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  • New acting intel czar Bill Pulte starts trimming staff as Trump urged

    New acting intel czar Bill Pulte starts trimming staff as Trump urged

    Acting director of national intelligence Bill Pulte, installed Friday by President Donald Trump, has at Trump’s urging begun trimming his organization, which coordinates the nation’s 18 spy agencies.

    This week Pulte fired a half-dozen political appointees and notified several dozen career officers on loan to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that they were being sent back to their home agencies.

    Pulte’s immediate predecessor, Tulsi Gabbard, had already culled hundreds of personnel, boasting that she had slashed the staff by 40%. Trump has long been distrustful of what he calls the “deep state” intelligence community, and the cuts by Pulte are the latest in a series of shocks that have roiled the ODNI.

    Gabbard, who left office last week, had a stormy tenure, falling in and out of favor with Trump’s White House. Current and former officials criticized as ham-handed her release of files related to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. She selectively declassified data on Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election and other matters that supported Trump’s views.

    In recent months, the ODNI has seen a number of high-level resignations and a roller coaster of leadership announcements by Trump.

    The agency “is being so hollowed out that its new name might become DNR — do not resuscitate. It’s on life support already,” said Beth Sanner, a former ODNI deputy director who served as Trump’s intelligence briefer in his first administration.

    While a number of current and former intelligence officials note that there are merits to shrinking the ODNI, the Trump administration, they say, has gone about it in a haphazard way that could undermine the intelligence coordination that Congress created the agency to do.

    “Reasonable people can debate ODNI’s size and mission, but sacking dozens of seasoned officers in your first week isn’t reform — it’s performative firing to please a president who treats his own intelligence community as the enemy within,” 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.

    Pulte asked program heads for a rank-ordered list of personnel to guide decisions on who could be let go, according to former intelligence officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

    One apparent casualty of the personnel moves that began under Gabbard is the National Intelligence Council, which was staffed primarily by career officers on loan from other agencies, such as the CIA. The NIC is considered the most authoritative intelligence analysis unit, producing in-depth reports on key topics for top government officials using information gathered by multiple spy agencies.

    About 20 NIC personnel have been removed or have chosen to leave, including several senior officers who oversaw the production of analysis on Russia, China, and Europe.

    The deputy director for mission integration, Will Ruger, who effectively led the council, was placed on administrative leave, according to three former intelligence officials.

    It is unclear whether and to what extent the vacancies will be filled. When the principal deputy intelligence officer for Russia left last year, the position was kept open.

    Trump told the Wall Street Journal this month that he’d like to see a “smaller” ODNI. “I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn’t be there,” Trump said, noting that he was referring to holdovers from the Biden and Obama administrations.

    Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton said on the Senate floor Wednesday that “mass firings” were not taking place. He said Pulte told him that “a small handful of front-office personnel” were leaving, “which is not at all uncommon when a senior leader leaves an agency or one comes into an agency.” He added that “around 45 or 50 career officers” were returning to their home agencies.

    “I think that’s a step in the right direction,” said Cotton, who has long called for shrinking the ODNI and last year proposed legislation that would cap its full-time staff at 650.

    Some agency insiders have heard that there could be subsequent rounds of cuts and that keeping each round relatively small will help avoid congressional blowback, according to one former intelligence official.

    Trump’s appointment of Pulte, who has no intelligence or national security experience, has alarmed Democratic lawmakers, as well as some Republicans. Some current and former intelligence officials fear he will use the post to further Trump’s agenda, including weaponizing intelligence against the president’s enemies.

    As head of a federal mortgage regulation agency, Pulte has launched mortgage fraud probes of people Trump considers adversaries, including Sen. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) and Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook.

    Government reorganization efforts under Trump have been marked by chaos and missteps, such as when Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency last year dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development and conducted mass firings at the State Department and other agencies.

    The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created by Congress in the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attacks, after investigations found that the CIA, the FBI and other agencies had failed to share critical information about al-Qaeda plots.

    The ODNI had a little more than 2,000 employees at the start of Trump’s second term. By the time Gabbard left last week, the number had shrunk to 1,300, according to congressional aides.

    Morale was shaken last year when Gabbard dismissed the chair and vice chair of the NIC after it produced a report that found that the Venezuelan government was most likely not directing the activities of Tren de Aragua, a criminal gang that Trump has vilified. The finding contradicted his rationale for invoking the Alien Enemies Act and deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members without due process.

    “Getting [the agency] smaller makes sense, but this isn’t the way to do it,” said John Sipher, a 28-year veteran CIA operations officer and former Moscow station chief, who has argued that the ODNI should be dismantled.

    Sipher said the ODNI’s problem is that it suffers not just from bureaucratic bloat, but from political interference. “The office that was meant to safeguard intelligence from fragmentation has become another perch from which intelligence can be politicized and bent toward partisan narratives,” he wrote in the Bulwark.

    This week’s cuts do not appear to have significantly affected the agency’s largest component, the National Counterterrorism Center, which was set up by Congress to be the government’s primary organization for analyzing international terrorism and which in its heyday had more than 1,000 personnel, according to former senior intelligence officials.

    Trump has nominated Jay Clayton, U.S. attorney and former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, to be the permanent director of national intelligence.

    But last week, Trump abruptly froze Clayton’s nomination, prompting the Senate to postpone a confirmation hearing, in a fit of pique over lawmakers’ failure to pass unrelated election legislation.

