New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill supports cementing the state’s sanctuary state policy into law — as it’s already written.
The Immigrant Trust Directive, commonly called a sanctuary policy, restricts state law enforcement from cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Enshrining the policy into law would ensure future governors of either party could not unilaterally take it away. As of now, the directive could be undone with a flick of a pen.
Immigrant rights groups in New Jersey have pushedfor several years to make the policy permanent with a new law, a move they say is increasingly urgent amid President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, which has reverberated across the country. But those activists want to expand protections, which could clash with Sherrill’s approach.
“Gov. Sherrill supports a bill to codify the directive,” her spokesperson Sean Higgins said. “What she does not support is anything that undermines the ability to defend our protections in court, which puts people at risk.”
Sherrill has said making changes to the directive while making it law could invite lawsuits andrisk the whole policy, which was enacted during Trump’s first presidency and has survived federal judges appointed by both Trump and former President George W. Bush.
“New Jersey’s directive has already withstood judicial review — and that additional action, if not precise, could undo important protections which we cannot risk under the Trump administration,” Sherrill said during her primary campaign.
Higgins said those concerns “have not changed.”
Immigrant rights groups nearlyreached the finish line late last year after the state legislature passed a bill that included some of the changes they wanted to make.
But former Gov. Phil Murphy rejected the bill in his final hours in office. Like Sherrill, he said the policy could be in jeopardy if it changed and could invite lawsuits.
Amol Sinha, the executive director of ACLU New Jersey, disagrees.
The bill Murphy vetoed — which Democraticlawmakers have already signaled they will reintroduce in the new session—would remove an exception for law enforcement to work with federal immigration authorities on final orders of removal and prohibit law enforcement from providing money to federal immigration authorities.
Sinha and others who support the bill say those changes would be on solid legal ground. Since the courts previously found federal law does not preempt the state’s immigration policy, and the state has the right to determine where its resources go, he said, he believes Murphy’s veto was overly cautious.
“We cannot be in a situation where we’re constantly afraid of lawsuits and therefore we don’t pass any laws,” Sinha said. “There is legal risk to every law that passes in New Jersey. You’re going to get sued, and if you don’t want to get sued, then you shouldn’t be in government.”
Sherrill’s stance on the matter has, at times, been ambiguous.
After a general election debate in late September, she said she was “going to focus on following the law and the Constitution” when pressed by reporters on whether she would keep the directive in place. In October, she said she supported aspects of the policy but also suggested she wanted to revisit it.
During the primary contest, her spokesperson said Trump “is changing the rules rapidly” and Sherrill would “address the circumstances as they exist,” but she had also signaled support for keeping the policy.
Since taking office last week, Sherrill has taken other steps to try to shield the state from ICE. She announced Thursday that her administration plans to launch a state database for New Jerseyans to upload videos of ICE operations in the state after two fatal shootings in Minnesota.
But the pressure to work with legislators on making the sanctuary directive law remains.
Assemblymember Balvir Singh, a Burlington County Democrat and cosponsor of the bill Murphy rejected, said part of the urgency is concern over Trump’s threats to withhold federal funding from Democratic-led states over policy disagreements.
Even though Sherrill has kept the policy in place, a directive carries less weight than a statute backed by two branches of government.
“Our executive can be put under a tremendous amount of pressure where they have to figure out how they’re going to fund our social services systems that rely on federal funding,” Singh said.
Just last week, Trump directed federal government agencies to review funding for several Democratic states, including New Jersey, almost all of which were on a list of sanctuary jurisdictions produced by his administration.
The one exception was Virginia, where new DemocraticGov. Abigail Spanberger rescinded a directive that instructed law enforcement to work with ICE. The previous week, Trump said he planned to cut off federal funding for states with sanctuary cities.
Singh, whose district includes communities with large immigrant populations, said preserving the seven-year-old policy through law is “the very minimum.”
‘I take Gov. Sherrill at her word’
Sherrill declined to comment on the specifics of the bill that reached Murphy’s desk, and the question will be whether lawmakers are able to enact changes to the current directive or if she will only sign a carbon copy of what already exists.
The sanctuary bill was one of three pieces of legislation aimed at protecting immigrants that Murphy weighed in his final days in office. He signed one about creating model policies for safe spaces in the state and vetoed another aimed at limiting data collected by government agencies and health centers, citing a “drafting oversight.”
As she waited anxiously for Murphy’s decisions on the bills earlier this month, Nedia Morsy, the executive director of immigrant advocacy group Make the Road New Jersey, said that New Jersey should not “make policy based on fear” and that immigrants in the state were experiencing a “collective feeling of suffocation.”
She criticized Murphy’s vetoes, saying legal experts had already vetted the bills.
Sherrill has repeatedly promised to fight Trump and recently said that ICE agents are “occupying cities, inciting violence, and violating the Constitution” and need to be held accountable “for their lawless actions.”
Her comments have given some activists hope that she will be willing to work with them.
And while a single bill cannot stop ICE from sweeping New Jersey communities, Sinha said, the state can “put up safeguards and guardrails” through policies like the ones Murphy rejected.
“I take Gov. Sherrill at her word that she wants to push back against authoritarianism,” he added, “and to me, that means doing whatever we can to protect immigrants in our state.”
District Attorney Larry Krasner on Wednesday announced the formation of a new coalition of progressive prosecutors committed to charging federal agents who violate state laws.
Krasner joined eight other prosecutors from U.S. cities to create the Project for the Fight Against Federal Overreach, a legal fund that local prosecutors can tap if they pursue charges against federal agents.
The move places Krasner at the center of a growing national clash between Democrats and the Trump administration over federal immigration enforcement and whether local law enforcement can — or should — charge federal agents for actions they take while carrying out official duties.
It is also the latest instance in which Krasner, one of the nation’s most prominent progressive prosecutors, has positioned himself as Philadelphia’s most vocal critic of President Donald Trump. He has made opposing the president core to his political identity for a decade, and he said often as he was running for reelection last year that he sees himself as much as a “democracy advocate” as a prosecutor.
Krasner has used provocative rhetoric to describe the president and his allies, often comparing their agenda to World War II-era fascism. During a news conference Tuesday, he said federal immigration-enforcement agencies are made up of “a small bunch of wannabe Nazis.”
The coalition announced Wednesday includes prosecutors from Minneapolis; Tucson, Ariz.; and several cities in Texas and Virginia. It was formed to amass resources after two shootings of U.S. citizens by federal law enforcement officials in Minnesota this month.
Renee Good, 37, was shot and killed in her car by an ICE officer on Jan. 7 as she appeared to attempt to drive away during a confrontation with agents. The FBI said it would not investigate her killing.
People visit a memorial for Alex Pretti at the scene in Minneapolis where the 37-year-old was fatally shot by a U.S. Border Patrol officer.
Then, on Saturday, Alex Pretti, 37, was killed after similarly confronting agents on a Minneapolis street. Video of the shooting, which contradicted federal officials’ accounts, appeared to show Border Patrol agents disarming Pretti, who was carrying a legally owned handgun in a holster. They then shot him multiple times. Federal authorities have attempted to block local law enforcement from investigating the shooting.
Krasner said that, despite Vice President JD Vance’s recent statement that ICE officers had “absolute immunity” — an assertion the Philadelphia DA called “complete nonsense” — prosecutors in FAFO are prepared to bring charges including murder, obstructing the administration of justice, tampering with evidence, assault, and perjury against agents who commit similar acts in their cities.
