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  • What John Waters thinks President Trump and punk rockers have in common

    What John Waters thinks President Trump and punk rockers have in common

    It’s a chilly January afternoon and John Waters is on the phone talking about his new one-man show, “Going to Extremes.”

    Waters, whose subversive indie films inspired William S. Burroughs to dub him “The Pope of Trash,” is calling from San Francisco, where he has an apartment. He has another one in New York and a place in Provincetown, Mass.

    But Waters’ heart — and his home — is in Baltimore.

    “That’s where my house is, that’s where my office is, that’s where my studio is,” Waters said. “Baltimore is always where I lived. I never for a moment thought of leaving there.”

    Waters’ 1970s queer cult classics like Multiple Maniacs and Pink Flamingos starring iconic drag queen Divine were all made in Baltimore, as were mainstream breakthroughs like Hairspray (1988) and Cry-Baby (1990).

    Charm City has always been essential to Waters’ work because, “I knew it well, and I praised a city that, in that time, had an inferiority complex.”

    Thanks to his movies and other works, like Barry Levinson’s Diner and David Simon’s The Wire, “Baltimore does not have an inferiority complex anymore because we praised all the things that people used against it.”

    “I think Philadelphia has the same issue sometimes, too. And we even have the same accent, though ours is a little weirder.”

    That “no one likes us, we don’t care” attitude has always made Waters a natural fit with his Philly fans, many of whom will be in attendance when he comes to the Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville on Saturday.

    “Philadelphia was always a good market for me,” he said. “Elizabeth Coffey was from there, a great, great actress who’s in a lot of my films, the first [transperson] I ever worked with… And the TLA cinema was one of the first theaters that made Pink Flamingos famous. It played there forever.”

    Waters and Divine made several trips up I-95 for appearances at TLA midnight movie screenings, one of which, from 1974, is immortalized on YouTube.

    It shows a lank-haired Waters in trademark shades and a Little Richard-inspired pencil mustache sitting beneath a Citizen Kane poster, and Divine popping out of a cake.

    Waters’ early movies can still shock. Watching Divine’s character Babs Johnson eat poo in Pink Flamingos never goes down easy. But over time, Waters has been lauded as a transgressive pioneer of undeniable importance.

    Or, as he puts it: “I’m so respectable I could puke!”

    In 2023, his oeuvre was celebrated in a retrospective show at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.

    John Waters’ show “Going to Extremes” comes to the Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville on Saturday.

    Pink Flamingos was added to the National Film Registry in 2021 and judged to be the 31st best comedy of all time last year by Variety. The publication called it “the cinematic birth of punk.” In the 91st spot on the same list is Waters’ Hairspray, the musical starring Ricki Lake (and Divine as her mother) about an American Bandstand-like 1960s Baltimore TV show’s struggles to integrate its dancers.

    “C’mon, the 100 best comedies in the history of film, and two of them are mine? We’re talking the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, everything. When I see that for movies that are probably even more offensive today than they would have been then because of all the things that you wouldn’t have been allowed to do — it’s astounding to me.

    “I’m proud,” he said. “I’m amazed by it. I think it’s wonderful. Debbie Harry, who’s a friend” — and hilarious as a scheming stage mom in Hairspray — “and I have talked about that. Aren’t we glad we’re alive to see this? Because many are not.”

    For all of his respectability, however, Waters, 79, still finds it hard to get films financed and made.

    “The last two movies I was supposed to make never happened. Aubrey Plaza was going to star, and we had a big company buy the rights to my novel Liarmouth. And it fell through.”

    Still, Waters says, “I’m busier now than I’ve ever been.”

    He’s a host for hire at events like the Mosswood Meltdown, the Oakland punk rock festival with a terrific lineup, where he’ll be serving as emcee for the 12th consecutive year in July.

    “I love the punks,” he said. “They’re the only minority who want to be hated.”

    He also gathers his flock every September for a long weekend in Connecticut at Camp John Waters, where “people come and live as my characters for four days. We call it Jonestown with a happy ending.”

    Every year, he also writes a brand new show and takes it on the road, sometimes with a Christmas theme in holiday season. “Going to Extremes” is billed as “crackpot comedy.”

    But don’t call it stand-up, or performance art.

    “It’s a sermon,” he said. “It’s a religious gathering.”

    And it aims to speak to America’s deep divisions with a tool he finds sorely lacking in the body politic: humor.

    “When I was young, the radical left had a sense of humor, with the Yippies and Abbie Hoffman. Today, they have more rules than my parents had.”

    Waters is worried about the times, especially about the persecution of trans people in the second Trump administration.

    “Of course, I’m worried about all of it, because you can’t embarrass him,” he said about the president. “He’s like the punks — he loves to be hated, too. When I saw him around in the ‘70s, he was a liberal. He was in Studio 54. He hung around with Hillary!”

    One of the highlights of “Going to Extremes,” he promised, will be revealing “the only funny thing [Trump] has ever said.”

    What is it? “You have to come to the show to hear it.”

    Waters is excited to return to the Colonial, where he performed in 2022. “The Blob was filmed there! And I, of course, love The Blob.”

    Water doesn’t love everything about barnstorming the country, though.

