Gov. Tony Evers sent a letter Thursday to President Donald Trump and Wisconsin’s congressional delegation urging the White House to resolve delays in the processing of applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. 

The DACA program has existed since the administration of President Barack Obama and allows people who were brought to the country as children without documentation to live and work in the U.S. 

There are 500,000 DACA recipients across the country and more than 5,000 in Wisconsin. The Trump administration has put their renewal applications on “processing holds.” For some of the program’s participants, those holds have now pushed their renewal beyond the deadline, putting their ability to obtain work permits and driver’s licenses at risk. 

Since its inception in 2012, the DACA program has been broadly popular among Democrats and Republicans. Earlier this year, Evers signed into law a bipartisan bill that allows DACA recipients to obtain occupational licenses from the state. 

But Trump attempted to end the program during his first term and amid his administration’s harsh crackdown on immigration, DACA recipients have been detained and deported despite their legal status. The delays in application processing have put even more people in legal limbo. 

“Mr. President, I urge you to end this harmful practice by your administration and resume expeditious processing and renewal of DACA applications,” Evers wrote. “And to Wisconsin’s Republican congressional delegation, I urge you to stand up for Wisconsin’s Dreamers, who will be or are up for renewals, and join me in demanding that the Trump Administration immediately identify and resolve the source of these unconscionable delays and resume processing and renewal of DACA applications, as Senator Baldwin, Congressman Pocan, and Congresswoman Moore have done. These hardworking members of our community should not endure the consequences of the Trump Administration’s failure to uphold the DACA program to basic standards.”

WASHINGTON — One day after President Donald Trump attended the dignified transfer of the remains of four U.S. service members killed as a result of the Iran conflict, the two chambers of Congress were at odds over whether to rein in the president’s military powers in the monthslong war.

While members of the U.S. House approved a War Powers Resolution 214-208, with four Republicans joining all Democrats, lawmakers in the U.S. Senate rejected the measure by a slim margin of 47-49, though two senators who previously supported the measure did not vote.

Trump reignited the conflict earlier this month, rupturing a ceasefire during 60-day negotiations between the U.S. and Iran to end the war. The countries have since been trading rocket fire on a near-daily basis.

The most recent deaths of U.S. soldiers in the conflict bring the total killed to 18. Three service members were killed July 17 and July 18 in an Iranian strike at a U.S. airbase in Jordan, and a fourth was killed during a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone July 19 at a U.S. base in Iraq. 

The dignified transfer, in which the remains of soldiers are transferred from an aircraft arriving from the theater of operations back to the United States, occurred at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The soldiers were identified by the Pentagon as:

• Army 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii
• Army Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas
• Army Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad, 28, of Ozone Park, New York
• Army Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, 30, of Fayetteville, North Carolina

Gas prices shoot back up

Economic fallout is also center stage again as Iran has choked off nearly all traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world’s petroleum traveled prior to the war. 

Oil reached over $100 a barrel Thursday, and AAA clocked gas prices at $4.09 a gallon across the U.S.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who prefers the title secretary of War, told Senate appropriators Tuesday the war has so far cost $37.5 billion. The administration has requested an additional $67 billion.

Dissident Republicans

House Republicans who sided with Democrats to stop Trump’s military action in Iran included Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Warren Davidson of Ohio and Tom Barrett of Michigan. 

In the Senate, Republicans Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rand Paul of Kentucky, who both voted “yes” for some or all of the dozen Iran War Powers Resolutions considered so far during the conflict, did not vote.

A spokesperson for Murkowski said the senator returned to Alaska Wednesday for a family emergency. Paul’s office did not immediately respond regarding the reason for his absence.

Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican locked in a tough reelection race, supported the measure Thursday.

As he has on all previous votes to curb the president’s war powers in Iran, Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., opposed the resolution, which some argue is not legal.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in early May that the 1973 War Powers Resolution is “unconstitutional.” 

Congress overruled President Richard Nixon’s veto of the measure meant to rein in his actions during the Vietnam War.

According to Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell on Monday, 100 troops have been injured since July 7, and 96% have returned to work. 

The department’s Defense Casualty Analysis System only identifies five injuries during Operation Epic Fury in July, and 420 total since the conflict began Feb. 28.

WASHINGTON — Members of the U.S. Senate tasked with advancing acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination to be the nation’s top law enforcer on Thursday pushed the vote one week.

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s delayed vote to send the controversial nominee to the full Senate is “per standard committee practice,” according to a spokesperson for Chairman Chuck Grassley.

The Iowa Republican and the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., used the time that had been allocated for the vote to comment at length on Blanche’s nomination. Grassley then recessed the session because too many Republicans were absent, which he described as “kind of rude.”

Grassley praised the selection of Blanche and said the Justice Department under his leadership as deputy and acting attorney general “has protected Americans at every turn,” but that committee Democrats “like clockwork, sought to defame him.”

Democratic committee member Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey led a forum Wednesday featuring former Department of Justice officials and a survivor of abuse by the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. 

The witnesses questioned Blanche’s fitness to lead the Justice Department following his handling of the Epstein files release, during which several victims’ identities were unmasked, and his role is establishing a nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund as part of President Donald Trump’s settlement with his own administration’s IRS.

Durbin said Thursday he and fellow Democrats oppose Blanche, who worked as Trump’s personal defense lawyer prior to his appointment to the DOJ, because he “will continue to serve the interests of Donald Trump, not the American people.”

Sen. Darline Graham joins

Committee members were scheduled to address other business, including voting on federal judicial nominees in Ohio and Oklahoma, and approving subcommittee roles for Republican Sen. Darline Graham, sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. She was sworn in as a senator July 14 following the sudden death of her brother.

The committee meeting marked the first for Graham, who was not yet part of the panel when members questioned Blanche for nearly five hours during a confirmation hearing July 15. Her arrival on the GOP-led committee brings the split among members back to 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats and is likely a positive development for Blanche.

Nominations require a majority vote to advance to the Senate floor. All eyes are on whether committee Republicans Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who announced his retirement last year, and John Cornyn of Texas will support Blanche after Trump effectively ended both of their Senate careers.

Trump subjected Tillis to intense criticism for opposing the Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025 and said he would find candidates to oppose Tillis in his primary. Trump endorsed Cornyn’s primary opponent earlier this year.

Both Tillis and Cornyn pressed Blanche during his confirmation hearing about formally ending the “anti-weaponization” fund. 

While Cornyn was present at Thursday morning’s Judiciary Committee meeting, Tillis was one of several members missing. Grassley’s spokesperson attributed Tillis’ absence to a Senate Banking Committee meeting that convened just a half hour before the scheduled Judiciary Committee meeting. Tillis’ office did not immediately respond to a question about his absence.

Blanche was a prosecutor in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York from 2006 to 2014. 

He eventually left the Justice Department to work in private law and represented Trump as his personal defense attorney in three criminal cases in 2023 and 2024. 

Trump, with the approval of Senate Republicans, installed Blanche as deputy attorney general in March 2025. 

Trump announced Blanche as his pick for attorney general in early June, just over two months after former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s departure. 

A federal judge ruled late last week that the Trump administration had acted illegally last summer when it cut millions in federal grant money. 

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in the District of Massachusetts ruled on Friday that the White House’s Office of Management and Budget does not have the authority to revoke grants on a whim. OMB had argued that a line in the federal regulations gave the White House authority to cancel grants to account for shifts in priorities. 

Talwani found that the agency couldn’t cancel grants to achieve priorities that were announced after the grants had been awarded. 

Wisconsin was joined by 22 other states and Washington D.C. in filing a lawsuit against OMB pulling back grant funds. The Wisconsin Department of Justice noted in a press release that the state had lost tens of millions of dollars in federal grant funding meant to help provide Wisconsin-grown food to local food banks, modernize the state’s unemployment system and fund research at UW-Madison. 

“The Trump administration has been recklessly attempting to slash funding that supports important programs,” said Attorney General Josh Kaul. “This decision shuts down an unlawful avenue that the Trump administration was using to try to impose those cuts.”

The nation’s election infrastructure is vulnerable to cyberattacks by foreign actors, President Donald Trump said during a primetime address Thursday night, citing a batch of documents he declassified — but providing no proof broad interference actually occurred or affected an election outcome.

Democrats and advocates quickly criticized the remarks as another attempt by Trump to give Republicans an advantage in crucial midterm elections and sow distrust of results, following his firing of members of the Election Assistance Commission, demands by his administration for state voter rolls, an executive order limiting mail-in ballots and more.

Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and some non-state groups “have the capability to compromise U.S. election infrastructure,” Trump said, quoting one of the documents, which were compiled by White House and intelligence community staff. The document said its authors did not know if any adversaries planned to interfere in elections.

Trump claimed that voter rolls in at least 18 states were “bought, stolen, or hacked by China” ahead of the 2020 election. The attempted methods of interference, he said, ranged from influencing voters to trying to produce fake ballots in favor of Democratic nominee Joe Biden.  

Standing behind a lectern at the White House, Trump said during the 2020 election, the People’s Republic of China carried out the “largest compromise of election data in history,” and said varyingly that China had illicitly accessed tens of millions or up to 220 million voters’ personal data. 

“Our purpose in disclosing this information is not to weaken confidence in (elections), but to earn that confidence by confronting vulnerabilities and correcting them very, very quickly,” he said. “And that’s what we’re doing.”

Trump announced he was immediately declassifying five sets of documents that he said proved foreign interference in the election and 2018 midterms, as well as “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure.” 

“Just as disturbingly, this vital information has, for many years, been covered up and hidden from you, the American people,” he said.

He claimed that the election vulnerabilities were known by members of the “deep state” who included top members of the intelligence community and worked to hide “the extent of China’s sinister election meddling,” including while he was president prior to and during the 2020 election. 

He further accused Biden’s Department of Justice of killing any investigation into the matter and preventing its disclosure. 

The documents were posted on a whitehouse.gov webpage Thursday evening.

Trump also said the vulnerabilities were another reason to pass the SAVE America Act, a bill that in its various versions would restrict voter access by adding requirements to register and cast ballots, including photo IDs. The bill, which is stalled in the U.S. Senate, does not include funding for election security infrastructure. 

Midterms impact

Many Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, said the remarks were not about the 2020 cycle, but were ultimately meant to undermine confidence ahead of this year’s midterms.

“Trump knows he has lost American families,” Schumer said in a statement following the address. “He knows he has made their lives more expensive, endangered their friends & families with an unnecessary war, and embarrassed the country on the global stage. And rather than pivot his policies, he is working to rig the midterms before a single vote has even been cast. We won’t let him.”

Former vice president and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris wrote shortly before Trump’s speech that he wanted the American people to believe their vote does not matter. 

“He wants you to lose confidence in our electoral system so you stay home this November,” she wrote on X. “He knows how discontent the American people are, and he wants to make sure that you do not vote.” 

Election forecasters say the most likely result of the midterms is that the GOP retains control of the U.S. Senate and Democrats gain a majority in the House.

Chinese meddling attempts

During his roughly 25-minute-long remarks, Trump avoided explicitly repeating his debunked claims the 2020 election was rigged, only implying it at one point.

“We’re taking swift action to ensure that sensitive voter data is better protected so we can never be bought, we can never be hacked, and we can never watch a stolen election again,” he said.

Instead, Trump said the documents showed U.S. elections are “vulnerable to being rigged and stolen.”

He said China did try to meddle with voter registration and influenced public opinion against him by paying U.S. journalists “large sums of money to write more negative articles about him.” He did not say that was the reason he lost the election and he did not identify the journalists.

According to the Election Assistance Commission, voter rolls are sometimes commercially available and are often obtainable through public records requests. 

Trump said another set of documents revealed a scheme by a get-out-the-vote group in Muskegon, Michigan, to file fraudulent voter registrations. He did not say the scheme, which has been discredited, affected any votes counted in Michigan’s 2020 election.

In a statement, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, said the state’s elections “are safe and secure.”

“Any suggestion otherwise is designed to undermine our voters’ basic rights,” she said.

Trump also claimed that 278,000 non-citizens are registered to vote in the U.S., citing a Department of Homeland Security report released shortly before his speech. That figure may be higher, he claimed, because Democratic-led states have not shared their voter information. 

