John Cole spent 18 years as editorial cartoonist for The (Scranton) Times-Tribune, and now draws for various statesnewsroom.com sites.
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Public health workers quitting over Guantánamo assignments
Rebekah Stewart, a nurse at the U.S. Public Health Service, got a call last April that brought her to tears. She had been selected for deployment to the Trump administration’s new immigration detention operation at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
This posting combined Donald Trump’s longtime passion to use the offshore base to move “some bad dudes” out of the United States with a promise made shortly after his inauguration last year to hold thousands of noncitizens there. The naval base is known for the torture and inhumane treatment of men suspected of terrorism in the wake of 9/11.
“Deployments are typically not something you can say no to,” Stewart said. She pleaded with the coordinating office, which found another nurse to go in her place.
Other public health officers who worked at Guantánamo in the past year described conditions there for the detainees, some of whom learned they were in Cuba from the nurses and doctors sent to care for them. They treated immigrants detained in a dark prison called Camp 6, where no sunlight filters in, said the officers, whom KFF Health News agreed not to name because they fear retaliation for speaking publicly. It previously held people with suspected ties to al-Qaeda. The officers said they were not briefed ahead of time on the details of their potential duties at the base.
Although the Public Health Service is not a branch of the U.S. armed forces, its uniformed officers — roughly 5,000 doctors, nurses, and other health workers — act like stethoscope-wearing soldiers in emergencies. The government deploys them during hurricanes, wildfires, mass shootings, and measles outbreaks. In the interim, they fill gaps at an alphabet soup of government agencies.
The Trump administration’s mass arrests to curb immigration have created a new type of health emergency as the number of people detained reaches record highs. About 71,000 immigrants are currently imprisoned, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, which show that most have no criminal record.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said: “President Donald Trump has been very clear: Guantánamo Bay will hold the worst of the worst.” However, several news organizations have reported that many of the men shipped to the base had no criminal convictions. As many as 90% of them were described as “low-risk” in a May progress report from ICE.
In fits and starts, the Trump administration has sent about 780 noncitizens to Guantánamo Bay, according to the New York Times. Numbers fluctuate as new detainees arrive and others are returned to the U.S. or deported.
While some Public Health Service officers have provided medical care to detained immigrants in the past, this is the first time in American history that Guantánamo has been used to house immigrants who had been living in the U.S. Officers said ICE postings are getting more common. After dodging Guantánamo, Stewart was instructed to report to an ICE detention center in Texas.
“Public health officers are being asked to facilitate a man-made humanitarian crisis,” she said.
Seeing no option to refuse deployments that she found objectionable, Stewart resigned after a decade of service. She would give up the prospect of a pension offered after 20 years.
“It was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make,” she said. “It was my dream job.”
One of her PHS colleagues, nurse Dena Bushman, grappled with a similar moral dilemma when she got a notice to report to Guantánamo a few weeks after the shooting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in August. Bushman, who was posted with the CDC, got a medical waiver delaying her deployment on account of stress and grief. She considered resigning, then did.
“This may sound extreme,” Bushman said. “But when I was making this decision, I couldn’t help but think about how the people who fed those imprisoned in concentration camps were still part of the Nazi regime.”
Others have resigned, but many officers remain. While they are alarmed by Trump’s tactics, detained people need care, multiple PHS officers told KFF Health News.
“I respect people and treat them like humans,” said a PHS nurse who worked in detention facilities last year. “I try to be a light in the darkness, the one person that makes someone smile in this horrible mess.”
The PHS officers conceded that their power to protect people was limited in a detention system fraught with overcrowding, disorganization, and the psychological trauma of uncertainty, family separations, and sleep deprivation.
“Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE,” said Tricia McLaughlin, chief spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, in an emailed statement to KFF Health News.
Adm. Brian Christine, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the Public Health Service, said in an email: “Our duty is clear: say ‘Yes Sir!’, salute smartly, and execute the mission: show up, provide humane care, and protect health.” Christine is a recent appointee who, until recently, was a urologist specializing in testosterone and male fertility issues.
“In pursuit of subjective morality or public displays of virtue,” he added, “we risk abandoning the very individuals we pledged to serve.”
Into the unknown
In the months before Stewart resigned, she reflected on her previous deployments, during Trump’s first term, to immigration processing centers run by Customs and Border Protection. Fifty women were held in a single concrete cell in Texas, she recalled.
“The most impactful thing I could do was to convince the guards to allow the women, who had been in there for a week, to shower,” she said. “I witnessed suffering without having much ability to address it.”
Stewart spoke with Bushman and other PHS officers who were embedded at the CDC last year. They assisted with the agency’s response to ongoing measles outbreaks, with sexually transmitted infection research, and more. Their roles became crucial last year as the Trump administration laid off droves of CDC staffers.
Stewart, Bushman, and a few other PHS officers at the CDC said they met with middle managers to ask for details about the deployments: If they went to Guantánamo and ICE facilities, how much power would they have to provide what they considered medically necessary care? If they saw anything unethical, how could they report it? Would it be investigated? Would they be protected from reprisal?
Stewart and Bushman said they were given a PHS office phone number they could call if they had a complaint while on assignment. Otherwise, they said, their questions went unanswered. They resigned and so never went to Guantánamo.
PHS officers who were deployed to the base told KFF Health News they weren’t given details about their potential duties — or the standard operating procedure for medical care — before they arrived.
Stephen Xenakis, a retired Army general and a psychiatrist who has advised on medical care at Guantánamo for two decades, said that was troubling. Before health workers deploy, he said, they should understand what they’ll be expected to do.
The consequences of insufficient preparation can be severe. In 2014, the Navy threatened to court-martial one of its nurses at Guantánamo who refused to force-feed prisoners on hunger strike, who were protesting inhumane treatment and indefinite detention. The protocol was brutal: A person was shackled to a five-point restraint chair as nurses shoved a tube for liquid food into their stomach through their nostrils.
“He wasn’t given clear guidance in advance on how these procedures would be conducted at Guantánamo,” Xenakis said of the nurse. “Until he saw it, he didn’t understand how painful it was for detainees.”
The American Nurses Association and Physicians for Human Rights sided with the nurse, saying his objection was guided by professional ethics. After a year, the military dropped the charges.
A uniformed doctor or nurse’s power tends to depend on their rank, their supervisor, and chains of command, Xenakis said. He helped put an end to some inhumane practices at Guantánamo more than a decade ago, when he and other retired generals and admirals publicly objected to certain interrogation techniques, such as one called “walling,” in which interrogators slammed the heads of detainees suspected of terrorism against a wall, causing slight concussions. Xenakis argued that science didn’t support “walling” as an effective means of interrogation, and that it was unethical, amounting to torture.
