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Josh Shapiro joins lawsuit against Trump administration’s plan to withhold disaster aid to pressure states on voter data

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro was one of 26 Democratic officials from across the nation to join a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s administration over its efforts to compel states into sharing raw voter data by threatening federal funding for natural disasters.

“Withholding this funding will make our communities less safe and would be dangerous under any circumstance, but doing this in an attempt to undermine states’ authority over elections is reckless and unconstitutional,” Shapiro in a statement Thursday.

New Jersey and Delaware are among the other states on the Illinois-led lawsuit. The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island, comes amid escalating tensions between Democratic-run states and the federal government over how best to ensure noncitizens are not voting in any elections — a situation these states say happens extremely rarely.

But New Jersey’s admission Tuesday that about 6,600 noncitizens were inadvertently added to the state’s voter rolls, due to a system error in the state’s department of motor vehicles voter registration program, has thrust the issue into the national spotlight as these efforts were already underway.

The Department of Homeland Security announced earlier this month that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would require states to hand over their unredacted voter rolls and adhere to significant changes in their election administration in order to receive funding for preparation and recovery from catastrophic disasters, such as major storms.

The policy puts nearly $6 million in federal aid at jeopardy for Pennsylvania, according to Shapiro.

Shapiro has routinely signed on to lawsuits against the Trump’s administration, particularly when federal funding to the state has come under threat.

Pennsylvania election officials have repeatedly declined to hand over unredacted voter rolls to the Trump administration, citing privacy concerns.

New Jersey has also refused to provide voter roll data to the Trump administration, though the federal government is using the state’s registration mishap to justify its request.

“We are not in the practice of turning this kind of personally identifying data over to the federal government because we have seen them weaponize it … and they don’t have a reputation for keeping it private, either,” New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said after a news conference Thursday.

As for the FEMA funding, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said in a social media post Thursday that the Trump administration “threatens our safety when it plays politics with these funds.”

While most of the plaintiffs are attorneys general, Shapiro was one of two governors to join the complaint, along with Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, another potential 2028 presidential contender who also leads a state with a Republican attorney general.

In a prime-time address last week, Trump called for an overhaul of U.S. election administration and ticked through old debunked claims about his 2020 election loss.

Pennsylvania and New Jersey are among four states — along with California and Nevada, which also joined the suit — that the Trump administration is targeting for additional scrutiny over their voter rolls, according to a document posted to the White House website last week. The one-pager claimed widespread instances of noncitizen voting, much broader than what New Jersey said it uncovered, though election experts have suggested caution when examining these numbers.

“The Trump Administration is holding critical funding for homeland security and disaster response hostage in their latest attempt to take over our elections and perpetuate baseless conspiracy theories,” Shapiro said in his statement Thursday.

July 23, 2026
Wu Shaoping escaped China’s repression, only to get busted by ICE in Pa.

Seven years ago, the walls were closing in on Wu Shaoping in his native China.

Like a firefighter who rushes into a burning building, attorney Wu had watched China’s repressive Communist Party arrest scores of human rights lawyers under a crackdown that began in 2015, and responded by joining their dangerous cause, representing practitioners of Christianity or the Falun Gong sect.

“It is simply a duty of my profession, part of my responsibility, to uphold the legal right of every person,” Wu said in a 2023 video urging his fellow Chinese to quit the Communist Party, or CCP. “It’s one of the things we should do as lawyers.”

In late 2019, China’s totalitarian government began arresting human rights advocates who’d attended a secretive conference in the southern city of Xiamen and charging them with subversion of state power. Wu was at that confab, and — fearing he’d be next — he fled with his wife and young daughter to a place that had offered a safe haven to so many Chinese dissidents: the United States.

Wu’s family traveled to New York on a tourist visa, and before that expired, the attorney applied for political asylum. As his case lagged in the clogged U.S. immigration courts, Wu built a life in his new country.

In 2023, the family moved to a more affordable town just outside Lancaster and joined a local Chinese Christian church, while Wu’s daughter enrolled in Hempfield High School. Wu supported them by driving for Uber, delivering packages for Amazon, and trying his hand at construction work. But he also built up his connections with the diaspora of Chinese dissidents while using his newfound free speech to speak out against the CCP.

It took just one traffic stop in Donald Trump’s America to turn everything upside down.

On July 15, Wu was making Amazon deliveries in Cumberland County, Pa., when a local police officer pulled him over and later placed him in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Despite having a work permit and an active application for asylum — which should have shielded him from deportation — Wu was quickly sent to ICE’s notorious Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Northwestern Pennsylvania, which has been criticized for squalid conditions.

Wu’s arrest and detention have stunned and demoralized the close community of Chinese political refugees on U.S. soil, who for years have faced harassment here from agents and allies of Xi Jinping’s dictatorship. Now they find themselves fighting on a second front as the reality sets in that the U.S. government they saw as their protector is no longer a reliable ally.

“The CCP is the ultimate source of fear, whereas the threat of being detained by ICE like this is more kind of imminent, immediate,” Zhou Fengsuo, who’d been jailed as a student leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising and gained asylum and U.S. citizenship after fleeing here in 1995, told me on Wednesday.

But Wu’s arrest is also a powerful symbol of an inhumane mass deportation policy that has become a mindless and lawless machine of evil banality. It is sweeping up all kinds of refugees to fill its gulag detention quota, without any thought to why its victims have come to America or preserving the U.S. legacy as a safe place for the world’s stateless dissidents, which is getting permanently destroyed by this meat grinder.

How can anyone possibly make sense of the twisted logic of the Trump regime, which in arresting Wu has targeted an outspoken critic of communism and the Chinese government — the same government the president has just accused (with no evidence) of attacking our elections.

But locking up an asylum-seeking Chinese dissident is no less illogical than the Minnesota ICE raids against the Hmong people who came here after aiding the CIA in Laos in the 1960s and ‘70s, or the detention of Afghan nationals who worked with U.S. troops after 2001, or so many others who thought America offered them safety. Instead, there is terror — not just for the detained and their families, but for those who fear they could be next.

The U.S. welcomed this child of the Vietnam War. Why did he die in ICE custody? | Will Bunch

“I came here not only for my freedom, but for the freedom of other Chinese people,” Wu said this week in a conference call from the Moshannon Valley lockup that was translated into English by a dissident friend and reported by Lancaster Online. He added that he shouldn’t have been arrested because “America is a country built on the rule of the law.”

Well, it was supposed to be.

Wu’s passion for fighting injustice has burned since he was a teenager and took a year off from his studies in 1997 to leave his rural home and earn some money by working in bustling Shanghai. The cramped, filthy back alleys where factory workers lived looked nothing like the thriving communist state he’d learned about in school. He started tracking down banned books, where he learned the truth of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre that the government had lied about when he was in third grade.

“It was upside down,” Wu said, as translated in the 2023 video. “They lied to the world and praised themselves, making the butcher the sweetest person in the world.” He said his dissatisfaction with China’s regime only grew after he became an attorney and witnessed rampant bribery, or saw residents whose homes were getting demolished for new projects get beaten by police when they tried to complain.

