JERUSALEM — Israel has cleared the final hurdle before starting construction on a contentious settlement project near Jerusalem that would effectively cut the West Bank in two, according to a government tender.
The tender, which seeks bids from developers, would clear the way to begin construction of the E1 project.
The anti-settlement monitoring group Peace Now first reported the tender. Yoni Mizrahi, who runs the group’s settlement watch division, said initial work could begin within the month.
The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank to be illegal and an obstacle to peace.
A controversial project
The E1 project is especially contentious because it runs from the outskirts of Jerusalem deep into the occupied West Bank. Critics say it would prevent the establishment of a contiguous Palestinian state in the territory.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician who oversees settlement policy, has long pushed for the plan to become a reality.
“The Palestinian state is being erased from the table not with slogans but with actions,” he said in August, when Israel gave final approval to the plan. “Every settlement, every neighborhood, every housing unit is another nail in the coffin of this dangerous idea.”
The tender, publicly accessible on the website for Israel’s Land Authority, calls for proposals to develop 3,401 housing units. Peace Now says the publication of the tender “reflects an accelerated effort to advance construction in E1.
Israel and Syria resume U.S.-brokered talks in Paris
Syrian and Israeli officials met Tuesday in Paris for U.S.-mediated talks intended to broker a security agreement to defuse tensions between the two countries. A joint statement issued after the meeting said it “centered on respect for Syria’s sovereignty and stability, Israel’s security, and prosperity for both countries.”
It said the two sides have agreed to establish a joint communication cell “to facilitate immediate and ongoing coordination on their intelligence sharing, military de-escalation, diplomatic engagement, and commercial opportunities under the supervision of the United States.” The cell would serve as a platform to address disputes and “prevent misunderstandings,” it said.
In December 2024, insurgents led by Syria’s now interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa ousted the country’s longtime autocratic leader, Bashar Assad, in a lightning offensive.
Al-Sharaa said that he has no desire for a conflict with Israel. But Israel was suspicious of the new Islamist-led leadership and quickly moved to seize control of a formerly U.N.-patrolled buffer zone in southern Syria set up under a 1974 disengagement agreement. Israel has also launched hundreds of airstrikes on Syrian military facilities and periodic incursions into villages outside the buffer zone, which have sometimes led to violent confrontations with residents.
Syrian officials have said their priority in the talks is the withdrawal of Israeli forces and a return to the 1974 agreement. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement Tuesday that Israel “stressed the importance of ensuring security for its citizens and preventing threats on its border” and of protecting the Druze minority in Syria, which also comprises a substantial minority in Israel.
U.N. says aid groups have enough food for Gazans
The United Nations said that aid groups have enough food on hand to sustain people in Gaza for the first time since the war began more than two years ago.
“The January round is the first since October 2023 in which partners had sufficient stock to meet 100% of the minimum caloric standard,” U.N. spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said Monday.
More aid has been reaching Gaza since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect on Oct. 10.
However, the flow of humanitarian aid remains challenging amid Israel’s recent decision to revoke the licenses of more than three dozen organizations, including such prominent groups as Doctors Without Borders, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and Oxfam.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief on Tuesday called on Israel to lift the restrictions to avert deaths from exposure, hunger, and a lack of medicines, as thousands of displaced Palestinians return to what is left of their homes.
“To deliver aid rapidly, safely, and at the scale required, international NGOs must be able to operate in a sustained and predictable way,” Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat, said in a statement from the 27-nation bloc, referring to non-governmental organizations.
Israeli troops fire at university protesters in West Bank
The Palestinian Red Crescent said Tuesday that 11 people were injured during an Israeli raid at a university in the West Bank.
The president of Birzeit University, speaking at a news conference, said a group of about 20 Israeli military vehicles had stormed the gate and entered the campus. Video obtained by The Associated Press confirmed their presence on campus.
“Unfortunately, targeting the university is a recurring event,” said Talal Shahwan, the school’s president, who said the forces displayed “clear brutality.”
Israeli officials said military and border troops were sent to break up an anticipated gathering and soon found themselves facing a crowd of hundreds of people, some allegedly throwing rocks at them from rooftops.
They said they used targeted fire toward the “main violent individuals.”
Foreign journalists press Israel for entry into Gaza
A group representing major international media organizations on Tuesday criticized the Israeli government’s latest refusal to allow foreign journalists into Gaza, despite a three-month ceasefire.
Israel has barred the foreign media from entering Gaza since the war erupted on Oct. 7, 2023.
The Foreign Press Association has asked Israel’s Supreme Court to end the ban. After months of delays, the Israeli government this week told the court that it remains opposed to allowing international journalists into Gaza, citing security reasons.
The FPA, which represents dozens of major media organizations, including The Associated Press, expressed “its profound disappointment” with the government’s position and said it hoped judges would soon end the ban.
PARIS — Ukraine’s allies said Tuesday they had agreed to provide the country with multilayered international defense guarantees as part of a proposal to end Russia’s nearly 4-year-old invasion of its neighbor.
At a key meeting in Paris, leaders from European countries and Canada, as well as U.S. representatives and top officials from the European Union and NATO, said they would provide Kyiv’s front-line forces with equipment and training and back them up with air, land and sea support to deter any future Russian attack.
The size of the supporting forces was not made public, and many of the plan’s details remain unclear.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the meeting made “excellent progress” but cautioned that “the hardest yards are still ahead,” noting that Russian attacks on Ukraine continue.
He said allies will participate in U.S.-led monitoring and verification of any ceasefire, support the long-term provision of armaments for Ukraine’s defense, and work toward binding commitments to support Ukraine in the case of any future attack by Russia.
There was no immediate comment from officials in Russia on Tuesday, which was the eve of Orthodox Christmas.
Moscow has revealed few details of its stance in the U.S.-led peace negotiations. Officials have reaffirmed Russia’s demands and have insisted there can be no ceasefire until a comprehensive settlement is agreed. Russian President Vladimir Putin has ruled out any deployment of troops from NATO countries on Ukrainian soil.
