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  • An ICE agent shot a gun near Mikie Sherrill’s former district. One of the candidates vying to replace her wants to abolish the agency.

    An ICE agent shot a gun near Mikie Sherrill’s former district. One of the candidates vying to replace her wants to abolish the agency.

    An ICE agent firing a gun near Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s former congressional district has brought new resonance to the agency in the race to replace her.

    Analilia Mejia, who campaigned on abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, won a close and crowded Democratic primary to replace Sherrill in Congress in a victory for the progressive movement that coincides with a national debate over President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda. Even some Republican officials have been speaking out against ICE’s tactics.

    Mejia will compete with Joe Hathaway, the former Randolph mayor who ran unopposed in the Republican primary, in an April special election. While Hathaway is far from supporting Mejia’s call for an end to ICE, he has also voiced support for making changes to the agency.

    The encounter that has brought their views into focus happened Tuesday in Morris County. The incident, in which an ICE agent fired a gun in Roxbury, is under investigation by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office. The attorney general’s office said no one was injured.

    The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said the officer shot at an undocumented immigrant’s tires in self-defense during a targeted effort to detain him.

    “This is a public safety issue,” Mejia said in an interview. “Abolishing ICE, to me, is the only reasonable step forward, because it is clear that ICE’s and DHS’s recruitment practices are clearly failing the American people. Their oversight and training is clearly failing the American people, and they have zero accountability.”

    In Roxbury, a township of about 20,000 people, roughly 40 miles from New York City, local residents recently protested a proposed ICE facility, which Democratic politicians and the all-Republican town council alike oppose.

    The township, which contains mostly Republican and unaffiliated voters, falls right outside of Sherrill’s former district, which includes other parts of the same county and has become fairly reliably blue.

    Mejia said Tuesday’s confrontation raises concerns about guns going off in residential neighborhoods or near schools, and that it shows the “recklessness” of the Department of Homeland Security. She said she’s been in conversation with local Democratic officials who question DHS’s account of the incident.

    Hathaway disagrees with Mejia’s views on ICE, but he also stopped short of defending DHS when asked about Tuesday’s incident. He said in an interview that he needs more information to comment.

    “I think it’s generally not a good thing when politicians try to stick our nose in and stoke the flames and politicize these kinds of things before we know the facts,” he said. “I certainly don’t want to do that in this case.”

    The GOP candidate is critical of the state’s Immigrant Trust Directive — the sanctuary policy that limits local law enforcement’s cooperation with ICE, but he also said he supports improved training, de-escalation tactics, and technology for ICE agents. He said American citizens who peacefully protest should be kept safe, though ICE agents also need to be able to detain undocumented immigrants effectively.

    A New York Times and Siena University poll published in late January found that a “sizable majority” of voters believe ICE “has gone too far,” while roughly half support Trump’s deportations and handling of the southern border.

    DHS said the undocumented person driving the car in Roxbury had a criminal history of drug trafficking charges, drug possession, and driving under the influence, and that a judge issued an order of removal for him in 2021. The federal agency said he “rammed into a law enforcement vehicle and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run an officer over” while trying to “evade arrest.”

    “Following his training, the officer defensively used his firearm and shot out the tires of the vehicle to stop the threat,” an unnamed DHS spokesperson said. “Thankfully, no one was injured.” The driver was arrested and taken into ICE custody, DHS said.

    The attorney general’s office requested that any witnesses share video footage of the incident. The request came right before Sherrill’s administration launched an online portal for New Jerseyans to submit videos of ICE, which she initially announced on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. Video footage shared by bystanders contradicted the Trump administration’s account of two recent deadly shootings by federal agents in Minnesota.

    Mejia argued during her campaign that ICE cannot be reformed and should be replaced with something else, such as a more efficient system of processing asylum or citizenship applications.

    “I’m not calling for open borders,” she said Wednesday. “I’m not calling for the eradication of a system. I’m actually calling for the cease and desist of the violence of the occupation of American cities, of the overreach from this administration, and the erosion of constitutional protections.”

    She said she believes Congress, in the short term, should stop funding ICE, reallocate funds for the agency that came as Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act slashed funding for social services, stop surveilling and collecting data from Americans, and end qualified immunity for agents.

    Senate Democrats blocked a funding bill for DHS Thursday amid unsuccessful negotiations with the White House to make changes to immigration enforcement operations following the shootings in Minneapolis.

    Hathaway said he is “willing, absolutely, to come to the table to reform” how ICE operates, but that he also wants to see changes to sanctuary policies.

    Sherrill’s administration has not provided more information about the Roxbury incident, citing an ongoing investigation.

    “We recognize that matters of this nature raise concerns within our communities… it is my duty to protect the safety of residents of this state and uphold the Constitution. I will do everything in my power to fulfill this responsibility,” Acting Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said.

    On Wednesday, Sherrill signed an executive order prohibiting ICE from operating on state-owned private property unless there’s a judicial warrant and launched a “know your rights” guide for residents interacting with immigration agents.

    Mejia, who grew up in Elizabeth and lives in Glen Ridge in Essex County, said that as an Afro-Latina, she feels less safe during Trump’s immigration crackdown and that she takes precautions like carrying her passport or being careful where she speaks Spanish.

    “It happening close to home is, of course, troubling, but this is an escalation that we have been seeing for years,” said Mejia.

  • Josh Shapiro’s clergy abuse investigation boosted his reputation. Years later, some survivors feel he abandoned them.

    Josh Shapiro’s clergy abuse investigation boosted his reputation. Years later, some survivors feel he abandoned them.

    Sitting onstage in an echoey historic synagogue, next to a U.S. senator and a cardboard cutout of his newly released memoir, Gov. Josh Shapiro reflected on the Pennsylvanians who give him hope.

    As he had in other stops on his book tour up and down the East Coast, Shapiro often referred to his book’s title, Where We Keep The Light, and the ways he finds hope in the “extraordinary impact” of Pennsylvanians. Among them, he said, were those who were sexually abused by Catholic priests in crimes covered up by the church until they were illuminated by the victims’ unrelenting quest for justice.

    In his book, Shapiro details his work as Pennsylvania attorney general to compile and release a bombshell grand jury report that in 2018 revealed thousands of cases of abuse by priests across the state.

    “I find hope in the people I met who were abused over years and years and years,” Shapiro told U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.) last month at an event at Sixth and I, a synagogue in Washington, “who still had the courage to show up in a grand jury room to testify and to challenge me to do something to make sure we righted a wrong and brought justice to them.”

    The nearly 900-page report was lauded as the most comprehensive review of clergy abuse across a single state and prompted new laws clarifying penalties for failure to report abuse and allowing survivors more time to pursue criminal or civil cases against their abusers.

