PARIS — France sizzled Sunday, canceling trains, concerts, and sports events and cracking down on public drinking as an exceptional heat wave unfurled across parts of Europe. Multiple drownings were reported as people sought relief in whatever water they could find.
About a third of France is under ‘’red alert″ heat and temperatures reached 104 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas, in a country where air-conditioning isn’t widespread. The forecast for Monday is even hotter.
The Eiffel Tower and other Paris venues set up misting stations to cool crowds, among a raft of measures introduced by authorities to minimize risks. Tourists in Rome dunked in fountains. Spain’s Basque Country canceled some sports and cultural events.
More than 200,000 people across Europe died from heat-related causes over the last four years, and most of the fatalities were preventable, the World Health Organization’s Europe office said this month. More above-average temperatures are expected this summer, which can cause heat exhaustion and life-threatening heat stroke.
Human-caused climate change is tied to increasing extreme weather events and U.N. climate agency projections say the next five years should shatter more heat records. A rapid study found that human-caused climate change was responsible for killing about 1,500 people in an unusually early European heat wave in May.
In this latest European hot spell, French media reported that four children drowned Saturday. Summer drownings are an annual problem that health authorities say worsens during hot spells.
Solstice parties draw large crowds in extreme heat
France’s annual Music Day on Sunday was of particular concern. The nationwide summer solstice celebration involves thousands of concerts in village squares, rave venues, and Paris clubs, bringing communities together and increasingly drawing British and other international visitors. Some of the concerts outside Paris were canceled.
The French government banned public drinking in ’’red alert″ zones, and ordered organizers of music day events to limit alcohol consumption to “preserve emergency services and allow medics to concentrate on taking care of the most vulnerable.”
Scores of French trains were canceled, and the national rail authority dispatched thousands of extra staff to deal with potential problems as the heat threatened rails and electrical cables.
Authorities are notably worried about people living in the baking streets, and elderly people in nursing homes or isolated in their homes. About 15,000 older people died in France in a 2003 heat wave that became a national reckoning.
The government mobilized emergency services and military forces for reinforced wildfire readiness, imposed tightened surveillance of water supplies to France’s many nuclear reactors, and ordered 845 schools to close Monday.
Spain, Italy, Germany swelter as tourists seek relief
Spain kicked off the summer with large parts of the country on alert due to temperatures expected to hover around 104 F — even in the interior of Basque Country, a northern region that typically experiences cooler temperatures.
Authorities have suspended outdoor sports and cultural activities in the region. The heat wave is expected to scorch Spain at least through Wednesday.
In Italy, authorities expanded heat warnings — referred to locally as “red flags” — to eight cities Sunday in northern and central parts of the country. Temperatures there are mostly in the high 90s to low 100s F.
At one farm outside Milan, owners set up fans and sprinklers to keep cows cool, while visitors to Milan Fashion Week huddled under parasols and clutched fans. In Rome, tourists dunked their arms and occasionally their faces into the city’s famed fountain pools.
The German Weather Service is forecasting temperatures of up to 98 F for Monday and Tuesday, and up to 102 F Wednesday.
A 23-year-old man drowned Saturday in a lake near Rheinstetten in the southwestern region of Baden-Württemberg, the German news agency dpa reported. Three other people are missing after swimming in the Rhine River, a police spokesperson told dpa.
Britain’s weather office has issued an “extreme heat” warning for much of southern England and parts of Wales from Monday until Thursday, saying temperatures could reach 100 F. The current record for a June day is 96 F, reached in 1976.
Thunderstorms also threatened regions in Germany and Poland.
French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu convened a new government heat crisis meeting Sunday, and ordered government ministers to plan for better adapting France to heat waves in the future — including “via air-conditioning, if necessary.”
OBBUERGEN, Switzerland — High-level U.S.-Iran talks on their interim deal to end the war had a tense start Sunday in Switzerland as Tehran took offense at comments by President Donald Trump, who threatened to attack and told Iran’s president to watch what he says.
The comments from afar — on social media and to news outlets — complicated efforts by Vice President JD Vance and mediators Pakistan and Qatar to keep Iran engaged in discussions meant to address thorny issues like Tehran’s nuclear program, the Strait of Hormuz, and the unfreezing of billions of dollars in Iranian assets.
Before anything, however, Iran wants to discuss Lebanon, where Israel’s military has been fighting the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group, since the deal halts conflict on all fronts.
“Iran must immediately stop their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon from causing trouble,” Trump said on social media. “If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder!!!”
“They would do better to be careful about their statements,” Iran’s lead negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said on X after Trump’s comments. “Our armed forces are prepared to respond to them in a different manner. They may keep talking, it is we who act.”
Iranian state media said talks had entered a “difficult phase” and recessed after the “publication of an insulting message by the U.S. President.” The Iranian delegation then met with Qatari mediators and left the negotiating site, state media said.
Vance and U.S. negotiators including Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, had met with Qalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi for what Iranian state media said was about 80 minutes.
An official with knowledge of the talks later told the AP the Iranian delegation remained engaged in the talks and has not indicated to mediators any intention to leave. The official requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the talks.
Iran’s focus on Israeli strikes in Lebanon
Negotiators are in a 60-day sprint to reach an agreement on the technical details that hold massive implications for the world economy and global security.
