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Fatal police shooting of man with knife roils Madison, Wisconsin

MADISON, Wis. — Protesters burst into a Thursday news conference about the police shooting of a homeless man in Madison, taking the microphone from the police chief and arguing with some attendees who said they wanted to hear more about the investigation.

The group of roughly 20 protesters burst into the room at the Madison police station, shortly after Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway and Common Council President Sabrina Madison identified the man killed by police as Corey Durell Ruiz, a homeless resident.

Ruiz, 38, was shot and killed Wednesday after police said he resisted arrest and injured an officer with a knife.

Police Chief John Patterson stepped away from the microphone when the protesters were shouting, and one man in the group took his spot at the podium. The event quickly devolved into a shouting match.

One protester held a sign saying “Corrupt cops deserve to die too!!!”

Moments earlier, the mayor said the shooting will be “rigorously investigated.”

“It does not matter who you are or what your past is, you should not lose your life as a result of an encounter with law enforcement,” Satya Rhodes-Conway said.

Madison, for her part, said “Corey could have been my brother because my brother is homeless and he often rides a bike.”

Court records show Ruiz had been in and out of jail over the past decade on charges including failing to pay child support, driving a vehicle without consent, jumping bail, threatening authorities, taking a vehicle without consent, possessing drug paraphernalia, resisting an officer and retail theft.

“He’s a human being. He had a family. He has parents who loved him who brought him home, who cared for him,” Madison said, adding that she’s struggling to understand what she’s seen in videos of the shooting that have circulated on social media.

“My first thought is, when the officer’s walking away, why isn’t he walking away in cuffs,” Madison said. “I’m angry, there’s no way around it.”

Once the protesters quieted down, the chief resumed his presentation, promising his department’s full cooperation with the state investigation.

Police have released few details

The shooting has roiled Wisconsin’s capital city, with Gov. Tony Evers calling for “transparency and accountability” and Madison community members gathering Thursday at a growing memorial.

None of the four officers who were detaining the man wore body cameras, but passersby recorded the confrontation on video, and accused the officers of overreacting.

“I thought, ‘Holy cow — what could have warranted that?’ It looked to me like they had him under control,” David Ortiz-Whittingham, who saw officers swarming and heard the gunshots, said Thursday. “Even now, knowing about the knife, did he have to die for it? Could this have been de-escalated without him losing his life?”

The police chief released few details Thursday, saying the Wisconsin Department of Criminal Investigation into the officer-involved shooting must run its course.

Earlier Thursday, Madison’s independent police monitor, Aeiramique Glass, said police have not yet shared evidence or the officer’s identity with her office, which will review the case and can recommend to the district attorney that charges be filed if warranted. She said the department and city are “obstructing what the community and the public” want.

“Let me do my job,” she said.

Patterson said the police were committed to cooperating with Glass as the independent monitor’s investigation is carried out, at the same time as the state’s probe.

The chief urged people not to draw conclusions

Patterson has urged caution in reading too much from the cell-phone videos. He said none show the perspective of the officers, and additional video that hasn’t been released is being reviewed.

The officer who fired his weapon is a veteran of the force, the chief said. He and the three other responding officers will be placed on administrative leave pending an independent investigation by the Wisconsin Department of Criminal Investigation, as required under state law.

Patterson said police were responding to calls that someone was attempting to enter parked vehicles, and the suspect fled on a bike before the officers surrounded him. One deployed a taser, but Patterson said he didn’t know if the taser worked. Those efforts failed to control the man, Patterson said.

In the videos circulating online, the man can be seen standing before he’s brought to his knees as the officers struggle to force him into a prone position. Then he falls quickly to the pavement after what sounds like three gunshots, and seems motionless as the officers handcuff him behind his back. Arriving officers then escort one of the officers a short distance away.

Patterson said he did not know the extent of the injuries sustained by the officer who was injured by the knife.

“This situation was clearly dangerous,” Patterson said. He later continued, “I am incredibly saddened by the loss of life.”

A neighborhood now accustomed to police shootings

The shooting happened in the middle of an intersection in the popular Marquette neighborhood, which is lined with restaurants, bars, shops, and homes less than 2 miles from the state Capitol. The bystander videos show numerous cars at the scene, with people watching and commenting as it unfolded.

“I saw everything! I saw everything! You did not need to kill him! … We watched it all!” a woman yelled in the video recorded by Ortiz-Whittingham. Three loud shots could be heard among the sirens, followed by screams.

Residents who dealt with two other police killings within the same few blocks expressed their frustration on Thursday.

In 2015, a white police officer shot and killed Tony Robinson, who was biracial, on the same street. Large protests followed, but the district attorney filed no charges, determining the officer was justified. In 2012, Paul Heenan, a white musician, was fatally shot after he had been drinking and mistakenly entered his neighbor’s house. That officer was exonerated as well.

The chief acknowledged that the neighborhood “has experienced a lot of trauma” and urged people to support one another.

“I want transparency, I want accountability,” Patterson said.

Questions about race and technology emerge

The race of the officer who fired his gun on Wednesday and that of the man he killed were not released by police.

But Black advocacy groups, protesters, and politicians spoke out against the crime and said they believe the man was Black.

The shooting also focused attention on the Madison Police Department’s lack of body-worn cameras. The force of around 500 is among the largest in the Midwest that doesn’t use the devices.

Common Council President Sabrina Madison said Thursday that she expects a police request for $400,000 to be approved, enabling the cameras to be phased in over the next three years. Others lamented that cameras aren’t already being used.

“Nobody can agree on anything,” said Katey Nelson, a member of the police civilian oversight board and operations director at YWCA Madison, a racial justice group. “Now we’re here, looking at another police shooting where we don’t have what we need to make sure the officers are held accountable.”