Starmer added that there can only be peace if Russia compromises, and “Putin is not showing that he is ready for peace.”
In the event of a ceasefire, he said the U.K. and France “will establish military hubs across Ukraine and build protected facilities for weapons and military equipment to support Ukraine’s defensive needs.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said progress was made in the talks, although commitments need to be ratified by each country so that they can be put in place after any settlement.
“We determined what countries are ready to take leadership in the elements of security guarantees on the ground, in the air, and at sea, and in restoration,” Zelensky told a news conference in Paris. “We determined what forces are needed. We determined, how these forces will be operated and at what levels of command.”
He said details of how monitoring will work remain to be determined, as do the size and financing of the Ukrainian army.
U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff said U.S. “strongly stands behind” security guarantees
French President Emmanuel Macron said the security statement endorsed by Ukraine’s allies is a “significant step” toward ending Russia’s invasion.
A joint statement said the allies also agreed to continue long-term military assistance and armament to Ukraine’s armed forces, which “will remain the first line of defense and deterrence” after any peace deal is signed.
The allies still must finalize “binding commitments” setting out what they will do to support Ukraine.
Prospects for progress at the meeting had been uncertain as the Trump administration’s focus is shifting to Venezuela, while U.S. suggestions of a Greenland takeover caused tension with Europe, and Moscow shows no signs of compromise.
The countries dubbed the “coalition of the willing have been exploring for months how to deter any future Russian aggression should it agree to stop fighting Ukraine.
Macron’s office said an unprecedented number of officials attended in person, with 35 participants including 27 heads of state and government. Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, met with Macron at the Elysee presidential palace for preparatory talks ahead of the gathering.
A series of meetings on the summit’s sidelines illustrated the intensity of the diplomatic effort and the complexity of its moving parts.
Zelensky met with Macron ahead of the summit. French, British, and Ukrainian military chiefs also met, with NATO’s top commander, U.S. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, participating in talks that France’s army chief said focused on implementing security guarantees. Army chiefs from other coalition nations joined by video.
Macron’s office said the U.S. delegation was initially set to be led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, but he changed his plans after the U.S. military intervention in Venezuela.
Tension rises over Greenland comments
Trump on Sunday renewed his call for the U.S. to take control of Greenland, a strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island.
The leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the U.K. on Tuesday joined Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in defending Greenland’s sovereignty in the wake of Trump’s comments about the self-governing territory of the kingdom of Denmark.
But the continent also needs U.S. military might to back up Ukrainian security guarantees and ward off Russia’s territorial ambitions. That could require a delicate diplomatic balancing act in Paris.
Participants are seeking concrete outcomes on five key priorities once fighting ends: ways to monitor a ceasefire; support for Ukraine’s armed forces; deployment of a multinational force on land, at sea and in the air; commitments in case of more Russian aggression; and long-term defense cooperation with Ukraine.
Ukraine seeks firm guarantees from Washington of military and other support seen as crucial to securing similar commitments from other allies. Kyiv has been wary of any ceasefire that it fears could provide time for Russia to regroup and attack again.
Important details unfinalized
Zelensky said during the weekend that potential European troop deployments still face hurdles, important details have not been finalized, and “not everyone is ready” to commit forces.
He noted that many countries would need approval from lawmakers even if leaders agreed on military support for Ukraine. But he recognized that support could come in forms other than troops, such as “through weapons, technologies, and intelligence.”
Zelensky said deployments in Ukraine by Britain and France, Western Europe’s only nuclear-armed nations, would be “essential.”
“Speaking frankly as president, even the very existence of the coalition depends on whether certain countries are ready to step up their presence,” he said. “If they are not ready at all, then it is not really a ‘coalition of the willing.’”
In fighting Tuesday, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) carried out drone strikes on a military arsenal and an oil depot deep inside Russia, according to a security official who was not authorized to comment publicly and thus spoke on condition of anonymity.
The long-range drones hit the arsenal in Russia’s Kostroma region, triggering explosions that lasted for hours and forced the evacuation of nearby settlements, the official said. The site was described as a key logistics hub supplying ammunition in western and central Russia.
In a separate strike, SBU drones hit an oil depot in Russia’s Lipetsk region, causing a huge fire, the official said.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Tuesday warned that Democrats would “find a reason to impeach me” if the GOP lost control of Congress — using the prediction to pressure lawmakers to unify behind a narrow set of electoral priorities to win the 2026 midterm elections.
“You got to win the midterms, because if we don’t win the midterms, they’ll find a reason to impeach me,” Trump said. “I’ll get impeached.”
The remark was a rare acknowledgment of Trump’s political vulnerability as Republicans prepare to face a Democratic Party buoyed by a string of off-year election victories, favorable polling, and voter anxiety over an economy now fully under Trump’s stewardship. The warning framed the midterms not onlyas a referendum on his agenda, but as a test of his legacy.
Trump addressed the representatives at the start of an all-day policy forum for House Republicans inside the Kennedy Center, a performing arts building recently renamed in his honor. The setting in the heart of Washington underscored how far Trump has come since Jan. 6, 2021, exactly five years ago, when rioters stormed the Capitol and set off years of criminal prosecution and political isolation.
In an address meant to energize his party, Trump conceded that his agenda has struggled to break through with voters. He complained that Americans had quickly moved past his record on illegal immigration and that the press had paid little attention to his push to pressure drug companies to cut prices, which has yielded wins, albeit limited, for some consumers.
He urged House Republicans to focus their messaging on drug prices, transgender athletes in women’s sports and cracking down on violent crime — issues he argued could sharpen contrasts with Democrats and mobilize voters ahead of 2026. And he instructed Republicans to set internal disputes aside and focus on a disciplined message he believes can carry them in November.
He also used the moment to defend Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.), who has struggled to manage an ideologically divided conference with a razor-thin majority without Trump’s interference.