“The question before us now is how much more can we accomplish together? Can we turn over a new leaf?” Vance said as the talks began, and asked whether they could “change relations in the Middle East permanently.”
The U.S. wants Iran locked into negotiations over its nuclear program amid concerns it may be used for military purposes, which Iran denies. Vance also wants Tehran to commit to keeping open the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran on Saturday claimed to close. The U.S. has disputed that, saying shipping traffic continued Sunday.
But Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told the state news agency that Tehran first wants talks to focus on the conflict in Lebanon.
A renewed ceasefire in Lebanon, brokered on Saturday, appeared to be holding, and Israel’s military said it would lift movement restrictions for residents near the border with Lebanon on Monday morning — another sign of calm.
But neither Israel nor Hezbollah is a signatory to the U.S.-Iran deal, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to keep his forces in southern Lebanon until any threat to Israel is eliminated. Hezbollah has refused to halt attacks unless Israel commits to withdrawing.
It also calls for Iran to dilute its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, believed to be buried under nuclear sites that were targeted in U.S. strikes a year ago.
Pezeshkian, however, declared Sunday that “we will never back down from the right to enrich uranium, and the other side is also forced to accept it,” according to Iran’s state media.
Trump, in a telephone interview with Fox News, later warned that the Iranian president should watch what he says and threatened to take over Iran, in comments relayed by a Fox correspondent.
Iran had cautiously approached the talks given its previous experience with U.S. negotiations on the nuclear issue, which twice in the past year were interrupted by military strikes.
The deal has stirred much controversy
Vance has said he planned to be in Switzerland for “a day or two,” leaving much of the detailed negotiations to be led by Witkoff and Kushner. His role in the talks has heightened scrutiny at a time when he’s considering a 2028 presidential campaign.
Trump and Vance have come under searing criticism from parts of their own party for the deal, with Republican hard-liners unfavorably likening it to the nuclear agreement signed by the Obama administration that Trump and Republicans have insisted did nothing to terminate Iran’s nuclear program.
The new agreement says commercial vessels can pass through the Strait of Hormuz for 60 days without charge, but does not preclude future fees imposed by Iran. Trump made his own threat Saturday to levy U.S. tolls if there is no deal with Iran in 60 days, insisting that the money would be for “services rendered as the Guardian Angel to the countries of the Middle East.”
The Trump administration has been working to reassure global markets that the war has been merely a blip on oil prices, as Americans complain about high gasoline prices ahead of peak summer travel. After the deal was announced, oil futures dropped almost 8%.
Markets were expected to closely track the progress of talks when they opened for trading Sunday evening.
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Benjamin Klevge, a soccer fan from Pamiers, France, had the front-facing camera open on his phone and a wide smile on his face. He crouched down, struggling to fit the Statue of Liberty into the frame.
It wasn’t the actual Statue of Liberty, though. It was a 60-foot replica, encrusted with more than 1 million green jelly beans, towering above the entrance to a three-story candy store.
And Klevge wasn’t in New York. He wasn’t even outdoors. He was roaming the gaping halls of the American Dream, a three-million-square-foot megamall in East Rutherford, N.J. He took more pictures in front of an indoor water park a few steps away as a Backstreet Boys song from the previous century played over the loudspeakers.
“C’est magnifique,” he said, before switching to English. “It’s beautiful.”
Fans who attended the opening match of this World Cup this month in Mexico City could wander a warren of neighborhood streets alive with music and the smell of grilled meat on their way to the iconic Estadio Azteca.
Other citadels of soccer — whether Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, which hosted the 1950 and 2014 finals, or Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu, where the final was played in 1982 — are similarly embedded in dense, urban landscapes, helping to animate the heartbeats of their respective cities.
Then there’s MetLife Stadium — or “New York New Jersey Stadium,” as World Cup officials have poetically rebranded it for the summer — which will host eight matches in this tournament, including the final.
For fans accustomed to ballparks with more of the local flavor outside, it has become a punchline. They deride it as a remote island in a sea of asphalt, an inaccessible behemoth surrounded by swampland and a tangle of highway. And for the most part they’re right.
But there’s another island out there.
On Tuesday, before a match between France and Senegal, Klevge and thousands of others fans flooded the American Dream mall, which is connected to the stadium by an elevated footpath, and tried to make the best of an odd situation.
Children from France kick play during a World Cup watch party at American Dream earlier this month.
“Exit?” Klevge asked a reporter after taking his selfies and apologizing for his limited English. He tapped two fingers on his lips. “For smoking?”
Erected in 2021, the American Dream is the second-largest shopping mall in the country. It has hundreds of stores, several dozen eateries and a host of attractions not commonly found indoors: a go-kart track, a water park, a ski slope and five roller coasters.
This month, the air-conditioned cathedral to commerce represents the only public gathering space — besides the generic official “fan zones” immediately outside the stadium — accessible to the 82,500-capacity stadium by foot.
“It’s kind of confusing. We’re just in a mall,” said Dawda Daye, 30, a Senegalese fan from Houston, who arrived there by taxi with his wife. “But it’s convenient, and everyone seems to be enjoying it and having fun.”
