Free Republic

Philadelphia police clashed with people protesting the Trump administration’s accelerating deportation efforts Tuesday night in Center City. A clip circulating on social media shows an officer pushing demonstrators before tackling to ground a masked protester dressed in black. The Inquirer posted a video that appears to show a PPD officer kneeling on an individual’s head and neck to subdue them. Both pieces of footage were taken on East Market Street. Law enforcement said two demonstrators and two bicycle officers were treated for minor injuries. Fifteen adults were arrested, with the most serious allegations against a man set to be charged...

After a huge fire broke out at SEPTA’s largest bus depot in Nicetown on Thursday, officials have determined a cause for the fire. What we know: A spokesperson for SEPTA stated that the Philadelphia Fire Department said a battery in one of the electric buses set off the massive fire Thursday at their largest bus depot, in Philly’s Nicetown neighborhood.

Bucks County Sheriff Fred Harran is facing legal action for his partnership with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Harran applied to take part in a federal program known as 287(g), which would give officers the authority to detain illegal immigrants while performing routine police duties. But, the American Civil Liberties Union and Community Justice Project says what he's doing is illegal in Pennsylvania. Steve Loney, the lead attorney representing the ACLU, said, "The sheriff is breaking the law by unilaterally and illegally over the objection of his county commissioners entered into an agreement with federal immigration enforcement to essentially appoint...

Investigators are working to uncover what caused a fleet of decommissioned SEPTA buses to catch fire at a Philadelphia bus depot on Thursday morning. SEPTA GM Scott Sauer said over a dozen of the torched buses were Protera-manufactured electric buses that he said have not been used in several years. A total of 40 buses were damaged in the fire, sparking air quality concerns that the city's health department says are still unhealthy for nearby residents. No one was injured in the fire at SEPTA's largest bus depot that runs 24-hours a day.

City health officials say nearby residents should stay indoors as much as possible, wear a mask outside, avoid strenuous physical activity and close windows and doors. Decommissioned buses were burned during a fire at the SEPTA Midvale Depot in North Philadelphia on June 5, 2025. (Emma Lee/WHYY) From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know! A fast-moving fire erupted early Thursday at a transit bus lot in Philadelphia filled with dozens of decommissioned vehicles, sending a thick plume of black smoke into the sky but causing...

America’s eighth-largest school district handed taxpayer cash to Planned Parenthood to train teachers that biological sex is a “myth,” according to documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Philadelphia School District (PSD), which oversees almost 200,000 students, paid Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania (PPSP) nearly $40,000 in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) HIV grant funds to provide up to 70 trainings which decry biological sex as a “myth,” support medical child sex-changes and normalize men in women’s sports, according to documents obtained by the DCNF through a public records request. Planned Parenthood delivered Comprehensive Sexual Education to more...

Two people are dead and nine others, including six teenagers, are injured following a mass shooting at a Memorial Day gathering in Fairmount Park. ---SNIP--- "This was wartime ammunition that was just opened on Philadelphians and those who were here in our city," she continued. Bethel continued, after chilling audio from the grisly scene was played, "That's the sound of war. So when you have an automatic weapon that you can empty a magazine, a 20-clip magazine in seconds, it is meant to kill, to create carnage and to hit as many people as possible. And in this case, you...

A prominent trans activist based in Philadelphia is currently standing trial on charges of sexually assaulting two young boys. Attorneys for Kendall Stephens, born Johnathan, are seeking access to personal documents related to the young victims in a bid to exonerate their client. Stephens, 39, identifies as transgender and was formerly a prominent LGBTQ+ advocate in Philadelphia. He was arrested on December 18, 2023, after charges involving multiple counts of child sexual abuse were filed against him by the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General. Stephens allegedly engaged in oral sex with a boy, identified in court records as Z.B.,...

Even the most powerful figures in the NFL were unable to stop the tush push. A proposed ban of the tush push play that the Philadelphia Eagles have popularized did not receive enough votes at the spring meeting Wednesday in Eagan, Minnesota. Before the vote, retired Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce and team owner Jeffrey Lurie spoke to the owners to lobby for the merits of keeping the play. Sources told ESPN's Adam Schefter that the final vote was 22-10 on the proposal, which was submitted by the Green Bay Packers. The proposal needed 24 votes to pass. Among the...

Josh Shapiro just gave away the largest Muslim grant in state history. Why?Local and state outlets reported it—and even quietly celebrated it. But no one asked the hard questions. No one challenged the ideology, the curriculum, or the dangerous precedent. That didn’t happen until Liberty Sentinel and journalist Alex Newman blew the lid off what this really was: a taxpayer-funded expansion of Sharia under the banner of “diversity.”In March 2025, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania awarded $5 million in taxpayer money to Al-Aqsa Islamic Academy—a Philadelphia-based Islamic school currently serving about 300 students. With this grant, the school now plans to...

