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Category: Politics

  • Delco man arrested after antisemitic tirade and threats against Gov. Josh Shapiro, state police say

    Delco man arrested after antisemitic tirade and threats against Gov. Josh Shapiro, state police say

    A Delaware County man was charged Wednesday after allegedly making threats against Gov. Josh Shapiro during a visit to a state representative’s office, including a threat to “burn down … [Shapiro’s] mansion with him in it,” Pennsylvania State Police said.

    Police said the threats occurred when Richard John Franklin, 65, of Brookhaven, visited State Rep. Leanne Krueger’s legislative office in Brookhaven alongside his brother on Tuesday to dispute and request help with an unanticipated and unpaid tax bill totaling $19, according to the criminal complaint. When a staffer tried to assist Franklin in completing a form to waive the taxes, Franklin “became irate and crumbled up the paper,” police said.

    Franklin then began making threats the staffer believed were “threatening, harassing, and antisemitic in nature,” according to the complaint, including: “I guess I’ll pay that Jew. That Jew needs the money more than me” and “I’d like to burn down his [expletive] mansion with him in it.” Police said Franklin repeatedly referred to Shapiro as a “‘Jew’ multiple times in a negative manner.”

    State law enforcement officers charged Franklin with felony levels of terroristic threats and ethnic intimidation, in addition to lower-level charges of harassment and disorderly conduct.

    Shapiro, a Democrat who is among the most prominent Jewish officials in the country, has faced multiple threats of violence since becoming Pennsylvania’s top executive. In April 2025, a man broke into the state-owned governor’s mansion on the first night of Passover with a hammer and set several firebombs inside while Shapiro and his family were sleeping in a different part of the residence. The man, Cody Balmer, later pleaded guilty to attempted murder and was sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison.

    The arson at Gov. Josh Shapiro’s mansion erupted within minutes. The impact lingers.
    Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro pauses during a news conference at the governor’s official residence discussing the alleged arson that forced him, his family and guests to flee in the middle of the night on the Jewish holiday of Passover, Sunday, Apr. 13, 2025, in Harrisburg, Pa.AP Photo/Marc Levy

    Early Wednesday, investigators from the state police political violence threat unit visited Franklin at his Brookhaven home, where he provided conflicting accounts of what occurred at Krueger’s office before ultimately admitting to “calling the Governor a ‘Jew’ in a negative manner” and added that his “brother told him he should not have made the statement,” according to the criminal complaint. Franklin denied making any threats toward Shapiro, but admitted to referring to the previous arson attempt at the governor’s residence during the outburst, police said.

    State police said they arrested Franklin without incident.

    Franklin’s brother, who witnessed the events at Krueger’s office, disputed the state police account and said his brother never threatened the governor.

    Leroy Franklin, 72, of Chester, said his brother visited the state representative’s office seeking information about a tax bill he had received, despite paying his state taxes through an accountant this year.

    After the brothers spoke to a staffer who did not have answers for them, Richard Franklin became upset and raised his voice, Leroy Franklin said.

    In a phone interview Wednesday, Leroy Franklin recalled his younger brother saying something to the effect of: “I’ve been on disability for 15 years, but I guess the state needs my money more than I do.”

    The two were together at Krueger’s office the entire time, Leroy Franklin said, adding that he did not hear his brother use an antisemitic slur. He also disputed that his brother threatened arson.

    “Anybody who said he did is lying,” Leroy Franklin said.

    Around 2 a.m. Wednesday, Leroy Franklin said, he received a call from his younger brother. Richard Franklin told him that police were at his apartment and he was not sure where they were going to take him, Leroy Franklin recounted.

    When the two spoke on the phone again later that morning, Leroy Franklin said, he learned police were taking his brother to jail.

    “I don’t know what the heck anyone is talking about,” Leroy Franklin said Wednesday. “This is a bit extreme, to put it mildly.”

    Richard Franklin was being held at the Delaware County prison with bail set at $100,000, according to court records. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for July 16, according to court documents. A lawyer for Franklin was not listed on court records.

    Franklin is a registered Democrat, Pennsylvania voting records show. He has no prior convictions in Pennsylvania.

    Shapiro’s office referred requests for comment about the incident to state police.

    In a statement Wednesday, State Police Sgt. Logan Brouse said the agency “takes threats against the lives of public officials seriously,” noting the state police political violence threat unit was created “to address the growing amount of ideologically motivated violence against elected officials.”

    Man arrested after making ‘hit list’ threats against 20 Pennsylvania Democratic lawmakers, police say

    The unit was created in May, after a Lebanon County man allegedly posted a “hit list” to social media targeting 20 state Democratic lawmakers. Adam Berryhill, 42, was arrested on May 6, after he was connected to an X account that posted a potential plan to attack the legislators. Some of the lawmakers named on the list said they had not been alerted to the threats against them, prompting state police leaders to update their communication protocols and create the investigations unit.

    Krueger (D., Delaware) referred a request for comment to a spokesperson for House Democrats.

    Nicole Reigelman, a spokesperson for House Speaker Joanna McClinton (D., Philadelphia), said in a statement that threats of political violence are becoming commonplace, “and every incident must be treated with the seriousness it deserves.”

    “Healthy democracies depend on robust debate and respectful disagreement — not threats, intimidation, or violence,“ Reigelman added. ”Political violence has no place in our communities, and Pennsylvanians must unite in condemning it whenever and wherever it occurs.”

  • Trump’s DOJ said Pa. election officials could be criminally charged if they let noncitizens vote

    Trump’s DOJ said Pa. election officials could be criminally charged if they let noncitizens vote

    The Justice Department sent a letter this week threatening criminal charges against Pennsylvania’s top election officials if they allow votes by noncitizens to be counted in forthcoming elections — a largely nonexistent phenomenon that is already prohibited by law.

    The letter, addressed to Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt and obtained by The Inquirer, was part of a nationwide effort by the Justice Department to say it is cracking down on what President Donald Trump has inaccurately described as a variety of problems with how ballots are cast and counted across the country. Similar letters were sent to election officials in all 50 states this week, the Justice Department said in a statement.

