Federal Level

Fauci Pleads the Fifth in Explosive Senate Showdown

Dr. Anthony Fauci repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination on Wednesday, refusing to answer questions during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing led by Chairman Rand Paul. It marked the first time in more than 250 congressional appearances that Fauci declined to testify, citing what he called Paul’s “clear fixation” on seeing him prosecuted over the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. Fauci’s personal lawyer was removed from the hearing room by Capitol Police after attempting to address the committee. Paul warned Fauci could still face “repercussions,” despite a pardon issued by former President Biden that shields Fauci from criminal prosecution but does not prevent Congress from pursuing the facts. ^1,2,3

Cornyn Blocks Blanche Vote Over Unmet Demands

Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans John Cornyn and Thom Tillis threatened Wednesday to sink Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general unless the Justice Department puts in writing that a $1.8 billion settlement fund tied to President Trump’s IRS dispute is permanently dead. Cornyn canceled a planned meeting with Blanche after the department failed to deliver the written guarantee he demanded by an afternoon deadline. The dispute leaves Blanche’s confirmation vote, originally scheduled for Thursday, in serious jeopardy since Republicans hold only a narrow edge on the Judiciary Committee and cannot afford to lose a single vote. ^4,5,6

Iran Strikes U.S. Base in Jordan, Trump Vows Response

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched multiple ballistic missiles at a U.S. military base in Jordan on Tuesday evening in what U.S. Central Command called an “attempted surprise attack.” All of the missiles were intercepted and no casualties were reported, but President Trump vowed the United States would hit Iran “very hard” in response. The strike came as negotiations over control of the Strait of Hormuz stalled, with Iran rejecting a proposal to share the waterway equally with Oman and warning that any foreign vessel attempting mine-clearing operations there would be treated as a legitimate target. Saudi Arabia joined the United States in separate strikes on Iranian-backed militias in Iraq the same day. ^7,8,9

State Level

Wisconsin Court Revives Walker-Era Union Law

A Wisconsin appeals court on Wednesday reversed a lower court ruling and restored Act 10, the 2011 law signed by former Governor Scott Walker that stripped most public employees of collective bargaining rights. The decision keeps the law in effect for now, though it does not immediately change the status quo, since the earlier ruling striking down the law had already been on hold pending appeal. Unions representing teachers and other public workers are expected to appeal to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which is currently controlled by liberal justices and could ultimately decide the law’s long-term fate after more than a decade of legal battles. Act 10 remains one of the most consequential labor policy changes in modern state history. ^10,11

Wisconsin Judge Bars Absentee Ballot Do-Overs

A Dane County judge ruled late Wednesday that Wisconsin voters who already returned absentee ballots for next month’s primary cannot request new ones, even if their preferred candidate has since dropped out of the race. Democrats had filed the last-minute lawsuit after the state’s Democratic gubernatorial field was upended by a wave of late candidate changes in recent weeks. The judge found that while in-person voters can change their minds before casting a ballot, state law offers no such option once an absentee ballot has already been submitted and received. The ruling means thousands of early votes cast for candidates no longer in the race will still be counted as originally marked. ¹²

Rhoden Wins South Dakota Governor Runoff

Incumbent South Dakota Governor Larry Rhoden defeated challenger Toby Doeden in Tuesday’s Republican primary runoff, securing his party’s nomination ahead of the November general election. Rhoden, who assumed office after Kristi Noem departed to become Homeland Security Secretary, campaigned on continuity with the state’s conservative fiscal policies and touted his record on agriculture and rural economic development during a spirited runoff campaign. Doeden, a businessman and political outsider, had forced the runoff after neither candidate cleared the required threshold in the June primary. Rhoden is now heavily favored in November in a state that has not elected a Democratic governor in more than four decades. ^13,14

Court Filings Show ICE Raid on Newsom Event Was Political

Newly released federal court documents in California reveal that Homeland Security Investigations agents described a 2025 immigration raid outside a press conference held by Governor Gavin Newsom as “a political agenda” and a “stunt.” Internal text messages, filed in a civil rights lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, show agents were pulled off other enforcement operations to stage the raid near the governor’s event. The records also contain slurs used by some agents to describe Latino immigrants. Newsom said the documents confirm his repeated warnings that federal law enforcement is being used against political opponents. ^15,16

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Article Sources

1. The New York Times, “Fauci Repeatedly Invokes Fifth Amendment in Senate Testimony,” July 29, 2026.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/us/politics/fauci-testifies-rand-paul.html

2. Fortune, “Fauci Pleads the Fifth Amid Rand Paul’s ‘Unhinged Obsession’ Over Covid Origins,” July 29, 2026.

https://fortune.com/2026/07/29/fauci-rand-paul-unhinged-obsession-pleads-fifth-covid-origins/

3. Politico, “Congress Live Updates: Trump, Cornyn, Blanche,” July 29, 2026.

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/07/29/congress/trump-cornyn-blanche-upset-01015574

4. Reuters, “Trump’s Attorney General Nominee Hits Snag as Senator Withholds Support,” July 29, 2026.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/trumps-attorney-general-nominee-hits-snag-senator-withholds-support-2026-07-29/

5. CNBC, “Cornyn Presses Blanche Over $1.8 Billion IRS Settlement Fund,” July 29, 2026.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/29/todd-blanche-attorney-general-trump-irs-audit-cornyn.html

6. USA Today, “Cornyn and Tillis Threaten Blanche Attorney General Vote,” July 29, 2026.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/07/29/todd-blanche-attorney-general-cornyn-tillis/91091442007/

7. Al Jazeera, “Iran Attacks U.S. Bases in Middle East as Trump Meets Netanyahu,” July 29, 2026.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/29/iran-attacks-us-bases-in-middle-east-as-trump-meets-netanyahu

8. CNBC, “U.S. Vows Response After Iran Strikes on Bases in Jordan and Iraq,” July 29, 2026.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/29/us-iran-war-hormuz-centcom.html