    “I don’t like it when the plane is late,” he quipped. “But I do enjoy it. I do 50 shows a year, so I’m always in motion. I’m a carny. It’s what I do. And I’m in touch with my audience.

    “Elton John once said to me, the day you stop touring, it’s over. And that’s true. You have to keep doing it. Somebody’s waiting to take your place the minute you blink.”

    “John Waters: Going to Extremes,” Feb. 7, 8 p.m., the Colonial Theatre, 227 Bridge St., Phoenixville. ColonialTheatre.com.

  • You can’t put Opera Philadelphia’s ‘Complications in Sue’ in a box. That’s what makes it epic.

    You can’t put Opera Philadelphia’s ‘Complications in Sue’ in a box. That’s what makes it epic.

    A high-concept stunt? A rare stroke of artistic luck? A Frankensteinian collage of 21st-century life?

    All of that can be said about Complications in Sue, an opera of sorts that premiered with surprising cohesion and great audience response, on Wednesday at the Academy of Music.

    Opera Philadelphia is on new ground with this collection of 10 loosely linked scenes by different composers who did their work without knowing what the others were up to.

    Each scene documents a decade of the life of Sue, in a birth-to-death chronicle curiously devoid of outstanding achievements but forming a reflection of the worlds (both inside and outside her psyche) swirling around her.

    Sue’s shopping algorithm comes to life in Scene 6 of “Complications in Sue.” Justin Vivian Bond’s costumes were designed by JW Anderson.

    At the center of it all — including episodes about Santa Claus in crisis, a grieving ex-husband, and Sue’s shopping algorithms coming to life — was the sharp-tongued cabaret artist Justin Vivian Bond.

    Playing the imaginary Sue, she sang, talked (and danced here and there), and seemed to go off script with a damning litany of current government persons and entities. She prompted the loudest ovation of the evening with a no-holds-barred condemnation of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    Opera Philadelphia’s ‘strange little roller coaster ride’ is rolling into town

    Somehow, the components came together, thanks partly to the anything-can-happen atmosphere of the piece.

    From left: Director Zack Winokur, producer Anthony Roth Costanzo, and director Raja Feather Kelly before a dress rehearsal at the Academy of Music on Jan. 31, 2026. The venue will be showing the new opera “Complications in Sue” from Feb. 4-8. 

    The 10 episodes — as fantastically conceived by librettist Michael R. Jackson — are like semi-improvised comedy sketches that leave certain psychological doors open for the composers to create a sense of operatic magnitude.

    The composer lineup, full of strong personalities, was framed by Errollyn Wallen on birth (during which Bond walked down the theater aisle saying hello to aisle seaters) and Nico Muhly on death (in lovely choral writing with a waning, interior heartbeat).

    Generally, tunes weren’t a priority as the composers characterized the theatrical events that Jackson gave them, such as Nathalie Joachim’s scene with a newscaster from deep within Sue’s psyche interviewing her about life choices. When Sue’s husband has a meltdown, Dan Schlosberg goes on a rampage through musical styles reflecting the cultural jumbles of our times. Missy Mazzoli makes Santa Claus’ breakdown more tragic than comic.

    Bass-baritone Nicholas Newton portrays a disillusioned Santa in Scene 2 of “Complications in Sue.”

    Nobody just went for laughs, even when they seemed to.

    Andy Akiho had singers being annoyingly manic playing college kids obsessing over who they thought Sue is. But this is where the overall theme of Complications in Sue coalesced: Do we know anybody? Or ourselves? Do we want to?

    Composers Cécile McLorin Salvant, Rene Orth, Alistair Coleman, and Kamala Sankaram also wrestled with such issues in one way or another, sometimes using minimalist-shaded repetition for urgency, prominent bass lines for dark corners and with absolutely no need to box these situations into some sort of smooth musical package.

    Mezzo-soprano Rehanna Thelwell as Brenda Blackwoman, broadcasting
    from inside Sue’s imagination in Opera Philadelphia’s “Complications in Sue.”

    That last quality made many of these miniature compositions seem epic in their implications. Was Complications in Sue really just 90 minutes?

    Under the confident direction of Caren Levine, the four-member cast consistently gave it their all in deeply unconventional musico-dramatic assignments.

    Kiera Duffy and Nicky Spence each had episodes giving them space to dominate the stage on their own. Duffy’s voice was an island of sweet stillness even in tumultuous moments while Spence never let intonation and enunciation slip even in his most reckless moments.

    The cast of “Complications in Sue” (From left: Nicky Spence, Kiera Duffy, Justin Vivian Bond, Nicholas Newton, and Rehanna Thelwell) in the final scene of the world premiere opera.

    Nicholas Newton played both Santa Claus and Death with equal conviction (an accomplishment indeed). And if you walked in not knowing that Rehanna Thelwell was walking through her stage roles that were actually sung by Imara Miles, you wouldn’t be any the wiser.

    The one disappointment on the performance front was Bond’s dance of death: It was just a lot of twirling in moments that asked for transcendence. Much of Bond’s fan base feels anything she wants to do is just fine. I’m not one of them.

    One major achievement was how the production elements worked together. That just doesn’t happen very often in new operas.

    Justin Vivian Bond as 10-year-old Sue in “Complications in Sue,” directed by Raja Feather Kelly and Zack Winokur

    The Krit Robinson-designed production ranged from a charmingly makeshift Christmas tree to dazzling abstraction. In later scenes, the stage had concentric rectangular frames, each with changing, subtle coloring.