    But a key step in delivering justice to those survivors — establishing a two-year window for the filing of lawsuits over decades-old abuse that falls outside the statute of limitations under existing law — remains unfinished.

    The proposal has become one of the most fraught issues in Harrisburg. After a devastating clerical error by Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration killed a proposed constitutional amendment in 2021, lawmakers have been unable to come together on a new path forward. Republicans who control the state Senate have tied the proposal to policies Democrats will not support. All the while, the Catholic Church and the insurance industry have lobbied hard against it.

    Nearly a dozen interviews with survivors, their family members, and advocates reveal a deep frustration with the inaction in Harrisburg. Even as Shapiro renews calls for the Senate to act, survivors are divided over whether he has done enough to use his power as governor to advocate for them.

    A key pledge in Shapiro’s bid for reelection — and his pitch to a national audience — is that he can “get stuff done” by working across the aisle. But some abuse survivors in Pennsylvania say the unfinished business in getting justice for them brings that record into question.

    “He got to where he’s at on the back of victims and survivors, and now he’s forgotten,” said Mike McIlmail, the father of a clergy abuse victim, Sean McIlmail, who died of an overdose shortly before he was supposed to testify in a criminal case against his alleged abuser.

    Shapiro, his spokesperson Will Simons said, has fought for survivors “publicly and in legislative negotiations” since 2018. He has promised to sign any bill that reaches his desk establishing the window.

    With a reelection campaign underway and his eyes on flipping the state Senate, the governor renewed that fight earlier this month. He used his budget address to blame Senate Republicans for the inaction thus far.

    “Stop cowering to the special interests, like insurance companies and lobbyists for the Catholic Church,” he said, his voice thundering in the House chamber. “Stop tying justice for abused kids to your pet political projects. And start listening to victims.”

    Mike and Debbie McIlmail, parents of Sean McIlmail, in the office of (left) Marci Hamilton, in Philadelphia on March 29, 2022.

    Years of delay

    Pennsylvania’s extensive investigation, which Shapiro inherited when he became attorney general in 2017, chronicled more than 1,000 cases of abuse by more than 300 priests across the state dating back to the 1940s.

    For most of the cases in the report, the statute of limitations had passed, leaving no legal recourse for survivors.

    The report proposed that lawmakers create a two-year window to allow the filing of civil suits over cases that happened years, if not decades, ago. Despite Shapiro’s advocacy since releasing the grand jury report, the proposal has been trapped in a stalemate for years.

    Pennsylvania trails more than 30 other states that have approved similar legislation.

    Then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro speaks at a news conference in the state Capitol in 2018 about legislation to respond to a landmark grand jury report accusing hundreds of priests of sexually abusing children over decades stalled in the legislature.

    “It’s maddening to have people say, ‘We’re committed to this, this is going to happen, we’re committed to it,’ from both sides of the political spectrum and nothing ever gets done,” said Jay Sefton, who says he was abused by a priest in Havertown as a middle schooler in the 1980s. “It does start to feel like these are lives being used as its own sort of theater.”

    Gov. Josh Shapiro makes his annual budget proposal in the state House chamber Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026.

    Speaking to journalists in Washington days before he targeted Republicans in his budget address, Shapiro tied the window’s prospects to Democrats’ ability to win the state Senate for the first time in more than three decades.

    “I’m confident with a Democratic Senate that will be one of the first bills they put on my desk,” Shapiro said.

    Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward, a Republican, leaves the House chamber following Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s annual budget proposal speech in Harrisburg on Feb. 3.

    In an interview, Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R., Westmoreland) noted that the GOP-controlled Senate had approved a constitutional amendment to establish the window several times before, although it ultimately failed to ever reach the voters.

    She declined to say whether the state Senate would take up the amendment up this year but said creating the window through legislation, as Shapiro requested, would be unconstitutional.

    She accused the governor of using survivors to score political points as he tries to raise his profile for his reelection this year and rumored 2028 presidential ambitions.

    “He has decided that he’s going to be moral instead of follow the law. Look at his record in his own office,” Ward said, arguing Shapiro has a track record of fighting for some survivors but not others. She pointed to his office’s handling of sexual harassment allegations brought against a former top staffer and close ally. Documents showed that complaints about the staffer were made months before his abrupt resignation.

    For some clergy abuse survivors, the blame lands squarely on Ward and her Republican allies as they insist on a constitutional amendment, which requires two votes by both the House and Senate along with a ballot measure.

    “It’s the Republicans that are blocking it, and I think they’re blocking it because of the church,” said Julianne Bortz, a survivor who testified before the grand jury and whose experience was featured in the report.

    A portrait of former Pa. House Speaker Mark Rozzi hangs alongside painting of other former speakers in hallway at the state Capitol.

    Debate among survivors

    Despite Shapiro’s recent statements, there is a sense among some survivors that lawmakers, and Shapiro, have forgotten about them.

    Former state House Speaker Mark Rozzi, a Berks County Democrat and clergy abuse survivor, said Shapiro “betrayed” survivors and should be playing “hardball” with the Senate to ensure that the bill makes it to his desk.

    “Talk is cheap. Unless you come to the table and cut a deal, nothing else gets done,” Rozzi said.

    Then-Pennsylvania House Speaker Mark Rozzi, center right, embraces Arthur Baselice, the father of Arthur Baselice III, after he testified at a hearing in Philadelphia on Jan. 27, 2023.

    Advocates have spent years pushing lawmakers in Harrisburg and have grown increasingly frustrated with the lack of movement.

    “We, being the victims, have always held our end of the bargain. Always. We’ve always shown up when we’ve asked to, we’ve testified when we were asked to, we interviewed, we discussed the worst moments of our lives when asked,” said Shaun Dougherty, who said he was abused by an Altoona-Johnstown priest.

    Now, he said, it’s the governor’s turn to get the work done.

    Former State Rep. Bill Wachob, a Democrat who worked in politics after leaving elected office in the 1980s, is convinced the governor could make it happen through negotiations if he wanted.

    “He and his team have made a calculated political decision that they have gotten as much mileage out of this issue as they’re going to get and they’re not doing anything more,” Wachob said.

    In Shapiro’s memoir, however, he wrote he expected that going up against the Catholic Church in pursuing the 2018 report “was likely the end of the road for me politically.”

    “I’d made my peace with being a one term Attorney General, if it meant that I could put my head on the pillow at night knowing I did my job and made good for these victims,” he wrote.

    Since Shapiro became governor in 2023, his efforts to fight for survivors have been waylaid by an increasingly tense relationship with the GOP-controlled Senate, as evidenced by last year’s nearly five-month bitter budget impasse.