The White House documents released Thursday link to a one-page document created by the department, which cites a “review” of voter information in four states: California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada. It does not reference any specific data. 

Throughout his speech, Trump took aim at the media, including NBC News and ABC News, which had both said they would not broadcast his speech live. CBS ultimately broadcast a portion of his speech in a special report after it began. 

2020 claims

Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election began almost immediately after his loss. 

Trump and his allies filed dozens of lawsuits challenging the results of the election, nearly all of which were dropped or thrown out for lack of evidence. 

The post-election campaign culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by Trump’s supporters on the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to disrupt Congress’ certification of Electoral College results. A U.S. House committee investigating the attack concluded Trump was responsible for inciting it by knowingly lying to his supporters about the election results. 

The investigation also found Trump sought to use Department of Justice resources and his influence among state-level Republicans to reverse the results.

Trump also faced a federal indictment for his conduct leading up to the riot. That prosecution was dropped when he won the 2024 election. After returning to office last year, Trump also pardoned everyone convicted of charges related to the attack.

Dems push back: ‘totally bogus’ 

Immediately after Trump’s remarks, Democrats slammed the president’s claims about China’s election interference. 

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said in a post on X that the “shocking ‘bombshells’ about China are totally bogus.” 

“The fact is our intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that China did not even try to change a single vote in the 2020 election,” he wrote. “A single concurring opinion suggested China may have tried to sway voters’ opinions… but that’s been public knowledge since 2021.”

During his speech, Trump, without evidence, cast doubt on the integrity of the Los Angeles mayoral race and the state’s recent gubernatorial race. 

California’s primary election was Tuesday, June 2, but election officials are allowed to take roughly a month to complete vote counting. The lengthy process is a product of the state’s large population, as well as its reliance on voting by mail. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom echoed other Democratic officials and said the speech, which he described as “the ramblings of a mad king,” was about the midterms. 

“Before a single vote has been cast, he’s already laying the groundwork to rig this election and convince YOU not to trust the results if they don’t go his way,” he said. “Don’t fall for it.” 

Last week, for a brief, beautiful span of days, all three of our young-adult daughters were immersed in nature, reveling in the delicious freedom of summertime. One, a camp counselor, was leading a group on a two-week trek through Yellowstone National Park. She sent us photos of the mountains, campfires, sweaty, grinning campers, a herd of bison they encountered by the side of the road. The other two sisters were on a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. They paddled from lake to lake, fell asleep to the sound of loons, woke up early to plunge in the crystal clear water.

Just as all three girls were ending their trips, more than a dozen wildfires swept through the Superior National Forest, prompting the Forest Service to close all entry points to the Boundary Waters. Some visitors were stranded. Eight Forest Service rangers paddled in to rescue people throughout the 150-mile stretch of wilderness on the U.S.-Canadian border. Our daughter who led the trip to Yellowstone returned to her base camp in Grand Marais, Minnesota, to learn that further trips have been canceled. A group of campers who were stuck in the Boundary Waters had to be rescued by helicopter. The smoke was chokingly thick. “It feels like the apocalypse,” she texted.

In Madison we woke up Thursday morning to the stinging haze of wildfire smoke blanketing the city, drifting down on us from the same forest fires.

The abrupt end of summer’s idyll is a heartache, not just for the immediate shock, but for what it means — a world on fire, a feeling of dread of the losses to come. There is no escape from the rapidly accelerating disasters caused by climate change. All of us are touched by it in our interconnected world. Yet somehow, we can’t get our act together to respond. As a country, we seem determined to kid ourselves about what we are seeing with our own eyes. Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Republican candidate for governor, has called warnings about extreme weather triggered by climate change “doomsaying, sky-is-falling rhetoric.”

Last summer, Tiffany and fellow Wisconsin Republican U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, along with three of their Republican colleagues from Minnesota wrote a letter to the Canadian embassy to complain that wildfire smoke was ruining summer across the Midwest.

“In our neck of the woods, summer months are the best time of the year to spend time outdoors recreating, enjoying time with family, and creating new memories, but this wildfire smoke makes it difficult to do all those things,” Tiffany and his colleagues wrote, demanding to know what the Canadians planned to do about it. Tens of thousands of Canadians were being displaced by raging fires at the time. “With all the technology that we have at our disposal, both in preventing and fighting wildfires, this worrisome trend can be reversed if proper action is taken,” Tiffany and his colleagues wrote.

Wildfires are getting worse because of climate change. The problem is particularly acute for Canada, where the Arctic region is rapidly warming and hotter, drier summers are turning forest land into a tinderbox, where a stray lightning strike can start a conflagration. The same thing is happening in the Superior National Forest this summer, where the fires are caused by lightning and the hot, dry conditions that are not letting up.

Instead of working to mitigate the threat, the Trump administration has dismantled the arm of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that researches wildfires and other climate-related threats, as well as the Forest Service’s firefighting teams. In 2025, the Forest Service lost nearly 6,000 employees. Trump’s fiscal year 2027 budget aims to cut the Forest Service budget by 75%. 

Tiffany’s scolding letter to Canada aside, the policies he has supported under Trump have directly increased fire hazards. To the eight rangers now searching the Boundary Waters for people trapped by the fires, the Forest Service office in Minnesota is hoping to add back some of the staff they’ve lost to Trump’s ill-advised reorganization and cuts. 

“We are actively trying through our existing staff to reach out to former staff that have retired or moved to another position off-forest that still have firefighting skills and credentials,” Forest Service spokesperson Christine Kolinski told the Minnesota Star Tribune. 

This summer’s fires are more than just a wake-up call. They are a five-alarm emergency alert. We are losing so much so fast. We all have a stake in facing it and acting now. It does no good to pretend the disaster isn’t happening or to blame our neighbors, as if they could fix things for us by getting out their rakes. The least we can demand of our political leaders is that they stop dismantling the only tools we have to fight the incineration of our world. We owe that much to every kid who looks forward to every future summer.

WASHINGTON — Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche vowed Wednesday to lawmakers on Capitol Hill that if he is confirmed for the top post, the Justice Department would not oppose an effort in Congress to permanently ban a controversial “anti-weaponization” fund.

Blanche also said he would consider any new information brought forward to the government about deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his ring of powerful associates. Multiple Epstein abuse survivors attended the Blanche confirmation hearing, some wearing t-shirts depicting the black bar redactions contained within the released files.

Blanche, who previously worked as President Donald Trump’s defense attorney, appeared before a tightly divided Senate Committee on the Judiciary. 

The Republican-led panel is now split 11-10 after the sudden death Saturday of South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham. A large bouquet of white roses was placed before his empty seat Wednesday.

Lawmakers volleyed partisan accusations about the weaponization of the Department of Justice under presidents from both parties. Missouri’s GOP Sen. Eric Schmitt called former Biden administration special counsel Jack Smith a “dirt bag” for his involvement in prosecuting Trump over allegations of colluding to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

But it was the plan for a nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund that brought tough questions for Blanche from two committee Republicans whose votes he needs to advance, Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. The fund was established in exchange for Trump dropping his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for the 2019 leak of his tax returns.

With a raised voice, Tillis said he wants “to stick a fork in this turkey of a 1776 fund,” referring to the administration’s choice of making the fund exactly $1.776 billion, adding the fund “should never be paid out.”

Confirmation fight

The acting attorney general faces a possible rocky road to confirmation in the narrowly divided full Senate, assuming he is advanced by Judiciary, depending on when Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell is released from hospitalization. Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine have previously opposed some items on Trump’s agenda.

Blanche’s confirmation will also be up to a handful of lame duck or retiring Republican senators whose future Senate careers were thwarted by Trump. They include Cornyn, a Texas Republican, and Bill Cassidy, R-La. Both recently lost primaries when Trump endorsed their opponents.

Blanche is a former federal prosecutor who switched to private law, eventually starting his own firm and representing Trump. 

Blanche defended Trump during a New York state jury trial on charges that the then-former president falsified business records when he paid adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Trump was found guilty on 34 felony charges in May 2024. 

Blanche then served as the deputy at DOJ in the second Trump administration, confirmed on a party-line vote, before being named acting AG after the departure in early June of Pam Bondi.

Trump and the Republican-led Senate have elevated the president’s former personal lawyers to high-level positions in the U.S. judicial system during his second term in office. 

In addition to appointing Blanche, the president nominated former defense attorney Emil Bove to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. 

The Senate, in a narrow 50-49 vote, confirmed Bove for the lifetime position in June 2025. Collins and Murkowski broke with Republicans to oppose Bove’s confirmation.

‘Anti-weaponization’ fund

Blanche caught heat from both sides of the aisle during the hourslong hearing for signing off on the “anti-weaponization” fund for claimants he previously described as “victims of lawfare.” 

Critics quickly pounced on what they called a “slush fund” for its likely future payouts to pardoned Jan. 6, 2021 defendants, including those who assaulted police officers during the attack aimed at halting Congress’ certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

Blanche maintains the administration scrapped the fund.

The acting attorney general sidestepped questions on whether he approved of Trump’s blanket pardon of roughly 1,600 defendants implicated in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“The Constitution gives the president the full power to pardon anybody for any reason,” Blanche said.

“You don’t question his decision?” ranking member Dick Durbin, D-Ill., asked.

Blanche repeated his answer.

Cornyn, displaying a blown-up copy of the IRS settlement deal, questioned Blanche on why the Department of Justice has not formally ended the fund.

“Has there been a written agreement of the parties to modify the settlement fund?” asked Cornyn.

“No, the settlement fund is just not moving forward. There’s no modification. It’s just, it never started. No money went from the Treasury to any other account,” Blanche replied.

“I’m under oath today, and I’ve said it’s dead repeatedly,” Blanche later said to Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat.

Tillis said, “I think that the courts are probably going to deal with it. But why should we waste the court capacity on this issue? If I could walk to the Senate floor with an agreed-to piece of text coming from the administration that just renders this whole thing dead?”

Blanche said the administration does “not object (to) that path.”

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, defended the arrangement to drop Trump’s IRS lawsuit as a “pretty darn good deal” that was settled “without the president receiving a single penny.”

Blanche met with angry Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill May 21 to sell the settlement fund as several protested it by holding out on the passage of a massive immigration funding bill to support Trump’s mass deportation agenda for the remainder of his term.

Blanche told House appropriators during a June 2 hearing that the administration would not move forward with the fund, but said he didn’t know “what that means to sign documents reversing” the fund.

Trump tax immunity

Trump’s settlement to drop his IRS lawsuit also indefinitely absolves him and his two plaintiff sons, Don Jr. and Eric, as well as the private Trump Organization, from government prosecutions and tax enforcement.

Democrats seized on the disparity. “Everyone in this room, all of us on this side, we have to follow the tax laws of the United States, and if we don’t, we can be held responsible for it to the point of even criminal prosecution,” Durbin said. 

“Why did you decide that President Trump and his family and their businesses should be exempt from that same responsibility?” the Illinois Democrat asked.

Blanche said the agreement was “typical” of settlements with the IRS, and that the agreement “included release of any past audits. It does not give any protection to the president, his family, or his organizations for any taxes they file.”

“It’s hard to explain to the American people that no one is above the law when that type of document was signed by you,” Durbin replied.

The Florida federal judge in the IRS case on Monday slammed Trump’s settlement with his own administration as using the presidency to “manipulate” the courts.

Epstein files

As expected, senators questioned the Justice Department’s handling of the legally mandated release of government files on Epstein, a process that critics and victims say fell short of full transparency and protection of victims’ identities.

Blanche defended the department’s “Herculean” effort in reviewing millions of documents related to the government’s federal investigation of Epstein 

“There were mistakes that were made, and so approximately 1% of the redactions had to be fixed after we released the Epstein files,” Blanche said. 

“Whenever we learned that any victim’s name had been improperly not redacted, we immediately took the document down and fixed it as soon as we could. That doesn’t excuse the mistakes of which I take responsibility, but it does mean that we tried to fix them,” Blanche said.

Durbin asked for a commitment that Blanche personally meet in the next month with 10 Epstein victims present at the hearing. Blanche said a sex trafficking prosecutor in his office is willing to meet any time, and that he is precluded from doing so because of ongoing litigation.

