The layoffs are planned forthe end of April, according to a Thursday WARN Act filing with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. They include the employees of all six Philly-area Amazon Fresh locations — 205 at the Northern Liberties store, 189 in Broomall, 161 in Bensalem, 157 in Langhorne, 144 in Warrington, and 127 in Willow Grove, according to the filing.
By the end of April, Amazon also plans tolay off nearly 900 New Jersey employees, the vast majority of whom work in northern counties where there are Amazon Fresh stores, according to a WARN Act filing with New Jersey Department of Labor & Workforce Development.
The day after announcing the Amazon Fresh closures, Amazon said 16,000 employees companywide would be losing their jobs as part of a broader reorganization.
“We’ve been working to strengthen our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy,” Amazon said in a statement announcing the layoffs.
The company said most U.S. employees will have 90 days to look for a new role internally. After that, those leaving the company will receive severance pay, “outplacement services,” and health insurance benefits, as applicable, according to Amazon.
With its move to shutter the Fresh stores, Amazon has said it will “double down” on online grocery delivery and expand its Whole Foods footprint. Whole Foods, which Amazon bought in 2017, has more than a dozen locations in the Philadelphia area.
“Amazon Whole Foods, a trillion dollar entity, treats us like robots to be exploited and squeezed for maximum profits,” Jasmine Jones, a Philadelphia Whole Foods worker and member of Whole Foods Workers United, said Tuesday in a statement that noted the company’s Whole Foods expansion plans. “They are making billions of dollars off of our labor and we deserve better pay and benefits.”
U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) on Thursday voted against advancing a highly contested government funding package that includes allocations for the Department of Homeland Security, despite noting his objections to shutting down the government.
The Senate voted 45-55 on the key procedural vote, failing to advance a budget package as the country moves closer to a partial government shutdown this weekend.
With Fetterman aboard, every Democrat voted against the appropriations package because of the inclusion of funding for DHS. The party previously vowed to block DHS funding in the aftermath of federal immigration agents’ fatal shooting of two Americans in Minneapolis this month.
Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.) voted to advance the bill.
Fetterman’s vote came as a surprise given the senator’s comments earlier in the week, when he said he would “never vote to shut our government down, especially our Defense Department,” one of the agencies that would have received funding from the appropriations package.
It was unclear Thursday why Fetterman voted against the package, but it is unlikely to be the final version considered by the Senate, as eight Republicans also voted no. A shutdown is slated to begin Saturday if Congress does not pass a package this week.
A spokesperson for Fetterman did not immediately return a request for comment on the senator’s vote.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) was among the Republicans who voted no so that he could make a motion to reconsider the legislation.
DHS oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, the agencies involved in the fatal Minnesota shootings. Democrats have been calling for a halt to additional funding in the wake of the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
But Fetterman noted Monday that the department received $178 billion from last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which he opposed, and that ICE would continue to operate during a shutdown.
“A vote to shut our government down will not defund ICE,” Fetterman said.
Fetterman has previously suggested removing DHS funding from the package under consideration as a compromise. He has also urged President Donald Trump to fire DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
A reporter from the Hill posted on X minutes after the vote that Fetterman saw his no vote as setting the stage to decouple DHS funding from the other five bills under consideration, rather than triggering a shutdown.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) has pushed Republicans and the White House to strip the Department of Homeland Security funding from the rest of the bill. In a deal reached with the White House, DHS would still be funded, but for a short time to allow for negotiations on the Democrats’ demands. Other agencies included in the bill would be funded through the end of September.
Negotiations remained ongoing Thursday.
Within the last week, Fetterman faced mounting pressure from fellow Pennsylvania Democrats and constituents to vote against the package as tensions in Minneapolis continued to escalate.
On Tuesday, every Democratic member of Pennsylvania’s U.S. House delegation cosigned a letter urging Fetterman and McCormick to vote against the funding. Constituents also gathered outside Fetterman’s office in Philadelphia on Tuesday to protest his stance.
“We can no longer continue to give Homeland Security a blank check,” U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle (D., Pa.) said Thursday morning in a virtual news conference with U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans (D., Pa.).
McCormick voted as expected to advance the GOP-led legislation.
“I’m just not in favor of shutting down the government or stopping funding the government, and that’s the position that I’ve had through the last shutdown,” McCormick said about his support for the funding on a tele-town hall Tuesday night. “I’m not in favor of ever shutting down the government. It doesn’t matter what party is in power, but some people see that differently.”
If lawmakers fail to pass a package by Friday, the federal government will undergo its second shutdown in four months, starting Saturday, potentially demoralizing federal workers and inconveniencing members of the public who rely on affected services.
This shutdown would be a partial one, affecting the Departments of Defense, State, Transportation, Education, Labor, Treasury, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development in addition to DHS.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which provides nutrition assistance to needy families, would not be affected.
The other four Democratic senators from the Philadelphia region — Sens. Andy Kim and Cory Booker of New Jersey and Sens. Chris Coons and Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware — all joined Fetterman in voting no Thursday.
Kim argued the vote was a bipartisan rebuke of the Trump administration’s immigration strategy and said he would be working with colleagues to deliver “real security” to the American public.
“Their lawlessness has taken lives on the streets of our neighborhoods, and I’ve heard from so many about an overwhelming fear that they can be targeted next,” Kim said in a statement. “We need real changes to fix a broken and lawless system that has led to so many Americans losing trust in their government to keep them safe.”