9. Stars and Stripes, “Iran Strikes Bases in Jordan and Iraq; U.S. Casualties Reported,” July 29, 2026.

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/middle_east/2026-07-29/iran-strikes-jordan-us-iraq-22397928.html

10. Associated Press, “Wisconsin Appeals Court Restores Act 10 Collective Bargaining Law,” July 29, 2026.

https://apnews.com/article/wisconsin-unions-collective-bargaining-act-10-58e465cade90c8ca1743c13dc5b4567b

11. The Washington Post, “Wisconsin Court Revives Walker-Era Restrictions on Public Unions,” July 29, 2026.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/07/29/wisconsin-unions-collective-bargaining-act-10/63f22404-8b53-11f1-8912-d71e69d679d7_story.html

12. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “Wisconsin Judge Upholds Rule Barring Absentee Ballot Revotes,” July 29, 2026.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2026/07/29/wisconsin-judge-upholds-election-rule-barring-absentee-ballot-revotes/91097241007/

13. USA Today, “Larry Rhoden Wins South Dakota Governor Primary Runoff,” July 28, 2026.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2026/07/28/larry-rhoden-wins-south-dakota-governor-runoff/91086174007/

14. The New York Times, “South Dakota Governor Runoff Results,” July 28, 2026.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/07/28/us/elections/results-south-dakota-governor-runoff.html

15. Office of Governor Gavin Newsom, “New Court Documents Expose Trump Administration’s Political Targeting of Governor Newsom,” July 29, 2026.

https://www.gov.ca.gov/2026/07/29/new-court-documents-expose-trump-administrations-political-targeting-of-governor-newsom/

16. Los Angeles Times, “Court Documents on Los Angeles Immigration Raids Detail Political Stunt,” July 29, 2026.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-07-29/court-documents-los-angeles-immigration-raids

Federal Level

Trump Administration to End Medicare Drug Subsidy

The Trump administration announced Tuesday, July 28, that it will end a temporary subsidy program that has held down Medicare Part D prescription drug premiums, with the roughly $3.6 billion in annual support expiring after 2026. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said insurers no longer need the assistance, arguing the program encouraged higher bids from plan sponsors. An administration official said about 45% of Part D’s 25 million enrollees are projected to see premiums rise between $11 and $20 a month next year, while a quarter should see costs stay flat or decline. Final 2027 premium figures are expected in September. ^1,2,3

Senate Advances Graham-Inspired Russia Sanctions Bill

The Senate voted 86-12 on Tuesday, July 28, to advance a Russia and Iran sanctions package championed by the late Senator Lindsey Graham, hours after his funeral at Washington National Cathedral. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky watched the vote from the Senate chamber. Senator Rand Paul was among the small bipartisan group opposing the measure, which still faces additional procedural hurdles before reaching President Trump’s desk. ^4,5

Nation Bids Farewell to Senator Lindsey Graham

President Trump delivered an emotional eulogy Tuesday, July 28, at the Washington National Cathedral funeral for Senator Lindsey Graham, who died July 11 at age 71. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky both attended, underscoring Graham’s decades-long role shaping U.S. foreign policy. Trump called him “a giant of the United States Senate” whose influence touched nearly every major piece of legislation for more than 30 years. Trump recalled their three-decade friendship and Graham’s role as a fierce advocate for a muscular American foreign policy. ^6,7

Trump Asks Supreme Court to Toss Carroll Verdict

President Trump asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday, July 28, to throw out the $83.3 million defamation judgment awarded to writer E. Jean Carroll, arguing the verdict violated his free speech rights and presidential immunity protections. The case stems from statements Trump made about Carroll while in office. The high court has not yet indicated whether it will take up the appeal. ⁸

Deadline Passes on Trump Birthright Citizenship Bid

The deadline passed Tuesday, July 28, for the Trump administration to ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling striking down the president’s birthright citizenship restrictions, with no new filing on the docket. The high court’s 6-3 decision in June found Trump’s executive order unconstitutional for denying automatic citizenship to children born in the United States to parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily. Legal experts noted the court has not agreed to rehear an argued case in more than 50 years. ⁹

D.C. Circuit Backs Trump on Mail Voting Order Appeal

A federal appeals court in Washington ruled Tuesday, July 28, that a Democratic Party legal challenge to President Trump’s mail-in voting executive order was premature, affirming a lower court’s earlier denial of an injunction. The order directs federal agencies to compile state citizenship lists and set new rules for mail ballots ahead of the midterms. The panel said the dispute is not yet ripe because the agencies have not finished implementing the order. ¹⁰

State Level

Rhoden Wins South Dakota Governor Runoff

Governor Larry Rhoden defeated businessman Toby Doeden by a wide margin Tuesday, July 28, in South Dakota’s first-ever gubernatorial primary runoff, earning the Republican nomination to seek a full term. Rhoden, who ascended to the governorship last year when Kristi Noem joined the Trump administration, will face Democratic nominee Dan Ahlers in November. Doeden, a self-funded political newcomer, pledged his support for Rhoden in the general election. The race drew national attention as the state’s first runoff since new primary rules took effect. ¹¹

Michigan Wins New Order Shielding Mental Health Funds

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel secured a temporary restraining order Tuesday, July 28, blocking the U.S. Department of Education from cutting roughly $6 million in mental health grants to Michigan schools. A coalition of 14 other states joined Nessel in the case. It is the second time in a year that Nessel has gone to court over the same grant program. ¹²

Wisconsin Democrats Begin Voting in Governor Primary

Early in-person voting opened Tuesday, July 28, in Wisconsin’s crowded Democratic primary for governor, a contest that will determine who replaces retiring Governor Tony Evers. Five Democratic candidates are competing ahead of the August 11 primary. The eventual Democratic nominee is expected to face Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany in a race both parties view as pivotal to the swing state’s political direction. ¹³

