About 2,000 New Jersey voters identified last week as noncitizens could actually be citizens after all, Gov. Mikie Sherrill said Tuesday, a week after her disclosure of a voter registration glitchput the state at the center of a heated national debate over election security.
Sherrill announced last week that approximately 6,600 noncitizens had been registered to voteahead of the 2024 election due to a software glitch with the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission’s automatic voter registration program. She said fewer than 400 of those people had voted and there is no evidence that they affected the results of any election. The finding came in the midst of a political fight over President Donald Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud, including by noncitizens, and his aggressive push for an overhaul of the country’s election system.
The first-term governor said Tuesday thatthe New Jersey Department of State’s Division of Elections has begun a process to remove more than 4,500 individuals who were registered because of the software error, but that the rest of the registrations will be referred to county election officials for further review “to ensure that any lawfully registered voters are not being disenfranchised.”
“We are taking this extra step because our initial review indicates that a number of these individuals may be citizens,” she said in a statement. “That has been the case in other states where clerical and administrative voter registration errors have occurred, and we’re determined to get this right.”
Her office announced the discovery a little more than one hour after celebrating New Jersey’s new John R. Lewis Voter Empowerment Act, which Sherrill signed July 2. Lewis was a civil rights leader who represented Georgia in Congress from 1987 until his death in 2020.
The law, which is based on a federal proposal that former President Joe Biden unsuccessfully tried to pass, promotes equal opportunity to voting and voter outreach to communities that do not speak English proficiently, and prohibits intimidation, deception, violence, or restraint of voters or election workers.
The law lays out a process for individuals who want to file a complaint over voting rights and requires public hearings for redistricting.
If jurisdictions have a history of discrimination, the law requires approval from the attorney general before they can make changes to their election administration. It also gives the attorney general authority to enforce the law through litigation, investigations, and studies, and by representing the public in federal court.
“Here in New Jersey, if your rights are violated, you have a right of action,” Sherrill said at Union Baptist Church in Trenton.
Sherrill said New Jersey is the 10th state to enact the model, but the first to do so since an April Supreme Court ruling that weakened part of the Voting Rights Act as the court’s conservative majority ruled against a majority-Black district in Louisiana.
Supporters of the bill said they had been advocating for it for four years in New Jersey.
Sherrill’s Tuesday celebration at the church shows the governor is not shying away from the issue of voting rights even as the state becomes a talking point for Republicans whowant enact new national restrictions — including requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship to register with documents like a birth certificate or passport.
Sherrill opposes the national legislation, known as the SAVE America Act, which has been championed by Trump as a way to make elections more secure but which opponents warn could make it tougher to vote for millions of Americans.
“Trump has only one concern: winning at any cost, and he’s willing to put the right to vote at risk,” Sherrill said Tuesday. “There’s no line he won’t cross, no rule he won’t break, no norm he won’t violate. But we will not stand idly by.”
The former member of Congress will likely continue to have a role in the debate as Republicans ramp up their advocacy ahead of November’s midterm elections.
U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a South Jersey Republican who was elected as a Democrat in 2018 before vowing his loyalty to Trump a year later, led a public letter with other House Republicans calling on Sherrill to answer a series of questions about the noncitizen voting issue. He questioned how she knows it was “just a software glitch and not a nefarious act.”
Van Drew, who chairs the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, said he plans to hold hearings over the issue and is “absolutely exploring” the possibility of subpoenas, Politico reported.
On Tuesday, Sherrill said Van Drew “has a very sordid history as far as elections go.” She said Van Drew’s campaign had hired a political operative who was a “known ballot harvester” — referring to Craig Callaway, who worked on Van Drew’s 2022 bid.
Sherrill said her administration hired the CSG law firm to conduct an independent investigation into the voting registration glitch. One of the firm’s main partners, Jeffrey Chiesa, served as attorney general under former Republican Gov. Chris Christie, who later appointed him to the Senate.
“We have a bipartisan, independent investigation going on right now because we have nothing to hide,” Sherrill said.
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, doubling down on a position that has already added to Democrats’ frustrations with him in recent months, offered a more detailed explanation this week for his change of heart about eliminating the Senate filibuster.
The Pennsylvania Democrat wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post that he had been “horribly wrong” to support ending the practice that requires bills to win 60 votes rather than a 51-vote majority.
The rule frequently allows members of the minority party to block policies that fail to win bipartisan support, including some of each party’s top priorities — like abortion protections when Democrats have been in control, or the voting restrictions that Republicans are now attempting to pass at President Donald Trump’s urging.
Fetterman was among many Democrats in recent years to campaign on eliminating the filibuster in order to secure those bigger wins. During his 2022 campaign, he specifically referred to passing abortion protections established under Roe v. Wade as a reason for that position after the Supreme Court overturned its landmark 1973 decision that year.
“I became one of the first candidates in the country to call for abolishing the filibuster for a reason: it stands in the way of getting things done for [Pennsylvanians],” his active campaign website still read on Tuesday, nearly four years after he won.
But as he has more frequently sided with Republicans and criticized his fellow Democrats, Fetterman has said repeatedly this year that he had been “wrong.”
“We were very wrong about that to nuke the filibuster, and we should really humble ourselves,” he said on Fox News in February. In that interview and others, he needled Democrats who opposed the filibuster but now, he said, express a “love” for it as they find themselves in the minority and try to reject Republican policies.
In the Washington Post this week, Fetterman wrote that Americans who are “horrified” at the policies coming out of the Republican-led Congress and Trump’s administration would be alarmed if the filibuster had been eliminated and every proposal could become law with a simple majority.
“We’d have the Save America Act by now, which I do not support,” Fetterman wrote. “We could have extreme policies such as nationwide abortion restrictions, backpedaling on LGBT rights, repeal of birthright citizenship and limited voting rights across the country. With a government trifecta firmly in place, many provisions of Project 2025 would have easily been enacted. Republicans could fundamentally change the entire government and country with a simple majority vote.”
Fetterman’s reference to the SAVE America Act comes as Trump has pressured Senate Republican leaders to eliminate the filibuster in order to pass the bill, which would enact sweeping election changes. It would require individuals to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote and to show photo ID at the polls, and it would scale back mail voting.
Opponents of the bill say it would make registering and voting more difficult for millions of people. And Fetterman has opposed the bill because of the changes to mail voting, though he has changed his position to support requiring a photo ID at the polls.
The bill has failed to receive support from 60 senators, and Trump has demanded that Republicans bypass the filibuster to force it through with only GOP support. U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.), a Trump ally, has said such a scenario is “very tempting” even though he campaigned against ending the filibuster in 2024.
“It’s a path to get more things done,” McCormick said during a telephone town hall with constituents last week.