  • Federal judge halts Trump’s election executive order seeking to create a federal voter list

    Federal judge halts Trump’s election executive order seeking to create a federal voter list

    BOSTON — A federal judge on Thursday halted President Donald Trump’s executive order that sought to create a federal voter list and limit who can receive a mail ballot.

    U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani, who was nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama, sided with a coalition of nearly two dozen states that challenged the Republican president’s order in granting a summary judgment. Her ruling applies to this year’s midterm election cycle.

    Plaintiffs argued in two lawsuits, both filed in federal court in Boston, that Trump’s order should be found unconstitutional because the states and Congress, not the president, have the power to set election rules. The judge agreed, noting in her ruling that the provisions of Trump’s order “unconstitutionally violate the separation of powers.”

    It was the second ruling in as many days against executive orders Trump has signed seeking oversight of the nation’s elections. A separate ruling Wednesday prohibited an executive order he had signed last year that would have required people to show documents proving their citizenship when registering to vote.

    The administration, in its motions to dismiss the lawsuits challenging the order seeking to establish a federal voter list, argued that the motions are premature and that plaintiffs lacked the legal basis to bring their claim based on the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies develop and issue regulations.

    But in an interim order before Thursday’s ruling, Talwani said the motions pertaining to this year’s election cycle were relevant: “In light of the EO’s specific deadlines over the next three months, and the reality that elections will be occurring throughout this period with the November 3, 2026 midterm occurring in just five months, postponing judicial review is impracticable and may inflict significant hardship on Plaintiffs,” she wrote. That order denied the Trump administration’s motion to dismiss the challenges.

    Trump’s executive order, the second one aimed at elections during his second term, comes as he continues to raise the specter of widespread voting by noncitizens as a reason to change election rules. But states already have detailed processes aimed at keeping their voter rolls accurate, and voting by noncitizens has been shown to be rare. It also is a felony that can be punishable by deportation.

    Trump issued his second order in March after a bill he supported to overhaul voting stalled in Congress. The order would have had the federal government create a list of eligible voters and then directed the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to those on the list. Election officials argued that it was ripe for abuse and could cause chaos, and the postal union has objected to the idea of mail carriers policing ballots.

    The Postal Service has published a proposed rule required by Trump’s executive order in the Federal Register. Among other things, the rule would not apply to primary elections or overseas ballots.

    The lawsuit seeking summary judgment was filed by Democratic attorneys general representing 22 states and the District of Columbia. Also signing on were attorneys representing Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, which has a Republican attorney general.

    “Donald Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional Executive Order sought to undermine eligible voters’ ability to make their voices heard in our democracy,” Pennsylvania Shapiro posted on X Thursday. “Our Constitution is clear: the authority to set our election rules belongs to the states.”

    The states also told the court that the move imposes a costly burden on election officials to comply and would spread fear about the possibility of prosecution. Stephen Pezzi, a lawyer for the Trump administration, had argued that no one would be prosecuted for violating the order.

    In a separate lawsuit filed against the executive order, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., in May agreed with the Trump administration that it was too early to block the order because it had yet to be implemented. That lawsuit was brought by Democratic and civil rights groups, who have appealed.

    Since his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, Trump has groundlessly claimed mail voting is rife with fraud and has launched a federal investigation into that year’s vote, even though repeated audits and investigations, including ones run by Republicans, found it was free of widespread fraud. Trump also has said he wants to “take over” election administration in Democratic areas.

  • Bill to raise minimum wage to $25 an hour will be introduced in Senate

    Bill to raise minimum wage to $25 an hour will be introduced in Senate

    The minimum wage would be raised to $25 an hour under a new bill to be introduced by Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) on Thursday, in a bid to enthuse the working-class voters who have abandoned the Democratic Party.

    The legislation, dubbed the Living Wage for All Act, has a companion bill already introduced in the House.

    Murphy, whose name is frequently floated as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, said he is pushing his party to take more aggressive stances on affordability, following its punishing defeats in the 2024 elections.

    “Democrats need to offer solutions that are as big as the problems people are facing,” Murphy said in an interview. “The way you solve people’s basic economic problem — not having enough money to pay the bills — is by making a minimum wage be a living wage.”

    The bill would incrementally increase the minimum wage from its current rate of $7.25, with the first jump to $12 an hour in the first year of enactment. Major corporations would have six years to work up to a $25 minimum wage, while smaller employers would have a 13-year runway. The legislation would also do away with subminimum wages for tipped workers, such as restaurant servers, youth workers and workers with disabilities. Nearly half of the American workforce makes less than $25 an hour.

    The legislation is unlikely to get very far in this Congress, with Republicans in control of both chambers, but the $25-an-hour push is one of the more significant proposals aimed at boosting Americans’ wages, which have been rising but not as quickly as inflation, especially in recent months.

    Some 34 states, territories or districts, including Washington, D.C., have increased the minimum wage above the federal minimum, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

    Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage, a left-leaning advocacy group that worked with Murphy on the bill, credited support for a $25 minimum wage for primary wins in competitive races in Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and California. She said she has heard support for the proposal from liberal and MAGA voters alike.

    The $25 figure was drawn from calculations by MIT that analyzed a living wage, which takes into account costs such as food, childcare, healthcare, housing and transportation.

    Democrats have long advocated raising the federal minimum wage from its current $7.25, but Murphy’s bill would set the highest floor of any proposal in the Senate. Rep. Delia C. Ramirez (D., Ill.) is leading a House version of the bill, which she introduced earlier this year with wide support across the Democratic caucus. A similar bill by Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind., Vt.) would set a $17 minimum wage and has 33 Democratic senators as cosponsors, including Murphy.

