The 990-foot SS United States could be making waves as an artificial reef at the bottom of the Florida Panhandle coast as early as March, according to a tentative timeline from its new owners in Florida.
Even so, hope still springs eternal for the most ardent swath of ship enthusiasts who would rather see it restored to its former glory than swimming with the fishes.
As tourism officials in Okaloosa County report being about 80% done with the remediation work required to meet state and federal requirements for sinking, the New York Coalition to Save the SS United States has urged the New York City Council to intervene to the best of its abilities: a move that appeared to be gaining some traction in recent weeks, until it wasn’t.
A resolution introduced by NYC council member Gale A. Brewer last year finally got a committee hearing in late November.
The symbolic gesture calls on Congress to pass legislation that would allocate funds for restoration and to bring the ship to New York City’s Gowanus Bay Terminal. It also appeals to President Donald Trump, a fellow New Yorker, to sign the legislation.
Okaloosa County, respectfully, is hearing none of it.
“We purchased the vessel specifically to become the world’s largest artificial reef,” said county spokesperson Nick Tomecek. “Anybody that thinks otherwise, that’s just pipe dreams.”
Brewer is aware the odds are against those hoping to reacquire the ship. She acknowledged the resolution was a “Hail Mary” during last month’s committee hearing.
Though the resolution moved to the full council, it has not been put on the calendar for a vote — the last session of the year was Thursday.
The SS United States is pulled out into the Delaware River and ready to bid its farewell from Philadelphia as people gather to watch it leave in the Delaware River in Gloucester City, N.J., on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025.
Brewer could not speak to why the resolution did not get a hearing until a year after she introduced it, but she understands how, despite support on the 51-member council, it has not been put to a vote in the full body.
“Just like in Philly, we got everything under the sun — restaurants, small business, parking, it’s just endless,” Brewer said. “I think there’s lots of support, but it’s not like number one on anybody’s list.”
Brewer said the priority would be to stop the sinking of the ship. Once the SS United States was in New York City, preservationists, donors, and lawmakers could figure out the best way to redevelop the ship, though she could see it as a restaurant.
In many ways, the New York City resolution is also a tried-and-tested approach. As the SS United States faced eviction from its berth along the Delaware River, the conservancy launched public campaigns calling on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to step in and help the vessel find a new home.
Passenger ship aficionados take a last look at the SS United States docked at pier 80 in South Philadelphia Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025 before it is towed away to Alabama
The conservancy sent its pleas to then-President Joe Biden, as well as members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.
Much to the chagrin of preservationists, no politico ever came, despite the conservancy’s assurances that whoever championed the ship would be rewarded with all the jobs redevelopment would create.
Whether Trump, his administration, or this iteration of Congress would intervene at the eleventh hour is anyone’s guess.
The New York Coalition to Save the SS United States, which launched as a nonprofit in October 2024, wrote to Trump this year asking him to intervene shortly before the ship left Philadelphia, to no avail.
In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Pensacola after the ship’s departure, the coalition said it had “no means of knowing whether the Executive Branch of the United States is even aware of the Letter, let alone whether it is being considered.”
The White House did not immediately respond to questions about whether the ship’s saga had reached Trump’s desk and if the administration would be inclined to step in.
Either way, time is working against the coalition.
The suit warned of how some of the prep work in Mobile, Ala., could hinder preservation efforts.
“… the twin stacks of SSUS will be removed, as will other parts of her superstructure,” read the suit. “Once this is done, any hope of preserving the Ship afloat and intact will be lost forever.”
Those smokestacks were indeed removed at the end of summer.
So were all portholes and windows, along with the ship’s radar mast and propeller, according to an Okaloosa County update last week.
Despite the coalition’s fears laid out in the suit, Dan Sweeney, who cofounded the group, hit a more optimistic note, saying it was not too late to stop a reefing.
“The Big U remains an important symbol of America,” he said of the SS United States. “It could also prove to be a robust economic development engine. These two reasons are more than enough for us to continue the effort, and many people across the country agree. For us, it’s ‘damn the torpedoes.’”
Okaloosa County officials, meanwhile, say the months ahead will be used to finish cleaning the ship, removing nonmetal items, cutting holes throughout the ship because the sinking will not be able to be done with explosives, and coordinating with state and local agencies on a sink date.
Should work continue at its current pace and no delays in inspections, the SS United States could be sunk as early as March.
Alex Fogg, the natural resources chief for Destin-Fort Walton Beach, said weather delays, of course, are always possible.
Tomecek reiterated that the county was working with the SS United States’ previous owners to build a land-based museum, which would feature the eye-catching smokestacks and other preserved ship memorabilia and artifacts.
He understands the renewed interest in “saving” the ship, though it would have been turned into scrap had Okaloosa officials not stepped in. In any case, Tomecek said, these efforts come too little, too late.
“I think that when [the SS United States] was sold to the county, a lot of folks kind of woke up and realized what was going on, when, in fact, they should have been worried about her the past 30 years, when she was sitting in Philadelphia,” Tomecek said.
Capstan Therapeutics’ sale this year for $2.1 billion, the highest price paid for a private early-stage biotech company since 2022, was a triumph for its founders at the University of Pennsylvania.
Unfortunately for Philadelphia, the company is based in San Diego. Investors wanted an executive who lives there to be CEO.
Capstan was a miss for Philadelphia, said Jeffrey Marrazzo, who cofounded a high-profile regional biotech company, Spark Therapeutics, and is now an industry investor and consultant.
If Philadelphia had a bigger talent pool of biotech CEOs, “it would have and should have been here,” he said.
The Philadelphia region has lagged behind other biotech centers in landing companies and jobs, but industry experts are working to close the gap and better compete with Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area, and San Diego.
According to Marrazzo and others, the Philadelphia region’s relatively shallow pool of top biotech management is a key challenge.
Big investors go to managers who have proven ability to deliver big investment returns, said Fred Vogt, interim CEO of Iovance Biotherapeutics, a California company with a manufacturing facility in the Navy Yard.
“They want the company to perform. They’ll put it in Antarctica, if that was where the performance would come from,” he said.
The Lilly announcement last month also reflects Philadelphia’s national biotech stature. It’s the fourth U.S. city to get a Lilly Gateway Lab, behind Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area, and San Diego.
Those places have far outpaced Philadelphia in the creation of biotech research and development jobs, even as the sector’s growth has slowed.
From 2014 through last year, the Boston area added four biotech research and development jobs for every one job added here, according to an Inquirer analysis of federal employment data.
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Penn’s role in Philadelphia biotech
Philadelphia’s reputation as an innovation center — boosters like to call the region “Cellicon Valley” — starts with the University of Pennsylvania, which has long been a top recipient of National Institutes of Health grants to advance scientific discovery.
Research at Penn has contributed to the creation of 45 FDA-approved treatments since 2013, according to the university.
“Penn discoveries help spark new biotech companies, but we can’t build the whole ecosystem in this area alone,” said John Swartley, Penn’s chief innovation officer. “Great science is just one ingredient. We also need capital, experienced leadership, real estate and manufacturing infrastructure, and strong city and state support.”
