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  • ‘No resistance.’ ‘Soft.’ Tyrese Maxey and Nick Nurse explain the Sixers’ record-breaking blowout losses

    ‘No resistance.’ ‘Soft.’ Tyrese Maxey and Nick Nurse explain the Sixers’ record-breaking blowout losses

    There’s no shame in losing a basketball game.

    This is doubly true when the two highest-paid players in the history of the franchise are either hurt (again), suspended (seriously?), or, when they are available, less than fully whole.

    Sometimes, there’s even no shame in losing by 40.

    However, there is great shame in losing by 40 because you don’t play hard. There is humiliation in being down by 49 with 12 minutes to play because, for the previous 36 minutes, you generally played matador, playground, YMCA defense, despite playing at home, after a day off.

    The Sixers lost by 40 to the Spurs on Tuesday night, but it could have been 70, except the Spurs sat their starters in the fourth quarter. They trailed by 49 after three en route to ignominy.

    It is their third home loss by at least 40 points. They are the first team in NBA history to lose three home games in the same season by at least 40, according to @basketball-reference.com.

    They’re the league’s worst third-quarter team, and the second worst in the last 30 years, but they gave up 46 points in the second quarter Tuesday. They are nothing if not equal-opportunity no-shows.

    They played without Joel Embiid, whose side hurts, and they played without Paul George, who served the 14th game of his 25-game drug suspension.

    Marcus Hayes: Tanking NBA teams should lose their lottery slot as ‘The Process’ leaves its rancid legacy

    They have won plenty without either of them, and both. Fueled by an MVP-caliber season from Tyrese Maxey, the Sixers entered Wednesday night’s game against the visiting Jazz at 33-28, which gave them sixth place in the Eastern Conference. If they play hard, they are a viable team every night.

    So, on a night without their two future Hall of Famers, and a night without bed-sick forward Kelly Oubre Jr., you would think the Sixers, to a man, would play hard. You’d think they would prioritize defense and rebounding.

    They did not.

    They were outrebounded by 16. They gave up 131 points.

    They played weak and they played dumb and they played like a team that was defeated before it took the court. They did so in a national TV prime-time game that embarrassed the franchise in front of the nation.

    No resistance

    “There just was no resistance, defensively,” coach Nick Nurse said.

    What he didn’t say was, again. He could have. For the Sixers, blowouts have become as common as bad draft picks.

    Blame Nurse if you like, or blame the players, or blame the bad luck and bad choices that have kept the stars in the trainer’s room, but the Sixers are conducting a clinic on how to chase fans to the parking lot before the fourth quarter is half over.

    This not only was the Sixers’ third loss by at least 40 points, it was their fourth loss by at least 37 points, and their seventh loss by at least 21 points. Despite it being a 40-point loss, it was still nine points shy of their worst loss of the year, a 49-point disgrace against the visiting Knicks on Feb. 11. Entering Wednesday night’s game against the Jazz, the Sixers had suffered three of the 17 worst losses in the NBA this season — a year in which about one-third of the league is tanking.

    All seven of the Sixers’ blowouts have come in their last 45 games, which means, lately, they’re getting destroyed more than 15% of the time.

    Is it road woes? No. Five of the seven blowouts came at home.

    Is it the competition? Not necessarily.

    The Spurs are a deep, well-coached team built around Victor Wembanyama, the game’s best two-way player. They’ve lost big to really good teams like San Antonio and Oklahoma City, but they’ve been dog-walked by three teams with worse records than their own: Orlando, Charlotte, and even woeful Washington.

    Maxey believes that when the Sixers don’t play hard and lack focus early, they have no chance late.

    “When we don’t start fast, defensively and aggressive in the right way — that’s when it happens,” Maxey said. “We start soft, and we’re not pressuring the ball, not getting to the ball, and we give up bad cuts, and stuff like that.”

    Tyrese Maxey: The hero Philadelphia needs

    That’s occasionally true, but the Sixers have generally been able to match their oppositions’ output in the first quarter. However, they’ve had to come back to do so, and that sometimes leaves them exhausted when the second quarter comes around. They gave up 51 points to Orlando, 41 to Charlotte, and 46 to the Spurs in the second quarters of those blowouts.

    Forget the numbers. Forget the quarters. If you watched the games, you saw what Nurse saw:

    No resistance.

