RICHMOND, Va. — A Virginia judge ruled Tuesday that a proposed constitutional amendment letting Democrats redraw the state’s Congressional maps was illegal, setting back the party’s efforts to pick up seats in the U.S. House in November.
Tazewell Circuit Court Judge Jack Hurley Jr. struck down the legislature’s actions on three grounds, including finding that lawmakers failed to follow their own rules for adding the redistricting amendment to a special session.
His order also said Democrats failed to approve the amendment before the public began voting in last year’s general election and failed to publish the amendment three months before the election, as required by law.
As a result, he said, the amendment was invalid and void.
Virginia House Speaker Don Scott, who was listed in Republicans’ lawsuit over the resolution, said Democrats would appeal the ruling.
“Nothing that happened today will dissuade us from continuing to move forward and put this matter directly to the voters,” Scott said in a joint statement with other state Democratic leaders.
Virginians for Fair Elections, a campaign that supports the redistricting resolution, accused conservatives of filing their lawsuit in a known GOP-friendly jurisdiction, saying, “Republicans court-shopped for a ruling because litigation and misinformation are the only tools they have left.”
President Donald Trump launched an unusual mid-decade redistricting battle last summer when he urged Republican officials in Texas to redraw districts to help the GOP win more seats, hoping to hold on to a narrow House majority in the face of political headwinds that typically favor the party out of power in midterms.
So far that battle has resulted in nine more seats that Republicans believe they can win in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, and six that Democrats think they can win in California and Utah. Democrats hope to fully or partially make up that three-seat margin in Virginia.
As in Virginia, redistricting is still being litigated in several states, and there is no guarantee that the parties will win the seats they have redrawn.
Other states still could join the fray: Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore is pushing for revised districts that could help Democrats win all eight of the state’s U.S. House seats, up from the seven they currently hold, and Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis plans to call a special session on redistricting in April.
Hurley’s ruling comes after lawmakers said they would unveil their proposed new House districts to voters by the end of this week.
The state is currently represented in the House by six Democrats and five Republicans from districts whose boundaries were imposed by a court after a bipartisan redistricting commission failed to agree on a map after the 2020 census.
Because the commission was established by a voter-approved constitutional amendment, lawmakers have to revise the constitution in order to be able to redraw maps this year. That requires the pass a resolution in two separate legislative sessions, with a state election sandwiched in between.
Virginians would have to vote in favor in a referendum.
All seven Democratic members of the U.S. House representing Pennsylvania cosigned a letter to Sens. John Fetterman and Dave McCormick on Tuesday calling on them to vote against funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees both ICE and the Border Patrol.
The letter, which was first obtained by The Inquirer, comes a day after Fetterman, their Democratic colleague, said he would not vote against funding the agency, which could trigger a partial government shutdown.
“We urge you to stand with us in opposing any DHS funding bill that does not include critical reforms,” the lawmakers said in the letter, delivered Tuesday. “We look forward to working together to advance legislation that both keeps our nation secure and upholds our fundamental values.”
The effort was led by U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio, whose Western Pennsylvania district includes parts of Allegheny County. Deluzio has been floated in Democratic circles as a potential primary challenger to Fetterman in 2028.
Deluzio was joined by Democratic U.S. Reps. Brendan Boyle and Dwight Evans, who represent Philadelphia, as well as U.S. Reps. Madeleine Dean, Mary Gay Scanlon, and Chrissy Houlahan, whose districts include the Philadelphia suburbs. U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, a progressive Democrat whose district includes Pittsburgh, also signed the letter.
Boyle, another potential contender for Fetterman’s seat and the dean of the delegation, said in a statement that “ICE is currently operating like a lawless, out-of-control agency.”
“We cannot send it another blank check,” he added.
Anti-ICE activists demonstrate outside U.S. Sen. John Fetterman’s Philadelphia office, Jan. 27, 2026, calling for the senator to vote against DHS funding.
The House Democrats urged the senators to vote against any bill that funds the department “without first securing meaningful, enforceable reforms to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and related DHS agency activity.”
Fetterman spoke out against ICE’s operation in Minneapolis and called for DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s firing on Tuesday but said he “will never vote to shut our government down, especially our Defense Department.” He said that allowing a partial shutdown would not defund ICE, since the agency was granted $178 billion in funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which he did not support.
“I reject the calls to defund or abolish ICE,” Fetterman said Monday. “I strongly disagree with many strategies and practices ICE deployed in Minneapolis, and believe that must change.”
He said he wants “a conversation” about the DHS appropriations bill and supports taking it out of the spending package, but said “it is unlikely that will happen.”
McCormick, a Republican, affirmed his support for Border Patrol and ICE on Sunday while also calling for “a full investigation into the tragedy in Minneapolis.”
Only a handful of House Democrats — none of whom represent Pennsylvania — joined Republicans last week in passing a bill to fund DHS. It was sent to the Senate as a package with other appropriations bills.
“We voted against this bill last week and ask that you do the same,” the lawmakers say in the letter. “Funding without adequate reform risks endorsing current approaches that undermine public safety and due process, erode American liberties, and weaken public trust.”
