WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said he’s dropping — for now — his push to deploy National Guard troops in Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., a move that comes after legal roadblocks held up the effort.
“We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again — Only a question of time!” he said in a social media post Wednesday.
Governors typically control states’ National Guardsmen, and Trump had deployed troops to all three cities against the wishes of state and local Democratic leaders. He said it was necessary as part of a broader crackdown on immigration, crime and protests.
The president has made a crackdown on crime in cities a centerpiece of his second term — and has toyed with the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act to stop his opponents from using the courts to block his plans. He has said he sees his tough-on-crime approach as a winning political issue ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Troops had already left Los Angeles after the president deployed them earlier this year as part of a broader crackdown on crime and immigration.
In his post, Trump said the troops’ presence was responsible for a drop in crime in the three cities, though they were never on the streets in Chicago and Portland as legal challenges played out. When the Chicago deployment was challenged in court, a Justice Department lawyer said the Guard’s mission would be to protect federal properties and government agents in the field, not “solving all of crime in Chicago.”
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson’s office in a statement said the city’s reduction in crime was due to the efforts of local police and public safety programs. Chicago officials echoed the sentiment, saying in a release Tuesday that the city had 416 homicides in 2025 — the fewest since 2014.
Trump’s push to deploy the troops in Democrat-led cities has been met with legal challenges at nearly every turn.
Governors react
The Supreme Court in December refused to allow the Trump administration to deploy National Guard troops in the Chicago area. The order was not a final ruling but was a significant and rare setback by the high court for the president’s efforts.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker wrote on X Wednesday that Trump “lost in court when Illinois stood up against his attempt to militarize American cities with the National Guard. Now Trump is forced to stand down.”
Hundreds of troops from California and Oregon were deployed to Portland, but a federal judge barred them from going on the streets. A judge permanently blocked the deployment of National Guard troops there in November after a three-day trial.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said in a statement Wednesday that her office had not yet received “official notification that the remaining federalized Oregon National Guard troops can return home. They were never lawfully deployed to Portland and there was no need for their presence. If President Trump has finally chosen to follow court orders and demobilize our troops, that’s a big win for Oregonians and for the rule of law.”
Trump’s decision to federalize National Guard troops began in Los Angeles in June, when protesters took to the streets in response to a blitz of immigration arrests in the area. He deployed about 4,000 troops and 700 Marines to guard federal buildings and, later, to protest federal agents as they carried out immigration arrests.
The number of troops slowly dwindled until just several hundred were left. They were removed from the streets by Dec. 15 after a lower court ruling that also ordered control to be returned to Gov. Gavin Newsom. But an appeals court had paused the second part of the order, meaning control remained with Trump. In a Tuesday court filing, the Trump administration said it was no longer seeking a pause in that part of the order.
“About time (Trump) admitted defeat,” Newsom said in a social media post. “We’ve said it from Day One: the federal takeover of California’s National Guard is illegal.”
Troops will remain on the ground in several other cities. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in December paused a lower court ruling that had called for an end to the deployment of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., where they’ve been deployed since August after Trump declared a “crime emergency.”
Trump also ordered the deployment of the Tennessee National Guard to Memphis in September as part of a larger federal task force to combat crime, a move supported by the state’s Republican Gov. Bill Lee and senators. A Tennessee judge blocked the use of the Guard, siding with Democratic state and local officials who sued. However, the judge stayed the decision to block the Guard as the state appeals, allowing the deployment to continue.
In New Orleans, about 350 National Guard troops deployed by Trump arrived in the city’s historic French Quarter on Tuesday and are set to stay through Mardi Gras to help with safety. The state’s Republican governor and the city’s Democratic mayor support the deployment.
WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice has expanded its review of documents related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to 5.2 million as it also increases the number of attorneys trying to comply with a law mandating release of the files, according to a person briefed on a letter sent to U.S. Attorneys.
The figure is the latest estimate in the expanding review of case files on Epstein and his longtime girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell that has run more than a week past a deadline set in law by Congress.
The Justice Department has more than 400 attorneys assigned to the review, but does not expect to release more documents until Jan. 20 or 21, according to the person briefed on the letter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.
The expanding scope of the disclosure and the additional legal firepower committed to it showed how the Epstein file investigation will continue to occupy significant attention in Congress and the White House, almost ensuring that it remains a potent political force as the new year rolls toward midterm elections.
The White House did not dispute the figures laid out in the email, and pointed to a statement from Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, who said the administration’s review was an “all-hands-on-deck approach.”
Blanche said Wednesday that lawyers from the Justice Department in Washington, the FBI, the Southern District of Florida, and the Southern District of New York are working “around the clock” to review the files. The additional documents and lawyers related to the case were first reported by the New York Times.
“We’re asking as many lawyers as possible to commit their time to review the documents that remain,” Blanche said. “Required redactions to protect victims take time, but they will not stop these materials from being released.”
Still, Attorney General Pam Bondi is facing pressure from Congress after the Justice Department’s rollout of information has lagged behind the Dec. 19 deadline to release the information.
“Should Attorney General Pam Bondi be impeached?” Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who helped lead the effort to pass the law mandating the document release, asked on social media this week.
Democrats also are reviewing their legal options as they continue to seize on an issue that has caused cracks in the Republican Party and, at times, flummoxed President Donald Trump’s administration.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said on social media that the latest figures from the Department of Justice “shows Bondi, Blanche, and others at the DOJ have been lying to the American people about the Epstein files since day one” and pointed out that the documents released so far represented a fraction of the total.
What’s expected next
A late January release of documents would put the Department of Justice more than a month behind the deadline set in law, but some key lawmakers appeared willing to let the process play out before trying to take direct action against the Trump administration.
Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who also led the effort to pass the law requiring the release, told the Associated Press that the Justice Department’s expanding review showed that the law is working.
“We are willing to give DOJ a few extra weeks to comply, provided they release the survivors’ statements to the FBI naming the other rich and powerful men who abused them or covered up and the prosecution memos about charges that were dropped against Epstein and co-conspirators,” he said. “When all the information comes out, this will shock the conscience of the nation.”
Massie has also said that he wants to see the release of statements that victims gave to the FBI. He has claimed that those could disclose the names of influential business figures and political donors who were involved or complicit in Epstein’s abuse.
The pair has also argued that the expanding disclosure is evidence that more people were involved besides Epstein and Maxwell.
What could the files mean for the midterms?
The Trump administration has already struggled to move past the Epstein files for the better part of last year. While it’s not clear what else will be shown in the files, it will almost certainly give Democrats continued fodder to continue to seize on the issue.
So far, Democrats, even though they are in the minority, have forced Congress to act on an issue that has caused splits in Trump’s political base.
A tranche of documents released just before Christmas showed that Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet in the 1990s, when they had a friendship before a falling out. But the documents revealed little new information about their relationship. The initial release of documents also showed several photos of former President Bill Clinton with women whose faces were blacked out.
