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  • Measles case confirmed in a person who visited a Montgomery County car dealership and a Wawa

    Measles case confirmed in a person who visited a Montgomery County car dealership and a Wawa

    Montgomery County health officials on Saturday warned residents of a possible measles exposure at two locations in the county, after confirming another case of the highly contagious disease.

    A person infected with measles visited a car dealership and a convenience store in Royersford and Limerick earlier this week, officials said.

    The case is connected to another in the county that was confirmed earlier this month, said Richard Lorraine, the medical director of the Montgomery County Health Department.

    The original measles case was linked to a larger outbreak centered on a college in Florida, Lorraine said. A person infected with measles connected to that outbreak then traveled to Montgomery County and visited an urgent care center in Collegeville on Jan. 29, he said.

    Later, two people in their household, who live in Montgomery County, contracted measles; they were already quarantining by the time they developed symptoms, Lorraine said.

    The latest case, announced on Saturday, was in an adult who had visited the Collegeville urgent care clinic at the same time as the original patient, Lorraine said. That person developed symptoms about 20 days after exposure to the virus, Lorraine said. The virus can incubate for up to 21 days before symptoms appear.

    All of the Pennsylvania residents who have contracted measles so far this year, including the Montgomery County cases, were not vaccinated against the disease.

    What to do if you were exposed to measles

    People who were at the following Montgomery County locations during the following time periods may have been exposed to the virus, which can linger in the air for up to two hours, officials said.

    • Nissan 422 of Limerick at 55 Autopark Blvd. in Royersford:
    • Wawa at 579 N. Lewis Rd. in Limerick:

    People are generally considered protected from measles if they were born in 1957 or earlier or have had two doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, or the recommended number of doses based on their age, health officials said.

    People are also considered protected if they have undergone lab testing that confirms they have already had the disease or have immunity to it.

    People who are not fully vaccinated or do not have immunity to measles and were exposed to the virus should call their doctor or the county public health office. The office can be reached at 610-278-5117 or after hours at 610-635-4300.

    Lorraine said that county health officials are working to track anyone who worked at or visited the Wawa and the car dealership earlier this week.

    Once health officials identify people who passed through those locations, he said, they check to ensure they are vaccinated for measles. People with two doses of the MMR vaccine are of little concern, since the vaccine is about 98% effective at preventing disease, Lorraine said.

    The county can also test residents without documentation of vaccination for measles immunity. People without immunity can get an MMR vaccine within about 72 hours of exposure to the virus that can prevent them from contracting measles, Lorraine said.

    “For those folks who don’t have an immune status, and don’t get the MMR, they do need to quarantine for up to 21 days afterward, because that’s how long the incubation period is,” he said.

    People without immunity who were potentially exposed to the virus should observe themselves for symptoms during that period. Symptoms include fever, an unexplained rash, a cough, congestion or a runny nose, and red, watery eyes.

    Health officials said people who develop measles symptoms should stay home and call a doctor immediately. They should also call ahead to any healthcare providers they plan to visit to protect staff and other patients from the disease.

    Measles in the Philadelphia area

    As of Saturday, Pennsylvania health officials said they have confirmed 11 cases of measles in state residents, a Pennsylvania Department of Health spokesperson wrote in an e-mail.

    Seven Lancaster County residents had been infected, as well as three in Montgomery County and one in Chester County. Two more cases were identified in out-of-state residents who visited the area: one in Montgomery County and one in Chester County.

    Chester County health officials did not immediately return a request for comment Saturday.

    On Friday, Delaware health officials said they had identified a case in a patient who visited a Wilmington emergency room.

    Lorraine said it is imperative for area residents to get vaccinated against measles, which can cause severe complications including pneumonia and brain infections. About 1 to 3 of every 1,000 children who contract measles will die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Infants and children under 5 years old, adults over 20, pregnant women, and people with weakened immune systems, including patients with leukemia or HIV, are at particular risk for complications from the disease, according to the CDC.

    “Like every other illness, measles can be mild, it can be severe. But that’s the reason why we want to immunize: We want to mitigate the possibility of severe illness. We really don’t want to even take a small chance on that,” Lorraine said.

  • Philly forecast calls for more than a foot of snow to fall Sunday into Monday

    Philly forecast calls for more than a foot of snow to fall Sunday into Monday

    Philadelphia and its suburbs are forecast to receive 16 to 22 inches of snow and face blizzard conditions beginning Sunday and continuing into Monday, with weather prediction models sharpening their focus as the storm approaches.

    “Mother Nature has spoken again and made it clear that winter is not over,” said Mayor Cherelle L. Parker during an emergency press conference, declaring a citywide snow emergency, starting 4 p.m Sunday. “Yet another big winter storm is coming. It’s a major snow storm with real accumulation anticipated, and it’s heading our way .”

    City government and courts will not open Monday, while public schools will switch to virtual learning. SEPTA riders should expect significant service disruptions over the next three days, said officials, who implored drivers to stay off the road Sunday.

    Dominick Morales, the city’s emergency management coordinator, described the expected storm as “dangerous,” adding that heavy, wet snow could threaten trees and power lines.

    “Dangerous because of the amount of snowfall that is being forecast in about a 24-hour period, but it’s also dangerous because of high winds — and for Philadelphia — near blizzard conditions. When this storm picks up, we have to take it seriously,” he said.

