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Linda Eckert, 64, of Perkasie, Pennsylvania, told NBC10 she was driving in Bucks County back in November 2025 when she noticed another driver near her who was using her phone.
“She was in the left lane going like 20 miles per hour,” Eckert said. “I got in the right lane and went around her and I looked at her like, ‘You’re on your phone.’ And I drove on. That was it.”
Eckert later pulled into the United Gas Station in Upper Southampton Township around 11:30 a.m. that morning. Eckert’s lawyer, Paul Lang, told NBC10 his office obtained video from the gas station showing the other woman kicking his client’s blue car as she was leaving. Lang said the other woman then fell to the ground after kicking the vehicle.
“What happened on that day was that the other individual decided to exhibit a lot of road rage towards my client,” Lang said. “My client drove into the gas station, she drove by the woman and the woman kicked her car.”
“It took us to preserve the photo of the footprint that was on Linda’s car on that date,” Lang said. “And not once did law enforcement try to preserve that.”
Instead, Eckert was accused of intentionally running the other woman over. Police showed up at her home later that day and took her into custody.
“Pulled into my garage, and they ripped me out of my car,” Eckert said. “And I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ And they said, ‘You’re being arrested.’ I’m like, ‘For what?’ [They said,] ‘For hit-and-run.’”
Eckert was arrested and charged with aggravated assault, aggravated assault by vehicle, simple assault, possession of an instrument of crime with intent, recklessly endangering another person, reckless driving and other related offenses. After the new video evidence was presented, however, those charges were dropped. Though Eckert still received a traffic ticket for failing to use a turn signal.
“It’s very shameful that it took them so long – over a hundred days – for them to come to this conclusion.” Lang said.
Lang is now calling on the Bucks County District Attorney to open a new investigation on how the case was handled.
NBC10 reached out to the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office for comment. We have not yet heard back from them.
PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — In this edition of The Dish, we’re making breakfast tacos with Tex-Mex flair from Taco Heart in South Philadelphia.
They just won the People’s Choice Breakfast of Champions award at The Tasties.
The trick to their most popular breakfast taco, the Migas, might surprise you.
“I didn’t grow up with this food,” says Mount Airy native and owner, Nano Wheedan. “I moved to Texas in 2004 to play music.”
That’s where a Tex-Mex breakfast sandwich changed his life plan.
“I found breakfast tacos, fresh flour tortillas,” he says. “They changed my life. I knew that I really wanted to bring it back to Philly.”
Wheedan opened Taco Heart in 2022. You can’t miss it on the now colorful triangular intersection of 7th Street and Passyunk Avenue.
The Tex-Mex taco shop specializes in breakfast tacos and fresh flour tortillas, which they make in-house.
“We do fajitas. We do fish tacos. We do bowls,” says Wheedan. “I call it Taco Heart because where my heart is, there’s a taco.”
We came for the secrets to the Migas, where scrambled eggs cozy up with crushed tortilla chips.
“The chips go into the scrambled eggs, kind of like give it more body, just have a little crunch to it,” says Wheedan. “It’s like putting potato chips in your sandwich.”
Directions: 1. Season the tomato, onion and cilantro with a little salt and sautee until the onions become translucent. 2. Add the crushed tortilla chips and then the egg. 3. Give it all a quick scramble in a pan, with a little oil. 4. Transfer to a nice warm tortilla and then add shredded Monterey jack cheese and avocado. 5. Wrap it up like a little burrito and enjoy!
Note: To kick it up a notch, add crumbled sausage into the stovetop mixture and garnish with jalapenos and homemade queso.
Prosecutors in Utah have filed a first-degree felony rape charge against Brigham Young University standout wide receiver Parker Kingston, officials said Wednesday.
Kingston, 21, is being held without bail in St. George, a city near Arizona, Washington County prosecutors said. His initial appearance in court is scheduled for Friday.
BYU wide receiver Parker Kingston celebrates with fans after a win over Iowa State in an NCAA college football game on Oct. 25, 2025, in Ames, Iowa.
Matthew Putney / AP
The investigation began last February, prosecutors said in a news release. A woman who was 20 years old at the time told officers at a St. George hospital that Kingston assaulted her on Feb. 23, 2025, prosecutors said. Police gathered digital and forensic evidence and interviewed the parties involved and other witnesses, prosecutors said.
It wasn’t clear if Kingston had an attorney. He didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment. A phone message left for his family wasn’t immediately returned.
BYU said in a statement that it takes any allegation very seriously and will cooperate with law enforcement. It said it wouldn’t be able to comment further due to federal and university privacy laws and practices for students.
Kingston had a team-leading 67 receptions and 928 yards with five touchdown catches last season. He also rushed for 199 yards on 25 carries with a score, and returned 17 punts for 230 yards and a touchdown.
“Smokin’ Joe” Frazier moved to Philadelphia as a teenager from South Carolina and is regarded among the greatest heavyweight boxers. He won an Olympic gold medal in 1964 at age 20, and in the “Fight of the Century” bout at Madison Square Garden, he became the first fighter to defeat Muhammad Ali.
Frazier founded Joe Frazier’s Gym on North Broad Street, where he mentored local youth and amateur boxers for more than 40 years. His experiences training in a meat locker and running the Art Museum’s steps also inspired details of the titular “Rocky” character in the movies.
Marguerite Anglin, public art director for Creative Philadelphia, said relocating the statue will create the chance for it to be seen by more people, particularly the influx of tourists expected to come to the city this summer for the U.S. semiquincentennial events, the World Cup and the Major League Baseball All-Star Game.
“As we celebrate our 250th, visitors will come here seeking authentic stories about Philadelphia,” Anglin said during the commission’s meeting Wednesday. “Placing the Joe Frazier statue at the art museum allows us to share a more complete story about Philadelphia’s spirit – one rooted in real people, real work and real pride in this city.”
Many critics have noted the city’s willingness celebrate and promote a monument to a fictional boxer while, for years, lacking recognition for a real-life champion in Frazier, and that even after Frazier’s statue was commissioned it was relegated to the stadium district instead earning a prominent perch at the art museum. Anglin said during Wednesday that moving the Frazier statue is an opportunity for “respectful dialogue.”
“Philadelphia is big enough to celebrate both the real life story of Joe Frazier and the myth of Rocky,” she said. “This is not a competition, it’s a conversation, and public art can help us have those conversations.”
Chris Nanos has had a long career in law enforcement, but he admits he isn’t used to the amount of scrutiny that has come with leading the investigation into the disappearance of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie’s mother.
WASHINGTON — House Republicans rushed to approve legislation on Wednesday that would impose strict new proof-of-citizenship requirements ahead of the midterm elections, a long shot Trump administration priority that faces sharp blowback in the Senate.
The bill, called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE America Act, would require Americans to prove they are citizens when they register to vote, mostly through a valid U.S. passport or birth certificate. It would also require a valid photo identification before voters can cast ballots, which some states already demand. It was approved on a mostly party-line vote, 218-213.
Republicans said the legislation is needed to prevent voter fraud, but Democrats warn it will disenfranchise millions of Americans by making it harder to vote. Federal law already requires that voters in national elections be U.S. citizens, but there’s no requirement to provide documentary proof. Experts said voter fraud is extremely rare, and very few noncitizens ever slip through the cracks. Fewer than one in 10 Americans don’t have paperwork proving they are citizens.
“Some of my colleagues will call this voter suppression or Jim Crow 2.0,” said Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., presenting the package at a committee hearing.
But he said “those allegations are false,” and he argued the bill is needed to enforce existing laws, particularly those that bar immigrants who are not citizens from voting. “The current law is not strong enough,” he said.
Election turmoil shadows the vote
The GOP’s sudden push to change voting rules at the start of the midterm election season is raising red flags, particularly because President Donald Trump has suggested he wants to nationalize U.S. elections, which, under the Constitution, are designed to be run by individual states.