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee have honed in on the connections to Clinton and are seeking to force him and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to appear for a deposition in January.
Still, Democrats are trying to show that the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files shows that it cannot be trusted and is more concerned about the welfare of the rich and famous than working-class voters.
“Unlike the President, we don’t care who’s in the files,” said Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the oversight panel, on social media. “Anyone that’s involved in the abuse of women and girls should be held accountable.”
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump issued the first vetoes of his second term on Tuesday, rejecting two low-profile bipartisan bills, a move that had the effect of punishing backers who had opposed the president’s positions on other issues.
Trump vetoed drinking water pipeline legislation from Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, a longtime ally who broke with the president in November to release files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He also vetoed legislation that would have given the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida more control of some of its tribal lands. The tribe was among groups suing the administration over an immigration detention center in the Everglades known as ” Alligator Alcatraz.”
Both bills had bipartisan support and had been noncontroversial until the White House announced Trump’s vetoes Tuesday night.
Trump appeared to acknowledge the tribe’s opposition to the detention facility in a letter to Congress explaining his veto. “The Miccosukee Tribe has actively sought to obstruct reasonable immigration policies that the American people decisively voted for when I was elected,” Trump wrote.
Trump did not allude to Boebert in his veto of her legislation, but raised concerns about the cost of the water pipeline at the heart of that bill.
In an interview later Wednesday with Politico, Trump also criticized the state’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis while saying that he issued the veto because “They’re wasting a lot of money and people are leaving the state. They’re leaving the state in droves. Bad governor.”
Boebert, one of four House Republicans who sided with House Democrats early on to force the release of the Epstein files, shared a statement on social media suggesting that the veto may have been “political retaliation.”
“I sincerely hope this veto has nothing to do with political retaliation for calling out corruption and demanding accountability. Americans deserve leadership that puts people over politics,” her statement said. Boebert added in another post: “This isn’t over.”
The Florida legislation had been sponsored by Republican Rep. Carlos Gimenez, whom Trump has endorsed. Gimenez and the Miccosukee Tribe were not immediately available for comment on Wednesday.
When asked whether the vetoes were punishment, the White House did not answer and instead referred to Trump’s statements explaining the vetoes.
Congress can override the vetoes by a vote of two-thirds of the members of the House and the Senate, but it’s unclear if there’s enough support in the Republican-controlled chambers to do so, especially heading into a midterm election year where many of them will be on the ballot and many GOP members will count on Trump’s backing.
Boebert’s legislation, the “Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act,” aimed to improve access to clean drinking water in eastern Colorado.
While the congresswoman has long been a staunch supporter of Trump, she found herself at odds with the president with her support this year for legislation that required the Justice Department to release files related to Epstein.
Trump fought the proposal before reversing in the face of growing Republican support for releasing the files. Members of his administration even met with Boebert in the White House Situation Room to discuss the matter, though she didn’t change her mind.
Republican Rep. Jeff Hurd of Colorado, who co-sponsored the legislation, said he was “deeply disappointed” by Trump’s veto.
“This was a bipartisan, unanimous bill passed by Congress to uphold a long-standing federal commitment to southeastern Colorado,” Hurd said in a statement.
He said the legislation did not authorize any new construction spending or expand the federal government’s original commitment to the pipeline project, but adjusted the terms of repaying its costs.
If she makes it on the ballot, Karen Dalton will be U.S. Rep. Scott Perry’s first primary opponent since 2012 – the year he first won the seat.
Dalton, a retired staff attorney for the Pennsylvania House Republicans, knows the odds are against her as she runs a solo campaign operation out of her living room. But she thinks she has a shot.
The 65-year-old Carlisle resident is irked byPresident Donald Trump’s policies both from a faith-based standpoint and a legal one.
She holds many views that align with Democrats, which may draw accusations that she’s a “RINO,” or Republican in name only. But she argues she’s a Republican at heart.
“I was talking to a senior citizen the other day, and the first thing he said to me was, ‘So you’re a RINO,” said Dalton, 65. “And my response to that was, well, if you mean ‘Respect for Individuals and Not Oligarchs,’ I’ll go along with that. He goes, ‘No, no, no, I’m a RINO too. I’m that old school Republican that believes in helping people.’ I’m like, ‘Yes, thank you. That’s what I’m talking about getting back to.’”
Perry, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump whosupported his unsuccessfulattempts to overturn the 2020 election, represents Dauphin County and parts of Cumberland and York Counties in Central Pennsylvania. He appears to be particularly vulnerable this yearas the district has shifted toward Democrats and Republican-turned-Democrat Janelle Stelson, a former local news anchor, had a razor-thin loss against him in the general election last year. She plans to run again in the Democratic primary.
Dalton, in a long-ranging interview with The Inquirer in her living room, called Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act the “Big, Brutal Betrayal of the American Dream Act,” because of its cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.
She believes formerVice President Kamala Harris should have pushed back more on Trump’s claims about transgender people in the 2024 election, argued that the term “illegal alien” is factually incorrect, and says on her website that climate change is a real threat.
Karen Dalton, who plans to challenge Scott Perry in the Republican primary, holds materials from a bill she worked on in Harrisburg in her Carlisle home on Monday.
She supports a $15 federal minimum wage anda millionaire’s tax, and wants to raise the corporate tax rate. She supports abortion rightsand believes health care is a human right, though she’s fearful of what she views as over-regulation from Democrats.
Her walls are covered with Republican political memorabilia and a poster of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, a Democrat who was assassinated during his 1968 presidential campaign.
She noted that she was a Republican when Donald Trump was a Democrat.
Her path to victory, she believes, is convincing enough independents and Democrats – particularly former Republicans – to change their registration to support her in the MayGOPprimary.
“You know, independents have been upset many years because Pennsylvania has a closed primary system … if they register as Republicans, they get to vote in a primary against Scott Perry and not wait until November,” she said.
Primary challengers are rarely successful. Dalton reported under $3,000 in contributions – and an approximately $6,000 loan from herself — through September, which is pennies compared to themore than $1 million Perry reported.
But she only needs to gather 1,000 signatures and pay a $150 filing fee to appear alongside him on the primary ballot.
Perry’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment about Dalton as of Wednesday.
U.S. Scott Perry speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington in July 2023.
Rosy eyed about the old Republicans
Dalton grew up in New Jersey and was the first in her immediate family to go to college, attending Montclair State University before getting her politics graduate degree at New York University and later attending law school.
She lives in Carlisle near Dickinson Law — her “beloved alma mater” — in a home she bought just four years ago at age 61. With student loans hanging over her head for the vast majority of her career, she couldn’t afford a down payment until her state retirement payday.
She has no kids and she’s never been married — “I spent a lot of time reading and studying and going to school,” she said. These days, she takes piano lessons and plays pickleball, and does pro bono legal work when she’s not knocking on doors for her one-woman campaign.