    C’mon, man

    You saw Maxey throw away a cross-court pass, then just watch the thief streak down the court.

    You saw Andre Drummond, a former defensive player of the year candidate and a four-time rebounding champion, foul Wembanyama twice in the first two minutes. Drummond, Embiid’s $5 million understudy, played just five minutes.

    Blowouts happen, especially when your roster fluctuates. Before their latest excuses for absence materialized, Embiid and George were only inconsistently available. This was due to age, injury management, and, frankly, a questionable desire to actually play in the games for which they are paid a combined $106 million this season.

    But their presence doesn’t ensure proficiency. Embiid and George both played in two of the blowouts. Embiid missed the other five, while George missed four of the five.

    Throw in a rookie like VJ Edgecombe, who, predictably, makes mistakes on defense, and add a dash of Maxey, who is congenitally defense-challenged, and you’re going to have the occasional train wreck.

    But it should only be occasional. It shouldn’t be more than 10% of the entire season.

    It might seem unfair to question players’ effort, especially that of Maxey and Edgecombe. Maxey leads the NBA in minutes played, and Edgecombe ranks eighth, and he leads all rookies, and the blowouts started about a month into the season.

    But Drummond, Edgecombe, and power forward Dominick Barlow, this season’s feel-good story of persistence and effort, earn their minutes from their defense.

    Embiid’s strained oblique will cost him at least one more game and probably more. George is out until March 25.

    Until they’re both back and both viable, the Sixers will have a talent void. They can best fill it with persistence and effort.

    But on nights when they offer “no resistance,” they will have no chance.

  • New York’s Blank Street, a coffee and matcha chain, to open on UPenn’s campus

    New York’s Blank Street, a coffee and matcha chain, to open on UPenn’s campus

    New York’s ubiquitous seafoam-green painted coffee and matcha cafe chain is headed to Philadelphia.

    Blank Street will open its first Philly location at 3603 Walnut Street, joining UPenn’s retail district. It’s expected to open in late summer.

    The six-year-old chain is known for its micro-cafe look and automated espresso systems for customers to grab matchas and lattes. And soon, Penn students, faculty and surrounding neighbors will experience the quick service inside the 3,500 square foot cafe.

    The Philly location will be one of the largest U.S. cafes on Blank Street’s expansive roster, which includes more than 40 locations in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

    “We’re excited to be getting closer than ever to the UPenn community,” said Vinay Menda, Blank Street co-founder and U.S. managing director in a statement. Giving the company, “the opportunity to invest deeply in design and bring an elevated, hospitality-forward experience to the neighborhood.”

    The new Blank Street cafe location at 3603 Walnut Street will be their first in Philly.

    Founded in 2020 by Menda and Issam Freiha, Blank Street quickly expanded with New York’s pandemic-induced surge of lowered rent storefronts and private equity financing. But soon, the rapid growth raised scrutiny from skeptics, who saw “Blank Street as an avatar of gentrification and automation” resenting “the use of Wall Street money to compete with local businesses,” reported the New York Times. The cafe chain also has its fans, who lean younger and see the trendy matcha drinks as fashionable — even leading the brand to London Fashion Week this year.

    Blank Street cafe is one of several additions to the SHOP PENN retail district. James Beard Award winner Chef Tom Colicchio’s Root and Sprig will open in the spring. And Korea Taqueria opened a location at Franklin’s Table Food Hall in January.

  • Quinta Brunson’s hit ‘Abbott Elementary’ will be renewed for a sixth season

    Quinta Brunson’s hit ‘Abbott Elementary’ will be renewed for a sixth season

    School will be in session for a sixth year at West Philadelphia’s fictional Abbott Elementary.

    ABC announced Wednesday that Quinta Brunson’s mockumentary based on the goings-on at an underserved Philadelphia public school is being renewed for its sixth season. This was first reported by Variety.

    The news comes on the same day Abbott resumes its fifth season. A new episode is set to air Wednesday night.

    Since its 2021 debut, Abbott has been a crown jewel of ABC. It has been nominated for an Emmy 30 times, including the 2026 Emmy for outstanding comedy series. It has won six.

    Abbott, a workplace comedy about a group of dedicated, passionate teachers determined to help students succeed, has made audiences laugh by pushing boundaries of a typical comedy show. Brunson’s writing has made viewers aware of the bureaucracy in the school system, ageism in the workforce, and what it looks like when administrators count students out because of the neighborhoods they come from.