The turning point was a date that’s little known to most Americans but holds great significance in the Chinese dissident community: July 9, 2015. More than 300 human rights lawyers and activists were detained in a government crackdown that launched that day, while others lost their law license and have been subjected to harassment.

That’s also when Wu stepped up his legal representation of clients targeted by the regime — especially those facing persecution for their religious beliefs in the officially atheist nation. That’s how he came to be one of roughly 20 pro-democracy activists who attended the private December 2019 meeting in Xiamen, and why he fled when two prominent attendees were arrested, and others felt they were in the crosshairs.

Wu Shaoping (right), his wife Li Caoliu, and their daughter after their 2022 baptism in Texas. Handout art

Wu’s life in America with his wife, Li Caoliu, and their daughter, now 17 and entering her senior year at the Lancaster County high school, has been divided between his quest for a normal family life and his tireless political activism. He helped found the Overseas Chinese Human Rights Lawyer Alliance — refugee attorneys who continue to advocate for the rule of law in their homeland.

The family converted to Christianity in 2022, and joined the Chinese Bible Church of Lancaster after moving to Pennsylvania. The pastor there, the Rev. Daniel Luo, described his congregant Wu as a busy man who nonetheless would drop everything to drive cancer-stricken Chinese children from New York City airports to a hospital in Hershey.

“He was so inspired by these persecuted Christians that he represented, and he felt a conviction to follow Christ,” said Wu’s close friend, the Rev. Bob Fu, the leader of the Christian diaspora group China Aid, who baptized the entire family during a 2022 retreat.

Big changes were happening for Wu — except for his asylum case, which stalled as the surge at the southern border in the early 2020s slowed immigration courts to a crawl.

The details of what happened when Wu was stopped by police earlier this month remain somewhat murky. Wu’s attorney in Montgomery County, John C. Visher, didn’t return calls or emails, but he’d previously told the New York Times that Wu was pulled over by police in Mount Holly Springs, Pa., while making his Amazon deliveries, and informed the officer of his work permit and his pending asylum application. But the officer called in ICE, whose agents detained Woo and eventually shipped him to Moshannon Valley.

An ICE spokesperson claimed last weekend that Wu lacks legal status and had overstayed his visa by six years. Advocates find the arrest baffling and are hopeful the case can be resolved in Wu’s favor in a scheduled hearing before an immigration judge on Monday.

His plight has gained support from two members of Congress — Republican Chris Smith of New Jersey and Democrat James McGovern of Massachusetts, who said in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Wu “would face a severe risk of persecution — including detention and harsh punishment — if returned to China.”

Fu said that on this week’s call from Moshannon Valley, his friend was grateful for the support, but “he’s very, very nervous, very concerned about the possible deportation.” His friends and allies agree that returning Wu to China would ensure the arrest he thought he’d avoided when seeking asylum in the United States.

But he’s already been arrested, in a nation where the beacon of democracy has nearly died out.

This man who has done absolutely nothing wrong is behind barbed wire walls in his adopted homeland, in a detention center where others have complained of rotten food and medical neglect. The irony is painful: Trump’s increasingly senseless human rights nightmare has totally lost the plot.

July 23, 2026
U.S. intelligence agency quietly cut about 200 jobs since June 1

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has shrunk more than is publicly known in recent weeks, losing about 200 personnel to firings and reassignments since June 1, according to data the Trump administration shared with Congress this week.

The cuts are the latest to hit ODNI, which was created to oversee and coordinate all U.S. spy agencies but has been targeted by President Donald Trump and many Republicans in Congress. They, and some former U.S. intelligence officials, say it has expanded far beyond what lawmakers intended when it was created two decades ago. The ODNI had about 2,000 employees at the start of Trump’s second term. It is now little more than half that size, according to congressional aides.

The staffing reductions mean that Trump’s nominee for intelligence czar, Jay Clayton, if confirmed by the Senate as expected, while inherit a shrunken organization that has experienced steady upheaval over the last 18 months.

The president in early June tapped federal mortgage regulator Bill Pulte, a political ally with no prior national security experience, to be acting director of national intelligence. Trump said at the time that he wanted Pulte to “start the process” of eliminating some workers.

Trump has often maintained a hostile posture toward professional intelligence personnel and their agencies, claiming they tried to undermine him in his first term, particularly with the compiling of reports on Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election to aid his campaign. The president has dismissed intelligence analysis on a range of issues, from North Korea’s nuclear policy to Iran’s likely reaction to the attacks the U.S. and Israel launched in February.

Neither Pulte nor the White House has publicly detailed what cuts they have made recently at ODNI, which houses the National Counterterrorism Center and was established to fix U.S. intelligence agencies’ failure to share threat information prior to the September 2001 terrorist attacks.

The latest personnel cuts were confirmed by a congressional staff member and another person familiar with the matter. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic information.

ODNI did not respond to requests for comment.

The cuts include some firings, as well as a larger number of intelligence officers who were ordered back to their home agencies, the person familiar with the matter said. Much of ODNI’s workforce consists of personnel detailed from the CIA and other intelligence organizations.

The counterterrorism center has not been affected significantly, officials have said. But there has been a whole-scale hollowing out of the National Intelligence Council, a prestigious analytic body that conducts intelligence community-wide assessments on key topics such as COVID-19’s origins and foreign interference in U.S. elections.

The Washington Post previously reported that about 20 intelligence council personnel have been removed or have chosen to leave, including senior officers who oversaw the production of analysis on Russia, China, and Europe. The top official who oversaw the council was placed on administrative leave.

Neither Clayton nor the Trump administration has articulated a vision of what ODNI should look like or focus on “other than it should be smaller,” said Julia Curlee, who served as a director for intelligence programs in Trump’s White House until last year and recently resigned from the CIA after 20 years as an analyst. “It seems like DNI was just a fat target to punish the ‘deep state.’”

“Morale is pretty terrible, as you would imagine,” Curlee said.

It is unclear how many of the 200 personnel were let go under Pulte, who became acting director of national intelligence on June 19, and how many were let go under his predecessor, Tulsi Gabbard, who left the administration after her husband became ill.

The Trump administration and its allies in Congress have not publicly acknowledged the extent to which ODNI has been shrunk.

“U.S. National Intelligence is operating more efficiently and effectively than ever before, and today, we started a third round of reducing redundant, or noncritical, personnel,” Pulte posted on X on July 10, without revealing details.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) said shortly after Pulte took over that the acting DNI had told him that “a small handful of front-office personnel” were leaving. “Around 45 or 50 career officers” were returning to their home agencies, Cotton said. Cotton’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

The precise size of the workforce at ODNI and other U.S. intelligence agencies is classified. By the time Gabbard departed in mid-June, the workforce had shrunk from about 2,000 in January 2025 to about 1,300.