Dalton is rosy-eyed about moderates of the Republican Party’s past. She managed former U.S. Rep. Jim Greenwood’s (R., Bucks) successful state Senate campaign in 1986 and worked for New JerseyRepublicanGov. Tom Kean,who wrote The Politics of Inclusion. She later worked as a staff attorney for Pennsylvania House Republicans for 25 years, where she focused on domestic violence and child sexual abuse legislation.
“I’m convinced that if the Republican Party wants to survive and thrive, we need to give up what Donald Trump believes in, and return to our roots,” she said.
Dalton, whose parents were both Democrats, changed her registration from independent to Republican in 1984 at the age of 24 after her first job working for Ralph J. Salerno’s unsuccessful state Senate campaign in New Jersey. When he lost, “amazingly, nobody took up arms,” she said.
“I mean, I cried in his lapel, but you know, it’s just like he conceded, and everybody moved on,” she said. “There was no insurrection, there was no battle, there was no violence, there was no ‘Oh, there was voter fraud.’ None of that stuff happened, because that’s the way things used to be before Donald Trump was president.”
Karen Dalton points to a photo of herself and her old boss Jim Greenwood in her Carlisle home on Monday. A message from Greenwood says: “Now I can prove that I knew you before you were a rock star.”
Tired of yelling at the television
Dalton said she didn’t think she’d become a candidate herself during her years working for politicians. But she said “steam started to come out of my ears” when Trump tried to end birthright citizenship, and again when House Speaker MikeJohnson mused about defunding the federal judiciary.
“I just couldn’t sit back anymore … I got tired of yelling at the television,” she said.
While Dalton argued that Trump’s rise in 2015 has soured the Republican Party, much of her criticism concentrated on the Jan. 6, 2021 riot and what followed.
Dalton worked with Perry in Harrisburg when he was a state representative, and she described him as “an incredibly nice man” despite her misgivings about his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and continued alignment with Trump. (She calls him “morally blind” on her website.)
When asked if she ever supported Perry, Dalton said she wasn’t comfortable talking about who she voted for in the past because “ballots are private.” She did say that she didn’t vote for Trump in 2024, and shevotedfor Stelson, Perry’s Democratic challenger.
“I can tell you that I don’t vote for insurrectionists,” she said.
Karen Dalton, who plans to challenge Scott Perry in the Republican primary, calls a table in her living room her “campaign headquarters.”
Policy informed by faith
Dalton was raised Catholic, confirmed Episcopalian, and has attended the Unitarian Universalist Church. Though she hasn’t converted, she now identifies as Jewish, and was moved to tears while talking about a late mentor who introduced her to the religion – noting that speaking about the subject made her“verklempt,” a Yiddish term for emotional.
“One of the things I love so much about Judaism, in addition to its focus on social justice, is the idea that you get to disagree,” she said, a handful of crumpled tissues in her lap.
Her faith informs her approach to public policy, from opposing cuts to healthcare subsidies to appreciating ideas across the political spectrum.
One of her flagship policy proposals is creating a way for people to borrow up to two years worth of their own Social Security benefits before they reach retirement age to help with things like a down payment, tuition, or medical expenses – one that would have helped her buy a home earlier.
Another is a scholarship program that would allow students in any field to borrow the full amount of their education from the federal government through loans that would be forgiven if they serve “the public good,” a rebuke of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill’s borrowing limit on federal student loans.
She also wants to create a program to pay for the education of students who want to pursue careers in science and guarantee employment at national health or science institutions, including a new foundation for scientific discovery.
Dalton has brought her neighbors into her home to discuss her ideas, and plans to do it again.
She also held a town hall at Central Penn College in Enola that she said drew 15 people.
“That’s 15 more people than Scott Perry looked in the eye and talked to over the past five years at his town halls that didn’t exist,” she said.
The Kennedy Center adopted bylaws earlier this year that limited voting to presidentially appointed trustees, a move that preceded a unanimous decision this month by board members installed by President Donald Trump to add his name to the center.
The current bylaws, obtained by the Washington Post, were revised in May to specify that board members designated by Congress — known as ex officio members — could not vote or count toward a quorum. Legal experts say the move may conflict with the institution’s charter.
Trump took over the Kennedy Center in February, purging its board of members he had not appointed. The months that followed saw struggling ticket sales and programming changes that began to align the arts complex with the Trump administration’s broader cultural aims, culminating with the annual Kennedy Center Honors hosted by the president.
Days later, on Dec. 18, the board voted to add the president’s name to the institution, and within 24 hours it was on the website and the building itself: “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”
Several artists have announced cancellations at the center as the unprecedented move drew public scrutiny and backlash. Democratic lawmakers and legal experts said it was illegal for the board to alter the name of the living memorial to Kennedy that Congress established. Democrats also claimed that one ex officio member, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D., Ohio), was muted when she attempted to speak out during the Dec. 18 vote.
Roma Daravi, the center’s vice president of public relations, told the Post that ex officio members have never voted.
“The bylaws were revised to reflect this longstanding precedent and everyone received the technical changes both before the meeting and after revisions,” Daravi wrote in an email to the Post. “Some members (including ex officio) attended in person, others by phone, and no concerns were voiced, no one objected, and the bylaws passed unanimously.”
The Kennedy Center lists 34 presidentially appointed board members, including Trump himself as chair, and 23 ex officio seats. The center’s president, Richard Grenell, is also an officer of the board.
The federal law that established the Kennedy Center designates specific government and federal positions — including the librarian of Congress; the mayor of Washington, D.C.; the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; and the majority and minority leaders of the Senate — to serve as ex officio members.
The law identifies them as part of the board of trustees, which it directs to maintain and administer the facility as a living memorial. But it does not distinguish between voting and nonvoting members, which has been a point of ambiguity in the days following the vote to rename the Kennedy Center.
The center’s original bylaws didn’t distinguish voting powers, either. But its most recent tax filings list 59 “voting members” of its governing body — a total that includes both general and ex officio members.
A former Kennedy Center staffer with knowledge of board proceedings, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution, told the Post that ex officio members were “always included in debate and discussion” during their tenure, but the person did not recall a time when those members’ votes were counted.
“Theoretically they could vote, but our practice was not to have them vote or count toward quorum,” the person said, noting they were not aware of the new leadership’s practices at the center.
For this report, the Post reached out to all ex officio members with questions about their voting authority and any known changes to it. Some told the Post or other outlets that they understood their current role to be nonvoting, though none addressed whether they were aware of any prior changes to that status.
“Like a lot of things, this seems to be in dispute,” said one person with knowledge of board proceedings, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) told a reporter Dec. 18: “I don’t have a vote. I don’t know enough about it.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) told the Post that he became an ex officio member this year after he became the lead Democrat on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works — another ex officio seat designated by Congress — but was not invited to board meetings until his committee began investigating the Kennedy Center last month.
Whitehouse said the statute “makes no distinction between ex officio and presidentially appointed Trustees when it comes to members’ rights and responsibilities on the board, including voting,” and he accused the Trump-appointed board of attempting to “illegally change the bylaws to silence dissent.”
