As a blanket of snow and sleet melted into the grass and an early winter fog hung over the Delaware Valley last month, Rinal Parikh’s art studio was a tranquil portal to the outside world.
In her studio, lofty windows look out onto a sprawling backyard. The walls are adorned with Parikh’s paintings, both completed and in progress, and its shelves are stacked with art supplies and mementos.
“What inspires me is my surroundings, and I’m blessed with an amazing backyard,” Parikh said, looking out the window. “That is my main inspiration.”
Parikh is a Media-based painter and biochemist by trade whose art blends traditional Indian folk styleswith contemporary themes. Her art, rich in texture, color, and meaning, uses a collection of materials, from sand and fabric to glass, beads, and stucco. She paints with acrylic and watercolors, and creates detailed drawings with thin brushes. Her work fuse her upbringing in India with her current life in Media, an amalgamation of past and present, of here and there.
Rinal Parikh, 43, Media-based artist, talking about her art work in her home in Media, Pa., on Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2025.
Parikh, 43, took a circuitous route to becoming an artist. She moved to Philly in 2005 from Gujarat, India, to follow her husband, Bhavin, who had immigrated a few years earlier (the day of our interview was the 20th anniversary, to the date, of her arrival in the U.S.). She enrolled in a masters in molecular biology program at Drexel University, a step toward her Ph.D., and got a job in a lab at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center.
A few years after her move, Parikh’s first son was born with health complications. With no family close by, Parikh quit her job to focus on taking care of her son. He’s now a healthy teenager, she notes.
Seeing that Parikh was missing out on work, her husband made a suggestion: Why not paint something for their new house? That first painting, “Krishna-leela,” now hangs in the Parikhs’ living room, an eye-catching depiction of the Hindu deity Krishna.
Rinal Parikh’s painting “Krishna-leela” is displayed at home in her formal living room in Media, Pa., on Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2025.
When her son was 9 months old, Parikh stopped by an art fair at the Creative Living Room, a community arts center in Swarthmore. She struck up a conversation with some of the women there. A few days later, they called with a question: Would she like to do a solo show?
“I didn’t even know what that means,” she said.
Nonetheless, she agreed. She worked tirelessly for three months to make 20 pieces. She didn’t know where to buy art supplies, so she imported them from India (someone would later point her toward the now-closed Pearl Art & Craft Supplies on South Street). In fall 2009, she displayed her paintings for the first time as a professional artist — and sold her first painting, too. The rest, she said, is history.
Parikh melds together three types of Indian folk art — Warli, Madhubani, and Kalamkari. Warli is a tribal art that depicts day-to-day life in a mural-like format. Madhubani uses geometric patterns and typically reflects celebrations of life. Kalamkari, Parikh said, is “very refined,” a style of art that uses a fine brush to create delicate and detailed line drawings. All three art forms have traditionally been practiced by women.
Parikh feels like she speaks “a global language.”
Though her paintings take inspiration from the traditional Indian folk style, the scenes depicted are not just of India. They’re often of the Philly area, and of the flora and fauna in her backyard.
“I still practice Indian folk art, but the subject matters are very ‘now,’” Parikh said. “The language is still very traditional, but the conceptualization, the visualization, is much more contemporary.”
A painting called “Home” painted by Rinal Parikh, 43, displayed in the family room of her home in Media, Pa., on Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2025.
In her family room hangs “Home,” a 2021 Warli painting of a tree. The background is complex in both texture and color, with blues, browns, and purples peeking out. Hanging from the tree are monkeys, which Parikh said captures the energy of having two boys, now 17 and 12,in the house. (They’re very good kids, she clarifies.)
“I observe my surroundings, I experiment with styles, I do a lot of repetitive patterns, and I tell my story,” she said.
Since jumpstarting her art career, Parikh has become involved in the region’s growing art community. She’s the marketing chair for the Rittenhouse Square Fine Arts Show and is involved with the Community Arts Center of Wallingford.
She said she understands the anxieties of young artists and wants to support the organizations that nurture their careers.
“I was supported by the community, and I want to do the same thing.”
Parikh’s art can be found on her website and her Instagram page.
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.
Living in the Fox Chase Manor neighborhood in the mid-1990s, Linda and Mike Tobin admired the location of houses across the street. So in 1997, they decided to buy one and enlarge it.
They raised their two children there and sent them to the Abington School District. But now the children are grown up and have moved to Cherry Hill, where Linda is from, so the Tobins will follow them there.
Mike installs telecommunications systems for businesses, and Linda is a retired telecommunications professional.
The primary bedroom.
Mike said they were particularly attracted by “the quaintness of the neighborhood, the big oak trees,” and township-residents-only Alverthorpe Park, with its variety of athletic facilities.
So they undertook a major renovation of the house on one of the larger plots of Fox Chase Manor, with a two-car attached garage and driveway parking for four more cars.
The family room has a gas fireplace.
The renovation comprised an expanded eat-in kitchen, first-floor powder room, and a family room with a gas fireplace and a large patio.
The second level was expanded for the house to have four bedrooms, two full bathrooms, and a laundry room.
Entrance to the house is through a covered front porch into the foyer, living room, and formal dining room.
The dining room.
The second level has the bedrooms, and the primary bathroom has a stall shower and walk-in closet.
The partially finished basement has heat.
There are hardwood floors in most of the home, and tile in the kitchen and bathrooms.
A covered front porch at the entrance to the house.
The roof was replaced in 2015 and there is 200-amp electric throughout.
The house is close to Huntingdon Valley Shopping Center and a Giant supermarket.
It is listed by Don Rowley of Coldwell Banker Hearthside Realtors for $599,900.
It was something of a lucky confluence of factors in West Bradford Township that led to residents seeing a reduction in their property taxes going into the new year, as other communities in the state see hikes.
A number of loans that were refinanced during record-low interest rates at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, plus long-term lease agreements that brought the municipality more money, eventually equaled “substantial savings,” said Justin Yaich, town manager.
Savings in hand, the township decided they’d give it back to residents, he said, rather than funding “another pet project or another program.”
In the budget, passed last month by the town’s board of supervisors, West Bradford set its property tax millage for a 0.25 mill — a 50% reduction in the tax for residents. For a home worth roughly $300,000, residents will now pay $75 a year, down from $150.
It’s unusual, John Brenner, executive director of the Pennsylvania Municipal League, said of West Bradford’s reduction.
“There have been increases, and I’ve seen a number of them from municipal leaders throughout the Commonwealth — cities, boroughs, townships,“ Brenner said. ”You’re seeing counties raise taxes that haven’t in a long, long time. So that tells you the environment we’re in.”
Local governments are fairly limited in how they can levy taxes under state law, with the biggest portion of revenue coming from “the beleaguered property tax,” Brenner said. Schools and the county take from that same source, with local municipalities usually taking far less.
