We’re a news organization that’s making room, making noise, and making ways for Black Philadelphia.
Rotimi Adeoye is a Philadelphia-based writer and columnist at The Daily Beast covering history, voting, and constitutional law. Formerly a speechwriter and Capitol Hill aide, he appears on MSNBC and writes for major publications.
Political earthquakes never copy themselves exactly, but the sudden retirement of Congressman Dwight Evans has created conditions that feel eerily familiar to what Democrats recently saw in New York in the primary for mayor.
When President Trump signed his sweeping new spending legislation into law, he presented it as a victory for fiscal responsibility. The "One Big Beautiful Bill," as it’s been dubbed, promises trillion-dollar savings through deep cuts to programs like Medicaid and SNAP.
When Philadelphia’s sanitation workers walked off the job at the beginning of July, their absence was impossible to ignore. Garbage piled high, spreading across sidewalks in the midsummer heat, becoming potent symbols of a city brought to a halt.
Late at night on July 1, 2025, Philadelphia saw nearly 9,000 city workers from AFSCME District Council 33 walk off their jobs.
State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta last week introduced a simple bill: allowing every Pennsylvania candidate and office-holder to spend campaign dollars on personal security. The timing was chillingly precise.
Something is breaking. You can feel it in the quiet moments after the news hits.
Philadelphia stands at a crossroads. Mayor Cherelle Parker’s newly unveiled housing initiative—called H.O.M.E.—is her boldest effort yet to address the city’s affordability crisis.
On Memorial Day, Fairmount Park should have been a quiet refuge. Instead, it became a crime scene.
Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” touted benefits for first-time homebuyers, but critics question its impact on working-class and Black families.
On Tuesday night, Larry Krasner won the Democratic primary for Philadelphia district attorney, all but guaranteeing a third term in office. It wasn’t close.
On May 20th, Philadelphia voters will head to the polls to decide who sits on the city’s Court of Common Pleas and Municipal Court—two judicial bodies that collectively determine what justice, crime, and public safety, looks like in everyday life.
The trains still come, mostly. But fewer riders are on them. SEPTA, the public transit agency that carries Philadelphia’s working class, students, and seniors, is heading toward a fiscal cliff.
On May 13, 1985, the city of Philadelphia dropped a bomb on its own citizens. Eleven people, five of them children, died in that fire. Sixty-one homes burned to the ground. The target was MOVE, a radical Black liberation group.
Something consequential is happening in Philadelphia. SEPTA, the region’s public transit system, is facing a financial crisis so severe that it’s planning to eliminate nearly half of its service
Donald Trump has never been subtle about where he stands on history.