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Article Sources

1. Reuters (via Yahoo News), “Trump administration plans to end Medicare drug plan subsidy, WSJ reports,” July 28, 2026.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/trump-administration-plans-end-medicare-211507928.html

2. Newser, “White House Ending Medicare Drug Subsidy,” July 28, 2026.

https://www.newser.com/story/393685/white-house-ending-medicare-drug-subsidy.html

3. The Philadelphia Inquirer, “The Trump administration is halting a Medicare drug subsidy. Will premiums rise?,” July 29, 2026.

https://www.inquirer.com/health/trump-administration-halting-medicare-drug-subsidy-20260729.html

4. USA Today, “Senate greenlights Russia sanctions bill in Lindsey Graham’s honor,” July 28, 2026.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/07/28/russia-sanctions-bill-lindsey-graham-senate-ukraine/91076048007/

5. Reuters, “Trump mourns Lindsey Graham as war hawk, golfing buddy at Washington funeral,” July 28, 2026.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-zelenskiy-netanyahu-attend-us-senator-grahams-funeral-2026-07-28/

6. Time, “Trump Pays Tribute to Lindsey Graham: ‘He Died Doing the Work He Was Born to Do’,” July 28, 2026.

https://time.com/article/2026/07/28/trump-lindsey-graham-funeral/

7. PBS NewsHour, “WATCH: Trump pays tribute to Sen. Graham during National Cathedral funeral service,” July 28, 2026.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-trump-pays-tribute-to-sen-graham-during-national-cathedral-funeral-service

8. USA Today, “Trump asks Supreme Court to throw out $83M award to E. Jean Carroll,” July 28, 2026.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/07/28/trump-supreme-court-jean-carroll-appeal/90371249007/

9. WSFA 12 News (AP), “Deadline passes for Trump to ask Supreme Court to reconsider birthright citizenship ruling,” July 28, 2026.

https://www.wsfa.com/2026/07/29/deadline-passes-trump-ask-supreme-court-reconsider-birthright-citizenship-ruling/?outputType=amp

10. U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, “DSCC v. Trump, Judgment,” Filed July 28, 2026.

https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/judgments/docs/2026/07/26-5193-2185433.pdf

11. Fox News, “GOP governor survives challenge from Bitcoin evangelist in gubernatorial runoff,” July 28, 2026.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-governor-survives-challenge-from-bitcoin-evangelist-gubernatorial-runoff

12. Michigan Department of Attorney General, “AG Nessel Secures Temporary Restraining Order Preventing Cuts to Federal Mental Health Grants,” July 28, 2026.

https://www.michigan.gov/ag/news/press-releases/2026/07/28/ag-nessel-secures-temporary-restraining-order-preventing-cuts-to-federal-mental-health-grants

13. Boston Globe (AP), “Wisconsin voters begin casting ballots at the polls in chaotic Democratic governor’s race,” July 28, 2026.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/28/nation/wisconsin-primary-early-voting/

Federal Level

Trump Team Asks Supreme Court to Revive Mail Ballot Order

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to reinstate an executive order imposing sweeping new restrictions on mail-in voting, two days after a federal appeals court kept the order blocked. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued the injunction improperly interferes with an order meant to promote election integrity ahead of November’s midterms. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that the Constitution grants states, not the president, authority over election administration. Twenty-three Democratic-led states are challenging the order, while twelve Republican-led states have joined the federal government’s appeal. ¹

Senate Advances Clayton’s Bid to Lead Intelligence Agencies

The Senate voted 51-43 along party lines Monday evening to advance Jay Clayton’s nomination as Director of National Intelligence, setting up a final confirmation vote Tuesday. Senate Majority Leader John Thune praised Clayton’s record as a former U.S. attorney and Securities and Exchange Commission chairman. Democrats, including Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, said they turned against the nomination after Clayton would not directly affirm that Joe Biden won the 2020 election during his confirmation hearing. Clayton would replace acting Director William Pulte, who has led a series of layoffs at the intelligence office. ²

Trump Holds Campaign-Style Rally at Michigan GM Plant

President Trump delivered a campaign-style speech Monday at the General Motors Proving Ground in Milford, Michigan, touting the economy and touring the facility with GM executives Mary Barra and Mark Reuss. The visit came eight days before Michigan’s Aug. 4 primary and featured remarks from Republican candidates John James, running for governor, and Mike Rogers, running for Senate, both of whom Trump has endorsed. Trump claimed the auto industry and inflation had improved under his tariffs, though state labor data shows Michigan lost roughly 4,000 auto parts manufacturing jobs over the past year. ³

Twenty-Plus States Sue Over FEMA Election Funding Threat

More than 20 states filed suit Monday against FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security, arguing the agencies are illegally conditioning billions in counterterrorism and disaster funding on states changing their election systems and assisting immigration enforcement. North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson said his state’s counterterrorism grant money, which funds bomb squads and hurricane response, could not become “a bargaining chip.” Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones said the conditions would force states to devote law enforcement resources to help DHS with immigration enforcement. The suit, filed in Rhode Island, argues the conditions violate the Administrative Procedure Act and the Constitution’s Spending Clause. ^{4, 5}

State Level

Wisconsin’s Chaotic Democratic Governor Primary Begins Voting

Early in-person voting began Monday in Wisconsin’s crowded Democratic primary for governor, a race Democrats hope will help them win full control of state government for the first time since 2010. Five candidates, including democratic socialist Francesca Hong and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, are competing ahead of the Aug. 11 primary. A judge is also weighing a Democratic Party lawsuit seeking to let voters cancel more than 100,000 already-returned mail ballots after two candidates dropped out and one, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, re-entered the race. ⁶

Florida Judge Keeps GOP’s Fishback on Governor Ballot

A Leon County judge ruled Monday that Republican gubernatorial candidate James Fishback may remain on Florida’s August primary ballot, rejecting a challenge from rival Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins. Collins had argued that Fishback failed to meet the state’s seven-year residency requirement, pointing to mortgage and voting records tied to a Washington, D.C., condo. Fishback testified that the property was a lightly used investment near his parents and that Florida remained his true home. The ruling clears the way for Fishback to continue campaigning in the crowded Republican primary. ⁷