Indeed, fans of both teams on Tuesday — just like the crowds supporting Brazil and Morocco over the weekend — seemed open to embracing the weirdness of the setting. The resulting rowdy energy was similar to the atmosphere at any major soccer match around the world — just entirely different.
Three hours before kickoff, four men in French jerseys juggled a plush soccer ball, purchased moments earlier from an Ikea kiosk, outside a Verizon store.
A Senegalese drum troupe rapped out a mesmerizing beat for a swaying group of soccer fans marching near the cash register of a Mrs. Field’s cookie stand.
The sunlit space normally containing the mall’s NHL regulation-size ice rink had been converted into a sort of simulation of a beer garden, filled with picnic tables where scores of fans clapped and sang. Above them towered a screen roughly the size of the penalty area on a soccer field that displayed a video feed of the very same picnic zone they were in — meaning the fans were cheering real-time images of themselves cheering.
“In the U.S., everything is bigger,” said Benoit Berthier, 39, a Frenchman working in Montreal, who was eating a pastry at a cafe a few steps away. “But what they did inside is good. If you have one thing you know how to do in America, it’s entertain.”
In a food court connected to H Mart, the Korean American grocery chain, two men wearing the jersey of Rayan Cherki, a young French star, blew into vuvuzelas as they squeezed between groups munching on traditional Korean snacks.
On the third floor — there are five levels to the American Dream — a trio of Frenchman puzzled over a digital map of the shopping center, tapping on the screen to find a place to eat.
“This kind of mall is unusual for French people,” said Gérald Grégoire, 52, one of the fans. “What’s most surprising is the size of the parking lot.”
Three friends kick a small soccer ball in the American Dream parking garage.
During American football season, when the New York Jets and the New York Giants share MetLife Stadium, the parking lots there can hold close to 30,000 cars, a perfect setting for that quintessentially American sports tableau: tailgating.
A handful of World Cup stadiums — like Lincoln Financial Field, where opposing fans played drinking games together before a match — are allowing tailgating this summer. MetLife is not one of them.
“We heard there was no tailgating, so we said, ‘OK, we’re not going to the stadium, we’re going to the mall,’ ” said Carlos Orbe, 35, who was visiting from Tampa, Fla., with his fiancée, Julia Szenberg.
Undeterred, the two grabbed a case of hard seltzers, took a cab to the American Dream and found some space between a row of parked cards in the mall’s indoor parking complex.
They stood in a circle with a dozen or so other fans, sipping their drinks and periodically kicking a soccer ball that bounced their way. Asked about the people in the juggling circle, Szenberg, 36, who was born in Paris, shrugged.
“We don’t know them,” she said. “But now they’re our family. This is the real American dream, happening in the mall parking garage.”
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said on Saturday that “multiple individuals” had been arrested for vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and that problems with a more than $14 million renovation project had become so severe that the pool would have to be at least partly drained for “necessary repairs.”
The president’s announcement late Saturday, made on social media, was his starkest acknowledgment of the pool’s rapid deterioration in recent days. The water this week became covered by clouds of blooming algae, which were obscuring a floor that had just been painted a shade that Trump has called “American flag blue.” The paint then began to peel off, making it a tourist destination for unusual reasons.
Among those accused of vandalism was David Carter Hearn, 67, a cyclist and three-time Olympian as a canoeist who says he stopped at the site Friday just to have a look, then reached down to touch a strip of peeling blue paint mixed with the algae.
The U.S. Park Police arrested Hearn shortly after, accusing him of destroying government property, a crime that can carry up to a 10-year prison sentence. Hearn denies the charge.
“I was just a curious, concerned citizen,” he said in an interview. “I guess I was there at the wrong place, wrong time.”
The administration has not released the names of others accused of vandalizing the pool, a crime that Trump said Saturday could lead to “years in jail.” In a later post, he said without evidence that vandals had “poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the Pool.”
The project, one of many Trump is undertaking around the capital as the United States nears its 250th birthday, has faced intense scrutiny, including from engineers and other experts who warned that the hastily undertaken project was unlikely to undo the problems that have plagued the pool for decades. A construction company tied to Trump was awarded a no-bid contract and painted the bottom of the pool.
Trump said Saturday that he had met with contractors earlier in the day to discuss the state of the pool.
The Interior Department said this week that agency workers had “killed the algae” that had expanded with heat and humidity. But on Friday afternoon, the water was stained by clumps of algae where National Park Service staff members had scrubbed away bright green blooms along the bottom of the basin. The pool’s new coating was also missing large sections, including a gap roughly the size of a park bench. Underneath appeared to be the original concrete basin.
Hearn, of Bethesda, Maryland, said that he was on a 50-mile bike ride before stopping at the pool, and that Park Police officers detained him for more than four hours Friday at a facility south of the National Mall without allowing a phone call. They also did not say more about why he had been arrested, he added. The White House and Park Police did not respond to requests for comment.
Late Friday, Trump claimed on social media that the “inside surface that was just installed” had been damaged by vandals.
Hearn said that he had “reached into the water to feel the characteristics” of a dislodged paint piece “still attached to the bottom.” He compared his actions to those of Jonathan Karl, an ABC News reporter who lifted a detached piece of paint at the pool Thursday in a video the news organization published.