Fetterman, in his op-ed, called the filibuster “a critical line of defense that prevents President Donald Trump from having a fill-in-the-blank government with new laws, deregulation or procedures of its choosing.”
He wrote that “history has vindicated” former U.S. Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D., Arizona) and Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) for voting with Republicans to block reforming the filibuster when Democrats were in control in 2022.
Fetterman could potentially play a similar role after the midterm elections this fall if Democrats win control of the Senate with a slim, potentially one-vote majority. Some observers have said Fetterman could also leave his party, becoming a Republican or — as Sinema and Manchin did after serving as Democrats — become an independent.
“Some of my colleagues, including myself, have been frustrated when engaging with the minority,” Fetterman wrote. “But that process isn’t a bug — it’s one of the best features of the Senate. We have a great democracy that is imperfect, but it requires working together.”
As Fetterman works more often with Republicans, though, Democrats have become more frustrated with him and vowed to mount a challenge if he seeks a second term in 2028.
Former U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb — one of the Democrats who has not ruled out another campaign after losing to Fetterman in the 2022 primary — has said the senator’s switch on the filibuster “is probably the worst Fetterman story yet” that most people don’t realize.
In a social media video in early June, Lamb said eliminating the filibuster was essential for Democrats to “put Roe v. Wade back into law” and to pass legislation on voting rights, gun control, and raising the minimum wage if they regain control of the Senate.
“When we ran against each other, he promised he would fight for women on this issue and get rid of the filibuster,” Lamb said. “And of course, like so many things, he’s changed his mind.”
The day after President Donald Trump delivered a prime-time speech contending, among other claims, that 250,000 noncitizens were registered to vote in just four states, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro derided it as“a whole bunch of conspiracy theories that are just simply not connected to reality.”
A week later,when New Jersey revealed that 6,600 noncitizens were improperly registered to vote in the state and nearly 400 cast a ballot due to a glitch, Shapiro’s message was nearly identical — that Trump ispushing “baseless conspiracy theories” as he seeks more power over state-run elections.
Pennsylvania and New Jersey were both on the list of Democratic-led states that Trump claimed had thousands of noncitizens on their voter rolls. The methodology of how the Trump administration arrived at that figure remained unclear, but his administration has sought to leverage the New Jersey disclosure as evidence of a larger problem.
But Shapiro and other national Democrats have not shifted their messaging on the issue ahead of the high-stakes midterm elections.They are refusing to cede to the GOP any suggestion that New Jersey’s voter rolls are evidence of widespread voter fraud and arewarning that the changes Republicans seek would make it tougher for many Americans to vote.
“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 said.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, another potential 2028 candidate, also joined the suit. (Both Shapiro and Beshear lead states with Republican attorneys general.)
The day after Trump’s speech, Shapiro challenged the administration to present “real evidence” of noncitizen voting, which Pennsylvania election officials say is extremely rare.
In addition to Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the White House also targeted Nevada and California for additional scrutiny over their voter rolls, according to a document posted to the White House website last week shortly after Trump’s speech.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, one of Trump’s most vocal critics in the Democrats’ potential 2028 field, said the president’s speech was fueled by debunked lies.
“It was unhinged. Unfounded allegations of election fraud — it’s madness. But he’s setting it up. He’s setting you all up. You know what he’s doing. He’s doing it in plain sight. He’s socializing all of this to normalize all of this,” Newsom said last week, during a newsconference that took place the same day as New Jersey’s announcement.
Trump has repeatedly promoted conspiracy theories about California elections in recent weeks — including in two Pennsylvania speeches — despite no evidence that fraud occurred.
For U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.), pushing back against Trump presents a tougher challenge.
Booker, also a likely 2028 aspirant, must balance the governing changes he sees as needed in New Jersey with the larger politics of the moment. He said the failure of the software was “not acceptable” but rejected Trump’s efforts to portray the entire election system as faulty.
“There are those who will choose to weaponize this issue to undermine confidence in our elections,” Booker said in a statement. “We cannot allow that.”
ButRepublicans have pointed toNew Jersey as proof that a sweeping overhaul is neededfor November’s results to be trusted.
Trump’s allies are pushing the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote and to show photo ID at the polls. The effort has stalled in Congress amid concern, even among Republicans, that the bill’s restrictions on mail voting could make it harder to cast a ballot and that many citizens could wrongly be blocked from voting if they do not have access to required paperwork.
Vice President JD Vance, widely viewed as a 2028 Republican candidate and a potential political heir to Trump, seized on New Jersey’s revelations as a renewed opportunity for the legislation’s relevance.
“If only there was a way to stop this type of ‘software error’ that allowed non citizens to vote in our elections,” he wrote in a post on X that targeted Booker and Sen. Andy Kim (D., N.J.), both of whom are unlikely to support the Republican-led bill.
But theregistration glitch happened despite these individuals answering “no” when asked on a keypad whether they were U.S. citizens. They were added to the system “through no fault of their own,” New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said last week, so it is not clear that showing additional documentation would have prevented the error.
Sherrill ordered her chief counsel to investigate the issue, which occurred under her predecessor, former Democratic Gov.PhilMurphy, and promised to hold those responsible for the error accountable.
Talking about this issue can pose an obstacle for both parties now that New Jersey’s glitch has been identified, said Sam Chen, a Pennsylvania strategist who has worked for former Gov. Tom Corbett and other Republicans.
Republicans have overplayed their hand and are not seen as an authoritative voice on voter fraud, but Democrats have spent the same amount of time dismissing all of Republicans’ concerns, including some that are legitimate, Chen said.
“When you’ve got an entire party saying, ‘No, this is never happening,’ and now you see what you see in New Jersey, it is going to leave a serious credibility issue for them,” Chen said.
Democrats, like Shapiro, could build more credibility if they acknowledged the positive parts of the SAVE Act, he contended.
“Grab what’s good, vehemently oppose what’s bad, and states can blaze their own path,” he said.
But J.J. Balaban, a Philly-based Democratic ad maker, said it does not make sense for Democrats to go along with the SAVE Act because the charges are being made in bad faith.
While many Democrats would support efforts to make election systems more secure, Balaban said, that is not what the Trump administration is trying to do — and New Jersey does not change that.
“Voter fraud was shockingly rare a month ago. It remains shockingly rare today,” he said.
When Herman Welker came to Washington in 1951, he had what seemed to be the ideal résumé to become a man of influence.
The Republican senator from Idaho was an unwavering conservative — a former prosecutor and World War II veteran — whose opinion counted on matters including war, national security, and U.S. Supreme Court seats.