May 13, 2025, will mark 40 years to the day after the MOVE bombing, when the Philadelphia Police Department dropped a bomb on the headquarters of the Black liberation, back-to-nature group's Osage Avenue headquarters. The bomb started a fire that ended up destroying more than 60 row homes in the West Philadelphia neighborhood. Five children and six adults in the MOVE house were killed. All shared the adopted surname Africa.

Air Traffic Control lost radar for 90 seconds at Newark Airport on Friday. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), there was a telecommunications outage at Newark Liberty International Airport. “There was a telecommunications outage that impacted communications and radar display at Philadelphia TRACON Area C, which guides aircraft in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport airspace. The outage occurred around 3:55 a.m. on Friday, May 9, and lasted approximately 90 seconds,” the FAA said on Friday morning. ... United Airlines pulled 35 round-trip flights a day following a radar outage at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey...

Air traffic controllers who lost communication with aircraft at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, leading to hundreds of delays for more than a week, are taking special government leave for traumatic situations to recover from the stress. The controllers in Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control, which coordinates planes arriving at Newark, “temporarily lost radar and communications with the aircraft under their control, unable to see, hear, or talk to them,” on Monday April 28, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association said in a statement shared with CNN. The connectivity between Federal Aviation Administration radar and the frequencies that...

A former housing official recently made a shocking allegation that, if true, will prove the most wasteful and arguably sinister government expenditure of all. Catherine Austin Fitts, who served as the assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Housing between 1989 and 1990, appeared on former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s podcast last Tuesday to claim that the United States government has spent a whopping $21 TRILLION over several years building an underground city for the wealthiest and most powerful in the country. To help back up her allegation, the 74-year-old Fitts cited a report released by Michigan State...

A former housing official who worked under President George H. W. Bush has made an astonishing claim that the U.S. government spent years funneling money into the creation of a secret underground “city” where the rich and powerful can shelter in the event of a “near-extinction event.” Catherine Austin Fitts, who served as the assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Housing between 1989 and 1990, made the shocking allegations during an appearance on former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s podcast, although there is no concrete evidence to support her claims. Fitts, 74, who is originally from Philadelphia, cited...

A massive crowd gathered at City Hall in Philadelphia Thursday for a May Day rally and to see Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders speak. The "For Workers, Not Billionaires" rally on the north side of City Hall drew a large crowd and shut down streets in the area. Sanders laid into the Trump administration's policies on taxes, immigration, federal cuts and more. He also pointed out the billionaires President Trump has put into cabinet positions and surrounded himself with — including the world's wealthiest man, Elon Musk. Sanders says he came to the event with a call to workers and Pennsylvania...

<p>NOT ENTIRELY COMPOSED WHEN DEPOSED. That would be Democratic gubernatorial nominee Ed Rendell, who was recently deposed in a federal lawsuit in which he is a defendant.</p> <p>Rendell appeared at times angry, frustrated and incredulous over some of the questions asked during the June 14 deposition in Philadelphia. More than once, he threatened to walk out of the proceedings.</p>

Several major blue cities in the U.S. have been marred by a slate of massive budgetary problems in recent years. City officials in Chicago and Los Angeles are currently grappling with how to address substantial budget shortfalls. Meanwhile, Philadelphia is struggling with various financial issues across several sectors, with both its school district and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), the city’s public transit system, facing massive budget deficits. Chicago is facing a projected budget gap of nearly $1.2 billion for fiscal year 2026. The city’s budget deficit has largely been exacerbated by soaring pension costs, declining state revenue and...

Disturbing security footage shows the moment a Uber driver was murdered as the gunmen appeared to have been targeting his passenger outside a Philadelphia hookah lounge. Olatunji W. Bolaji, 77, was seen picking up a 22-year-old passenger in his black Chevy Suburban in downtown Philadelphia outside the Byblos Hookah Bar on Wednesday at around 2 a.m. — moments before the deadly shooting, according to video obtained by NBC10. The unidentified fare hugged a woman outside Bolaji’s car as two men jumped out of a Jeep Grand Cherokee with Massachusetts plates, police said. The woman is seen fleeing for safety when...

The sanctuary cities of Chicago and Philadelphia have canceled their annual Cinco de Mayo parades, citing fears of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids targeting criminal illegal aliens. The decision, announced by local organizers, is being slammed as a blatant attempt to harbor lawbreakers and undermine federal immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump’s renewed crackdown on illegal immigration. In Chicago, the Cermak Road Chamber of Commerce and Casa Puebla pulled the plug on the Little Village parade, a long-standing celebration of Mexican-American culture, claiming the community is “frightened” by ICE’s efforts to apprehend illegal aliens. Hector Escobar, president of the...