“I didn’t remove anything,” Hearn said. “I was bending and feeling this 2-millimeter-thick, rubbery flap.”
Until his retirement 18 months ago, Hearn ran a company selling special materials for building canoes. That, he said, made him particularly interested in the materials contractors had used before the paint at the base of the pool began peeling.
Hearn said that he had already received offers of pro bono representation following his arrest.
“I’m getting a lot of support from my community,” he added.
Last month’s summit in Beijing between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, the presidents of the world’s largest economies, drove home the magnitude of the crisis facing democracy. At the scale of decisions affecting billions of people, nobody was properly represented.
Trump and Xi were negotiating for all of us, but representative of hardly any of us, whether American, Chinese, or, like most of the world, completely voiceless in the selection of either leader.
Americans have a bigger say than most nations in the selection of their leaders, but when the leader of the world’s preeminent representative democracy is openly envying the power of the leader of the world’s biggest autocracy, we know that democracy is in trouble.
In 1787, the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia hammered out a blueprint for representative democracy. Today, we are in a crisis because democracy has failed to scale up to fit the nearly 100-fold growth in population since then. We need to think of alternative ways of ensuring that diverse interests and diverse expertise are represented for the good of the people. We need a new constitutional convention.
In 1787, the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia hammered out a blueprint for representative democracy, writes Colin Allen.
This is not the first time that democracy has failed to scale.
Athenian direct representation was only barely functional at the scale of the Greek city-state. Even though only male landowners were enfranchised, it was still impossible to accommodate them all at once in the Pnyx, so each voter was required to show up only for a subset of the votes.
It took another two millennia to invent representative democracy: a manageable number of legislators, each of them elected to represent the interests of thousands of people. The first U.S. census in 1790 recorded just shy of 4 million inhabitants. The newly formed House of Representatives had 65 members: roughly one per 60,000 people.
Today, over 331 million Americans are represented by 435 members: a ratio of roughly 1 to every 760,000. Not only is each member tasked with representing so many more people, but the diversity of interests in each constituency and the sheer range of issues that must be addressed at this scale mean that practically nobody is properly represented on all issues.
Voting often feels like selecting the lesser of several evils, and is at best a compromise forced by the need to decide which issue is most important to you, writes Colin Allen.
Electors face impossible choices. The chance that any one candidate represents all of a voter’s views is vanishingly small. Casting a ballot often feels like selecting the lesser of several evils, and is at best a compromise forced by the need to decide which issue is most important. At worst, voters disengage entirely or resort to preferring qualities that would be more suitable for dominance contests among apes. These problems are aggravated because social media has fractured communal purpose, and gerrymandering is splitting natural constituencies.
The possibility of electing leaders with autocratic tendencies has always been a weakness of democracy. This weakness is magnified at scale: Larger, more diverse constituencies can come to seem ungovernable, favoring politicians who project strength. We need to grapple collectively with these problems and find better ways of allocating our votes among representatives whose values and expertise match the scope of their powers.
How might this be done?
The whole approach to democratic governance needs to be reengineered from the ground up. For example, the existing separation among legislative, executive, and judicial powers should be supplemented by erecting firewalls among different spheres of political decision-making.
Existing government departments (health, education, agriculture, defense, etc.) provide an initial sketch of where separate legislative bodies might be desirable. Separating legislative functions along these lines would serve to concentrate expertise where it is needed.
Legislation in one domain would no longer be encumbered by riders that belong in other domains. Funding of health or science initiatives would not be held hostage to disputes about unrelated matters. Reducing the scope of individual legislators would also make them less prone to targeting by the full spectrum of lobbyists.
The Nobel Prize-winning work of Elinor Ostrom, pictured here, showed how management of scarce common resources is often best handled through local self-governance.
We also need to rethink the relationship between geography and representation. Some areas of governance are inherently more tied to location than others. The Nobel Prize-winning work of Elinor Ostrom showed how management of scarce common resources is often best handled through local self-governance. People whose livelihoods depend on shared resources they jointly control make better decisions than those acting under rules imposed remotely.
Current political systems (whether democratic or not) aggregate legislative and economic power hierarchically over increasingly large geographic areas. This favors decisions by people who have little or no skin in the game when it comes to good stewardship of local resources. Hence, in the domains of agriculture or the environment for example, it makes sense that one’s choice of representative should be tied to your location.
But for other issues, such as justice and civil rights, national defense, or international trade, a voter’s interests and values may be better represented by someone living far away than by local politicians. At-large representation could provide a mechanism for voters to select representatives for domains where geographic location is less important. For some domains, a mixture of local and at-large representation may produce the best deliberative bodies and the greatest sense by voters that their views are adequately represented.
These ideas merely provide one set of suggestions. They admittedly bring new problems with them. An obvious challenge for multiple specialized legislative bodies is that of coordination among them. Possible solutions to be explored include constitutionally mandated joint sessions. Elected delegations from one legislature could also have voting rights in another. Other solutions come from the power of the purse.
I suggest giving some of that power back to the people by allowing voters to allocate a certain number of shares of the government’s total revenue to various legislative bodies. A pacifist might opt to allocate zero shares to defense while splitting the remainder 50-50 between health and education, for instance. Other voters with different priorities could steer the money differently. Such a scheme would help to address “not with my tax dollars” complaints that are often heard when people don’t like some government programs that others believe essential.
