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Tag: Donald Trump

  • Is AI’s authoritarianism a bigger threat than Trump’s?

    Is AI’s authoritarianism a bigger threat than Trump’s?

    Like every other beleaguered top editor in a big-city newsroom these days, Chris Quinn — who leads Cleveland.com and the print Plain Dealer — has to deal with assaults from all sides.

    In March 2024, Quinn briefly became a darling of the online left (not easy for a journalist to pull off these days) with a bold manifesto for how Cleveland.com would deal with one of those many threats: An authoritarian president who despises a free press.

    “We tell the truth, even when it offends some of the people who pay us for information,” Quinn wrote that fateful spring in his “Letter From the Editor” column. “The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse.”

    Less than two years later, Quinn has gone viral again. But this time, instead of resisting a powerful force aiming to upend American life as we’ve known it, he’s embracing one: The power of artificial intelligence to transform the workplace … and just about everything else.

    Quinn has said that steep job cuts (more on those later) have left just a skeleton crew covering Cleveland’s far-flung exurban counties, and using an AI tool to write stories based on the downsized staff’s reporting will result in more articles about these potential news deserts. When an anonymous college journalism student withdrew her application to Cleveland.com because she said she couldn’t work in a newsroom using AI to perform what was once a human task, the editor went off in his column.

    “Journalism programs are decades behind,” wrote Quinn in arguing that technology is rendering such degrees as worthless. “Many graduating students have unrealistic expectations. They imagine themselves as long-form magazine storytellers, chasing a romanticized version of journalism that largely never existed.”

    Seriously, how dare those young whippersnappers dream of creating beauty in their lives, instead of welcoming their new robot overlords and embracing their future as a cog in a faceless news machine?

    But the dilemma facing Cleveland, Quinn, and the Unknown Job Applicant is the crisis that’s been thrust in the face of all Americans as the brutal winter of 2026 slowly melts into spring, and, it seems, a reality we’re truly not ready to confront — not practically, nor politically, nor morally.

    People forget, but there was a brief moment in the mid-to-late 1990s when the internet was dismissed as a fad — clunky to use (remember dial-up?) and its abilities overhyped by Silicon Valley. But the internet radically changed how we live, as did the arrival of smartphones in the 2000s — not always for good. Yet, these seem like the warm-up acts for the life-altering conniptions caused by omnipresent AI.

    Suddenly, there’s been a flood of essays trying to warn us that whatever one initially thought about programs like ChatGPT — and, yes, AI is still prone to “hallucinations” and other embarrassing errors — we need to adjust to the news that a new generation of AI tools is much more powerful, and better poised to replace many jobs.

    “I am no longer needed for the actual technical work of my job,” an AI executive named Matt Shumer wrote in the most viral of these hot takes, titled “Something Big Is Happening.”

    In describing how new AI programs rolled out by Anthropic, maker of Claude, and ChatGPT’s parent OpenAI can now perform complex coding tasks from the most simple instructions, Shumer warned the earthquake is coming to “[l]aw, finance, medicine, accounting, consulting, writing, design, analysis, customer service. Not in ten years. The people building these systems say one to five years. Some say less.”

    This jibes with dire predictions from Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei, who has warned repeatedly of “painful” white-collar job losses caused by AI, and said in his most recent long-form essay that the new technologies are “acting as a ‘general labor substitute for humans.’”

    Is that bad? It sounds bad.

    In 2026, America needs an anti-AI party | Will Bunch Newsletter

    The sweeping changes in the labor market are already starting, including a sharp drop in entry-level hiring for coders, who seem to be the canaries in this coal mine. January was the worst month for layoffs since the Great Recession of 2009, and analysts say job losses directly attributable to replacement by AI were a significant slice of that. The idea that wiping out millions of jobs might be bad for the overall economy even caught the ADD-addled attention of Wall Street for a day or two.

    I don’t have space here to go deep on the technology, but everyone should take a moment to learn what “vibe coding” and “agentic AI” are, and read the New Yorker on the rise of Anthropic’s Claude, or listen to a really good podcast explanation of AI and the labor market from the New York Times’ Kevin Roose. But we’re already overdue in addressing what this all means for everyday human existence.

    The idea that eventually “everything you think, do, and say is in the pill you took today” — as Zager and Evans sang so presciently in their 1969 No. 1 smash, “In the Year 2525” — has been with us for decades. But there was also a sense that robots performing the worst drudgery of the workplace might be liberating, creating more leisure time and space for human creativity.

    So far, that’s not what’s happening. Avoiding the poverty and deprivation that would be caused by massive job losses would require a government willing to pay people a universal basic income (UBI), but the current government has instead been dismantling the existing welfare state. And the workers creating AI are sleeping in their cubicles.

    And creativity may become a fever dream, not just for that naive journalism student with her “romanticized” visions of telling stories. Did you read the Times profile of the romance novelist who’s relying on Claude to crank out new tomes in as little as 45 minutes? Did you watch the lifelike short movie of an AI-generated “Brad Pitt” fighting “Tom Cruise”?

    Let me get this straight. AI is taking our jobs and ending artistic struggle to liberate us … for what, exactly?

    I haven’t even discussed the other really bad things about AI, including the drain on electricity from massive data centers likely to unleash yet another form of tyranny, unbridled climate change, and the death of critical thinking as reliance on AI decimates the classroom. At a moment when we’re just coming to terms with the downside of smartphones — such as higher rates of anxiety and depression among teenagers — could we learn to avoid similar mistakes with AI before they start?