“There is a sliver of immunity that is not going to save people who disarm a suspect and then repeatedly shoot him in the back from facing criminal charges,” Krasner said during a virtual news conference Wednesday. “There is a sliver of immunity that is not going to save people who are shooting young mothers with no criminal record and no weapon in the side or back of the head when it’s very clear the circumstances didn’t require any of that, that it was not reasonable.”
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner attends an event at Independence National Historical Park on Dec. 21, 2025.
How will FAFO work?
The coalition has created a website, federaloverreach.org, and is soliciting donations.
Prosecutors who spoke during the news conference said those donations would be toward a legal fund that would allow prosecutors to hire outside litigators, experts, and forensic investigators as they pursue high-profile cases against federal agents.
“This will function as a common fund,” said Ramin Fatehi, the top prosecutor in Norfolk, Va., “where those of us who find ourselves in the tragic but necessary position of having to indict a federal law enforcement officer will be able to bring on the firepower necessary to make sure that the federal government doesn’t roll us simply through greater resources.”
The money raised through the organization will not go to the individual prosecutors or their political campaigns, they said Wednesday.
Scott Goodstein, a spokesperson for the coalition, said the money will be held by a “nonpartisan, nonprofit entity that is to be stood up in the coming days.” He said the prosecutors are “still working through” how the fund will be structured.
Krasner said it would operate similarly to how district attorneys offices receive grant funding for certain initiatives.
Most legal defense funds are nonprofit organizations that can receive tax-deductible donations. Those groups are barred from engaging in certain political activities, such as explicitly endorsing or opposing candidates for office.
Goodstein said the group is also being assisted in its fundraising efforts by Defiance.org, a national clearinghouse for anti-Trump activism. One of that group’s founders is Miles Taylor, a former national security official who, during the first Trump administration, wrote under a pseudonym about being part of the “resistance.”
Demonstrators from No ICE Philly gathered to protests outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, office at 8th and Cherry Streets, on Jan. 20.
‘Who benefits?’
In forming the coalition, Krasner inserted himself into a national controversy that other city leaders have tried to avoid.
His approach is starkly different from that of Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, a centrist Democrat who has largely avoided criticizing Trump. She says she is focused on her own agenda, and has not weighed in on the president’s deportation campaign.
Members of the mayor’s administration say they believe her restraint has kept the city safe. While Philadelphia has policies in place that prohibit local officials from some forms of cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, the Trump administration has not targeted the city with surges of ICE agents as it has in other jurisdictions — such as Chicago and Los Angeles — where Democratic leaders have been more outspoken.
Parker and Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel have at times been frustrated with Krasner’s rhetoric, according to a source familiar with their thinking who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal communications.
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker and Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel speaking ahead of a July 2024 press conference.
That was especially true this month when Krasner hosted a news conference alongside Sheriff Rochelle Bilal. The pair made national headlines after Krasner threatened to prosecute federal agents — something he has vowed to do several times — and Bilal called ICE a “fake” law enforcement agency.
Bethel later released a statement to distance the Police Department from the Sheriff’s Office, saying Bilal’s deputies do not conduct criminal investigations or direct municipal policing.
The police commissioner recently alluded to Parker’s strategy of avoiding confrontation with the federal government, saying in an interview on the podcast City Cast Philly that the mayor has given the Police Department instruction to “stay focused on the work.”
“It is not trying to, at times, potentially draw folks to the city,” Bethel said. “Who benefits from that? Who benefits when you’re putting out things and trying to… poke the bear?”
As for Krasner’s latest strategy, the DA said he has received “zero indication or communication from the mayor or the police commissioner that they’re in a different place.”
“I feel pretty confident that our mayor and our police commissioner, who are doing a heck of a lot of things right,” he said, “will step up as needed to make sure that this country is not invaded by a bunch of people behaving like the Gestapo.”
Blocking the package would set off a partial government shutdown.
“I will never vote to shut our government down, especially our Defense Department,” Fetterman said in a statement on Monday, which is one of the agencies that is relying on the pending appropriations package.
Even so, Fetterman thinks that changes are needed to President Donald Trump’s immigration strategy. He urged Trump to fire Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and he said immigration agents’ presence in Minneapolis needs to “immediately end,” after federal agents shot and killed two Americans this month.
Fetterman has suggested removing DHS funding from the package under consideration as a compromise, but Senate Republican leaders are unlikely to do that.
If a partial government shutdown kicks off Friday,impacted agencies include the Departments of State, Treasury, Health and Human Services, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development.
With a partial government shutdown potentially just days away, here’s what to know about Fetterman’s stance.
Why won’t Fetterman join Democrats in blocking funding for DHS?
Senate Democrats have said they won’t support funding for DHS in the wake of the killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti this month by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis. DHS oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol, the two agencies involved in the fatal shootings.
Democrats have also signaled that they want major reforms to federal agents’ conduct as they carry out Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda.
Fetterman said this week that he spent “significant time hearing many different positions on the funding bills,” but will still never vote to shut the government down.
Further, he thinks shutting down the government over U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement won’t have much of an impact at all.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and border enforcement operations are still likely to be operational even during a shutdown, CBS News reported. Agents have typically been considered essential employees.
“A vote to shut our government down will not defund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” Fetterman wrote in a statement this week, noting that DHS received $178 billion in funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Fetterman opposed.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during a news conference at Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters, Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026, in Washington.
Why did Fetterman call for Kristi Noem to be fired?
On Tuesday, Fetterman made a direct plea to Trump: Fire Noem.
“Americans have died,“ Fetterman wrote in a post on X. ”She is betraying DHS’s core mission and trashing your border security legacy.”
The Pennsylvania Democrat also tried to appeal to Trump by criticizing former President Joe Biden’s DHS secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, saying: “DO NOT make the mistake President Biden made for not firing a grossly incompetent DHS Secretary.”
An increasing number of lawmakers and advocacy groups have called for Noem’s ouster, including Republican U.S. Sens. Thom Tillis, of North Carolina, and Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska.
Fetterman had previously joined six other Democrats in voting to confirm Noem’s nomination for DHS secretary last year, including Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey. (Kim has also called for Noem to be fired).
What constituents and elected officials are saying
The pressure on Fetterman from colleagues and constituents appears to be growing.
Every Democratic member of Pennsylvania’s U.S. House delegation cosigned a letter on Tuesday calling for Fetterman and Sen. Dave McCormick (R, Pa.) to vote against DHS funding, The Inquirer reported.
Anti-ICE activists demonstrate outside U.S. Sen. John Fetterman’s Philadelphia office, Jan. 27, 2026, calling for the Pennsylvania Democrat to vote against DHS funding.
“We urge you to stand with us in opposing any DHS funding bill that does not include critical reforms,” the lawmakers said in the letter, delivered Tuesday. “We look forward to working together to advance legislation that both keeps our nation secure and upholds our fundamental values.”
Meanwhile, around 150 protesters gathered in front of Fetterman’s Philadelphia office in freezing temperatures on Tuesday to urge him to vote against the funding.
“What do we want? U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement out,” the crowd chanted.
President Donald Trump endorsed Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity for governor Tuesday evening, awarding her the coveted nod from the leader of the Republican Party as she tries to unseat the popular Democratic incumbent Gov.Josh Shapiro in November.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump declared Garrity “WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN” and stated that as governor, she would work to grow the economy, strengthen the military, keep borders secure, and safeguard elections, among other priorities.
“Stacy is a true America First Patriot, who has been with me from the beginning,” Trump wrote.