Clayton was mauled in his Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing by Democrats who decried what they said was his failure to unequivocally state that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, which Trump denies. The Republican-led committee approved his nomination Tuesday on a 9-8 vote, and a full Senate vote is expected next week.

July 23, 2026
A new federal judge for Philadelphia was confirmed by the U.S. Senate

A partner at one of the city’s largest law firms who once worked as a federal prosecutor was confirmed Thursday by the U.S. Senate to become the Philadelphia region’s newest federal judge.

Antonio Pozos’ nomination to join the region’s U.S. District Court was approved by a vote of 49-44. There was no discussion as the Senate voted to approve his nomination, which earns him a lifetime seat on the bench.

Pozos, 44, most recently a partner at Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath, is the first person appointed to the region’s district court since President Donald Trump began his second term last year. During his first term, Trump had five judges confirmed to the region’s federal bench.

Pozos will fill a vacancy created by last year’s retirement of U.S. District Judge Mitchell Goldberg, giving the court 22 district judges and eight senior judges.

District court judges oversee a variety of criminal and civil cases each year, and typically issue the first rulings on legal questions that can sometimes reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

Although some of Trump’s recent nominations to judicial posts across the country have been controversial — including his decision to nominate his former personal lawyer, Emil Bove, to the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit — Pozos’ candidacy received some bipartisan support.

Shortly after his nomination was announced, Pennsylvania’s Democratic senator, John Fetterman — who, under Senate rules, had the ability to block Pozos’ candidacy from advancing — decided to allow the process to move forward, the first time any Democrat had done so for a district court nominee during Trump’s second term.

Fetterman also voted Thursday to confirm Pozos.

During a confirmation hearing last month, U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.) called Pozos a “successful attorney, a strong Pennsylvanian, a decorated public servant, and he’s eminently qualified for this role.”

Pozos was criticized by some Democratic senators during the hearing for hesitating to use the word attacked when describing the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He instead said it “appeared that there was violence and trespass” that day, and called the events “profoundly troubling.”

Pozos lives in Bryn Mawr and is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, according to a questionnaire he submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Before he became a partner at his firm in 2018, the questionnaire said, he spent three years as a prosecutor in the Justice Department’s criminal fraud section in Washington, where he often worked on cases involving healthcare fraud. He previously worked as an associate in a Washington-based firm and clerked for U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga in Virginia.

In Philadelphia, Pozos has served as a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School and is on the board of Drexel University’s Kline School of Law.

With Pozos’ confirmation to the bench, Trump has now appointed six of the Philadelphia region’s district judges, who handle cases that arise from the city, its suburbs, and counties in and around Reading and Allentown. Former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama each appointed seven judges to the bench, and two were appointed by George W. Bush.

Trump has had a more outsize impact on the region’s appellate court, where he has appointed six of the court’s 14 members across his two terms.

July 23, 2026
Smoky skies? Throw shade at the fossil fuel industry.

Last week’s air quality is brought to you by the fossil fuel industry.

To quibble about how much of the Canadian fires are due to human-caused climate change as opposed to poor forest management or normal climatic changes is to not see the fire for the trees. The fossil fuel industry has created human-made climate change, and it has won the war against it.

If your first reaction to this claim is to think the climate is always changing and that there is nothing out of the ordinary about the speed of current global temperature rise, that, too, was brought to you by the fossil fuel industry.

Since the 1970s, this industry has known about the impact of its products on climate. Rather than prioritize planet over profit, it chose to “manufacture uncertainty” about these impacts, fostering climate denial in order to delay government action that might otherwise address the problem.

A woman wears a mask because of the smoke in the air from the wildfires in Canada on Friday in Philadelphia.Aidan T. Gallo / Staff Photographer

The fossil fuel industry’s “playbook” involves sustained and well-funded efforts to diminish climate reduction targets, protect subsidies to fossil fuel companies, and push for “energy independence” that is achieved through more oil and gas drilling. To extend their reach beyond their very successful lobbying of politicians, energy corporations have even sponsored university centers that lend academic credibility to their preferred climate solutions, such as relying on natural gas rather than renewable energies that would have far lower climate impacts.

If thinking about the role of climate change in causing the fires that are to blame for last week’s haze makes you feel guilty about your own energy consumption, that guilt was also brought to you by the fossil fuel industry.

Most prominently, in 2004, British Petroleum funded a $250 million marketing campaign to introduce the public to the “carbon footprint calculator” while rebranding itself as a green energy company. This fostered widespread framing of the climate problem as something caused by individual lifestyles, a problem that could be solved by individual behavior changes such as recycling and the use of energy-efficient appliances.

The carbon footprint framing created and promulgated by the fossil fuel industry focused public concern on voluntary changes that could be made by individuals, rather than on regulation of the industry profiting from sustained use of planet-heating fuels.

That guilt you feel about your own energy consumption was put there to prevent your individual anger from turning into collective anger that could bring down the industry profiting from your fossil fuel consumption.

Protesters carry placards as they cross the Brooklyn Bridge in New York during a Youth Climate Strike march to demand an end to the era of fossil fuels in 2024. Andres Kudacki

But the industry isn’t just making you personally responsible for climate change; it’s using its immense economic power to influence political decisions shaping domestic automobile markets.

It is fitting, then, that a large part of North America is choking on smoke from rampant fires at the end of a fiscal quarter in which China’s BYD electric car company again outsold Tesla in global electric vehicle sales.

In contrast to many countries around the world that are benefiting from access to low-price, high-quality EVs manufactured in China — which will simultaneously diminish the cost of driving and its climate impact — the Trump administration is doing a solid for Elon Musk’s EV company by virtually blockading Chinese EVs from entering the U.S. domestic market through the use of 100% tariffs and related technology bans.

President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk speak to reporters as they sit in a red Model S Tesla vehicle on the South Lawn of the White House in March 2025. Uncredited

Effectively, this protects billionaire Musk’s domestic market dominance while keeping EV prices high enough to ensure Americans stay dependent on gas-powered cars.

It should come as no surprise that the fiscally savvy prime minister of Canada just pivoted to deliver a blow to the fossil fuel industry that President Donald Trump will never even try to land. In a reversal of its protectionist stance, Canada cut its 100% surtax on Chinese EVs down to a 6.1% tariff rate, allowing up to 49,000 Chinese EVs per year, conditioned on Chinese automakers’ investment in joint ventures with Canadian manufacturers.

Hazy skies over the skyline caused by wildfires in Canada on July 17 in Philadelphia.Aidan T. Gallo / Staff Photographer

Access to affordable, high-quality EVs that diminish climate harms currently wreaking havoc on Canada is no consolation for all the humans and animals whose homes, habitats, and lives are currently being burnt to a crisp. But it reflects the behavior of a country that is still capable of doing something besides protecting the profits of its billionaire class.

If you want to do something that will save your bank account and your lungs, stop voting for political candidates who are bought and brought to you by the fossil fuel industry.

Breena Holland is an associate professor of political science and environmental studies at Lehigh University. Her research focuses on domestic environmental policy and air quality in the Lehigh Valley.

