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You can sword-fight at this club. But no politics allowed
Gaia Ferrency, 17, of Swissvale, Pa., waits to participate in a long-sword tournament as part of Friday Night Fights, hosted by Pittsburgh Sword Fighters, on Oct. 4 at a former Catholic church northeast of Pittsburgh.
Justin Merriman for NPR/
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Over the last few years and through this year’s contentious campaign season, which was rooted in America’s deep divisions, there has been a coarsening in the way people talk to each other. We wanted to explore how some are trying to bridge divides. We asked our reporters across the NPR Network to look for examples of people working through their differences. We’re sharing those stories in our series Seeking Common Ground.
CREIGHTON, Pa. — With their faces hidden behind hard black masks, two fighters stand a few feet apart and raise their swords.
They step forward and clank the broad, dull metal blades against each other repeatedly. One fighter strikes the other in the chest. The fight is over, and a small crowd applauds.
Inside this former Catholic church northeast of Pittsburgh, under a 25-foot ceiling flanked by Gothic, pointed-arch windows, members of the Pittsburgh Sword Fighters club and school gather.
The audience cheers on two sword fighters as they take part in a long-sword tournament hosted by Pittsburgh Sword Fighters.
Justin Merriman for NPR
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Justin Merriman for NPR
It’s a tournament — as well as a party — billed as Friday Night Fights.
There are plenty of rules in a sword fight. But there’s one rule that applies after the fighters have put down their weapons: no talk of politics.
The evolution of the rule started around 2016, when club owner Josh Parise says he was getting fed up with the rancor of political discourse in the U.S. — personal attacks were on the rise, even within families, as was cancel culture.
“I couldn’t tolerate the lack of decency between human beings,” says Parise, whose club focuses on historical European martial arts.
“None of it made sense anymore,” he says.
Josh Parise, 48, of Oakmont, Pa., is the owner of Pittsburgh Sword Fighters.
Justin Merriman for NPR
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And then there were a few would-be sword fighters who came to the club and didn’t treat others well. Parise had to tell them to get on their horses and leave.
“It’s infuriating to me, so with this place, we just don’t allow that to happen,” Parise says.
Leaving their politics at the door
As club volunteer Kat Licause watches the matches, she says the directive to avoid politics has led to closer relationships in the club.
“I don’t think we avoid it in the sense that we’re running scared of big questions and topics,” says Licause, who works as a tech writer. “I think we just have this mutual understanding here that if any of us was ever in trouble, we would pick each other up, like immediately.”
The club space is outfitted with medieval and Gothic touches, like coats of arms, a three-eyed raven sculpture and faux stonework that Parise made himself.
Chuck Gross, one of the head long-sword instructors at Pittsburgh Sword Fighters, stands in the doorway of the former Catholic church where a long-sword tournament will take place.
Justin Merriman for NPR
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Justin Merriman for NPR
Against the far wall, a custom Dumbledore throne sits on a fake altar. Off to the sides, there’s a table for potluck dishes and an open bar. The crowd and the vibe are noticeably chill, considering the main activity.
“You walk up, you acknowledge one another, and then you hit each other with big metal sticks,” Parise says with a wry smile.
But divisive political rhetoric, which can be sharper than the swords here, must be left at the club’s big wooden door. The politics ban doesn’t rise to the level of, say, a 15th-century heresy law, but it’s there.
Parise says his students and club members run the gamut politically, from religious conservatives to progressives. He loves to see them find common ground.
“I just don’t want people to feel uncomfortable, but I also don’t want them to bring their baggage with them,” he says. “Leave it outside and just do the thing.”
Teaching and learning from fellow fighters
As the tournament gets underway, a judge briefs the fighters and urges them to play by the rules and stay under control, lest he “red-card” them.
Todd Rooney, a high school English teacher, is photographed on Oct. 4. Rooney is a competitor in the long-sword tournament.
Justin Merriman for NPR
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“These are teachable moments,” the judge says. “We fight at Friday Night Fights to learn and help each other.”
More fighters line up. Among them is high school English teacher and long-sword instructor Todd Rooney.
He’s holding his headgear, waiting for his name to be called to fight. Rooney has been a member of the sword fighters’ club for almost 10 years and appreciates the politics-free zone.
“Because that rule exists here, I get to work with, spar with, teach, learn from people from all different walks of life, all different political affiliations, religious groups,” Rooney says.
And the controlled conflict of a sword fight, he says, brings about a kind of clarity.
“We have to encounter each other as fully human — we have to respect each other,” he says. “And it’s especially important here, when we’re coming at each other with weapons.”
Members gather on the steps of the former Catholic church where Pittsburgh Sword Fighters hosts a Friday Night Fights long-sword tournament.
Justin Merriman for NPR
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Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, the Food and Drug Administration’s top drug regulator, said she was fired from the agency Friday after she declined to resign.