This story is developing and will be updated.
Staff writer Aliya Schneider contributed to this article, which contains information from the Associated Press.
Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity on Thursday announced her pick for a running mate in the governor’s race, as state Republicans mount their campaign to more seriously challenge Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro in November’s election.
Jason Richey, a longtime Pittsburgh attorney and chair of the Allegheny County GOP, announced his campaign for lieutenant governor on Thursday morning. Garrity, the state party-endorsed candidate for governor, quickly endorsed him afterward.
Jason Richey, Aliquippa, Pa., Republican Candidate for Governor speaks with Inquirer Reporters at the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association held at The Metropolitan Club in New York, N.Y., on Saturday, Dec., 4 2021.
Garrity said Richey “rose to the top” as the best candidate to be her running mate to challenge Shapiro.
“Jason understands the potential Pennsylvania has, but only if our Commonwealth has the right leadership,” she said in a news release, noting that he shares her concerns with Shapiro’s tenure as governor. “Jason Richey will not just be an incredible running mate on the campaign trail, but a terrific partner in governing for all the people of Pennsylvania.”
Until Richey’s announcement, few moderate candidates had emerged to run alongside Garrity. Meanwhile, other potential candidates declined to run with her in the uphill battle election against Shapiro, a popular incumbent with a $30 million war chest and a growing national profile. Garrity announced earlier this month she had raised nearly $1.5 million in the first few months of her campaign, from August to December.
Richey is running to be Garrity’s No. 2 among a field of several other potential lieutenant governor candidates, including State Sen. Cris Dush (R., Jefferson) and Bucks County businessman and political newcomer Brian Thomas. Other candidates who have considered a run for lieutenant governor but have yet to announce include former gubernatorial nominee State Sen. Doug Mastriano (R., Franklin) and former State Rep. Rick Saccone (R., Allegheny).
In Pennsylvania, candidates for lieutenant governor and governor run in the primary election separately. Whoever wins the primary nomination joins on one ticket for the general election. For example, Mastriano won the primary nomination but his endorsed lieutenant governor candidate did not, leading him to run with another running mate in November. At least one of the lieutenant governor candidates — Dush — said he would run for the office in the primary election even without the party’s support.
Shapiro is expected to again run unopposed in the Democratic primary, alongside Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, the first Black person elected to Pennsylvania’s executive branch.
“We must turn Pennsylvania around now and I believe that Stacy Garrity is the person who can fix Pennsylvania,” Richey said in a release Thursday. “I’m excited to join Stacy on the ticket that’s going to save Pennsylvania. Stacy has demonstrated leadership, fiscal discipline, a deep commitment to serving Pennsylvanians and the ability to win statewide.”
In an interview weeks before he decided to enter the race, Richey said he believed Garrity should pick a lieutenant governor candidate who is politically moderate and comes from Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, the state’s population centers.
Earlier this month, Richey said a running mate who has “a little more urban understanding,” since Garrity hails from a rural part of the state, “would make a lot of sense” on the Republican ticket.
Garrity secured the state party endorsement for governor last fall, as Republicans sought to coalesce around a gubernatorial candidate after their failures to do so in 2022 led to Mastriano’s nomination to oppose Shapiro. Mastriano went on to lose to Shapiro by nearly 15 percentage points, or 800,000 votes.
Richey ran in 2022 for governor as part of the crowded GOP primary, but withdrew and did not appear on the ballot with the other nine candidates in the running.
Garrity, of rural Bradford County, captured President Donald Trump’s endorsement earlier this week, in which Trump called her a “true America First Patriot, who has been with me from the beginning.” Garrity will appear in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center on Thursday for a live taping of the political podcast RUTHLESS, alongside Fox News analyst Guy Benson.
In addition to his duties as chair of the Allegheny County GOP, Richey is a partner at K&L Gates law firm in Pittsburgh with a focus on energy law.
Richey, 54, lives in a suburb of Pittsburgh with his wife and has three sons.
Staff writer Katie Bernard contributed to this article.
It’s hard to go wrong with Denzel Washington, Tom Hanks, and the City of Philadelphia — and the Library of Congress apparently agrees.
Philadelphia, the Oscar-winning 1993 legal drama that helped bring America’s AIDS crisis into mainstream media, was among 25 films selected Thursday for inclusion in the Library’s National Film Registry for Preservation, based on “cultural, historic or aesthetic importance.”
“When we preserve films, we preserve American culture for generations to come,” said acting Librarian of Congress Robert R. Newlen, in a statement announcing the selections. “These selections for the National Film Registry show us that films are instrumental in capturing important parts of our nation’s story.”
Philadelphia — which The Inquirer named the fourth on its list of best Philly movie of all-time — features Hanks as a law partner fired after it becomes known he has AIDS, with Washington as the attorney hired to fight the termination.
In addition to Philadelphia, Ten Nights in a Barroom — a 1926 film produced by the Colored Players Film Corporation of Philadelphia — was also among the selections.
A silent film adapted from an 1854 Timothy Shay Arthur novel and subsequent play, the film featured an all-Black cast and represents one of only two surviving films produced by the company.
Philadelphia and Ten Nights in a Barroom are among several Philly-tied films to be honored by the Library of Congress throughout the years, joining the 1976 Sylvester Stallone film Rocky and 1940’s The Philadelphia Story starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn.
