President Donald Trump’s administration has spent almost a year scrutinizing, and then dismantling, and then trying to rewrite history at one of Independence Mall’s most informative exhibits on slavery.
Transportation SecretarySean Duffy, who has been one of the Trump administration’s biggest cheerleaders for this week’s 250th anniversary celebrations, produced a video asking Mayor Cherelle L. Parker which Philadelphia historical sites visitors should see.
Parker listed the highlights — the National Constitution Center, Independence Mall, the Liberty Bell, and ended her list of recommendations with the President’s House, which memorializes the nine people enslaved by George Washington in Philadelphia.
“Reconnect with our history, recommit to the democratic values that we stand on, and have an amazing time,” Parker said.
Cue Duffy showcasing pictures of the very panels at the President’s House that his boss wants to take down.
There are few places that are better to celebrate America’s 250th birthday and to go on a road trip than the BEDROCK of DEMOCRACY: Philadelphia
Thank you to @PhillyMayor Cherelle Parker for showing us her can’t miss stops for road trippers in the City of Brotherly Love!
The video, which was posted Wednesday to Duffy’s social media, appears to have been filmed in May, when Duffy visited Philadelphia while the city and the Trump administration were in the midst of alegal battle over the President’s House after the federal government removed the site’s exhibits earlier this year.
After the Third Circuit’s ruling, Parker said in a statement that: “I will pursue every legal action possible to reverse this decision. We cannot and WILL not rest until the full story of American history — including the existence of slavery at the President’s House here in Philadelphia — is told, for our Nation and the World to see.”
On Thursday, a Boston-based federal appeals court removed the final legal obstacle that prevented the Trump administration from installing its own exhibits at the President’s House.
This was not Duffy’s only visit to Philadelphia that coincided with a key event in the President’s House saga. Duffy joined Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in a visit to Independence National Historical Park in September 2025, just days after reports that the Interior Department planned to make changes to the President’s House.
The secretaries were preparing for the Semiquincentennial celebrations. The Transportation Department, led by Duffy, has promoted road trips to a number of sites targeted by the Interior for changes, including Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in Virginia, in addition to the sites in Philadelphia.
Duffy, a former MTV reality television star, hasfaced backlash for shooting a reality TV-style travel series with his family over the span of several months called The Great American Road Trip, meant to encourage celebrating the United States ahead of the 250th.
A trailer for the series shows that he stopped in Philadelphia and visited LOVE Parkand the Liberty Bell.
In Wednesday’s video, which does not appear to be related to the series, Duffy says, “There’s no better place to go than where it all began in Philadelphia.”
“This city is truly amazing, and the history that exists here,” Duffy said, “No one has it.”
Pope Leo XIV will accept the National Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal on Friday, delivering remarks live from the Vatican that will be broadcast inside the Sixth and Arch building.
The U.S.-born pontiff’s speech is a major addition to Philadelphia’s already extensive lineup of activities and events on the eve of the United States’ 250th birthday on July Fourth.
His speech will be particularly anticipated in Philadelphia given the Semiquincentennial and Leo’s deepties to the Philly area.
The Catholic leader has garnered attention for clashing with President Donald Trump’s administration, which will be further exemplified by his visit with migrants on Independence Day.
His award acceptance speech also comes just two days after traditionalist Catholics in Switzerland defied him by consecrating bishops without his consent, which Leo called “a sin of extreme gravity,” the Associated Press reported.
His Friday remarks were initially going to be broadcast on Independence Mall but it was moved inside due to extreme heat.
Here’s what to know ahead of his Liberty Medal speech.
What are Pope Leo’s connections to the Philly area?
Not only is he the first U.S.-born pope, but he has connections to the Philly area — despite being from Chicago.
Leo graduated from Villanova University in 1977 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. He received an honorary doctorate of humanities in 2014 from the Augustinian university.
Those who knew him at the time described him as a Midwesterner with a sense of humor who was tuned in to global issues like immigration and poverty — and like anyone who goes to Villanova, a big basketball fan. He worked part-time at St. Denis Catholic Church in Havertown as part of the cemetery maintenance crew during his studies.
In May, he passed along a surprise commencement message tothis year’s graduates. In that message, he fittingly referenced America’s 250th anniversary.
“May the graduates of 2026 always be faithful to the guiding light that has been so important for these 250 years,” Leo said.
This video screen grab shows Pope Leo XIV wearing a Villanova hat given to him during a meeting with an Italian heritage group.
Last month, a delegation from Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center met with Leo at the Vatican to present him with the medal. They would have been remiss to forget to celebrate his Philly connections.
So they brought him a few local goodies: a bundle of Villanova swag, a replica of George Washington’s Acts of Congress, and, best of all, a Wawa tote bag filled with Tastykakes.
Vince Stango, interim president and CEO of the Constitution Center, said the visit had “a real Philadelphia vibe that was unmistakable.”
What’s the Liberty Medal?
The Liberty Medal has been presented by the nonpartisan National Constitution Center since 2006, offering the esteemed prize to individuals and organizations who “strive to secure the blessings of liberty to people around the globe.”
In Leo’s case, he’s receiving the award because of his work in promoting religious liberty.
Previous recipients of the award include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late U.S. Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), and the late civil rights leader and U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D., Ga.).
How do I watch?
The National Constitution Center is streaming the ceremony live onits YouTube channel at 10:45 a.m. NBC10 will also broadcast the awards.