July 23, 2026
DOJ says it needs New Jersey’s voter database to verify that more noncitizens aren’t registered to vote

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill revealed Tuesday that roughly 6,600 self-identified noncitizens were wrongly added to the voter rolls ahead of the 2024 general election — and President Donald Trump’s administration pounced to capitalize on the disclosure.

Within hours, a Department of Justice attorney sent a revamped request for New Jersey’s unredacted voter database to Dale Caldwell, the Garden State’s lieutenant governor and secretary of state.

And the department’s Civil Rights Division launched an investigation and sent Sherrill a letter demanding, within five business days, information about the 6,600 people wrongfully registered as voters, and when and where up to 400 of them voted.

“Ensuring that U.S. citizens’ votes are not illegally diluted by noncitizens’ votes is of paramount importance,” Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, wrote in the Tuesday letter to Sherrill.

For the last year, the Justice Department has been seeking the state’s voter rolls, which include each voter’s full name, date of birth, address, and driver’s license or the last four digits of their Social Security number. But the requests have been rebuffed.

The Trump administration sued Caldwell in February, accusing him of violating federal voting and civil rights laws. Without the data, the suit said, the federal government could not ensure the state was in compliance with federal requirements for voter roll maintenance.

The Tuesday letter to Caldwell said the new information shared by Sherrill provides an “additional basis” to the request, wrote Jesus Osete, a principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division.

“The Division must also verify that no other noncitizens remain on New Jersey’s voter rolls, in violation of federal law,” Osete’s letter said.

The roughly 6,600 people were improperly added to the voter rolls when applying for driver’s licenses and identification cards. Even though they checked “no” when asked if they were a U.S. citizen, they were registered anyway.

Fewer than 400 of these individuals voted, Sherrill said.

The erroneous registrations took place between June 2023 and June 2024, Sherrill said, “through no fault” of the noncitizens, who were registered due to a software glitch in New Jersey’s motor vehicle system, which processes the automatic registration when a citizen obtains an ID or license.

The Justice Department shared the letter it sent Caldwell with U.S. District Judge Zahid N. Quraishi, who is presiding over the lawsuit.

“While it is currently unknown in which elections those noncitizens voted or whether the ballots those noncitizens cast affected the outcome of any race,“ the department said in a court filing, ”Governor Sherrill acknowledged in a press conference the seriousness of noncitizens voting in American elections.”

But the disclosure did not lead Sherrill, a Democrat who took office in January, to change her position about sharing the unredacted voter data with the federal government.

“The Trump administration has a long history of weaponizing the Justice Department for political purposes and attempting to overturn election results,” Sean Higgins, a spokesperson for Sherrill, said in a statement. “Governor Sherrill has been clear that she will use all the legal tools available to her to protect New Jerseyans’ personal information.”

The announcement came less than a week after Trump delivered a prime-time address in which he repeated his grievances over his 2020 election loss, and claimed without evidence that more than 250,000 noncitizens had registered to vote in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, and Nevada.

Republican officials used the New Jersey revelation to make the case for the SAVE Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote.

“This is why we must confirm citizenship before anyone registers. Only US citizens should vote in our elections,” U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.) said on X in response to the Garden State’s news.

The Trump administration has also attempted to get the Keystone State’s voter rolls through litigation. A judge tossed out the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt last month. The suit, which is nearly identical to the one against New Jersey, is one of 16 similar lawsuits that have been dismissed by federal judges throughout the country, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

But this month, the Justice Department threatened to bring criminal charges against top election officials in all 50 states if they allowed noncitizens to vote. The letter threatening Pennsylvania officials was addressed to Schmidt, who again declined to share voter information.

“I take seriously the obligations under both federal and Pennsylvania law to ensure that only eligible voters have access to the ballot box and to see to it that Pennsylvania’s voter rolls are appropriately maintained and updated,” Schmidt wrote.

Staff writer Aliya Schneider contributed to this article.

July 22, 2026
How 6,600 noncitizens were registered to vote in New Jersey and what happens next

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill was handed an election security crisis that took place under her predecessor just days after President Donald Trump’s administration pushed out claims of widespread noncitizen voting.

Sherrill revealed Tuesday that about 6,600 noncitizens had been illegally registered as voters in New Jersey due to a system error in the state’s department of motor vehicle voter registration program under former Gov. Phil Murphy.

The governor said fewer than 400 of those people had voted. There is no evidence that their ballots changed any election outcomes, but the news has thrust the Garden State into the middle of the national debate over election security.

“This failure didn’t occur on my watch, but accountability starts now,” she said at a news conference Tuesday.

Here is what to know about what happened and how, and what the fallout could be — both in Trenton and in Washington.

How many noncitizens got registered in New Jersey and how many voted?

About 6,600 people who identified themselves as noncitizens were registered to vote in New Jersey between June 2023 and June 2024 “through no fault of their own” due to the glitch, though fewer than 400 cast a ballot, Sherrill said.

Sherrill said at a news conference that the error “was caught and stopped in 2024” but that her administration is now working to remove those hundreds of voters from the rolls. She said they could have voted in any elections since then but there is no evidence at this time that they could have swayed any results. She said they were registered as Democrats, Republicans, and mostly unaffiliated, and scattered throughout the state.

She said her team is “taking a hard look at the process failures that occurred under the previous administration and the guardrails we can put down for the future.” Through a spokesperson, Murphy declined to comment.

Sherrill, a former member of Congress who began her term in January, campaigned on changing the culture in Trenton and distanced herself from Murphy on the campaign trail but remained cordial with him. Her tone sharply changed this week.

“This entire situation is unacceptable,” she said. “It’s unacceptable that the vendor released software with such a glaring error. It’s unacceptable that the MVC [Motor Vehicle Commission] took a year to get this fixed, and it’s unacceptable that no one in the previous administration brought this to light, demanded accountability, or took action when it happened years ago.”

How did this happen?

Sherrill called the issue a “serious software error in New Jersey’s motor vehicle system.”

New Jersey began automatic voter registration in 2018, which allows citizens to be automatically registered to vote when they get an ID at the MVC unless they opt out.

The noncitizens who were improperly registered had answered “no” when asked on a keypad at the MVC whether they were a U.S. citizen, Sherrill said. But she said the system registered them anyway “through no fault of their own.” She said the error could put those individuals’ immigration status at risk. It would be hypocritical for the state to charge the individuals and she wants to protect them, she said, but she “would not put it past” the federal government to charge them.

U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a North Jersey Democrat who unsuccessfully ran for governor last year, called for a national audit into IDEMIA, the vendor whose software was used for the registrations.

But IDEMIA pointed a finger at the New Jersey Department of State, noting that while the vendor’s role is to transmit information between the motor vehicle and state departments, it is ultimately the state department’s responsibility to verify voter eligibility.

“Information submitted by IDEMIA must still be validated and adjudicated by the Division of Elections,” the company said in a statement.

When did Gov. Sherrill find out?

Sherrill said she learned about the error last Wednesday, the day before Trump’s speech. She announced the discovery on Tuesday.