    An agency spokesperson said the letters were “asking for voluntary compliance in a timely manner with [officials’] obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections.”

    The outreach came after Trump’s administration, during his second term, took other steps to target states’ election practices or voter rolls.

    A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State said in a statement that the state “is in compliance with federal and state election law.”

    “We will continue our nonpartisan work to ensure elections in the commonwealth remain free, fair, safe, and secure,” said Geoff Morrow, the department’s deputy communications director.

    Last month, a federal judge in Pittsburgh dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit that sought to obtain Pennsylvania’s entire unredacted voter database. Federal judges have rejected similar efforts by the Trump administration in at least 10 other states, although the Justice Department recently filed an appeal of the decision in Pennsylvania.

    The FBI, meanwhile, is reportedly assisting with a sweeping investigation into alleged irregularities in the 2020 election in Fulton County, Ga. — a key jurisdiction that contributed to Trump’s loss in that year’s presidential contest.

    Trump has repeatedly refused to acknowledge his defeat to Joe Biden that year, and he has long fueled evidence-free conspiracy theories about widespread and brazen fraud in elections, particularly in jurisdictions that tend to vote for his opponents. Experts generally agree that although voter fraud does happen, it has not historically occurred at rates that would tip the scales in high-profile contests.

    The effort also comes as Trump has been again pressuring congressional Republicans to pass the so-called SAVE America Act, a controversial bill that could require voters to provide proof of citizenship when registering or to show approved forms of identification when voting. Prior efforts to pass the bill into law have failed amid bipartisan resistance.

    As for the subject of the Justice Department’s most recent letter — which was signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon — noncitizens are already barred from voting in federal and state elections under a law passed by Congress 30 years ago.

    Studies in a variety of states since then have found some instances of noncitizens being registered to vote or voting, but almost no evidence that the issue is widespread or common. In Utah, for example, officials said earlier this year that they had reviewed records of the state’s more than 2 million voters and found one person who was confirmed as a noncitizen.

    And in 2024, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services wrote in a letter to Ohio’s secretary of state that “it is extremely uncommon for noncitizens to vote in Federal elections,” and that many of those who do are identified by authorities and prosecuted.

    Dhillon, in her letter, acknowledged that noncitizen voting is already illegal. But she nonetheless listed several provisions under which election officials could be criminally charged if it occurred.

    And she said Schmidt should reply within five days to describe “how the state of Pennsylvania intends to ensure it is complying with these federal laws,” a deadline the Pennsylvania Department of State said it intends to meet.

    Schmidt, a Republican who was chosen by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro to serve as the state’s top election official, has been at the forefront of addressing noncitizen voting dating back to his time as a Philadelphia city commissioner.

    In 2017, when he worked for the city, Schmidt discovered that the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s so-called motor voter system, which allows eligible citizens to register to vote when they get or renew a driver’s license, had a glitch dating back to the 1990s and was allowing legal residents who were noncitizens to register to vote, too.

    Schmidt found that the glitch had allowed at least 168 noncitizens in Philadelphia to register to vote. And he found that an additional 52 noncitizens in the city had registered by other means.

    Collectively, that group of people cast a total of more than 225 ballots in Philadelphia during the years they were registered, Schmidt’s office reported at the time. Schmidt said it was critical to rectify the issue, and all of the improper registrations were canceled. PennDot fixed the glitch in 2017.

    Still, the largest number of votes cast by noncitizens in the city during the affected time period occurred in the 2008 general election, when 47 such people submitted ballots — representing about .0065% of the city’s vote tally that year.

    “One thing that became very clear through that research and all evidence suggests that noncitizens voting in elections in the United States occurs very rarely,” Schmidt told Votebeat earlier this year. “It doesn’t mean that it’s not important. Like I said before, every vote is precious, and we want to make sure that we do everything we can to safeguard and strengthen election integrity. But there’s no evidence to suggest that it happens in any widespread way whatsoever.”

    Lauren Cristella, president of the Committee of Seventy, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that advocates for good governance, said the Justice Department’s letter “represents another attempt to undermine faith in our elections without presenting any evidence or even allegations of wrongdoing.”

    The country’s elections have routinely been shown to have been conducted freely and fairly, Cristella said. And in Pennsylvania, she said, Schmidt has been “the person who’s been leading the charge to clean up our voter rolls.”

    State Auditor General Tim DeFoor, a Republican, found in an audit released earlier this year that the reforms made to the motor voter system after Schmidt’s exposures of PennDot’s systemic failures had been largely successful.

    The Justice Department’s effort to threaten election officials not only clouds that reality, Cristella said, but it “completely lacks integrity and is part of the distrust that is leading to the erosion of our democracy.”

  • Graham Platner, isolated, defies Maine Democrats as they try to hatch a plan

    Graham Platner, isolated, defies Maine Democrats as they try to hatch a plan

    Increasingly isolated from the Democratic Party, Graham Platner is holed up at his home in rural Maine, navigating the likely end of his once-surging campaign for the U.S. Senate, as establishment fury over his prolonged exit grows louder.

    Platner’s campaign team held a call Wednesday afternoon in which campaign leadership sounded resigned to the idea that the Democrat’s bid could be ending soon, said a Democrat close to Platner. Campaign staff were told that Platner would speak about the future of his run Wednesday night.

    He could drop out of the race soon, probably by prerecorded video, said a second person close to Platner’s team who, like others in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid alienating fellow Democrats in what has become an increasingly tense situation.

    One of Platner’s key advisers, Morris Katz, flew up to Maine from New York on Tuesday to discuss his withdrawal, said the person. But Platner, whose political support has evaporated since he was accused of sexual assault on Monday, has struggled with the decision, people close to him said, and has said he would like input on the replacement process, leaving the timing of any announcement unclear.

    “It is him who is wanting to hold on,” the first Democrat said. “He is having to come to terms that his dream is dead. The show is over, this is done.”