Tickets to the event were previously made available to the public and other invited guests.
What’s going on with the pope and Trump?
Trump invited the pontiff to visit the United States on July Fourth to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the country. He declined.
Instead, the pope will spend Independence Day visiting Lampedusa, an Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea located between Tunisia, Malta, and Sicily. It‘s a major entry point for migrants seeking refuge in Europe from North Africa. It’s one of the deadliest migration paths in the world, Reuters reported.
Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, visited the island in 2013.
Francis, who was close with Leo, also clashed with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance on issues like immigration, and that tension has continued under the new pontiff.
The pope said in November that the United States has been treating migrants “in a way that is extremely disrespectful” under the Trump administration. A month prior, he suggested that the United States’ treatment of immigrants is “inhumane.”
Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, said this week on Fox News that he finds the Vatican’s immigration views “troubling,” saying that “mass migration has victims.”
Trump has not held back on his criticism of the pope, calling him “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” in an April social media rant. He faced condemnation from Catholics — who have found themselves taking a side between the pope and the president — after sharing a now-deleted image of himself presented as Jesus.
It will be telling whether Leo leans into his disagreements with the Trump administration, whether directly or indirectly, during his speech on Friday.
WASHINGTON — Federal immigration officials have detained more than 10,000 people in the last five days, a major surge that has stemmed from a push within Immigration and Customs Enforcement to increase arrest rates.
Agency leaders in recent days ordered top ICE officials to focus more of their officers’ efforts on picking up immigrants they want to deport, according to documents obtained by The New York Times and interviews with federal officials. ICE officers have arrested people at check-ins, with immigration authorities, during traffic stops and on the street. The push has apparently yielded results, with recent arrest numbers roughly doubling from the 1,000 picked up each day earlier this year.
ICE officials were told that the White House wanted an increase in arrests, according to three officials with knowledge of the conversations. One of the officials said that it was unclear how long the pace could continue, but that ICE officials had been told that 2,000 arrests a day was the new standard for enforcement.
The surge has occurred without the fanfare of highly visible operations last year, in which officials announced their intentions ahead of time to target cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles, and send officers pouring into the streets. Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, pledged to mount a quieter enforcement campaign following the chaos of a monthlong operation in Minnesota, where federal officers killed two U.S. citizens.
The rise in arrests suggests that President Donald Trump is determined to meet his pledge of mass deportations, a goal that is popular among his conservative supporters but that has fueled a political backlash amid the administration’s heavy-handed tactics. The Trump administration has promised more aggressive actions, particularly after the Supreme Court in recent days expanded the president’s power to set federal immigration policy, but undercut his effort to eliminate birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants in the country illegally and visitors.
“Our message is clear: If you come to our country illegally, we will find you, we will arrest you and we will deport you,” Lauren Bis, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, said in a statement.
Word of an uptick in arrests has started to trickle out, sowing fear in immigrant communities and among advocates already on edge after the Supreme Court ruled that Trump could end deportation protections for people from disaster- and war-torn countries under the Temporary Protected Status program.
In recent days, ICE officers have launched an intense push to ramp up arrests. Arrests topped out Saturday when authorities detained more than 2,400 people, according to documents obtained by the Times. The detention population inside ICE facilities has jumped nearly 4,000, to more than 63,000 in the agency’s custody as of Tuesday, according to internal documents.
In emails to ICE personnel, agency leaders applauded the latest numbers.
“I want to personally thank each of you for your extraordinary efforts this past weekend,” Marcos Charles, the head of ICE’s deportation wing, wrote this week. “Through your dedication, professionalism, and unwavering commitment to our mission, enforcement and removal operations achieved remarkable operational results.”
Top ICE officials were told to make sure that as many officers as possible were working seven days a week, and to put 80% of their officers on arrest operations, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations. Top supervisors were expected to be working closely on the operations as well.
Last year, Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, set a goal of 3,000 arrests a day for the agency, a figure it was not able to hit. Since then, the agency has hired thousands of new officers and has had its budget increased by billions of dollars for the enforcement surge.
Across the country, immigration lawyers and advocates have reported an uptick in enforcement.
In South Texas, Sister Letty Ugboaja, a Nigerian nun, was arrested on her way to church on Sunday morning, according to Sister Norma Pimentel, her colleague. Ugboaja is a local nurse who also helps at a parish in the region. Pimentel called local leaders after learning of the arrest, and congressional officials soon got involved and pushed for her release.
On Sunday, she was let go from ICE custody, and Pimentel was there to greet her.
Pimentel said that Ugboaja was distraught upon her release.
“It took her awhile to be able to talk — she was crying,” she said.
In southern Florida, attorneys have been on alert. Cindy Blandon, an immigration attorney in Miami, said that one of her clients, a Nicaraguan father of two children, had an immigration court hearing set for 2027, but was arrested by ICE on Monday during a routine check-in.
And in Utah, Ysabel Lonazco, an immigration attorney, has noticed an uptick as well. She has spoken to several clients, including a man who was driving when he was picked up by the agency for overstaying his visa this weekend.
“It sets further fear in the community,” she said. “People don’t want to leave their houses. They are afraid to drive to do their grocery shopping. They are just terrified with these detentions.”
One of her clients, Arturo, a 48-year-old Mexican man, was arrested in Salt Lake City on his way to a soccer game Sunday, according to his wife, Veronica. She said the arrest had shattered their family.
