Mayor Cherelle L. Parker marked her 1,000th day in office by breaking ground on a $21.7 million improvement to the McPherson Square library, a symbol of the Kensington opioid crisis, to send the message that her administration’s “commitment to this community is firm.”
“The Kensington that I’m standing in today — this is not the Kensington that I walked in January of 2024. Quality of life is improving here,” Parker said at a news conference on Monday.
Although she did not focus on Kensington while campaigning for mayor in 2023, Parker has, since taking office, embraced the challenge of addressing gun violence and substance abuse in the neighborhood, which has made international headlines, and eradicating what is often referred to as the largest open-air drug market on the East Coast. She rode the El to an event at a Kensington middle school to mark her first 100 days in office.
The McPherson Square park and library became a highly visible marker of the crisis in the mid-2010s. People in addiction were a constant presence in the six-acre park, near Kensington Avenue and Orleans Street. Library staff learned how to administer Narcan, which reverses overdoses.
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker exits the Allegheny station before walking along Kensington Avenue on April 11, 2024. Parker took the El to attend an event marking her 100th day in office in the Kensington neighborhood in Philadelphia.Heather Khalifa / Staff Photographer
Parker ran on a tough-on-crime platform, and her approach to Kensington has featured a mix of police-focused tactics and novel strategies aimed at getting people off the streets and into recovery.
She cut city funding for syringe exchange services in her first budget, and her election effectively ended the city’s efforts to open a supervised drug consumption site, a priority of former Mayor Jim Kenney. The police department has doubled the number of officers who patrol the area, First Deputy Police Commissioner John Stanford said Monday.
Parker has also launched a Neighborhood Wellness Court program, which is designed to encourage alleged offenders to choose addiction services and avoid criminal proceedings, and she has launched the Riverview Wellness Village, a 20-acre recovery house in Northeast Philadelphia where more than 200 people live.
“People are beginning to see that we are at least trying to make a difference, and we are not acting as if we don’t see what’s happening,” Parker said. “We’re looking it straight in the eye and trying to figure out a way to make sure that we are solving a problem.”
Since Parker took office, the Kensington-based 24th Police District has seen a 48% decrease in violent crime, a 63% decrease in shootings, and a 47% decrease in homicides, Stanford said Monday.
After peaking in the wake of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, rates of violent crime and homicide have fallen across the country. This year, homicides in Philadelphia are on pace for a 60-year low.
People using drugs are still a common sight in Kensington, and crime rates in the neighborhood remain higher than the city as a whole, a reality Parker readily acknowledges. And her approach has drawn criticism from some harm reduction advocates and public health experts, who contend that heavy-handed policing can be counterproductive to saving the lives of people in addiction.
But few doubt Parker’s commitment to cleaning up the neighborhood, and the prospect of a revitalization of the dilapidated library, which was built in 1917 with a copper dome and classical columns, could be a potent symbol.
The renovation of the McPherson Square library is being funded through Rebuild, the parks and recreation center renovation program championed by Kenney and supported by Parker when she was on Council. Rebuild is one of three programs Kenney proposed while pitching the city’s tax on sweetened beverages, which was approved in 2016 and is more commonly known as the soda tax.
Workers set out to clean after the Office of Clean and Green Initiatives kicked off the summer edition of the One Philly, United City Citywide Cleaning Program in McPherson Park on May 4.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
The first phase of the library renovation, which included a new roof and a restored dome, was completed in 2025. Parker on Monday broke ground on the second phase, a “full-gut renovation” with “new HVAC, plumbing, electrical, fire alarm, and security systems” and many other improvements, according to the Philadelphia Capital Program Office.
The project will take two years. In the meantime, the Free Library of Philadelphia will set up a temporary location on Allegheny Avenue, said Kelly Richards, the library’s president and director.
City Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, whose 7th District includes much of Kensington, said she spoke to Parker about addressing the long-neglected neighborhood’s challenges in 2023, and recalled being “skeptical” that Parker would follow through on her promises as mayor.
“She made a commitment on that day that if she were to become the mayor of this city, that she would make Kensington and this community a priority,” Lozada said at the new ground-breaking, “and she has stood by that commitment and that promise.”
Staff writer Anna Orso contributed to this article.
Nearly a year after Mayor Cherelle L. Parker announced that Philadelphia would move away from using its long-held diversity goals in awarding public contracts, a City Council committee on Monday formally recommended that the city codify the change.
However, several corporate leaders who advised the special committee’s work testified during a hearing that the shift away from race- and gender-conscious contracting would set the city back.
Craig T. Williams, founder of the construction firm Pride Enterprises, said the city’s move to provide contracting advantages to businesses certified as “small and local” — instead of to businesses owned by women, minorities, and people who are disabled — will make it harder for Black-owned firms like his to grow.
“While the new terminology is intended to retain support for diverse businesses, it also removes the intentional mechanisms that once created predictable access for them,” Williams said. “The shift in terminology will likely result in an increase in opportunities for non-diverse firms, widening the disparity gap.”
And Michael Brown, CEO of The 360 Group, a consulting firm, said “minority businesses across Philadelphia are witnessing a catastrophic erosion of margins, pushing foundational enterprises to the brinks of collapse.”
He cited data showing that the state government awards only a small portion of its contracts to Black- and Hispanic-owned businesses.
“Philadelphia is slowly sleepwalking down the same exact destructive path,” he said.
Council’s Special Committee on City and Private Sector Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Policies, which is led by business community leaders, was convened in 2024 by Council President Kenyatta Johnson. The group was charged with drafting recommendations to strengthen the city’s DEI policies and address barriers faced by women, people of color, and people with disabilities who own businesses.
The city also stopped assigning participation “ranges” to publicly funded projects, meaning contractors are no longer given benchmarks for the amount of dollars that should go to subcontractors and suppliers owned by people of color, women, and people who are disabled.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker speaks at Vare-Washington Elementary School in Philadelphia, on July 14.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
The change came amid a broader dismantling of affirmative action-style programs at the federal level led by President Donald Trump’s administration. Parker said a new national legal precedent made the city’s practices vulnerable to court challenges, so the administration will now aim to give preference to businesses that are certified as small and local.
On Monday, Council’s committee agreed. Its report recommends the city move to a more legally defensible, race-neutral framework like the one Parker’s administration is already building. The committee also recommended that the city adopt more aggressive preferences to give those businesses clear advantages when they’re bidding for city dollars.
Still, members of the committee said Monday that they have concerns about implementation.
Michelle Flamer, a former longtime attorney for the city, said she is worried that the city will stop collecting demographic data on businesses that bid for contracts.
“We’re in a time period in this country of great distress, of really unbridled racist behavior, but this will not last forever, and we have to continue to collect this data so we will be prepared for a new day,” she said. “But if we don’t have it, we won’t be able to hold anyone accountable.”
And Harold T. Epps, the city’s former commerce director who co-chaired the committee, said he’s concerned that providing advantages to small businesses — which are defined as those which bring in less than $47 million over a three-year period — effectively puts a cap on how a business can grow.
“It seems the city has fallen into the same old trap of predetermining how large a business that has any elements of diversity can be,” he said.