    Until Platner pulls the plug, however, the Democratic Party is at an impasse, unable to fully refocus on its uphill battle to defeat five-term Republican Sen. Susan Collins. The race is critical to Democrats’ longshot bid to retake the Senate, where the party must flip four seats held by Republicans to win back control in November.

    That frustration is now spilling into the public.

    On Tuesday night, the Maine Democratic Party released a confrontational video reiterating its call for Platner to drop out so it could select a replacement candidate. If Platner withdraws by Monday, the party has until July 27 to submit a new nominee – though it remains unclear how that decision would be made.

    “Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like,” Devon Murphy-Anderson, executive director of the Maine Democratic Party, said in the video. “We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate.”

    That posture incensed Platner’s more dedicated supporters, some of whom have felt aggrieved by how quickly Democrats turned on him after the sexual assault accusation and who argue that any replacement candidate must be aligned with the populist politics that fueled his rise.

    Party officials are sensitive to the fact that, despite Platner’s downfall, they need to keep the political movement that emerged around him intact in order to win.

    “It is important that someone carry forward the movement that has been built here of everyday working-class people who are fed up with a system in Washington that is so broken,” Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau said in an interview. “There are a number of people in Maine politics who share the same views as Graham Platner, who have the same message as Graham Platner, who can carry this work forward.”

    A spokesperson for Platner denied that “the campaign tried to ‘put its finger on the scale’” of the replacement process. But Platner is seeking to influence it as he navigates his exit – and his decision not to drop out immediately has divided many within his campaign.

    Platner’s attempt to continue a campaign detonated by his own alleged behavior has not only exasperated some Maine Democrats but also dumbfounded them.

    “People who have made their political careers decrying a rigged political system are now trying to rig the political system,” quipped a Democratic operative who works in Maine.

    National Democrats, led by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, have said that they will not spend money in Maine if Platner remains the nominee.

    But their role in selecting his successor is minimal, beyond supporting the Maine Democratic Party’s currently unknown plans for selecting a replacement should Platner drop out. There is belief within the committee that any nominee, at this point, will be stronger than a scandal-plagued Platner, said one person familiar with the committee’s thinking.

    Since he launched his campaign last summer, Platner’s political rise and his outsider message have invigorated Maine Democrats, who have long failed to find a candidate who can defeat Collins, despite the state’s Democratic lean.

    Many voters were willing to overlook earlier controversies that plagued the charismatic 41-year-old oyster farmer and military veteran, including old social media posts where Platner downplayed sexual assault and made other inflammatory comments; a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol that he had covered up; sexually explicit text messages sent to other women after he married; and accusations of violent behavior by ex-girlfriends.

    Then on Monday, a woman who used to date Platner said he entered her home intoxicated one night in late 2021 and forced himself on her as she told him to stop.

    On Tuesday, a second ex-girlfriend told The Washington Post that Platner repeatedly removed protection without her consent when they were having sex. The campaign called the claim “categorically false and politically motivated.”

    Unlike some politicians engulfed by scandal, Platner retains a core of close advisers who have stuck by him since Monday, allowing him to hold out against calls for his withdrawal.

    In April, when then-Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-California) was accused of sexual assault by a former staffer amid a run for governor, top campaign staff immediately quit and his campaign imploded within days. Platner, by contrast, continues to operate with the inner circle of his campaign from his home in the small coastal town of Sullivan.

    The scene was quiet there Wednesday morning. Several cars were parked in Platner’s driveway near a pile of chopped wood and a boat covered in a green tarp. A few reporters were across the narrow road.

    As the public awaits word from Platner about his plans, longtime friends say this has been a difficult moment, with one even suggesting that Platner could continue to fight.

    “Everybody says they are pulling their support. Is that truly what they are going to do? Are they just going to let Susan Collins win?” the friend said. “That seems highly unlikely to me because we need Maine to flip the Senate.”

    That is not a universal view, however. Some people who have backed Platner for months, even through his many scandals, are too disgusted with him to continue their relationship.

    “At this point, he knows I know he’s lied to me directly too many times,” said a top Maine Democrat who has been close to Platner. “I don’t think he has the shame to speak directly to me.”

    Joanna Slater in Sullivan, Maine, contributed to this article.

  • Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear asks Sen. Mitch McConnell to give a public update on his condition

    Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is directly asking Sen. Mitch McConnell, the state’s most powerful figure in Congress, to disclose more about his condition after three weeks of silence from the 84-year-old since he was hospitalized in Washington.

    The letter released Wednesday from Beshear, a Democrat who is considered a potential presidential candidate in 2028, to the former Senate Republican leader says, “Kentuckians have grown increasingly concerned about the current state of your health and well-being, and ability to hold office.”

    McConnell, whose physical condition has visibly declined in recent years, was hospitalized June 14. He has not released a public statement, photos, or videos since. Aides have disclosed nothing specific about his condition, other than to say last week that McConnell “continues to improve, and is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters while the Senate is out of session.”

    That lack of detail has fueled rampant speculation about his prognosis and whether he will return to the Senate when it reconvenes next week. The firestorm was enough that Republican Senate leaders on Tuesday made public statements saying they had talked to McConnell and that he was alert and discussing current events.

    McConnell is retiring at the end of his term in January, and the campaign to elect his successor already is underway. Kentucky’s Senate succession law, which Republican legislators have twice changed during Beshear’s tenure, does not give the governor a role in picking a temporary successor should McConnell’s seat become vacant before his term ends.

    Under the latest change in 2024, if the seat becomes vacant before Aug. 3, there would be a special election to pick a replacement, perhaps held concurrently with the general election in November. The special election winner could take office nearly immediately. The general election winner would be sworn in as part of the new Congress in January.

    If the seat were vacated after Aug. 3, there would be no time under the law for a special election and the seat would remain vacant until January.

    Beshear ended the letter by wishing McConnell “a safe and speedy recovery.”

  • Justice Department threatens top election officials over noncitizen voting

    Justice Department threatens top election officials over noncitizen voting

    The Justice Department sent letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia on Tuesday threatening criminal prosecution of top election officials if ballots cast by noncitizens were counted in upcoming elections.