“He’s as tough as anybody in the room actually,” the president said. “But you can’t be tough when you have a majority of three.”
“You can’t be Trump,” he said, appearing to mock his own confrontational style. “You make 10 enemies, 20 enemies and that’s the end of that.”
The endorsement came at a critical moment for Johnson, who is trying to unify his unruly conference behind a second legislative package after passing a sweeping tax and immigration effort — dubbed by Trump the One Big Beautiful Bill.
Trump also urged House Republicans to reclaim healthcare from the Democrats as a political issue and to pass a voting ID law, while urging conservatives to remain “flexible on Hyde” a signal to lawmakers who have stalled negotiations over abortion language.
“You got to be a little flexible. You got to work something,” Trump said. “We’re all big fans of everything but you got to have flexibility.”
Since returning to the presidency, Trump has continued to minimize the violenceof the riot, calling the insurrection “a day of love” and ultimately fulfilling his promise to pardon participants charged with misdemeanors and felonies. On Tuesday, he again downplayed his role.
Across town, House Democrats marked the anniversary with a hearing featuring lawmakers, Capitol Police officers and Pamela Hemphill, a rioter who entered the Capitol and later rejected a pardon from Trump.
“Once I got away from the MAGA cult and started educating myself about January the 6th, I knew what I did was wrong,” she said. “When Donald Trump pardoned us I rejected the pardon. Accepting that pardon would be lying about what happened on January 6. I am guilty.”
Republicansmeanwhile refocused on their agenda Tuesday,which the party is seeking to anchor on Trump’s economic agenda. That effort has been complicated by his decision to deploy U.S. forces to Venezuela and seize control of the country’s oil assets, a move that has resonated with some hawkish Republicans and members of both parties critical of Nicolás Maduro, but concerned others who fear the president’s “America First” base will lose patience with his interventionism.
Trump argued the action would lower energy costs.
“Got a lot of oil to drill,” he said.
Trump’s address lasted for more than an hour and included everything from jokes about FDR’s disability to an aside about first lady Melania Trump’s distaste for his dance moves.
“I think I gave you something,” he concluded. “It’s just a road map. It’s a road map to victory.”
LONDON — Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok is facing a backlash from governments around the world after a recent surge in sexualized images of women and children generated without consent by the artificial intelligence-powered tool.
On Tuesday, Britain’s top technology official demanded that Musk’s social media platform X take urgent action while a Polish lawmaker cited it as a reason to enact digital safety laws.
The European Union’s executive arm has denounced Grok while officials and regulators in France, India, Malaysia, and Brazil have condemned the platform and called for investigations.
Rising alarm from disparate nations points to the nightmarish potential of nudification apps that use artificial intelligence to generate sexually explicit deepfake images.
Here’s a closer look:
Image generation
The problem emerged after the launch last year of Grok Imagine, an AI image generator that allows users to create videos and pictures by typing in text prompts. It includes a so-called “spicy mode” that can generate adult content.
It snowballed late last month when Grok, which is hosted on X, apparently began granting a large number of user requests to modify images posted by others. As of Tuesday, Grok users could still generate images of women using requests such as, “put her in a transparent bikini.”
The problem is amplified both because Musk pitches his chatbot as an edgier alternative to rivals with more safeguards, and because Grok’s images are publicly visible, and can therefore be easily spread.
Nonprofit group AI Forensics said in a report that it analyzed 20,000 images generated by Grok between Dec. 25 and Jan. 1 and found that 2% depicted a person who appeared to be 18 or younger, including 30 of young or very young women or girls, in bikinis or transparent clothes.
Musk response
Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, responded to a request for comment with the automated response, “Legacy Media Lies.”
However, X did not deny that the troublesome content generated through Grok exists. Yet it still claimed in a post on its Safety account, that it takes action against illegal content, including child sexual abuse material, “by removing it, permanently suspending accounts, and working with local governments and law enforcement as necessary.”
The platform also repeated a comment from Musk, who said, “Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”
A growing list of countries are demanding that Musk does more to rein in explicit or abusive content.
Britain
X must “urgently” deal with the problem, Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said Tuesday, adding that she supported additional scrutiny from the U.K.’s communications regulator, Ofcom.
Kendall said the content is “absolutely appalling, and unacceptable in decent society.”
“We cannot and will not allow the proliferation of these demeaning and degrading images, which are disproportionately aimed at women and girls.”
Ofcom said Monday it has made “urgent contact” with X.
“We are aware of serious concerns raised about a feature on Grok on X that produces undressed images of people and sexualised images of children,” the watchdog said.
The watchdog said it contacted both X and xAI to understand what steps it has taken to comply with British regulations.
Under the U.K.’s Online Safety Act, social media platforms must prevent and remove child sexual abuse material when they become aware of it.
Poland
A Polish lawmaker used Grok on Tuesday as a reason for national digital safety legislation that would beef up protections for minors and make it easier for authorities to remove content.
In an online video, Wlodzimierz Czarzasty, speaker of the parliament, said he wanted to make himself a target of Grok to highlight the problem, as well as appeal to Poland’s president for support of the legislation.
“Grok lately is stripping people. It is undressing women, men, and children. We feel bad about it. I would, honestly, almost want this Grok to also undress me,” he said.
European Union
The bloc’s executive arm is “well aware” that Grok is being used to for “explicit sexual content with some output generated with childlike images,” European Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier said
“This is not spicy. This is illegal. This is appalling. This is disgusting. This is how we see it, and this has no place in Europe. This is not the first time that Grok is generating such output,” he told reporters Monday.
After Grok spread Holocaust-denial content last year, according to Regnier, the Commission sought more information from Musk’s social media platform X. The response from X is currently being analyzed, he said.
France
The Paris prosecutor’s office said it’s widening an ongoing investigation of X to include sexually explicit deepfakes after officials receiving complaints from lawmakers.