    And did I mention the whole “robots take over the world” scenario?

    Dealing with all this would take political will. Yet, leaders in both parties — Trump, for sure, but also top Democrats like Josh Shapiro and Gavin Newsom — have embraced the data center and AI ambitions of their donor class, even though the majority of their voters want strict regulation. A pro-AI super-PAC raised $125 million last year to buy the midterm elections. Who is fighting for the about-to-be-starving artists?

    People opposed to a data center proposal at the former Pennhurst state hospital grounds talk during a break in an East Vincent Township supervisors meeting in December in Spring City, Pa.

    It doesn’t have to be like this. The same better-late-than-never push to remove smartphones from classrooms can be used as a model for eradicating AI in K-12 schools as well as college, to give the next generation at least a fighting chance to learn to think for itself. The politicians don’t have to allow data centers that burn fossil fuels instead of clean energy and consume the lion’s share of water available to the communities where they’re located.

    Nor do we need to embrace the late-stage capitalist ethos that if shareholders make more money employing robots than human beings, some invisible law forces us to do this. Remember Chris Quinn back in Cleveland? The reason he feels he needs AI to write up the news is because, back in 2019, he oversaw the layoff of one-third of his unionized newsroom, at the behest of the paper’s corporate parent.

    Maybe robots are now “agentic,” but humans have always had agency. Here’s the perfect chance to use it: by encouraging the uses of AI that will be good for society — diagnosing sick patients and inventing medicines to cure them, for example — but regulating or banning the aspects of AI that will make life worse.

    That’s partly up to the politicians, but it’s also up to us. Societal trends like the outbreak of “neighborism” — strangers forming new community bonds to beat back the fascism of immigration raids — or a rise in union membership are healthy signs that Americans are finally getting tired of technology driving us apart.

    The fight against the authoritarianism of unchecked and often unwanted AI is the battle of the 21st century that will be waged long after the fight against political authoritarianism in Trump’s United States and elsewhere has been won.

  • U.S. trade deficit slipped lower in 2025, but gap for goods hits a record despite Trump tariffs

    U.S. trade deficit slipped lower in 2025, but gap for goods hits a record despite Trump tariffs

    WASHINGTON — The U.S. trade deficit slipped modestly in 2025, a year in which President Donald Trump upended global commerce by slapping double digit tariffs on imports from most countries. But the gap in the trade of goods such as machinery and aircraft — the main focus of Trump’s protectionist policies — hit a record last year despite sweeping import taxes.

    Overall, the gap between the goods and services the U.S. sells other countries and what it buys from them narrowed to just over $901 billion, from $904 billion in 2024, but it was still the third-highest on record, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

    Exports rose 6% last year, and imports rose nearly 5%.

    And the U.S. deficit in the trade of goods widened 2% to a record $1.24 trillion last year as American companies boosted imports of computer chips and other tech goods from Taiwan to support massive investments in artificial intelligence.

    Amid continuing tensions with Bejing, the deficit in the goods trade with China plunged nearly 32% to $202 billion in 2025 on a sharp drop in both exports to and imports from the world’s second-biggest economy. But trade was diverted away from China. The goods gap with Taiwan doubled to $147 billion and shot up 44%, to $178 billion, with Vietnam.

    Economist Chad Bown, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the widening gaps with Taiwan and Vietnam might put a “bull’s-eye’’ on them this year if Trump focuses more on the lopsided trade numbers and less on the U.S. rivalry with China.

    In 2025, U.S. goods imports from Mexico outpaced exports by nearly $197 billion, up from a 2024 gap of $172 billion. But the goods deficit with Canada shrank by 26% to $46 billion. The United States this year is negotiating a renewal of a pact Trump reached with those two countries in his first term.

    The U.S. ran a bigger surplus in the trade of services such as banking and tourism last year — $339 billion, up from $312 billion in 2024.

    The trade gap surged from January-March as U.S. companies tried to import foreign goods ahead of Trump’s taxes, then narrowed most of the rest of the year.

    Trump’s tariffs are a tax paid by U.S. importers and often passed along to their customers as higher prices. But they haven’t had as much impact on inflation as economists originally expected. Trump argues that the tariffs will protect U.S. industries, bringing manufacturing back to America and raise money for the U.S. Treasury.

  • Philly’s economy is among the nation’s strongest for the first time in generations | Expert Opinion

    Philly’s economy is among the nation’s strongest for the first time in generations | Expert Opinion

    Philadelphia is a happening place. No, I’m not referring to the winning sports teams or the great restaurants. I’m talking about the economy. For the first time in generations, Philadelphia’s economy is among the nation’s strongest.

    Among the 25 largest metropolitan areas in the country with populations of more than 3 million, Philly enjoyed the strongest job growth last year. Soak that in for a second. Our hometown’s economy grew faster than those of high-flying cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, and Phoenix.

    This economic success is also evident in the major development projects underway across the region, including the redevelopment of the old oil refinery in Southwest Philly, the planned transformation of the area around the stadiums, and all the action at Penn’s Landing, in Center City, and the Science Center.

    To be transparent, Philadelphia’s economy looks good, in part, because the nation’s economy is struggling to create jobs. Since so-called Liberation Day in April, when President Donald Trump announced massive tariffs on all our trading partners, many nervous businesses stopped hiring, and job growth has come to a standstill.