    William Stanford Davis (Mr. Johnson), Tyler James Williams (Gregory Eddie), and Quinta Brunson (Janine Teagues) in “Abbott Elementary.”

    The show enjoyed positive reviews from its crossover episodes with It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Earlier this year, The Philadelphia Inquirer was featured on an episode.

    Brunson was one of the Philadelphia treasures featured on The Simpsons recent 800th episode, an animated homage to Philadelphia. In addition to starring and creating Abbott Elementary, she also serves as an executive producer for the show.

    Brunson grew up in West Philadelphia and spent time in district and charter schools, naming the show for Joyce Abbott, her sixth grade teacher at Andrew Hamilton Elementary.

    In late 2025, Brunson started the “Quinta Brunson Field Trip Fund” for district teachers and administrators to apply for grants after completing a short application. Last year, she received a key to the city of Philadelphia.

  • New Jersey Turnpike officials to test E-ZPass stickers instead of transponders

    New Jersey Turnpike officials to test E-ZPass stickers instead of transponders

    Could the white E-ZPass transponder on your windshield become a relic?

    Well, not yet.

    But New Jersey Turnpike officials will soon test out E-ZPass stickers in turnpike authority fleet vehicles, spokesperson Tom Feeney said Wednesday. The New Jersey Turnpike Authority also operates the Garden State Parkway.

    “If there are no problems,” Feeney added, “we will make a plan to introduce them to NJ E-ZPass customers.”

    The pilot, first reported Tuesday by NJ.com, takes a cue from other states that have transitioned from transponders to stickers.

    Drivers approach the Williamstown entrance ramp to the Atlantic City Expressway in 2022.

    Both devices are equipped with digital chips, which are read by overhead gantries on the highways. The technology allows drivers to keep moving and be digitally charged for tolls.

    This week, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation rolled out E-ZPass stickers, free of charge for new customers and those who need to replace their transponders, according to several local news reports.

    Massachusetts officials estimate the switch will save the state more than $7 million a year, since the stickers’ production cost is a fraction of the cost of the transponders, according to a recent report from WBUR, the Boston NPR affiliate.

    In New Jersey, officials spent $8.4 million in 2022 to replace the batteries of 920,000 E-ZPass transponders, according to NJ.com.

    News of the Garden State’s E-ZPass sticker test comes two months after the Atlantic City Expressway went cashless, with the Garden State Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike set to follow. Across the river, the Pennsylvania Turnpike has been cashless since 2020.

  • Jefferson Health Plans had big gains in Medicare Advantage during open enrollment last year

    Jefferson Health Plans had big gains in Medicare Advantage during open enrollment last year

    Jefferson Health Plans added nearly 12,000 new customers to its Medicare Advantage plans during the open enrollment period for coverage this year, the biggest annual gain ever for the insurance arm of Thomas Jefferson University.

    About half of Jefferson’s enrollment gains were in Philadelphia, Montgomery, and Bucks Counties. Still, Jefferson remained the sixth largest provider of private Medicare plans in Southeastern Pennsylvania. The Inquirer compared February 2025 with last month.

    Philadelphia-based Independence Blue Cross was leader, with one-third of the region’s 383,000 Medicare Advantage customers. National companies Aetna, UnitedHealthcare, Humana, and Cigna occupied the next four spots.

    “This was the strongest Medicare Advantage enrollment period in Jefferson Health Plans’ history,” Jefferson Health Plans president Krista Hoglund said in an email.

    “That level of growth signals a clear gap in the market for coverage that is anchored in the local community, easier to use, and closely connected with the doctors and hospitals they know and trust,” she said.

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    New Jersey has been a harder market for Jefferson. Enrollment more than doubled this year, but the eight counties in South Jersey where Jefferson sells plans still account for less than 10% of its members.

    Jefferson gained about 2,400 members in Lehigh Valley counties served by Lehigh Valley Health Network, which Jefferson acquired in 2024. Jefferson’s ownership of an insurer was a key reason why Lehigh Valley chose to become part of Jefferson, health system officials said at the time.

    Jefferson’s gains in the Lehigh Valley came amid a contract dispute with United HealthCare, leading to LVHN going out of network in January for UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage plans. Jefferson had warned in October that the contract was expected to end.