After a second U.S. citizen was fatally shot by ICE in Minneapolis over the weekend, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said Democrats would not vote for the forthcoming appropriations legislation if funding for DHS is part of it.
Democrats have pushed for provisions in the spending bill to increase training for ICE agents, to require warrants for immigration arrests, to require agents to identify themselves, and for Border Patrol to stay on the border instead of helping ICE elsewhere.
Upward of 150 protesters gathered in front of Fetterman’s Philadelphia office in the cold on Tuesday to urge him to vote against the funding. One protester held a sign saying “listen to your wife,” referencing Gisele Fetterman, who was undocumented as a child before becoming a citizen and posted on X for the first time in nearly a year on Sunday to speak against ICE.
“Sen. Fetterman, we’re here to remind you: You work for us in Philadelphia. We don’t want ICE in Pennsylvania,” Tiffany Chang, an Asian and Pacific Islander Political Alliance activist, said into a microphone.
“We want ICE out of the government spending bill,” Chang added. “So today, we need everyone listening to tell Sen. Fetterman: ‘Vote no on funding an agency that kills with impunity.’”
After the protest, participants said they did not feel that Fetterman was listening to his constituents.
“I thought a show of people in front of his building might actually get some attention,” said Stefanie Nicolosi, 39, a Phoenixville resident and member of Indivisible Chester County.
CLIVE, Iowa — President Donald Trump arrived in Iowa on Tuesday as part of the White House’s midterm-year pivot toward affordability, even as his administration remains mired in the fallout in Minneapolis over a second fatal shooting by federal immigration officers this month.
The Republican president first made a stop at a local restaurant, where he met some locals and sat for an interview with Fox News Channel — in which he said he was attempting to “de-escalate a little bit” in Minnesota. Afterwards, he was scheduled to deliver a speech on affordability at the Horizon Events Center in Clive, a suburb of Des Moines.
The trip is expected to also highlight energy policy, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said last week. It’s part of the White House’s strategy to have Trump travel out of Washington once a week ahead of the midterm elections to focus on affordability issues facing everyday Americans — an effort that keeps getting diverted by crisis.
The latest comes as the Trump administration is grappling with the weekend shooting death of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse killed by federal agents in the neighboring state of Minnesota. Pretti had participated in protests following the Jan. 7 killing of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer. Even as some top administration officials moved quickly to malign Pretti, Trump said he was waiting until an investigation into the shooting was complete.
Trump calls Pretti killing ‘sad situation’
As Trump left the White House on Tuesday to head to Iowa, he was repeatedly questioned by reporters about Pretti’s killing. Trump disputed language used by his own deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, who on social media described Pretti as an “assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents.” Vice President JD Vance shared the post.
Trump, when asked Tuesday if he believed Pretti was an assassin, said, “No.”
When asked if he thought Pretti’s killing was justified, Trump called it “a very sad situation” and said a “big investigation” was underway.
“I’m going to be watching over it, and I want a very honorable and honest investigation. I have to see it myself,” he said.
He also said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was quick to cast Pretti as a violent instigator, would not be resigning.
Later, as he greeted diners at an Iowa restaurant, Trump weighed in further with comments that were likely to exacerbate frustration among some of his backers who are also strong Second Amendment proponents.
“He certainly shouldn’t have been carrying a gun,” Trump said of Pretti.
He called it a “very, very unfortunate incident but said, ”I don’t like that he had a gun. I don’t like that he had two fully loaded magazines. That’s a lot of bad stuff.”
Republicans want to switch the subject to affordability
Trump was last in Iowa ahead of the July 4 holiday to kick off the United States’ upcoming 250th anniversary, which morphed largely into a celebration of his major spending and tax cut package hours after Congress had approved it.
Republicans are hoping that Trump’s visit to the state on Tuesday draws focus back to that tax bill, which will be a key part of their pitch as they ask voters to keep them in power in November.
“I invited President Trump back to Iowa to highlight the real progress we’ve made: delivering tax relief for working families, securing the border, and growing our economy,” Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, said in a statement in advance of his trip. “Now we’ve got to keep that momentum going and pass my affordable housing bill, deliver for Iowa’s energy producers, and bring down costs for working families.”
Trump’s affordability tour has taken him to Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina as the White House tries to marshal the president’s political power to appeal to voters in key swing states.
But Trump’s penchant for going off-script has sometimes taken the focus off cost-of-living issues and his administration’s plans for how to combat it. In Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, Trump insisted that inflation was no longer a problem and that Democrats were using the term affordability as a “hoax” to hurt him. At that event, Trump also griped that immigrants arriving to the U.S. from “filthy” countries got more attention than his pledges to fight inflation.
Competitive races in Iowa
Although it was a swing state just a little more than a decade ago, Iowa in recent years has been reliably Republican in national and statewide elections. Trump won Iowa by 13 percentage points in 2024 against Democrat Kamala Harris.
Still, two of Iowa’s four congressional districts have been among the most competitive in the country and are expected to be again in this year’s midterm elections. Trump already has endorsed Republican Reps. Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks. Democrats, who landed three of Iowa’s four House seats in the 2018 midterm elections during Trump’s first term, see a prime opportunity to unseat Iowa incumbents.