    Some industries are actually suffering serious job losses, especially those on the front lines of the global trade war, including manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, and distribution. These are big industries in many parts of the South and Midwest, but not in Philadelphia.

    Federal government jobs have also been hit hard by the Trump administration’s workforce cuts, which began soon after he took office a year ago. Of course, the broader Washington, D.C., area has struggled with these job losses. These positions were also important to many communities across the country, but less so in Philadelphia.

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    Eds and meds

    In fact, Philadelphia’s economy is fortunate to be powered by education and healthcare — eds and meds — the only industries consistently adding to payrolls nationwide. The largest employers in the region are world-class institutions of higher education and healthcare providers, including the University of Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson University, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Temple University.

    Employers in eds and meds are especially attractive, as demand for the services they provide is fueled by the insatiable need for highly educated workers in the age of artificial intelligence, and the inexorable aging of the population. Baby boomers have aged into their 60s and 70s and will require high-quality healthcare for years to come. And since healthcare is largely delivered in person, it is less vulnerable to losing jobs to AI.

    These large institutions employ workers of all skill levels. There are highly trained physicians, nurses, and researchers, as well as middle-skilled technicians and administrators, and lesser-skilled maintenance workers. An entire economy can be built on eds and meds, and that’s Philadelphia.

    The Philadelphia region also has the good fortune of being home to successful companies across a diverse range of industries. Examples include the media giant Comcast, the financial services powerhouse Vanguard, the global software company SAP, and the technology giant Siemens.

    Cost of living

    It isn’t cheap to live and work in Philadelphia, but it is highly affordable when compared to neighboring New York and D.C. For example, the typical-priced home in Philadelphia costs about $400,000, which is almost four times the typical household income. In D.C., houses typically cost close to $600,000, or 5.5 times income, and New York house prices exceed $1 million, or 10 times income.

    I could go on, but I’m beginning to sound like a Chamber of Commerce, and Philadelphia certainly has big challenges. The nation’s universities and research centers are facing large budget cuts and heightened federal scrutiny. This is a huge shift from the financial largess from D.C. they’ve come to rely on.

    Challenges and what’s ahead

    Poverty and all the attendant social ills, like crime and drug use, are also long-standing problems in the city. Although the poverty rate has dipped a bit recently, close to one-fifth of the city’s residents live below the poverty line, a disturbing stat. Of the nation’s big cities, only Houston has a higher rate.

    The high poverty rate is the result of a complicated brew of factors, but the severe shortage of rental housing for lower- and middle-income residents is one of them. Putting up more homes is a priority for the city’s mayor, and with good reason.

    The city’s high wage tax remains a barrier to even stronger growth. It is encouraging that it has declined since peaking more than 40 years ago, but it remains prohibitively high, hindering the city’s efforts to attract workers back into its office towers. The lower-taxed suburban Pennsylvania counties are the key beneficiaries.

    It won’t be easy for Philadelphia to consistently remain among the nation’s best-performing economies. We need to support our institutions of higher education and healthcare, work to address poverty, and make it more affordable to live and work here. If we do, we have a good chance of always being in the mix. Kind of like our Eagles.

  • Judge gives Trump administration a deadline to restore President’s House exhibits

    Judge gives Trump administration a deadline to restore President’s House exhibits

    President Donald Trump’s administration now has a hard deadline to restore slavery exhibits to the President’s House.

    The Department of Interior and National Park Service must restore the President’s House to its condition before the exhibits were removed by 5 p.m. Friday, according to a new order from District Judge Cynthia M. Rufe. In a blistering 40-page opinion Monday, the judge had ordered the exhibits to be restored “immediately,” but without a specific time frame.

    Rufe wrote that the deadline follows the agencies’ “failure to comply” with the injunction’s instruction to take action “forthwith,” which is often defined in law to mean as soon as possible or within 24 hours.

    While the federal government appealed the injunction to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, the judge noted, the Trump administration did not ask for a stay.

    “Absent a stay granted by this Court or the Third Circuit, this Court must enforce its own order,” Rufe wrote.

    The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania did not respond to a request for comment. The city declined to comment.

    The National Park Service last month removed exhibits telling the story of the nine enslaved people who lived in George Washington’s Philadelphia home. The city sued the federal government in turn, and following a tense hearing and the judge’s inspection of the exhibits and site, secured an injunction on Monday that required the federal agencies to restore the interpretive panels.

    National Park Service staff were at the President’s House site on Wednesday morning to hose down the walls, which are covered with protest signs in lieu of the exhibits, and place barricades around them.

    The National Park Service did not respond to questions about the activity.

    A spokesperson for the White House, Taylor Rogers, said in a statement Wednesday that the lawsuit brought by Philadelphia was “premature” because the removal of the exhibits from the President’s House and other national parks is not final.

    “The Department of the Interior is engaged in an ongoing review of our nation’s American history exhibits in accordance with the President’s executive order to eliminate corrosive ideology, restore sanity, and reinstate the truth,” Rogers said.

    Staff writer Fallon Roth contributed to this article.

  • Philly launches real-time public air quality monitoring network

    Philly launches real-time public air quality monitoring network

    Philadelphia residents can now consult a new online dashboard to gauge outdoor air quality before heading out to a park, going for a run, or cycling through the city.

    The city unveiled a real-time air quality network that collects data from solar-powered sensors at 76 strategic locations, blanketing every neighborhood. The system can warn residents when pollution spikes — for instance, if a junkyard fire sends particulate levels surging.

