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  • 5 takeaways from the Senate hearing where Fauci refused to answer questions

    5 takeaways from the Senate hearing where Fauci refused to answer questions

    For almost three hours Wednesday, Republican senators grilled Anthony S. Fauci with dozens of questions at a hearing focused on the origins of the covid-19 pandemic and whether Fauci previously lied under oath to Congress. Again and again, the 85-year-old former government scientist gave the same response.

    “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution,” Fauci said. He delivered variations of that answer more than 100 times.

    Fauci was subpoenaed to appear before the Senate’s government oversight committee by its chairman, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), who has spent years alleging that Fauci participated in a cover-up of the possible origins of the covid-19 pandemic. Paul has also blamed Fauci for inadvertently sparking the pandemic – noting that Fauci’s agency previously funded coronavirus research in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak was first detected in late 2019 – and has called for him to be put in prison.

    Fauci has denied the allegations in repeated appearances before Congress, most recently in a combative 2024 hearing. Infectious-disease experts have also insisted to Paul and other Republicans that while Fauci’s former agency, the National Institutes of Health, funded virus research in Wuhan, the work could not have caused the pandemic.

    Fauci said Wednesday that he refused to testify because he believed Paul was seeking to wrongly trap him.

    “The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something – anything – that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said, before announcing his plan to invoke the Fifth Amendment.

    Here are five takeaways from the hearing.

    Republicans tore into Fauci

    Senate Republicans did not miss their chance to lace into Fauci. They inquired. They mocked. They goaded. At times, they flat-out insulted. Beyond asking about covid-19’s origins, senators accused Fauci of mishandling pandemic guidance and accused him of using his growing profile during the pandemic for personal benefit.

    Paul, a longtime adversary of Fauci, was visibly frustrated with Fauci’s nonanswers. Paul warned the former official that it was against the law to obstruct an investigation and threatened “repercussions” for Fauci’s unresponsiveness. When Fauci’s attorney, David Schertler, asked to make a comment, a back-and-forth led to Paul removing the lawyer from the room.

    It was the first of many tense moments.

    “Nothing says honesty like taking the Fifth, huh, Doc,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) said, leaning forward in his seat. The senator grew heated in his questioning, raising his voice and pointing with both hands as he accused Fauci of enriching himself.

    A Hawley staffer propped up an image of a magazine cover for which Fauci posed in September 2020. “You became a narcissist and a megalomaniac and a liar,” Hawley said.

    Fauci leaned forward, looking down at the table in front of him, hands fidgeting in his lap, glancing up occasionally at the senators accosting him.

    At one point, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) asked audience members to stand up if they had disagreed with or been harmed by policies such as mask requirements and school closures. More than a dozen stood. Moreno asked Fauci to turn around and look at them. Fauci turned to confer with his lawyers, then faced forward again.

    Sen. James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) adopted a warmer tone toward Fauci than his colleagues did. “I know you’re invoking your Fifth Amendment right, which you have the right to be able to do constitutionally,” he said. “Thanks for coming to be a part of this.”

    Democrats defended Fauci – mostly

    Democrats portrayed Fauci as a hero and said the GOP attacks were baseless. They also criticized Republicans for attacking public health officials like Fauci while supporting the Trump administration’s cuts to public health research and funding.

    Sen. Gary Peters (Michigan), the committee’s top Democrat, called Paul’s efforts biased. “One-sided investigations designed to validate predetermined conclusions do not serve the American people,” Peters said.

    Fauci and other public health officials have saved lives, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut). “Today, we are demeaning and degrading their lifesaving service,” he added.

    One Democrat struck a different note.

    Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania) was not going to attack Fauci, he said, but he wouldn’t defend him, either. Instead, Fetterman shared a regret: that the lab-leak theory came to be seen by some as a right-wing conspiracy theory, preventing people like himself from taking it seriously.

    “I hope … the next time our nation’s facing something like this, we are not … as I might have been, blinded by the partisan idea that maybe the truth might come from a side that’s different than you are,” Fetterman said.

    The hearing shows how divisions have calcified

    Wednesday was the latest example in a years-long trend: Congressional lawmakers have been unable to work together on a probe of the pandemic’s origins.

    A House investigation of the government’s pandemic response began in early 2023 with the top Republican and Democrat pledging to work together. It descended into partisan bickering and dueling reports about what the investigation found, and whether Fauci was personally culpable.

    In the Senate, a bipartisan plan to set up a commission investigating the nation’s covid response repeatedly stalled out. Democrats have accused Republicans of promoting conspiracy theories about Fauci’s role and other aspects of the response, while GOP officials say liberals and the media have not been sufficiently transparent about mistakes that government officials made.

    Paul, particularly, has long vowed to hold Fauci accountable for his “crimes” – a claim that Fauci and his allies say made it impossible to cooperate with him Wednesday.

    Paul’s threat to hold Fauci in contempt raises new legal questions

    The chairman said his committee plans to hold a vote next week on whether Fauci was in contempt of Congress. But he and his colleagues acknowledged legal uncertainty about how to proceed, complicated by President Joe Biden’s preemptive pardon for Fauci before Biden left office.

    Lankford asked Paul if there is guidance on whether Fauci could be held in contempt for refusing to answer questions after making an opening statement. Lankford noted a 2013 episode in the House in which an IRS official made an opening statement and then invoked her Fifth Amendment right to not answer questions about whether her agency had wrongly targeted conservative groups. The GOP-led House concluded that the official had waived her Fifth Amendment rights by making an opening statement, and she was ultimately found in contempt.

    “Are we dealing with the same issue here?” Lankford asked.

    Paul said that was among the legal questions lawmakers would consider. He added that the courts may need to settle whether, with “a presidential pardon that offers you complete immunity, you can still claim that you need protection” in a congressional hearing.

    “Dr. Fauci isn’t liable for anything as long as he tells the truth,” Paul added.