Three government ministers alerted prosecutors to “manifestly illegal content” generated by Grok and posted on X, according to a government statement last week.
The government also flagged problems with the country’s communications regulator over possible breaches of the EU’s Digital Services Act.
“The internet is neither a lawless zone nor a zone of impunity: sexual offenses committed online constitute criminal offenses in their own right and fall fully under the law, just as those committed offline,” the government said.
India
The Indian government on Friday issued an ultimatum to X, demanding that it take down all “unlawful content” and take action against offending users. The country’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology also ordered the company to review Grok’s “technical and governance framework” and file a report on actions taken.
The ministry accused Grok of “gross misuse” of AI and serious failures of its safeguards and enforcement by allowing the generation and sharing of ”obscene images or videos of women in derogatory or vulgar manner in order to indecently denigrate them.”
The ministry warned failure to comply by the 72-hour deadline would expose the company to bigger legal problems, but the deadline passed with no public update from India.
Malaysia
The Malaysian communications watchdog said Saturday it was investigating X users who violated laws prohibiting spreading “grossly offensive, obscene, or indecent content.”
The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission said it’s also investigating online harms on X, and would summon a company representative.
The watchdog said it took note of public complaints about X’s AI tools being used to digitally manipulate “images of women and minors to produce indecent, grossly offensive, or otherwise harmful content.”
Brazil
Lawmaker Erika Hilton said she reported Grok and X to the Brazilian federal public prosecutor’s office and the country’s data protection watchdog.
In a social media post, she accused both of generating, then publishing sexualized images of women and children without consent.
She said X’s AI functions should be disabled until an investigation has been carried out.
Hilton, one of Brazil’s first transgender lawmakers, decried how users could get Grok to digitally alter any published photo, including “swapping the clothes of women and girls for bikinis or making them suggestive and erotic.”
“The right to one’s image is individual; it cannot be transferred through the ‘terms of use’ of a social network, and the mass distribution of child pornography by an artificial intelligence integrated into a social network crosses all boundaries,” she said.
From removing protections from newly resurgent communicable diseases to investing good money after bad into industries that will make the planet more inhospitable during their lifetimes, we adults have wholly abdicated our responsibilities to Gen Alpha (and the infant Gen Beta). We’ve especially failed them by ceding to our own most juvenile inclinations — we elect the irresponsible and reward the feckless — and abandoning them to what we’ve wrought.
You grok? Yeah, that used to mean “to understand profoundly and intuitively,” but thanks to the sots that run the social media site X, it now refers to the artificial intelligence assistant that is, as we speak, actively degrading children by allowing users to take any innocently posted photo and, via prompt, have Grok edit and return the same image with the children stripped of their clothing, sometimes with other sexually suggestive details added.
When first called out, the AI assistant itself claimed the offending, nonconsensual, manipulated images were isolated cases.
I've reviewed recent interactions. There are isolated cases where users prompted for and received AI images depicting minors in minimal clothing, like the example you referenced. xAI has safeguards, but improvements are ongoing to block such requests entirely. (214 chars)
Hey @FBI did you know that Grok has been generating CSAM for a few days now? I've been documenting it in this thread, obviously leaving out the actual generated images because they were very sexual but leaving in the Grok reply previewhttps://t.co/vJIJxsyzac
Nevertheless, as of yesterday, the degrading images were still being generated and posted, the Guardian noted.
It’s not only children. The majority of the nonconsensual AI manipulated images created this way between Dec. 25 and Jan. 1, according to ananalysisby a French forensic nonprofit, are of women under the age of 30, with only 2% involving minors under the age of 18. Still, it is particularly troubling that some of the minors subjected to this kind of image editing are allegedly as young as 5 years old.
The creation of these deepfakes isn’t, unfortunately, limited to X. According to a recent article by Wired, Google’s and OpenAI’s chatbots also enable users to manipulate existing images nonconsensually this way.
As the adults in the room, our gravest fault in all this isn’t that we’ve given puerile middle-aged tech leaders like Musk the space to ply generative products that retcon our children’s images in gross and nonconsensual ways, though that’s certainly bad enough. No, it’s the cumulative harms to our children we’re enabling across the board and right under our noses.
Elon Musk holds up a chain saw he received from Argentina’s President Javier Milei (right) as they arrive to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Md., in February.
It’s an administration that has thwarted the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, despite the calls to do so from the women who were preyed upon and victimized when they were young girls. The same administration that has cut the SNAP benefits that feed millions of young people, and has dismantled educational resources for disabled students. An administration that, under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s direction, has narrowed access to healthcare, blamed Tylenol for autism, and curtailed gold-standard vaccines for children rather than expanded them.
In the longer term, the same Big Tech responsible for the development of generative AI is responsible for the explosion of data centers, which we adults welcome because, sure, they create jobs for us now. But since each one consumes up to five million gallons of freshwater per day, the world we are shaping for Gen Alpha and Gen Beta children to inhabit will have drastically diminished, or contested, capacity to support human life.
There are so many other examples of how we, the adults in the room, are choosing to be callow and cavalier about the future. So can we really bristle when we hear members of Gen Alpha (or even Gen Z) say we’ve ruined the world?
If we want the younger generations to be mistaken about that, we must changecourse now. And the opportunity to flex on the Grok grotesquerie is staring us in the face. Let’s push to close it down altogether until the coding is modified, and no one can prompt the AI assistant to strip our children of their clothes, their dignity, and their agency. We owe them that.
A Philadelphia man whose murder conviction was overturned because of its connection to disgraced former homicide detective Philip Nordo is now a suspect in two new homicides, and he was arrested this weekend after authorities say he committed yet another violent crime.
Arkel Garcia, 32, had been on the run since November, when police said he beat an elderly acquaintance to death inside an apartment complex in the city’s Stenton section. Authorities described that crime as a robbery, and issued an arrest warrant for Garcia on murder charges.