    Raja Feather Kelly and Zack Winokur shared directing duties but in such fluid, choreographic staging, it was hard to determine where one director’s work started and the other left off.

    Consider what this team could do in more conventional operatic circumstances. I hope to see that.

    “Complications in Sue,” plays at Feb. 5, 7 p.m. Feb. 6, 8 p.m. Feb. 8, 2 p.m. Academy of Music, 240 S Broad St. All tickets are Pick Your Price, starting at $11. operaphila.org, 215.732.8400, tix@operaphila.org

  • Flyers hope to build some momentum as they play their final game before the Olympic break

    Flyers hope to build some momentum as they play their final game before the Olympic break

    Two Januarys ago, the Flyers were riding a wave, building steam for the postseason beach.

    But a loss to the Eastern Conference’s worst team, the Ottawa Senators, in Game 2 of what proved to be a five-game losing streak sent that wave crashing down before it came ashore. It was a turning point in an otherwise promising season.

    Heading into their Thursday matchup at Xfinity Mobile Arena (7 p.m., NBCSP), the Flyers and Senators were in a different predicament. Both teams are on the outside looking in at the playoff picture, but they are tied in points percentage (.545), with the Flyers having a game in hand.

    Unlocking Jamie Drysdale’s offensive potential could go a long way toward improving the Flyers’ power play

    It is the last game for each team before the NHL takes a break for the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. The Flyers hoped end the unofficial first half of the season with a two-game winning streak.

    “Just play how we can play,” forward Noah Cates said Wednesday after practice. “Obviously, a big win [Wednesday], but kind of struggled a little bit there. But try to flush it and get one more before the break.

    “Put ourselves in the best spot possible for that push coming in late February, March, and April. So it’s kind of getting back to the way we have been playing when we’ve had success and kind of the team game that we can play.”

    Cates was quick to mention that the Flyers’ record after a win isn’t great — it’s 9-11-4. Two of those losses, one in regulation and one in overtime, came at the hands of the Senators.

    Although he knew the stat, he and his teammates aren’t paying too much attention to it. After all, Flyers coach Rick Tocchet stresses keeping an even keel and never reading too much into the highs or the lows.

    Rick Tocchet says it is important that the Flyers’ minds don’t drift elsewhere with one game remaining before a three-week break.

    But the bench boss has been down this road before and knows he needs to keep his team focused, as a nice break is on the horizon.

    “You’re concerned a guy’s mind is somewhere else,” he said Thursday during an optional morning skate. “I think [assistant coach] Todd [Reirden] told the story about, I think Sidney Crosby, before an All-Star break, or this sort of thing, is one of the leading point-getters of all-time.

    “Sometimes their minds are already, ‘Hey, where [are we] going?’” he said. “This is a big game. This is a mindset game. So, yeah, even keel, 100%.”

    The Flyers are off the ice until 2 p.m. Feb. 17, when they will practice in Voorhees. They do not return to game action until Feb. 25 at the Washington Capitals (7 p.m., NBCSP).

    Flyers GM Danny Brière addresses Rick Tocchet’s recent comments on Matvei Michkov: ‘They have a good relationship.’

    Ersson update

    Sam Ersson was back on the ice with his teammates and participated in the optional morning skate with forward Nic Deslauriers, defenseman Emil Andrae, and goalie Aleksei Kolosov at Xfinity Mobile Arena.

    The goalie was injured last Thursday during the Flyers’ loss to the Boston Bruins. Ersson allowed five goals on 20 shots and did not come out for the third period after suffering a lower-body injury.

    “I would expect it, yes,” Tocchet said when asked if Ersson should be good to go after the Olympic break. “I mean, 21 days [until the next game]. I would expect it for sure, especially that he’s on the ice now.”

    Breakaways

    Dan Vladař (17-8-5, .904 save percentage) will start against the Senators. He was in goal for the 2-1 loss in October, allowing two goals on 33 shots. Kolosov will serve as the backup. … Forward Garnet Hathaway slots back into the lineup and Deslauriers comes out. … Despite Tocchet saying he didn’t want Andrae to remain out of the lineup too long, the defenseman will sit again Thursday for the fifth straight game. Andrae has not played since Jan. 26, a 4-0 loss to the New York Islanders. “I was talking to [Reirden], he’s kind of liked the PK the last 3-4 games,” Tocchet said. “I think it’s helped us the last couple of games, even with confidence. … We’ll reset after this game. We have two weeks off, we’ll figure things out from there.”

  • Swarthmore Public Library closes the chapter on overdue book fees

    Swarthmore Public Library closes the chapter on overdue book fees

    The Swarthmore Public Library has officially done away with overdue fees, joining a growing contingent of libraries that say the fines do more to drive patrons away than to get them to return their books on time.

    Swarthmore’s library serves residents of Swarthmore and neighboring Rutledge and is a member of the Delaware County Public Library System. A nonprofit, the library is powered by private donations and government funding. It served around 3,100 cardholders in 2024.

    Overdue fines can actually deter library use, all while bringing in marginal financial benefits, said Alec Staley, the library’s director.