    “Starting now, every resident in Philadelphia will be able to see, almost in real time, the air quality in their own neighborhood,” said Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker.

    What does the system measure?

    The weatherproof sensors, bolted to utility poles at 1.5-mile intervals, track two primary pollutants:

    • Fine particulate matter (PM2.5), tiny particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs and cause respiratory issues.
    • Nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a component of ozone.

    Parker, along with City Council members and officials from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health’s Air Management Services (AMS), introduced the Breathe Philly initiative Wednesday at Stinger Square Park in Grays Ferry.

    The monitoring system, manufactured by Clarity Movement Co., will cost the city $90,000 annually. It is currently funded through the nonprofit Philadelphia City Fund.

    The new network operates independently from the city’s existing 10‑sensor system that supplies data to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

    Parker said it represents a significant step toward environmental justice, especially in neighborhoods that previously lacked adequate monitoring. Some of the sensors will begin monitoring for ground-level ozone as soon as spring.

    Ozone is a potent pollutant formed from chemical reactions between vehicle, power plant, and industrial emissions in the presence of sunlight.

    “You can check it on your phone, your tablet, your computer,” she said. “You can access up-to-date information about the air that you and your family are breathing right where you live.”

    Paresh Mehta (right), an engineer with Philadelphia’s Air Management Services, explains to City Council President Kenyatta Johnson (left) and Mayor Cherelle L. Parker how air quality data is collected.

    ‘We knew right away’

    Palak Raval-Nelson, the city’s health commissioner, said the new air monitoring network has been in the works for years. The project is overseen by the health department’s AMS.

    “It’s amazing to finally see that it’s here,” she said.

    The system detected the air quality as poor during a fire last week, Raval-Nelson said.

    “The monitor went off, and we knew right away that we needed to communicate information,” Raval-Nelson said.

    The monitor displays colored circles and squares indicating the air quality at each monitor. Colors range from green, the best, to purple and mauve, the worst.

    A sample of the Breathe Philly online dashboard that gives residents real-time data on air pollution from 76 sensors placed around the city.

    The sensors detect levels of particulate matter, which are tiny particles in the air that can cause health risks. PM2.5 is the result of the burning of fossil fuels, such as by vehicles or power plants. They sensors also measure NO2, a gas also emitted by burning fossil fuels.

    Both chemicals can cause respiratory issues.

    “It is a concrete step to help keep all of us and our loved ones safe,” Raval-Nelson said of the new sensor system.

    Council President Kenyatta Johnson, who grew up in Point Breeze, said the system will help provide real-time information in the event of a disaster, such as the PES Refinery explosion and fire in 2019.

    And it will help those with breathing issues like asthma decide whether it is safe to go outside for extended periods.

    One of 76 solar-powered sensors made by Clarity Movement Co. for a new network of real time air quality data available for Philadelphia residents.

    A new layer of safety

    Alex Bomstein, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Clean Air Council, said the network adds a new layer of safety for city residents.

    “You can’t go very far in the city without encountering a monitor, which is wonderful, because that means that everybody in the city is being protected,” Bomstein said.

    He fears pollution will worsen in the future as the administration of President Donald Trump continues to roll back environmental rules and regulations, such as those governing vehicle tailpipe emissions.

    Sean Wihera, a vice president with Clarity Movement Co., said the company was founded in 2014 as a start-up at the University of California, Berkley. Similar systems have been installed in Los Angeles and Chicago, he said.

    The company owns the sensors and is responsible for them if they break or are stolen. The sensors are upgraded after three years for the latest technology. Wihera said it is possible that Philly’s system could monitor for benzene in the future.

    “We’ve been working now in 85 different countries, hundreds of cities,” Wihera said. “But this is one of the most successful integrations that we’ve seen.”

  • The DOJ said authorities in N.J. have violated dozens of judicial orders in recent immigration cases

    The DOJ said authorities in N.J. have violated dozens of judicial orders in recent immigration cases

    Federal authorities in New Jersey have violated dozens of judicial orders in recent months as immigration cases have surged in the courts, the Justice Department acknowledged in a court filing, including by transferring some detained immigrants to other jurisdictions and, in one instance, improperly deporting a man to Peru.

    The admissions came in a declaration filed by Associate Deputy Attorney General Jordan Fox, who has recently been helping lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey, and who is also a top adviser to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

    They are the latest example of how federal judges in various jurisdictions have been seeking to hold the Trump administration accountable for episodes in which authorities have failed to comply with court orders as President Donald Trump has sought to rapidly increase deportations.

    Fox issued her declaration in response to an order from U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz, who has been overseeing a lawsuit from an immigrant challenging his detention. Farbiarz was frustrated that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had transferred the man to another jurisdiction — despite the judge’s order to keep him in New Jersey.

    So earlier this month, court records show, Farbiarz directed prosecutors to review similar immigration lawsuits filed in the state’s federal courts since December and “enumerate each instance in which the Respondents or people acting on their behalf violated an order issued by a judge of this district.”

    Fox, in her response filed last week, said her office had identified 547 such cases — known as habeas petitions — filed since early December. And in 56 instances, the declaration said, prosecutors did not comply with a judicial order.

    Some concerned lawyers’ behavior, the document says, including six instances in which attorneys missed filing deadlines, and 10 cases in which government attorneys did not provide complete discovery.

