cameron relied heavily on his connections to McConnell-world in his previous races for fundraising, and that’s simply not an avenue that’s available to him for this race, and it shows in his fundraising reports,” said Tres Watson, a Republican strategist in Kentucky.
Cameron notes that some McConnell donors have backed Barr — who leads the pack on fundraising. Attack ads on Barr from a group affiliated with the conservative Club for Growth featured old footage of Barr calling McConnell a “mentor.”
Barr has kept his distance from McConnell, too, however, tying himself to Trump.
“Thank you for giving me a chance to work with this president to make America great again,” he said to close his speech at recent GOP dinner. His team declined an interview request.
Trump has stayed out of the Senate race and often avoids weighing in on primaries absent a personal grudge or clear polling leader. But prominent Trump allies have lined up behind Morris, the businessman and friend of Vance. Morris said the vice president called him last year encouraging him to jump into the Senate race, saying that “we’re going to need somebody in that seat that’s not going to stab our president in the back.”Vance allies work on Morris’s campaign and a supportive super PAC.
Charlie Kirk, the late conservative activist, endorsed Morris before he was killed in September. Morris “is not going to be beholden to the McConnell machine,” said Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for Kirk’s group Turning Point, who called McConnell a “relic.”
Elon Musk, the billionaire tech CEO who has become a major force in GOP politics, rocked the primary by putting $10 million behind Morris this year after a meeting where he came away impressed in part by Morris’s anti-McConnell message, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
“[McConnell] has had a stranglehold on Kentucky for 40 years, and it is not the easiest thing to challenge the McConnell mafia right here in the Bluegrass State,” Morris said last month on the podcast of Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. — where he also launched his campaign. “But we’ve done it and we’ve gone straight for the jugular of Mitch and his cronies.”
The message hasn’t always gone over well. Morris was roundly booed last year at an annual Kentucky political picnic where the former garbage company CEO declared he would “trash Mitch McConnell’s legacy.”
“A lot has changed in politics, but you still have to introduce yourself, and he started out just attacking people,” said Adam Koenig, a former GOP state lawmaker.
Morris dialed back his attacks at a recent event in northern Kentucky, mentioning McConnell only in passing. But he made his antipathy clear.
“We cannot go back to what we’ve had the last 40 years,” he said.
This year’s celebration of African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas’ founder, the Rev. Absalom Jones, was intrinsically political.
Parishioners on Sunday overwhelmed the pews at the Overbrook Farms church for the annual event honoring Jones, the first Black ordained Episcopal priest. But this year’s service took on new meaning after Jones’ legacy was stripped from the President’s House historical site on Independence Mall, the church’s rector said.
Last month, the National Park Service dismantled the exhibit memorializing the lives of nine people enslaved at the nation’s first presidential mansion. The illustrative displays chronicled the Atlantic slave trade and President George Washington’s dogged support for the institution. They also elevated early influential Black Philadelphians, like Jones and contemporary Richard Allen. The site was a casualty of President Donald Trump’s push to remove all content that “inappropriately disparages Americans past or living” from federal land — what many have called an attempt to sanitize history by omitting the brutality of slavery from the narrative.
But Curry’s prevailing message was clear: Fight through the vicissitudes. Curry, former presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church, is the first African American presiding bishop in the country.
“If you want to taste freedom, if you want America to be just again,” Curry said, “if you want an America where every person is a child of God, where there is freedom and justice — not just for some — but for all … don’t you quit. Keep going, keep going.”
Curry later added: “If we love America, change America.”
The late afternoon service also featured young singers from Minnesota, faith leaders from other prominent Philadelphia institutions, and descents of the Rev. Allen.
The Rt. Rev. Michael B. Curry (center) walks into the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas before providing the sermon in the celebration of the life and ministry of the Rev. Absalom Jones on Sunday.
Jones and Allen, former slaves who became lay preachers in the 18th century and together created the benevolent Free African Society, were forced out of St. George’s Methodist Church general congregation and forced to worship in segregated pews. Jones went on to form St. Thomas, while Allen built Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church.
