This article is part of\u00a0<\/i>Upstream,<\/i><\/a>\u00a0The Daily Wire\u2019s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories \u2014 from our featured writers to you.<\/i><\/p>\n ***<\/i><\/p>\n Americans were shocked to learn that two teens from Bucks County, a wealthy suburb of Philadelphia, were charged in the March ISIS-inspired terrorist attack<\/a> in New York City. As a Bucks County native, I wasn\u2019t surprised.<\/p>\n Over the past decade, I\u2019ve watched the county change from a peaceful suburb to an ideological battleground where progressives and conservatives regularly clash over culture war issues that are dividing America.<\/p>\n Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, Bucks County teens charged in the March 7<\/a> attempted terror attack, are from desirable communities and were educated at sought-after suburban school districts. Kayumi reportedly<\/a> resided in a multi-million-dollar house in Newtown<\/a>, an affluent township located less than a 10-minute drive from where George Washington famously crossed the Delaware River.<\/span><\/p>\n Bucks County boasts lush farms, prestigious<\/a> school districts, and quaint historic towns. It has more than 10,000<\/a> acres<\/a> of public parks where you can get lost in the beauty of nature while being less than an hour\u2019s drive from the center of Philadelphia and its renowned restaurants and museums.<\/p>\n It was an idyllic place to grow up. How did it become a breeding ground for terrorists who hate America?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n My kids playing at Tyler Park, a 1,700-plus-acre escape in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, located just 33 miles away from Center City, Philadelphia. (Photo by Meg Brock)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Philadelphia has been in decline for over half a century. Its population peaked in 1950 when it reached over 2 million residents<\/a>, and over the next five decades, hundreds of thousands of residents fled. The city\u2019s population bottomed out in 2006 with a low of less than 1.49 million. Since then, it has experienced a small yearly increase in population largely fueled by immigration, according to a Pew report<\/a>.<\/span> The analysis noted the population increases came from an influx of foreigners replacing U.S.-born citizens. \u201cFrom 2000 to 2016,\u201d the report stated, \u201cthe number of foreign-born residents rose by roughly 95,000 while the number of U.S.-born Philadelphians fell by 44,500.\u201d<\/p>\n This trend hasn\u2019t stopped. Local news outlet WHYY reported in a March 2025 article<\/a>\u00a0that the migration of \u201cforeign-born residents outweighed domestic migration out of the city\u201d and noted, \u201cMore than 21,300 individuals immigrated to Philadelphia between 2023 and 2024, compared to 15,300 U.S. born residents who left.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, almost one in five working Philadelphia residents is foreign-born, and there are concerns over how President Donald Trump\u2019s crackdown on illegal immigration will affect the city\u2019s population, according to recent reporting<\/a>\u00a0from The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/a>.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, millennial parents<\/a>\u00a0swapped Philly for places like Bucks County to find safer communities and better schools in the suburbs. In the 2010s, 60,000 Philadelphia<\/a> residents were leaving the city every year, and more than half of them were ages 18 to 34, according to Pew research<\/a>.<\/p>\n I watched this happen in real time. My generation recognized the city was a fun place to live as a young adult, but its failing schools<\/a> and rising crime made it an increasingly undesirable place to raise a family. Parents wanted to raise their kids in safety and didn\u2019t want them attending schools where four out of five<\/a> fourth graders aren\u2019t proficient in reading, and who could blame them?<\/p>\n While parents may have voted against failed progressive policies with their feet, many took their voting habits to the suburbs.<\/p>\n For decades, the Philadelphia suburbs had been Republican strongholds.\u00a0But in the 2010s, Philadelphia\u2019s four surrounding counties \u2014 Bucks, Chester, Montgomery, and Delaware \u2014 shifted to Democratic control.<\/span><\/p>\n Montgomery County was the first county to flip when Democrat Josh Shapiro, now Pennsylvania\u2019s governor, was elected<\/a> county commissioner in 2011.\u00a0Democrats completed their mission in 2019 with local\u00a0wins<\/a> that gave them control of Bucks, Chester, and Delaware counties.<\/p>\n To call the wins\u00a0historic<\/a> is an understatement. In Montgomery County, Democrats had won control of leadership for the first time in 140 years. In Delaware County, it was the first time they held power since the Civil War<\/a>.<\/p>\n But there were more dynamics at play than just families fleeing Philadelphia.