    “I have no doubt that the governor has been doing what he can,” said Marci Hamilton, the founder of Child USA, which advocates for child sex abuse victims. She blamed the challenges in reaching a deal on Harrisburg’s partisan dynamics.

    Recent criticism of Shapiro has driven division within the survivor community in recent weeks, said Mary McHale, a survivor who was featured in a 2022 Shapiro campaign ad.

    “He cares. But he also has a state to run. This can’t be the No. 1 issue,” she said.

    Diana Vojtasek, who said she was abused by the same Allentown priest as McHale, said she worries frustration is being misdirected at Shapiro instead of Republicans.

    “I just don’t see the value in attacking the one who has vowed publicly that he will sign this legislation for us as soon as it’s across his desk,” she said.

    Abuse survivor Shaun Dougherty (left) greets then-Gov. Tom Wolf in the State Capitol on Sept. 24, 2018.

    Could progress come this year?

    Advocates are hopeful that the national bipartisan effort to force President Donald Trump’s administration to release FBI files related to serial abuser and trafficker Jeffrey Epstein may spur new motivation to protect abuse victims in the state.

    “What the Epstein transparency act showed us is we are finally at a point where the protection of sexual abuse victims is nonpartisan,” Hamilton said. “I fully expect to see that that understanding for victims will happen in Harrisburg.”

    Rep. Nathan Davidson, a Dauphin County Democrat who introduced the House legislation to create the window, has scheduled hearings in April to bring renewed attention to the issue.

    Sefton, who said he was abused as a middle schooler in Havertown in the 1980s, will perform a one-man show about his experience in a theater just steps from the state Capitol the week of the hearings.

    He is done hoping lawmakers will establish the window but said it would make the state safer if they did.

    “Nobody is going to give anyone their childhood back. It can’t happen,” Sefton said.

    “There’s always going to be a part of me that’s filled with some rage about people blocking the energy here. If that were to go through, it’s a piece of energy that gets finally freed up.”

  • Howard Lutnick’s name is on the library at Haverford College. Will that change after his appearance in the Epstein files?

    Howard Lutnick’s name is on the library at Haverford College. Will that change after his appearance in the Epstein files?

    As U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein gains new scrutiny, questions have emerged on Haverford College’s campus about how to address their mega-donor’s involvement.

    Lutnick, a 1983 Haverford graduate who has donated $65 million to the college and whose name is on the school’s library, had contact with the late financier as recently as 2018, long after Epstein pleaded guilty to obtaining a minor for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute, according to documents released by the Justice Department. And during congressional testimony this week, he said he visited the sex offender’s private island with his family in 2012. That’s even though Lutnick previously said he had not been in a room with Epstein, whom he found “disgusting,” since 2005.

    At Haverford, where the library at the heart of campus is named after Lutnick, two students have floated a proposal to remove Lutnick’s name from the building and wrote a resolution that could be discussed at a forthcoming student-led meeting, according to the Bi-College News, the student newspaper for Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges. Fliers that say “Howard Lutnick is in the Epstein Files — What Now?” have been posted around campus, according to the publication.

    And in an email to campus Thursday, Wendy Raymond, president of the highly selective liberal arts college on the Main Line, said she and the board of managers are monitoring the situation.

    “We recognize that association with Epstein raises ethical questions,” she wrote. “While Secretary Lutnick’s association with Epstein has no direct bearing on the College, as an institution, we are committed to our core values and cognizant of broader ethical implications raised by these disclosures.”

    Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick listens during an event with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House earlier this month.

    A Commerce Department spokesperson told the Associated Press last month that Lutnick had had “limited interactions” with Epstein, with his wife in attendance, and had not been accused of “wrongdoing.” Lutnick told lawmakers this week: “I did not have any relationship with him. I barely had anything to do with him.”

    Lutnick, formerly chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald L.P., a New York City financial firm that lost hundreds of employees in the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, served on Haverford’s board for 21 years and once chaired it. In addition to the library, the indoor tennis and track center bears the name of his brother Gary Lutnick, a Cantor Fitzgerald employee who was killed on 9/11, and the fine arts building carries the name of his mother, Jane Lutnick, a painter. He also funded the college’s Cantor Fitzgerald Art Gallery.

    In making a $25 million gift to the college in 2014 — which remains tied for the largest donation Haverford has received — Lutnick told The Inquirer the college had helped him during a particularly difficult period. He lost his mother to cancer when he was a high school junior, and one week into his freshman year at Haverford, where he was an economics major, his father died as the result of a tragic medical mistake.

    Haverford gets record gift from an alum the college helped save

    The then-president of Haverford called Lutnick and told him his four years at Haverford would be free.

    “Haverford was there for me,” Lutnick said, “and taught me what it meant to be a human being.”

    Lutnick’s gift was used to make the most significant upgrades to the library in 50 years. Lutnick left Haverford’s board in 2015.

    He was confirmed as commerce secretary a year ago, after President Donald Trump took office for the second time. Since the Epstein documents were released, Lutnick has faced bipartisan calls to resign.

    Some in the Haverford community have spoken out online about Lutnick’s ties to Epstein.

    “How soon can we petition to make Magill Magill again,” one alum, who said they were at Haverford when Lutnick attended, wrote anonymously on a Reddit thread, referring to the library’s prior name. “More urgently, does Haverford plan to express compassion and support for the survivors and publicly condemn Lutnick for his involvement?”

    The Haverford Survivor Collective’s executive board, a group founded in 2023 and led by Haverford students and survivors of sexual assault, also called on the college to “re-examine” its ties to Lutnick.

    “At what point will the College confront its relationship with this individual?” the group asked. “At what point will it say, unequivocally, ‘enough is enough’? At what point does a reluctance to do so extend beyond mere negligence into a moral failing?”

    The outside of the Lutnick Library at Haverford College

    Push to rename the library

    Earlier this month during a Plenary Resolution Writing Workshop — part of Haverford’s student self-governance process — students Ian Trask and Jay Huennekens put forth a resolution that would change the name of the library, the student newspaper reported.

    At plenary sessions, which take place twice a year in the fall and spring, the student body discusses and votes on important campus issues. On March 23, a packet of plenary resolutions will be released to the student body, with the plenary session scheduled for March 29.

    “We feel that it is important that the college reflect the values of the student body, and that those values do not align with the Trump administration or the associates of Jeffrey Epstein,” the students told the Bi-Co News.

    Attempts to reach Trask and Huennekens were unsuccessful.

    If the student resolution passes, it would go to Raymond for signing.

    But even then, it’s no easy feat to remove a name from a college building. There would be a review process involving the board of managers that could take a while.

    Under Haverford’s gift policy, the school can rename a building if “the continued use of the name may be deemed detrimental to the College, or if circumstances change regarding the reason for the naming.”