“Local government is not a business,” Brenner said. “It’s a provider of services, and those services cost money, and somebody has to pay for it.”
But in West Bradford, it was years of planning and a flurry of factors, Yaich said. It started in 2019, when the town purchased the former Embreeville State School and Hospital, an abandoned 900,000-square-foot psychiatric hospital that had been deteriorating for more than two decades. A developer had sought to transform the property into a high-density residential complex, which saw community pushback and years of litigation.
To purchase the site for roughly $23 million to turn it into 200 acres of open space, the township — for the first time — levied a real estate tax. (Residents already paid property tax to Downingtown Area School District and the county but previously did not pay the town.)
But early in 2020, West Bradford refinanced its outstanding debts, renegotiated some lease terms, and began to hold other costs consistent. Over the years, it culminated in the township being able to reduce the real estate tax, Yaich said.
The board’s philosophy is to do its core responsibilities — taking care of roads and infrastructure, caring for the open spaces and parks, running trash and recycling programs — and make sure there’s enough leftover for new programs or capital improvements, Yaich said. But anything beyond that, return it to the taxpayers, rather than figure out how to spend it, he said.
It is easier to spend money than it is to trim, Yaich added, noting that the township faces rising costs and shrinking revenue sources: Cable providers, who once were paying $300,000 to the township in a year to put their lines in, are dwindling as people turn to streaming services. With more electric vehicles, fewer people are filling up at the pumps, meaning less liquid fuels money for the township, too. It’s rare, and unlikely to be replicated in a few years, to cut costs for residents like this, he acknowledged.
As other town managers call and ask Yaich how to emulate him, he tries to dispel the magic.
“We’re in a unique situation that we were able to do it,” Yaich said. “There’s no magic sauce or magic potion that we’re doing here that other places aren’t doing. It’s just that we were set up at the right time in the right place, and we acted when things were favorable to us and we were fortunate.”
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.
Something about the phrase “Do what makes you happy” struck Faridah Ismaila. It became the title of, and inspiration behind, one of her art pieces. It’s printed onto the back of her T-shirt. It’s something the 15-year-old artist lives her life by.
“When I do art, it’s because it makes me happy, and when I can give my art to other people or spread the joy of art, it’s making them happy,” she said.
Following that guiding light of happiness, Ismaila, a digital artist and a sophomore at Great Valley High School, recently launched her nonprofit, A Paint-full of Promise, which offers free monthly art classes for kids in her school district in kindergarten through gradesix.
Working with educators in the district, Ismaila devises themed art projects and provides supplies and classroom time to teach young artists how to express themselves. The first club is slated for mid-January, with a winter wonderland theme. Children will make snowflakes and paint winter-themed coasters.
Ismaila has been recognized for her art nationally: She was the state winner and a national finalist in the 2022 Doodle for Google competition, where young artists compete for their work to be featured as the Google homepage design. That recognition helped give her the confidence to pursue big dreams, like her nonprofit and club.
“It makes me feel I can still do this. Because sometimes I’ll doubt myself. … I can’t be having all these big dreams,” she said. “But if people want to vote for me and I am recognized nationally, I feel on top of the world. I can do anything.”
The first brushes of the nonprofit — which she hopes one day will grow to multiple sessions a month — started years ago, when Ismaila began making YouTube videos, teaching the fundamentals of art. She showed viewers how to make a gradient, how to depict a sunrise. She circulated the videos around her Malvernneighborhood, and she thought: Why not hold a class for younger kids?
Faridah Ismaila, 15, poses for a portrait at her home on Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Malvern. Ismaila started a kids art nonprofit called A Paint-full of Promise. She also sells her art online.
Over a summer, in her garage, she set up two art projects — painting and colored pencils — and led about eight kids through a lesson. She called it Faridah’s Art Crafty Corner.
Holding the class made her happy. So she did it again, but bigger, turning it into a summer camp, under the new name: A Paint-full of Promise.
“Then I decided, why not actually make this a club, so not only my community can get this, my entire district can?” she said.
And now, the teenager has a nonprofit under her belt. She officially launched the organization last month at an event in Malvern, where she raised money by auctioning off prints of her work and selling T-shirts with her designs.
Anne Dale, an art teacher at Great Valley High School who is an adviser for the club, said she was impressed with Ismaila’s ability to get other high school students involved in running the club.
“A lot of students have big ideas for clubs, but there’s not always follow-through. With her, it’s definitely different, and I knew that when she approached me with it,” Dale said.
Giving kids the tools and opportunity to create artwork was essential to Ismaila, who gravitates to art to process her emotions.
“It’s just the best thing ever,” she said. “Once you start doing art as a kid, it’s just a great way to get your feelings out there and express yourself, even if you can’t use words to describe it.”
One of her pieces, Beauty Within, depicts a skeletal hand holding a white mask, a tear running down its cheek. Behind the mask, flowers bloom. It came from a feeling of constantly analyzing herself, the feeling that what you show people is not necessarily what’s on the inside.
Another piece, made when she was “seriously sleep-deprived,” shows a face with an assortment of pixels, pizza, stick figures, and paint pouring out.
Faridah Ismaila, 15, talks about some of her early works at her home on Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Malvern. Ismaila started a kids art nonprofit called A Paint-full of Promise. She also sells her art online.
A piece she is working on now shows herself, in vibrant colors, pointing to her reflection. She wanted to capture the feeling of two versions of the self — one confident, the other fragile.
Sometimes, her mother Nofisat Ismaila said, her parents feel as if they are holding her back.
“I don’t know how I’m gonna keep keeping up with this girl, because she’s just taking us to places, keeping us busy, keeping us on our toes,” she said. “She’s turning out to be a really young, determined adult.”
Faridah Ismaila, 15, poses for a portrait at her home on Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Malvern. Ismaila started a kids art nonprofit called A Paint-full of Promise. She also sells her art online.
But to Faridah Ismaila, it’s about finding happiness, and giving it to others, too.
“I really hope the kids just do what makes them happy. … It’s also just not being afraid to get out there, because when I was a kid-kid, I wasn’t afraid of anything,” she said. “I think middle school really kicks some kids in the butt, and getting up out of that — at least for me, art was a way to do that. I just want to give that to kids.”
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.
President Trump mounted an illegal invasion of Venezuela, kidnapping president Nicolás Maduro and his wife and spiriting them out of the country.
The breathtaking use of military force against a sovereign state has no legal justification. It opens the door for anarchy in Venezuela and threatens to make the United States a pariah with no moral authority for other dictatorships around the globe.
Trump acted without the authorization of Congress, in clear violation of the Constitution. But then again Trump has long mocked the Constitution he swore to uphold.