Medics practice evacuating a detained immigrant in a simulated exercise at Guantánamo in April 2025. Torture hasn’t been reported from Guantánamo’s immigration operation, but ICE shift reports obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the government watchdog group American Oversight note concerns about detainees resorting to hunger strikes and self-harm.
“Welfare checks with potential hunger strike IA’s,” short for illegal aliens, says an April 30 note from a contractor working with ICE. “In case of a hunger strike or other emergencies,” the report adds, the PHS and ICE are “coordinating policies and procedures.”
“De-escalation of potential pod wide hunger strike/potential riot,” says an entry from July 8. “Speak with alien on suicide watch regarding well being.”
Inmates and investigations have reported delayed medical care at immigration detention facilities and dangerous conditions, including overcrowding and a lack of sanitation. Thirty-two people died in ICE custody in 2025, making it the deadliest year in two decades.
“They are arresting and detaining more people than their facilities can support,” one PHS officer told KFF Health News. The most prevalent problem the officer saw among imprisoned immigrants was psychological. They worried about never seeing their families again or being sent back to a country where they feared they’d be killed. “People are scared out of their minds,” the officer said.
U.S. service members stand by during an April 2025 simulated medical evacuation of immigrants detained at Guantánamo. No sunlight
The PHS officers who were at Guantánamo told KFF Health News that the men they saw were detained in either low-security barracks, with a handful of people per room, or in Camp 6, a dark, high-security facility without natural light. The ICE shift reports describe the two stations by their position on the island, Leeward for the barracks and Windward for Camp 6. About 50 Cuban men sent to Guantánamo in December and January have languished at Camp 6.
A Navy hospital on the base mainly serves the military and other residents who aren’t locked up — and in any case, its capabilities are limited, the officers said. To reduce the chance of expensive medical evacuations back to the U.S. to see specialists quickly, they said, the immigrants were screened before being shipped to Guantánamo. People over age 60 or who needed daily drugs to manage diabetes and high blood pressure, for example, were generally excluded. Still, the officers said, some detainees have had to be evacuated back to Florida.
PHS nurses and doctors said they screened immigrants again when they arrived and provided ongoing care, fielding complaints including about gastrointestinal distress and depression. One ICE monthly progress report says, “The USPHS psychologist started an exercise group” for detainees.
Doctors’ requests for lab work were often turned down because of logistical hurdles, partly due to the number of agencies working together on the base, the officers said. Even a routine test, a complete blood count, took weeks to process, vs. hours in the U.S.
DHS and the Department of Defense, which have coordinated on the Guantánamo immigration operation, did not respond to requests for comment about their work there.
One PHS officer who helped medically screen new detainees said they were often surprised to learn they were at Guantánamo.
“I’d tell them, ‘I’m sorry you are here,’” the officer said. “No one freaked out. It was like the ten-millionth time they had been transferred.” Some of the men had been detained in various facilities for five or six months and said they wanted to return to their home countries, according to the officer. Health workers had neither an answer nor a fix.
Unlike ICE detention facilities in the U.S., Guantánamo hasn’t been overcrowded. “I have never been so not busy at work,” one officer said. A military base on a tropical island, Guantánamo offers activities such as snorkeling, paddleboard yoga, and kickboxing to those who aren’t imprisoned. Even so, the officer said they would rather be home than on this assignment on the taxpayer’s dime.
Transporting staff and supplies to the island and maintaining them on-base is enormously expensive. The government paid an estimated $16,500 per day, per detainee at Guantánamo, to hold those accused of terrorism, according to a 2025 Washington Post analysis of Department of Defense data. (The average cost to detain immigrants in ICE facilities in the U.S. is $157 a day.)
Even so, the funding has skyrocketed: Congress granted ICE a record $78 billion for fiscal year 2026, a staggering increase from $9.9 billion in 2024 and $6.5 billion nearly a decade ago.
Last year, the Trump administration also diverted more than $2 billion from the national defense budget to immigration operations, according to a report from congressional Democrats. About $60 million of it went to Guantánamo.
“Detaining noncitizens at Guantánamo is far more costly and logistically burdensome than holding them in ICE detention facilities within the United States,” wrote Deborah Fleischaker, a former assistant director at ICE, in a declaration submitted as part of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union early last year. In December, a federal judge rejected the Trump administration’s request to dismiss a separate ACLU case questioning the legality of detaining immigrants outside the U.S.
Anne Schuchat, who served with the PHS for 30 years before retiring in 2018, said PHS deployments to detention centers may cost the nation in terms of security, too. “A key concern has always been to have enough of these officers available for public health emergencies,” she said.
Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesperson, said the immigration deployments don’t affect the public health service’s potential response to other emergencies.
In the past, PHS officers have stood up medical shelters during hurricanes in Louisiana and Texas, rolled out COVID testing in the earliest months of the pandemic, and provided crisis support after the deadly shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the Boston Marathon bombing.
“It’s important for the public to be aware of how many government resources are being used so that the current administration can carry out this one agenda,” said Stewart, one of the nurses who resigned. “This one thing that’s probably turning us into the types of countries we have fought wars against.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.
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Union host top soccer academies from Europe and North America at their ‘world-class facility’ in inaugural tournament
The Union had the opportunity to show off the club’s new WSFS Bank Sportsplex facility to teams from a wide range of nations last week, as it hosted the inaugural “Snow Bowl,” a tournament showcasing some of the world’s best youth academies.
Clubs from across Europe and North America were represented in the tournament, which included divisions for under-15, under-16, and under-18 teams. The tournament drew 10 major soccer clubs, including England’s Manchester United and Newcastle United, and Germany’s Borussia Dortmund and Borussia Mönchengladbach.
Jon Scheer, the Union’s director of academy and professional development, said the Union’s ability to draw in European clubs of this caliber speaks to the club’s global reputation. .
“To get Manchester United, PSV, Dortmund, some of the best European clubs, to come, I think it says something about the brand of the Philadelphia Union now,” Scheer said. “Certainly our facility was a big reason why they agreed to come, but also because of the level of competition that we brought in.”
The Union boasted two teams in the Feb. 14 final of the inaugural Snow Bowl tournament, showcasing some of the top youth academies from around the world at the WSFS Sportsplex. The Union also invited the Netherlands’ PSV Eindhoven, Mexico’s Monterrey, Denmark’s Lyngby, Portugal’s Benfica, and Major League Soccer’s Chicago Fire academies.
“We really wanted to target clubs that we felt would bring over academy-level talent that would really push ourselves,” Scheer said. “And they would, in turn, benefit from the opportunity for their players.”
The Generation Adidas Cup, which started as MLS’s top academy tournament in 2007 and expanded to include clubs from outside MLS in 2014, served as a common meeting place for many of the academies that attended this year’s Snow Bowl in Chester.