    Raymond would have to convene a committee, consider that committee’s recommendations, and make her recommendation to the external affairs committee of the board of managers and its chair and vice chair. The external affairs committee then would make its recommendation to the full board of managers.

    Bryn Mawr College to remove former president’s name from library after legacy of antisemitism and white supremacy

    At nearby Bryn Mawr College, it took years before M. Carey Thomas’ name was removed from the library. Thomas, who was Bryn Mawr’s second president, serving from 1894 to 1922, was a leading suffragist, but also was reluctant to admit Black students and refused to hire Jewish faculty.

    In 2017, then-Bryn Mawr president Kim Cassidy issued a moratorium on using Carey’s name while the college studied how to handle the matter. A committee in 2018 decided students, faculty, students, and staff should no longer refer to the library using Thomas’ name, but decided to leave the inscription and add a plaque explaining the complicated history.

    The college faced continued pressure from students to take further action and removed Thomas’ name in 2023.

    Other colleges have taken similar actions. Princeton University in 2020 stripped former President Woodrow Wilson’s name from its public affairs school and presidential college.

  • Federal authorities announce an end to the immigration crackdown in Minnesota

    Federal authorities announce an end to the immigration crackdown in Minnesota

    MINNEAPOLIS — The Trump administration is ending the immigration crackdown in Minnesota that led to thousands of arrests, violent protests and the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens over the past two months, border czar Tom Homan said Thursday.

    The operation called the Department of Homeland Security’s ” largest immigration enforcement operation ever ” has been a flashpoint in the debate over President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts, flaring up after Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed by federal officers in Minneapolis.

    The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation focused on the Minneapolis-St. Paul area resulted in more than 4,000 arrests, Homan said, touting it a success.

    “The surge is leaving Minnesota safer,” he said. “I’ll say it again, it’s less of a sanctuary state for criminals.”

    Several ICE agents were arrested in recent months, showing risk of misconduct

    The announcement marks a significant retreat from an operation that has become a major distraction for the Trump administration and has been more volatile than prior crackdowns in Chicago and Los Angeles. It comes as a new AP-NORC poll found that most U.S. adults say Trump’s immigration policies have gone too far.

    State and local officials, who have frequently clashed with federal authorities since Operation Metro Surge started in December, insisted the swarm of immigration officials inflicted long-term damage to the state’s economy and its immigrant community.

    Democratic Gov. Tim Walz urged residents Thursday to remain vigilant in the coming days as immigration officers prepare to leave. He called the crackdown an “unnecessary, unwarranted and in many cases unconstitutional assault on our state.”

    “It’s going to be a long road,” Walz told a news conference. “Minnesotans are decent, caring loving neighbors and they’re also some of the toughest people you’ll find. And we’re in this as long as it takes.”

    Unmasking ICE in Philly could test the limits of local power over federal agents

    Trump’s border czar pledged that immigration enforcement won’t end when the Minnesota operation is over.

    “President Trump made a promise of mass deportation and that’s what this country is going to get,” Homan said.

    Some activists expressed relief at Homan’s announcement, but warned that the fight isn’t over. Lisa Erbes, a leader of the progressive protest group Indivisible Twin Cities said officials, must be held accountable for the chaos of the crackdown.

    “People have died. Families have been torn apart,” Erbes said. “We can’t just say this is over and forget the pain and suffering that has been put on the people of Minnesota.”

    While the Trump administration has called those arrested in Minnesota “dangerous criminal illegal aliens,” many people with no criminal records, including children and U.S. citizens, have also been detained.

    Homan announced last week that 700 federal officers would leave Minnesota immediately, but that still left more than 2,000 on Minnesota’s streets. At the time, he cited an “increase in unprecedented collaboration” resulting in the need for fewer federal officers in Minnesota, including help from jails that hold deportable inmates.

    Homan took over the Minnesota operation in late January after the second fatal shooting by federal immigration agents and amid growing political backlash and questions about how the operation was being run. He said Thursday that he intends to stay in Minnesota to oversee the drawdown that began this week and will continue next week.

    Philly federal judges are growing frustrated with ICE policy to detain most undocumented immigrants

    “We’ve seen a big change here in the last couple of weeks,” he said, crediting cooperation from local leaders.

    During the height of the surge, heavily armed officers were met by resistance from residents upset with their aggressive tactics.

    “They thought they could break us, but a love for our neighbors and a resolve to endure can outlast an occupation,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said on social media after Homan’s news conference. “These patriots of Minneapolis are showing that it’s not just about resistance — standing with our neighbors is deeply American.”

  • Big-money and out-of-state donors helped Josh Shapiro raise $30 million while Stacy Garrity raised $1.5 million from Pa.’s grassroots

    Big-money and out-of-state donors helped Josh Shapiro raise $30 million while Stacy Garrity raised $1.5 million from Pa.’s grassroots

    Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro is racking up contributions from out-of-state billionaires as well as thousands of individual donors across the country.

    His likely Republican challenger, State Treasurer Stacy Garrity, meanwhile, is capturing small-donor donations from Pennsylvanians.

    That’s according to an analysis of the latest campaign finance filings in the Pennsylvania governor’s contest, as a clearer picture of the race emerges nine months out from Election Day. Shapiro entered 2026 with $30 million on hand — money raised over several years as he has built a national profile — while Garrity raised $1.5 million in her first five months on the campaign trail as she tries to unseat the popular Democratic incumbent. Last year, Shapiro brought in $23.3 million.

    The race between Josh Shapiro and Stacy Garrity for Pa. governor has officially begun. Here’s what you need to know.

    Here are three takeaways from the first campaign finance filings in the race, tracking fundraising heading into 2026.

    Almost all of Stacy Garrity’s contributors are from Pennsylvania, while 62% of Shapiro’s are in state

    Nearly all of Garrity’s individual 1,155 contributors — more than 97% — live in Pennsylvania, and on average gave $889 each.

    Shapiro — who has amassed a national following and is a rumored 2028 Democratic presidential contender — had a much further reach and attracted many more donors from around the country. He received contributions from 4,981 individual donors, 62% of whom are from Pennsylvania. The average individual donor to Shapiro contributed $3,461, a number buoyed by multiple six- and seven-figure contributions.

    Shapiro received most of his remaining individual donations from California (7.1%), New York (6.3%), New Jersey (2.5%), Florida (2.5%), and Massachusetts (2.4%), according to an Inquirer analysis.

    (The analysis includes only donors who contributed more than $50 in 2025. Campaigns are required to list only individual donors who contribute above that threshold.)

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    Shapiro’s broad donor base is a result of his status as a popular incumbent governor who is liked among people of both political parties, said Robin Kolodny, a Temple University political science professor who focuses on campaign finance.