Nadir Jones, the director of the city’s Office of Business Impact and Economic Advancement, said the Parker administration is exploring implementing a “middle market” program for companies that “graduate” out of the small-business classification.
City Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr. held a campaign fundraiser featuring Mayor Cherelle L. Parker at the Cobbs Creek Golf Course on Thursday night, a show of strength as he gears up to seek a sixth term in next year’s municipal election.
But that hasn’t stopped a whisper campaign among Philly’s political class about whether he’ll actually appear on the Democratic primary ballot next spring, with as many as four potential candidates said to be eyeing his seat representing parts of West and Northwest Philadelphia.
People close to Jones have recently encouraged him to reconsider seeking a new term and to clear the way for State Rep. Morgan Cephas to run to represent Council’s 4th District, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Other possible candidates include criminal justice reform advocate Celeste Trusty, ex-Service Employees International Union staffer Leigh Owens, and developer Ryan Spak.
The intrigue over Jones’ political future follows an Inquirer report in June that Jones and his wife, City Representative Jazelle Jones, who is a top official in the Parker administration, stand to reap up to $752,000 in payouts from the controversial Deferred Retirement Option Plan, or DROP.
Jones, who makes $165,000 per year, told The Inquirer in June that he may need the extra money from DROP to pay for medical bills in retirement because he is suffering from glaucoma, an incurable disease that Jones said has already caused him to lose 40% of his vision.
Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr. stands in for former Council President Darrell Clarke after he stepped away briefly during a Council meeting on Sept. 14, 2023.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
State Sen. Vincent Hughes, a West Philadelphia Democrat who said he has been friends with Jones for 44 years, said he will support Jones no matter what he decides, adding that “no election is automatic.” But Hughes also said he has encouraged Jones to consider his health when deciding how to proceed.
“I think the councilman has earned the opportunity to try to make an accurate determination as to what he wants to do for his future,” Hughes said in an interview Monday. “I have encouraged him to think about the personal side of this, the physical challenges.”
Hughes said he would like to see Cephas eventually succeed Jones in the 4th District. But if Jones decides that he can serve another term, Hughes said he will back his reelection.
“He’s been serving with this challenge, and he’s been serving well,” Hughes said.
Jones said Thursday that he intends to run for reelection and serve a full term.
ScreenshotSean Walsh
DROP allows city workers to “double-dip” by accumulating four years of pension payments, which is usually paid out in a lump sum upon their retirement, while they are still working and receiving their regular paychecks.
The Joneses’ enrollment in DROP is legal, but his use of the program resurrects a scandal from the early 2010s that ended the political careers of several prominent figures in City Hall.
Elected officials, who were not initially envisioned as being eligible for the program, took advantage of it by briefly retiring at the end of their terms, collecting lucrative DROP payouts, and then getting rehired at the beginning of their new terms.
As a junior Council member, Jones in 2010 voted for a bill banning future elected officials from enrolling in DROP. But the bill “grandfathered” in current elected officials at the time, he said, and Jones is now poised to become the first lawmaker to use the program in years.
Jones enrolled in DROP in August 2024, meaning his mandatory retirement date would be in August 2028, during the first year of the next Council term. He would be eligible to collect a $432,000 payout then, and upon retirement he will begin collecting his regular city pension payments.
But Jones in June said he plans to retire just before the start of the next Council term in January 2028, take a slightly reduced DROP payout, and then serve his entire next four-year term, if he is reelected. He has held the seat since 2008.
The person familiar with the discussions about Jones’ future said 4th District voters are unhappy about his enrollment in DROP and that speculation about his potential successor is becoming a “self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“This is a district that reads the newspaper and works to stay informed,” the person said. “And they don’t like what they’ve been reading and hearing.”
In June, Jones said he has had four eye surgeries and that he enrolled in DROP to ensure he can afford the healthcare he needs in retirement, “so that if I was blind, I wouldn’t have been without resources.”
He added that, due to his health challenges, he is grateful he was not elected Council president. He ran for the leadership post in 2023, losing to Kenyatta Johnson, a South Philadelphia Democrat.
“I am functional. My staff kind of helps to keep that good,” Jones said. ”I am thankful to God that I did not get elected [Council] president. Do you know how much reading they do? I could have not kept up with all of the numbers and stuff like that, so I know my limitations.”
Jazelle Jones, who has served in multiple mayoral administrations, enrolled in DROP in 2020 and was originally set to retire in 2024. Parker, however, has pushed through a series of exceptions to personnel rules allowing her to continue serving and collect a more lucrative DROP benefit of about $320,000. Those approvals were processed months after the fact, city records show, and the administration has not yet explained the gaps in paperwork.
Curtis Jones, 69, has also said he hopes that Cephas, 42, a West Philadelphia Democrat, will succeed him when he retires after his next four-year term, meaning she would run in the 2031 municipal election cycle.
State Rep. Morgan Cephas attends a get-out-the-vote rally for State Sen. Sharif Street at the Church of Christian Compassion in West Philadelphia on May 18, 2026, on the day before the Democratic primary election for the 3rd Congressional District. Cephas was a candidate for the same seat, but withdrew early in the race.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Philadelphia politicians sometimes retire in the middle of their terms, triggering a special election in which Democratic ward leaders, and not primary voters, choose the party’s nominee, who usually ends up winning the seat thanks to Philly’s deep-blue electorate. That can sometimes allow outgoing politicians to handpick their successors.
But Jones has said he would not retire in the middle of his next term, and he instead plans to endorse Cephas to run in a Democratic primary in 2031.
Amid the heightened scrutiny over his retirement plans, some allies of Jones and Cephas, who both got their start in the West Philadelphia-based political organization previously led by former U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, are encouraging him to speed up the transition. That could prevent a worst-case scenario for Cephas: if Jones lost to another challenger in next year’s Democratic primary while Cephas sat out the race in deference to Jones.
Several other potential candidates are considering running for Jones’ seat, setting up what could grow into a crowded primary.
Spak — an affordable housing developer based in West Philadelphia who has in recent years been critical of some Council members’ more restrictive housing policies — is rumored to be considering a campaign. He declined to comment.
In this 2022 file photo, Ryan Spak is photographed at 44th and Chestnut Street near the Ethiopian Community Association. Spak’s work has included collaborating with West Philly residential and commercial property owners on rehab projects.ALEJANDRO A. ALVAREZ / Staff Photographer
In addition, the city’s progressive organizations are eyeing the district as a potential opportunity to grow their influence on Council. Candidates aligned with the left are already lining up to run against incumbents in at least two other districts.
Three sources close to that effort, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plans publicly, said Trusty and Owens, both criminal justice reform advocates, are considering getting in the 4th District race.
Trusty is the ex-secretary of the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons and has also worked with the national organization FAMM, formerly known as Families Against Mandatory Minimums. She declined to comment.
Celeste Trusty, of FAMM, is at right in this 2019 file photo. She is celebrating with Ketra Veasy (center), sister of Willie Veasy, who had been imprisoned for 27 years for murder and was exonerated.HEATHER KHALIFA / Staff Photographer
Owens, a former staffer at SEIU who was also a political aide to progressive ex-Councilmember Helen Gym, is now the education and advocacy director at the Pennsylvania Prison Society. He said in an interview that he has been considering running for Jones’ seat for about two years.