Former President George W. Bush at least sold a phony story about weapons of mass destruction to get Congress to go along with his reckless invasion of Iraq. That catastrophic folly lasted nearly nine years, resulting in tens of thousands of needless deaths and costing taxpayers roughly $3 trillion.
Trump once promised to avoid forever wars and claimed to be the president of peace. But without any provocation or convincing explanation, he launched a military buildup in the Caribbean and began illegally bombing small boats, killing alleged drug smugglers in Central and South America.
President Nicolás Maduro joins a rally in Caracas, Venezuela, on Dec. 10, 2025. The Trump administration designated Cartel de los Soles, which it says is headed by Maduro, a foreign terrorist organization.
Trump has offered shifting explanations — and even less evidence — for the military action ranging from wanting to stop drug trafficking to accusing Maduro of “stealing” U.S. oil and land.
After the attack, Trump came clean on just how out of control the operation is, claiming the U.S. is ”going to run the country” and take over oil production.
Congress, which under the Constitution, has the sole power to declare war, rejected efforts to rein in Trump’s warmongering. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Trump puppet, praised the attack as a “justified operation that will protect American lives.”
Sen. Andy Kim (D., N.J.) called the move “disastrous” and said Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “blatantly” lied to Congress when they said the goal of the military buildup was not to topple Maduro.
To be sure, Maduro is a corrupt and undemocratic leader who has brought economic ruin and death to Venezuela. Under his repressive regime, roughly 8 million people have fled the country.
But if the Trump doctrine is the removal of corrupt and undemocratic leaders, where do the military actions end? How does Trump square the removal and prosecution of Maduro with his outrageous pardon last month of former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of drug trafficking by federal prosecutors?
Trump’s strongman act will do little to spread peace and democracy around the globe. In fact, the military actions in Venezuela may embolden China to invade Taiwan. It also signals to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin that Trump is not serious about defending Ukraine or Europe.
It is painfully clear there is a corrupt and unrestrainedmadman in the White House. Yet, the conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court and the Republicans in Congress have abandoned their role to act as checks on the executive branch, starting with the insurrection Trump fomented nearly five years ago.
Under Trump, the American democracy that is getting ready to celebrate 250 years, is backsliding. A Harvard professor who studies democracies said flatly: “We are no longer living in a democratic regime.”
The unauthorized attack in Venezuela is just the latest example of Trump’s growing authoritarian rule.
Irene Blair was expected to have another six to eight months to live in June, after her pancreatic cancer rapidly advanced to stage 4 less than a year after her initial diagnosis.
A new drug being tested in clinical trials around the world, including at Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center, was the 59-year-old grandmother from Newark, Del.’s best hope for more time.
The drug belongs to a class of pharmaceuticals long considered the holy grail of cancer research. It is a KRAS inhibitor, capable of blocking a protein that fuels an especially deadly cancer. Only 13% of pancreatic cancer patients are still alive five years after their diagnosis, the highest mortality rate of all cancers.
Called daraxonrasib, the drug is not considered a cure. But the results emerging from clinical trials point to the first major advancement in decades for a devastating cancer usually caught in late stages. Former Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse last week disclosed in a blunt social media post that he was recently diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer and is “gonna die.”
In recent months, the federal government has sped up the review timeline for the drug made by California-based company Revolution Medicines, Inc., based on early clinical trial results.
Across 38 patients in a phase 1 trial, the drug appeared to double the survival time for at least half of patients compared to standard chemotherapy, from roughly seven months to 15.6 months.
“In pancreatic cancer, for too long, we haven’t had effective therapies beyond just chemotherapy,” said Mark O’Hara, Blair’s oncologist who leads multiple clinical trials testing KRAS inhibitors at Penn.
Blair started the therapy through a phase 3 trial in July. Within three weeks, her cancer-associated pain went away.
In October, her tumors looked stable or decreasing on scans. Her most recent December scan showed her cancer had not progressed.
Aside from occasional facial rashes, she feels normal. It’s a big improvement from how she felt previously on chemotherapy, which caused her to lose 35 pounds and become so weak she couldn’t walk.
The question now is how long the therapy can remain effective. Blair seeksextra time to “start living life.”
She officially retired from her job in real estate in May and wants to travel, with trips planned to see family in California and Florida.
Holidays have been especially hard for her.
“You just wonder, ‘Will I be here next year?’” she said.
Irene Blair and her husband, Charles, at a beach in Delaware.
How does the therapy work?
Cancer researchers have worked to design a drug targeting KRAS, a protein that acts like a “gas pedal” for cancer growth when mutated, since its discovery in 1982.
The mutant protein is like a pedal stuck in the down position, driving uncontrolled proliferation — which tumors thrive on. These mutations are found in a quarter of human cancers, mostly aggressive cancers of the pancreas, lung, and colon.
Scientists finally succeeded in 2021, when the first drugs capable of blocking KRAS were approved by the FDA for lung cancer. Dozens of KRAS inhibitors are now invarious stages of development.
Daraxonrasib is one of the first tested for pancreatic cancer, a tumor type where nearly 90% of cases have these mutations. Also called a ‘pan-RAS inhibitor,’ it not only targets KRAS, but two other related proteins that drive cancer when mutated, HRAS and NRAS.
More than 90% of the 83 patients in a phase 1 trial saw their pancreatic cancer stall during treatment, and roughly 30% saw shrinkage.
While taking the drug, at least half of patients gained more than eight monthsbefore the cancer started progressing again.
The drug comes in pill form.
The drug comes in the form of three pills, taken daily at home.
The most prevalent side effect is a rash — 91% of patients in a phase 1 trial experienced this symptom, with 8% having severe cases. It often shows up on the face or scalp and is similar to acne, O’Hara said.
Diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and mouth sores are other common symptoms.
O’Hara said these are manageable with medications for most patients and still allow them to have a better quality of life than chemotherapy.
“I want to be able to give KRAS inhibitors to all my patients right now,” he said.
Irene Blair of Newark, Del., meets with her doctor, Mark O’Hara, at her December appointment.
Looking forward
O’Hara runs multiple trials of KRAS inhibitors at Penn.
Some of them are testing the inhibitor as a treatment for patients with metastatic cancer after other options have stopped working.Another is evaluating its use in combination with chemotherapy as an initial approach.
“I’m looking for more tools to put in that toolbox, and I think this provides a new tool,” O’Hara said.
Ben Stanger, a gastroenterologist and scientist at Penn, has led experiments in mice that showed combining a KRAS inhibitor with immunotherapy may be more effective than using the former alone.
If this approach makes it into clinical trials as well, it could still take years to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the combination.
He believes KRAS inhibitors could be “a game-changer” for pancreatic cancer if approved, particularly if paired with other anti-cancer drugs.