But Welker’s path to power and prominence — serving as a close ally and faithful wingman to Republican Sen. Joe McCarthy in his abusive, power-hungry, and attention-seeking campaign to root out American communists — undid him in a single term. Welker, known in the Senate as “Little Joe from Idaho,” was implicated in another senator’s blackmail-driven suicide. When McCarthy faced censure in the Senate, Welker tried to delay, dissuade, and, according to accounts at the time, bully others out of officially expressing their disgust.
Welker lost his seat in the next election, then, after a brief illness, died.
That’s the thing about influence attained through a grand bargain with those who wield power in ways that defy the law, norms, and anything approaching restraint: It requires a grasp of time and mortality few humans can reliably claim. Which is precisely the risk Sen. Lindsey Graham, a lawyer and a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ran until his sudden death this month.
Unlike Welker, Graham transformed in full public view from a man who was once one of Donald Trump’s most strident and vociferous critics into a dependable MAGA workhorse in Congress.
Now, Graham’s legacy will be forever bound up with that of the 47th president, who took pains to tell NBC News that his faithful wingman’s death would be a “big blow” to the passage of the SAVE America Act.
In 2015, Sen. Lindsey Graham described Donald Trump as a bigot. Much changed over the next decade, Janell Ross writes.Jacquelyn Martin
In 2015, Graham was a third-term senator from South Carolina vying for the Republican presidential nomination — a field that included more than a dozen others — en route to being crushed by Trump.
Graham, for his part, described Trump as a bigot, interested in anti-American policy, and a malignancy that, if nominated, would destroy the GOP.
Given that, when Graham offered his pithy prescription for America in a December 2015 appearance on CNN, I wasn’t exactly surprised.
“You know how you make America great again?” he said. “Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.”
It was a riff on the recycled bit of American political sloganeering that Trump had pushed into the zeitgeist, again. Trump’s vision was to make America more like it was in the past: less diverse, more exclusionary, with group suspicion as public policy, and strict racial and gender hierarchies governing national life.
In 2015, Graham’s position on Trump seemed clear and immutable. He told reporters he did not vote for Trump in 2016. Then, Trump won the election, and Graham spent most of the decade since transforming into one of the president’s most steadfast defenders.
There was a brief interregnum, a wobble of sorts on Jan. 6, 2021. After Trump supporters invaded the U.S. Capitol, Graham gave a speech. On the Senate floor, Graham seemed to point the finger of responsibility directly at Trump.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) speaks with reporters during the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump in February 2021 at the U.S. Capitol Building.Stefani Reynolds
“Trump and I, we’ve had a hell of a journey,” Graham said. “I hate it to end this way. Oh my God, I hate it. From my point of view, he’s been a consequential president. All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.”
But Graham, converted MAGA bannerman and, his critics say, Trump-era opportunist, soon returned.
Graham’s devotion to Trump was so sweeping and so sudden that the more conspiracy-minded have embraced the idea that Graham was the victim of blackmail or controlled by some sort of kompromat.
In death, Graham’s defenders — a group that, in these contentious times, notably includes Republicans and Democrats — have described his Trump transition as pragmatic, even admirable; what a skilled legislator must do.
Graham, they say, managed, in the final days of his life, three substantive foreign policy victories. He hammered out the details of a Russian economic sanctions bill Trump has said he will sign. He secured U.S. approval for Ukrainian strikes in Russia. And with these agreements, Graham effectively shored up NATO and its fundamental goal of staving off world war. Of course, all of that is contingent upon a mercurial president remaining uncharacteristically disciplined and consistent.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) with President Donald Trump at a rally in Charlotte, N.C., in March 2020.DOUG MILLS
And therein lies the public lesson for us all. Time can and will run out. Redemption arcs, periods of public reconsideration, and book-tour explanations are not guaranteed.
Entirely honest assessments of the dead are rare. Many will offer familiar strings of superlatives, words of admiration, mutual respect, and sympathy — perhaps in the hope that those sentiments will be reciprocated when their time comes.
Others might just say our passing was a “big blow” to one of their pet projects.
Ultimately, though, our actions and associations will speak unvarnished truths about us long after we are gone.
Visit the block where Welker lived in Washington, D.C. Today there is not so much as a plaque. There’s just a Marriott.
Janell Ross is a former senior correspondent at Time magazine who frequently writes about race, politics, and identity.
In the opening pages of the book he published between losing and then winning a Pennsylvania seat in the U.S. Senate, Dave McCormick painted the picture of an uncomfortable scene at Mar-a-Lago.
It was early 2022. McCormick, a former hedge fund CEO running in a tough Republican primary against celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, had made the pilgrimage to meet with then-former President Donald Trump and ask him not to endorse Oz. Trump had maintained a firm grip on the party after leaving office and avoiding conviction for “incitement of insurrection” at his second impeachment trial.
According to McCormick’s retelling, Trump pulled up a television interview McCormick gave after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol in which he said the president was partially responsible for political divisiveness.
“Then the former president looked me in the eyes and warned, ‘You know you can’t win unless you say the election was stolen,’” McCormick wrote. “I made it clear to him that I couldn’t do that. Three days later, Trump endorsed Mehmet Oz.”
McCormick lost the race but ran again and won with Trump’s support two years later — when they shared a ballot. Now, three years after McCormick penned the book, he has become a prominent cheerleader in the Senate for an election reform proposal — the SAVE America Act — that Trump has advocated for while continuing to falsely say the 2020 election was rigged against him.
The Pennsylvania Republican has still not echoed the president’s debunkedclaims of widespread fraud in 2020. He also has not disputed them as he lobbies for the bill, which he and other Trump allies argue will build confidence in elections and which critics say will do the opposite while potentially disenfranchising millions of voters.
Other Pennsylvania Republicans in Congress — some of whom tried to block the state’s electoral votes hours after the Capitol attack— have similarly stayed quiet as Trump has both resurfaced old allegations and introduced new ones.
In a prime-time speech earlier this month, Trump claimed that China had secretly obtained U.S. voter information and that a “large-scale voter registration operation” led to fraud in Michigan six years ago. His administration also released a document alleging Pennsylvania was among four states where the Department of Homeland Security had identified more than 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote.
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, a Republican appointed by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, has forcefully rejected those claims.
But adding more fuel to the rhetoric about election integrity, New Jersey officials said last week that about 6,600 people who were not citizens were registered to vote before the 2024 election, and fewer than 400 cast a ballot.
Still, many of the claims Trump made in his speech have been refuted by election experts and, in many cases, were not new.Meanwhile, none of the 11 Republicans representing Pennsylvania in Congress have commented directly on them, including some who responded to certain questions for this story but did not answer others specifically about the new claims.
President Donald Trump, left, and Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa., attend the finals at the NCAA wrestling championship, Saturday, March 22, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)Matt Rourke
McCormick’s spokesperson said only that the senator’s position on 2020 “remains unchanged.”