He said he is a native of the district, and sees an opportunity for new voices on Council to advocate for stronger public education and more affordable housing.
Owens, 46, said the revelations around Jones’ use of DROP made clear that it’s “time for the old guard to step down.”
“When I see what he’s doing with this DROP money and people using politics as a tool to line their pockets and stifle progress, it’s upsetting,” Owens said. “It’s time for people that really have the lived experience and who are doing this for the right reasons to get these seats. That’s the only way the city is going to be better: if our leaders care about the people and not their own interest.”
Staff researcher Ryan W. Briggs contributed to this article.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly listed a candidate considering running for the 4th District seat. The potential candidates are Curtis Jones Jr., Morgan Cephas, Ryan Spak, Celeste Trusty, and Leigh Owens.
Barely five weeks before November’s midterm elections, Senate Republicans are rushing to pass more legislation that they can run on as polling shows Democrats within striking distance of retaking the chamber.
The Senate is expected to vote on legislation this week meant to protect consumers from high electricity costs caused in part by the data center building boom. And some Republicans are pushing to take up other bills to address voters’ frustrations with the cost of living.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) decided against sending senators home early last week to campaign, opting instead to keep the Senate in session to try to bolster Republicans’ legislative record. This week is the last that the Senate is scheduled to be in session before Election Day.
Republicans are confronting the once-unthinkable prospect that they could lose the Senate. Democrats are running competitively even in some states that President Donald Trump won by double digits in 2024, giving the party a shot at picking up the four seats they need to recapture the chamber.
Almost no Republican is in more danger of losing his seat than Sen. Jon Husted (Ohio), who introduced the data center bill that Republicans are set to take up.
Former Democratic senator Sherrod Brown, who is challenging Husted, has spent millions of dollars on ads attacking Husted over his support for data centers, which the ads blame for “causing electric bills to spike by thousands of dollars.” The National Republican Senatorial Committee warned in a memo last month that the ads are effective, describing data centers as an “anchor hanging around Husted’s neck.”
Sixty-nine percent of likely voters in Ohio say data centers — enormous warehouses filled with servers that power the artificial intelligence boom and the rest of the internet — are mostly bad for home energy costs, according to a Bowling Green State University/YouGov poll conducted this month.
Husted has defended his record on data centers and criticized Brown for supporting them in the past. He described his bill as a way to “show the American people that we’re serious about driving down electric prices and making life more affordable for them” — and he almost dared Democrats to block it.
“If Senate Democrats want to be the lone obstacle to passage, then shame on them,” he told reporters. “That shows that they don’t really care about affordability.”
It is not clear whether Husted’s bill will pass.
The House approved it overwhelmingly, but Sen. Martin Heinrich (D, N.M.) blocked Husted from fast-tracking its passage this month, arguing that it did not go far enough. Heinrich sought to pass his own bill to force data centers to shoulder the costs of upgrading the electric grid, which Republicans blocked.
Husted’s bill does not take full effect for two years and would not bring down electricity prices before the midterms. Some Democrats have argued that it would do little to address affordability at all.
“Senator Husted’s bill is a fraud,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) told reporters last week. “It’s voluntary. No company has to do it.”
Republicans say Democrats are just trying to deny them victories. Sen. Bernie Moreno (R., Ohio) accused Democrats of blocking Husted’s bill “so they can just put up another TV ad to say that electricity prices are high so that they can win an election.”
Senate Republicans have spent much of the past two weeks working to pass legislation from Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.) to overhaul regulation of college sports. Cruz has argued the bill is crucial to “protect an American institution that millions of people love,” but some Republicans have groused that it is hardly the most pressing issue for the party to tackle right before the midterms.
“With gas at over $4 a gallon, a persistent war with Iran, $40 trillion in debt, the Senate has decided that the most urgent thing now is to dictate how college sports are run from Washington,” Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) said on the Senate floor.
Sen. John Kennedy (R., La.) said he was prepared to support the bill if he secures an amendment vote but argued it is not a priority for voters, describing it as a way “to make the football coaches happy.”
“I haven’t met a single person on the campaign trail, when they lie down to sleep and can’t, who are worried about the football coaches,” Kennedy told reporters.
Husted is not the only Republican senator facing a tough race who has pushed to pass legislation that can be campaigned on before heading home.
Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine), who is seeking a sixth term in a Democratic-leaning state, has pressed Senate Republican leadership to take up a bipartisan bill to force insurers to cap the cost of insulin at $35.
Another vulnerable Republican, Sen. Dan Sullivan (Alaska), tried to pass legislation last week meant to protect salmon in his state. He was blocked by Sen. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), who said he needed more time to seek feedback from fishermen in his state.
Husted and other Republicans are campaigning on the tax and domestic policy bill that Trump signed into law last year, which cut taxes on tips and overtime. But some Senate Republicans have pushed for months to do more to address voters’ affordability concerns.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) said he had urged Senate leadership to take up the insulin bill, along with legislation to suspend the federal gas tax and other bills to make life easier for working families.
“My view is that ought to be our sole focus,” Hawley said. “If we’re not going to do that, it’s not clear to me what we’re doing here.”
Rep. Ashley Hinson (R), who is facing a tight race for an open Senate seat in Iowa, last week called on the House to return to Washington to vote on suspending the federal gas tax as well as other steps to reduce fuel prices. The House adjourned earlier this month and has no plans to return before Election Day.
Thune has faulted Democrats for obstructing his party’s agenda. Republicans and Democrats have spent months negotiating over legislation to overhaul the federal permitting process, which could bring down energy costs by making it easier to build power lines and other infrastructure. Thune said the Senate could take up such a bill before the midterms if the two sides were to reach a deal, but he acknowledged Thursday that it would not happen, which he blamed on Democrats.
“While they may acknowledge the need for permitting reform, what they really care about is denying Republicans another legislative win” ahead of the midterms, Thune said on the Senate floor.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) and Heinrich, the Democrats leading permitting negotiations, said Friday that they wanted to give senators more time to review the legislation and warned that trying to pass it before the midterms could kill the bill.
“We are talking about major changes to how America builds energy and infrastructure,” they said in a statement. “Getting that right has to matter more than election-year deadlines.”
First came a proposal to permit tariff-free beef imports, but that immediately angered America’s farmers and ranchers.
Then came a plan to ban exports of domestic diesel fuel, but that met with pushback from major oil companies.
In between, President Donald Trump pitched the idea of simply cutting $5,000 checks to adult Americans frustrated, polls show, by high food and gas prices — if the GOP maintains control of Congress. But that idea, too, has come under fire, even from some Republican lawmakers concerned about the potential hit to the budget deficit.
With just five weeks until Election Day, the White House has thrown out multiple ideas for combating persistent inflation, which has outpaced wage growth. But experts say it is unclear whether Trump can execute any policy that would placate inflation-weary voters and help the GOP maintain control of Congress.
“These are symptoms of panic in the administration about problems that they have in part created,” said David Wessel, director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution.