“Goal number one would be to make pancreas cancer, instead of a death sentence, into a more ‘chronic’ disease that is treated over time,” he said.
In October, the drug was also one of the first selected for a new program that aims to accelerate review times for drugs from one year to as short as a month, potentially putting it on a faster path to approval.
Daraxonrasib, also known as RMC-6236, earned Breakthrough Therapy and Orphan Drug designations in 2025.
Limited options
When Blair first started having back pain around May 2024, she thought it was a pulled muscle from kickboxing.
She put a heating pad on the back of her chair and went on with life.
Afterher father had a stroke that July, she got it checked out at the hospital where he was admitted.
A day later, she was diagnosed with stage 2B pancreatic cancer.
“My first thought is, ‘I’m dying,’” she said.
Had she been diagnosed earlier, she would have retired early, instead of worrying about saving money.
Instead, she spent her final working year undergoing surgery to remove partof her pancreas, spleen, and several lymph nodes, followed by 12 difficultsessions of chemotherapy.
When she finished her last session in March, Blair’s scans showed no evidence of the cancer. But by late April, her back pain returned.
Two months later, more scans showed that the cancer was now considered stage 4, as it had metastasized to her liver, forming 10 to 15 new tumors.
Her best option was to enter a clinical trial of daraxonrasib at Penn.
Much to her relief, she was chosento receive the drug in July upon enrolling in a study in which half of patients are randomized to receive chemotherapy.
“It’s enabled me to start living again,” she said, but knows eventually the therapy will likely stop working.
In that case, doctors may try the standard chemotherapy — which usually works for three to four months — or test a different therapy based on her cancer’s genomic profile, O’Hara said.
For now, she described herself as “living scan to scan,” seeking as much time as possible with her son, grandchildren, and husband.
Irene Blair and her husband Charles, son Tom, daughter-in-law Kelsey, and two of her three grandchildren, Aidan and Madilynn.
Blair’s next evaluation is in February. She hopes it shows her disease remains stable, and she can stay in the trial.
When famed production designer Wynn Thomas prepared an acceptance speech for his long-awaited Oscar at the age of 72, he wanted to highlight his own Philadelphia story.
“My journey to storytelling began as a poor Black kid in one of the worst slums in Philadelphia. There were street gangs and poverty everywhere. And to escape that world, I immersed myself in books,” Thomas told the Hollywood audience at the Governor’s Awards ceremony in November. “I would sit on my front stoop and I would travel around the world. Now, the local gangs looked down on me and called me ‘sissy.’ But that sissy grew up to work with some great filmmakers and great storytellers.”
It was a significant moment for an artist who has spent nearly 50 years behind the camera to finally step into the spotlight himself. The honorary Oscar — which also went to Tom Cruise and Debbie Allen — recognizes “legendary individuals whose extraordinary careers and commitment to our filmmaking community continue to leave a lasting impact.”
During his extensive film career, Thomas has designed epic, comedic, and dramatic worlds for filmmakers like Spike Lee (Do The Right Thing, Malcolm X), Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man), Robert DeNiro (A Bronx Tale), Tim Burton (Mars Attacks), and Peter Segal (Get Smart).
And while at it, he broke several barriers along the way: Thomas is considered the first Black production designer in Hollywood history.
No matter how far his work took him, though, he was always proud to discuss his Philadelphia roots.
The theater kid from West Philly
Long before he worked on major feature films, Thomas grew up as one of six kids in West Philadelphia, living primarily near 35th and Spring Garden Streets. Avid reading kept him out of trouble. His mother, Ethel Thomas, wrote a permission letter to the local library so he could access the adult section, and he immersed himself in the worlds of Harper Lee, James Baldwin, William Shakespeare, and Lillian Hellman.
The young Thomas always looked forward to Saturdays, when he could spend nearly all day at a movie theater on Haverford Avenue. Occasionally, he took classes at Fleisher Art Memorial, too.
The 1961 movie Summer and Smoke, written by Tennessee Williams, he said, inspired him to pursue theater.
“I absolutely said, ‘My God, what is this?’ I think it was just the nature of the story that really affected me,” Thomas, who now lives in New York, said in a recent interview. “I couldn’t believe what I had just seen, what I had just experienced. So I went to my library and got as many Tennessee Williams plays as I could.”
Wynn Thomas (fifth from right) at the Society Hill Playhouse as a teen in the late 1960s.
A couple of years later, Thomas heard that Society Hill Playhouse was holding open auditions. He was too young to audition himself, so he persuaded his older sister Monica to try out.
“I remember saying to her, ‘You need to do a scene from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,’” he recalled, chuckling. “Now, can you imagine being a 14-year-old kid who knows Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? That’s a geek!”
She earned a spot in the company for a season and Thomas frequently tagged along, volunteering as an usher and eventually forming a close relationship with the owners, legendary Philadelphia theater couple Jay and Deen Kogan.
Throughout high school, the Overbrook High art student spent most of his after-school time across town at the playhouse. He acted, painted scenery, and served as a stage manager.
One of the final productions he stage-managed was The Great White Hope, loosely based on boxing champion Jack Johnson, who was played by Richard Roundtree — the soon-to-be Hollywood star who went on to lead the 1971 classic Shaft. While he was performing at Society Hill Playhouse, Roundtree was auditioning for the life-changing role.
“Shaft was a very important and very pivotal film for that time period,” said Thomas. “It was about a strong Black male who lived in the world under his own terms. That was not a character that was portrayed often in films.”
It was a glimpse into the worlds Thomas would help create in the future — with Black characters who had agency at the center.
Some four decades later, he worked with Roundtree once more for the 2019 remake of Shaft and they had an “incredible reunion.”
From Philly to Boston to New York
Thomas received his bachelor of fine arts in theater design from Boston University. After graduating in 1975, he returned to Philadelphia and worked as a window dresser at the Strawbridge & Clothier department store on Market Street for a few months before landing his next theater job.
For about four years, Thomas was a painter for the Philadelphia Drama Guild, operating out of the Walnut Street Theatre. He also returned to Society Hill Playhouse as a production designer.
An article about Wynn Thomas when he was 23 years old and working as a theater designer in Philadelphia in the mid 1970s.
“It was a huge learning phase for my career, because I was painting all these different kinds of shows,” Thomas said.
By his mid-20s, Thomas had moved to New York and soon became the resident set designer for the legendary Negro Ensemble Company, where he worked with not-yet-famous actors from Denzel Washington to Phylicia Rashad.
“There was an actor who had auditioned for the company but did not get in. He was looking for a job and it turns out that he had carpentry skills, so I ended up hiring this actor who built my sets for my very first season at NEC,” Thomas recalled.
“That actor was Samuel L. Jackson.”