Garrity, the state’s second-term treasurer,has led the low-profile office without controversy and boasts that her staff has blocked nearly $2 billion in improper payments. The retired U.S. Army colonel in 2024 broke the record for highest number of votes received in a state-level race in Pennsylvania, and she quickly earned the support of the state party establishment last year.
In a statement Tuesday, Garrity said she was honored to receive Trump’s endorsement, adding that the president has “been a voice for hardworking Americans who have been left behind.”
“Josh Shapiro is President Trump’s number one adversary, and I am looking forward to working with President Trump and his team to defeat Josh Shapiro this November,” Garrity said.
At right is Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro listening to Stacy Garrity, 78th State Treasurer, Forum Auditorium, Harrisburg, Pa., Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025.
Garrity is a longtime Trump supporter from rural Bradford County, who in 2022 at a Trump rally repeated his false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election — a position she has since walked back, telling reporters earlier this month that she had gotten carried away in the moment when she said that.
Last summer, Trump said he would support another potential candidate — U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser (R., Pa.) — if he ran.Weeks later, the Northeast Pennsylvania Republican declined to run andannounced he would seek a fourth term in Congress instead. Meuser quickly endorsed Garrity once she formally joined the race, and she continues to capture more GOP officials’ endorsements as Pennsylvania’s May 19 primary election inches closer.
Garrity is currently running unopposed as the Republican candidate for governor, after State Sen. Doug Mastriano announced he would not run again this year after losing by nearly 15 percentage points to Shapiro in 2022. However, Garrity has yet to announce who she wants as her running mate for lieutenant governor, with largely far-right conservatives — including Mastriano — interested in the job.
Still,Trump’s endorsement of Garrity could draw needed eyes and checkbooks to her campaign, as her fundraising in the early months of the race has lagged far behind the $30 million war chest Shapiro has amassed over the last few years. Earlier this month, Garrity announced that her campaign had raised nearly $1.5 million from August through December.
Republicans are hopeful that Garrity can drive enough enthusiasm at the top of the state ticket to motivate GOP voters to come out to vote throughout Pennsylvania, boosting candidates up and down the ballot in a year where control of Pennsylvania’s General Assembly and the U.S. House of Representatives is on the line.
“Pennsylvanians deserve better than a Governor who is nothing more than a rubber stamp for Trump’s chaos and higher costs, and that’s why she will be soundly rejected this November,” Pennsylvania Democratic Party chair Eugene DePasquale said in a statement.
In Harrisburg, a top Democrat floated making Pennsylvania a so-called sanctuary state to protect undocumented immigrants.
And in Washington, senators faced mounting pressure to hold up funding for the Department of Homeland Security, an effort that could result in a government shutdown by the end of the week.
Across the nation, lawmakers are fielding calls to rein in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after President Donald Trump’s administration surged forces into Minneapolis as part of his aggressive nationwide deportation campaign. Frustration with the agency reached new heights Saturday after agents fatally shot protester Alex Pretti, the second killing of a U.S. citizen there this month.
Democrats nationwide slammed ICE and called on Trump to pull the forces out of Minnesota. Sen. John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has at times sided with Trump on immigration matters, said DHS Secretary Kristi Noem should be fired.
Anti-ICE activists demonstrate outside U.S. Sen. John Fetterman’s Philadelphia office on Monday, calling for an end to federal immigration enforcement policies.
A growing number of Republicans have also signaled their discomfort with the Minneapolis operation, including Trump allies who called on members of the administration to testify before Congress. Sen. Dave McCormick, a Pennsylvania Republican, has called for an independent investigation into Pretti’s killing.
Trump, for his part, showed some willingness to change course, sending border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis to meet with Democratic leaders there. The president on Tuesday called Pretti’s death a “very sad situation.”
Rue Landau shown here during a press conference at City Hall to announce a package of bills aimed at pushing back against ICE enforcement in Philadelphia on Tuesday.
However, a chorus of Democrats and activists said Tuesday that the agency needs to change its tactics and be held accountable for missteps. And local leaders said they are laying out plans in case a surge of immigration enforcement comes to Philadelphia, home to an estimated 76,000 undocumented immigrants.
“We have spent hours and hours and hours doing tabletop exercises to prepare for it,” Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said during a Monday night interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Philadelphia officials said the best way they can prepare is by limiting the city’s cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
City Councilmember Kendra Brooks, of the progressive Working Families Party, and Councilmember Rue Landau, a Democrat, were joined by dozens of activists and other elected officials during a news conference Tuesday to unveil a package of legislation aimed at codifying into law the city’s existing “sanctuary city” practices.
Those policies, which are currently executive orders, bar city officials from holding undocumented immigrants in custody at ICE’s request without a judicial warrant.
Landau and Brooks’ legislative package, expected to be introduced in Council on Thursday, goes further, preventing ICE agents from wearing masks, using city-owned property for staging raids, or accessing city databases.
Erika Guadalupe Núñez, executive director of immigrant advocacy organization Juntos, said the legislation “goes beyond just ‘We don’t collaborate.’”
Juntos gets regular calls about ICE staging operations at public locations in and around Philadelphia, and people have been worried, despite official assurances, whether personal information held by the city will be secure from government prying.
“We deserve a city that has elected leadership that’s willing to step forward with clear and stronger protections,” Núñez said.
A protester speaks to a Minnesota State Patrol officer near the site of the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday.
If the legislation is approved, Philadelphia would have some of the most stringent protections for immigrants in the country.
Oregon has especially strong restrictions against cooperation with federal immigration authorities, including barring local law enforcement from detaining people or collecting information on a person’s immigration status without a judicial warrant.
In Illinois, local officers “may not participate, support, or assist in any capacity with an immigration agent’s enforcement operations.” They are also barred from granting immigration agents access to electronic databases or to anyone in custody.
California, New York, Colorado, Vermont — and individual jurisdictions in those states — also provide strong protections for immigrants.
In New Jersey, Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat who was sworn in last week, has kept the state’s sanctuary directive in place as lawmakers seek to expand and codify the policy into law. Legislators came close in the final days of former Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration, but he killed a related bill that had won approval in Trenton, saying he worried that enacting a law that included changes to the state’s current policy would invite new lawsuits.
Meanwhile, some conservatives say bolstering sanctuary policies risks community safety.
“If an illegal immigrant breaks the law, they should be dealt with and handed over to federal law enforcement, not be released back into our neighborhoods to terrorize more victims and commit more crime,” said James Markley, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Republican Party.
He added: “Sanctuary policies don’t protect communities, they endanger all of us by shielding criminals from accountability for their crimes.”
Democrats are taking varying approaches
The widespread outrage over ICE’s tactics in Minneapolis has exposed sharp divisions in elected Democrats’ responses.
“There will be accountability now. There will be accountability in the future. There will be accountability after [Trump] is out of office,” Krasner said Tuesday. “If we have to hunt you down the way they hunted down Nazis for decades, we will find your identities.”
District Attorney Larry Krasner speaks during a news conference at City Hall on Tuesday to announce a package of bills aimed at pushing back against ICE enforcement in Philadelphia.
Somewhere in the middle is State Sen. Sharif Street, a Philadelphia Democrat and former head of the state party who is running for Congress.
Street does not have Krasner’s bombast, but this week he announced plans to introduce legislation to prevent state dollars from funding federal immigration enforcement. The bill has less of a chance of becoming law in Pennsylvania’s divided state legislature than similar measures would in Philadelphia, where City Council is controlled by a supermajority of Democrats.