In a pluralistic society we can be fairly confident that the allocations emerging from these individual choices would keep the essential parts of the government going via the wisdom of crowds. But there are many reasons for retaining some degree of top-down control. An elected body specializing in finance and taxation would be particularly important. This body could be constitutionally mandated to control some percentage of the total budget, say 30% with the other 70% being allocated through voter preferences.
The finance body might itself consist of a mixture of at-large representatives and district-based representatives. It could be constitutionally mandated to allocate a substantial portion of revenues to domain-crossing projects, such as education that serves agriculture, or medical research that serves defense department needs, and it could also provide funding in cases where an urgent or unanticipated need has arisen.
I present these ideas in the spirit of trying to think creatively about how we can harness democracy for the large-scale challenges of the 21st century. I am sure that all of these proposals can be improved upon collectively through the mechanism of a constitutional convention.
Pie in the sky? Clearly this is not an overnight project. The Philadelphia Convention took place 11 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The deliberations that occurred there were a matter of intense public scrutiny.
The Constitution took another two years to be ratified. Compromises were necessary and were made. We are still living with the effects of some of those compromises today. But something workable emerged, although it notoriously failed to treat all people as equal.
The system we have is no longer suited to a modern society in which hard-won gains of underrepresented groups are being rolled back by a Supreme Court that regards the application of the Constitution more as an academic exercise than a serious attempt to deal with all that has changed in the past 239 years.
Those on both wings can be suspicious of the motives of those on the other side, but all should be able to take seriously the idea that the United States has outgrown the clothes originally tailored for it almost 250 years ago.
Colin Allen is a distinguished professor of philosophy at University of California, Santa Barbara and a Public Voices fellow of the OpEd Project.
We collected 76 places around Philly that capture everything that’s great about our neighborhoods, but it’s not an exhaustive list by any means.
Some are hidden gems or may be hiding in plain sight. Together, they all stitch the fabric of the city’s weird, wonderful, and one-of-a-kind spirit, such as:
🍠 A basement yam museum
🪩 A mosaic wonderland
🥟 A neighborhood market that has served Philly for decades
The astronomical summer is here as of 4:24 a.m. this morning, though it definitely already felt like it around here.
As the sun beams its most direct light on the Tropic of Cancer, we have Inquirer editor and all-things-atmosphere writer Tony Wood on the line to tune us in to key solstice storylines. For instance:
🌡️ Is it going to get hot again? Some experts told Wood they expect El Niño to work against punitive hot spells in the region. Others aren’t buying that.
🌵🥵 Will the drought conditions ever end? They always have, but Philadelphia has gone 10 consecutive months of below-normal precipitation. Rain is in the forecast for Monday, which should help.
☄️ And for the celestial lovers (ahem, myself included), this could be a big year for the Perseids, and there’s a forthcoming lunar eclipse to look out for.
The Justice Department is suing Philly and some top officials over an “ICE Out” law that prohibits U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from concealing their identity.
A former supervisor in District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office was suspended for three years in federal court for complicity in efforts to mislead a federal judge.
ICE plans to sell three warehouses in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The agency bought the properties for more than $336 million to support Trump’s deportation agenda.
Current homebuilder — and former Duke basketball player — Brian Zoubek is being sued by a longtime Philly developer and his neighbors over damage to their homes.
🎤 Here’s Tommy Rowan with a look back at a future L.A. Dodgers owner who planted ivy at Penn.
There are notable alums, and then there’s Walter O’Malley.
The pioneering baseball owner helped bring the sport to the West Coast, moving the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, where he built an iconic ballpark and a championship organization. And he became one of only 16 owners inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Rita’s Italian Ice & Frozen Custard has added a new limited-edition flavor to its summer menu. It’s called “mermaid” and is only available for about a month. What’s one of its primary ingredients?
Cheers to Tom Lamont, who correctly guessed Wednesday’s answer: Cathedral Basilica. For several nights a week through mid-August, the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul will go secular and become the canvas for a new immersive, custom-designed light show called “Luminiscence.”
Crowd Pleaserz Donnie “Nyce” Thompson of North Philadelphia; daughter Aniyah, 8; and son Jaden, 16, perform at the Juneteenth celebration at the African American Museum in Philadelphia.
As we approach America’s 250th anniversary, the political party that brags of its patriotism is actively undercutting national security.
Although many GOP House members and senators are versed in foreign affairs and grasp the irresponsibility of their actions, they are too cowardly to confront the biggest security threat America has faced in decades: President Donald J. Trump.
As his Iran debacle laid bare, Trump’s ego-driven foreign policy is making America more vulnerable to our enemies — both at home and overseas. Yet, the aging POTUS seems ever more determined to ignore real security dangers. His main focus is on seeking quick military hits he thinks will win him personal acclaim.
His failed Iran war perfectly displays his misuse of the U.S. military for unnecessary battles that decrease capacity for any future conflicts with Russia and China. And Republican legislators — who claim a monopoly on love of country — don’t have the guts to call him out.
Why? Because they value their chairs more than keeping Americans safe.
The Iran war, and the memorandum of understanding that has temporarily halted it, are a perfect example of Trump’s failure to protect the nation.