    But others outlined ways in which federal authorities handled immigrants in custody. In 17 instances, Fox wrote, ICE or other federal authorities transferred immigrants in detention after judges had ordered them not to be moved.

    Fox wrote that each of those mistakes “occurred inadvertently,” because of either communication delays or “administrative oversight,” and that prosecutors in each case had agreed to return the petitioner to New Jersey.

    In December, court records show, ICE also “erroneously removed” a man and deported him to Peru despite a judicial injunction prohibiting his removal.

    Fox wrote that the deportation “occurred due to an inadvertent administrative oversight by the local ICE custodian.” She said that authorities worked with the man’s lawyer to try to arrange his return to the United States, but that he “decided to remain in Peru instead.”

    Farbiarz, the judge, responded in a filing Tuesday by crediting Fox and her staff for providing thorough answers to his questions.

    Still, he wrote, he was concerned that the violation he observed in his case was apparently “not fully an outlier.”

    “Judicial orders,” he wrote, “should never be violated.”

    He instructed the Justice Department to file an affidavit “detailing the procedures that are in place (or that will be put in place in the near-term) to ensure that court orders issued by district judges in New Jersey are timely and consistently complied with.”

  • Savannah Guthrie’s mother is missing. But let’s not forget many others are, too.

    Savannah Guthrie’s mother is missing. But let’s not forget many others are, too.

    I like to visit Tucson, Ariz., this time of year to get away from the cold. Winters are mild, and it hardly ever rains in the Sonoran desert there, averaging roughly 300 days of sunshine.

    But when I was there last week, it felt as if a dark cloud were hovering. I kept being reminded about the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of NBC’s Today show cohost Savannah Guthrie, who is a longtime resident. I checked for updates multiple times a day. Then, one overcast and rainy afternoon, I grabbed a notebook and went to Nancy’s home in the Catalina Foothills.

    TV is a medium that creates false intimacy, making it feel as if we actually know the on-screen performers. I’ve watched Savannah Guthrie coanchor the Today show for years, but I have never met her. When I learned her mother had gone missing, my blood ran as cold as if she had been a close friend.

    I wondered if her family was targeted because of her work as a high-profile journalist. A Today show segment featuring Guthrie giving a tour of her hometown aired in November. It includes footage of the host’s mother and sister sipping tequila from teacups at a popular Mexican restaurant.

    This image provided by the Pima County Sheriff’s Department shows a missing person alert for Nancy Guthrie.

    The day I showed up outside the Guthrie residence, there were no law enforcement officials to interview about the status of the investigation. A lone sheriff’s vehicle was parked in the driveway, near Nancy’s front door, where a masked gunman had been caught on doorbell camera footage around the time investigators say she’s believed to have disappeared on Feb. 1. Blood splatters have been found outside.

    A handful of spiky agave plants flanked a red gravel driveway. People had dropped off yellow roses, potted plants, and other offerings at a makeshift memorial out front. A sign reads, “Dear Guthrie Family, your neighbors stand with you.” Saguaro cacti tower over the scene.

    Meanwhile, reporters and social media influencers milled about on the street, waiting for answers that never came.

    If this had been a targeted kidnapping, Guthrie had said on video, “We will pay.” Why hasn’t Nancy been released? And is she even still alive?

    Inquirer columnist Jenice Armstrong stands next to the Tucson, Ariz., memorial honoring Nancy Guthrie — the mother of the NBC “Today” show cohost Savannah Guthrie — who went missing Feb. 1.

    Two things can be true simultaneously: As much as I felt my heart ache for the Guthrie family, I also spared a thought for other families who are waiting for their missing loved ones to come home, too.

    I also couldn’t help but think that if Nancy Guthrie weren’t related to a celebrity, or if she were a person of color, it’s doubtful we’d even know her name, much less that she was missing.

    It’s also unlikely President Donald Trump would have bothered to offer his condolences and as many resources as he has, posting on Truth Social, “ALL Federal Law Enforcement to be at the family’s, and Local Law Enforcement’s, complete disposal, IMMEDIATELY.”

    He has since threatened to impose the death penalty on the perpetrators.

    Meanwhile, there are so many other missing people whose cases could benefit from just a fraction of the attention Nancy’s case has attracted.

    An estimated 2,300 children are reported missing every day in America. The National Missing and Unidentified Persons Systems database currently lists 134 people — ranging from infants to 85 years old — missing in Philadelphia County alone. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also snatches up countless undocumented immigrants whose loved ones frequently know only that they’ve suddenly gone missing.

    Roz Pichardo, who runs the Missing in Philly page on Facebook, pointed out that when local people disappear, it often escapes the notice of the media or public officials. “No one is hardly looking at that page other than families who are searching for someone,” she told me.

    Natalie Wilson, cofounder of the Black and Missing Foundation, agreed that not enough is done to find those who have disappeared. “Your observation about the media cycle is exactly why we stay so focused on our mission.”

    None of this takes away from the Guthrie family’s nightmare. But their situation can help us understand how familiar the horror and accompanying heartache might be for people standing in line or sitting on the bus next to us.

    What resources should we allocate locally to help those who are experiencing something similar to what the Guthrie family is going through? What ways can we make sure others who have disappeared get more attention and a share of our concern, as well?

    My prayer is that any family with a missing loved one finds peace, including the Guthries. I hope my friend-in-my-head Savannah will wake up from this bad dream soon — and that Nancy will be safely returned to her beloved home in the Sonoran desert with her agave plants, cacti, spiny ocotillo, and some fresh yellow roses.