    When all is said and done, the total snowfall may be close to 18 inches in the city, and could surpass 20 inches in South Jersey, where high winds are forecast to create blizzard conditions, according to the National Weather Service. Early Sunday morning, the weather service extended a blizzard warning to cover Philadelphia and Bucks and Delaware Counties, as well as eastern Montgomery County and all of South Jersey.

    “It does look like it’s going to be quite an impactful storm for the whole [I-]95 corridor and further east,” said Sarah Johnson, warning coordination meteorologist at the weather service’s Mount Holly office, on Saturday.

    This will lead to potentially dangerous driving conditions starting Sunday into Monday. And the Shore and Delaware Bay could experience flooding during high tide Sunday evening.

    PennDot and the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission said interstate and I-76 vehicle restrictions are set to begin at 3 p.m. Sunday. Speed limits may be restricted to 45 mph on these roadways, officials said.

    While forecasters saw trouble brewing for several days, it was not clear how heavily the storm would affect Philadelphia, Johnson said.

    “Pretty much throughout the week, we were aware that there was going to be this storm system off the coast. The question was just going to be how close to the coast it came,” she said.

    The storm is expected to begin with a mix of snow and rain Sunday morning, with the potential for only rain falling before dawn. By early to midafternoon, that is forecast to change over entirely to snow, Johnson said.

    The blizzard warning is in effect from 10 a.m. Sunday to 6 p.m. Monday.

    “We are also going to be seeing some gusty winds with the heaviest snow amounts,” Johnson said. Wind speeds of up to 45 mph late Sunday and early Monday have the potential to cause blowing and drifting snow that may make it difficult to keep roads clear, according to the weather service.

    The blizzard warning is in effect from 1 p.m. Sunday to 6 p.m. Monday.

    Johnson emphasized that whatever the storm brings, it will be significant for Philadelphia.

    “The period that we are most concerned about in terms of both snow rates and wind is Sunday evening through the morning on Monday,” she said.

    The storm arrives while the administration is still stinging from criticism over what many perceive as a slow and ineffective response to the January snowstorm, the biggest to hit the city in a decade, which left many neighborhood streets and byways encased in snow and ice for 25 days.

    On Saturday, Parker said the city would be ready.

    More than 1,000 emergency city personnel, 800 snow removal vehicles, and a reserve of 25,000 tons of salt will be deployed, she said.

    “I want to be very clear,” Parker said. “We will do whatever it takes, for however long it takes, to ensure that we have cleared our streets and are keeping Philadelphians safe.”

    Snowfall rates could intensify to as much as two inches per hour Sunday afternoon into evening, Parker said.

    “It’s going to be a big one, and we’re going to be ready for it,” said Carlton Williams, city emergency management director.

    Williams said two high-powered melters, often capable of melting 135 tons of snow per hour, would be strategically placed near residential locations, where snow removal proves difficult, though he did not exactly say where. He said the city is also adding more locations for residents to pile snow.

    Williams and other officials requested the public’s help, asking drivers not to block corners, which prevents ploughs from accessing snow-clogged streets. Deputy Police Commissioner John Stanford was clear about parking:

    “You cannot save parking spots,” he said. “If we are called to a location for any cones, chairs, or any other items out there, we will remove them.”

    All Philadelphia public school activities will be canceled Monday, officials said.

    SEPTA is expecting major delays.

    “There are going to be significant disruptions to service all throughout the duration,” said SEPTA General Manager Scott Sauer.

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    In contrast to the very low temperatures for days after the Jan. 25 storm that dumped a foot of snow in areas around Philly, temperatures are expected to rise above freezing on Monday afternoon.

    Higher temperatures later in the week may help melt the snow, as opposed to the long-lasting snowpack after the January storm.

    Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill urged residents in their states to stay off the roads during the storm.

    On social media, Shapiro said state agencies are prepared to respond to the weather in Eastern and Southeastern Pennsylvania.

    Sherrill on Saturday declared a state of emergency ahead of the storm.

    She said at an afternoon news conference that it was the first time since 2022 that the National Weather Service had issued a blizzard warning along the coastline.

    The state of emergency will go into effect at noon Sunday.

    “I know we just got through a historic winter storm just a few weeks ago — we all did it together by heeding warnings, staying off the roads, and taking public safety seriously,” Sherrill said. “Now we have another serious winter storm on our hands, and my top priority is your safety.”

    Officials urged people to stock up on essentials ahead of the storm, keep electronics like cell phones charged, and avoid driving once the snowfall begins.

    Sherrill advised New Jerseyans to stay home and suggested watching the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team play for gold Sunday, doing a puzzle, and eating chili.

    Staff writer Stephen Stirling contributed to this article.

  • Trump aides struggle with how to spend $500 billion more on military

    Trump aides struggle with how to spend $500 billion more on military

    Trump administration officials have struggled to figure out how to increase U.S. military spending by a whopping $500 billion in their forthcoming budget, slowing the overall White House spending plan, four people familiar with the matter said.

    President Donald Trump last month agreed to a roughly 50% funding boost sought by Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, in the White House’s annual budget proposal. The idea ran into internal criticism from several other officials, including White House budget chief Russell Vought, who warned about its potential impact on the widening federal deficit, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect internal deliberations.

    Since Trump agreed to the higher number, White House aides and defense officials have run into logistical challenges surrounding where to put the money, because the amount is so large, the people said. The White House is more than two weeks behind its statutory deadline to send its budget proposal to Congress, in part because it is unclear how precisely to spend the additional $500 billion, according to the people familiar with the matter.