    Murphy’s bill also has the backing of Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut), Andy Kim (New Jersey), and Ron Wyden (Oregon).

    Congress has not raised the federal minimum wage since 2009, though only about 1% of workers make $7.25 an hour or less.

    Business groups have often campaigned against raising the minimum wage, suggesting that the economy works best when employers are responsive to market forces.

    A higher federal minimum wage could create “really damaging consequences,” including businesses closing or cutting jobs, especially in rural areas where the cost of living is low, said Ryan Bourne, an economist at the libertarian Cato Institute.

    He said the rising average wage shows that state and local governments are already responding to market changes.

    “I think it makes much more sense for it to be set at a local level where policymakers have a better sense of the local industries,” Bourne said.

    Murphy called those kinds of arguments a “red herring,” saying cities that have already established a $15 minimum wage have not seen major adverse effects. He said the staggered adoption would help assuage employers’ concerns.

    “The business community cried murder, and the job losses they predicted did not materialize,” Murphy said.

    Alex Jacquez, the chief of policy and advocacy at the left-leaning Groundwork Collaborative and a former Sanders aide, helped craft a $15 minimum wage proposal that Democrats attempted to include in their climate and economic policy bill in 2021. He said the surge in wage growth as the economy recovered from the coronavirus pandemic has led more liberal policymakers to believe that a $15 minimum wage would now be too low.

    “It’s also an organizing tool,” he said. “It’s something big and bold that people can hang on to and run on and be able to see the Democrats are fighting for them.”

    So far, most congressional action has tried to address affordability through tax cuts, including the child tax credit, covid-era Affordable Care Act credits or the numerous tax cuts in Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill.

    While Murphy supports programs such as the child tax credits and student loan forgiveness, he said tax cuts have proved insufficient in motivating voters.

    “People don’t want to be written a check. People want to work for pay,” Murphy said. “[Tax breaks] are designed to compensate for a rigged system. Why don’t we just unrig the system?”

  • Rep. Tom Kean, missing for months, is back home in New Jersey

    Rep. Tom Kean, missing for months, is back home in New Jersey

    Rep. Thomas Kean Jr., who has been missing from Washington for nearly four months with little explanation, is back home in New Jersey.

    He could be seen from the street Wednesday evening, standing in a brightly lit front room of his Westfield home just before 8:45 p.m.

    “It’s good to see you,” he said after a reporter for the New York Times rang his doorbell. He was wearing a dark suit and a red tie. “I’ll talk to you next week,” he said. “Thank you.”

    Kean’s wife, Rhonda, stood in the background, smiling pleasantly. He declined additional comment and closed the door.

    Aides had said that Kean, 57, was being treated for a health condition and was expected to fully recover, but had offered no additional details as their boss missed more than 100 floor votes since the middle of March.

    Kean, a Republican, is running for a third term in November in one of the country’s most competitive midterm races. His absence from the campaign trail, though, had left even some of his biggest Republican boosters frustrated.

    A spokesperson for Kean, Harrison Neely, said last week that Kean was expected to return to Washington on June 30. He declined to say how long Kean had been home or to offer any additional details about the representative’s long absence.

    “He will be fully transparent on the 30th,” Neely wrote in a text message.

    Earlier this month, Kean, in absentia, locked in the Republican nomination for his 7th District seat; he was running unopposed. Democrats selected Rebecca Bennett, 39, a former Navy helicopter pilot.

    The Democratic Party considers Kean’s seat one of its best pickup opportunities as it seeks to tip the balance of power in Washington and had been aggressively targeting the race long before he began missing votes in Washington.

    Kean was last spotted on Capitol Hill on March 5. He spoke that day during a committee hearing and cast a crucial “yea” vote in support of funding President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and moving to end a government shutdown.

    Then, he seemingly vanished. Neighbors in Westfield said there had been no obvious sign of Kean for months, and the family’s vacation house in Bay Head, N.J., appeared shuttered the weekend before Memorial Day. Year-round residents of Fishers Island, N.Y., where the Kean family owns a large estate, said they had not seen him, either.

    Kean’s aides repeatedly insisted that he had no plans to abandon his reelection effort and that he was expected to return to work “soon,” even as they refused to discuss the medical condition that had sidelined him.

    In May, after a debate between the four Democrats vying to run against him, Dan Scharfenberger, Kean’s chief of staff, offered a cryptic explanation for why there had been no sightings of the representative in Washington or in his New Jersey district. “There’s no cameras where Tom is,” he said, and did not elaborate.

    During his absence, Kean has nonetheless bought and sold stock, introduced remarks into the Congressional Record and urged House colleagues from afar to oppose Ireland’s effort to limit trade with Israel.

    A handful of Republican leaders in the 7th District’s six counties reported getting calls from Kean. And his office has released two statements attributed to Kean, including one on primary day, June 2, when he made no public appearances.

    “Right now I am focused on my recovery and under the advice of healthcare professionals,” the June 2 statement said.

    The statement indicated that he planned to be “completely transparent as to the nature of my medical condition.”

    “I understand the need for transparency on this matter,” he wrote, “and I look forward to sharing my experience with the public.”