Weeks after that, authorities in Florida said they were seeking to question Garcia in connection with another killing there, on Nov. 28 in St. Lucie County. The sheriff’s office said a victim — whom it did not identify — died from blunt force trauma and smoke inhalation after a residence was intentionally set ablaze. Authorities did not provide many additional details about the crime, but said Garcia was considered a person of interest “based on evidence recovered at the crime scene and witness interviews.”
The most recent incident occurred Sunday afternoon, when police said Garcia, back in Philadelphia, shot a 34-year-old man in the arm inside a residence on the 5200 block of Germantown Avenue. Another man, age 37, then stabbed Garcia, police said, and began struggling with Garcia over his firearm, at which point the gun went off and struck Garcia.
Responding officers found Garcia suffering from gunshot and stab wounds in a nearby parking lot and took him to a hospital, where he was to be treated before being arraigned on murder charges. He had not been arraigned as of Tuesday afternoon.
The string of crimes occurred about a year after Garcia was released from prison after the collapse of his earlier murder case — an outcome prosecutors said was necessary because of Nordo’s misconduct.
In 2015, a jury had found Garcia guilty of fatally shooting Christian Massey, a 21-year-old man with special needs who was killed in Overbrook over a pair of Beats by Dre headphones. Garcia was sentenced to life in prison.
But four years later, District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office charged Nordo with raping and sexually assaulting male witnesses he met on the job. And as part of that investigation, prosecutors said they uncovered emails and recorded phone calls showing that Nordo had pursued secret sexual relationships with key witnesses while seeking to compile evidence implicating Garcia.
A confidential informant who spoke to Nordo about the Garcia case later told The Inquirer Nordo sexually assaulted him and also failed to protect his identity in the neighborhood. The informant was later convicted of killing someone after he said he was threatened because of being labeled a snitch.
In 2021, prosecutors persuaded a judge to overturn Garcia’s murder conviction in the Massey killing, and Krasner’s office declined to retry him.
But Garcia was not released from prison right away. After being found guilty of Massey’s murder, he fought with a sheriff’s deputy in the courtroom and was later convicted of aggravated assault. A judge sentenced him to five to 10 years in prison for that crime, and he remained incarcerated for it until he was paroled in October of 2024.
(Nordo, meanwhile, was convicted of sex crimes in 2022 and sentenced to 24½ to 49 years in prison.)
Late last year — while Garcia was still on parole — police said he fatally beat 68-year-old David Weinkopff inside an apartment on the 4900 block of Stenton Avenue. Weinkopff was wheelchair-bound, authorities said, and neighbors told police they’d seen Garcia going into and out of the building before the crime.
About two weeks after a murder warrant was issued in that case, authorities in Florida announced they were seeking to question Garcia over a homicide in Fort Pierce, a coastal city about an hour north of West Palm Beach.
Detectives there believe Garcia may have come to the area to visit estranged relatives, but are not sure how or why he killed the 51-year-old victim found dead on the 600 block of South Market Avenue. By the time authorities said they were seeking to question Garcia, they said he may have been attempting to return to Philadelphia by bus.
Still, Garcia remained on the lam until Sunday, when police said he got into an argument with several people inside a residence in Germantown.
Witnesses said the episode turned violent when Garcia fired his gun, according to Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore, and officials said Garcia was the only one with a firearm.
Vanore said Garcia was expected to face charges including aggravated assault, illegal gun possession, and reckless endangerment — in addition to the murder charges he will face for the killing on Stenton Avenue in November.
A relative of Massey’s, who asked not to be identified to discuss Garcia’s new arrest, said she and her relatives had felt “let down” by the system — and were heartbroken that Garcia, whom she still believes killed Massey, had been freed to hurt other people.
“This is a violent individual,” she said. “How is that not clear?”
FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Abortion will remain legal in Wyoming after the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that two laws barring the procedure, including the country’s first explicit ban on abortion pills, violate the state constitution.
The justices sided with the state’s only abortion clinic and others who had sued over the abortion bans passed since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.
Wyoming is one of the most conservative states, but the 4-1 ruling from justices all appointed by Republican governors was unsurprising in that it upheld every previous lower court ruling that the abortion bans violated the state constitution.
Wellspring Health Access in Casper, the abortion access advocacy group Chelsea’s Fund and four women, including two obstetricians, argued that the laws violated a state constitutional amendment ensuring competent adults have the right to make their own healthcare decisions.
Voters approved the constitutional amendment in 2012 in response to the federal Affordable Care Act. The justices recognized that the amendment wasn’t written to apply to abortion but said it’s not their job to “add words” to the state constitution.
“But lawmakers could ask Wyoming voters to consider a constitutional amendment that would more clearly address this issue,” the justices wrote.
The ruling upholds abortion as “essential healthcare” that shouldn’t be subject to government interference, Wellspring Health Access President Julie Burkhart said in a statement.
“Our clinic will remain open and ready to provide compassionate reproductive healthcare, including abortions, and our patients in Wyoming will be able to obtain this care without having to travel out of state,” Burkhart said.
The clinic opened in 2023 as the only facility of its kind in the state, almost a year later than planned after an arson attack. A woman who admitted breaking in and causing heavy damage by lighting gasoline that she poured over the clinic floors pleaded guilty and has been serving a five-year prison sentence.
Attorneys for the state had argued before the state Supreme Court that abortion can’t violate the Wyoming constitution because it is not healthcare.
Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, said in a statement that the court ruling disappointed him. He called on state lawmakers meeting later this winter to pass a constitutional amendment banning abortion that would go before voters this fall.
“This ruling may settle, for now, a legal question, but it does not settle the moral one, nor does it reflect where many Wyoming citizens stand, including myself. It is time for this issue to go before the people for a vote,” Gordon said.
Such an amendment would require a two-thirds vote to be introduced as a nonbudget matter in the monthlong legislative session that will be devoted primarily to the state budget. But it would have wide support in the Republican-dominated statehouse.