“Who knows the amount of money that the state could incur because of Trump’s reckless immigration policies?” Street said in an interview Tuesday. “I don’t think state taxpayers should be paying for Donald Trump’s racist, reckless policies.”
The mayor’s critics have said her approach is not responsive to the city’s overwhelmingly Democratic residents.
“To the people of Philadelphia, I want to say: I hear you. You want ICE out of our city, and you want your local government to take action,” Brooks, the Council member, said Tuesday. “Some people believe that silence is the best policy when dealing with a bully, but that’s never been an option for me.”
Kendra Brooks shown here during a news conference at City Hall on Tuesday to announce a package of bills aimed at pushing back against ICE enforcement in Philadelphia.
Others say Parker’s conflict-averse strategy is appropriate.
“All of us have different roles to play,” Street said. “The mayor has to manage the city. She’s got to command law enforcement forces. … As a state legislator, we make policy.”
Rafael Mangual, a fellow who studies urban crime and justice at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute in New York City, said legislative efforts to erect barriers between federal and local law enforcement could backfire.
“If you don’t engage at all, and you do something that seems to actively frustrate the federal government,” Mangual said, “that would seem to be an invitation for the federal government to prioritize a city like Philadelphia.”
Staff writers Alfred Lubrano, Aliya Schneider, and Gillian McGoldrick contributed to this article.
Sen. John Fetterman on Tuesday urged President Donald Trump “to immediately fire” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after federal agents killed two citizens in Minneapolis this month during an immigration enforcement operation.
“Americans have died,” Fetterman (D., Pa.) said in a statement. “She is betraying DHS’s core mission and trashing your border security legacy.”
The senator’s call for Noem’s firing comes after federal agents killed two Americans during the Minneapolis operation. On Saturday, a Border Patrol agent shot and killed Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse at a VA hospital. An ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old poet and mother, on Jan. 7.
Fetterman referenced Noem’s predecessor, Alejandro Mayorkas, who served under former President Joe Biden and faced impeachment by the Republican-led House in 2024 amid a backlash over increased border crossings under Biden.
Sen. Andy Kim (D., N.J.), who also voted for Noem, joined the growing chorus of Democrats calling for Noem to step down on Tuesday. The South Jersey lawmaker has previously called the vote a mistake.
Fetterman’s plea to fire Noem comes a day after he called for the withdrawal of federal agents from Minneapolis. And it comes as the U.S. Senate is poised to vote this week on funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees both ICE and the Border Patrol.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats would vote against it, which could trigger a partial federal government shutdown.
About 150 protesters gathered outside Fetterman’s office in Philadelphia in the snow on Tuesday to urge him to join the effort, but the senator said on Monday that he will never vote to shut down the government. He also argued that doing so would not pull the $178 billion dedicated to DHS through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which he did not support.
“I would like him to listen and actually represent us, because that’s his job,” said James Pierson, 42, an Exton resident attending the demonstration.
Fetterman suggested pulling the DHS bill from the package of bills under consideration by the Senate this week rather than another shutdown vote.
“I reject the calls to defund or abolish ICE,” he said. “I strongly disagree with many strategies and practices ICE deployed in Minneapolis, and believe that must change.”
Is this actually an honest-to-goodness turning point in the war for the soul of America? Monday night, the deny-everything-admit-nothing Trump regime surprised observers by revealing that violence-provoking Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino has been sent home from Minneapolis and may even be retiring. That’s a giant win for the power of everyday people resisting, but turning around the battleship of tyranny will still take much more work.
Corporate America may pay a steep price for its cowardly ICE neutrality
Protesters gather Friday at Target’s corporate headquarters in Minneapolis.
One of the many remarkable and lasting ideas the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. placed into the national conversation was the concept of something he called “negative peace.”
Although the phrase began appearing in the writings of the civil rights leader in the late 1950s, King made the idea famous in his 1963 “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” where he was locked up for fighting segregation in Alabama’s largest city. He was annoyed by a letter from eight local white clergymen, titled a “Call for Unity,” that begged King to end a civil disobedience crusade for racial integration and seek progress through negotiations and the courts.
When an aide smuggled the newspaper into King’s cell, he began furiously scribbling his response in the margins of the ad before writing more on any scrap of paper he could find. His key passage argues that the white moderate was a greater threat to Black freedom than the KKK, because he was someone “more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice,” and who wants African Americans to wait for a “more convenient season.”
Flash-forward 63 years, and the grand pooh-bahs of U.S. capitalism have learned nothing from this. On Sunday, 60 major corporations based in Minnesota — feeling caught in the crossfire of the federal immigration raids tearing apart Greater Minneapolis and the growing resistance movement — issued a cowardly and pathetic call for a negative peace to reduce the tensions.
The open letter that was released through the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce was signed by the CEOs or equivalents of almost every major Gopher State brand that you could think of — including Target, 3M, General Mills, Hormel, UnitedHealth (yes, that UnitedHealth), and all five major sports franchises. Some of these firms are beginning to see real economic fallout from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and protest activities, which have kept some frightened Black and brown workers at home and triggered a large general strike last Friday.
The letter reads little differently from the Birmingham ministers’ “Call for Unity.”
“With yesterday’s tragic news” — a vague, bloodless reference to the 10 shots fired by federal officers into a 37-year-old intensive care nurse named Alex Pretti — “we are calling for an immediate deescalation of tensions and for state, local and federal officials to work together to find real solutions,” the letter states. It notes that Minnesota business leaders have been in touch with Gov. Tim Walz, the Donald Trump White House, and others in pleading for what it hopes would be a solution to the state’s crisis.
Pretti is never mentioned in the letter. Neither is Renee Nicole Good, the 37-year-old mother of three who was gunned down behind the wheel of her family SUV by an ICE agent as she attempted to drive away from a confrontation. In fact, ICE is never mentioned, nor are the federal agency’s most outrageous tactics, such as the seizure of a 5-year-old boy as “bait” to detain him and his father, or dragging a barely dressed Hmong refugee who is a U.S. citizen out of his home in frigid weather.
The entire letter is remarkable not for what it says — since it says very little beyond praying this whole mess somehow goes away so they can go back to making money without thinking about such dreadful things — than for what it doesn’t say.
There is no condemnation of the murders of two U.S. citizens who did nothing beyond legally monitoring the federal officers and their activities while on public streets. There is no condemnation of the ICE tactics in seizing hardworking migrants with no criminal records who are the backbone of the Minnesota community. There is nothing about what MLK would have called “positive peace” — a desire for real justice.
That’s probably because positive peace requires bold choices and displays of real courage — qualities that modern corporate America seems to have misplaced in a giant warehouse somewhere.
Exhibit A would have to be Target, the large national retailer that, with its hundreds of stores and its name slapped on the NBA’s Timberwolves’ arena, is now to many Americans the corporate face of Minnesota. Under pressure from demonstrators, including more than 100 clergy who protested outside Target’s Minneapolis headquarters on Friday, the retailer still said nothing — before the tepid group letter — about the ongoing ICE raids, or why agents have been allowed to stage operations in its parking lots and even inside stores.
There’s a bleak history here. In 2020, Minnesota became the epicenter of the fight for racial justice when the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd was captured on video. That time, the state’s CEOs not only expressed moral outrage but pledged to spend heavily on diversity initiatives. Five years later, the local news site Racket reported many of these firms had backtracked, and that barely a third of the pledged $550 million had been spent.