“We will never not talk to victims. We will never not do everything we can to prosecute anybody that committed any crimes against any of these women. … Any victim, if they’re here today, I would encourage them or their lawyers to meet with the FBI,” Blanche said.

“I think you ought to be in the room,” Durbin said.

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said he was “stunned” at Blanche’s refusal to meet personally with victims.

“But you did meet with Ghislaine Maxwell,” Booker said, referring to Blanche’s July 2025 meeting with the convicted sex trafficker and Epstein co-conspirator shortly before she was moved to a prison with less security.

Epstein survivors submitted six letters to the committee opposing Blanche’s nomination, and Durbin also submitted for the record a letter from 1,200 former career DOJ employees who served for both parties warning against confirming Blanche.

When prompted by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., to apologize to victims in the room, Blanche said his “heart breaks for every victim of any sexual crime, whether involving Mr. Epstein or somebody else.”

Pivoting the subject to a campaign refrain of Republicans, Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., said she appreciated Blanche’s “commitment” to the Epstein victims and that she wished Democrats “had that same level of conviction” for “families of those who have lost loved ones at the hands of illegal aliens.”

Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, entered a handful of letters in support of Blanche’s confirmation, including from law enforcement associations.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to resume traffic stops Wednesday, reversing a one-day pause on the policy after officers killed two immigrants who were in their vehicles in Texas and Maine.

In a post to social media, Trump called the practice of federal immigration officers conducting enforcement during traffic stops “one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective” tools. 

The Trump administration’s aggressive deportation campaign has led to an uptick in people killed by immigration officers, including at traffic stops.  

On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security ordered all federal immigration officers to pause vehicle-related enforcement after the killings of 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston on July 7 and 25-year-old Johan Sebastián in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday. 

Both men were stopped in their vehicles when federal immigration officers shot and killed them. Neither was an initial target of immigration enforcement, DHS said.

Monday’s shooting prompted a demand from Maine’s Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who is in the midst of a tight reelection race, for ICE to “cease all non-urgent vehicle stops.”

Trump said Democrats wanted the pause on immigration enforcement at traffic stops.

“The Radical Left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch,” he said. “I.C.E., be judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important job.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to detailed questions about the president’s directive. White House spokespeople did not immediately respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.

Congress calls for action

Monday’s shooting sparked calls for action among lawmakers, with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus advocating for dismantling of ICE and Maine’s congressional delegation pressing an independent watchdog to conduct an expedited investigation.

“Given the gravity of the situation and the understandable anxiety within the Biddeford community, we urge you to prioritize this investigation,” the Maine delegation wrote to DHS’s Office of Inspector General. 

“Timely and factual answers will be critical to providing closure for the grieving community and ensuring that federal law enforcement operations are conducted safely, lawfully, and in a manner that respects public safety.”

Collins and independent Sen. Angus King also requested the Department of Justice collaborate with state and local law enforcement authorities to investigate the fatal shooting.

International outrage

Sebastián was a Colombian immigrant with legal work authorization. Salgado Araujo was a Mexican national who had been in the United States for decades and was the father of three U.S. citizen children.

Both of their killings sparked outrage in their communities, as well as from the leaders of Mexico and Colombia.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro called Sebastián’s death, “a murder of a Colombian, a Latin American, at the hands of the US government.”

In a social media post written in Spanish, Petro said he expects to hear from Trump about the shooting. 

“They killed him for believing him to be an inferior being without rights, and as a person, he had all the rights conferred on a human being simply for being born, and he was a citizen with rights in the US,” he said. 

He added that “ICE is an organization that must be denounced on a worldwide scale.”

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced Monday that her government will file complaints to the Justice Department relating not only to Salgado Araujo’s death, but in states where Mexican nationals have died in U.S. federal detention centers or during immigration enforcement.

“I don’t think this situation appears acceptable to anyone,” she said, according to the Texas Tribune. “This is an issue for all Mexicans.”

 

WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh promised Tuesday to “put these years of high inflation behind us” and lower prices, including mortgage rates, for everyday Americans as inflation remains at the highest level in two years.

Warsh appeared before lawmakers on Capitol Hill just after the government’s latest monthly inflation data showed a slight drop, led by falling gas prices as the war in Iran cooled. 

But routine costs like food and fuel remain 3.5% higher compared to a year ago, a level of inflation last seen in May 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index for June. The report comes as the United States and Iran again ramped up the exchange of rocket fire last week in the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for a significant portion of global oil.

The grilling by members of the House Committee on Financial Services marked Warsh’s first time before Congress since being confirmed to lead the central bank. 

The nation’s top banker faced questions not only about inflation, but also how he plans to insulate the Fed from President Donald Trump, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to increase the president’s authority over agencies.

Warsh told lawmakers he will ignore political pressure and “follow the data” when deciding monetary policy decisions.

Warsh’s appointment was made after Trump’s long and public pressure campaign on former Fed Chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates, and his firing of Fed Board Governor Lisa Cook. Trump also targeted Powell with a federal investigation over renovation costs, but eventually dropped the probe.

‘A potential second surge in inflation’

Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill, an Arkansas Republican, warned during questioning “a potential second surge in inflation is appearing due to factors outside the Fed. What the Fed can control is how it reacts.”

Hill said he was “encouraged” to hear Warsh commit to lowering inflation to the Fed’s target of 2%.

“Inflation affects Americans in the here and now, not in some hypothetical future composed of long-term projections. … How do you and your colleagues on the open market committee plan to accomplish that?”

Warsh said the Fed will examine interest rates and the central bank’s assets and liabilities to harness inflation.

“We have the tools to deliver that. So it’s a function of commitment, responsibility, and tools, and we’re three for three, and we’ll deliver,” he said.

Hammering on the topic of high costs of living, Rep. William Timmons, R-S.C., said “the people I represent should not have to endure another sustained period of elevated inflation.”

Warsh said he agreed with Timmons’ “diagnosis” that American households and businesses have suffered an “undue hardship.”

“What I would also say is I’m not in the business of trying to prejudge what the (Federal Open Market) committee I’m honored to lead decides,” Warsh said. “I think we need to have a continued good family fight on this subject. That’ll start again in a couple of weeks, and when we have news for you about exactly the methods of solving this problem, we’ll be very clear about what they are and so will the American people.”

Communications with public

Several questions from committee Democrats centered on how Warsh plans to communicate with the public after he announced plans to pare back press conferences and announcements. 

Rep. Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y., asked Warsh if he can “commit today to creating a fixed public standard for which (Federal Open Market Committee) decisions and procedural changes trigger a press conference rather than deciding case by case which ones might be worth it?”

Warsh said it is “immediately important to think about reforms, including communications.”

“I don’t expect any of the changing communications to be about hiding the ball,” he said.

Rep. Andy Barr, a Kentucky Republican, cited a Wall Street Journal article criticizing the “constant yammering, long policy statements and press conferences” to signal future policy moves.

“Chairman Warsh, why is it important to do away with the dot plot and end once and for all forward guidance?” Barr asked, referring to a graph displaying data as dots.

Warsh said his Fed will not share “every passing thought.”

“I think being somewhat more circumspect in our communications, at least for me, is a better way of calling balls and strikes,” he said.

Will he ‘follow the president’s wishes’?

Warsh also faced numerous questions from Democrats on his commitment to protecting the Fed from Trump’s attempts to interfere.

Rep. Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat, said “If the president publicly pressures you to pursue a different course than the one you believe the economic data supports, will you follow the president’s wishes or follow the data?”

“My commitment to you is to follow the law and follow the data, follow our very best judgment,” Warsh answered.

Meeks shot back: “Even if he publicly criticizes you for doing it? … Publicly criticizes you and tells you how disappointed he’s in you and all of that? Will you still do what the data tells you to do? … You ready for that?”

“I’m ready to follow the law, and I’m ready for the Fed to deliver on the expansive remit that you gave us,” Warsh replied.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump “acted in bad faith” when he swiftly dropped his tax return lawsuit and directed his Cabinet members to establish a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, a federal judge in Florida ruled Monday.

Federal Judge Kathleen Williams of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida excoriated Trump, his sons Eric and Don Trump Jr., and their private Trump Organization for using the presidency to “manipulate the judicial process to pursue benefits unavailable in litigation.”

The Trumps and their private company voluntarily dropped a $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in May in exchange for the departments of Justice and Treasury creating a $1.776 billion fund for alleged “victims of lawfare.”

Critics pounced on the settlement as a “slush fund” for “cop beaters,” referring to Jan. 6 defendants who assaulted police officers. Trump pardoned all Jan. 6 rioters on the first day of his second term. 

The Department of Justice maintained the fund was open to victims of any political leanings.

Williams, appointed during President Barack Obama’s first term, noted in her order the pot of settlement money was created to “fund claims premised on events including those arising from, inter alia, the Mar-a-Lago Documents Case and the events of January 6, 2021.”

The settlement agreement, signed May 18 by Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward and IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank Bisignano, also forever absolved Trump, his sons and the Trump Organization from government prosecution and tax enforcement.

“No sitting President has ever sued federal agencies completely subject to his control for monetary benefits, or any benefits that inure to him, his family, and associates. The failure of any attorney in this case to address, on this docket, the relationship of this Article II proscription with the benefits conferred by the ‘settlement’ is a glaring omission that speaks to the control of the Lead Plaintiff,” Williams wrote in the 56-page order.

Lawyers, Trump and family cited

Williams referred Trump’s attorney Alejandro Brito to the Florida Bar for review of possible disciplinary action, and will prohibit for at least one year applications to the Southern District of Florida by Trump’s other attorney, Daniel Z. Epstein.

Trump, his sons and the Trump Organization are “prohibited from referring to the purported ‘settlement agreement,’ or using, offering, admitting, or citing any of its provisions in any judicial, administrative, regulatory, arbitration, or any other official proceeding as evidence of a ‘settlement’ reached in this matter,” Williams wrote. 

Further, she ordered the Trumps and their company to reimburse fees for attorneys appointed by the court to examine Trump’s case against the IRS, an agency under his control as president.

35 former judges

The president and his family sued the IRS in January over the late 2019 leak of their tax information to news media by a government contractor. The contractor had already been sentenced for the leak in early 2024.

The creation of the “anti-weaponization” fund sparked lawsuits, including from two former police officers who deployed to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump’s IRS case was revived in late May when 35 former federal judges intervened, arguing the settlement fund was “a product of collusion and is itself a fraud on the Court.”

Lawyers representing the former federal judges hailed Williams’ ruling.

“The court’s opinion is a resounding victory for the rule of law. We are proud to represent these former judges in presenting the arguments that the court adopted,” according to a statement from Norm Eisen, co-founder and board member of Democracy Defenders Action, Matt Platkin, founding partner of Platkin LLP, and Susman Godfrey.

The Trumps and their private business maintained the president sued the IRS in his personal capacity and that the court lacked authority to review the settlement.

In her order Monday, Williams said the court declined to “accept the credulous exercise of divorcing President Trump’s current job title from an understanding of what happened here.”

Promise to scrap fund

Outrage over the fund, including from members of Trump’s own party, delayed the Senate’s eventual passage of a bill to fund Trump’s mass deportation agenda for the rest of his term.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche testified to Congress on June 2 that the administration would scrap the fund.

The White House referred States Newsroom to the president’s personal attorneys for comment. 

A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement, “The IRS wrongly allowed a rogue, politically-motivated employee to leak private and confidential information about President Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization to the New York Times, ProPublica and other left-wing news outlets, which was then illegally released to millions of people. President Trump continues to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice provided States Newsroom with a written statement. 

“There was no collusion in this case, and the partisan judge who speculated otherwise has disregarded decades of precedent. This case was brought by President Trump in his personal capacity, as well as by several members of his family, who were all victims of admitted violations of law. There was a live dispute because the plaintiffs sought relief that the government had not provided. The plaintiffs did not receive any money and were barred from receiving any from the now-defunct Anti-Weaponization Fund,” according to the spokesperson.

The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced Monday he would like the South Carolina governor to select the late U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sister to fill the Republican’s seat for the remainder of his term.