    Senior Pentagon officials have consulted with former senior defense officials as they grapple with the challenge, said one person familiar with the matter. Part of the discussion centers on how much emphasis should go into buying weapons the military already uses versus investing in high-end technologies, such as artificial intelligence, that the Pentagon envisions as part of its future.

    The roughly $900 billion defense budget approved last year was the largest in U.S. history. While other nations have also increased their military spending, the United States already spends more on defense than the next nine countries combined, according to 2023 data from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank.

    “I’m not surprised they’re having difficulty doing that,” said G. William Hoagland, senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank. “That’s an awful lot of money in one year.”

    Spokespeople for the White House and the Defense Department declined to comment.

    Trump, Hegseth, and many congressional Republicans have defended the proposed increase in the military budget as necessary to pay for an array of new priorities and confront foreign adversaries. Hegseth has said that the money would be spent “wisely” and that the larger budget would send “a message to the world.”

    The forthcoming White House budget for fiscal 2027 will spell out the administration’s proposed spending levels across the government. It requires congressional approval to be enacted and faces long odds.

    “This will allow us to build the ‘Dream Military’ that we have long been entitled to and, more importantly, that will keep us SAFE and SECURE, regardless of foe,” Trump said in a Truth Social post this month confirming his support for the $1.5 trillion budget number.

    The Pentagon has been grappling with how to rapidly replenish expensive munitions that it has relied on heavily, including Tomahawk cruise missiles, Patriot missile-defense interceptors, and ship-launched munitions known as Standard Missile-6s, or SM-6s.

    It also is wrestling with how to upgrade its Cold War-era nuclear weapons program with expensive next-generation systems like the B-21 bomber and the Columbia-class submarine. The aircraft, with an estimated cost of about $700 million each, is expected to replace the Air Force’s fleet of B-1 and B-2 bombers. The Columbia-class submarines are expected to cost at least $9 billion each.

    Hegseth, upon taking office, directed each military service to look for budget reductions of 8%; the money could then be invested in other Pentagon priorities better aligned with Trump’s agenda. Hegseth bristled at the suggestion that such reprogramming should be considered cuts, saying he would be “reorienting” about $50 billion in defense spending that the Biden administration had planned.

    More recently, Hegseth has called for “supercharging” the U.S. industrial base, seeking to speed up how quickly the military can field new weapons and other capabilities, in part by not relying as heavily on traditional defense contractors.

    With such a significant jump in spending planned, it now appears that the Pentagon budget is detached from a new national defense strategy that Hegseth’s team released in January, said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. That strategy calls for the Pentagon to focus first on defense in the Western Hemisphere, with less emphasis on Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

    It’s a “head-scratcher” that the Pentagon wants to spend so much money while also cutting back in those areas, Cancian said.

    “If you’ve got a 50% budget increase, you don’t have to do any of that,” he said. “You’d be talking about all the new places you’d be making investments.”

    The federal deficit, or the gap between what the government spent and what it collected in tax revenue, was $1.8 trillion last year. That number was down from the surges of red ink during the COVID years but up significantly from the standard deficit before the pandemic.

    Vought, a deficit hawk, has long called for reducing federal spending while also supporting Trump’s general goal of rebuilding the American military. He was instrumental in securing additional funding for the military last year in the GOP’s tax bill, which bypassed the typical bipartisan process for setting military spending.

    The increase in military spending alone would amount to one of the biggest federal programs. One Democratic plan to expand Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing benefits would cost $350 billion over the next decade, by comparison. If Congress were to spend an additional $500 billion every year on the military, the cost would be $5 trillion over the next decade. It is unclear if the Trump administration’s proposal is for an additional $500 billion just for next year, or $500 billion each year for a decade.

    “I’m sure there are very difficult conversations happening right now. Obviously, it would have a huge impact,” said Charles Kieffer, who spent several decades across administrations in the White House Office of Management and Budget and working for Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee. “A 50% increase requires a completely different formulation for your priorities.”

    Some experts in military spending panned the proposed increase as likely to increase fraud and waste. Julia Gledhill, a research analyst for the national security reform program at the nonpartisan Stimson Center, pointed to failed audits at the Pentagon and a lack of clear guardrails on much of the new military spending approved last year in the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which she said has been used like a “slush fund.”

    “We don’t know what we’re already spending money on. We don’t have details on how the Pentagon is using its trillion-dollar budget,” Gledhill said. “How are you supposed to make educated, informed decisions about the military budget if you don’t know where it’s already going?”

  • ICE’s purchases for big detention centers are marked by secrecy, frustrating towns

    ICE’s purchases for big detention centers are marked by secrecy, frustrating towns

    SOCORRO, Texas — In a Texas town at the edge of the Rio Grande and a tall metal border wall, rumors swirled that federal immigration officials wanted to purchase three hulking warehouses to transform into a detention center.

    As local officials scrambled to find out what was happening, a deed was filed showing the Department of Homeland Security had already inked a $122.8 million deal for the 826,000-square-foot warehouses in Socorro, a bedroom community of 40,000 people outside El Paso.