Penn was one of two Philadelphia institutions receiving more than $100 million in NIH funding in the year that ended Sept. 30. The otherwas the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman spoke at a University of Pennsylvania news conference after they were named winners of a 2023 Nobel Prize in medicine. Their work was instrumental to modifying mRNA for therapeutic uses, such as the rapid development of lifesaving vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic.
By contrast, the Boston area was home to 10 institutions with at least $100 million in NIH grants, generating more spinoffs and jobs.
The Philadelphia region has a healthy number of biotech spinouts, but the biggest markets have more from a larger number of research institutions, said Robert Adelson, founder Osage University Partners, a venture capital firm in Bala Cynwyd.
That concentration of jobs and companies in the Boston area — where nearly 60,000 people worked in biotech R&D last year — makes it easier to attract people. By comparison, there were 13,800 such jobs in Philadelphia and Montgomery County, home to the bulk of the regional sector.
If a startup fails, which happens commonly in biotech, “there’ll be another startup or another company for me to go to” in a place like Boston, said Matt Cohen, a managing partner for life science at Osage.
Another challenge for Philadelphia: It specializes in cell and gene therapy, a relatively small segment of the biotech industry, whose allure to investors has faded in the last few years.
Such market forces shaped the trajectory of Spark, a 2013 Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia spinout that developed Luxterna, the first FDA-approved gene therapy, used to treat an inherited form of blindness. The promise of Spark’s gene therapy work for a form of hemophilia spurred its 2019 acquisition by Swiss pharmaceutical titan Roche for $4.8 billion.
The company still employs about 300 in the city, a spokesperson said, and work continues on its $575 million Gene Therapy Innovation Center at 30th and Chestnut Streets in University City.
The long arc of biotech
A handful of companies dominated the early days of U.S. biotech. Boston had Biogen and Genzyme, San Francisco had Genentech, San Diego had Hybritech, and Philadelphia had Centocor. All of them started between 1976 and 1981.
Centocor started in the University City Science Center because one of its founders, virologist Hilary Koprowski, was the longtime director of the Wistar Institute. Centocor’s first CEO, Hubert Schoemaker, moved here from the Boston area, where he had gotten his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Another drug still under development at the time of the sale, Stelara, went on to become J&J’s top-selling drug as recently as 2023 with $10.9 billion in revenue. Stelara, approved to treat several autoimmune disorders, remains a testament to Centocor’s legacy.
Despite its product success, Centocor didn’t have the same flywheel effect of creating new companies and a pipeline of CEOs as peer companies did in regions outside of Philadelphia.
The University of Pennsylvania’s Smilow Center for Translational Research, shown in 2020, is one of the school’s major laboratory buildings.
“There are a lot of alums of Centocor that are really impressive, but they seem to have wound up elsewhere,” said Bill Holodnak, CEO and founder of Occam Global, a New York life science executive recruitment firm.
Among the Centocor executives who left the region was Harvey Berger, Centocor’s head of research and development from 1986 to 1991. He started a new company in Cambridge, Mass.
At the time, the Philadelphia area didn’t have the infrastructure, range of scientists, or management talent needed for biotech startups, he said.
Since then, he thinks the regional market has matured.
“Now, there’s nothing holding the Philadelphia ecosystem back. The universities, obviously Penn, and others have figured this out,” Berger said.
Conditions have changed
Penn’s strategy for helping faculty members commercialize their inventions has evolved significantly over the last 15 years.
It previously licensed the rights to develop its research to companies outside of the area, such as Jim Wilson’s gene therapy discoveries and biochemist Katalin Karikó and immunologist Drew Weissman’s mRNA patents. Now it takes a more active role in creating companies.
Among Penn’s latest spinouts is Dispatch Bio, which came out of stealth mode earlier this year after raising $216 million from investors led by Chicago-based Arch Venture Partners and San Francisco-based Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.
Dispatch, chaired by Marrazzo, is developing a cell therapy approach that uses a virus to attach what it calls a “flare” onto the cells it wants the immune system to attack.
Marrazzo said in July that he wasn’t going to be involved in Dispatch if it wasn’t based largely in Philadelphia. As of July, 75% of its 60 employees were working in Philadelphia. Still, Dispatch’s CEO is in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Philadelphia region is increasingly well-positioned for the current biotech era, said Audrey Greenberg, who played a key role in launching King of Prussia’s Center for Breakthrough Medicines about five years ago. The center is a contract developer and manufacturer for cell and gene therapies.
“You no longer need to move to Kendall Square to get a company funded,” she said, referring to Cambridge’s biotech epicenter. “You need good data, a credible translational plan, experienced advisers, and access to patient capital, all of which can increasingly be built here.”
Greenberg now works as a venture partner for the Mayo Clinic, with the goal of commercializing research discoveries within the health system’s network of hospitals in Minnesota, Arizona, and Florida.
She plans to bring that biotech business to the Philadelphia region.
“I’m going to be starting my companies all here in Philadelphia, because that’s where I am. And I know everybody here, and everybody I’m going to hire in these startups that are going to be based here,” she said.
In the first year of President Donald Trump’s administration, Palantir Technologies has secured major contracts to compile data on Americans, assist the president’s federal immigration enforcement, and play a key role at the height of the Department of Government Efficiency’s efforts to shrink the federal government.
But just a few years ago, it seemed unlikely that billionaire Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir — a publicly traded data software company that Karp described in 2011 as “deeply involved in supporting progressive values and causes” — would ever strike such deals with Trump.
Karp grew up in the Philadelphia area in a politically left-leaning household and was critical of Trump during his first White House term. But over time, and catalyzed by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, his opinion and habits shifted. Quickly, he went from being a major Democratic Party donor to writing a big check to Trump’s 2024 inaugural committee.
Palantir is a publicly traded data analytics software company that was cofounded by Karp, Joe Lonsdale, Nathan Gettings, Stephen Cohen, the company’s president, and Peter Thiel, a billionaire tech investor and cofounder of PayPal. Thiel is a libertarian and is a staunch supporter of right-wing ideology.
Palantir, based in Denver, grew out of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States and a desire to help improve national security.
According to The Daily podcast guest Michael Steinberger, who spent six years interviewing Karp for a book, one of Palantir’s major contractors has been the CIA, which was also one of its early investors. Palantir’s technological products also played a key role in assisting Ukraine during the early months of Russia’s war on the country.
The company started its partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during former President Barack Obama’s administration, but that contract did not draw controversy until Trump’s first term in the White House, when his immigration crackdown became a key priority, Steinberger, a contributing writer to the Times, said.
Alex Karp, Palantir CEO, has roots in Philadelphia
Karp was born in New York but grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs, he told the World Economic Forum in 2023. He went on to attend Central High School.
As Steinberger describes it, “He’s a Philly kid. He grew up in Philadelphia. Grew up in a very left-wing household.” Karp is the son of a Jewish pediatrician and a Black artist. And he’s dyslexic, Steinberger said.