    United said then that the timing of the warning during the Medicare Advantage open enrollment period looked like a “negotiating tactic” that could lead United customers to choose other plans.

    The two Pennsylvania counties where United had the biggest percentage declines were Lehigh and Northampton, where LVHN has substantial operations.

    The biggest gains, however, went to Capital Blue Cross, of Harrisburg.

  • The sea is higher than we thought and millions more are at risk, study finds

    The sea is higher than we thought and millions more are at risk, study finds

    Climate change’s rising seas may threaten tens of millions more people than scientists and government planners originally thought because of mistaken research assumptions on how high coastal waters already are, a new study said.

    Researchers studied hundreds of scientific studies and hazard assessments, calculating that about 90% of them underestimated baseline coastal water heights by an average of 1 foot, according to Wednesday’s study in the journal Nature. The problem arises far more frequently in the Global South, the Pacific, and Southeast Asia, and less in Europe and along the Atlantic coasts.

    The cause is a mismatch between the way sea and land altitudes are measured, said study coauthor Philip Minderhoud, a hydrogeology professor at Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands. And he attributed that to a “methodological blind spot” between the different ways those two things are measured.

    Each way measures its own areas properly, he said. But where sea meets land, there are a lot of factors that often do not get accounted for when satellites and land-based models are used. Studies that calculate sea level rise impact usually “do not look at the actual measured sea level, so they used this zero-meter” figure as a starting point, said lead author Katharina Seeger of the University of Padua in Italy. In some places in the Indo-Pacific, the figure is close to 1 meter, or about 3 feet, Minderhoud said.

    One simple way to understand that is that many studies assume sea levels without waves or currents, when the reality at the water’s edge is of oceans constantly roiled by wind, tides, currents, changing temperatures, and things like El Niño, Minderhoud and Seeger said.

    Adjusting to a more accurate coastal height baseline means that if seas rise by a little more than 3 feet — as some studies suggest will happen by the end of the century — waters could inundate up to 37% more land and threaten 77 million to 132 million more people, the study said.

    That would trigger problems in planning and paying for the impacts of a warming world.

    People at risk

    “You have a lot of people here for whom the risk of extreme flooding is much higher than people thought,” said Anders Levermann, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research in Germany, who was not part of the study. Southeast Asia, where the study finds the biggest discrepancy, has the most people already threatened by sea level rise, he said.

    Minderhoud pointed to island nations in that region as an area where the reality of discrepancy hits home.

    For 17-year-old climate activist Vepaiamele Trief, the projections are not abstract. On her island home in the South Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu, the shoreline has visibly retreated within her short lifetime, with beaches eroded, coastal trees uprooted, and some homes now barely 3 feet from the sea at high tide. On her grandmother’s island of Ambae, a coastal road from the airport to her village has been rerouted inland because of encroaching water. Graves have been submerged and entire ways of life feel under threat.

    “These studies, they aren’t just words on a paper. They aren’t just numbers. They’re people’s actual livelihoods,” she said. “Put yourself in the shoes of our coastal communities — their lives are going to be completely overturned because of sea level rise and climate change.”

    Paying attention to the starting point

    This new study is pretty much about what is the truth on the ground.

    Calculations that may be correct for the seas overall or for the land are not quite right at that key intersection point of water and land, Seeger and Minderhoud said. That is especially true in the Pacific.

    “To understand how much higher a piece of land is than the water, you need to know the land elevation and the water elevation. And what this paper says the vast majority of studies have done is to just assume that zero in your land elevation data set is the level of the water — when, in fact, it’s not,” said sea level rise expert Ben Strauss, CEO of Climate Central. His 2019 study was one of the few the new paper said got it right.

    “It’s just the baseline that you start from that people are getting wrong,” said Strauss, who was not part of the research.

    Maybe not so bad, some scientists say

    Other outside scientists said that Minderhoud and Seeger may be making too much of the problem.

    “I think they’re exaggerating the implications for impact studies a bit — the problem is actually well understood, albeit addressed in a way that could probably be improved,” said Gonéri Le Cozannet, a scientist at the French geological survey. Most local planners know their coastal issues and plan accordingly, Rutgers University sea level expert Robert Kopp said.

    That’s true in Vietnam, in the high-impact area, Minderhoud said. Officials there have an accurate sense of elevation, he said.