    Case studies have shown that library fees ultimately can discourage people from returning books. After the Chicago Public Library dropped fees in 2019, it saw a 240% increase in return of materials within three weeks. During a six-week fine-forgiveness program at the San Francisco Public Library in 2017, nearly 700,000 items were returned (the items returned were valued at $236,000).

    Once late fees start accruing, many people, especially low-income library patrons, will stay away to avoid paying them, forfeiting their library access entirely. Oftentimes, late fees burden the people who need library resources the most.

    Collecting fees has also become taxing for library staff, Staley said. Turning away families because of overdue fees has weighed heavily on Swarthmore’s librarians.

    “We were just punishing [people] for no reason at all,” he said.

    The new policy means any outstanding late fees will be wiped from cardholders’ balances.

    Elizabeth Brown, president of the library’s board of trustees, said fine revenue is “not a meaningful source of our budget.”

    Swarthmore Borough is set to contribute $277,000 to the library this year, up 17% from the year prior.

    Late fees make up only around 1%, or $5,000, of the Swarthmore Public Library’s annual revenue. Library officials believe they can close the gap with fundraising.

    Does this mean people will be able to take the books and run? Not really.

    “We’ll still have a lost-item charge,” Brown said. “This is by no means a free-for-all.”

    Unreturned items will be marked “lost” after three weeks and a fee will be charged. However, fees will be dropped if the “lost” book is returned.

    The Swarthmore Public Library joins a growing group of Philly-area fine-free libraries.

    The Free Library of Philadelphia went fine-free in 2020, a move the library system said would increase equity and bring back 88,000 cardholders who were unable to access library services due to fines.

    In Delaware County, the Upper Darby Township and Sellers Memorial Free Public Library, Newtown Public Library, Media-Upper Providence Free Library, and Ridley Park Public Library are fine-free.

    Ultimately, Staley said, imposing fines runs counter to the heart of what a public library is supposed to be.

    “We champion that we’re one of the last free spaces in the United States,” he said. “But then we have this secret where we’re still charging fines.”

    This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.

  • Some fans blame Nick Sirianni for Jeff Stoutland’s departure. Others are just thankful for ‘Stoutland University.’

    Some fans blame Nick Sirianni for Jeff Stoutland’s departure. Others are just thankful for ‘Stoutland University.’

    “Stoutland University” is shutting its doors.

    On Wednesday, in a social media post addressed to Philadelphia, longtime Eagles offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland announced his decision to leave the organization after 13 seasons.

    “I’ve decided my time coaching with the Eagles has come to an end,” he wrote. “When I arrived here in 2013, I did not know what I was signing up for. I quickly learned what this city demands. But more importantly, what it gives back. The past 13 years have been the great privilege of my coaching career. I didn’t just work here, I became one of you. Stout Out.”

    At least one Eagles offensive lineman was named to the Pro Bowl in every year of Stoutland’s tenure with the franchise. Two Eagles running backs led the league in rushing during the same span: LeSean McCoy in 2013 and Saquon Barkley in 2024.

    Ex-Packers assistant Ryan Mahaffey to succeed Jeff Stoutland as Eagles run game coordinator

    The news comes a week after The Inquirer first reported that Stoutland’s role as the team’s run game coordinator waned during the season as the Eagles shifted their game-planning responsibilities. Stoutland, as reported by ESPN, did not desire to keep the role after the in-season change.

    With the news of the two-time Super Bowl champion assistant relinquishing his coaching role, many fans have taken to social media to thank Stoutland. Others have looked to display their dismay …

    Jeff Stoutland exits as Vic Fangio pondered retirement: Eagles drama never ends | Marcus Hayes

    Leaving no time wasted, some fans have begun to blame Stoutland’s departure on coach Nick Sirianni’s reported takeover of run coordinator duties. Stoutland’s agent, Alan Herman, told ESPN that Stoutland was frustrated with the change and felt his input was being ignored.

    The news of Stoutland’s decision was coupled with uncertainty around defensive coordinator Vic Fangio’s retirement. The Inquirer has since reported that Fangio will be staying with the Eagles through 2026, but that did not stop onlookers from connecting the two coaching developments to what they perceived as a larger cultural problem.

    Others have called on fans to stop the blame game and cease the “conspiracy theories.” Meanwhile, some have seen the departure as a positive for the franchise, as it indicated that new offensive coordinator Sean Mannion would be taking more control over the offense.

    Stoutland was not the only Philadelphia favorite to depart from the city on Wednesday. A few hours before the assistant coach’s announcement, the Sixers traded away second-year guard Jared McCain to Oklahoma City for the Houston Rockets’ 2026 first-round pick and three second-round picks.

    The combination of both Stoutland and McCain leaving has left some Philadelphia fans in shambles.

  • From Big Lots to warehousing humans: ICE plan sparks fear in Schuylkill County

    From Big Lots to warehousing humans: ICE plan sparks fear in Schuylkill County

    TREMONT, Pa. — Evil has never looked this banal.

    A massive 1.3 million-square-foot Schuylkill County warehouse that just 13 months ago bustled with 505 workers moving cheap overstock goods like shower curtains or pet cleaners for now-bankrupt retailer Big Lots sits utterly abandoned, its dozens of truck bays fenced off and surrounded by a silent shroud of snow.