The mayor said her budget, which has not yet been released, will include funding for body-worn cameras. Rhodes-Conway said the city needs to put together a policy for the use of the cameras, and said that will be completed before the budget takes effect in January.

And now it’s a talking point in the governor’s race

Madison, home to the University of Wisconsin, has a long history of organized protest dating back to the 1960s. More than 100,000 people marched on the state Capitol in 2011 in favor of union rights. There were large demonstrations that turned violent after the George Floyd shooting in 2020.

And so the shooting quickly infused itself into the race to succeed Evers as governor, with voting already underway in the Aug. 11 primary.

“This state sanctioned violence was an execution,” posted Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist candidate who appeared with a bullhorn at the scene just a few blocks from her campaign office. She has called for defunding the police.

Another Democrat in the race, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, said while the details must become public, “these reports are painfully reminiscent of the tragedies we have witnessed in Kenosha, Minneapolis, and far too many communities across our country.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany called on his rivals to let the state investigation “establish the facts without politicians rushing to judgment or stoking division” in a statement that also said he would “work to end revolving-door criminal justice policies.”

July 23, 2026
Trump imposes double-digit tariffs on dozens of countries as his 10% levies are set to expire Friday

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is going ahead with new double-digit tariffs on dozens of U.S. trading partners just as the clock runs out Friday on stopgap levies he imposed after a stinging defeat at the Supreme Court.

The United States will slap taxes of 10% to 12.5% on imports from 60 countries accounting for 99% of U.S. imports, charging that they have inadequately enforced bans on goods produced by forced labor.

“The United States has had a forced labor import ban for nearly a century, and rigorously enforces it; it’s well past time for our trading partners to do the same,” said U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. “Today’s action will begin to correct what is both a human rights abuse and distortive trade practice to improve the welfare of workers everywhere.

The new tariffs will take effect just as temporary 10% worldwide tariffs expire at 12:01 a.m. Friday. Trump had turned to those temporary levies after the Supreme Court struck down his biggest and boldest tariffs in February.

Now he’s tapping more durable tariffs under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which permits the president to impose import taxes and other sanctions against countries found to engage in “unjustifiable,” “unreasonable,” or “discriminatory” trade practices. Trump used Section 301 to impose big tariffs on China in his first term, and they survived court challenges.

More Section 301 tariffs are likely coming: The U.S. Trade Representative’s office has launched a probe into whether 16 countries — accounting for 70% of U.S. imports — have overproduced goods, pushing down prices and putting U.S. companies at a disadvantage in global markets. The administration has yet to complete that investigation.

Trump, who argues that high tariffs will revive American manufacturing, last year overturned decades of U.S. policy that favored lower tariffs and ever-freer trade. Invoking the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), he imposed double-digit tariffs on imports from almost every country on Earth, saying America’s longstanding trade deficit amounted to a national emergency.

But the Supreme Court ruled that IEEPA did not authorize tariffs. The decision forced the administration to pay refunds to importers that had paid the tariffs.

In response, Trump announced 10% worldwide tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. But he can only use Section 122 levies for 150 days; time runs out on them Friday.

The administration initially proposed the forced labor tariffs last month. Since then, some countries have tightened forced labor enforcement and qualified for lower tariffs, said a senior administration official who spoke under condition of anonymity. For example, the official said, the tariff on imports from India initially was set at 12.5% but now will be 10%.

Some products — including oil and gas and fertilizer — are exempted from the new tariffs announced Thursday. Also being spared are products that qualify for duty-free status under the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the North American trade pact Trump negotiated in his first term.

Tariffs are paid by companies in the United States that import foreign products. The importers usually try to pass along the cost by charging consumers higher prices. Americans are already frustrated by the high cost of living. So the administration is taking a risk in rolling out new tariffs ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections.

Human rights watchers say that it’s reasonable to be skeptical of the motivation behind the tariffs. But they say the levies could make an impact on the problem of forced labor.

Forced labor is defined by the International Labor Organization Forced Labor Convention of 1930 as “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself (or herself) voluntarily.”

According to the latest statistics from the ILO, which is a U.N. agency focused on human and labor rights, about 27.6 million people were in forced labor worldwide on any given day in 2021.

“We’ve gone on record for years now advocating for import bans, not as a magic bullet, it’s not a silver bullet, but as a potentially effective tool in combating forced labor across the globe,” said Martina Vandenberg, founder and president of The Human Trafficking Legal Center.

“It’s possible to be extremely critical of tariffs, as we are, and to be very concerned about blanket tariffs used as bludgeons against countries,” she said. “And yet I think it’s undeniable that there is a significant response in terms of the adoption of import bans.”

However Vandenberg and her organization urged in testimony that the tariffs be implemented in a phased approach to give countries time to implement a ban or a plan for enforcement.

“Our concern is that the import bans will be thin slips of paper with no enforcement,” she said. “Countries need time to build import ban mechanisms that are meaningful and enforceable.”

Kenya Davis, partner at Boies Schiller Flexner, said the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, a U.S. federal law passed in 2021 that prohibits the importation of goods made wholly or in part in China’s Xinjiang region or by designated entities, is the most significant legislation related to forced labor that the U.S. has passed before the tariffs.

“The level of effectiveness is certainly up for debate, but it certainly has drawn attention to the issue of labor trafficking and forced labor,” she said. “And so, if nothing else, these import bans will serve that function of bringing greater awareness to forced labor.”

But without a “comprehensive approach,” that provides transparency about what the investigations consisted of, and programs that provide countries aid in enforcing bans, “I’m very cautious in my enthusiasm about the [tariffs],” she said.