This election will be the first since 1968 with open seats for both governor and U.S. senator at the top of the ticket after Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds and Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst opted out of reelection bids. The political shake-ups have rippled throughout the state, with Republican Reps. Randy Feenstra and Ashley Hinson seeking new offices for governor and for U.S. senator, respectively.
Democrats hope Rob Sand, the lone Democrat in statewide office who is running for governor, will make the entire state more competitive with his appeal to moderate and conservative voters and his $13 million in cash on hand.
Saying the Trump administration is using the federal government for “pure evil” in its immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, Gov. Josh Shapiro revealed on late-night television Monday that he’s preparing Pennsylvania to respond should the state face such an incursion.
Shapiro’s wide-ranging remarks on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert — which included Shapiro deriding Vice President JD Vance as a “sycophant” and a “suck-up” — sounded at times like a speech before a studio audience that applauded him vigorously. Making the rounds to promote his new book, Where We Keep the Light: Stories from a Life of Service, Shapiro also appeared on CBS Sunday Morning, Good Morning America on Monday, and The View on Tuesday.
On Colbert, the governor sharply criticized the Trump administration’s actions in Minneapolis, where he said “untrained” agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been creating “chaos” by fatally shooting two American citizens.
“I think Americans are outraged by what they see,” Shapiro said, adding: “The mission in Minnesota must be terminated immediately.”
When Colbert said there are “rumors” that federal troops will be sent to Philadelphia “to foment fear,” Shapiro nodded. On The View, he said troops could show up in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, or Lancaster.
“We have spent hours and hours and hours doing tabletop exercises to prepare for it,” Shapiro said, without being specific. The governor did not elaborate.
He added that “it’s a sad day in America that a governor of a commonwealth needs to prepare for a federal onslaught where they would send troops in to undermine the freedoms and the constitutional rights of our citizens. This is un-American.”
“But I want the good people of Pennsylvania to know — I want the American people to know — that we will do everything in our power to protect them from the federal overreach.”
Asked for comment, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said Tuesday: “It’s pure evil when Democrat leaders provide sanctuary to dangerous criminal illegal aliens who assault, murder, and rape innocent American citizens. President Trump is keeping his promise to the American people to deport criminal illegal aliens.”
Referencing ICE agents wearing masks, Shapiro said that members of the Pennsylvania State Police “have strict rules on when they can wear a mask. You want to be identified as folks who are keeping people safe.”
He added, “Of all the tools that we give our law enforcement in Pennsylvania, the most important tool you need to have is trust with the community that you police.”
When the conversation turned to Vance’s statement that the ICE officer who shot andkilled Minneapolis resident Renee Macklin Good on Jan. 7 has “absolute immunity,” Shapiro retorted that it was untrue.
He added that Vance is “such a sycophant, such a suck-up. He embarrasses himself daily as he seeks the affirmation of Donald Trump.”
ICE agents “are not above the law,” Shapiro added moments later. “I don’t care what B.S. Vance [says.]”
The governor’s reelection bid this year, as well as rumors that he may be a presidential candidate in 2028, did not come up. Instead, Colbert touted Shapiro’s book.
Shapiro said that the courts, Congress, and public opinion need to be marshaled to prevent the Trump administration from sending more troops to U.S. cities.
“All of you have powerful voices,” Shapiro told the audience. He added: “The story of America is ordinary Americans rising up, demanding more, seeking justice.”
The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday for the third time this year, seeking to shore up a softening labor market even as inflation builds and leaving the prospect of more cuts next year unclear.
“It’s a labor market that seems to have significant downside risks,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said at a news conference following the meeting.
Although Fed officials tentatively penciled in at least one more rate cut before the end of next year, estimates about where the economy is heading varied significantly and Powell suggested the central bank might wait before returning to any additional cuts.
“We are well positioned to wait and see how the economy evolves from here,” he said.
Wednesday’s widely expected move lowers the Fed’s benchmark rate to a range of 3.5 to 3.75 percent, the lowest level in about three years. But officials remain sharply divided over how to respond to an economy sending mixed signals: Inflation remains above the Fed’s target, which would typically argue for holding rates steady, while slower hiring and a modest uptick in unemployment suggest a case for easing.
Investors cheered the news, with major financial indexes ending the day higher on Wednesday afternoon.
Nine Federal Reserve officials backed Wednesday’s cut while three dissented. Two officials — Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee and Kansas City Fed President Jeffrey Schmid — favored no rate reduction, while Fed governor Stephen Miran preferred a larger, half-point cut. It was the most dissent since September 2019.
In another sign of division among top Fed officials, the latest economic projections also released on Wednesday showed seven officials penciled in no additional cuts next year, while 12 favored at least one or more.
Fed policies influence what households and businesses pay for mortgages, credit cards and other loans, and investors are watching closely for guidance on the central bank’s next steps.
The Fed’s job is to keep prices stable and to maximize employment, but it is split on howto navigate what some describe as a light version of stagflation — elevated inflation alongside a labor market that is slowing but far from collapsing. Those divides were exposed at the Fed’s last gathering in October, where officials expressed “strongly differing views about what policy decision would most likely be appropriate,” according to the meeting minutes.