    Some past congressional witnesses have also repeatedly pleaded the Fifth. Martin Shkreli, a controversial pharmaceutical investor, refused to answer questions in front of a House Oversight Committee hearing in 2016, annoying lawmakers with his smirking. While lawmakers discussed holding Shkreli in contempt of Congress, they ultimately did not.

    Regina Wallace-Jones, the head of the Democratic fundraising engine ActBlue, also repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment during a congressional hearing last month in which Republicans pressed her on the platform’s process for vetting foreign donations.

    “It is the only reasonable response to a proceeding that from the beginning has been about harassing a political opponent’s fundraising platform, not genuine oversight,” she wrote in The Washington Post.

    House Republicans have threatened to hold ActBlue in contempt.

    Evolving perceptions of Fauci

    Fauci was initially seen as a unifying figure, particularly in the early days of the pandemic as Americans looked for answers – and the highly visible doctor provided them in TV interviews, podcast appearances and other forums.

    About 8 in 10 Americans in April 2020 said they trusted Fauci to provide reliable information on the pandemic, including similar shares of Republicans and Democrats, according to polling by KFF, a nonpartisan health care research and polling organization. But within two years, only about 5 in 10 Americans had trust in Fauci, a decline driven by plunging GOP support: Just one-quarter of Republicans said they trusted the doctor, according to KFF.

    Some of that was fueled by relentless criticism of Fauci in conservative media, which blamed him for pandemic policies that were increasingly viewed as too harsh. It was also driven by President Donald Trump, who empowered Fauci in early 2020 and followed his advice on imposing shutdowns and other measures, before distancing himself from the doctor later that year and repeatedly criticizing his guidance.

    “I didn’t mind him, I didn’t find him to be bad personally, as a person,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday. “But I didn’t agree with what he was saying or what he was doing.”

    Fauci has previously said that Trump soured on him as the pandemic stretched on and the 2020 presidential election drew closer, with Trump telling the scientist to be more optimistic about the virus’s risks in his media appearances.

    Fauci still retains more trust than some current leaders.

    Fifty-four percent of Americans in February said they were confident that Fauci had provided the public with trustworthy medical information, according to a February poll by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. That exceeded the level of trust in current Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was at 38 percent.

  • Lawmakers will investigate Iranian attack that killed 6 U.S. troops

    Lawmakers will investigate Iranian attack that killed 6 U.S. troops

    Democratic lawmakers announced Thursday that they are opening an investigation into the Iranian drone strike that killed six U.S. service members in Kuwait earlier this year, citing doubts over the objectivity of the military’s internal review of the attack.

    In a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) and Rep. Pat Ryan (D., N.Y.) — along with almost a dozen other House and Senate Democrats — cited recent reporting by the Washington Post and other media outlets scrutinizing the March 1 strike, saying they want answers to whether the military had adequate protections in place before the attack and whether the troops received proper medical care afterward.

    “The need for this investigation goes beyond the Shuaiba attack — it’s about taking accountability and protecting our service members,” Ryan, an Army and Iraq War veteran, said in a statement to the Post. He was referring to Port Shuaiba, the facility along the Persian Gulf where the deadly strike occurred. “It’s our job as members of Congress to force [Hegseth] to give us real answers and make sure something like this never happens again.”

    Reached for comment, the Pentagon did not address whether it would cooperate with lawmakers’ investigation, saying in a brief statement that “as with all Congressional correspondence, we will respond directly to the sender.”

    It was just the second day of Operation Epic Fury, the name the Trump administration has given the conflict, when an Iranian Shahed drone crashed into the center of an Army operations center at Port Shuaiba. Dozens of service members were injured in the attack along with the six who died.

    In the months since, survivors have alleged that military leaders failed to take appropriate action after being warned the facility lacked adequate defenses. Some have said, too, that troops wounded in the strike faced considerable difficulty obtaining treatment.

    Military officials have contested both assertions.

    As the Post reported this month, several soldiers who were at Port Shuaiba have said they doubt the Army’s internal review will hold anyone accountable. Citing a U.S. official familiar with the review, the Post also reported that the initial findings did not assign fault for the attack or address any punitive action.

    The Army has shared its findings with the families of some of the fallen service members but has not released that information publicly.

    In their letter to Hegseth, lawmakers questioned the seriousness and independence of the Army’s internal review, citing other reporting by the Post that revealed the task was assigned initially to a midgrade officer within the affected unit instead of an outside investigator.

    The matter was later elevated to a more senior officer at U.S. Army Central, the affected unit’s parent command. Outside observers have said they were skeptical of the move, noting that it still left the review to be overseen by personnel in the same chain of command.

    The lack of an independent investigator, coupled with new concerns about the Pentagon’s transparency and recordkeeping, raise questions about “whether investigations into service member casualty incidents will be conducted objectively,” Warren wrote in the letter.

    Citing Democrats’ concerns about the Defense Department’s “failures to provide service members that sustained injuries in this war with adequate care and its inability to honestly and openly inform the American people about the consequences of this war,” the lawmakers have chosen to pursue answers on their own, the letter says.

    They requested a response from the Pentagon by Aug. 12.

  • Worker was ‘impaled’ by blow torch while dismantling an old crane at EMR Camden

    Worker was ‘impaled’ by blow torch while dismantling an old crane at EMR Camden

    A worker at EMR was impaled by a blow torch while taking apart a crane for scrap metal, according to Camden Fire Department incident reports.

    Camden County had confirmed that a worker at the scrap metal plant had been transported to the hospital after suffering life-threatening injuries less than two weeks ago on July 18. The man remains in the hospital in stable condition and conscious.

    The incident took place less than a week after the company announced its phased reopening after a string of fires. A judge had allowed EMR to resume operations after the company sued the city of Camden for suspending its operations.

    Fire department documents obtained by The Inquirer through a public records request reveal that worker was injured while dismantling a crane.

    He was on a stretcher with “what appeared to be a large Oxy-Acetylene blowtorch handle impaled into his left bicep and into his torso,” when Camden City Fire Department Battalion Chief Ezequiel Tirado arrived on the scene to respond to a burn victim, according to his report.