Isabelle Glimcher, senior research scientist for global labor at the NYU Stern Center for Human Rights, said one flaw in the tariffs is that they focus on levying the tax on countries based on goods they import — not goods they make domestically.

But she said the impending tariffs threat has spurred several countries — such as India — to amend their foreign trade policies to include a forced labor import ban. European Union forced labor regulations due to go into effect later next year are also contributing, she said.

“Not all of these things are necessarily or wholly attributable to the Section 301 investigations, but does seem like countries are responding and starting to take all of this seriously,” she said.

July 23, 2026
Trump expands a voluntary pledge to protect consumers from high utility bills from AI data centers

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday had governors and electricity companies join a voluntary pledge to shield U.S. consumers from higher utility bills from data centers — a sign of how the artificial intelligence build-out has become a lightning rod of controversy before the midterm elections.

The president first announced the pledge with leading AI and tech companies in March, but that initial commitment has done little to comfort voters who are already grappling with affordability issues as they worry about competing for electricity, water, and land with tech companies controlled by billionaires. It’s unclear, with electricity demand already growing, whether consumers would see genuine savings.

Trump is doubling down on the pledge at a time when the broader social contract is being rewritten by AI, a technology that is evolving so quickly in its capabilities that governments are struggling over how to provide oversight.

The president, in remarks about the pledge at the Environmental Protection Agency, called on the gathered executives and governors to sell the public on data centers, stressing that the cities and towns that do have them will be “rich.”

“You have to convince your community,” Trump said. “You can’t fight it. You have to go with it.”

The president added: “If you don’t take all that money, somebody else is going to take it. You might as well do it yourselves.”

Concerns about data centers cross party lines

The president promised that electricity prices would drop because of the nonbinding pledge, saying there would be a surplus of power. It’s not clear that data centers generating their own electricity will be sufficient to overcome the rising demand for electricity, but that did not deter Trump from saying that utility bills — a major concern for voters — will be lower.

“Electricity bills for American families will actually come down,” Trump said. “They’re going to have a lot of electricity left over, and they’ll put that into the grid.”

The White House said Thursday the pledge has been signed by 23 governors and at least 187 companies, including 55 utilities and 27 data center developers. Signers include some of the nation’s biggest utilities such as NextEra Energy, Duke Energy, American Electric Power, Southern Co., and Pacific Gas & Electric.

Data center developers that have signed the pledge include Equinix, Digital Realty, and Prologis.

A slowdown in data center construction could derail what has been one of the dominant drivers of U.S. economic growth, in addition to possibly ceding the U.S. edge in cultivating the technology to China and create national security risks.

But AI’s increasing ability to perform basic tasks — such as driving, analyzing spreadsheets, and writing software — also potentially threatens millions of jobs. That has created mounting public resistance as tech companies concentrate historic levels of wealth in the hands of a select group of tycoons.

The increased electricity demand could cause monthly utility bills to rise by 15% to 40% by 2030, according to a recent analysis by ICF, a consulting and technology services company.

Opposition to data centers has spiraled into a bipartisan issue. Voters are worried about the environmental impact, use of AI in schools, and the prospect of data centers making their communities more expensive and less livable. Data center companies say their facilities help to generate tax revenues for school districts and reduce property tax burdens for homeowners.

The opposition has spread into the Republican stronghold of rural Texas and led to frustration with Gov. Greg Abbott, who is now among the 23 Republican governors who signed Trump’s nonbinding pledge.

Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for Texas governor, has been using the issue to challenge Abbott before the November election.

“They are owned by the richest men in the world,” she said of data centers. “We’re all footing the bill. There are no rules. It is the Wild West of data centers.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, signed an order to ban construction of large server warehouses in her state for a year. In May, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed a law that he said would prevent utilities from passing along energy costs from data centers to residential and small-business customers.

Already, dozens of state legislatures or utility commissions have moved to put in place requirements that data centers pay the cost of their electricity, including new power plants or transmission system upgrades. But it’s not

Tech companies are pushing growth of data centers

In California, however, the industry opposes legislation designed to protect consumers from electricity price increases attributable to data centers, said Matthew Freedman, a staff attorney for the Utility Reform Network.

“It is disappointing, but perhaps not surprising, that the same tech companies signing the Ratepayer Protection Pledge are simultaneously opposing efforts at the state level to force them to deliver on their promises,” Freedman said.

In an interview with The Associated Press last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, whose computer chips are enabling the AI revolution, said America’s weakness is a lack of power generation for further developing the technology.

Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, xAI, OpenAI, and Amazon are among the companies that have already committed to the Trump administration’s “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” that consumers will not shoulder the cost of the data center build-out.

Despite the pledge, there are challenges on addressing issues with electricity prices.

The White House has complained that PJM Interconnection, which oversees electric power in 13 states from Virginia to Illinois, can’t ensure adequate electricity supplies at reasonable prices in the AI-driven boom.

White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said Thursday that PJM — the nation’s largest grid operator — has failed to implement a bipartisan statement of principles signed by the Trump administration and all 13 governors in the region.

“The Trump administration strongly advises PJM and its member companies to proactively reform its stakeholder process, reform its board governance, and implement the Statement of Principles before it is too late,” Rogers said.

There are efforts to formalize Trump’s pledge as law, with the House Energy and Commerce Committee approving a bipartisan bill. The bill would require data centers to bear the costs of grid upgrades.

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
House votes to limit Trump on Iran; Senate fails to advance similar measure

The House passed a measure to halt the war in Iran on Thursday, as Democrats mounted a last-minute bid to constrain the escalating conflict before lawmakers left Washington for a monthlong recess.

The effort led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.) passed by a vote of 214-208. Four Republicans — Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Warren Davidson of Ohio, and Tom Barrett of Michigan — joined Democrats in supporting the measure.