Though the 25 films announced on Thursday span more than a century of filmmaking, several contemporary films earned recognition; 11 of the 25 films selected this year were released in the 1990s or later.That includes seven films released after 2000, including Frida, The Hours, The Incredibles, Christopher Nolan’s Inception, and Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Here’s a complete list of the 25 films selected for the 2025 National Film Registry:
Large slate-shaped slabs of ice in the Delaware River this week have been like a floating harbinger of things to come for the Philadelphia Water Department (PWD).
PWD, which draws its drinking water from intakes along the Delaware and the Schuylkill, takes a freezing river seriously.
It has implemented emergency plans to provide for 24-hour ice patrol at its river water intake plants — and it is on high alert for freezing and bursting water mains and pipes.
The department has two intakes on the Schuylkill and one on the Delaware that help provide drinking water for about 1.6 million people.
There is no easy way to say how much of the rivers are icing. But the Middle Atlantic River Forecast Center at State College, an office of the National Weather Service, uses gauges placed in the rivers by the U.S. Geological Survey. At various times this week, officials could not get readings from some gauges because they were affected by ice.
Brian Rademaekers, a spokesperson for PWD, said the city can also pull from already stored water if ice does became a problem at an intake.
“We’re getting into a stretch where we haven’t been above freezing for days,” he said, “And I think at least through Feb. 1 it looks like we’ll remain below freezing.”
Indeed, the region has been subjected to an Arctic blast for nearly a week. Daily highs have been below freezing since Saturday. The top temperature in that stretch was 28 degrees on Monday. Wednesday hit a low of 14. Overnight Thursday into Friday is forecast to drop to 2degrees.
The National Weather Service is not forecasting a high of 32 until Tuesday. And then it’s back to below-freezing temperatures.
Burst water main on S. 16th Street just below Federal Street, Philadelphia, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026.
Bursting pipes
PWD is warning residents and businesses that the extreme cold is affecting city water mains and reminding them thatwater lines that are the responsibility of property owners.
As the city facesunbroken stretches of below-freezing temperatures, PWD knows pipes will begin to freeze or, worse, burst, Rademaekers said.
Pipes can start to be seriously affected after 72 hours, or three days, of below-freezing weather. Philadelphia is past that benchmark.
PWD’scall center is already inundated with reports of water outages and leaks. But the department cannot help people with frozen pipes because that takes away from crews responding to public water main leaks.
Rademaekers said PWD has responded to 147 water main breaks in January, but noted that is a preliminary figure.
Last year, 256 breaks were reported in January. In recent memory, he said, 2018 was the worst year, with 366 breaks.
City mains are public property and range in sizefrom 96 inches in diameter to 48 inches, 12 inches, and 6 inches.
Breaks in smaller pipes are most common. PWD is currently fixing a 6-inch main at 16th and Federal Streets.
Property owners are responsible for the lateral pipes that run from the curb into a home.
Rademaekers said residents who suddenly find themselves without water should check with a neighbor first. If the neighbor has running water, it’s likely the homeowner has a frozen pipe.
In that case, PWD suggests trying to bring the pipes near your water to 40 degrees and opening faucets so that thawing water can drip out and release pressure.
He said running a hair dryer or using another source to gently warm the pipes could help them thaw. He said residents should be cautious trying to use space heaters to warm on pipes.
The department has tips online for how to deal with frozen pipes.
Homeowners should not to wait for the department to respond to take these steps, PWD advises. Doing so could lead to burst pipes.
Rademaekers said many homes in Philadelphia have their main water meter by the wall facing the street, often in uninsulated basements, some with cracked windows.
“When it falls to 6 degrees overnight, even if the heat’s on in your house, that particular space right there might just get cold enough to freeze that pipe up, and then ice kind of spreads through the system,” Rademaekers said. “Once the freezing starts, the pressure will build.”
Rademaekers cautioned customers against calling 311 if they have a frozen pipe. Instead, he said, they should call the PWD hotline at 215-685-6300 and press 1.
“Certainly whenever we see freezing temperatures for more than two days we start to see a surge of calls into the call center,” he said. “Over the last week, the top three reports we have been getting are water in the basement, leak in the street, or no water at the tap.” Some of those could be water main problems, he said, ”but most often they are traced back to private lines.”
After a night of dancing and laughter in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Kelly Crispin and her fiance, Omar Padilla Vélez, were driving back to his family’s home when they made a wrong turn off the popular Calle Cerra nightlife strip.
It was about 1:45 a.m. on Jan. 3. The side street that the South Philadelphia couple had turned onto, which they thought led to the highway, was nearly pitch-black. Then suddenly, Crispin said, roughly a dozen masked men carrying AR-15-style rifles appeared in the road and quickly surrounded the car.
Padilla Vélez tried to press forward and drive around the crew, she said, when the men opened fire. She remembers the glass exploding around her and the pain in her shoulder and hand as bullets tore through the car. And then the words from her fiance: “I’ve been shot.”
Padilla Vélez, a 33-year-old chemist for DuPont, was shot in the head. He was rushed to a hospital, where he died days later.
Omar Padilla Vélez, of South Philadelphia, was shot and killed in San Juan on Jan. 3.
Crispin, 31, recounted the attack in a phone interview from her South Philadelphia home this week as she struggled to come to terms with what she said San Juan police believe was a random attack by a gang controlling a small stretch of road near a popular tourist area.
After the shooting stopped, at the intersection of Calle Blanca and Calle La Nueva Palma, Crispin said, one of the men appeared at the side of the car and took her phone as she was calling 911.