    This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

  • Reflecting Pool’s algae bloom and peeling paint reflect Trump’s treatment of U.S. history

    Reflecting Pool’s algae bloom and peeling paint reflect Trump’s treatment of U.S. history

    President Donald Trump’s latest D.C. renovation, painting the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool “American Flag Blue,” to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday has instead turned the symbolic heart of the National Mall Algae Bloom Green. The paint is peeling, and the water is a swampy muck.

    Trump has asserted, without evidence or corroboration, that vandals cut a 250-foot gash into the new lining and poured corrosive chemicals into the basin. Yet, the explanation for what has happened appears to be more mundane and predictable than the cloak-and-dagger sabotage Trump has suggested. Rosalina Stancheva Christova, an aquatic ecologist from George Mason University’s Algal Ecology Laboratory, sampled the water and found an ordinary, non-toxic bloom — the kind any ordinary swimming pool owner has fought in their own backyard.

    And yet, the problem with the renovation runs far deeper than all of this. Trump’s painting project reflects a fundamental lack of understanding of the original purpose and vision for the reflecting pool. For more than a century, the basin has functioned as a civic mirror, a place where visitors could see themselves reflected alongside the monuments that commemorate the nation’s story. Today that possibility is gone.

    The roots of the reflecting pool lie in the “City Beautiful” movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Gilded Age and decades of laissez-faire growth had left many of America’s cities in disrepair, full of tenement districts, boss-run wards and blight.

    American architects Daniel Burnham, Charles McKim, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and Augustus Saint-Gaudens wanted to change that, and they were inspired by European urban renewal projects like Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann’s redesign of Paris. In 1893, at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, they explored the principles that spawned their movement to reimagine American cities — demonstrating how monumental architecture and carefully designed landscapes could express civic ideals.

    Their experience in Chicago helped to convince the men that beautiful, orderly, civic space could repair the disordered industrial cities the Gilded Age had left them. Their vision reflected a broader Progressive Era faith that urban renewal and public investment could address the social problems of industrial America while restoring civic pride through monumental construction projects designed to project an image of a robust and resilient nation.

    In 1903, all four architects became members of the Senate Park Commission (McMillan Commission) whose mandate was to replace decades of haphazard development in Washington D.C. with a coherent civic plan.

    They set their sights on the National Mall, which was, at that time, a disunified Victorian garden punctuated by marshland with a public green transected by a railroad depot and tracks.

    The commission’s 1901 report complained that the mall “has been diverted from its original purpose and cut into fragments, each portion receiving a separate and individual informal treatment, thus invading what was a single composition.” Their redesign plans aimed to unify the space into a legible and cohesive civic story and the reflecting pool eventually became the spine for that narrative.

    Over the next two decades, the McMillan Plan gradually reshaped the mall.

    Architect Henry Bacon was charged with designing the Lincoln Memorial. In 1911, he completed his first sketches, and he incorporated the commission’s vision by extending the mall’s central axis westward and anchoring it with the reflecting pool. Bacon imagined the pool as a mirror reflection, where visitors could see both the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. As a result, Bacon created a linear and legible connection between the man who presided over the creation of the republic at one end and the man who led the nation through the war for its preservation at the other.

    The future Reflecting Pool site facing west toward the Lincoln memorial in 1921.

    In 1919, the Army Corps of Engineers began excavating a former Potomac marshland known as the Kidwell Flats, to enable construction of the pool. The project took four years and was still under construction at the time of the Lincoln Memorial’s dedication in 1922.

    The pool quickly became a symbolically rich venue for crucial moments in U.S. history. In 1939 the African American contralto Marian Anderson sang from the memorial steps to a crowd of approximately 75,000 people massed along the pool after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let her perform at Constitution Hall.

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    Twenty-four years later, a quarter million people lined both banks of the pool to hear the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaim his dream, to challenge the nation to complete the unfinished journey toward racial equality and achieve a meaningful resolution of the issues that had nearly destroyed the nation.

    Marian Anderson performs from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on April 20, 1952, in this image showing the Reflecting Pool and the Washington Monument. . Anderson’s accompanist is Franz Rupp, lower left, at piano. (AP Photo/Henry Griffin, File)

    The pool reflected those crowds, those moments and those movements only while they occupied the space. Each reflection vanished and was replaced by another individual, another gathering, another episode in the nation’s story.

    Yet, despite its symbolic significance and its success as a site for large scale civic dialogue, from a physical standpoint, the pool faced problems almost from day one. At issue was the soggy foundation created by the choice of marshlands for the reflecting pool’s site.

    This 1922 photo was taken at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial. Nearly from the start, the Reflecting Pool faced structural problems.

    During its construction, the Army Corps of Engineers had attempted to mitigate the potential problem with concrete support beams and a drainage system undergirding the pool. But almost immediately these mitigation systems proved inadequate. The result was cracks and leaks that have plagued the pool for its entire lifetime.

    Numerous administrations have tried to solve the issues. In 1986, the Reagan Administration drained the pool and poured an entirely new concrete foundation. Even this did not solve the problem. The pool continued to leak nearly 30 million gallons per year.

    In 2011, Barack Obama’s administration undertook another round of renovations. While matters improved, the pool still leaks 16 million gallons of water per year.

    The current issue with the reflecting pool and Trump’s response to it, however, go well beyond structural inadequacies and sabotage theories. They reflect a lack of understanding about the pool’s purpose.