“They’re getting people — be very careful,” her husband told her from ICE detention, she recalled through an interpreter. She said her 13-year-old son was traumatized by the arrest of his father, who had worked most days of the week building furniture before his arrest, she added.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said that Arturo had illegally reentered the United States and would be held in ICE custody as the agency sought to deport him.
Veronica said the family had not expected to be caught up in Trump’s deportation sweep.
“We were worried, but it wasn’t like we were extremely worried. We figured — we don’t have any criminal record, we pay taxes every year,” she said.
WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Washington on Wednesday blocked the United States Postal Service from carrying out changes to its delivery of mail-in ballots, writing that recent policies directed by President Donald Trump ran afoul of legal terms the agency accepted more than four years ago to ensure timely delivery of mail ballots.
In a brief opinion, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan pointed to a settlement agreement reached between the NAACP and the Postal Service in December 2021, after the group sued the government arguing that postal delays threatened to disenfranchise voters. At that time, the agency agreed to “prioritize monitoring and timely delivery of election mail.”
Sullivan, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, wrote that the Postal Service’s proposal, which includes not delivering mail-in ballots in states that decline to hand over voter data to the federal government, violated the settlement agreement, which the parties had agreed would run through the 2028 election cycle.
Sullivan wrote that Trump’s order appeared “designed to exert federal control over who in the United States may be sent a mail-in or absentee ballot in federal elections by the Postal Service.” He wrote that the agency had previously agreed to outline plans before each national election and meet with the NAACP to explain how it would ensure efficient delivery of election-related mail.
While another judge in Washington had declined for now to halt the enforcement of the executive order because new rules for the Postal Service had not been finalized at the time, Sullivan concluded that the agency’s recent proposal could be blocked preemptively because it would violate the prior agreement.
Last week, a judge in Massachusetts struck down the main components of Trump’s order, including the creation of lists of eligible voters and changes to mail-in voting. The ruling from Judge Indira Talwani stated that the Constitution granted authority over elections firmly to the states.
The NAACP, which brought the lawsuit in 2020 amid a spike in voting by mail during the COVID-19 pandemic, had raised concerns about delays in mail delivery. The group argued that the new proposed changes raised fresh worries for coming elections. Among the changes it contested were the addition of new individualized bar codes on mail-in ballots and a plan to reject ballots from states that do not submit a list of eligible mail-in voters to the Postal Service ahead of time.
“The proposed USPS changes would have created unnecessary and unlawful barriers, in direct violation of the USPS’s mandate to prioritize election mail,” Anthony P. Ashton, the NAACP’s senior associate general counsel, said in a statement. “Those barriers could have disproportionately harmed Black voters, who are more likely to rely on mail voting due to long-standing inequities in access.”
“Put simply, the use of mail-in voting helps reduce voter intimidation at the polls and Election Day dirty tricks,” he added.
Postmaster General David Steiner has said on multiple occasions, including to The New York Times this year, that he would follow court orders governing voting by mail.
The agency had argued in filings before the decision that the court could not block the changes until it had finalized its rules and that the changes fell outside the scope of the legal settlement.
The Postal Service has not responded to multiple requests for comment after recent court decisions that partially blocked Trump’s mail voting executive order and the Postal Service’s proposal to impose it.
Under the 2021 settlement, the Postal Service agreed to take extra steps to expedite mail ballots for all even-year federal elections through 2028.
William Hensley, a former election mail specialist at the Postal Service who helped establish those “extraordinary measures” while at the agency, said in an interview that they can include dispatching delivery trucks on extra trips, authorizing local postmasters to pay out employee overtime, and in some cases postmarking and turning around mail ballots locally rather than at regional processing centers.
For this year’s midterm elections, the Postal Service said it will begin enforcing those measures Oct. 27, roughly a week before the midterms.
On a sweltering and humid summer afternoon — as tourists and historical reenactors milled about Old City ahead of 250th anniversary celebrations — Cristian Marín guided his family through the President’s House.
Loyal soccer fans, Marín’s family had traveled from Colombia to visit their son in Philadelphia, attend the World Cup matches, and see the Revolutionary Erasites.
But it was up to Marín, 37, to play tour guide last Friday and explain to his family why large gaps of brick wall were covered by paper adorned with handwritten messages expressing their indignation with President Donald Trump after his administrationremovedexhibits about slavery at George Washington’s former home in Independence National Historical Park.
Marín’s family started laughing from pure disbelief about the “craziness of the situation,”he said.
Marín’s relatives are among an influx of tourists visiting Philadelphia in the lead up to the city’s Semiquincentennial festivities only to find themselves confronted with evidence of the largely partisan battle playing out over how to tell the complicated story of America’s founding.
“For me, it’s shocking to see a country trying to erase that history,” said Marín, a freelancejournalist. “I think it’s important to remember our past in order to just not repeat those kinds of things.”
Cristian Marín, 37, tours the President’s House in Independence National Historical Park last week.
Ahead of the 250th, both Philadelphians who have been engaged in the fight to protect historical exhibits and tourists who have wandered through the President’s House for the first time, have lamented the Trump administration’s changes to the exhibit, which was largely dismantled by the administration earlier this year.
They told The Inquirer that the missing panels, such as those that discuss the brutality of slavery, do a significant disservice to understanding the full picture — even the ugly parts — of U.S. history.