The Union’s U-17 team won the GA Cup in 2023 and 2024. PSV, Monterrey, and Manchester United have also competed in the tournament, hosted in the spring at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla.
“Through things like Aspire Conference and through our relationship with U.S. Soccer and success at the GA Cup level and success at the MLS level, I think that’s starting to make our reputation a bit stronger globally,” Scheer said.
While the Union’s reputation convinced teams to come, the WSFS Bank Sportsplex made hosting the tournament a possibility. Teams competed on the indoor turf field at the facility, which the club opened last July.
Scheer said the visiting clubs were surprised by the quality of the facility.
“When they came over here, they said this is truly a world-class facility,” Scheer said. “There’s nothing like this in Europe, from what they’ve talked about.”
Aloys Wijnker, the academy head at PSV Eindhoven, was particularly impressed with the Union’s campus. Wijnker, who worked for U.S. Soccer from 2016-18 before returning to his native Netherlands, remembered when the club’s first team, second team, and academy were spread apart. Now, the Union host all of their operations on the waterfront in Chester.
The Union’s under-16 and under-18 academy teams advanced to the finals of the inaugural Snow Bowl tournament. “This is amazing,” Wijnker said. “We heard about the dome, but then you see, oh, what kind of dome is it? This is a real building with all the facilities inside, with the gym. I [haven’t seen] everything so far, but it’s impressive.”
For the Union, hosting the Snow Bowl not only allows academy players to play against high-level talent from Europe and North America, but it also allows the Union’s academy staff to compare notes on development with their counterparts from around the world.
“We have such a growth mindset and a passion for learning,” Scheer said. “We want to get better. We think we do a good job but we know we can get better. And if we can take one piece of information here or there, selfishly, by interacting with some of the best clubs in the world, we’re certainly going to be able to do that.”
Wijnker, who served as director of the U.S. Soccer Boys’ Development Academy for three years, said he was impressed with the Union’s focus on developing first-team players from their academy.
“I think they are on top in the U.S., top three with the academy,” Wijnker said. “They do a big investment with money, but also with resources, with the energy they put in. Also the whole philosophy in the club, not buying expensive players, they’ve really invested in the youth. If you ask me the question, I think that this is what every club should do.”
The club hopes to make the Snow Bowl an annual tradition. This year’s tournament was sponsored by The SWAG, a no-cost youth soccer organization philanthropically funded by members of the Union’s ownership group, and YSC Academy, the club’s school.
“We want to do a really good job this year, and hopefully have others, in addition to SWAG and YSC Academy, help sponsor the event,” Scheer said. “I do think it’ll be one of the best developmental opportunities our academy kids could have with the competition they’re facing.”
The Union’s U-15, U-16 and U-18 teams were unbeaten in the group stage of the tournament, picking up wins over Newcastle’s U-15 squad, Borussia Mönchengladbach’s U-16 team and Benfica’s U-18 team.
“We are probably further along, not only at the Union, but in our country, than we think we are sometimes, in terms of development and the game of football,” Scheer said. “[Other clubs] are not only commenting on our facility, but they’re commenting on some of the quality of our individual players, our success at the team level. Ultimately, that’s what it’s about.”
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Mikaela Shiffrin and Erin Jackson headline Sunday’s Olympic TV schedule
We like to think that big-time athletes are superhuman, and in a lot of ways they are.
They’re still humans, though, capable of feeling emotions and pressure just like the rest of us.
It happened to Ilia Malinin in figure skating on Friday. He said point-blank after his falls on the ice that “the pressure of the Olympics really gets you.” And it happened to another American, skiing star Mikaela Shiffrin, in the team event last Tuesday.
“I didn’t find a comfort level that allows me to produce full speed,” she said after an unusually slow slalom run that left her team off the medal stand.
But both of those moments were just single points in each athlete’s career — and in these Olympics, too. Malinin helped the U.S. win gold in the team event, and on Sunday Shiffrin gets a second shot in the giant slalom.
Unfortunately for TV viewers here, the event is early in the morning Philadelphia time. (Alpine skiing events are always held during the day wherever they are.) The first run is at 4 a.m. on USA Network, and the second is at 7:30 a.m. on NBC.
But as with all the events at these Olympics, you can catch a replay on Peacock whenever you want afterward. There will also be highlights on NBC’s prime time show.
Elsewhere on Sunday, American speedskater Erin Jackson goes for her second straight gold medal in the women’s 500 meters. You might remember that the Florida native was the U.S. flag bearer in the opening ceremony.
There might also be a moment of Olympic history on Sunday. Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo can break the record for the most Winter Games golds won by an individual, in cross-country skiing’s 4×7.5km relay. It’s live at 6 a.m. on USA, and the last bit will be simulcast on NBC when the network comes on air at 7.
Erin Jackson was a flag bearer for the U.S. at the opening ceremony in Milan. NBC will have coverage from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., then it will head to the NBA All-Star Game. The prime time show will start after that.
How to watch the Olympics on TV and stream online
NBC’s TV coverage will have live events from noon to 5 p.m. Philadelphia time on weekdays and starting in the mornings on the weekends. There’s a six-hour time difference between Italy and here. The traditional prime-time coverage will have highlights of the day and storytelling features.
As far as the TV channels, the Olympics are airing on NBC, USA, CNBC, and NBCSN. Spanish coverage can be found on Telemundo and Universo.
NBCSN is carrying the Gold Zone whip-around show that was so popular during the Summer Olympics in 2024, with hosts including Scott Hanson of NFL RedZone. It used to be just on Peacock, NBC’s online streaming service, but now is on TV, too.
Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo can set an Olympic record for the most gold medals won by an individual on Sunday. Every event is available to stream live on NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app. You’ll have to log in with your pay-TV provider, whether cable, satellite, or streaming platforms including YouTube TV, FuboTV, and Sling TV.
On Peacock, the events are on the platform’s premium subscription tier, which starts at $10.99 per month or $109.99 per year.
Here is the full event schedule for the entire Olympics, and here are live scores and results.
Sunday’s Olympic TV schedule
NBC
7 a.m.: Cross-country skiing – Men’s 4×7.5km relay
7:30 a.m.: Alpine skiing – Women’s giant slalom final run (LIVE)
8:30 a.m.: Snowboarding – Mixed team snowboard cross final
8:45 a.m.: Biathlon – Women’s 10km pursuit
9:30 a.m.: Bobsled – Women’s monobob first run (tape-delayed)
10 a.m.: Speedskating – Men’s team pursuit qualifying
10:30 a.m.: Bobsled – Women’s monobob second run (delayed)
11 a.m.: Speedskating – Women’s 500m
11:45 a.m.: Biathlon – Men’s 12.5km pursuit (delayed)
12:30 p.m.: Freestyle skiing – Men’s dual moguls final (delayed)
1:15 p.m.: Skeleton – Mixed team final
1:40 p.m.: Freestyle skiing – Men’s big air qualifying
3 p.m.: Figure skating – Pairs’ short program
8 p.m.: Prime time highlights including speedskating, alpine skiing, freestyle skiing, and figure skating
11:35 p.m: Late night highlights including snowboarding, skeleton, and freestyle skiing.
