There were two noticeable no-shows as Western leaders gathered Monday to mark the 35th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence — and its five years of resistance to Vladimir Putin’s effort to re-subjugate the country to Russian rule.
There were multiple news reports that President Donald Trump’s clueless peace envoys — son-in-law Jared Kushner and real estate magnate Steve Witkoff — might finally join European allies at anniversary ceremonies.
I say “finally” because neither of these supposed peacemakers has ever deigned to visit Ukraine. Not once. Meantime, Witkoff has visited Moscow eight times, and gushed over Putin as he and Kushner (also a repeat visitor) discussed business deals with Russia.
It is no surprise, then, that Trump’s blinkered envoys postponed their trip, reportedly blaming their absence on intensified Russian missile and drone strikes. Never mind that former Vice President Mike Pence, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, and other European leaders showed up.
They recognized — as Trump and his envoys still do not — that Ukraine is fighting not just for its own freedom, but for the security of Europe and the United States.
Burnham, who came to Kyiv on his first foreign trip as prime minister, understands the significance of Ukraine’s brave stand against the world’s second-largest army. A Russian military that is heavily aided by the dictators of China, North Korea, and Iran, all eager to undermine America and the democracies of the West.
The U.K. leader rightly compared Ukraine’s resistance against Russian imperialism to Britain’s fight against Nazi Germany in the 1940s, telling Ukrainians, “My nation kept the flame of European freedom alive in the 20th century; you hold that flame in the 21st.”
Burnham is right on the mark.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky hands over the flag of a military unit during the ceremony to mark Ukraine Independence Day in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday.Efrem Lukatsky
The image of London firefighters bravely battling the blazes caused by the German Blitz, which rained rockets down on civilians in order to break their morale, comes right to mind when watching video of Ukrainian rescue workers pulling women and children out of the rubble of collapsed apartment towers that have been hit with Russian missiles or drones.
Then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill understood that if Britain fell, the Nazis would take over Europe. The Battle of Britain in the summer and fall of 1940, in which incredibly courageous Royal Air Force pilots pushed back the Luftwaffe, forced Adolf Hitler to abandon his planned invasion of England. The courage and spirit of Britons under bombing gave the RAF the time to regroup and attack the Nazis in Europe. It gave President Franklin D. Roosevelt time to act on sending Lend-Lease war supplies to Britain.
Burnham grasps that Putin is a stalking horse for an axis of adversaries – namely China, North Korea and Iran – that backs and finances Russia’s crimes.
Ukraine’s battle of the skies is effectively the first round of World War III. And only one weapon can take down the ballistic missiles Russia is pouring down on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure: U.S.-made Patriot interceptors.
Yet, Trump has wasted much of America’s Patriot missile stock chasing cheap Iranian drones, and refuses to sell Kyiv a small percentage of what the U.S. retains. And after proposing joint production of Patriots with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the U.S. president immediately backed off.
That is why Burnham announced Monday that the U.K. (along with France) will help Ukraine make its own version of a Anglo/French long-range cruise missile by sharing classified technical information. That will help Ukraine preempt Russian missiles by eliminating the firing sites.
But setting up that production line will take months or years, and Ukraine desperately needs Patriots now.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky (left) hands over the Ukraine state award to European Council President António Costa during a commemorative ceremony in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, marking Ukraine’s 35th Independence Day.Efrem Lukatsky
It is hard for many Americans to grasp how important Ukraine’s survival is to our future security. Few U.S. politicians consider Ukraine to be a critical campaign issue. Trump has communicated his disdain for Kyiv to his MAGA followers, and Vice President JD Vance boasts that his proudest moment was helping cut off aid to Ukraine. As for Democrats, they’d rather focus on cost of living and the endless Iran war.
But Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army Europe, nailed it when he told me recently that what’s been missing from the lack of U.S. attention “is the recognition that it’s in the U.S. interest for Ukraine to be successful.” President Joe Biden was too timid, he noted, and Trump is worse.
America’s enemies are taking full notice.
China is watching and learning from the drone, robot, and electronic warfare being fought in Ukraine, while sharing dual-use weapon parts and technology with Moscow. Every lesson is being fed into the hopper of Xi Jinping’s massive agglomeration of data used for prep to take back Taiwan and dominate South and East Asian neighbors and territorial waters.
North Korea is earning hard currency by sending troops and missiles to aid Russia’s war on Ukraine. In return, it is accessing Russian technology to build up its nuclear arsenal. Iran sends Shahed drones to Russia and learns from Russian upgrades of those drones, which helps Tehran attack U.S. bases and threaten Gulf Arab states in the Middle East.
Meantime, Trump is focused on his White House ballroom, car races, and starting a trade war with Canada, while Kushner and Witkoff chicken out of visiting Kyiv. They have no clue that the fate of the Ukraine war will overshadow everything they now think is important.
Their trips to Moscow are feckless unless they recognize that Putin has no interest in peace. Any “peace process” is dead (irrespective of CIA Director John Radcliffe’s secret visit to Moscow last weekend) until the United States recognizes reality and joins Europeans in squeezing Putin until he fears the war is endangering his survival.
I believe Ukraine will hold out via its tech brilliance and innovation, and its people’s determination not to surrender to the brutal domination of Russia. But the United States will pay a dear price for failing to step up when it could have blocked Putin and his allies — before their war on the West got much, much worse.
Two years ago, every child in the kindergarten class at Eleanor Emlen Elementary in Mount Airy had vaccine protection against measles.
A year later, the school’s kindergarten immunization rate had dropped to just 80%, putting students and the surrounding community at risk of an outbreak of the highly contagious disease.
Emlen is among more than two dozen Philadelphia-area schools that saw double-digit declines in kindergarten immunization rates last school year — in many cases because parents are increasingly refusing vaccines.
The affected schools span a diverse range of communities, from city neighborhoods like Mount Airy to the outlying suburbs. In Chester County, for example, a small private school in Downingtown saw its vaccination rates plunge by 20%.
Even as countywide immunization levels remain relatively high, some 40% of kindergarten classrooms across the region became vulnerable to an outbreak during the 2025-26 school year, up from 33% the year prior, an Inquirer analysis of newly released state data found.
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That means that at least 249 schools had vaccination rates below 95%, the level at which scientists say a population must be vaccinated to prevent the spread of measles, one of the most contagious diseases.
Of these, 98 Philadelphia-area schools reported measles vaccination rates below 90%, presenting an even greater risk to students.
A sharp increase in parents opting out of vaccination for religious or philosophical reasons continued to drive down vaccination rates; exemptions in this category rose by 15% in the latest two years for which data are available.
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Pennsylvania is among a handful of states that allows parents to opt out of vaccine requirements for philosophical or religious reasons, often by simply signing a form.
The health department published more granular, school-level vaccination data this summer for the first time, after reporting by The Inquirer and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette made this information public for the prior school year, exposing pockets of vulnerability within counties with overall high vaccination.
The new data show the growing public health threat to the region from Pennsylvania’s growing measles outbreak, in which two people in Lancaster County have died, state officials reported Tuesday. They were the state’s first measles-related deaths in three decades.
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So far, nearly 400 cases have been diagnosed, with nearly half in Lancaster County. The rapidly spreading outbreak is edging closer to densely populated Philadelphia. Chester County, just west of the city, has reported the second-highest number of cases in the state.
At a news conference on the measles deaths Tuesday, Gov. Josh Shapiro stressed his concern about the rise in Pennsylvania parents opting out of vaccinations over the last 10 years.
“It has dramatically reduced community immunity in different areas of our Commonwealth,” he said. “Today, we see the consequences of a lack of immunization.”
The new school-level data on vaccines, he said, allow “everyone to see their school’s vaccination coverage and make informed decisions.” Lawmakers have also said they hope that having more access to data about their children’s schools will make families more aware of risks within their communities and encourage them to vaccinate their children.
Amid rising measles case counts and declining immunization rates, Delaware County’s health department launched an immunization campaign over the summer to encourage families to vaccinate.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
Emlen, which saw one of the steepest drops in protection, was one of 40 schools in the five-county region that reported 100% measles vaccination rates two years ago, only to drop below the 95% herd immunity threshold last year.
Philadelphia school officials say the changes at Emlen likely reflect increasing hesitancy among parents to immunize their children against measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) and other diseases. State records show that most unvaccinated kindergarteners at Emlen have philosophical or religious exemptions.
Some fluctuations in kindergarten vaccination rates are typical from year to year, but the rise of anti-vaccine rhetoric in federal leadership appears to be exacerbating fears around vaccination, said Kendra McDow, a pediatrician who serves as the Philadelphia school district’s medical director.
“What we’re seeing is reflective of what I believe are local and national trends,” McDow said. “Families are confused, and they want to do right by their children.”
In the latest federal vaccine maneuver — opposed by the medical establishment, prominent Democrats, and Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician — President Donald Trump signed an executive order this month asking states to “consider updating” laws to require fewer vaccinations for schoolchildren without any medical justification. He also advocated for splitting the MMR vaccine into three separate shots — even though no separate measles, mumps, or rubella vaccines are licensed in the United States.
The order came after a chaotic year in which Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy fired federal vaccination advisers and pushed to upend the federal vaccine schedule. Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, has promoted false concerns that vaccinations can lead to autism.
Families are faced with a barrage of misinformation about vaccines. Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
With Pennsylvania now experiencing its largest measles outbreak in three decades, Kevin Ressler, a healthcare nonprofit leader in suburban Philadelphia who was raised in Lancaster County, worries that declining vaccine rates reflect increasing political polarization.