A spokesperson for the Smithsonian Institution said that Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III does not vote or attend the meetings. It was unclear whether he had since assuming his role in 2019, but it is not uncommon for high officials serving on influential Washington boards to attend by proxy or not at all.
Copies of the Kennedy Center’s May and September board meeting minutes, obtained by the Post, showed that many ex officio members were absent or sent a staffer in their place.
Beatty, who sued the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees Dec. 22 to stop it from adding Trump’s name to the institution, declined to comment for this story. But her lawsuit argues the center’s statute makes her a “a full voting member.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.) leaves a protest of the Kennedy Center name change in Washington on Dec. 20.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), who is listed as an ex officio member on the Kennedy Center’s website, said he is no longer part of the board. “I was on the Kennedy Center board … in the last Congress,” he told the Post. “So their website is not caught up because I was told when Democrats lost control of the Senate and the Republicans became the majority that I fell off.” (The charter calls for three additional Senate members appointed by the president of the Senate and three House members appointed by the speaker to serve in ex officio seats.)
Many in high-ranking roles, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D., N.Y.), did not respond to requests for comment.
The offices of D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and the acting librarian of Congress, Robert Newlen, declined to comment.
Other changes from the May revision state that the general trustees “serve at the pleasure of the President.” (Previously, that language appeared in the bylaws and the federal statute only in reference to the Advisory Committee on the Arts, a separate body that makes recommendations to the board.)
They also added language about the ability of officers to make certain appointments, including stating that the chair may appoint the center’s president to act as chief executive.
The vote by the Kennedy Center’s board to add Trump’s name to the institution marked the most overt effort to date by the president and his allies to remold the storied performing arts center in his image.
In the days since his name was added to the building, several lawmakers have vowed to fight the change.
During a rally outside the Kennedy Center on Dec. 20, Van Hollen said he and his colleagues would work to “reverse” the move when Congress returns to session in January. “The day we get back, we can put an amendment on the … Interior appropriations bill to reverse this outrage,” he told the crowd.
Beatty’s lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claimed that the vote exceeded its statutory authority and requested that a judge declare it to be void.
“Because Congress named the center by statute, changing the Kennedy Center’s name requires an act of Congress,” the lawsuit says, adding that “Congress intended the Center to be a living memorial to President Kennedy — and a crown jewel of the arts for all Americans, irrespective of party.”
President Donald Trump, shown attending a showing of “Les Misérables” in June, has made himself a marquee element of the Kennedy Center.
Last week, Rep. April McClain Delaney (D., Md.) introduced legislation to remove Trump’s name.
Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine, the top Democrat on the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Kennedy Center, along with more than 70 lawmakers in Congress, called for Trump to reverse the renaming effort and remove his name from the building immediately.
“No board vote nor social media post has the legal authority to change the name without an act of Congress,” the members wrote.
“We’ll be working to block this disgraceful renaming effort at every possible opportunity and restore the Kennedy Center’s rightful place as our nation’s cultural center without the burden of vanity projects or political influence,” they wrote.
Roger Colinvaux, a law professor at Catholic University, said his read of the statue establishing the center was “not quite as demonstrative” as Beatty’s, but “I’d argue that the statute does not differentiate among types of trustees in terms of powers and obligations, which would include voting.”
Colinvaux added that “basic governance principles” “do not allow for the ‘muting’ of members” of an entity’s governing body, which is a “deliberative body.”
Phil Hackney, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh and a specialist in nonprofit tax-exempt organizations, said it’s worth noting “how ex officio trustees have traditionally operated” at both the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian, of which the Kennedy Center is technically a bureau. He said that a court would also need to consider whether trustees are supposed to be able to remove ex officio members’ powers by amending bylaws.
That said, the statute says the trustees “have the usual powers,” and “it still strikes me, under what I see so far, that it is reasonable to believe that ex officio trustees might have the right to vote,” he said.
Ellen Aprill, senior scholar at UCLA School of Law, who has written about the Kennedy Center’s legal status, said even if the bylaws limit voting to general board members appointed by the president, “I believe there is a strong argument that such a bylaw provision violates the Kennedy Center’s charter.”
Aprill stressed that the charter includes a variety of public servants, and both majority and minority members of Congress in the Kennedy Center’s governance. “Clearly the intent of the charter provisions was to entrust Kennedy Center guidance to a broad group, not just those appointed by the president,” she said.
Still, the Kennedy Center’s relatively ambiguous legal status as a public-private entity “makes it difficult to predict how a judge faced with the issues in the case beyond standing would decide,” she said, noting the situation “is likely to give any judge a great deal of freedom in making any decision.”
With the election behind him and the top law enforcement job in Bucks County ahead, Joe Khan says he’s ready for his next challenge.
In January, Khan, a former federal prosecutor and onetime Bucks County solicitor, will become the first Democrat to serve as district attorney in the county since the end of the Civil War. (That’s not counting Ward Clark, a Republican who switched parties to run as a Democrat in 1965 and immediately switched back to his GOP roots after he won.)
Khan, 50, is also the first candidate from outside the district attorney’s office to win the top post after several decades in which voters routinely replaced outgoing district attorneys with successors from among inside the ranks of the office.
To claim that mantle, Khan decisively beat Jen Schorn, the Republican incumbent and a career prosecutor in the district attorney’s office, winning 54% of the vote in the November election, which broke a 20-year record for voter turnout.
County political leaders say Khan’s victory signals voters’ desire for regime change in the once GOP-dominated suburb.
“Democrats came out because they felt like it was necessary to push back on what Trump was doing,” said State Sen. Steve Santarsiero, the chair of the Bucks County Democratic Party. “And in the case of Joe, they recognized him as someone who is going to stand up to an administration that has shown it’s willing to flout the law.”
Khan, for his part, says politics is in the rearview mirror as he prepares for his new job.
“I don’t care what political party you’re from, I don’t care who you voted for president or for district attorney,” he said in a recent interview. “What I care about is that you’re here to support the mission of keeping Bucks County safe and seeking justice every day.”
Joe Khan greets and signs a poster for supporter Phyllis Rubin-Arnold as he waits for a meeting with the Buckingham Township Police chief. Khan says that politics has no role in his plans for the district attorney’s office.
And he said he would expand that work — Khan tapped Kristin McElroy, one of Schorn’s top deputies, to serve as his first assistant.
Drawing on his experience in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia, Khan said he would pursue environmental crimes and prosecute cases involving violations of workers’ rights.
“We have seen all kinds of advances in terms of the powers that DAs have in Pennsylvania, so I think it’s great to have an opportunity to look at things with fresh eyes,” he said.
Khan grew up in Northeast Philadelphia, where his father settled after emigrating from Pakistan. Like his brother, State Rep. Tarik Khan (D, Philadelphia), he took an early interest in public service. He followed those aspirations to Swarthmore College and, later, the University of Chicago Law School.