Breaking into film
Thomas loved theater but sought higher-paying work in film. After multiple job rejections, he joined the United Scenic Artists Local 829.
In an event the union organized with renowned production designer Richard Sylbert, who was working on Francis Ford Coppola’s The Cotton Club, Thomas was the sole Black person in attendance.
The next day, he called Sylbert and introduced himself: “I’m the Black guy that was in the room last night. Do you remember seeing me?”
He convinced Sylbert to hire him to build model sets, and Sylbert became a crucial reference that helped Thomas secure art director jobs, like on 1984’s Beat Street (directed by fellow Philly native Stan Lathan). That’s where he met Spike Lee, who interviewed “for the coffee-fetching position of assistant to the director,” Thomas recalled. When Lee stopped by the art department to greet a friend, the aspiring filmmaker was surprised to see Thomas.
“He said he didn’t know there were any Black people doing this [work],” Thomas said.
Filmmaker Spike Lee, center right, appears with his brother David Lee, center left, with castmembers, including Halle Berry, left, and Wesley Snipes, right, on the set of the 1991 film, “Jungle Fever.” Wynn Thomas served as production designer.
A storied career of firsts
That Beat Street encounter led to one of the most fruitful collaborative relationships of Thomas’ career: He went on to make 11 films with Lee, from She’s Gotta Have It to School Daze to Jungle Fever. Lee regularly worked with the same collaborators (“the family”) including Thomas, costume designer Ruth Carter, and cinematographer Ernest Dickerson.
“We wanted to present images of Black and brown folks that had not been seen before on the screen. We did not want to present any negative images. If you look at those films, there’s no drugs, there’s no alcohol, there’s no domestic abuse — none of that trauma that people used to associate with our communities,” said Thomas. “That was the artistic link, the journey for all of us …[and] that has been a criteria for me.”
Meanwhile, he continued to find mainstream success on commercial films, fueled by a relentless work ethic and a commitment to hiring a diverse crew of artists on his team. Later in his career, he was elected to the Academy’s Board of Governors where he pushed for expanding educational programs nationwide.
Thomas’ films showcase a breadth of world-building talent across genres like comedy (To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, Get Smart), romance (The Sun Is Also a Star), and dramas about other Black barrier-breakers, like King Richard (starring fellow Overbrook alum Will Smith), Hidden Figures, and the miniseries Lawmen: Bass Reeves.
It’s rare that he returns to his hometown for a job, but in 2014, he was thrilled to work on the pilot of the Philadelphia-set show How to Get Away with Murder.
Thomas believes the city holds countless rich, untold stories that he hopes will one day receive a bigger spotlight.
For now, he’s enjoying seeing the Oscar statue grace his living room.
“It really means a great deal to me, after 40-plus years of working in the business, to have my work recognized by this organization,” said Thomas. “I’ve worked on a lot of films that should have been recognized by the Academy, [for which] I should have been nominated, and it never happened. So I think this was a way for the Academy to correct that oversight.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are planning to spend $100 million over a one-year period to recruit gun-rights supporters and military enthusiasts through online influencers and a geo-targeted advertising campaign, part of what the agency called a “wartime recruitment” strategy it said was critical to hiring thousands of new deportation officers nationwide, according to an internal document reviewed by the Washington Post.
The spending would help President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation agenda dominate media networks and recruitment channels, including through ads targeting people who have attended UFC fights, listened to patriotic podcasts, or shown an interest in guns and tactical gear, according to a 30-page document distributed among officials in this summer detailing ICE’s “surge hiring marketing strategy.”
The Department of Homeland Security has spoken publicly about its fast-tracked effort to significantly increase ICE’s workforce by hiring more than 10,000 new employees, a surge promoted on social media with calls for recruits willing to perform their “sacred duty” and “defend the homeland” by repelling “foreign invaders.” The agency currently employs more than 20,000 people, according to ICE’s website.
But the document, reported here for the first time, reveals new details about the vast scale of the recruitment effort and its unconventional strategy to “flood the market” with millions of dollars in spending for Snapchat ads, influencers and live streamers on Rumble, a video platform popular with conservatives. Under the strategy, ICE would also use an ad-industry technique known as “geofencing” to send ads to the phone web browsers and social media feeds of anyone who set foot near military bases, NASCAR races, college campuses, or gun and trade shows.
The document was also distributed among ICE officials in the days after the agency published a request for bids seeking contractors who could use “precise audience targeting, performance media management, and results-driven creative strategies” to “accelerate the achievement of [its] recruiting goals.” The language in the published bid closely mirrored language in the strategy document. That same month, DHS awarded two marketing firms nearly $40 million to support ICE’s public affairs office “recruitment campaign,” according to federal awards data.
It’s unclear how much of the spending and strategy have been carried out. But the plans outlined in the document have coincided with a rush of recruitment ads online seeking Americans who will “answer the call to serve.”
The rapid-recruitment approach is unlike anything ICE has ever pursued, said Sarah Saldaña, a director of ICE during the Obama administration, who recalled the agency filling its open positions through local police departments and sheriff’s offices with appeals to officers’ interests in federal public-safety work.
She said she worries that the speed with which ICE is racing to bring on new hires — coupled with the ad campaign’s framing of the jobs as part of a war — will raise the risk that the agency could attract untrained recruits eager for all-out combat.
The appeal to law enforcement should not be “the quicker we get out there and run over people, the better off this country will be,” she said. “That mentality you’re fostering tends to inculcate in people a certain aggressiveness that may not be necessary in 85 percent of what you do.”
ICE deferred comment toTricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokeswoman, who did not dispute a detailed list of claims and financial figures sent by the Post andsaid she was “thrilled to see the Washington Post highlight … [the] wildly successful ICE recruitment campaign, which isunder budget and ahead of schedule.”
The agency, she said, has received more than 220,000 job applications in five months and has issued more than 18,000 tentative job offers. More than 85% of the new hires had experience in law enforcement, she added.
Tricia McLaughlin, spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, is flanked by Madison Sheahan, second in command at ICE, and Todd Lyons, acting ICE director, at a May 21 news conference in Washington.
Congress this summer tripled ICE’s enforcement and deportation budget to about $30 billion by passing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, helping to start a hiring spree that officials have said would be necessary to carry out the Trump administration’s promise of the biggest mass deportation in American history. Officials set a goal of 1 million deportations within the first year of Trump’s term.
To bolster its recruiting, the agency has removed its age limits for applicants and offered signing bonuses of up to $50,000. A job listing on a federal hiring board said the salaries for many deportation officers could range from $50,000 to $90,000 a year.
Recruitment ads have proliferated across TV, radio, print and podcasts directing viewers to an ICE hiring website that portrays immigration as an existential threat. “America has been invaded by criminals and predators,” reads the website, which includes an image of Uncle Sam. “We need YOU to get them out.”