Inflation has been running over the Federal Reserve’s target rate since 2021, but an array of Trump policies have fed the problem, economists say. Trump’s decision to join Israel in going to war with Iran has disrupted the global oil supply, leading to elevated energy rates. His tariffs have produced higher prices for some imported goods. And his administration’s immigration crackdown has made low-cost labor harder to find, keeping price pressures on domestic companies high.
Consumer frustration is reflected in polling. The gap has steadily widened between voters who approve of and disapprove of Trump’s performance as president, and 73% of Americans said they disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy in a recent poll conducted by SSRS for CNN. Only 27% approved — his lowest approval rating on the issue ever recorded by the survey.
Against that backdrop, Trump has floated a parade of ideas for cutting prices.
“President Trump pledged to lower costs and raise real wages for everyday Americans, and the Administration continues to rigorously evaluate every option on the table to deliver,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement.
On top of the political hurdles, however, these policies have been “small in the grand scheme of things … if they’re helpful at all,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “So it’s not like it’s moving the dial on the affordability crisis.”
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a conservative-leaning think tank, said it’s not uncommon for politicians to try to bring down prices in the run-up to elections, especially when their party’s control of Washington is at risk.
President Joe Biden did the same ahead of the 2022 midterms, notably by calling for a federal gas tax holiday and releasing millions of barrels of oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to bring down sky-high gas prices.
“This whack-a-mole with particular prices is something the Biden guys tried,” said Holtz-Eakin, who was a senior economic adviser to President George W. Bush and the 2008 presidential campaign of then-Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.). “It doesn’t solve the economic problem, and it doesn’t seem particularly politically successful.”
For Trump, time is running out, said Rebecca Patterson, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The U.S. economy is so big and so complex that improving affordability “is simply not something anyone can do in a month,” Patterson said. “Actions taken today might help in the medium and longer term. But between now and the election, the best you can hope for is that voters appreciate that you’re trying.”
One idea the administration has executed is buying back Treasury bonds. But so far, the payoff has been minimal.
In part because of the competition for cash from massive private-sector spending on artificial intelligence, investors are demanding higher interest rates for Treasury bonds. Higher bond yields, in turn, raise interest rates for consumer loans such as mortgages. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate hit 7% last week for the first time since January 2025.
In August, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced he would intervene in the bond market by buying back longer-term Treasury bonds to try to slow the rise in yields. That has not yet worked in bringing down yields, though Bessent contended in a recent congressional hearing that it is nonetheless a success because “we then proceeded to have the two most successful Treasury auctions that we’ve had in 20 years.”
While Bessent was wrestling with the bond market, Trump decided to tackle meat prices.
In late August, the president signed a proclamation that rolled back tariffs on foreign beef trimmings for 90 days in an effort to boost imports and lower ground beef prices, which have risen almost 25% since the beginning of Trump’s second term.
But that drew rare pushback from farm-state Republicans, including Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Sen. Pete Ricketts (Neb.), Sen. Roger Marshall (Kan.) and Rep. Ashley Hinson (Iowa), who is running in a competitive Senate election in her state.
The lawmakers argued that a flood of cheap foreign beef would undermine American farmers and ranchers, who are already struggling with high fuel, grain, and fertilizer prices due to the Iran war and other factors.
Trump issued a follow-up executive order aimed at helping ranchers, and the Agriculture Department announced new policies aimed at supporting American beef producers. The administration is now reportedly considering reversing course on beef imports — though the White House has denied that.
Then came the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, where Trump made his biggest pitch yet: If Republicans keep both the House and Senate on Nov. 3, Trump said, he would give every adult American a $5,000 dividend to spend within the United States.
Some Republican lawmakers applauded the idea, but others were skeptical, saying the checks not only could exacerbate inflation but also could increase historically large budget deficits. The proposal could cost more than $1 trillion at a time when concern is growing about the nation’s outsize debt, which recently surpassed $40 trillion.
Public interest groups blasted the idea; Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the left-leaning consumer watchdog Public Citizen, called it an “explicit and desperate attempt to buy votes.”
And voters largely have not been swayed: A YouGov poll released earlier this month found that 64% of U.S. adults felt they would probably or definitely not receive the dividend if Republicans were to win the election.
So far, there have been few signs of interest on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers would have to draft legislation to authorize the checks and vote to approve it.
Last week, after diesel prices hit a record high, Trump and Bessent announced a new idea for tackling soaring fuel prices: a ban on diesel exports. Their theory was that a ban would boost the diesel supply for American consumers, lowering the price at the pump.
Several Republican candidates in competitive congressional races supported the idea. But major oil companies and Energy Secretary Chris Wright objected, arguing that such a policy would incentivize companies to lower diesel production, which would further raise fuel prices.
By midweek, the fate of the diesel export ban, too, seemed uncertain: Wright said any new limits on diesel exports were likely to be voluntary.
First came a proposal to permit tariff-free beef imports, but that immediately angered America’s farmers and ranchers.
Then came a plan to ban exports of domestic diesel fuel, but that met with pushback from major oil companies.
In between, President Donald Trump pitched the idea of simply cutting $5,000 checks to adult Americans frustrated, polls show, by high food and gas prices — if the GOP maintains control of Congress. But that idea, too, has come under fire, even from some Republican lawmakers concerned about the potential hit to the budget deficit.
With just five weeks until Election Day, the White House has thrown out multiple ideas for combating persistent inflation, which has outpaced wage growth. But experts say it is unclear whether Trump can execute any policy that would placate inflation-weary voters and help the GOP maintain control of Congress.
“These are symptoms of panic in the administration about problems that they have in part created,” said David Wessel, director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution.
Inflation has been running over the Federal Reserve’s target rate since 2021, but an array of Trump policies have fed the problem, economists say. Trump’s decision to join Israel in going to war with Iran has disrupted the global oil supply, leading to elevated energy rates. His tariffs have produced higher prices for some imported goods. And his administration’s immigration crackdown has made low-cost labor harder to find, keeping price pressures on domestic companies high.
Consumer frustration is reflected in polling. The gap has steadily widened between voters who approve of and disapprove of Trump’s performance as president, and 73 percent of Americans said they disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy in a recent poll conducted by SSRS for CNN. Only 27 percent approved — his lowest approval rating on the issue ever recorded by the survey.
Against that backdrop, Trump has floated a parade of ideas for cutting prices.
“President Trump pledged to lower costs and raise real wages for everyday Americans, and the Administration continues to rigorously evaluate every option on the table to deliver,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement.
On top of the political hurdles, however, these policies have been “small in the grand scheme of things … if they’re helpful at all,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “So it’s not like it’s moving the dial on the affordability crisis.”
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a conservative-leaning think tank, said it’s not uncommon for politicians to try to bring down prices in the run-up to elections, especially when their party’s control of Washington is at risk.
President Joe Biden did the same ahead of the 2022 midterms, notably by calling for a federal gas tax holiday and releasing millions of barrels of oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to bring down sky-high gas prices.
“This whack-a-mole with particular prices is something the Biden guys tried,” said Holtz-Eakin, who was a senior economic adviser to President George W. Bush and the 2008 presidential campaign of then-Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona). “It doesn’t solve the economic problem, and it doesn’t seem particularly politically successful.”