    Another worker who could not speak English had cuts on his face, and blood and mud on his hands, according to Tirado’s report. They spoke in Spanish, and the man said he was hurt but declined to be brought to the hospital, stating that he’s an undocumented worker.

    “I told him, ‘Don’t worry about that. Let’s get you some help,’” Tirado wrote. “He stared at me then ran away.”

    He was later found at the hospital, Tirado said.

    William Scott, the night time operations manager for EMR, said he did not know what caused the workers’ injuries, according to Tirado’s report. Scott said they were using a cutting torch to cut an old crane for scrap metal.

    Tirado described the site of the incident as “very dark with no lighting equipment” and lots of debris. He said emergency responders set up lighting and discovered a pool of blood near the crane and under a lift.

    Camden County spokesperson Dan Keashen said Wednesday that the now-stabilized man who was impaled with the blow torch was transported to the hospital in critical condition. He said the county police department is still investigating the incident.

    Joe Balzano, the CEO of EMR, said on the phone Wednesday that the workers were subcontractors hired to demolish an old crane and not employees of EMR.

    He said the injured worker is “a very hardworking nice man, unfortunately who was involved in a workplace injury.”

    “We’re just glad that he’s doing well,” the CEO said. “It’s unfortunate, heavy industry situations have, you know, unfortunate accidents … we just hope he does continues to progress well.”

  • Blanche nomination at risk of delay as senator seeks assurances on Trump settlement

    Blanche nomination at risk of delay as senator seeks assurances on Trump settlement

    WASHINGTON — A planned vote to move forward with Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general appeared in doubt Wednesday as a key Republican senator demanded more assurances from the Justice Department about the settlement of President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.

    GOP Sen. John Cornyn, a crucial swing vote, called off a scheduled Wednesday meeting with Blanche, who has been serving as acting attorney general since Pam Bondi’s firing in April. Cornyn told reporters that the Justice Department has not adequately addressed in writing his concerns about the settlement that afforded Trump and members of his family protection from tax audits.

    The dispute threatened to upend plans for the Senate Judiciary Committee to vote Thursday on whether to advance Blanche’s nomination to the full Senate. Another Republican on the committee, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, has backed Cornyn’s position, and just one Republican holdout could sink Blanche’s prospects.

    “They know what they need to do but they simply refuse to do it,” Cornyn, who lost the Texas Republican primary in May, said of the Justice Department.

    At the center of the fight is the settlement of Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS that included a deal to drop tax claims against the president and a now-scrapped plan to create a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to compensate people who believe they were wronged by the Justice Department. The Justice Department said in June that it was no longer moving forward with the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” amid bipartisan outrage but officials have said the audit immunity agreement remains in place.

    Trump on Wednesday downplayed any concerns about Blanche’s path to confirmation, calling his attorney general pick and former personal attorney “outstanding.”

    “Maybe John Cornyn’s upset with me because I didn’t endorse him,” Trump told reporters in response to questions about the senator’s demands.

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won the state’s Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, easily defeating Cornyn. Trump had endorsed Paxton.

    Some lawmakers have raised concerns that the fund could be resurrected absent a commitment in writing from the Trump administration that it is dead, especially since Trump has expressed continued support for the idea. Blanche had previously resisted requests for a formal written retraction, though he told senators at his confirmation hearing earlier this month that the administration would be willing to help craft legislation to bar the creation of the fund.

    Cornyn has also demanded clarification from the Justice Department on the scope of the tax immunity deal. He has pressed the administration to modify that piece of the settlement to make clear that it covers only existing audits and does not protect the president from examination of future tax filings.

    “We’re been trying to help them get to a conclusion here and they won’t let us. It’s befuddling to me,” Cornyn said.

    A person familiar with the matter said the Justice Department provided Cornyn’s office with a written proposal seeking to address his concerns around the audit immunity agreement and the fund. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about sensitive discussions surrounding Blanche’s confirmation.

    The settlement resulting from Trump’s lawsuit over his leaked tax returns has drawn intense scrutiny both in Congress and in court. The judge handling the case said in a scathing ruling earlier this month that Trump had effectively engaged in self-dealing through the lawsuit and that she was troubled Blanche had signed the settlement, given his prior representation of Trump.

    Blanche has said he disagrees “with the judge’s insinuations” about him.

  • The EPA halted a study on gas stoves and asthma. But even partial results were striking.

    The EPA halted a study on gas stoves and asthma. But even partial results were striking.

    Paul Moore’s house is old. It was built around 1900 as a hunting lodge near where Cleveland would develop, and his grandparents bought the home around 50 years later, converting it over the years into a three-bedroom ranch that included what Moore called an “old school” gas stove.

    When he moved into the house in 2020 with his wife and six children, Moore already had debilitating asthma. He got winded walking up hills and couldn’t play basketball with his children. He slept poorly and couldn’t hold steady employment, instead doing odd jobs like fixing neighbors’ cars and houses. He was hospitalized multiple times with severe asthma attacks and almost died from being unable to breathe.

    “My asthma was a real hindrance at the time. And I couldn’t figure out why, you know?” Moore said. “Just couldn’t pinpoint one thing or another. Was it me? Is it something going on with my body? Is it something else?”

    It turned out that researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and a local hospital network were studying asthma sufferers like Moore. He signed up to have his gas stove swapped out for an electric one in June 2025. That research would end up providing vital evidence on gas stoves’ health impacts, amid fierce debate between fossil fuel advocates and climate change activists.

    Moore said without the study, he has no clue how long it would have taken him to save the money to change it himself. The researchers spent an average of about $10,000 per household, as many old homes needed to be completely rewired to handle the larger electrical load of an induction stove.

    What Moore didn’t know is that he would be one of the last people to get a new stove as part of that work.

    Ash Sehgal, a Case Western medical professor who led the study, had received an $18 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency in December 2024 to replace the stoves in 1,200 homes of asthma sufferers in the Cleveland and Akron, Ohio, areas. A month before Moore’s stove was replaced, Sehgal received a letter stating that the grant had been terminated.