South Dakota Holds First-Ever Governor Primary Runoff

South Dakota Republicans headed to the polls Tuesday in the state’s first-ever gubernatorial primary runoff, choosing between Gov. Larry Rhoden and Aberdeen businessman Toby Doeden. Neither candidate reached the 35 percent threshold needed to win outright in the June 2 four-way primary, triggering the runoff under a 1985 state law. The winner will face Democrat Dan Ahlers, a former state legislator, in the Nov. 3 general election. Rhoden became governor in 2025 after Kristi Noem resigned to join the Trump administration. ⁸

North Carolina Lawmakers Return to Weigh Carry Bill Override

The North Carolina General Assembly reconvened Monday and is expected to consider overriding Gov. Josh Stein’s veto of Senate Bill 50, which would eliminate the state’s permit requirement for concealed handgun carry. The bill previously passed with Senate Republican support sufficient for an override, but it has remained stalled amid uncertain vote counts in the House. Republicans hold a supermajority in the Senate but need a small number of Democratic votes in the House to complete the override. ⁹

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Article Sources

1. The Providence Journal / IJPR, “Administration asks US Supreme Court to uphold sweeping Trump order restricting vote-by-mail,” July 27, 2026.

https://www.ijpr.org/law-and-justice/2026-07-27/administration-asks-us-supreme-court-to-uphold-sweeping-trump-order-restricting-vote-by-mail

2. The Washington Times, “Senate advances Jay Clayton’s nomination for Director of National Intelligence,” July 27, 2026.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/jul/27/senate-advances-jay-claytons-nomination-director-national/

3. Bridge Michigan, “Fact check: President Trump says Michigan ‘thriving,’ auto industry ‘back’,” July 27, 2026.

https://bridgemi.com/michigan-government/fact-check-president-trump-says-michigan-thriving-auto-industry-back/

4. North Carolina Department of Justice, “Attorney General Jeff Jackson Sues FEMA Over Threat to North Carolina’s Counterterrorism Funding,” July 27, 2026.

https://ncdoj.gov/attorney-general-jeff-jackson-sues-fema-over-threat-to-north-carolinas-counterterrorism-funding/

5. WSLS 10, “AG Jay Jones joins lawsuit against Trump administration for attempted conditions for billions in federal funding,” July 27, 2026.

https://www.wsls.com/news/local/2026/07/27/ag-jay-jones-joins-lawsuit-against-trump-administration-for-attempted-conditions-for-billions-in-federal-funding/

6. Las Vegas Sun (AP), “Wisconsin voters begin casting ballots at the polls in chaotic Democratic governor’s race,” July 27, 2026.

https://lasvegassun.com/news/2026/jul/27/wisconsin-voters-begin-casting-ballots-at-the-poll/

7. WCTV, “Judge rules Fishback eligible for governor race,” July 27, 2026.

https://www.wctv.tv/2026/07/27/judge-rules-fishback-eligible-governor-race/

8. KFGO, “South Dakota Republicans go to polls in historic runoff for governor nomination,” July 28, 2026.

https://kfgo.com/2026/07/28/1333978/

9. The Gun Mag, “Grassroots Legislative Report—July 27, 2026,” July 27, 2026.

https://www.thegunmag.com/grassroots-legislative-report-july-27-2026/

Federal Level

Netanyahu Heads to Washington for Tense Trump Meeting

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu departed for Washington on Sunday ahead of a White House meeting with President Trump scheduled for Tuesday, where the two leaders are expected to discuss the ongoing war with Iran and the blocked Strait of Hormuz. Netanyahu told his cabinet before leaving that he would also attend a memorial service for the late Senator Lindsey Graham. The relationship between the two leaders has grown strained as the military campaign against Iran, which Netanyahu urged Trump to launch, has failed to reopen the critical shipping channel or bring Tehran back to the table. ^{1, 2}

Appeals Court Keeps Block on Trump Elections Order

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled Sunday that key provisions of President Trump’s second elections-related executive order will remain blocked through the fall midterms while litigation continues. The panel unanimously upheld a lower court order preventing the Postal Service from withholding ballots from voters not on new federal lists, and blocking Homeland Security from compiling voter eligibility rosters. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who co-led the 23-state coalition challenging the order, called the ruling a win for state control over elections. ³

GOP Senators Press Thune to Cancel Recess for SAVE Act

Senators Mike Lee and Rick Scott said on social media Sunday that they oppose any August recess until the Senate votes on the SAVE America Act, a GOP election bill that Majority Leader John Thune acknowledges does not yet have the votes to pass. Lee signaled he could force a Senate vote on whether to adjourn and warned that the bill’s fate could affect Thune’s bid for reelection as leader in November. President Trump has separately pressed Senate Republicans to adopt a $95 billion spending blueprint containing election-related funding before the August break, though most GOP senators do not expect that timeline to hold. ^{4, 5}

ICE Readies Sweep of Haitians as TPS Protections End

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is preparing to significantly expand operations to locate and arrest Haitian nationals whose Temporary Protected Status is set to expire, according to federal sources cited Sunday. The Supreme Court’s ruling clearing the way for the administration to end TPS for more than 300,000 Haitians was expected to be certified to lower courts Monday. Springfield, Ohio, home to a large Haitian community that became a flashpoint during the 2024 campaign, is expected to be a focus of the enforcement push, which could begin as soon as this week. ^{6, 7}

State Level

Trump to Rally in Michigan Ahead of Aug. 4 Primary

President Trump is scheduled to hold a campaign rally Monday in Oakland County, Michigan, as early in-person voting continues ahead of the state’s August 4 primary. The visit comes as Republicans grow anxious about rising gas prices and the unpopular Iran war weighing on their midterm prospects in a state Trump narrowly carried in 2024. The trip coincides with a competitive Republican governor’s primary between Trump-endorsed Rep. John James and businessman Perry Johnson, as well as a hard-fought Democratic Senate primary. ^{8, 9}