In February 2026, Iran presented no threat to the United States. Tehran’s enriched uranium was deeply buried under rubble after the U.S. and Israel waged a 12-day war on Iran in June 2025.
But, driven by ego, POTUS let Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu persuade him that a quick bombing run could achieve regime change in Tehran and remake the entire Middle East.
President Donald Trump poses for a photo in October with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before he boards Air Force One at Ben Gurion International Airport, near Tel Aviv, as Israel’s President Isaac Herzog watches at left.
Don’t blame Bibi, because only a president who knows nothing about Iran and obsessively seeks a Nobel Peace Prize could have believed such nonsense. POTUS ignored warnings from U.S. military brass that Iran would respond by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, because he insists he knows best.
After four months of war, what has Trump’s ego wrought?
In desperation to get Iran to reopen the strait and push gas prices down before the midterms, Trump has promised Tehran huge and immediate economic benefits.Meantime, nuclear talks are pushed back to 60 days of negotiations, which will probably be extended indefinitely.
The one-and-a-half page memo contained only one paragraph on nuclear talks, but POTUS has already revealed a host of U.S. concessions in interviews. They guarantee that if a nuclear deal is ever reached, which is far from certain, it will be similar or worse than President Barack Obama’s JCPOA nuclear accord, from which he withdrew in 2018.
Rather than ending Iran’s nuclear program altogether, as Trump promised, any deal will permit Tehran to enrich uranium to low levels, as did the JCPOA. It will also allow Iran to downgrade its highly enriched uranium inside their country, rather than send 97% out of the country as required by Obama’s deal.
In fact, Trump now debunks the importance of rushing to extract Iran’s enriched uranium from the rubble, because Tehran can’t access it. “Nobody’s touching it,” he said. “We have Space Force cameras [monitoring the sites]. It’s actually not valuable. …”
So tell me again, Mr. President, why you started this war?
Supporters pass by a billboard showing leaders of Hezbollah, outside the grave of the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, as they mark the first day of Ashoura in Beirut, Lebanon, on Wednesday. The preliminary agreement between Iran and the United States leaves unresolved the two issues at the heart of the conflict: Israel’s occupation and Hezbollah’s arsenal.
The list of Trump concessions to Iran goes on, each one explained more bizarrely by the president. Trump casually declared he would allow Iran to keep its ballistic missiles, which were fired at Israel and U.S. bases — a total reversal of his pledge before the war started. “I’m saying that if other countries have them, it’s a little bit unfair for them not to have some,” Trump told reporters in Paris the other day. Say what?
What is particularly dangerous — and requires Congress to confront the president — is that this unnecessary war has degraded the U.S. military, and revealed its weaknesses to our adversaries.
The war has also exposed the erratic style of the U.S. commander in chief, who treats the U.S. military like his personal plaything. Both he and his showman “secretary of war,” Pete Hegseth, have proved they lack the judgment and temperament to command this force.
By keeping such a huge percentage of our air force and naval assets in the Mideast for months, Trump has worn out the readiness of our military. This war also used up a staggering amount of U.S. long- and medium-range missiles that are badly needed to stabilize the Indo-Pacific against Chinese aggression, and by NATO allies to ward off Russian aggression.
Yet, instead of selling such missiles to Taiwan, or letting Europeans buy them to protect Ukraine from massive Russian bombing, Trump used them up against Iran.
Moreover, the Iran war revealed the continued Pentagon failure to prepare for the new drone and artificial intelligence-driven 21st century form of warfare. The U.S. military used billions worth of $2 million missiles to intercept $20,000 Iranian drones because the Pentagon has been unable to speed up drone production and refuses proffered help from Ukraine.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends a Medal of Honor ceremony in the East Room of the White House, Thursday.
In fact, at the G7 summit in France on Tuesday, Trump made a point of how unimportant the Ukraine conflict was to America. “Look, we have nothing to do with it,” he said of that war. “It has no impact on us, other than we sell weapons” to Ukraine, he added. “We’re thousands of miles away.”
That kind of dumb remark, in a world where satellites and electronic warfare make distance irrelevant, is proof positive of Trump’s total misunderstanding of geopolitics. The U.S. abandonment of Kyiv and coddling of Russia enhances China’s belief that America’s power is declining and the global balance of power is shifting.
Indeed, the most vivid illustration of the president’s blindness to the fallout from his Iran fiasco, came when he thanked Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping for their help with ending the Iran war. What head spinning brain-blank could prompt gratitude for Putin giving intelligence information to Tehran to target U.S. bases? Or to Xi for providing all the parts for Iranian drones that killed Americans in Kuwait?
Which side is Trump on?
POTUS’s conviction that his personal relationships with Putin and Xi will prevent them from doing America harm is endangers America’s safety. He won’t critique them for aiding Iran, because he believes both men are his comrades. His easily manipulated ego plays into both dictators’ hands.
This war has provided proof that America’s adversaries need only wait and watch as the U.S. president undermines the U.S. military’s fighting capacity by wasting it on delusionary wars.
Instead, Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth make a point of slamming our allies, whose help we need to deter to Russian and Chinese imperialism.