    It was one of thousands cut short after President Donald Trump took office and launched aggressive efforts to reduce government spending.

    But unlike many others forced to halt their research, Sehgal and his co-authors released their study anyway, publishing it in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology in Practice this month with a fraction of the intended sample size. Still, removing the gas stoves relieved the participants’ asthma so much that the results were clear even with only 85 of them, according to two scientists who reviewed the methodology but were not involved in the study.

    “What really surprised me is that the improvement in the asthma symptoms was similar to or even larger than the improvement in asthma symptoms that’s reported in clinical trials of commonly used asthma medications,” Sehgal said.

    Participants recorded far fewer asthma attacks, emergency room visits and missed days of work after the stove was removed, and levels of nitrogen dioxide in their kitchens plummeted by 70 percent.

    “They were able to see some important results, even with the grant getting canceled, even with the sample size being less than a tenth of what they’d intended,” said Julian Marshall, an environmental engineering professor at the University of Washington.

    “It’s also an actionable finding. People who have asthma would want to know, ‘What can I do about this?’” he added. “This is a major problem facing thousands and thousands of people across the U.S.”

    Sehgal said that while it can help to replace gas stoves that exacerbate symptoms, it is not a cure for asthma. Asthma sufferers still need to work with a doctor, take their medications and avoid triggers like pollen and cigarette smoke.

    Rob Jackson, an environmental scientist at Stanford University who was not involved in the research, said many studies on indoor air pollution from gas stoves rely on models to estimate the impact on people’s health, whereas this study makes real-life observations.

    “It’s important because the extent to which indoor air pollution from stoves harms people’s health is still debated in state houses, federally, in courtrooms, and so every piece of the puzzle, even if it’s only 85 individuals, strengthens that story,” he said.

    In recent years, conservatives have championed gas stoves and fought Biden-era policies that sought to reduce the use of fossil fuels driving climate change. Trump has championed fossil fuel development, seeking to boost the oil and gas industry by rolling back environmental protections and opening new areas to exploration.

    Politicizing science

    Scientists have lamented the loss of federal funding following the Trump administration’s dramatic cuts last year to grants across the government, including those awarded by the National Institutes for Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    The EPA has terminated $28.5 billion in grants, according to Grant Witness, a tracking project, with much of that money intended to focus on helping communities respond to climate change or reduce pollution. That included funding projects that installed rooftop solar or sealed up houses against wildfire smoke, as well as scientific studies that had real-life applications, like evaluating the replacement of gas stoves.

    The agency closed the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, which awarded Sehgal’s grant, amid its broader purge of programs related to climate change, environmental justice and diversity, equity and inclusion.

    Despite court challenges, including a district judge ruling earlier this month that the cancellations were illegal, many researchers were forced to end their studies early.

    EPA spokesperson Brigit Hirsch said in an email that the agency’s internal scientists continue to conduct vital research.

    “EPA’s core mission is protecting human health and the environment, and at the Trump EPA, gold-standard science supported by our excellent career scientists is happening like never before to ensure clean air, land, and water for all Americans,” she said.

    The cancellation of the gas stoves research grant “seems to be a political decision, not necessarily based on science-based or public health priorities,” said Darya Minovi, a public health researcher at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group.

    The administration is looking to expand its ability to shape scientific funding, she said. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget proposed a new regulation in late May that would demand grants across the federal government align with the president’s policy priorities or face cancellation.

    While presidents often set the general direction of agencies by appointing their leadership, Minovi said this new policy would give the president more control over decisions typically made by staffers at institutions such as the NIH.

    “This is really making it government-wide policy to politicize grant-making that should not be subject to the whims of a president, but really should be decided on scientific merit,” she said.

    What was lost

    Based on the results that were published, Sehgal can estimate how much damage halting the study caused. If 1,100 more households had participated as originally planned, it would have resulted in 900 people with better-controlled asthma and 84 fewer people who would go to the emergency room or be hospitalized.

    Many of those people probably don’t even realize the connection between their asthma and their gas stove, said Angela Bland, a 38-year-old stay-at-home mom in Akron who also participated in the study. She said the impact of replacing her stove was almost immediate, and she didn’t feel her throat closing up as much while cooking.

    “It was kind of heartbreaking because I was like here’s something that can really help people and get information out there to help people, and they cut it so quick,” she said.

    Similar to Bland, Moore said he quickly felt the impact of removing his gas stove.

    “It was just like, ‘Huh, I feel a little bit better. It’s not like how it used to be.’ It was a slow realization over the first week,” he said.

    He remembers waking up to his daughter cooking, smelling the food and feeling good for once, so much so that his family noticed.

    “They felt the difference. It was a magical moment,” Moore said.

    After his health improved, Moore found a new job locating gas lines so that major construction projects don’t rupture them.

    “There’s a whole lot of people out there probably feeling just like how I felt,” he said. “A lot more people deserve to feel good when they cook or when they eat or when they are able to sit down with their families.”

  • Trump’s attacks on mail balloting and concerns over delays turn midterms spotlight on Postal Service

    Trump’s attacks on mail balloting and concerns over delays turn midterms spotlight on Postal Service

    Roughly six weeks before the first midterm ballots are mailed out, the U.S. Postal Service is emerging as a pivotal player in an election season that will determine control of Congress.

    President Donald Trump is seeking greater control over mail balloting through an executive order while a change to how the agency processes mail is leading to criticism that it’s failing to deliver ballots on time.

    Democratic officials have raised concerns over the past week about how quickly the Postal Service will process ballots after tens of thousands of them in California and hundreds in Wisconsin arrived at local election offices too late to be counted in elections earlier this year. The top election offices in Kansas and Michigan are urging voters who want to cast their ballots early to avoid the mail and instead drop them off in person.

    The Postal Service replied to those concerns by saying it remains “committed to fulfilling our role in the electoral process.”

    “We provide a secure, efficient, and effective way for citizens to participate when policymakers decide to use mail as part of their elections,” it said in a statement Tuesday.