    “Nobody from the federal government bothered to pick up the phone or even send us any type of correspondence letting us know what’s about to take place,” said Rudy Cruz Jr., the mayor of the predominantly Hispanic town of low-slung ranch homes and trailer parks, where orchards and irrigation ditches share the landscape with strip malls, truck stops, recycling plants, and distribution warehouses.

    Socorro is among at least 20 communities with large warehouses across the U.S. that have become stealth targets for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s $45-billion expansion of detention centers.

    As public support for the agency and President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown sags, communities are objecting to mass detentions and raising concerns that the facilities could strain water supplies and other services while reducing local tax revenue. In many cases, mayors, county commissioners, governors, and members of Congress learned about ICE’s ambitions only after the agency bought or leased space for detainees, leading to shock and frustration even in areas that have backed Trump.

    “I just feel,” said Cruz, whose wife was born in Mexico, “that they do these things in silence so that they don’t get opposition.”

    Communities scramble for information

    ICE, which is part of DHS, has purchased at least seven warehouses in Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Texas, signed deeds show. Other deals have been announced but not yet finalized, though buyers scuttled sales in eight locations.

    DHS objected to calling the sites warehouses, stressing in a statement that they would be “very well structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards.”

    The process has been chaotic at times. ICE this past week acknowledged it made a “mistake” when it announced warehouse purchases in Chester, N.Y., and Roxbury, N.J. Roxbury then announced Friday that the sale there had closed.

    DHS has confirmed it is looking for more detention space but hasn’t disclosed individual sites ahead of acquisitions. Some cities learned that ICE was scouting warehouses through reporters. Others were tipped off by a spreadsheet circulating online among activists whose source is unclear.

    It wasn’t until Feb. 13 that the scope of the warehouse project was confirmed, when the governor’s office in New Hampshire, where there is backlash to a planned 500-bed processing center, released a document from ICE showing the agency plans to spend $38.3 billion to boost detention capacity to 92,000 beds.

    Since Trump took office, the number of people detained by ICE has increased to 75,000 from 40,000, spread across more than 225 sites.

    ICE could use the warehouses to consolidate and to increase capacity. The document describes a project that includes eight large-scale detention centers, capable of housing 7,000 to 10,000 detainees each, and 16 smaller regional processing centers. The document also refers to the acquisition of 10 existing “turnkey” facilities.

    The project is funded through the big tax and spending cuts bill passed by Congress last year that nearly doubled DHS’ budget. To build the detention centers, the Trump administration is using military contracts.

    Those contracts allow a lot of secrecy and for DHS to move quickly without following the usual processes and safeguards, said Charles Tiefer, a professor emeritus of law at the University of Baltimore Law School.

    Socorro facility could be among the largest

    In Socorro, the ICE-owned warehouses are so large that 4½ Walmart Supercenters could fit inside, standing in contrast to the remnants of the austere Spanish colonial and mission architecture that defines the town.

    At a recent city council meeting, public comments stretched for hours. “I think a lot of innocent people are getting caught up in their dragnet,” said Jorge Mendoza, an El Paso County retiree whose grandparents immigrated from Mexico.

    Many speakers invoked concerns about three recent deaths at an ICE detention facility at the nearby Fort Bliss Army base.

    Communities fear a financial hit

    Even communities that backed Trump in 2024 have been caught off guard by ICE’s plans and have raised concerns.

    In rural Pennsylvania’s Berks County, commissioner Christian Leinbach called the district attorney, the sheriff, the jail warden, and the county’s head of emergency services when he first heard ICE might buy a warehouse in Upper Bern Township, 3 miles from his home.

    No one knew anything.

    A few days later, a local official in charge of land records informed him that ICE had bought the building — promoted by developers as a “state-of-the art logistics center” — for $87.4 million.

    “There was absolutely no warning,” Leinbach said during a meeting in which he raised concerns that turning the warehouse into a federal facility means a loss of more than $800,000 in local tax dollars.

    ICE has touted the income taxes its workers would pay, though the facilities themselves will be exempt from property taxes.

    Georgia center could house twice the population of town

    In Social Circle, Ga., which also strongly supported Trump in 2024, officials were stunned by ICE’s plans for a facility that could hold 7,500 to 10,000 people after first learning about it through a reporter.

    The city, which has a population of just 5,000 and worries about the infrastructure needs for such a detention center, only heard from DHS after the $128.6 million sale of a 1-million-square-foot warehouse was completed. Like Socorro and Berks County, Social Circle questioned whether the water and sewage system could keep up.

    ICE has said it did due diligence to ensure the sites don’t overwhelm city utilities. But Social Circle said the agency’s analysis relied on a yet-to-be built sewer treatment plant.

    “To be clear, the City has repeatedly communicated that it does not have the capacity or resources to accommodate this demand, and no proposal presented to date has demonstrated otherwise,” the city said in a statement.

    And in the Phoenix suburb of Surprise, Ariz., officials sent a scathing letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after ICE without warning bought a massive warehouse in a residential area about a mile from a high school. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, raised the prospect of going to court to have the site declared a public nuisance.

    Crowds wait to speak in Socorro

    Back in Socorro, people waiting to speak against the ICE facility spilled out of the city council chambers, some standing beside murals paying tribute to the World War II-era Braceros Program that allowed Mexican farmworkers to be guest workers in the U.S. The program stoked Socorro’s economy and population before President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration in the 1950s began mass deportations aimed at people who had crossed the border illegally.

    Eduardo Castillo, formerly an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, told city officials it is intimidating but “not impossible” to challenge the federal government.