She said she heard some of the men yelling at one another that there was a woman in the car and urging others not to shoot, as if realizing they had made a mistake. They searched her purse, she said, but returned her phone. They took nothing.
Crispin and a friend,who was with them in the car and was unharmed, pulled Padilla Vélez into the back seat. As she held pressure on his wounds, her friend took the wheel, and the gunmen told them to leave and told them how to get out of the neighborhood.
It was surreal, she said, to be shot and then have one of the gunmen explain how to leave safely.
They called 911 again as they left, and met an ambulance at a nearby gas station and were rushed to Centro Médico de Puerto Rico.
About two days later, Padilla Vélez was briefly stable enough for Crispin to visit him.
“He told me that he loved me, and I told him that I loved him, too,” she said. “And he said, ‘I’m so sorry.’ Then he fell asleep.”
Kelly Crispin and Omar Padilla Vélez got engaged in the fall and were looking forward to getting married.
Later that day, she said, he suffered a catastrophic stroke. Days later, he was declared brain-dead. He was an organ donor, she said, and doctors were able to use his organs to save several lives.
Padilla Vélez was Puerto Rican, she said, and came to the mainland U.S. in 2015 to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry at Cornell University. He moved to Philadelphia in 2022 and worked as a senior scientist for DuPont in Wilmington.
The couple met about three years ago at their best friends’ wedding. Crispin, who works as a project manager for an electrical vehicle company, moved to Philadelphia about a year into their relationship. In September, they got engaged.
They often returned to San Juan to visit Padilla Vélez’s relatives. This trip, which began Dec. 30, was meant to ring in the new year.
Crispin said she has been frustrated with San Juan police, who she said did not appear to have visited the scene of the shooting until five days later, after her fiance died and the case was assigned to a homicide detective. She said she was not interviewed until Jan. 21 and worries those delays could hamper the investigation.
No arrests have been made.
Police in San Juan did not respond to several requests for comment about the case.
Crispin said the homicide detective assigned to the investigation told her that residents in the area, fearful of retaliation, have refused to provide information. Police, she said, told her that a gang operates on the street where they were ambushed, and that she and her fiance were likely shot in a case of mistaken identity.
Crispin said the city should warn people to avoid the area, especially since it’s so close to a popular tourist district.
Omar Padilla Vélez earned a doctorate in chemistry from Cornell, before moving to South Philadelphia, where he lived with his fiancée.
Since returning to Philadelphia last week, she has struggled to make sense of her new reality. The bones in her hand were shattered and will require multiple surgeries to repair. The bullet passed through her shoulder, and she will need months of physical therapy.
But that is nothing, she said, compared to the searing heartache of what she has lost.
Padilla Vélez, she said, was intelligent and funny. To meet him was to feel like you’d known him for years.
He had a booming laugh that was often the loudest in the room.
“I thought it was mortifying at first, how loud it was,” she said. “Then I just began to love it.”
She recalled sitting with him on their couch one night and laughing so hard that their stomachs ached. She can’t remember what started the laughing fits, she said, but she remembers thinking: I am so lucky.
“I would see other couples and wonder if they laugh like Omar and I do,” she said.
“We had just made this decision to spend the rest of our lives together, forever,” she said. “It just feels so cruel that this was taken away.”
The embattled new boss of CBS News, the until-now opinion journalist Bari Weiss, on Tuesday led a town hall-style meeting for editors and reportersat the storied TV network and appeared to understand both the crisis of American media and the values needed to fix it.
“Our strategy until now has been: Cling to the audience that remains on broadcast television,” Weiss told her newsroom. “I’m here to tell you that if we stick to that strategy, we’re toast.” She called for more investigative reporting and pledged to merge the values of a high-tech start-up with “journalistic principles that will never change — seeking the truth, serving the public, and ferociously guarding our independence …”
Meanwhile, the overpowering stench of burning toast filled the room.
That’s because Weiss and her billionaire pro-Trump overlords, the Ellison family, seem to be doing all the wrong things, undercutting those pretty words. Her first concrete move announced in tandem with the town hall was the hiring of 18 thumb-sucking opinion journalists — a ragtag, right-leaning group that includes a medical huckster and an ex-Trump official — even as the newsroom braced for buyouts and feared layoffs that would slash honest shoe-leather reporting.
The move toward more commentators telling you what to think about an America spiraling into chaos and fewer boots-on-the-ground journalists digging up what’s needed to fix that crisis — objective truth — could not happen at a worse time, and unfortunately, this is not unique to CBS News.
As the Washington Post braces for a round of layoffs, staffers bemoan the lack of vision from owner Jeff Bezos and CEO Will Lewis. https://t.co/92VsAGFbaK
The Washington Post — which has lost hundreds of thousands of digital subscribers since a self-coup by its billionaire owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, shifted its opinion section to the political right — is also bracing for deep staff cuts that would cripple its international reporting, as well as its sports staff.
The extent of the widely rumored staff reductions isn’t yet known, but a preview came last week when the paper briefly told the newsroom it was axing its long-standing plan to send 12 journalists to next month’s Winter Olympics in Italy, before slightly backtracking and saying four reporters would still go.
Still, that move, and the louder rumors about pending layoffs, has led to deep concern over the future of its metro Washington and international desks. “We urge you to consider how the proposed layoffs will certainly lead us first to irrelevance — not the shared success that remains attainable,” stated a letter from 60 journalists on the foreign desk sent this week to Bezos.