    “These amounts that you’re seeing is a very strong signal that ‘This is our guy,’” Kolodny said. “That underscores he is a popular incumbent.”

    Kolodny also noted that Shapiro’s state-level fundraising cannot be transferred to a federal political action committee should he decide to run in 2028. But his war chest shows his ability to raise money nationally and his popularity as the leader of the state, she added.

    Governor Josh Shapiro during a reelection announcement event at the Alan Horwitz “Sixth Man” Center in Philadelphia on Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026.

    Only a small percentage of the population contributes to political campaigns, Kolodny said. And sometimes, it’s the smallest contributions that pay off the most, she said. Small-dollar donations suggest grassroots support that can translate into a person assisting the campaign in additional ways to get out the vote, she said.

    Both Shapiro and Garrity have received a significant number of small-dollar donations that illustrate some level of excitement in the race — though Shapiro’s more than 3,000 in-state donors outnumber Garrity’s total by nearly 3-1.

    “Think of fundraising as not just a money grab, but also as a campaign strategy,” Kolodny said.

    Since announcing his reelection campaign in January, Shapiro has run targeted social media ads and sent fundraising texts, asking for supporters to “chip in” $1 or $5. The strategy worked, bringing in $400,000 in the first two days after his announcement, with an average contribution of $41, according to Shapiro’s campaign. This funding is not reflected in his 2025 campaign finance report.

    Most of Shapiro’s money came from out-of-state donors, including billionaire Mike Bloomberg and a George Soros PAC

    While Shapiro garnered thousands of individual contributions from Pennsylvania in all 67 counties, according to his campaign, the latest filings show it was the big-money checks from out-of-state billionaires that ran up his total.

    Approximately 64% of the $23.3 million Shapiro raised last year came from out-of-state donors.

    And more than half — 57% — of Shapiro’s total raised came from six- or seven-figure contributions by powerful PACs or billionaire donors.

    By contrast, only 31% of Garrity’s total fundraising came from six-figure contributions.

    The biggest single contribution in the governor’s race came from billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who gave Shapiro $2.5 million last year.

    Shapiro also received $1 million from a political action committee led by billionaire Democratic supporter George Soros; and $500,000 from Kathryn and James Murdoch, from the powerful family of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

    Kolodny noted that big contributions from people like Bloomberg are a drop in the bucket of his total political or philanthropic spending.

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    “This is not something extraordinary,” Kolodny said. “He’s got nothing but money.”

    In Pennsylvania, Shapiro received notably high contributions from Philadelphia Phillies owner John Middleton, who gave $125,000, and Nemacolin Resort owner Maggie Hardy, who gave $250,000, among others. He also received a number of five-figure contributions from private equity officials, venture capitalists, and industry executives in life sciences, construction, and more.

    Garrity’s single biggest donation was $250,000 from University City Housing Co., a real estate firm providing housing near Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania. Her largest contributions from individuals included $50,000 from her finance chair, Bob Asher of Asher Chocolates, and another $50,000 from Alfred Barbour, a retired executive from Concast Metal Products.

    Garrity has served as Pennsylvania’s state treasurer since 2020 and has led the low-profile statewide office with little controversy. She did not join the race for governor until August and raised only a fraction of the funds Shapiro did in that same time. Meanwhile, Shapiro spent 2025 at the political forefront as a moderate Democrat trying to challenge President Donald Trump in a state that helped elect him. Shapiro also benefited from his national name recognition after he was considered for Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate in 2024.

    Shapiro has so far outraised Garrity 30-1, and top Pennsylvania Republicans have said they want to see Garrity fundraising more aggressively nationally.

    Facing an uphill battle against Gov. Josh Shapiro’s $30 million war chest, Stacy Garrity still has to convince top Republicans she’s worth investing in

    Kolodny said Garrity’s low fundraising is a reflection of the state of the race: Republicans put up a weak candidate in 2022 against Shapiro during his first run for governor, and now many powerful donors want to keep the relationship they have formed with Shapiro over the last three years.

    “That will reflect as a lack of enthusiasm for her,” Kolodny said. “Now she could turn that around, but from what I see, I don’t see her that much, only recently. She had the last six months; she could have done a lot more.”

    Controversy over donations tied to associates of Jeffrey Epstein

    Shapiro’s top contributions from individual donors also included a $500,000 check from Reid Hoffman, the Silicon Valley-based billionaire cofounder of LinkedIn. His name showed up thousands of times in the trove of documents recently released by the U.S. Department of Justice related to the investigation into financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

    Garrity has highlighted the donations Shapiro received from Hoffman, and has publicly called on Shapiro to return the tech billionaire’s campaign contributions from last year and prior years, totaling more than $2 million since 2021.

    Hoffman has claimed he had only a fundraising relationship with Epstein, but publicly admitted he had visited his island. He has not been charged with wrongdoing.

    A spokesperson for Shapiro said Garrity should “stop playing politics with the Epstein files.”

    “Donald Trump is mentioned in the files over 5,000 times. Is she going to ask him to rescind his endorsement?” asked Manuel Bonder, Shapiro’s spokesperson.

    Garrity has previously downplayed Trump’s appearance in the Epstein files, and argued that Democrats would have released them much sooner if there was clear evidence of Trump partaking in any inappropriate behavior.

    Trump endorsed Garrity for governor last month.

    GOP candidate for Pennsylania Governor, Stacy Garrity and Jason Richey hold up their arms in Harrisburg, Pa., Saturday, February 7, 2026. The PA State Republican Committee endorsed the two in their quest for the governor’s mansion. (For the Inquirer/Kalim A. Bhatti)

    If Shapiro were to return the funds from Hoffman, it would be bad for Garrity, Kolodny said, because she has made very few other political attacks against him.

    “That’s her [main] issue,” she said.

  • The lying is out of control. People need to go to prison.

    The lying is out of control. People need to go to prison.

    Even by the pitifully low standards of the fact-free government of the United States, this one was a whopper.

    Last month, agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) showed up at a Minneapolis hospital emergency room with a 31-year-old Mexican immigrant named Alberto Castañeda Mondragón who’d suffered severe head injuries.

    The ICE agents told the ER nurses, according to the Associated Press, that Mondragón “purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall.” But doctors could immediately see that the official version made zero sense, since their patient had multiple head injuries on the front, back, and side — not consistent with a fall or a collision.

    Under oath, the feds suddenly switched to passive voice, as an ICE deportation officer said only in a sworn statement that Mondragón “had a head injury that required emergency medical treatment.” A judge ruled the arrest was unlawful — Mondragón had come to the U.S. legally and overstayed his visa — and ordered the man freed. Mondragón, who survived his eight skull fractures and brain bleeds and is suing the government, weeks later told an AP reporter his story of what really happened.