Further complicating the decision, the Fed received far less official data about the health of the economy, because of the government shutdown that delayed or canceled the release of reports on the jobs market and consumer prices. Some Fed officials, relying on alternative data or surveys of the business community, argued that progress on inflation had stalled and warned that cuts risked undermining hard-won gains. Others countered that rising unemployment and weakening consumer demand suggested a need for action.
Powell defended cutting rates now rather than waiting for the Fed’s next meeting in late January, when officials will finally have a better sense of the status of economy thanks to a trove of upcoming official reports. Wednesday’s call reflected mounting evidence of a cooling job market, he noted, saying that after readjustments and revisions, job growth may have been slightly negative since spring.
“I think you can say that the labor market has continued to cool gradually, maybe just a touch more gradually than we thought,” Powell said.
With unemployment rising to 4.4 percent in September, the Fed no longer characterized that rate as “low,” in a statement announcing the rate cut.
Former Philadelphia Fed president Patrick Harker said this week that Wednesday’s move is shaping up to be a “hawkish cut” — a rate reduction paired with a signal that policymakers may soon pause further easing. Harker said the Fed’s internal divergence reflects an unusual degree of economic “fog,” with inflation not worsening as much as feared, unemployment claims relatively stable, and labor-market signals increasingly difficult to interpret. He noted that monthly job gains below 100,000 would normally be a red flag, but demographic trends and uncertain immigration patterns complicate the baseline.
Those disagreements are unfolding amid unprecedented political pressure from President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly criticized the Fed for not moving quickly enough to lower rates and has threatened to fire Powell. Trump renewed those attacks ahead of this week’s meeting, telling Politico that support for aggressive rate cuts is a litmus test for whoever he taps to succeed Powell, whose term as chair expires in May. The president plans to nominate a successor early next year, though he has already signaled he knows who he is likely to pick.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, who was top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, said he is perplexed by Trump’s push for cuts, because inflation remains above target and the broader economy continues to expand. The data shows cooling — not collapsing — labor conditions, which wouldn’t normally justify an urgent push for easing rates, Toomey said.
Toomey warned that the president is taking a much bigger political gamble than he appears to realize. If inflation were to spike again, he said, Trump would “completely own” the fallout after pressuring the Fed when “there’s no obvious need to ease.” That makes the campaign for faster rate cuts “surprising,” Toomey said.
Although Powell secured enough board support to approve Wednesday’s cut, future easing would depend on keeping that alliance.
The split appears to pit a “hawkish” coalition of regional Fed presidents focused on preventing inflation from resurging against a group of governors in Washington who see the greater risk in a softening economy. Officials such as Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack, who said she would have preferred not to cut rates in October, have argued that inflation remains stubbornly above the bank’s 2 percent target and warned that reducing rates too soon could keep prices rising.
Meanwhile, other officials continue to emphasize that a cooling labor market and softening consumer demand call for cuts, to ensure the economy does not slip further.
Sen. John Fetterman on Tuesday urged President Donald Trump “to immediately fire” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after federal agents killed two citizens in Minneapolis this month during an immigration enforcement operation.
“Americans have died,” Fetterman (D., Pa.) said in a statement. “She is betraying DHS’s core mission and trashing your border security legacy.”
The senator’s call for Noem’s firing comes after federal agents killed two Americans during the Minneapolis operation. On Saturday, a Border Patrol agent shot and killed Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse at a VA hospital. An ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old poet and mother, on Jan. 7.
Fetterman referenced Noem’s predecessor, Alejandro Mayorkas, who served under former President Joe Biden and faced impeachment by the Republican-led House in 2024 amid a backlash over increased border crossings under Biden.
Sen. Andy Kim (D., N.J.), who also voted for Noem, joined the growing chorus of Democrats calling for Noem to step down on Tuesday. The South Jersey lawmaker has previously called the vote a mistake.
Fetterman’s plea to fire Noem comes a day after he called for the withdrawal of federal agents from Minneapolis. And it comes as the U.S. Senate is poised to vote this week on funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees both ICE and the Border Patrol.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats would vote against it, which could trigger a partial federal government shutdown.
About 150 protesters gathered outside Fetterman’s office in Philadelphia in the snow on Tuesday to urge him to join the effort, but the senator said on Monday that he will never vote to shut down the government. He also argued that doing so would not pull the $178 billion dedicated to DHS through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which he did not support.
“I would like him to listen and actually represent us, because that’s his job,” said James Pierson, 42, an Exton resident attending the demonstration.
Fetterman suggested pulling the DHS bill from the package of bills under consideration by the Senate this week rather than another shutdown vote.
“I reject the calls to defund or abolish ICE,” he said. “I strongly disagree with many strategies and practices ICE deployed in Minneapolis, and believe that must change.”
Trump officials have ordered national parks to remove dozens of signs and displays related to climate change, environmental protection, and settlers’ mistreatment of Native Americans in a renewed push to implement President Donald Trump’s executive order on “restoring truth and sanity to American history.”