“It’s all very confusing, and no one knows anything,” an anonymous Post staffer told the Guardian. “The anxiety is so sad.”
America has been losing news reporters for years. Nationally, newsroom staff have plummeted a whopping 26% since 2008, and the pace of job cuts has only accelerated in recent years as vast news deserts with no sources of local journalism expand across rural America. It’s been a perfect storm prompted heavily by internet-driven changes in reader or viewer habits, as well as declining public trust in traditional media.
But the looming cuts at the Post and CBS are especially painful both in a symbolic sense and also as self-inflicted own goals that will only heighten public mistrust instead of attacking the problem.
In 1972, with then-President Richard Nixon driving toward a landslide reelection, the Post, under its legendary editor Ben Bradlee, and CBS, with its popular, avuncular anchor Walter Cronkite, were the only two major outlets that took seriously the links between the Watergate break-in and the Nixon White House. Both newsrooms threw major resources into keeping alivethe story that eventually caused Nixon to resign, including a 22-minute special report that Cronkite anchored on the CBS Evening News.
In this undated photo released by Paramount, one of the Free Press’s cofounders, Bari Weiss, poses for a portrait. Weiss is the editor-in-chief of CBS News.
That kind of accountability journalism created a bond with the audience that should have left CBS and the Post better positioned to weather the economic storms that have battered journalism in the 21st century. The current crises were self-inflicted, albeit for slightly different reasons.
In Washington, the Post zigzagged from acknowledging what its readers wanted during Donald Trump’s first term — both in its “Democracy Dies in Darkness” slogan to some solid journalism that backed that up — to billionaire Bezos’ embrace of authoritarianism ahead of Trump’s second coming. The Bezos-ordered spiking of a Kamala Harris endorsement and a rightward editorial shift accelerated a steep decline in subscriptions, including about 300,000 lost readers after the nonendorsement.
One could argue that staff cuts in such an environment are inevitable, but one might also question the priorities of the Post’s owner, the world’s second-richest person. Amazon — where Bezos remains executive chairman — has just spent $75 million on a White House-fluffing Melania documentary expected to bring back just $1 million at the box office.
The priorities at Weiss-run CBS News seem similarly warped. The money the newsroom is spending on those 18 or so opinion journalists — a motley crew that includes Mark Hyman, who health experts have accused of “quackery,” calling him a “germ theory denialist,” and retired Gen. H.R. McMaster, a key policy adviser in Trump’s first term — could have been spent on new investigative reporters.
But then Weiss’ overlords in the Ellison family, whose recent role in the TikTok takeover and current fight to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery both depend on the blessing of the Trump White House, probably don’t want the stories Leonnig is uncovering.
Tense afternoon in Kenner, outside of New Orleans, as protesters followed Greg Bovino and Border Patrol around a neighborhood around 3pm today. pic.twitter.com/4IcH4OfL2K
This is not a diatribe against all opinion journalism. I am an opinion journalist, and I started moving in that direction in the 2000s when I thought someone needed to be screaming from the rooftops about the lying and the war crimes of the George W. Bush regime. I think commentary and debate are especially needed in the local communities where such jobs have vanished the most, but I also think powerful opinion journalism exists mainly to augment on-the-ground reporting, not replace it.
The greatest irony of the pullbacks at CBS and the Post is that the national crisis over immigration raids in Minnesota and the conduct of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers who’ve killed two citizens has shown that what American democracy needs most is seekers of the truth — much more than people telling you what to think.
The over-the-top lies from the highest levels of the U.S. government about how and why Renee Good and Alex Pretti were gunned down on the streets of Minneapolis have fallen apart because multiple videos have allowed citizens to see the truth of what actually happened.
Most of those videos were shot by citizen observers, but with 3,000 federal agents fanning out across Minnesota and hundreds more conducting immigration raids from Maine to Los Angeles, a web of local and independent journalists has also proved critical in documenting the raids and their many human rights abuses.
Dozens of journalists have been tear-gassed multiple times or struck with rubber bullets or pepper balls, and yet continue to cover protests and ICE activities, often in the most miserable conditions, and keep going out there to create a public record.
CBS News and the Washington Post could have been at the vanguard of this movement, which would have been a fitting tribute to the legacies of Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, Bradlee and Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and their many intrepid colleagues. Instead, the supposed keepers of those flames have made a horrible, doomed bet on autocracy.
What I’ve watched in recent weeks coming out of Minneapolis and elsewhere on the front lines of the war for America’s soul has given me more hope for the future of journalism than any time since the ball dropped to launch this cursed millennium. That CBS and the Post chose this exact moment to willingly blind themselves is beyond pathetic.
The Philadelphia Orchestra’s 127th season will be a mix of standard repertoire, newly minted scores, film music, family concerts, and guest artists new and familiar.
Emanuel Ax has been dubbed “artist of distinction” for the season, the orchestra said in its announcement of 2026-27 artists and repertoire unveiled Thursday. The much-loved pianist makes both recital and concerto appearances to celebrate his half-century-plus history with the orchestra.
Several big, ambitious pieces anchor the season in Marian Anderson Hall.
The Philadelphians will perform their first-ever complete Bach Christmas Oratorio. Following on the heels of last season’s Tristan und Isolde, the orchestra takes on Wagner’s Lohengrin for the first time. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 is on the roster, as are four Mahler symphonies — Nos. 1, 3, 5, and 7.