This time, the business leaders just want the “tension” to disappear. That’s not so easy. Just ask Target. Its early 2025 move to end its diversity initiatives as Trump took office sparked calls from Black leaders for a boycott that has cut into store traffic and lowered Target’s stock price. It seems that moral surrender actually does have a price.
Also on Sunday, the team chaplain for the Timberwolves — ironically, one of the teams that signed onto the corporate letter — issued a personal statement with loud echoes of the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” calling out any churches that had prayed that morning for peace and unity but not for justice.
“Peace is what the powerful ask for when they don’t want to be interrupted,” Matt Moberg wrote in a short piece that went viral on social media, adding, “Unity that refuses to name violence is just loyalty to the ones holding the weapons.”
This wouldn’t be the first time corporate America misread the room. Sunday’s statement suggested a continued deer-in-the-headlights reaction from the shock of Trump’s return to office — even as the CEOs ignore not just the power of the Target boycotts but the recent success of economic justice campaigns against firms from Disney to Avelo Airlines, not to mention the solidarity that drove the Minneapolis general strike.
Already, there is growing talk of a national general strike or expanded boycotts by millions of citizens who are also consumers, and who are both furious over the Good and Pretti murders and now flabbergasted by the corporate cone of silence. America’s business leaders don’t understand that cowardice has a steep cost attached.
Yo, do this!
There’s no better writer about the long fight for social justice in America than historian Heather Ann Thompson. Her searing 2016 book about the 1971 Attica prison uprising — Blood in the Water — won a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize, and locals were thrilled when it was reported that the next book from Thompson, who taught for a while at Temple, would be on the 1985 MOVE bombing. Instead, she has taken a detour. Her Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage is out today. I just downloaded the audiobook, and cannot wait to listen.
It’s Academy Award season, and so — hopelessly snowed in on Sunday — I took a family break from football (!) to rent a movie … from 2009. Given my obsession with 1960s rock and roll radio, it’s weird that I’d never seen Pirate Radio, a fictional homage to the U.K.’s government-defying offshore radio stations of the British Invasion era that stars the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. The plot can be muddled at times, but it’s maybe the best movie soundtrack ever!
Ask me anything
Question: Why do Dem Leaders want to save ICE, when nobody really else does? What’s the motivation? — @keynesaddiction.bsky.social via Bluesky
Answer: I wonder this, too. Both ICE and the current crew at U.S. Customs and Border Protection have been simmering for far too long in a toxic, unredeemable culture that cannot be reformed. What’s more, the shocking abuses on display in Minnesota and two killings have now convinced a plurality of U.S. voters that ICE should be abolished. Still, I can understand the Democrats’ bind, since at the moment the party has no other political leverage beyond the ability to block most Senate legislation with the filibuster. It might be best to push hard for as much as can be done in 2026, while running in the midterms on a platform of abolishing ICE when they gain power on Capitol Hill.
What you’re saying about …
LOL — remember that whole Greenland thing? It feels like that was five years ago, but some of you had some good responses on dealing with Trump’s bluster about an American takeover, even if things have temporarily cooled down. Tom Desmond said the Europeans “need to quit pretending that they can ‘manage’ him through flattery and soft words. Instead, they need to apply threats — i.e., whatever tariffs he imposes on Europe over Greenland they will return against the U.S. three-fold.” Jo Parker said Congress needs to reassert its powers over tariffs and declaring war, but “With the spineless [Dave] McCormick and [John] Fetterman representing us, I’m not sanguine that such actions will take place, however.”
📮 This week’s question: Things are coming to a head in Congress over funding for ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Should Democrats make a deal for ICE reforms, such as unmasking and requiring arrest warrants, or must they push for bigger concessions, or even abolishing ICE? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “ICE funding” in the subject line.
Backstory on the day (a) Fetterman spoke out
U.S. Sen. John Fetterman and his wife, Gisele Barreto Fetterman, await the arrival of President Joe Biden at Philadelphia International Airport in July 2024.
I must confess that keeping up with the downward spiral of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Sen. John Fetterman since he took office in 2023 can get tiresome. At first, Fetterman’s rightward tack seemed largely a function of his zealous support for Israel, which caused him to wave off allegations of war crimes by Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government. Soon, others pointed to his health woes — hospitalizations for a stroke and depression, among other things — as he endorsed more and more Trump-flavored ideas.
Amid mounting outrage over Trump’s aggressive immigration raids, Fetterman made some comments that had his growing legion of critics wonder if the senator’s real heart issue was whether he had one. “ICE performs an important job for our country,” the Democrat posted on X last July, adding that any calls to abolish the agency were “inappropriate and outrageous.” Even after the Jan. 7 ICE killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, Fetterman’s middle-of-the-road stance was this: “Secure the border. Deport all the criminals. Stop targeting the hardworking migrants in our nation.” In the immediate aftermath of Saturday’s killing of Alex Pretti by federal agents, even Pennsylvania’s GOP Sen. Dave McCormick had called for a congressional investigation before Fetterman said anything.
On Sunday night, though, Fetterman issued a heartfelt and moving statement. Well, a Fetterman did.
“For more than a decade, I lived undocumented in the US,” the senator’s wife, Gisele Barreto Fetterman, a native of Brazil, posted on X. “Every day carried the same uncertainty and fear lived in my body — a tight chest, shallow breaths, racing heart. What I thought was my private, chronic dread has now become a shared national wound. This now-daily violence is not ‘law and order.’ It is terror inflicted on people who contribute, love, and build their lives here. It’s devastatingly cruel and unAmerican.” Her post ended with an emoji of a broken heart.
Sen. Fetterman finally issued a statement nearly a day later. He called for “an immediate end” to the ICE operations in Minnesota, adding, “It has become an ungovernable and dangerous urban theatre for civilians and law enforcement that is incompatible with the American spirit.” But Fetterman still disappointed critics of Trump’s immigration policy, insisting that while he wants ICE reforms, he still supports the embattled agency, and won’t join other Democrats in shutting down the federal government if those reforms aren’t happening.
Pennsylvanians thought they were getting a progressive voice and a moral leader when they elected Fetterman in 2022. It feels now like we elected the wrong Fetterman.
What I wrote on this date in 2010
It was only 16 years ago, but at the dawn of the 2010s, there was still a robust conversation about how to save the traditional journalism outlets— especially newspapers — that had flourished in the 20th century. On Jan. 27, 2010, I criticized an idea coming from Apple that a new kind of $1,000 iPad, nicknamed “the Jesus tablet,” would fix everything. I wrote: “To survive, we need to change our whole worldview — finding ways to encourage more dialogue with readers and more community involvement so that local readers feel they have a stake in this thing. And we also need to do a better job at the thing we claim to be already good at — real journalism that makes a difference.”
On the national beat, there’s no bigger story than the fallout from the inhumanity of the Trump regime’s mass deportation policies. In my Sunday column, I looked at the other way people are dying in ICE’s reign of terror: inside the growing network of squalid and overcrowded jails and detention camps. The death rate in these facilities so far in 2026 is already 10 times higher than it was in the last year of the Biden administration. Over the weekend, I quickly shifted gears and turned a planned column about faith leaders in Minneapolis and an America yearning for morality into a lament over the shocking ICE murder of a 37-year-old observer, Alex Pretti. The contrast between good and evil in America has never been more stark.