Even as POTUS was signing the surrender document with Iran, Hegseth announced the U.S. will pull back troops from Europe and weapons support for NATO. Thus, Trump openly advances Putin’s dreams of splitting the transatlantic alliance, at a time when Russia is openly hostile to the West.
President Donald Trump with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy after a Group of 7 photo in Evian-les-Bains, France, Tuesday.
POTUS even infuriated his closest European ally, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who accused him of “fabricating” claims that she “begged him” for a joint photo.
“I can only say it is disappointing that he does not show the same determination with the enemies of the West and of the United States, whose leaders he instead treats with far greater indulgence [than his allies],” Meloni stated angrily.
There is a name for a leader who coddles the enemy while alienating friendly democracies that share our values. Such treachery, whether carried out wittingly or blindly, betrays our nation.
Trump’s indifference to U.S. security isn’t just evident in his misadventures abroad.
At a time when foreign terror threats to the nation are high, the president just refused to reauthorize critical U.S. foreign spy powers, unless they were tied to a voter suppression bill.
The same week, he used political trickery to officially appoint a fervently loyal ally, Bill Pulte, as temporary director of national intelligence, over bipartisan Senate objections. Pulte has zero intel experience, but is tasked by POTUS to pursue his political enemies and undermine the midterms.
Never mind the serious risk of terror attacks during FIFA matches or sesquicentennial celebrations — or during fall balloting. GOP senators bowed to their boss man rather than make a big fuss.
So as July Fourth approaches and Trump busies himself with architectural destruction in the nation’s capital, his GOP enablers in Congress are helping a doddering egomaniac undermine the. security of the citizens he supposedly serves. These Republicans know what POTUS is doing, yet they refuse to stand up and make their voices heard.
On America’s 250th, GOP pols are aiding Trump in betraying constitution and country. How they can look in the mirror and call themselves patriots mystifies me.
MARGATE, N.J. — Hillary Bor had had enough of running the acclaimed Pumpkin BYOB in Philly after two decades.
Around the time Pumpkin closed in 2024, she uprooted her life and moved to the Shore full time. Also around this time, she fell in love with Tim Nedzwecky, whom she met through their respective white pit bulls, Piggy and Loki.
They hadn’t planned to launch a food venture, but when Scott Bonar, of Scott’s Dock on the bay in Margate, talked about wanting a food option, the pieces fell together.
Dogs. The Shore. A view.
Thus was born Dock Dogs (hot dogs with a view), a permanent fixture next to Scott’s Dock, with a complimentary lovely sunset over the bay.
Tim Nedzwecky and Hillary Bor, the former owner of Pumpkin BYOB in Philadelphia, opened Dock Dogs on the bay in Margate.
“We wanted to do something together,” Bor said. “He asked us, ‘You guys want to do food?’”
Hot dog stands have a history in Margate. There’s Junior’s nearby and the old Lenny’s, famous for its pepper hash, which was set up back in the 1960s and 1970s near Lucy the Elephant. Now, Dock Dogs has started carrying — by popular demand — the pepper hash from the original Lenny’s outside Philadelphia.
But does running a hot dog cart, even one with a beautiful view, offer fulfillment after owning Pumpkin BYOB with its elevated cuisine and prime South Street Graduate Hospital location, for 20 years?
Bor does not hesitate to answer.
“This is so fulfilling,” said Bor, who rides a bike everywhere and still doesn’t own a car. Plus, “I get to be with my soulmate. I get to be with wonderful people to work with. We get to be on the water.”
“It’s a dream come true,” said Nedzwecky.
Tim Nedzwecky and Hillary Bor at their hot dog stand on the bay in Margate, Docks Dogs. Bor is the former owner of Pumpkin BYOB in Philadelphia, which closed in 2024.
Dock Dogs has a menu item in memory of Scott’s mother, Robin, a familiar face around the marina, who died in 2021: Robin’s Reuben with Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and Russian dressing. ($12).
The Windy Dog with mustard, relish, onions, peppers, pickles, celery salt, tomatoes, and a side of Lenny’s pepper hash, at Dock Dogs in Margate, opened by Hillary Bor, the former owner of Pumpkin BYOB in Philadelphia, and partner Tim Nedzwecky.
All hot dogs are Hebrew National and served on Martin’s potato rolls with kettle chips, pickles, and coleslaw.
There’s chicken and egg salad options (no hot dog) as well, and the Keeper, a crab cake shaped like a hot dog ($22). The Captain’s Choice ($14) has bacon, barbecue sauce, and cheddar and a “simple sailor” hotdog with choice of ketchup, mustard, relish, sauerkraut, and sriracha is $10.
They’re hoping people come for the food as well as the vibe. Mondays are for families, with face painting and other kid-friendly activities out back, where picnic tables line the docks. You can come by boat. Wednesdays feature a house band.
There’s also a “Hook the hot dog” game that carries a prize.
The response has been enthusiastic.
“Saturday night, the vibe here, it was so special,” said Nedzwecky. “Everybody, the kids, were dancing.”
“We were looking at each other like, ‘Oh my God it’s amazing.’, ” said Bor.
“It makes us really happy,” said Nedzwecky. “People are saying this is exactly what this area needed.”
Humans still answer the phones. The business is family-owned and run by women. But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of T. Frank McCall’s is the reality that the store is still there, next to the railroad tracks in the Delaware County riverfront city of Chester, where it has been since 1876.