    It’s hard to imagine, but in the very near future, this white behemoth could be warehousing thousands of desperate human beings behind its bland, baby blue-trimmed concrete walls. On Monday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement filed a county deed that confirmed its $119.5 million purchase of the Big Lots facility — one more island in an American gulag archipelago of detention camps for the undocumented immigrants ICE is aggressively arresting from coast to coast.

    “It hurts my heart,” the Rev. Brian Beissel, pastor at Christ’s United Lutheran Church in nearby Ashland, told me, choking up a bit, as we sat in a car outside the warehouse entrance.

    When I asked him to expand on the source of that pain, Beissel’s response epitomized what other local residents have been saying about the stunning ICE news — a blend of small-town fears about stressed infrastructure with spiritual unease over the images of violent immigration raids in Minneapolis and elsewhere. He invoked Schuylkill County’s deep resentment of the 20th-century coal barons who took the money and the minerals and then ran. “They’re promising jobs, but how long are they going to be here?”

    But then Beissel — a Schuylkill County native who sees himself as a not very political preacher, in a county that Donald Trump won in 2024 with nearly 71% of the vote — pivoted to his moral dismay over a citizenship-seeking restaurant owner and father of a 2-year-old he knows from nearby Danville who was arrested by ICE and agreed to return to Mexico. “The Bible is pretty darn clear,” he said, “that we welcome the stranger.”

    Brian Beissel, pastor at Christ’s United Lutheran Church in Ashland, Pa., stands in front of the former Big Lots warehouse in Tremont, Pa., that has been purchased by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), on Wednesday.

    The Trump regime told America this day was coming. Its acting ICE director, Todd Lyons, said in an April interview that he wanted to run the agency like a business, with a deportation process “like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings.”

    Ironically, the soon-to-be ICE detention center in Schuylkill County, about 100 miles northwest of Philadelphia, is less than a mile from a massive new Amazon fulfillment center that opened in 2023. Soon, trucks carrying consumer bric-a-brac to Tremont will be jostling on Interstate 81 with buses carrying day laborers or restaurant servers in handcuffs to those reborn rows of truck portals.

    ICE, flush with a whopping $45 billion in cash from Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill to construct its human supply chain, is currently racing to buy sites for 23 detention centers with as many as 76,500 beds from coast to coast — often keeping communities like Tremont in the dark to thwart the inevitable opposition.

    In fact, the Schuylkill County deal is the second ICE facility in east-central Pennsylvania announced just this week. A different warehouse location, which ICE envisions as a kind of feeder camp for 1,500 detainees, was also purchased for $87 million in Hamburg, Berks County — only 25 miles from Tremont.

    Even if you could somehow put the morality of what many see as concentration camps on U.S. soil to the side, the government’s scenario for tiny Tremont — a coal-country hollow of two-story brick homes and faded American flags with just 2,000 residents — boggles the mind.

    The Big Lots site could soon see a community of nearly 10,000 people — the 7,500 detainees and an estimated more than 2,000 workers to oversee them — that would instantly become the second-largest city in Schuylkill County (after Pottsville, the county seat). It’s just 300 yards from the largest daycare center in a township where the water and sewer system is already at capacity, with no local police force or nearby hospital to deal with the inevitable emergencies. The U.S. government won’t be paying the roughly $1 million a year in annual property taxes that propped up local schools and county and municipal services.

    The empty streets of downtown Tremont, Pa., on Tuesday. The 2,000 people of the coal-country borough and its surrounding township would be dwarfed by 7,500 potential detainees at a planned ICE facility on the edge of town.

    It’s these kinds of not-in-my-backyard worries that are driving a lot of the initial concern in Schuylkill County, especially from politicians who are cautious in talking about the fraught immigration issue in blood-red Trump country. “I am not going to get into a debate over the overarching immigration policies of the United States of America,” the GOP chair of the county commission, Larry Padora Jr., told a meeting on Wednesday, where he confirmed the ICE purchase of the warehouse.

    But a growing number of neighbors do want to talk about those immigration policies, and the stench of inhumanity.

    “I’m scared,” Tana Smith, a 24-year-old server at Behm’s Family Restaurant, the local wood-paneled breakfast hangout, told me about the pending ICE project. She, too, blended fears about the daycare site and possible escapees from a detention center with empathy for those same would-be detainees. “People’s families are just being, you know, ripped apart,” she said. “It’s really sad.”

    Smith said she’d already gently lobbied her dad — a Republican who said, “I guess it’s just taking care of the illegal people” — against the ICE plan. “I was like, I don’t feel like that’s true at all,” she said. “I feel like they’re going after everyone.”

    People are dying in Trump’s squalid concentration camps | Will Bunch

    Andrea Pitzer, author of the definitive history of global concentration camps, One Long Night, said Tremont residents like Smith are right to be alarmed. She told me her research found that authoritarian regimes frequently rely on existing sites like abandoned warehouses or factories as they launch a growing network of gulags.

    “The U.S. is clearly echoing previous history with these warehouse acquisitions,” she said. “Dachau — not a death camp, to be sure, but one of the earliest Nazi concentration camps — took over a converted factory when it began its heinous existence in 1933.”