    In April, Trump posted a doctored image of himself and his officials in swimsuits lounging in the reflecting pool, a woman in a bikini reclining in the water beside them. But the pool is a mere 18 inches deep, not swimming pool/ lounging depth and Bacon never intended anyone to use it that way. He built a basin you stand beside because its work happens in the mind of the person at the rim. Trump’s artificial intelligence revisionism gets the object exactly wrong — an instrument of contemplation made over into the feature of a tacky resort.

    Trump directed the Department of the Interior to repaint the pool in time for the nation’s 250th anniversary and used an emergency exemption to award a no-bid contract to a company that specialized in painting swimming pools. The result essentially took an area that was a swamp, before its transformation into a civic mirror, and returned it to a swamp. An algae-greened surface now sits where the reflection used to be, and the connection the pool held, the citizen to the monuments, individual to the national story, has been severed.

    When the pool functions as a mirror surface, it is a monument that embodies an evolving republic rather than a finished one. Trump’s swamp has transformed it into a static, murky image that defies the idea of a nation moving forward. As this history makes clear, the health of the republic depends on its ability to see itself clearly, and Trump’s algae-infested reflecting pool is a symbolic reflection of a nation and a history he and his administration continue to try to obscure from clear view.

    Susan Deily-Swearingen holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of New Hampshire, and has taught at multiple universities since 2015. She has a forthcoming book about the persistent legacies of the U.S. Civil War in contemporary politics and society, and frequently writes about historical memory and the echoes of the past in the modern world.

    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.

  • 1 in 4 Philadelphians say preserving historical sites is city’s top ‘responsibility to the nation,’ poll shows

    1 in 4 Philadelphians say preserving historical sites is city’s top ‘responsibility to the nation,’ poll shows

    President Donald Trump’s administration got the green light from a federal appeals court last week to install its own version of the historical exhibits at the President’s House Site on Independence Mall after it dismantled panels about slavery there earlier this year.

    But that may not jibe with what many Philadelphians want to see.

    A new Suffolk University/Philadelphia Inquirer CityView poll of 500 city residents found that a quarter of respondents believe the city’s primary responsibility to the nation is to protect its historical sites for future generations. Nearly 27% said the city’s primary responsibility to the nation is to serve as a model for “diverse, multicultural urban progress.”

    The poll, conducted from June 16 to 20 and released this week, comes after a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in favor of the Trump administration and just weeks ahead of celebrations in Philadelphia for the nation’s 250th birthday.

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    The appeals court’s ruling last week was a turning point in a legal battle waged by Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration that questioned the federal government’s authority to interfere in what information is presented at the President’s House. Both the Third Circuit ruling and a recent decision by a Boston-based federal appeals court regarding National Park Service exhibits nationwide have started to pave the way for the Trump administration to make unprecedented changes to displays of U.S. history in the region.

    Alacia Maxton, 36, a respondent to the poll, said frustration with the attacks on the President’s House has been at the forefront of her mind as the city prepares to celebrate the Semiquincentennial.

    For nearly two decades without opposition, the site — which opened in December 2010 — has memorialized the nine people George Washington enslaved at his Philadelphia residence during the founding of America and detailed the brutality of slavery.

    Last month, it was designated as an endangered historic site by a major national historic preservation organization. The new panels proposed by the Trump administration to replace the removed exhibits at the President’s House soften Washington’s role as an enslaver, according to those working to protect the site.

    “I don’t like the idea that certain groups of people want to whitewash history and erase what doesn’t make them feel comfortable,” said Maxton, who lives in Overbrook Park.

    Carolyn Keys, 61, another resident who responded to the poll, said the absence of the some of the original panels is like “missing pieces to a puzzle.”

    “Every piece was specifically put together for a purpose,” said Keys, 61, a veteran who lives in the Tacony neighborhood.

    David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, said Philadelphians valuing preserving history and being a model for progress is a particularly localized issue.

    “Which I think makes this really important information for the nation to see,” Paleologos said.

    Philadelphia Lawyer Michael Coard speaks at a rally at the President’s House Site in response to the removal of the President’s House exhibit in Old City, in Philadelphia, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026, in Philadelphia

    A bipartisan grassroots group of Philadelphians — called the President’s House/Slavery Memorial Coalition — has been spearheading efforts to protect the historical site, which has been under scrutiny from the Trump administration since last summer.

    The group has often discussed a desire for its work in Philadelphia to be a model for preserving history elsewhere in the country.

    Michael Coard, an attorney and founder of one of the leading groups in the efforts to protect the President’s House, said in a statement Wednesday that the poll results show that “Philadelphians understand the importance of protecting our shared history.”

    “Black history is American history, and we have both an obligation and, based on these results, a clear mandate to ensure that the stories of enslaved Africans and their descendants are preserved, honored, and accurately told,” Coard said.

    Other respondents had different ideas for Philadelphia’s primary responsibility as the birthplace of democracy: Roughly 23% said “leading national conversations on civil rights and economic justice” was a top priority, while almost 17% said the city’s duty to the nation is “proving that a large, complex city can govern itself equitably.”

    These insights come as Philadelphia is bracing for an influx of tourists, with particular emphasis on its history as the nation’s birthplace, ahead of the Semiquincentennial celebrations.

    The Liberty Bell in Independence National Historical Park Feb. 2, 2026.

    Almost 28% of the Philadelphia residents polled see the Liberty Bell — in comparison to Independence Hall, the National Constitution Center, and the Rocky Steps — as the city landmark that best embodies American democracy.

    But hanging over the impending 250th celebrations is the uncertain fate of the President’s House, said Leeanna Lundy, 34, of West Philly.