What is Gov. Sherrill doing about it?

Sherrill said she immediately ordered an investigation when she learned about the issue and ordered the removal of the noncitizens from the voter rolls. She said that Rosalie Johnson, whom Sherrill appointed as New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission administrator this year, had already begun replacing the system vendor.

The governor said her administration hired an independent firm, CSG Law, to conduct the investigation. She said “they will be moving very quickly” and had already found the figures she has been citing. She said she will “present the findings” of the investigation to the public.

Johnson said she expects to launch the new vendor next year and is working on creating additional safeguards to regularly review information before sending it to the elections division.

Sherrill said her administration is looking at ways to make the state’s elections more secure and vowed to hold any government workers accountable.

“Should there be anyone that is identified that is still working in this space that has not done the right thing, I will hold them personally accountable for this,” she said.

How is the Trump administration responding?

The Trump administration and other prominent Republicans are using the issue to call for the passage of the SAVE Act, a federal bill that Republicans say would improve election security but Democrats warn would suppress millions of voters.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in a post on X that the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice “is investigating this unlawful dilution of American votes.”

Additionally, the department argued in a letter that the incident justifies the Trump administration’s efforts to obtain the state’s unredacted voter rolls.

Vice President JD Vance called on New Jersey U.S. Sens. Cory Booker and Andy Kim, both Democrats, to support the legislation in a post on X, given the issue in their home state.

“If only there was a way to stop this type of ‘software error’ that allowed non citizens to vote in our elections,” Vance said in the tongue-in-cheek post.

Booker said he trusts the Sherrill administration to solve the problem and criticized “those who will choose to weaponize this issue.” Kim declined to comment on the matter.

Why is the timing beneficial for the president?

The news came at an opportune time for Trump, just days after his speech in which he reignited conspiracy theories about his 2020 election loss. The same day, the White House shared claims of widespread noncitizen voting, including in New Jersey.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin claimed that more than 35,000 noncitizens could be registered in New Jersey. The department has not shared how it arrived at that number, and experts cautioned it could include new citizens who have not been updated in a system meant to check work eligibility.

Sherrill said her administration received a letter with that 35,000 figure after Trump’s speech — which was also after she said she had learned about the 6,600 noncitizen voters.

“We have asked them for any evidence of this, where they got that number, who this is,” she said. “We’ve received nothing back yet.”

Sherrill said that the president “knows that if he provides us any credible information we will of course investigate it” but that he has “zero credibility on the issue of election integrity.”

“For the past 10 years he’s cried wolf and peddled bizarre conspiracy theories about fraud with no evidence,” she said.

Trump called for the passage of a national proof of citizenship requirement Wednesday during a speech in Georgia, but he did not directly reference New Jersey.

How will New Jersey lawmakers respond?

State Sen. Anthony Bucco of North Jersey, the Senate Republican leader, said the state should “at the very least” suspend the automatic voter registration program until a full investigation is complete and next steps are made clear.

He also called on the state to enact a voter identification requirement.

New Jersey requires identification or a Social Security number to register to vote, and first-time voters who registered to vote by mail may need to provide ID at the polls. But overall, most voters do not need to show ID at the polls in New Jersey.

Republican-led efforts to enact legislation following this incident are unlikely to succeed in Trenton because Democrats hold a supermajority in the Assembly and a majority in the Senate.

Sherrill said at the Tuesday news conference that the problem is not with the state’s laws, but rather with how the state government has been operating — further pushing blame on her predecessor.

“I see no reason why our state cannot run our election system well and have a computer program that can operate well, and should any problem occur it should be caught quickly … it’s a problem with accountability,” she said. “It’s a problem with making sure government is effective and running well, and it really is a lack of responsibility.”

Has this happened before?

In 2017 Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, a Republican city commissioner in Philadelphia at the time, uncovered and resolved a similar glitch at the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation in which all Pennsylvania drivers were asked if they wanted to be registered to vote regardless of citizenship status.

Schmidt said at the time that the glitch led to 168 noncitizens registering to vote in Philadelphia but that just 44 ballots were cast in the city as a result.

Schmidt has since said that noncitizen voting is rare and that the threat has been exaggerated.

Staff writers Michelle Baruchman and Abraham Gutman contributed to this article.

July 22, 2026
New Jersey reveals glitch allowed 6,600 noncitizens to register to vote ahead of 2024 election

Roughly 6,600 people who were not citizens were improperly registered to vote over a yearlong span ahead of the 2024 election because of a software error in New Jersey’s motor vehicle system, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill disclosed Tuesday.

The revelation came just days after President Donald Trump’s administration targeted New Jersey as one of four states that the Department of Homeland Security claimed had noncitizens on its voter rolls, along with neighboring Pennsylvania. The White House said the announcement from New Jersey underscored the need for Trump’s proposed national overhaul of elections.

Among the noncitizens, who were wrongly registered between June 2023 and June 2024, fewer than 400 cast a ballot, Sherrill said.

The voters were scattered across the state and registered as Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters, though the office did not provide percentage breakdowns.

Sherrill, a Democrat who took office in January, pointed a finger at her predecessor, noting that the wrongful registrations took place under former Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy. She said that she “immediately ordered” her chief counsel to investigate the issue and that the individuals erroneously added to the voter rolls be removed “before the next election,” which will be the November midterms that will determine control of Congress. The individuals have been notified of their planned removal.

“As a military veteran who swore an oath to defend our Constitution, and as a former federal prosecutor, I believe the integrity of our elections is fundamental to our democracy. I am appalled by the reckless failures that allowed this to happen and the lack of transparency shown by those in charge at the time,” Sherrill said in a statement.

Sherrill, at a news conference Tuesday afternoon, said the investigation would determine which elections the noncitizens’ votes were cast in — and whether they included the 2025 gubernatorial race in New Jersey, which Sherrill won, or the 2024 presidential election, when the state went for Vice President Kamala Harris — but neither contest’s outcome would have been changed by these ballots cast.

The glitch occurred when individuals were applying for driver’s licenses and identification cards in New Jersey. Although they answered “no” when asked on a keypad whether they were a U.S. citizen, “through no fault of their own, the system registered them anyway,” Sherrill’s office said.

Trump last Thursday delivered a prime-time address in which he, amid conspiracy theories about his 2020 election loss, claimed the Department of Homeland Security had identified more than 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote across four Democratic-led states — New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, and Nevada — according to a document the White House posted online during Trump’s speech.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin claimed Tuesday on X that more than 35,000 noncitizens could be registered in New Jersey. However, the department has not shared the methodology it used to arrive at that number, and experts have cautioned it could include new citizens who have not been updated in a system meant to check work eligibility.

“Just ONE illegal vote cancels out the vote of a U.S. citizen,” Mullin said.

He said he appreciated Sherrill’s announcement, but “this should’ve been done a LONG time ago.”

Pennsylvania election officials have disputed DHS claims of noncitizen registrations, but the timing of the New Jersey disclosure is sure to fuel scrutiny of the four states.

