Three Family Members Killed By Amtrak Train: What To Know
Three family members have been killed after being struck by a train in Pennsylvania on Thursday evening.
The incident occurred in Bristol Borough, Bucks County, at around 6 p.m., involving an Amtrak train traveling from Boston to Richmond, Virginia. The exact circumstances of the collision remain unclear.
Bristol Borough Police Chief Joseph Moors described the crash as a "horrific tragedy."
Republican Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, whose district includes Bristol, wrote on X, formerly Twitter: "As we continue working to confirm further details, I ask everyone to join me in praying for the victims, their families, those aboard and operating the train, our first responders, and the entire Bristol community during this deeply difficult time."
This is a breaking story. More to follow.
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Chicago Tribune
28 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Afternoon Briefing: Closures for NASCAR street race to begin
Good afternoon, Chicago. Are you ready for some racing? NASCAR is gearing up for a more streamlined Chicago Street Race weekend event on July 5-6, with an accelerated setup and breakdown schedule that is likely to reduce the frustration of the city's drivers. Here's what to know about street closings that start this week. And here's what else is happening today. And remember, for the latest breaking news in Chicago, visit and sign up to get our alerts on all your devices. Subscribe to more newsletters | Asking Eric | Horoscopes | Puzzles & Games | Today in History The Chicago city clerk is suspending the online application portal to a municipal ID program recently subpoenaed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the latest defense from local officials grappling with the threat of mass deportations under Republican President Donald Trump. Read more here. More top news stories: After Wayfair's first and so far only 'in real life' store celebrated its first anniversary recently, both company officials and the village of Wilmette say they're happy with the results. Read more here. More top business stories:The Chicago Fire have announced plans for a new soccer-specific stadium, while the Stars are in planning mode for a move from Bridgeview. Read more here. More top sports stories: This probably isn't the Route 66 that most people imagine. Here, there are no restored 1950s diners or art deco gas stations-turned-gift shops. Here in Albuquerque, homeless encampments occupy an entire city block, and it is not uncommon to see people openly injecting drugs while sitting on a curb. Read more here. More top Eat. Watch. Do. stories: It was 160 years ago that enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned they had been freed — after the Civil War's end and two years after President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. The resulting Juneteenth holiday — its name combining 'June' and 'nineteenth' — has only grown in one-and-a-half centuries. Read more here. More top stories from around the world:
an hour ago
ICE is using no-bid contracts, boosting big firms, to get more detention beds
LEAVENWORTH, Kan. -- LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) — Leavenworth, Kansas, occupies a mythic space in American crime, its name alone evoking a short hand for serving hard time. The federal penitentiary housed gangsters Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly — in a building so storied that it inspired the term 'the big house.' Now Kansas' oldest city could soon be detaining far less famous people, migrants swept up in President Donald Trump's promise of mass deportations of those living in the U.S. illegally. The federal government has signed a deal with the private prison firm CoreCivic Corp. to reopen a 1,033-bed prison in Leavenworth as part of a surge of contracts U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has issued without seeking competitive bids. ICE has cited a 'compelling urgency' for thousands more detention beds, and its efforts have sent profit estimates soaring for politically connected private companies, including CoreCivic, based in the Nashville, Tennessee, area and another giant firm, The Geo Group Inc., headquartered in southern Florida. That push faces resistance. Leavenworth filed a lawsuit against CoreCivic after it tried to reopen without city officials signing off on the deal, quoting a federal judge's past description of the now-shuttered prison as 'a hell hole." The case in Leavenworth serves as another test of the limits of the Republican president's unusually aggressive tactics to force migrant removals. To get more detention beds, the Trump administration has modified dozens of existing agreements with contractors and used no-bid contracts. One pays $73 million to a company led by former federal immigration officials for 'immigration enforcement support teams' to handle administrative tasks, such as helping coordinate removals, triaging complaints or telling ICE if someone is a risk to community safety. Just last week , Geo Group announced that ICE modified a contract for an existing detention center in southeastern Georgia so that the company could reopen an idle prison on adjacent land to hold 1,868 migrants — and earn $66 million in annual revenue. 