    “For them to remove where the most impactful part of where history took place, it’s like mind-boggling,” Lundy said.

    Staff writer Michelle Baruchman contributed to this article.

  • White House seeks $87.6B from Congress for Iran war costs, U.S. farmers, and Ebola response

    White House seeks $87.6B from Congress for Iran war costs, U.S. farmers, and Ebola response

    WASHINGTON — The White House has formally requested $87.6 billion mostly to replenish the Pentagon after the U.S. war against Iran, submitting the request to Congress at a politically difficult time as Republican and Democratic lawmakers have objected to any further military action.

    The Office of Management and Budget sent the supplemental spending request on Wednesday. It arrived just hours after President Donald Trump assailed Republican senators during a private lunch — engaging in a shouting match with one — over their votes to approve a war powers resolution that would halt further hostilities.

    The request is mostly for expenses incurred by the Defense Department as part of Operation Epic Fury, the U.S.-led attack on Iran. But it also includes a range of other items, including aid to American farmers, help for the Ebola crisis in Africa, and other needs closer to home, including restoration projects in Washington, D.C.

    “I urge the Congress to take action on these important and urgent requests as soon as possible,” said OMB Director Russ Vought in a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson.

    It’s unclear how quickly the House and Senate could act on the White House’s request, or if Congress takes up the matter at all. The funding faces a difficult path because many lawmakers could view any votes as a reflection of test of their support for the war effort.

    Yet the White House was clear to include provisions to interest lawmakers from various regions, including $1 billion to assist “the final design and construction of a modernized Penn Station in New York City,” which would be of interest to the Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York.

    The administration said it is requesting $67 billion for the Department of Defense for what it said were urgent needs related to the war against Iran, including “funding for military personnel and readiness expenses, operational costs to rebuild stocks.”

    It also wants $11.1 billion toward economic assistance for American farmers, $1.4 billion for the Ebola virus outbreak in Central Africa and requests $500 million to support ongoing efforts “to complete restoration and construction projects in and around Washington, D.C.”

    The package also includes a collection of policy proposals that the administration strongly supports, and which are certain to raise interest among lawmakers.

    Among them, the package proposes revisions to federal regulations of hemp products that have long been in dispute, changes to the year-round sales of renewable fuels and lifting of restrictions around federal investment support in Venezuela.

    Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the lead Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the request is not merely to pay for “the president’s disastrous war, but an attempt to secure tens of billions of additional dollars for unrelated Pentagon priorities that should rightly be considered through the annual appropriations process.”

    Murray added: “I will closely review this request in its entirety and ensure we take care of our service members, but I will not rubber-stamp tens of billions more for this disastrous war of choice.”

    Rep. Tom Cole (R., Okla.), the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and Rep. Ken Calvert (R., Calif.), who chairs the panel’s subcommittee on Defense, said in a joint statement, “President Trump’s request reflects the reality that our defense strength must be maintained, not merely demonstrated.”

    The biggest share of defense funding, $21 billion, will go to weapons munitions, with another $17.3 billion for operational costs and $12.1 billion for other classified programs. Funds are also requested to cover fuel costs, drone manufacturing, and cybersecurity.

    The money for farmers would provide $10 billion in economic assistance to row and specialty crop farmers and $1.1 billion specifically to Florida agriculture producers who suffered losses from this past year’s winter storms.

  • Ex-chief of staff to former NYC Mayor Eric Adams charged with taking bribes

    Ex-chief of staff to former NYC Mayor Eric Adams charged with taking bribes

    NEW YORK — A former chief of staff to ex-New York Mayor Eric Adams was arrested Wednesday in a federal bribery case about a lucrative migrant shelter contract, the latest sign that prosecutors continue to scrutinize Adams’ inner circle months after the scandal-bruised Democrat left office.

    The charges against Frank Carone are the latest in a string of corruption allegations leveled at the former mayor — who was himself indicted on bribery and other charges that were later dismissed — and key aides. Separately, federal authorities searched the homes of current and former New York Police Department leaders Wednesday in connection with a different bribery investigation.

    Adams was not accused of wrongdoing in Carone’s indictment. It alleges the ex-chief of staff exploited his position to get more than $100,000 in payoffs for steering a migrant shelter contract to a hotel that social service officials had deemed unsuitable.

    “Frank Carone was entrusted to run our city government and instead put his own wealth and status above duty,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Winik told a court.

    Carone and his brother, Anthony Carone; hotel owner Yan Po Zhu, and hotel employee Crystal Chen pleaded not guilty to various charges. The brothers sat across from each other at a defense table, where Anthony Carone rubbed his face and Frank Carone appeared to read along during the proceedings.

    Frank Carone’s lawyer, Arthur Aidala, said outside court that the case was based on “assumption after assumption after assumption.”

    “There is not one fact that indicates Frank Carone did anything specific to influence anything in our government,” Aidala said. The other defendants and their attorneys declined to comment.

    Frank Carone and the Sabrina Carpenter church video

    Carone, a former Brooklyn Democratic Party lawyer and longtime political power broker, is widely credited as one of the architects of Adams’ political rise. He also drew attention for his financial dealings with a Roman Catholic priest who let pop star Sabrina Carpenter film scenes for a provocative music video in a church.

    Federal investigators later subpoenaed the church. “They found nothing,” Aidala said Wednesday, contending that the government first targeted Carone, then looked for a case.