The many tentacles of the mass deportation story stretch well beyond Minneapolis and other hot spots like Maine, including stepped-up ICE enforcement activity here in Philadelphia since Trump returned to office. The Inquirer’s veteran immigration reporter, Jeff Gammage, has drilled deeply into the human stories on the front lines here. Written with colleague Michelle Myers, this week’s installment was both poignant and infuriating. A local family of four is returning to Bolivia after the dad — the prime caregiver for his 5-year-old son, being treated at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for brain cancer — has stopped fighting his deportation after five months in ICE detention. As his family prepares to leave, the child’s future in a South American country with substandard medical care is highly uncertain. Old-school beat reporting like this is what local community journalism is all about. You support this vital work when you subscribe to The Inquirer.
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Philadelphia lawmakers are set to consider legislation that would make it harder for ICE to operate in the city, including limiting information sharing, restricting activity on city-owned property, and prohibiting agents from concealing their identities.
Among the package of bills set to be introduced Thursday is an ordinance that effectively makes permanent Philadelphia’s status as a so-called “sanctuary city” by barring city officials from holding undocumented immigrants at ICE’s request without a court order. Another bans discrimination based on immigration status.
Two City Council members are expected to introduce the legislation as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is facing mounting national scrutiny over its tactics in Minneapolis, where federal agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens this month.
Councilmembers Rue Landau, a Democrat, and Kendra Brooks, of the progressive Working Families Party, said in an interview that the violence in Minneapolis hardened their resolve to introduce legislation to protect a population that includes an estimated 76,000 undocumented immigrants in Philadelphia.
“It’s been very disheartening and frightening to watch ICE act with such lawlessness,” Landau said. “When they rise to the level of killing innocent civilians, unprecedented murders … this is absolutely the time to stand up and act.”
The package of a half-dozen bills is the most significant legislative effort that Council has undertaken to strengthen protections for immigrants since President Donald Trump took office last year on a promise to carry out a mass deportation campaign nationwide.
Left: City Councilmember Rue Landau. Right: City Councilmember Kendra Brooks. Landau and Brooks are introducing legislation this week to make it harder for ICE to operate in Philadelphia, including by limiting city cooperation with the agency.
ICE spokespeople did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Jasmine Rivera, executive director of the Pennsylvania Immigration Coalition, said it’s not the job nor the jurisdiction of the city to enforce federal law.
The goal of the legislation, Rivera said, is ensuring that “not a single dime and single second of our local resources is being spent collaborating with agencies that are executing people.”
Now, the mayor could be forced to take a side. If City Council passes Landau and Brooks’ legislation this spring, Parker could either sign the bills into law, veto them, or take no action and allow them to lapse into law without her signature. She has never vetoed a bill.
Joe Grace, a spokesperson for Parker, declined to comment on the legislation.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker speaks at a news conference earlier this month. It is unclear how she will act on upcoming legislation related to ICE operations in Philadelphia.
It’s unclear what fate the ICE legislation could meet in Council. The 17-member body has just one Republican, but Parker holds influence with many of the Democrats in the chamber.
City Council President Kenyatta Johnson, a Democrat who controls the flow of legislation, has not taken a position on the package proposed by Landau and Brooks.
But he said in a statement that “Philadelphia has long positioned itself as a welcoming city that values the contributions of immigrants and strives to protect their rights and safety.”
“I have deep concerns about federal ICE actions directed by President Donald Trump’s administration that sow fear and anxiety in immigrant communities,” Johnson said, “underscoring the belief that enforcement practices should be lawful, humane, and not undermine trust in public safety.”
Making sanctuary status the law
Border Patrol and ICE are both federal immigration agencies, which are legally allowed to operate in public places and subject to federal rules and regulations. Some cities and states —not including Pennsylvania and New Jersey — actively cooperate with ICE through written agreements.
Since 2016, Philadelphia has operated under an executive order signed by former Mayor Jim Kenney, which prohibits city jails from honoring ICE “detainer requests,” in which federal agents ask the city to hold undocumented immigrants in jail for longer than they would have otherwise been in custody to facilitate their arrest by federal authorities.
Undocumented immigrants are not shielded from federal immigration enforcement, nor from being arrested and charged by local police for local offenses.
Some refer to the noncooperation arrangement as “sanctuary.” As the term “sanctuary cities” has become politically toxic, some local officials — including in Philadelphia — have backed away from it, instead declaring their jurisdictions to be “welcoming cities.”
Parker administration officials have said several times over the last year that Philadelphia remains a “welcoming city.”
Protesters march up Eighth Street, toward the immigration offices, during the Philly stands with Minneapolis Ice Out For Good protest at Philadelphia’s City Hall on Jan. 23.
But advocates for immigrants have said they want an ironclad city policy that can’t be rescinded by a mayor.
Landau and Brooks’ legislation would be that, codifying the executive order into law and adding new prohibitions on information sharing. The package includes legislation to:
Strengthen restrictions on city workers, including banning local police from carrying out federal immigration enforcement and prohibiting city workers from assisting in enforcement operations.
Prohibiting law enforcement officers from concealing their identities, including by wearing masks or covering up badges with identifying information.
Banning ICE from staging raids on city-owned property and designated community spaces such as schools, parks, libraries, and homeless shelters. (It would not apply to the Criminal Justice Center, where ICE has had a presence. The courthouse is overseen by both city and state agencies.)
Prohibiting city agencies and contractors from providing ICE access to data sets to assist in immigration enforcement.
Restricting city employees from inquiring about individuals’ immigration status unless required by a court order, or state or federal law.
Peter Pedemonti, co-director of New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia, an advocacy organization that partnered with the Council members to craft the package of bills, compared ICE to an octopus that has multiple arms reaching into different facets of American life.
The proposed legislation, he said, is a means to bind a few of those arms.
“The whole world can see the violence and brutality,” Pedemonti said. “This is a moment where all of us need to stand up, and Philadelphia can stand up and speak out loud and clear that we don’t want ICE here to pull our families apart, the families that make Philadelphia Philadelphia.”
An impending showdown that Parker hoped to avoid
Homeland Security officials claim that sanctuary jurisdictions protect criminal, undocumented immigrants from facing consequences while putting U.S. citizens and law enforcement officers in peril.
Last year, the Trump administration named Philadelphia as among the jurisdictions impeding federal immigration enforcement. The White House has said the federal government will cut off funding to sanctuary cities by Feb. 1.
Some of Parker’s supporters say the mayor’s conflict-averse strategy has spared Philadelphia as other cities such as Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis have seen National Guard troops or waves of ICE agents arrive in force.
Residents near the scene of a shooting by a federal law enforcement agent in Minneapolis on Saturday.
Critics, including the backers of the new legislation, have for months pressed Parker to take a stronger stand.
Brooks said she “would love to have the support of the administration.”
“This should be something that we should be working collaboratively on,” she said. “Philadelphia residents are demanding us do something as elected officials, and this is our time to lead.”
But Parker has not been eager to speak about Philadelphia’s immigration policies.
For example, the city is refusing to release a September letter it sent to the U.S. Department of Justice regarding its immigration-related policies, even after the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records ruled its reasoning for keeping the document secret was invalid. The Inquirer has requested a copy of the letter under the state Right-to-Know Law.
The new Council legislation and the increasing tension over Trump’s deportation push may force Parker to take a clearer position.
Notably, the city sued the federal government last week over its removal of exhibits related to slavery from the President’s House at Independence National Historical Park, potentially signaling a new willingness by Parker to push back against the White House.
But even then, Parker declined to take a jab at Trump.
“In moments like this,” she said last week, “it requires that I be the leader that I need to be for our city, and I can’t allow my pride, ego, or emotions to dictate what my actions will be.”