The Trump administration recently seized ballots in Georgia from the 2020 election, which the president insists he won despite his defeat to Democrat Joe Biden. The Department of Justice is demanding voter rolls from states, including Michigan, where a federal judge this week dismissed the department’s lawsuit seeking the voter files. Secretaries of state have raised concerns that voters’ personal data may be shared with Homeland Security to verify citizenship and could result in people being unlawfully purged from the rolls.
“Let me be clear what this is about: It’s about Republicans trying to rig the next election,” said Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, during a hearing ahead of the floor vote. “Republicans are pushing the Save America Act because they want fewer Americans to vote. It’s that simple.”
The legislation is actually a do-over of a similar bill the House approved last year, which also sought to clamp down on fraudulent voting, particularly among noncitizens. It won the support of four House Democrats, but stalled in the Republican-led Senate.
This version toughens some of the requirements further, while creating a process for those whose names may have changed, particularly during marriage, to provide the paperwork necessary and further attest to their identity.
It also imposes requirement on states to share their voter information with the Department of Homeland Security, as a way to verify the citizenship of the names on the voter rolls. That has drawn pushback from elections officials as potentially intrusive on people’s privacy.
Warnings from state election officials
The new rules in the bill would take effect immediately, if the bill is passed by both chambers of Congress and signed into law.
But with primary elections getting underway next month, critics said the sudden shift would be difficult for state election officials to implement and potentially confuse voters.
Voting experts have warned that more than 20 million U.S. citizens of voting age do not have proof of their citizenship readily available. Almost half of Americans do not have a U.S. passport.
“Election Day is fast approaching,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. “Imposing new federal requirements now, when states are deep into their preparations, would negatively impact election integrity by forcing election officials to scramble to adhere to new policies likely without the necessary resources.”
The fight ahead in the Senate
In the Senate, where Republicans also have majority control, there does not appear to be enough support to push the bill past the chamber’s filibuster rules, which largely require 60 votes to advance legislation.
That frustration has led some Republicans, led by Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, to push for a process that would skip the 60-vote threshold in this case, and allow the bill to be debated through a so-called standing filibuster – a process that would open the door to potentially endless debate.
Lee made the case to GOP senators at a closed-door lunch this week, and some said afterward they are mulling the concept.
“I think most people’s minds are open,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., “My mind’s certainly open.”
But Murkowski of Alaska said she is flat out against the legislation.
“Not only does the U.S. Constitution clearly provide states the authority to regulate the ‘times, places, and manner’ of holding federal elections, but one-size-fits-all mandates from Washington, D.C., seldom work in places like Alaska,” she said.
Karen Brinson Bell of Advance Elections, a nonpartisan consulting firm, said the bill adds numerous requirements for state and local election officials with no additional funding.
“Election officials have a simple request of Congress – that you help share their burdens not add to them,” she said.
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This story has been corrected to fix a statistic. Fewer than one in 10 Americans do not have paperwork proving they are citizens; an earlier version incorrectly said fewer than one in 10 have valid passports.
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Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.
The trailblazing, larger-than-life divorce lawyer and Philly character died this week.
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Sandra Schultz Newman in her “dream closet” in the June 1988 issue of Philadelphia magazine. / Photography by Mary D’Anella
I’m gutted by the news that Sandra Schultz Newman has died. Sandy (I always called her Sandy, and she let me) was a force of nature, one of the most fascinating, sharp-as-a-whip, hilarious, generous, resilient, shrewdest people I’ve ever met.
I first met her in late 1987 when I was a young writer starting my career at Philly Mag. A publicist I got to know in town, Tina Breslow, told me over lunch at Marabella’s some great gossip: Sandra Newman, Philly’s top divorce lawyer, had ordered her husband, Dr. Julius Newman, the famous cosmetic surgeon known as “Dr. Nose,” to build her a new house because she needed a bigger closet. Ding ding ding! I ran back to the office, told my editor and had my next story: “Mrs. Nose Builds Her Dream Closet.”
“Mrs. Nose Builds Her Dream Closet” in the June 1988 issue of Philadelphia magazine. (Click image to read the article.)
I spent weeks and weeks with Sandy, drinking Dom P and smoking long More cigarettes at the Four Seasons, being regaled with wild divorce stories (most of her clients were men, partly because men could afford her and partly because, as one client put it, “only a woman could be as big a bitch as my wife”), and accompanying her on all sorts of adventures — including her annual trip to New York City, via one of her private limousines, to put her 17 fur coats (three belonged to her husband) in storage (they needed a limousine to fit, so we couldn’t take one of the Rollses), with a stop at Bergdorf’s to drop $1,950 on another Judith Leiber evening bag.
Let’s just say it was a very ’80s story. Not everyone loved it. Her rabbi was pissed. When, years later, she ran for Supreme Court justice, her opponent tried to use it against her. It didn’t work; she won.
We stayed in touch over the years and in 2021, when I moved back to Philadelphia, she was the first person to take me to lunch, at the Capital Grille. I asked her that day why she liked my story. “Because you made it clear,” she said, “that I earned my own money.”
“The Noses in (almost) Casablanca, their new $4 million digs.” Julius and Sandra Schultz Newman photographed in the June 1988 issue of Philadelphia magazine.
Julius died 21 years ago. Sandy never got over it. She had two sons, who were her world. One of them, David, a yoga guru, died two years ago of brain cancer. She was never the same. And her body started failing. She died on Monday at the age of 87. I can honestly say that, even through some wicked emotional and physical pain, she never wasted one of her days.
At first, when I came back to Philly, I had to use a walker, so she would dispatch Mark, her chauffeur, to pick me and my dog Joey up and deliver us to her dream house in Gladwyne, where her chef would cook up something fabulous and we’d talk and talk and talk and gossip for hours. She was as protective of me as Mama Bear would be, doted on Joey, and always gave me great advice on everything from my stories (“That’s not Lisa enough.”) to my wardrobe (“Oh, get rid of that!”).
President Trump said Wednesday that nearly all governors are welcome at the White House for a formal meeting and dinner next week, though the Democratic governors of Maryland and Colorado are still being excluded.
The White House was initially going to exclude Democratic governors from a formal, typically bipartisan business meeting on Feb. 20 during the annual National Governors Association (NGA) conference, according to the NGA and a source familiar with the White House’s planning.
And two Democratic governors, Wes Moore of Maryland and Jared Polis of Colorado, said they were informed by the NGA last Friday they would not be invited to a separate dinner at the White House on Feb. 21 with the president, the governors and their spouses.
But after talks between the White House and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican who chairs the NGA, the organization and the president said Wednesday that governors from both parties are welcome to both the meeting and the dinner. Democratic governors began receiving invitations on Wednesday evening to the business meeting, though the NGA did not receive updates about the White House dinner.
Gov. Stitt informed governors of all 55 states and territories on Wednesday that all are invited to the formal meeting on Feb. 20.
“He was very clear in his communications with me that this is a National Governors Association’s event, and he looks forward to hosting you and hearing from governors across the country. President Trump said this was always his intention, and we have addressed the misunderstanding in scheduling,” Stitt wrote in a message to governors obtained by CBS News.
In a Wednesday afternoon Truth Social post after Stitt’s message was sent, Mr. Trump wrote that Moore and Polis are still excluded. He suggested there was a misunderstanding between him and Stitt.
“The invitations were sent to ALL Governors, other than two, who I feel are not worthy of being there,” Trump wrote, adding that he “even invited” two of his political foes, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. “So, as usual with him, Stitt got it WRONG! The Invitations were sent out to all other Governors, Democrat and Republican.”
Moore still received an invite on Wednesday to the formal meeting, according to a source familiar with the matter. It is unclear if Polis received an invitation to that meeting as well. CBS News has reached out to the White House.
The NGA said it was informed by the White House on Feb. 5 that only Republican governors would be invited to the formal business meeting. Because of these exclusions, the NGA said the following day that it would not facilitate that meeting or put it on the group’s official schedule. Stitt reiterated that in a letter to governors on Monday, and defended Moore as “an exceptional vice chair” for the NGA.
After reports of Democratic governors being excluded from the meeting, nearly every Democratic governor put out a joint statement Tuesday that indicated they wouldn’t attend any White House events, including the dinner, out of solidarity with Moore and Polis.