    The letters arrived in the midst of an ongoing campaign by President Donald Trump and his allies to tighten election rules to prevent a problem that doesn’t exist: widespread noncitizen voting in American elections.

    The effort has, however, continued to sow doubt and distrust in the electoral process, most notably among the president’s base of supporters. And his proposals could have the effect of making it more difficult for eligible voters to cast their ballots — an outcome that many voting-right activists say is the president’s real goal.

    The letters sent Tuesday came from Harmeet Dhillon, who runs the Justice Department’s civil rights division. They are largely identical, according to multiple copies obtained by The New York Times. The seven-page letters detail a host of federal election laws that prohibit noncitizens from voting in elections — laws that have been clear for decades.

    “Any election officer, including the chief election officer of the state, who knowingly retains noncitizens on the state’s” voter list “or facilitates noncitizens in receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability,” Dhillon wrote.

    The letters asked the election officials to respond to the Justice Department “within five days” with details on how their states intended to comply “with these federal laws both at the state and local level and how the Department can assist in those efforts.” It is unclear what would happen if a state does not respond in five days, as the letters are not subpoenas requiring a response.

    Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, the top election official in Utah and a Republican, expressed frustration with the Justice Department’s tenor and tactics.

    “Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution,” Henderson wrote on social media. “I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts. This is truly bizarre behavior by the federal agency that is supposed to be protecting civil rights.”

    Adrian Fontes, the Democratic secretary of state in Arizona, criticized the efforts by the Justice Department as politically motivated.

    “It is insulting to insinuate that the good people at our county recorders’ offices across the state are not doing their jobs correctly,” Fontes said. “Arizona election officials have always worked to ensure that only eligible citizens are registered to vote, and we will continue following Arizona law — not directions that come from political rhetoric or intimidation.”

    Justice Department officials have said their purpose in seeking voter roll data is to ensure compliance with federal law requiring states to maintain accurate voting rolls. Some voting-rights advocates have speculated that the department’s specific aim is to look for evidence of noncitizen voting or use voter roll data to challenge future election results.

    Kiersten Pels, a spokesperson for the Justice Department, confirmed that letters were sent to officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, seeking “voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections.”

    David Becker, a former voting rights lawyer for the Justice Department who now runs the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan group that works to build confidence in elections, said that the letters from Dhillon look like a performative display by the Justice Department to show it is working aggressively on one of the president’s priorities despite little success.

    “This is what panic and desperation looks like,” Becker said. “They’ve had 18 months to find evidence of a crime that was never committed, and found nothing. And now they fall back on crude and transparent bullying tactics. They sent these letter to several, perhaps all states, with no specific evidence of a crime.”

    He added that “the election officials I’ve spoken with aren’t intimidated, and are seeing these empty threats for what they are.”

    The Justice Department also sent letters to three cities in Michigan — Detroit, Lansing and East Lansing — stating that federal election monitors from the department would be going to the areas for the upcoming primary election. The department’s stated reasons were observations from the 2024 election, citing a lack of provisional ballots in at least one polling location and voting machines that were not operational in multiple polling locations.

    Michigan election officials roundly rejected both the claims from the Justice Department and the reasons for sending monitors. Janice M. Winfrey, the city clerk in Detroit, wrote in response Tuesday that the Justice Department had made “false assertions that form a baseless conclusion that then becomes the pretext for additional monitoring of Detroit elections.”

    Winfrey added that “according to our records, there were no representatives from the Department of Justice, and if so, they did not comply with regulations requiring them to identify themselves and sign in with supervisory staff at the polling place.”

    For years, Trump has claimed without evidence that noncitizens voting in American elections have benefited Democrats. After the 2016 election, which he won, he claimed that as many as 3 million ballots in California had been cast by noncitizens.

    Since returning to office, Trump has led a relentless effort to prove his claims using the levers of the federal government.

    None of those investigations has provided any evidence of widespread noncitizen voting. An initial review in January of nearly 50 million voter registration records by the Department of Homeland Security referred roughly 0.02% of the names processed for further investigation.

    This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

  • Poverty in New Jersey is three times higher than the federal measure, experts say

    Poverty in New Jersey is three times higher than the federal measure, experts say

    Dana Brown-Toure, 52, says her life is in a place “somewhere between drowning and surviving.”

    A former health aide living on disability benefits, Brown-Toure contends with diabetes that threatens to blind her, while rising bills continue to overwhelm her. Brown-Toure shares an arduous existence with her two children, ages 8 and 21, in the house they rent in Camden, made harder by her former husband’s recent stroke, which hampers his ability to contribute money.

    Still, despite their troubles, the family takes in enough money to place Brown-Toure just above the official federal poverty level.

    That the U.S. government does not consider her to be living in poverty is hard for Brown-Toure to believe. “Life’s a struggle,” she said Monday. “I would say this feels below the poverty line.”

    So would the Poverty Research Institute (PRI) of Legal Services of New Jersey, a statewide legal aid nonprofit that has released a new report asserting that the actual rate of poverty in the state is about triple what the U.S. government calculates.

    That means, the report says, the official number of residents living in poverty in New Jersey in 2024 — the latest statistics available — was close to 3 million, rather than the federal figure of 859,000. Brown-Toure did not want her exact income to be disclosed, but the federal poverty level for a family of three such as hers in 2024 was just over $25,000.

    A person living below the official poverty level can more readily qualify for various assistance programs, such as SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), Medicaid, Head Start, and school meals. The problem, experts say, is that even people with incomes that are twice the poverty rate need help, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

    The government “severely understates poverty for high-cost states like New Jersey,” PRI director Shivi Prasad said.

    New Jersey’s cost of living ranks third-highest among states, behind California and Hawaii, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis in the Department of Commerce. It also has the highest real estate property taxes in the United States, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit that analyzes tax policy. The average annual tax bill in the state exceeds $10,000, compared with a national average of around $3,119, the foundation said.