“History is going to be out there, and the more we share history, the better for everybody,” said Hector Vargas, 40, from New York. “For the new generation, and even ourselves, because this is something from the past and we need to understand better — what happened and how this great country basically became the great country it is.”
The Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau estimates that from 250th-related events alone the city will welcome over 1.5 million overnight visitors in 2026.
But the turmoil facing the President’s House is hanging over the celebrations, as the site’s stakeholders and the Trump administration battle over which version of history residents and visitors will see as they celebrate on Independence Mall.
Judges presiding over lawsuits related to the President’s House or other threats by the Trump administration to change historical content at national parks have viewed the Fourth of July as a deadline to set the record straight as to whether the federal government has the authority to rewrite history.
Some advocates believe the Trump administration saw it that way, too.
Visitors read unofficial signage put up to protest the Trump administration’s changes to the President’s House site, which memorializes the nine people enslaved by George Washington in Philadelphia.
The Inquirer reported that the federal government also quietly removed mentions of slavery from Independence Hall and a panel under Thomas Jefferson’s portrait at the Second Bank — sending a new wave of outrage among historians and advocates ahead of this weekend.
“In the 250th anniversary of the founding of the Declaration of Independence, there’s probably increased impetus and motivation to get these changes installed before the dawn of the Fourth,” said Paul Steinke, executive director of the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia.
‘They want to make us believe that slavery did not happen’
Perched on folding chairs bordered by patriotic banners that flapped in the wind, dozens of Philadelphians spent their Friday night at the People’s Plaza, a concrete gathering space just steps away from the President’s House eight days before the 250th anniversary.
A truck displaying a digital screen with the name of the event, “Trump Fascism: Historical Erasure and the Battle Over the Truth,” parked across the street.
With Independence Hall towering behind them, state Rep. Chris Rabb, attorney and advocate Michael Coard, civil rights organizer Masaru Edmund Nakawatase, and visual artist Dread Scott railed against the federal government’s changes to history at an event hosted by Refuse Fascism, an anti-Trump organization.
The gathering is one of many events opponents to the Trump administration’s actions are holding in the days surrounding the 250th. Coard’s group, Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, is hosting its annual Black Independence Day on July Fourth at the President’s House.
“We have so much power and it scares these people. If it didn’t scare them, why would they be worried about this exhibit right here?” Rabb (D., Philadelphia) declared, pointing at the President’s House.
Rabb, who will represent parts of Philadelphia in Congress after winning the Democratic primary for the Third District in May, has often spoken of how he is a descendant of both a signer of the Declaration of Independence who enslaved people and of Black abolitionists.
The Trump administration had spent a year eyeing the President’s House and other exhibits before they abruptly dismantled the site in January, just weeks into the nation’s 250th year. Last year, the president had issued an executive order directing parks to conduct a content review of materials that could “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”
Subsequent legal battles have allowed some — but not all — of original panels to be reinstalled, though the administration can now install its own spin on history at the President’s House, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia has ruled.
But the struggle to confront the full scope of U.S. history is baffling to some visitors, like Camila Ordenana, 24, from Ecuador. Ordenana, who ventured from Guayaquil to Philadelphia to attend a World Cup game, said she hasnever seen this kind of censorship in her other travels.
“It is weird, because we have been to several places, several historical cities, like, I can remember going to the U.K. or going to Germany, and you can learn about the experience in a very neutral and respectful way,” Ordenana said.
Katrie White, 53, from Illinois, traveled to Philadelphia specifically for sightseeing to learn more about African American history. She said she was disturbed by the removal of the signs.
“They want to make us believe that slavery did not happen,” White said. “And that’s how it affected African Americans, that it wasn’t a big deal, that it made us better. But of course, we all know that it didn’t, and it really did affect us. It was a trauma that is still carried on to this day.”
Many Philadelphians appear to agree.
A recent Suffolk University / Inquirer poll found that a quarter of city residents see preserving historic sites as Philadelphia’s top responsibility to the nation ahead of the 250th.
Richard Porter (left), 52, of Michigan, at the President’s House last week.
Gathered by the Market Street entrance of the President’s House last Friday, looking at the colorful illustration panels that remained, Richard Porter grappled with the impact of the removals, saying that without the educational information, “We’ll repeat it over and over again.”
The Michigan resident said that the country is at a point where it needs to move forward but that the changes to the President’s House are sowing further divisions.
“This is an everyday battle. It’s not just today or for the 250; this is all the time,” Porter said.
As the nation celebrates its 250th birthday this weekend, the legislative branch has momentarily called it quits.
The House leadership on Tuesday abruptly canceled votes and sent lawmakers home early for the holiday recess, Speaker Mike Johnson ‘s majority once again ground to a standstill by a Republican revolt over their own party’s agenda.
In this case, it’s a standoff blocking the annual defense bill — with pay raises for the troops and other matters at a time of war — as the renegade Republicans push to include President Donald Trump’s own priority, the SAVE America Act, a strict voter ID bill. Last week, the Senate similarly shuttered after Trump’s demands.
The emptying Capitol provides another snapshot of the imbalance of power in Washington as a headstrong executive confronts a weakened Congress.
For the second time in as many weeks, the House has simply given up.
“It’s a relatively bad time in Congress,” Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota said recently. “A lot of my colleagues have forgotten how to govern.”
The scene is far different than last year’s Fourth of July
A year ago this weekend brought a wholly different scene in Washington, as Trump gathered Republican lawmakers outside the White House for an ebullient July Fourth ceremony to sign what they called the “One, Big, Beautiful Bill” of tax breaks and spending cuts.