In his Wednesday post, Mr. Trump cited a disagreement over the imprisonment of former Colorado county election clerk Tina Peters as the reason for not inviting Polis. The president has pushed Polis for months to grant clemency to Peters, who is serving a nine-year sentence on multiple state charges related to unauthorized access to voting machines.
And Mr. Trump called Moore “foul mouthed” and claimed he had embellished receiving military medals, though Moore has said it was an “honest mistake” on a White House fellowship application in 2006. He has since received a Bronze Star for his deployment to Afghanistan.
The president also criticized Stitt, calling him a “RINO,” or Republican in name only. Stitt had backed Mr. Trump’s former opponent, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, during the 2024 Republican presidential primaries.
Moore called the decision not to invite him “another example of blatant disrespect and a snub to the spirit of bipartisan federal-state partnership” in a statement earlier this week.
A Polis spokesperson called it a “disappointing decision for a traditionally bipartisan event between Governors and whomever occupies the White House.”
Governors from both parties attended a White House meeting and dinner during last year’s conference. The meeting drew attention for a verbal scuffle between Mr. Trump and Maine Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, in which the president pressed Mills on the issue of transgender women in sports, and Mills responded: “We’ll see you in court.”
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If you know anything about Philly, you know we don’t mess around when it comes to sports.
This city lives and breathes athletics in a way that’s honestly hard to explain unless you’ve experienced it firsthand.
Whether you’ve been bleeding green since you were five or you’re just looking for something fun to do on a weekend, trust me – Philadelphia’s got you covered.
Here are five sports events that’ll give you a real taste of what this city’s all about. Fair warning: once you experience Philly sports culture, there’s no going back.
Eagles // Where Dreams and Heartbreak Collide
The Eagles aren’t just a football team here. They’re practically a religion. Lincoln Financial Field turns into something magical (or chaotic, depending on how you look at it) every game day. The fans are absolutely relentless in the best way possible.
Nothing beats a divisional game against the Giants or Cowboys. The energy’s electric, the tailgating’s legendary, and you’ll hear chants that’ll make your grandmother blush. Even if you don’t know a touchdown from a field goal, you’ll get swept up in it. The cheesesteaks alone are worth the price of admission.
76ers // Basketball with Attitude
Credit: Unsplash
Joel Embiid’s a beast. Watching him dominate at the Wells Fargo Center is something else entirely. The Sixers have this swagger that’s pure Philadelphia – confident, gritty, and never backing down from anyone.
The crowd gets loud, especially when we’re playing Boston or Miami. You’ll see incredible plays that’ll have you jumping out of your seat, and the halftime entertainment’s pretty solid too. Plus, the Wells Fargo Center‘s got some decent food options if you’re willing to pay arena prices.
Phillies // Summer Nights Done Right
Citizens Bank Park on a warm summer evening? That’s peak Philadelphia right there. The Phillies have been through their ups and downs, but when they’re hot, this city goes absolutely nuts. Remember 2008? Yeah, that was something special.
What I love about Phillies games is the pace. You can actually have a conversation, grab a beer, and let the kids run around. It’s baseball the way it should be – relaxed but exciting when it matters. The cheesesteaks are better here than at the Eagles games, just saying.
Flyers // Old School Hockey Intensity
The Flyers embody everything about Philadelphia sports culture. Tough, scrappy, and never giving up. These games get intense fast, and the fans at Wells Fargo Center don’t hold back. You’ll hear things that would make a sailor proud.
Hockey’s different from other sports – the pace is relentless, the hits are brutal, and when someone scores, the whole place explodes. After sitting on the edge of your seat for three periods, you might need one of those massagers to work out the tension. Seriously, these games will stress you out in the best possible way.
Union // Soccer’s Growing on Us
Soccer’s still finding its footing in Philly, but the Union’s doing something right at Subaru Park. The venue’s smaller, more intimate. You feel connected to what’s happening on the field.
The supporters’ section goes all out with chants, banners, the whole nine yards. It’s got this international vibe that’s different from our other teams. Even if you’re not a huge soccer fan, it’s worth checking out. The atmosphere’s pretty unique for Philadelphia sports.
Bottom Line
Philadelphia sports aren’t for everyone. We’re loud, we’re passionate, and we’re not always the most patient with opposing fans.
But if you want to experience something authentic – something that captures what this city’s really about – you need to get to one of these games.
Don’t overthink it. Grab some tickets, show up, and prepare to be part of something bigger than yourself.
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A bicyclist and an impassable bike lane at 11th and Washington, more than two weeks after a major storm brought mounds of snow and ice to Philadelphia / Photograph by Bradford Pearson
Lo and behold, Philadelphia: The polar vortex is gone. The Arctic blast is no more. Two-and-a-half weeks after a major storm brought a bounty of snow and ice to Philadelphia, we are finally basking in the melty glow of highs that don’t start with the numeral one or two. We’ve heard no shortage of complaints over the last two weeks from car owners frustrated — nay, downright angry — with the condition of the roads, and it remains to be seen if voters will seek vengeance come the mayoral primary in May 2027. But if you think that car drivers had it bad, what about all those Philly bicyclists?
“For the first two weeks after the storm, I felt completely unsafe riding my bike,” says Newbold’s Zach Strassburger, who relies on their e-cargo bike to get to and from work in Center City and to transport their four-year-old and 10-year-old to school and Hebrew school. And because Strassburger relies on that bike, it means they also rely on the many miles of bike lanes in Philadelphia to keep them and their kids safe.
The problem? There have essentially been no bike lanes, because they’ve been covered with caked-in ice. After hearing a complaint on Tuesday morning from South Philly about the bike lane problem, I decided to pilot my 2004 Kia Optima from 23rd and Race to South Philadelphia to West Philadelphia to Fairmount Park and then through Wynnefield and home to my saved spot in Overbrook, and, sure enough, I saw very few useful bike lanes. What I did see were numerous delivery people on e-bikes swerving in and out of traffic because they couldn’t use the bike lanes.
“There’s nothing we can do,” says one such driver, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who asked to be identified only as Chas. I stopped Chas outside of a restaurant in West Philadelphia on Tuesday afternoon to ask what his experience had been like. “I came out the Tuesday after it snowed and have been out every day since. It’s very unsafe but if I don’t work, I don’t make any money … I can’t ‘work from home.’”
Realizing that the bike lanes weren’t an option in the two weeks after the storm, Strassburger did their best to use unreliable and overcrowded SEPTA, but SEPTA doesn’t go everywhere, including that Hebrew school. They also had to ask their ex to step in at times for rides, which was far from ideal. The chaos and confusion of the storm’s aftermath and the logistical nightmares it wrought resulted in Strassburger’s 10-year-old walking home after dark from a school band practice and getting lost. “He ended up walking to the wrong house,” recounts Strassburger. “I didn’t have any idea where he was, and that was really scary.”
This week, Strassburger decided enough was enough. It was time to break out the bike.
“I almost crashed,” Strassburger says of their Monday ride. Then, they wound up on a street that didn’t have a cleared bike lane, so Strassburger had no option but to ride in the single lane of traffic, which, of course “the cars don’t like.” On Tuesday, Strassburger had to take their 10-year-old to middle school and read online that the bike lanes on 11th Street were bad, so they thought they would try the ones on 13th Street. “Those were utterly inaccessible,” Strassburger says.
South Philadelphia resident James Bold, a nurse at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, has biked almost daily for the last 30 years. But given the state of the city after the storm, he made the less convenient switch to SEPTA. “I actually did ride to work one morning after waiting for the 45 bus that never came,” says Bold. “I scrambled back home and grabbed the bike and made it in. But not ideal.”
Bold says that while the frigid temperatures and uncleared lanes did affect his decision to steer clear of the bike for a couple of weeks, the main reason he stayed off the bike was all those angry car drivers.