    “If you don’t at least try,” he said, “you will end up with another inhumane detention facility built in your jurisdiction and under your watch.”

  • U.S. pays tribute to the late Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau at the Winter Olympics

    U.S. pays tribute to the late Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau at the Winter Olympics

    MILAN — Johnny Gaudreau was working hard to make the U.S. team heading to the 2026 Winter Olympics. He and brother Matthew watched the event growing up in South Jersey, always with eyes on playing in it.

    “It was their dream,” Jane Gaudreau said her sons.

    Johnny and Matthew died on Aug. 29, 2024, when they were struck by an SUV while riding bicycles near their hometown of Salem County on the eve of their sister Katie’s wedding. Their deaths shocked the hockey community, and the Gloucester Catholic High School graduates have been honored since by retired numbers, a memorial 5K, and more.

    An elite player a decade into his NHL career and the all-time U.S. leading scorer in international play, Johnny Gaudreau was on track to be in Milan for the tournament that wraps up Sunday when the Americans play rival Canada for the gold medal. Guy Gaudreau said USA Hockey was gracious enough to tell the family their oldest son was on the projected roster.

    Friends and family honor Matthew and Johnny Gaudreau at the inaugural Gaudreau Family 5K

    “He wanted to be on this team,” Guy Gaudreau said during the third period of the U.S. semifinal win on Friday night. “And it would’ve been nice if he’d been here.”

    The U.S. is honoring the Gaudreau brothers with a tribute to them in their locker room at the Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena. A blue No. 13 Gaudreau jersey hangs there as a reminder of the player known as “Johnny Hockey,” who was beloved by so many on the national team and beyond.

    “It means everything — we all know he should be here with us,” said Dylan Larkin, who played with Gaudreau at multiple world championships. “He should be with us. We love him, and I like that we continue to think about him and I wouldn’t imagine it any other way.”

    Jane and Guy Gaudreau, along with Johnny’s widow, Meredith, and their two oldest children arrived in Milan on Friday. The Gaudreau parents had been planning a trip to Las Vegas and initially hesitated after USA Hockey invited them to attend.

    “Our two daughters, for 24 hours, they just kept at us: ‘You have to go. The boys would want you to do this. This would mean so much to John,’” Jane said. “It just means so much to our family, and we’re so excited to remember what our boys meant to hockey.”

    The Gaudreau family connections to players on the roster run deep, from Boston College to the NHL. In addition to the world championships, Johnny played with Noah Hanifin on the Calgary Flames and Zach Werenski on the Columbus Blue Jackets.

    “Johnny was close to a lot of guys in that room,” Hanifin said. “We know he’d be here with us, so we’ve been thinking about him and carrying him with us.”

    Werenski said after he and his teammates advanced to the final that Meredith reached out to his wife a few days earlier to let them know they were coming.

    “It’s great having them here, and it’s super special,” Werenski said. “We’re happy that we made it to the gold-medal game so they can watch that and be a part of it. It’s on us to make them proud.”

    Not that it would have been much of a debate, but coach Mike Sullivan confirmed what management told the Gaudreaus: Johnny would have been on the team if he were still alive, based on his body of work and how well he has played in a U.S. uniform.

    “He was one of America’s very best,” Sullivan said. “He’s just a good person on the ice and off the ice, and I think he’s an inspiration to our players to this very day.”

    Nearly a year after the Gaudreau brothers’ deaths, their sister made sure Johnny and Matt were at her wedding

    Players still talk about Gaudreau, and “all the stories are funny,” according to Charlie McAvoy, who played alongside him at worlds.

    “Just an amazing person, just an infectious personality,” McAvoy said. “The detail, really, with our staff and our equipment staff especially to make sure that he’s always with us, little reminders of him in the room, and they just go a long way. You always see them. They’re just gentle. They’re right there. But we know that he’s always with us.”

    Along with Johnny’s No. 13 jersey is that number on the wall alongside Matthew’s No. 21. It’s similar to what USA Hockey did a year ago at the 4 Nations Face-Off, when Guy Gaudreau took part in practice as a guest coach.

    This would have been Johnny Gaudreau’s first chance to play at the Olympics after the NHL did not participate in 2018 and 2022. But it almost certainly won’t be the last time his jersey hangs in the U.S. locker room at the game, a tradition that could continue for years to come.

    “I hope so,” Larkin said. ”I sure hope so.”

  • U.S. ambassador causes uproar by claiming Israel has a right to much of the Middle East

    U.S. ambassador causes uproar by claiming Israel has a right to much of the Middle East

    TEL AVIV, Israel — Arab and Muslim nations on Saturday sharply condemned comments by the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who said Israel has a right to much of the Middle East.

    Huckabee made the comments in an interview with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson that aired Friday. Carlson said that according to the Bible, the descendants of Abraham would receive land that today would include essentially the entire Middle East, and asked Huckabee if Israel had a right to that land.

    Huckabee responded: “It would be fine if they took it all.” Huckabee added, however, that Israel was not looking to expand its territory and has a right to security in the land it legitimately holds.

    His comments sparked immediate backlash from neighboring Egypt and Jordan, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the League of Arab States, which in separate statements called them extremist, provocative, and not in line with the U.S. position.

    Egypt’s foreign ministry called Huckabee’s comments a “blatant violation” of international law, adding that “Israel has no sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territory or other Arab lands.”