    As the issue of affordability continues to plague Americans, thrusting many deeper into poverty, it’s becoming clear that the government‘s methods to measure deprivation are inadequate, PRI explains.

    The report, released in June and titled “2024 Poverty Data at a Glance: How the Federal Measurement Falls Short for New Jersey,” says that “the hard reality is that poverty remains deeply entrenched with millions left behind — a paradox for a state considered among the wealthiest in the nation.”

    The PRI measures what it calls True Poverty Level, described as the minimum income working families need to afford basic necessities without any public or private support, without making tradeoffs such as eating less to make rent payments.

    The basic flaw of the official federal poverty level, according to the PRI and other experts, is that it is a simplistic standard based on computations from 1964.

    “It’s a super-inadequate measure, like the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour,” said Laura Napolitano, a sociologist at Rutgers University-Camden. “We’re looking at a dated calculation that’s been unchanged for years.”

    Back in the mid-1960s, poverty thresholds were derived by taking the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s calculation for the minimum cost of food, then multiplying it by three to account for other family expenses. The thinking was that food was one-third of a family’s budget. Each year, the poverty level is updated to keep up with inflation, but the equation has remained the same for more than 60 years.

    Importantly, Prasad said in an interview, as the decades have gone by, the federal poverty level has not accounted for the actual costs of housing, childcare, food, transportation, healthcare, and other aspects of everyday life. And the federal poverty level does not allow for geographic differences in cost across the nation. For example, the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan ($5,746) is vastly higher than it is in Omaha ($1,441), according to Apartments.com.

    “We look at all these realistic costs to see how much a family really needs to make it,” Prasad said. “We want to see how much you’d need to survive on your own, without help from the government or from family.”

    To determine how much basic survival costs in New Jersey, Prasad noted that an average monthly rent in the state is around $1,800 for a two-bedroom apartment. That would make a year’s rent more than $21,000.

    Now look at childcare, Prasad said, where the maximum monthly rate that can be charged for a toddler is $1,417, according to the New Jersey Department of Human Services, which comes to around $17,000 a year.

    With rent and childcare adding up to almost $40,000 annually, even if you are making $50,000 — almost twice the federal poverty rate for a family of three — “you really don’t have enough to survive,” Prasad said.

    And that says nothing about skyrocketing food costs, she added. The Food Bank of South Jersey reported that over the last four years in Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, and Salem Counties, the number of meals distributed to compensate for increasing food expenses grew by 34%.

    “More of our neighbors are turning to us amid an affordability crisis that’s hitting a high-cost state like New Jersey harder than poverty measures may show,” Jane Asselta, the food bank’s president and chief executive officer, said in a statement.

    For a more detailed analysis of the area the food bank serves, Prasad focused on South Jersey data for The Inquirer. In Burlington County in 2024, the true poverty rate was 27.2%, Prasad said. Similarly, Camden County’s true poverty rate was 38%, while Gloucester County’s sat at 29%. All rates as calculated by the PRI were more than three times the federal poverty levels for the counties in 2024, figures show.

    Ultimately, Brown-Toure said, no matter how the government classifies poverty, the one constant she endures is that life’s hardships are wearing her down.

    “I’m feeling depressed,” she said. “I miss working and my weekly paycheck. And the dream I once had to own a house is all gone.

    “There’s a lot of struggle right now, a lot trauma. It’s hard. And the hardship never stops.”

  • Property values in Kensington went up more than any other Philly neighborhood this year

    Property values in Kensington went up more than any other Philly neighborhood this year

    The biggest jump in Philadelphia’s property assessments this year occurred in Kensington, a measure that means many homeowners in the long-struggling neighborhood are likely to see higher taxes amid a concerted effort by the city to clean up the area.

    That is according to an Inquirer analysis of recently released property assessments of single-family homes, which found that, citywide, there was a 3% median change in valuations from the 2025 tax year, the last time there was a mass reassessment.

    That increase is far more modest than the widespread jump in valuations that homeowners saw two years ago, which captured multiple years of real estate growth and the volatile post-pandemic market.

    What remains the same: who will be most affected.

    The Inquirer’s analysis of this year’s property assessment data shows that low-income neighborhoods near gentrifying areas saw the sharpest jumps in valuations compared with the rest of the city.

    The four areas that saw the largest percentage increases in median assessments — Kensington, Mantua, Grays Ferry, and Kingsessing — all border more gentrified neighborhoods like Fishtown, University City, and Point Breeze. The results of the analysis are a further sign that market pressures in higher-income areas are pushing into pockets of the city that have long been primarily home to Black and brown working-class residents.

    Of the eight neighborhoods that saw the largest increases between the 2025 and 2027 tax years, five have median annual household incomes around $40,000 or less, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data. The federal poverty level is $33,000 for a family of four.

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    In a statement, officials with Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration noted that many homeowners in those five neighborhoods are benefiting from a popular city tax break. The city said that the median 2027 value in those five neighborhoods is $123,600, so for many homeowners in those areas, the median taxable assessed value is just $23,600.

    That is because of the homestead exemption, a tax break for homeowners who live in their house as their primary residence that exempts the first $100,000 in home value from property taxes. Homeowners must sign up to be included in the free program.

    At least 60% of homeowners in those neighborhoods have signed up for property tax relief programs, according to the city.

    James Aros Jr., the chief assessor of the Philadelphia Office of Property Assessment, and Revenue Commissioner Kathleen McColgan said enrollment rates in property tax relief, including the homestead exemption and multiple tax freeze programs, are “encouraging.”

    They said the city will “build on this progress through extensive targeted outreach, community partnerships, and efforts to make enrollment as simple and accessible as possible.”

    The current property tax rate is 1.3998% of assessed value, which has not changed for nearly a decade. The revenue is split between the city and the Philadelphia School District.

    Rising home values in Kensington

    Citywide, the steepest increase in valuations was in Kensington, where the median property value jumped 15.3%, from $115,700 in the 2025 tax year to $133,400 now. That median increase would translate to a roughly $250 annual property tax hike.