“For the life of me, I will never understand the hostility toward bicycles,” Bold laments. “More than the snow and ice and cold, I think what kept me off my bike since the storm is knowing how aggressive everybody is driving and parking. And if they were to encounter a bicyclist on the already compromised tight roads, it’s just something I didn’t want to have to deal with.”
Lana Harshaw, executive director of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, echoes Bold’s observations, saying that while obstructed bike lanes — whether those obstructions are cars parking in them or ice covering them — are a problem, the real problem is the people behind the wheel of their cars.
“The cyclists have to merge in with high-speed traffic, and a lot of the drivers are aggressive or just folks who aren’t used to sharing the road with cyclists,” Harshaw says. “I would just ask all the drivers out there to be considerate of bike riders and pay attention so everyone can be safe.”
The Philadelphia Streets Department did not respond to a request for comment on this story. But Bold, for one, says not to be too hard on local officials. “It’s one of the things you accept living in the city and under extremely unusual circumstances,” he adds.
The good news? We’re supposed to touch 50 degrees one day next week. The bad news? There’s still more than a month of winter left. Be safe — and nice! — out there.
Actor James Van Der Beek, best known for his role on TV’s “Dawson’s Creek,” has died at age 48.
Van Der Beek, who played Dawson Leery in the 90s teen drama, announced a colorectal cancer diagnosis in 2023. Van Der Beek also starred in the films “Varsity Blues and “Texas Rangers.”
“Our beloved James David Van Der Beek passed peacefully this morning,” a post on the actor’s wife’s Instagram account said. “He met his final days with courage, faith, and grace. There is much to share regarding his wishes, love for humanity and the sacredness of time. Those days will come. For now we ask for peaceful privacy as we grieve our loving husband, father, son, brother, and friend.”
NBCLA has reached out to his publicist for comment.
He is survived by his wife Kimberly and their six children Olivia, Joshua, Annabel, Emilia, Gwendolyn, and Jeremiah.
“I’m just on the journey,” he told TODAY of his cancer battle in July 2025. “It’s a process. It’ll probably be a process for the rest of my life.”
After his diagnosis, Van Der Beek became committed to spreading awareness about the importance of early screenings and detection as colorectal cancer rates are skyrocketing in young adults.
“I ate as well as I could. I was healthy. I was in amazing cardiovascular shape,” he said. “There was no reason in my mind that I should have gotten a positive diagnosis.”
In September 2025 Van Der Beek was scheduled to reunite with “Dawson’s Creek” cast members Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson, Michelle Williams and others for a live reading of the show’s pilot episode in a one-night only charity event.
“We wanted to gather around our dear friend James and remind him that we are all here. We always have been and we always will be,” Williams said at the time. “And I know the fans of ‘Dawson’s Creek’ feel the same way.”
Van Der Beek — the titular character of “Dawson’s Creek,” which aired from 1998 to 2003 on The WB — was forced to cancel his appearance due to illness.
“So, you can imagine how gutted I was when two stomach viruses conspired to knock me out of commission and keep me grounded at the worst possible moment,” Van Der Beek said in a social media post the day before the event.
“I won’t get to be there. I won’t get to stand on that stage and thank every soul in the theater for showing up for me, and against cancer, when I needed it most,” the post reads.
James Van Der Beek is shedding new light on how he is feeling emotionally amid his battle with colorectal cancer. During an interview with “TODAY” on Friday from his Texas ranch, the actor reacted to concerns over his appearance which arose after he was unable to attend a “Dawson’s Creek” reunion on Broadway in September due to a stomach virus.
Van Der Beek surprised fans at the event with a pre-recorded video appearance.
“I can’t believe I’m not there,” he said in the video played at the Richard Rodgers Theater in New York City. “I can’t believe I don’t get to see my castmates, my beautiful cast, in person. I wanted to stand on this stage and thank every single person in this theater for being here tonight.”
Van Der Beek’s wife and children were in attendance, joining the stars on stage to sing the show’s theme song, “I Don’t Want to Wait.”
“This night was so special for the whole family and, more importantly, just feeling my husband fill the entire theater and the love for him,” Kimberly Van Der Beek wrote on her Instagram story after the event.
James Van Der Beek was born on March 8, 1977 in Cheshire, Connecticut. He became interested in theater in middle school and went on to make his off-Broadway debut in the play “Finding the Sun” in 1993 at 16 years old.
He made his first television appearance on a 1993 episode of Nickelodeon’s “Clarissa Explains It All” and, in 1995, appeared in three episodes of the CBS soap opera “As the World Turns.”
In 1997, he landed the role of Dawson Leery in “Dawson’s Creek,” a coming-of-age drama centered around a group of teenage friends in the fictional town of Capeside, Massachusetts. The show debuted Jan. 20, 1998 and ran for six seasons and 128 episodes, becoming an international success and turning a main cast of unknowns into stars.
Van Der Beek went on to find success on the big screen. He starred in the teen football drama “Varsity Blues” in 1999, taking home the MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Male Performance.
He followed with appearances in “Texas Rangers,” “Scary Movie,” “Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back” and many others through 2020.
Getty Images
Getty Images
The cast of Dawson’s Creek in an undated publicity still.
He maintained a television presence throughout, with recurring roles on hits like “Criminal Minds,” “How I Met Your Mother,” and “One Tree Hill.”
He later made reality television appearances on “Dancing with the Stars” in 2019 and “The Masked Singer” in 2025.
He continued working after his cancer diagnosis, starring in the series, “Elle,” about the high school years of the “Legally Blonde” character.
“The greatest thing about work is a cancer doesn’t exist between action and cut,” Van Der Beek said in 2025. “It was fun to drop in and just have a blast because it’s such a great cast, a great production, and everybody out there is really talented.”
The NFL season is over, and everything is worse now. We just saw the Seattle Seahawks soundly defeat the New England Patriots in Super Bowl 60, meaning the Eagles’ title of defending champions is over.
We now enter the dark day,s also known as the offseason.
Football-less weekends are upon us.
How you spend these next few months is up to you, but here’s where I’m starting.
We do know that Jordan Love has played well under Mannion, Baker has become the franchise guy in Tampa under Grizzard, and the Vikings’ rushing game was surprisingly competent despite the revolving door of starter quarterbacks. I’ll also be looking at players who may join or leave the team next year.
A.J. Brown
Brings us to crazy trade scenarios. Is AJ Brown actually going to force a trade out of Philadelphia? Personally, I want to keep AJ despite his antics from the last two years. Most reports show Brown’s value around a second-round pick, which doesn’t justify it to me. Sure, a second-round pick could be any caliber of player; it could even be an AJ Brown-type player. Then again, Howie has shown he’d rather pull the plug early than late.
Maxx Crosby
Is Howie going to pull a masterclass and try to get Maxx Crosby? While I would love to see a player like him added to the team, I think it only really happens if the Raiders are desperate to move him.
He has a massive contract signed last year, and the Eagles need more help on the offensive line than on the defensive line. They’ll likely try to build through the draft.
2026 NFL Draft
Speaking of, you can also start prepping for the draft. My early draft prep is to take an o-line or player from either the college playoffs or the SEC. I think the biggest difference for the Eagles from 2024 to 2025 was their running game.
Hand up, I’m not much of a college football fan, so specifics will come later as we get closer to the draft. I do know that we can’t judge their past season of play until we see how well they exercise before the draft. More to come later, but we have our last idea.
Landon Dickerson
Doom scroll about the team. Not recommended, and actually, I’m going to try to talk you down on the big ones. Landon Dickerson might retire due to a knee injury that has reportedly plagued his 2025 season and was an issue when he was first drafted. It may surprise you, but I’m not secretly a doctor with a great knowledge of players’ knees.
As a sports watcher, I can say we’ve seen a lot of players with leg injuries heal faster and return to 100% as of late. There are ACLs like Jayson Tatum or even Joel Embiid who got knee surgery and have been playing like they did when they won the MVP.
Lane Johnson
Lane Johnson also underwent surgery, and as the Eagles’ longest-tenured player (assuming Brandon Graham re-retires), there are questions about his future. I don’t actually expect him to retire unless his healing goes worse than expected.
