08/16/2025
The Republican playbook in Philly is the same one they’ve run everywhere. They create the problem, then claim the only fix is their way. With SEPTA, Harrisburg starves the system, blocks Philly from passing its own safety laws, and then points at the consequences as proof the city “can’t manage itself.” Manufactured failure.
It’s no different from the way Republicans flooded cities with drugs and guns in the 80s and 90s, then used the fallout to push mass incarceration. Or how they fought AIDS relief under Reagan, letting people die so they could moralize about “decay.” Or how Trump and his allies like DeSantis and Abbott turned COVID into a partisan weapon: blocking care, attacking masks and vaccines, and then blaming cities for deaths they engineered.
Now it’s SEPTA. The same Republicans, the white-flight legislators who don’t even ride transit, hold Philly’s system hostage, cut funding, block local control, and then scream “failure.” And too many people fall for it.
But ridership is recovering. The data proves it. What’s not recovering is trust in politicians who break the system, blame the people, and sell themselves as the only solution. That’s the Republican strategy: break it, blame it, and profit off the wreckage.