“It’s like I have this weirdly structured brain,” Karp said in an interview with Steinberger. “The motor is just structured differently.”
Karp and his younger brother spent time going to antiwar and antinuclear protests, and the older Karp attended Haverford College, Steinberger said. There, he closely identified with his Black heritage, getting involved with Black student affairs and organizing an antiracism conference at Yale University.
Karp insists that he did not put much effort into his schooling at Haverford, but Steinberger, who was a classmate of Karp’s in college, appears to think otherwise.
“I think his path in life would suggest otherwise. I think the library saw a lot more of him than it did of me, which may go some way to explaining why he became a billionaire and I did not,” Steinberger said.
After Haverford, Karp attended Stanford Law School, where he met and became close with Thiel — whose political views were the opposite of Karp’s. Years later, Karp and Thiel reunited after 9/11. Thiel was looking for a CEO for Palantir.
“Thiel interviews a couple of people for the CEO position, but then he and the other people involved in founding Palantir realized Karp is probably the right guy for the job,” Steinberger said.
In an interview with Steinberger, Karp admitted that his background made him an unlikely choice for CEO.
“I wasn’t trained in business. I didn’t know anything about start-up culture. I didn’t know anything about building a business. I didn’t know anything about financing a business,” Karp said.
From a Philly liberal to a staunch Trump defender
In Steinberger’s telling, Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, gave rise to a political environment that would solidify Karp’s rightward shift.
Over time, Karp had become discouraged with the left’s criticisms of Palantir, but that reached a fever pitch when Palantir offered its services to Israel as the country began its military invasion of Gaza amid protests, including internal dissent from employees, Steinberger said.
Steinberger said Karp — once a protester himself — became increasingly troubled by college campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
“He thinks the protests are riddled with antisemitism,” Steinberger said. “They’re very dangerous and he sees this as reflective of a broader rot in his mind on the left.”
Karp continued to back then-President Joe Biden, who was supportive of the Israeli government, but in December 2023, Karp posed a sort of ultimatum at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California regarding liberals’ stance on Israel and a desire for the Democratic Party to denounce the college campus protests.
“I’m one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party and, quite frankly, I’m calling it out, and I’m giving to Republicans. If you keep up with this behavior, I’m going to change. A lot of people like me are going to change. We have to really call this out. It is completely beyond the bounds,” Karp said.
Over time, Karp started donating more “aggressively” to Republicans, Steinberger said, and made clear his support for Trump. Karp wrote a $1 million check to the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee and later began publicly praising Trump on national security.
Karp, for his part, still thinks of himself as a progressive.
“I didn’t shift my politics,” Karp said. “The political parties have shifted their politics. The idea that what’s being called progressive is any way progressive is a complete farce.”
It’s school-opening season for the Philadelphia School District.
On Tuesday, officials cut the ribbon on a brand-new Thomas Holme Elementary, a K-8 school in the Northeast. That celebration came exactly a week after the district opened a new middle-school building, AMY at James Martin, in Port Richmond.
“I see a place where students will have access to a 21st century education,” Holme principal Micah Winterstein said during a ceremony attended by students, school district officials, and community members. “A place where they feel like school is where they belong, a place where they will have moments each day that inspire.”
New furniture at the new Thomas Holme Elementary School.
Unlike many other sections of the city, where the district’s enrollment is shrinking, the Northeast’s school population is booming — its schools are overcrowded.
Holme, named for Pennsylvania’s first surveyor general, outgrew its old building, which was razed to make way for the new 141,000-square-foot structure. Designed with flooding natural light, welcoming learning spaces, and flexible spaces and furniture for more conversational teaching environments, the school includes state-of-the-art music rooms, a bright new gymnasium and stage, science classrooms, an interactive media commons, and a dance studio with a real hardwood dance floor.
A dance studio at the new Thomas Holme Elementary School has a real hardwood dancefloor.
“This is the shining star of the school,” said April Tomarelli, an educational facilities planner, during a tour of the sunlit dance studio.
Smaller details, like the dragon-shaped tiles in the cafeteria to match the school mascot, offer a homey touch, said April Tomarelli, an educational facilities planner, during a tour.
“Everything was done with intention,” Tomarelli said.
A music room at the new Thomas Holme School.
Students had a hand in the design of the new building — they weighed in on the facade, the playground, and the stormwater management system.
“This school comes from you,” said architect Troy Hill, who helped design the building for Blackney Hayes, adding that the students’ input included more learning spaces, outdoor classrooms, and a space for designing murals.
The outside of Thomas Holme School in Northeast Philadelphia.
The new Holme will open as the district nears completion of its long-awaited facilities master plan, which officials have said will call for some school closings and co-locations, as well as building renovations and new construction.
The average district school building was built 73 years ago, said Reginald L. Streeter, president of the board of education.
“Most Philadelphia children walk into schools older than their grandparents,” he said.
Philadelphia School District Superintendent Tony B. Watlington speaks during opening ceremonies for the new Thomas Holme Elementary School on Tuesday.
At the ribbon cutting, Superintendent Tony B. Wallington Sr. celebrated the fact that, like AMY at James Martin, the new Thomas Holme school was completed on time — and on budget.
“You’re in a school district that’s been excellent stewards of federal, state, and local tax dollars,” he said, adding that the district has its best investment-grade credit rating in 50 years.
The school library at the new Thomas Holme Elementary School.
The state-of-the-art school represents a step towards the district’s aspiration to be the “fastest-improving, large school district in the country,” he said.
“Not for bragging rights,” he said. “But because the children of Philadelphia deserve it so.”
Mike Greco, president of Penn Academy Athletic Association, which helped shepherd the project through the community, said he has two grandchildren who will be attending the new school in January. His two children had previously graduated from the old Thomas Holme, which was built in 1950.
“We needed this,” he said. “We need good things to happen everywhere in this city.”
Once considered the loudest hospital in the Philadelphia area, Riddle Hospital in Media has significantly reduced its nighttime noise levels, newly released federal data shows.
At the Main Line Health Riddle hospital, only 12% of patients from the most recent survey rated the area around their room at night as “sometimes” or “never” quiet — down from 26% of patients surveyed between July 2022 and June 2023.
Across the Philadelphia region, 52% of patients said their hospital room was “always” quiet at night. That’s slightly worse than nationally, where patients said hospitals were quiet throughout their stay 57% of the time.
Virtua Mount Holly Hospital in New Jersey is now rated the loudest by patients.
Nazareth Hospital in Northeast Philadelphia, owned by Trinity Health, was ranked the second loudest in the region.
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Quieter hospitals have benefits for both patients and staff, helping to lower anxiety levels, improve sleep quality, and ease the flow of communication.
Riddle Hospital’s improvement follows construction of a new 230,000-square-foot patient pavilion that had temporarily increased noise at its Delaware County campus.
“With the pavilion’s 2023 completion, as well as the resulting addition of more private rooms, noise is significantly reduced,” spokesperson Larry Hanover said.
Reducing noise is also priority for Penn Medicine, whose Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) was rated the quietest hospital among the 25,000 patients surveyed in the Philly-area.