    “They started beating me right away when they arrested me,” he recounted, describing how immigration agents pulled him from a friend’s car at a St. Paul, Minn., shopping center on Jan. 8, then slammed him to the ground, handcuffed him, punched him, and whacked him with a steel baton. Mondragón said he was beaten again at a federal detention center, where his pleas for mercy were met by laughter and more blows.

    “There was never a wall,” he said.

    Alberto Castañeda Mondragón, who says in a lawsuit that he sustained eight skull fractures when he was beaten by ICE agents, poses for a portrait earlier this month in St. Paul, Minn.

    Mondragón’s narrative would be outrageous if it were an isolated incident, but this is simply one of the most egregious examples of falsehoods by an American secret police regime that has been caught in high-profile lies again and again. The best-known cases are the Minneapolis killings of Renee Good — where officials up to the president falsely claimed an agent was struck by a car and rushed to a hospital — and Alex Pretti, who was accused of brandishing a gun at federal agents, a lie that was instantly demolished when videos emerged.

    And these are just three of the many instances where a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agent or top official has offered a version of events — often backed up by sworn testimony — that soon fell apart.

    On Wednesday, another woman DHS had described as “a domestic terrorist” — Mirimar Martinez, the Chicago Montessori schoolteacher who was shot five times after a vehicle collision with ICE agents — presented powerful evidence of government lies as she pursues legal action against DHS and the agent who shot her, Charles Exum.

    Marimar Martinez (center) is greeted by her family after being released from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in October, after being shot by immigration agents and charged with assaulting federal officers in an incident in Chicago’s Brighton Park.

    Martinez, whose federal charges stemming from the encounter were later dropped, and her lawyer said that a federal diagram of the crash scene presented in court showed three other vehicles that do not exist, that the shots did not come through the front windshield as claimed by Exum, and that another claim — that Martinez had “rammed” Exum’s vehicle — was also false. Said her lawyer, Christopher Parente, “This is a time where you just cannot trust the words of our federal officials.”

    Ya think?

    Minneapolis ICE murder is Trump’s Waterloo in America’s war for the truth | Will Bunch

    Let’s not pretend to be so naive as to act as if official deceit began on the June 2015 day that Donald Trump descended on that Trump Tower escalator. It was the late 1960s — the era of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Vietnam “credibility gap” — when the investigative journalist I.F. Stone famously wrote, “All governments lie.” I became an opinion journalist because of my disgust over George W. Bush’s lies that drove the Iraq War.

    That said, the outrageous, Soviet-caliber falsehoods of the Trump regime feel much worse. These are not “plausible denial” fairy tales to push an unpopular policy or cover up some dirty deeds, like Watergate, but a vast empire of Big Lies — easily disprovable, about everything from election results to economic statistics — with a much more ambitious goal of undermining the very notion of objective reality.

    This fish stinks from the head. That Trump was elected a second time after the Washington Post (remember them?) chronicled some 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first four years was essentially America’s drive-through order of a Double Whopper.

    The nation seems to have all but given up on challenging Trump’s absurd claims that he won Minnesota three times (although he actually lost three times), or his fact-free insistence that his tariff policies have sparked $18 trillion in new investments, just to name two instances. But America’s liar-in-chief has also offered fresh inspiration to his underlings.

    One would be hard-pressed to find a more blatant case of highest-level lying than the matter of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased financier and sex trafficker. When the Trump regime’s cover-up of its massive Epstein files became a big story last summer, Lutnick, a former Wall Street CEO who lived next door to Epstein in Manhattan, told a podcast that he’d briefly visited Epstein’s home in 2005, and was revulsed at the sight of a massage table. He insisted that he then decided, “I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.”

    This was an epic lie.

    We now know — thanks to the congressionally mandated (but still incomplete) release of the Epstein files — that Lutnick and his family and entourage stopped for lunch at Epstein’s Caribbean island in 2012, and that this was one of many contacts — about meeting for drinks, or philanthropic contributions — the two men had almost up until Epstein’s arrest and jail cell death in 2019.

    There’s no evidence Lutnick committed any crime — beyond telling a massive and now discredited lie to the American people he purportedly serves. In Europe, heads are rolling for far less, but Lutnick has “the full confidence” of the president. That fact, bobbing above a vast MAGA sea of lies, should make us ask some hard questions as a nation.

    Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick listens during an event with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office in February.

    The current consensus — honored mainly in the breach — that lying is wrong, or bad, does not go nearly far enough. Perhaps it muddies the water that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled it is First Amendment-protected free speech when private citizens utter things that aren’t true. But official deceit is a different category.

    “The government’s lies can be devastating,” a leading scholar — University of Colorado law professor Helen Norton — wrote in a powerful 2015 article, arguing that official government dishonesty is fundamentally unconstitutional. Norton noted that false testimony and evidence in criminal cases — what we’ve seen frequently in the immigration terror campaign — is a violation of the Constitution’s due process clause, while invented allegations that aim to silence critics are offenses against constitutionally protected free speech.

    It’s a felony to lie in federal court cases, or when testifying under oath before Congress, or in other types of governmental proceedings. And the federal statute of limitations for perjury is five years — plenty of time for a liberated U.S. Department of Justice to pursue these many cases if democratic forces can win back the White House in 2028.

    But we should also recognize that top officials who tell deliberate lies are abusing their power in ways that, as Norton rightly argues, are grossly unconstitutional. When Noem lies to the American people about Good and how she was killed by ICE, she should resign or be impeached. When Lutnick looks into a camera and offers complete fiction about his friendship with the world’s most notorious sex trafficker, he, too, should quit immediately, or face impeachment.

    Norton, in her prescient article from 11 years ago, notes that beyond the specific wrongs against individuals — such as Mondragón, Martinez, Good, and Pretti — that occur when the government lies, there is a much broader problem: the loss of public trust.

    Indeed, the steep decline of public faith not only in government but in other civic institutions began with those official lies about Vietnam and Watergate, and the flawed probes into the John F. Kennedy assassination. It was those and other countless moments of scatheless lying by those in power that created the rubble Trump marched over in 2016.

    We won’t get anything resembling democracy until we clear that widespread debris, and that means sending a bunch of these liars to prison, because they are the real criminals. America desperately needs truth and consequences.

  • Medicaid insurer AmeriHealth Caritas is closing its PerformRx PBM at the end of this year

    AmeriHealth Caritas, one of the nation’s largest Medicaid insurers, is closing its in-house pharmacy benefits manager, PerformRx, by the end of this year, the Newtown Square company said in an announcement to employees Wednesday.

    Health insurers effectively subcontract with pharmacy benefit managers to oversee drug benefits. They have become increasingly powerful cogs in healthcare and face new restrictions under a law signed by President Donald Trump this month.