“I recommended, to Governor Henry McMaster, Lindsey Graham’s wonderful sister, Darline, to serve as interim Senator from the Great State of South Carolina,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “This would be a fabulous tribute to Lindsey, who loved her dearly!”

McMaster is scheduled to announce his appointment to the Senate at 4 p.m. Eastern during a press conference. The person selected for the role would serve out the remainder of Graham’s term through early January. Graham was close to his sister, Darline Graham Nordone, after their parents died when she was a teen.

South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott backed the suggestion, writing on social media that Nordone “would be a fantastic pick to serve out the reminder of the senate term.” 

“After speaking with Darline, there is no one better who understands Lindsey’s love for family, our state, and our country,” Scott wrote.

Graham, 71, died unexpectedly this weekend of an aortic dissection due to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease, according to preliminary findings from the District of Columbia’s medical examiner that were shared by Graham’s office. 

Graham’s death has also triggered a special election process in his home state to determine who will advance to the November general election for a full six-year Senate term. 

Graham won the Republican primary in June and was set to face Democratic candidate Annie Andrews later this year. 

The special election to determine which Republican will advance is scheduled for Aug. 11, with a runoff taking place on Aug. 25 if necessary. 

WASHINGTON  — U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham died on Saturday night of a “brief and sudden illness,” the South Carolina Republican’s office announced early Sunday.

“Senator Graham’s family appreciates prayers at this time and asks for privacy during this incredibly difficult period,” the statement added.

Graham, who turned 71 on Thursday, was a close ally of President Donald Trump and chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. In June he defeated five Republican challengers in the Senate primary in South Carolina and was to face Democrat Annie Andrews in the general election. 

A statement shared with the media Sunday night by Graham’s office, citing the District of Columbia medical examiner, said he died following an aortic dissection due to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease. According to the Mayo Clinic, an aortic dissection occurs when there is a tear in the inner layer of the aorta, the body’s main artery; blood rushes through the tear; and the inner and middle layers of the aorta split.

The statement also said Graham’s death certificate will be pending until all toxicological and microscopic testing is final.

Trump on social media called Graham “one of the greatest people and Senators I have ever known.”

“He was always working, and was a true American Patriot. Lindsey will be greatly missed!!! DETAILS AND ARRANGEMENTS TO FOLLOW. So sad!”

Graham, who had just returned from a visit to Ukraine, had been scheduled to appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday morning. Instead, Trump came on as a guest and told host Kristen Welker he spoke with Graham on Saturday night, “sometime in the sevens,” apparently not long before Graham died. “He was really a worker but he sounded great, actually,” Trump said, adding that Graham said he was “a little tired” after the trip overseas.

“I got a message about 1 o’clock in the morning from one of the people in his office that he had passed away,” said Trump. 

“He was a great politician actually,” said Trump, who had endorsed Graham. “There was nobody like him. He loved being a politician, and he was going to win his election, he was going to win it big.” 

Trump said if he “had a problem with a Democrat, he could work it out,” and added that Graham in their final conversation underlined his advocacy for the SAVE America Act, an elections bill stalled in the Senate.

Asked by Welker if he had anyone in mind who should be appointed to the seat, Trump said, “I have somebody that I think would be great, but I don’t want to say it now because … it’s too soon.”

Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, also on “Meet the Press,” said, “The entire state has lost a statesman. I have lost a friend.” He said he expected at least one or two U.S. House members from South Carolina would be considered for the appointment to Graham’s seat.

Former President Joe Biden, a Democratic member of the Senate from Delaware before his election to the presidency, said on social media he and Graham served together for more than a decade and worked closely on many issues as members of the Foreign Relations Committee. “We disagreed often, and sometimes loudly,” said Biden. “Lindsey and I did agree on the profound importance of public service. Like me, he loved the Senate as an institution, even with all its flaws and complexities.”

Trump said Sunday afternoon has has ordered all U.S. flags be lowered to half staff until July 18.

Return from Ukraine

Graham, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs, while in Ukraine met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who posted photos of the two of them on X on Friday. “This is already his 10th visit to our country, and we appreciate this support,” Zelenskyy said then.

Early Sunday, Zelenskyy posted on social media: “Deeply saddened by the news of the passing of United States Senator Lindsey Graham. Lindsey was a true defender of freedom and the values that make our world safer.” He said they had met twice on Graham’s most recent visit.

Graham’s office did not provide additional details on the circumstances of his death. The Washington Post, citing police scanner audio, reported that emergency responders at Graham’s Washington, D.C., home worked to stabilize a man on Saturday night and transported the individual to a hospital.

NBC News reported that the response, according to emergency responders’ audio, was to a call for “cardiac arrest” and CPR was in progress. “Photographs from the scene reviewed by NBC News show paramedics carrying a person on a stretcher from Graham’s home to an awaiting ambulance. Police cars and fire trucks were also on site,” NBC said.

‘My heart is heavy’

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said in a statement “my heart is heavy” to learn of Graham’s death.

“Lindsey’s long and dedicated service in the Air Force and in Congress carried him to far-flung regions of the world,” Thune said. “He was a strong advocate for the United States and a strong ally to freedom-loving countries across the globe. He believed in the might of America to achieve good in the world and dedicated his life to advancing that cause.”

Graham, who was born in Central, S.C., first joined Congress in 1994 when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from the Third Congressional District. He was elected to the Senate in 2002 and reelected in 2008, 2014 and 2020.

He earned undergraduate and law degrees from the University of South Carolina and spent six-and-a-half years on active duty as an Air Force lawyer. He then served in the South Carolina Air National Guard and Air Force Reserves, according to his official biography, retiring at the rank of colonel in 2015.

Under the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the governor of a state must schedule an election to fill an empty Senate seat. South Carolina law says the governor can make an appointment to fill the Senate seat for the remainder of Graham’s term, which expires in January, according to the South Carolina Daily Gazette.

Also under South Carolina law, a special primary election must be held to select the next Republican nominee to the seat Graham held. The special primary is set for Aug. 11 with a runoff if needed on Aug. 25, the Daily Gazette reported.

The Democratic nominee for Senate, Andrews, expressed her condolences on X. “From his small-town South Carolina roots to the halls of the U.S. Senate, he was a man of great faith who proudly served our nation as a JAG officer and Air Force colonel,” she said. “I hope that South Carolinians will join me in setting partisanship aside and offering gratitude to Senator Lindsey Graham for his service to the great state of South Carolina.”

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said on social media he and his family were “devastated” by Graham’s death. “Lindsey Graham is irreplaceable,” he said. “The fiercest of fighters for South Carolina and America—and a loyal and steadfast friend.”

Narrow margin in Senate

Republicans control the Senate with 53 seats. Graham’s death came as concerns have mounted about the continuing absence of 84-year-old Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, whose office has said he has been hospitalized since June 14 for an undisclosed condition.

McConnell released a statement Sunday saying he fell before he was hospitalized and he has moved from being a hospital patient to “a rehabilitation center where I’ll keep regaining my strength.” 

Senators expressed their condolences to Graham’s family and praised his legacy after awakening Sunday to the unexpected news. “I’m shocked and saddened by the passing of my friend and colleague Senator Lindsey Graham,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. “Lindsey was a lifelong public servant, a tireless champion for South Carolina, and an outspoken advocate for America’s role in protecting freedom throughout the world.”

Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, said Graham represented South Carolina and America “with pride and determination. He guided the Senate through our toughest battles while Chairman of both the Judiciary Committee and the Budget Committee. He carried the day with his mission clarity and steadfast leadership.”

Vice President JD Vance, a former GOP senator from Ohio, said on social media that Graham “came from humble beginnings and became one of the most powerful lawmakers in the most powerful nation on Earth,” and recalled a shouting match they once got into at a Senate lunch over a Ukraine funding bill. Vance said he then learned Graham was quietly pushing for rail legislation that Vance wanted. 

“That was Lindsey Graham. He fought like hell for the things he believed in, and he was just as willing to go to bat for you when it counted,” said Vance. “Lindsey had the best sense of humor in the Senate. He loved the game of politics. He was constantly asking which races were up and down, and how he could help. As he liked to say, ‘I don’t care if you’re an isolationist or a religious fanatic, so long as you have an R next to your name, I want you to win.’”

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s latest shot in a relentless war on how elections are conducted has triggered enormous concern among voting rights activists.

As of Thursday night, the U.S Election Assistance Commission has no members. The White House in an email dismissed Democrats Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland. Republican Christy McCormick resigned, and GOP member Donald Palmer left earlier this year.

Trump’s move guts, for now, a four-member board created in 2002 after the chaos that dogged the 2000 presidential election. That result came down to the vote count in Florida, where the question was debated of whether “hanging chads” on ballots counted or not.

The commission legislation, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2002, is designed to have the panel help states establish credible voter registration and voting systems.

Activists saw Trump’s sudden firings as the latest, and perhaps most ominous, chapter in his efforts to influence elections in a way opponents say is meant to help his party in the fall midterms.

To them, it becomes part of a growing list that includes extraordinary congressional map-drawing in Republican-leaning states, a fierce effort to require voters to provide photo ID and proof of citizenship and the Supreme Court’s curtailing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

“Here we go again,” said a joint statement by Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., and Rep. Joe Morelle, D-New York., after the commission decision became public. They’re the top Democrats on the congressional committees that deal with election law.

“Purging commissioners just months before the midterm elections and further gutting support for our state and local elections officials is a blatant part of his plan to politicize our elections and enable more unlawful and dangerous election interference,” they said.

The White House insisted it is interested only in a fair election.

“The Administration from the start has been working across all agencies and local partners to safeguard elections from fraud and abuse, and investing in a strong infrastructure to sustain that mission especially in the midterm elections,” a White House official who asked not to be named told States Newsroom in an email.

Trump’s election orders

To skeptics, Trump’s latest action was part of an ongoing push to influence election procedures – an effort unheard of in modern times for an incumbent president – that shows no signs of abating.

The election commission would not alter the national voter registration form as Trump wanted so that it would include proof of citizenship. Trump issued an executive order requiring proof of citizenship for voters, but a federal judge blocked the effort, saying states and Congress had that authority.

He is also attempting to restrict voting by mail. The Supreme Court last month rejected a bid to bar mail votes from being counted after Election Day. The votes can count as long as they are postmarked by that day.

But the administration is trying another court challenge, aimed at preserving Trump’s executive order telling federal agencies to come up with a national list of documented adult U.S. citizens who could then vote.

The order would also have the U.S. Postal Service establish a system for dealing with mail-in votes from the approved lists. A federal judge has blocked the order. The case could wind up at the Supreme Court later this year.

Can the SAVE America Act be saved?

On Capitol Hill, when Congress returns to work Monday from the Fourth of July recess, House lawmakers will confront how or whether to proceed with the SAVE America Act, Trump’s bid to require voters to show identification and proof of citizenship.

The legislation is expected to go nowhere, since it needs 60 votes in the Senate, which has 47 members who caucus with the Democrats.

Trump, though, has put enormous pressure on supporters to move the bill. “THE SAVE AMERICA ACT’S non-passage is CRAZY, and a serious threat to any politician who votes against it!” he wrote on Truth Social Friday. He explained he will not sign a housing reform bill, which passed Congress by big bipartisan margins last month, in protest. Without his signature, the bill will become law anyway at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.

The SAVE America Act has paralyzed the House, as supporters refused to let members consider any other legislation until the chamber passes the act.

Trump has been moving on other fronts. His administration backed a successful challenge to a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a law that tore down decades-old barriers that kept minority voters in the South from voting and gaining political clout. 

The president also energized movements across conservative states to redraw congressional district lines, normally done after censuses in years ending in zero.

Instead, eight states, including Texas, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio and Missouri have adjusted their maps this year in ways expected to help Republicans.

California and Utah have redrawn maps to create more potential Democratic seats. But all the changes, said the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, have created “a Republican advantage of some size.” 

Trump’s initiatives have sparked bitterness for and against.

“Democracy doesn’t disappear overnight, it erodes piece by piece. SCOTUS weakens voting rights. Trump guts the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission and pushes the SAVE America Act to choke voter registration and fair elections. We cannot stay silent. We must resist,” Rep. Analilia Mejia, D-N.J., said on X.