She said she did not know who had ordered her firing or why, nor whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. knew of her fate. The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The departure reflected the upheaval at the F.D.A., days after the resignation of Dr. Marty Makary, the agency commissioner. Dr. Makary had become a lightning rod for critics of the agency’s decisions to reject applications for rare disease drugs and to delay a report meant to supply damaging evidence about the abortion drug mifepristone. He also spent months before his departure pushing back on the White House’s requests for him to approve more flavored vapes, the reason he ultimately cited for leaving.
Dr. Hoeg’s hiring had startled public health leaders who were familiar with her track record as a vaccine skeptic, and she played a leading role in some of the agency’s most divisive efforts during her tenure. She worked on a report that purportedly linked the deaths of children and young adults to Covid vaccines, a dossier the agency has not released publicly. She was also the co-author of a document describing Mr. Kennedy’s decision to pare the recommendations for 17 childhood vaccines down to 11.
But in an interview on Friday, Dr. Hoeg said she “stuck with the science.”
“I am incredibly proud of the work we were doing,” Dr. Hoeg said, adding, “I’m glad that we didn’t give in to any pressures to approve drugs when it wasn’t appropriate.”
As the director of the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, she was a political appointee in a role that had been previously occupied by career officials. An epidemiologist who was trained in the United States and Denmark, she worked on efforts to analyze drug safety and on a panel to discuss the use of serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants, during pregnancy. She also worked on efforts to reduce animal testing and was the agency’s liaison to an influential vaccine committee.
She made sure that her teams approved drugs only when the risk-benefit balance was favorable, she said.
The firing worsens the leadership vacuum at the F.D.A. and other agencies, with temporary leaders filling the role of commissioner, food chief and the head of the biologics center, which oversees vaccines and gene therapies. The roles of surgeon general and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also unfilled.
The U.S. Supreme Court
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The U.S. Supreme Court refused Friday to allow Virginia to use a new congressional map that favored Democrats in all but one of the state’s U.S. House seats. The map was a key part of Democrats’ effort to counter the Republican redistricting wave set off by President Trump.
The new map was drawn by Democrats and approved by Virginia voters in an April referendum. But on May 8, the Supreme Court of Virginia in a 4-to-3 vote declared the referendum, and by extension the new map, null and void because lawmakers failed to follow the proper procedures to get the issue on the ballot, violating the state constitution.
Virginia Democrats and the state’s attorney general then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to put into effect the map approved by the voters, which yields four more likely Democratic congressional seats. In their emergency application, they argued the Virginia Supreme Court was “deeply mistaken” in its decision on “critical issues of federal law with profound practical importance to the Nation.” Further, they asserted the decision “overrode the will of the people” by ordering Virginia to “conduct its election with the congressional districts that the people rejected.”
Republican legislators countered that it would be improper for the U.S. Supreme Court to wade into a purely state law controversy — especially since the Democrats had not raised any federal claims in the lower court.
Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Republicans without explanation leaving in place the state court ruling that voided the Democratic-friendly maps.
The court’s decision not to intervene was its latest in emergency requests for intervention on redistricting issues. In December, the high court OK’d Texas using a gerrymandered map that could help the GOP win five more seats in the U.S. House. In February, the court allowed California to use a voter-approved, Democratic-friendly map, adopted to offset Texas’s map. Then in March, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the redrawing of a New York map expected to flip a Republican congressional district Democratic.
And perhaps most importantly, in April, the high court ruled that a Louisiana congressional map was a racial gerrymander and must be redrawn. That decision immediately set off a flurry of redistricting efforts, particularly in the South, where Republican legislators immediately began redrawing congressional maps to eliminate long established majority Black and Hispanic districts.
An explosion and fire drew a large emergency response on Friday to a lumber mill in the Midcoast region of Maine, officials said.
The State Police and fire marshal’s investigators responded to Robbins Lumber in Searsmont, about 72 miles northeast of Portland, said Shannon Moss, a spokeswoman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.
Mike Larrivee, the director of the Waldo County Regional Communications Center, said the number of victims was unknown, cautioning that “the information we’re getting from the scene is very vague.”
“We’ve sent every resource in the county to that area, plus surrounding counties,” he said.
Footage from the scene shared by WABI-TV showed flames burning through the roof of a large structure as heavy, dark smoke billowed skyward.
The Associated Press reported that at least five people were injured, and that county officials were considering the incident a “mass casualty event.”
Catherine Robbins-Halsted, an owner and vice president at Robbins Lumber, told reporters at the scene that all of the company’s employees had been accounted for.
Gov. Janet T. Mills of Maine said on social media that she had been briefed on the situation and urged people to avoid the area.
“I ask Maine people to join me in keeping all those affected in their thoughts,” she said.
Representative Jared Golden, Democrat of Maine, said on social media that he was aware of the fire and explosion.
“As my team and I seek out more information, I am praying for the safety and well-being of first responders and everyone else on-site,” he said.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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