Sherrill said she learned of the error last Wednesday, the day before Trump’s address.

White House, Republicans call for changes to voting laws

Trump’s administration has been pushing states to hand over unredacted voter rolls and threatening legal consequences for election officials, but New Jersey and Pennsylvania have resisted, saying doing so could put voters’ personal information at risk.

“As the Trump Administration tries to weaponize elections for political gain, I am ensuring we protect our elections. Let me be clear: Donald Trump has zero credibility on the issue of election integrity,” Sherrill said in her statement.

The White House argued that the New Jersey disclosure helped make the case for the SAVE Act, which would require prospective voters to prove their citizenship in order to register to vote.

“Democrats and their media allies have repeatedly said it is impossible for noncitizens to register to vote, let alone cast a ballot. Time and again, they have been proven wrong. As President Trump has said, there is nothing more important than the integrity of our elections,” said Abigail Jackson, a spokesperson for the White House.

The legislation has stalled in the Senate, but the New Jersey announcement will likely renew a push for it ahead of the midterms.

“This is why we must confirm citizenship before anyone registers. Only US citizens should vote in our elections,” U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.) said on X in response to the Garden State’s news.

The senator has yet to weigh in on Pennsylvania’s inclusion on the White House’s list.

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) called the failure of the registration software “not acceptable.” But he said he trusts Sherrill and the state to solve the problem and criticized “those who will choose to weaponize this issue” as attempting to undermine confidence in elections.

“I have full confidence in New Jersey’s ability to administer voter registration and elections accurately and securely, and to ensure every legal ballot is counted,” Booker said.

U.S. Sen. Andy Kim, a South Jersey Democrat who criticized Trump’s speech last week, declined to comment.

New Jersey Republicans called for a bipartisan investigation and chastised Democrats for dismissing the issue in the past.

“We believe this issue is not isolated to this one-year time frame or a software glitch. The system and verification process must be improved in order to safeguard our elections,” said Christine Giordano Hanlon, chair of the New Jersey GOP. “The public also deserves to know why this was covered up and who was responsible for keeping this critical information from the public.”

U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a South Jersey Republican facing a challenge from Cape May Mayor Zack Mullock this fall, said the state should end automatic registration through the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission and require proof of citizenship to register.

“We have had extremely close elections in New Jersey, and God knows how many other ineligible voters may still be on the rolls or how many ballots have been cast without ever being identified,” Van Drew said in a statement. “It is unacceptable.”

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993, commonly known as the motor voter law, requires states to enable people to register to vote through departments of motor vehicles when they are getting a driver’s license. Twenty-three states, including New Jersey and Pennsylvania, provide automatic voter registration through the DMV, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Micah Rasmussen, the director of the nonpartisan Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University in Mercer County, said the wrongful registrations were a small slice of the state’s 6.6 million voters.

“It’s got to be dealt with,” he said. “The administration is dealing with it, but it’s also something well short of systemic.”

He said that the DMV has long been a weak link in motor vehicle voter registration and that it is worth looking into replacing the vendor that runs the registration software.

“On Election Day, when voters can go and argue and plead their case before a judge because they’re not registered and they thought that they were, invariably, it surprises nobody when DMV winds up being the problem,” he said.

This is not the first time a state’s motor vehicle system has incorrectly registered noncitizens.

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt uncovered a similar glitch in 2017 while he was serving as a Philadelphia city commissioner, discovering that a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation error had allowed 168 noncitizens to register to vote in the city, and likely a couple of hundred statewide.

The state’s voter rolls were updated in 2018, and Schmidt has emphasized that noncitizen voting remains incredibly rare.

In a statement, Schmidt said Pennsylvania’s automatic voter registration system, which was implemented in 2023, permits only eligible applicants — American citizens — to register to vote.

“AVR has allowed hundreds of thousands of eligible Pennsylvanians to register to vote while safeguarding the integrity of our voter rolls,” he said in the statement.

Sherrill said that she is exploring options to rectify the problem, and that the vendor behind the error will be replaced. Individuals responsible for the error will be held accountable, she said.

“We’re open to suggestions that make our elections more safe,” she said. “The investigation will have findings on what occurred. We will be looking carefully at what we can do to make sure it doesn’t occur again.”

July 21, 2026
President Donald Trump denied Johnny Doc’s request to be let out of prison early

Convicted former Philadelphia labor leader John J. Dougherty has taken a variety of steps to try to cut his six-year prison term short, including by taking the witness stand this spring to tell a federal judge about the unique health challenges faced by his wife.

But one other avenue he pursued last year — an appeal to the White House for mercy — apparently hit a dead end.

President Donald Trump earlier this month denied Dougherty’s request for a commutation, according to the Office of the Pardon Attorney’s website, meaning Trump — at least for now — will not use his broad powers of clemency to clear the way for Dougherty’s early release.

Dougherty — who, nicknamed Johnny Doc, was once a singular power broker in the city’s Democratic Party — was one of about 5,600 people whose commutation applications were denied on July 10, according to the pardon attorney’s site. A commutation keeps a defendant’s conviction intact but ends or reduces their sentence.

Trump, a Republican, also denied about 300 applications for a pardon, a broader form of relief that is added to the record of the case and reverses any restrictions stemming from a conviction, such as limitations on voting or seeking public office. The New York Times first reported on the wave of denials this week.

Presidents have broad authority to issue pardons and commutations in federal cases, and Trump has shown a willingness to grant them to political allies during his second term in office.

One of his first actions after being sworn in again last year was to issue pardons to nearly every person charged with participating in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump has also bestowed clemency on political figures convicted of corruption and those he maintains were “persecuted” by the Justice Department under former President Joe Biden.

Biden also used his clemency powers in unique ways, granting nearly 1,500 commutations during his final weeks in office, commuting dozens of death sentences, and, controversially, granting a wave of preemptive pardons to family members and allies.

Dougherty’s attorney, George Bochetto, said Tuesday that he was not involved in the effort to petition for a commutation and did not know about it. It was not immediately clear if Dougherty submitted an application himself or if he had another associate help with its preparation.

The pardon attorney’s website made basic information about Dougherty’s application available through its case search system, showing Dougherty’s name and his Bureau of Prisons register number and saying his application was filed last year.

Bochetto has been overseeing a different relief effort: Dougherty’s attempt to have a judge grant him compassionate release.

In court documents and in testimony before U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl, Dougherty has been saying for months that his wife, Cecilia — who has long suffered from a debilitating brain injury — has seen her condition worsen while he has been imprisoned. Dougherty has asked to serve the rest of his sentence on house arrest in order to oversee her care, saying if he is not allowed to do so, his wife will likely die.

Schmehl denied that request earlier this year, but has been reconsidering after Bochetto appealed.