    The findings come as a new UNESCO report warns of major gaps in understanding how much carbon the ocean absorbs. That report said that models differ by 10% to 20% in estimating the size of that carbon sink, raising questions about the accuracy of global climate projections that rely on them.

    Together, the studies suggest governments may be planning for coastal and climate risks with an incomplete picture of how the ocean is changing.

    “When the ocean comes closer, it takes away more than just the land we used to enjoy,” said Thompson Natuoivi, a climate advocate for Save the Children Vanuatu.

    “Sea level rise is not just changing our coastline, it’s changing our lives. We are not talking about the future — we’re talking about the right now.”

  • Sprawling investigation finds decades of sexual abuse among Catholic priests in Rhode Island

    Sprawling investigation finds decades of sexual abuse among Catholic priests in Rhode Island

    PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Catholic priests in Rhode Island preyed on hundreds of children for decades, and were protected by bishops more concerned with the church’s reputation than the victims, according to a new report on clergy sexual abuse that echoes findings elsewhere.

    The report, released Wednesday by Attorney General Peter Neronha, follows a multiyear investigation into the Catholic Diocese of Providence, R.I.

    Neronha said the full scope of the priest abuse problem in Rhode Island — the smallest U.S. state but the one with the highest Catholic population per capita, at nearly 40% — had long remained elusive. He agreed with victims who say not enough has been done to address the problem long after it was exposed in the nearby Boston diocese in 2002.

    “Not until now has there been a comprehensive review of this painful chapter in our state’s history, with a view toward offering transparency, accountability, and systemic reforms that will, I hope, lessen the likelihood of future child sexual abuse, not just within the Diocese of Providence, but in our community as a whole,” Neronha wrote in the report.

    Neronha, who was raised Catholic, said he hopes the report will spur legal reforms to boost investigative powers and help victims seek justice.

    The investigation found that 75 Catholic clergy had molested more than 300 victims since 1950, but officials stressed that the number of victimized children and abusive priests is likely much higher.

    The diocese, in response, acknowledged the scourge of child sexual abuse — especially by clergy — but said the report reflects the church’s willingness to share internal records under a 2019 agreement with the state.

    “The report presents this 75-year history in ways that might lead the reader to conclude these issues are an ongoing diocesan problem or that these are new revelations. They are not,” the diocese said in a statement.

    3 priests charged in R.I. awaiting trial

    Church records show the diocese transferred accused priests to new assignments without fully investigating complaints or contacting law enforcement, a practice exposed in investigations in Boston, Philadelphia, and elsewhere.

    And, as in other cities, the Diocese of Providence opened a “spiritual retreat-style facility” in the early 1950s for accused priests to seek treatment. Later, when the abuse was deemed a mental health problem, priests were sent to more formal treatment centers.

    By the 1990s, accused priests were sometimes placed on sabbatical leave.

    For example, a priest named Robert Carpentier resigned after a victim came forward in 1992 to say that he had been sexually abused as a 13-year-old victim in the 1970s. Carpentier acknowledged the abuse, was sent to a treatment center, and later went on sabbatical at Boston College. He retired in 2006 and received support from the diocese until he died in 2012.

    Most accused priests, the report found, avoided accountability from both law enforcement and the diocese.

    Neronha’s office has charged four current and former priests with sexual abuse in connection with allegations stemming from 2020 to 2022. Three of them are still awaiting trial. The fourth priest died after being deemed incompetent to stand trial in 2022.

    Only 20 people — about a quarter of the clergy identified in the report — faced criminal charges, and just 14 were convicted. A dozen others were laicized or otherwise dismissed.

    Diocesan review board member among the accused

    One survivor described being groomed for more than a year before he was abused by the pastor of Immaculate Conception Church in Cranston in 1981. The survivor, who is not named in the report, said the late Msgr. John Allard showered him with attention. By ninth grade, he said, the sexual abuse began in the priest’s bedroom.

    “His comment to me was always, ‘You need a hug,’ and that’s something that I can hear him saying very clearly to this very day,” the survivor told officials in 2013.

    While a review board deemed the abuse credible, the Vatican — at the urging of then-Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin — let Allard retire rather than be defrocked.

    In at least one case, a member of the diocesan review board hearing abuse complaints was himself accused, the report says. The Rev. Francis Santilli stepped down after the complaint, but remained in active ministry even after other complaints surfaced in 2014 and 2021. He was not removed until 2022. A message left at a possible number for him on Wednesday was not immediately returned.