  • A Minneapolis artist’s custom font, Times New Resistance, autocorrects Trump to ‘felon’ and ICE to ‘goon squad’

    A Minneapolis artist’s custom font, Times New Resistance, autocorrects Trump to ‘felon’ and ICE to ‘goon squad’

    Abby Haddican got tired of the rhetoric.

    The Minneapolis-based artist can’t unsee the impact ICE and directives from President Donald Trump’s administration’s have had on her hometown in recent months.

    “I don’t really know anyone whose life hasn’t been affected by the occupation in a tangible way,” she said. “Many people I know are volunteering to deliver meals, patrol schools, drive folks to work, and serve as peaceful observers — which is what both Renee Good and Alex Pretti were doing when they lost their lives at the hands of ICE agents.”

    The independent graphic designer thought about ways she could get involved when it hit her. She’s joining a larger tradition of subversive font design.

    Haddican, whose work focuses on typography, branding, and packaging, thought back to Moontype, a font created by designer Olli Meier that autocorrects “bad words,” like hate, into “good words,” like love.

    Then she thought about language and its use today.

    “It’s become impossible to ignore how blatantly the Trump administration is misusing language in order to control and distort the narrative,” she said. It clicked.

    “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could change someone else’s words?” Haddican said. “I decided that the best practical use of this font feature would be a practical joke.”

    This month, she launched Times New Resistance, a parody of the commonly used Times New Roman font, which autocorrects a slew of specific words as they’re typed. Notably, Times New Roman is the new (and old) official font of the State Department.

    Using Times New Resistance, the term ICE autocorrects to “the Goon Squad.” Trump autocorrects to “Donald Trump is a felon.” Gay becomes “gay rights are human rights.” Illegal alien becomes “human being.”

    Kingsley Spencer, a creative director and designer based in Jacksonville, Fla., says using the State Department’s own font is part of what makes Haddican’s font so powerful.

    “Using technology as a form of commentary against a political regime that decided to weaponize Times New Roman as a form of culture shaping is sharp for a designer,” he said. “I love how direct and comical it is.”

    The font is free, “just like America used to be,” Haddican‘s website says. She said Monday that it has been downloaded about 600 times so far. She describes it as a “social commentary meant to autocorrect the autocrats.”

    The hope is that some users might secretly install the font onto the computers of “an ICE apologist,” or “morally bankrupt American” as a way of unleashing mischief.

    To the untrained eye, the typeface looks like Times New Roman in the font menu — there’s just a sneaky extra space between the words Times and New. But it’s likely many downloads are by like-minded supporters who want to enjoy the font for themselves.

    The technology behind the font is simple.

    Haddican modified an existing open-source typeface that resembles Times New Roman and programmed the substitutions. She said the hardest part was deciding which autocorrections to make.

    “I know I’ve done an imperfect job. The corrections are a mixture of serious stuff (for example, the word ‘good’ autocorrects to ‘Renee Good was murdered by ICE’) and things that I find funny, like changing ‘Stephen Miller’ to ‘Nosferatu,’” she said.

    “The first draft was significantly more profane, but I toned it down. I wanted to offend people by speaking truth to power, not for swearing like a sailor.”

    Spencer said the font uses something in the typography world called ligatures, which replaces a set of recognized characters with a single character phrase. An example of this is when you type a fraction or date in a document and it’s automatically formatted.

    Haddican joins a group of other typography artists who have made jokes, social commentary, or both through text.

    Times Newer Roman is a typeface created by the Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF (pronounced mischief) in 2018 that looks identical to Times New Roman, except each character is 5% to 10% longer, making essays appear slightly longer without changing formatting rules.

    It was billed as a font that could help students cheat on term papers. The font takes jabs at academic productivity culture, using typographic invisibility that’s undetected by the untrained eye.

    Sang Mun, a designer and former National Security Agency contractor, created a subversive “surveillance proof” font called ZXX in 2013. The fonts were created to be legible to the human eye, but difficult for surveillance software used by Google and other companies to scan text to read.

    More mainstream examples include Shepard Fairey, the artist behind OBEY and President Barack Obama’s iconic HOPE graphic, who is known for his use of single phrases and high-contrast graphics to make political propaganda-style art. In the 2024 presidential election, Fairey made a Kamala Harris poster that said FORWARD in the same style as his Obama art.

    Artist behind Obama’s ‘Hope’ poster endorses Harris with her own graphic

    On social media, reception for Haddican’s font has been strong, garnering over 6,000 likes on Instagram and hat tips from fellow designers.

    “I think just about anything can be a form of resistance, and I believe that humor and playfulness are powerful tools for pushing back against oppression and authoritarianism,” Haddican said. “The trickster (e.g. Bugs Bunny) always beats the martyr (e.g. Elmer Fudd) in the end.”

  • Sen. Dave McCormick says Chester County proves the need for national election rules. But the GOP proposal wouldn’t have solved the county’s problems.

    Sen. Dave McCormick says Chester County proves the need for national election rules. But the GOP proposal wouldn’t have solved the county’s problems.

    When Sen. Dave McCormick stood on the Senate floor to call for nationwide rules mandating proof of citizenship and photo identification for voters, he invoked a drama that had played out three months earlier in Chester County.

    The county had mistakenly left all third-party and unaffiliated voters off the Election Day voter rolls, creating a chaotic scene in which more than 12,000 voters were forced to cast provisional ballots, which take more time to count as officials must verify the eligibility of each voter. A subsequent investigation by a law firm hired by the county attributed the issue to human error and insufficient oversight.