    OptumRx, a unit of UnitedHealth Group Inc. and one of the three largest PBMs, is scheduled to take over for PerformRx on Jan. 1. OptumRx already provides PBM services to the majority owner of AmeriHealth Caritas, Independence Health Group. Independence is best known for its Independence Blue Cross business.

    “This decision reflects evolving market and regulatory landscape, not the performance or dedication of our PerformRx leadership or associates,” the AmeriHealth Caritas announcement to staff said.

    Caritas said in a statement to The Inquirer that it expected a “limited impact on jobs, with many functions remaining in-house to support the same high-quality experience for members and providers.”

    The company did not elaborate on the market and regulatory changes that precipitated the decision to close PerformRx, which Caritas formed in 1999. PerformRx has contracts in 13 states, including Pennsylvania and Delaware, according to the Caritas website.

    One of those states is California, where a new law took effect Jan. 1 that prohibits PBMs from charging health plans, including Medicaid plans, more than they pay the pharmacy for a drug. PBMs are still allowed to change a flat administrative fee in the state.

    Independence owns 61.3% of AmeriHealth Caritas. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan owns the rest. Caritas accounted for about three-quarters of Independence’s $32 billion in revenue in 2024. The former CEO of AmeriHealth Caritas, Kelly A. Munson, succeeded Gregory E. Deavens in the top job at Independence last year.

  • Philly DA Larry Krasner casts doubt on running against Mayor Cherelle Parker

    Philly DA Larry Krasner casts doubt on running against Mayor Cherelle Parker

    Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner on Wednesday dismissed rumors that he may challenge Mayor Cherelle L. Parker when she will face reelection next year, and he said in a statement that he is focused on his job as the city’s top prosecutor.

    Krasner, who last year won his third term as district attorney and has cultivated a national brand, told The Inquirer that talk he might challenge the incumbent divides the city’s leadership.

    His statement came after the news website Axios Philly reported that some political insiders were floating Krasner’s name as a potential mayoral contender.

    “Especially in these times, all Philadelphia residents need to stand together and work together for Philly,” Krasner said. “Not sure whose agenda this narrative serves, but there’s nothing new about insiders stirring things up to benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else.”

    Talk of Parker facing a potential primary challenge ramped up in recent days after the mayor’s political action committee filed a campaign finance report showing she had raised $1.7 million last year, a striking sum for a sitting mayor two years out from a reelection bid.

    Mayor Cherelle Parker’s campaign raised an eye-popping $1.7 million last year though she won’t face reelection until 2027
    In this 2024 file photo, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker is flanked by Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel and District Attorney Larry Krasner during a news conference.

    The fundraising report fueled speculation among the city’s political class that Parker, a centrist Democrat who is backed by much of the party establishment, may be expecting a challenge in the primary.

    A progressive would be a natural fit for a challenger. The city’s left has opposed some of Parker’s initiatives, including her law enforcement-driven plan to address the Kensington drug market. Activists have also been critical of Parker’s cautious approach to President Donald Trump, whom she generally avoids attacking directly.

    Krasner, 64, is the most prominent progressive in the city. He won reelection last year in landslide fashion, and he has positioned himself as the city’s most vocal Trump opponent, often drawing comparisons between the federal government and 20th-century fascism.

    And several past district attorneys have run for mayor, including Ed Rendell, who went on to serve two terms in City Hall and then was elected governor of Pennsylvania.

    But for Krasner, any run at Parker would be tricky.

    Krasner, who is white, has been successful in electoral politics in large part because of support from the city’s significant bloc of Black voters, politicians, and clergy. Those groups are also key to the base of support that has backed Parker, who comes from a long line of Black politicians hailing from the city’s Northwest.

    Allies of the district attorney say a better fit — if he decided to seek higher office — could be running for a federal seat.

    Political observers have suggested a handful of Democrats, including Krasner, could run for the U.S. Senate seat currently occupied by Sen. John Fetterman. The Democratic senator, who will be up for reelection in 2028, has an independent streak and has angered many in the party for at times siding with Republicans.

    Several other Democrats have been floated as potential contenders for the seat, including U.S. Reps. Brendan Boyle, of Philadelphia, and Chris Deluzio, whose Western Pennsylvania district includes Allegheny County. Some have also speculated that former U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, also of Western Pennsylvania, could run.

    Fetterman has not said whether he intends to run for reelection. Left-leaning organizations have already pledged to back a primary challenger against him.

  • Will we stand up for immigrants and democracy?

    Will we stand up for immigrants and democracy?

    As a Pennsylvanian who works with immigrants on the U.S.-Mexico border, I urge people of goodwill in the Keystone State and beyond to stand up for immigrants in our country. Our democracy depends on it.

    I am a Sister of Mercy of the Americas, a Catholic order that has accompanied immigrants in Pennsylvania, across the United States, and internationally since 1843. We take seriously the Gospel command to “welcome the stranger.”

    On the border, I am a community worker. Part of my ministry is to help immigrants in the United States apply for citizenship or renew their legal permanent residence and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) status.

    Migrants are arrested at the Texas-Mexico border in 2024. Migrants’ lives have become a nightmare, writes Sister Patricia Mulderick.

    Most are doing everything they can to follow the rules, to attain or hold on to legal status. But their lives have become a living nightmare, and their plight fills me with anguish.

    Migrant workers in Texas are terrified of being picked up in the fields, where they toil 12 hours a day under the hot sun to pick melons, onions, carrots, and other fresh produce destined for grocery stores and our kitchen tables around the country, anonymous but vital to our economy and way of life.

    The migrants left in Mexico are in limbo, denied hearings by U.S. immigration officials and often unable to return to their home countries.

    “You could send me a limousine with a marching band, and I could not return,” one man said to me. “I would be dead within 24 hours.” And a woman I know sold everything she owned to make the journey north — she has nothing to go back to.

    On the U.S. side of the border, people are being terrorized by masked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stalking our neighborhoods. One elderly woman who has worked in the fields for four decades hid in her bedroom as they pounded on her front door. Neighbors alerted a women’s group I am part of, and members asked to see the agents’ warrant. It turned out ICE was looking for someone else. I shudder to think what would have happened if those brave advocates had not stepped up.

    I first learned about the bonds between democracy and our nation of immigrants at my public school in the coal regions. The brutality and terror inflicted by security forces all around our country are un-American.

    When Pennsylvanians helped unite 13 colonies into one country by inviting new Americans to Philadelphia’s Independence Hall to debate and sign the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, they knew their “experiment” in self-governance wasn’t guaranteed. Ben Franklin famously said that Americans had “a republic, if you can keep it.” We must again help lead the way.