What I do expect is that this is his last year, so the Eagles better take one of those guys I haven’t researched yet.
Vic Fangio
Vic Fangio also flirted with retirement but has told the team he’d remain for at least another year. While this would be bad for obvious reasons, there’s always the chance that these were just rumors and a return to winning would cure his issues. There’s also our old pal Jim Schwartz, who is taking a year off from football after not being picked as the Browns’ head coach.
Would he be willing to take another defensive coordinator position? Who knows, but I can tell you he’d get more national coverage with the Eagles than the Browns.
Those are a few things I’ll be doing.
I’ll also be writing for all you fine readers.
Hello, I’m a greater Philadelphia native writing mostly about the Eagles and the rest of the NFL. Articles aren’t … More about Kyle Lavin
REC Philly may have closed its doors, but its co-founder Dave Silver still believes the best is yet to come for our city’s immensely talented creatives.
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From left: Will Toms, Questlove, and Dave Silver after Questlove’s performance at REC Philly. / Photographs courtesy of REC Philly
This is not a goodbye letter. This is a letter of appreciation.
It’s a thank-you to a city that helped guide me over the last decade. The people. The places. The neighborhoods. The opportunities. The support.
What started as an idea in a basement in North Philly grew into a warehouse down the road, and eventually into an institution at the corner of 9th and Market streets. But growing REC Philly, alongside my high school best friend and dozens of young, passionate changemakers, was never just about the spaces we built. It was about the people who poured themselves into the vision. The team who built REC. The creators who defined it. The business community that believed in it and showed up for it, year after year.
Dave Silver, Will Toms, and team the night of the grand opening of REC Philly’s space at Fashion District in 2019
As a Temple student who grew up in the suburbs, I never imagined how deeply committed I’d become to Philadelphia. But the city made it easy. Since 2012, from basement parties to dive-bar showcases, every single event we hosted revealed someone new in the creative community whose talent stopped me in my tracks. That discovery made the hard days of building a business easier to push through. Behind every challenge was a creator getting closer to doing what they love for a living, and a team working tirelessly to help make that possible.
For more than a decade, Philly’s creative community carried me through some of my most difficult moments as an entrepreneur. I’m not sure the creatives ever knew that their work was often what kept me going on the darkest days — but it was. That’s one of the main reasons for this letter.
From left: Will Toms and Dave Silver at the REC Philly construction site at Fashion District in 2019.
If the creative community was the fuel that kept the car running, then the business community was the oil. From the very beginning, Philadelphia’s business leaders showed up in ways I didn’t expect. There aren’t many cities where a twenty-something entrepreneur with a wild idea can send a DM to the leader of one of the largest corporations in the city — and actually get a meeting. But that’s what happened. Comcast — and shoutout to Danielle Cohn — opened doors before I even fully understood what I was building. That single conversation turned into a relationship that lasted more than seven years, with Comcast’s Lift Labs becoming a key sponsor and client as REC grew.
I have similar stories with Independence Blue Cross, PECO, and the City of Philadelphia itself, local institutions that didn’t just talk about supporting the creative economy, but actively invested in it. Philadelphia can be tough, no doubt. But if you’re consistent and thoughtful with your asks, there are warm, generous people here who genuinely want to help you build something meaningful.
One story that best captures the spirit of this city came during the pandemic. Like so many others, REC was on the brink, and artists across the city were struggling to find ways to survive.
Roger LaMay of WXPN honoring a grantee at the Black Music City showcase event in 2022
I’ll never forget the call from WXPN’s general manager, Roger LaMay. They saw what was happening to the creative community and wanted to help, but needed a partner to bring the idea to life. That collaboration became Black Music City, a program that ran for five years and distributed over half a million dollars to Black creators in Philadelphia. It remains one of the projects I’m most proud of, not just because of the impact, but because it reflected the trust and care that exists within this city’s ecosystem.
I could tell stories like this for pages. I could list artists and partners endlessly. But I’ll spare you. The point is simple: Philadelphia has the talent, and it has the support, to build a truly thriving creative economy. I still believe we’re only scratching the surface.
Philadelphia Is All We Need
The REC Philly team at the construction site in Fashion District in 2019
REC may not be operating the way it has for the last several years, and while that’s difficult, I’ve learned that sometimes things need to stop so other things can start. Creators learned through our programming at REC. They met collaborators. They built relationships that will carry them forward. All of that feels like a fuse waiting to be lit, and I look forward to supporting that spark in new ways moving forward. I know my business partner, Will Toms, does too. It will just look different than it has over the past decade.
And I need to offer my deepest thank you to the team who, for years, sat in that warehouse at 9th and Dauphin streets, freezing cold in the winter, boiling hot in the summer, working under a roof sealed with trash bags. We believed in a vision and built it together, piece by piece, until it became real. There will never be another experience like that, and I’m forever grateful to everyone who helped bring it to life.
REC had the distinct honor of welcoming all levels of talent into our space, from emerging creatives to living legends. I’m deeply grateful to everyone who trusted us with their time, their work, and their names.
From left: Will Toms, Kenny Gamble, and Dave Silver at REC Philly’s creative space at 9th & Market.
People like Wallo267 and Gillie Da King, who recorded early podcast episodes in our studio. Kenny Gamble, who walked the halls of REC in a hard hat before we opened and immediately understood the vision. Questlove, who spun records at one of our festivals, nodding to his teenage years running through the Gallery. Tierra Whack, who trusted us with her merchandise when we opened our retail store. Jason and Travis Kelce, who recorded an early episode of New Heights in Studio A. Armani White, who spent countless hours in our live room preparing to tour the world. These moments happened within four walls, but they’ll stay with me for a lifetime.
Dave Silver, Will Toms, and the team behind Jason Kelce’s Underdog Apparel nonprofit clothing line
I know there’s curiosity about what led to REC’s space closing, and while that story deserves its own time and place, this letter isn’t about that. What I will say is this: Challenges arose when we stopped being fully dedicated to the impact we were making in Philadelphia. Like many ambitious entrepreneurs, we wanted to expand our reach. We took that shot. We learned from it. And one of the biggest lessons I’ll carry forward is this: Sometimes depth matters more than scale. Philadelphia could have been enough, and in many ways, it always was.
I’ll end here. Philadelphia is one of the largest cities in the country, yet it still feels like a small town. When you do things right here, the impact ripples. People care deeply. They’re tough.
They’re opinionated. But they love this city. And that passion, whether it showed up as support or criticism, was fuel for me over the years.
They say if you can make it in Philadelphia, you can make it anywhere. I’m grateful I got the chance to try. Thank you, Philly. Let’s see what we do next.
Dave Silver was co-founder/CEO of REC Philly from 2015-2025.
Hey, have you heard about one of the marketing slogans Boston planners floated for that city’s slate of 2026 birth of the nation events?
“The Revolution started here,” Beantown’s boosters say. “Philly just did the paperwork.”
Booyah. For those of us who grew up with a deep disdain for the Celtics, it’s a traumatic diss. And what has been the response of our tough, blue-collar town — without whom, one could argue, we might still be subjects of the crown?
Listen to the audio edition here:
Uh, kinda crickets. No “Yo, Boston! We got yer paperwork right here,” complete with a prime-time TV reading of the Declaration of Independence on the Art Museum steps by, say, Questlove, Quinta Brunson, and, I don’t know, Pink?
Don’t get me wrong. Philly has a year of great parties planned, with neighborhood get-togethers, World Cup soccer, baseball’s All-Star Game, the NCAA college basketball tourney. But what’s missing, in these times of national torment, is something to reverberate through the decades to come in a way that stirs the civic soul. Something that reestablishes Philly as the nation’s center of Enlightenment values. You know: Here, we double down on justice, tolerance, truth, and unbridled exploration. That’s the role we played for the country’s 100th anniversary, when Philly’s Centennial Exhibition shaped the national zeitgeist by celebrating American ingenuity and entrepreneurialism.