On social media, administration accounts have mixed immigration raid footage with memes from action movies and video games to portray ICE’s mission as a fight against the “enemies … at the gates.” “Want to deport illegals with your absolute boys?” one post says. “Are you going to cowboy up or just lay there and bleed?” says another.
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent is seen in Park Ridge, Ill., on Sept. 19.
But to reach ICE’s “rapid hiring” goal of about 14,000 new Enforcement and Removal Operations officers, Homeland Security Investigations agents, ICE lawyers and support staff, the strategy document also calls for deploying more finely targeted digital advertising tools that can home in on viewers’ interests and lifestyles.
ICE recruitment ads, the plan said, would be shown to people with an interest in “military and veterans’ affairs,” “physical training,” or “conservative news and politics” and would target people whose lifestyles are “patriotic” or “conservative-leaning.”
The strategy said to target listeners of conservative radio shows, country music and podcasts related to patriotism, men’s interests and true crime, as well as any accounts that resemble users with an interest in “conservative thought leaders, gun rights organizations [and] tactical gear brands,” the document said.
To further attract recruits, the strategy called for spending at least $8 million on deals with online influencers whose followers are largely Gen Z and millennials and who were in the “military families,” “fitness,” and “tactical/lifestyle enthusiast communities.”
The document did not name specific influencers but said it would focus on “former agents, veterans and pro-ICE creators” who would be expected to host live streams, attend events and post short- and long-form videos and other content to Facebook, Instagram, Rumble, X and YouTube. Blogs, Substack newsletters, and Threads accounts would also be targeted for more “niche communities,” the document said.
The objective, it said, is to build trust through “authentic peer-to-peer messaging” and to “normalize and humanize careers at ICE through storytelling and lived experiences.” The document said it expected more than 5,000 applicants would come through the influencer program, costing ICE about $1,500 per application.
ICE has run ads on Google, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook, targeting the latter to military veterans and “entry-level job” seekers, according to the companies’ ad libraries, which share public data on the platforms’ ad campaigns. Millions more in advertising was slated for delivery to gaming consoles, connected TV devices and streaming services such as ESPN, Fox News and Paramount+, as well as across newspapers, billboards and box trucks, the strategy document said.
Listeners on Spotify have heard ICE ads calling on recruits to “fulfill your mission,” leading to hundreds of complaints on the music service’s message board. One NASCAR viewer who saw the ads on live streams said in a Reddit post that they changed the channel, and separately told the Post that they had “never felt such distaste for our government airing such ads.”
Natalia Banulescu-Bogdan, a deputy director at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan Washington think tank, said ICE’s ads harked back to World War I recruitment posters by using symbols like Uncle Sam.
The war rhetoric is in line with the Trump administration’s broader efforts to push mass deportations as critical to American security and immigration officials’ work as heroic, she said. But the ads also allow ICE to gloss over the “messy realities of immigration enforcement,” including “the public backlash, the legal pushback and the very real operational constraints.”
“We’ve never seen immigration agencies kind of strip down the policy debates to this level of raw imagery and symbolism,” she added.
The strategy document features on the cover ICE’s second-in-command, Madison Sheahan, who worked as an aide to DHS Secretary Kristi L. Noem when she was governor of South Dakota. In the photo, Sheahan, 28, wears a “police” vest and an ICE badge under the words “Defend the Homeland.”
The document called for spending “$100 million within one year” as part of an “aggressive” recruitment program that would “saturate digital and traditional media” and prioritize “speed, scale, and conversion at every level.”
Public ad-tracking figures from Google and Meta show ICE’s digital ad spending so far is a fraction of the strategy’s proposed budget for their platforms. McLaughlin, the DHS spokeswoman, did not respond to questions about how much money had been spent already or whether the strategy had changed.
Beyond demographic targeting, the strategy document also identified New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago, and Boston as “key locations” for finding recruits. The cities have been the targets of intense ICE sweeps and major anti-deportation protests over the last year.
The largest local recruitment target, seeking up to 1,000 removal officers, is slated for the New Orleans field office. The state of Louisiana has one of the country’s biggest immigrant detention populations, second only to Texas, and the New Orleans field office manages all nine detention facilities in the state.
ICE has hosted hiring events around the country, including at a Texas job fair earlier this year, during which a former mixed martial arts fighter told the Post he was eager to “work with these guys that are going to arrest you, slam your face on the pavement and send you home.”
But the strategy has also called for boosting recruitment at major gatherings and sporting events, including a booth at the NASCAR Cook Out Southern 500 in South Carolina in August; a “gym-based recruitment” event with “influencer-style content” at the UFC Fight Night in Las Vegas in November; and a planned sponsorship devoted to “patriotism, strength [and] grit” at the National Finals Rodeo this month in Las Vegas.
DHS did not say whether all the events proposed in the strategy were carried out, but their ads did accompany several of the events on TV. “ICE commercial during the UFC event tonight?! How gross,” one X user said in October. ICE also posted a bid in November seeking a firm to “identify suitable event locations” for “recruitment and outreach events.”
The recruitment ads run separately from other large-scale DHS campaigns that celebrate Trump’s immigration agenda and urge undocumented immigrants to leave the U.S. DHS has awarded more than $200 million in contracts this year to People Who Think and Safe America Media, two marketing firms linked to Republican political consultants, federal contracting records show. Representatives from the firms did not respond to requests for comment.
Those efforts, too, have relied on ad-targeting techniques more commonly used by corporate marketing campaigns. The ad library for Meta, which runs Facebook and Instagram, shows that DHS has spent more than $1 million on “self-deportation” ads in the last 90 days targeted to people interested in “Latin music,” “Spanish as a second language,” and “Mexican cuisine.”
On a message board for the music streaming service Pandora, some users were furious about the ads they called “fearmongering … propaganda.” One user, who said she is a U.S. citizen who likes listening to reggaeton, said she had been overwhelmed by DHS commercials “implying I am an undocumented immigrant and instructing me to ‘go home’” that played in “nearly every other ad slot I hear.”
ICE’s ads have drawn criticism from some Democrats, who have called them overly inflammatory. The Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), said in October that ICE’s “polarizing recruitment ads” would “only attract MAGA radicals.”
And some of the platforms on which the ads have run have expressed their own reservations. Earlier this month, a transit operator in Long Beach, Calif., removed ICE recruitment ads from its buses and apologized for the “uncertainty and fear” they may have caused, as was first reported by the Long Beach Watchdog, a local news source.
Americus Reed, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, said the ICE strategy reminded him of the “Army of One” campaign that the military once used to build up recruits as mighty warfighters critical to safeguarding the American way of life.