“You don’t have to be a scientist to recognize that’s a problem,” said Ressler, the CEO of Alliance for Health Equity, a Coatesville nonprofit that works to improve access to health services. “A lot of this is rooted in whether we are able to hold trusted relationships.”
Philly-area counties all at risk
Philadelphia and its suburban counties overall remain well protected against measles, state officials say. The declines seen in the latest school year amount to less than 1% of all kindergarteners in each of the five counties in the area, an improvement from the drops that followed the COVID-19 pandemic.
But even small drops can be significant given the contagiousness of measles, which can linger in the air for hours and infect nine in 10 unvaccinated people who come into contact with it.
Mia Williams, a registered nurse, vaccinates a client at Delaware County’s mobile clinic in Upper Darby in July. Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
“The risk has definitely gone up because of lower vaccination numbers,” said Rene Najera, the director of public health at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
Najera says slipping vaccination rates especially endanger vulnerable students and community members beyond the schools, like pregnant women, cancer patients, or babies too young to be vaccinated. Parents of high-risk children should speak with their pediatricians about the risks of attending a school with lower vaccination rates, he said.
Last year marked the first time in more than 10 years that no Philadelphia-area county had reported measles vaccination rates above herd immunity.
Bucks County had the lowest MMR vaccination rate for kindergartners, at 93.7%, down by more than a half a percentage point from the year before.
Montgomery County, the only county in the Philadelphia region with kindergarten vaccination rates at herd immunity two years ago, slipped just below the threshold in 2025, to 94.8% vaccinated.
About 94% of Delaware County and Philadelphia kindergarteners were vaccinated last school year.
In Chester County, the only Philadelphia-area county to report cases in the current outbreak, vaccination rates for kindergartners have held steady at 94.5% for the last two school years. Some schools in the county reported steep drops in MMR coverage ahead of the current outbreak, which has seen 40 cases confirmed since June.
At Windsor Christian Academy in Downingtown, only one in four kindergarteners were vaccinated last year at a school that exceeded the herd immunity threshold the year prior. About 14% of the class had religious exemptions for vaccination. School officials did not return a request for comment.
Caln Elementary School in Thorndale saw measles vaccination rates drop from 100% to 74% in a year. Officials at the school declined to comment. (Caln closed at the end of last school year, and most of its students are transferring to the newly built Doe Run Elementary this year.)
Jeanne Franklin, Chester County’s health director, said she is “moderately” concerned about the current measles outbreak, given that many of the county’s most populous public schools still have high vaccination rates.
The school-level data improve the county’s ability to identify schools with lower vaccination rates.
Chester County health officials talk to school nurses, principals, and other administrators before the start of every school year to remind them of what to do if they identify a case of measles.
Under county policy, a single measles case in a school will mean all unvaccinated students and staff must stay home for 21 days.
This year, conversations that are usually hypothetical have taken on more urgency.
The health department has urged schools to take stock of who within their school is unvaccinated and develop a plan for how they will teach unvaccinated students who are sent home and staff classrooms of absent teachers.
“You don’t own getting them vaccinated,” Franklin said she tells administrators. “But you have to think through these things.”
Sisters A’zuri, 3, and A’Sara, 6, wait while their mother, Shania’ Jason, checks in at a vaccination clinic during the School District of Philadelphia’s sixth annual Back-To-School Bus Tour stop this month at Marcus Foster Memorial Stadium. Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Philly schools on alert
As the school district’s lead health officer, McDow worries about the threat of measles so close by, but believes concerted efforts in the city have kept vaccination rates “as high as they can be in this current climate.”
She’s also monitoring Philadelphia schools where the state data show declining vaccination coverage. (The publicly available school-level data does not include classes with fewer than 20 students, for privacy reasons, or schools that did not report to the state. About 90% of schools statewide reported data in 2025.)
In some cases, what looks like a decline can be explained by delays in data reporting due to administrative issues or staff absences. School vaccination records are reported to the state during the month of December.
For example, Mantua’s Morton McMichael School reported a 50% drop in MMR vaccination coverage, initially going from nearly nine in 10 kindergarteners vaccinated to just over a third.
But by the end of the 2025-2026 school year, records show 93% of McMichael kindergarteners were fully vaccinated against measles, district officials said, though the state data does not show the improvement.
McDow worries about drops at other schools, from Mount Airy’s Emlen Elementary to North Philadelphia’s James Logan Elementary’s 18.5% decrease in vaccination rates, which are likely related to parents increasingly refusing vaccines.
Pediatrician Amanda Bernard (left) talks with Shania’ Jason and her daughter A’zuri, 3, at a vaccination clinic hosted by the Philadelphia School District this month at Marcus Foster Memorial Stadium.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
The school district hosts vaccination clinics over the summer and during the school year, working with the city health department to target families with unvaccinated children and schools with low vaccination rates.
The district also works to ensure vaccination clinics are accessible to working parents, organizing some on weekends or evenings.
“We need to be talking to families and answering questions in transparent ways,” McDow said. “But we also need to be providing the opportunities for vaccination.”
Some families line up for immunizations
On a recent sweltering August afternoon, families lined up at a tent pitched on the football field at Marcus Foster Memorial Stadium in Olney, part of a back-to-school fair sponsored by the Philadelphia School District.
“IMMUNIZATIONS,” read a flag waving in the breeze. Business was brisk all day.
Some families who visited the tent were recent immigrants, getting caught up on vaccinations before their children started at their new schools.
“We’re vaccinated, my husband and I, because our parents vaccinated us. And I’ll do the same for my children,” said Betty Bachene, who moved to Philadelphia from Paris this summer. Speaking in French, she said she’s never been afraid of vaccinating her children, but does fear the diseases vaccines prevent.
Anaiya Burnham, a nurse, said she’d opted against getting COVID or flu shots for her two children, one of whom is entering kindergarten this year. But vaccinating them against measles was never a question.
“I would really be curious to know why anyone would opt out of the MMR, given the research,” she said.
Cianey Brown, 16, reacts and turns to her family after getting an immunization at a Philadelphia school district vaccination clinic this month at Marcus Foster Memorial Stadium. Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Philadelphia parents face a number of different barriers that keep them from vaccinating children — and not all of them are related to vaccine hesitancy, said Amanda Bernard, a pediatrician with Greater Philadelphia Health Action, the clinic offering vaccinations at the event.
Some lack transportation to get to a health center outside their neighborhood, or don’t speak English well enough to navigate the healthcare system, she noted.
“I think that these sorts of events are really a way that we could combat that,” said Bernard, who has heightened her advocacy around vaccination as Pennsylvania’s measles outbreak has spread.
“There’s almost a desperation in my education. I sometimes feel like I’m almost begging [families] to get it.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the name of James Logan Elementary in Philadelphia.
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A Supreme Court decision on mail voting has created uncertainty with 70 days until critical midterm elections, but Pennsylvania Democrats are trying to reassurevoters that they will have the option to cast a ballot by mail.
More litigation over this highly watched issue is expected and further rulings could still come even after November, affecting the next presidential election.
“We will continue to fight at every stage — including in the Supreme Court the moment they attempt to implement this — to make sure every eligible Pennsylvanian can cast their ballot by mail, free from federal interference,” said Montgomery County Commissioner Neil Makhija, a Democrat and an attorney who sits on the county’s election board.
The procedural update, issued Monday, does not rule on the underlying legality of President Donald Trump’s March executive orderthat directed the U.S. Postal Service to help decide which voters should receive mail ballots but rather whether lower courts had the authority, at this stage, to block it.
Pennsylvania was among the states suing to block the order.
“Absolutely nothing has changed here in Pennsylvania. You can vote in person on Election Day or you can vote by mail before Nov. 3,” Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro said Tuesday evening during a visit to the Eagles’ training camp.
“Your vote will be counted. Your vote is safe and secure,” Shapiro said. “No matter how many times the president wants to try and undermine people’s right to vote in this commonwealth, he needs to know that he will be met with a swift rebuke from me.”
Shapiro noted that the election is administered by the state and its counties under the Constitution.
Revival of the debate about the availability and security of mail voting, and the temporary clearance, however, may instill doubt among voters that their ballot will be received and tabulated, Makhija said.
“With just weeks until ballots go out, last-minute federal interference sows chaos for the voters we serve,” he said.
Trump’s efforts to restrict mail voting, part of his long-standing grievance against the system despite repeatedly utilizing the method himself, are still working through the courts, and several experts doubt the proceedings will move fast enough to affect the November elections, whenfour swing districts in Pennsylvania could help determine control of the U.S. House.
“Whatever may ultimately happen in this litigation, I’m pretty skeptical that anything is going to change for this November’s election,” saidBen Geffen, staff attorney at the Public Interest Law Center in Philadelphia, a nonprofit group that monitors election issues.
States across the country will soon begin preparing applications and mailing ballots to voters.
Pennsylvania voters, who can cast a ballot by mail for any reason, must complete an application by Oct. 27, and all ballots must be returned by Nov. 3 at 8 p.m., according to the Pennsylvania Department of State’s website.
“Turning that battleship around in a matter of days is extremely unlikely,” Geffen said.
A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State said the ruling does not change state law, and voters should be confident that counties will continue to ensure eligible voters can cast their ballot by mail.
“The USPS action is not lawful, and we will continue to challenge that rule to ensure that Pennsylvania voters can have their voice heard — whether they vote in person, on demand, or by mail,” Geoff Morrow, the department spokesperson, said.