Park staff have interpreted Trump’s directive — which seeks to scrub federal institutions of what it calls “partisan ideology” and remove any content deemed to “disparage Americans past or living” — to include any references to historic racism and sexism, as well as climate change and LGBTQ+ rights. Last week, that included the removal of an exhibit at the President’s House in Philadelphia that focused on George Washington’s ownership of enslaved people.
A visitor on Thursday looks at the site where explanatory panels from an exhibit on slavery were removed from the President’s House in Philadelphia.
In a new wave of orders this month, Trump officials instructed staff to remove or edit signs and other informational materials in at least 17 additional parks in Arizona, Texas, Colorado, Utah, Montana, and Wyoming, according to documents reviewed by the Washington Post. The documents also listed some removals ordered in August and September.
The Interior Department said in a statement it was implementing Trump’s executive order.
“All federal agencies are to review interpretive materials to ensure accuracy, honesty, and alignment with shared national values,” the statement said. “Following completion of the required review, the National Park Service is now taking appropriate action in accordance with the Order.”
Among the national parks targeted in the new removal orders are some of the country’s most iconic: Grand Canyon, Glacier, Big Bend, and Zion.
The removal orders include descriptions of how climate change is driving the disappearance of the glaciers at Glacier National Park and a wayside display at the Grand Canyon referring to the forced removal of Native Americans.
The administration’s broad attempt to suppresstrue stories “should offend every American,” said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association.
Brengel emphasized that Park Service staffers are acting on administration orders. “Everyone understands this history,” she said. “It’s not debatable, but they’re being forced to select stories because they think the administration will threaten their jobs if they don’t.”
Here are details on some of the changes being ordered at national parks.
Grand Canyon National Park
Staff at a Grand Canyon visitor centerin Arizona removed part of an exhibit after flagging potentially problematic passages to the national park system’s leadership in D.C., according to documentation reviewed by the Post.
The passages included text stating that settlers “exploited land for mining and grazing” and that federal officials “pushed tribes off their land” to establish the park.
The park also removed references to cattle ranchers “carelessly overgrazing” the land, tourists “foolishly” leaving trash in the park and entrepreneurs who “profited excessively” from tourism.
Trump officials have yet to take action on several other items, including a video about Native American history.
Park staff suggested fixes that would remove a reference to a federal policy that prevented Native Americans from using body and face paint, as well as references to their ancestors’ “misery, suffering,” and “loss.”
Roadside displays on climate change, pollution and mining were also flagged for possible removal.
Glacier National Park
In response to frequent inquiries from visitors about the potential disappearance of the famous glaciers at Montana’s Glacier National Park, staff created signs and other resources to answer those questions, said Jeff Mow, who retired as superintendent of the park in 2022.
The administration flagged one brochure for removal or changes that shows images of glaciers retreating and explains that human-caused climate change is a factor in their likely future disappearance. A video that refers to the disappearance of the glaciers was also ordered removed or changed.
Also flagged was a sign at the park’s gift shop that says: “Climate Change Affects National Parks and the Treasures They Protect.”
“We’re whitewashing or we’re taking out all those sort of not-so-nice stories that have occurred in our nation’s history,” Mow said.
Another informational display to be removed or changed describes the park’s issues with air pollution. The administration paused air-quality monitoring at national parks last year.
Other signs talk about the increasing fire risk at the park, as well as a nearby dam that “flooded two lakes within the park.”
“As the nation’s storyteller of natural and cultural history, the National Park Service takes great pride” in telling these stories, Mow said. “This process of being edited — it’s like taking a torpedo in the bow.”
Big Bend National Park
The signs slated for removal at Big Bend National Park along the Texas-Mexico border do not reference the topics, such as climate or Native American history, that have typically attracted the attention of Trump officials.
Instead, of the nearly 20 signs flagged for not conforming with the new policy, many deal with geology, prehistoric history, fossils and other seemingly uncontroversial scientific or historical topics. The removal orders do not spell out what’s wrong with the signs.
Some of the displays are in Spanish and English, while others talk about cooperating with Mexico on modern preservation efforts.
Big Bend’s submission for the administration’s review says, “These wayside exhibits describe natural features, but emphasize ‘matters unrelated to the beauty, abundance, or grandeur of said natural feature.’” Although it flagged the materials for review, the park said it did “not advocate changing these wayside exhibits.”
Even so, Trump officials decided the displays did not conform with administration policy and ordered them changed or removed.
“This is not something that the National Park Service should be blamed for,” said Bob Krumenaker, superintendent of Big Bend until 2023. “They are being told they have to do these things. And my hope is they’re saving these exhibits for when things change so they can put them back up.”
Other parks
The administration also targeted less famous parks. One sign slated for removal at Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site in Colorado described key figures in the site’s history and included references to the forced removal of a Native tribe, a family’s slave ownership and another historic figure who had a miscarriage.
At Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site in Arizona, a panel on Ganado Mucho, a Navajo leader known for settling disputes with ranchers, is also listed for changes or removal.
The documentation reviewed by the Post also included new details on removals and changes that were ordered last year.
At Arizona’s Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, descriptions of destructive grazing practices and the accelerating rate of warming since 1850, as well as a booklet that talks about endangered turtles and Sonoran pronghorn, were ordered changed or removed.
Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming was ordered to remove or change a panel about Gustavus Cheyney Doane that said he participated in the U.S. Army massacre of Piegan Blackfeet Native Americans, including women, children and the elderly.
At Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana, exhibit text that described the United States being “hungry for gold and land” and breaking promises to Native Americans was ordered changed or removed.
Another text describing how U.S.-run boarding schools for Indigenous children “violently erased cultural identities and language” was also deemed not to comply with Trump’s policy.
Brengel of the National Parks Conservation Association said the Trump administration’s efforts to sanitizeAmerican history runs counter to the mission of the park system.
“We are capable of hearing about our tragedies and our victories, and this systematic erasure should concern everyone in our country,” she said.
Prominent Republicans and gun rights advocates helped elicit a White House turnabout this week after bristling over the administration’s characterization of Alex Pretti, the second person killed this month by a federal officer in Minneapolis, as responsible for his own death because he lawfully possessed a weapon.
The death produced no clear shifts in U.S. gun politics or policies, even as President Donald Trump shuffles the lieutenants in charge of his militarized immigration crackdown. But important voices in Trump’s coalition have called for a thorough investigation of Pretti’s death while also criticizing inconsistencies in some Republicans’ Second Amendment stances.
If the dynamic persists, it could give Republicans problems as Trump heads into a midterm election year with voters already growing skeptical of his overall immigration approach. The concern is acute enough that Trump’s top spokeswoman sought Monday to reassert his brand as a staunch gun rights supporter.
“The president supports the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens, absolutely,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
Leavitt qualified that “when you are bearing arms and confronted by law enforcement, you are raising … the risk of force being used against you.”
Videos contradict early statements from administration
That still marked a retreat from the administration’s previous messages about the shooting of Pretti. It came the same day the president dispatched border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota, seemingly elevating him over Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino, who had been in charge in Minneapolis.
Within hours of Pretti’s death on Saturday, Bovino suggested Pretti “wanted to … massacre law enforcement,” and Noem said Pretti was “brandishing” a weapon and acted “violently” toward officers.
“I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign,” Noem said.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, an architect of Trump’s mass deportation effort, went further on X, declaring Pretti “an assassin.”
Bystander videos contradicted each claim, instead showing Pretti holding a cellphone and helping a woman who had been pepper sprayed by a federal officer. Within seconds, Pretti was sprayed, too, and taken to the ground by multiple officers. No video disclosed thus far has shown him unholstering his concealed weapon -– which he had a Minnesota permit to carry. It appeared that one officer took Pretti’s gun and walked away with it just before shots began.
As multiple videos went viral online and on television, Vice President JD Vance reposted Miller’s assessment, while Trump shared an alleged photo of “the gunman’s gun, loaded (with two additional full magazines!).”
On Tuesday, Trump was asked if he agreed with Miller’s comment describing Pretti as an “assassin” and answered “no.” But he added that protesters “can’t have guns” and said he wants the death investigated.
“You can’t walk in with guns, you just can’t,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn before departing for a trip to Iowa.
The National Rifle Association, which has backed Trump three times, released a statement that began by casting blame on Minnesota Democrats it accused of stoking protests. But the group lashed out after a federal prosecutor in California said on X that, “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.”
That analysis, the NRA said, is “dangerous and wrong.”
FBI Director Kash Patel magnified the blowback Sunday on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo.” No one, Patel said, can “bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple.”
Erich Pratt, vice president of Gun Owners of America, was incredulous.
“I have attended protest rallies while armed, and no one got injured,” he said on CNN.
Conservative officials around the country made the same connection between the First and Second amendments.
“Showing up at a protest is very American. Showing up with a weapon is very American,” state Rep. Jeremy Faison, who leads the GOP caucus in Tennessee, said on X.
Trump’s first-term vice president, Mike Pence, called for “full and transparent investigation of this officer involved shooting.”
A different response from the past
Liberals, conservatives and nonpartisan experts noted how the administration’s response differed from past conservative positions involving protests and weapons.
Multiple Trump supporters were found to have weapons during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump issued blanket pardons to all of them.
Republicans were critical in 2020 when Mark and Patricia McCloskey had to pay fines after pointing guns at protesters who marched through their St. Louis neighborhood after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. And then there’s Kyle Rittenhouse, a counter-protester acquitted after fatally shooting two men and injuring another in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during the post-Floyd protests.
“You remember Kyle Rittenhouse and how he was made a hero on the right,” Trey Gowdy, a Republican former congressman and attorney for Trump during one of his first-term impeachments. “Alex Pretti’s firearm was being lawfully carried. … He never brandished it.”
Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor who has studied the history of the gun debate, said the fallout “shows how tribal we’ve become.” Republicans spent years talking about the Second Amendment as a means to fight government tyranny, he said.
“The moment someone who’s thought to be from the left, they abandon that principled stance,” Winkler said.
Meanwhile, Democrats who have criticized open and concealed carry laws for years, Winkler added, are not amplifying that position after Pretti’s death.
Uncertain effects in an election year
The blowback against the administration from core Trump supporters comes as Republicans are trying to protect their threadbare majority in the U.S. House and face several competitive Senate races.