Dougherty, 66, was sentenced in 2024 to six years in prison after being convicted in separate trials — the first after a jury found that he had spent years bribing former Philadelphia City Councilmember Bobby Henon, the second over nearly $600,000 he and others embezzled from his union, Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

July 21, 2026
Will U.S democracy die from embarrassment? | Will Bunch Newsletter
If the summer of 2026 came with an Official Cliché™, it would have to be “glass half empty, half full.” Things could be better. Things could be worse. It’s people — many of whom are quite wonderful — doing our best in a world run by institutions that are rotten to the core. You’ll find no greater example than the World Cup that wrapped up Sunday with a well-deserved trophy for Spain. Will we remember the gross commercialism and rank corruption perpetuated by FIFA and its political twin, Donald Trump? Or the many remarkable moments on the pitch, and the joyous sense of internationalism in the stands and beyond? How do we get to a place where elite greed is crushed while mere mortals like us thrive?

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U.S politics becomes a farcical unreality show. How worried should we be?

Video monitors in the White House briefing room in Washington carry a live feed of President Donald Trump as he addresses the nation on July, 16.DOUG MILLS

If you live in or near a big city and use mass transit to get around, you know this experience. You hop on a subway or a bus, focused only on getting from point A to point B, but there’s a man just a few feet away who demands your attention. He is talking loudly, repeating the same gibberish phrase over and over, seemingly arguing with someone until you realize he’s not even holding a phone. It’s just him. You feel a mix of emotions — sorry for the guy because clearly he’s going through something, yet mainly praying he will just stop yelling and give you some peace.

On Thursday night, that clearly disturbed man was Donald J. Trump, billionaire, who’s owned a mansion and a yacht and is currently the 47th president of the United States. And all of America was his subway car, just dying to get off.

Trump commandeered 26 minutes of invaluable TV prime time (CBS and MS Now ran all or most of it; NBC, ABC, and even CNN declined) for a speech that arguably may be remembered as one of the most consequential ever delivered from the White House — but only for the Big Lie constructed on a foundation of half-truths.

Despite days of hype, which was sensibly ignored by most folks who know better after a decade of Trump’s political dishonesty, there was zero new evidence that China or any other foreign power consequentially interfered in the 2020 presidential election Trump lost fairly and squarely to Joe Biden. POTUS instead offered gross exaggerations around old reports that would have made the late red-baiter Joe McCarthy blush, with bizarre allegations about the CIA and other intel agencies while he was in charge of them in 2020.

But this wasn’t debate club, and making a coherent case was never the point. Trump was seeking to offer a ball of confusion that he can use today to pressure his slim GOP majorities on Capitol Hill to pass legislation experts say would threaten to disqualify millions of legitimate voters, or that he could use tomorrow to try and seize emergency federal powers over the election.

There was a huge problem, however, with the president’s scare tactics: No one was scared. It’s not just that many among the 61% or so of Americans who disapprove of Trump’s job performance had expected the Thursday night monologue would include even worse lies or fabrications, or stronger threats — instead of a leader who was not just incoherent but weak.

But even the Republican politicians and right-wing opinion makers who were a main target of the White House address looked the other way in the immediate aftermath. We were all the mortified passengers on the same subway car, hoping the noise would just end.

Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump’s longtime friend, was on the air when the speech ended and fairly quickly changed the topic, so eager to avoid the stench. Even worse, the president’s favorite show, Fox & Friends, which aired early the next morning, did not mention the address once in the three hours it was on.

I’ve lived through the 1980 men’s hockey gold medal and Watergate, the Iraq War and the legalization of gay marriage — so I know how it feels to be proud to be an American, and to be furious with our government. But I’ve never felt the sense of utter embarrassment that was the national mood at 9:30 p.m. last Thursday. The president gave a prime-time address that was complete fiction. Who will ever again take the United States seriously on a world stage?

But there was also a dangerous flip side to America’s week of magical thinking. In delivering a speech about election integrity problems that don’t exist, there was also a pack of wild dogs that did not bark Thursday night. For one thing, Trump barely mentioned his unilateral decision to resume and escalate the war in Iran, even as three more U.S. troops would be dead by week’s end, and everyday Americans once again felt the pain of gas prices over $4 a gallon.

But Trump and his GOP allies were determined to ignore, deflect, or flat-out lie about the crisis that was literally right in their faces: the smoke from northern wildfires, mostly in rural, remote Canada, that shrouded huge swaths of the Midwest and Northeast in thick, wood-smelling smoke and led to orders for people to remain indoors.

Wildfires may be as old as the trees, but there’s only one reason why smoke from Canada has caused two major health emergencies in the United States since 2023, and that reason is climate change. Consistently warmer summers — even more extreme in northern Canada than elsewhere — have led to drought conditions that fuel these blazes. “The best way to solve it is to just stop burning fossil fuels,“ Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist and dean at the University of Michigan, told the CBC.

Except that claiming human-made climate change is a hoax is Trump’s second Big Lie, coming in right behind the “stolen” 2020 election that wasn’t actually stolen. His regime has spent the last 18 months tilting at windmills and solar panels and throwing the awesome power of the federal government fully behind burning as much coal, natural gas, and oil as possible, even as the nation’s crude oil stockpile hits a 43-year low.

But suffocating smoke from the northlands is a jolly big problem, which nobody can deny. And so a president who’s been utterly skewered by South Park decided to rap, “Blame Canada.” The world’s climate-denier-in-chief was shocked, shocked, that “the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air, the quality of which is dangerous, and totally unacceptable!”

Filmmaker Jim Pattiz called this — wait for it — America’s “latest global embarrassment.” He wrote, “The whole planet is watching an American president shake his fist at the sky and order a sovereign country to get its clouds under control.”

There’s two ways to look at all of this. For now, Trump’s lame efforts to frame the looming midterm election as rigged are coming off as sad and pathetic, a lot more Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator than an actual führer. He lacks both evidence and judges who will rule in his favor, while his political base is shrinking every day.

But the fact that Trump was willing to debase himself and the American presidency with a joke speech on national TV also reveals the president’s desperation to avoid an election loss by any means necessary. Trump’s scheme hinges on purging the top ranks of the military, while hiring thousands of newly hired, masked immigration goons to do the dirty work. Did I mention the nuclear weapons? We turn a blind eye to the man in the subway car at our own peril.

For now, Trump will not be ignored, like Glenn Close flipping the lamp switch on and off in Fatal Attraction. Neither the mortification of Thursday’s speech nor the death of three soldiers in his Iran war of choice could keep the president from bullying his way onto the main stage at Sunday’s World Cup final in New Jersey, ignoring the boos to shoehorn his way into Spain’s victory photos as if he had assisted on the winning goal.

Can a world superpower die from embarrassment? We are finding out in real time.