Geffen’s advice for those concerned is to start early. Get your mail ballot application in right away, and as soon as you receive your ballot, fill it out and return it. For now, you can still send your ballot through the U.S. mail. But you can also drop it off at your county election board, and many counties offer satellite locations and drop boxes.
If you prefer to vote in person on Election Day, go in the morning, he said.
“You have options for how to vote, and you will get to vote. Nobody’s taking away the election, and just jump on it early,” he said.
After Trump, through his directive, ordered the Postal Service to withhold mail ballots to individuals who are not on an approved list, which he instructed states to develop in order to prevent noncitizens from voting, Shapiro promised to protect Pennsylvanians’ right to vote by mail. In April, he used his power as governor to join other Democratic states in a lawsuit that argued the order violated states’ constitutional power to carry out elections.
The unions representing postal employees also criticized Trump’s push to restrict mail voting as November approaches.
“Any insinuation that voting by mail is not safe and secure is severely misguided. Letter carriers have securely delivered ballots for decades, and there is no evidence that the existing system requires substantial changes,” NALC president Brian L. Renfroe said in the statement.
Gwen Ivey, president of the American Postal Workers Union, Local 89, which represents between 1,300 and 1,400 U.S. clerks in Philadelphia who process mail, maintenance employees, and drivers who transport mail, also warned against inserting the Postal Service into decisions over voting.
“The Postal Service is a public institution that serves the American people,” Ivey said Tuesday. “It should not be placed in a position of determining who is entitled to participate in elections or becoming an instrument for restricting access to the ballot boxes.”
Trump has long railed against mail voting, referring to the ballots as “crooked” in his State of the Union address and suggesting they amount to cheating. But his 2024 victory in Pennsylvania was thanks, in part, to a higher rate of mail voting by Republicans.
The practice is particularly useful for seniors and voters in rural areas — often with strong Republican bases — where voters may live far from their nearest polling location.
“If you want to win, mail it in, that’s our message to our Republican voters,” then-Pennsylvania GOP chairman Lawrence Tabas said two years ago. The Pennsylvania GOP did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Pennsylvania Republicans have been more supportive of Trump’s SAVE America Act, an election reform proposal stalling in Congress that he insists will make voting more secure, though most election experts say new guidelines in the legislation would make it harder to vote.
You’ve probably noticed that many of your favorite TV news anchors are on vacation right now, because the conventional wisdom is that nothing ever happens in August. That conventional wisdom has been wrong since Aug. 24, 79 A.D., when Mount Vesuvius erupted. The calendar has failed to stop natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina (see item below) or human-made ones like Richard Nixon, who resigned on Aug. 9, 1974. I’m going to tempt fate and take some vacation time next week, including a rare newsletter skip. I’ll see you in two weeks. What could possibly go wrong?
Trump’s autocratic assault on Stars and Stripes isn’t just bad. It’s personal.
Sgt. John Hubbuch of Versailles, Ky., one of the members of NATO-led peacekeeping forces in Bosnia, reads a copy of the Stars and Stripes in 1999.AMEL EMRIC
Less than two months after the U.S. dropped the most powerful weapon humankind had ever invented — the atomic bomb — on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American military arrived in Japan to implement a very different kind of tool in the U.S. arsenal of democracy.
A free and largely unfettered newspaper.
The first edition of the Stars and Stripes Pacific newspaper was published from downtown Tokyo on Oct. 3, 1945, when the ink on the Japanese surrender that ended World War II was barely dry. This was the start of a decades-long run when print journalism was still the best way to get information that could be entertaining or essential out to hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops who initially occupied Japan and other Pacific outposts, and later would see combat in Korea and Vietnam.
Stars and Stripes Pacific — like virtually everything tied to U.S. imperial might after the war — is part of a complicated legacy that overlapped with American censorship of local and outside media in Japan. Yet, U.S. soldiers managed to get their own information from a publication that celebrated the better angels of the First Amendment back home, with coverage of Tokyo’s war-crimes trial and later from the front lines in Korea.
It was only part of a much grander legacy for Stars and Stripes, which has been the American military’s independent news source tracing all the way back to 1861 and the Slaveholder’s Rebellion.
Famously, when legendary World War II Gen. George Patton threatened to jail editorialcartoonist Bill Mauldin over a cartoon lampooning him, his superior, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, stopped him. “Stars and Stripes is the soldiers’ newspaper,” Ike reportedly said. “We will not interfere.” Mauldin was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his wartime cartoons. In 2010, Stars and Stripes reporters exposed the Pentagon’s efforts to slant mainstream media coverage of the war in Afghanistan, and won a George Polk Award.
That feisty spirit of Stars and Stripes runs deep in my family’s DNA. My maternal grandfather, Thomas Blender, who’d been a photo editor at the Peoria (Ill.) Journal Star before joining the Army, was sent to Tokyo in those early days to work as a top editor of the Pacific publication. I’ve always regretted, after Grandpa Tom died when I was only 11, that I never got to ask him about those days once I’d been infected with the family journalism bug I’d eventually pass on to my own son.
That must be why it felt like a personal attack last Friday when the Pentagon of Donald Trump and his like-minded “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth obliterated 155 years of editorial freedom by firing its editor, its publisher — who, seeing the writing on the wall, was about to retire — and its Middle East correspondent. That journalist, Lara Korte, said she was pink-slipped for an interview with CBS News about her reporting on the dreadful conditions for Navy sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.
The fuse had already been lit back in January when Hegseth’s Pentagon gutted the regulations regarding the government-funded news organization by stripping language that called for “a free flow of news and information to its readership without news management or censorship.” The new rules, which instead said Stars and Stripes’ journalism “must be consistent with good order and discipline of the military,” were seen asan invitation for censorship. Sean Parnell, the formerly embattled Pennsylvania Republican who is now Hegseth’s chief spokesperson, blasted Stars and Stripes for “woke distractions.”
Three months later, Jacqueline Smith, the internal editorial watchdog of Stars and Stripes at the Pentagon, criticized military brass for editorial interference and was promptly fired. But the last straw for the outlet came two weeks ago with its aggressive reporting about problems aboard the Lincoln, which spent nine months mostly at sea with dwindling supplies tied to Trump’s ill-advised war on Iran. Journalist Alison Bath reported that sailors’ families were growing deeply concerned about the mental health of the aircraft carrier’s exhausted crew.
That work epitomized everything that has been good and decent about Stars and Stripes. What the newspaper has shown at its best is that — despite all the contradictions and moral failings of U.S. postwar imperialism — a democratic government can value the press freedom that its armed readers literally died for from Gettysburg to Omaha Beach. That high-minded ideal was a beacon to set us apart from our adversaries in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, who never would have permitted the kind of honest coverage Stars and Stripes offered for decades.
Until America found itself with a government with the same philosophy as 1939 Berlin or 1949 Moscow. Just like his boss, Hegseth has shown nothing but contempt for the notion that his “warfighters” might actually serve to protect Americans’ right to the truth about their own government, including the foibles of his Pentagon.
On Monday, it came out that the military’s U.S. Central Command told the Intercept that it maintains “a list of people to disregard,” a.k.a. a blacklist. This is the same U.S. Department of Defense — sorry, Pete, that is still its legal name — that also forced out any journalist who wouldn’t sign their integrity away to work in the press room at the Pentagon.
The firings at Stars and Stripes and the Pentagon’s apparent desire to turn the award-winning newspaper into a Pravda-style propaganda sheet for Hegseth’s testosterone-dosed military feels like a new low on the road toward the utter obliteration of all press freedom.
Since returning to power last year, Trump and his MAGA minions have waged war against journalists they’ve called “the enemy of the people” — and they’ve done so not through some grand Orwellian censorship edict, but through a mix of billionaire carrots and sticks that have inflicted a thousand small cuts. That means rewards for wealthy allies who buy prominent news organizations (think the Ellison family assuming control of CBS and being on the brink of getting CNN) or neuter them (Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post) — but lawsuits, obstacles, or straight-up bullying for everyone else.
Another alarming example of the precarious state of the First Amendment came earlier this month when a lawyer for Trump threatened a $5 billion (with a “b”) lawsuit against a left-leaning think tank, the Center for American Progress (CAP), if it didn’t retract a factual report that the Trump regime’s deployments of National Guard troops to U.S. cities have not lowered crime rates.
The CAP has stood its ground so far, but this reveals the state of play right now. MAGA World has already either bought off or intimidated much of the mainstream media, so now they are hoping they can crush the outliers like Stars and Stripes or CAP, one by one.
The mission my grandfather was dispatched to Tokyo to carry out after World War II was on the fringe of an idea that came to be known as “soft power” — the now-quaint notion that America could form healthy alliances with the rest of the world through good things like vaccinating children or printing uncensored journalism, instead of dropping bombs. Other organizations meant to show people in oppressed lands that press freedom and democracy are things to fight for — like Radio Free Europe — have been forced to grapple with Trump-ordered cutbacks.
The right knows exactly what it is doing — that truth and knowledge are kryptonite for its authoritarian project. Increasingly, they are saying the quiet parts out loud. The great Tennessee journalist Phil Williams recently unearthed a sound bite from a white supremacist confab in Rome in which the conversation turned to America’s growing number of news deserts where journalism has all but perished.
“Local media has been dying all over America, which means that there’s essentially no real way to hold local governments accountable — and they can do whatever they want,” white nationalist Kevin DeAnna told the gathering. “You should be fantasizing about this. This is a good thing.”