    That comes after Parker’s administration in 2024 launched a multipronged effort to address the long-entrenched open-air drug market in Kensington, which is the epicenter of the city’s opioid crisis and a site of sprawling homelessness.

    While the administration has increased law enforcement’s staffing in the neighborhood and scaled up programs for people who are in addiction, Kensington has also for years seen creeping gentrification from Fishtown to its southeast.

    In this 2021 file photo, a glass building at J and Tioga sits near a beer store in Kensington.Inga Saffron

    Some neighborhood leaders have watched with anxiety as luxury housing developers and out-of-town investors gobbled up properties in the neighborhood, fearing that poorer residents and middle-class homebuyers may be priced out.

    City Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, a Democrat who represents the 7th Council District, which includes parts of Kensington, said she knew speculators from outside the area would want to make it “the next gentrified neighborhood” once the city changed its strategy to more aggressively clean up trash and improve public safety.

    How speculators fueled a nightmare for Kensington residents — and could soon cash in

    But Lozada said there are not enough programs specific to Kensington aimed at preventing displacement as a result of rising property values, especially as the city is investing millions of dollars a year to improve the neighborhood. She said her office is exploring additional tax relief measures.

    “I’m going to do whatever I have to do to make sure that residents who have lived in that community can stay there, can raise their families there,” Lozada said. “We have witnessed what has happened on the southern end of the district, where there has been rapid gentrification.”

    In this March file photo, City Councilmember Quetcy Lozada stands in Council chambers during Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s budget address.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer

    Lozada also said rising property values in Kensington are part of why she has been “so careful with projects presented to me” and has prioritized what she sees as equitable development in the neighborhood — at times to the chagrin of developers who think she has been too restrictive.

    “I’m all about people making a return,” she said, “but you can’t continue to do it on the backs of poor people.”

    The 3100 block of Arbor Street in Philadelphia on Tuesday, July 7, 2026.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer

    Continuing change in pockets of West Philly

    There were also significant property value increases in parts of West Philadelphia.

    The median increase in Mantua, the neighborhood north of University City, was the second highest in the city, at 15%, according to The Inquirer’s analysis. The median increase was 12% in Kingsessing, the neighborhood south of University City that in 2025 saw the largest jump of any neighborhood in Philadelphia.

    Newly developed buildings along Fairmount Avenue in the neighborhood of Mantua in Philadelphia, Pa., on Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer

    Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, a Democrat who represents West Philadelphia and has made preventing displacement a key initiative, said that there has long been racial bias in the city’s property assessments and that the city must “get serious” about protecting low-income homeowners by revamping its system.

    “There has to be a higher level of urgency in making sure that the city doesn’t have a hand in pushing out all of these homeowners that make Philadelphia what it is,” Gauthier said. “It’s unconscionable for us to destabilize our neighborhoods and the longtime homeowners who live there because we didn’t take enough care to make sure that our process was fair and equitable.”

    For too long, she said, city officials have said they intended to examine the property assessment practices and identify improvements. In 2024, Parker convened a task force to study the process.

    Aros told Council in April that the task force’s report was “being finalized.” He said OPA would look to implement recommendations from the report, including conducting more regular reassessments and improving property-level data such as property condition.

    The city is also planning to hire an outside consultant to examine its mass appraisal practices, according to city records. The analyst will be responsible for drafting a report by the end of this year.

    Deputy creative director John Duchneskie contributed to this article.

  • Mayor Parker’s office declined to say if the city will be refunded for Christina Aguilera’s canceled July 4th concert set

    Mayor Parker’s office declined to say if the city will be refunded for Christina Aguilera’s canceled July 4th concert set

    Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s office on Tuesday declined to say whether the city will save money after pop star Christina Aguilera, who was scheduled to headline the city’s free July Fourth concert, ended up not taking the stage Saturday due to the weather delays that pushed much of the concert and the subsequent fireworks display into the early morning hours of Sunday.

    Parker spokesperson Joe Grace said the city had “no comment as yet” on whether the city would be refunded in light of the change in plans triggered by Saturday’s severe thunderstorms.

    Aguilera was the only artist who ended up skipping their set, and Grace emphasized Parker’s role in ensuring the rest of the performers returned to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to restart the show around midnight after it was suspended about 9 p.m.

    “We’re focused on the performers who did return and put on a tremendous show once the storms subsided,” Grace said in a statement, noting that the Roots, Kathy Sledge, State Property, Meek Mill, Will Smith, and DJ Jazzy Jeff all performed after the concert restarted. “In the evening, those artists came back, at the request of [concert producer] ESM and Mayor Parker — and put on a great concert. … All the evening artists credited the mayor with bringing them back to perform.”

    The decision to restart the concert pushed the fireworks display to about 2:30 a.m. Sunday.

    “After the storms passed, there were a lot of people who could have called it a night,” Parker said in a statement Tuesday. “Instead, we made one more call. The Roots and the other artists, including Will Smith returned. Thousands of people returned. Our city employees never stopped working. Our first responders stayed at their posts. Together, we finished what we started. That’s who Philadelphia is.”

    Smith, in an Instagram post on Monday, said he returned to the Parkway to perform in the Independence Day concert after midnight after receiving a personal call from Parker.

    Will Smith was ready to go home on July 4 night. Then he got a call from ‘Mrs. Mayor.’
    Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff (left) perform at One Philly: Unity Concert for America on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway Sunday, July 5, 2026, in Philadelphia.Yong Kim / Staff Photographer

    Parker’s administration this year agreed to pay $15.5 million to ESM Productions, a for-profit Philadelphia-based company known for putting on major events on the Parkway, to organize the show. The city paid ESM at least $10 million prior to July Fourth, but it is unclear if any money was paid out to performers in advance of the show.

    The annual concert was previously managed by the nonprofit Welcome America, a public-private partnership organized by the city in the 1990s, and cost taxpayers far less.