    Trump’s order puts more focus on mail ballots

    The Postal Service faced similar questions about mail delivery in 2024, but the scrutiny this year is heightened because of an executive order Trump issued in March that seeks to create a national voter list to guide the Postal Service in deciding who gets a mail ballot.

    The order has sparked multiple lawsuits and federal court orders, leading to a case now before the U.S. Supreme Court in which the administration is asking the justices to allow it to impose its restrictions on mail balloting.

    Trump has lied for years about voter fraud to try to explain away his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, and mail balloting is a favorite target, even though he has used the method himself. During a recent stop in Michigan, he falsely characterized mail balloting as “inherently corrupt” and added, “Hopefully there will be no mail-in ballots.”

    A 2025 report from the research group Brookings identified about four cases of fraud for every 10 million mail ballots cast.

    Despite Trump’s attacks, the method remains popular with voters of both major parties. In 2024, nearly 30% of U.S. voters cast their ballots by mail, according to federal data. In Michigan, where competitive U.S. House and Senate races could help determine the balance of power in Congress, the state said it has sent out more than 2 million absentee ballots for the state’s Aug. 4 primary.

    “We want to keep vote by mail. We want to protect it. We want to expand it,” said Jonathan Smith, president of the 200,000-member American Postal Workers Union, which launched a campaign in April promoting it and is opposed to turning the Postal Service into an election administrator. “Why? Because it works.”

    Legal battles intensify over Trump’s order

    The Postal Service proposed a rule in June in line with Trump’s executive order that would create a national list of eligible voters, based on databases kept by other federal agencies. Only those on the list would be eligible to receive mail ballots.

    Democratic officials in nearly two dozen states filed a federal lawsuit in Massachusetts. A federal judge there blocked Trump’s order last month, and an appeals court upheld that ruling, prompting Trump’s appeal to the Supreme Court. But the appeals court for the District of Columbia refused Tuesday to block the order in a separate case, calling a legal challenge premature.

    Democratic senators and governors have written to the Postal Service urging it to abandon efforts to implement Trump’s order.

    “Donald Trump has shown he’ll stop at nothing to meddle in our upcoming elections,” Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin said in a statement to The Associated Press. ”At best, this new push will exacerbate already severe delays for mail-in voters and at worst, it will stop eligible Americans from casting their ballots.”

    In a letter to Democratic senators earlier this month, the heads of the Postal Service said they were abiding by the court rulings that had halted the executive order. But Smith, of the postal workers union, told the AP on Tuesday that USPS information technology staffers who are union members are working on a planned portal for the list of eligible voters “behind the scenes.”

    The Postal Service declined to respond to Smith’s statements and said it could not comment about whether it’s moving forward with work related to Trump’s order because of the litigation.

    The postal workers’ union opposes the plan for a portal, a national list of eligible voters and using that list to determine who can receive a mail ballot. Smith said it shouldn’t be postal workers’ responsibility “to decide who can vote and who can’t vote.”

    A plan to consolidate mail processing centers upsets officials

    The Postal Service has been under financial stress for years and has been consolidating mail processing into fewer regional centers. Mail travels an average of 139 miles to reach one and sometimes 500 miles, according to a recent Brookings report.

    In January, a group of mostly Democratic senators said it was concerned about a decision to end twice-daily mail dispatches from local post offices to regional processing centers. The result is that mail arriving after the only daily dispatch would go out the next day.

    California officials said the change was a factor in the state rejecting more than 148,000 ballots from its June primary, with 63% of them arriving too late despite a seven-day grace period. Officials worried that some ballots were postmarked at processing facilities the day after they were dropped off at a post office, possibly invalidating them. Wisconsin officials also said hundreds of ballots from an election in April arrived late.

    The Postal Service said postmarks generally are being applied with automated equipment at processing centers, “in the same manner and to the same extent as before.” It said someone who wants to make sure their ballot envelope gets a timely postmark can get a free one applied by a postal worker.

    A report on the 2024 election by the USPS Office of Inspector General said the Postal Service handled more than 59 million pieces of ballot mail from Sept. 1 to Nov. 15 that year and that 97.3% arrived on time.

    Some state election officials advise voters to avoid the mail

    The Michigan secretary of state’s office is advising voters to hand-deliver ballots to their local clerk’s office or a drop box.

    “We’ve seen these issues over a number of election cycles now — they’re always concerning, and that’s why we’ve put out that guidance,” said Deputy Secretary of State Aghogho Edevbie.

    The Postal Service said its Michigan centers are not seeing processing delays.

    In Kansas, concerns about late ballot deliveries in the state’s 2024 primary election prompted a quip on the social platform X from Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican: “The Pony Express is more efficient at this point.” Asked his view now, spokesperson Whitney Tempel said Schwab still believes “keeping your ballot out of the hands of the federal government is best.”

    Jamie Shew, a Democrat elected to oversee elections in Douglas County, home to the main University of Kansas campus, said his office is trying to change voters’ perceptions.

    “I think voters are used to, you can drop it off on Friday and we’re going to receive it by Election Day,” Shew said Tuesday. “That’s just not the reality.”

    California’s state budget includes $10 million for social media campaigns and other efforts to discourage last-minute ballot mailings.

    And the Postal Service said it hasn’t changed its own longstanding advice for voters: They should get their ballots in the mail at least a week before their state’s deadline for receiving them.

  • Federal judge dismisses Trump administration’s lawsuit seeking New Jersey voter records

    Federal judge dismisses Trump administration’s lawsuit seeking New Jersey voter records

    A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit from President Donald Trump’s administration that sought New Jersey’s unredacted voter files.

    The case — one of more than two dozen lawsuits filed by the Trump administration against states ahead of the midterm election — predates New Jersey’s recent disclosure that thousands of noncitizens had been registered to vote in 2023 and 2024 due to a glitch in the motor vehicle system.

    The Justice Department attempted to use that news as leverage in the case, but it was unsuccessful.

    U.S. District Judge Zahid N. Quraishi ruled the department did not have the authority to compel New Jersey to hand over its unredacted records.