USA Network
4 a.m.: Alpine skiing – Women’s giant slalom first run
4:40 a.m.: Freestyle skiing – Men’s dual moguls final
6 a.m.: Cross-country skiing – Men’s 4×7.5km relay
10:40 a.m.-1 p.m.: Ice hockey – Canada vs. France men
1:45 p.m.: Figure skating – Pairs’ short program
3:10 p.m.: Ice hockey – United States vs. Germany men
CNBC
6:10 a.m.: Ice hockey – Switzerland vs. Czechia men
8:30 a.m.: Curling – United States vs. China women
1:10 p.m.: Ice hockey – Denmark vs. Latvia
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What to know about student loan repayment plans and collections
NEW YORK — It’s been a confusing time for people with student loans. Collections restarted, then were put on hold. At the same time, borrowers had to stay on top of changes to key forgiveness plans.
Last year, the long-contested SAVE plan introduced by the Biden administration ended with a settlement agreement. President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” introduced new borrowing limits for graduates and raised challenges to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. While several changes for student loan borrowers will take effect this summer, other key questions remain unresolved.
More than 5 million Americans were in default on their federal student loans as of September, according to the Education Department. Millions are behind on loan payments and at risk of default this year.
Borrowers “genuinely struggle to afford their loans and then to hear that the administration is making it more expensive and taking away some of the tools and resources that help folks afford their loans is really, it’s panic-inducing,” said Winston Berkman-Breen, legal director at Protect Borrowers.
Last month, the Education Department announced that it would delay involuntary collections for student loan borrowers in default until the department finalizes its new loan repayment plans. The date for this is still unclear.
If you’re a student loan borrower, here are some key things to know.
If you were enrolled in the SAVE plan
The SAVE plan was a repayment plan with some of the most lenient terms ever. Soon after its launch it was challenged in court, leaving millions of student loan borrowers in limbo. Last December, the Education Department announced a settlement agreement to end the SAVE plan. What is next for borrowers who were enrolled in this repayment plan is yet to be determined.
“Seven and a half million borrowers who are currently enrolled in SAVE need to be moved to another plan,” Berkman-Breen said.
As part of the agreement, the Education Department says it will not enroll new borrowers, will deny pending applications, and will move all current SAVE borrowers into other repayment plans.
The Education Department is expected to develop a plan for borrowers to transition from the SAVE plan, yet borrowers should be proactive about enrolling in other repayment plans, said Kate Wood, a lending expert at NerdWallet.
If you are looking to enroll in an income-driven repayment plan
Borrowers can apply for the following income-driven plans: the Income-Based Repayment Plan, the Pay as You Earn plan, and the Income-Contingent Repayment plan.
“They all have similar criteria, and they function similarly. Your payment is set as a percentage of your income, not how much you owe, so it’s usually a lower payment,” Berkman-Breen said.
The payment amount under income-driven plans is a percentage of your discretionary income, and the percentage varies depending on the plan. Since many people are looking to switch plans, some applications to income-driven repayment plans might take longer to process, said Jill Desjean, director of policy analysis at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
You can find out which repayment plan might work best for you by logging on to the Education Department’s loan simulator at studentaid.gov/loan-simulator/.
If you’re working toward your Public Service Loan Forgiveness
There are no changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program yet. Last year, the Trump administration announced plans to change the eligibility requirements for participating nonprofits.
The policy seeks to disqualify nonprofit workers if their work is deemed to have “substantial illegal purpose.” The Trump administration said it’s necessary to block taxpayer money from lawbreakers, while critics say it turns the program into a tool of political retribution.
The proposal says illegal activity includes the trafficking or “chemical castration” of children, illegal immigration, and supporting foreign terrorist organizations. This move could cut off some teachers, doctors, and other public workers from federal loan cancellation.
“This is something that obviously is very stressful, very nerve-wracking for a lot of people, but given that we don’t know exactly how this is going to be enforced, how these terms are going to be defined, it’s not really something that you can try to plan ahead for now,” Wood said.
While this policy is currently being challenged by 20 Democrat-led states, it’s expected to take effect in July. In the meantime, Wood recommends that borrowers enrolled in the PSLF program continue making payments.
If your student loans are in default
Involuntary collections on federal student loans will remain on hold. The Trump administration announced earlier this month that it is delaying plans to withhold pay from student loan borrowers who default on their payments.
Federal student loan borrowers can have their wages garnished and their federal tax refunds withheld if they default on their loans. Borrowers are considered in default when they are at least 270 days behind on payments.
If your student loans are in default, you can contact your loan holder to apply for a loan rehabilitation program.
“They essentially come up with a payment plan where you’re making a reduced payment,” Woods. “After five successful payments on that rehabilitation plan, wage garnishment will cease.”
If you’re planning to attend graduate school
Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” has changed the amount graduate students can borrow from federal student loans. Graduate students could previously borrow loans up to the cost of their degree; the new rules cap the amount depending on whether the degree is considered a graduate or a professional program.
Wood said that if you’re starting a new program and taking out a loan after July 1, you will be subject to the new loan limits.
Under the new plan, students in professional programs would be able to borrow up to $50,000 per year and up to $200,000 in total. Other graduate students, such as those pursuing nursing and physical therapy, would be limited to $20,500 a year and up to $100,000 total.
The Education Department is defining the following fields as professional programs: pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry and theology.
If you want to consolidate your loan
The online application for loan consolidation is available at studentaid.gov/loan-consolidation. If you have multiple federal student loans, you can combine them into a single loan with a fixed interest rate and a single monthly payment.
The consolidation process typically takes around 60 days to complete. You can only consolidate your loans once.
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South Koreans are shunning dangerous shipbuilding jobs envied by Trump
South Korea has promised to help “Make American Shipbuilding Great Again,” pitching its world-leading shipyards to President Donald Trump as a model to revive U.S. manufacturing and create desirable blue-collar jobs. But in reality, the sector is reliant on low-paid migrants and plagued by a high accident rate. Shipbuilding is among the country’s most dangerous industries, killing dozens of people each year, prompting more South Korean workers to shun those jobs — a growing problem for Lee Jae Myung, the nation’s leader.