    Carone played a key role in Adams’ 2021 mayoral campaign, was chief of staff in 2022, then left and formed a political consulting firm.

    He “dedicated decades of his life to public service, the legal profession and helping countless individuals, businesses, and charitable organizations throughout New York,” Adams spokesperson Todd Shapiro said in a statement.

    Indictment focuses on how the hotel became a shelter

    Starting in 2022, the city scrambled to expand its shelter capacity amid an influx of migrants. Zhu’s hotel got $6.8 million to shelter some of the new arrivals, though the city’s Social Services Department had repeatedly rejected the facility, which was small and in a Queens neighborhood where residents objected to more shelters, according to prosecutors.

    Prosecutors said in court papers that Frank Carone accepted around $120,000 in bribes from Zhu and Chen to intercede on the hotel’s behalf. The money was passed through Anthony Carone’s law firm, according to the indictment.

    In a September 2022 text message, Zhu asked Frank Carone for help getting the hotel an immediate one-year contract, according to the indictment. It said Carone replied by asking for the address, and Zhu gave it, adding: “Thank you my big guy.”

    In December 2023, Zhu texted Carone: “I asked my partners to pay you for a year,” according to the document. Carone, who is also charged with obstruction of justice, deleted the message after learning he was under investigation, prosecutors said.

    Zhu “is anxious to establish his innocence,” lawyer Stephen Scaring said before the arraignments. All four defendants later were released on bond, ranging from $100,000 for Chen to $8 million for Zhu.

    Police officials’ homes searched in unrelated probe

    Separately Wednesday, the FBI and the NYPD executed search warrants at the homes of NYPD Chief of Manhattan South James McCarthy and former Deputy Commissioner Tarik Sheppard, and federal agents also searched former Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey’s home, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the searches. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the searches were part of a bribery investigation that grew out of an inquiry into Maddrey.

    There was no immediate response to an inquiry to Maddrey’s attorney. Attorney information for Sheppard and McCarthy was not immediately available.

    There is no public indication of any arrests as part of those searches.

    They were not related to Frank Carone’s arrest, according to another person familiar with the matter who also was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the case and spoke on condition of anonymity.

    Once the NYPD’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, Maddrey resigned in 2024 over allegations that he demanded sex from a subordinate in exchange for opportunities to earn extra pay. Maddrey denied the claims of a quid pro quo.

    Adams was indicted in 2024 on charges of accepting illegal campaign contributions from Turkish officials and others in exchange for political favors. The case was tossed by federal Justice Department leaders who said it was distracting Adams from assisting in Republican President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Adams has denied wrongdoing.

    After skipping last year’s Democratic primary, Adams mounted but eventually abandoned an independent campaign for a second term.

  • A new bipartisan housing law was on track to bring Pennsylvania’s home-repair program nationwide. Then Trump refused to sign the bill.

    A new bipartisan housing law was on track to bring Pennsylvania’s home-repair program nationwide. Then Trump refused to sign the bill.

    WASHINGTON — A Pennsylvania program that assists homeowners and small landlords by financing repairs was on track Wednesday to expand nationwide, after Congress this week passed a bill that both Republicans and Democrats are celebrating as the first major federal housing law in decades.

    Tucked into the 374-page omnibus legislation is a pilot version of a federally backed Whole-Home Repairs program — an idea that was originally sponsored by State Sen. Nikil Saval (D., Philadelphia) and passed in Pennsylvania in 2022.

    The program offers grants or loans to address safety, habitability, and efficiency concerns.

    But despite wide bipartisan support for the program and dozens of other housing reforms in the larger bill, final approval was derailed on Wednesday when President Donald Trump canceled the bill-signing ceremony in an attempt to force Congress to first pass more restrictive voter-ID laws.

    Democrats and some Republicans quickly rebuked the president, who still made a rare appearance on Capitol Hill to meet with Senate Republicans. The intraparty meeting turned contentious, according to multiple reports, while Democrats noted they had enough votes to overturn Trump’s veto if he holds out long enough.

    “It’s a mess,” said U.S. Sen. Andy Kim (D., N.J.). “Finally, we’re doing something that the American people want. We got bipartisanship. We worked on it forever. … Then he just parachutes in and just blows it all up here at the end.”

    The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act aims to incentivize housing construction, restrict large institutional investors from buying single-family homes, improve financial literacy, and more.

    More than a year in the making, it includes a separate stand-alone Whole-Home Repairs Act that U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) had introduced in each of the last two sessions of Congress. Fetterman’s bill merged last year into the larger bill while keeping many of the same provisions as the Pennsylvania-level program.

    Households that earn less than 80% of the area median income are eligible for grants, while small landlords with affordable units can access loans, including forgivable loans.

    Funded with more than $120 million in COVID-era federal stimulus money, the program has been limited amid high demand, with as many as 18,000 homes on the waiting list.

    Saval said he expects the national version to also reflect that level of “immense demand” — particularly as the program starts small and as homeowners across the country face higher costs to maintain their residences.

    “This is a huge issue. There are some 200,000 homes in Pennsylvania alone that have moderate to severe deficiencies,” Saval said. “Everyone is dealing with rising energy costs. Everyone’s dealing with the cost of materials and labor and the inability to pay for all that.”

    Addressing those kinds of affordability concerns, which have become a top-of-mind political issue during this year’s high-stakes midterm elections, is a rare bipartisan effort to emerge from the U.S. Capitol.

    Philadelphia-area lawmakers on both sides of the aisle had spent months advocating for the bill.