'Never in our 42-year company history have we had so much activity and demand for our services as we are seeing right now,' said CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger during an earnings call last month with shareholders. A tax-cutting and budget reconciliation measure approved last month by the House includes $45 billion over four years for immigrant detention, a threefold spending increase. The Senate is now considering that legislation. When Trump started his second term in January, CoreCivic and Geo had around 20 idle facilities, partly because of sentencing reforms that reduced prison populations. But the Trump administration wants to more than double the existing 41,000 beds for detaining migrants to at least 100,000 beds and — if private prison executives' predictions are accurate — possibly to more than 150,000. ICE declared a national emergency on the U.S. border with Mexico as part of its justification for authorizing nine five-year contracts for a combined 10,312 beds without 'Full and Open Competition.' Only three of the nine potential facilities were listed in ICE's document: Leavenworth, a 2,560-bed CoreCivic-owned facility in California City, California, and an 1,800-bed Geo-owned prison in Baldwin, Michigan. The agreement for the Leavenworth facility hasn't been released, nor have documents for the other two sites. CoreCivic and Geo Group officials said last month on earnings calls that ICE used what are known as letter contracts, meant to speed things up when time is critical. Charles Tiefer, a contract expert and professor emeritus of law at the University of Baltimore Law School, said letter contracts normally are reserved for minor matters, not the big changes he sees ICE making to previous agreements. 'I think that a letter contract is a pathetic way to make big important contracts,' he said. CoreCivic's Leavenworth facility quickly became a priority for ICE and the company because of its central location. Leavenworth, with 37,000 residents, is only 10 miles (16 kilometers) to the west of the Kansas City International Airport. The facility would hold men and women and is within ICE's area of operations for Chicago, 420 miles (676 kilometers) to the northeast. 'That would mean that people targeted in the Chicago area and in Illinois would end up going to this facility down in Kansas,' said Jesse Franzblau, a senior policy analyst for the National Immigrant Justice Center. Prisons have long been an important part of Leavenworth's economy, employing hundreds of workers to guard prisoners held in two military facilities, the nation's first federal penitentiary, a Kansas correctional facility and a county jail within 6 miles (10 kilometers) of city hall. The Leavenworth area's politics might have been expected to help CoreCivic. Trump carried its county by more than 20 percentage points in each of his three campaigns for president. But skeptical city officials argue that CoreCivic needs a special use permit to reopen its facility. CoreCivic disagrees, saying that it doesn't because it never abandoned the facility and that the permitting process would take too long. Leavenworth sued the company to force it to get one, and a state-court judge last week issued an order requiring it. An attorney for the city, Joe Hatley, said the legal fight indicates how much ill will CoreCivic generated when it held criminal suspects there for trials in federal court for the U.S. Marshals Service. In late 2021, CoreCivic stopped housing pretrial detainees in its Leavenworth facility after then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat, called on the U.S. Department of Justice to curb the use of private prisons. In the months before the closure, the American Civil Liberties Union and federal public defenders detailed stabbings, suicides, a homicide and inmate rights violations in a letter to the White House. CoreCivic responded at the time that the claims were 'false and defamatory.' Vacancies among correctional officers were as high as 23%, according to a Department of Justice report from 2017. 'It was just mayhem,' recalled William Rogers, who worked as a guard at the CoreCivic facility in Leavenworth from 2016 through 2020. He said repeated assaults sent him to the emergency room three times, including once after a blow to the head that required 14 staples. When Leavenworth sued CoreCivic, it opened its lawsuit with a quote from U.S. District Court Judge Julie Robinson — an appointee of President George W. Bush, a Republican — who said of the prison: 'The only way I could describe it frankly, what's going on at CoreCivic right now is it's an absolute hell hole.' The city's lawsuit described detainees locked in showers as punishment. It said that sheets and towels from the facility clogged up the wastewater system and that CoreCivic impeded the city police force's ability to investigate sexual assaults and other violent crimes. The facility had no inmates when CoreCivic gave reporters a tour earlier this year, and it looked scrubbed top to bottom and the smell of disinfectant hung in the air. One unit for inmates had a painting on one wall featuring a covered wagon. During the tour, when asked about the allegations of past problems, Misty Mackey, a longtime CoreCivic employee who was tapped to serve as warden there, apologized for past employees' experiences and said the company officials 'do our best to make sure that we learn from different situations.' Besides CoreCivic's Leavenworth prison, other once-shuttered facilities could come online near major immigrant population centers, from New York to Los Angeles, to help Trump fulfill his deportation plans. ICE wants to reopen existing facilities because it's faster than building new ones, said Marcela Hernandez, the organizing director for the Detention Watch Network, which has organized nationwide protests against ICE detention. Counties often lease out jail space for immigrant detention, but ICE said some jurisdictions have passed ordinances barring that. ICE has used contract modifications to reopen shuttered lockups like the 1,000-bed Delaney Hall Facility in Newark, New Jersey, and a 2,500-bed facility in Dilley, Texas, offering no explanations why new, competitively bid contracts weren't sought. The Newark facility, with its own history of problems, resumed intakes May 1, and disorder broke out at the facility Thursday night. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a Democrat who previously was arrested there and accused of trespassing, cited reports of a possible uprising, and the Department of Homeland Security confirmed four escapes. The contract modification for Dilley, which was built to hold families and resumed operations in March, calls its units 'neighborhoods' and gives them names like Brown Bear and Blue Butterfly. The financial details for the Newark and Dilley contract modifications are blacked out in online copies, as they for more than 50 other agreements ICE has signed since Trump took office. ICE didn't respond to a request for comment. Private prison executives are forecasting hundreds of millions of dollars in new ICE profits. Since Trump's reelection in November, CoreCivic's stock has risen in price by 56% and Geo's by 73%. 'It's the gold rush,' Michael A. Hallett, a professor of criminal justice at the University of North Florida who studies private prisons. 'All of a sudden, demand is spiraling. And when you're the only provider that can meet demand, you can pretty much set your terms.' Geo's former lobbyist Pam Bondi is now the U.S. attorney general. It anticipates that all of its idle prisons will be activated this year, its executive chairman, George Zoley, told shareholders. CoreCivic, which along with Geo donated millions of dollars to largely GOP candidates at all levels of government and national political groups, is equally optimistic. It began daily talks with the Trump administration immediately after the election in November, said Hininger. CoreCivic officials said ICE's letter contracts provide initial funding to begin reopening facilities while the company negotiates a longer-term deal. The Leavenworth deal is worth $4.2 million a month to the company, it disclosed in a court filing. Tiefer, who served on an independent commission established to study government contracting for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, said ICE is "placing a very dicey long-term bet' because of its past problems and said ICE is giving CoreCivic 'the keys to the treasury' without competition. But financial analysts on company earnings calls have been delighted. When CoreCivic announced its letter contracts, Joe Gomes, of the financial services firm Noble Capital Markets, responded with, 'Great news." 'Are you hiding any more of them on us?' he asked.
Miami Herald
an hour ago
- Miami Herald
Padilla arrest was a grave mistake by Kristi Noem
In Los Angeles, the Trump administration has been doing the right thing. Trump was right to call out the National Guard after protesters assaulted police, set their vehicles on fire, attacked unmanned Waymos and threatened to overwhelm local law enforcement. Trump is right in keeping his promise to make the removal of undocumented immigrants an overwhelming national priority. But there is no way that arresting United States Senator Alex Padilla is in the same vein. Yeah, he was rude in interrupting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's disquisition on 'alien removal operations' in Los Angeles. But if rudeness were a crime, Donald Trump would have faced the electric chair long ago. Every U.S. citizen has the right to question public officials about government actions, but United States Senators even more so. Their job, like all members of Congress, is literally to oversee and question the executive branch on behalf of the particular interests of their state or district. If a senator can't get a little frisky in raising questions, then nobody can. That's dangerous. The danger is not that one older guy gets roughly handled; Padilla's bruised arms and ego will recover. No, the danger is that peaceful protesters see that even staying within the bounds of the First Amendment gets you treated in exactly the same way as violent insurgents. Once they see that, some, maybe many, will join the protesters who are already bent on vandalism and violence. Once that happens, there are not enough National Guardsmen to bring order back to our cities. The fact that the Department of Homeland Security released an official statement falsely stating that Padilla didn't identify himself during his rude outburst only adds fuel to the fires of suspicion. Some normally level-headed conservative leaders such as Erick Erickson are dismissing the mishandling of Padilla as a 'stunt intended to go this way,' as if the predictability of Trump administration overreactions makes them ok. Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson condemned Padilla's actions as 'wildly inappropriate,' as if the Trump administration and Republicans were sitting around eating crudites before a fancy French meal at which everyone will mind their manners. The mildest thing one could say about some of the Trump administration's actions is 'wildly inappropriate.' Accepting $400 million gifts from a foreign monarchy, appointing a quack as head of the Department of Health and Human Services and getting into Twitter brawls with former supporters are just some of the things Trump has done that might be called 'inappropriate.' Democrats were quick to rush to condemn the actions of federal officers. ''This is the stuff of dictatorship,' said Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, according to The New York Times. That's a bit much. Emperor Palpatine hasn't crushed the Senate. And Padilla was healthy and free enough afterward to address the assembled cameras. What is true is that if a United States Senator can be treated this way while his staff films the abuse of power, the Trump administration is on the threshold of authoritarianism. As Padilla said in a video released after his arrest, regular Americans who have done nothing more than speak can expect to receive much worse treatment from law enforcement when cameras are not around or the scrum makes figuring out what happened harder to do. That, too, will fuel escalation by protesters. The Trump administration, led by the president and Kristi Noem, need to step back. The treatment of Sen. Padilla will be a rallying cry and a recruiting tool for the rioters who threaten to get out of control. It was a mistake for Noem to allow this to happen.