A spokesperson for U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a moderate Bucks County Republican who voted to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 win, said the lawmaker “completely disagrees with the president’s allegations of interference in the 2020 election.” She did not answer a question about the new and specific claims, such as the 250,000 noncitizens registered, but said Fitzpatrick “has full faith and confidence [in] our election officials.”
Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC 2024, in Oxon Hill, Md., Feb. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)Jose Luis Magana
U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, a York County Republican who tried to overturn election results and became a subject of investigations into Jan. 6, reposted comments online that raised alarm about the White House’s claims of noncitizen voters.
Perry’s office did not respond to a request for comment. He is one of four Republicans in the state facing a competitive reelection this fall — putting Pennsylvania in the national spotlight as Democrats push to gain control of the narrowly divided U.S. House, and potentially at the center of concerns about Trump’s attempts to control the election process.
Republicans point to N.J. as they call for new voting law
Every Pennsylvania Republican in Congress, meanwhile, has supported the SAVE America Act. The bill would require voters to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote and to show photo ID at the polls. It would also scale back mail voting, which has become increasingly popular since the COVID-19 pandemic but has remained a focus of Trump’s false claims of fraud.
Supporters of the legislation say that voter ID is widely popular and that eliminating even a few noncitizens from the voter rolls is worth ensuring elections are legal and secure. Opponents say that the issues the bill is trying to solve are either nonexistent or statistically irrelevant, and that it would effectively make registering more difficult for about 21 million people who do not have easy access to the paperwork that would be required, like a passport or birth certificate.
“It would upend voter registration and our democracy and, on its own terms, is an extraordinarily harmful policy that would hurt millions of American citizens,” said Eliza Sweren-Becker, a voting rights expert at the Brennan Center for Justice. “It is being advanced on the backs of lies about our election system that are themselves harmful to our democracy and trust in election administration.”
Though he has not addressed Trump’s latest claims, McCormick renewed his public push for the SAVE America Act after Trump’s prime-time address — writing, “Let’s act now,” on social media following the speech.
Last week, he and others also grasped on to both a nearly decade-old voter registration issue in Pennsylvania and the fresh problem in New Jersey to underscore the need for the law.
“This isn’t a harmless ‘software error,’” McCormick wrote on social media after Gov. Mikie Sherrill said a technical mistake led to noncitizens registering to vote. “This is why we must confirm citizenship before anyone registers. Only U.S. citizens should vote in our elections.”
McCormick also elevated a statement from the Department of Homeland Security that referred to an issue that Schmidt, then a Philadelphia city commissioner, discovered in 2017. Schmidt found 168 noncitizens were registered in Philadelphia, and likely hundreds more were registered statewide, due to an error by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. State Auditor General Tim DeFoor, a Republican, has said fixes to the system were largely successful.
U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, a Lehigh County Republican who is running in one of the most competitive districts in the country, also pointed to the Pennsylvania example and the New Jersey developments while justifying his support for the SAVE America Act during a telephone town hall with constituents Wednesday.
But while trying to remember the details on the call, Mackenzie potentially overstated the problem.
“I believe it was about 8,000 people here in Pennsylvania made their way onto the voter rolls, who were not supposed to be there and weren’t asked those proper questions. So these things do happen,” Mackenzie said before stressing the need for the SAVE America Act.
Asked about that number, a spokesperson for Mackenzie pointed to the Pennsylvania Department of State’s additional review in 2018 that found 8,698 voters whose eligibility needed to be determined. Those voters, however, were not necessarily noncitizens or otherwise ineligible to vote, and the state never released a more detailed analysis.
The spokesperson did not answer questions about whether Mackenzie agrees with Trump’s old or new claims about election fraud in 2020, or whether Pennsylvanians should have confidence in the state’s current system.
“This case from Pa., and from N.J. more recently, highlight the lack of appropriate checks taking place when people initially register to vote. We should have appropriate checks to verify the citizenship status when someone initially registers, which is what the SAVE Act provides. The absence of these safeguards, as well as the egregious errors that have been seen in states like New Jersey, are key reasons for the bipartisan frustration with our elections.”
Sweren-Becker said overstated claims of noncitizen voters have contributed to spreading distrust. The Pennsylvania situation, she said, was also not an example of a scheme to defraud the system, and “not the basis for a policy that would block millions of Americans from being able to cast their ballots.” Both that case and the one in New Jersey are instead examples of administrative errors that occasionally happen in a complex election system and represent “an extraordinarily small fraction” of voters, she said.
The Cato Institute, a libertarian Washington-based think tank, has also thrown cold water on the idea that the SAVE America Act would have prevented the New Jersey error. Legal fellow and former Arizona Republican official Stephen Richer, in a post that referred to McCormick’s advocacy, wrote that the current structure of the bill “likely wouldn’t have prevented” the software error.
“Be wary of politicians who say, ‘All of these problems will be fixed with my simple legislation,’” Richer wrote. “That’s often not the case.”
‘Deeply unhelpful’
McCormick, in response to questions for this story, did not directly say if the law would have prevented the issue in New Jersey. But he stressed that the paperwork requirement “helps stop noncitizens from getting registered.” It would also require states to set up a program to “continuously check voter rolls to find noncitizens” using different datasets — which he noted some states already have.
In a telephone town hall with constituents on Wednesday, the senator also acknowledged concerns about the bill when asked about it by voters on both sides of the issue.
Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senators John Fetterman (left) and Dave McCormick appear together Monday, June 29, 2026 to promote the savings accounts for kids that were a signature piece of President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
He said he believed the law would “make it as easy as possible” for people to obtain valid forms of ID if they do not have them. And as someone who lost his first race against Oz by 950 votes and won his second race against Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey by about 15,000 votes, he said even rare cases of noncitizen voting could make a difference in close elections. Eligibility for mail ballots also needs “to tighten up dramatically,” he said, though he did not fully explain his thoughts on the issue or if he believes there has been fraud associated with them.
As Democrats block the bill in the Senate, he called on them to “defend the indefensible” and said “there should be a political cost in objecting to something that most Americans agree with.”
One of the Democrats opposing the bill is McCormick’s close friend and ally — U.S. Sen. John Fetterman.
Though he has frequently broken with his party — and now supports voter ID after previously calling it “insidious and unnecessary” — Fetterman has said the bill’s changes to mail voting are “a nonstarter” for him.” In a CNN interview last week, he also said that the 2020 election in Pennsylvania was fair, that there is “no evidence” of 250,000 noncitizens registered, and that Trump was unnecessarily fixated on the 2020 election.