“If we bring in foreign workers on around 2.2 million won ($1,500) a month to fill shipyard jobs, we have to ask what happens to domestic employment, and whether that truly helps the long-term development of the industry,” Lee said at a cabinet meeting Tuesday.
At first glance, the country’s shipyards are formidable: fast, cheap, and relentlessly efficient. Seoul made the industry an integral part of a $350 billion trade agreement with the U.S., and has also sought to leverage it into contracts for military vessels and permission to build nuclear-powered submarines. Yet a closer look reveals a more complicated picture. South Korea’s occupational fatality rate is almost 4 deaths per 100,000 workers, vs. an OECD average of roughly 3, according to International Labour Organization data compiled by Bloomberg. Risks are especially acute in shipbuilding, where the fatality rate in 2024 was more than four times the national average, government data showed.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung (center) and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (left) visited the Hanwha Philly Shipyard in August 2025 in Philadelphia. The event marked the christening of the NSMV State of Maine and highlighted growing industrial and strategic cooperation between South Korea and the United States. The safety record helps explain why many skilled Korean workers have deserted the yards. To keep up production as big orders roll in, shipbuilders have turned to foreign workers, often using layers of subcontracting to keep costs low.
As of April 2025, more than 23,000 migrant workers hold the main work visas used in South Korea’s shipyards, industry data shows. The government has repeatedly eased strict quotas, now allowing foreigners to make up as much as 30% of the workforce in certain skilled shipbuilding roles — one of the highest rates of any sector. The data point to a central contradiction: The productivity Washington admires is sustained by jobs many Koreans no longer take, filled instead by workers with far fewer options to refuse them. This sits uneasily with Seoul’s $150 billion pledge to support a revival of U.S. shipbuilding and U.S. manufacturing jobs.
Modern servitude
“What worries me most is that we’re exporting a shipbuilding model whose reality is barely sustainable at home,” said Kim Hyunjoo, head of the Ulsan Migrant Center. “If this industry is being kept afloat by highly constrained foreign labor, it’s hard to see how that model can simply be transplanted to the U.S., where regulations and scrutiny are far stricter.”
Aslam Hassan, a migrant worker from Sri Lanka, was injured while working at a shipyard in Ulsan, South Korea. “When you look closely at migrant worker visas, it feels like they were designed to create a kind of modern servitude.” Three years ago, while working at a shipyard in Ulsan, a sudden blast from a high-pressure spray machine knocked Sri Lankan worker Aslam Hassan to the ground, shattering his protective gear and shooting toxic paint into both eyes.
“As I fell, I thought, ‘So this is how I die, without even seeing my baby,’” said Hassan, who was working as a subcontractor at the time. His vision never fully recovered.
His experience reflects the dangerous conditions that underpin South Korea’s shipbuilding efficiency. Government data show nonaffiliated workers, including subcontracted and dispatched labor, make up about 63% of shipbuilding employment, far above the economy-wide average of roughly 16%.
“When you look closely at migrant worker visas, it feels like they were designed to create a kind of modern servitude,” said Hassan, who now works for an auto parts company after his injury. “During the contract period, we can’t move even in unfair conditions.”
Safety rules are enforced more strictly during regular shifts for directly employed workers, one migrant worker told Bloomberg News, asking not to be identified as he’s not authorized to speak publicly. More hazardous tasks are often pushed to subcontractors, who are called in early, late, or overnight, when oversight is looser.
Demand is growing as the industry enjoys a new boom that puts further strains on its workforce. Fresh orders last year reached nearly $36 billion for HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering Co., Hanwha Ocean Co., and Samsung Heavy Industries Co., accounting for about 20% of global new ship orders by volume, according to SK Securities.
Shipbuilding ties have also bolstered Seoul’s security goals. President Lee has received Trump’s conditional approval to pursue nuclear-powered submarines, a long-standing ambition. But the growing strategic role has raised the stakes.
Tensions have also become more acute in recent weeks, with Trump warning that the U.S. could again raise tariffs on South Korean goods, citing frustration over what he sees as slow or uneven follow-through on trade commitments. The threat has pushed senior officials back to Washington to explain delays and reassert Seoul’s promises.
Further straining ties is South Korea’s probe into a massive data breach at Coupang Inc., the Seattle-headquartered e-commerce firm known as the “Amazon of South Korea.” Vice President JD Vance has framed Seoul’s actions as an assault on the U.S. tech sector.
With the trade deal still very much up in the air, shipbuilding — as one of the highest-profile deliverables — is under the microscope. And any failure to deliver what has been promised could derail the entire agreement.
Ignoring rights
The sector’s heavy reliance on migrant workers on restrictive contracts is also likely to pose problems in any wholesale export of the model stateside, experts say. South Korea is painfully aware of Trump’s anti-immigrant drive after Hyundai and LG workers were detained in a massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweep at a battery plant in Georgia last year, just weeks after Lee first met Trump.
Sri Lankan welder Manoj Wijesekara paid a broker to secure a skilled-worker visa and a job at HD Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. When the pay turned out to be far lower than expected, Wijesekara resigned — only to discover that his visa effectively tied him to HD Hyundai, leaving him unemployed and at risk of deportation. In the shipyards, many South Korean companies rely on a visa regime that binds overseas workers to a single employer, limiting their ability to change jobs, experts say. Sri Lankan welder Manoj Wijesekara paid a broker about 20 million won to secure a skilled-worker visa and a job at HD Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., hoping the move would allow him to support his two children.
When the pay turned out to be far lower than expected, Wijesekara resigned — only to discover that his visa effectively tied him to HD Hyundai, leaving him unemployed and at risk of deportation. He says the company misled him. The company says he resigned of his own accord. The dispute is pending before South Korea’s National Labor Relations Commission.
“I am terrified to speak out for fear of being deported,” said Wijesekara, who missed his mother’s funeral in November but said he was determined to hold his former employer to account. “People tell me it’s foolish to fight a company this big.”
But this broken labor model doesn’t just hurt migrant workers, said Kim Doona of Korean Lawyers for Public Interest and Human Rights, if it continues “it will hurt Korean shipbuilders.”
“Ignoring labor rights in an industry built on high-skilled work ultimately weakens global competitiveness,” she said. “Once companies fall short of international human rights standards and domestic labor laws, that risk can weigh on exports.”
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After 50 years devoted to a Logan Square landmark, Cherry Street Tavern’s owners have decided it’s time to sell
In 1976, when Bill Loughery was a rookie bartender at Cherry Street Tavern, the old-world saloon seemed as abandoned as the neighborhood around it. Back then, the streets around 22nd and Cherry in Logan Square were littered with abandoned warehouses, rusting textile mills, and crumbling body shops.