North Carolina Lawmakers Return for Veto Override Fight

The North Carolina House and Senate convene Monday at noon in Raleigh for a session that could determine the fate of a stalled concealed-carry veto override and dozens of bills awaiting Governor Josh Stein’s signature. Senate Bill 50, which would let North Carolinians 18 and older carry concealed handguns without a permit, has already cleared the Senate override vote but remains short of support in the House. Lawmakers can also take up budget-related matters, appointments and other carryover legislation under the terms of their earlier adjournment agreement. ^{10, 11}

Texas Governor Hopeful Presses Abbott on Data Centers

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Gina Hinojosa used a Texas Panhandle town hall Sunday to renew her call for an emergency moratorium on new data center construction, arguing Governor Greg Abbott should act immediately rather than wait for lawmakers to convene in 2027. Hinojosa criticized what she called unregulated electricity and water use by data centers built to power artificial intelligence. Abbott has proposed requiring data centers to fund their own power and water infrastructure, but has not responded to the moratorium request, which has become a defining issue in the governor’s race. ¹¹

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Article Sources

1. Politico, “Netanyahu will visit a White House increasingly at odds with him,” July 27, 2026.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/27/netanyahu-white-house-visit-trump-iran-war-01012362

2. The Times of Israel, “Netanyahu set to depart for US trip, White House meeting with Trump,” July 27, 2026.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-set-to-depart-for-us-trip-white-house-meeting-with-trump/

3. California Department of Justice, “Attorney General Bonta Secures Another Victory Against President Trump’s Second Elections-Related Executive Order,” July 26, 2026.

https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bonta-secures-another-victory-against-president-trumps-second

4. Politico, “Capitol agenda: Thune tries to focus as Trump fumes,” July 27, 2026.

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/07/27/congress/thune-tries-to-focus-as-trump-fumes-01012495

5. PJ Media, “Rick Scott Joins Push to Force SAVE Act Vote as Lee Explains His Plan,” July 26, 2026.

https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2026/07/26/rick-scott-joins-in-forcing-save-act-vote-lee-explains-his-plan-n4955475

6. CBS News, “ICE plans to target Haitians as Temporary Protected Status is set to end, sources say,” July 26, 2026.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-haitian-migrants-arrest-deport-temporary-protected-status/

7. WRGA News (Fox News Digital), “ICE prepares major operation targeting Haitians losing TPS after Supreme Court ruling,” July 26, 2026.

https://www.wrganews.com/2026/07/26/ice-prepares-major-operation-targeting-haitians-losing-tps-after-supreme-court-ruling/

8. CBS News Detroit, “Trump to rally in Michigan’s Oakland County as early voting opens in key primary,” July 26, 2026.

https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/trump-rally-michigan-oakland-county-primary/

9. The Washington Post, “President Donald Trump to travel to Michigan ahead of swing state’s primary election,” July 21, 2026.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/07/21/trump-michigan-republican-primary/

10. Carolina Journal, “NC legislature adjourns, returning July 27 for unfinished business,” July 5, 2026.

https://www.carolinajournal.com/nc-legislature-leaves-raleigh-with-unfinished-business/

11. KAMR Local 4 News, “WATCH: Politics Today for the week of July 26, 2026,” July 26, 2026.

Federal Level

Appeals Court Blocks Trump Mail Voting Order

A federal appeals court in Boston ruled Saturday that the Trump administration cannot enforce a March executive order restricting mail-in voting in 23 states and the District of Columbia. The three-judge panel voted 2-1 to keep in place a lower court block on a rule that would have required the Postal Service to withhold mail ballots from states that refuse to share unredacted voter data with the Department of Homeland Security. The court found the order intrudes on states’ constitutional authority to run their own elections. ^{1, 2}

Maine Democrats Pick Troy Jackson for Senate

Maine Democrats selected former state Senate President Troy Jackson as their new U.S. Senate nominee Saturday, replacing Graham Platner, who withdrew earlier this month following a rape allegation he denies. Jackson, a logger from northern Maine, won nearly unanimously at a special party convention in Bangor and will now face five-term Republican Senator Susan Collins in November. The race is considered pivotal to Democrats’ hopes of retaking Senate control. ^{3, 4}

Trump Threatens EU Tariffs Over Google Fine

President Trump said Friday he will pursue a new trade investigation and “substantial” tariffs against the European Union after Brussels fined Google roughly $1 billion for antitrust violations. Trump called the penalty “illegal and highly unethical” and warned it could jeopardize the trade agreement he reached with the EU last year that caps tariffs on European exports at 15 percent. The dispute adds fresh strain to U.S.-EU trade relations just as a broader tariff truce was taking hold. ⁵

24 States Sue Over Disaster Grant Conditions

A coalition of 24 state attorneys general and two governors, co-led by California, Illinois, New Jersey and Rhode Island, filed suit Thursday challenging new federal conditions on disaster and counterterrorism grants. The complaint argues that Homeland Security’s requirements, including voter citizenship verification and cooperation with immigration enforcement, exceed federal authority and violate the Constitution’s Spending Clause. More than $740 million in fiscal year 2026 grant funding is at stake for the plaintiff states. ⁶

Trump Vows Fourth Term Bid at Correspondents Dinner

President Trump used his speech at the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner Friday night to condemn the political violence that postponed the event in April, then jokingly announced his intention to seek a fourth presidential term, which the Constitution prohibits. Trump also criticized several reporters by name and defended his administration’s economic and foreign policy record. The dinner marked his first appearance at the annual event since taking office this term. ¹¹

State Level

Hawaii Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke Indicted on Bribery