Yo, do this!
- Blame — or thank — the Major League Baseball schedulers who seem determined to stop the Phillies from playing on Friday nights, but the baseball blackout forced me to go on Netflix and realize it has added an awesome documentary that came out in 2019 but is needed now more than ever: Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins. The film shows how the outspoken and relentlessly funny Texas journalist rebelled as a student in the 1960s against the hypocrisies of her privileged upbringing and never looked back until she was taken from us, way too young, in 2007. Every up-and-coming young journalist needs to watch this and discover a role model for life.
- After that commercial that ran incessantly during the World Cup, the lyrical phrase “What the world needs now …” has been stuck in my head for weeks. Well, what the world needs now, with rising authoritarianism and ruthless capitalism, isn’t only love, sweet love, but also courage. What remarkable timing for Julia Angwin and Ami Fields-Meyer’s new book, On Courage: How to Be a Dissident in an Age of Fear. The authors tell the story of more than 100 dissidents all over the globe, from Hong Kong to Venezuela, to learn how everyday folks can find the gumption to resist oppression. It’s a must-read for Donald Trump’s America, and it is next on my list.
Ask me anything

Question: Why is [Donald Trump] being allowed to randomly declare tariffs on Canada again if the Supreme Court said that it was illegal? Do we have to have the same argument over and over again? — Stephanie King (@stephstephking.bsky.social) via Bluesky

Answer: Apparently we do. Section 338 of the 1930 Trade Act — known, notoriously, to history geeks as the Smoot-Hawley Act that only exacerbated the Great Depression — gives the president fairly broad powers to impose retaliatory tariffs if his administration concludes that a foreign country is discriminating against U.S. products. Thanks to the international trade war that Trump himself initiated, the president is now claiming Canada is punishing American autos, alcohol, and dairy products. It feels like the proposed 50% levy on many Canadian products is less about sound economics and more about a) answering GOP calls to blame Canada for the wildfires that are actually the result of climate change, and b) trying to change the subject from a disastrous week. They don’t take effect for 30 days, plenty of time for the next TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) Tuesday.

What you’re saying about …

Last week’s question about how to respond to Trump’s Big Lie about election fraud that we all knew was coming in Thursday’s speech was probably, in hindsight, too wonky to generate much response. Those who did write agreed that a heavy burden falls on the news media to do everything to debunk — or, as longtime reader Rosalind Holtzman put it, “pre-bunk” — the president’s many falsehoods. She added: “Americans have the attention span of mayflies and need review and repetition. Revisit the events of the 2020 elections and how Trump’s claims all failed in court.” I couldn’t agree more.

📮 This week’s question: Optimists are already starting to ponder a world where Donald Trump is no longer president. But where would a Democratic successor even start to undo the damage caused by the many destructive policies of the Trump regime? What should be the Day One measures to start rebuilding U.S. democracy? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “Dems Day One agenda” in the subject line.

Backstory on Trump’s campaign cash and ‘explosive diarrhea’

Federal health officials have linked a large cyclosporiasis outbreak to shredded lettuce served at Taco Bell. Is lettuce from grocery stores and restaurants OK to eat?NICOLE BENGIVENO

Before last week, most Americans had never heard of Taylor Farms, a California-based produce firm, and, for a company that supplies lettuce to large U.S. restaurant chains, anonymity was arguably good for business. There are no two words in the English language that can raise awareness of a brand — and destroy it — faster than “explosive diarrhea.” That’s the most alarming symptom from a foodborne illness linked to the parasite cyclospora that’s laid low thousands of Americans in multiple states. Since the early days of the outbreak, suspicion has focused on Taylor Farms after Taco Bell stores stopped using the iceberg lettuce it procures from the company. But the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) probe into the cause has so far been a mess — much of that the result of steep cuts to food safety by the Trump regime. But there are also ethical concerns.

Follow the money.

Regular folks might not have heard of Taylor Farms, but the world’s largest salad processor has made itself known in the corridors of the Trump regime since March 2025. That was right around the time the FDA surprised industry observers by postponing its Food Traceability Rule — drafted under the Biden administration to better track and remove contaminated products — for 30 months. Just six days after the industry-friendly move, Trump’s main political action committee, MAGA Inc., received a whopping $1 million donation from Taylor Farms.

What’s more, money buys access in Trump World. The Daily Beast has reported that last Thursday — despite the company’s nationwide lettuce recall — Taylor Farms executives met with White House and FDA officials and complained about the way the government has been investigating the outbreak. That meeting was followed by a bizarre weekend in which the FDA initially announced that testing of Taylor Farms produce from central Mexico had tested positive for cyclospora, then told the company one day later the result had been a “false positive.” The chaos means ongoing confusion about why so many Americans are getting sick, and whether it’s safe to eat lettuce. And that raises troubling questions about whether political cash has compromised food safety.

This was hardly the first time donations to Trump’s massive empire of political wealth — money raised for a man who is constitutionally barred from running for the presidency again — have overlapped with key policy decisions. For example, the New York Times reported this spring that tobacco company Reynolds American donated $5 million to MAGA Inc. just one week before an industry-friendly FDA ruling on e-cigarettes.

MAGA Inc. — just one of several ways billionaires and corporations can funnel money to Trump World, along with projects like his presidential library — had more than $400 million in the bank at the end of June, an astronomical sum. Its donors have included not only a who’s who of American industry, but also crypto dudes — whose industry has been largely deregulated under Trump — and wealthy pardon seekers. Some of those dollars will go to GOP candidates in November’s midterms, but what happens to most of this cash is a mystery. Trump may be leaving office on Jan. 20, 2029, but we’ll still be following the money for years to come.

What I wrote on this date in 2019

Trump’s second term has been so dangerous for democracy that we tend to forget the horrors of his first four years in the White House. On this date seven years ago, I joined a lot of other folks in shock and dismay over the raw racism of the 45th president’s campaign-style rally in South Carolina, where a diatribe against Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali refugee who became a U.S. citizen and represents a Minnesota district, sparked a frenzied chant: “Send her back!” I wrote about the tween girl in the crowd directly behind Trump, who looked around and joined the adults. “In front of national TV cameras, with the 45th president of the United States as maestro, we are witnessing the exact moment that the raging rabble of a Donald Trump rally has taught a child how to hate.”

Read the rest: “I can’t stop thinking about the little girl behind Trump and the hate she’s being taught.”

Recommended Inquirer reading
- No columns from me this past week as I spent time with family up and down the Eastern Seaboard, but my Inquirer colleagues have been hard at work. It turns out that the Philadelphia metro area has been ground zero for the latest bizarre business scheme that’s hopelessly intertwined with the Trump regime: a pop-up scheme of at least 25 gas stations rebranded as Trump-aligned Freedom Fuel that — at least for a week or two — were selling gasoline at much lower prices than their nearby rivals. The Inquirer has been all over this weird local story with national implications, and with more questions than answers. Where does this cheap gas come from? Who’s really behind the Freedom Fuel stations? On Tuesday, The Inquirer’s Ximena Conde and Rob Tornoe started to unravel the somewhat dubious past (surprise, surprise) of some of the folks connected to the gas stations, and how suddenly prices at Freedom Fuel aren’t as cheap as they used to be. I suspect the final chapters of this saga are going to be a doozy. The only way to stay on top of local news and support the in-depth journalism we do here is to become an Inquirer subscriber. Join us. It’s a gas.
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July 21, 2026