Soprano Elza van den Heever.
Lohengrin, like the Tristan, will be led by music and artistic director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
“He’s always able to attract the people that are known for these roles,” Jeremy Rothman, chief programming officer for the Philadelphia Orchestra and Ensemble Arts, said of the cast of singers. Tenor Stanislas de Barbeyrac takes the role of Lohengrin, with soprano Elza van den Heever as Elsa.
“It’s the kind of thing that really only the Philadelphia Orchestra can do — attracting this talent with Yannick conducting with this level orchestra,” said Rothman.
Conductor Anthony Parnther leading the Philly Pops in a live orchestra-to-screen performance of “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi” at the Mann Center on Aug. 11, 2022.
Nézet-Séguin will lead 12 weeks of programs in 2026-27 (plus special concerts), with podium appearances by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Anthony Parnther, Dima Slobodeniouk (his debut here), Jane Glover, Fabio Luisi and others.
Marin Alsop, the orchestra’s principal guest conductor, leads three weeks of programs plus special concerts.
Violinist Arabella Steinbacher.
Guest soloists include pianists Yunchan Lim and Seong-Jin Cho in Rachmaninoff, Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider as both violinist and conductor, violinist Arabella Steinbacher in Beethoven, Yefim Bronfman in Schnitke and Liszt, Daniil Trifonov performing Prokofiev, and Yuja Wang in Beethoven.
The Spotlight recital series continues with artists like Yo-Yo Ma, Yuja Wang, and Itzhak Perlman.
Composer Gabriela Ortiz.
Among the premieres, or first performances by the Philadelphia Orchestra, are works by Reena Esmail, Julia Wolfe, Unsuk Chin, Anna Meredith, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Gabriela Ortiz, and Caroline Shaw.
Film music once again threads throughout the season, with live orchestra-to-screen presentations of Star Wars: A New Hope and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Film concerts are often a sell-out for the orchestra, but they are also a lure for new audiences who later buy tickets to regular orchestra concerts, said Ryan Fleur, president and CEO of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Ensemble Arts.
Howard Shore’s score for “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” was performed live by the Philadelphia Orchestra and guest conductor Ludwig Wicki to a packed house at Marian Anderson Hall, Dec. 5, 2025.
If past statistics are a reliable guide, the orchestra will sell 6,000 tickets to next season’s Star Wars program. About 4,000 of those listeners will be people who had not bought an orchestra ticket previously. Of those, 20% will come back for a straight orchestra concert in the following year and a half.
“It’s pretty consistent data now that we’ve seen over the last few years,” said Fleur.
“Gateway” is the word the orchestra uses to describe concerts like those with film, or the shorter, informal Orchestra After 5 concerts, which also continue next season.
“It’s programs that are accessible as a first date,” said Fleur.
The season-wide average ticket price next season is increasing about 2.5% due to a higher share of premium, or special, programs, a spokesperson said.
Composer and conductor Joe Hisaishi performing with the Philadelphia Orchestra at Marian Anderson Hall, June 26, 2025.
Another film-adjacent presence next year is Joe Hisaishi, the orchestra’s composer in residence best known for his work on the animated films of Hayao Miyazaki (My Neighbor Totoro, Castle in the Sky). Hisaishi’s Orbis is the very first work heard next season, prefacing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 on opening night, Sept. 24. In the spring, Hisaishi leads the world premiere of his own Piano Concerto with Alice Sara Ott as soloist on a program with his Concerto for Orchestra.
Rattle’s concerts, in January 2027, feature familiar territory: John Adams’ propulsive and emotional landmark work from 1985, Harmonielehre; Debussy’s La Mer; and the Ravel Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2.
Why these particular pieces?
“We didn’t have an in-depth discussion about it,” said Rothman. “When Simon wants to bring a program here, we trust him with what he knows [is] going to work really well with this ensemble.”
Marin Alsop conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra at its Pride Concert at the Kimmel Center in June 2023.
More novel for both performers and audience is a Marin Alsop program that includes the world premiere of The Party, a collaboration between composer Austin Fisher and conceptual artist Alex Da Corte. The artistic forces include the orchestra, a cast of singers, and life-size sculptures inspired by 1960s artist Marisol Escobar in a stop-motion film.
Rothman calls the work, which was commissioned by the orchestra, “a really novel way to present opera, where you have the singers and the orchestra live on stage, but all the action is taking place up on the screen.”
The Party is on a program with Pacific 231, Arthur Honegger’s classic 1923 depiction of a train accelerating, then grinding to a halt; and Haydn’s Symphony No. 101, “the Clock.”
“It’s a way of exploring the depiction of time,” said Rothman of the three pieces.
A scene from the Philadelphia Orchestra’s performance in April 2015 – in what was then named Verizon Hall – of Bernstein’s “Mass.”
Rothman was responsible for the creation of one of the season’s most intriguing creations: a “new” work by Leonard Bernstein.
“I was thinking about how Mass has some of his most beautiful music in it,” said Rothman, “but just the scope of that work means that music is rarely ever heard live because of the forces that are required to mount it.”
He conceived of a symphonic suite made of material from Mass, the musical-theatrical piece commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy that premiered in 1971 at the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Leonard Bernstein conducts the Curtis Symphony Orchestra with soloist Susan Starr in a 1984 performance at the Academy of Music.
“So I reached out to the kids,” said Rothman, referring to Bernstein’s three children, “and I said, ‘What do you think of this idea?’ And I got back like an immediate, ‘Oh my God, we love it. Let’s do it.’”