No, it’s not. The government’s bludgeoning of Stars and Stripes has truly — to borrow from a storied military campaign of yesteryear — crossed the Rubicon of no return for its all-out blitzkrieg against the truth. All of us, including the laggards of the mainstream media who continue to pretend this war doesn’t exist, need to fight back with everything we have.
I never got to know my Grandpa Tom very well, but I know in my soul that this is what he would have wanted.
Yo, do this!
Meep, meep! If timing is really everything, then the half-animated, half-real feature film Coyote vs. Acme, which hits theaters this week, will be the greatest motion picture of all time. The film is based on a 1990 New Yorker essay that imagines Warner Bros. cartoon icon Wile E. Coyote suing the giant Acme Corp. over years of faulty products that literally blew up in his face and ruined his shot at catching the speedy Road Runner. The fact that real-world corporate baloney delayed for several years the release of this film mocking the excesses of runaway capitalism is an unbelievable irony. I’m really looking forward to seeing it.
Books, despite their apparent looming extinction, remain a great way to track what humankind is thinking about. This summer, the hot topic is anxiety over AI and the unchecked power of Silicon Valley. In addition to the best-selling Nerd Reich, now there’s the great essayist and Harvard historian Jill Lepore with her new tome, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, out today. Lepore’s timely work tracks the rise of authoritarianism run not so much by a tinhorn dictator, but by machines, and how humanity can fight back.
Ask me anything
Question: Do PA Dems have a legit chance of freeing us from Joe Pittman’s reign of terror in the state Senate? — Travis (@unraptured.bsky.social) via Bluesky
Answer: Travis, the answer is absolutely yes. Democrats in the Keystone State have managed to chip away at what once seemed like a permanent GOP majority in the upper chamber at the same time that they’ve recaptured the state House. The current Republican Senate edge is just 27-23, meaning Democrats have to flip only three more GOP seats among November’s 25 contests. Every arrow — Trump’s high disapproval, the popularity of Gov. Josh Shapiro at the top of the ticket, and special-election results like last week’s shocking Democratic House victory in a blood-red district in Western Pennsylvania — points toward a blue tsunami. The Democrats have reportedly targeted three suburban swing districts. The big question for 2027 may be whether Shapiro really wants a Harrisburg trifecta pushing him to the left.
What you’re saying about …
OK, last week’s question about Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff’s pointed comments regarding Donald Trump’s corruption, including an eyebrow-raising mention of ever-present aide Natalie Harp, was kind of a slam dunk for readers of this newsletter. You saw nothing uncivil in the fighting spirit of his remarks, and a surprising number of you echoed back a phrase from my question: “a breath of fresh air.” Wrote Daniel Fleischer: “Jon Ossoff called Trump a ‘crook.’ If anything, that’s a euphemism understating Trump’s criminality.” Added Patricia Eisenberg: “What he said was undeniably true — the President chose this young woman to travel on his escape plane, not one of his cabinet members.”
📮 This week’s question: It seems like the GOP’s got nothing ahead of the midterms beyond its opposition to what it calls “men playing women’s sports.” It’s kind of pathetic, but it does pose a question for Democrats: Do they strongly embrace transgender rights, or is that risking political defeat in today’s culture wars? I have a strong opinion on this, but what do you think? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “transgender politics” in the subject line.
Backstory on Indiana’s new, outrageous Katrina
A woman sits inside the City Life Center as she waits for food in Gary, Ind., on Aug. 20, more than a week after a deadly storm passed through the area.Nam Y. Huh
Exactly 21 years ago today, a tropical storm in the Atlantic Ocean rapidly intensified into a hurricane — Hurricane Katrina — and raced across Florida on a path into the Gulf of Mexico, where it became a Category 5 monster. Still, many of us in 2005 briefly thought the Gulf Coast dodged a bullet when Katrina weakened slightly, and its center struck what looked like only a glancing blow on populated New Orleans. Then, one by one, the city’s levees began to break, and the water rose.
The death and destruction in Katrina’s wake was covered around the clock on cable TV, yet it took a couple of days for news anchors to articulate what viewers were seeing with their own eyes. The thousands of people who crowded interstate overpasses or were trapped on roofs were almost all Black, and most were desperately poor.
In These Times wrote the following week that “many Americans were surprised that most of the victims of the New Orleans flood were Black: Their image of the Crescent City had been one of jazz, tasty cuisine and the good-natured excesses of its lively festivals. Where did all those black people come from, they wondered; and where were the white victims?” Katrina triggered some long-overdue conversations about inequality and racism in America, and the inept response from the George W. Bush administration would start his steep decline in public approval. Long before the roughly 1,400 New Orleanians who died in the flooding or chaotic aftermath could be buried, many folks were asking how to prevent this from ever happening again.
It wasn’t a hurricane that struck Gary, Ind., and surrounding communities in the state’s northwest corner exactly two weeks ago on Aug. 11 — just a thunderstorm — but the winds were nearly as intense, snapping trees and downing power lines across the region. Gary’s 67,000 predominantly Black residents hunkered down in the dark nights and blistering hot August days as their refrigerated food went bad, and waited for help. And waited.
While life returned to normal across the rest of the storm-battered Midwest, the massive outage in the region that includes Gary that began with some 375,000 homes lacking electricity dwindled at a snail’s pace. After two weeks, there were still more than 5,000 families without power and struggling with spoiled food and closed schools and workplaces. There is growing anger among residents who say that Indiana’s heavily Republican power structure and Donald Trump’s federal government feel no sense of urgency to rescue a city that is mostly African American.
“This isn’t a problem that started with the storm,” the hip-hop star Freddie Gibbs, who grew up in Gary, told MS Now Monday night. “We are a predominantly Black city that tends to get ignored.” It feels like Katrina redux — an island of utter despair in the world’s wealthiest nation, with a government’s inaction bordering on criminal neglect. But there is one big difference: This festering crisis has been mostly ignored by the national media. The tragedy isn’t just our inability to stop the next Katrina, but our inability to care.
What I wrote on this date in 2022
One of George Orwell’s greatest passages in 1984 concerns Winston Smith’s job of cutting out old newspaper articles and tossing them into “the memory hole” — inconvenient truths meant to be forgotten by civilization. That’s how it feels now reading news stories from those four years in the early 2020s when Donald Trump was out of power, and America took baby steps back toward normalcy that would later get crushed. On Aug. 25, 2022, I wrote about one of these: Joe Biden’s eventually failed plan to wipe out some $300 billion of the nation’s massive student loan debt. I wrote that “this week will be remembered as one giant leap toward an idea that can change everything — the notion that higher education should be a public good, not the privatized rat race that has demoralized our rising generations.”
Look what’s happening out in the streets, got a revolution — and it’s not the one anyone saw coming. Growing public rage against Big Tech — the intrusiveness of artificial intelligence and the noisy, polluting data centers that power it, and increasingly also against omnipresent surveillance cameras — has become the surprise issue of the 2026 midterms. Politicians in both parties are performing backflips to join the bandwagon. Over the weekend, I wrote about how voter anger against Silicon Valley and its billionaires is rapidly reshaping our politics, and what could happen if our broken system fails to deliver radical change.
For the first time in recent memory, August has been living up to its reputation as a slow news month (so far), but on the baseball diamond things have really been heating up as kids are drifting back to school. The Phillies’ just-ended nine-game winning streak has electrified a city that’s been having a pretty good summer in spite of everything. The Inquirer’s oft-cynical sports columnist Marcus Hayes even published a list of five reasons to believe the Phils can go deep into October with a reenergized starting lineup, world-class pitching, and improved defense. A stunning turnaround from long-anticipated rookie pitcher Andrew Painter has also been key to the team’s revival in the National League East. It’s an old-fashioned pennant race, and subscribing to The Inquirer is the best way to keepup.
By submitting your written, visual, and/or audio contributions, you agree to The Inquirer’s Terms of Use, including the grant of rights in Section 10.
Two-thirds of Pennsylvania Democrats who are likely to vote this year believe U.S. Sen. John Fetterman supports President Donald Trump too frequently, while about half say the Democratic senator has been too supportive of Israel, according to an Inquirer/New York Times/SienaUniversity poll published Tuesday.
Democratic voters’ sharply divided views on Fetterman — with 69% having an unfavorable opinion of him in general — are the latest signs hecould face an uphill battle if he seeks reelection as a Democrat in 2028.
Fetterman has not said whether he will run for a second term.
But as he weighs his options — which include leaving the Democratic Party because of what he considers its anti-Israel sentiment — the senator’s occasional support of Trump’s agenda has contributed to his declining favorability among voters who helped elect him in the first place, the new survey indicates.
“I’m so disappointed in him, I can’t even see straight,” said Joseph Jaskula, a retired salesman from Lewisburg, Union County, who participated in the poll of 760 likely voters conducted by Siena University on behalf of The Inquirer and the New York Times from Aug. 17 to 21.
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Jaskula, a Democratwho said he voted for Fetterman in 2022, said he is particularly upset about the senator’s votes for several of Trump’s nominees and for the war in Iran.
“He voted with the Republicans on that,” Jaskula, 72, said of the war powers resolutions that aimed to rein in Trump. “And he’s had some other ones where we wonder if he’s a Republican or a Democrat.”
Fetterman’s standing among Pennsylvania voters overall remains split, according to the poll.
He is viewed favorably by 49% and unfavorably by 43% of all likely voters in the state. That was nearly the same result as the last time the Inquirer/New York Times/Siena poll asked about Fetterman’s favorability, in May 2024.