Khan said he was drawn to Bucks County later in his career, and has made it his home in the 14 years he has lived with his sons, Sam, 14 and Nathan, 11, in Doylestown Township. He and the boys’ mother are divorced but co-parent amicably, he said, and live a few doors down from each other.
After stints in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and the U.S. Attorney’s Office — where he specialized in prosecuting gun crimes and locking up child predators — Khan ran for the top prosecutor’s job in Philadelphia in 2017, losing the race to Larry Krasner.
Joe Khan (center) is seen here in March 2023 alongside County Commissioners Diane M. Ellis-Marseglia and Robert J. Harvie Jr. as they announced a lawsuit filed against multiple social media companies for “fueling a mental health crisis among young people.”
Three years later, Khan took over as Bucks County solicitor. He developed an interest in local politics, he said, after watching the culture-war debates over library books and allegations of abuse that embroiled the Central Bucks School District, where his kids are enrolled.
“It’s really central to my view of what parents need from their government,” he said. “They need people in roles like this that are going to make life easier, not harder, and that are going to help them with the challenges that they’re facing.”
Not long after taking over the office, Khan challenged Trump’s efforts to dismiss mail-in ballots during the 2020 election. He also waged legal battles, taking on companies including 3M, DuPont, and Tyco by filing lawsuits over the “forever chemicals” that had leached their way into residents’ water supplies.
And he made headlines for joining a national lawsuit against social media giants like TikTok, bidding them to address the mental health of their young users.
When now-Gov. Josh Shapiro left the state attorney general’s office, Khan stepped down to join a crowded primary to replace him, running in 2023 on a platform to “continue what has been a lifelong fight to keep people safe.”
After losing that race, Khan set his sights on the top law enforcement job in his new home, challenging the long-standing Republican machine that had controlled it for decades.
“I think that if you do a good job and you let people know why you’re doing the things that you’re doing, whether or not they agree with you on every political position, if they know that you’re honest, you got a pretty good shot at earning their vote,” he said.
“And I think that’s a big part of how we won this election.”
A voter walks past the election lawn signs, including one for Joe Khan and his running mate, Danny Ceisler, outside the Bucks County Senior Citizens polling location in Doylestown on Nov. 4.
Santarsiero, the county Democratic Party chair, said he was confident that Khan would make a fine district attorney.
Winning the post required political prowess, of course, but he said that is a dichotomy unique to the office: Politics are required every four years to secure a position that is apolitical.
Party affiliation aside, he said, Khan would work for the good of the county.
Khan, for his part, says he is ready to give it his all.
“We are here to keep people safe, and we’re going to do that in new and exciting ways,” he said. “I have my values, I wear them on my sleeve, and I’m very clear about the direction that we’re going to go to make sure that people who deserve a healthy environment for their families are getting a higher level of service than they’re used to.”
The decision was abrupt, apparently made without advanced input from Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.), who’d set up a commission to identify candidates to serve as the region’s top federal prosecutor.
Metcalf was 39 and, unlike many of his predecessors, didn’t have deep roots in the region — but did have some reported ties to officials who’d sought to help Trump adviser Roger Stone years earlier.
And the appointment was announced as Trump was openly pledging to “clean house” in the Justice Department and pull the agency more directly in line with the White House.
But in the months since Metcalf has assumed control over the office and its 140 lawyers, what has stood out so far has been the serious temperament the veteran prosecutor has brought to the role, and the relative lack of drama he’s overseen — particularly in comparison to nearby jurisdictions, where U.S. Attorney’s Offices have been embroiled in controversies over leadership appointments and whether to indict Trump critics.
During a recent interview with The Inquirer at his Center City office, his first since being appointed in March, Metcalf said his deliberate approach toward his first few months in the job has been influenced by his decade-plus career as a Justice Department lawyer — one that included stints in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.
He has met with a host of other local stakeholders since taking over — including Police Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and federal judges — and has avoided ushering in drastic upheaval within his office.
U.S. Attorney David Metcalf outside the federal courthouse in July, with Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel standing behind him.
Instead, he said, a key focus has been to encourage his prosecutors to pursue large, ambitious, complex investigations targeting violent crime, synthetic opioid abuse, and healthcare fraud — subjects he said were critical to public safety in the Philadelphia region.
“I do not feel some personal impulse to burn my brand on this office by restructuring and reorganizing it,” he said, later adding: “The greatest offices and the greatest cases come from prosecutors who are hunting them down and competing for them … and that’s the breed of prosecutor we’re trying to create here.”
Composed and self-assured, Metcalf was uninterested in commenting on the broader political landscape surrounding his job. He instead concentrated on the work of his office, whose lawyers prosecute matters including drug trafficking, political corruption, and terrorism across nine counties from Philadelphia to Allentown and west past Reading. They also litigate civil matters on behalf of the federal government.
“I don’t want to say that I’m … bound by precedent or a devotee to the status quo,” he said. “But I do believe in stability, and I’m certainly not going to change things just for the sake of changing them.”
Even Krasner — an outspoken progressive Democrat who rarely misses an opportunity to criticize Trump, and who was engaged in a long-running feud with a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney four years ago — said he had a “professional and pleasant lunch” with Metcalf earlier this year.
“We have always worked well with the career prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and our teams seem to be continuing to work well together,” Krasner said in an interview.
Rod Rosenstein, who was the deputy attorney general during Trump’s first term, said in an interview that he hired Metcalf a decade ago, when Rosenstein was the U.S. attorney in Maryland. And their paths continued to intersect over the years as their careers wound through the Justice Department.
Rosenstein said Metcalf had “superb legal skills” and “excellent judgment” — two qualities he views as critical for leading a U.S. attorney’s office.
“I think people recognize he’s got the right qualifications,” Rosenstein said.
U.S. Attorney David Metcalf in his Center City office.
‘An exhilarating vocation’
Metcalf grew up in northern Virginia and graduated from The Wakefield School, a private prep school about an hour west of Washington, D.C. His father was once an Army colonel, he said, and his grandfather was Joseph Metcalf III, the Navy vice admiral who led the 1983 invasion of Grenada.
Metcalf was a standout soccer player in high school, and was recruited to play by more than 80 college teams, the Washington Post reported in 2003. He used the situation to his advantage, the paper reported — making a deal with his mother that he could let his hair grow down past his shoulders once Division I colleges started sending him letters.
He ended up attending Princeton — playing soccer all four years — and then went on to graduate from the University of Virginia’s law school.
After clerking for U.S. Circuit Judge Albert Diaz, Metcalf spent a few years in private practice before becoming an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland under Rosenstein.
Metcalf said he didn’t have a single epiphany that made him realize he wanted to become a prosecutor. But he said he was quickly drawn to the work, which he found more interesting and important than other legal jobs.
“I thought it was really just an exhilarating vocation in a profession that doesn’t always have the most glamorous applications,” he said.