    The last July Fourth concert cost Welcome America about $3 million to produce, according to a person with knowledge of the event who was not permitted to discuss details about its costs. Welcome America’s entire budget for 2024 — its salaries and office expenses, a concert that featured Kesha and Ne-Yo, and several smaller events it organizes — totaled about $6.6 million, about $5.3 million of which came from government grants, according to the group’s most recent federal nonprofit disclosure.

    Mayor Parker changed things up for this year’s July 4th concert — and it’s costing Philly’s taxpayers millions more

    It is unclear how much Aguilera was supposed to be paid for her performance this year.

    ESM’s original $10 million contract with the city, which was obtained by The Inquirer, included a nearly $3.4 million budget for “talent.”

    The contract between the city administration and ESM did not include a breakdown on how much each artist would be paid, and it did not include details related to artists’ pay in the event of canceled performances.

    The city also signed a $5.5 million contract amendment with ESM that did not include budget details.

    ESM Productions declined to comment.

    Fireworks fill the sky at the One Philly: Unity Concert for America on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on Sunday, July 5, 2026 in Philadelphia.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer

    United Talent Agency, which represents Aguilera, did not return a request for comment. The pop star on Sunday posted videos from her rehearsals prior to the show on social media.

    “Philly, we had such a special 4th of July show planned for you!! 😭😫☔️🌧️,” Aguilera wrote on Instagram. “We poured so much heart and soul into this one, but safety always comes first—and sadly, the storm meant we couldn’t give you the show we worked so hard to bring to life 💔 Thank you to everyone who came out, and to my team for all the hard work that went into building this show… I hope to be back to Philly soon! xxxx.”

    The city’s payments to ESM are only part of the taxpayer costs for putting on the annual concert. The city also increases hours for city workers such as sanitation workers and police officers to put on the event.

    Grace on Tuesday declined to share the total cost of the concert, and reiterated Parker’s previous promise to lay out all expenses related to it at a future date.

    “As we’ve said previously, we will account for all expenses associated with the concert, along with producing an analysis of economic benefits accruing to the city, and release a report at a later time,” he said. “We want the report to be comprehensive.”

  • Gov. Mikie Sherrill says fighting data centers is part of her response to extreme weather during Camden visit after flooding

    Gov. Mikie Sherrill says fighting data centers is part of her response to extreme weather during Camden visit after flooding

    New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill climbed onto an emergency water vehicle in Camden on Tuesday with Camden Fire Chief Jesse Flax. That vehicle, called the High Water One, was used by local emergency responders on Monday to rescue 14 people from the flooded streets of Camden, Flax said.

    The vehicle had arrived in the city one week earlier, just in time for what officials said was the worst flooding they had ever seen in the city, including from Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

    “I’ve never seen this in my whole career,” said Flax, who has worked in the city for three decades. “I’ve seen bad fires, I’ve seen a lot of different things. But I’ve never seen it flood in this capacity.”

    The new High Water Rescue vehicle that was used in the recent rainfall and flooding at the Fire Administration Building in Camden on Tuesday.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer

    No one was reported injured among 1,000 calls to emergency services.

    Sherrill thanked emergency responders and comforted Maria Perez, a Camden resident recovering from surgery who worked with her neighbors to fight the flooding by “telling them what to do and keeping them calm.”

    “I wanted them to keep plastic bags on their feet, too, because you don’t know what’s in that water. … I’m so glad that we had such a great team,” Perez, a member of the Camden schools advisory board, said in an interview.

    The governor’s visit came just a little more than an hour after she signed legislation in Salem County aimed at data centers. She said that very work can help prevent strain on the power grid during future storms and that the electrical grid is “top of mind” for her.

    Gov. Mikie Sherrill, left, speaks with Maria Perez, center, and Sen. Nilsa Cruz-Perez, right, at the fire house in Camden on Tuesday.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer

    “We are seeing these extreme weather events more and more and more frequently,” said Sherrill, who was dealt a historic snowstorm just weeks into her term and has recently seen a deadly heat wave. After her stop in Camden, she went to a BJ’s Wholesale Club store in Monmouth County where a roof fell in from Monday’s flooding.

    One of the bills Sherrill signed into law on Tuesday creates a new ratepayer class and rate structure for data centers that is meant to ensure they pay for their own energy. Another creates more oversight for utility companies’ grid upgrades to try to save money.

    “We’ve set them aside in a separate class of utility users, so that if we have storms like this, they will be first impacted, not normal rate payers,” Sherrill said.

    Data centers have caused concern on both sides of the aisle in South Jersey, with towns including Medford taking steps to block their development locally. But according to county spokesperson Dan Keashen, Camden did not have widespread power outages during the storm, just a handful that were rectified the same day.

    Oscar Parra makes his way to his car in the flooded parking lot at the Ferry Avenue PATCO station in Camden on Monday amid a flash flood threat for the region.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer

    So what about the damage in Camden?

    Sherrill said residents should report damage through the New Jersey Office of Emergency Management so the state can calculate how much federal assistance to request.

    “There are technical things we need to meet,” she said. “I think we probably will, but we’re collecting that now.”

    American Red Cross workers in Camden on Tuesday were providing cleaning supplies like mops, bleach cleaners, gloves, and tarps — as well as snacks and water, said Diane Concannon, the organization’s communications director for the New Jersey region.

    “Flooding is horrible for any family … because everyone wants to be able to save everything,” she said.

    While the rain was intense, it cleared up quickly because the city has maintained its sewers so well, Sherrill said.

    “They have done a really good job here in Camden with some of these resiliency efforts,” she said. “It’s why this wasn’t worse.”

  • Democrats begin to clash over who replaces Platner even before he exits

    Democrats begin to clash over who replaces Platner even before he exits

    The implosion of Graham Platner’s campaign for Senate in Maine after an accusation of rape has ripped open divisions inside the Democratic Party as its progressives and moderates battle to pick his successor even before he has said he will step aside.