One of the laws overturned Tuesday sought to ban abortion except to protect a pregnant woman’s life or in cases involving rape or incest. The other law would have made Wyoming the only state to explicitly ban abortion pills, though other states have instituted de facto bans on abortion medication by broadly prohibiting abortion.
Abortion has remained legal in the state since Teton County District Judge Melissa Owens in Jackson blocked the bans while the lawsuit challenging them went ahead. Owens struck down the laws as unconstitutional in 2024.
Last year, Wyoming passed additional laws requiring abortion clinics to be licensed surgical centers and women to get ultrasounds before having medication abortions. A judge in a separate lawsuit has blocked those laws from taking effect while that case proceeds.
Thirteen states currently ban abortion completely after the North Dakota Supreme Court overturned an earlier ruling and upheld that state’s abortion ban in November.
In the beginning, God created the 12 days of Christmas and the bacchanalia of New Year’s Eve to get us through the dark and frigid endless nights of winter. That wasn’t nearly enough for us shivering and depressed humans, so God sent us the NFL playoffs. The hope is that the Eagles last long enough to get us to the balmy breezes of baseball’s spring training.
Delay, deny, distract, divert attention: Inside the Epstein Files coverup
Pages from a totally redacted New York grand jury file into Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, released by the U.S. Justice Department, are photographed last month in Washington.
I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover up or anything else if it’ll save it — save the plan.
The newish word that best captures the 2020s is one that I’m not allowed to use in a family newspaper like The Inquirer. In 2022, the social critic Cory Doctorow coined this scatological term that I’m calling “en(bleep)ification” (it won’t take much imagination) to describe the way that products, but especially consumer-facing websites, gradually degrade themselves in pursuit of the bigger goal, higher profits.
For example, writer Kyle Chayka wrote a popular New Yorker essay in 2024 about what he called the, um, en(bleep)ification of the music site Spotify as it devolved, in his opinion, from a place for the songs and albums you want to hear to pushing playlists that they want you to hear.
In the political world, no product rollout had been more anticipated than the December release, forced by law upon the Donald Trump regime’s Department of Justice, of the Jeffrey Epstein Files — the investigative trail of documents about the late financier and indicted sex trafficker who also palled around with Trump in the 1990s and early 2000s.
No one with any familiarity of Trump’s modus operandi should have been shocked by what happened when the congressionally mandated deadline for release of all of this massive cache of paperwork finally arrived on Dec. 19 — or by what has happened in the two-and-a-half weeks since then.
Needless to say, the Epstein Files have not offered the seamless user experience that its readers — especially those hoping for bombshells that would expose the tawdry secrets of Trump’s friendship with a man who allegedly abused more than 1,000 young and sometimes underaged women — had anticipated. In the hands of the president’s minions at Justice, the Epstein Files have been en(bleep)ified.
How so? Here’s the diabolical part. The MAGA Gang that normally can’t shoot straight managed to hit the coverup bullseye this time, not with one dramatic act to rile people up — like Nixon during Watergate with his notorious Saturday Night Massacre — but with a blend of tactics and dodges designed to frustrate and exhaust truth-seekers.
Delay. The law, which Trump signed to avoid an embarrassing defeat on Capitol Hill, required the release of every single document — with appropriate blacked-out redactionsto protect things like the names of Epstein’s victims — by that December deadline. But suddenly the Justice Department — which once had as many as 200 staffers combing the papers last spring before its original botched plan to squelch the files — lacked energy and manpower, claiming it was working as fast as it could in an initial release of just about 40,000 pages, which would seem to be a tiny fraction of more than 5 million pages believed to exist.
The DOJ’s small-batch cooking came in two small servings right before Christmas, when most Americans consume the least news, and information about any new releases in the new year has suddenly dried up, with maybe 99% of the files still outstanding.
Deny. The papers that have been released have included major redactions — including the completely blacked-out pages of Manhattan grand jury testimony pictured above — that violate the spirit if not the letter of the law, which demanded that any hidden passages only protect victims and not Epstein’s powerful associates and clients.
Stunningly, DOJ actually took back and attempted to bury some 16 files from the first release, including a photo of a photo that included Trump, before a public outcry led to that file’s republishing. Meanwhile, the department also claimed that 1 million additional Epstein files were discovered in New York after the legal deadline — an incredible claim that was immediately punctured by experts.
Deflect. The initial batch was also larded with photos of Epstein with celebrities like Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, and Walter Cronkite as well as several of a Trump predecessor and longtime enemy, Bill Clinton. The pictures were dumped without any explanation and seemed to prove only that there’s a good reason the government normally doesn’t release raw investigatory files, especially about those not charged with any crime.
The second batch also included a lurid and bizarre apparent letter from Epstein to a fellow famed accused sex offender, the gymnastic coach Larry Nassar, penned right around the time of his August 2019 jail-cell death. It seemed unbelievable, and just hours later the FBI said: Oh yeah, we looked at this and it’s a fake. The not-subtle subtext was essentially: “We don’t know what to believe in these files, and neither should you.”
Nearly 53 years ago, Nixon’s plan to cover up Watergate with a mix of denials, delays, purchased silence and outright lies didn’t work. But Team Trump’s efforts to “save it — save the plan” by stonewalling the Epstein files is going just swell so far.
If this moment feels familiar, it is very much like 2018 and the long-awaited Robert Mueller report on Russian influence in the 2016 presidential campaign and potential links to Moscow’s preferred candidate, Trump. There was a Mueller Report — much like there has been a “release” of the Epstein Files — that contained damning evidence, especially about potential obstruction of justice. But the information was dribbled out, downplayed, denied, and ultimately went nowhere.
The Epstein Files have been destined to fail from Day One. It was always what Trump himself might call a “rigged deal” — with the papers in the possession of those with the most to lose, with many ways to make sure the worst stuff stays buried until at least 2029, if it hasn’t already been shredded. But the biggest truth has already been revealed.