It was a celebratory moment for Trump and the slim Republican majority — and for Johnson, who many doubted could pass the bill over the objections of Democrats who viewed it as tax giveaway at the expense of billions of dollars in cuts to health care and food stamps for Americans in need.
Johnson was so reliant on Trump’s power to help push the bill to approval that he gifted the president a speaker’s gavel, which Democrats and others saw as a worrisome symbol of the transference of power from one branch of government to the other.
“We’re not dealing with Speaker Mike Johnson,” Democratic Rep. Pete Aguilar of California, the caucus chairman, said in a recent interview. “Unfortunately, Speaker Donald Trump does not want us in this week.”
Trump makes conflicting demands on his party in Congress
As Johnson works to keep Trump close, the president’s demands seem to grow in ways the Republican speaker can’t always deliver.
The president’s insistence on the SAVE America Act, which doesn’t have enough support in the Senate to pass, has interrupted almost all other business in Congress. Trump has refused to sign a popular bipartisan housing bill that cleared both chambers until the voting bill is also approved. He calls the housing bill a “yawn.”
Johnson spent four hours last week at the White House and said he spent another two hours with the president this week on a path forward.
“I told him, ‘Mr. President, I don’t have any tattoos, but if I did, it’d say SAVE America on my shoulder,’ OK?” Johnson said over the weekend on Fox News.
“We passed it three times in the House already. We’re going to pass it again.”
But by Tuesday, a House vote to advance the legislation collapsed. Republicans led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida argued that Johnson’s plan to attach the voting bill to the defense bill was essentially a doomed strategy that would be rejected in the Senate.
“That’s disappointing,” acknowledged Republican Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana, who insisted the GOP would try again.
“We’re going to keep trying because we have to,” he said. “We’re not done doing big things.”
As America celebrates its 250th birthday, Congress is adrift
The founders of the new democracy clearly had aspirations for the Congress, putting it first in the Constitution as the Article One branch of government, ahead of the executive and judicial branches.
But as lawmakers face voters this fall, they will have to answer for these dwindling days on their calendar.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the problem is not the Congress, it’s the GOP.
“Donald Trump is fighting with Senate Republicans, Senate Republicans are fighting with House Republicans, and House Republicans are fighting with each other,” said Jeffries, who is in line to become House speaker if Democrats win control in fall.
“It’s not the Congress that’s struggling. It’s House Republicans who are struggling,” he said.
Jeffries said Democrats are fighting “to make life more affordable for the American people.”
As they left the Capitol for an extended recess, lawmakers voiced frustration with the House’s dysfunction.
Rep. Kevin Kiley, who left the Republican Party to become an independent earlier this year, said the situation in the House is “frustrating.”
“It’s just like déjà vu where many times now we run into some sort of obstacle,” he said, “then the solution is just to go home.”
WASHINGTON — A pair of federal judges struck down a Trump administration overhaul to a public service forgiveness program for student loans, ruling Tuesday in separate cases in favor of advocates who said the program risked becoming a tool for political retribution.
U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Massachusetts vacated the U.S. Education Department’s changes, saying they overstepped the agency’s power and threatened to violate First Amendment protections for free speech. The ruling came in response to a pair of lawsuits filed by more than 20 states along with a coalition of nonprofit groups and cities.
In Washington, D.C., District Judge Amir Ali in Washington issued a similar ruling in a case brought by nonprofit organizations. The rulings came a day before the new rules were set to take effect.
Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent said the department was evaluating next steps.
“The Department stands behind this commonsense policy to ensure that taxpayer dollars are never used to subsidize illegal activities,” Kent said in a written statement.
Congress created Public Service Loan Forgiveness in 2007 to encourage college graduates to work in government and nonprofit jobs. It promised to forgive their federal student loans after they worked in public service jobs for 10 years.
Last year, the Trump administration moved to add new eligibility rules that would strip the benefit from workers whose employers are deemed to have a “substantial illegal purpose.”
The overhaul targeted nonprofits and government organizations that support causes at odds with the Trump administration’s priorities.
It gave the education secretary power to exclude groups from the program if they engage in the trafficking or “chemical castration” of children, illegal immigration or supporting terrorist organizations. Its definition of “chemical castration” included using hormone therapy or drugs that delay puberty.
The overhaul amounted to a major reworking of a program that has canceled loans for more than 1 million Americans. Nonprofits and government groups said it undercut an important benefit that helped attract college graduates to jobs that traditionally pay less than the private sector.
“This decision is a win for the communities that depend on local nonprofits and for the workers who serve them,” said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits, one of the plaintiffs in the Massachusetts case.
One of the plaintiffs in the Washington case, Student Defense, said the judge’s ruling is a victory for student loan borrowers.
“Public servants should not have to worry that the federal government will punish them because of their employer’s mission or perceived political views,” said Aaron Ament, Student Defense’s president.
Joun said the new rules threatened to impose the administration’s policy views on employers. The judge also faulted the department for failing to connect its definitions of illegal activity to criminal statutes.
“The Department cannot create new criminal prohibitions through rulemaking,” he wrote.
The judge also questioned the department’s stated rationale for proposing the new rules, drawing on its own estimates that fewer than 10 employers would be barred from the program per year.