    Pennsylvanians take pride in being standard-bearers for liberty. We also value the vital contributions newcomers make in our state, in industries ranging from construction and hospitality to high-tech.

    More than ever, we must stand up for immigrants and democracy together. We must hold our nation to the ideals inscribed on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

    We must not lose hope. But we cannot sit idle.

    The Sisters of Mercy have spoken out on the cruel treatment of our immigrant brothers and sisters under this administration, as have the U.S. bishops in a powerful statement, and Pope Leo XIV, who emphasized that immigrants arriving in strange lands “must not find the coldness of indifference or the stigma of discrimination!”

    Pope Leo and I met in the 1980s, when he was the young priest Father Robert Prevost, and we both were serving in Peru. His humility and concern for people living in poverty moved me deeply.

    In Mexico recently, I held hands with a woman who wept after her immigration hearing — scheduled for the day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration — was canceled by the president on his first day in office. This woman had lived in a tent for eight months, waiting to cross legally.

    “Your president says we are criminals, but I have never broken a law in my life,” she told me. “They seem to hate us, but I will not hate back. I will not let hate win.”

    Will we?

    Sister Patricia Mulderick is a member of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, the largest order of Catholic religious women in the United States. She serves in both Pennsylvania and Texas.

  • Chrissy Houlahan calls Trump administration’s failed attempt to indict her and other lawmakers for video an ‘abuse of power’

    Chrissy Houlahan calls Trump administration’s failed attempt to indict her and other lawmakers for video an ‘abuse of power’

    U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan said it’s unclear what crime the Department of Justice was trying to charge her with when a grand jury refused an indictment over a video in which she, with five other Democratic colleagues, called on service members to “refuse illegal orders.”

    “The regular American people that comprised the grand jury saw this for what it was, which was kind of a spurious misuse, abuse of the power of the federal government against the people,” Houlahan, of Chester, said in an interview Wednesday.

    “It’s not about me or my colleagues,” continued Houlahan, a former Air Force officer. “It’s about the fact that the Constitution allows for all of us to be treated as equals, and all of us to have the freedom to speak with freedom.”

    The Justice Department investigated the six Democratic lawmakers who made the video, all of whom previously served in the military or intelligence agencies. But a Washington grand jury would not sign off on charges on Tuesday, The Associated Press reported.

    It’s a setback for President Donald Trump’s administration, which has targeted the lawmakers in a variety of ways since November, when the president claimed the video was an act of sedition.

    Houlahan said none of the Democrats’ lawyers could identify what charges could have legitimately been brought against them.

    “Collectively, we all, of course, have unfortunately had to secure lawyers in this process,” she said. “And to a person, none of them could come up really with what it was that we had purportedly done. And clearly the people in the grand jury saw the same thing.”

    The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

    U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio, an Allegheny County Democrat who also appeared in the video, said in an interview Wednesday he is “not surprised at all” by the grand jury’s decision.

    “The fact that the Trump administration and their lawyers want to try to charge us with crimes for stating the law and saying words that they don’t like is outrageous, and of course, not something that you should be able to throw people in prison for,” said Deluzio, who served in the Navy.

    In a news conference Wednesday, some of the lawmakers suggested legal action against the Trump administration is on the table.

    “There will be accountability, and they should be preserving documents, preparing for what’s coming,” Deluzio said.

    U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio speaks to a large crowd in front of the Beaver County Courthouse in April 2025 wearing a hat that says “don’t give up the ship.”

    Trump accused the Democratic lawmakers of sedition “punishable by death” after they posted the video in November, warning service members and intelligence workers to “refuse illegal orders.” In the video, the Democrats urged service members and intelligence professionals not to “give up the ship,” a sentiment Deluzio repeated Tuesday night.

    The phrase, which Deluzio has long referenced, is a rallying cry that’s hung on the wall at the Naval Academy’s Memorial Hall.

    “It’s a phrase that means a lot, and it means a lot in this moment of great stress to our country — that this thing is worth our efforts and that we should not give it up,” Deluzio said in the Wednesday interview.

    What does sedition actually mean? Here’s what to know about Trump’s accusation against Democratic lawmakers.

    The Democrats did not mention any specific orders in the video, but lawmakers who appeared in the video expressed concerns at the time about strikes on boats in the Caribbean and National Guard operations in U.S. cities.

    Houlahan said they continue to be concerned about “the unlawfulness of the administration.”

    The video also included U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich.), a former CIA officer; U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.), a former Navy captain; U.S. Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D., N.H.), a former intelligence officer; and U.S. Rep. Jason Crow (D., Colo.), a former paratrooper and Army Ranger.

    The lawmakers were contacted by the FBI late last year.

    Federal prosecutors unsuccessfully tried to secure the indictment against all six lawmakers in the video, The New York Times reported. The office that pursued the case is led U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox News personality who served as district attorney in Westchester County, N.Y., during the 1990s and early 2000s.

    Grand jury rejections are extraordinarily rare, but have occurred repeatedly in recent months in Washington, as citizens who have heard the government’s evidence have come away underwhelmed in a number of cases. Prosecutors could try again to secure an indictment.

    Attention on the lawmakers’ video escalated days after they initially posted it when Trump began his social media tirade in November.

    “This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country,” he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???”

    He also shared posts from supporters calling for retribution against the Democrats, including one that said, “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!” and another calling them domestic terrorists.

    Houlahan said at the time she was “profoundly disappointed” in her GOP colleagues for not defending the Democrats, a sentiment she repeated on Wednesday.

    “The fact that the president and the people around him, in hearing a reminder about the law, reacted the way they did, which is to call for our death, arrest, to try to imprison us, tells me more about them than I could ever know,” Deluzio said Wednesday.

    “A normal person, a normal president, would be reminding their troops of their obligations to follow the law as well because they care about the rule of law,” he added.

    Houlahan and Deluzio reported bomb threats at their district offices after Trump went on offense in November.

    Trump told Fox News Radio that he was “not threatening death, but I think they’re in serious trouble,” adding that, “in the old days, it was death.”

    His administration has cited a different military law that says orders are presumed to be lawful and the importance of “good order and discipline.”

    “Their foolish screed sows doubt and confusion — which only puts our warriors in danger,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the time.

    Kelly, the only lawmaker who served long enough to officially retire and therefore falls under The Pentagon’s jurisdiction, is in a another fight with Trump’s administration over the video.

    Hegseth has censured Kelly for participating in the video and is trying to retroactively demote him from his retired rank of captain.

    In response, Kelly is suing Hegseth to block those proceedings, calling them an unconstitutional act of retribution. During a hearing last week, the judge appeared to be skeptical of key arguments that a government attorney made in defense of Kelly’s Jan. 5 censure by Hegseth.

    This article contains reporting from The Associated Press