First operated as a bar around 1902 and surviving Prohibition as a barbershop — at least one where regulars swilled hooch in the back room — the tavern had retained much of its bygone charms into the ’70s. It had an elaborately carved mahogany backbar, vast beveled bar mirrors, pearly white tiled floors, and an old-timey phone booth. Even the tiled water trough running the length of the floor under the bar — a no longer operational relic from the barroom’s pre-World War II days designated for fedora-sporting patrons to spit tobacco juice and relieve themselves — had survived the decades.
But like the neighborhood, business had faded.
Bill Loughery, then 24, and his younger brother, Bob, had scored the bartending gigs from their former coach and mentor, legendary La Salle High School football coach John “Tex” Flannery, who purchased the bar in the early 1970s. Serving 25-cent Schaefers, rocking their favorite Grateful Dead tunes, and warmly greeting the newbies filling the barstools, the Lougherys brought life to Cherry Street Tavern, eventually buying it from Flannery in 1990.
Bill Loughery, co-owner of Cherry Street Tavern, inside his bar in Philadelphia on Friday, Dec. 19, 2025. While burnishing its old-world grace, they had transformed the timeworn taproom into a thriving, in-the-know spot for eating and drinking, with a diverse, dedicated, and colorful cast of regulars from all over. Everyone from construction workers and electricians to lawyers and bankers to art students and professors came to the bar — even rock icons like Jimi Hendrix, who, as the legend goes, knocked on the side door wearing a cape in 1968 after playing a show at the original Electric Factory, just blocks away; he palmed the bartender $100 for a case of Bud and a bottle of Jack Daniels. There were also visiting sports legends like Larry Bird, who would drink at Cherry Street with his staff when he came through town as a coach in the 1990s and 2000s.
“He’d say, ‘Billy, let me know when you’re closing that kitchen,’” Bill Loughery remembers. “And then he would go back to the Four Seasons with bags of roast beef and roast pork.”
And always, there were Bill and Bob Loughery, either toiling in the tavern’s tiny kitchen before dawn to prepare steaming cauldrons of Irish potato soup and huge slabs of beef for the bar’s signature sandwiches, or working the wood until closing.
The outside of Cherry Street Tavern in Philadelphia on Friday, Dec. 19, 2025. After 50 years devoted to a tavern that always felt more like a labor of love — and bearing witness to the change all around it — Bill and Bob Loughery have decided it’s time.
“Time to take off the apron,” said Bill Loughery, taking a quick break on a recent afternoon to sit in the soft sunlight slipping through Cherry Street’s bottle-height barroom windows. “It’s just time.”
History, for sale
It’s been time for a few years, but the Lougherys — wanting to preserve the understated elegance and identity of the shot-and-a-beer saloon, especially after revitalizing the bar once again as a popular meeting spot for locals after COVID-era restrictions dried up lunchtime and commuter crowds — have never officially listed the tavern and its upstairs apartment for sale. They began whispering to friends and regulars about selling around 2024.
“People were always asking us to let them know when we were ready,” Bill Loughery said.
After months of talks with prospective purchasers, the Lougherys are now in talks with a buyer who they say is interested in expanding the bar’s kitchen and making other renovations.
The Lougherys’ efforts to find a buyer committed to keeping the spirit of the bar alive have eased the worries of regulars old and new, and loyal staff.
Kira Baldwin, 27, chats and makes drinks for folks at Cherry Street Tavern. “There’s just something sacred about the place,” said Kira Baldwin, 27, of Ardmore, who tends bar at Cherry Street Tavern, along with her brother, Jack, 24, and her mother, Juanita Santoni, with whom she sometimes shares a shift.
For Baldwin, it’s personal. As a child, she cherished special occasions when her mother allowed her to visit the bar. (Santoni has worked nights and weekends at Cherry Street Tavern since 1991, when she was a part-time child life therapist at CHOP.) On those nights, Baldwin would do her homework in the quiet of the ancient phone booth and swing from the brass dining rails. At the annual Christmas parties, when Bill Loughery hired Moore College of Art & Design students to paint the windows for the holidays, she and her brother received gifts from a regular dressed up as Santa.
Now, she watches new regulars fall in love with a bar she’s been coming to since “the womb.”
“People treat it with reverence,” she said. “When they come in, they understand it completely. They have a deep and profound respect for the place.”
Prohibition, the food, and the regulars
Little is known about Cherry Street’s earliest days, but by Prohibition, it was known as Dever’s, operated by John “Jack” Dever, a dapper barman who lived above the tavern with his wife and two children, and whose father, Joseph, had run it before him. (Like Flannery and the Lougherys after him, Dever happened to be a La Salle High alum.)
The barbershop speakeasy had been Jack Dever’s idea, said his grandson, Michael Dever.
Before it became Cherry Street Tavern, John “Jack Dever (left) operated the tavern for years, living upstairs with his family, and eventually dying behind the bar. “The story always went that, when Prohibition came about, he closed the front door and opened the back door,” said Dever. “It became dangerous. The story was that you were either buying from the mob or dirty politicians.”
Dever reopened the bar after Prohibition, sponsoring a bar baseball team. But dangers persisted. In 1940, two robbers broke into the bar while Dever and his family slept upstairs, briefly making off with 25 quarts of high-quality whiskey before their bulging bag of booze crashed to the pavement. Nearby patrolmen ran to the scene, “their noses guiding them unerringly as the liquor spilled into the gutter,” The Inquirer reported.
Dever, who soon moved his family out of the upstairs apartment, ran Cherry Street until 1967, when he died of a heart attack behind the bar, according to granddaughter Maureen Ginley. At first, customers assumed her grandfather had just stepped down a hatch behind the bar, leading to a liquor cellar.
“But he didn’t,” she said.
After keeping the bar afloat for five years, Dever’s widow, Mary, sold the bar to Flannery. A local high school football legend who coached at La Salle for nearly 30 years, Flannery operated a no-frills, old-school establishment, refusing to allow a jukebox. Under Tex, the tavern’s old-world grace peeked out from behind a dusty veneer and faded Venetian blinds.
Kevin Sanders, of Quakertown, Pa., first time at the bar, sharing a story with friends as they enjoy drinks at Cherry Street Tavern in Philadelphia on Friday, Dec. 19, 2025. A 1981 Daily News article described the bar “as cave-dark, cave-cool, cave-quiet.”
“Let’s face it, a guy comes in here, he wants to drink,” the article quoted Flannery.
For a while, it was just the old-timers, said Bill Loughery.
“We had the senior citizens from the neighborhood who started drinking right in the morning and went home before lunchtime,” he remembered.