“The Department offers no explanation for why a Final Rule with such sweeping consequences is necessary to address the possibility that, at most, ten employers each year may be engaging in illegal activity,” Joun wrote.
In his ruling, Joun noted that more than 100 supporting briefs were filed on behalf of the groups challenging the rules, while none were filed in support of the Trump administration’s change.
Since its founding in 2021, the educational advocacy group Moms for Liberty has been mobilizing conservative mothers across the country against school curriculum they deem indoctrinating, un-American, anti-Christian and antithetical to their understanding of family values.
They’ve targeted books that explore LGBTQ themes, transgender athletes and curriculum they deride as critical race theory or as too focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. More broadly, they claim to be fighting to protect their parental rights to control what their children learn.
Members of Moms for Liberty have earned seats on school boards, garnered national media attention and infiltrated the highest levels of conservative policymaking. According to cofounder and CEO Tina Descovich, she has visited President Donald Trump’s White House more than a dozen times.
Moms for Liberty has also made waves in the Philadelphia suburbs, especially in Bucks County, which boasted the largest leadership team of any chapter in the country by April 2025. At a Harrisburg-area event last October, Descovich said, “I am very familiar with Bucks County. Before I knew it existed, I knew the [Bucks County] Beacon existed because they were writing trash pieces about us.”
Groups like Moms for Liberty have proved effective at making political noise — and even notching some policy wins, at least temporarily. Yet, the group is really just a continuation of a decades-long crusade by conservative white women to weaponize public education in the service of a right wing agenda. While it has largely failed to transform American curriculum, this push has turned these women into key figures in Republican politics who have made fighting the culture wars a GOP priority.
The modern conservative movement since World War II owes much of its success to the work of grassroots education warriors.
These women proudly embraced traditional gender roles. They saw them as a marker of success because many women in their mothers’ generation had to work outside of the home to make ends meet in the Great Depression and wartime years.
Even as some of these conservative women became full-time political activists, they claimed the mantle of traditional homemakers and mothers — which aroused charges of hypocrisy from critics. Yet, they argued that their advocacy work in the traditionally male world of politics and education policy was wholly consistent with traditional gender roles because protecting innocent children from worldly dangers was a natural role for women and mothers.
At their kitchen tables and in PTA meetings across the country, these “suburban warriors” launched far-reaching campaigns against sex education, multicultural curriculum and other aspects of schooling they deemed antithetical to traditional American values.
In the 1970s and 1980s, as the political parties realigned, these conservative education warriors emerged as a crucial Republican constituency and a core part of the New Right coalition. These white women were galvanized by the recent gains of the civil rights movement, the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision — which provided a right for women to have legal abortions under certain circumstances — and debates over the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which they claimed (without evidence) would decimate the female homemaking role.
These recent changes threatened to disrupt what the conservative women argued were divinely inspired gender roles, which were embodied by the “traditional” nuclear family of a working male breadwinner, a female homemaker and kids. They feared that big government-backed forces might take away this ideal life, which many had only recently achieved.
Increasingly, these women looked to public schools as the place to fight their crusade. Taxpayers funded the schools and they were responsible for shaping the next generation of Americans outside of parental control.
In 1974, the education wars burst onto the national stage in Kanawha County, W.Va., thanks to an ugly and violent struggle over school textbooks. The controversy began after Alice Moore, a 29-year-old mother and the lone woman on the county school board, objected to a newly adopted language arts curriculum she deemed indoctrinating, racially divisive and steeped in “secular humanism.”
This latter concept wasn’t new. It dated to the late 19th century, and argued that people could gain knowledge through reason, intellect and logic rather than relying upon religious teaching.
Yet in the 1970s conservatives thrust it into the spotlight, because they needed a fresh villain. Tried-and-true messaging on anticommunism had grown stale. But pushing secular humanism as the latest liberal conspiracy aligned with the New Right’s renewed focus on faith, family and traditional gender roles, while energizing Christian conservatives.
Moore and her allies saw secular humanism as increasingly influential in education — and as incredibly hostile to Christianity and their narrow definition of divinely inspired traditional family values. It further alarmed them because they saw secular humanism as teaching students to challenge their parents’ authority. Within a few years, the once obscure concept would become the New Right’s star bogeyman.
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Throughout the fall of 1974, Moore read excerpts from the textbooks before the school board. She singled out Black nationalist Eldridge Cleaver, whose writings allegedly produced “racial hatred” toward white people. She also took issue with “dialectology,” a study of dialects that included lessons on African American vernacular — what she called “ghetto dialect” — that she believed to be antithetical to American speech.
By October, the controversy had produced two shootings, dozens of arrests and multiple rounds of bombings, boycotts and school bus blockades.
Moore’s crusade against secular humanism in West Virginia quickly caught the attention of national conservative organizations. The Heritage Foundation featured Kanawha County in its 1976 study, “Secular Humanism and the Schools: The Issue Whose Time Has Come.” Phyllis Schlafly — the country’s most famous antifeminist at the time — jumped into the fray, claiming that public education promoted “a tolerance of violence, theft, adultery, obscenity, profanity, and blasphemy.”
In part because organizations like the Heritage Foundation and Schlafly’s Eagle Forum highlighted Moore’s activism for like-minded conservative women, it inspired conservative mothers across the country to wage their own crusades against dirty textbooks. In the ensuing years, they launched repeated battles against seemingly subversive curriculum.