Chester County Hospital, also owned by Penn Medicine, was ranked the second quietest.
The health system has made big investments in recent years to address noise levels at its hospitals, according to the university’s website. The Pavilion, which opened at HUP in Center City in 2021, was designed to reduce noise levels and nightly disruptions by separating nonclinical work from patient care areas.
Each floor of the $1.6 billion building centers around an “offstage” area for staff to hold conversations and calls away from patient rooms that line the perimeter. The design of the rooms also allows care teams to check vitals and refill medications from the hallway, reducing nighttime disruptions.
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All 17 of Philadelphia’s City Council members have indicated they will seek reelection in 2027. And if they follow through, that election would mark the first time all members simultaneously asked voters for new four-year terms since the city’s Home Rule Charter was adopted in 1951.
The 2027 primary is more than a year away, and plenty can happen before then. Past lawmakers have declined to seek reelection for a variety of unexpected reasons, such as receiving an appointment to another post or being indicted. And while incumbents usually prevail in Council elections, several current members are likely to see serious challengers.
Still, if the incumbents all run and prevail, Philadelphia could potentially see for the first time in its modern political history a cohort of Council members serving more than four years together.
In some ways, it makes sense that this crop of Council members might be the first to achieve that feat. Council is remarkably inexperienced at the moment, with 12 of its members having served less than two terms. And it appears no current Council members are expected to resign their seats to run for other offices until after 2027, given that none have entered the race for Philadelphia’s open U.S. House seat next year and that Mayor Cherelle L. Parker is in her first term and unlikely to face a reelection challenge from Council’s ranks.
“It’s no surprise this City Council all wants to return,” said John C. Hawkins, a City Hall lobbyist. “They are much younger and newer than previous iterations, and they’re feeling confident that they and their leadership are representing their constituents well.”
While many voters may not start paying attention to who is running for Council until much closer to the primary, potential candidates and political insiders are already hard at work trying to figure out which seats will be open or vulnerable and who might run in the 2027 election cycle.
In addition to being an opportunity for special interests to wine and dine the state’s political class, Pennsylvania Society also serves as a breeding ground for rumors about future elections. This year, there was little if any talk of vacancies emerging on Council.
O’Neill to seek 13th term
In the run-up to every recent city election cycle, speculation has swirled around whether Councilmember Brian J. O’Neill, the body’s lone Republican member and by far its longest-serving, will run for reelection.
O’Neill, who turns 76 later this month and was first elected in 1979, said he is up for the challenge of extending his own record by seeking a 13th four-year term.
“I am definitely running,” O’Neill said Monday. “If my health or my wife’s changed, that would be a big factor. Right now, she’s pretty healthy, and so am I.”
Councilmember Brian J. O’Neill (center) speaks during a hearing in City Council Monday, Oct. 27, 2025 on former Mayor Jim Kenney’s tax on sweetened beverages. Behind him, front to rear, are: Councilmembers Kendra Brooks, Jimmy Harrity, Nina Ahmad, and Rue Landau.
O’Neill said he decided long ago that if he could no longer knock on doors while campaigning, he would call it quits. After shoveling snow for more than two hours last weekend, O’Neill said, he is confident that won’t be a problem.
What is most remarkable about O’Neill’s longevity is that he is one of the few district Council members who regularly face opposition. That’s because his Northeast Philadelphia-based 10th District is the only one in deep-blue Philly that could be considered purple.
In fact, a majority of voters registered with parties in the district are now Democrats. But O’Neill has successfully swatted away a series of Democratic challengers, doing so most recently in 2023 against Gary Masino, who led the sheet metal workers’ union.
O’Neill, who avoids partisan political debates in Council and focuses almost entirely on Northeast Philly neighborhood issues, expects another challenge in 2027. But he is not concerned.
“I try not to think about it because I could never have predicted any of the races I’ve had,” O’Neill said. “It’s a waste of energy because no matter who runs against you, they all present different situations.”
The Council members who are viewed as potentially vulnerable include some of the newest and some who must navigate ideologically divided constituencies.
Councilmember Jimmy Harrity, one of seven Council members who represent the entire city, was the last-place finisher among Democrats in the 2023 primary, putting a target on his back for the 2027 primary.
In the last two election cycles, Councilmembers Kendra Brooks and Nicolas O’Rourke of the progressive Working Families Party won at-large seats set aside for minority-party or independent candidates. The GOP, which had held those seats for 70 years, may seek to mount a comeback.
City Council candidates Kendra Brooks and Nicolas O’Rourke celebrate after the Working Families Party declared victory at their election night gathering at Roar Nightclub in Philadelphia, Pa. on Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023.
Councilmember Cindy Bass, a centrist who represents the 8th District, which includes parts of North and Northwest Philadelphia, narrowly eked out a win over progressive Democrat Seth Anderson-Oberman in the 2023 primary and may see another challenge from the left in 2027.
And Councilmember Jeffery “Jay” Young Jr., who represents the North Philadelphia-based 5th District, has already drawn a potential challenger.
Young won his seat without opposition after being the only candidate to qualify for the ballot in a bizarre scenario triggered by former Council President Darrell L. Clarke’s last-minute decision not to seek reelection in 2023.
Council members do not have to make their reelection campaigns official for more than a year, and they gave a variety of answers when asked if they planned to seek new terms.
“I can’t see a reason why I wouldn’t,” said Council President Kenyatta Johnson, who represents the 2nd District in South and Southwest Philadelphia.
“I’m strongly considering yes,” said Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr., whose 4th District includes parts of West and Northwest Philadelphia.
Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, who holds an at-large seat, said yes, and added, “What I like is the fact this legislative body as a collective is so young.”
Councilmembers Nina Ahmad, Harrity, O’Rourke, Jamie Gauthier, Rue Landau, Quetcy Lozada, and Mike Driscoll all simply affirmed they would likely run. And numerous City Hall insiders told The Inquirer they expect all members to seek new terms.
Councilmember Rue Landau speaks with Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr. on first day of City Council on Jan. 23, 2025, Caucus Room, Philadelphia City Hall.
Young gave perhaps the most puzzling answer.
“It’s not up to me to make that decision,” he said. “It’s up to the people of the 5th District.”
Asked how he would discern whether voters wanted to keep him before the next election, Young said he would gauge support by doing outreach in his district. But he also said he would personally like to serve another four years.
“I like doing my job,” he said.
2031 mayoral election race on horizon
Even if they all win reelection, it is unlikely that this group of Council members will stay together for future elections.
One major driver of Council turnover is the City Charter’s “resign to run” rule, which requires city employees to step down if they want to campaign for an office other than the one they hold. Consequently, mayoral elections are a major driver of resignations.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker is with City Council President Kenyatta Johnson (far right) and supportive Council members in the Mayor’s Reception Room at City Hall Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024 after Council gave final approval to the Sixers arena.
Assuming Parker wins reelection in 2027, she will be unable to seek a third consecutive term in 2031, and several current members are likely to throw their hats in the ring to replace her.
Johnson, Thomas, Gauthier, and Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson are all seen as potential contenders for that race.