Perhaps reflecting the stakes, GOP staff and campaign aides were reticent Monday to talk about the issue at all.
The House Republican campaign chairman, Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, is sponsoring the GOP’s most significant gun legislation of this congressional term, a proposal to make state concealed-carry permits reciprocal across all states.
The bill cleared the House Judiciary Committee last fall. Asked Monday whether Pretti’s death and the Minneapolis protests might affect debate, an aide to Speaker Mike Johnson did not offer any update on the bill’s prospects.
Gun rights advocates have notched many legislative victories in Republican-controlled statehouses in recent decades, from rolling back gun-free zones around schools and churches to expanding gun possession rights in schools, on university campuses and in other public spaces.
William Sack, legal director of the Second Amendment Foundation, said he was surprised and disappointed by the administration’s initial statements following the Pretti shooting. Trump’s vacillating, he said, is “very likely to cost them dearly with the core of a constituency they count on.”
LOS ANGELES — The Trump administration has not shied away from sharing AI-generated imagery online, embracing cartoonlike visuals and memes and promoting them on official White House channels.
But an edited — and realistic — image of civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong in tears after being arrested is raising new alarms about how the administration is blurring the lines between what is real and what is fake.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s account posted the original image from Levy Armstrong’s arrest before the official White House account posted an altered image that showed her crying. The doctored picture is part of a deluge of AI-edited imagery that has been shared across the political spectrum since the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by U.S. Border Patrol officers in Minneapolis
However, the White House’s use of artificial intelligence has troubled misinformation experts who fear the spreading of AI-generated or edited images erodes public perception of the truth and sows distrust.
In response to criticism of the edited image of Levy Armstrong, White House officials doubled down on the post, with deputy communications director Kaelan Dorr writing on X that the “memes will continue.” White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson also shared a post mocking the criticism.
David Rand, a professor of information science at Cornell University, says calling the altered image a meme “certainly seems like an attempt to cast it as a joke or humorous post, like their prior cartoons. This presumably aims to shield them from criticism for posting manipulated media.” He said the purpose of sharing the altered arrest image seems “much more ambiguous” than the cartoonish images the administration has shared in the past.
Memes have always carried layered messages that are funny or informative to people who understand them, but indecipherable to outsiders. AI-enhanced or edited imagery is just the latest tool the White House uses to engage the segment of Trump’s base that spends a lot of time online, said Zach Henry, a Republican communications consultant who founded Total Virality, an influencer marketing firm.
“People who are terminally online will see it and instantly recognize it as a meme,” he said. “Your grandparents may see it and not understand the meme, but because it looks real, it leads them to ask their kids or grandkids about it.”
All the better if it prompts a fierce reaction, which helps it go viral, said Henry, who generally praised the work of the White House’s social media team.
The creation and dissemination of altered images, especially when they are shared by credible sources, “crystallizes an idea of what’s happening, instead of showing what is actually happening,” said Michael A. Spikes, a professor at Northwestern University and news media literacy researcher.
“The government should be a place where you can trust the information, where you can say it’s accurate, because they have a responsibility to do so,” he said. ”By sharing this kind of content, and creating this kind of content … it is eroding the trust — even though I’m always kind of skeptical of the term trust — but the trust we should have in our federal government to give us accurate, verified information. It’s a real loss, and it really worries me a lot.”
Spikes said he already sees the “institutional crises” around distrust in news organizations and higher education, and feels this behavior from official channels inflames those issues.
Ramesh Srinivasan, a professor at UCLA and the host of the Utopias podcast, said many people are now questioning where they can turn to for “trustable information.” “AI systems are only going to exacerbate, amplify and accelerate these problems of an absence of trust, an absence of even understanding what might be considered reality or truth or evidence,” he said.
Srinivasan said he feels the White House and other officials sharing AI-generated content not only invites everyday people to continue to post similar content but also grants permission to others who are in positions of credibility and power, like policymakers, to share unlabeled synthetic content. He added that given that social media platforms tend to “algorithmically privilege” extreme and conspiratorial content — which AI generation tools can create with ease — “we’ve got a big, big set of challenges on our hands.”
An influx of AI-generated videos related to Immigration and Customs Enforcement action, protests and interactions with citizens has already been proliferating on social media. After Renee Good was shot by an ICE officer while she was in her car, several AI-generated videos began circulating of women driving away from ICE officers who told them to stop. There are also many fabricated videos circulating of immigration raids and of people confronting ICE officers, often yelling at them or throwing food in their faces.
Jeremy Carrasco, a content creator who specializes in media literacy and debunking viral AI videos, said the bulk of these videos are likely coming from accounts that are “engagement farming,” or looking to capitalize on clicks by generating content with popular keywords and search terms like ICE. But he also said the videos are getting views from people who oppose ICE and DHS and could be watching them as “fan fiction,” or engaging in “wishful thinking,” hoping that they’re seeing real pushback against the organizations and their officers.
Still, Carrasco also believes that most viewers can’t tell if what they’re watching is fake, and questions whether they would know “what’s real or not when it actually matters, like when the stakes are a lot higher.”
