Jake Blumgart

Stock Market Posts Worst Week in Months on Renewed Economic Fears

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/b...

The Jobs Report Shows AI Is the Only Game in Town That’s okay for clean energy firms, terrible for manufacturers, and a big risk for everyone.

"With these new numbers in hand, it’s clear that the labor market has essentially stalled out since Liberation Day in April...And as President Trump continues to shuffle tariffs and increase trade uncertainty, we can expect conditions to worsen." heatmap.news/economy/jobs...

Alden Global Capital is miffed that The Dallas Morning News won’t offer itself up for disembowelment The hedge fund threatens to shift their takeover bid to shareholders — while trying to sweet-talk the only shareholder that matters.

Great lede here from @joshuabenton.com: "Alden Global Capital just can’t understand. Why would any newspaper not want to be the next to pass through its digestive tract?" www.niemanlab.org/2025/08/alde...

Trump demands firing of BLS chief after soft jobs report The monthly jobs report showed just 73,000 jobs in July, with big reductions to May's and June's numbers

"The agency has scaled back its data-collection efforts for its benchmark inflation report amid staffing shortages and proposed budget cuts."

www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

Regional Rail riders would face two-hour waits between midday trains in SEPTA’s August cuts SEPTA has prepared service cuts to help close an operating deficit if it does not receive enough state aid to forestall them.

the exact opposite of the way our regional rail system should be going www.inquirer.com/transportati...

Are Philadelphia’s historic preservation regulations too strict? Homeowners and preservationists are clashing over the cost of building materials in some of the city's most historically significant spots.

ICYMI: www.inquirer.com/real-estate/...

Aw yay!

A bipartisan Senate housing bill includes a national version of a Pa. home repair program Sen. John Fetterman has sought to replicate state Sen. Nikil Saval’s Whole Home Repairs policy, which created a grant program for homeowners and small landlords to fix their properties.

The bipartisan housing bill that got voted out of the Banking Committee yesterday has a lot of ties to Pennsylvania, including a version of the Whole Home Repairs program www.inquirer.com/politics/nat...

Hard to fully side with anyone who's quoted in this great piece by @jblumgart.bsky.social. Clearly Philadelphia has an exquisite built environment worth caring for, but all the sides in this argument are claiming the role of aggrieved underdog.

Are Philadelphia’s historic preservation regulations too strict? Homeowners and preservationists are clashing over the cost of building materials in some of the city's most historically significant spots.

My story on pushback to preservation. While many people are opposed to the razing of the city's historic buildings, they are less aware of all the regulations that come with designation. Can Philly defend against demolition without micromanaging homeowners windows? www.inquirer.com/real-estate/...

State-appointed SEPTA prosecutor finally starts prosecuting Work begins as crime plummets and Supreme Court considers legal challenge.

"The revelation that the special prosecutor has now taken on multiple cases, including at least one attempted murder, comes as SEPTA reports continued steep declines in serious crime since it peaked during the pandemic." billypenn.com/2025/07/21/s...

Housing affordability is a major problem. Elizabeth Warren is helping lead a sweeping bipartisan effort to address it. - The Boston Globe The bill to increase the supply of houses and apartments unanimously passed a Senate committee Tuesday.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/07/29/n...

Feds Slash Millions in Promised Funds for Local Transportation Congress voted this month to claw back funding from some awards made during the Biden administration, particularly those focused on equity. The rescissions will leave dozens of transportation projects...

Cities were awarded $3.2 billion for transportation projects under the Neighborhood Access and Equity program. Congress is rescinding 75 percent of the funds, leaving dozens of awarded projects partly funded or not funded at all. www.governing.com/transportati...

"At a privately owned CBD wellness shop called Hemperiffic, on Snyder Avenue in South Philadelphia, reporters purchased 'Jelly Zonut,' a product marketed as hemp. Testing showed it was traditional cannabis that also contained mold and the banned pesticide carbofuran."

Pennsylvania’s unregulated weed stores are booming — but tests show products are rife with toxic and illicit chemicals Almost every sample The Inquirer had tested was over the legal potency or contained mold or pesticides.