The men’s names and history were invoked throughout the President’s House Site. A panel titled “How Did Enslaved People Become Free?” discussed Jones’ and Allen’s experience at St. George’s, their respective parishes, and how they organized against slavery.
The erasure of the site — which captured the somber paradox of a young America that exalted freedom for some but deprived others — comes ahead of the country’s Semiquincentennial celebrations putting Philadelphia in the national spotlight.
“It brings a totally different emphasis and focus on the celebration this year at the church,” the Rev. Martini Shaw, St. Thomas’ rector, told Episcopal News Service. “But while some want to erase history, we in the church are prepared to celebrate history.”
Amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration and deployment of federal officers to cities across the country, students at Philadelphia-area colleges are protesting against the appearance of U.S. Customs and Border Protection at campus career fairs.
At least four local universities — Thomas Jefferson, Villanova, Temple, and Rowan — have faced opposition to allowing recruitment in recent months.
A petition circulated at Jefferson last week sought to keep CBP from appearing at a campus career event. CBP and ICE — both agencies that enforce immigration laws under the Department of Homeland Security — have been at the center of a national debate after two Minneapolis residents were killed by federal immigration enforcement agents in shootings now under investigation.
“Due to the harm CBP has caused to communities across the nation, it is abhorrent for TJU to accept CBP at their institution,” said anoccupational therapy student who signed the petition and asked that her name be withheld, fearing retribution. “I don’t think any institution should be encouraging students to get involved in these kinds of agencies, given the current climate.”
But the petition has since come down, the student said, and CBP is not on the list of employers due to appear at the event, called the 2026 Career Day and Design Expo, on Thursday at the East Falls campus. Jefferson has not acknowledged that CBP was on the list initially or responded to questions on whether it was removed.
CBP, which has offices in Philadelphia, has appeared at campus career events in the area in the past.
An email seeking comment from CBP’s media office was not returned.
At Rowan University in New Jersey earlier this month, the participation of CBP’s Trade Regulatory Audit Philadelphia Field Office in a career fair drew some student protest. Members of a student activist group distributed fliers speaking out against CBP during the fair, according to Rowan’s student newspaper, the Whit, and campus police and administration officials came to the scene.
The agency also reserved a table and came to afall event at Rowan to share information about accounting-related auditing internships, said Rowan spokesperson Joe Cardona,and has done so at the public university for the last decade.
Rowan’s Rohrer College of Business Center for Professional Development hosts more than 200 employers each year, including local, state, and federal agencies as well as private-sector groups, he said.
“The presence of any employer on campus does not constitute institutional endorsement of that organization’s policies or actions,” Cardona said. “Rather, it reflects our commitment to supporting student career exploration while upholding principles of open access and free expression.”
At Villanova, CBP pulled out of a career fair it had planned to attend earlier this month, according to the Villanovan, the student newspaper. The withdrawal followed criticism on social media about the organization’s planned appearance.
The organizer of an Instagram account that opposed the agency’s participation said they wished that Villanova had made the decision to disallow the group rather than the group withdrawing, according to the student newspaper.
“I think a lot of students will feel a lot safer and more comfortable attending this Career Fair,” the organizer said. “But it doesn’t take away the anger that this was ever something that was gonna happen.”
Villanova said in a statement that CBP‘sOffice of Trade had participated in prior career events and that employers with prior participation were contacted “through standard outreach” about this year’s event.
Temple’s law school last semester had planned to host a “Coffee and Careers” networking event with a DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement lawyer but later canceled it, according to the Temple News, the student newspaper. The event was replaced with a talk on public interest law by Philadelphia City Councilmember Rue Landau.
DHS “chose to engage directly with students interested in DHS opportunities rather than participate in a scheduled career event,” Temple spokesperson Steve Orbanek said.
He also noted that “career fairs are university-sponsored events, and actions that disrupt these events may violate university policy and established on-campus demonstration guidelines.”