    “Statements of this nature — extremist and lacking any sound basis — serve only to inflame sentiments and stir religious and national emotions,” the League of Arab States said.

    There was no immediate comment from Israel or the United States.

    Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has not had fully recognized borders. Its frontiers with Arab neighbors have shifted as a result of wars, annexations, ceasefires, and peace agreements.

    During the six-day 1967 Mideast war, Israel captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem from Jordan, Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula as part of a peace deal with Egypt following the 1973 Mideast war. It also unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

    Israel has attempted to deepen control of the occupied West Bank in recent months. It has greatly expanded construction in Jewish settlements, legalized outposts, and made significant bureaucratic changes to its policies in the territory. U.S. President Donald Trump has said he will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank and has offered strong assurances that he’d block any move to do so.

    Palestinians have for decades called for an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza with east Jerusalem its capital, a claim backed by much of the international community.

    Huckabee has long opposed the idea of a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinian people. In an interview last year, he said he does not believe in referring to the Arab descendants of people who had lived in British-controlled Palestine as “Palestinians.”

    In the latest interview, Carlson pressed Huckabee about his interpretation of Bible verses from the book of Genesis, where he said God promised Abraham and his descendants land from the Nile to the Euphrates.

    “That would be the Levant, so that would be Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon. It would also be big parts of Saudi Arabia and Iraq,” Carlson said.

    Huckabee replied: “Not sure we’d go that far. I mean, it would be a big piece of land.”

    Israel has encroached on more land since the start of its war with Hamas in Gaza.

    Under the current ceasefire, Israel withdrew its troops to a buffer zone but still controls more than half the territory. Israeli forces are supposed to withdraw further, though the ceasefire deal doesn’t give a timeline.

    After Syrian President Bashar Assad was ousted at the end of 2024, Israel’s military seized control of a demilitarized buffer zone in Syria created as part of a 1974 ceasefire between the countries. Israel said the move was temporary and meant to secure its border.

    And Israel still occupies five hilltop posts on Lebanese territory following its brief war with Hezbollah in 2024.

  • Trump wants to impose 15% tariff, up from 10% he announced after Supreme Court decision

    Trump wants to impose 15% tariff, up from 10% he announced after Supreme Court decision

    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Saturday that he was raising the global tariff he wants to impose to 15%, up from 10% he had announced a day earlier.

    Trump said in a social media post on that he was making the decision “Based on a thorough, detailed, and complete review of the ridiculous, poorly written, and extraordinarily anti-American decision on Tariffs issued yesterday,” by the U.S. Supreme Court.

    After the court ruled he didn’t have the emergency power to impose many sweeping tariffs, Trump signed an executive order on Friday night that enabled him to bypass Congress and impose a 10% tax on imports from around the world. The catch is that those tariffs would be limited to just 150 days, unless they are extended legislatively.

    Trump’s post significantly ratcheting up a global tax on imports to the U.S. yet again was the latest sign that despite the court’s check, the Republican president was intent on continuing to wield in an unpredictable manner his favorite tool to for the economy and to apply global pressure. Trump’s shifting announcements over the last year that he was raising and sometimes lowering tariffs with little notice jolted markets and rattled nations.

    Saturday’s announcement seemed to a be a sign that Trump intends to use the temporary global tariffs to continue to flex.

    “During the next short number of months, the Trump Administration will determine and issue the new and legally permissible Tariffs, which will continue our extraordinarily successful process of Making America Great Again,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social media network.

    Under the order Trump signed Friday night, the 10% tariff was scheduled to take effect starting Feb. 24. The White House did not immediately respond to a message inquiring when the president would sign an updated order.

    In addition to the temporary tariffs that Trump wants to set at 15%, the president said Friday that he was also pursuing tariffs through other sections of federal law which require an investigation by the Commerce Department.

    Trump made an unusually personal attack on the Supreme Court judges who ruled against him in a 6-3 vote, including two of those he appointed during his first term, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. Trump, at a news conference on Friday, said of the two justices: “I think it’s an embarrassment to their families.”

    He was still seething Friday night, posting on social media complaining about Gorsuch, Coney Barrett, and Chief Justice John Roberts, who ruled with the majority and wrote the majority opinion. On Saturday morning, Trump issued another post declaring that his “new hero” was Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote a 63-page dissent. He also praised Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who were in the minority, and said of the three dissenting justices: “There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that they want to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

  • Bucks County DA investigating after Quakertown police arrested high school students protesting ICE

    Bucks County DA investigating after Quakertown police arrested high school students protesting ICE

    The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office is investigating the Quakertown Borough Police Department’s response to a high school student protest against federal immigration enforcement.

    On Friday, a Quakertown High School student walkout protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) escalated into a confrontation with adults that left at least one teenager bloodied and in handcuffs.

    “Our office is conducting an independent investigation into the police response during this incident,” said Manuel Gamiz Jr., a spokesperson for Bucks County District Attorney Joe Khan. “To ensure a thorough and transparent review, we are seeking the community’s assistance and encourage anyone with information, including video footage or photos, to contact the Bucks County detectives at 215-348-6354.”

    Bystander video footage showed police, adults, and what appear to be teenagers, at times fighting, on a sidewalk along Front Street. In a widely shared video, teens were seen scuffling with a man who put a girl in a chokehold. Several news organizations have reported that the man, who was not wearing a police uniform, was Quakertown Police Chief Scott McElree. Quakertown police and McElree did not respond to requests for comment Saturday morning.