In 1983, in rural East Tennessee, fundamentalist mother Vicki Frost waged her own legal battle against the Hawkins County school board after discovering objectionable material in her daughter’s reading textbook, including alleged depictions of telepathy, witchcraft and black magic that violated her religious beliefs.
In Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education — a case that became known as “Scopes II” because of Hawkins County’s proximity to the original Scopes Trial — Frost and her fellow plaintiffs alleged that the school board’s policies violated the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. Their legal counsel came courtesy of Concerned Women for America, whose founder Beverly LaHaye took Frost on a national speaking tour to publicize the alleged dangers of modern textbooks. Although the plaintiffs lost their case on appeal, LaHaye deemed the case a “PR success” that “identified us as a friend of the family.”
The result epitomized the outcome of the broader education wars. Fighting against offensive school curricula turned many conservative women into key figures in the culture wars, with substantial reach and political impact. They quickly become politically astute grassroots organizers who leveraged their identities as white Christian homemakers and mothers to argue for an educational system rooted in Christianity, the traditional nuclear family and American exceptionalism.
The impact of these organizers, however, hasn’t necessarily come in the classroom. Most of Moore’s “dirty books” found their way into the Kanawha County curriculum. Frost and the plaintiffs in Hawkins County ultimately lost their case on appeal. In recent years, the majority of school board candidates backed by Moms for Liberty have similarly suffered defeat.
Yet, these organizers have been able to mobilize thousands of culturally conservative women — particularly other white Christian mothers — and bring them into the Republican Party. Their involvement has driven the GOP to make the culture wars a key component of the party’s identity.
These earlier crusaders also created a language that remains a staple of conservative critiques of public education to the present day. More than five decades after Moore’s war, conservative organizations continue to emphasize “parental rights,” “family values” and “school choice” in their efforts to influence American education.
When groups like Moms for Liberty claim that public schools are indoctrinating children with “woke” ideologies such as critical race theory, they rely upon a well-established playbook that conservative women have drawn upon for more than half a century. Despite mixed results in America’s actual classrooms, their political activism has proved a tried-and-true means for both enflaming public opinion and solidifying the role of self-proclaimed traditional mothers and homemakers within modern conservatism.
Allen Fletcher is a public historian and journal editor with research interests in Appalachia, gender and the history of American education. His current book, Building Schools, Building Communities: Appalachian Women and the Struggle for Educational Change, is under contract with LSU Press.
Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of The Inquirer.
NEW YORK — President Donald Trump took in nearly $1.2 billion from his crypto businesses last year, a federal filing released Tuesday shows, locking in profits while his investors were socked with losses.
Mere startups when he took the oath of office, the new ventures have now eclipsed in revenue much of his vast property portfolio that took him decades to accumulate. Fueling their rise were billionaire investors and Trump’s own move to quash a federal crackdown on the industry.
Trump got more than $500 million from his World Liberty Financial business selling new crypto products, including “governance tokens,” according to the required annual disclosure report with the Office of Government Ethics. It also showed another crypto business, CIC Digital LLC, took in more than $600 million from sales of souvenir-type “meme” coins stamped with his face.
Both the tokens and the coins have plunged in value since the sales.
Trump also took in millions last year from selling Trump-branded Bibles, sneakers and other small items in another unprecedented move for the presidency. The sale of Trump-branded watches alone brought in $4.7 million.
The 927-page disclosure form paints a stark, if incomplete picture of the massive growth of the president’s wealth since taking office last January through a web of business interests — many of which have benefited from the policy moves of Trump’s own government. Trump has insisted that his sons direct his finances but the arrangement rejects the conflict of interest protections that his recent predecessors in office had instituted.
Forbes estimates Trump’s net worth at $6 billion, up from $2.3 billion in 2024.
The Trump business is growing abroad
The rise of crypto relative to Trump’s property is especially noteworthy because he first rode to office boasting of his property wins. It’s also remarkable because that mainstay business also boomed last year. Trump took in tens of millions in fees from a flurry of new hotel, resort and condo deals overseas that amounts to the biggest property expansion ever in the century since the family business was founded.
Many of those countries were negotiating with the U.S. over tariffs, military aid and other important matters while the family business was striking the deals.
A property in the United Arab Emirates generated $10.4 million for the Trump business last year. One in Saudi Arabia being built by a real estate developer close to the ruling family sent the president’s company $9 million. And one in Bucharest, Romania, and another in Qatar sent him $5 million each.
One of his prominent domestic properties, Mar-a-Lago in Florida, notched big growth last year, too.
Trump took in $77 million from the property, a 50% jump from the year earlier when he was just another citizen, as heads of state and business people flocked to it in his new term.
The disclosure report doesn’t give profit figures, just revenue, so it’s impossible to know how much he is earning.
Trump is now the billion-dollar crypto man
After taking office last year, Trump reversed the Biden administration’s tough stance on the crypto industry and pushed policies friendly to the industry.
But regulators still had some concerns. Before Trump’s World Liberty began selling “governance tokens,” they issued warnings about this new kind of crypto asset, saying that unlike stocks, the tokens offer no ownership stake in the issuing company, just voting power on certain corporate policies, and are difficult to value.
Buyers pounced anyway, including a Chinese billionaire who spent $75 million on the tokens and $200 million on the souvenir coins. In February last year, a federal lawsuit charging him with duping investors was paused before being settled for a $10 million fine.
The billionaire, Justin Sun, has repeatedly denied his spending on Trump businesses had anything to do with his federal case, while World Liberty has dismissed the notion of a conflict of interest.