Rep. Abe Hamadeh, R-Ariz., applauded Trump’s latest action.

“President Trump is right to clean house at the Election Assistance Commission,” Hamadeh said on X.

“For too long, it has enabled weak standards & defended vulnerable machines that fueled irregularities in 2020 & 2022. Rather than address legitimate concerns with transparency & accountability, the EAC circled the wagons & politicized a sacred nonpartisan process,” he said.

Rigged elections?

At the heart of all these efforts is Trump’s long-held view that elections are too often rigged. He made that claim after losing in 2020, despite no evidence of much if any fraud.

Most recently, he alleged rigging in the Los Angeles mayoral primary, where Republican Spencer Pratt failed to advance, topped by two Democrats. Again, there’s been no evidence of wrongdoing.

The independent Election Assistance Commission that Trump gutted helped in establishing the credibility of elections by, in its description, “advancing Safe, Secure, Accurate, and Accessible Elections.”

The Center for Election Innovation & Research has found that over the past 25 years, “states have implemented several innovative policies that streamline the process of voter registration, promote voter list accuracy, and create more options for eligible citizens to register or update their voter registration.”

Among the changes: more online voter registration, same-day voter registration, and automatic voter registration. Forty-six states and Washington, D.C., use at least one of these methods, up from seven states in 2000.

Next steps

The commission’s ability to effect change now appears stymied.

“Congress deliberately structured the Election Assistance Commission as a bipartisan agency to help states administer free, fair, and secure elections,” said Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law.

“These removals leave the agency without leadership and unable to carry out its major responsibilities,” he said.

Trump is using the authority that the Supreme Court appeared to give him in a decision last week allowing him to remove members of independent agencies, except for Federal Reserve governors.

Trump would have to appoint two Democrats as well as two Republicans to the EAC, but they would need Senate confirmation.

Asked if the president planned appointments anytime soon, the White House official said, “The Administration from the start has been working across all agencies and local partners to safeguard elections from fraud and abuse, and investing in a strong infrastructure to sustain that mission especially in the midterm elections.” 

President Donald Trump said Friday morning he would not sign federal legislation aimed at lowering the cost of housing, but the bipartisan package became law at 12:01 a.m. Saturday anyway.

In a post to his social media site, Trump again said that as a protest against Congress not passing an elections bill known as the SAVE America Act he considers a top priority, he would not sign the housing bill that both chambers of Congress passed with wide margins. 

If the president does not sign or veto a bill passed by Congress, it becomes law in 10 days, excluding Sundays, after it reaches the White House. The constitutional provision does not apply if Congress is adjourned, resulting in what is called a pocket veto, but the current July Fourth recess does not count as an adjournment, experts agree.

The housing package, known as the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, overhauls several areas of housing policy in an effort to make it easier for builders to construct new units and potential buyers to secure federally backed loans. 

Trump in his post targeted the SAVE America Act.

“I will not sign the Housing Bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House, in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, which is polling at 97% with the Republican Party, and very high with the non-politician Dumocrats,” Trump wrote, overstating the bill’s level of support.

Liked, but not universally

Public polling on the SAVE America Act, which would impose photo ID requirements for voters and limit mail-in voting, among other provisions depending on the version of the bill, is scant. But surveys that are available show the bill, while generally popular, is much more divisive than Trump represented.

A May Politico survey showed that, when pollsters did not describe the bill’s provisions, more voters supported than opposed the bill, 37% to 21%, but that a 42% plurality of voters had no opinion. Even among the sample of respondents who voted for Trump in 2024, only 62% said they supported it.

Asked about particular elements of the bill, the most popular in the Politico poll was a requirement to show proof of citizenship to register to vote, with 52% of respondents saying they supported it compared to only 18% who opposed.

In the U.S. Senate, Democrats are universally opposed to the bill. And not enough Republicans support abolishing the chamber’s legislative filibuster, which would allow the chamber’s majority Republicans to pass bills along party lines.

Consensus housing measure

The housing legislation, on the other hand, registered barely any opposition.

The measure passed 85-5 in the Senate and 358-32 in the House. Many of the no votes in the House came from a group of conservatives who took Trump’s cue and opposed the package not on its merits but as a protest of the Senate’s inaction on the elections bill.

The housing overhaul packages together many earlier proposals sought by various interests involved in housing policy. It would reduce some regulatory hurdles to home construction and expand the possible uses of federal housing funds. 

The bill would also allow money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant program to be used for construction of affordable housing. 

It would in addition tie the amount some cities and states receive from the $3.3 billion grant program to their rates of affordable housing construction and expand the eligibility for some federally backed low-income mortgage programs.

The White House initially said Trump supported the bill, and scheduled an unusually prominent signing ceremony at the U.S. Capitol in late June. 

But the president changed course just hours before he was scheduled to sign the bill and canceled the event. He has since dismissed the housing measure as unimportant compared to the SAVE America Act.

Republican candidates seeking to replace U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany in Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District participated in a debate Tuesday night, during which they touted their loyalty to President Donald Trump and laid out differing priorities for Congress. 

Tuesday’s debate, hosted by WJFW Newswatch 12, is the only televised debate in which all the Republican primary candidates have agreed to participate. Those candidates include Michael Alfonso, whose father-in-law, Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, formerly held the 7th CD seat and has been campaigning on his behalf, has Trump’s endorsement; Niina Baum a lifelong Northwoods resident and dog musher who founded Northwoods Young Professionals to attract and retain workers in northern Wisconsin; Jessi Ebben, a public relations professional who describes herself as a “Trump Republican,” and who previously ran to represent Wisconsin’s 3rd CD and Kevin Hermening, a financial advisor and former United States Marine. Don Raihala, an accountant, will also appear on the ballot in August, though he wasn’t invited to participate.

Alfonso had refused to participate in earlier debates, in one case because he was attending a lobbyist event hosted by the Republican Party of Wisconsin in Washington D.C., and said he would only participate in one local news forum.

The winner of the Republican primary will face the winner of the Democratic primary in November. While the district has been represented by Republicans in recent years, the 7th CD was represented by Democrat Dave Obey, the longest serving U.S. House member in Wisconsin history, from 1969 until 2011. The three candidates vying for the Democratic nomination are Fred Clarke, Chris Armstrong and Ginger Murray.

The district, which encompasses a huge portion of the state, stretches from eastern to western Wisconsin and from central Wisconsin to the Northwoods. Tiffany, who has represented the district since 2020, is running for governor in 2026.

While Trump’s endorsement has helped Tiffany, whose primary opponent in the governor’s race dropped out, in Alfonso’s case it has not cleared the field. Republicans from local county parties and his primary opponents have criticized Alfonso’s lack of experience and his father-in-law’s help as he tries to win the race.

“I’m the only candidate on this stage that our great president, the greatest president of my lifetime, President Donald J. Trump, trusts to get his agenda into law,” Alfonso said during the debate. “We hear a lot about politicians saying they’re pro-Trump only in the year of an election. What the Trump endorsement means is that I will support the president, I will fight for his agenda.”

Alfonso said he sat down with Trump for an interview and promised the president that no one would out work him in Congress.

While Alfonso used the endorsement as his main argument to differentiate himself from the other candidates, he was not the only candidate to claim he would carry forward Trump’s agenda in Congress

Hermening, said he would be experienced, tested and “ready on day one” to serve in Congress and help Trump achieve his agenda. In his closing remarks, Hermening criticized the current Congress for allowing some items in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” to sunset within a short period of time and for not passing more of Trump’s agenda. 

“The president has put forward so many executive orders… Congress needs to finish the job and put some of those executive orders into actual legislation,” Hermening said. “I’m committed to helping him finish that job.”

Hermening noted that Trump had already endorsed Alfonso before he entered the race, but said he has been honored to get endorsements from other Republicans in the district including state lawmakers Mary Felzkowski, John Spiros, Duke Tucker, Brent Jacobson, Pat Snyder and Romaine Quinn.

“I’m not running to be someone,” Hermening said. “I’m running to do something.” 

Alfonso, 26, directly addressed concerns about his lack of experience during the debate, including saying that he is currently employed as an accountant. Prior to running for Congress, Alfonso worked in construction while a student at UW-Madison. After graduating, he moved to Florida and worked on a podcast hosted by Dan Bongino for a year. He has since moved back to Hayward, Wisconsin.

Alfonso argued that young people can bring energy to politics and that experience is not the only measure of effectiveness. 

“Let me ask you, did Nick Shirley have experience?” Alfonso said, referring to the young Youtuber whose debunked videos of empty childcare centers helped spur investigations into fraud in Minnesota. “He was only a young man in his 20s. Young people are capable of so much in a culture where we seek to make young people infantilized.” 

Alfonso in his opening remarks attacked Democratic Socialism and State Rep. Francesca Hong, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, mentioning communism and his roots in Cuba. He said he wants to fight “Marxism” in Congress.

“The older generation has already won the battle with communism. They fought very hard, but I will tell you what, my generation is falling for those very same lies,” Alfonso said. “I look forward to working every single day to stop the spread of violent Marxism, which is what got my friend Charlie Kirk murdered.”

A couple of candidates spent time in the debate defending their status as Republicans. 

Ebben addressed controversy over her 2011 signature on a petition protesting Act 10, the law signed by former Gov. Scott Walker that significantly curbed union rights for public employees. 

“I was 21 years old in college, and I was told by my parents who were lied to by the teachers unions that they were worried about losing their jobs, and that didn’t happen,” Ebben said. “So, I was not only in college when this happened, but I became a Christian. I became a conservative, and I’ve knocked thousands of doors for candidates in the conservative movement for Republicans up and down the ballot over the years, helping them get elected, and like President Trump and President Reagan, I chose to become a Republican.” 

Baum was asked directly whether she is a Republican. She noted that the last time she voted for Trump was in 2016, but added that people do not fit into neat political boxes. 

“The job of a representative is to represent the people and what they need, and what if something that the people in this district want and need doesn’t align perfectly with party lines, then we’re supposed to blindly follow that? I don’t think so,” Baum said. 

Throughout the debate Baum said she would be in Congress to serve the people of the 7th CD, adding that she won’t take corporate PAC money and wants to end Citizens United, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed corporations to spend unlimited money on elections. 

During closing remarks, she announced that she will be embarking on a 400-mile bike trip through the district to meet with voters and hear from them directly, and promised to pay close attention and listen to people. 

“The job of a representative is to represent the people, not the president’s priorities, no matter who the president is,” Baum said when asked whether she would support Trump’s agenda. “If those priorities align, I will absolutely support them, but if they don’t , I’m going to stand up for them, just like with these AI data centers.”

The candidates were asked whether they support Trump’s war in Iran. 

Alfonso repeated Trump’s claim that the war was necessary to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

“I look forward to working with President Trump to bring peace to the Middle East,” Alfonso said. 

Hermening, who was among the Americans held captive for 444 days during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, said he does not support having boots on the ground to pursue regime change in the country.

“That is a decision that the Iranian people need to make on their own. They need to be responsible for that. It is not our job to be the policeman of the world,” Hermening said, though he added that he thought Trump had done the right thing by seeking to block the development of nuclear weapons in Iran. “In any negotiation, it requires two honest brokers, and it is very evident to me in watching what’s been going on between the United States and Iran for 47 years that the Iranians have never sent an honest broker to any negotiation, so I believe that we have to be very steadfast in what we are standing for.” 

Ebben said that she thinks the country needs to focus on domestic issues as opposed to war overseas. 

“I don’t want my son in the future to have to go off and fight another war,” Ebben said. “I don’t want any mother or father to have to worry about sending their son or daughter overseas to champion someone else’s war. We need to get back to America First.” 

The candidates agreed on some issues, including wanting to reduce government spending and regulation as a way of addressing the cost of living, though they differed on Congress’ role in regulating artificial intelligence and data centers as well as combating PFAS.

Hermening said the federal government needs to ensure that the U.S. isn’t left behind on the world stage, so it shouldn’t put unnecessary regulations in place on people who want to grow their companies. 

“Too often the government gets in the way,” Hermening said. 