The outright defiance of the law demanding full release of the Epstein Files has exposed the utter brokenness of our democracy.
The reason that Nixon’s coverup plan failed is because America had institutions stronger than his lies, including a Congress that cared more about its strength and independence than party ID, newspapers that were not just widely read but believed, and Supreme Court justices with an allegiance to the law and not the man who appointed them.
Trump and his DOJ are daring a comatose Congress, a cowed news media, and a judiciary already in their back pocket to do something, but so far there is no indication that the en(bleep)ification of the Epstein Files can be undone. For now, they are more like the X Files, because the truth about Trump and his Palm Beach pal is out there…but beyond our weakened grasp.
Yo, do this!
These days I find “vacation” is often just another word for catching up on household chores, but during my long December break I did watch a slew of movies, including some of the ones I’d recommended previously like One Battle After Another (very good, but flawed) and Eddington (meh). I ventured to an actual theater on New Year’s Eve and saw probably my favorite movie of 2025: Song Sung Blue, the bittersweet, based-on-a-true-story saga of a Neil Diamond cover band at the end of the 20th century. As the title implies, the movie is more than just a rousing feel-good pop musical, despite cathartic moments of exactly that. Kate Hudson deserves an Oscar for her Wisconsin Nice accent.
If you miss the glory days of not-formulaic-or-cartoonish movies — in the spirit of Song Sung Blue or One Battle After Another, only better — you should check out a new documentary on Netflix called Breakdown: 1975, by filmmaker Morgan Neville. The film spotlights an all-too-brief golden age of the mid-1970s with clips from the era’s classics like Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon, and Network, and interviews with the likes of Martin Scorsese and Albert Brooks. They could have done much more with this, but I’d still recommend it.
Ask me anything
Question: Do you think that there is enough of a media firestorm over Grok’s nude filter to kill it? — BCooper (@bcooper82.bsky.social) via Bluesky
Answer: The recent, shocking news about the artificial-intelligence tool called Grok that was created for Elon Musk-owned X (formerly Twitter) is a classic example of an important story that so far has befuddled and fallen through the cracks of the mainstream media. In recent days, X users have been asking Grok to create partially clothed and sexualized AI photos of real, everyday people, including images of underage adolescents. And Grok has complied, in what would seem to be a violation of laws regarding child pornography, among other legal and ethical problems. Musk needs to shut down Grok immediately — arguably for good — but that is not enough for the harm that’s already been caused. In a nation that routinely prosecutes citizens for having this kind of material on their computers, Musk, his co-creators of Grok, and X as a corporation need to be hauled before a judge.
What you’re saying about…
The half-dozen or so of you who responded to December’s open-ended call for 2026 predictions had one big thing in common: Boundless pessimism. Readers of this newsletter expect the new year to bring economic collapse and a disastrous midterm election in November, either from Donald Trump stealing it to Democrats somehow blowing it in the ways that only Democrats can. Stephen R. Rourke predicted: “I believe that the American economy, and perhaps the world economy, will slide into a second Great Depression, the almost inevitable consequence of an over leveraged economy, and a lack of willingness across the board to make tough choices about how to address the American addiction to borrowed money…” Oof. Nonetheless, Kim Root stole my heart with this: “I think the Philadelphia Union will rise even with the personnel changes because they are a developer of young talent. DOOP.”
📮 This week’s question: A no-brainer: Donald Trump’s lethal assault on Venezuela and his seizure of that country’s strongman leader, in defiance of U.S. and international law, marks a turning point in American foreign policy. Are you OK with Trump’s actions because a bad guy has been removed from power, or are you alarmed by a military assault with the stated goal of pumping more oil? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “Venezuela attack” in the subject line.
Backstory on the growing crisis of ICE custody deaths
The Federal Detention Center in Miami.
Marie Ange Blaise, a citizen of Haiti, was 44 years old when she was arrested last February by Customs and Border Patrol officers as she attempted to board a commercial flight in Charlotte — one of the thousands swept up during 2025 amid the mass deportation drive of the Donald Trump regime.
Just 10 weeks later, Blaise died inside a federal immigration detention center in Broward County, Fla. A South Florida public radio station reported that the Haitian woman had spoken to her son, who later told the medical examiner that “she complained of having chest pains and abdominal cramps, and when she asked the detention staff to see a physician, they refused her.” Another detainee reported Blaise’s care was “severely delayed,” even as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) insisted she’d been offered blood-pressure medication but refused.
Blaise’s death was not an isolated incident. There was a sharp spike in ICE custody deaths during 2025, with the final tally of 31 fatalities nearly triple the 11 deaths posted during 2024, the last year of the Biden administration. Given the surge in immigration arrests after Trump took office last January, some increase was inevitable. Two of the 31 were killed by the gunman who fired on an ICE facility in Dallas. But immigration advocates say the crisis has been greatly exacerbated by inadequate medical care, bad food, and unsanitary conditions at detention centers.
“This is a result of the deteriorating conditions inside of ICE detention,” Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network, told the Guardian, which recently published a comprehensive rundown of all 31 custody deaths. Many died from heart attacks or respiratory failure, with a few apparent suicides — although, in a number of cases, family members are disputing the official account. Only a few of those who died were senior citizens.
There’s a bigger picture here. History has shown that authoritarian regimes can be hazardous to your health, and there is no American Exceptionalism. The MAGA movement’s low regard for the sanctity of human life is breaking through on multiple fronts, from the more than 100 deaths of South Americans on boats blown up by U.S. drones to the global crisis caused by the decimation of foreign aid through USAID (blamed for as many as 600,000 deaths by health experts) to the rising concern about fewer vaccinations and shrinking health insurance. A new generation is witnessing a grim reality: Dictatorship can be deadly.