Garth Edwin Sunderland, a composer and vice president of creative projects at the Leonard Bernstein Office, was engaged to create Symphonic Rituals from Mass, which contains about 40 minutes of music — a “new” work drawn from Bernstein’s original colorful, groovy score.
“It’s still paying homage to the sacred nature and the ritual of the piece, but bringing all that fantastic musical material into the orchestra, so no vocalists, no choirs,” said Rothman. “There will be a little bit of a rock band because that’s so essential to the core essence of the piece.”
Actor and director Bradley Cooper (left) and Yannick Nézet-Séguin speak during an interview, Feb. 14, 2024, in New York.
Nézet-Séguin was, of course, the perfect choice to conduct. He’s been an enthusiastic champion of Bernstein’s music and was involved in the Bradley Cooper movie about Bernstein, Maestro.
“I texted Yannick,” said Rothman, “and I said, ‘Yannick, how would you like to give the world premiere of a piece by Leonard Bernstein?’ And he goes, ‘What? What are you talking about?’”
Philadelphia Orchestra 2026-26 subscriptions go on sale at noon Thursday, with single tickets available July 30. ensembleartsphilly.org, 215-893-1955.
Philadelphia is the wrong place for historical amnesia.
Dignitaries gather for the opening of a memorial to enslaved people at President’s House in 2010. From left: Municipal Judge Charles Hayden, attorney Michael Coard, Independence National Historical Park’s Cynthia MacLeod, and Mayor Michael Nutter.
The President’s House stands on ground where the ideals of liberty were articulated alongside the daily practice of human bondage. During Washington’s presidency, the executive mansion functioned simultaneously as a seat of republican government and a site of enslavement, even as Philadelphia emerged as a center of abolitionist thought and Black civic life. The exhibit that opened in 2010 was the result of years of advocacy by historians, community members, and activists who insisted that the enslaved people in Washington’s household not be erased from public memory.
Slavery was not incidental to Washington’s presidency. It was essential to it.
Washington enslaved people from childhood, inheriting human property at the age of 11 and expanding his holdings through purchase and marriage. By the time he became president in 1789, he was a Virginia planter whose wealth, household, and public standing depended on enslaved labor. That dependence followed him north.
When Washington relocated to Philadelphia, he encountered Pennsylvania’s Gradual Abolition Act of 1780, which allowed enslaved people to claim freedom after residing in the state for six months. Rather than comply with the law’s intent, Washington devised a deliberate strategy to evade it.
Enslaved people in his household were sent out of Pennsylvania just before the deadline and then returned, resetting the clock. He was careful to keep this arrangement private, instructing aides that it should not become public.
Among the enslaved people living in the President’s House was Ona Judge, who belonged to Martha Washington and served as her personal attendant. As historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar has shown through meticulous research, Judge understood the possibilities and dangers of freedom in a city like Philadelphia. In May 1796, after learning she was to be given away as a wedding gift, Judge fled the President’s House and escaped north.
Committed to slavery
Washington’s response reveals the depth of his commitment to slavery.
Within days, an advertisement appeared on the front page of the Philadelphia Gazette and Universal Daily Advertiser. It announced that Judge had “absconded from the household of the President of the United States.” Placed by the steward of the President’s House, the notice described her appearance in detail, warned ship captains not to assist her escape, and offered a reward for her capture and return.
The language matters. It explicitly tied the presidency itself to the pursuit of an enslaved woman who claimed her freedom.
Washington pursued Judge for years, dispatching friends, relatives, and officials to recapture her. He never succeeded, but his actions make clear that slavery was not a peripheral contradiction in his life. It was a system he actively defended while serving as president.
A visitor views a panel about the Fugitive Slave Act at the President’s House in Independence National Historical Park in 2025.
At the same time, Black Philadelphians were building institutions that challenged slavery not in theory, but in practice.
Only a few blocks from the President’s House, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones organized mutual aid through the Free African Society, laying the groundwork for what would become Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Born from the violence of segregation in white churches, Mother Bethel became a cornerstone of Black autonomy in the early republic — a place where abolition was preached, freedom was practiced, and Black civic life flourished.
The ironies of Philadelphia’s founding moment are unavoidable. The same Washington who pursued Judge and signed the Fugitive Slave Act also contributed financially to Allen’s efforts to build an African church. These contradictions were not hidden from contemporaries. They were preserved.
More than a century after the American Revolution and Washington’s presidency, the association between presidential authority and enslaved labor had not faded from public memory.
In 1883, a widely circulated illustrated history depicted Washington walking along a cobblestone street with a Black “servant” following several steps behind him in livery, carrying his coat. For Americans who could not read — or who absorbed history visually — such images conveyed meaning powerfully. Even generations later, Washington was still remembered in proximity to enslaved labor.
That illustration is not an abstraction. It survives today in the holdings of the Library Company of Philadelphia, where I direct the Program in African American History. Despite contemporary efforts to erase or soften this past, the evidence remains materially present. The Library Company holds the largest collection documenting the Black presence in Philadelphia — more than 13,000 items spanning the 18th through 20th centuries.
These materials document slavery, but they also trace the Black community’s sustained fight to advance abolition, and the enduring ways Black Philadelphians confronted the afterlives of slavery across the 19th and 20th centuries.
Preserving memory
The archive does what removed signage cannot. It insists on memory.