“The farmer saw new machines, seeds and processes; the mechanic, ingenious inventions and tools, and products of the finest workmanship; the teacher, the educational aids and system of the world; the man of science, the wonders of nature and the results of the inventions of the best brains of all lands,” wrote James McCabe in The Illustrated History of the Centennial Exhibition.
That was long before the advent of the Philly Shrug. Fast-forward 100 years: In 1976, the city threw a party and hardly anyone showed up, after Mayor Frank Rizzo, mystifyingly, spoke darkly of danger in the streets and calling in the National Guard.
Until recently, some of us feared we were heading for a reprise of that debacle, thanks to eight years of inattention by the perpetually gloomy Mayor Jim Kenney. But Mayor Cherelle Parker (pushed by Councilmember Isaiah Thomas) and a group of civic leaders have stepped up to save what could have been an embarrassment. They deserve credit, but there’s still one looming question: Can we do something bold that once again models for a desperate country how to come together as a nation?
Where we were
Let’s look back at how we got here. As chronicled by David Murrell in a 2022 Philly Mag piece, nearly 15 years ago investment banker Andrew Hohns, a civic innovator who founded Young Involved Philadelphia, started agitating for a 2026 plan that would shape Philadelphia for decades to come. He envisioned investments that would grow the city and change its national image. Hohns founded the nonprofit USA250 and enlisted first local historian and former mayoral candidate Sam Katz and then former Mayor and Governor Ed Rendell to helm the ambitious project. Problem was, 2026 was so far off; many thought there were more pressing problems deserving immediate attention.
Early in President Trump’s first term, the government formed the federal U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, the official body tasked with planning the celebration. In short order, America250, as it was called, started making all the wrong types of news. There was infighting, allegations of shady side deals, and sexual harassment charges. Hohns, who was on the federal commission, stepped down in protest. Soon, it became clear that cities like Boston, New York, Charleston, and especially Washington, D.C. — now that President Trump, with his “Triumphal Arch,” has seen its marketing value — would all be competing to own the nation’s birthday.
It’s not just about quantifying economic impact, or maximizing visitors, or throwing grand parties, even though all those things are cool. It’s also about restoring a sense that Philly can once again do big things.
Meanwhile, USA250, renamed Philly250, went small ball, focusing, as one civic leader told me, “merely on block parties.” Yes, there were some exciting, headline-making draws, like the FIFA World Cup games and, as Hohns had lobbied for, the Major League Baseball All-Star Game. But there wasn’t much that fit the vision of boldly using the anniversary to rebrand Philadelphia on the world stage, as the Centennial celebration had done.
It was, in contrast to the ambitious ethos of our founding, an example of the incremental thinking that has come to be modern Philadelphia’s curse.
But a green shoot emerged last year when a group of yes-minded civic leaders stood up to do something about it. Among them were Visit Philly CEO and Citizen Media Group board member Angela Val and Philadelphia Visitor Center CEO Katherine Ott Lovell — a pair who have come to be called the Laverne and Shirley of 2026 event planning.
Things began happening. In early 2025, Philly250 was folded into Ott Lovell’s portfolio at the Visitor Center as Philadelphia250, with Rendell as its chair. Gregg Caren and Maria Grasso at the Convention and Visitors Bureau stepped up as well. And Parker rose to the challenge. In 2024, she named nonprofit executive Michael Newmuis the City’s 2026 director; now there was someone in city government waking up every day and thinking solely about how Philly could capitalize on the 250th. There were also now millions to spend from city coffers — the result of Thomas’s 2024 hearings on the lack of planning for 2026, hearings that pressured Parker into coughing up funds. (Even with all this, though, there were critics, including Hohns, who thought the City was simply too late to the game.)
Meanwhile, the Connelly Foundation put together a group of philanthropic funders for the effort, including the William Penn and Comcast foundations. The $16 million Philadelphia Semiquincentennial Funder Collaborative — which now has seven founding philanthropies — would underwrite innovative plans to mark the 250th. For a city and region long characterized by siloed civic investment efforts, it modeled the power of philanthropic collaboration.
The result? The Wall Street Journal named Philly the world’s number one place to visit in 2026. We have a potential tourism bonanza, a total estimated economic impact north of $700 million, and a solid roster of events and programming throughout the year. Under the leadership of Ott Lovell, to cite just one example, the Visitors Center has amassed an army of “Phambassadors” — everyday Philadelphians charged with helping the city and region put our best foot forward when company shows up.
The downside, still? Scant programming that lives on after 2026 to stir and shape the civic soul. The 250th is an opportunity to create new institutions that will grow the city — as Atlanta had done following the 1996 Olympics and as Philly had done before. Past American birthdays, after all, have given us the Mann. Music Center, the African American Museum, the Please Touch Museum, and FDR Park, to name just a few.
But that doesn’t mean it’s too late to add some substance to the 2026 sizzle, as some loosely connected local patriots have been trying to do.
A monument to democracy?
It’s tempting to characterize Rendell as our resident lion in winter, but when it comes to 2026, he’s been a dog with a bone. He has raised $5 million for an idea he calls the National Light — a permanent, interactive, domed monument to democracy. At a time when civics and civility are imperiled, Rendell has imagined something that’s part museum and part public square, an illuminated civic space in Center City with curated, interactive content. Something that returns us to democracy’s roots, when Athenians debated civic issues in public assemblies.
I spoke to him recently, right after he’d read Walter Isaacson’s new book, The Greatest Sentence Ever Written, a chronicle of the 10-day collaborative editing done by Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin on the text of what would become the Declaration of Independence. Rendell ties the disunity of this moment to the fact that so few know about that one. Philadelphia250 has done polling. They found that most of the country doesn’t even know this is our national birthday. In fact, most of the country — like our city — knows very little of civic import, period.
“Our polling shows that less than 30 percent of Philadelphians have any idea what Martin Luther King Jr. said in his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech,” Rendell told me. “They know it was a great speech. Well, at the National Light, you could see it in context, get questions answered in real time, debate the message.” Had his vision come to life, he added wistfully, “it would have been great.”
For a time, it looked like it would happen. Rendell had hired designers, and the City even provisionally greenlit a site for his idea — the renovated, spaceship-like Fairmount Park Welcome Center at LOVE Park.
“Sometimes we let the perfect be the enemy of progress,” Gould said. “And I wish Philadelphia could be a little more welcoming to risk.” — the Sixers’ David Gould
But Parker mysteriously rescinded it last July. To hear her tell it, all told, Parker has invested in excess of $100 million in our 2026 celebration, though others say that number is a little misleading, given that it includes expenditures on non creative items like new cars for the city’s Department of Fleet Services, training for cops, and new crowd control barriers. The actual investment in content may be more like $75 million, they argue. Either way, Rendell’s idea ran up against all that spending. He needed another $10 million, at the very least, but the well dried up.
Others suspect that it might not have helped that Rendell was such a fervent backer of Rebecca Rhynhart against Parker in the 2023 mayoral primary. Still others say that getting his project built wasn’t the issue; the real question was who would maintain and run it once the power of Rendell’s watchful eye was no longer on it?
“I’m very sad,” Rendell told me from his East Falls home. “Sad for us. Because no other city has come up with anything better. If I was still governor, I would have given Philadelphia $30 million and said, Go come up with something that owns this nationally and changes Philadelphia’s direction, because America needs a new revolution — and it should start here.”
It’s an argument he made to the current occupant of his old office in Harrisburg; the state budget allocates $40 million to the 250th, but that’s spread out among the Commonwealth’s 67 counties. Yet the revolution happened here, Rendell argues. Sure, Luzerne County should have a parade — but leave that to the locals. “Why would you give $500,000 to a county that had no people living in it in 1776?” he wonders. He won’t share precisely what he said to Governor Shapiro, but it’s not hard to discern what Rendell’s political advice might have been: Focus on what you can own—particularly when you’re making a national name for yourself.
“Josh is doing a terrific job and I support him,” Rendell told me. “But he’ll too often take the safe route. You’ve got to have some political moxie.” As for Parker, Rendell said she was afraid to spend more money. “In business,” he told me, “there’s a saying: You have to spend money to make money.”