An Oahu grand jury indicted Hawaii Lieutenant Governor Sylvia Luke on Friday on charges including criminal conspiracy to commit bribery and falsifying candidate committee reports, one of five people charged in a long-running corruption investigation. Governor Josh Green called on Luke, a fellow Democrat, to resign so the state government can move forward. Luke has acknowledged receiving payments at the center of the case but says they did not influence her official actions. ^{7, 8}

Oklahoma Governor Hopefuls Clash Over Trump-Backed Smelter

The three leading candidates for Oklahoma governor met Saturday at a Tulsa cattlemen’s forum, their first joint appearance since the June primary. Attorney General Gentner Drummond and rival Republican Mike Mazzei sparred over a Trump-backed foreign-owned aluminum smelter project in Inola, with Drummond warning it would pollute the region and Mazzei touting its promised 10,000 jobs. Democratic nominee Cyndi Munson used the forum to criticize Governor Kevin Stitt’s handling of the state forestry agency and private school tax credits. ⁹

Michigan Early Voting Opens Amid Federal Election Fight

Michigan opened its first weekend of statewide early in-person voting Saturday ahead of the state’s August 4 primary, with roughly 10 percent of registered voters already casting ballots on day one. The launch came as Attorney General Dana Nessel welcomed the federal appeals court ruling blocking Trump’s mail-voting order, calling repeated administration efforts to control state election systems a violation of the separation of powers. Michigan is one of more than two dozen states that sued the administration this month over funding conditions tied to election policy. ^{10, 1}

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Article Sources

1. Democracy Docket, “Trump’s anti-mail voting order gets blocked again, this time by federal appeals court,” July 25, 2026.

https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/trumps-anti-mail-voting-order-gets-blocked-again-this-time-by-federal-appeals-court/

2. Reuters, “US appeals court rules Trump cannot implement mail-in voting order,” July 25, 2026.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-appeals-court-rules-trump-cannot-implement-mail-in-voting-order-2026-07-25/

3. The Washington Post, “Democrats pick new Senate candidate in Maine in aftermath of Platner debacle,” July 25, 2026.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/07/25/democrats-pick-new-senate-candidate-maine-aftermath-platner-debacle/

4. ABC News, “Troy Jackson secures Democratic nomination for Maine Senate race,” July 25, 2026.

https://abcnews.com/Politics/troy-jackson-secures-democratic-nomination-maine-senate-race/story?id=135085406

5. Politico, “Trump threatens new tariffs against EU over Google fine,” July 24, 2026.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/24/trump-eu-tarriffs-tech-fines-01011576

6. Daily Finland (Xinhua), “24 US states sue Trump admin over conditions on disaster funds,” July 25, 2026.

https://www.dailyfinland.fi/worldwide/50527/24-US-states-sue-Trump-admin-over-conditions-on-disaster-funds

7. The New York Times, “Hawaii Lt. Gov. Is Indicted in Corruption Investigation,” July 25, 2026.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/25/us/hawaii-indictment-corruption-investigation.html

8. Maui Now, “Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke, four others indicted on bribery, corruption charges,” July 24, 2026.

https://mauinow.com/2026/07/24/lt-gov-sylvia-luke-four-others-indicted-on-bribery-corruption-charges/

9. The Oklahoman, “Mazzei, Drummond and Munson take stage in heated Oklahoma governor race,” July 25, 2026.

https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/politics/elections/2026/07/25/drummond-mazzei-munson-oklahoma-cattlemens-forum/91041130007/

10. Michigan Department of State, “First weekend of statewide early in-person voting starts Saturday, July 25,” July 23, 2026.

https://www.michigan.gov/sos/resources/news/2026/07/24/first-weekend-of-statewide-early-in-person-voting-starts-saturday-july-25

11. Axios, “Trump condemns violence, slams press at White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” July 25, 2026.

https://www.axios.com/2026/07/25/trump-white-house-correspondents-dinner-whcd

Federal Level

Democrats Pick South Carolina to Lead 2028 Primary

The Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee voted Friday to recommend South Carolina hold the first 2028 presidential primary, awarding the state 26 votes over Nevada’s 19 and New Hampshire’s four. The panel also recommended Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Michigan, and Virginia round out the early window ahead of Super Tuesday. Party leaders said the move reflects a broader push to elevate Black and Hispanic voters after South Carolina helped revive Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign and his path to the presidency. South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Christale Spain told the committee that the South represents the party’s future, not its past. The full DNC will vote on the proposed calendar next month. ^{1, 2}

Energy Dept. Admits Grants Cut Over Political Votes

The Trump administration acknowledged in a court filing Friday that it canceled $7.6 billion in clean energy grants across 16 states last October based solely on the fact that those states had voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. The admission contradicts Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s earlier claim that the projects were cut because they were not economically viable or did not adequately serve the nation’s energy needs. Illinois, New York, California, and 13 other Democratic-leaning states were affected, prompting Senator Patty Murray and Representative Marcy Kaptur to demand congressional accountability for what they called a weaponization of federal funding against working families. ³

Senate Eyes Bipartisan Deal on Funding, Russia Sanctions

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Friday he is optimistic Democrats will help pass a stopgap government funding bill before the chamber’s August recess, avoiding a third shutdown this Congress. Lawmakers in both parties are also pushing to pass a Russia sanctions bill, newly renamed after the late Senator Lindsey Graham, that would sanction Moscow’s energy and defense sectors and add tariffs on countries still buying Russian oil. President Trump has asked senators to fold Iran sanctions into the same package, and Thune said Republicans intend to comply with the request. ⁴

Trump Slaps New Tariffs on Dozens of Trading Partners

The Trump administration imposed tariffs of 10 to 12.5 percent Friday on goods from more than 80 countries, including the European Union, citing insufficient enforcement of forced-labor import bans. The move relies on Section 301 trade authority after the Supreme Court struck down an earlier tariff scheme in February, and a separate court challenge to a follow-up measure remains pending before the Court of International Trade. Critics, including a former Biden trade official, argue the forced-labor justification is a workaround to preserve tariffs the courts have repeatedly found unlawful. ⁵