    Pitzer asked, “What things will they do on this new, huge scale behind barbed wire?” She noted that the warehouses are a massive expansion of a system that’s already at a record for detainees, with more than 73,000, and is already plagued by squalid conditions, a measles outbreak at the family detention site in Texas, and a death rate as much as 10 times as high as during the Biden administration.

    No wonder ICE has moved to buy up new sites — including the two Pennsylvania warehouses — with a practically Soviet level of state secrecy. There are no public hearings. Top lawmakers from both parties have been left in the dark. “This was quiet,” the Democratic county commissioner, Gary Hess, told the meeting. “It was silent. And then, bango! There it was.”

    “These will not be warehouses — they will be very well-structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards,“ the U.S. Department of Homeland Security insisted in a statement Wednesday. It added that the federal acquisitions “should not come as news,” as ICE expands its nationwide dragnet.

    Yet, arguably the region’s most powerful politician, Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser, who voted for the $45 billion fund, has sounded, fittingly, like TV’s fictional German prison camp guard, Sgt. Schultz: He knows nothing, nothing! His spokesperson said Meuser, with both planned facilities in his 9th Congressional District, “has requested a call with … [ICE], and our office has reached out for additional information to better understand the details of the situation. We have not yet received a response.”

    Instead, it fell on Meuser’s likely Democratic opponent in November — Rachel Wallace, a former chief of staff for the U.S. Office of Management and Budget who has returned to her native Pottsville — to organize a town hall last week when the project was still rumored.

    Lisa Von Ahn (left) and Josephine Kwiatkowski, members of the Schuylkill County chapter of Indivisible, attend a county commissioners meeting in Pottsville on Tuesday to speak out against a proposed ICE detention center in Tremont, Pa.

    Most of the 100 or so people who packed a fire hall voiced opposition, but for a variety of reasons. The local GOP state representative, Joanne Stehr, attended and agreed with the not-in-my-backyard concerns, but then drew loud boos when she reportedly said: “I’m saying ICE has a job to do, and it’s going to get done. We are taking out the trash.”

    The growing uproar in Schuylkill County echoes brewing battles in many of the 21 other locations, even in areas that voted heavily for Trump in 2024. In Ashland, Va., a Canadian-based warehouse owner canceled its planned deal with ICE after economic pressure and opposition from county commissioners. Elected officials in Roxbury, N.J., and other proposed sites are also fighting to keep ICE out, but it’s unclear how much traction such an effort will get in red rural Pennsylvania.

    “We want economic development, and we want good businesses that are part of the community,” Wallace, the congressional candidate, told me as she decried the process and her opponent Meuser’s silence. “And this is the opposite of that.”

    And a growing number of Schuylkill County residents say their biggest alarm is less over the NIMBY concerns and more about the idea of their backyard hosting an American concentration camp.

    “We have seen firsthand the brutality that government agents are using to detain American citizens, legal immigrants, and law-abiding immigrants without legal status, and the violence in our streets caused by masked, heavily armed agents,” Josephine Kwiatkowski, an Army veteran and retiree from Pottsville, told the commissioners. She said these scenes and “the civil rights violations, the lack of humanitarian conditions [in current ICE facilities], and the discounting of the Constitution are the same issues that I was willing to sacrifice my life to oppose.”

    Pitzer, the concentration camp historian, said the time to act is now, before these proposed gulags are up and running.

    “Those who made excuses for or ignored these kinds of camps in Russia in the 1920s or Germany in the 1930s couldn’t know how much more vast and lethal those systems would become a decade later,” she said. “But we, who have those examples and other horrors from around the world in our rearview mirror, have no excuse.”

    This should be a five-alarm fire, not just for the politicians who’ve been trusted with keeping an American republic, but for citizens who are beginning to grasp a monstrous reality that was set into motion when Trump’s xenophobic demagoguery won a narrow plurality on Nov. 5, 2024. The image of our neighbors shipped in a supply chain like patio furniture and disappeared into the bowels of a Big Lots warehouse should have all of us asking a fundamental question.

    What are we doing here?

  • Pa. employers can’t reject job applicants who disclose their criminal history, court rules

    Pa. employers can’t reject job applicants who disclose their criminal history, court rules

    A Pennsylvania law prohibiting employment discrimination against people with criminal convictions has gotten a boost from a federal appeals court.

    A three-judge panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals held that regardless of how a prospective employer learned about an applicant’s criminal background, Pennsylvania law prohibits rejecting the application as long as the crime was not related to the job for which they are applying.

    The Jan. 28 ruling resolves a dispute in federal cases over the wording of a 1980 law that some employers argued applied only when the criminal information came from official files of state agencies.

    The Third Circuit opinion came in the case of Rodney Phath, a Philadelphia resident who in 2023 applied to work as a truck driver at Central Transport’s Montgomery County facility. Phath had experience as a truck driver and held the needed license and credential.

    He also had a 2008 criminal conviction for armed robbery, and had served six years in prison.

    Phath told the Michigan-based trucking company during an interview about the conviction and was immediately rejected from the job.

    In a 2024 federal lawsuit, Phath accused Central Trucking of violating Pennsylvania’s Criminal History Record Information Act.

    The company didn’t deny that it rejected Phath because of his criminal background. The law prohibits employers using “information collected by criminal justice agencies,” Central Trucking argued, and did not apply because Phath disclosed his conviction himself.