More than two years ago, a Chester County Voter Services employee made a dire prediction.
In an eight-page grievance against Voter Services Director Karen Barsoum, the employee described a hostile work environment in which election workers were subjected to “bullying” from the department’s director.
At the time of the complaint, the employee wrote, 15 people had left the 25-person department since Barsoum was hiredin 2021.
“I have very legitimate fears that there will be a mass exodus from voter services in the coming months,” the employee, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, wrote in the grievance document he provided to The Inquirer. “My concern is how this will impact the 370k voters of Chester County.”
Two years later, it appears that his prediction had come true. The number of staff departures since Barsoum took over grew to 29 by November of this year, according to a Chester County spokesperson.
Election offices across the nation have experienced a high level of turnover and staff burnout in recent years in the face of election denialism and threats, but Chester County’s churn-rate is nearly double the number of departures in Montgomery and Delaware Counties’ elections departments that have lost 16 and 15 people respectively in the same time period. Both departments are larger than Chester County’s election office.
Accounts and records from three former staffers at Chester County Voters Services Department, two of whomasked not to be named, paint a picture of a hostile work environment where employees were often made to feel as though management had placed a target on their back.
These concerns have been raised to elected and non-elected county leaders for more than two years.
Barsoum saidin an interview that she couldn’t respond to allegations from employees but described her management style as collaborative.
Employees, she said, had left for a variety of reasons including jobs in other Southeast Pennsylvania election offices that pay better than Chester County. Others, she said, left to pursue other opportunities or for family reasons.
Some, she said, left because of the increased pressures of election work as state law changes and the intensity increases.
“I encourage everyone to do what is the best for them,” Barsoum saidThursday.
Though Barsoum acknowledged it was challenging for the office when people left, she said she and other managers were very hands-on in training staff and ensuring that staff members knew the ins and outs of various positions.
Karen Barsoum, Chester County’s director of voter services, at the Chester County Government Services Building in 2022.
The employee who filed the grievance said he feared that the attrition would leadto mistakes during the 2024 presidential election, when the eyes of the nation were on Pennsylvania.
Ultimately, everyone who wanted to vote was able to, county officials said. But the error created a chaotic scene as the county kept polls open two additional hours and more than 12,000 voters were asked to cast provisional ballots — which require more steps from election workers and voters to be counted.
The county hired a WestChester law firm to investigate how and why the poll book error occurred.
Chester County’s CEO David Byerman, the county’s top unelected official, said that turnover across all departments can be attributed to a variety of factors in the county including pay and managers.
He described working in elections today as a “pressure cooker” as a result of the political climate.
The investigation, he said, would look closely at management in the department and whether factors existed that would have hindered staff from identifying or reporting concerns.
“The very fact that we’re doing an investigation into what happened last month … indicates that we want to learn more about what happened in this particular election,” Byerman said. “Part of that investigation is looking at the performance of our management team in voter services.”
It’s unclear at this stage whether the error can be attributed to the turnover and environment in voter services, but Paul Manson, a professor at Portland State University who researches challenges faced by election workers, said the turnover seen in Chester County is unusual and alarming.
Often, Manson said, staff tends to be relatively stable in election offices because they care deeply about the work. Stressors of reduced staffing and the toxic environment described by threeformeremployees, he said, could create a dynamic that makes mistakes more likely.
“When we have these periods of turnover local election officials really sort of grit their teeth because they worry about these small errors turning into big errors,” he said.
Election workers process mail ballots for the 2024 general election at the Chester County, administrative offices in West Chester. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
Allegations of ‘hostility’ toward staff
Barsoum, who came to Chester County from Berks County in 2021, has earned respect in the election field nationally and within Pennsylvania. Barsoum had been the assistant director in the Berks election office.
“Karen Barsoum has an extraordinary knowledge that is a resource both statewide here in Pennsylvania and has been a resource nationally. I don’t think anyone doubts her knowledge of election processes,” said Byerman, the Chester County CEO.
“At the end of the day I think any manager needs to combine two abilities. An ability to manage an office effectively and an ability to be knowledgeable and an expert.”
Byerman said each manager in the county is evaluated on these criteria regularly, but when asked whether Barsoum possessed both qualities, Byerman did not respond.
Former county employees said Barsoum’s high reputation outside Chester County did not align with what they experienced in their jobs.
The employee who filed the grievance against Barsoum said he got along with her well when she started and he received high marks on performance reviews, according to documents provided to The Inquirer.
But after a reorganization in the department in 2022, he said, he noticed that more and more staff members were leaving. The employee was promoted to a new role and during the 2022 election did that job while maintaining responsibilities from his prior role.
He said he expressed concern about being overworked and received little support in the new role. After the employee said he dropped the ball on a minor item and reported it to Barsoum, she began treating him differently.
“In Karen’s eyes you’re either 100% right or 100% wrong,” he said in an interview.
The employee filed his grievance in August of 2023 after a meeting where, he said, Barsoum listed accomplishments of staff members and refused to acknowledge any of his work.
Barsoum’s “hostility” toward him in the meeting was so noticeable, he wrote in the complaint, that eight colleagues approached him afterward to say they noticed it.
“After so many months of mistreatment and disrespect in such a hostile work environment, it eventually gets to the point that something needs to be said. If the Presidential Election were to not run smoothly next year and ChesCo voters were disenfranchised due to the Voter Services, I would forever regret not sending this grievance,” the employee wrote in his grievance.
That employee left the department the next year. He was placed on a performance-improvement plan weeks after submitting his grievance, and, after completing that plan, he was placed on another as a result of a low performance review and quit before he could be terminated.
Elizabeth Sieb, who worked at the election office for eight years before leaving in 2022, said she had similar experiences with Barsoum to those detailed in the grievance. For the past year and a half she has been telling county officials about her concerns.
In 2022, Barsoum reorganized the office to respond to the new stressors of elections and new responsibilities that come with mail voting. Since then, she said, she and staff work to evaluate after each election what worked and what didn’t so adjustments can be made.
But Sieb said Barsoum didn’t take constructive criticism well when changes were made and stifled discussion among staff members.
Sieb was fired from the department in 2022. She said she was placed on a personal-improvement plan that demanded that she seek mental health treatment and subsequently placed on a three-day unpaid suspension.
Following the suspension, Sieb said, she was directed not to speak to her colleagues if it was not directly related to her work. She said she was fired for violating that rule when she reported to a lower-level manager concerns about another manager speaking disparagingly about a job applicant in earshot of other employees.
Sieb, who at times questioned Barsoum’s decisions, said she felt that the director was threatened by long-term staff and was prone to outbursts when employees would correct her.
“She was slowly but surely wearing down and getting rid of all the people that had been there a long time,” Sieb said.
Jennifer Morrell, the CEO of the Elections Group, a company that assists local election officials, said turnover in election offices happens for a variety of reasons — including the long hours and relatively low pay civil servants receive.
She noted that training programs from state agencies and associations are designed to help prevent errors as a result of turnover and that a larger department, like Chester County, may be able to fill rolls with election workers from other counties.