State Level

Illinois Governor Demands Restoration of Lost Funding

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker demanded Friday that the Trump administration immediately restore $583 million in canceled clean energy grants after federal officials admitted in court that the cuts were politically motivated. Pritzker said the funding would have gone toward lowering energy costs, strengthening grid reliability, and creating jobs across Illinois. The dispute adds to Pritzker’s ongoing standoff with the administration, which also includes his earlier demand for an $8.68 billion tariff refund for Illinois households following a Supreme Court ruling against the president’s tariffs. ⁶

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Article Sources

1. NPR, “For Democrats in 2028, South Carolina is up first, again,” July 24, 2026.

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/24/nx-s1-5906834/dnc-primary-election-calendar-south-carolina-2028

2. The Washington Times, “DNC plan puts South Carolina on track to be first in 2028 nominating lineup,” July 24, 2026.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/jul/24/dnc-plan-puts-south-carolina-track-first-2028-nominating-lineup/

3. ABC News (AP), “Trump administration admits grants for clean energy were canceled based on politics,” July 24, 2026.

https://abcnews.com/Business/wireStory/trump-administration-admits-grants-clean-energy-canceled-based-135071063

4. The Washington Times, “Senate seeks return to bipartisanship with government funding stopgap,” July 24, 2026.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/jul/24/senate-seeks-return-bipartisanship-government-funding-stopgap/

5. The New York Times, “Trump Administration Live Updates: New tariffs on imports from over 80 nations,” July 24, 2026.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/07/24/us/trump-news

6. Capitol Fax, “Department of Energy admits billions of dollars in grants canceled solely for partisan reasons,” July 24, 2026.

https://capitolfax.com/2026/07/24/department-of-energy-admits-billions-of-dollars-in-grants-canceled-solely-for-partisan-reasons/

Federal Level

House Passes New Resolution to End Iran War

The House voted 214 to 208 Thursday to approve a War Powers resolution directing President Trump to remove U.S. forces from hostilities with Iran, with four Republicans joining nearly all Democrats to advance the measure. The resolution is not legally binding, but it reflects growing bipartisan frustration in Congress over a war that has stretched nearly five months without formal congressional authorization. The Senate rejected a companion resolution the same day by a narrow 49 to 47 vote, keeping the military campaign intact for now. Democratic Representative Gregory Meeks said he is exploring legal options to force the administration to comply with the House’s earlier war powers votes. ^{1, 2}

Jordan Refers Jack Smith to DOJ for Prosecution

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan sent a letter to the Justice Department Wednesday asking prosecutors to investigate former special counsel Jack Smith for allegedly lying to Congress about the scope of records he obtained on lawmakers during his investigation of President Trump. Jordan alleges Smith concealed that he received message content, not just phone metadata, from more than 40 lawmakers during his 2020 election probe. Smith’s attorneys say he testified truthfully about the phone records and that any message content came through the separate Presidential Records Act, calling the referral misleading. The dispute echoes a similar false-statements case against former FBI Director James Comey that a judge later dismissed. ^{3, 4}

Cassidy Backs Trump’s CDC Pick Despite Hearing Flap

Senate Health Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy said Thursday he will vote to confirm Dr. Erica Schwarz as CDC director, reversing earlier doubts raised by her halting answers about whether she would stand up to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on vaccine policy. The committee’s scheduled vote was postponed after Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski was absent for a family emergency, leaving Schwarz needing at least one Democratic vote to advance without Murkowski present. Cassidy’s endorsement significantly improves her path to confirmation ahead of a rescheduled committee vote, though her rocky hearing performance last week has left some public health advocates skeptical of her independence. ⁵

California Sues Trump Over Disaster Grant Rules

California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Thursday that a coalition of 25 Democratic-led states is suing the Trump administration over new conditions tied to federal disaster preparedness grants. The lawsuit challenges rules requiring states to verify voters’ citizenship through a federal system, use hand-marked paper ballots, and assist federal immigration enforcement in exchange for keeping Homeland Security Grant Program funding, which helps states guard against terrorism and natural disasters. A federal judge in Rhode Island, a Trump appointee, rejected a similar funding threat earlier this year, calling it “unconscionable.” Bonta said this marks California’s 79th lawsuit against the current administration. ⁶

State Level

Judges Uphold Tennessee Map Splitting Memphis

A three-judge federal panel declined Thursday to block Tennessee’s new congressional map, which splits the state’s only majority-Black district in Memphis into three Republican-leaning districts ahead of the August 6 primary. The judges, including two Trump appointees, ruled that challengers lacked direct evidence Republicans were racially motivated rather than seeking a partisan advantage, writing that political motivations “readily explain the map’s dilutive effects.” Democratic Representative Steve Cohen, who has represented the Memphis-based seat for two decades, has already announced he will not seek reelection under the new lines. Voting rights advocates say the ruling will likely embolden other Republican-led states to redraw similar districts before November. ⁷

New Jersey Bans Surveillance Pricing at Grocery Stores

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill signed legislation Thursday banning surveillance pricing, a practice in which retailers use shoppers’ personal data to set individualized prices at the checkout. The law makes New Jersey among the first states to prohibit the practice at grocery stores, which consumer advocates say can raise costs for shoppers without their knowledge or consent. Sherrill said the measure builds on her administration’s broader push to lower everyday costs for state residents, following earlier energy and housing affordability measures she signed this year. ⁸

Minnesota AG Fights DHS Voter List Mandate

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced Thursday that his office is challenging new federal disaster relief conditions requiring states to share voter registration lists with the Department of Homeland Security and alter how they administer elections. Ellison’s office called the requirements illegal and unconstitutional, joining a growing list of state challenges to the Trump administration’s efforts to tie unrelated federal funding to election policy changes. The dispute adds Minnesota to the coalition of states pushing back on similar terms attached to counterterrorism and disaster preparedness grants nationwide. ⁹