One Friday during Lent in 1977, Flannery summoned the brothers to a sit-down fish cake dinner and laid it out straight. “He said, ‘Listen, the future of the bar business isn’t 25-cent beers,’” remembers Bill Loughery. “‘You got to come up with a food angle.’”
With the help of a regular, Bill and Bob Loughery introduced the tavern’s signature hot roast beef and roast pork sandwiches, chili, and daily soups.
A roast beef sandwich at Cherry Street Tavern in Philadelphia on Friday, Dec. 19, 2025. By the 1980s, when condos and townhomes and office buildings and new life began to fill the neighborhood, the Lougherys were ready.
Soon, the expanded back room was packed at lunch and the stools were filled with regulars who Bill Loughery blessed with nicknames: Happy Bob and Sleeping Charlie, Big Tom and Buddy Bud, Catfish and Canadian John (who eventually became American John). Joe Watson — a beloved old-timer who lived upstairs, and became a “patron saint” to the bar, said Bill Loughery — took a busload of regulars to a Phillies game for his 89th birthday. There were St. Patrick’s parties and fishing trips and softball teams and marriages and births and deaths. It was their “Cheers,” one regular said.
“What’s Cheers?” Bill Loughery would ask, unironically.
It was Bill and Bob who brought everyone back, said Frank Oldt, 81, who has been a Cherry Street regular since the days of Tex.
“They just made it such an easy place to be,” he said.
It’s bittersweet, said Santoni, who remembers how the bar regulars threw her not one — but two — baby showers when she was pregnant with Kira. She has been trying to get Bill and Bob Loughery to slow down for years. But she understands the special pull of the place.
“It gets in your bones,” she said.
Last call
It all took a toll on Bill Loughery’s bones, who still works 12-hour shifts, splitting days and nights with his brother. Bill’s back is hunched from those endless hours in the kitchen. He doesn’t want to become the second person to die behind the bar at Cherry Street. Sitting down, he flipped through photo albums from the bar’s heyday. They’ll be the last things he takes with him when he leaves, he said.
“It’s like the Old and New Testament,” Bill Loughery said, opening a near-to-bursting photo album.
For a few minutes, he allowed himself to recall the faces and the nicknames and the good times.
“So many nice people,” he said.
Then, he closed the book and went back to work.
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Tyrese Maxey eager to ‘try again’ after first All-Star three-point contest
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Minutes after he left the Intuit Dome court Saturday afternoon, Tyrese Maxey rattled off everything he would do differently in the All-Star three-point contest.
The 76ers’ guard would start on the opposite corner, so he could take his “money ball” rack balls from his right side. He also would squeeze in at least one practice run, which he could not manage this past week between the Sixers’ return home from a five-game Western Conference road trip and another cross-country flight to Los Angeles.
Maxey’s 17 points were not enough to move on to the final, which the Portland Trail Blazers’ Damian Lillard eventually won with a score of 29.
He joked that the fact that he “didn’t even get 20” points will haunt him for the next year. Still, competing in All-Star Saturday’s showcase event was gratifying for Maxey, who has transformed from a player whose three-point shooting was knocked coming out of college to one of the NBA’s most lethal from beyond the arc.
“I just wanted to see what it was going to be like my first time,” Maxey said. “I’ll definitely come back and try to win it, for sure.”
Maxey entered the All-Star break shooting 37.9% on 8.8 three-point attempts per game, which is tied for seventh in the NBA. He is proud of the variety of ways he now can get to that shot, by creating off the dribble or shaking free to catch and fire.
Yet Maxey was not always this feared from deep range. He shot 29.2% from three during his one season at Kentucky, leading to numerous questions from NBA front offices during the pre-draft process. Maxey’s father, Tyrone, recently recalled to The Inquirer a workout when Tyrese made 33 consecutive three-pointers and the unnamed NBA team “still passed on him.”
“Most [general managers] were like, ‘Man, you play the game with a joy, but you can’t shoot,’” Maxey said. “I’m like, ‘I can shoot.’”
Tyrese Maxey shoots during the three-point contest at the NBA All-Star Weekend festivities on Saturday. The Sixers’ front office, meanwhile, believed in Maxey’s form and “secondary indicators” of NBA shooting success, president of basketball operations Daryl Morey said in 2021. Former coach Doc Rivers often shared publicly that he was regularly bamboozled that Maxey was accurate inside the Sixers’ practice facility, but made only 30.1% of his 1.7 attempts as a rookie.
However, confidence instilled by the coaching staff encouraged Maxey to launch more. The next two seasons, his percentages catapulted above 40%, while increasing that volume, as his overall offensive responsibilities blossomed.
His percentage dipped to 33.7% during the Sixers’ disastrous 2024-25, primarily due to an injured little finger that prematurely ended his season. His efficiency is back to normal this season, with the freedom from Sixers coach Nick Nurse to take even deeper shots — particularly while in transition.
This season, Tyrese Maxey has been unafraid to let loose on his three-ball. When asked to partake in the All-Star three-point competition as a first-time All-Star two years ago, Maxey turned it down because he was “nervous” and wanted to soak in the full weekend of festivities. This year, it was a no-brainer.
He said he felt some jitters while being introduced at center court, then anxious while waiting for the five competitors’ trip around the arc before his.
“I wanted to shoot, man,” Maxey said, before a performance he described as “a little cold.”
Once eliminated, Maxey watched as Lillard and the Phoenix Suns’ Devin Booker put on a show in a scorching 29-27 final. An NBC television camera caught Maxey, hands on his head and mouth agape, as Booker’s potential tying final corner shot bounced off the rim.
Then Maxey praised Lillard, whom he noticed shooting deep three-pointers while recovering from a torn Achilles tendon when the Sixers visited Portland last week.
“That was amazing,” Maxey said. “ … He’s a legend in our league. Still hooping. Still playing the right way. Love seeing him out there.”
Plenty still awaits this weekend for Maxey, who will start for the U.S. “Stars” team in Sunday’s All-Star game (5 p.m., NBC10, Peacock).
But he is already eager for the 2027 three-point contest.
“That was really fun,” he said. “I can’t wait to try that again.”
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Students protest U.S. Customs and Border Protection participation at campus career fairs
Amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration and deployment of federal officers to cities across the country, students at Philadelphia-area colleges are protesting against the appearance of U.S. Customs and Border Protection at campus career fairs.
At least four local universities — Thomas Jefferson, Villanova, Temple, and Rowan — have faced opposition to allowing recruitment in recent months.
A petition circulated at Jefferson last week sought to keep CBP from appearing at a campus career event. CBP and ICE — both agencies that enforce immigration laws under the Department of Homeland Security — have been at the center of a national debate after two Minneapolis residents were killed by federal immigration enforcement agents in shootings now under investigation.