    District Judge John R. Padova agreed, and tossed out the complaint in December 2024.

    Because the law bans employers from obtaining formal criminal records and using the information in them for hiring decisions, it did not apply when Phath self-disclosed his criminal background, the judge concluded.

    Padova wasn’t the first judge to interpret the law literally, as applying only when an official file from a government agency sits on an employer’s desk — or at least in a computer desktop.

    A Georgetown Law professor, Brian Wolfman, offered to assist in Phath’s appeal with his students.

    The literal interpretation renders the law “meaningless,” the appeal argued, and creates a Catch 22. If an applicant with a criminal record discloses it, they are no longer protected. But if they don’t mention it when asked, they can be rejected for lying in the application process.

    “If that’s true the act would have no force at all, and that can’t be right,” Wolfman said in an interview.

    Phath won his appeal last week, with Third Circuit Judges Stephanos Bibas, Anthony Joseph Scirica, and D. Brooks Smith finding that the law prohibits prospective employers from using information that is included in a criminal history file regardless of how it came about.

    “The employer just has to receive the information,” Bibas, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, wrote in the opinion.

    The judge’s opinion could be appealed to an expanded panel of the court, which has the discretion to pick its cases. But if it stands it would be binding precedent in Pennsylvania’s federal court. The case now returns to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, where it will head toward trial.

    The attorney who represented Central Trucking in the appeal did not respond to a request for comment.

    Phath’s lawsuit was filed in federal court because Central Trucking is based out of state. But Pennsylvania employees suing in-state employers won’t have the benefit of the binding ruling, although it can be cited in an effort to convince local judges.

    The one in four Philadelphians who have a criminal record also are protected by the city’s Fair Chance Hiring Ordinance, which was updated in the fall.

    The ordinance prohibits employers from considering a misdemeanor after four years from an arrest or release from incarceration, and seven years for a felony. Before that time period, it allows rejecting applicants based on the criminal history only if the employer can show a specific record leads to a specific risk related to that specific job.

    Jamie Gullen, managing attorney of Community Legal Services’ employment unit, said the Philadelphia ordinance is one of the strongest in the country.

    Her unit represents 2,000 people a year who face employment barriers because of a criminal record. The most effective way to prevent this type of discrimination is to seal criminal records, Gullen says.

    The Clean Slate Act, which allows people with certain convictions to have their criminal records sealed by filing court petitions, has long waiting periods and doesn’t cover every offense. So Gullen was glad to see an appeals court acknowledge the barriers people with a criminal history face in the job market.

    “Fair hiring laws are a really important piece of the puzzle,” the attorney said.

  • Five measles cases in Lancaster County are Pa.’s first outbreak of 2026

    Five measles cases in Lancaster County are Pa.’s first outbreak of 2026

    Five cases of measles have been confirmed in Lancaster County, the Pennsylvania Department of Health said this week.

    The cases, all among school-age children and young adults, are the first of 2026 in Pennsylvania. Four of the cases are related, making this the state’s first measles outbreak of the year.

    Separately, the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday confirmed a case of measles in Collegeville involving a person traveling through the county who sought care at Patient First Primary & Urgent Care-Collegeville.

    Health officials urged anyone who was at the clinic between 1:15 and 4:15 p.m. on Jan. 29 to monitor for symptoms, which include a high fever, cough, runny nose, and a red rash.

    Measles has been spreading in the United States over the last year, including isolated cases among travelers and increasingly larger outbreaks. The CDC reported 49 outbreaks in 2025, up from 16 in 2024.

    An outbreak is when three or more cases are related, and is a sign that the community lacks sufficient immunity to keep the disease from spreading. Experts generally consider a community to have so-called herd immunity if at least 94% to 95% of people are vaccinated.

    In Lancaster County, 89% of kindergarten students and 95% of high school seniors had received two doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine in 2025, according to Pennsylvania Department of Health data.

    Last month, Philadelphia officials warned of a potential measles exposure for people who had passed through several transit hubs, including Philadelphia International Airport and 30th Street Station, after a traveler was confirmed to have measles.

    Measles is highly contagious, and people who are not vaccinated have a 90% chance of becoming ill if they come into contact with someone who has it. The virus spreads through the air when infected people cough, sneeze, or talk, and can linger in the air for up to two hours after an infected person leaves an area.

    People are considered immune to measles if they were born before 1957, have already had measles, or received two doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine.

    The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends children receive two doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine when they turn a year old and before entering kindergarten.

    Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has recently overseen an overhaul of the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule, with new recommendations for when vaccines should be given and who should receive them. But the measles vaccine remains among those recommended for all children.

    Staff writer Aubrey Whelan contributed to this article.

  • Ex-Packers assistant Ryan Mahaffey to succeed Jeff Stoutland as Eagles run game coordinator

    Ex-Packers assistant Ryan Mahaffey to succeed Jeff Stoutland as Eagles run game coordinator

    Changes to the Eagles’ staff under new offensive coordinator Sean Mannion are well underway.

    The team is hiring Ryan Mahaffey as the run game coordinator and tight ends coach, a league source confirmed to The Inquirer on Thursday.

    Mahaffey, 38, worked with Mannion while they were with the Green Bay Packers, most recently serving as the wide receivers coach for the last two seasons.