It shows how Black political thought, religious life, and institutions developed alongside — and in opposition to — slavery. Mother Bethel AME Church, which continues to stand today, hosted abolitionists, organized resistance to colonization schemes, supported the Underground Railroad, and later aided Black migrants during emancipation, Reconstruction, and the Great Migration. This is not peripheral history. It is Philadelphia’s history.
Removing slavery interpretation from the President’s House is therefore not a neutral curatorial decision. It contradicts the historical record, violates agreements requiring consultation with the city, and risks teaching the public that the presidency can be understood without reckoning with slavery.
It cannot.
This moment is especially fraught as the nation approaches the 250th anniversary of 1776. That commemoration will invite renewed storytelling about founding ideals and national origins. If we enter that moment by stripping slavery from public history sites, we will be manufacturing historical amnesia precisely when historical clarity matters most.
Philadelphia has another choice. In February, the Library Company of Philadelphia, in partnership with the American Philosophical Association, will host a conference titled “Black Declarations of Independence: Before and After 1776.” The premise is straightforward: Black claims to freedom, dignity, and self-determination were not marginal to the founding era. They were central to it — and they continue to shape the nation’s unfinished project.
Restoring the President’s House signs would be a modest but meaningful step in that direction. It would affirm that Philadelphia will confront its history honestly as it prepares to commemorate 1776 — and that it will not celebrate independence by forgetting those whose bondage, resistance, and perseverance make the meaning of independence intelligible in the first place.
Jim Downs is a historian and Guggenheim Fellow, a professor of history at Gettysburg College, and director of the Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia.
The 76ers have made at least one move at five consecutive NBA trade deadlines since Daryl Morey took over as president of basketball operations in 2020.
Many of those moves slashed salaries, enabling the Sixers to avoid paying the luxury tax. However, the new acquisitions didn’t make the team’s playoff chances any better.
The Sixers are expected to continue their trend of making moves ahead of this season’s 3 p.m. deadline on Feb. 5. Here are five reasons the Sixers should be cautious at the deadline:
The Sixers could avoid the luxury tax by trading Kelly Oubre Jr. ahead of the Feb.5 NBA trade deadline. However, he’s their best perimeter defender.
A bad look for the franchise
The Sixers are $7 million above the allowable threshold to avoid being taxed. They’re also around $1 million away from being a first-apron team and facing penalties.
Quentin Grimes ($8.7 million), Kelly Oubre Jr. ($8.3 million), and Andre Drummond ($5 million) have expiring contracts that could help avoid paying the threshold tax.
But trading a key contributor for the sake of avoiding being taxed would be a bad look for the franchise. It would give the impression that saving money for Sixers managing partner Josh Harris is more important than contending for a title. The team would come off looking cheap, especially considering that the Joel Embiid championship window is closing quickly.
Aside from Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe (77), the Sixers don’t have the assets to bring in the type of player who could drastically improve the team.
Not enough assets
The Sixers don’t have much to give up to upgrade talent via a trade. Aside from Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe, the Sixers don’t have the assets to acquire the type of player who could drastically improve the team. And they’re not trading either of those guys. Nor should they forfeit their future by surrendering future draft picks to help facilitate a trade. The Sixers will need those picks to acquire young talent and continue building around Maxey and Edgecombe after Embiid and Paul George leave.
Joel Embiid (21) and Paul George (8) are once again healthy. As a result, the Sixers can beat anyone in the Eastern Conference when the team plays well.
A dangerous team
The Sixers are dangerous as currently constructed. When they play well, they can beat anyone in the East. They’ve won two of their three meetings against the conference’s second-place New York Knicks. The Sixers have done the same against the third-place Boston Celtics, and split the four-game series against the fourth-place Toronto Raptors. They’re 0-2 against the first-place Detroit Pistons. However, the Sixers were without Embiid and George in both games. And they still had opportunities to win before blowing fourth-quarter leads both times. So if they remain healthy, the Sixers are a team no one wants to face in the postseason.
Forward Trendon Watford is one of many role players who have learned to mesh well with the Sixers’ Big Three of Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, and Paul George.
Losing chemistry
If you bring in someone new, he’ll have to learn to play with Embiid. The current players spent half the season learning how to play with Embiid, Maxey, and George. And based on the Sixers’ early struggles with their Big Three intact, there’s clearly a learning curve to playing alongside Embiid, Maxey, and George.
Players like Oubre, Grimes, Drummond, Dominick Barlow, Jabari Walker, Adem Bona, Jared McCain, and Trendon Watford have established roles. Tinkering with that could negatively impact the team, especially if the Sixers are not acquiring a major upgrade in talent.
League sources say the Sixers are open to trading Andre Drummond.
Insurance for Embiid
With Drummond and Bona backing up Embiid, who is back to playing at a high level, the center position is set. However, league sources say the Sixers are open to trading Drummond, even though he and Bona have been equally valuable assets, playing behind and often in place of Embiid, who misses games because of knee injury management.
Bona plays against the teams that have fast and athletic centers, while Drummond usually plays against towering centers who flourish in the post.
The 6-foot-11 Drummond averages a team-leading 8.9 rebounds while playing just 20 minutes per game. Drummond is second in the NBA in rebounds per 36 minutes at 16.0, trailing the Knicks’ Mitchell Robinson (16.9). And he has started 17 of the games Embiid has missed, averaging 8.6 points, 10.9 rebounds, and 1.1 assists in those contests.