“Due to the harm CBP has caused to communities across the nation, it is abhorrent for TJU to accept CBP at their institution,” said an occupational therapy student who signed the petition and asked that her name be withheld, fearing retribution. “I don’t think any institution should be encouraging students to get involved in these kinds of agencies, given the current climate.”
But the petition has since come down, the student said, and CBP is not on the list of employers due to appear at the event, called the 2026 Career Day and Design Expo, on Thursday at the East Falls campus. Jefferson has not acknowledged that CBP was on the list initially or responded to questions on whether it was removed.
CBP, which has offices in Philadelphia, has appeared at campus career events in the area in the past.
An email seeking comment from CBP’s media office was not returned.
At Rowan University in New Jersey earlier this month, the participation of CBP’s Trade Regulatory Audit Philadelphia Field Office in a career fair drew some student protest. Members of a student activist group distributed fliers speaking out against CBP during the fair, according to Rowan’s student newspaper, the Whit, and campus police and administration officials came to the scene.
The agency also reserved a table and came to a fall event at Rowan to share information about accounting-related auditing internships, said Rowan spokesperson Joe Cardona, and has done so at the public university for the last decade.
Rowan’s Rohrer College of Business Center for Professional Development hosts more than 200 employers each year, including local, state, and federal agencies as well as private-sector groups, he said.
“The presence of any employer on campus does not constitute institutional endorsement of that organization’s policies or actions,” Cardona said. “Rather, it reflects our commitment to supporting student career exploration while upholding principles of open access and free expression.”
At Villanova, CBP pulled out of a career fair it had planned to attend earlier this month, according to the Villanovan, the student newspaper. The withdrawal followed criticism on social media about the organization’s planned appearance.
The organizer of an Instagram account that opposed the agency’s participation said they wished that Villanova had made the decision to disallow the group rather than the group withdrawing, according to the student newspaper.
“I think a lot of students will feel a lot safer and more comfortable attending this Career Fair,” the organizer said. “But it doesn’t take away the anger that this was ever something that was gonna happen.”
Villanova said in a statement that CBP‘s Office of Trade had participated in prior career events and that employers with prior participation were contacted “through standard outreach” about this year’s event.
Temple’s law school last semester had planned to host a “Coffee and Careers” networking event with a DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement lawyer but later canceled it, according to the Temple News, the student newspaper. The event was replaced with a talk on public interest law by Philadelphia City Councilmember Rue Landau.
DHS “chose to engage directly with students interested in DHS opportunities rather than participate in a scheduled career event,” Temple spokesperson Steve Orbanek said.
He also noted that “career fairs are university-sponsored events, and actions that disrupt these events may violate university policy and established on-campus demonstration guidelines.”
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U.S. Army Corps official, congressman say help is on the way for N.J. beach erosion
The federal official in charge of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers visited Ocean City and other Jersey Shore communities Friday, along with U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, pledging that beach replenishment help is on its way.
Adam Telle, assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, came to New Jersey for a tour hosted by Van Drew. The Army Corps manages beach projects and puts up the majority of money. States and municipalities contribute the rest.
“There’s emergency funding that’s available,” Telle said from Fifth Street on Ocean City’s boardwalk, adding that some beaches would see repairs by summer.
Telle said the money does not hinge on legislation and has President Donald Trump’s support.
The Army Corps will evaluate which beaches are in the most severe condition, he said, including Ocean City, which is among the top of the list. Telle and Van Drew did not cite a specific amount of money but indicated millions could be available.
Telle, Van Drew, and other officials visited Strathmere, Avalon, and North Wildwood, which have all been heavily impacted by storm erosion over the last year. The short-term goal this year would be to take spoils from Army Corps projects and spread that on beaches.
They said they plan to draw on a mix of funding, including money still remaining from Hurricane Sandy in 2012, other supplemental funds, and earmarks — language in appropriations bills to direct federal funds to state and local projects.
Van Drew, a Republican, represents multiple Shore towns on the southern tip of New Jersey.
Friday’s tour came on the heels of zero dollars earmarked for beach replenishment in 2025 — the first time that had happened since 1996. Up to $200 million annually has typically been awarded for beach erosion control projects.
Van Drew also introduced a bill last week to establish a new source of continuous beach replenishment money through the Coastal Trust Fund Act.
The bill would pay for ongoing coastal storm risk management by the Army Corps. U.S. Rep. Laura Gillen, a Democrat from New York, is a cosponsor.
According to Van Drew, the legislation would use revenue from offshore energy leases to fund $1 billion a year into Army Corps of Engineers coastal storm management projects.
He said his bill, if approved, would create a permanent source of funding so that it would not depend on yearly appropriations from Congress.
“We need to get a permanent system in place so we aren’t riding this roller coaster,” Van Drew said.
However, he acknowledged that getting any bill approved in Congress right now is difficult.
“It’s going to be a labor of love,” Van Drew said, adding that he is gathering “support from all around the country.”
There is no date for a vote on the bill.
U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (center), Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Adam Telle (right) and Upper Township Mayor Curtis Corson Jr. discuss shore erosion and beach replenishment in Strathmere. A measure has been introduced by U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, a Republican from Tennessee, for $23 million to fund coastal replenishment projects this year. That would be supplemented by a Senate bill introduced by U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, that would allocate $62.2 million. However, neither bill is scheduled for a vote.
In 2025, multiple New Jersey Shore towns found themselves in a crisis over erosion as Congress and Trump pushed for a huge reduction in the federal budget.
No money was made available for crucial beach nourishment projects. The lack of funding became a political issue in New Jersey, which depends heavily on its beaches for tourism revenue.
For decades, beach projects have been a staple of coastal management in the United States. In 2025, projects were paused in New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware.
Projects set for Cape May, Stone Harbor, Avalon, Sea Isle, Strathmere, Ocean City, and Long Beach Island were stalled because of the lack of funding. Georgia and Florida also were affected.
In October, Ocean City declared a local emergency over the severe erosion exacerbated by storms like Hurricane Erin and a potent nor’easter in October. The city was left grappling with sand cliffs upward of five feet high after the storms scoured its beaches.
Mayor Jay Gillian and others pushed for urgent state and federal intervention, citing the difficulty of managing large-scale beach replenishments and dune restoration with city resources alone.
Gillian said Friday at the tour stop in Ocean City that he welcomed any help from the Army Corps and Van Drew.
“They’re working for a solution,” Gillian said of Telle and Van Drew. “The permanent funding, that’s huge because it stops the games, and it stops the politics.”
Van Drew represents the largely conservative 2nd District, which spans mostly rural and Shore communities in South Jersey, including all of Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland, and Salem Counties, plus parts of Gloucester and Ocean Counties. He remains optimistic for funding.