“Karen is highly respected in the election community, super professional,” Morrell said. “Our hearts just ached with what happened because it could have happened to anybody.”
Commissioners respond to concerns
After leaving the department, Sieb said, she believed she suffered from PTSD related to her experience.
Beginning in 2024 she began reaching out to Republican Commissioner Eric Roe with her concerns. Roe, Sieb said, investigated the complaints and brought them to the other commissioners, Democrats Josh Maxwell and Marian D. Moskowitz. The commissioners also serve as the county’s election board.
“I have had a lot of people come to me with various concerns throughout county government, and voter services is certainly one of them,” Roe told The Inquirer, explaining that his role as minority party commissioner makes him a frequent recipient of workforce complaints.
Chester County Commissioners (from left) Eric M. Roe, Josh Maxwell, and Marian D. Moskowitz at a board meeting in September.
But a year and a half later, Barsoum remained in her role and Sieb continued to hear from her former colleagues with concerns. Twice this year, Sieb went before the Chester County Election Board to raise public concerns about turnover under Barsoum.
Maxwell, who chairs the Chester County Election Board, said the county reviews reports from departments when they receive them. He said he was unable to comment on specific departments or personnel matters but said the county needed to do everything it could to support its election workers.
“We need to do a better job, I think, making sure that people feel valued. Including the folks that unfortunately we’ve lost,” he said.
Election work in Pennsylvania and elsewhere has gotten increasingly fraught. The work itself is more intense than it once was with more mail voting, and workers now deal with threats, longer hours, and a camera on them when they’re working with ballots.
“We were seen as clerical people, maybe, in the past; now we are wearing many different hats,” Barsoum said.
Moskowitz attributed much of the turnover in the county to burnout and noted the threats that election employees have faced in her years on the job.
Barsoum became emotional as she said she had worked to ensure that her staff had the resources they needed to feel safe, including mental health resources through the Human Resources department, team building outside election cycles, and a space for workers to step off camera.
“We can count on each other; we lean on each other. It’s a strong bond, a camaraderie,” she said.
When hiring new staffers, Barsoum said she warns them of what’s to come — that they’re not walking into a normal 9-to-5 job, that they won’t be able to plan vacations through about half of the year, and that they’ll be asked to take phone calls from irate people.
It’s a lifestyle, she said, that isn’t right for everyone — including some parents.
“If you’re leaning on a daycare and that is your sole, the go-to, it will be very hard to work in the department because there is 24/7 operations, and there are so many things that are going off and beyond the regular work schedule.”
Josh Maxwell, chair of Chester County Commissioners and the county Elections Board, presides over a September commissioners meeting.
Maxwell and Moskowitz declined to comment specifically when asked if they were confident in Barsoum’s leadership, but Maxwell has repeatedly asked residents to direct their anger at November’s error at him rather than Barsoum or her staff.
“I think it’s important that we protect these folks and we empower them to make the best decisions possible,” Maxwell said at an election board meeting last week.
Speaking to The Inquirer, he reiterated that point.
“We want to make sure that people feel welcomed and empowered and are in a working environment they appreciate,” Maxwell said in an interview.
“Elections have changed so much in five years it’s not surprising to me that some people want to find something new to do.”
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.
Victor Acurio Suarez is 52 but childlike, born with developmental disabilities that have left him unable to live on his own.
He likes to talk to people, said his brother, who takes care of him. And on Sept. 22, in a Lowe’s parking lot near the brothers’ home in Seaford, Del., he tried to flag down an ICE agent, apparently thinking the officer could help him find work.
Instead, Acurio Suarez, originally from Ecuador, was arrested for being in the country without permission and sent to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, an ICE detention facility in central Pennsylvania.
Acurio Suarez doesn’t realize he’s in custody, his brother, Lenin Acurio Suarez, said in an interview. He thinks he’s on vacation, provided with three free meals a day and allowed to buy snacks and kick a soccer ball.
But in phone calls from Moshannon, he says that after three months, he’s grown tired of vacation and wants to come home.
In fact, Acurio Suarez faces deportation to Ecuador ― with a key Immigration Court hearing that had been scheduled for Thursday now postponed. When that hearing takes place, he could be granted asylum and allowed to stay in the U.S., safe from the gang violence he fled, or ordered returned to his homeland.
His case, said his attorney, Kaley Miller-Schaeffer, is a prime example of how Trump-administration policy shifts have encouraged ICE to detain even the most vulnerable and to treat potential discretionary relief as irrelevant in a bid to boost deportations.
Her Sept. 30 request to have Acurio Suarez released to the care of his brother while his immigration case goes forward was denied.
Asked about Acurio Suarez’s arrest and detention, ICE said in a statement that they screen and look out for the health of all detainees.
“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is firmly committed to the health, safety, and welfare of all detainees in custody. ICE’s National Detention Standards and other ICE policies require all contracted facilities to provide comprehensive medical and mental health screenings from the moment an alien arrives at a facility and throughout their entire time in custody.”
At an earlier court hearing, Miller-Schaeffer said, she watched as Acurio Suarez struggled to answer basic questions. He told the judge he didn’t know if he had an attorney or know what an attorney does.
His ability to testify was so limited, she said, that the judge allowed his brother to take the stand to explain his sibling’s experience and situation.
Acurio Suarez can recall big events in his life, she said. He remembers being beaten by gangs who seized on his vulnerability, but he couldn’t tell you exactly when that occurred.
Today, as President Donald Trump pursues an unprecedented mass-deportation campaign, more migrants including Acurio Suarez have been made subject to mandatory detention. That means they’re held in custody during their deportation proceedings, unable to seek release on bond.
Victor Acurio Suarez’s empty room at his home in Seaford, Del.
That includes immigrants whose only offense was crossing the border without approval, who in the past might have been issued a notice to appear in court and allowed to live in the community while their cases go forward.
The administration says it is arresting the “worst of the worst,” dangerous immigrants who have committed serious and sometimes violent offenses. But data show 74% of those in detention have no criminal convictions.
That includes Acurio Suarez, who worked at odd jobs in Ecuador before coming to this country in 2021.
According to an ICE report, at 9:14 a.m. on Sept. 22, an ICE team was conducting operations in Seaford, a southern Delaware city of 9,000 where 13% of the population is foreign-born.
The ICE officer wrote that he was looking for a place to park in the Lowe’s lot when a man in paint-stained clothing, Acurio Suarez, approached him. Acurio Suarez waved his hand, signaling the officer to come to him, according to the ICE account.
The officer kept going, then stopped his car and watched Acurio Suarez from another lot. Acurio Suarez tried to hail other cars, and could be seen talking to people who were loading lumber onto a trailer in the parking lot, he said.
It looked like Acurio Suarez was trying to find daily work, which is why he tried to get the ICE officer to stop his vehicle, the report said.
It’s common for undocumented immigrants seeking a day’s pay to wait in the parking lots of big home-improvement stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot, hoping to connect with building contractors who need laborers.
Lenin Acurio Suarez said his brother cannot hold a full-time job, able only to handle small tasks, provided someone is beside him giving directions.