Ebben said that the government needs to be cautious about artificial intelligence and ensure that people, including students in school, aren’t relying on it too much. 

Alfonso said he didn’t know whether Congress should do more to regulate AI. 

“We don’t know where this technology is going to take us but we need to watch it very closely. We cannot have hundreds of thousands of Americans displaced from their jobs,” he said. 

Baum said she would work to implement a moratorium on data center construction and described hearing from local residents who reached out to her about a company that wanted to buy their land for a data center.

“There’s no regulations around them and they impact us in so many different ways,” Baum said of data centers. “They impact our natural resources, our water, our utility bills and recently our phone prices… are going to be impacted because of the demand for memory chips from AI data centers.” 

Baum also criticized the sales and use tax exemption that the Wisconsin state government approved for data centers.

“I know this is a state-level thing, but I’m using this as an example because why are they getting that benefit when there are small businesses who actually provide consistent jobs and more jobs than an AI data center will at the end of its completion. They should not be getting breaks.” 

The candidates also differed on how much of a role the federal government should play in addressing the issue, a long-running concern for communities in the Northwoods including the town of Stella. 

“I would advocate for clean water, lower costs to bring about the lesser contamination,” Hermening said. “When the government helps to make policies that bring about contamination, whether it is approving certain types of chemicals that end up in our groundwater, the government has a responsibility for making it right.”

Ebben said she is concerned about the federal government stepping in and imposing too much regulation. 

Alfonso declared that he had the endorsement of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) PAC and said he would work with Trump to both encourage businesses and protect natural resources. He said he would also want to leave PFAS regulation up to states rather than the federal government. 

Baum said that the federal government was involved with spreading PFAS contamination, so the federal government has a responsibility to help ensure access to clean drinking water. 

The primary will be held on Aug. 11.

After denying requests for disaster relief to Wisconsin over recent months, President Donald Trump has approved $22.6 million in assistance to several counties that experienced extreme weather in April. Wisconsin Emergency Management determined that over $27 million in damage occurred as a result of the historic April storms that hit communities, bringing tornados, heavy rain and flash flooding.

The storms broke records as rivers overflowed and skies darkened under heavy cloud cover, high winds and torrential rain. According to the National Weather Service, a record-breaking 8.56 inches of precipitation accumulated in Green Bay during the month of April, breaking the prior record set in 1929 by more than 2 inches. Wausau also broke the record for precipitation with 8.74 inches accumulating in April, compared to the 6.06 inch record set in 1954. Historic flooding flowed out along the Wolf River basin in Shiocton and New London, as well as near the Embarrass and Peshtigo rivers near Porterfield. The Menominee River at McAllister reached its second highest level on record, and multiple dams overflowed in Waupaca and Shawano counties.

Residents living in the counties of Bayfield, Brown, Jackson, Jefferson, Juneau, Kenosha, Manitowoc, Marathon, Milwaukee, Outagamie, Racine, Rock, Sauk, Vernon, Washington, Waukesha, Waupaca and Winnebago, along with the Oneida Nation, will have access to the assistance. The funding will cover temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses and other programs. Federal funding is also available to state, tribal, and local governments which are eligible for assistance, as well as certain private nonprofit organizations to help replace damaged facilities. 

Trump posted on Truth Social that he’d contacted U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany — the Republican candidate he  endorsed for Wisconsin governor —  about greenlighting the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) assistance. Trump said that “the wonderful people of Wisconsin are in good hands with Tom,” alongside other Republican politicians which have been endorsed by the president. Meanwhile, Tiffany posted on X saying he called the White House after the storms and thanking the Trump administration “for their partnership.” Tiffany said in his post, “We’ll keep working to ensure every Wisconsin community has the resources needed to recover.”

Trump’s effort to spotlight Tiffany in connection with the announcement of emergency assistance comes ahead of the gubernatorial primary in August. Tiffany is the leading Republican contender, while six Democrats with a range of experiences and political leanings are competing for their party’s nomination. 

When Trump first announced the emergency relief for Wisconsin, saying he had contacted Tiffany to inform him, neglecting to mention the current Gov. Tony Evers, Evers said in a statement posted to X, “Wisconsinites and I will believe it when we see it.” 

“President Trump and the Trump Administration have declined tens of millions of dollars in Wisconsin disaster relief requests,” Evers wrote, “and have been playing politics by withholding emergency FEMA assistance from states across our country that’s supposed to go to helping families and communities rebuild and recover after a disaster—and all while he uses taxpayer dollars to build himself a golden ballroom.”

In February, the Trump administration denied disaster relief — for a second time — which would have helped Wisconsin communities recover from historic, record-breaking flooding and storms that hit in August. Over 1,800 homes in the Milwaukee area alone were left either damaged or destroyed, and multiple parks were left virtually underwater. The state fair shut down early as people fled the fairgrounds through waist-high water, and some were left stranded on roadways after their vehicles were flooded. Collectively, the August floods caused about $76 million in damage to private homes and public infrastructure, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. 

A letter sent to Evers by FEMA in February said that assistance was “not warranted” but didn’t explain the rationale the agency had used to make that decision. Flood assistance was also denied for Milwaukee in November and October. A month after the FEMA denial, Wisconsinites endured a historic blizzard so bad that it shut down plowing services in a state used to snowfall. This summer, residents have been contending with a dangerous heatwave. 

These are just the latest bouts of extreme and dangerous weather which have challenged the ability of residents to adapt and of local and state governments to respond. Researchers have long warned that extreme weather including more intense flooding, heatwaves and blizzards would become more common due to climate change. Trump has called climate change a hoax and his administration has cut back the federal programs to improve climate resilience. 

Democrats are seizing the mantle of states’ rights to oppose the agenda of President Donald Trump, who has sought to reset Washington’s relationship with the states. 

While the party out of federal power has always pushed its agenda in statehouses, Democrats across the country have recently demanded more autonomy for governors and state lawmakers. Liberals, longtime proponents of a stronger central government, are now championing an ideology that evokes odious memories of slavery and segregation.  

Many state leaders hope that a renewed focus on federalism could help lower the national political temperature. By shifting more political decisions to the states, they envision a nation less subject to blue-red swings that change the entire course of federal law enforcement, environmental policy and business regulation. 

“Otherwise we just end up fighting every four years over red king-blue king,” said Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory, a Republican. “And our entire nation goes entirely one way, and then 180 degrees the other way.”

Ivory said the pendulum swinging is “ripping our nation apart” politically and costing untold dollars as national policy reverses depending on who is in power. He leads Utah’s Federalism Commission, a bipartisan legislative group assessing state-federal boundaries and working to educate leaders across the country on federalism issues. 

While he’s been pushing for a smaller federal government and heightened role for the states for years, he said the fiery policy debates in Trump’s second term have given the effort unprecedented momentum. 

Last June, California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said the White House had violated his state’s sovereignty in deploying the National Guard to Los Angeles without the governor’s consent. In a lawsuit the state ultimately won, California cited arguments made by founding father James Madison in the Federalist Papers calling for ratification of the Constitution more than 200 years ago. 

And this winter in Minnesota, Democrats pushed for more state oversight of the federal government after immigration officers killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. 

“This is a matter of states’ rights,” said Democratic state Senate leader Erin Murphy. “And while we can’t impact — except for next November – the makeup of Congress, we can impact and bring relief for the people of Minnesota.”

Many of the most high-profile conversations surrounding states rights’ have proven predictably partisan. Yet Democrats and Republicans behind the scenes have been quietly building momentum for a rebalancing of state-federal authority.  

Conservative state lawmakers who have long pushed for a smaller federal government are welcoming liberal counterparts to a growing movement underscoring the importance of federalism, the uniquely American system created by the framers of the Constitution to share power between Washington, D.C., and the states.

As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary, Stateline is exploring how the Trump era is transforming the relationship between the states and the federal government. This article is the third in an occasional series examining the fraught moment and what evolving — and often deteriorating — state-federal ties mean for the country, now and in the future.

In Utah, the Republican House speaker called Rep. Ivory several days after Trump’s 2024 election, noting that even California’s liberal governor was talking about federalism.

“He says, ‘We have the opportunity of our lifetime. … We need to get out and work with other states, get them together,’” Ivory recalled. 

“I said, Mr. Speaker, I agree with you. But if Gavin Newsom does something that we believe is state jurisdiction, even if we don’t like the policy, we’ve got to stand with him. And he said, ‘I know,’ and that had never happened before.”

‘An inflection point’

The debate over how much power states should wield is as old as the nation itself: Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, the forebears of our two-party system, famously argued for larger and smaller federal roles, respectively. 

In Trump’s second term, Democrats have leaned on federalism principles as a means of checking federal power, said Troy Smith, a professor of constitutional federalism and director of the Constitutional Federalism Initiative at Utah Valley University in Orem. 

The American federalist system is always evolving as states and the federal government tussle over authority and the two parties come in and out of national power. Smith said state governments, namely governors, have grown increasingly partisan since the 1990s. But that may be changing as Republicans and Democrats embrace states’ rights.

“I think we’re in an inflection point now that looks like it has the potential to go in that direction as the states start recognizing they have many things in common that transcends party and cooperation could be to their benefit,” Smith said.

Federalism scholars took note of December’s inaugural meeting of the Assembly of State Legislative Leaders, a bipartisan gathering of lawmakers from 30 states. Though not highly publicized, that group signed off on a 449-word declaration on the importance of states’ ability to legislate independently. 

“I think that’s pretty unique and telling in this moment that Republican and Democratic leaders came together and unanimously approved that resolution,” Smith said. 

The group of lawmakers has yet to publicize any more meetings and its leader, Ohio’s Republican House Speaker Matt Huffman, declined an interview request.

But New Hampshire House Speaker Sherman Packard, who attended that gathering, said it was clear that concerns over the size and scope of the federal government transcend parties.

“It’s strictly a bipartisan issue,” said Packard, a Republican. “It isn’t an issue that’s dominated by one blue state or one red state. It’s an issue that I think almost every state legislature is dealing with, and red or blue, it’s worth telling the federal government, ‘enough is enough.’”

Tennessee Democratic state Rep. Karen Camper, though, is skeptical that the states will mark meaningful progress during Trump’s term. 

“Bipartisan has become a nasty word for this president,” she said. “So it’s going to have to be after he’s gone, because he will kill it. That’s what I’ve seen from this president.”

Camper, the Tennessee state House minority leader, pointed to May’s special legislative session in which the GOP pushed through a controversial congressional redistricting plan. It splits the state’s only majority-Black congressional district in Memphis across three districts, diluting that area’s vote as Republicans attempt to flip the state’s only Democratic-held district. 

“Look at what just happened in our state,” Camper said, highlighting Trump’s push for redistricting. “That was a chance for our Republican supermajority to say, ‘We’re not going down this road.’” 

Camper is also the chair of the Black Legislative Leaders Network, a national group of Black lawmakers who lead state chambers, caucuses and committees. She said she worries that too much focus on state autonomy could jeopardize important freedoms that were won at the federal level, including civil rights and voting rights.

“So we’re going to be fighting, refighting some of the same stuff, some of the same things that we fought for,” she said. “…We should be protected by these rights, regardless of where we go in this country, but in states’ rights, there’s a chance that you won’t.”

A complicated history

The debate over states’ rights is inextricably tied to race, equality and segregation. 

And some Southerners continue to argue that conflicts over states’ rights — rather than slavery — drove secession ahead of the Civil War. Historians, though, note the only significant right under debate at that time was the right to enslave people.

In the Jim Crow era, Southern states continued the siren call of states’ rights as they defended racial segregation and fought civil rights movements.

While the concept can still evoke those deeply divisive times, liberals in recent years have found political value in embracing states’ rights, said Paul Nolette, professor and director of the Les Aspin Center for Government at Marquette University and co-editor of a national academic journal on federalism. 

That’s particularly true of Democratic attorneys general, who have been aggressively challenging the White House in the past year with scores of lawsuits over its immigration enforcement efforts, environmental policies and the withholding of federal funds from states.

“If states were just this weak link, then they would be able to do nothing,” Nolette said. “You know, it would just be the federal government getting whatever it wants. But in fact, the states have a lot of tools themselves to push back on the federal government.”