    Church, AG spar over degree of cooperation

    Neronha launched the investigation in 2019, a year after a Pennsylvania grand jury issued a landmark report that found more than 1,000 children had been abused by roughly 300 priests since the 1940s.

    However, Rhode Island law does not allow grand jury reports to become public — a hurdle that Neronha has long tried to change. Instead, he forged an agreement with the diocese to access its trove of records on clergy sexual abuse.

    The church turned over 70 years’ worth of material, including complaints from its secret archives, civil settlement records, treatment costs, and other documents. Yet Neronha called the diocese’s help limited at times.

    “It repeatedly refused my team’s requests for interviews of diocesan personnel responsible for overseeing the diocese’s investigations,” Neronha said in the report.

    The diocese, in its response Wednesday, pushed back on that view, saying the report would not have been possible without the church’s cooperation.

    “Any abuse of children is an abhorrent sin and a terrible crime,” the diocese said in its statement. “The very existence of the Attorney General’s report is the result of the Diocese of Providence’s unprecedented and voluntary agreement to extraordinary transparency. ”

  • ‘MAGA is Trump’: President fires back at right-wing mutiny over Iran

    ‘MAGA is Trump’: President fires back at right-wing mutiny over Iran

    As President Donald Trump directs military strikes on Iran, he is also fighting online attacks at home from some of the loudest voices in his MAGA political movement.

    “This is Israel’s war. This is not the United States’ war,” former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Tuesday on his weekly political podcast.

    “No one should have to die for a foreign country,” Megyn Kelly, another former Fox News host with a massive online following, said on her podcast Monday.

    Daily Wire podcaster Matt Walsh beseeched fellow conservatives on Monday to stop supporting Trump’s military campaign. “I can’t take the gaslighting, guys. I really can’t,” he wrote on X.

    MAGA critics of Trump’s new military conflict say they are struggling to reconcile it with his “America First” principles and long record of criticizing costly and protracted American military interventions. The president has said operations against Iran could go on for four to five weeks, or longer.

    “I think to them it feels legitimately like a betrayal on a fundamental tenet of Trumpism,” said Matthew Dallek, a professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management.

    Trump has dismissed the idea that his critics could speak for the Make America Great Again movement: “MAGA is Trump,” he said in an interview with independent journalist Rachael Bade on Monday.

    Online infighting is common in political movements, but Dallek said the degree of open dissent among conservatives over Iran suggested it could be a “breaking point” for some of Trump’s most influential supporters. Carlson, Kelly, and Walsh together list more than 13 million subscribers among them on YouTube, with millions more on X and other platforms.

    Trump claimed that he alone spoke for MAGA after Bade asked him about the rebellion in the ranks of his supporters, according to a post she published late Monday. “MAGA wants to see our country thrive and be safe. And MAGA loves what I’m doing — every aspect of it,” he said.

    White House spokesperson Olivia Wales echoed the president’s comments in a statement to the Washington Post. “President Trump is MAGA and MAGA is President Trump,” she wrote in an email. “With Operation Epic Fury, President Trump is putting America first, eliminating the threat to our people, and securing our Nation and world for generations to come,” she added.

    Trump has made opposition to foreign military intervention a cornerstone of his political platform since he first sought the presidency. In the 2016 Republican primary, he called the Iraq War “a big, fat mistake” as he sought to tie rival Jeb Bush to his brother George W. Bush’s unpopular legacy. Running against Democrat Kamala Harris in 2024, Trump called himself “the candidate of peace,” and said in his election night victory speech: “I’m not going to start a war.”

    Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist for part of his first term in office, warned that turnaround could become a political problem for the president. He criticized the Iran operations after a guest on his War Room podcast over the weekend suggested the conflict could be “a hard slog.”

    “I’m just going to be brutally frank,” Bannon said. “That was not pitched in the 2024 campaign. It just wasn’t. We’re going to bleed support.”

    Whitney Phillips, a professor of information politics at the University of Oregon, said the president was severely testing his supporters’ loyalty.

    “Trump has put these people in such an impossible position,” she said. “He’s not asking them to bend a little — he’s asking them to entirely reconfigure themselves into a new kind of balloon animal.”

