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For Iranians in Philly area, complicated feelings about simmering conflict with their homeland

Meanwhile, Pa. reps. split 9-8 in House war powers vote

  • Ed Mahon
Kazem Nabavi visits the chickens he keeps behind his tire shop in Port Richmond. His animals, including a pony, two peacocks, and ducks, remind him of his childhood in Iran.

 Emma Lee / WHYY

Kazem Nabavi visits the chickens he keeps behind his tire shop in Port Richmond. His animals, including a pony, two peacocks, and ducks, remind him of his childhood in Iran.

Fellow PA Post reporter Joseph Darius Jaafari and I appeared on WITF’s live radio show, Smart Talk, on Thursday to talk about prison commissaries and the debate over gun removal orders, respectively. Katie Meyer, WITF’s Capitol bureau chief, guest hosted the show, which you can listen to here.–Ed Mahon, PA Post reporter
Kazem Nabavi visits the chickens he keeps behind his tire shop in Port Richmond. His animals, including a pony, two peacocks, and ducks, remind him of his childhood in Iran.

Emma Lee / WHYY

Kazem Nabavi visits the chickens he keeps behind his tire shop in Port Richmond. His animals, including a pony, two peacocks, and ducks, remind him of his childhood in Iran. (Emma Lee/WHYY)

  • WHYY’s Ximena Conde talked with Iranian Americans in and around Philadelphia to see how they felt about the U.S. military strike that killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

  • Kazem Nabavi had complicated feelings. He left Iran when he was 13 because he thought the government was too oppressive. And he thinks the country is worse off under its current leadership, Conde reports. Still, Nabavi said he wished he could have attended Soleimani’s funeral, and he spoke with admiration for how Soleimani rose to power despite coming from a poor family. “In Iran, this is very, very, very hard. You have to be son of somebody to become somebody, but he did it. He broke that barrier,” Nabavi told WHYY.

  • Pennsylvania has relatively few residents from Iran or with Iranian ancestry, about 6,900, according to U.S. Census estimates compiled by Business Insider. Three of our neighboring states — New Jersey, New York and Maryland — have more, Andy Kiersz reports.

  • One Pennsylvanian with Iran ties was stopped by Customs and Border Patrol when he reentered the country earlier this week. John Ghazvinian, “who had been leading a group of high-school teachers on a two-week trek through Egypt in his role at Penn’s Middle East Center, called his experience ‘troubling,’” The Daily Beast reports. “Even as a U.S. citizen, you have to be aware of the fact that some of our cherished rights are sometimes more fragile than we imagine, and we don’t know where this might go,” he said.

  • California has about 200,000 people of Iranian descent– and southern California is home to the largest community of Iranians outside the country of Iran. The New York Times and NPR recently published compelling stories from the Los Angeles area.

  • On Thursday, the House passed a resolution aimed at limiting President Donald Trump’s military actions regarding Iran. Pennsylvania’s 18 representatives split along party lines, with 9 Democrats voting for it, and 8 Republicans opposing (Republican Brian Fitzpatrick did not vote; his older brother passed away at the beginning of the week). The Senate is expected to take up a similar resolution next week. Two Republicans in the upper chamber have already declared that they are unsatisfied with the White House’s explanation for why it carried out the strike that killed Soleimani.

  • Democratic Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon explained her vote for the resolution in this Twitter thread. GOP Rep. Fred Keller posted a video to Twitter explaining his vote against.

  • Earlier this week, Pennsylvania’s two U.S. senators were split on the question of whether senior Trump administration officials adequately explained why the president ordered the strike that killed Soleimani. WESA’s Lucy Perkins provides the details.

  • The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jonathan Tamari looks at the political implications for former vice president Joe Biden of the high-stakes standoff with Iran. Biden’s time as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is seen by some as a political plus. But he also voted in favor of authorizing military force against Iraq in 2002 — which is seen as a liability by many Democrats. On Tuesday night, Biden was clear about who’s to blame for the current Iran mess.

  • Separately, The Inquirer profiled 26-year-old Trey Yingst, who grew up in the Harrisburg area and is now a Fox News correspondent in Baghdad, covering the tension between the United States and Iran.

Best of the rest

Ed Pawlowski

AP Photo/Matt Smith

Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski announces his resignation during a news conference outside his home on March 8, 2018 in Allentown, Pa., following his conviction on charges that he traded city contracts for campaign cash. (AP Photo/Matt Smith)

  • Former Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski told The Morning Call that there’s a plus to being sent to prison: Yoga, spin classes and regular visits to the weight room have helped him drop 30 pounds. That’s one of the details P

  • awlowski, who was sentenced to 15 years in a pay-to-play corruption scandal, shared in a letter to the news organization, Emily Opilo reports.

  • Allentown is one of three cities in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, where the booming economy was recently profiled by The New York Times. “The region’s success distinguishes it from onetime industrial dynamos in the Northeast and Midwest that have struggled to replace shuttered plants and vanishing jobs,” reporter Patricia Cohen writes. The boom, her pieces notes, is winning plenty of love for President Trump from the valley’s residents.

  • The Pennsylvania presidential primary is April 28 — late, given how many other states precede it. But Mass. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is betting the nomination will still be up for grabs when Keystone State Democrats head to the polls. The Inquirer‘s Julia Terruso reports on the Warren campaign’s Pa. dreams. At least two of the Democratic contenders meet this Sunday in Iowa, a forum that will be moderated by the Rev. John C. Welch, dean of students at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. The Post-Gazette’Julian Routh has more.

  • Pennsylvania State Police have provided guidance to gun dealers about how to perform background checks when selling partially manufactured frames that can be converted into guns, the Associated Press reports. For now, dealers must call into a background check system and cannot use an online system. The move follows Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s December legal opinion declaring that certain gun parts will be treated as if they are operating firearms (so-called 80 percent guns often sold as part of kits and said to be a favorite of some criminals). A gun-rights group and firearms business are challenging the AG’s opinion.

  • Documents released by the daughter of a GOP strategist contain the warning that Republicans in Pennsylvania “got greedy” when they drew district maps favorable to their party after the 2010 census, The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Claudia Vargas reports. The state Supreme Court tossed out the congressional map in 2018 and drew its own.

  • Parents of children in the Roman Catholic Church and survivors of sexual abuse can move forward with a lawsuit alleging that the Diocese of Pittsburgh has not met its obligations under state law to report child sexual abusers, Claudia Lauer reports for The Associated Press.

  • Matthew Rink of GoErie.com looks at who will be able to testify when the Pennsylvania State Board of Education holds an evidentiary hearing March 18 regarding Erie County’s community college application. The board approved hearing from several parties, including Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, who opposes the community college application, and Empower Erie, the nonprofit that is advocating for the community college.

  • A 26-year-old man from Collingswood, New Jersey, is behind the “Daddy Bernie” profile on the dating app Tinder. It’s getting so much attention from single people in Philly that it warranted a closer look by Ellie Silverman of The Philadelphia Inquirer. The profile’s creator, Alex Scheinberg, is pulling for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential nomination fight and thought he’d mix politics with love. Sanders’s campaign didn’t have much to say about the Tinder profile, but to clear up any confusion it stressed that “Senator Sanders is happily married and not on Tinder.”


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