    “The Constitution’s architects chose to delegate election administration to the states, recognizing local governments have the deepest understanding of their constituents’ circumstances,” Quraishi wrote in the ruling, which granted New Jersey’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

    Quraishi has become the 18th U.S. District Court judge to rule against the Trump administration on the issue, according to data from the Brennan Center for Justice.

    The Trump administration will likely appeal the case, as the president and his allies have made election security a focal point ahead of the November midterms. It is mounting an appeal in a similar case in Pennsylvania.

    The ruling in the state’s favor came a day after New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill formally told the Justice Department she would not release personal information about noncitizen voters who had been mistakenly added to the state’s voter rolls ahead of the 2024 election.

    Sherrill announced last week that about 6,600 noncitizens had been registered to vote due to a glitch in the automatic voter registration system at the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission. She said fewer than 400 had cast ballots and there was no evidence they had affected election results.

    On Tuesday, she said the New Jersey Department of State had begun removing 4,500 voters from the rolls. But there is a chance the rest could actually be citizens, so counties will review those about 2,000 individuals to ensure no eligible voters are disenfranchised, she said.

    Following Sherrill’s disclosure last week, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon requested the full names, dates of birth, nationalities, and home addresses of the individuals who were erroneously registered, as well as additional information about the noncitizens who voted, within a week.

    Sherrill had publicly indicated she would not hand over the data, but her letter Tuesday put it on the books.

    The Justice Department’s request has no legal basis, Sherrill said in a Tuesday letter to Dhillon, and sharing “extensive personal information about thousands of New Jersey residents” is limited by state and federal privacy laws.

    “Here and always, I remain committed to protecting New Jerseyans’ personally identifying information,” Sherrill wrote, reiterating her stance from the previous week, when she cited concerns about federal data breaches under Trump.

    In response to Sherrill’s rebuffing, Dhillon said the Justice Department’s request was rooted in the legal authority to “keep ineligible voters off its rolls” and vowed to obtain the information “through all legal means!”

    Sherrill’s “refusal to cooperate with federal law enforcement does nothing to protect law-abiding NJ voters,” Dhillon said on X.

    Sherrill on Tuesday criticized the Trump administration for “weaponizing the government against individuals that disagree with them.”

    She pointed to an issue during her campaign last year in which the federal government provided personal information about her that should have been redacted, like her Social Security number, to an ally of her Republican opponent. The National Personnel Records Center director apologized at the time and called it a rare error, but Sherrill claims her data were “weaponized” against her.

    Sherrill has not shied away from the issue of voter access in New Jersey as it becomes a national talking point in the debate over election security after last week’s revelation that thousands of people had been improperly added to the voter rolls when applying for driver’s licenses and identification cards.

    On Tuesday, she championed a new law, the John R. Lewis Voter Empowerment Act, that offers a slew of policies meant to increase voter participation.

    The erroneous registrations took place between June 2023 and June 2024 under former Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration due to a software glitch in New Jersey’s motor vehicle system, which processes the automatic registration when citizens obtain an ID or a license unless they decline.

    Even though they checked “no” when asked if they were a U.S. citizen, the noncitizens were registered anyway.

    Sherrill pointed a finger at her predecessor but a spokesperson for Murphy said the former governor had “no knowledge” of the glitch.

    U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a South Jersey Republican, said he planned to hold hearings over the issue and called on Sherrill to answer a slate of questions.

    Sherrill said Tuesday that her administration had hired a law firm to conduct an independent bipartisan investigation. One of the firm’s main partners worked under former Republican Gov. Chris Christie as attorney general and was later appointed by Christie to the Senate, she noted, saying “we have nothing to hide.”

    Christie said in a post on X that Sherrill “made the right choice tapping my former AG Jeff Chiesa to lead the independent investigation into New Jersey’s voter rolls.”

    “Jeff won’t hide anything from the public,” he said. “You can count on it.”

    But the New Jersey GOP questioned Wednesday why Sherrill would not comply with the Justice Department if she “has nothing to hide.”

    “She ran on transparency and accountability,” the party said in a post online. “Apparently, those were campaign promises that expired the moment she was sworn in.”

    Republicans have seized on the noncitizen voter registrations to make the case for the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship like a passport or birth certificate to register to vote.

  • Senate confirms Jay Clayton as new intelligence czar

    The Senate confirmed Jay Clayton as the director of national intelligence Tuesday, ending the tenure of Bill Pulte, a housing official and Trump loyalist, who held the role for more than a month.

    The 51-to-47 vote was more partisan than expected after Trump nominated Clayton in June. Many Democrats initially welcomed the pick and signaled they would support him.

    But their attitude changed after Clayton’s July confirmation hearing, where multiple Democrats pressed him to acknowledge that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. Clayton repeatedly said that Biden had been “certified” as the victor but declined to answer the question directly.

    The question became a flash point for Democrats concerned about President Donald Trump’s use of the intelligence community to further his baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged.

    Clayton previously served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and chaired the Securities and Exchange Commission during the first Trump administration.

    His background has been less controversial than that of Pulte, who used his time leading the Federal Housing Finance Agency to further allegations of mortgage fraud against Trump’s perceived political enemies. But some Democrats have still argued that Clayton, like Pulte, lacks the national security experience required by law for the position.

    The director of national intelligence oversees the 18 agencies that span the U.S. intelligence community. Lawmakers established the role after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to try to prevent future lapses in intelligence sharing and interagency coordination.

    Pulte used his five weeks as acting intelligence chief to cut positions in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, fulfilling Trump’s desire to vastly reduce its size. Since June 1, The Washington Post has reported, he has eliminated about 200 jobs within the ODNI.

    Pulte said in a posting on X on Tuesday that he had conducted “a 5th and Near Final Round of TERMINATIONS, an approximately 30% Staff Reduction from Weeks Ago.” ODNI has shrunk from around 2,000 people at the start of Trump’s second term to less than 1,300. The workforce’s precise size is classified.