    “Every time Americans hear about election problems like Chester County’s, they rightly question the integrity of our electoral process,” McCormick said.

    But in his recounting of events, the Pennsylvania Republican gave incomplete and inaccurate information about Chester County’s election error.

    What did McCormick say about Chester County?

    Americans, he said, overwhelmingly believe there are problems with U.S. elections, and he argued that has been demonstrated for them on multiple occasions, including in November when Chester County omitted more than 70,000 third-party and unaffiliated voters from its Election Day pollbooks.

    “Registered voters were turned away at the polls. And an unknown number of unverified voters cast regular ballots,” McCormick claimed.

    But there is no evidence that voters were turned away or that ineligible voters cast ballots. McCormick’s office did not respond to questions.

    Were voters turned away?

    According to county officials, no voter who wanted to vote was turned away.

    Instead, for most of the day voters were offered the opportunity to vote by provisional ballot while county and state officials worked to get supplemental pollbooks distributed to polling places across the county.

    Some voters did testify at county election board meetings that they voluntarily left their polling place when their name was not in the pollbook but that they returned later in the day when they could vote on machines.

    Did unverified voters cast ballots?

    There is no evidence that ineligible voters cast ballots. The identity and eligibility of all voters who cast ballots were verified, county officials said.

    When the pollbook issue was discovered on Election Day, Chester County officials initially recommended that poll workers ask voters not included in the pollbook to sign the pollbook manually and vote as normal, according to the independent investigation of the incident.

    To ensure those voters were eligible to vote, county officials said, poll workers were instructed to follow a detailed process that included verifying voters’ eligibility in the full voter list and verifying their identity with photo identification.

    The Chester County Republican Committee has disputed the county’s version of events, contending that photo ID was not checked for all voters who wrote their names into pollbooks and that poll workers were unable to verify voters’ identities using signature matching.

    Around 7:40 a.m., less than an hour after polls opened, Pennsylvania Department of State officials recommended the county shift to asking voters to cast provisional ballots to eliminate the risk of an ineligible voter casting a ballot, thereby invalidating the election.

    A county spokesperson said there is no evidence that ineligible voters cast ballots during November’s election.

    Whether voters wrote their names into a pollbook or cast a provisional ballot, “the identity and eligibility of each individual was verified by the poll workers,” said Chester County spokesperson Andrew Kreider.

    Would the SAVE Act have changed anything?

    The SAVE Act is a collection of election policies proposed by congressional Republicans that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and mandate all voters show photo ID at the polls.

    Such requirements would not have prevented Chester County’s error, which investigators determined was a clerical error resulting from inexperienced staff with insufficient training and oversight.

    “Sen. McCormick was ignoring the facts and feeding into this larger narrative that our elections can’t be trusted and just feeding into the president’s narrative that there’s something wrong with Pennsylvania elections,” said Lauren Cristella, the CEO of the Committee of Seventy, a Philadelphia-based civic engagement and good-government organization.

    In addition to Chester County, McCormick pointed to his own experience in close elections — both his 2022 primary loss and his 2024 general election win — as a reason he supports the bill’s proof of citizenship and voter ID requirements.

    The policy, which passed the Republican-led U.S. House, still faces an uphill battle in the U.S. Senate, where it would need 60 votes to advance. It has faced significant opposition from Democrats who say it would needlessly make it harder for people to vote.

    The proof of citizenship requirement, critics say, would place a higher burden on married people whose last names no longer match their birth certificates.

    Speaking to reporters last week, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro said he was “vehemently opposed” to the policy, arguing it would nationalize elections.

    “We are not going to turn our elections over to Donald Trump,” he said.

  • ‘Courage is contagious.’ How Philadelphia churches and neighborhood groups are preparing to confront ICE.

    ‘Courage is contagious.’ How Philadelphia churches and neighborhood groups are preparing to confront ICE.

    Within the serpentine halls and stairways of Olivet Covenant Presbyterian Church, congregants have established several private, off-limits rooms ― each a potential last-stand space where members would try to shield immigrants from ICE, should agents breach the sanctuary.

    Church leaders call them Fourth Amendment areas, named for the constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure. The plan would be to stop ICE officers at the thresholds and demand proof that they carry legal authority to make an arrest, such as a signed judicial warrant.

    “It’s a protective space,” said the Rev. Peter Ahn, pastor of the Spring Garden church. “While you’re here, you’re safe, is what we want to assert.”

    Could it come to that? A pastor confronting armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the hallway of a church?

    It’s impossible to know. But across Philadelphia, churches, community groups, immigration advocates, and block leaders are actively preparing for the time ― maybe soon, maybe later, maybe never ― that the Trump administration deploys thousands of federal agents. People say they must be ready if the president tries to turn Philadelphia into Minneapolis ― or Los Angeles, Chicago, or Washington, D.C.

    People participate in an anti-ICE protest outside of the Governors Residence on Feb. 6, in St. Paul, Minn.

    Know-your-rights trainings are popping up everywhere, often to standing-room-only attendance, and ICE-watch groups are abuzz on social media.

    The First United Methodist Church of Germantown held a seminar last week to learn about nonviolent resistance, “so that we will be ready for whatever comes,” said senior pastor Alisa Lasater Wailoo.