High-profile connections
From 2015 through 2022, Metcalf worked as a line prosecutor in Baltimore and, later, in Philadelphia — the office he now leads. The two years he spent here were unusual, he said, because they unfolded during the peak of the pandemic, when many aspects of the court system were disrupted and most people were working from home.
Metcalf also spent time during the first Trump administration in Washington, D.C. While there, he worked closely with prominent Justice Department officials including Rosenstein; Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen; Timothy Shea, the onetime U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C.; and then-Attorney General William Barr.
Attorney General William Barr and President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House on Nov. 26, 2019.
In 2022, Metcalf left the public sector and went to work as a corporate counsel for Amazon. But this March — after Trump was reelected for a second term — Metcalf was suddenly thrust back into the Justice Department, as the White House announced it was nominating him to be Philadelphia’s U.S. attorney.
From nominee to confirmation
The decision came as something of a surprise.
McCormick, Pennsylvania’s newly elected GOP senator, had made a point of publicly announcing that he’d formed a committee to review and vet potential candidates for federal law enforcement positions across the state. And other GOP-connected lawyers in the region had been jockeying for months to try to figure out who might be able carve a path toward the coveted position.
When the White House named Metcalf its permanent nominee, the process was effectively short-circuited.
Metcalf said he couldn’t speak to how or why the process played out the way it did. He said he applied for the job, and “had relationships with folks in the Trump administration” due to his time in Washington during Trump’s first term.
He didn’t specify who those people were. And some of his former bosses — particularly Barr — had fallen out of favor with Trump after his first term.
But Rosenstein said “it’s a mistake to think that people are the people they work for. It’s a big government, and not everyone agrees all the time.”
And in any case, Rosenstein said, he believed Metcalf was nominated “on merit, not on connections.”
Rod Rosenstein, deputy attorney general during President Donald Trump’s first term, says Metcalf has “superb legal skills” and “excellent judgment.”
William McSwain, who served as U.S. attorney during Trump’s first term, said he believed Metcalf was “extremely well-qualified for the position.”
It took the U.S. Senate six months to vote to confirm Metcalf along with a host of other Trump nominees, but by then, the Philadelphia region’s federal judges had already voted to extend Metcalf’s appointment indefinitely while the process played out.
That move stood in contrast to several other jurisdictions, including New Jersey, where the judiciary declined to extend the tenure of Trump’s nominee, Alina Habba. For months afterward, that office was thrust into turmoil as questions swirled about who could legally serve as its leader.
Pursuing notable cases
During his tenure so far, Metcalf said, he’s been seeking to focus his prosecutors on finding what he called “nationally significant” cases, particularly those targeting violence, drugs, and healthcare fraud, which he views as priorities for the region.
One of the first big indictments he announced was in October when FBI Director Kash Patel visited Philadelphia to help reveal that 33 people had been charged with being part of a Kensington-based drug gang. Metcalf said the case was the largest single prosecution in the region in at least two decades.
FBI Director Kash Patel helping announce the arrest of dozens of suspects in a Kensington drug case.
He also helped create a new program dubbed PSN Recon, an initiative designed to help Philadelphia Police more readily share intelligence with state and federal agencies about which groups or suspects should be investigated.
Prosecutions overall have increased on his watch, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research organization that collects federal courts records.
So far this fiscal year, prosecutions in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania were up 32% compared to last year, TRAC found, and were on their highest pace since 2019. The most common types of cases charged this year were immigration violations, drug offenses, and illegal firearm possession, according to TRAC.
Earlier this year, Metcalf was reportedly involved in one particularly significant case: an investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan and his role in producing an intelligence assessment about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Brennan went on to become a prominent Trump critic.
Former CIA director John Brennan testifies before the House Intelligence Committee in 2017.
Metcalf never commented publicly on his purported involvement in the Brennan case, and declined to do so again during his interview with The Inquirer. The investigation is now reportedly being handled by federal prosecutors in Florida.
Metcalf did allow a short peek into his professional mindset when he was asked more broadly if he’d ever felt pressure from Washington to sign off on a decision he didn’t agree with.
After declining to comment on any discussions he may or may not have had with Justice Department leaders, he paused for a moment and added one final point.
“I will also say that I would be very surprised if that ever happened to me,” he said. “I don’t see it as a problem here.”
In mid-December, the nation’s leading workplace civil rights enforcer took to social media to pose a question: “Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex?”
Andrea Lucas, chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, appeared in the video, urging those who have to contact the agency “as soon as possible.”
“You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws,” she says in the video, which has amassed nearly 6 million views on X.
It was an unusual move, because the EEOC does not typically solicit complaints. But it underscores the sea change at an agency central to President Donald Trump’s civil rights agenda —one that began with executive orders gutting the last vestiges of affirmative action, and buttressed by his purge of the EEOC board anda newly installed Republican majority.
Now “fully empowered,” the agency will focus on stamping out “illegal discrimination” stemming from diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and “anti-American bias,” Lucas said recently in written responses to questions from the Washington Post. Enforcement, including a heightened emphasis on pregnancy and religious bias, will stress “individual rights over group rights,” she said, and eschew identity politics.
The EEOC’s new priorities come during a year of regulatory uncertainty — it lacked a quorum most of the year, limiting its functions — fueling confusion and uncertainty for employers, workplace experts say. And civil rights advocates contend this pivot detracts from its mission.
“Chair Lucas has chosen to elevate an asserted concern that lacks empirical support as a significant and widespread problem,” a group called EEO Leaderssaid in a statement Dec. 23, “diverting scarce enforcement resources from well documented and pervasive forms of workplace discrimination that harm millions of workers in America today.” The group comprises former EEOC and Department of Labor officials.
Andrea Lucas, testifying at a June hearing on Capitol Hill, was designated chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in November, after a 10-month stint as acting chair.
Lucas said her X post reflects the agency’s effort to “correct underreporting” of forms of discrimination that were neglected by the past administration, adding that “for too long, many employees thought they weren’t the ‘right’ kind of plaintiff, that our civil rights laws only protected certain groups, rather than all Americans.”
A restrained year
Founded in 1964 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, the EEOC is charged with enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a worker or job applicant on the basis of race, sex, religion, age, disability, and other factors. Most employers with at least 15 employees are bound by EEOC regulations, which apply to such workplace practices as hiring, firing, promotions, and wages. The agency has recouped billions in monetary rewards for victims of workplace bias and harassment during the last decade.
Days into his second term — in a break from precedent — Trump dismissed two Democratic members of the independent commission. As a result, it lost the quorum needed to pursue certain cases and overhaul guidance. That changed in October with the appointment of Commissioner Brittany Panuccio, who with Lucas gave the panel a 2-1 GOP majority and a quorum. Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal, a Democrat, rounds out the commission.
In past administrations, the EEOC typically filed 200 to 300 merit lawsuits — those in which the agency determined discrimination exists — a year, said Christopher DeGroff, an employment attorney with the firm Seyfarth Shaw. The 93 merit suits the agency filed in fiscal 2025 marked one of its lowest tallies in three decades, he noted in an analysis of its activity.