“They’re aiming for that sweet spot of people who’ve got something to prove, who want to have that power, under the guise of patriotism,” he said.
With the election behind him and the top law enforcement job in Bucks County ahead, Joe Khan says he’s ready for his next challenge.
In January, Khan, a former federal prosecutor and onetime Bucks County solicitor, will become the first Democrat to serve as district attorney in the county since the end of the Civil War. (That’s not counting Ward Clark, a Republican who switched parties to run as a Democrat in 1965 and immediately switched back to his GOP roots after he won.)
Khan, 50, is also the first candidate from outside the district attorney’s office to win the top post after several decades in which voters routinely replaced outgoing district attorneys with successors from among inside the ranks of the office.
To claim that mantle, Khan decisively beat Jen Schorn, the Republican incumbent and a career prosecutor in the district attorney’s office, winning 54% of the vote in the November election, which broke a 20-year record for voter turnout.
County political leaders say Khan’s victory signals voters’ desire for regime change in the once GOP-dominated suburb.
“Democrats came out because they felt like it was necessary to push back on what Trump was doing,” said State Sen. Steve Santarsiero, the chair of the Bucks County Democratic Party. “And in the case of Joe, they recognized him as someone who is going to stand up to an administration that has shown it’s willing to flout the law.”
Khan, for his part, says politics is in the rearview mirror as he prepares for his new job.
“I don’t care what political party you’re from, I don’t care who you voted for president or for district attorney,” he said in a recent interview. “What I care about is that you’re here to support the mission of keeping Bucks County safe and seeking justice every day.”
Joe Khan greets and signs a poster for supporter Phyllis Rubin-Arnold as he waits for a meeting with the Buckingham Township Police chief. Khan says that politics has no role in his plans for the district attorney’s office.
And he said he would expand that work — Khan tapped Kristin McElroy, one of Schorn’s top deputies, to serve as his first assistant.
Drawing on his experience in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia, Khan said he would pursue environmental crimes and prosecute cases involving violations of workers’ rights.
“We have seen all kinds of advances in terms of the powers that DAs have in Pennsylvania, so I think it’s great to have an opportunity to look at things with fresh eyes,” he said.
Khan grew up in Northeast Philadelphia, where his father settled after emigrating from Pakistan. Like his brother, State Rep. Tarik Khan (D, Philadelphia), he took an early interest in public service. He followed those aspirations to Swarthmore College and, later, the University of Chicago Law School.
Khan said he was drawn to Bucks County later in his career, and has made it his home in the 14 years he has lived with his sons, Sam, 14 and Nathan, 11, in Doylestown Township. He and the boys’ mother are divorced but co-parent amicably, he said, and live a few doors down from each other.
After stints in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and the U.S. Attorney’s Office — where he specialized in prosecuting gun crimes and locking up child predators — Khan ran for the top prosecutor’s job in Philadelphia in 2017, losing the race to Larry Krasner.
Joe Khan (center) is seen here in March 2023 alongside County Commissioners Diane M. Ellis-Marseglia and Robert J. Harvie Jr. as they announced a lawsuit filed against multiple social media companies for “fueling a mental health crisis among young people.”
Three years later, Khan took over as Bucks County solicitor. He developed an interest in local politics, he said, after watching the culture-war debates over library books and allegations of abuse that embroiled the Central Bucks School District, where his kids are enrolled.
“It’s really central to my view of what parents need from their government,” he said. “They need people in roles like this that are going to make life easier, not harder, and that are going to help them with the challenges that they’re facing.”
Not long after taking over the office, Khan challenged Trump’s efforts to dismiss mail-in ballots during the 2020 election. He also waged legal battles, taking on companies including 3M, DuPont, and Tyco by filing lawsuits over the “forever chemicals” that had leached their way into residents’ water supplies.
And he made headlines for joining a national lawsuit against social media giants like TikTok, bidding them to address the mental health of their young users.
When now-Gov. Josh Shapiro left the state attorney general’s office, Khan stepped down to join a crowded primary to replace him, running in 2023 on a platform to “continue what has been a lifelong fight to keep people safe.”
After losing that race, Khan set his sights on the top law enforcement job in his new home, challenging the long-standing Republican machine that had controlled it for decades.
“I think that if you do a good job and you let people know why you’re doing the things that you’re doing, whether or not they agree with you on every political position, if they know that you’re honest, you got a pretty good shot at earning their vote,” he said.
“And I think that’s a big part of how we won this election.”
A voter walks past the election lawn signs, including one for Joe Khan and his running mate, Danny Ceisler, outside the Bucks County Senior Citizens polling location in Doylestown on Nov. 4.
Santarsiero, the county Democratic Party chair, said he was confident that Khan would make a fine district attorney.
Winning the post required political prowess, of course, but he said that is a dichotomy unique to the office: Politics are required every four years to secure a position that is apolitical.
Party affiliation aside, he said, Khan would work for the good of the county.
Khan, for his part, says he is ready to give it his all.
“We are here to keep people safe, and we’re going to do that in new and exciting ways,” he said. “I have my values, I wear them on my sleeve, and I’m very clear about the direction that we’re going to go to make sure that people who deserve a healthy environment for their families are getting a higher level of service than they’re used to.”
The decision was abrupt, apparently made without advanced input from Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.), who’d set up a commission to identify candidates to serve as the region’s top federal prosecutor.
Metcalf was 39 and, unlike many of his predecessors, didn’t have deep roots in the region — but did have some reported ties to officials who’d sought to help Trump adviser Roger Stone years earlier.
And the appointment was announced as Trump was openly pledging to “clean house” in the Justice Department and pull the agency more directly in line with the White House.
But in the months since Metcalf has assumed control over the office and its 140 lawyers, what has stood out so far has been the serious temperament the veteran prosecutor has brought to the role, and the relative lack of drama he’s overseen — particularly in comparison to nearby jurisdictions, where U.S. Attorney’s Offices have been embroiled in controversies over leadership appointments and whether to indict Trump critics.
During a recent interview with The Inquirer at his Center City office, his first since being appointed in March, Metcalf said his deliberate approach toward his first few months in the job has been influenced by his decade-plus career as a Justice Department lawyer — one that included stints in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.
He has met with a host of other local stakeholders since taking over — including Police Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and federal judges — and has avoided ushering in drastic upheaval within his office.
U.S. Attorney David Metcalf outside the federal courthouse in July, with Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel standing behind him.
Instead, he said, a key focus has been to encourage his prosecutors to pursue large, ambitious, complex investigations targeting violent crime, synthetic opioid abuse, and healthcare fraud — subjects he said were critical to public safety in the Philadelphia region.
“I do not feel some personal impulse to burn my brand on this office by restructuring and reorganizing it,” he said, later adding: “The greatest offices and the greatest cases come from prosecutors who are hunting them down and competing for them … and that’s the breed of prosecutor we’re trying to create here.”