    Clayton will take over an organization that has endured near nonstop upheaval in recent weeks, since the departure of former DNI Tulsi Gabbard in mid-June. Morale is low, former senior intelligence officials have said, noting they fear that ODNI’s recent politicized leadership and the firing of veteran analysts have discouraged independent analysis that clashes with White House narratives.

    Clayton’s confirmation could unlock a deal to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a warrantless spy program that lapsed for the first time in June after Democrats protested Pulte’s temporary appointment and voted down the legislation. Civil libertarians and privacy advocates have long opposed the tool, arguing it needs firmer guardrails to protect American citizens from government surveillance.

    Lawmakers from both parties had sought to accelerate Clayton’s confirmation hearing in June to avoid having Pulte ever step into the acting director role. Trump abruptly canceled the previously scheduled session only hours before it was set to begin, instructing Clayton not to appear.

    The president instead called on the Senate to pass a voting restrictions bill and threatened to blockade future legislation without it. The Senate has not yet done so.

  • Mayor Parker’s former DEI chief sues the city for discrimination in tell-all lawsuit

    Mayor Parker’s former DEI chief sues the city for discrimination in tell-all lawsuit

    Philadelphia’s former chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer has said before that Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and top administration officials scapegoated her after she reported sexual harassment in City Hall and then fired her “unjustly.”

    But in an explosive new lawsuit filed in federal court in Philadelphia this week, that officer, Brandee Anderson, claimed her termination was part of a coordinated effort to “suppress” or rebrand diversity work and came as a top Parker administration official made derisive comments about other DEI leaders.

    She claimed Parker — a centrist Democrat who is Black and the city’s first female mayor — said in 2025 that she “did not care about Ms. Anderson’s ‘DEI ideology,’ only minority business.”

    And she alleged in the lawsuit that the mayor threatened to remove any administration official who expressed dissenting views, telling a gathering of senior officials that no one “has a right to have an opinion about where we are going.”

    The suit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, seeks unspecified damages and payment of lost wages as a result of her firing. Parker is named as a defendant, as are Deputy Mayor Vanessa Garrett Harley, Inspector General Alexander DeSantis, and communications director Joe Grace. Anderson claimed DeSantis and Grace defamed and retaliated against her in statements to the media after her firing.

    Anderson served as Parker’s chief DEI officer beginning in 2024, advising the mayor and administration on matters such as workforce diversity, community engagement, equitable budgeting, and minority business opportunities. She also oversaw offices that serve LGBTQ+ residents and people with disabilities.

    She was fired in 2025 after Tyrell Brown, then the director of the Philadelphia Office of LGBTQ+ Affairs, reported to Anderson that they had received a “semi-nude” photo from a senior administration official. Anderson says in the lawsuit that she was fired days after elevating the matter to Garrett Harley and human resources officials.

    Why Mayor Cherelle Parker’s administration fired its top DEI and LGBTQ affairs officials due to a ‘semi-nude’ photo neither sent

    The city declined to comment on the lawsuit and generally does not answer questions about pending litigation.

    The lawsuit was the second filed against the city by a former DEI official during Parker’s tenure. Leslie Marant, the Philadelphia Police Department’s first DEI chief, who was fired in the first days of Parker’s administration, said in a federal lawsuit filed in October that she was a victim of the systemic discrimination that she was tasked with addressing. That litigation is ongoing.

    It was also the second time this month that a former Parker administration official accused senior administration members of fostering a toxic work environment.

    Shania Bennett, the former director of the Philadelphia Office of Youth Engagement, last week posted on social media that working for the city was “the worst experience of [her] life” and that she had quit her job after “unprofessional harassment.”

    Bennett could not be reached for comment.

    ‘Stand down’ on DEI matters

    Anderson, an attorney who founded a firm that creates anti-racist trainings, was hired in October 2024 to lead the city’s DEI efforts. In the lawsuit, she alleges that Parker officials undermined her authority from the outset.

    She claimed Parker forbade her from contacting members of City Council with whom she had existing relationships. And she said Garrett Harley, one of Parker’s most senior officials, told her and other DEI leaders to “stand down” if they expressed dissenting views, saying “if you can’t align with the mayor’s strategy, DEI may not be the job for you.”

    Deputy Mayor Vanessa Garrett Harley speaks during a news conference in Philadelphia, Pa., in June 2024.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer

    Anderson also claimed Garrett Harley made discriminatory comments about a transgender official, Celena Morrison-McLean, former director of the Philadelphia Office of LGBTQ+ Affairs, who reported to Anderson. Garrett Harley, the lawsuit alleges, instructed Anderson to “document Celena [Morrison-McLean] out,” or create a paper trail leading to her dismissal.

    According to the lawsuit, the deputy mayor also mocked Morrison-McLean during a meeting with several other officials, saying she used a “deep male tone” to intimidate staff.

    Morrison-McLean left her post in November 2024, roughly eight months after she was pulled over by a Pennsylvania State Police trooper in a traffic stop that went viral and resulted in her and her husband’s arrest.

    She is now a consultant, according to her LinkedIn profile. She could not be reached for comment.

    Celena Morrison-McLean reads a statement with Darius McLean (rear) Thursday, Mar. 7, 2024. The married LGBTQ leaders were arrested during a contentious traffic stop over the weekend.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer

    Anderson said in the lawsuit that Garrett Harley also made comments to her in early 2025 that she saw as fostering a hostile work environment. She claims she disclosed to Garrett Harley that she was the victim of rape and asked for time off to attend a hearing in the criminal case against her alleged assailant.

    “Ms. Garrett-Harley responded,” the lawsuit says, “by questioning how one woman could rape another.”

    In a separate instance, Garrett Harley also instructed Anderson to delete emails documenting dangers to children in the city’s care, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit did not elaborate on the content of the emails.

    Harassment report and press fallout

    Brown was appointed in March 2025 to succeed Morrison-McLean as the city’s director of LGBTQ+ affairs. In July 2025, Brown reported to Anderson that Christopher Dailey, then a deputy chief of staff in the mayor’s office, had sent them a sexual image on a cruising app.