Though the federal government has grown in scope over the decades, Nolette noted, state bureaucracies have also expanded influence. Many federal programs, including the national food stamp program and safety net health insurance, are administered by state governments.

“So the nature of federal policy over the last few decades has actually given states additional powers to have a say in national policy,” he said. 

Nick Brown, Washington state’s Democratic attorney general, acknowledged his view of states’ rights has evolved over the years. 

Like many others, the phrase to him frequently evoked the Southerners who championed states’ rights in their efforts to oppose racial integration. The state’s first Black attorney general, Brown previously spent years working in the U.S. Department of Justice, a federal agency he admired for its role in pursuing civil rights cases. 

But he said the Trump era demands a different role for states as the president continues to flout congressional appropriations and punish political opponents.   

“I think certainly we have to look differently at what states’ authorities are in this moment,” he said. 

Brown said a heightened focus on states is welcome after years of outsized attention on national politics. That’s because the issues most important to most people — taxes, schools and public safety — are most affected by local policy decisions, he said. 

Changing the structure 

In Utah, state officials are looking to lead a national movement to bring more authority back to the states. 

While fears over the Trump administration’s overreach have fueled Democratic interest, Ivory, the Republican representative leading that effort, said the initiative is more focused on governmental structure than politics. 

Ivory likened the current federal-state dynamic to a bicycle with a bloated front tire threatening to bust and a back tire so flat it’s about to chew the rubber off the rim.

“Well, the answer is not to get a different rider or a stronger rider or to steer the bike to the left or to the right. It’s to fix the balance in the tires,” he said. “Our structure, our vehicle of government was two spheres with very specific balance, and we haven’t been paying attention to that for a long time.”

This discussion comes naturally in Western states that have for generations feuded with Washington over the proper use and ownership of federal lands. Over 90% of federal lands are located in the West, according to the Congressional Western Caucus, with the federal government owning 1 of every 2 acres. 

Utah’s commission aims at connecting state lawmakers and agency staff from across the country to better adjudicate federal and state jurisdiction on everything from land management to law enforcement. Ivory said the group would also like to help fill the void left after the 1996 disbandment of the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, an entity that put state and local governments in direct contact with federal agencies. 

Utah Democratic state Rep. Jennifer Dailey-Provost acknowledged her initial skepticism of the GOP’s federalism push there because of its historic ties to slavery and segregation.

“I’m pretty liberal,” she said. “Federalism is something that was always viewed, I think for not unjustified reasons, as something that was hostile to equality and equitable outcomes and fairness.”

But after a 90-minute conversation with her Republican colleague, she began to see the value — especially now — of pushing for an expanded role for states. Now a member of the state’s federalism commission, she said she envisions a better structure where states stand together, regardless of party affiliation, to counterbalance the federal government.

“States are oftentimes too wrapped up in whether we’re blue states or red states to really have each other’s back,” she said. “And it’s been hard, politically, to convince a red state like Utah to vocally say blue-state California wants to do things its way, we have to have their back and say that they have the right to do things that way, even if it’s not how we would do things.”

As a member of the political minority in Utah, she acknowledged how difficult that can be. Utah’s Republican party holds all statewide offices and enjoys supermajorities in both legislative chambers. And Dailey-Provost said the state’s LGBTQ+ population has been subjected to “constant attacks” from the GOP there. 

Still, she said, she would rather have that debate locally than rely on the federal government to protect those residents. 

“So, I don’t like the current policy outcomes, but I see more opportunity to continue to work with communities and try to fix it over time here at the state level,” Dailey-Provost said. “… At least I feel like there’s a path forward at the local level.”

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org. States Newsroom reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@statesnewsroom.com.

WASHINGTON —  A large swath of America melted under record heat for the country’s 250th birthday, including in the nation’s capital, where despite being one of the hottest places across the globe Saturday, President Donald Trump planned a nighttime speech followed by a massive fireworks display.

Some major events were canceled. Organizers for the annual National Independence Day Parade in Washington, D.C., called off the event due to the extreme heat, as did organizers for the Salute to Independence Semiquincentennial Parade in Philadelphia.

On Saturday night, the Great American State Fair and National Mall were ordered evacauated as a storm threatened, throwing into doubt the rest of the night’s programming. “Freedom 250 will share updates on programming and doors reopening — please stay close to our official channels for updates,” Freedom 250 spokesperson Danielle Alvarez said in a statement.

Alvarez released a statement later saying the event would resume at 9:30 Eastern time.
 

Scenes from the Capitol Hill Fourth of July Parade in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Army Golden Knights Parachute Team landing on the Ellipse on Saturday, July 4, 2026. (Video by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

Forecasters predicted temperatures would reach around 100 degrees, with the possibility of an all-time record of 101 degrees in the nation’s capital, according to AccuWeather. Heat indexes were expected to reach 110 to 115 degrees.

The neighborhood Capitol Hill Fourth of July Parade however, went on, though shortened to one hour, instead of the usual two-hour event. 

Some high school marching bands that traveled across the country to perform in the national parade, including those from Minnesota and Nebraska, switched last minute to march in the community Capitol Hill event.

“We flew in on Wednesday and were able to go sightseeing, and then last night we heard that the parade was canceled,” said Cassidy Moody, 28, the color guard coach for Grand Island Senior High School in Grand Island, Nebraska. 

“When they found out this parade was happening, they were super pumped they could play their instruments in Washington,” Moody said, adding their tour guide connected them to parade organizers.

“This is so fun. I’m trying not to cry.”

Time capsule, concerts, block parties, ceremonies

Other events up and down the sweltering East Coast carried on, including the burial in Philadelphia of a congressionally mandated time capsule to be unearthed, and opened, in 2276. 

The capsule, organized by the bipartisan America250 commission, contains contributions from each state and territory; sports memorabilia, including an Olympic gold medal; a 1GB digital archive from the Library of Congress; and a pocket Constitution signed by each Supreme Court justice, among hundreds of other items.

Congress commissioned America250 in 2016 to plan ways to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The commission is hosting events across the country Saturday, including block parties in Boston; Charleston, South Carolina; Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Milwaukee and Philadelphia.

The famous Times Square New Year’s Eve ball dropped eight times on Friday to ring in the Fourth of July, representing the eight time zones in the territories and continental United States. The first occurred at 10 a.m. Eastern Friday when midnight struck in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

The America250 commission also scheduled an Independence Day benefit concert in Los Angeles, featuring Chris Stapleton, the Smashing Pumpkins, Chaka Khan and other artists. Tickets cost $17.76.

Other events included the Virginia 250 commission’s naturalization ceremony for immigrants from 36 nations. The ceremony took place at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello home in Charlottesville, Virginia, where there was also a live reading of the Declaration of Independence.

Not all were celebrating the ideals of the United States Saturday. 

 

Hundreds of members of the neo-Nazi organization Patriot Front marched through the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Washington, D.C., holding upside-down American flags. States Newsroom also witnessed the masked men boarding the city’s Metro while National Guard members looked on.

Military flyovers and another Trump speech

Trump promised his administration’s Freedom 250 Salute to America events would go forward on the National Mall despite the heat, though organizers revised the schedule and publicized the presence of cooling tents and hydration stations. America250 and Freedom 250 diverged over the past year and each created dueling program offerings and merchandise to mark the semiquincentennial.

The Freedom 250 Great American State Fair on the mall shut down at 5 p.m. on Friday due to the heat and its Fourth of July opening was postponed from 10 a.m. to noon. 

Military flyovers were scheduled to begin at 1:15 p.m. Eastern and occur several times an hour until nearly 8 p.m. Visitors and residents in D.C. can expect to see multiple different aircraft, including F-22 Raptors, a B-1 bomber and a MV-22 Osprey, an aircraft that takes off and lands vertically like a helicopter but flies like a plane.

The administration promised a world record-breaking fireworks display, set to begin at 10:30 p.m. Eastern, later than in other years. The Western Pennsylvania-based Pyrotechino is expected to shoot off more than 850,000 fireworks, according to local news reports. Some people already were in line at 3:15 p.m.

Air quality forecasters predict “unhealthy” levels of air pollution, including small particulate matter that can enter the bloodstream, until at least July 5.

Trump is scheduled to deliver remarks at 9:45 p.m. Eastern, one of numerous appearances the president scheduled tied to the holiday. 

On July 1 in Medora, North Dakota for the opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library during his Freedom 250 tour, Trump said he planned a lengthy speech on Independence Day despite heat warnings.

“July 4, it’s going to be approximately 107 degrees out, and I’m gonna go and I’m gonna make a really long speech just to show that I can do anything,” he said.

Trump also spoke at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota Friday, on the eve of the semiquincentennial. Prior to a celebratory fireworks display, Trump focused his comments on labeling communism as a “mortal threat to American liberty.” 

Trump kicked off the state fair on June 24 on the National Mall with a another 25-minute speech that refashioned much of his 2024 presidential campaign rhetoric.

What does it mean to celebrate freedom from tyranny and the birth of a government founded on equal rights and the consent of the governed amid the current ICE surge? Over the last several days, as Isiah Holmes reports, masked federal agents have been snatching people off the streets in Milwaukee and Madison, breaking car windows, separating families, spreading fear and violently arresting people who have no criminal record.

This is the backdrop to the Fourth of July holiday this year.

A few days after the fireworks, on July 8, former Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan faces sentencing for her conviction of obstructing federal agents who came to her courtroom to arrest Eduardo Flores Ruiz, a man who appeared before her on misdemeanor charges last April. Objecting to federal immigration arrests inside the courthouse, which had been disrupting proceedings for weeks, Dugan confronted the agents, then quickly ended Flores Ruiz’s hearing and led him out a side door. He was arrested outside the courthouse minutes later. For her defiant act, Dugan was subjected to a campaign of intimidation and public humiliation. She was arrested, handcuffed, shackled, perp-walked through the courthouse, and had her picture plastered all over social media by FBI director Kash Patel and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi. Now, federal prosecutors argue, she should be sent to prison for 15-21 months.

“This was a serious offense, and it warrants a correspondingly serious sentence,” they wrote in their sentencing memorandum.

Dugan’s crime is particularly grave, federal prosecutors write, because “she used her position to interfere with the lawful administration of justice. That betrayal magnifies the seriousness of the offense.”

Her conduct “undermined public confidence in the judicial process,” they continue, and only a serious sentence can “reaffirm a foundational principle of our criminal justice system: no one is above the law.”

That last, high-minded sentence comes directly from a gloating social media post by Bondi, which drew responses inducing: “except for J6ers and Donald Trump.”

The heavy-handedness of the Dugan arrest came before the much more traumatic ICE surges in Chicago and Minneapolis and the cold-blooded killings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents.

What does it mean, given everything that has happened just over the last year, when federal prosecutors argue that punishing Dugan beyond the loss of her reputation, her livelihood, her home — she moved out after receiving serious threats — and her ability to go out in public, is a matter of “the need to promote respect for the law”?

“Respect for the law” under President Donald Trump is a one-way street. It means respect for the unfettered authority of his administration. His own complete lack of respect for the rule of law or Americans’ constitutional rights is clear.

The actions of the Trump administration ring a bell on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which, among its enumerated grievances against the King of England, lists having “kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures” and “protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States”. 

There has still been no disciplinary action, investigation or even apology from the U.S. government for the shootings of Renee Good or Alex Pretti.

Dugan’s colleague, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Joseph Wall, in a letter to the court included in the defendant’s sentencing memorandum,, describes Dugan’s “career-long commitment to the poor and the powerless,” including her pro bono work for Legal Action, Catholic Charities and at the Immigration Legal Services Program, as well as “founding, staffing and leading no less than ten programs and projects that provided legal services and other assistance to immigrants, the poor, and the unrepresented.” 

She has already been punished enough, Wall writes. Instead of more than a year in prison, he suggests Dugan’s sentence should be time served. That happens to be the same sentence given to Eduardo Flores Ruiz, the man she was convicted of trying to help escape.

Of Dugan’s public arrest at the courthouse, where she was paraded in front of her colleagues in handcuffs and shackles, Wall writes, “Of course, none of that was necessary. It was all meant to humiliate her. It was meant to humiliate her in the eyes of her colleagues and the general public.”