A second ICE officer arrived, and both parked their cars near where Acurio Suarez had left his lunch box unattended. Acurio Suarez walked back toward the officers, and one of the agents approached and questioned him.
Acurio Suarez said he had no identification or immigration documents and was placed in handcuffs. He told the officer he was in good health, the report says.
Lenin Acurio Suarez holds a photograph of his brother, Victor, at his home in Seaford, Del., on Wednesday. Victor was arrested by ICE on Sept. 22.
Records show that four years ago, on Aug. 2, 2021, he and his brother were stopped by the U.S. Border Patrol as they tried to enter the country near Eagle Pass, Texas, southwest of San Antonio.
The brothers were processed separately by immigration authorities. Lenin Acurio Suarez was issued a notice to appear in court and released. His immigration case was later dismissed.
Victor Acurio Suarez was ordered deported and subsequently returned to Ecuador on Sept. 24. But three days later, for reasons that are unclear, the deportation order was found to have been issued incorrectly, and Acurio Suarez was brought back by authorities to the U.S.
In October 2021, he was granted temporary permission to stay in the country. He had filed his asylum case by the time that permission expired a year later.
The group projects that intentional homicides in Ecuador could reach 9,100 in 2025, a 40% increase over the previous year.
That’s a rate of nearly 50 per 100,000 inhabitants, which would continue to give Ecuador the highest homicide rate in Latin America, the organization said. In the U.S. the figure is about five per 100,000 people.
While ICE agents were arresting Acurio Suarez, Lenin was frantically searching the neighborhood, initially not having realized that his brother had left their home. Lenin called local police for help, and officers checked the Lowe’s security cameras. The video showed Victor being taken into custody.
In an interview, Lenin, 49, explained that he has always taken care of his younger brother, since their mother left when they were teenagers in Ecuador.
In this country, Lenin has a job in housing construction that enables him to provide for himself and his brother and to live with others in a rented house. He worries what will happen to Victor if he’s sent back to Ecuador, where there’s no one to care for him.
“Thanks to God I’ve been able to pay rent and food for me and my brother,” Lenin said. “I am grateful for this country, to be in this country. But I want my brother to have a fair life, with me, out of detention. He won’t be able to survive by himself in Ecuador.”
When Common Pleas Court Judge Scott DiClaudio sat before the Court of Judicial Discipline in October and answered questions under oath about whether he sought to influence a colleague’s decision in a case, he denied having summoned the fellow judge to his Philadelphia courtroom.
DiClaudio said he did not ask Judge Zachary Shaffer to come see him that day in June. Shaffer, he said, showed up unannounced.
“I was unaware that day he was going to walk in,” DiClaudio said. “He was unannounced and unexpected.”
But a recording captured by digital audio systems inside DiClaudio’s and Shaffer’s courtrooms and obtained by The Inquirer calls that account into question.
According to the recording, DiClaudio asked his assistant, Gary Silver, to contact Shaffer on the morning of June 12.
“Is Judge Shaffer on the bench right now?” DiClaudio asked his court staff around 11 a.m., according to the recording. “Can you call down there and see if he’s still on the bench, please?”
A few minutes later, according to a recording from the digital system inside Shaffer’s courtroom, Silver visited Shaffer.
“1001 wants to see you,” Silver told the judge, referring to the number of DiClaudio’s courtroom, according to the audio.
The recordings raise questions about DiClaudio’s sworn testimony before the disciplinary panelas he faces charges from the Judicial Conduct Board that he sought to influence Shaffer’s handling of a gun case involving a defendant with ties to Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill.
Elizabeth Hoffheins, deputy counsel for the Judicial Conduct Board, said during thehearing that DiClaudio’s conduct was so egregious that it brought the judiciary into disrepute.
DiClaudio has denied that he sought to influence Shaffer’s decision-making and said his colleague misunderstood his words and intentions on that day. He has been suspended without pay as the disciplinary case proceeds.
DiClaudio’s attorney, Michael van der Veen, declined to comment on the recordings and said the judge had done nothing wrong.
“It would not be appropriate to comment about alleged secondhand partial evidence in an ongoing matter,” van der Veen said in a statement Monday. “It remains very concerning that there are continual leaks of information somewhere in this process. As from the beginning, my client professes his innocence.”
Common Pleas Court Judge Zachary Shaffer testified that Judge Scott DiClaudio’s assistant came to his courtroom on the ninth floor of the city’s criminal courthouse and said DiClaudio wanted to see him on the morning of June 12.
The conversations were captured on a digital audio recording system embedded in dozens of courtrooms across Philadelphia to aid in the transcription of testimony and proceedings. The systems, which have been in city courtrooms since 2003, can be turned on and off between hearings at the discretion of court reporters, who transcribe hearings.
On the morning of June 12, inside courtrooms 1001 and 905, the systems captured the brief side conversations of the judges and their staff.
At the hearing in the Court of Judicial Discipline, Shaffer testified that he was seated in his ninth-floor courtroom when Silver, DiClaudio’s assistant and a former defense attorney, came in and said DiClaudio wanted to see him.
Shaffer said that during that week in June, he and his court clerk, Nicole Vernacchio, had been in touch with DiClaudio about buying T-shirts from DiClaudio’s wife’s cheesesteak shop.
About 45 minutes after Silver came by, he said, they went up to DiClaudio’s 10th-floor room, assuming the shirts were ready to be picked up.
They met in DiClaudio’s robing room and talked for about 10 minutes before DiClaudio asked Vernacchio to leave the room, he said. Vernacchio also testified that the judge asked her to step out.
After she left, Shaffer said, DiClaudio pulled out a piece of lined paper with “Dwayne Jones, courtroom 905, and Monday’s date” written on it.
DiClaudio held it out at his side, he said, then looked at him and said, “OK?”
Shaffer said he was confused, and hesitantly said, “OK.”
Then, he said, DiClaudio ripped up the paper and threw it away.
The judges then spoke casually about unrelated topics for a few minutes, he said. As he started to leave, Shaffer said, DiClaudio told him, “‘You probably would have done the right thing anyway.’”
Shaffer said he was shocked. He believed DiClaudio was suggesting that he should give a favorable sentence to Jones, who was scheduled to appear in front of him in a few days on illegal gun possession charges connected to a fatal shooting.
The next morning, Shaffer said, he reported the conversation to his supervisors, and they referred the matter to the Judicial Conduct Board. He recused himself from Jones’ case.
In September, the Judicial Conduct Board charged DiClaudio with multiple ethical violations, saying his actions on that day represented “conduct that was so extreme that it brought the judicial office itself into disrepute.”
At the October hearing, held to determine whether DiClaudio should be suspended without pay amid the ongoing inquiry, DiClaudio took the stand and vehemently denied Shaffer’s version of events.
He said he had met Jones at The Roots Picnic on June 1. During a brief conversation, he said, Jones mentioned that he had a gun case in front of Shaffer, and gave DiClaudio his business card.