On a below-freezing day in January, Pennsylvania House Speaker Joanna McClinton delivered food to a West Philly home just minutes from her district office and listened as Sheila Alexander discussed the patchwork of care she has created for herself.
Alexander, 67, who struggles to get around on her own, explained that she depends on family often but uses a Medicaid-funded home health aide who helps her in the evening — especially when she needs to get up the steep stairs in her home.
McClinton is advocating for the aides who care for Alexander — and the rest of the roughly 270,000 Pennsylvania workers who make up the home care industry — to earn a higher wage.
Pennsylvania’s home healthcare workers are among the lowest-paid in the region at an average $16.50 per hour, resulting in what the Pennsylvania Homecare Association has called a crisis point for home care, as more and more workers leave the field and seniors struggle to find help. And it’s a crisis that may only deepen in future years, as one in three Pennsylvanians are projected to be 60 or older by 2030.
It’s an issue that McClinton, a Philadelphia Democrat who became House speaker in 2023 when her party took a one-seat majority, has had to contend with in her own life.
McClinton’s 78-year-old mother lost one of her favorite aides because of low pay, she said. The aide had cared for McClinton’s mother for a year, until the aide’s daughter got a job at McDonald’s that paid $3 more an hour. At that point, McClinton said, her mother’s aide realized just how low her pay was.
House Speaker Joanna McClinton (center) with her staff member Nicole Reigelman (left) and home care worker Kate McNaughton (right) wait to meet with home care recipient Ronda Gay on Jan. 20 in her West Philadelphia home. McNaughton was bringing a basket of milk, eggs, canned foods, and other necessities.
McClinton said she helps her mother when she can, but she only has so many hours in the day and needs assistance when she’s at the Capitol.
“Many of my colleagues are just like myself, supporting parents who are aging and trying to make sure that they have all the necessities so that when I’m in Harrisburg I’m not thinking, ‘Oh, my God, how’s my mom going to eat or how’s she going to have a bath,’” McClinton said. “It’s because of home health aides and the folks assigned to her that she’s able to thrive. But she’s not unique.”
Until recently, McClinton had taken a more hands-off approach compared with some previous House speakers who would use their position as the top official to push through their personal agendas. Now, she is taking a more active role in pushing for the issues she cares about most, with special attention to the home care wage crisis.
Home care workers are often paid through Medicaid, which provides health services to low-income and disabled Americans and is administered at the state level. Pennsylvania has not increased how much it reimburses home care agencies, resulting in all of the surrounding states paying higher wages to home care workers, including GOP-controlled West Virginia and Ohio.
Describing her leadership approach with a slim majority as “pragmatic,” McClinton says her goal is to find common ground to raise the wages for home healthcare workersbetween Republicans and Democrats, on an issue that impacts residents across all corners of the state.
“We just have to really coalesce and build a movement so that we see things get better and that there’s more care,” she said. “Because when there’s more care, there’s less hospitalization, there’s less ER trips, there’s more nutrition.”
Better pay at Sheetz
Stakeholders recount dozens of similar stories of aides leaving to work at amusement parks, Sheetz stores, orfast-food restaurants because the pay is better. What’s more: Some home health aides will choose to work in a nearby state where wages are all higher than those paid in Pennsylvania.
Cathy Creevey, a home health aide who works for Bayada in Philly, made $6.25 when she started working in the field nearly 25 years ago. Now, she makes just $13.50. She has watched countless colleagues quit to take higher-paying jobs elsewhere, resulting in missed shifts and seniors that go without the care they need.
“We have patients that are 103, 105, and when that aide doesn’t show up their whole world is turned upside down because sometimes we’re the only people that they see to come in, to feed them, to bathe them,” Creevey said.
While Creevey said she stays in the work because she cares about her patients, she said the long hours and low pay are difficult.
Fewer and fewer people being willing to take on the jobs means seniors going without care or being forced intoalready understaffed nursing homes throughout the state.
“Participants are waiting for care that isn’t coming,” said Mia Haney, the CEO of the Pennsylvania Homecare Association.
Haney said she hoped McClinton’s advocacy will help drive the issue heading into the next budget season.
“She has a wonderful opportunity to really influence her peers, but also raise awareness and education about how meaningful and critical these services are,” Haney said.
In addition to McClinton’s advocacy, 69 House Democrats sent a letter to Gov. Josh Shapiro earlier this month, calling for more funding for the struggling industry just as Shapiro is set to make his 2026-27 budget proposal next month.
Older Pennsylvanians prefer to “age in place,” or stay in their homes where they remain connected to their communities, said Kevin Hancock, who led the creation of a statewide 10-year strategic plan to improve care for the state’s rapidly aging population.
“Nursing facilities and hospital services get a lot of attention in the space of older adult services, but it’s home care that really is the most significant service in Pennsylvania,” Hancock said. “The fact that it doesn’t seem to warrant the same type of attention and same type of focus is pretty problematic.”
House Speaker Joanna McClinton (right) meets with home care worker Rachael Gleisner (center) and home care recipient Sheila Alexander in her West Philadelphia home on Jan. 20.
Home care remains popular in Pa.
The fight to increase dollars for home care workers has been an uphill battle in Harrisburgeven with the speaker’s support.
More Medicaid dollars go to home care services than any other program in Pennsylvania due to its popularity among Medicaid recipients, Hancock said. Meanwhile, its critical care workers — a majority of whom are women or women of color — still make low wages for often physically and emotionally demanding work.
A study by the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services last year determined that a 23% increase would be necessary for agencies to offer competitive wages, but the state’s final budget deal did not include it. (The final budget deal did provide increases to direct aides hired by patients, which represent about 6% of all home care workers in the state.)
Home care agencies are asking Shapiro to include a 13% reimbursement rate increase in the 2026-27 budget, which equates to a $512 million increase for the year. The 13% ask, Haney said, was a “reasonable and fair” first step in what would need to be a phased approach to reaching competitive wages.
But neither Shapiro nor Senate GOP leadership has committed to any increases in the forthcoming budget.
Pennsylvania House Speaker Joanna McClinton listens as Gov. Josh Shapiro delivers his budget address to a joint session of the state House and Senate at the State Capitol on Feb. 4, 2025.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Shapiro said the governor understood the need and cited his support for limited increases in last year’s budget and for a proposed statewide minimum wage increase to $15 per hour. (Previous efforts by the Democratic House to increase the state’s minimum wage have stalled in the GOP-controlled Senate.)
Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R., Indiana) said his caucus will put the state’s “future financial stability” before all else. Pennsylvania is expected to spend more than it brings in in revenue this year, setting the stage for yet another tense budget fight.
“While we’ve seen Democrats continually push for more spending within the state budget year after year, any increases require thoughtful consideration as to the impact on hardworking taxpayers of Pennsylvania,” Pittman added.
Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman, a Republican from Indiana County, is joined by other GOP Senate leaders criticizing Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposed budget last year.
McClinton, however, was cautiously optimistic that something could be done this year, even as she placed the onus on Senate Republicans, rather than Shapiro.
“We’ve seen Republicans refusing to work, refusing to resolve issues, that’s not acceptable,” McClinton said. “I’ve seen an unwillingness from Republicans to resolve these issues.”
Republicans, she said, should come to the table because staffing shortages harmed their constituents in rural Pennsylvania even more than it harmed hers in Philly.
“We have to get our heads around the fact that we have the lowest reimbursement rates in our area,” McClinton said in an interview after visiting two patients in her district. “We have to make the investment now. We have lots of needs. We have lots of priorities, but we can balance them.”