The Senate blocked consideration of a similar resolution hours later on a 49-47 procedural vote.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was the lone Republican to join Democrats in supporting the measure. Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) voted against it.

The votes marked the first test of Republican support for the conflict since President Donald Trump resumed strikes against Iran this month. U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, announced it had conducted its 12th consecutive day of airstrikes as Trump pledges to retaliate for the deaths of several American service members killed by Iranian attacks in the last week.

By returning to the war, Trump has forced some vulnerable Republicans into a tenuous political position ahead of the November midterm elections. Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz — spiking global food and energy markets — and the Houthis, its proxy force in Yemen, have threatened to halt Saudi Arabian oil transiting the Red Sea.

A Washington Post-Ipsos poll earlier this month found that nearly 70% of respondents thought that the war was not “worth fighting.” Eighteen U.S. service members have died during the conflict, with nearly 430 injured.

Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told lawmakers the war will cost about $37.5 billion by the end of September. Congress is debating how to proceed with a $73 billion package to restock the Pentagon’s inventory of precision weapons and cover other costs incurred by the conflict.

“When you’re digging yourself a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging — and that’s what this resolution seeks to do,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), who introduced the resolution, said on the Senate floor before the vote. “Let us stop pretending that Congress has no role to play while American service members remain in harm’s way.”

Sen. Tim Sheehy (R., Mont.), a Navy SEAL veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, countered that passing the resolution would send the wrong message to the U.S. troops fighting the war.

“Think about the people who are deployed right now standing on that wall with a loaded weapon who have volunteered to defend our country and our way of life,” Sheehy said on the Senate floor. “Because they are there defending us in a just war.”

The Trump administration’s return to military strikes in Iran has also divided some Democrats over how best to respond.

The successful vote in the House and the failed one in the Senate came after both chambers approved a separate resolution last month meant to halt the war. Trump has argued the measure lacks the power of law, infuriating Democrats who say the war is being conducted unlawfully without lawmakers’ consent.

The White House has pressured Republicans to oppose such resolutions. Trump complained when he met with Republicans senators last month that the passage of one of the resolutions was undermining his negotiations with the Iranian government.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.) supported the resolution that passed last month but opposed a subsequent one after being briefed by the White House. He voted against Thursday’s resolution.

Two other Republicans who have voted for similar resolutions in the past, Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska) and Rand Paul of Kentucky), did not vote. Sens. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and Katie Boyd Britt (R., Ala.) also missed the vote.

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D., N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Thursday that he will introduce a resolution to sue the Trump administration over its refusal to abide by their efforts to rein in the war.

Trump “should be coming directly to Congress” to explain why he has continued his war effort in Iran, Meeks said. “Since he’s not, then we should be suing the administration to say ‘You must come to Congress at this point.’”

Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.), the architect of Democrats’ strategy to force war powers votes, said he did not think the failed procedural vote in the Senate undercut the successful passage of the war powers resolution last month.

“The substantive vote has been taken,” Kaine said after Thursday’s vote. “Both houses have said, Mr. President, you either have to withdraw troops or” seek authorization from Congress to continue the war.

Still, Kaine said he was turning his attention to pushing back against the war through the appropriations process, through which Congress could exert leverage over the war by refusing to fund it. The House passed a resolution Wednesday taking the first step toward sending $73 billion to the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies, largely to cover the cost of the conflict, but the measure faces an uncertain future in the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) said the Senate would not take it up immediately as bipartisan negotiations over government funding play out — an approach that some Senate Republicans say is a mistake. The Senate could use the measure to fund the government later if those negotiations collapse.

After the House vote, Rep. Jason Crow (D., Colo.), a co-sponsor of Jayapal’s resolution, said Democrats would continue to force votes on similar resolutions and predicted that more House Republicans would support them after hearing from frustrated constituents while the chamber is on recess over the next four weeks.

“They’re going to get crushed,” Crow told reporters after the vote. “When we come back in September, I bet we have more people joining with us saying, ‘All right, let’s wrap this up.’”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) signaled that Senate Democrats would also continue to force votes on similar resolutions.

“We will keep forcing votes until Senate Republicans stop playing dumb and summon up the courage to do what is right,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.

July 23, 2026
House again passes resolution seeking to halt military action in Iran as some Republicans defect

WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday narrowly passed a resolution to halt U.S. military action in Iran, sending a warning to President Donald Trump for the second time as the war has escalated and the future of the conflict is increasingly uncertain.

The 214-208 vote requiring congressional approval for the war comes as the Senate is expected to consider a similar resolution later Thursday morning. Though the votes forced by Democrats are largely symbolic, they are meant as a strong signal to the Republican president that his support on Capitol Hill is chipping away as the war drags on and lawmakers in both parties have questioned his administration’s endgame.

The war has had “no clear mission, no strategy, no end goal,” said Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat who led the resolution on the House floor.

The resolution narrowly passed after four Republicans — Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Tom Barrett of Michigan, Warren Davidson of Ohio, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky — voted with Democrats to end the war. But the vast majority of Republicans voted to back the war and cede congressional war powers to Trump.

Trump has insisted that continued U.S. attacks against Iran do not mean a return to war or long-term action. After the first House vote to halt the war in early June, he posted on social media that it was “unpatriotic” and “meaningless.”

Continued American airstrikes are occurring even as diplomatic efforts show little public sign of progress and officials on both sides have dug in on the dispute over the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for global energy that remains largely closed. The unpopular war threatens further worldwide economic disruption and is sending fuel prices up ahead of midterm U.S. elections this fall.

Most Republicans vote to cede congressional powers

As the House debated the resolution Wednesday evening, Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast (R., Fla.) read out names of 18 service members killed since the war began.