    Quakertown police said Friday that five or six minors and one adult were taken into custody. Police have not provided details on who was arrested and said that the students had been acting violently.

    Standing outside the Quakertown police station Saturday morning, parents and leaders from local civil rights groups called on police to provide answers.

    Adrienne King, president of the Bucks County NAACP, said that when young people are involved in a police encounter, “the standard for care, restraint, and adherence to policy are high and must be adhered to.”

    “Video circulating publicly has raised serious questions in our community,” King said. “Those questions deserve answers, and we are here to ask for those answers today. Transparency is not optional in situations like this.”

    Family members of one of the girls in police custody provided a written statement Saturday.

    “We are looking for answers and accountability from the Quakertown police department and school district as well as justice for our daughter and the other children. We offer solidarity with the other families affected and hope to have our children home immediately.”

  • Winter storm warning for Philly; blizzard conditions expected at the Shore

    Winter storm warning for Philly; blizzard conditions expected at the Shore

    A winter storm warning is in effect for Sunday — a blizzard warning for the Jersey Shore — and Sunday into Monday Philly’s snow has a shot at doubling the amount that fell on Jan. 25, the National Weather Service says.

    “At this point, that’s certainly possible,” Zachary Cooper, meteorologist with the National Weather Service said Saturday. The official forecast is calling for just over a foot in the city, with the potential for the total reaching 18 inches.

    Blizzard warnings up for the Shore, where onshore winds are forecast to howl past 35 mph, with moderate to major flooding possible.

    While it wasn’t in the official language, the weather service on a Saturday morning might well have included a supermarket stampede warning.

    The actual winter storm warning is in effect from 7 a.m. Sunday until 6 p.m. Monday.

    With a surprising level of agreement computer models and their interpreters Saturday were seeing the storm as being inevitable. It was forecast to affect the I-95 corridor from Washington to Boston — a rarity in recent winters.

    The weather service listed a 25% chance that totals could approach two feet in the city.

    “It’s going to be a long-duration event,” said Cody Snell, meteorologist with NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Md.

    On the plus side, this will not have the staying power of the 9.3 punitive inches that accumulated on Jan. 25 and spent a three-week vacation in the region. No ice is in the forecast, and daytime temperatures above freezing and the February sun likely will erase most it by the end of the workweek.

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    What time would the snow begin in Philly?

    Precipitation is expected to begin Sunday morning, said Snell, possibly as a mix of snow and rain that becomes all snow.

    Snow may have a hard time sticking during the day, said Tom Kines, senior meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc., since temperatures will be near or slightly above freezing and the late-winter sun will be a factor, even it’s just a rumor in the sky.

    Plus the ground won’t be especially cold after a Saturday in which the temperature may approach 50 degrees.

    However, the upper air is going to be quite cold, Snell said, and when the snow is falling heavily, as it is expected to do Sunday night, “it will cool the column.”

    He said areas that get caught in heavy snow “bands” would see the highest amounts.

    What would be so different about this storm?

    The storm is forecast to mature into a classic nor’easter, so named for the strong winds generated from the Northeast.

    Nor’easters are the primary source of heavy snows along I-95, but the ones that produce heavy snow from Washington to Boston have been scarce lately.

    “Over the past several years, they’ve been few and far between,” Kines.

    The Jan. 25 storm was not a nor’easter per se, said Snell, but more of a case of the “overrunning” of warm air over cold air producing the snow and sleet.

    John Gyakum, an atmospheric scientist at McGill University in Montreal and a winter storm specialist, said he anecdotally has seen a trend of coastal storms intensifying too far north to have much of an impact on the Philly region.

    If that were the case, it could be a symptom of global warming, said Steve Decker, meteorology professor at Rutgers University. Storms form where cold and warm meet, and that may have been happening farther north lately.

    In any event that evidently won’t be the case Sunday.

    What could go wrong with the forecasts?

    Are you new around here?

    The storm consists of multiple moving parts, and as it bounds off the Southeast coast, it is due to intensify rapidly over the warm Atlantic waters.

    Meteorologists advised it was still unclear precisely how intense it would become and what path it would take.

    Forecast busts have been known to happen, including a famous one 25 years ago. On a Friday, the weather service warned of a storm of “historic” proportions to begin that Sunday.

    What Philly got was about an inch of snow that fell over three uneventful hours.

    In 2015, the head of the Mount Holly weather service office publicly apologized for a busted forecast.

    However, in recent years, the region hasn’t had all that many serious snow scares.

    In this case, expect details to jump around even as the precipitation is falling, but Snell said “confidence is growing” that substantial snow is going to happen.

    Inquirer staff writer Stephen Stirling contributed to this article.

  • Trump doesn’t invent resentments — he senses which ones are newly safe to express

    Trump doesn’t invent resentments — he senses which ones are newly safe to express

    There is a particular kind of ugliness that does not merely offend but instructs. It tells us something about who we have been, who we are becoming, and what social permissions are quietly being expanded. Donald Trump’s circulation of an image portraying Barack and Michelle Obama as apes belongs squarely in that category. It is not a one-off lapse. It is a signal flare.

    This was not just racist imagery; it was historically literate racism. The ape trope is among the oldest tools in the dehumanization kit, refined over centuries and deployed whenever Black Americans have come too close to full belonging. One does not stumble into it by accident.