In the waning days of the worst January any of us can remember, I desperately wanted to tell a good story about America, and then on Friday, I watched one unfold in frozen Minnesota with an abiding love and white-hot intensity that seemed to melt the subzero air.
The sight of as many as 50,000 people packing the downtown streets on a minus-9-degree day to demand federal immigration raiders leave Minneapolis was a high watermark for a pro-democracy movement that refuses to obey the autocracy of Donald Trump.
I was especially moved by the images of a polyglot of clergy from all across the nation — priests, rabbis, imams — leading the protests as they blocked traffic at the Minneapolis airport before marching on the headquarters of the giant retailer Target, pleading for an end to any cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The group included as many as a half dozen rabbis, Unitarian ministers, and other faith leaders from the Philadelphia area.
Saturday morning, I reached out to one of them: Rabbi Nancy Fuchs Kreimer, a professor emeritus at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote. We talked about how, in a moment when pollsters and pundits fret about the steep decline in religiosity in American life, members of the clergy are providing a moral leadership so many crave.
Kreimer told me about the instant bond in Minneapolis between the many rabbis there — the ICE raids “had a magnetic quality to them because of the echoes of the Gestapo,” she said — and other faith leaders like Black clergy, who were reminded of 19th-century slave patrols, and white Protestant ministers ashamed over a rising tide of white Christian nationalism in the Republican Party.
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum and protesters gather at Target headquarters in Minneapolis on Friday.
“People see coming out of the government — from out of the president, specifically — such cruelty, such contempt, such dehumanizing language, and just crudeness and awful meanness,” the rabbi said. “But yes, actually, people are looking for a different kind of culture of kindness. And yes, they can find it perhaps in a spiritual setting.”
While we were on the phone, one of the lowest and most immoral acts in America’s 250-year history was taking place on the same snow-covered Minneapolis streets that had just been overflowing Friday with a vast sea of righteousness.
At 9:05 a.m. Central Time, a 37-year-old community volunteer and nurse named Alex Pretti stepped between a half dozen masked federal agents and a female volunteer they were attacking with pepper spray, documenting the moment on his phone. In a split second, the goon squad had thrown Pretti to the ground, punching and kicking him in a brutal scene that looked like a documentary about the rise of Nazi Germany, or maybe an outtake from Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas.
Then, shockingly, a shot rang out. Then a volley of as many as 10 more. Pretti had been summarily executed in public by agents of the U.S. government, in a scene that was captured on multiple phone cameras from every angle and will haunt the American soul for generations to come.
Federal agents claimed Alex Pretti, 37, forced their hand on a Minneapolis street Saturday morning, alleging he “violently resisted” disarmament until the officers fired “defensive shots.”
In the first 24 days of 2026, there have been three homicides in the city of Minneapolis. Two of them have been committed by agents from ICE or the U.S. Border Patrol. And the similarities between Saturday’s murder and the Jan. 7 fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good go beyond the sad fact that both victims were 37-year-old millennials who’d moved to Minneapolis in hopes the progressive enclave could offer them a better life, only to see their dreams cut short by a repressive regime.
Both Good and Pretti came under a vicious second attack before their families had even been notified — falsely slandered as “terrorists” by their own government that lacks even the tiniest shred of human decency. As with Good’s murder, the Trump regime asked Americans to believe a ridiculously fabricated version of what went down on Nicollet Avenue instead of their own eyes and ears.
This time, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security raced out the lies that Pretti — who was legally carrying a licensed, holstered handgun — had brandished his weapon at the Border Patrol officers, when videos show the nurse only holding his phone, and alsowhen the gun was safely pulled away by an agent before the shooting began. DHS spun a fantasy that Pretti was there to kill officers when he was just protecting his neighbors.
“The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting,” the victim’s heartbroken parents, Michael and Susan Pretti, said in a statement late Saturday, adding: “Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.”
When Good was slain less than three weeks ago, I wrote that her death might mark a turning point in the war for objective truth that requires combating the Orwellian Big Lies at the core of the Trump regime’s tyrannical rule. Both in Friday’s massive protests and Saturday’s aftermath to Pretti’s murder, you see how America is already changing — for good.
A protester holds a sign reading “Love thy neighbor -Jesus” during a rally against federal immigration enforcement on Friday in Minneapolis.
Even online message boards about the most nonpolitical topics — like cats — were cluttered Saturday with posts expressing outrage or denouncing ICE and the Trump regime. A pundit for the ultimate dude-bro, anti-“woke” site, Barstool Sports, wrote that “Pretti was murdered by ICE with zero justification for deadly force,” while NBA All-Star Tyrese Haliburton tweeted in agreement: “Alex Pretti was murdered.”
Most importantly, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), with the ability to stop most legislation with a filibuster by 41 of the chamber’s 47 Democrats, announced Saturday that he will work to block a new appropriations bill for DHS that’s due by the end of the month as long as ICE occupies Minneapolis and keeps abusing people. The time is right. A fight over funding ICE could be the decisive battle of the Trump years, and it’s clear many Americans are ready for this fight.
The tired conventional wisdom of politics that has cowed the likes of Schumer for so long also died in that hail of gunfire on Saturday. This thing is way beyond politics now. The brute force and absurd lies of a would-be American dictatorship have finally made people realize this is no longer left vs. right, but good vs. evil.
“My father warned us, ‘When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind,’” Bernice King, the daughter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., wrote of Pretti’s murder. “What we are witnessing now (masked raids, people taken without due process, vigilante, Gestapo, and slave patrol-like tactics, normalized under the color of law) is a moral crisis.”
That moral fight has come full circle. In 1965, the televised images of Alabama state troopers clubbing peaceful voting rights marchers in Selma led hundreds of clergy from across America to fly south to join King in a march on the state capital of Montgomery. One of those ministers, the Rev. James Reeb of Boston, was murdered by racist thugs. That historic effort inspired today’s faith leaders who descended on Minneapolis.
This undated photo provided by Michael Pretti shows Alex Pretti, the man who was shot by federal officers in Minneapolis on Saturday.
“People are searching for values,” Kreimer said after returning from her sessions with Minnesota activists, who trained her on how to organize people when ICE inevitably descends on Philadelphia. She added that they are “saying, ‘I am repelled by this. What is it about this? It’s not OK. What is it in the way that I live my life that I need to do about this?’”
There’s no disputing that church attendance is nowhere near what it was in 1965, or that organized religion has the same kind of public trust issues as other institutions. But the unthinkable scenes of thuggery on once placid American streets, and the blatant lies from our leaders, clearly have people asking questions about the arc of a moral universe that has been suppressed for far too long.
It’s been too easy to become jaded about the word evil and its meaning when that term has been abused by cynical politicians to justify their pointless wars.
But it’s become impossible to watch the courage of whistleblowing everyday citizens putting their lives on the line to fight for the neighbors they don’t even know, or to see the utter depravity of top government officials slandering innocent murder victims while their bodies are still warm, and not conclude: Yes, there is good and evil in this world.
The church pews might be empty, but millions of Americans are still desperate to affirm that they love thy neighbor. In the shock and sorrow over the Minneapolis murders, this is something we can all cling to.
I don’t know what lies ahead on this bumpy road, or how many more Alex Prettis or Renee Goods will have to die before the positive moral force that finally awoke in Minneapolis can fully reclaim America. It’s tough to think about right now. But what’s clear is this: The time for choosing is today. Which side are you on?