“To belittle this mission is to belittle and demean the very service these members gave their life for,” Mast said. “Their sacrifice was not meaningless. This operation is bringing reckoning for the hundreds of times Iran has attacked and killed people of the United States of America.”

The top Democrat on the panel, New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, said that presidents are supposed to make the case to Congress.

The service members who died made the ultimate sacrifice for “an illegal unauthorized war that the American people don’t want,” Meeks said.

As both chambers vote on whether to weigh in, the U.S. has carried out waves of airstrikes in recent days as the two countries clash over control of the Strait of Hormuz. Gas prices have spiked again, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told senators at a hearing Tuesday that the U.S. had spent $37.5 billion on the war so far. On Wednesday, Trump traveled to Dover Air Force Base for the arrival and dignified transfer of the remains of four U.S. service members.

“I do think the combination of the hearings, plus the fact that we are in this new escalatory phase where Americans have been killed, and Americans are experiencing the rising costs — I think it’s important that people be held accountable,” said Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat who is leading the Senate effort on Thursday. “And this is a very unpopular war.”

Trump is watching Iran votes closely

Republicans on both sides of the Capitol know that voting against the war can have a political cost, even as many of them have privately questioned the Trump administration’s handling of the conflict.

In his post after the June House vote, Trump called the four Republicans who voted with Democrats “GRANDSTANDERS!” and said they should be “ashamed of themselves.”

“They would rather have our Country fail than give me another, of many, victories,” he said.

When the Senate passed a war powers resolution on Iran for the first time in June, the president attended a GOP Senate luncheon the next day and called the Republicans who voted for it “losers.”

Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican who lost his Senate seat in a primary after Trump endorsed one of his opponents, told Trump directly that he needed to give more details to the public about the conflict. “This was supposed to last four weeks. It’s lasted four months,” Cassidy said. “Our original objectives have not been achieved.”

Trump argued back, Cassidy later told reporters, and he told the president that he wouldn’t change his vote until he got a briefing. The White House later relented, giving Cassidy a one-on-one meeting, and the Louisiana Republican changed his vote in a late-night do-over vote before the Senate left for a two-week recess.

Cassidy wouldn’t say Wednesday whether recent developments would change his vote.

Polling find Americans disapprove of the war

Most Americans disapprove of the way Trump is handling the situation with Iran, according to recent polling. A Washington Post/Ipsos poll conducted in July found that few Americans think the war in Iran has been worth fighting, and most aren’t confident that the U.S. military action in Iran and negotiations to end the war will prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Only about two-thirds of Republicans approve of Trump’s handling of the situation in Iran, according to the poll. Most Republicans, about 6 in 10, think the war has been worth fighting and are confident that the military action and ensuing negotiations will prevent Iran from development nuclear weapons, but a sizable share — about one-third — are unconvinced.

July 23, 2026
Saudi nuclear deal in doubt as Trump adds new condition regarding Israel

Saudi Arabia would need to normalize relations with Israel to receive the U.S. nuclear technology it has long sought, President Donald Trump said Thursday, adding a new and potentially deal-ending stipulation to an agreement signed just a day earlier.

The nuclear deal — which was fiercely opposed by Israel and others concerned about nuclear proliferation — is “totally subject” to Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords, Trump said in a social media post, referring to the effort from his first term to normalize relations between Israel and Muslim-majority countries from which it had long been estranged. The Saudis have thus far refused to join the accord.

It was the latest whiplash-inducing policy shift from the White House, which had faced-down considerable political opposition to push forward with the Saudi deal. The Biden administration also discussed a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, but tied any agreement to opening diplomatic relations with Israel, a move that has the potential to reshape dynamics in the Middle East, but which remains distant.

If the Saudis “don’t join the Abraham Accords, the deal is off,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said a few hours after Trump’s post, responding to questions from reporters.

Asked why that condition had not been included in the deal when it was announced Wednesday, Leavitt said that Trump is “always the final dealmaker.”

It wasn’t immediately clear how the Trump administration would modify a legal agreement that it has already signed with the Saudi government. Asked for details, the White House pointed to Leavitt’s comments.

The deal to allow the Saudis to build nuclear power plants using U.S. technology, creating a pathway to a Saudi nuclear enrichment program, has set off debate in Congress. Many lawmakers fear that allowing more countries to develop enrichment programs could eventually lead to more possessing nuclear weapons.

Israel hotly opposes Saudi Arabia’s developing a nuclear enrichment program, fearful it could lead to a regional arms race. Israeli leaders welcomed Trump’s new conditions.

The Saudis have long sought to build nuclear power plants on their territory — and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the country, has declared that they would work to develop nuclear weapons if Iran develops its own.

The Biden administration also explored a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, but it ultimately floundered because normalizing relations with Israel was the main condition the U.S. placed on the agreement. The deal the Trump administration signed Wednesday would have imposed no such requirement.

Trump’s new condition on Thursday would attach a major string to the deal. Saudi leaders were nearing a normalization agreement with Israel in 2023, just before the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 of that year. Since then, however, talks have been paused. Saudi leaders now say they would want guarantees of an eventual Palestinian state, and Saudi public opinion has soured toward Israel because of its handling of the war in Gaza. Any nuclear deal tied to Saudi-Israel diplomatic breakthroughs has seemed remote.

“The Civil Nuclear Deal (There will be no enrichment of material!) being made between the United States Department of Energy and Saudi Arabia, which pertains only to non-military use such as the ones that Iran and UAE (and others) already have, will be approved,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday. “But is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords.”

The Abraham Accords, signed in 2020, normalized diplomatic and economic ties between Israel and Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Morocco later joined. Saudi Arabia is a heavyweight of the Middle East. Boosting ties to Israel would be a major shift in a region long beset by religious tensions.