    Walsh, who has long urged Trump to take a hard line on immigration, transgender people, and diversity policies, is among the MAGA influencers refusing to reconfigure.

    He criticized the administration’s “confused” messaging on the justification for the Iran operation in an X post on Monday that drew a lengthy response from Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. Her X post listed what she called the “clear objectives” of Trump’s military campaign.

    Instead of Walsh and others falling in line, an online fracas ensued. Some X users mused that Walsh might be fired by Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro, who had opened his own podcast on Sunday by lauding the operation that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Shapiro did not respond to a request for comment. Walsh stepped up his online campaign against Trump’s strategy, taking aim at his fellow Trump supporters.

    “Conservatives are now running around saying ‘Iran has been waging war on us for 47 years,’” Walsh posted Monday on X. “Okay, then why didn’t any of you call for an attack on Iran at any point until now? … You and I both know that almost every conservative influencer in the business was opposed to war with Iran until just now.”

    Laura Loomer, a right-wing influencer who has described herself as “Trump’s loyalty enforcer,” has used her own online platform to attack critics of the war and sought to enlist Trump in hitting back at them. She posted on X that she had spoken to Trump and congratulated him, but also told him about the criticism he was receiving from Carlson, Kelly, Rep. Thomas Massie (R., Ky.) and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) — a group she lumped in with “communist Democrats.”

    “I’m so glad I was able to speak to President Trump after the strikes on Iran and show him what the Woke Reich, including Tucker, Megyn, and Marjorie Traitor Greene have been saying about him,” Loomer added Tuesday. “He was not happy when I showed him, but he told me he is focused on winning and they aren’t.”

    Conservative figures opposing the war appear to be in the minority despite the attention their criticism has generated.

    An analysis by the Post of about 5,000 online posts, podcasts, and newsletters from 79 conservative politicians and commentators since the Iran conflict began last weekend showed that most supported the operation, but that more than a dozen criticized it at least some of the time. Only a few were staunchly opposed to Trump’s new military intervention in Iran.

    While Trump returned to office amid a wave of online loyalty from leading conservative voices, experts in political communication said that in just a few days the Iran attacks had begun to test the limits of his influence.

    A.J. Bauer, a professor of journalism at the University of Alabama, said the pushback has gained traction in part because the administration has struggled to articulate a clear message on Iran for the right to rally around. That has left conservative influencers to chart their own course based on their personal beliefs, their loyalty to Trump, and their assessment of the risk that the conflict becomes unpopular with MAGA voters.

    A flash poll conducted by the Post over the weekend found that Americans oppose Trump ordering airstrikes on Iran by 52% to 39%; 9% said they were unsure.

    Sam Rosenfeld, a professor of political science at Colgate University, said the influencer backlash over Iran also speaks to wider problems emerging for Trump. His approval rating was 39% ahead of last month’s State of the Union address.

    There is an “emerging sense that Trump’s centrality to right-wing politics has an endpoint in the not-so-distant future,” Rosenfeld said. “That all serves to loosen Trump’s symbolic grip on the right’s discourse.”

  • Building of former Italian bistro La Locanda Del Ghiottone to be demolished and replaced with luxury condos

    Building of former Italian bistro La Locanda Del Ghiottone to be demolished and replaced with luxury condos

    The quaint mustard yellow former home of La Locanda Del Ghiottone, a former Italian restaurant in Old City, is slated for demolition, according to city records.

    Brian Zoubek, the developer behind the hotel down the block, Sosuite at the Loxley, plans to turn the lot into luxury condos.

    The property will take on a new character, Zoubek said. Gone will be the vibrant, squat structure decorated in colorful plates. In its place will stand a sleek, narrow five-story mixed-use building. The bottom floor will be retail and the four floors above will each feature one condo. Prices will range from around $1.6 million to about $1.95 million per unit, he said.

    A rendering of a new five-story building coming to the corner of Third and Cherry Streets in Old City.

    Zoubek said he’s expecting demolition to start this month and construction to take about 12 to 14 months. He’s hoping the condos will open next summer. He purchased the building in 2022, according to city property records.

    To align the new building with the historic aesthetic of that block, he said the building will be covered in brick with a stone facade on the first floor.

    A rendering of a new five-story building coming to the corner of Third and Cherry Streets in Old City.

    Residential use is a change for the property anchoring the southwest corner of Third and Cherry Streets. It hit the market in 2020 when La Locanda Del Ghiottone relocated to Port Richmond.