"Three [samples] exceeded legal limits for pesticides in New Jersey, including carbofuran, a neurotoxin banned in the United States, Canada, and the European Union. One sample contained mold, pesticides, and high levels of chromium, a carcinogenic metal."

www.inquirer.com/news/a/penns...

Future of Scotch whisky lies in hands of U.S. president who doesn’t drink Scottish whisky distillers hope Trump’s ties to the country will soften him on the tariffs interrupting their trade with the U.S., their biggest market.

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Why Oasis won in the end The band’s lasting appeal wasn’t foreseen by a cultural elite that overvalues innovation

Why Oasis won in the end https://on.ft.com/4miqTgh | opinion

Why Mayor Cherelle Parker’s administration fired its top DEI and LGBTQ+ affairs officials due to a ‘semi-nude’ photo neither sent Tyrell Brown, the director of LGBTQ+ affairs, and Brandee Anderson, the city's chief of diversity, equity and inclusion, were terminated this week, they said. Anderson said she was fired "unjustly."

What a mess www.inquirer.com/politics/phi...

Welcome back, Frosty! The Wanamaker Light Show will return this year. The Light Show and Dickens Village, both beloved holiday traditions, were endangered after Macy's closed its Center City store.

www.inquirer.com/arts/wanamak...

Mass starvation stalks Gaza as deaths from hunger rise Aid agencies warned for months that Israel’s harsh limits on food aid would bring acute malnutrition and widespread suffering to Gaza’s 2.1 million people.

"Doctors are famished to the point that they have dizzy spells as they make their rounds, medics say, and the journalists documenting their caseloads are often too weak to even walk to the clinics." www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...

Philadelphia Managing Director Adam K. Thiel is on leave from city government to serve in the Army Reserve Thiel became managing director in January 2024, when Parker took office, and he joined the Army Reserve in August 2024, according to his LinkedIn profile.

! www.inquirer.com/politics/phi...

An Allentown grandfather’s reported deportation went viral. Then discrepancies emerged. Discrepancies emerge in the Leon family's account, as no one is able to corroborate their story. Federal immigration authorities are calling the Morning Call story a hoax.

www.inquirer.com/news/pennsyl...

Inside the Media’s Traffic Apocalypse The whole premise of internet publishing — that you could reach audiences far and wide — is starting to crumble.

"So what’s working? Original reporting can break through the noise and even overcome, at times, the hurdles that social-media companies have created."

nymag.com/intelligence...

getting rid of gatekeepers sounds good most of the time and then you read the sentence "the Nelk Boys welcomed Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu onto their Full Send podcast"

ICE arrests in Pa. and N.J. are surging, including people without criminal records More people without criminal records are being detained around Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.

ICE arrests in Pennsylvania and the region are surging in the wake of a late-May White House directive reportedly demanding 3,000 detentions a day. Half of recent arrestees now have neither a criminal record nor pending charges www.inquirer.com/news/pennsyl... @inquirer.com

AIA Philadelphia is selling its Arch Street HQ The real estate costs are a burden for the nonprofit, partly because the event business in the space has not come back from the pandemic.

www.inquirer.com/real-estate/...

Let's hear it for @djrobertdrake.bsky.social - congrats on his @phillymag.com award. XPN alos won Philly mag's "Best Concerts On The Cheap" for our 20 year (almost 1000th) Free At Noon program.

81-unit apartment building is planned for East Mount Airy The project will add retail and a diversity of apartment sizes to Northwest Philadelphia's main drag.

TierView Development is starting to pop up all over the place www.inquirer.com/real-estate/...

AI guzzled millions of books without permission. Authors are fighting back. Authors are appealing for help from Congress and the courts after Meta and Anthropic used millions of books to create AI technology, without seeking consent.

Tech firms torrented millions of pirated books to train their AI models. Now authors are fighting back.

My story on the front page of today's @washingtonpost.com: www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

AFSCME DC 33 members approve contract agreement with city following eight-day strike About 64% of DC 33 members voted to approve a tentative contract agreement with Mayor Cherelle L. Parker's administration, following a garbage strike.

“City employees in DC 33 will also be able to take four days of leave for the death of a close family member, and one day of leave in the event of the death of other family members”

www.inquirer.com/politics/phi...