For Trump, time is running out, said Rebecca Patterson, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The U.S. economy is so big and so complex that improving affordability “is simply not something anyone can do in a month,” Patterson said. “Actions taken today might help in the medium and longer term. But between now and the election, the best you can hope for is that voters appreciate that you’re trying.”
One idea the administration has executed is buying back Treasury bonds. But so far, the payoff has been minimal.
In part because of the competition for cash from massive private-sector spending on artificial intelligence, investors are demanding higher interest rates for Treasury bonds. Higher bond yields, in turn, raise interest rates for consumer loans such as mortgages. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate hit 7 percent last week for the first time since January 2025.
In August, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced he would intervene in the bond market by buying back longer-term Treasury bonds to try to slow the rise in yields. That has not yet worked in bringing down yields, though Bessent contended in a recent congressional hearing that it is nonetheless a success because “we then proceeded to have the two most successful Treasury auctions that we’ve had in 20 years.”
While Bessent was wrestling with the bond market, Trump decided to tackle meat prices.
In late August, the president signed a proclamation that rolled back tariffs on foreign beef trimmings for 90 days in an effort to boost imports and lower ground beef prices, which have risen almost 25 percent since the beginning of Trump’s second term.
But that drew rare pushback from farm-state Republicans, including Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Sen. Pete Ricketts (Nebraska), Sen. Roger Marshall (Kansas) and Rep. Ashley Hinson (Iowa), who is running in a competitive Senate election in her state.
The lawmakers argued that a flood of cheap foreign beef would undermine American farmers and ranchers, who are already struggling with high fuel, grain and fertilizer prices due to the Iran war and other factors.
Trump issued a follow-up executive order aimed at helping ranchers, and the Agriculture Department announced new policies aimed at supporting American beef producers. The administration is now reportedly considering reversing course on beef imports — though the White House has denied that.
Then came the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, where Trump made his biggest pitch yet: If Republicans keep both the House and Senate on Nov. 3, Trump said he would give every adult American a $5,000 dividend to spend within the United States.
Some Republican lawmakers applauded the idea, but others were skeptical, saying the checks not only could exacerbate inflation but also could increase historically large budget deficits. The proposal could cost more than $1 trillion at a time when concern is growing about the nation’s outsize debt, which recently surpassed $40 trillion.
Public interest groups blasted the idea; Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the left-leaning consumer watchdog Public Citizen, called it an “explicit and desperate attempt to buy votes.”
And voters largely have not been swayed: A YouGov poll released earlier this month found that 64 percent of U.S. adults felt they would probably or definitely not receive the dividend if Republicans were to win the election.
So far, there have been few signs of interest on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers would have to draft legislation to authorize the checks and vote to approve it.
Last week, after diesel prices hit a record high, Trump and Bessent announced a new idea for tackling soaring fuel prices: a ban on diesel exports. Their theory was that a ban would boost the diesel supply for American consumers, lowering the price at the pump.
Several Republican candidates in competitive congressional races supported the idea. But major oil companies and Energy Secretary Chris Wright objected, arguing that such a policy would incentivize companies to lower diesel production, which would further raise fuel prices.
By midweek, the fate of the diesel export ban, too, seemed uncertain: Wright said any new limits on diesel exports were likely to be voluntary.
Rep. Thomas Kean Jr., a New Jersey Republican in a tight reelection battle, sought to distance himself slightly from President Donald Trump on Sunday as his Democratic opponent, Rebecca Bennett, pelted him with reminders of his years of loyalty to the unpopular president.
Kean began his opening comments during a debate in Rahway, New Jersey, by stating that he was willing to stand up to Trump’s efforts to strip funding from a critical Hudson River rail tunnel. “I will make sure that I counter anybody who gets in my way, including this president,” he said.
And for the first time, Kean clearly stated his opposition to the Trump administration’s plan to convert a warehouse in Roxbury, New Jersey, into an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center.
He also said he opposed Trump’s decision to change the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America.” On key issues such as the war in Iran and the president’s tariffs, however, he maintained strong support for Trump’s policies.
“The president is justifiably using that to reduce costs for consumers,” Kean said of the tariffs.
His seat in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District, which has seesawed between the two parties three times since 2018, is considered a prime pickup opportunity for Democrats as they try to retake control of Congress in November.
On Friday, in a sign of the volatility of the contest, The Cook Political Report shifted the race from “toss-up” to “leans” Democratic, despite the Republican Party’s 16,600-voter registration edge. An independent poll taken this month showed Kean trailing Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot.
Groups aligned with the Republican Party are pumping millions of dollars into the race. Kean and his Republican allies have booked $17.4 million in advertising, far outpacing Democrats’ $4.9 million, according to AdImpact, an ad analytics firms.
Sunday’s debate was the first time that Kean, 58, had subjected himself to extensive public questioning since being absent from Congress for nearly four months while being treated for what he has said was depression. The first question Kean was asked dealt with the lack of information he shared while hospitalized and missing from Congress from March through June.
“Nobody can plan a medical emergency,” he said. “And that was a medical emergency.”
Neither the debate’s moderators nor Bennett pressed him for additional details about his treatment or his fitness to continue to hold office for a third term.
“I’m glad that you got access to the care that you need,” Bennett said, “and I wish you a continued speedy recovery.”
Kean — the son and namesake of a former New Jersey governor — has never been known as a graceful speaker, even after 25 years as a politician. But he appeared confident Sunday as he parried for 90 minutes with Bennett. His wife, father and twin brother sat in the front row behind the moderators.
He stressed his experience and his unconditional support for Israel, noting that he would support sending U.S. troops to defend the country, if needed. He also tried to depict Bennett, a first-time candidate, as a puppet of the Democratic Party.
“You have not heard my opponent once tonight differ from the average Democratic member of Congress, who always votes the party line,” he said.
Bennett, 39, focused on Kean’s support for Trump’s policies, including his vote to slash Medicaid funding, as she worked to present him as out of touch with his constituents’ concerns.
She repeatedly mentioned his active stock portfolio and the trades he signed off on while absent from Congress, as well as the fact that he had not put his assets in a blind trust when he entered Congress, as he had promised to do. (Kean’s lawyer has said that doing so would preclude him from also taking “principled and pragmatic stands” against investing with foreign adversaries and selling American stocks short.) Bennett said she had sold all of her individual stocks before the race — although she refused, when pressed, to disclose the value of those sales or her net worth.
Bennett also spoke forcefully about the need to end the war in Iran.
“Any time we are going to put American service members in harm’s way, there needs to be a clear motivation, a clear objective and a clear exit strategy,” she said. “And we have not seen any of that from this administration.”
She repeatedly linked the war to the high price of gas as she stressed her goal of bringing down costs if elected. “The reason that we are seeing this increase in our gas prices,” she said, “is because of this unnecessary war.”
The two did share a moment of bipartisan agreement when asked about pineapple on pizza.
“I find that perfectly acceptable,” Kean said.
“I’ll eat it,” Bennett said. “But I wouldn’t put it on there myself.”