Even when there are blatant signs of AI generation, like street signs with gibberish on them or other obvious errors, only in the “best-case scenario” would a viewer be savvy enough or be paying enough attention to register the use of AI.
This issue is, of course, not limited to news surrounding immigration enforcement and protests. Fabricated and misrepresented images following the capture of deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro exploded online earlier this month. Experts, including Carrasco, think the spread of AI-generated political content will only become more commonplace.
Carrasco believes that the widespread implementation of a watermarking system that embeds information about the origin of a piece of media into its metadata layer could be a step toward a solution. The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity has developed such a system, but Carrasco doesn’t think that will become extensively adopted for at least another year.
“It’s going to be an issue forever now,” he said. I don’t think people understand how bad this is.”
ORLANDO, Fla. — President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration contributed to a year-to-year drop in the nation’s growth rate as the U.S. population reached nearly 342 million people in 2025, according to population estimates released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The 0.5% growth rate for 2025 was a sharp drop from 2024’s almost 1% growth rate, which was the highest in two decades and was fueled by immigration. The 2024 estimates put the U.S. population at 340 million people.
Immigration increased by almost 1.3 million people last year, compared with 2024’s increase of almost 2.8 million people. If trends continue, the annual gain from immigrants by mid-2026 will drop to only 321,000 people, according to the Census Bureau, whose estimates do not distinguish between legal and illegal immigration.
In the past 125 years, the lowest growth rate was in 2021, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when the U.S. population grew by just 0.16%, or 522,000 people and immigration increased by just 376,000 people because of travel restrictions into the U.S. Before that, the lowest growth rate was just under 0.5% in 1919 at the height of the Spanish flu.
Births outnumbered deaths last year by 519,000 people. While higher than the pandemic-era low at the beginning of the decade, the natural increase was dramatically smaller than in the 2000s, when it ranged between 1.6 million and 1.9 million people.
Lower immigration stunts growth in many states
The immigration drop dented growth in several states that traditionally have been immigrant magnets.
California had a net population loss of 9,500 people in 2025, a stark change from the previous year, when it gained 232,000 residents, even though roughly the same number of Californians already living in the state moved out in both years. The difference was immigration since the number of net immigrants who moved into the state dropped from 361,000 people in 2024 to 109,000 in 2025.
Florida had year-to-year drops in both immigrants and people moving in from other states. The Sunshine State, which has become more expensive in recent years from surging property values and higher home insurance costs, had only 22,000 domestic migrants in 2025, compared with 64,000 people in 2024, and the net number of immigrants dropped from more than 411,000 people to 178,000 people.
New York added only 1,008 people in 2025, mostly because the state’s net migration from immigrants dropped from 207,000 people to 95,600 people.
South Carolina, Idaho, and North Carolina had the highest year-over-year growth rates, ranging from 1.3% to 1.5%. Texas, Florida, and North Carolina added the most people in pure numbers. California, Hawaii, New Mexico, Vermont, and West Virginia had population declines.
The South, which has been the powerhouse of growth in the 2020s, continued to add more people than any other region, but the numbers dropped from 1.7 million people in 2024 to 1.1 million in 2025.
“Many of these states are going to show even smaller growth when we get to next year,” Brookings demographer William Frey said Tuesday.
The effects of Trump’s immigration crackdown
Tuesday’s data release comes as researchers have been trying to determine the effects of the second Trump administration’s immigration crackdown after the Republican president returned to the White House in January 2025. Trump made a surge of migrants at the southern border a central issue in his winning 2024 presidential campaign.
The numbers made public Tuesday reflect change from July 2024 to July 2025, covering the end of President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration and the first half of Trump’s first year back in office.
The figures capture a period that reflects the beginning of enforcement surges in Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., but do not capture the impact on immigration after the Trump administration’s crackdowns began in Chicago; New Orleans; Memphis, Tennessee; and Minneapolis, Minn..
The 2025 numbers were a jarring divergence from 2024, when net international migration accounted for 84% of the nation’s 3.3 million-person increase from the year before. The jump in immigration two years ago was partly because of a new method of counting that added people who were admitted for humanitarian reasons.
“They do reflect recent trends we have seen in out-migration, where the numbers of people coming in is down and the numbers going out is up,” Eric Jensen, a senior research scientist at the Census Bureau, said last week.
How the population estimates are calculated
Unlike the once-a-decade census, which determines how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes each state gets, as well as the distribution of $2.8 trillion in annual government funding, the population estimates are calculated from government records and internal Census Bureau data.
The release of the 2025 population estimates was delayed by the federal government shutdown last fall and comes at a challenging time for the Census Bureau and other U.S. statistical agencies. The bureau, which is the largest statistical agency in the U.S., lost about 15% of its workforce last year due to buyouts and layoffs that were part of cost-cutting efforts by the White House and its Department of Government Efficiency.
Other recent actions by the Trump administration, such as the firing of Erika McEntarfer as Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, have raised concerns about political meddling at U.S. statistical agencies. But Frey said the bureau’s staffers appear to have been “doing this work as usual without interference.”
“So I have no reason to doubt the numbers that come out,” Frey said.