“I eventually say, ‘Judge Shaffer is a good judge. He does the right thing,’” DiClaudio said he responded. “He gives me his card. I put it in my cell phone case. Then he leaves, never to be seen again.”
He’d forgotten about the conversation, he said, until he saw Shaffer on June 12 and remembered he still had Jones’ business card. He took out the card and relayed the conversation he’d had with Jones before tossing it into the trash, he said.
“I was relating the story to Judge Shaffer to give him a compliment,” DiClaudio said. “I wasn’t trying to influence a case.”
He also denied asking Vernacchio, the clerk, to leave the room.
Van der Veen asked DiClaudio whether he asked Shaffer to come to his courtroom.
“Never,” he said.
Van der Veen told the disciplinary panel that he and DiClaudio had never before heard Shaffer’s contention that his fellow judge had summoned him for a conversation and said it was “shocking.” And he noted that there was no mention of such a request in the summary of Shaffer’s interview with the investigator from the disciplinary board.
(Shaffer, for his part, insisted that he told the investigator DiClaudio had asked him to come to his courtroom. He said he did not review the summary of his conversation with the investigator before it was shared with the board and DiClaudio and his lawyer, and said the report was incomplete and in some ways inaccurate.)
Van der Veen seized on the omission. He suggested that the assertion that DiClaudio had called Shaffer to his courtroom was a “new fact” belatedly raised to support his contention that DiClaudio had sought to influence him.
“Otherwise‚” the lawyer said, “it is completely nonsensical. If you’re going to come to the theory of the prosecutors, that this was … clandestine, premeditated, and designed by Judge DiClaudio, that’s completely false if Judge DiClaudio didn’t call for the meeting.”
Hoffheins, the attorney for the Judicial Conduct Board, told the disciplinary panel DiClaudio orchestrated the meeting with Shaffer to seek a favorable sentence for Jones. The judge did so, she said, because Jones is a friend of Meek Mill. DiClaudio is also a friend of Mill’s, and has worked with him on criminal justice reform issues related to the rapper’s nonprofit.
“The nature of misconduct here is not a technical misstep. It is an abuse of judicial privilege,” she said of DiClaudio’s actions. “It was made behind closed doors, and it was an attempt to tilt the scales of justice for a personal acquaintance.”
The judicial officers on the disciplinary court agreed that the allegations were consequential. In November, they suspended DiClaudio without pay.
The case now awaits a trial before the disciplinary tribunal. If the panel finds that DiClaudio violated judicial ethics or constitutional rules, he could be censored, fined, or removed from office.
DiClaudio was elected to Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas in November 2015, and took the bench in January 2016. In recent years, he has mostly heard cases filed by people seeking to have their murder convictions overturned.
He has presided over many high-profile exonerations and wrongful-conviction cases and approved the release or resentencing of dozens of people who had been serving life in prison.
Over the last decade, he has faced multiple inquiries from the Judicial Conduct Board.
In 2020, the Court of Judicial Discipline determined that he violated the code of conduct for judges when he failed to report debts on annual financial disclosure forms and repeatedly defied a judge’sorders to pay thousands of dollars in overdue bills to a Bala Cynwyd fitness club. He was suspended for two weeks, and placed on probation through 2026.
Then, in April of this year, the board filed charges against DiClaudio for allegedly using his position as a judge to promote his wife’s cheesesteak shop. In so doing, the board said, he had eroded public trust in the judiciary and abused the prestige of the office for personal gain. DiClaudio has denied the allegations, and the case is pending before the disciplinary court.
DiClaudio was reelected to another 10-year term last month, though he has publicly discussed retiring after the New Year.
While waiting for a bus earlier this year, two Philadelphia street artists who rely on public transportation diagnosed an all-too-familiar ailment: I have no idea when the bus will be here.
“No one knows when the bus is coming,” one recalled saying.
“We should really make something.”
Earlier this month, their brainchild — a solar-powered e-reader mounted into a street sign that provides bus arrival information — went live on the northeast corner of Broad Street and Washington Avenue in South Philadelphia, along bus Route 64.
The device pulls real-time arrival times from publicly available data (the same dataset that feeds SEPTA’s app), according to artist Make It Weird, who engineered the rig and asked to remain anonymous because their work meanders into a legal gray area.
The digital real-time bus tracker that has been installed at the Route 64 bus stop on the northeast corner of Broad Street and Washington Avenue in Philadelphia on Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025.
Their creation is inconspicuous; to passersby, it could be a road sign graffitied with a lanky bird and stalky flowers. Commuters might get closer and see it reads, “This data is unofficial. … Do not contact SEPTA.”
“We have a fundamental issue with funding transit in Pennsylvania,” Make It Weird said. “We, as citizens, often make excuses for real quality-of-life improvements that could be made by saying, ‘Well, SEPTA doesn’t have money, so quit complaining.’ We’re just saying, ‘This could be better.’”
The sign is akin to a Band-Aid on a public transportation network plagued by infrastructure issues, financial turmoil, and an ever-constricting budget, as well as a resource for people who don’t have access to a smartphone with unlimited data or SEPTA’s app, said Make It Weird and collaborator Bird, the alias for the artist whose signature statuesque and slender pink bird appears on the sign.
“Accessibility is something that’s hugely important to me,” Bird said. “It comes from a really large place of privilege that people always assume that everyone has a phone or can look something up, and that’s just not the case. Trying to provide that kind of accessibility for everyone — I think it’s an important place to start.”
Late last month, a prototype of the device near South Philly’s Benna’s Cafe caught the attention of Conrad Benner and wound up on Streets Dept’s Instagram.
The video has garnered more than 8,500 likes; the comments section is filled with fire emojis and clapbacks at SEPTA. One commenter wrote, “This is a sincere public service. Artists are extraordinary. Septa should hire them.” Another said, “Hopefully, it doesn’t find the same fate as Hitchbot did.”
“I’ve been really appreciative of how many people think it’s cool,” Make It Weird said. “I’ve been also really appreciative of how many people say, ‘Yeah, other cities are doing this.’”
Digital screens that feed real-time tracking information have already popped up in other major cities, like New York City and Minneapolis. But Philadelphia has been slow to adopt the tech: While a five-year, $6 million contract to install iPad-sized trackers mounted to bus stops was publicized last year, SEPTA spokesperson Kelly Greene said in an email that none of the screens have been deployed yet, citing cybersecurity.
“We recognize the importance of real-time bus tracking for our customers and will provide an update on this initiative as soon as possible,” Greene said.
Make It Weird started making goofy and whimsically mock street signs in June; all their signs are configured to meet the federal standards, they said, which helps their art meld with the monotonous “No Parking” and “Tow-Away Zone” verbiage. (One sign near City Hall said, “Stop Parking, Ride SEPTA: Fund Public Transit, Sell Your Car,” in the ubiquitous, red Highway Gothic sans-serif font. Another triptych read, “Go Birds,” “F— ICE,” and “Free Palestine,” quoting Hannah Einbinder’s bleeped Emmy acceptance speech.)
The Route 64 sign is the first in hopefully a series of 10, all featuring collaborations with other Philly artists who don’t drive.