“In Pennsylvania, out of 67 counties, the vast, vast, vast majority of them are deep red counties, and they’ve never encountered any kinds of fraud,” Fetterman said. “I don’t know why the president is dragging up all of this stuff. You’re the president. Do something positive. And you are talking about 2020. That’s been settled over six years ago. It’s deeply unhelpful.”
Other Pennsylvania Democrats have lambasted Trump for dredging up the old claims, and they have blamed GOP “enablers” for supporting him and pushing the bill.
“The only thing it would ‘save’ is Trump and his Republican enablers from voters holding them accountable,” U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans (D., Philadelphia) said.
U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio, an Allegheny County Democrat who worked on election security issues before running for Congress in 2022, said the bill “will do nothing to improve election security” and would instead harm married women — whose birth certificates might not have their current name — and people without passports. He said those who lie about the 2020 election are “cowards” who should not have a place in elected office.
“The fact that some Republican politicians are so scared of Donald Trump that they lie for him just to keep their jobs is spineless and pathetic,” Deluzio said.
McCormick, for his part, said during the telephone town hall that the bill is unlikely to pass as Democrats continue to block it from getting the required 60 votes in the Senate, and as Republicans decline to eliminate the filibuster rule to let it move forward with just 50 votes.
“Where does that leave us? That leaves us in a position where I think we should be constantly talking about this, and I try to do this every single week, multiple times, [saying] why the SAVE America Act is important,” said McCormick, whose staff said he was unavailable for an interview.
New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed a surveillance pricing ban into law on Thursday as she champions herself as a fighter for lower costs in New Jersey.
The Democrat lauded the initiative as part of her broader agenda and campaign promise of making life more affordable in the state. Also in line with her messaging, she blamed President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran for high grocery prices at a news conference announcing the new law.
“Surveillance pricing essentially gives Big Brother a look into your shopping cart,” she said. “It’s incredibly invasive and it’s expensive.”
Several states across the country have similar bills under consideration, but New Jersey is just the third to write the ban into law, after Maryland and Connecticut.
Here’s what to know about the new law.
What is surveillance pricing?
Essentially, it’s when grocery stores or apps create individualized pricing based on shoppers’ personal data.
As defined by the new law, it’s a pricing strategy in which food prices are adjusted, optimized, or recommended by an algorithm or automatic system that uses personal data, such as through biometrics, cameras, sensors, device tracking, or other forms of observing consumers’ personal attributes.
What does this law do?
The new law, called the Fair Price Protection Act, bans surveillance pricing or other pricing strategies that determine the cost of groceries based on consumers’ data. The law takes aim specifically at groceries and not at restaurants or other places that sell food or beverage for immediate consumption.
It also implements a one-year ban on new electronic shelf labels and requires the state to study the use of such labels. The New Jersey Innovation Authority is required to submit findings no more than six months before the end of the moratorium along with policy recommendations surrounding the practice. Companies are allowed to repair or replace existing electronic shelf labels during this moratorium.
These labels allow companies to update prices more efficiently and do not mean surveillance pricing is being used. But a group that has lobbied for a surveillance pricing ban — the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union — has also called for bans on electronic price tags and called them “the missing piece of the surveillance pricing puzzle.”
The surveillance pricing ban will not take effect for a year, but the electronic shelf label moratorium will begin in six months.
A violation of the new law carries penalties of up to $10,000 for the first offense and up to $20,000 for further violations, and the attorney general can pursue additional civil penalties.
What did lawmakers think of this bill?
Earlier this year, some South Jersey legislators said they wish the bill had gone further and banned the practice across other industries.
The bill passed both chambers of the legislature on June 30 as part of a slew of last-minute actions before the budget deadline.
It passed largely along party lines, though two Democrats voted against it in the Senate, including Sen. James Beach, a Camden County Democrat who had been listed as a cosponsor on the bill. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
In the Assembly, seven Democrats did not vote on the bill, and one Republican voted for it.
Does Instacart use surveillance pricing?
At her news conference, Sherrill cited figures from a Consumer Reports study that found Instacart used artificial intelligence-driven pricing that left customers with price tags differing as much as 23% per item for an annual household cost difference of $1,200 per year.
However, Instacart has said it did not use personal information to set those prices, and therefore it did not involve surveillance pricing — a practice the company said it does not use. The company also said it has changed its practices outlined in the study.
That being said, experts have warned that the combination of AI pricing models and the mass amounts of data collected on U.S. shoppers paves the way for surveillance pricing, per Consumer Reports.
Will this law interfere with your loyalty discounts?
Opponents of the bill, such as business groups and Republican lawmakers, have argued that the bill will have the opposite effect than intended, leading to higher prices because of negative effects on loyalty discount programs.
“The reason so many businesses pushed back on ‘The Fair Price Protection Act’ wasn’t because they want to price gouge customers, it’s because the bill threatens the loyalty programs, discount apps, and member pricing that brings in customers and actually brings prices down for everyday shoppers. … This law threatens to take that all away,” Assembly Republicans said in a post on X on Thursday.
But Sherrill insists the new law will not go after those discounts.
“Deals are fine,” Sherrill said. “Surveillance-driven surcharges driving up costs are not. If companies violate your privacy to try and make a buck, they’ll be held accountable under our state’s Consumer Fraud Act.”
The law specifically says it does not prevent discounts with publicly shared eligibility requirements, such as being a teacher or veteran. It also allows companies to offer discounts through loyalty programs that shoppers opt in to and provide discounts based on customers’ purchases as long as all members of the program are eligible to receive them under the same conditions.
HARRISBURG — As state legislators failed to reach an agreement on a new sentencing structure for second-degree murder convictions on the eve of a deadline imposed by Pennsylvania’s highest court, the Allegheny County district attorney has asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to extend its deadline 120 days.
Unless the court agrees, the state’s divided legislature is all but guaranteed to not reach a deal by the Friday evening deadline set by the court, which ruled in March that mandatory life sentences for crimes of that category were ruled unconstitutional.
That means that judges would begin to sentence individuals across the state without legislative guidance — and likely tees up about 1,100 individuals already serving life sentences for lengthy litigation over what comes next.
In a filing with the court Thursday afternoon, Stephen Zappala, the Allegheny County district attorney, requested that the judges give the General Assembly the ability to continue debating new sentencing guidelines when they return in September from summer recess.
Lawmakers were not due back to Harrisburg until the fall, but Senate and House Republicans lambasted House Democrats for failing to pass any legislation on second-degree murder. The House returned to the Capitol for a special session Thursday to vote on a Democrat-backed plan for second-degree murder sentencing.
The passage of that bill, however, did not bring lawmakers closer to a deal.