But the difference between now and then — when Fetterman was campaigning against Trump’s election and only two years removed from his own sweeping victory in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary — is who is supporting him.
Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senators John Fetterman (left) and Dave McCormick appear together at June event in Philly to promote the savings accounts for kids that were part of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Fetterman outperforms McCormick with GOP voters
In almost the exact opposite breakdown compared with about two years ago, just one in five likely Democratic voters reported having a favorable view of Fetterman, while four out of five likely Republican voters said they have a favorable view.
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Don Levy, director of the Siena Research Institute, called the Democratic senator’s numbers “shocking.”
“If you didn’t know any difference, you would immediately assume that Fetterman and McCormick are both Republicans, and that Fetterman is an extremely popular Republican senator amongst Republicans,” Levy said. “I can’t think of another case exactly like this.”
GOP leaders, who are fighting to retain control of the Senate this fall, have said they would welcome the Pennsylvania Democrat into their fold.
And Fetterman has raised the prospect of leaving the party, possibly becoming an independent, if Democrats oppose Israel as an “official” part of their platform. He has staunchly supported the country in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, and as Democrats have become increasingly critical of Israel’s counterattack.
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Fetterman has opposed fellow Democrats’ efforts to end the United States’ assistance to Israel’s offensive measures. He has also become the most vocal Democratic supporter of both countries’ attacks against Iran, an issue that also remains deeply unpopular among Pennsylvania voters.
“He’s a voice in the party, standing up for what’s right,” said Nicholas Morabito, a 32-year-old warehouse worker in Butler who participated in the poll.
A registered Republican, Morabito said he would consider voting for Fetterman in 2028, regardless of which party label accompanies his name on the ballot.
“I don’t think there’s very much difference between the two of us. Just the difference in party,” Morabito said.
Fetterman has acknowledged the shift in support. He wrote in his 2025 memoir that he was “completely at peace” with the idea that his support of Israel might cost him his Senate seat. And in interviews, he has repeatedly said that, as a swing-state senator, he should work with and not demonize the other party.
A plurality of likely voters — 47% — say Fetterman is “about right” when it comes to supporting or opposing Trump, according to the poll. About 38% said he supports Trump too much, 6% said he opposes Trump too much, and 9% did not answer.
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But Democratic voters have indicated a strong desire for their elected officials to push back against Trump, and Fetterman’s declining support among them appears to be due in part to that shift during Trump’s second term. About 67% of likely Democratic voters said Fetterman supports the president too much, while 20% said he gets it “about right.”
“Fetterman has been such an interesting, unique personality now since he broke onto the scene,” Levy said. “Given the state of play right now, Democrats are just angry that he was elected. Democrats are supposed to act like Democrats, and this shows that their perception of him is that he is not.”
More than half of likely voters in Pennsylvania’s forthcoming midterm elections disapprove of President Donald Trump’s job performance, and he is drastically underwater among the state’s electorate on key issues — some of which helped him win a second term in 2024.
Trump, who won the crucial swing state by nearly two percentage points in November 2024, now has an approval rating of 39% and a disapproval rating of 58% among Pennsylvania’s likely voters, according to an Inquirer/New York Times/SienaUniversity poll published Tuesday.
The poll, which was conducted from Aug. 17 to 21 among 760 likely Pennsylvania voters, raises questions about how voters’ perception of the president will affect November’s midterms, when many Pennsylvanians will cast their ballots in four critical swing district races that could determine which party controls the U.S. House.
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Even among his Pennsylvania supporters who were surveyed, Trump faces some of his lowest approval ratings regarding his handling of the war in Iran and cost-of-living issues, according to the poll, counteracting campaign promises that proved successful in 2024: ending foreign wars and helping people pay their bills.
Once again,the economy will likely be at the front of voters’ minds heading into November — 22% of Pennsylvanians polled said it is their top issue in the governor’s race — and it could also serve as an indicator for the outcome of House races where Republicans will be on the defensive.
“Certainly it’s got to be a drag on their fortunes,” said Don Levy, director of the Siena Research Institute.
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Trump losing ground on issues that propelled him to White House
The new polling on Trump’s management of top concerns facing the United States — particularly the economy and the cost of living — shows how the issues that helped propel him to the White House in 2024 are now souring his approval among Pennsylvanians, including some who previously voted for him.
Among likely voters in the Keystone State, 39% approve and 61% disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy. On his handling of the cost of living, 33% said they approve and 66% disapprove.
The data come as voters continue to grapple with rising costs, including unusually high gas prices, and grocery prices that have been increasing for nearly six years. Trump’s tariffs, one of the defining policies of his first year back in office, also raised prices for consumers and businesses.
Now, a quarter of Pennsylvanians who voted for the president in 2024 say they disapprove of how he is handling of the cost of living.
Michael Patterson, 60, of Bucks County, is one of them.
Though Patterson said Trump’s term has been“great” overall, he was expecting more from the president on the economy and costs.
“The prices are still too high, interest rates are still too high,” Patterson said. “We still haven’t seen anything from that promise yet.”
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Trump’s messaging on the economy in 2024 was part of why he won Pennsylvania with more votes than any other statewide GOP candidate in history. Pennsylvania voters cited Trump’s promises to bring costs down as a top reason that they voted for him and overlooked Democrats’ warnings about what his election could mean for democracy.
Trump is also hurting on other issues that helped boost him to the presidency, including his promise to end wars. Thirty-two percent of likely voters in Pennsylvania approve of Trump’s handling of the war in Iran and 66% disapprove — including 30% of Trump voters.
Kay Skripac, who voted for Trump in 2024, said thatthough she supports the president on almost every other issue, “I just don’t think that we should have invaded or bombed Iran. I was very surprised, because I didn’t vote for that.”
The 72-year-oldindependent votersaid, despite thinking Trump has done strong work on the economy (she says her retirement portfolio doubled from 2016 to 2026), she is feeling the war’s impact at the gas pump.
“I want everything to just be normal and stay the same, because everything was fine,” said Skripac, who lives in Crawford County. “We weren’t involved in any wars. You didn’t have to worry about any friends or loved ones potentially getting killed. I don’t like that at all.”
Trump’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict also received low marks from voters, with 62% disapproval, compared with 36% approval.
Republican Sandra Faust, 40, approves of Trump’s handling of that conflict. But her support does not extend to the war in Iran, which Trump launched in coordination with Israel.
Faust, who voted for Trump two years ago, said she strongly disapproves of the war due to rising gas prices and believes it conflicts with the president’s promise to end wars. The Pittsburgh resident, who has a family member in military training to become a jet refueler, said she wishes the conflict in Iran would end.
“Them dragging it on is not only harming us, locally with gas and, you know, pricing and stuff like that, but it’s putting our military in harm’s way, and I’m not happy about that,” she said.
Faust added that she opposes the war because of her belief in the “America First” ideology. That perspective also makes her supportive of Trump’s immigration agenda, she said.
The president is lagging in Pennsylvanians’ support of his immigration policies — which have included mass deportations and enhanced border security — but the disapproval is not as stark. Among likely voters, 44% approve of his handling of immigration and 55% disapprove.
“We are not responsible for taking care of the world’s problems,” Faust said.
What does Trump’s approval rating mean for November in Pa.?
So what does this mean for the midterms?
Time will tell.
But 51% of Pennsylvania’s likely voters who were polled indicated they would be more likely to vote for a Democrat in their congressional district, and 44% said they would support a Republican. More than half, 53%, say they would want to see a flip of control in the House, putting Democrats in charge, while 44% say they would want to see the GOP maintain control.
The polling for the GOP in November is not as bleak as Trump’s numbers, butitshows where voters’ heads are a little more than two months away from the midterms, when Pennsylvanians will weigh in on four competitive swing district congressional races.
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Both parties are targeting GOP-held seats in Bucks County’s 1st Congressional District, the Lehigh Valley’s 7th Congressional District, the Scranton area’s 8th Congressional District, and the Harrisburg area’s 10th Congressional District.
Democrats are hoping that a message focused on affordability and tying opponents to Trump will usher in wins this fall. For instance, Democrat Bob Harvie in the heated 1st Congressional District race published a new campaign platform recently that focuses mainly on addressing economic issues.
“The task of Republicans running in various congressional districts, or for the governor of the state, is going to be to somehow separate themselves from the perception that Pennsylvanians have about the job that the head of their party is doing on the economy,” said Levy, the Siena polling director.
But for Democrats, connecting Harvie’s opponent, longtime Republican U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, to Trump could be a harder sell. The Bucks County lawmaker consistently outperforms his party and has survived one blue wave after another.
The poll’s findings signal that both parties may also have to think about their branding to the public — 50% of respondents said the Democratic Party is too far to the left and 47% said Republican Party is too far to the right.
Republicans will also have to consider Trump’s unpopularity, especially with women.Sixty-two percent of female likely voters in Pennsylvania disapprove of Trump’s policies, while 34% approve. The president is also strugglingwith men — a key base for him in 2024: 51% of men disapprove of Trump’s policies, compared with 46% who approve.
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Democrat Vincent Russo, 78, of Lackawanna County, where Republican U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan faces a challenge from Democrat Paige Cognetti in the 8th District, said he will be voting straight blue on his ballot in November and thinks opposition to Trump’s policies will motivate his party to get out to the polls.
“I think the people are starting to see he does nothing but lie,” Russo said.
Staff writers Michelle Baruchman and Gillian McGoldrick contributed to this article.