    The restaurant’s history at the property dates back to 1989, when Giuseppe Rosselli, an immigrant from northern Italy, took over the building at 130 N. Third St.

    Rosselli, a character who used to post screeds outside the restaurant, originally named the 35-seater Trattoria Dell’Artista. In 1992, Rosselli opened L’Osteria dell’Artista down the block at 114 N. Third St., and a year later, renamed his original restaurant Ristorante der Ghiottone (”the glutton”). He later tweaked the name to La Locanda Del Ghiottone. Rosselli died at age 51 in 2000.

    Ghiottone was a favorite of Inquirer critic Jim Quinn, who raved about the “rough and ready cuisine moded on the bargain-price restaurants of Italy. Portions are huge, prices extremely low, and all food is rushed directly from the stove to you.”

    La Locanda Del Ghiottone’s building, seen on March 3, 2026, will be demolished and replaced with luxury condos.

    Reporter Michael Klein contributed to this article.

  • Philly clerk shot during a robbery sues ‘skill games’ manufacturers for attracting crime

    Philly clerk shot during a robbery sues ‘skill games’ manufacturers for attracting crime

    A convenience store worker shot during a September armed robbery has sued a “skill games” manufacturer, alleging the casino-style devices on the premises motivated the attack.

    Ahmedine Maham, 27, was working the night shift at Philly Market in Frankford on Sept. 14, the suit says, when two armed men entered the store and shot Maham in the face, according to the complaint, which was filed Monday in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.

    “The robbers targeted the store because the high amount of cash required to be on hand for gambling machine payouts,” the lawsuit says.

    Banilla Gaming, a North Carolina-based skills game manufacturer, is aware of the dangers associated with its “gambling devices,” the suit says.

    The complaint also names Philly Market and associated businesses as defendants.

    Banilla did not respond to a request for comment. The Inquirer was unable to reach Philly Market’s owners based on publicly available records.

    The slot-like devices, commonly placed in bars and gas station convenience stores, have evaded Pennsylvania’s gambling regulations and exist in a gray area of the law. Manufacturers argue the games are based on skill, and are distinct from slot machines that are only legal within the walls of casinos.

    Because they do not fall under gaming laws they are untaxed and unregulated. But their status has been subject to debates in Harrisburg for years.

    Skill games regulations were on the table during last year’s prolonged budget negotiations but lawmakers again punted on the issue, despite bipartisan agreement that they are needed. Gov. Josh Shapiro called the matter “unfinished business,” leaving the door open for future action.

    Law enforcement officials have raised concerns over skill games for years, and earlier this month the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association sent a letter to Shapiro asking for the devices to be taxed and regulated in a way that would “ensure consumer protection, require security measures, and prevent underage gambling.”

    The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is considering a case challenging the status of the devices. In a November hearing, justices didn’t seem to view them as different from slot machines.

    Philadelphia enacted a ban on “skill games” in 2024 motivated by concerns the machines attract crime to low-income neighborhoods. Philadelphia Police Department officials testified in City Council in favor of the ban.

    But following an industry lawsuit, the Commonwealth Court lifted the prohibition.

    Matthew Haverstick, a lawyer for Pace-O-Matic who argued in front of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on behalf of the “skill games” company, said in 2024 that the games were “not crime magnets” but a revenue stream for “small businesses that survive on really thin profit margins.”

    Maham’s lawsuit is the latest in an effort to hold skill games manufacturers, distributors, and store owners accountable for the violence the devices allegedly draw.

    A Philadelphia jury awarded $15.3 million last year to the estate of Ashokkumar Patel, a Hazelton store clerk killed during a 2020 robbery. That suit similarly placed the blame for the violence at the feet of the “skill games” industry.

    Robert Zimmerman, a Saltz Mongeluzzi Bendesky lawyer who represents Maham and represented the Patel’s estate, said the devices force store clerks to act as casino operators without the security measures required in gaming regulations.

    Game manufacturers could improve safety without waiting for regulations, Zimmerman said, by placing terminals in stores that dispense payouts instead of relying on store clerks. But the industry has been resistant to changes that could bite into its profit stream, according to the attorney.

    “This is a danger not only for low-wage workers at these convenience stores, but they are a danger to everyone in the community,” Zimmerman said.