Still, the agency’s new priorities were evident in the cases that reached a public resolution or culminated in a lawsuit, DeGroff said. Merit suits alleging discrimination based on race or national origin — historically one of the EEOC’s busiest enforcement areas — hit a decade low in 2025, his research noted. And two of the three cases filed revolved around anti-American bias.
Meanwhile, 37 of the 93 merit lawsuits the EEOC brought pertained to sex or pregnancy discrimination. Of those, 10 were filed under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and/or the newly enacted Pregnant Workers’ Fairness Act, and included lawsuits against Delta Air Lines and meat processor Smithfield alleging they denied accommodations to pregnant employees.
Religious bias lawsuits were another focus in 2025, with the agency filing 11 merit suits asserting religious discrimination or failure to accommodate religious beliefs. One case was against Apple, over allegations it failed to accommodate a Jewish employee’s request not to work on the weekend due to his faith.
Apple declined to discuss the case but “strongly denied” the claims in a statement to the Post.
Disparate impact
One of the EEOC’s biggest pivots under Trump is to abandon cases filed under disparate impact, a legal theory holding that seemingly neutral policies — such as height or lifting requirements — can have discriminatory outcomes. It stems from the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1971 decision in Griggs v. Duke Power, where attorneys used statistical evidence to show how standardized tests prevented Black employees from advancing at a North Carolina energy company.
Disparate impact is central to civil rights litigation and a key lens though which the EEOC has tackled systemic discrimination, said Jenny Yang, who served as EEOC chair during the Obama administration and worked to expand the agency’s tool kit for addressing systemic discrimination.
In 2020 for example, Walmart settled a nationwide discrimination lawsuit brought by the EEOC over a “physical ability test” it used for grocery workers that “disproportionately excludes female applicants.” Walmart agreed to stop using the test and to pay $20 million into a settlement fund for women who were denied grocery order-filler positions because of the testing.
Disparate impact “advances the core principle that removing unjustified barriers to opportunity helps all Americans thrive,” Yang said.
In April, Trump signed an executive order barring use of disparate impact by agencies, calling it a “pernicious movement” that ignores “individual strengths, effort or achievement.” Dan Lennington, deputy counsel at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative think tank specializing in workplace issues, said the debate reflects the broader ideological divide on how to best protect workers’ civil rights.
“The minute you start saying all Black people this, all Hispanic people this, all women this, you’re just stereotyping,” he added. “The only thing that matters is the individual in front of you.”
Yang said it’s been “challenging” to see the Trump administration make such changes to an agency that historically ” really valued its bipartisanship and its independence to interpret antidiscrimination laws.” By moving away from disparate impact and targeting corporate diversity efforts, Yang said, the EEOC has been “weaponized to intimidate employers, to retreat from efforts designed to promote equal opportunity, and to really abandon its historic mission to protect some of our most vulnerable workers.”
‘Illegal’ DEI
Shawna Bray, general counsel at the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank, said that Lucas’ EEOC iscorrecting for past administrations that “used the tools in the toolbox to push things up to, and even over, the line because of their goals,”especially with DEIand other social issues.
DEI refers to practices companies use to ensure equal opportunity in their ranks, from recruiting and mentorship programs to antibias training and employee resource groups. Many companies began reconsidering such policies after the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision rejecting the use of affirmative action in college admissions.
After the Supreme Court struck down the use of racial considerations in college admissions in June 2023, many companies reassessed their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
The ruling sparked a wave of activist lawsuits aiming to replicate the order in the employment sphere. Much of corporate America has since opened identity-based programs, such as fellowships and employee resource groups, to people of all backgrounds, ended efforts like antibias training, and rebranded DEI programs with a focus on “belonging.”
Lucas and others in the Trump administration often refer to “illegal DEI,” but Bray said that she finds the term “a little frustrating” given that such programs only break the law if they show identity-based preference. She also thinks the phrasing has created confusion.
The EEOC should “have in mind an even application of our civil rights,” regardless of factors such as race, gender, and religious background, Bray said. “The desire to put a thumb on the scale was never consistent with that.”
While the agency has yet to file a lawsuit over a workplace DEI program under Lucas, DeGroff expects to see such “cases hit the docket” in 2026.
Valerie Wilson, director of EPI’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, said that priorities like dismantling DEI have “turned the mission of the EEOC on its head, in a way that weaponizes it against the people that it was intended to protect, given the long history of racial discrimination and exploitation” in the United States.
Lucas contends the EEOC is making up for past administrations that “went hunting for activist matters while closing [their] eyes to overt widespread discrimination occurring against groups it disfavored.” Earlier this year, it issued guidance encouraging workers to challenge DEI policies by their employers.
Among possible targets are 20 law firms from which the EEOC said it has requested information about their DEI and hiring practices going back nearly a decade.
Jason Solomon, director of the National Institute for Workers’ Rights, a think tank focusing on private workplace law, wonders whether there is much more for the EEOC to target, given that companies have largely gotten rid of identity-based programs.
“They may look at the changed landscape and say, ‘We can declare victory because we’ve gotten employers to change a lot of what they’ve done,’” Solomon said.
Backing away
Race-discrimination complaints are historically among the most common lodged with the EEOC — 29,000a year on average since 1997, according to a report from EPI — but 2025 marked “the lowest number of race/national origin-based filings by the EEOC in at least a decade,” Seyfarth’s report states.
Two of the lawsuits it pursued alleged bias against U.S.-born workers in favor of foreign ones, DeGroff said. One case involved a hotel and resort in Guam, LeoPalace Guam Corp., which agreed to pay $1.4 million to resolve claims that it favored Japanese workers over those from other countries, including the U.S.
The EEOC also has dismissed cases filed on behalf of transgender workers and stopped processing new gender-identitycomplaints to comply with Trump’s executive orderthat prohibits agencies from using federal funds to support gender-identity issues. It also removed “X” as a gender marker option on its discrimination charge intake form, making it harder for workers whose gender identity does not match their sexat birthto file complaints.
Over the summer, the agency resumed processing some transgender discrimination cases, although the complaints will be subject to a heightened level of review.
Starting Thursday, Americans in five states who get government help paying for groceries will see new restrictions on soda, candy, and other foods they can buy with those benefits.
Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Utah, and West Virginia are the first of at least 18 states to enact waivers prohibiting the purchase of certain foods through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
It’s part of a push by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to urge states to strip foods regarded as unhealthy from the $100 billion federal program — long known as food stamps — that serves 42 million Americans.
“We cannot continue a system that forces taxpayers to fund programs that make people sick and then pay a second time to treat the illnesses those very programs help create,” Kennedy said in a statement in December.
The efforts are aimed at reducing chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes associated with sweetened drinks and other treats, a key goal of Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again effort.
But retail industry and health policy experts said state SNAP programs, already under pressure from steep budget cuts, are unprepared for the complex changes, with no complete lists of the foods affected and technical point-of-sale challenges that vary by state and store. And research remains mixed about whether restricting SNAP purchases improves diet quality and health.