With a little more than two months until Election Day, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro has a double-digit lead over his Republican challenger, Stacy Garrity, among likely Pennsylvania voters in the race to lead the critical swing state — an election that could also serve as an audition for the 2028 presidential primary.
Shapiro holds a 16-percentage-point lead over Garrity, the state treasurer, according to a new poll of 760 likely voters conducted from Aug. 17 through 21 by The Inquirer, the New York Times, and Siena University.
The numbers could foreshadow another commanding victory for Shapiro, as he hopes his popularity trickles into other down-ballot races, including four congressional districts that national Democrats think they can flip. Shapiro is also trying to flip the state Senate for the first time in 30 years and deliver a Democratic trifecta in the statehouse.
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A majority of Pennsylvania voters — 60% — have a favorable opinion of the governor, compared with Garrity, who is viewed favorably by just 37% in the state.
Shapiro’s popularity also eclipses that of President Donald Trump, according to the poll. Sixty percent of likely Pennsylvania voters approve of the job Shapiro is doing as governor, while 39% approve of Trump, who won the state two years ago.
Lora Peluso, 63, a Democrat and retired catering director from Pittsburgh, said Shapiro has been a shield in Pennsylvania against some of Trump’s most harmful policies affecting low-income and older people.
“I think [Shapiro] is trustworthy,” said Peluso, who participated in the poll. “His policies are things that actually benefit people, the average working person, seniors.”
Garrity still unknown by some Republicans
Pennsylvania Republicans this year had hoped to avoid another walloping by Shapiro, who has won three times statewide, with fears that a weak gubernatorial candidate could negatively affect the rest of the Republican ticket. So the state GOP took the unprecedented move of endorsing Garrity in September 2025 — approximately 14 months before the election — to try to raise her profile.
Despite securing Trump’s endorsement, Garrity has struggled to raise money, attract support from national Republicans, or compete with Shapiro’s $13 million in ad buys so far this cycle. Her campaign has spent $679,000 on ad buys thus far, according to media-tracking firm AdImpact, as it seeks to introduce the candidate to voters.
Now, with 70 days until the election, a quarter of likely Republican voters still did not know Garrity or know enough about her to form an opinion of her, according to the poll.
Meanwhile, Shapiro maintains favorable opinions among 27% of Trump’s 2024 supporters, and 35% of registered Republicans approve of the job he is doing as governor, the poll found.
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Michael Patterson, a Republican from Trumbauersville, Bucks County, who supported Trump in 2024, said he plans to support Shapiro in November because he likes the job the governor is doing and because he does not know much about Garrity besides what he has seen on social media.
“Honestly, I don’t know much about her,” Patterson, 60, said. “I guess I don’t see advertisements on the TV. Other than Facebook, I really don’t see her. The stuff I see on Facebook is just typical partisan stuff.”
Shapiro, on the other hand, appears more moderate and independentfrom his party in Patterson’s eyes.
“He’s kinda doing his own thing. I have a lot of respect for that. He’s not playing partisan games,”Patterson said, contrasting Shapiro with Democrats in California and New York.
Michael Patterson, a Bucks County Republican voter pictured in his Trumbauersville home, plans to vote for Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro over Republican nominee Stacy Garrity. William Thomas Cain / For The Inquirer
This attitude shows up among other Republicans, too, said Don Levy, the director of the Siena Research Institute.
“Shapiro is seen as sufficiently middle of the road,” Levy said. “He’s got 35% of Republicans approving of the job that he’s doing as governor. That’s a really impressive number in today’s world.”
Other Republicans like Steven Keenan, 70, of Ridley Township, are all in for Garrity, citing her military experience and support for Trump.
“[Shapiro’s] a big phony. He’s a politician,” Keenan said. “She is, too, but she’s been through the wars. I think she’s earned her place. I think we should give a woman a chance.”
A majority of Pennsylvania voters trust Shapiro over Garrity to handle top issues facing the state, including the economy, cost-of-living increases, the Trump administration, immigration, and doing what is best for ordinary Pennsylvanians.
Tina Hoffert, 68, of Lenhartsville, Berks County, said she has not heard much about Garrity, but plans to vote for her in November because she is unsatisfied with Shapiro’s leadership.
“He’s forever bashing Trump,” Hoffert, a Republican, said. “I’m sorry, I don’t care whether you like him or not, he’s our president. You work with him. You don’t fight him. And if there’s things you don’t like that he’s doing, then you go in there and you have discussions.”
Shapiro’s presidential prospects
If Shapiro is reelected in a landslide victory this November, it becomes even more likely that he jumps into the 2028 presidential race as the governor of a key swing state with19electoral votes.
Among those surveyed who said they plan to vote in the Democratic primary in two years, 86% said they would be likely to support him — though the poll did not compare him with other potential primary candidates.
Other prospective candidates include former Vice President Kamala Harris, Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and JB Pritzker of Illinois, U.S. Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Jon Ossoff of Georgia, and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
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Shapiro has brushed off questions about his ambitions and told a reporter Saturday, in response to whether he would commit to serving a four-year term in office, that “the only thing that I’m focused on — and the only thing anybody should be focused on — is winning in November and being a check on this president’s chaos, cruelty, and corruption.”
Most voters in the poll — 58% — said that if Shapiro decidesto run for president, doing so either would not distract from his role as governor or would not keep him from being effective at governing.
“I mean, it would be a distraction, of course, but I think he’s a professional and a hard worker, and he would figure it out. It seems like he hires good people, too,” said Peter Hewitt, 62, of Devon, a Democrat who supports Shapiro’s reelection bid.
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Shapiro’s potential candidacy has largely centered on his electability, especially his ability to win the top office in the nation’s premier swing state. He has pitched himself as a Democratic governor more interested in working with Republicans to make meaningful improvements to the state than in picking partisan fights, and voters agree: 58% of respondents said he is neither too far to the left nor to the right.
“He’s done a good job of just being more of a moderate, middle-of-the-road Democrat,” said Andrew Perez, a 58-year-old self-described independent voter in Pittsburgh. He said he appreciated Shapiro’s focus on improving roads and highways and not “just blindly disagreeing” with Trump.
“I think we need a strong presidential candidate who will try to unite the country instead of just keeping it being divisive, so I think that I’d be pretty likely to vote for him [for president],”said Perez, a physician.
Montiese McKenzie, 46, of West Philadelphia, said she is supporting Shapiro for a second term, but is not quite yet sold on a presidential run. She said she has not seen him rise to the level of “fighter” she thinks the Democratic Party needs, and believes as of now, she would be more likely to support someone else in the Democratic primary.
“You see people like Jon Ossoff and JB Pritzker, and they’re not putting up with it. They don’t make it pretty anymore,” McKenzie said. “If I saw some of that in Shapiro, I might be more likely to support him as a presidential candidate. Until then, I’m not sure he has the gumption.”
Shapiro has signed on to dozens of lawsuits against Trump’s administration on a host of issues, from tariffs to gender-affirming care.
But to win the party’s nomination, Shapiro would have to defeat more progressive candidates and make the case for his more centrist approach.
Montiese McKenzie, 48, poses for a portrait near her home in West Philadelphia on Monday, Aug. 24, 2026. McKenzie is a supporter of Gov. Josh Shapiro’s reelection, but is hesitant to back his potential presidential run in 2028.Allie Ippolito / For The Inquirer
Nearly half, 47%, of respondents said he has been just “about right on support of Israel,” with 14% saying he has been too supportive and 19% saying he has been not supportive enough.
Should Shapiro launch a presidential campaign, Hewitt wants to see him “come out on the right side.”
Hewitt, who emphasized his support for Jewish people in his community, said he considers the Israeli government’s actions toward Palestinian people in Gaza to be genocidal. More than 73,000 Palestinian people have been killed in Gaza since the war began nearly three years ago, and multiple international institutions have said Israel’s actions violate human rights.
“I don’t think it’s really that big of a deal for governors per se. He’s not going to vote on national policy as the governor of Pennsylvania,” Hewitt said. But he added: “He does have a voice, and if he’s thinking about a next step beyond Pennsylvania, then he will have to come out in regard to that issue.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has awarded more than $17 million in contracts, mostlyto businesses, in the Philadelphia area since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, with more than half of that money going to a firearms manufacturer in Montgomery County.
The local data, compiled by The Appeal, highlights the Trump administration’s spending related to raids and enforcement operations as the agency carries out the president’s mass deportation agenda, including its purchases of weaponry.
Geissele Automatics, a firearms manufacturer based in North Wales, has the largest and perhaps most consequential contract with ICE in the Philadelphia area.
The company — which specializes in selling high-grade, AR-15-style semiautomatic weapons and parts to consumers, law enforcement agencies, and the military — entered a contract with ICE for nearly $9.1 million in September 2025, according to federal data.
The payment was for the delivery of “precision long guns and accessories” to support ICE agents as well as the agency’s tactical programs, the data show. It’s unclear where the equipment is being used.
Neither the company’s founder, Bill Geissele, nor a representative from the company’s sales team returned a request for comment.
Nationwide,ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection has dramatically increased spending on firearms in Trump’s second term, according to a report earlier this year from U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), leading to outcry from Democratic officials and voters who say the agency has become a militarized force with little oversight or accountability.
That outrage continued this month when Democrats voiced their opposition to ICE’s plan to provide ICE officers with electric shock gloves. Schiff’s oversight report, released earlier this year, called ICE and CBP’s contracts for weaponry a “misuse of taxpayer dollars to maximally arm federal immigration agents.”