    U.S. Sens. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.) and Lisa Blunt Rochester (D., Del.) — members of the Senate committee that advanced the legislation — both celebrated the final passage by talking about its impacts on affordability and “cutting red tape.” Kim called it a “historic” move to bring costs down.

    “This package comes at a critical moment,” Blunt Rochester said in a statement, noting a nationwide housing shortage of as many as 7 million units. Five bills she separately sponsored — to accelerate building, increase investment in community development projects, develop zoning and land-use policies, and more — were featured in the final law.

    The Whole-Home Repairs provision of the legislation was not a guarantee as negotiations developed over the last year. House Republicans were generally skeptical of creating a new government program, and specifically critical of the policy’s tenant protections, according to a source familiar with the negotiations. But their counterparts in the Senate, and Democrats in both chambers, helped keep it in the larger bill.

    Fetterman said in a statement that Whole-Home Repairs “ensures families can stay in their homes” and that passing it had been a priority since he entered the Senate in 2023.

    “I’ve consistently maintained that our housing crisis needs real solutions that help address the problems at the center,” Fetterman said.

    Saval, who said he made multiple trips to Capitol Hill to work with sponsors and lobby for Whole-Home Repairs, said he was “thrilled” by the inclusion of a program that he and the coalition of advocates who helped push the idea had always envisioned as a model that could be replicated.

    He said he expects the pilot program to prove successful in “a few states” where it is able to launch. Unlike previous version of the federal bill that would have allocated $30 million to the pilot, there is no specific funding number for Whole-Home Repairs in the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act.

    The legislation calls for the secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to identify between two and 10 “implementing organizations” every year during the pilot, which is set to run through October 2031. The organizations will be local or state governments that administer the programs.

    Saval said that no matter how much funding is allocated, it “will undoubtedly fall short of the need,” but that its effectiveness will spur further investment.

    “It repays itself,” Saval said. “It repays itself in stabilized communities. It repays itself in stabilized property values, in people remaining in their homes rather than in unsafe or unhealthy homes, or rather than abandoning them.”

    Staff writer Jake Blumgart contributed to this article.

  • Federal judge bars Trump from implementing proof of citizenship requirement to vote

    Federal judge bars Trump from implementing proof of citizenship requirement to vote

    A federal judge on Wednesday permanently barred President Donald Trump’s administration from implementing most of his first executive order on elections, part of which sought to require people to show documentary proof of citizenship when they register to vote.

    The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper in Boston effectively converts a preliminary injunction she issued a year ago, in which she temporarily blocked many of Trump’s efforts to overhaul elections, into a permanent ban.

    Casper rejected the Republican administration’s argument that the lawsuit to block the changes brought by Democratic state attorneys general was premature because the rules had yet to be put in place. Instead, she agreed that the Constitution gives states and Congress the authority to regulate elections, and that Trump’s requirements violated the separation of powers.

    The Constitution “does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” wrote Casper.

    Among other proposed changes, Trump’s order would have required people to provide documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote, prevented mail ballots from being counted if they arrive after Election Day, even if they were postmarked by then, and punished states that failed to comply by withholding certain federal money.

    In a statement, New York Attorney General Letitia James said she was grateful the court had blocked Trump’s “unconstitutional attempt to seize control of our elections” and would continue to defend voting rights in this year’s midterm elections.

    “Generations of Americans fought tirelessly for the right to vote, and we honor their legacy by protecting that right against anyone who tries to undermine it,” said James, a Democrat.

    California Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose state was the lead plaintiff in the case, said the ruling reaffirmed the constitutional principle that it s up to the states and Congress to set election rules.

    “While we are proud of this result, we are clear-eyed that President Trump’s attacks on voting rights and our elections show no signs of slowing down,” Bonta, a Democrat, said in a statement. “So let me be clear: we will keep fighting back every step of the way.”

    Requests for comment sent to the White House and the U.S. Department of Justice were not immediately returned.

    The ruling was the latest in a series against the elections executive order Trump signed just months after taking office for his second term. The Republican president has since signed another executive order on elections that seeks to create a national voter list and limit mail balloting. That directive also faces multiple legal challenges.

    Last fall, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., overseeing a separate challenge to the first election executive order by civil rights and Democratic Party-aligned groups blocked the government from taking steps to include the proof-of-citizenship requirement on the federal voter registration form. That judge later barred Trump’s defense secretary from requiring documentary proof of citizenship when military personnel register to vote or request ballots.

    In an apparent nod to the difficulty of implementing a proof-of-citizen requirement by executive order, Trump is pushing legislation in the Republican-controlled Congress to create such a mandate. The SAVE America Act has passed the House but has stalled in the Senate, leading Trump to advocate for eliminating the filibuster that is blocking the legislation.

    On Wednesday, he abruptly canceled the expected signing of a bipartisan housing bill, saying he would not sign legislation until Congress passes his proof of citizenship requirement for voting.

    The president and many of his Republican allies have been promoting the narrative that voting by noncitizens is a major problem, when in fact it’s quite rare. The federal voter registration form already requires people to attest that they are U.S. citizens. Violating that is punishable as a felony that can lead to prison or deportation.

    In another major voting case, the U.S. Supreme Court is due to issue an opinion soon on whether mail ballots must arrive by Election Day. That could immediately change the rules in 14 states that allow grace periods ranging from days to weeks if the ballots are postmarked by Election Day.

    Casper, who was nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama, is the chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.