    To understand why this matters — and why it is likely to get worse — we have to situate Trump not just as a provocateur, but as a product of moral inheritance, cultural permission, and a long American tradition of racial degradation repackaged as “joking” or “provocation.”

    Trump’s sharing of a racist video of the Obamas on Truth Social is beyond the pale, even for him | Jenice Armstrong

    Trump has always been less an ideologue than an accelerant. He doesn’t invent resentments; he senses which ones are newly safe to express. His strategy, if we must call it that, is social intuition — an ability to intuit when cruelty will be rewarded rather than punished.

    That intuition was honed in a family and business culture that Mary Trump, his niece, describes in her 2020 memoir, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, as emotionally brutal, hierarchical, and relentlessly contemptuous of perceived weakness. Empathy was treated as a liability; dominance as virtue.

    That worldview maps neatly onto racial hierarchy. When Trump rose to political prominence by falsely claiming Barack Obama was not really American, he was not engaging in policy disagreement. He was policing the boundaries of belonging. The ape image is simply that instinct stripped of euphemism.

    From left, Fred Trump, boxing promoter Don King, and Donald Trump participate in a 1987 news conference in Atlantic City.

    It is also not untethered from history. Trump’s defenders bristle at any mention of white supremacist lineage, but history is stubborn. His father, Fred Trump, was arrested at a 1927 Ku Klux Klan rally in Queens — an event Trump has long dismissed without serious reckoning.

    Whether Fred Trump was a member or merely present is ultimately less important than what this moment symbolizes: Trumpism did not emerge in a vacuum. It grew in soil long fertilized by segregationist politics, racial grievance, and coded contempt that later became uncoded.

    Police officers break up a scuffle amid demonstrators outside South Boston High School on the first day of a court-ordered busing program to integrate Boston public schools in September 1974.

    Cultural historians like Henry Louis Gates Jr. have shown how the ape trope was central to 19th and early 20th-century pseudoscience, minstrel culture, and colonial propaganda. To depict Black people as simian was to deny them reason, morality, and ultimately rights. It was a way of making cruelty feel natural.

    Scholars from Frantz Fanon to Saidiya Hartman have traced how this imagery did not vanish with Jim Crow; it merely went underground, resurfacing whenever racial hierarchy felt threatened.

    Trump’s racist Truth Social post about the Obamas is meant to demean us all | Solomon Jones

    The Obama presidency was precisely such a moment. For some Americans, it symbolized not progress but displacement. Trump rose by giving voice to that panic, laundering it through grievance and mockery. The ape image is not regression; it is escalation.

    Why will it get worse? Because norms erode asymmetrically. Once a president can circulate imagery that would once have ended a public career — and suffer no meaningful consequence — the floor drops out. What was once unsayable becomes debatable. What was once debatable becomes funny. And what was once funny becomes policy.

    What made this episode briefly arresting — before it slid into the familiar churn of outrage — was that condemnation came, at least initially, from both sides of the political aisle. Democrats responded with predictable fury, naming the image for what it was: racist, dehumanizing, indecent. But some Republicans, too, recoiled. A handful of conservative commentators, former officials, and religious leaders expressed a kind of moral embarrassment, as if they had suddenly overheard a family secret spoken aloud at the dinner table.

    That bipartisan outrage matters, but not in the way we might hope. It did not signal a renewed moral consensus so much as a fleeting recognition of how far the ground has shifted.

    Many of the Republican critics framed their objections narrowly — not that the image was wrong in itself, but that it was “unhelpful,” “distracting,” or “beneath the dignity of the office.” This is the language of procedural discomfort, not moral revulsion. It suggests that the line being defended is not the humanity of the Obamas but the decorum of politics.

    On the Democratic side, the outrage was morally clearer but strategically fatigued. There was anger, yes — but also weariness. A sense that we have seen this movie before, named its villain, issued our statements, and then moved on. Moral clarity without moral consequence eventually becomes ritual. It reassures the speaker more than it restrains the offender.

    This asymmetry reveals something crucial. Outrage alone does not halt degradation; it can even normalize it by making it routine. When every transgression is met with the same crescendo of denunciation and the same absence of consequence, the culture learns a quiet lesson: that cruelty is survivable, that it carries no lasting cost. Trump understands this intuitively. He relies on the fact that outrage is loud but short-lived, while the permissions he expands are durable.

    What we witnessed, then, was not a national reckoning, but a brief moral spasm — a reminder that many Americans still know, at least intellectually, that some lines should not be crossed. The tragedy is that knowing is no longer the same as enforcing. In a healthier moral ecosystem, bipartisan outrage would be a stopping force. In ours, it is often just a speed bump.

    Trump’s political project has never been about persuasion in the classical sense. It is about habituation. Repetition dulls outrage. Shock exhausts resistance. Eventually, people stop asking whether something is wrong and start asking whether it “works.”

    This is how democracies corrode — not in grand coups, but in the slow reeducation of moral reflexes. The danger is not only Trump’s blatant racism and cruelty, but the lesson it teaches: that dignity is conditional, and that some people may always be safely reduced.

    If history teaches us anything, it is that dehumanization does not stop where it starts. Once a society relearns how to sneer, it rarely remembers where to stop.

    And that is why this moment deserves more than disgust. It deserves memory.

    Jack Hill is a diversity consultant, child advocate, journalist, and writer.