After the debate, the challenger lingered to take questions from reporters. Bennett said that if Kean opposes Trump’s efforts to block funding for the Hudson River tunnel, which is known as Gateway, he hasn’t been effective.
“Donald Trump has tried to hold up the funding for the Gateway tunnel,” she said, “and Tom Kean Jr. has been unable to do anything to make sure we’re actually going to get the funding back.”
Minutes after the debate ended, Kean quickly exited through a side back door, flanked by family members and aides.
He ignored a question about his differences with Trump as he climbed into a silver sport utility vehicle that was waiting for him near the exit.
In the five years he spent researching his book Mobilization Politics, Haverford College political scientist Stephen J. McGovern interviewed former Mayor Jim Kenney and other Philadelphia elected officials, political activists, campaign consultants, labor leaders, and protesters.
The book, which covers events from the 2010s through Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s victory in the 2023 election, uses Philly as a case study to examine the national rise of grassroots progressive politics over the last two decades. McGovern details how local activists employed bottom-up tactics to win major policy victories in areas like criminal justice reform, helping to decrease the jail population, and immigration, leading to Philly becoming a so-called sanctuary city.
The activists often used an inside/outside strategy, McGovern wrote, of leaning on officials they helped elect, like District Attorney Larry Krasner, and publicly pressuring more moderate ones, like Kenney.
Haverford College political scientist Stephen J. McGovern authored the 2025 book “Mobilization Politics,” on grassroots activism in Philadelphia.Sean Walsh
McGovern also explores areas where progressives have fallen short of their goals, and the problems associated with a brand of politics driven by groups that tend to be more affluent and white than the city as a whole. Much of the new type of political organization has been driven by millennials born outside the city, McGovern found, leading to tensions over gentrification.
McGovern recently spoke with The Inquirer about his 2025 book, the rise of the local progressive movement, and what it all means during Parker’s administration. The interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Your book describes how grassroots activists are really driving the agenda in Philadelphia City Hall, and, as you say, across the nation in local government. Is that an accurate summation of your thesis statement?
I think that’s fair, and what I want to call attention to is how significant that change is. There may be a lot of people today who assume, “Well, hasn’t that always been the case in city politics?” But no, for much of the mid- to late 20th century, city politics operated in a very different way. It was much more of a top-down phenomenon, and the shift towards more bottom-up politics has been a relatively recent one. And increasingly it’s pretty widespread throughout the United States. So as a scholar of urban politics, I was interested in trying to explain how and why that happened.
In the book, you describe various political science theories that have sought to explain urban politics in the past. Can you explain how your thesis is different from those previous schools of thought, such as “regime theory”?
Many scholars have argued that downtown-led regimes wielded a great deal of power over urban policymaking. Regimes were led by business leaders and their allies — law firms, accounting firms, mass media relations firms, and interest groups that had an interest in promoting growth, especially pro-growth labor unions, and, of course, public officials. Basically from 1970 on, every Philadelphia mayor headed a downtown-led regime in a relatively top-down fashion, in terms of governing style. So that’s the backdrop. My book is all about how that pattern began to change around the turn of the century, and then picked up in the 2010s with a burst of social movement activity. Occupy Wall Street really started things off, but then it picked up, especially with Black Lives Matter, the immigrant rights movement, and all of that social movement protest had a catalytic effect on grassroots organizing in cities with respect to a whole host of public policy issues.
As your book points out, much of the activism has been driven by millennial transplants who have moved into the city. Is it fair to say that trend is the main driver of this change, or one of several factors?
That is one of the main factors in explaining why there is this big shift. But there are also some underlying changes in the local political environment, what social movement scholars sometimes call the “political opportunity structure.” One of those changes is a decline in the organizing capacity of the downtown business community, which had been so dominant. It started to create a vacuum. Into that vacuum steps young people. Populations had been steadily declining in virtually all big American cities. They started to stabilize around 2000, and you see an influx of young people who are relatively well educated, more likely to be professional, more likely to be progressive, more likely to get involved in local politics. Some people call it the “back to the cities” movement.
What’s different about these newcomers compared with other left-leaning groups that have sought to impact city politics in the past?
In the past, a lot of young people tended to get involved in protest politics. People on the left were very wary about engaging in electoral politics. The folks who are moving into Philadelphia after 2000 increasingly are participating in more conventional politics, including electoral politics, and that’s a big change. That escalates when Bernie Sanders runs for president in 2016. One of the lessons learned for lots of people who volunteered for him is: This is something we can do at the local level.
As you note, the groups driving this style of politics tend to be more affluent, more educated, and more white than Philadelphia as a whole. That’s created a lot of friction. There’s a debate over whether this is a phenomenon that will be limited to gentrified areas, or whether it will grow into a cross-racial or cross-class coalition. Is it fair to say that’s the central question going forward?
Absolutely. So much of this is turf-oriented. The millennials and Gen Zers moving into Philadelphia tended to congregate in neighborhoods that attract a lot of white, middle-class people who were relatively well educated, and so those became significant bases of progressive politics. The challenge then becomes organizing in other neighborhoods. Some of the grassroots groups made impressive inroads. I’m thinking about campaigns for Larry Krasner, in particular, in lower-income, predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods, where a group like Reclaim Philadelphia or the 215 People’s Alliance were pretty effective. But in many cases, it was fairly difficult for a group like Reclaim Philadelphia to venture into neighborhoods beyond their comfort zones, if you will. They were mindful of some of the skepticism that residents of those neighborhoods felt towards the millennials and Gen Zers flocking into the city and contributing to gentrification. Somebody from Reclaim Philadelphia might be knocking on the door talking about the affordable housing crisis, and people answering the door might look at them and say, “You’re actually a big part of the problem here.” This tension between so-called new Philadelphians and old Philadelphians became more pronounced, and navigating those tensions becomes a real challenge.
Your book finishes with the 2023 mayor’s race, when Cherelle L. Parker defeated more progressive candidates and won the election with a “law and order” platform. So perhaps that was a surprising twist on your thesis at the end of your research.
She’s obviously fascinating. She’s a shrewd operator. In the primary election, two progressives split the vote. And being the only prominent Black candidate worked to her advantage. But since she’s been elected, she’s been very skillful about maneuvering in ways that have brought back a return of the traditional kind of urban politics — a top-down governing coalition led by a somewhat resurgent business community and pro-growth unions, the building trades unions, and a somewhat resurgent establishment-oriented Democratic Party, all of which is led by Parker. This is very reminiscent of standard politics of the mid- to late 20th century. So in some ways, Philadelphia is a bit of an aberration in that it’s moved backwards, if you will, recently. But I still see lots of evidence that bottom-up grassroots activism remains a force, and will become much more impactful in the next four years.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker speaks at Vare-Washington Elementary School to highlight the historic education investments included in the 2026-27 state budget, in Philadelphia, July 14, 2026.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
For what it’s worth, Parker herself seems to be mindful that grassroots politics are still relevant. We reported last year that she ordered a bunch of copies of a book called Performative Outrage: How Manufactured Fury Undermines Local Government and Public Service, and was handing it out to people. So I think it’s safe to say she isn’t a fan of the trends you described. You alluded to Parker returning to a “regime theory” style of politics. What’s an example of that?
