Good morning, and welcome to Broad + Liberty's Weekly Reads.

We've moved to Wednesdays to accommodate Fideri News's new flagship weekly newsletter, the Sunday Bulletin, which should hit your mailboxes in our old time slot on Sunday mornings.

And as always, to stay up to date on late-breaking stories and analysis, subscribe to our daily email list ([link removed]) and get the best of Broad + Liberty delivered straight to your inbox.


** 1. 19%, 24%, 5% — Delaware County’s tax-increase trifecta hits average homeowner for extra $409 annually ([link removed])
------------------------------------------------------------

By Todd Shepherd

The first draft ([link removed]) of Delaware County’s 2026 budget proposes a nineteen percent tax increase, a move coming just one year after the county levied a 24 percent tax increase in property taxes for the current year, and a five percent hike the year before that in 2024.

Using the median home value of $255,000 as an example, that homeowner would have had a tax bill of $763 in 2023. If the nineteen percent increase is approved, and when also calculating the increases from the last two years, the same homeowner would have a tax bill next year of $1,172 — a total increase of 53 percent requiring an extra $409 per year.

Why It Matters. The county posted the executive director’s proposed budget ([link removed]) online Friday, days after Democrats, who control all five seats on the council, won resoundingly at the polls. Current council member Richard Womack was re-elected, and the county’s controller, Joanne Phillips, was promoted to the council seat being vacated by Kevin Madden, who is term-limited.

Republicans made the 24 percent tax increase for 2025 a central plank of the campaign.

Council members have complained that years of underfunding by previous Republican-controlled councils left the county in a precarious position financially. Yet it’s also clear from the current budget that the top two priorities of the Democrats who swept to power in the November 2019 elections have added to the budget’s bottom line.

Continue Reading ([link removed])


** 2. Renamed, rebranded, and reduced — What happened to the Philadelphia Museum of Art? ([link removed])
------------------------------------------------------------

By Thom Nickels

The Philadelphia Museum of Art, now the Art Museum of Philadelphia, has been in decline for a number of years.

Director Timothy Rub attempted to hold the line and keep up appearances for a good while. To a large extent, he succeeded. Exhibition openings (for the press) were well-organized and still special events with speeches and tables of breakfast delicacies for journalists on assignment. The old guard at the museum took the press seriously, a tradition going back to Anne d’Harnoncourt’s tenure when press events were actual sit-down diners (white table cloths and wine), where a Philadelphia journalist might find him or herself seated beside someone from the Wall Street Journal.

Enter the new CEO, Sasha Suda.

She was from Canada. The sound of the name caused me to pause. Call it a vibe. I’m not xenophobic but I felt what I felt. The museum continued to have press exhibition openings, and I continued to attend but the new director always managed to be absent, or she managed to speak to journalists at the very beginning of the event before I got there and then retreated to her office. It was a full year or more before I actually saw her.

About this time, museum press events were slowly changing. They seemed a little hurried and more abbreviated now: I could see that old guard PMA formality was slowly being eroded.

The new boss liked things simple.

Continue Reading ([link removed])


** 3. Lightning Round
------------------------------------------------------------
* A deep dive into Krasner’s third-term win ([link removed])
* Seth Higgins: Reflections from a Pennsylvania veteran ([link removed])
* Gerard St. John: Joe Rosenthal’s Iwo Jima ([link removed])
* Frank Speidel: Why they fought ([link removed])
* Christine Flowers: It’s hard to stomach what the residents of NYC just did ([link removed])
* Kyle Sammin: Eating the seed corn ([link removed])
* Operation Clean Sweep scores a big hit on Philly-area drug trafficking ([link removed])


** 4. What we're reading
------------------------------------------------------------

The Supreme Court's October term will have many high-profile cases, but the most momentous of them is the recently argued matter of Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, which challenges the president's claim that he can set tariff rates without any input from Congress. Over at the Free Press, Harvard's Professor Jed Rubenfeld suggests that despite his other successes, the outlook is not great for the president's arguments ([link removed]) .

One big problem Rubenfeld notes: "As authority for the challenged tariffs, Trump has relied solely on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). But the word tariff never appears in that statute." There are other problems, as well. Tariffs could be Trump's signature achievement in his second term, but depending how the court rules, it might require doing it the old fashioned way: by working with Congress.
[link removed]

Broad + Liberty is funded by readers like you.

Your generous support ensures that Broad + Liberty can bring you stories and opinions that Pennsylvania’s mainstream media would rather leave unheard. Please consider making a contribution today. If you would like your gift to be used to help us cover a specific story or subject, please let us know in the contribution form or at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) .

As always, gifts made to Broad + Liberty are 100% tax deductible!

Thank you, dear reader, for your steadfast support of our independent, broad-minded brand of local journalism. We could not do this without you.

With gratitude,

— The Editors at Broad + Liberty
Support Broad + Liberty ([link removed])
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]

============================================================
Copyright © 2025 Fideri News, All rights reserved.
You signed up for emails at OnPattison.com

Our mailing address is:
Fideri News
323 W Front St Fl 2
Media, PA 19063
USA
Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can ** update your preferences ([link removed])
or ** unsubscribe from this list ([link removed])
.

Broad and Liberty, Inc. is a Pennsylvania Domestic Nonprofit Corporation classifed as a public charity under Internal Revenue Code Section 501 (c) (3).
Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp
[link removed]