    “That may mean putting our bodies in the path to protect other vulnerable bodies,” she said. “We’re seeing that in Minnesota.”

    In Center City, Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel has ordered 300 whistles ― portable and efficient tools to immediately alert neighbors to ICE presence and warn immigrants to seek safety.

    “There was a sense of needing to support our neighbors if it comes down to it,” said Rabbi Abi Weber. “God forbid, should there start to be ICE raids in our neighborhood, people will be prepared.”

    In other places around the country, immigrant allies have similarly readied themselves for ICE’s arrival, and organized to react in concert when agents show up.

    In Washington state, the group WA Whistles has distributed more than 100,000 free whistles to create what it calls “an immediate first line of community defense.” Chicago residents set up volunteer street patrols to warn immigrants of ICE and to contact family members of those detained. In Los Angeles, people raised money to support food-cart vendors, and organized an “adopt a corner” program to protect day laborers who seek work outside Home Depot stores.

    A small sign at the Olivet Covenant Presbyterian Church, where the Rev. Peter Ahn is creating space to shield immigrants if necessary.

    Ask Philadelphia groups that advocate for immigrants — 15% of the population, including about 76,000 who are undocumented — and they say ICE isn’t about to land in the city. It’s been here.

    The agency’s Philadelphia office serves as headquarters not just for the city but for all of Pennsylvania and for Delaware and West Virginia as well. Arrests take place every day in the Philadelphia region.

    “You all seem to be ‘preparing’ for something that’s already happened,” veteran activist Miguel Andrade wrote on Facebook.

    What has changed, however, is the dramatic escalation in ICE enforcement, particularly visible in Democratic-run cities like Minneapolis, where agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens in January.

    ICE detained 307,713 people across the country in 2025, a 230% increase over the 93,342 in 2024. What federal immigration agencies record as detentions closely mirror arrests.

    Today residents in communities like Norristown and Upper Darby see ICE agents on the streets all the time. Cell phone videos have captured violent footage, including the smashed front door of a Lower Providence home after agents made an arrest on Feb. 9, and two people roughly pulled from a car in Phoenixville earlier this month.

    For immigrants who have no legal permission to be in the U.S. ― an estimated 14 million people ― the rising ICE presence steals sleep and peace of mind. They know not just that they could be arrested and deported at any moment, which has always been true, but also that the U.S. government is expending vast resources to try to make that happen.

    A woman who came to Philadelphia from Jamaica last year, and who asked not to be identified because she is undocumented, said she rarely leaves her home. She said she steps outside only to go to the grocery store, a doctor, or an attorney.

    She recently asked her daughter to check something on the computer, and the girl balked ― afraid to even touch the machine, worried that ICE could track her keystrokes and identify their location, the woman said.

    “How can I tell her it’s going to be OK when I don’t know it’s going to be OK?” asked the woman, who came to the U.S. to escape potential violence in Jamaica. “You come here expecting freedom, but here it’s like you’re in jail except for the [physical] barriers of the four walls.”

    Even as arrests have soared, Philadelphia has been spared the federal intrusions visited on other American cities.

    Why?

    Some say President Donald Trump doesn’t want to ruin the summer celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday, or spoil the grandeur of the World Cup or Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game. Others suggest that he might be timing an ICE deployment to do exactly that.

    City Council President Kenyatta Johnson speaking at the City Council’s first session of the year Jan. 22. He said this month that it’s time to stand up for immigrants in Philadelphia. “It’s my responsibility to step up in this space and be more vocal,” he said.

    That as Philadelphia City Council prepares to consider “ICE Out” legislation that would make it more difficult and complicated for the agency to operate in the city.

    Trump told NBC News this month that he is “very strongly” looking at five new cities.

    Some people are not waiting to see if Philadelphia is on the list.

    The monthly Zoom meeting of the Cresheim Village Neighbors usually draws about 20 people. But a hundred logged on in January to hear a presentation: What to do if/when ICE comes to our neighborhood.

    The short advice: If it happens, get out your phone and hit “record.”

    “If I see ICE agents, I will film,” said neighbors group coordinator Steve Stroiman, a retired teacher and rabbi. “I have a constitutional right to do that.”

    Federal immigration enforcement agents shatter a truck window and detain two men outside a Home Depot in Evanston, Ill., on Dec. 17, 2025.

    In a sliver of University City, Miriam Oppenheimer has helped lead three block meetings where neighbors gathered to discuss how they would respond.

    They set up a Signal channel so people can communicate. And they formulated a loose plan of action: People will come outside their homes and take video recordings ― and try to get the names and birth dates of anyone taken into custody, so they can be located later.

    “Courage is contagious,” Oppenheimer said. “Everybody is waiting for somebody else to do something, but we have to be the ones.”

    Inside Olivet Covenant Presbyterian Church, doorways to some rooms now bear black-and-white signs that say, “Staff and authorized personnel only.”

    Issues around ICE access to churches have become more urgent since Trump rescinded the agency policy on “sensitive locations,” which had generally barred enforcement at schools, hospitals, and houses of worship.

    Legal advocates such as the ACLU say ICE agents can lawfully enter the public areas of churches, including the sanctuaries where people gather to worship. But to go into private spaces they must present a warrant signed by a judge.

    “There are many front lines right now,” said Ahn, the Olivet pastor. “We’re not trying to be simply anti-ICE, or anti-anybody. We’re just trying to be for the rights of the Fourth Amendment.”

    Staff writer Joe Yerardi contributed to this article.