What I wrote on this date in 2021
Jan. 6, much like Dec. 7 or Sept. 11, is a date which will live in infamy for most Americans. I had some health concerns five years ago that kept me from traveling to Washington to report on the insurrection — which I’ll always regret — but I did dash off an instant column before the smoke from Donald Trump’s failed coup had dissipated. I wrote, “When the future 45th president of the United States egged on the most violent thugs at his Nuremberg-style campaign rallies, when he yelled “get him the hell out of here” as white supporters roughed up a Black man in Birmingham, when he promised to pay the legal fees of brownshirts who beat up anti-Trump demonstrators, and when he said “I’d like to punch him in the face” to one rally insurrectionist, why are people still shocked when a riled-up mob takes Trump up on his own toxic words?” Read the rest: “Trump told us he would wreck America. Why didn’t we believe him the first time?”
Recommended Inquirer reading
I returned from a long Christmas break this weekend with something brand new to write about: the Trump regime’s illegal attack on Venezuela, which killed as many as 80 people, including civilians, and resulted in the capture of that nation’s strongman leader, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife. I wrote that Trump’s war without the required constitutional approval or public support, in violation of international law against unprovoked military aggression, fulfills his ambitions to rule as a dictator. And a new world order based not on the rule of law but brute force makes all of us less safe.
Last June, the partially unclothed body of a young woman was discovered by police under a pallet in an overgrown lot in Philadelphia’s Frankford neighborhood. For weeks, the identity of this murder victim was unknown, which didn’t deter one determined homicide detective, the missing woman’s anguished family who’d been initially told not to file a missing-person report — or The Inquirer’s Ellie Rushing, who has written a moving account of the life and death of the woman eventually learned to be Anastasiya Sangret. This kind of essential local reporting takes time and resources, which means it needs your support. You do exactly that, and unlock all the journalism of one of America’s best newsrooms, when you start 2026 with a subscription to The Inquirer.
By submitting your written, visual, and/or audio contributions, you agree to The Inquirer‘s Terms of Use, including the grant of rights in Section 10.
The Philadelphia Police Department on Tuesday released the name of the officer who shot and wounded a knife-wielding man on New Year’s Eve in Strawberry Mansion: Nicholas Jones.
Jones, 26, a four-year veteran of the department, shot 31-year-old Keith Freeman once in the chest, police said.
Jones and another officer — whose name has not been released — were called to a house in the 1800 block of North Bailey Street, police said, after a 911 caller had reported hearing a woman screaming.
A 9-year-old child opened the door, police said, and inside the officers saw a 30-year-old woman lying on the floor. Standing over her, knife in hand, they said, was Freeman. The woman had not been injured.
According to police, Jones and the other officer told Freeman to drop the knife. Instead, police said, Freeman leapt over a sofa and charged the officers, and Jones shot him.
Freeman was taken to Temple University Hospital for treatment. He was charged with aggravated assault, possession of an instrument of crime, simple assault, and recklessly endangering another person.
Freeman and the woman know one another, police said.
A police spokesperson said Tuesday that Jones has not previously been involved in an on-duty shooting. He has been placed on administrative duty, as is customary, pending an internal investigation.
Penn took a familiar drive to Jadwin Gymnasium on Monday night, looking to open Ivy League play with a win against longtime rival Princeton. After taking a 14-point lead in the first half, the Quakers couldn’t keep pace with the hot-shooting Tigers in the second and fell, 78-76, after missing the final shot in Fran McCaffery’s first Ancient Eight game as head coach.
Princeton (5-11, 1-0 Ivy) has won 14 straight over Penn, which McCaffery and the players know well.
“You can’t worry about what happened six years ago,” McCaffery said. “What happened when Pete Carril was coaching, we all know what it was like. We played a game tonight. We lost to a good team, a really good coach, and, whether we won or lost, we are going to break the film down and try and get better.”
Next up, Penn (7-7, 0-1) will host Brown on Saturday (2 p.m., ESPN+).
Last-second chance
Penn made a late comeback and trailed by two after a 13-0 run, which included nine points from the free-throw line.
The final play, intended for Ethan Roberts, went awry, and point guard AJ Levine attempted to make a buzzer-beating three, which clanged off the rim.
“They did a good job switching it,” McCaffery said. “I thought [Roberts] should have kept going. He passed it. That’s hard because now you put your teammate in a position where there’s two seconds to go in the game and he’s at 26 feet.”
Roberts, the team’s leading scorer, missed the previous four games because of an injury he suffered against Villanova in the Big 5 Classic championship on Dec. 5.
The senior forward scored 19 points on 5-for-12 shooting in his return, but McCaffery believes Roberts has yet to return to full speed.
“He takes the pressure off TJ [Power] and Michael [Zanoni],” McCaffery said. “He just has to get back in rhythm. He missed five weeks. He’s trying to remember the plays; he’s trying to remember where he goes.”
Second-half collapse
Roberts and shooting guard Zanoni (13 points) led the charge in the first half, combining for 20 points to help secure a 32-24 lead. To open the second, the Tigers made 16 straight baskets in the first 11-plus minutes.
Penn suddenly found itself down, 63-51, with 8 minutes, 48 seconds to go. The Tigers made 21 of 27 shots (77.8%) from the field, including 5-for-7 from deep, in the second half.
McCaffery was asked whether he had seen a shooting performance like that before. “No,” he said. “Nothing else to say, no. It’s a good question.
“What do you do? Think about it. You can change personnel. You can change defenses. We did that, and really the only thing to work was press, and we waited too long.”
However, Penn did not miss from the free-throw line in the game, going 19-for-19.
Seeking redemption
Princeton had struggled to start the season, and coach Mitch Henderson attributed the Tigers’ strong performance against Penn to the return of Dalen Davis, who suffered a leg injury in November.
The junior shooting guard scored 19 points off the bench in 21 minutes. Sophomore guard Jack Stanton led the Tigers with 23 points.
“It’s not just the scoring,” Henderson said of Davis’ play. “That’s awesome, I did not know we made 16 in a row. That’s amazing, but it’s his defense — his ability to go with balls shows his competitiveness.”