The president’s assertion that there would be no nuclear enrichment as part of the deal appears to contradict how people familiar with the deal have described it. Most of the deal’s details remain private.

The president will need to submit the agreement to Congress, starting a 90-day clock for approval. That move could take place as early as today.

It is unlikely Congress will be able to stop the deal, even if there is substantial opposition. The president could veto their disapproval, and opponents are unlikely to have the votes to override him.

But Trump’s new condition could stymie the deal even before it gets off the ground.

Trump had not spoken to Mohammed in the hours since the social media announcement, Leavitt said. Nor did he speak to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, she said.

It was just the latest example of the president’s on-again, off-again approach to policymaking. Last week, Trump said that the United States would impose a 20% toll on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, despite months in which his own administration said that doing so would be a violation of international law.

A day later, and following widespread condemnation, he abandoned the idea, saying he would make investment deals with Persian Gulf countries instead.

The agreement that Energy Secretary Chris Wright and his Saudi counterpart signed Wednesday lays out conditions for nuclear energy cooperation and includes stipulations aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

But unlike other recent deals with countries that do not already have a domestic enrichment program, this one would not impose the same strict conditions aimed at preventing them from moving in that direction.

The initial announcement of the deal on Wednesday drew condemnation in Israel, where leaders fear a Saudi nuclear program could spur a regional arms race. Israelis worry that Turkey and others could also seek nuclear enrichment programs, ultimately leading to far more countries in the region that have a pathway to a nuclear weapon.

Israel has an undeclared nuclear weapons program, in addition to civilian nuclear power capability.

“Saudi Arabia’s joining of the Abraham Accords would be an historic leap forward for peace in the Middle East,” Netanyahu said Thursday in a statement.

The Trump administration has offered little information about the agreement’s contents. Three people familiar with the details said that it is designed with safeguards to keep the Saudis from enriching nuclear fuel to weapons-grade level.

But they said it exempts the Saudis from aggressive international inspections required in nuclear reactor deals with other countries, including the United Arab Emirates. Instead, sensitive inspections would be executed by American teams under terms spelled out in the agreement, which was initially worked out when the crown prince visited Washington in November.

The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the agreement publicly.

“These agreements reflect our two nations’ shared commitment to strengthening U.S.-Saudi commercial relations, delivering prosperity at home and security to our allies abroad,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a Wednesday statement.

Trump had to sign a separate national security waiver to allow the deal to move forward, since it does not include conventional international inspections, according to the people familiar with the deal.

Under the Saudi deal, the two countries agree to study for two years whether enrichment on Saudi soil is feasible and necessary.

Proponents say the deal with the Saudis gives the U.S. an opportunity to control the expansion of the enrichment network on its own terms and limit the risk of nuclear proliferation. The deal requires that any enrichment on Saudi soil would be controlled by U.S. companies using technology that is not shared with the Saudis, in an effort to limit the possibility that Saudi Arabia could use the program to develop a nuclear weapon.

Nonproliferation experts have long warned against such a deal, saying that safeguards are unlikely to hold for the long term.

July 23, 2026
Mideast oil producers step up plans to bypass the Strait of Hormuz

Before the war in Iran, roughly 15 million barrels of Persian Gulf oil were shipped each day through the Strait of Hormuz. Within a few years, much of that oil could bypass the strait.

As Iran’s chokehold over the strait drags on and oil prices surge, countries across the Gulf are planning to spend billions of dollars to build pipelines enabling them to redirect more supplies to ports along the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman.

At least seven major pipeline projects are under construction, in the planning stage or being discussed as possibilities, according to government officials, oil companies and analysts. The war has been a wake-up call for Gulf oil producers, who are determined to become less dependent on a transit point that hugs Iran’s coast.

But alternatives to Hormuz are also vulnerable to disruption. Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels said early Thursday they had attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, a key alternative route to the strait for Saudi oil exports.

Some alternative routes will take the oil on longer and more expensive paths to market. Regardless, producers have realized that relying so heavily on the Strait of Hormuz “is no longer a prudent long-term strategy,” said Victoria Grabenwöger, senior research analyst at data firm Kpler.

The Red Sea and Gulf of Oman have become vital alternatives to Hormuz

The effective shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz would have been an even greater shock to the world economy were it not for a pipeline Saudi Arabia built in the 1980s amid fears that Tehran would disrupt shipping through the strait during the Iran-Iraq war.

The Saudis’ East-West pipeline carries oil across the desert nation from a processing facility in Abqaiq to the city of Yanbu on the Red Sea coast. Once there, it is loaded onto tankers that head either south to the Arabian Sea or north to the Suez Canal.

The United Arab Emirates has been sending more oil to the port of Fujairah, which abuts the Gulf of Oman, about 145 kilometers (90 miles) south of Hormuz.

Combined, the two pipelines had spare capacity of about 3.5 million to 5.5 million barrels per day before the war began, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The two pipelines are now running near full capacity.

More oil could begin flowing through a UAE port by next year

The state-owned oil company of Abu Dhabi, one of the UAE’s seven emirates, is accelerating construction of a $3 billion, 300-kilometer (200-mile) pipeline to Fujairah. That pipeline, which will run parallel to an existing one, aims to increase oil supplied to Fujairah by more than 1.2 million barrels a day.

The project, which started before the war, is now reportedly about halfway completed, according to Kpler. The pipeline is intended to be completed by early 2027, but Kpler says mid-2027 is more likely given the need to expand the port at Fujairah.

The ambitious timeline “has only become feasible against the backdrop of the Strait of Hormuz blockade,” Kpler’s Grabenwöger said.