It has somehow survived through the administrations of 28 presidents, 32 governors, and 32 mayors; two world wars; the Great Depression; and the collapse of Chester’s economy that has climaxed with a rare municipal bankruptcy, By the time the Philadelphia Phillies played their first game in 1883, McCall’s had been in business for seven years at Sixth and Madison Streets.
The building has retained the faint odors of the company’s seed-and-grain roots. But these days the houses that had lined the streets are long gone. The nearest neighbor is a remnant of a factory that once was part of the city’s industrial might. The store’s owners are bemused by the unused bicycle lane on the other side of Madison Street, and the superfluous parking restrictions.
The remnants of an abandoned factory building sit next to McCall’s.
McCall’s sells janitorial and cleaning supplies, but rather than a traditional “jan/san” business, it is more like a hybrid wholesale general store. That its website features a snowfall image is fitting: It made a killing selling ice-melters this winter to SEPTA, Philadelphia, and other customers.
The assortment evidently continues to work; McCall’s generates about $10 million in annual revenue, said owner Lisa Witomski, whose father bought the company from the family of the original owners in 1957 in a decade when businesses were pulling out of Chester.
What explains the staying power?
In part, Witomski said, McCall’s sells things people have to have. “Nobody really wants to buy janitorial supplies, but if you have customers or employees, you need them.”
Staying in the one location in Chester, even though only a tiny percentage of the revenue comes from in-store sales, has been an asset, Witomski said. Customers know where to find them, and the company owns the 50,000-square-foot facility outright; the mortgage was paid off in 1880.
The county estimates the property’s value at about $850,000, and the company contributes about $17,000 annually to the city and the Chester-Upland School District in property taxes. It also pays a 6% sales tax to the city, and the 16 employees pay earned-income levies. The size of the workforce has not changed much through the years.
Most of the building’s space, which includes a former stable for the horses that delivered the company’s goods in the wayback when Chester was transforming from a rural outpost to an industrial power, is devoted to warehousing. About 95% of the company’s business is shipped on McCall’s trucks, Witomski said, and the location has outstanding road access, close to I-95 and the Blue Route.
When customers call during business hours, “a human being always answers the phone,” she said. “People are shocked when you say, ‘Hello,’ and they’re waiting for ‘press 1.’”
Being a family business that has resisted corporate takeover has given McCall’s an edge with customers, said Witomski, who recalled playing hide-and-seek among the store’s galvanized trash cans as a kid.
“Unlike almost all our competition, we haven’t sold out.”
The original McCalls
George McCall started his feed-and-grain business in 1876, when Chester’s population was growing rapidly. He eventually turned over the keys to his son Thomas, who later passed on the business to his sons under the name T. Frank McCall.
A breakthrough came in the 1880s when nearby Scott Paper — on the Chester riverfront, the company that is believed to have been the first to market toilet paper on a roll and disposable paper towels — hired McCall’s as its distributor. (The plant now bears the Kimberly-Clark name, but the Scott brand name survives.)
Along with Scott products, through the years it would sell and distribute a wide variety of janitorial and other products while remaining in the seed-and-grain business.
The McCalls would run the company for 80 years.
McCall’s today
Owner Lisa Witomski (right) with her niece Lisa Claire, McCall’s office manager, and nephew Chas Wiley, warehouse manager, inside the store.
They sold the company in 1957 at a time when Chester was entering a postwar decline: In the 1950s, the number of apparel and general merchandise stores in the city fell from 68 to 19, according to Chester Planning Commission documents.
Brothers Edward and Charles Witomski purchased the business on the advice of a member of the legendary Pew family, founders of the Sun Oil empire. The brothers had owned a bar in Essington and were looking for an enterprise that would be more family-friendly, Lisa Witomski said.
Like the McCalls, they continued the tradition of selling and distributing a wide variety of products, including paints and even baby chicks at Easter time. Eventually the business was passed on to Charles Witomski’s daughters, Marcie and Lisa, the company president. Marcie Witomski’s daughter, Lisa Claire, is the office manager; Marcie’s son Chas Wiley manages the warehouse.
In recent years their regular customers have included casinos throughout the region that have needs for paper and enzyme cleaning products. (Gamblers have been known to make a mess.)
And ice melter has been a source of considerable cold cash — this winter in particular.
“It was a doozy,” Claire said. It wasn’t just the 30 inches of snow, but the subsequent Arctic freezes that locked in the snow-and-ice coverage. The result was the sale of mass quantities of calcium chloride melter.
On occasion, a motorist along Madison Street, which is part of Route 320, stopped in to buy some melter, Lisa Witomski said, but the store never was heavily trafficked even when the neighborhood was well-occupied in the 1950s and ’60s.
Save for a few incidents — one person tried to walk off with a lawn mower, another tried to make off with a 100-pound barrel that he couldn’t carry — crime has not been an issue, Lisa Witomski said, even when the city went through a period a decade ago when it had the nation’s highest per capita homicide rate.
“We are not exactly in a populated area,” she said.
Cars parked in front of the store these days are anomalies. “We think the two-hour parking is very funny,” she said.
Said Michelle Cubler, the purchasing manager, “We’ve never seen them actually ticket on this street.”