    National Democrats have grown alarmed that a seat seen as crucial to winning control of the Senate could be slipping from the party’s grasp. Platner had survived a series of controversies — about a tattoo with Nazi symbolism, inflammatory old Reddit posts, and his relationships with women — but many in the party abandoned him after the rape accusation, including the leaders of the Maine Democratic Party and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

    They have demanded that Platner step down before a Monday deadline for him to be replaced on the ballot to find a new Democrat to run against Sen. Susan Collins, a longtime Republican fixture in the state. The main super political action committee for Democratic Senate candidates said it would redirect $24 million in ad reservations to other states if he remained.

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), one of Platner’s earliest and most prominent backers, joined the chorus on Tuesday afternoon.

    “I have spoken with Graham Platner about the best path forward for Maine,” Sanders said in a statement. “In light of these very serious allegations, I have recommended that he step aside.”

    Platner, who has denied the allegation, said on a private call with his campaign staff on Monday evening that he believed he still had leverage to influence which candidate would replace him on the ticket, according to three people familiar with the conversation. On the call, he did not announce plans to withdraw but implied such a decision would be coming, the people said.

    Platner’s campaign had stopped running ads on Meta’s platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, as of Tuesday, according to the company’s ad disclosure database. He had been running multiple ads as recently as Monday evening.

    The drama comes almost exactly two years after the Democratic Party was roiled by the exit of Joe Biden, then the president, from his reelection race and the speedy anointment of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. That process — and Democrats’ ultimate loss in 2024 — has left deep scar tissue for many in the party.

    Many on the left — including, it appears, Platner himself — want any replacement to come from the progressive wing of the party after he won the primary over Gov. Janet Mills, a moderate two-term Democrat, who withdrew over a month before the election.

    “To the Democratic establishment: This is not your opening,” said Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, a group that emerged from Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. Referring to Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, he added, “Mainers did not vote by an overwhelming margin against Janet Mills and the DSCC’s handpicked pick just to be handed another status-quo candidate anyway.”

    On the flip side, many in the party establishment believe those on the left should show some humility after Platner’s collapse.

    A range of Democratic groups and activists engaged in the politics of “I told you so.”

    “When women raise the alarm, listen,” said a social media post from EMILY’s List, a group that works to elect Democratic women and that had backed Mills. “Graham Platner’s behavior is disqualifying (AS WE HAVE SAID THIS WHOLE DAMN TIME), and he should end his campaign.”

    On Tuesday morning, more Democrats who are ideological allies of Platner called for him to step aside, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

    “I believe that it’s time for him to drop out of the race,” Mamdani said when asked at a news conference. “I think the focus of today should be to respond to the gravity of what so many of us have read, and I think the only appropriate response is for the campaign to come to an end.”

    Mamdani and Platner share several advisers, including Morris Katz and Rebecca Katz of the Fight Agency.

    The progressive group MoveOn also dropped its endorsement.

    As the situation in Maine threatened to spiral out of control, Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee are set to host major donors this week for a fundraising retreat at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. Donors are asked to contribute $44,300 to attend, according to a copy of the invitation.

    The event, which was previously scheduled, was billed as a “special weekend to discuss the DSCC’s strategy and campaigns for taking back the Democratic Senate majority,” but now talk is likely to be consumed by the developments in Maine.

    Platner can be replaced as the Democratic nominee if he withdraws voluntarily by Monday. The state Democratic Party would then have until July 27 to pick his replacement, under state law. But the law does not dictate how the state party itself needs to pick Platner’s replacement.

    What that would look like remains unclear. The options under discussion include a convention or a statewide caucus in late July.

    “We ask for your patience as this work continues,” Devon Murphy-Anderson, the state party’s executive director, wrote in a message to committee members on Tuesday, adding: “Whatever process is ultimately adopted must reflect our Democratic values. It should be open, inclusive, transparent, and fair.”

    A range of candidates are being discussed, with some early attention on those who ran and lost the primary for governor this year. Those Democrats include Troy Jackson, a former president of the Maine Senate; Nirav Shah, a former director of Maine’s public health agency; and Shenna Bellows, Maine’s secretary of state. But some Democrats were concerned about elevating someone who just lost.

    Supporters of Jackson, who had backed Platner in the primary, created a Draft Troy website, and he filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission for a Senate exploratory committee. Shah put out a statement that said he had received “hundreds of encouraging messages,” adding that anyone who ran for the nomination should commit to a televised debate and “multiple town halls across every corner of the state.”

    Another possible candidate is Dan Kleban, a co-founder of the Maine Beer Co., a brewery outside Portland. He briefly ran for Senate last year before dropping out and endorsing Mills. But like Platner, he has never held elected office or been through the rigors of a campaign.

    Yet another possibility is Jordan Wood, who also previously ran for Senate and dropped out. Wood ran instead in the primary for Rep. Jared Golden’s House seat and lost.

    Golden, a moderate Democrat and veteran who holds the most pro-Trump House seat of any Democrat in Congress, is retiring and previously said he was ready to step away from elected office.

    In recent days, Golden has fielded calls gauging his interest in a run for Senate, according to two people familiar with those conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.

    Golden has not commented since the latest allegations against Platner emerged.

    More unconventional picks were being bandied about, as well. One Democratic firm in recent days included actor Patrick Dempsey in a poll. (He was viewed favorably by 52% of voters in the survey.) Others floated the popular liberal historian Heather Cox Richardson, who is based in Maine.

    Some Democrats erupted after the news emerged that Platner wanted a replacement who was aligned with him politically. One person familiar with the Platner campaign’s internal discussions said Monday that Platner would seek a guarantee he would be replaced by someone in agreement with “the values and vision and policy agenda” that he had pressed.

    Others argued that under the circumstances, Platner’s support would be damaging.

    Joe Baldacci, a state senator who ran and lost in the primary for Golden’s House seat this year, said the idea that Platner would bless a replacement would be the equivalent of “tying a lead weight” to the person.

    “After you have put the Democratic Party in a shambles and undermined all Democratic candidates running for office in Maine then you should have no say in who will be your successor,” Baldacci wrote on social media. He added, “Any connections to Platner will doom that person’s campaign from the very beginning.”

    This article originally appeared in the New York Times.