A spokesperson for Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that $17 million in contracts in the Philadelphia region is “simply not accurate” and “conflates nationwide ICE contracts” with spending in the area.
“ICE contracts with vendors across the country to support its law enforcement mission. The existence of a federal contract, a vendor located in a particular region, or a nationwide contract vehicle does not mean that the full value of that contract was spent in Philadelphia,” the spokesperson said
“Reporting should accurately distinguish between nationwide contract values, vendor locations, places of performance, and actual federal expenditures before presenting a misleading figure as fact,” they added.
The details on the contracts come as residents and advocates in the Philadelphia region and nationwide are continuing to remain vigilant of ICE’s presence in their communities. Earlier this year, ICE struck deals to retrofit warehouses in Pennsylvania and New Jersey into mass detention centers before later backtracking after residents and leaders in both states voiced opposition.
Bill Geissele — who hosts the manufacturer’s podcast Shots Fired in Anger —has donated to Republican elected officials in Pennsylvania, including U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick and U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser. Geissele’s contract, while not the company’s first with the federal government, is by far the most significant contract between the gun manufacturer and the federal agency on record.
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In August 2024 for example, under former President Joe Biden’s administration, Geissele Automatics entered a $12,224 contract with ICE for equipment to support a “sniper sustainment” course, according to data compiled by The Appeal.
By 2025, when Trump returned to the White House and significantly ramped up ICE operations nationwide, those contracts ballooned.
On top of the $9.1 million contract that year, Geissele was paid $27,936 to provide training rifles and magazines for the agency’s Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs, as well as $16,544 for rifles and accessories required for testing and evaluation.
ICE also took its spending across the river to Burlington County in New Jersey, where it awarded George J. Petronis Enterprises Inc., a gun shop, slightly more than $505,000 since the start of Trump’s second term for training ammunition and ink cartridges for 9mm training ammo to support ICE’s Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs in Fort Benning, Ga.
George J. Petronis Enterprises Inc. did not return an email requesting comment.
The Appeal’s dashboard also shows a contract for rental of a firing range between ICE and the county’s fire academy, located in Conshohocken, that has existed since at least 2021. But Montgomery County officials said Friday that the contract is with the broader Department of Homeland Security — which ICE is a part of — and not with the federal immigration enforcement agency directly.
County Commissioner Jamila Winder, a Democrat, said that the academy is used by local, state, and federal agencies for law enforcement training but “this facility is not available for training for those engaged in immigration enforcement activities.”
Other contracts highlighted by The Appeal dashboard may also be directly tied to DHS, instead of ICE.
Earlier this year, Montgomery County’s Board of Commissioners passed a resolution restricting federal immigration enforcement from using county property or resources for noncriminal investigations.
Other local contracts with ICE include a roughly $50,000 contract with the Philadelphia Parking Authority for rental spaces for 16 vehicles and more than $78,000 to Ricoh USA Inc., an office technology company headquartered in Chester County that was also used under the Biden administration. Coast2Coast Shredding LLC, which is headquartered in Montgomery County but shreds documents in California, received more than $94,000 from ICE.
Whitney Biennial curators travel the length and breadth of the country, paying visits to artists in their studios, surveying their work, and picking creators whose work they think represents the present climate of art making in the country. Together, they bring a once-every-two-years expansive exhibition to New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, often regarded as the most prestigious and faithful register of American art.
Past biennial curators — the 2024 edition was curated by the Institute of Contemporary Art’s former associate curator, Meg Onli — have embarked on these travels separately, but for the country’s 250th year and the biennial’s 82nd, Whitney curators Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer traveled together.
Whitney Museum of American Art’s Biennial 2026 curators Drew Sawyer, Marcela GuerreroBryan Derballa
“We wanted to just listen to artists and see where they were at, see what they were thinking about, how they were processing recent events,” said Guerrero. They traveled for a bit over a year, nationally and internationally, and visited more than 300 artists.
“The idea of relationality and how do we relate in different ways” at political and interpersonal levels, is a theme that eventually emerged from their survey, Guerrero said.
While in the past some curators have traveled as far as Hawaii, Guerrero and Sawyer’s short travel to Philadelphia in the winter of 2024 proved equally fruitful.
“Philly was such a productive trip and very coherent in terms of what we were hearing from artists on gentrification, displacement, and the cost of living,” Guerrero said.
Artists in Philadelphia, Sawyer noticed, “seem to be particularly preoccupied with ideas of infrastructure” and there exists a strong sense of connection among them. Several of the city’s artist are graduates of the MFA programs at the University of Pennsylvania and University of the Arts, taught by the same professors like Michelle Lopez (whose work is included in this year’s biennial) and Sharon Hayes (whose work was a part of the 2024 biennial).
Maia Chao, “Being Moved,” 2026. Performance, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, May 14–17, 2026. Commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art.Julieta Cervantes
Performance artists Maia Chao and Jonathan González, both of whose works are part of the biennial, live in West Philadelphia and are friends and collaborators. Emilio Martínez Poppe attended Penn and studied with Lopez, and was particularly interested in the idea of infrastructure from the perspective of the labor of public sector employees to help build and maintain our social and civic architectures.
“A kind of certain institutional critique, I would say, was common” among Philadelphia artists, said Sawyer.
“One of my biggest takeaways is the real vibrancy of the artistic scene in Philadelphia,” he said.
Here are the Philadelphia artists whose works appear in the Whitney Biennial.
West Philadelphia-based artist Maia Chao’s performance pieces “Being Moved’ and “Scores for the Museum Visitor” are part of the 2026 Whitney Biennial.Amelia Golden
Maia Chao
“Scores for the Museum Visitor,” “Being Moved”
Maia Chao’s performance art emerges from studying social behavior. Where some might see the mundane walk from home to work, she sees choreography, a rhythm, and an interaction of the body with its surroundings.
Her biennial performance piece Being Moved, choreographed by Lena Engelstein, takes inspiration from how museum visitors interact with the art. “It reframes the focus from the art itself to the visitors’ experience,” she said. The title refers to both “this potential to be moved by an artwork,” but also “of the ways that the institution makes us move, makes us move our bodies, and makes us behave in the presence of extremely valuable assets.”
That tension of the push and pull of a museum — where its mission might seem inviting and welcoming but once inside, rules around how to behave, what to touch abound — is at the center of Chao’s piece.
Maia Chao, “Being Moved,” 2026. Performance, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, May 14–17, 2026. Commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art.Julieta Cervantes
When visiting the biennial beyond Chao’s performance schedule, visitors view Scores for the Museum Visitor as a set of prompts, an invitation to create “micro performances” of their own.
Among the scores are: “Identify another museum visitor. From afar, copy their movements as closely as possible.” “While holding a museum brochure, clasp your hands behind your back. Drop the brochure.” “Find a bench. Take a seat. Imagine the artworks slowly falling to the floor.”
“These are invitations to kind of transgress the rules, [for] engaging with the artwork, or interpreting and encountering an artwork,” the artist said.
Maia Chao, “Being Moved,” 2026. Performance, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, May 14–17, 2026. Commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art.Julieta Cervantes
Chao first caught the curators’ attention with Agents of Deterioration (2024), made in collaboration with Ethan Philbrick, a performance piece commissioned by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Sawyer was drawn in by Chao’s “legacy of institutional critique through affective registers.”
“There’s a real kind of commitment to the institution, even as Maia is critiquing it, which we felt was important in this moment where there’s, from many different directions, an eroding of faith in institutions. We were really interested in the way she both critiques and pushes institutions to do better,” he said.
Artist and Penn professor Michelle Lopez whose “Pandemonium” is part of the 2026 Whitney BiennialKelsey Valencia, Denniston Hill Residency
Michelle Lopez
“Pandemonium”
Pandemonium is a fully Philadelphia piece of art. It was made in collaboration with the Moore College of Art and Design and the Franklin Institute, supported by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and the University of Pennsylvania, filmed at Northeast Philadelphia’s RAIR (Recycled Artist in Residency), premiered at the Fels Planetarium and the Galleries at Moore, and inspired by artist Michelle Lopez’s earlier work exhibited at the ICA.
“Philadelphia is just a really supportive environment for artists,” said Lopez, who is an associate professor of fine arts at Penn’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design, where she leads the sculpture program. “I could not have made that work in New York.”
The video project, as Lopez says, came from a desire to “situate the viewer in the eye of a storm so that they could feel, on a somatic level, what it was like to have their environment really collapse around them.”
At the Whitney Museum, Pandemonium plays on a domed screen on the ceiling of the gallery and demands that the viewer sit below it and look up. What they witness is things moving around with a violent force against the sky — debris, newspapers, packaging, clothing (including Lopez’s own and her son’s old underwear), and other markers of extreme human consumption.
In order to make this mayhem happen, Lopez, who is trained in sculpture, built a tornado machine using a robotic contraption, industrial fans, and leaf blowers. Together they created a simulation of a tornado at RAIR which was then filmed and eventually screened in the Fels Planetarium.
“A lot of the work imagistically, came from seeing images of tornadoes and hurricanes wiping out towns. I was really interested in the way nature could collapse culture,” said Lopez, who lives in South Philadelphia.
Installation view of Whitney Biennial 2026 (Whitney Museum of American Art, March 8–August 2026). Michelle Lopez, “Pandemonium,” 2025.Jason Lowrie/BFA.com
While a Whitney gallery is nowhere close to the grandeur and wonder of the Fels Planetarium, the 360-format video manages to suck in a viewer who feels almost weightless as the feeling of being thrown around by the forces of nature is simulated.