Plans to pipe more oil to Turkey and Syria will take longer

In Iraq, officials are ramping up plans to develop alternative export routes for southern oil fields around Basra. Iraq is so dependent on the Strait of Hormuz that it has had to scale back production.

The Iraqi government, which gets some 90% of its revenues from oil sales, has been pursuing pipeline projects with U.S. companies. One would take supplies from an oil terminal in Basra — through which more than 3 million barrels were exported daily before the war — to the port of Ceyhan in Turkey, along the Mediterranean Sea.

That pipeline would also have a branch extending to the Mediterranean port of Baniyas in Syria. Some 2 million barrels a day of oil could ultimately flow through the pipeline to Baniyas, which the U.S. State Department has called “a critical energy corridor.”

Iraqi officials have also held discussions with Jordan on advancing long-discussed plans for a pipeline that would carry oil from Basra to Aqaba. From there it would be exported via the Red Sea or the Suez Canal to Asia and beyond.

The new pipelines will add time and costs — and are also vulnerable to attacks

Taken together, the new projects to bypass Hormuz could carry an added 3.8 million barrels of oil a day by the end of next year, and 7.3 million barrels per day by the end of 2028, according to analysts at the investment bank Goldman Sachs. The projects would mean some 60% of the Gulf’s total prewar exports of 23 million barrels a day could bypass Hormuz if needed, the analysts said.

Pipelines from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea send oil in the wrong direction to help Asian countries that relied on exports through Hormuz, requiring a much longer trip around the southern tip of Africa.

Any additional supplies piped from Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea will also be vulnerable to attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen, as Thursday’s attacks show; the rebels have successfully disrupted shipping before at the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.

That oil could also be sent to the Suez Canal instead to reach the Mediterranean. But the canal cannot accommodate the industry’s largest tankers, which hold up to 2 million barrels per vessel and are often the most cost-efficient way to transport oil long distances.

And pipelines themselves are not immune to attack. The Saudi East-West pipeline was shut down by a Houthi drone strike in May 2019.

Meanwhile oil pipelines don’t help with the disruption to supplies of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, carried by ship. About one-fifth of the world’s LNG — much of it from Qatar and headed for Asian customers — transited the strait before the war.

July 23, 2026
Trump poised to restart tariff campaign, using provision on forced labor

The Trump administration is expected as soon as this week to introduce permanent new tariffs to replace the temporary import penalties it imposed after the Supreme Court earlier this year abruptly upended President Donald Trump’s trade strategy.

The first batch of new tariffs is expected to affect 60 nations that the administration said in June were importing goods produced using forced labor, putting higher-paid American workers at a disadvantage.

Nations that do not prohibit such goods would face tariffs of 12.5%, while those that have such laws but fail to enforce them would be hit with 10% levies, under a proposal that Jamieson Greer, the president’s chief trade negotiator, made public last month. The president could adjust those numbers before taking final action on what are called “Section 301” tariffs.

Those tariffs would fill the gap left by the scheduled expiration at 12:01 a.m. Friday of a stopgap measure that Trump introduced in February after the nation’s high court invalidated levies he imposed last year under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

In response, Trump used a different legal authority to levy a 10% tariff, limited to just 150 days. Now those tariffs are lapsing.

Forced to start his tariff campaign anew, Trump appears eager to pull every lever of trade power he can identify, using laws considered less vulnerable to challenge than the rushed approach he employed last year. Some are well-established weapons in major laws dating to 1962 and 1974. Others, like his use this week of an untested 1930 law to challenge Canada, reflect his unquenchable desire to test legal limits.

“The specific authorities this administration is using have changed but the trade strategy has not,” Greer told the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday.

Indeed, the president’s goal of greater domestic manufacturing has remained constant since he entered the political arena more than a decade ago. Through tariffs, he aims to encourage manufacturers to invest in new American factories rather than import foreign products.

In his Senate testimony, Greer said the administration is making progress. The trade deficit through the first five months of the year is down by almost 4%, according to Commerce Department data. The United States is exporting more merchandise and — rather than buying foreign consumer goods — is importing machinery needed to equip new factories that will employ American workers, he said.

The administration has used tariff pressure to secure 10 so-called reciprocal trade arrangements, which pried open some foreign markets while cementing in place higher U.S. tariffs. Broader trade and investment accords have been reached with the United Kingdom, Japan, and the European Union.

“They’ve gotten a number of trade agreements that they otherwise would not have,” said Blake Harden, managing director of Washington Council EY, a consultancy. “The way that they used [the International Emergency Economic Powers Act] really resulted in commitments by trading partners that the U.S. has been seeking for quite some time, both on tariffs and nontariff barriers.”

Yet U.S. factories employ 75,000 fewer workers than when Trump returned to the White House. And despite administration denials, tariffs are aggravating inflation, according to a recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Without tariffs, the Fed’s preferred inflation measure would have risen at an annual rate of 2.3% in March, instead of its actual 3.2% figure, the Dallas bank said.

Meanwhile, Trump’s insistence on using the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose his initial round of tariffs in April 2025 — which permitted him to take immediate action — has had far-reaching consequences. After the Supreme Court disallowed his use of the law in February, the administration was required to refund tariffs it had illegally charged importers, an amount the Cato Institute estimated at more than $170 billion. Through the end of June, the government had paid out more than $71 billion, U.S. Customs and Border Protection told a federal judge this month.

As Trump has sought to rebuild his tariff wall, he has turned instead to Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. In addition to pursuing the forced-labor tariffs, the administration is probing 16 nations it says deliberately maintain excess production capacity, leading to a global glut of low-cost products. Some of the largest U.S. trading partners — including China, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, and India — subsidize manufacturing at the expense of U.S. producers, the administration says. New levies could result from that probe within weeks.