The National Retail Federation, a trade association, predicted longer checkout lines and more customer complaints as SNAP recipients learn which foods are affected by the new waivers.
“It’s a disaster waiting to happen of people trying to buy food and being rejected,” said Kate Bauer, a nutrition science expert at the University of Michigan.
A report by the National Grocers Association and other industry trade groups estimated that implementing SNAP restrictions would cost U.S. retailers $1.6 billion initially and $759 million each year going forward.
“Punishing SNAP recipients means we all get to pay more at the grocery store,” said Gina Plata-Nino, SNAP director for the anti-hunger advocacy group Food Research and Action Center.
The waivers are a departure from decades of federal policy first enacted in 1964 and later authorized by the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008, which said SNAP benefits can be used for “any food or food product intended for human consumption” except alcohol and ready-to-eat hot foods. The law also says SNAP cannot pay for tobacco.
In the past, lawmakers have proposed stopping SNAP from paying for expensive meats like steak or so-called junk foods, such as chips and ice cream.
But previous waiver requests were denied based on U.S. Department of Agriculture research concluding that restrictions would be costly and complicated to implement, and that they might not change recipients’ buying habits or reduce health problems such as obesity.
Under the second Trump administration, however, states have been encouraged and even incentivized to seek waivers — and they responded.
“This isn’t the usual top-down, one-size-fits-all public health agenda,” Indiana Gov. Mike Braun said when he announced his state’s request last spring. “We’re focused on root causes, transparent information, and real results.”
The five state waivers that take effect Jan. 1 affect about 1.4 million people. Utah and West Virginia will ban the use of SNAP to buy soda and soft drinks, while Nebraska will prohibit soda and energy drinks. Indiana will target soft drinks and candy. In Iowa, which has the most restrictive rules to date, the SNAP limits affect taxable foods, including soda and candy, but also certain prepared foods.
“The items list does not provide enough specific information to prepare a SNAP participant to go to the grocery store,” Plata-Nino wrote in a blog post. “Many additional items — including certain prepared foods — will also be disallowed, even though they are not clearly identified in the notice to households.”
Marc Craig, 47, of Des Moines, said he has been living in his car since October. He said the new waivers will make it more difficult to determine how to use the $298 in SNAP benefits he receives each month, while also increasing the stigma he feels at the cash register.
“They treat people that get food stamps like we’re not people,” Craig said.
SNAP waivers enacted now and in the coming months will run for two years, with the option to extend them for an additional three, according to the USDA. Each state is required to assess the impact of the changes.
Health experts worry that the waivers ignore larger factors affecting the health of SNAP recipients, said Anand Parekh, chief policy officer at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
“This doesn’t solve the two fundamental problems, which is healthy food in this country is not affordable and unhealthy food is cheap and ubiquitous,” he said.
To Julia Coleman, Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk were just “Melissa” and “Charlie.”
Coleman, a Republican state senator, knew Hortman, a Democrat, through their work in the Minnesota legislature. The two had discussed reopening the Capitol daycare center, while sitting in Hortman’s office sharing tequila and Milano cookies. Coleman was Turning Point USA’s first Minnesota employee, and Kirk, her first boss, became her friend.
On June 14, Melissa was shot dead.
On Sept. 10, so was Charlie.
Coleman, 34, watched in horror as her social media feeds became clouded with a thickening haze of baseless and speculative ideas about her former colleagues’ deaths.
“When I see people spreading horrible conspiracy theories that are completely based out of nothing and dishonor the person who passed away, I feel compelled to say something,” Coleman said. “More elected officials have to stop sitting on their hands and start calling it out.”
That is what she is trying to do.
On the Sunday after Christmas, Coleman was in her kitchen, making dinner for her family, when she saw a post that infuriated her. The user claimed that Hortman’s assassination was connected to a fraud scandal in Minnesota, and implied that Hortman had known her life was in danger. (There is no evidence supporting either of these claims.)
“This is sick,” Coleman thought to herself. She began to type.
“I am a Minnesota Republican legislator. I never agreed with Melissa. Not once. But I’m begging people to stop sharing this conspiracy theory,” Coleman wrote. “Please, unless you have evidence, stop trying to get social media clout off the death of a good person that you know nothing about.”
Within 24 hours, her post had attracted more than a million views.
Republican state Sen. Julia Coleman, of Waconia, speaks at a news conference at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul., Minn., on Monday, May 8, 2023, against a Democratic-backed paid family and medical leave bill that was slated for debate later in the day. (AP Photo/Steve Karnowski)
Responses have been mostly positive, she said. Coleman sees conspiracies and misinformation trending more on her own side, the political right, but believes the problem transcends partisan loyalties. In Minnesota, traumatized legislators have stayed away from Hortman and Kirk conspiracy theories, and many have been speaking out against them, Coleman said.
Hours after her first post, Coleman followed up: “I’ve learned two things today 1) invest in tinfoil (for hats on both sides of the aisle) 2) buy a bunch of jumbo crayons and construction paper for explaining basic concepts to people this upcoming year.” Others, including former Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, a Republican, have also come out to slam the rumors.
Legislators have watched as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, has borne the brunt of recent attacks, with some people claiming baselessly that Walz was involved with Hortman’s assassination.
The conspiracists have relied on a video of Hortman in tears after she voted to end a budget deadlock by supporting a spending plan that cut health benefits for people who are in the country illegally. Coleman has said that Hortman was upset because she knew people would lose healthcare, and that there is no evidence of any link between the shooting and the scandal, which involves allegations of improper social services payments to dozens of Somali immigrants.
The Kirk conspiracies are tied to unproven claims that the political activist’s killing was related to his stance on Israel.
Coleman saw the governor at a bill signing shortly after Hortman was killed. Walz had lost weight. She noticed pain in his eyes. “It’s got to be hard that people are sitting there thinking he did that or would order that to be done just because a crazy man said it to be true,” Coleman said.
A spokesperson for Walz did not respond to a request for comment.
After Hortman and Kirk were killed, Coleman had panic attacks. She questioned whether she should quit her job to protect her three young boys. “It was a rough summer and fall. Losing two people to assassinations — I just never thought that sentence would even come out of my mouth,” Coleman said. “The initial reaction was: I have to get out of this if I want my kids to grow up with a mother.”
Then Coleman thought about who would be left to speak up if people like her were intimidated out of politics. She said she decided she did not want to let fear drive her from public office — but knows the experience will never be the same.
“It feels like all the magic that was in this job got sucked out of it on June 14,” Coleman said. “Long-standing grudges have been erased because a lot of us just are in the trenches now together.”
When legislators walk into the House chamber, they see Hortman’s photo and roses on her desk.
When the doorbell rings at home, they now check their security camera before answering.
“I’ve seen some people start to speak up, and I hope that my actions [Sunday], which came from a moment of frustration standing in my kitchen, will encourage others to do the same,” Coleman said.