The 76ers’ arena, for example. She was siding with the Sixers and other downtown-oriented interests that wanted to see the arena in Center City on East Market Street, and discounting the views of community groups, most prominently Chinatown. There’s a general mode of governance style associated with Parker that’s very uncomfortable with dealing with grassroots-oriented groups. That’s just not her style. She’s much more comfortable dealing with downtown business elites and people in the building trades unions. Her whole mindset is much more comfortable with the old ways of governing cities.
Parker won in 2023, when Joe Biden was president. Progressives in Philly and elsewhere seem to do better when Trump is in office. This spring Democrats just elected Chris Rabb, a progressive firebrand, in a high-profile primary for a Philly congressional seat.
Politics is cyclical. Donald Trump has had that effect of reinvigorating lots of activists. So there was a lull in progressive activism in the city for a while, but it’s on the rise again. But it takes time to regroup, especially on the activist side. Some groups last for a long time, but the norm is for groups to be quite ephemeral. New groups have to pop up, often involving activists who had been involved in the old groups. The transition costs are pretty steep. Somebody like Chris Rabb winning doesn’t surprise me at all. There will probably be more successes in the next two or three years. That said, progressive activists have lots of challenges. They’re in a holding pattern right now.
Thanks for your time. That’s all I’ve got. Is there anything I didn’t touch on that you want to include?
I’m an urban politics specialist. I wrote this book. I devoted five years of my life to it. But in the last year or two, I’ve been so fixated on what’s going on in national politics and Donald Trump and the threat that he and his administration pose to democracy. With that in mind, I just want to say that urban politics in general offers some hope for people who are increasingly demoralized. At the local government level, partisan polarization isn’t nearly as intense. We’ve got divisions between progressives and moderates, but that’s nothing like what we’re seeing in national politics. There’s real hope for city governments to address big problems and offer real solutions. There’s a path forward. One can make a case that right now, democracy in American cities is actually thriving.
As President Donald Trump ran to return to the White House in 2024, his campaign released a somber, black-and-white ad in which he railed against the “deep state” and vowed to expel “warmongers” from government.
“This is the final battle,” Trump is heard saying in the online ad, which shows him walking silently down a hallway.
That ad returned over the weekend, airing on television stations across the country, with one notable difference: As it ends, the words “Paid for by the U.S. Government” appear on the screen.
The spot is the latest in a series of pro-Trump ads funded by public money. Some ethics experts have argued that the Trump administration is violating federal laws banning the use of taxpayer dollars for propaganda, and the ads have drawn criticism from both parties. The most recent ad, one expert argued, is a more flagrant violation given its prior use in the political arena.
“The president and his administration have gone from breaking the law to trampling it,” said Norm Eisen, a former White House special counsel for ethics and government reform under President Barack Obama who has sued the Trump administration several times. “The prior ad was bad enough, but this one openly repurposes prior political conduct.”
The ad aired during Fox News Sunday, Saturday Night Live, and several college and NFL football games last weekend, including the Seattle Seahawks vs. Washington Commanders contest and the Ohio State-Illinois matchup, according to data from the ad-analytics firm AdImpact.
The White House has defended the ads, saying in a statement it reissued Sunday that the spots are “public service announcements” that are “reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad.” The White House said that there was no “call to action” in the ads.
But Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said the use of federal funds for the ads could be an “abuse of power” and “an impeachable offense.” He urged Congress to demand a reimbursement for the spending.
“This is very dangerous,” Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, said in a phone interview Sunday. “We do not allow government-sponsored propaganda in the United States.”
Three pro-Trump ads that say they are funded by the government have run in recent days, according to AdImpact. While it is not clear how much the government is spending to air the ads, the figure appears to be more than $1 million, according to an AdImpact modeled estimate based on media markets where the ads were spotted on the airwaves.
The initial ad, which debuted last week, showed the president vowing to defeat “socialism and communism and Marxism” as a montage plays. The ad, which is set to the song “Love Me,” was first posted on the White House YouTube channel two weeks ago. A second ad features quotes and clips from Trump’s July 4 speech at Mount Rushmore.
The latest ad appears to be backed by more than $70,000, according to AdImpact’s modeled estimate. The audio resembles remarks Trump made at several different campaign events across the country in 2023 and 2024.
The current ad repromotes Trump’s 2024 campaign promise to “expel the warmongers from our government,” at a moment when his administration continues a war against Iran, which has no clear resolution in sight.
The ads come in the run-up to the November midterm elections. Trump’s low approval ratings and a war that has driven up prices threaten to hurt Republicans’ chances of holding their congressional majorities.
Democrats and some Republicans have expressed concern about the ads. Sen. John Kennedy (R., La.) said in an interview broadcast Sunday that no public official, including Trump, “should spend public money on private ads for themselves.”
“The White House sees it differently,” Kennedy said in an interview on CBS News’ Face the Nation.
Sen. Andy Kim (D., N.J.) questioned how much taxpayer money was spent on the ad on Sunday. “Trump has overseen the most corrupt administration in modern history, making billions of dollars for him and his friends, while your costs go up,” he said in a social media post.
In addition to federal appropriations laws, some ethics experts said the ads might go against the Hatch Act, passed in 1939, which bars government employees from making political statements in their official capacity. The president is exempt from the Hatch Act, but if government employees worked on the ads or their placement, they could have run afoul of the law, the experts said.
“A divisive campaign commercial paid for by the U.S. government defies the Hatch Act’s very purpose,” said Margaret Dylus-Yukins, senior legal counsel for ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group.
Trump’s campaign spent an estimated $60,000 to boost the original version of the latest ad online between Oct. 18, 2024, and Nov. 2, 2024, according to AdImpact.
The White House website has a page dedicated to defending the new ads. The page lists examples of what it calls “public service announcements” funded by past administrations, including pro-war messages under Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Ads from the George W. Bush administration about a Medicare law and the dangers of drug use, and the Biden administration’s campaign to encourage COVID-19 vaccination, are also cited.
The defense is a weak one, Painter said. In 2004, the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress now called the Government Accountability Office, found the Bush administration violated a federal appropriations law against propaganda because its ads portrayed the Medicare law as a boon to the elderly.
“They really shouldn’t have done it the way they did,” Painter said, referring to the Bush administration ad, which aired before he joined the White House. “Even though it’s nowhere near as bad as this. Nowhere near.”
Four Democratic members of Congress, including the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, have demanded that the White House take down the ads and provide information on the cost of producing and running them.
“This is the sort of government propaganda one might expect in North Korea, not the United States of America, and it is an egregious and illegal misuse of Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars,” Sens. Patty Murray and Jack Reed, and Reps. Rosa DeLauro and Steny Hoyer wrote in a letter to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles on Thursday.
Sen. Maggie Hassan (D., N.H.), the ranking member on the joint economic committee, also demanded information on who created the ads.
Almost two-thirds, 64%, of self-identified Democrats backShapiro seeking higher office, a strong consolidation of support within the party’s base that still leaves room for other prospective candidates. But more than one in five Republicans also support a potential White House run by the governor, a sign of Shapiro’s moderate appeal in a key battleground state.