There’s talk that Rendell’s National Light might end up inside the Constitution Center, which is fine, I suppose, even if it smacks of a half-assed compromise. But there’s better news, at least, in that our 82-year-old former guv isn’t the city’s only would-be 2026 change agent.
Rendering of National Light at LOVE Park. Photo courtesy ESI Design/NBBJ.
Andy Toy, a city worker who heads the Philadelphia Policy Forum and sits on the Philadelphia250 board, called me over the summer, when the 40th anniversary of the groundbreaking Live Aid concert was underway. Why don’t we revisit that, he suggested — only this time it’s called “Democracy Aid” and instead of fighting famine in Africa, the proceeds go to civic-minded nonprofits right here? I hooked him up with legendary rock impresario and Live Aid producer Larry Magid, who rightly pointed out that not only would Toy need millions to secure the type of national acts he was targeting, but the moment probably wasn’t right for a democracy rally. In these crazy times, sad to say, being pro-democracy has come to be seen as somehow partisan.
But Magid remembered that he’d once helped produce one of Norman Lear’s Declaration of Independence Road Trips — featuring celebrities like the late Rob Reiner dramatically reading aloud the words of our revolutionary founding. Could something like that be the answer to Boston’s throwing of shade?
It’s not too late. I’ve talked to countless folks — people who build things — and they’re still cooking up plans for 2026 and beyond. Despite Magid’s misgivings, Toy is still dreaming of some type of ambitious concert. Another entrepreneur pointed me to a Boston (there’s that damn city again) art collective called Silence Dogood (an homage to one of Ben Franklin’s pseudonyms) that has been projecting lighted Revolutionary War messages — quotes from
Thomas Paine, for example — in vintage-style typefaces on buildings throughout the city.
“If I was still governor, I would have given Philadelphia $30 million and said, ‘Go come up with something that owns this nationally and changes Philadelphia’s direction, because America needs a new revolution — and it should start here.’” — former Gov. Ed Rendell
Why not engage Philly’s Klip Collective, which has projected sensory light shows onto City Hall, to do that here, where Paine’s pamphlets began their sweep of the colonies and spread a spirit of revolution? Why not brighten our night sky with Paine’s inspiring calls to take up civic arms, messages we should once again be exporting across the nation, like, We have it in our power to begin the world over again?
Another forward-thinking civic leader, a CEO, tells me he reached out to Philadelphia250 and wondered if the coming influx of visitors wasn’t an opportunity to sell people and businesses on relocating here.
He offered to put together a group of CEOs to serve as volunteer tour guides for just that purpose. Imagine you’re a New York businessperson on a jaunt to Philly for the 250th and Brian Roberts is chauffeuring your group through the city, selling its charm and convenience. Maybe you’d pull up stakes in overpriced and over-congested Manhattan? Alas, no one has yet gotten back to our would-be CEO volunteer. (Which may not be surprising, since business recruitment falls not to the 2026 team but to the City’s Commerce Department, which still doesn’t have a permanent director after Alba Martinez, a big supporter of 2026 planning, stepped down last May.)
Most promising, a group of next-gen business and civic leaders has formed to host a series of “Beyond 2026” public conversations. They had their first event at the Pennsylvania Society in New York, where, rather than simply schmooze and booze, they held a luncheon to talk about how to capitalize on 2026 and build a bigger and better city.
It was the brainchild of Cozen O’Connor managing director Joe Hill, who seems to have his hand in all matters of policy and power in Philly, and he recruited the afore-mentioned Angela Val; Comcast’s Michelle Singer; Sixers chief corporate affairs officer David Gould; and McKinsey’s JP Julien, an inclusive economic development consultant, for a panel that tossed around a commodity we’re too often lacking in: ideas. They were egged on by Future Standard founder and CEO and Citizen Media Group co-founder Michael Forman, who challenged the room of young and young-at-heart professionals to put something on the line. A lot was said, but there was a common theme: We need a change in attitude.
“Sometimes we let the perfect be the enemy of progress,” Gould said. “And I wish Philadelphia could be a little more welcoming to risk.”
Welcoming to risk. It’s funny to think of those guys — and they were all guys — huddled over that parchment at 7th and Market two and a half centuries ago. The original start-up founders, on our very own cobblestoned streets. As Isaacson chronicles in his book, Jefferson and Adams differed on inalienable versus unalienable rights. Adams prevailed — we are endowed with certain unalienable, or inherent, rights. While they tussled over a prefix, it’s easy to forget how much they had at stake. They were in the tiny minority; loyalists abounded around them. Had things gone another way, they’d have been found treasonous, likely put to death. And yet there they were, fixated on just the right word to fit their revolutionary call.
We’re here because of their welcoming of risk. And yet their attitude in the era of the Philly Shrug seems so bygone. Rendell even wrote a book about our post–20th century allergy to doing big things, titled A Nation of Wusses.
That’s why what we do this year, of all years, matters: It’s not just about quantifying economic impact, or maximizing visitors, or throwing grand parties, even though all those things are cool. It’s also about restoring a sense that Philly can once again do big things. That we can remind the nation of our founding values, even those that, at the time, might have been aspirational: tolerance, truth, equality. That we can let New York be the financial capital, as Rendell says, and let D.C. be the political capital — but take up our own mantle as “the history and democracy capital.” That we can get our swagger back.
And if that’s seen as arrogant or self-aggrandizing or somehow out of our reach? Well, then, as one modern-day revolutionary reminded us a few years ago: No one likes us, and we don’t care.
MORE ON OUR SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL
The Historic Philadelphia Block Party, part of Wawa Welcome America, brings a traditional Philadelphia community street party to Independence National Historical Park. Throughout the day, festivalgoers enjoy some of the city’s top food trucks, entertainment on two stages, street performers and interactive children’s activities.
Fans have no choice but to believe this leak is true.
That’s because the kit is right on par with Union history.
The Philadelphia Union has always dedicated its look to the city and its fans. Look at a few years ago, when the Union debuted the “By U’ era of jersey—a kit designed by fans themselves.
Now, it appears the Union is going for Philly history. A jersey designed to pay homage to the storied history of the city of Philadelphia in the United States. Which is fitting as the country is celebrating its 250th anniversary. Of course, no one can miss Ben Franklin front and center. A prominent figure in American history, whose raucous support group, the Sons of Ben, is named after him.
A closer look at Black Philadelphians whose ideas, work, and courage left a lasting mark on our city
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Philadelphia’s Black history is vast, visionary … and too often reduced to a handful of familiar names. So, a few years ago, The Philadelphia Citizen asked none other than Charles Barkley to help widen that lens: to spotlight Philadelphians whose influence reshaped science, culture, politics, and more, even if their names never made the textbooks.
This month, we’ll be sharing a group of Barkley’s “Philadelphia Black History Month All-Stars” each week. Consider it a reminder, maybe — and an invitation — to keep expanding the story of who shaped this city.
Guion Bluford
Astronaut/Scientist Born November 22, 1942
I’ve come to appreciate the planet we live on. It’s a small ball in a large universe. It’s a very fragile ball but also very beautiful. You don’t recognize that until you see it from a little farther off.”
The first African American to go into space is Philadelphia’s own Bluford, 79, who grew up here before earning an aerospace engineering degree from Penn State through the Air Force ROTC program.
After flying 144 combat missions in Vietnam, Bluford became the first African American NASA astronaut in 1979, eventually going into space on the Challenger and Discovery.
Bluford logged over 28 days in space and 5,100 hours on different fighter pilots. After his retirement, Bluford joined the private industry, eventually becoming president of Aerospace Technology, an engineering consulting firm.
Nellie Rathbone Bright
Teacher / Poet / Author March 28, 1898 – February 7, 1977
I want to slay all the things just things That they tell me I must do. I would drown them all in the tears I weep When each breathless day is through. … I want to look deep in a pool at night, and see the stars Flash flame like the fire in black opals.”