    At the time, Anderson said Brown told her they did not feel harassed by the photo, partly because it was not clear whether Dailey knew to whom he had sent the image, which included Dailey’s face. Brown’s profile was anonymous, Anderson said, but the app used geolocation, meaning that users would have known they were contacting someone in or near City Hall.

    Anderson elevated Brown’s report to human resources roughly a week later, the complaint says, leading DeSantis, the city’s inspector general, to launch an investigation.

    By July 22, Anderson was fired. DeSantis has said Anderson never possessed the photo, but allowed Brown to display it while another employee besides Anderson, their supervisor, was in the room. That decision, DeSantis said, constituted a violation of the city’s sexual harassment policy.

    Mayor Cherelle Parker, right, hugs Tyrell Brown, left, the new Director of LGBTQ+ Affairs, during a press conference to announce new appointments, at City Hall, in Philadelphia, March 21, 2025.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer

    Brown was fired the same week as Anderson. Parker tasked Garrett Harley with handling the office’s work through March, when the administration named a replacement.

    Anderson’s lawsuit claims racial discrimination, noting that Dailey, who is white, was not fired, but was instead moved to a new role in a different office. Brown and Anderson are both Black.

    Brown could not be reached for comment.

    Additionally, Anderson claimed that Parker, DeSantis, and Grace each made “false and defamatory” statements in the media after she was fired.

    She cited a July 2025 Inquirer article in which Grace said Anderson’s allegations about the reason for her termination included “outright misstatements of fact.”

    The lawsuit also mentioned an interview with iHeart Radio’s WDAS 105.3 FM that DeSantis participated in last year about the firings, during which he said that Anderson had “mishandled the photograph” and “did something wrong.”

    Anderson, in the lawsuit, said those statements were false.

  • A new live stream camera at the Liberty Bell increases access, but raises questions for privacy experts

    A new live stream camera at the Liberty Bell increases access, but raises questions for privacy experts

    Strangers took photos of families in front of the Liberty Bell, as others took close-up photos of the iconic symbol of U.S. independence.

    A little boy in blue shorts and curly hair ran up to the bell to point out the crack. A National Park Service staffer looked at his watch. It was almost closing time at the Liberty Bell Center and the crowd began to dwindle as 5 p.m. approached Tuesday.

    The boy posed next to a little girl for the last photo of the day, and the room cleared.

    The bell received a reprieve from visitors until 9 a.m. Wednesday, when it all started back up again.

    These moments were captured by a new camera that transmits a 24-7 live stream of the Liberty Bell on EarthCam, a website that live streams various iconic sites around the world.

    “At Independence National Historical Park, the livestream provides the public with a real-time virtual view of one of the nation’s most iconic historic sites, expanding public access and engagement,” said a spokesperson for Independence National Historical Park in a statement.

    The Liberty Bell live stream is Philadelphia’s second on EarthCam. A camera set at the Franklin Institute that points toward the Central Library of the Free Library of Philadelphia on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway has been live on the internet since 2018.

    The Eagles Super Bowl parade down the Benjamin Franklin Parkway as captured by EarthCam from the Franklin Institute. February 14, 2025.EarthCam

    The camera pointing at the Revolutionary-era relic was set up ahead of the United States’ 250th anniversary celebration earlier this month, and adds to the website’s collection of iconic travel destinations that includes Times Square in New York City, the Temple Bar in Dublin, and the crosswalk at Abbey Road, London. There is also a camera streaming Andy Warhol’s grave in Bethel Park, Pa., outside Pittsburgh.

    The streams, while an effort to increase access to historic sites, also raise questions for surveillance experts and are part of a growing number of live streams in public places.

    “The general trend of video surveillance [is] becoming pretty ubiquitous in common public spaces and across cities,” said Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology.

    EarthCam, a New Jersey-based web-camera technology company, installed the Liberty Bell camera and live stream as part of a donation of 250 cameras for the United States’ 250th birthday.

    “Taking people to that park and showing that view is amazing,” said Brian Cury, EarthCam’s founder and CEO.

    The Liberty Bell cam has racked up more than a quarter million streams since it was installed about a month ago, Cury said, including 80,000 virtual visits on July Fourth.

    Cury said EarthCam donated the camera to the National Park Service at no cost. The company streams from national parks throughout the country, including the Flight 93 National Memorial in the Shanksville, Pa., area.

    The streams are a way to bring iconic sites to people in a way that is more compelling than a photo, Cury said. And hopefully, he said, they can entice people to step outside.

    “There are lots of kids that should get out of the house and go explore our amazing country,” the CEO said. “But they are online.”

    Visitors to the EarthCam website can view the live stream, a video archive of the last 24 hours, and a collection of still images from previous days since the camera has been installed (a “hall of fame” of sorts, Cury says.)

    Still images from recent days show the bell at night, families visiting, and groups gathering in front of the bell for photos.

    Also on the “hall of fame”: a park ranger taking a photo of a law enforcement officer in a black uniform posing in front of the bell after hours.

    A law enforcement officer poses in front of the Liberty Bell after hours.EarthCam

    Some surveillance experts say the archive raises privacy concerns, especially because people are identifiable in the image.

    “The longer those pictures are kept, the more it makes me uneasy,” said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program.

    “The more it’s susceptible to even a private company just collecting those pictures and using them for some other purpose,” she said. “Or just people scrolling through and seeing the pictures for who knows what purposes people might use them.”

    There is no information posted at the site about the live stream, but a security sign at the center’s entrance advises: “video surveillance in effect.” Online, the live stream is advertised via a small link at the top of the National Park Service’s Liberty Bell web page.

    EarthCam does not place cameras in private locations where people have an expectation of privacy, Cury said. And the camera itself — on the wall in front of the bell — is not hidden, he said. Visitors, the CEO said, view the camera as an attraction.

    “When you are looking at a lot of our cameras,” Cury said, “people are standing in front of them and waving.”