When the curators visited Philadelphia for studio visits, “top on our list was Michelle Lopez,” said Sawyer. “We were aware that she had been working on this major moving image project that departed from what she’s most well known for, which is sculpture. So we were really excited to meet with her, especially because her work had not been a part of the biennial before.”
Artist Emilio Martínez Poppe, whose work “Civic Views” was on display in the City Hall courtyard last year. This year, it’s a part of the Whitney Biennial.Neal Santos
Emilio Martínez Poppe
“Civic Views”
Like Lopez’s Pandemonium, artist Emilio Martínez Poppe’s Civic Views is an artwork that is only possible because the city of Philadelphia exists. Several Philadelphians have already seen Martínez Poppe’s workwhen it was on view last year in the City Hall courtyard.
Martínez Poppe was then studying city planning and working toward an MFA in visual art from Penn when he was mulling over the future of city planning graduate students who’d go on to join the public service workforce.
It was in conversation with professors that he found out that the oldest surviving daguerreotype in the country, which is stored at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, was taken by Joseph Saxon, who was a public sector employee working for the U.S. Mint.
“That was shot out of the U.S. Mint, where the Widener Building is today. He’s following Daguerre’s technological recipe, he uses it to photograph what he sees through the window. Unlike Daguerre, who was a theater entrepreneur, Saxton was a public sector employee who was doing something he was not hired to do,” said Martínez Poppe. “He was hired to work on the newly nationalized currency and he was tinkering with this invention in his office, and that view is one of the only real entry points that we have into his position at his job there, which is interesting.”
Emilio Martínez Poppe looks out the windows at the Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services office on Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025 in Philadelphia. Emilio Martínez Poppe is working on a project curated by Jameson Paige that documents the views from municipal service buildings. The project also includes interviews with city workers.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
Inspired, Martínez Poppe visited municipal buildings all across Philadelphia and photographed views from the inside out so he could document what city workers see from their windows. Alongside, he conducted “dozens of long form, anonymized interviews” with city workers from more than 20 agencies.
“I would ask them, what was your perspective of city government before working here, who taught you about the value of public sector work? Often, so many people would tell me it was their mothers.”
Civic Views is a result of those conversations — a coming together of anonymized interview snippets and photographs displayed in a scaffolding-like structure in the middle of a Whitney gallery. “It’s the scaffolding that dissolves the authoritative center, even in the Whitney Biennial,” said Martínez Poppe.
An installation view of Emilio Martínez Poppe’s “Civic Views.”Summer Surgent-Gough
“The public sector is vulnerable to radical change, for better or worse. With my work, I want to say that it’s time to seize the means, seize our technology to create the world that belongs to us,” the artist, who now works for the New York City Mayor’s Office as a civic arts programs coordinator, said.
“We need to assume that responsibility. That’s why the project centers the voices of workers and how their positions shape their views. But also how their views shape the structures that we are living in and living through.”
On the curators’ Philadelphia visit, Guerrero recalled seeing Civic Views and people of the city interacting with it. “It was very touching,” she said. Her favorite part about the work is that it uses “the tropes of the camera, of the interview, of bureaucracy, but then upends it completely.”
Installation view of Whitney Biennial 2026 (Whitney Museum of American Art, March 8–August 2026). “Civic Views” (2024) by Emilio Martínez Poppe, “Philadelphia Housing Authority, South,” 2024; Emilio Martínez Poppe, “Philadelphia Department of Sanitation, North,” 2024; Emilio Martínez Poppe along with works of Kainoa GruspeJason Lowrie/BFA.com
“You see how important the job of a public servant is,” she said, “and how you know they’re in kind of a double bind because they’re the face of the government and also they receive the same services they provide … their kids are in the public school system, they depend on the Department of Sanitation.”
She finds this complexity “beautifully translated” in Civic Views. “You can really put yourself in the shoes of the person who’s speaking and feel the care that really goes into this type of work that should not be overlooked.”
Artist Jonathan González whose performance piece ‘magic hour — golden time’ is part of the 2026 Whitney BienialRudy Gerson
Jonathan González
“magic hour — golden time”
Like Chao, Jonathan González’s work also sees a two-pronged approach with performance and photography. Three Super 8 photographs, A, B, and C, mark the locations, across the museum, of the three-hour long performance piece presented by González and their co-artists.
“Each photograph shares with the performers how to perform the work,” said González, who also lives in West Philadelphia. Magic hour-golden time, they said, “is a double leaning. Magic hour comes from the usage in broadcast television when you have the highest viewership. And golden hour is that moment of the sunset. And so the piece is merging this experience of looking out and also being seen over three hours.”
Jonathan González, “magic hour–golden time,” 2026. Rehearsal performance, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, May 12, 2026. Commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art.Julieta Cervantes
From three terraces around the museum, the performers follow the sun’s movement for three hours. In the first hour, the performers “embody the architecture that surrounds the museum” and makes up the city’s skyline. The second hour, they said, “is a procedure of call and response … the dancers dance with every dance you’ve ever danced, and take information from one another as dancers, as well as from the pedestrians.”
The final hour, González said, is performed on an inaccessible terrace. “It can only be viewed from across the street, you cannot see it from the museum. It’s called the ‘Endless Bow,’ and it’s 60 minutes of bowing to the sun and bowing to the world and bowing to the performance.”
Philadelphia, the former University of the Arts professor said, gives them “the capacity to slow down to hear these voices, and have dreams, visions come to you.” The city allows them the time to spend time in the studio with friends like Chao and inspires them to “collaborating not toward a particular product or aim, but much of the time experimentation.”
Jonathan González, “magic hour–golden time,” 2026. Performance, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, May 12, 2026. Commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art.Julieta Cervantes
“Just the fertile nature of Philly as a historical Black geography has been really important for me to really situate the questions of time and what happens to a city at the late stage of industrialization, and to really think critically about what a group can do, what mutuality is,” they said.
“Certain artists just stay in your mind, and you want to come back and see what they are working on,” said Guerrero recalling her first tryst with González’s work. “The work felt so mature. There’s this notion of how, through improvisation, you can be attuned to your surroundings. In the case of their performance, they make these other effective strategies [for attunement] that don’t always rely on the senses, and that is something that is very present in the show.”
The Whitney Biennial 2026 is on view through Aug. 23 and on partial view, which will include all of the Philadelphia artists’ static works, through Oct. 12. The Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort St., New York. whitney.org
New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed a bill Thursday that offers greater protections for reproductive and gender-affirming healthcare — both for patients and for providers in the state — by making it a crime to intervene against such care.
The new law strengthens existing reproductive healthcare protections and also broadens them to now include gender-affirming care. It is meant to cover residents as well as people traveling to the state.
“This is a very big deal. It’s amazing,” said Martha Madrigal, a transgender woman who leads the Collingswood chapter of PFLAG, a national advocacy group for the families of LGBTQ+ people.
She added that the law is a “solid declaration” that interfering with transgender rights “does not stand in New Jersey. We’re letting out an enormous sigh of relief today.”
The legislation expands New Jersey’s shield laws by expressly including gender-affirming care in the definition of “protected reproductive healthcare services.”
Essentially, the law creates a new crime for interfering with someone trying to access reproductive healthcare, such as an abortion, or gender-affirming care.
It is now a fourth-degree crime (a low-level felony like shoplifting, punishable by up to 18 months in prison) to injure, threaten, intimidate, or physically block patients or providers, or to damage property in an effort to interfere with such care.
The law would also protect providers from extradition to other states that have banned abortion or gender-affirming care for minors.
Sherrill said New Jersey is “standing firm in defense of reproductive freedoms — including the right to choose and the right to receive gender-affirming care.”
In comments after the signing, Sherrill referenced “attacks” and efforts to impose restrictions on access to abortion and gender-affirming healthcare by the Trump administration and Republican-led states.
She said the transgender community has been “relentlessly attacked” by the Trump administration.
“They’ve pulled tactics straight out of the ‘Red Scare’ playbook to restrict transgender people’s healthcare,” Sherrill contended.
Since returning to office last year, President Donald Trump has issued orders to block federal funding for gender-affirming care for people under 19, oust transgender military personnel, and prevent transgender people from using the gender they self-identify as on passports.
“We are not going to pay for our innocent children to undergo these barbaric surgeries and practices, which result in unthinkable and irreversible harm to their young bodies,” Trump said on Truth Social earlier this month after Medicaid ended reimbursement for hormone treatment and surgeries for minors.
Surgeries for minors are extremely rare. And fewer than 1 in 1,000 U.S. adolescents receive medication for gender-affirming care, according to a Harvard University study released last year.
State Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D., Essex), a chief sponsor of the bill and the Senate’s majority leader, said the bill makes New Jersey “a beacon of hope” in the nation.
“You can’t tell us what we can read on a library shelf but want to be up in our uterus in an exam room,” she said.
The law empowers patients and providers to take legal action against individuals who interfere with their access to or delivery of protected care.
And it protects healthcare providers from professional penalties or adverse actions involving their medical malpractice insurance for providing care that is legal in New Jersey.
Speaking for healthcare providers in New Jersey, Kristyn Brandi and Catherine Obando, doctors from Union who are preparing to open a clinic providing abortions and gender-affirming care, praised the law as an assurance that providers could deliver care without “risking their freedom or professional license” in the state.
“We are grateful to know that our patients and staff will be protected from criminalization and harassment,” Brandi and Obando said in a statement as founders of the Luminosas Wellness Collective.