\u00a0These wins weren\u2019t only historic<\/a>, but also strategic. Pennsylvania Democrats had long conquered<\/a>\u00a0Philadelphia and, fueled by their despondency over the election of President Trump, set their sights on conquering the suburbs.<\/p>\n Chapters of the radical progressive group Indivisible<\/a>, an anti-Trump grassroots organization founded in 2016, popped up throughout the Philadelphia suburbs. Grassroots organizations worked alongside the Pennsylvania Democratic Party to channel their \u201canti-Trump furor<\/a>\u201d into winning local suburban elections.<\/p>\n Local Republican committees, filled with aging boomers and few under 40, were woefully unprepared for the fight. In 2019, Democrats Diane Marseglia and Bob Harvie defeated Republicans Gene DiGirolamo and Rob Loughery and claimed the leadership majority as county commissioners by the narrowest of margins \u2014 just 664 votes<\/a> in an election with more than 450,000 registered voters. Democrats also won the four other countywide elections.<\/p>\n Harvie is currently\u00a0running for Congress<\/a> against a longtime Republican incumbent, Brian Fitzpatrick. DiGirolamo, the Republican elected as the minority commissioner, admitted to being totally shocked by the Republican losses, calling them \u201cdevastating<\/a>\u201d at a public meeting.<\/p>\n One of the biggest stories of the night was the 37% voter turnout<\/a> \u2014 a historically high number for a local, off-year election. The average voter turnout for the previous eight off-year elections was only around 27%. Democrats had put the work in, and it paid off for their party.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Protestors support a Democrat running for a seat on the Central Bucks School District at a press conference before a contentious school board meeting in July 2021. (Photo by Meg Brock)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n America\u2019s brewing ideological divide accelerated to a boiling point in 2020, and Bucks County was no exception.<\/p>\n Democrats Harvie and Marseglia were sworn into office in January 2020 and, though they made personnel changes during their transition into power, they kept the county\u2019s health director, Dr. David Damsker<\/a>.<\/p>\n Bucks is one of only a handful of counties in Pennsylvania with its own health department. According to\u00a0Pennsylvania law<\/a>, the county health director has the authority to determine school mitigation efforts during a disease outbreak.<\/p>\n While Pennsylvania\u2019s Secretary of Health Rachel Levine<\/a> imposed some of the most extreme COVID-19 mitigation policies in the nation, Damsker took a moderate, data-driven approach to COVID mitigation. He controversially<\/a> advocated that Bucks County lockdowns end in early May 2020, against the wishes of then-Governor Tom Wolf.<\/p>\n Damsker faced full-blown attacks in June 2020<\/a> after he issued reopening guidance for Bucks County schools that recommended a full return to in-person learning and made mask use optional.\u00a0The guidance said \u201cin-person instruction\u201d was \u201cessential to our children\u2019s emotional well-being, as well as their educational growth and advancement.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The school guidance caused a sharp division within Bucks County.\u00a0Many parents were thrilled about a return to in-person learning, while others were horrified.\u00a0Social media was abuzz with passionate, divisive opinions on Dr. Damsker, masks, and in-person learning.<\/p>\n The Mideastern region president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association published a scathing op-ed<\/a>\u00a0in the local newspaper questioning Damsker\u2019s credibility and demanding he change his recommendations.<\/p>\n School board meetings were filled to capacity throughout the 2020-2021 school year as parents argued\u00a0for and against in-person school, masks, and vaccines, while school board members were slandered and even received death threats over educational decisions.<\/p>\n A political breaking point came in the late summer of 2021 as tensions were again stoked by the emergence of the Delta variant of the coronavirus. That summer, I literally felt the tension when I was physically assaulted<\/a> by a Democratic township supervisor who struck me from behind with a \u201cMasks Save Lives\u201d sign during a school board press conference. The supervisor was charged with harassment and was later reelected.<\/p>\n Grassroots progressive groups and leaders from the local Democratic Party pressured<\/a> Harvie and Marseglia to fire Damsker, claiming his school guidance, which did not require students to wear masks, endangered the community.<\/p>\n The school guidance became overtly political when Pennsylvania\u2019s Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam<\/a> reached out<\/a> to Commissioner Marseglia, rather than Damsker, about Bucks County\u2019s school guidance.\u00a0By the end of the day, Bucks County had changed<\/a> its school guidance to align with the state\u2019s demands.