    The news of Mahaffey’s hiring comes in the wake of Jeff Stoutland’s departure from the Eagles after 13 seasons on Wednesday night. Stoutland, who turns 64 next week, was hired by Chip Kelly in 2013 to serve as the Eagles’ offensive line coach. In 2018, he added the title of run game coordinator to his role with the team.

    However, The Inquirer reported last week that Stoutland’s input in the running game decreased last season as the Eagles attempted to address their early struggles on the ground by shifting their game planning and play calling.

    While a source said that the Eagles wanted Stoutland back in 2026, he chose to step away from coaching, giving way to the hiring of Mahaffey to assume running game responsibilities.

    Mahaffey, a former NFL fullback and tight end, earned his NFL coaching start with the Packers in 2021 as an offensive quality control coach. He held the title of assistant offensive line coach (2022-23) before becoming the team’s wide receivers coach in 2024.

    Mahaffey coached tight ends at the college level, first at Northern Iowa, his alma mater, in 2013 and then at Western Kentucky in 2017-18. This is the first time in Mahaffey’s coaching career that he has held the title of run game coordinator.

    The addition of Mahaffey likely signals the end of Jason Michael’s tenure with the Eagles. Michael, 47, was brought to the Eagles by Nick Sirianni in 2021 as tight ends coach after serving in the same role with the Indianapolis Colts in 2019-20.

    Mahaffey is the third new face on the Eagles’ offensive coaching staff, joining Mannion and Josh Grizzard, the new pass game coordinator.

  • Olympics: Finland-Canada women’s hockey game postponed due to norovirus outbreak

    Olympics: Finland-Canada women’s hockey game postponed due to norovirus outbreak

    MILAN (AP) — Finland’s women’s hockey team’s preliminary round opener against Canada on Thursday has been postponed due to a stomach virus depleting Finland’s roster.

    The game was rescheduled to Feb. 12.

    The decision to postpone the game was announced shortly after Finland completed its early afternoon practice with just eight skaters and two goalies. The remaining 13 players were either in quarantine or isolation due to a norovirus that began affecting the team on Tuesday night.

    The postponement provides Finland two extra days to rest before playing the U.S. on Saturday. Had their game against Canada not been postponed, Finnish officials were considering the possibility of a forfeiture.

    “While all stakeholders recognize the disappointment of not playing the game as originally scheduled, this was a responsible and necessary decision that reflects the spirit of the Olympic Games and the integrity of the competition,” Olympic officials announced.

    “All stakeholders thank teams, partners, and fans for their cooperation and understanding, and look forward to the rescheduled game being played under safe and appropriate conditions.”

    Team Finland officials were already weighing the likelihood of not playing before the game was postponed.

    Coach Tero Lehterä said it could be unfair to ask his 10 healthy players to compete in a full game. Lehterä also said the team has to take into account the possibility of Canadian opponents being infected as well.

    “Most of them are getting better but not healthy enough to play. And there’s the chance that if we would play, it could influence Team Canada and their health as well,” Lehterä said following practice.

    “But I couldn’t risk my players if they were ill yesterday to play tonight because that would be wrong against the individual,” he added.

    Lehterä said the first sign of the illness became apparent on Tuesday night — and after the team held a full practice earlier in the day.

    The rescheduled game falls on the second of two consecutive off days during the women’s tournament, and a day before the quarterfinals open.

    The 53-year-old Lehterä is in his first year coaching the women’s team. He played for the Finland national team in the 1990s and previously coached men’s teams.

    Lehterä did his best to stay upbeat despite the situation. At one point, he joked the last time he competed in a game with 10 players was in a beer league outing.

    “It might become a strength. I got to think positive,” he said. “We might be stronger when we come out of this. You never know.”

    Lehterä then noted the potential of facing adversity was among his first messages to the team last summer.

    “Some things might happen, you never know what happens. And you only worry about the things that we can affect,” Lehterä said. “And this is not something we can do anything about it. We have no say whether we play or not. It’s not up to us. When we’re told to show up, we show up. Whether it’s five, six, seven, 15 or 20 [players].”

    Finland captain Jenni Hiirikoski, making her fifth Olympic appearance, said players were leaning on each other for support.

    “It’s not nice, definitely. But we try to focus one day at a time,” the 38-year-old defender said. “The big thing has been how we tolerate different things. I think we try to help each other, whatever it is, and how it goes. So it’s just stay calm and focused.”

    Finland, along with Czechia, entered the tournament as medal contenders behind the two global powers — the favored Americans and defending Olympic champion Canada.

    Finland is a four-time Olympic bronze medalist, with the last coming at the 2022 Beijing Games. And the team has won bronze at the past two world championships, beating Czechia both times.

    Though the 2022 Beijing Games were played amid the Coronavirus pandemic, no games were postponed during a competition that took place in front of few fans and with participants limited to a closed bubble.

    The closest a hockey game came to being postponed or forfeited happened during a preliminary round meeting between Canada and Russia. Team Canada refused to take the ice for pregame warmups and the game time was delayed because COVID test results of Russian players were not available.

    As a compromise, Canada agreed to begin the game after officials ruled all participants had to wear facemasks.

    AP Hockey writer Stephen Whyno contributed.