“We still want to have a legislative solution, we believe it is going to be the most equitable way statewide to address the issue of people who are currently serving unconstitutional sentences,” said Roxanne Horrell, the legislative director for Straight Ahead, a decarceration advocacy organization. “We are ready and willing to come to the negotiating table.”
The House-advanced plan, which passed 102-100, would allow individuals who have already been convicted of second-degree murder to seek parole after serving 30 years. A decision on new sentencing guidelines would be left to the state’s Sentencing Commission.
In a brief statement to reporters, House Majority Leader Matt Bradford (D., Montgomery) said that bill “is a real attempt in the House to meet the Senate more than halfway.”
In floor arguments that at times grew heated, House Republicans took issue with the outlining no minimum sentence for future cases and instead placing that decision in the hands of the Sentencing Commission.
Republicans also criticized Democratic leadership for not taking a vote on the Senate-passed plan.
That bill — which several Senate Democrats voted for — creates a sentencing minimum of 35 years to life for future cases. Individuals would be eligible for parole after serving 35 years, or after serving 20 years for those older than 70.
“This is one of those issues that requires a great deal of thought, and it requires bringing in some of the stakeholders that we are hearing from that was opposed to this legislation today,” House Minority Leader Jesse Topper (R., Bedford) said. “Those are people who need to be in a room to come up with a solution, and unfortunately, that’s not what happened.”
He called for party leaders, the state’s Fraternal Order of Police, Gov. Josh Shapiro, and Attorney General Dave Sunday to come together and reach an agreement instead of shuttling bills back and forth between both chambers.
“When you don’t have that kind of collaboration to deal with an issue such as this,” Topper said, “nothing will be done.”
Horrell said the decarceration organization would support discussions that include their input.
In a letter on Thursday, the attorney general urged state representatives to vote against the plan backed by House Democrats.
“This approach does not foster appropriate and thoughtful re-entry initiatives or put individuals on a path to success,” wrote Sunday, a Republican. “Thoughtful re-entry initiatives are necessary and important, and I support those initiatives. But not this approach, which ultimately fails to hold dangerous offenders accountable.”
The plan advanced Thursday is the latest development in months of back and forth between Republicans and Democrats who have advanced differing visions for what the new sentencing parameters should be.
Lawmakers were unable to reach a deal as part of budget negotiations that concluded earlier this month.
“Today, the House took important action prior to the court-imposed deadline by passing a package to address this issue and it’s time for Senate Republicans to return to Harrisburg and bring this matter to conclusion rather than grandstand,” Shapiro said in a statement.
The House-passed bill also expands the state’s compassionate release program. Under existing law, incarcerated individuals can only be candidates for release if doctors determine that they have less than a year to live.
The bill would allow for an individual to be released if they have been diagnosed by a doctor with a terminal or life-threatening illness, or if a physician diagnoses them with an illness that could be treated better outside of a correctional facility.
Democratic Rep. Rick Krajewski, who represents West Philadelphia, said that the program is designed for incarcerated individuals who are facing serious illnesses “that require real, complex medical care” that can’t be provided while an individual is serving out their sentence.
“I am glad that the House was able to put a vision forward about how to fulfill our constitutional mandate and reform our carceral system generally,” he added.
Several Republicans had supported Krajewski’s initial bill, which passed the house 111-92. The program is estimated to save $15 million a year in healthcare costs for incarcerated individuals, he said.
Now that both the House and Senate have passed a bill, either could be amended and voted on by both chambers in a single day.
“Instead of allowing a vote on either of the bipartisan bills passed by the Senate, [House Democrats] chose to engage in political theater and failed to produce any feasible product to protect our communities and victims’ families,” Senate Republican leaders wrote in a statement.
A spokesperson for Senate Republican leadership did not respond to a request for comment on whether the chamber planned to return for a vote Friday.
On Thursday morning, Topper morning said that he hoped the legislature could come to an agreement in the coming weeks if an agreement could not be reached by the deadline.
However, speaking to reporters after the House adjourned, Topper said the decision to advance the House bill without a vote on the Senate bill on Thursday “sets things back considerably.”
Ethan Young is an intern with the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents’ Association. He can be reached at ethanmyoung@gmail.com.
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.
Early on in his tenure, U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick proved himself to the largest federal employees union in the United States.
In 2017, President Donald Trump signed a law to improve whistleblower protections and set guidelines for employee misconduct at the Department of Veterans Affairs. But the American Federation of Government Employees began noticing some adverse effects.
As Phil Glover, a national vice president for AFGE, tells it, veterans, including those with disabilities, and lower-level employees were being targeted instead.
AFGE officials went to Fitzpatrick with their concerns, and the Bucks County Republican introduced his own bill repealing and adjusting certain provisions.
That move, Glover said, was an inflection point in solidifying a long-lasting partnership with Fitzpatrick — one that gives the union a rare ally in the Republican caucus and Fitzpatrick a consistent endorsement from a powerful organization as he has repeatedly won reelection in a narrowly divided district.
“He’s carried a lot of water for us within the Republican Party, within the caucus, whether they were in the minority or majority,” said Glover, whose jurisdiction includes Pennsylvania.
In the high-stakes midterm elections this year, union endorsements behind Fitzpatrick and U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan, a freshman Republican trying to hold onto his seat in Northeastern Pennsylvania, are shaping up to be a potentially critical factor inthesetwoswing districts that could help determine which party controls the U.S. House.
“They all reached out. I didn’t even have to call them. They reached out to me right away and said we are 10,000% with you,” Fitzpatrick said, describing his relationship with the unions as “beyond advocacy” and “like family.”
Organized labor has traditionally backed Democratic candidates in the state —and that remains mostly true this year.
Fitzpatrick was the only Republican congressional candidate to get an endorsement Wednesday from the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, which is also backing popular Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro.
In two other swing-seat districts centered on Harrisburg and the Lehigh Valley, unions have coalesced behind the Democratic nominees, including by spending big to help union leader Bob Brooks win his primary in May.
But the splintering of their endorsements in both Fitzpatrick’s Bucks County-based 1st Congressional District and Bresnahan’s Scranton-based 8th Congressional District seat has been a striking departure — underscoring some unions’ willingness to reward incumbents’ loyalty to give labor a voice in a Republican caucus that may not always work in their interests.
Last week, the Pennsylvania State Education Association — the largest union for teachers or any other labor organization in the state — backed Fitzpatrick even though Harvie, a former social studies teacher at Bucks County Technical High School, was previously a member.
How those endorsements move the needle in the election is still an open question.
But in a district with independent-minded voters who have shown a willingness to cross party lines, some observers say, the labor endorsements could make a difference — both in the get-out-the-vote and fundraising support that unions sometimes provide, and in appealing to swing voters.