A devoted teacher and principal, Nellie Rathbone Bright was part of the Harlem Renaissance, through her role in the Black Opals, a literary group that published a magazine of the same name from Philadelphia. (The name pays homage to her poem from its first issue.) Like similar groups in other East Coast cities, the Black Opals were considered an extension of the Harlem Renaissance.
Bright and her family were part of the Great Migration, as they moved from Savannah, Georgia, to Philadelphia when Bright was 12. While studying at Penn, Bright was a founding member of the Gamma chapter of the university’s first Black sorority, Delta Sigma Theta.
A landscape painter who was fluent in Spanish and French, Bright also studied at the Sorbonne, University of Oxford, University of Vermont, and at the Berkshire School of Art in Massachusetts. She co-authored the book American – Red, White, Black, Yellow, with her longtime colleague Arthur Fauset, which focuses on the history of minorities in the United States.
Octavius V. Catto
Civil Rights Activist February 22, 1839 – October 10, 1871
All that [the colored man] asks is that there shall be no unmanly quibbles about entrusting to him any position of honor or profit for which his attainments may fit him.”
Octavius Catto was the greatest civil rights leader in post-Civil War Philly.
A statue honoring Catto on the southwest apron of City Hall was unveiled by Mayor Jim Kenney in the spring of 2017. It is Philadelphia’s first public statue honoring a solo African American.
Catto was an educator, athlete, and major in the Pennsylvania National Guard. “The Jackie Robinson of his time,” Catto helped establish Negro League Baseball and ran the undefeated Pythian Baseball Club of Philadelphia that played the first black versus white game. He was married to noted teacher and civil rights activist Caroline LeCount. He recruited African Americans to serve in the military and led a successful protest to integrate Philadelphia’s horse-drawn streetcars.
Catto was assassinated on Election Day in 1871, as Blacks fought for the right to vote.
“We shall never rest at ease, but will agitate and work, by our means and by our influence, in court and out of court, asking aid of the press, calling upon Christians to vindicate their Christianity, and the members of the law to assert the principles of the profession by granting us justice and right, until these invidious and unjust usages shall have ceased,” Catto said.
Rebecca Cole
Doctor March 16, 1846 – August 14, 1922
We must attack the system of overcrowding in the poorer districts … that people may not be crowded together like cattle, while soulless landlords collect 50 percent on their investments.”
A staunch advocate for the poor and for women, Rebecca J. Cole was the second female African American doctor in the United States, who practiced in South Carolina, North Carolina, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia.
In 1873, she created the Women’s Directory Center, which specialized in legal and medical services for poor women and children, often in their own homes.
Cole’s first hand view of poverty informed her public argument with sociologist W.E.B. DuBois, who argued in his landmark 1899 study, The Philadelphia Negro, that African Americans were dying of consumption because they were ignorant of proper hygiene. Cole accused DuBois of collecting erroneous data from slumlords, and instead argued that high African American mortality rates were the fault of white doctors, who refused to collect complete medical histories of their Black patients.
She also argued her own case, when needed. When working as a representative for the Ladies’ Centennial Committee of Philadelphia, helping to plan the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, she was asked to form a separate Colored Ladies Sub-committee. Cole refused, arguing that Black women should be able to work alongside the rest of the committee, not in a separate group. She won.
Helen Octavia Dickens
Physician / Sexual Health Advocate February 21, 1909 – December 2, 2001
I sat in the front seat. If other students wanted a good seat, they had to sit beside me. If they didn’t, it was not my concern.”
Helen Octavia Dickens was encouraged by her parents — former slaves — from a young age to focus on her education. She gained admittance to the University of Illinois medical school, and was the only African American student in her class.
After treating impoverished urban areas lacking medical care, Dickens gained a master of science degree from Penn, completed her residency, and was certified by the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
It was in this city that she became the first African American fellow at the American College of Surgeons. She served as a director of the Mercy Douglass Hospital Ob/Gyn Department and also taught at Penn — by 1985 she was named professor emeritus.
Aside from her remarkable achievements, Dr. Dickens was also groundbreaking in her advocacy for sexual health among young women, and led extensive research in teen pregnancy and sexual health issues. She was a medical icon — both in her breaking of racial barriers and women’s reproductive rights.
Crystal Bird Fauset
Politician June 27, 1894 – March 27, 1965
We should not want to think of America as a ‘melting pot,’ but as a great interracial-laboratory where Americans can really begin to build the thing which the rest of the world feels that they stand for today, and that is real democracy.”
A friend of Eleanor Roosevelt’s, Fauset was the first African American woman elected to a state legislature in the country, chosen in 1938 to represent the 18th District of Philadelphia, which was over 66 percent white.
In that role, she introduced legislation that addressed public health, low-income housing and women’s workplace rights. She later joined Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Black Cabinet” to promote African American civil rights.
As a member of the interracial committee for the American Friends Service Committee, she gave over 200 lectures about African American culture to mostly white audiences.
Jessie Redmon Fauset
Writer April 27, 1884 – April 30, 1961
To be a colored man in America … and enjoy it, you must be greatly daring, greatly stolid, greatly humorous and greatly sensitive. And at all times a philosopher.”
Known as “the midwife” of the Harlem Renaissance, Fauset was an acclaimed writer/editor who used her pen and others’ — including Langston Hughes’s — to further the African American voice in public discourse.
She was the only African American in her graduating class at Philadelphia High School for Girls. Years later, she was an editor for The Crisis, the NAACP magazine started by W.E.B. Dubois.
The most published novelist of the Harlem Renaissance, she wrote four novels, each with a focus on Black culture and the challenges that confronted it.
William Stanley Braithwaite hailed her as “the potential Jane Austen of Negro Literature,” and Deborah E. Mcdowell saw her as a “black woman [who dared] to write — even timidly so — about women taking charge of their own lives and declaring themselves independent of social conventions.”
“The Super Bowl is in my district, but I was not in the suites,” Ro Khanna tweeted. “I was with activists in my district demanding no new funding for ICE.”
Last week — the Eagles lost a championship quarterback with the passing of HOF Quarterback Sonny Jurgensen at the age of ninety-one. Jurgensen’s command of the field coupled with an amazing arm made him a force on the field.
It’s sometimes difficult to remember that 2018 wasn’t the only season when the Eagles had two quarterbacks on the roster capable of winning a championship. When Nick Foles became the first ever quarterback to win a Super Bowl in Philadelphia — everyone wondered what would happen to Carson Wentz. Fifty-seven years earlier — the Eagles won another championship with Norm Van Brocklin — “The Dutchman” under center.
Jurgensen was drafted by the Eagles in 1957. When Van Brocklin retired after winning the Championship in 1960 — Jurgensen became the starter. After a season as an NFL passing leader and record setter with 3,723 yards in 1961 — on April 1st, 1964 — the Eagles traded him to the Washington Redskins in return for Norm Snead and defensive back Claude Crabb.
Sonny Jurgensen would play ten more years for Washington until 1974 including a short stint with Coach Vince Lombardi. Jurgensen is considered by many as being the best pure passer of all-time. His last game was a playoff game against the Los Angeles Rams. Neither Claude Crabb nor Norm Snead could stop the Eagles from falling into the cellar. They would not be relevant again until the mid-1970s when Dick Vermeil took the job as Head Coach.
For Jurgensen — who gave up giving post-game interviews because he once when he returned all of the beer was gone — will always be remembered from the Eagles team who drafted him and the 1960 Championship Team that he will always be a part of.
About two hours north of Philadelphia is the small town of Macungie, with a population of less than 4,000. And two weeks ago — Macungie and specifically Emmaus High School — had something big to celebrate.
Indiana University starting Defensive Lineman Mario Landino, who played football at Emmaus High School, is now a College Football National Champion.
Indiana may have been known primarily for its basketball program, with legendary Coach Bobby Knight, and for the 1986 film Hoosiers starring Gene Hackman. Not anymore.
And while 65 NCAA Football Teams have been undefeated since the AP started polling in 1936, Indiana is only one of two teams to finish 16–0. The other — the 1894 Yale Football Team. Indiana ran through their 2025 D1 College Football season, including a 13–10 win over Ohio State.
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