<\/p>\n Many in the community saw this as an example of Democrats playing politics<\/a> with children\u2019s education and believed the politicians, rather than the health director, wrote the guidance for political clout \u2014 something the commissioners adamantly denied. Suspicions were increased when Damsker, who\u2019d been in the public eye for over a year, suddenly disappeared from the public purview. Many thought he\u2019d been silenced<\/a> by the Democratic commissioners.<\/p>\n Seeking clarity on what had happened, I began submitting public record requests and asked for records showing who wrote the updated school guidance. Instead of providing clarity, the county weaponized itself against me. The commissioners wrongfully blocked<\/a> my phone number from calling any county government office, made up a defamatory story about me and published it in the local newspaper, and denied me access to public records.<\/p>\n After months of me fighting for transparency with the Bucks County Law Department (which was led by Joe Khan, who is now Bucks County\u2019s district attorney), the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records<\/a> ordered the county to fulfill<\/a> my record requests. Instead of giving me the public records, Khan and the Bucks County Law Department filed the first of five lawsuits<\/a> against me in June 2022.<\/p>\n After a three-year legal battle, Pennsylvania\u2019s Commonwealth Court upheld a lower court ruling that Bucks County lawyers had acted in bad faith and wrongfully withheld public records and ordered them to pay $3,000<\/a> in civil penalties.<\/p>\n Khan was named<\/a> the 2022 Government Lawyer of the Year by the Pennsylvania Bar Association for his work overseeing the Bucks County Law Department.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Bucks County Democratic chairman state Senator Steve Santarsiero (right) speaks with Bucks County District Attorney Joe Khan (left) at a rally supporting The Rainbow Room in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Meg Brock)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The battle over Bucks County has continued beyond the COVID era, as reflected in the county\u2019s election results. Bucks County Republicans swept countywide elections in 2021, Democrats swept countywide elections in 2023, President Trump won Bucks County in 2024, and in 2025, Democrats again swept countywide elections, giving them control of every county office.<\/p>\n Democrats are working hard to transform Bucks into an ideological extension<\/a>\u00a0of progressive Philadelphia.<\/p>\n In June 2020, for the first time in Bucks\u2019 history,\u00a0the LGBT pride flag<\/a> was raised outside of the county administration building. Democratic commissioners celebrated the moment alongside The Rainbow Room<\/a>, an LGBT youth club for children and adults ages 14 to 21, operated by Planned Parenthood<\/a>. Social media accounts show the club has taught youth<\/a> about transgender medical transitions, has celebrated \u201cqueer\u201d sex and masturbation<\/a>, and hosts a yearly queer prom.<\/p>\n Commissioner Harvie and state Sen. Steve Santarsiero\u00a0 attended the queer prom<\/a> in February 2020. Both have\u00a0helped\u00a0secure<\/a> taxpayer funding for The Rainbow Room, which regularly organizes student rallies<\/a> for progressive causes.<\/p>\n Harvie and Marseglia proved that local elections can have national consequences in November 2024 when they voted to disregard Pennsylvania\u2019s election laws<\/a> and count illegal ballots after the 2024 election.<\/p>\n When he took office in January, Bucks County\u2019s newly elected Democratic sheriff immediately terminated the county\u2019s agreement<\/a> with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and said the \u201cpublic safety costs of this ICE partnership are greatly outweighed by any potential public safety benefits,\u201d according to local reporting.<\/p>\n In addition to mirroring the radical social policies of Philadelphia, Bucks County Democrats are embracing its fiscal woes. Bucks County recently announced<\/a> a countywide tax increase to make up for the county\u2019s $16 million tax deficiency, which leaders blamed on the federal government.<\/p>\n On the surface, Bucks County might still look like an idyllic, moderate community, but it\u2019s being run by radical progressives implementing policies similar to those that drove residents away from Philadelphia.<\/p>\n If you were shocked that two teens could be radicalized by ISIS in an affluent suburb, you haven\u2019t been paying attention to the rapid ideological and population shifts that have occurred in America over the last decade. Leaders who openly disdain their constituents, publicly disregard the law, and focus on pushing extreme ideologies instead of good governance create fertile soil for homegrown radicalism.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2026\/04\/IMG_0679-863x576.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe Philadelphia Suburbs Flip Blue<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nCulture Wars Escalate During The Pandemic<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nThe Suburban Battle For America\u2019s Future<\/strong><\/h3>\n