“It suggests to an independent voter or even a moderate Democratic voter that this candidate isn’t a far-right candidate, that this candidate is somebody who will work with workers and work with unions,” said Paul Frymer, a politics professor at Princeton University who studiesorganized labor.
U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan introduced before remarks from President Donald Trump in Mt. Pocono, Pa., in December. Steven M. Falk / For The Inquirer
‘We consider them our friends’
With Trump in office and Republicans in control of Congress, Fitzpatrick and Bresnahan have won some union support by backing policies their own party leadership opposes.
In December, they were among 20 Republicans to join 211 Democrats to force a successful vote on the Protect America’s Workforce Act, which aimed to reverse a Trump executive order to strip collective bargaining rights from federal workers. In June, they were again among 20 Republicans — and the only ones from Pennsylvania — to vote for the Faster Labor Contracts Act, an effort to speed up bargaining negotiations.
And Bresnahan’s decision-making, as a freshman going against the White House, “had some guts to it,” Glover said. He said his group “didn’t entertain” endorsing Democrat Paige Cognetti, the Scranton mayor running against Bresnahan, or Harvie in the Bucks County race.
Angela Ferrito, president of the 700,000-member Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, which endorsed Fitzpatrick on Wednesday, said that while he has not always sided with labor, he has become the kind of Republican who will “sometimes almost put their neck out.”
Still, the union’s own public scorecard shows Fitzpatrick has aligned with its priorities far less often than Democrats — about 46% of the time in the current session of Congress. Bresnahan, who did not secure the union’s endorsement Wednesday, voted with the AFL-CIO just once — on the Protect America’s Workforce Act — to give him an 8% score.
Ferrito said the organization supports candidates who “support us and stand up when it matters.”
“Pennsylvania has always been unique in that way, where we do have moderate Republicans who will support unions and the rights of union workers. And so in those circumstances that we consider them, we consider them our friends,” she said.
State of play
As both of their districts draw national attention, Fitzpatrick has touted more than 40 labor-centered recommendations or formal shows of support and Bresnahan has highlighted about a dozen.
Fitzpatrick’s labor endorsements have ranged from local building trade affiliates — such as the Boilermakers Local 13 and the deep-pocketed International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98 — to national labor organizations, like the Transport Workers Union of America and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.
The SEIU Pennsylvania State Council, which represents employees in public services, healthcare, and property services, backed him for the first time after a decade of either endorsing against him or staying neutral. But the council’s perspective changed after Fitzpatrick publicly supported reforms for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and was only one of two Republicans to vote against his party’s cuts to Medicaid in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“For us, that means something,” said Matt Yarnell, president of SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania and the state council, “if someone’s down to both organize and fight and stand up and speak out against your own party.”
Fitzpatrick said his “unique” role as a labor-friendly Republican has made him a “pivotal voice” in Congress — largely because of the hyperpartisan nature of politics that he has railed against, he said.
“That’s unfortunate,” Fitzpatrick said. “If we did away with the political parties and we just had people form coalitions around ideas, you would see so much support, so much more support for commonsense measures, like supporting labor.”
Bresnahan said he made it a personal mission to cultivate strong relationships with organized labor when he entered Congress last year after having had collective bargaining agreements as the CEO of his family’s electrical contracting business.
As a freshman Republican, he said, he had to prove himself. He got up to speed on the roughly 10,000 federal jobs in his district and made visits to a high-security federal prison with “serious staffing shortages”at the same time as Trump was laying off thousands of federal workers.
“I absolutely encourage my Republican colleagues to take another look at this and find a way to support the people that support us each and every day,” said Bresnahan, who narrowly defeated six-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright in 2024.
Bucks County Commissioner Bob Harvie addresses supporters after winning the May 19 Democratic primary. Steven M. Falk / For The Inquirer
Harvie, the Democrat challenging Fitzpatrick, grew up in a union household and hasreceived the backing of two unions: the American Federation of Teachers Pennsylvania and Transport Workers Union Local 234, which represents SEPTA employees. His campaign said conversations are ongoing with labor and believes more support is in the works.
Harvie said Fitzpatrick’s endorsements have in some ways been a “reward for doing the bare minimum” while his own track record as a former Falls Township supervisor and as a twice-elected county commissioner proves he would be a steadfast supporter of labor in Congress.
He said he was “anxious to get the support of the rank-and-file workers,” who are bearing the brunt of cost-of-living issues.
“They’re the ones who are really going through all the pain right now with higher gas prices, higher grocery prices, higher energy prices, concerns about their healthcare,” Harvie said.
Cognetti, meanwhile, has credited her endorsements from nearly a dozen local labor unions to her record in Scranton, including increasing the number of jobs and wages for public workers. Endorsements from AFSCME, which represents municipal employees, and others that she announced this month underscore that support, she said.
She also said she would support more labor priorities than Bresnahan, including the PRO Act — a major effort to expand workers rights that Bresnahan has not endorsed — and repealing parts of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Bresnahan voted for.
“It’s very important that you look at the whole picture of someone’s votes. It’s very easy to sign on to a letter and try to make yourself a hero,” Cognetti said.
In one unusual instance, Cognetti appeared to receive the endorsement of the Pennsylvania Conference of Teamsters with a voice vote during an April meeting, but the organization released a statement endorsing Bresnahan in June. But conference president Bill Hamilton, who had called for the vote at the April meeting, said in the June statement that Bresnahan “has always had our backs,” including through his vote for the Faster Labor Relations Act.
Bresnahan, in an interview, also referenced that bill and stressed his relationship with Sean O’Brien, the national Teamsters leader whose podcast Bresnahan appeared on in January.
The state and national Teamsters organizations did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the situation.
“Democrats just can’t take unions for granted anymore,” Bresnahan said.
Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti hosts the national summer meeting of the Mayors Innovation Project in Scranton in 2023. Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
‘Stick with them no matter what’
The union endorsements in the 1st and 8th Congressional Districts have been a sharp contrast to other swing-seat districts that have arguably already shown the power of labor as a political force.
In the Lehigh Valley district where Brooks, a statewide union leader and retired firefighter, is running against freshman Republican U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, high-profile Democrats recruited and rallied around the Democrat largely because of his union bona fides. And when opponents unleashed a last-minute ad campaign against him in the May primary, another political action committee padded with organized labor donations spent nearly $1.8 million to push back and help give Brooks the win.
It is not yet clear whether unions will similarly spend heavily to elect Fitzpatrick or Bresnahan — especially as they mostly look to elect Democrats elsewhere in Pennsylvania and across the country.
TJ Lepera, political director of IBEW Local 98, said he believed a Democratic blue wave would be highly favorable to labor interests. But his union has also backed Fitzpatrick,who“knows our issues, and that could be helpful in trying to calm down a lot of the crazy rhetoric that comes out of the Republican side, sometimes, on the attacks of labor,” Lepera said.