It was also meant to strike fear in the hearts of other judges and public officials who might dare to stand up to the Trump administration.

Dugan’s lawyers rebut the prosecution’s argument that her imprisonment would serve as a deterrent to future crime, pointing out that not only has she been an exemplary member of her community with no prior criminal record, she is no longer a judge and cannot possibly repeat the particular act of which she was convicted. 

As for other judges taking the wrong lesson and going rogue, in their sentencing memo, Dugan’s lawyers point out that the Trump administration’s aggressive ICE policy of conducting arrests inside of courthouses has been blocked by a federal judge in a recent class action suit. 

In his decision, U.S. District Court Judge Casey Pitts  called the Trump administration’s reversal of a policy that previously avoided arrests in courthouses  “arbitrary and capricious,” and pointed to ICE’s previous guidance stating that courthouse arrests “disincentivize” immigrants from attending their hearings.

This was precisely the concern judges in Milwaukee were actively discussing last April, when Dugan confronted the agents outside her courtroom and then led Flores Ruiz out a side door. 

The prosecution, in demanding a heavy sentence, also claims that Dugan “put others in danger” by forcing agents to resort to making an arrest outside the courthouse after a foot chase, where they might have been hit by a car. “None of this would have happened but for the defendant’s interference with law enforcement officers who were merely attempting to do their duty in a peaceful and safe manner.”

The assertion that federal immigration agents deploying extraordinarily aggressive new tactics are “peaceful and safe” flies in the face of every image of home invasions, broken windows, reckless driving, and, of course, deadly shootings on previously peaceful residential streets. ICE prefers to make arrests at courthouses because they are soft targets and therefore “safe” for armed, masked agents. So, too, are many of the people they are going after. In June, Diana Socha Torres and her 8-year-old son were grabbed by ICE agents from their home in the Wisconsin Dells. They are currently sitting in a jail-like detention center in Dilley, Texas, notorious for overcrowding and shortages of food, water and medicine. Socha Torres has committed no crime. She has been living and working  in the U.S. for years while pursuing an asylum claim based on what her lawyer says is her legitimate fear of violence in Colombia. She has never missed a court date until recently. Missed court dates have become common, her lawyer told Wisconsin Public Radio, as immigration courts rapidly change dates and many clients are unaware that their appearances have been rescheduled. For this paperwork infraction, the U.S. government is keeping Socha Torres and a little boy in a dangerous South Texas jail. 

This is the type of repression that sparked a revolution 250 years ago. Real patriotism means standing up to it today. 

WASHINGTON — What’s more American than apple pie? Capitalism. And an array of merchandise and influence is on sale for the 250th birthday of the United States.

An America250 $275 Liberty Lux American Prosperity decorative throw pillow, anyone? How about a $25 Freedom 250 youth tee?

America250, a commission created by Congress a decade ago, and Freedom 250, President Donald Trump’s entity formed last year, each operate on their own respective tracks as a nonprofit and as a limited liability company. Both are employing staff, soliciting corporate donors and spending taxpayer funds. 

That means people, businesses and nonprofits are getting a slice of the semiquincentennial pie, some bigger than others. But there is no clear accounting of which entities are getting the bigger shares and no one associated with either organization offered a full explanation to States Newsroom. Reports also show at least $10 million in taxpayer money flowing from America250 to Freedom 250, and some Democratic lawmakers claim more has been redirected.

The commission’s nonprofit arm, America250.org, lists 850 items available from its official online store: apparel, toys, games, eyewear, housewares, challenge coins, holiday ornaments, and a premier collectible line including an $8,000 painting by Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based “speed painter” Cody Sabol. 

America250 Chair Rosie Rios said the nonprofit arm receives a portion of the profits.

“It’s a licensing arrangement, so we get a percentage of the merchandise sold,” Rios told States Newsroom during a June 22 interview.

When asked how to differentiate between America250 the commission and America250 the nonprofit, Rios said “Think of it as one entity. America250 is one entity working together on the planning side and the implementations.”

An America250 spokesperson declined to specify what percentage of funds from merchandise that America250’s nonprofit arm received in 2025 and 2026, but provided a written statement.

“America250 is proud to be partnering with numerous household brands to bring the America250 logo and merchandise to communities across the country. These partnerships and merchandise are designed to help expand public awareness of the commemoration and give Americans additional ways to participate in the Semiquincentennial,” according to a spokesperson, adding the list of merch has grown in recent months.

“Our partners help bring the celebration to Americans through the brands they know and trust, advancing our goal of reaching all 350 million Americans as part of our ‘350 for 250’ initiative,” the statement continued. 

In its 2025 legally mandated annual report to Congress, the America250 commission touted “a strong portfolio of strategic licensing agreements” that generated new revenue.

States Newsroom reached out to the offices of bipartisan members of Congress who currently serve as commissioners, and several staff replied they did not have information about how much money is being generated by merchandise.

The commissioners include Sens. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Alex Padilla, D-Calif., and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., as well as Reps. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., Maria Salazar, R-Fla., Dwight Evans, D-Pa., and Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J.

Freedom 250, the Trump entity, offers 62 branded products for sale on its website store, including shirts, hats, can koozies, stickers, pins and a colonial model flag with “250” featured inside the circle of the 13 stars.

At least two booths selling merchandise are open at the Great American State Fair on the National Mall, one of Freedom 250’s main events.

Freedom 250 press officials did not respond to States Newsroom regarding where merchandise profits are directed.

Merchandise representing both America250 and Freedom 250 has been spotted in tourist shops in Washington, D.C., and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, just over the Virginia border.

Millions in spending

Congress initially appropriated $79.8 million over several years to the America250 commission, beginning in 2019, according to the entity’s annual report.

Most of its spending in 2025 — $17 million — went to America250 programs, according to the report.

That included field trips for roughly 550 students, $250,000 in grants for young entrepreneurs, an America250 time capsule to be buried in Philadelphia on July 4, a “Giving Forth” initiative to raise awareness about mid-year donations to nonprofit organizations, and New Year’s Eve-style ball drops to ring in Independence Day in every U.S. time zone and territory, among other initiatives.

“We are driven by purpose, not politics and our bipartisan Commission focuses on serving the interests of all Americans as mandated by our legislation. If the 250th anniversary is going to mean something to all Americans, it needs to be nonpartisan and belong to every American,” an America250 spokesperson said.

The organization awarded $935,000 in grants to state and local entities between 2021 and 2025, according to the report. A 990 nonprofit tax filing for 2025 was not yet available on the website.

The report also showed the White House Task Force 250 — the precursor to Freedom 250 — spent roughly $31 million of the America250 funds last year, with most, $22 million, paying for the June 2025 military parade that occurred on Trump’s birthday, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Army.

An America250 spokesperson said a comprehensive list of private donors was not readily available, but the annual report identified new private-sector sponsors as The Coca-Cola Company, Starbucks, Walmart, Kraft Heinz, JPMorgan Chase, General Mills, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and RAM, BNY, and Leidos.

According to America250.org’s most recent 990 tax filing, the entity ended 2023 with just under $14.6 million in revenue — $11.1 million of which was program service revenue, and roughly $3.3 million of which came from other gifts and contributions. 

The organization spent $12.2 million for the year. A category labeled as “other” clocked in at around $8.3 million. Salaries amounted to just over $1 million, not including employee benefits. Information technology and conferences each amounted to $469,000 and fundraising expenses were nearly $343,000, among other smaller line items. 

Nine employees, and one former, are listed on the 990, with salaries ranging from $101,185 to $285,690, including incentive bonuses, the highest of which reached $43,800. 

The nonprofit gave out $175,000 in grants to organizations and local governments in 2023, according to the filing. Most of the 16 individual grants were doled out as $10,000 in seed money for state governments, and nonprofit historical societies and foundations, including those in Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington and West Virginia.

Congress allocated $150M 

In 2025, as part of the “big, beautiful bill,” the Republican-led Congress approved another $150 million for “events, celebrations, and activities surrounding the observance and commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, to remain available through fiscal year 2028.” 

The lawmakers directed the money to Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum “acting through the director of the National Park Service.” Burgum is an ex offico member of the America250 commission as well.

According to commissioners Coleman and Padilla’s offices, America250 was promised $100 million of the “big beautiful bill” funds.

The commission has only received $25 million to date, according to Padilla’s and Coleman’s offices.

“Freedom 250 siphoned off funding but the details are murky due to their lack of transparency,” a spokesperson for Coleman’s office said.

According to an America250 spokesperson, “The final mix of funding cannot be known at this point as our programs are still in various stages of development and execution, and our fundraising for them continues.”

“However, Chair Rios’ commitment to Congress has been to engage the private sector for a true public/private partnership to engage all Americans and not rely on federal funding only,” according to the spokesperson.

The Department of the Interior did not provide to States Newsroom, as requested, a breakdown of how the funds have been allocated so far, but offered a written statement.

“As with all of our signature 250 events, resources have been made available to ensure these historic occasions are a success. The Memorandum of Understanding signed with all 250th related entities made that clear and we are proud to be partners in celebrating these iconic events honoring our 250th thanks to the bold leadership of President Donald J. Trump,” according to the statement from a department spokesperson. 

Freedom 250 was formed as a limited liability company in late October 2025, according to division of corporation records in Delaware, where it is registered.

The National Park Foundation, a congressionally chartered fundraising arm for the National Park Service, created Freedom 250 as a separate LLC “to help NPS with the execution of these events, while keeping this effort distinct and separate from the day-to-day work NPF does to support our national parks.”

‘From Vanity to Insanity’

U.S. House Democrats slammed Freedom250 in a new report on July 2, calling it “a shadow organization capable of infiltrating the celebrations and injecting America’s 250th with Trump’s extreme, partisan agenda.”

The 55-page interim report titled “From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People Out of their 250th Birthday,” said the administration “hijacked” the celebrations.

“Significant questions remain unanswered, beginning with the complete donor lists and the ultimate disposition of the funds that Freedom 250 has raised and spent. But the record already assembled supports a conclusion that should alarm the American people,” according to the report.

A spokesperson for Freedom 250 dismissed the report Thursday as “categorically false” and “disheartening.”

“This so-called ‘report’ is nothing more than a partisan smear from politicians who would rather manufacture division than celebrate America’s 250th birthday alongside the rest of the country. Congressional members should be ashamed they are spending countless hours fabricating a report instead of joining Americans in creating an absolutely beautiful celebration,” according to a statement provided to States Newsroom by Freedom 250 spokesperson Danielle Alvarez.

Alvarez criticized America250’s use of money, saying they had “nothing to show for it.”

“Freedom 250 was created because the American people deserved better. We stepped in to rescue our nation’s 250th birthday from years of wasted time, wasted money, and failed planning. We are unapologetic about celebrating the greatest nation on earth, and we are delivering the historic celebration Americans deserved,” Alvarez said.

Mobile exhibits funded

According to USAspending.gov, a $10 million grant originally given to America250.org was transferred to the National Park Foundation in late 2025, via the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and directed to Freedom 250 to fund “Freedom 250 Trucks,” six mobile exhibits stopping at libraries and community events. 

The trucks provide curriculum resources from the private, Michigan-based Hillsdale College, a Christian institution led by Trump ally Larry Arnn, who spoke at Freedom 250’s “Rededicate 250,” a faith-based, Christian-oriented event held on the National Mall in May.

Freedom 250 did not respond to State’s Newroom’s request for a comprehensive list of donors and amounts pledged to the LLC. 

The watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington published an investigation of sponsorship money for Freedom 250 in May. Sponsors mentioned in their report included January AI, SAP, United Airlines, Ultimate Fighting Championship and Mosaic.

The New York Times reported in February that a donor solicitation obtained by the news organization revealed promises of special access and preferred seating for those who gave $500,000. A private Freedom 250 reception invite was offered, where sponsors who give $1 million can get a photograph with Trump, and the level of $2.5 million reportedly included possible speaking roles at the president’s July 4 program.

Freedom 250 did not respond to a request to confirm the Times’ report.

Freedom 250 also did not respond to questions about staffing. A quick LinkedIn search puts the range of Freedom 250 employees between two and 10.