Meanwhile, investors have seen the value of their Trump-tied holdings drop significantly.
The price of World Liberty tokens has fallen 80% since they started trading in September. And the Trump souvenir coins that spiked to more than $74 in the days after launching in January 2025 now sell for $1.68.
The White House says Trump only acts in the public interest
The White House has repeatedly said Trump put his business in a trust managed by his sons and is not involved in its decisions and that there are no ethics issues to discuss.
“Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged — or will ever engage — in conflicts of interest,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people.”
The Trump umbrella company, the Trump Organization, has said its deals overseas were with private companies, not with governments.
Still, it is difficult to know what is truly private in countries ruled by authoritarians, royal families and one-party governments.
For a new Trump resort in Vietnam, the report shows Trump took in $5 million last year after the ruling Communist Party sent its deputy prime minister to sign off on the deal and, according to The New York Times, pushed farmers off the land to make way for the construction.
Whether the deals played any role in changing U.S. policies in ways these countries sought is nearly impossible to know, but the countries did get what they wanted.
Vietnam got tariff relief. Qatar got access to advanced U.S. technology previously off limits, and Saudi Arabia got U.S. fighter jets it had coveted for years.
The insurgent progressive movement jolting the Democratic Party rolled through Colorado on Tuesday evening in the latest test of the left’s ability to oust establishment politicians and usher in generational change.
In two primary battles between mainstream figures and candidates running to their left as Washington outsiders, the more liberal candidates prevailed. Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old lawyer and democratic socialist, toppled a veteran congresswoman in Denver, while Phil Weiser, the state attorney general, stopped Sen. Michael Bennet’s bid to move from Congress to the governor’s mansion.
But in a third key primary race, Sen. John Hickenlooper staved off a progressive challenger.
Here are five takeaways from the night in Colorado, where Democrats will be favored in all three races in November.
Even older progressives are falling to young left-wing challengers
Rep. Diana DeGette, who lost to Kiros, sported legitimate progressive credentials. She was a strong backer of “Medicare for All,” and she ran a television advertisement featuring prior praise from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who did not pick a side in Tuesday’s primary.
Nevertheless, she met her match in Kiros, who centered her campaign on calls for generational change — DeGette, 68, was first elected to Congress the year before Kiros, 29, was born — and on opposition to Israel over the war in the Gaza Strip.
DeGette said last year that she opposed the sale of “offensive weapons” to Israel, but in the past she had called herself a “strong supporter of Israel.” Kiros was far more outspoken in her opposition to the war and her calls to end U.S. military aid to Israel.
Socialists are racking up victories around the country
Kiros adds to a growing number of socialist candidates expected to enter Congress next year, including Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier of New York and Chris Rabb of Pennsylvania.
Running in a deep-blue Denver district, Kiros did not shy away from her socialist label. She welcomed support from the Democratic Socialists of America and Hasan Piker, a provocative left-wing livestreamer who is popular with young progressives but controversial with the party establishment.
Her victory is likely to further embolden the ascendant movement, which has aspirations beyond deep-blue cities.
In Wisconsin, a candidate for governor, Francesca Hong, will test whether socialism can appeal to voters in a swing state. And two battleground Senate candidates who do not identify as socialists but also have left-wing, populist politics — Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Graham Platner in Maine — are on similar missions.
One establishment veteran wasn’t caught flat-footed
On the surface, Colorado’s Democratic primary for Senate mirrored the kinds of races that have been ripe for upset victories this year: A 74-year-old moderate incumbent who had spent 20 years in state politics faced a younger progressive who was once a DSA member.
But toppling a U.S. senator in a statewide race remains considerably more difficult than ousting a House member, at least on the Democratic side. And Hickenlooper turned back his challenge from Julie Gonzales, a state senator, by nimbly moving to the left and drastically outspending her.
Hickenlooper focused his campaign pitch on liberal priorities like overhauling the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. He also earned some support from labor and activist groups, preventing Gonzales from consolidating progressives.
Perhaps most significantly, he raised nearly $8 million, while she had less than $1 million at her disposal.
Trump loomed large in an upset in the governor’s race
Colorado’s other senator was not so fortunate.
Bennet lost his bid to become the state’s next governor to Weiser, who had trailed by 30 percentage points in polls last year but managed to make the race a referendum on how forcefully the two candidates were opposing President Donald Trump.
Pointing to his lawsuits against the administration, and to Bennet’s votes to confirm a few of Trump’s Cabinet members, Weiser won that metric.
And although Weiser does not profile as a typical insurgent progressive — he is a former federal lawyer who served in the Obama administration and as dean of a law school — he successfully portrayed himself as an outsider running to Bennet’s left.
Democrats keep picking progressives in key House races
In swing districts from California to Pennsylvania this year, Democratic voters have bucked the conventional wisdom of running centrist candidates who can peel off independent voters against Republicans. Instead, they have backed left-wing candidates.
Coloradans took a similar approach Tuesday, choosing Manny Rutinel, a progressive state lawmaker, over Shannon Bird, a more moderate legislator, in the Democratic primary race to face Rep. Gabe Evans, a vulnerable Republican in a district north of Denver.
The general election will also be a test of whether Democrats can regain support from Latino voters. Rutinel, who is Dominican American, will need a sizable chunk of them in a district that is nearly 40% Latino to beat Evans, who is Mexican American.