“If somebody has a great voting record with us and has been loyal to Local 98 and the way that we see legislation, we typically stick with them no matter what,” Lepera said.
That emphasis on loyalty was echoed by other unions, even if their political calculus led them to go the other direction.
“We were not going to support anything that would possibly turn the House or the Senate red,” said Joe Coccio, secretary-treasurer and political coordinator from TWU Local 234, which has endorsed Harvie. “If they were a good candidate by us … once we endorse a candidate, unless they break the law or do wrong by us, we continue to endorse them until they move up or move on.”
Coccio said Harvie had proved his appreciation for SEPTA employees when he served on the transit agency’s board.He is also accessible and pro-union, and has valuable experience as a teacher and county commissioner during the COVID-19 pandemic, Coccio said.
AFT Pennsylvania, which is backing Harvie, did not respond to multiple interview requests.
As November inches closer, unions backing both Fitzpatrick and Harvie are planning out their financial and ground-game support.
“For us, is it strategic? Yeah, it’s very strategic,” said Lepera, whose Local 98 has a long history as a political power broker in Philadelphia and statewide. “We want to have a voice on the other side of the aisle.”
HARRISBURG — Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania’s divided state government rarely agree.
But this month, there was one issue upon which nearly all of them found common ground: ending tax breaks for data centers.
Despite the rare consensus as Harrisburg looks to add guardrails to the state’s data center boom, no legislation was passed to end the favorable tax treatment for the projects. After approving the $50.8 billion state budget last week, Pennsylvania’s lawmakers went home for the summer, each blaming the other party for the inaction.
But new regulations could be coming soon, Gov. Josh Shapiro said.
The governor — who has adamantly stood by his proposal to condition tax breaks for data center projects based on their compliance with environmental and transparency standards — said he plans to take executive action on regulating Pennsylvania data centers in the coming weeks.
“I am now exploring everything I can through executive authority since the Senate Republicans refused to act,” Shapiro said Tuesday at an unrelated event in Philadelphia, declining to share details or a timeline for his plans.
Lawn sign along Crooked Lane in King of Prussia, Wednesday, May 27, 2026. Some residents are standing in opposition to building a data center in their community.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
The state’s current tax incentive for data center development is projected to cost Pennsylvania nearly $2 billion in lost revenue over the next five years.
The current benefit was approved by the legislature in 2021. Developers who generate a certain dollar value of investment are exempt from the state sales tax rate of 6% for equipment, including materials used to construct the data center building.
According to a February report from the state, 12 projects currently receive the exemption.
Proponents of the tax break have said it helps keep Pennsylvania economically competitive. Opponents say such a benefit is no longer necessary for an industry that is expanding rapidly.
“I am not going to get into hypotheticals,” Shapiro said Tuesday when asked whether he would sign a bill that would eliminate the tax benefit, something industry groups have loudly opposed.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, flanked by fellow state Democrats, signs the 2026-2027 Pennsylvania state budget in Harrisburg, Pa. on Sunday, July 12, 2026.Gillian McGoldrick / Staff
Shapiro has championed his proposal for data centers, which incentivizes tax breaks for projects that adhere to a series of requirements. He has not publicly endorsed other data center regulation bills passed by the Democratic-controlled House. The governor’s plan passed the House in June with a vote of 134-68, but was not put up for a vote in the Republican-controlled Senate.
And as public opinion has soured on data center development, lawmakers in Harrisburg have become more skeptical. This year, all but five Pennsylvania state legislators expressed support for bills that would remove tax breaks for data centers.
According to an Inquirer review, 197 out of 202 House members voted for a bill that would have repealed the tax benefit. In the Senate, 44 out of 50 members voted in favor of a bill that included a provision to eliminate the tax exemption. The remaining six senators expressed support in interviews for getting rid of the tax break, though they said they voted against the bill because of unrelated provisions included within the legislation, including an expansion of the Educational Improvement Tax Credit Program.
Though the state’s final budget took no action on the tax exemption, it included a provision requiring data centers with electric outputs larger than 10 megawatts to submit information about their energy and water usage to the state.
Several other data center regulations that received bipartisan support in recent weeks were also absent from the final spending package, including attempts to enact a local or statewide moratorium on new development.
State Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R., Indiana) during a press conference at the Capitol in Harrisburg Feb. 3, 2026.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
House Democrats and Senate Republicans were quick to blame each other for failing to reach a deal on removing the tax exemption.
During separate news conferences after the budget passed, Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R., Indiana) and House Majority Leader Matt Bradford (D., Montgomery) each said it was the other party’s fault that a tax benefit repeal was left out.
Pittman said that Democrats “shredded” a Republican-backed bill into “something that nobody could recognize,” adding in an email that Senate Republicans would also “continue to examine” the proposal backed by Shapiro.
Bradford, placing the blame on Pittman, said he is “obviously unbelievably disappointed by the Republican leader in the Senate stating that he has no interest in doing anything on data centers,” adding that he was proud of the state House for advancing a number of data center regulation proposals.
Beth Rementer, a spokesperson for the House Democrats, said in a statement that “Senate Republicans still have an opportunity outside the budget negotiation process to vote on all the bills we passed to hold big tech accountable.”
State Rep. Matt Bradford (D., Montgomery County) during a press conference at the Capitol in Harrisburg Feb. 3, 2026.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
The Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry and the Pittsburgh Building Trades Council lobbied legislators to keep the tax break. In a June memo to state House members, the Pennsylvania chamber wrote that a repeal of the tax benefit “threatens to place Pennsylvania at a competitive disadvantage and sends a troubling signal to current and prospective investors that the Commonwealth is willing to change the rules after the fact.”
The legislature quietly deferred action on other topics, like funding mass transit and regulating skill games, as part of this year’s budget negotiations. But the data center debate spilled into the public arena.
In an interview, State Sen. Katie Muth (D., Montgomery) — one of four senators who voted against approving the original tax exemption in 2021 — said she suspected the legislative back-and-forth about the tax break gave lawmakers a chance to record their vote on a hot-button issue among their constituents.
She said that many legislators who voted to repeal the tax break did so for “show, so everybody can send out mailers.” In addition to Shapiro, half the state Senate and all members of the state House are up for election in November.
Lawmakers could revisit the topic come fall when they reconvene. And Shapiro said it is on his agenda, too.
“I think the legislature should have acted,” Shapiro said. “Given the fact that the legislature refuses to act, we’re going to look at our executive authority and determine what the best steps are.”
Ethan Young is an intern with the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents’ Association. He can be reached at ethanmyoung@gmail.com.