Those who want him to run ranked his character and competence as their highest factors, with 41% of respondents giving those as reasons they would want him to run. Nearly 20% said they were satisfied with Shapiro’s performance as governor.
“I like him. No scandals. He’s an honest man, and he has a nice, wonderful family, and he doesn’t lie,” said Michael Koller, a 77-year-old Democrat in Pittsburgh. “I think he’s helped the people of Pennsylvania just by being a good governor.”
The survey, conducted Sept. 15 to 21, comes just six weeks before his matchup against Republican State Treasurer Stacy Garrity, whom he has far outpaced in both polling and fundraising. It also arrives before any prominent Democrats have formally declared candidacy for the nation’s highest office, with nearly all vowing to wait until after the midterm elections to make a decision.
Shapiro has said he is laser-focused on winning in November as well as helping fellowDemocrats flip four hotly contested U.S. House seats and take over the state Senate for the first time in more than 30 years. But his fundraising prowess and recent book publication suggest he is well positioned for a run. In interviews with reporters, Shapiro has never outright denied his interest to become commander in chief.
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And yet despite Shapiro’s 60% job approval rating in a politically divided state, poll respondents highlighted the disconnect between his relatively high popularity as governor, where he is focused on the needs of Pennsylvanians, and their interest in him as a possible president, who would oversee the entire country and control foreign policy.
A balancing act on Israel
Kathrine Sidiqi, 77, a Democrat who lives in Delaware County, regards Shapiro as a “competent governor” who impressed her with a quick reopening of I-95 in 2023 after a fiery gasoline tanker crash threatened to close the transportation corridor for months. He expedited government procedures and got it reopened in just 12 days. “Stuff works,” she said.
However, when asked if she would support Shapiro for president, Sidiqi said no.
“I am Muslim, and he is too much of a supporter of Israel for me to do that,” she said. “I have nothing against him being Jewish … but he seems to have an outdated opinion of what’s going on.”
Sidiqi said she does not want the U.S. to provide any taxpayer money for weapons to Israel, a view shared with 60% of Pennsylvania likely voters who are against providing additional American economic and military support to Israel, according to the poll.
Among Democrats, whom Shapiro would first need to win over in a presidential run, 63% of poll respondents said they would support a candidate who opposed aid to Israel.
More than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed and nearly all Gazans have been displaced in the three years since Israel launched its war against Hamas, the militant group that carried out the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack that killed more than 1,200 people, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Gov. Josh Shapiro talks to patrons alongside Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer out in the back patio of Sam’s Morning Glory Diner in South Philadelphia on Friday, Sept. 25, 2026. Aidan T. Gallo / Staff Photographer
The war in Gaza has bitterly divided Shapiro’s party, and his positions on Israel may have a played a role in preventing his nomination as vice president in 2024. Shapiro in his book called questions about his relationship with Israel from Vice President Kamala Harris’ team “offensive.”
Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s third Jewish governor, has said his views on the topic have evolved from when he was in college and wrote that peace with Palestinians was “not possible.” The governor now favors a two-state solution, with Israelis and Palestinians “living peacefully side by side, being able to determine their own futures and their own destiny.”
The governor has also repeatedly spoken out against antisemitism at campus protests against Israel and called for an encampment at the University of Pennsylvania to be disbanded in 2024.
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Multiple respondents brought up Shapiro’s Jewish faith unprompted— sometimes in connection with Israel — and questionedwhether the country is ready for a Jewish president.
“I think a Jewish candidate is going to have a hard time winning the election,” said Michael Biello, a 68-year-old Democrat in Philadelphia. “I like his views. I like his policies. I like everything. I just think his religious affiliation will stop him from winning because I think the rest of the country, especially the middle of the country, will rally against him.”
Shapiro is one of several potential contenders who could make history as the first Jewish president, along with former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, and Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin.
An arsonist — who said in a 911 call he would “not take part in [Shapiro’s] plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people — attacked the governor’s mansion last year during Passover while Shapiro and his family were inside. (The arsonist’s family said he had spiraled into a mental health crisis.)Since then, Shapiro said, there have been a half dozen more terroristic threats against him and his wife “because of how I worship.”
In his memoir, Where We Keep The Light, published earlier this year, Shapiro wrote that since the Oct. 7 attack in Israel, he and his family “feel both a responsibility and pride demonstrating our faith and living it out loud.”
Hailey Brinnel, who is Jewish, said she does not believe Shapiro’s faith alone would hinder a potential campaign.
“People didn’t think New York was ready for a Muslim mayor,” she said, referring to the 2025 election of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. “New York right now has really been changing what I come to think of as someone who’s electable. So I do not think it’s out of the question now.”
Brinnel, a 31-year-old Democrat, said she will “always love” Shapiro and said she believes he has strong appeal to older, more centrist Democrats. But she is more interested in whether ideologically progressive candidates are electable.
“After seeing the success of Zohran Mamdani and different democratic socialists, it makes me at least curious if we should be moving in a more progressive direction.”
How does Shapiro compare with Trump and Vance?
Several respondents highlighted Shapiro’s support for education, healthcare, and business development work during his first term as governor as reasons he would make a good president. His recent orders on data centers, which face majority opposition in Pennsylvania, have also been a point in his favor among voters.
“I appreciate that he went and he asked what other people wanted, and then he advocated against the data centers,” said Mac Alasad-Murphy, a 27-year-old attorney in Haverford.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro speaks during a discussion on free expression and civil dialogue at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026nErin Blewett / For The Inquirer
Alasad-Murphy, a Democrat, said she believes Shapiro is capable of approaching complicated situations by listening with a careful and cautious ear.
“He does a really good job of meeting with the people and trying to get an understanding of what the community he’s serving actually wants,” she said.
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Shapiro’s 63% favorability rating trounces that of President Donald Trump, who has pushed for more data center construction even amid opposition from Republican voters. As gas prices climb to $4.55 in Philadelphia, just 38% of likely Pennsylvania voters have a favorable view of the president while they see him taking little action on the economy and cost-of-living concerns, their top issues.
Vice President JD Vance has a slightly higher favorability rating than Trump, 44%, as he is increasingly seen as the Republican front-runner in a 2028 primary. Almost half of respondents view Vance very or somewhat unfavorably.
Among voters in the poll who opposeda potential Shapiro run, 21% said they dislike him personally and 19% they dislike his policies and views.
Susan Roller, 72, of Lancaster, disagrees with Shapiro’s support for abortion access and vaccine policy.
“Our current governor doesn’t respect life at all stages, especially pre-born children, and is trying to push through a lot of health initiatives that would take away our freedom of choice,” said Roller, who is a Republican.
Before making her decision, with the 2028 primaries more than a year away, Alasad-Murphy, the Haverford voter, said she wants to understand Shapiro’s plan to tackle the country’s biggest problems.
“I couldn’t say just because I like him and I like what he’s done for Pennsylvania that I would like what he might do for the country. Those are two completely different things,” she said.
But his temperament and willingness to work across partisan lines to pass legislation go a long way, she said.
“He’s very level-headed. He’s very respectful toward others, even when they don’t see eye to eye. And in the current political climate, I think that having stability and respect is really important,” she said.