The latest flurry of tariff activity began with the imposition earlier this month of 25% tariffs on Brazilian goods, which the administration said was a response to Brazil’s “unfair” trade practices.

On Tuesday, the president took to social media to announce a 100% tariff on imported generic drugs, effective Aug. 1, 2028, and rising to 200% one year later.

And on Monday, he cited an untested 1930 trade law to threaten 50% tariffs on Canadian products, which would take effect in 30 days.

In addition, the Commerce Department has a number of open investigations under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which authorizes the president to impose 25% tariffs on national security grounds.

And Trump could get new tariff powers under a Russian sanctions bill in the Senate that would empower him to levy 100% tariffs on major importers of Russian oil. Business groups such as the National Foreign Trade Council oppose the provision, fearing that Trump would stretch those powers in unforeseeable ways. China, India, and the EU could be at risk of punishing trade taxes if the legislation is approved.

The administration’s renewed legal maneuvering will arm the president for future trade negotiations, including ongoing talks over revisions to the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and equip him to respond when domestic industries seek protection, said John Veroneau, a U.S. trade negotiator under President George W. Bush.

“The steps they’re taking to get their legal house in order does not necessarily mean that they’re gearing up for massive levels of new tariffs. I think it does suggest they need to get their legal house in order and want to have flexibility to act in targeted ways as they see fit,” Veroneau said.

Still, this month’s spate of tariff news has left importers and foreign governments scrambling to keep pace.

“There’s a little bit of whiplash in terms of keeping track of the various duties on Brazil, France, Russia, Canada, you know, the hits just keep on coming,” said Jake Colvin, president of the NFTC, which represents companies such as Coca-Cola, Google and IBM. “It feels like the administration is trying out every tool in its toolbox to come up with new tariffs.”

July 23, 2026
U.S. on track to have historically low number of homicides in 2026, report says

LOS ANGELES — Data collected from 30 American cities showed an 18% decrease in the homicide rate from 2025 compared to the same period in 2026, translating to about 215 fewer homicides this year, according to a new report from the independent Council on Criminal Justice.

Should the trend continue, it would push the annual homicide rate to the lowest levels in over a century once final numbers are released at the end of the year.

The report, released Thursday, tracked 13 crimes and recorded drops in nine of those categories, including carjackings, residential burglary, and aggravated assaults. There was a small jump in shoplifting, domestic violence incidents, sexual assaults, and drug offenses over the same period between 2025 and 2026, the report showed.

Experts say the broadly positive changes are exceeding expectations, improving on baseline crime rates from before 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought historic surges in violence.

Democrats and Republicans across the country have tried to capitalize on the positive developments during a competitive midterm election year. But the trends documented in the report carry through in cities with leadership across the political spectrum.

That suggests the most significant factors contributing to the improvements are taking place nationwide and are not specific to a single local public safety measure, said Adam Gelb, the president and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank for criminal justice policy and research.

“Murder and other crime rates are falling across the map in cities with different political leadership, different housing and economic conditions, different policing and prosecution and violence reduction strategies and different levels of federal enforcement activity,” Gelb said.

The council collects data from police departments and other law enforcement sources. Some of the report categories include data from as many as 36 cities, while others include fewer cities in their totals because of tracking gaps or differences in definitions for specific crimes.

Notably, Gelb said that a significant number of violent crimes were less deadly: There was a 23% drop in the lethality of the crimes committed, which is measured by the share of serious violent crime that is fatal.

Many of the non-violent crimes tracked in the report also saw declines, including a 13% drop in residential burglaries year over year and a 50% drop in burglaries compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019. At the same time, reported shoplifting bucked the trends of other property crimes, showing a 5% increase. And while there was a small increase in drug offenses, those were still lower than pre-pandemic levels.

Roughly a third of the 30 sampled cities defied average homicide rate declines across the country, recording an increase in deadly violence from the first half of 2025 to the same period in 2026. That includes Norfolk, Va., which saw a 64% increase in homicides, and San Francisco, which saw a 55% increase. The number of cities that saw a longer-term increase was far smaller: Only Norfolk, Austin, Pittsburgh, and Minneapolis experienced more homicides in 2026 than in the same period in 2019.

Philadelphia recorded the fewest shootings and homicides over the first week of July in recent memory

Philadelphia has recorded 96 homicides so far in 2026, a 23.8% decline from the same period in 2025. If the current pace continues, Philadelphia is on track to record fewer than 200 homicides for the first time since the 1960s, a remarkable turnaround from just five years ago, when nearly three times as many people were killed.

There are many factors that could impact why a location sees increases or decreases in certain crimes when another doesn’t, according to John Roman, director of the Center on Public Safety and Justice at the National Opinion Research Center from the University of Chicago.

Roman said that conservative politicians affiliated with President Donald Trump will point to intensified immigration crackdowns and the deployment of the National Guard in cities like Los Angeles and Memphis, whereas liberal politicians might point to former Democratic President Joe Biden’s public safety legislation that strengthened background checks on firearm sales.

But ultimately, Roman said, the best explanations transcend specific administrations. That ranges from decreased drug usage and therefore fewer purchases from illegal markets, which are often linked to violence, to an influx of federal funding for localities after the pandemic that was spent on social programming.

Those programs, Roman said, often funded jobs like teachers and social workers who primarily work with “young people who are the highest risk of violence and victimization.”

While both Gelb and Roman concurred that there wasn’t a single reason, Gelb said the outcomes should be studied for future insights and celebrated.

“This is one of the most significant public safety developments in decades. It means lives are being saved, families are spared trauma and communities are regaining stability,” Gelb said.

July 23, 2026