Composed and self-assured, Metcalf was uninterested in commenting on the broader political landscape surrounding his job. He instead concentrated on the work of his office, whose lawyers prosecute matters including drug trafficking, political corruption, and terrorism across nine counties from Philadelphia to Allentown and west past Reading. They also litigate civil matters on behalf of the federal government.
“I don’t want to say that I’m … bound by precedent or a devotee to the status quo,” he said. “But I do believe in stability, and I’m certainly not going to change things just for the sake of changing them.”
Even Krasner — an outspoken progressive Democrat who rarely misses an opportunity to criticize Trump, and who was engaged in a long-running feud with a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney four years ago — said he had a “professional and pleasant lunch” with Metcalf earlier this year.
“We have always worked well with the career prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and our teams seem to be continuing to work well together,” Krasner said in an interview.
Rod Rosenstein, who was the deputy attorney general during Trump’s first term, said in an interview that he hired Metcalf a decade ago, when Rosenstein was the U.S. attorney in Maryland. And their paths continued to intersect over the years as their careers wound through the Justice Department.
Rosenstein said Metcalf had “superb legal skills” and “excellent judgment” — two qualities he views as critical for leading a U.S. attorney’s office.
“I think people recognize he’s got the right qualifications,” Rosenstein said.
U.S. Attorney David Metcalf in his Center City office.
‘An exhilarating vocation’
Metcalf grew up in northern Virginia and graduated from The Wakefield School, a private prep school about an hour west of Washington, D.C. His father was once an Army colonel, he said, and his grandfather was Joseph Metcalf III, the Navy vice admiral who led the 1983 invasion of Grenada.
Metcalf was a standout soccer player in high school, and was recruited to play by more than 80 college teams, the Washington Post reported in 2003. He used the situation to his advantage, the paper reported — making a deal with his mother that he could let his hair grow down past his shoulders once Division I colleges started sending him letters.
He ended up attending Princeton — playing soccer all four years — and then went on to graduate from the University of Virginia’s law school.
After clerking for U.S. Circuit Judge Albert Diaz, Metcalf spent a few years in private practice before becoming an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland under Rosenstein.
Metcalf said he didn’t have a single epiphany that made him realize he wanted to become a prosecutor. But he said he was quickly drawn to the work, which he found more interesting and important than other legal jobs.
“I thought it was really just an exhilarating vocation in a profession that doesn’t always have the most glamorous applications,” he said.
High-profile connections
From 2015 through 2022, Metcalf worked as a line prosecutor in Baltimore and, later, in Philadelphia — the office he now leads. The two years he spent here were unusual, he said, because they unfolded during the peak of the pandemic, when many aspects of the court system were disrupted and most people were working from home.
Metcalf also spent time during the first Trump administration in Washington, D.C. While there, he worked closely with prominent Justice Department officials including Rosenstein; Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen; Timothy Shea, the onetime U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C.; and then-Attorney General William Barr.
Attorney General William Barr and President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House on Nov. 26, 2019.
In 2022, Metcalf left the public sector and went to work as a corporate counsel for Amazon. But this March — after Trump was reelected for a second term — Metcalf was suddenly thrust back into the Justice Department, as the White House announced it was nominating him to be Philadelphia’s U.S. attorney.
From nominee to confirmation
The decision came as something of a surprise.
McCormick, Pennsylvania’s newly elected GOP senator, had made a point of publicly announcing that he’d formed a committee to review and vet potential candidates for federal law enforcement positions across the state. And other GOP-connected lawyers in the region had been jockeying for months to try to figure out who might be able carve a path toward the coveted position.
When the White House named Metcalf its permanent nominee, the process was effectively short-circuited.
Metcalf said he couldn’t speak to how or why the process played out the way it did. He said he applied for the job, and “had relationships with folks in the Trump administration” due to his time in Washington during Trump’s first term.
He didn’t specify who those people were. And some of his former bosses — particularly Barr — had fallen out of favor with Trump after his first term.
But Rosenstein said “it’s a mistake to think that people are the people they work for. It’s a big government, and not everyone agrees all the time.”
And in any case, Rosenstein said, he believed Metcalf was nominated “on merit, not on connections.”
Rod Rosenstein, deputy attorney general during President Donald Trump’s first term, says Metcalf has “superb legal skills” and “excellent judgment.”
William McSwain, who served as U.S. attorney during Trump’s first term, said he believed Metcalf was “extremely well-qualified for the position.”
It took the U.S. Senate six months to vote to confirm Metcalf along with a host of other Trump nominees, but by then, the Philadelphia region’s federal judges had already voted to extend Metcalf’s appointment indefinitely while the process played out.
That move stood in contrast to several other jurisdictions, including New Jersey, where the judiciary declined to extend the tenure of Trump’s nominee, Alina Habba. For months afterward, that office was thrust into turmoil as questions swirled about who could legally serve as its leader.
Pursuing notable cases
During his tenure so far, Metcalf said, he’s been seeking to focus his prosecutors on finding what he called “nationally significant” cases, particularly those targeting violence, drugs, and healthcare fraud, which he views as priorities for the region.
One of the first big indictments he announced was in October when FBI Director Kash Patel visited Philadelphia to help reveal that 33 people had been charged with being part of a Kensington-based drug gang. Metcalf said the case was the largest single prosecution in the region in at least two decades.
FBI Director Kash Patel helping announce the arrest of dozens of suspects in a Kensington drug case.
He also helped create a new program dubbed PSN Recon, an initiative designed to help Philadelphia Police more readily share intelligence with state and federal agencies about which groups or suspects should be investigated.
Prosecutions overall have increased on his watch, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research organization that collects federal courts records.
So far this fiscal year, prosecutions in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania were up 32% compared to last year, TRAC found, and were on their highest pace since 2019. The most common types of cases charged this year were immigration violations, drug offenses, and illegal firearm possession, according to TRAC.
Earlier this year, Metcalf was reportedly involved in one particularly significant case: an investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan and his role in producing an intelligence assessment about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Brennan went on to become a prominent Trump critic.
Former CIA director John Brennan testifies before the House Intelligence Committee in 2017.
Metcalf never commented publicly on his purported involvement in the Brennan case, and declined to do so again during his interview with The Inquirer. The investigation is now reportedly being handled by federal prosecutors in Florida.
Metcalf did allow a short peek into his professional mindset when he was asked more broadly if he’d ever felt pressure from Washington to sign off on a decision he didn’t agree with.
After declining to comment on any discussions he may or may not have had with Justice Department leaders, he paused for a moment and added one final point.
“I will also say that I would be very surprised if that ever happened to me,” he said. “I don’t see it as a problem here.”