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Article Sources

1. NPR, “House approves resolution to end the war in Iran,” July 23, 2026.

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/23/nx-s1-5904515/congress-iran-war-powers-vote

2. US News & World Report, “US Senate Blocks Resolution Curbing Trump’s Iran War Powers,” July 23, 2026.

https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2026-07-23/us-senate-blocks-resolution-curbing-trumps-iran-war-powers

3. NBC News, “Rep. Jim Jordan formally asks DOJ to prosecute Jack Smith,” July 23, 2026.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/rep-jim-jordan-formally-asks-doj-prosecute-jack-smith-congressional-te-rcna588834

4. ABC News, “Jim Jordan issues criminal referral against former special counsel Jack Smith,” July 22-23, 2026.

https://abcnews.com/Politics/house-judiciary-committee-chairman-jim-jordan-issues-criminal/story?id=135006808

5. The Hill, “Cassidy will support CDC nominee, but attendance issues force vote postponement,” July 23, 2026.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5986517-cassidy-endorses-cdc-nominee-schwartz/

6. CalMatters, “California sues Trump over emergency funding rules that pressure states on elections,” July 23, 2026.

https://calmatters.org/politics/2026/07/california-emergency-funding-trump-lawsuit/

7. ABC News, “Federal judges allow new Tennessee congressional map that splits majority-Black district in Memphis,” July 23, 2026.

https://abcnews.com/US/wireStory/federal-judges-new-tennessee-congressional-map-splits-majority-135038517

8. ABC7 New York (WABC-TV), “NJ governor signs law to ban surveillance pricing to make groceries cheaper,” July 23, 2026.

https://abc7ny.com/videoClip/19564453/

9. Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, “July 23, 2026 Press Release,” July 23, 2026.

https://www.ag.state.mn.us/Office/Communications/2026/07/23_Disaster-Relief.asp

Federal Level

House Narrowly Passes $1.15 Trillion Defense Bill

The House passed the annual defense policy bill Wednesday by a razor-thin 216 to 212 vote, with nearly all Democrats opposing a measure that typically draws broad bipartisan support. The National Defense Authorization Act increases military pay, expands missile defense production, and would formally rename the Department of Defense the Department of War. Most Democrats objected that the bill effectively endorses the ongoing war with Iran without adequate congressional oversight, while Republicans called the spending increase essential given a more dangerous global landscape. ¹

Trump Threatens to Bomb Iranian Bridges, Plants

President Trump warned Wednesday that the United States will destroy an Iranian bridge or power plant, including sites in Tehran, every time Iranian forces strike a vessel in the Strait of Hormuz. The threat came as the president attended a dignified transfer ceremony for four American service members killed in the ongoing conflict with Iran. Trump said further strikes were imminent and that Iran was “going to pay a big price,” as the war entered its fifth month with no resolution in sight. ²

House Passes Limited Ban on Lawmaker Stock Trading

The House voted 232 to 198 Wednesday to bar members of Congress, their spouses, and dependent children from buying new individual stocks while in office, though the measure stops short of a full trading ban. Lawmakers could keep stocks they already own and would face a fee of $2,000 or 10 percent of a trade’s value for violations. The bill’s pairing with a voter identification provision drew opposition from most Democrats, and its fate in the Senate remains uncertain. ³

Senate Confirms Trump Pick to Sixth Circuit

The Senate confirmed Benjamin Flowers, a former Ohio solicitor general, to a lifetime seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Wednesday by a vote of 49 to 46. Democrats objected to Flowers’s record and criticized his refusal during his confirmation hearing to say who won the 2020 presidential election. The confirmation gives President Trump another lasting imprint on the federal appellate bench, which oversees cases from Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee. ⁴

Warnock Calls for Probe of GOP Mapmakers If Democrats Win

Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia said Wednesday that Democrats should investigate Republican officials who redrew congressional maps if the party regains control of either chamber of Congress after the midterms. Warnock argued that GOP-led legislatures manipulated district lines to dilute Black voting power following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which narrowed protections under the Voting Rights Act. He proposed hearings, document requests, and potential subpoenas targeting officials behind the redrawn maps, while drawing a distinction from California’s redistricting, which voters approved directly. ⁵

State Level

Massachusetts House Votes to Ease Abortion Limits

The Massachusetts House voted 119 to 33 Wednesday to loosen the state’s restrictions on abortions performed after 24 weeks of pregnancy, sending the bill to the state Senate. The measure would let a physician’s professional judgment determine whether a later abortion is appropriate, replacing the current standard that requires a threat to the patient’s health or a grave fetal diagnosis. Supporters, including several major hospital systems, said the change would keep patients from having to travel out of state for care, while Massachusetts Citizens for Life said the bill goes too far. ⁶

Louisiana AG Murrill Cleared of All Felony Charges

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill announced Wednesday that a special prosecutor dropped all felony charges accusing her of intimidating New Orleans officials over a contested court consolidation law. The charges had stemmed from letters Murrill sent warning local leaders they could lose their offices for supporting an unauthorized clerk position, prompting a 16-count grand jury indictment on July 2. Republican Governor Jeff Landry had promised a pardon, and New Orleans officials themselves urged the prosecutor to drop the case, underscoring the deep rift between the state’s Republican leadership and Democratic-controlled New Orleans. ⁷

Michigan Budget Faces $600M Shortfall Dispute

A nonpartisan Michigan research group said Wednesday that the $86.4 billion state budget Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a day earlier carries a shortfall of $600 million to $900 million between what lawmakers appropriated and expected tax revenue. Whitmer’s administration denied any imbalance, saying the spending plan relies on standard accounting practices, including the lapse of unused pandemic-era and economic development funds into the general fund. The dispute adds fresh scrutiny to a budget that already drew criticism for growing nearly $1.5 billion over last year’s spending plan. ⁸

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Federal Level

House GOP Clears Path for Funding, Defense Package

The House voted 214 to 211 Tuesday to advance a package pairing a stopgap government funding bill with the annual defense policy measure and a $95 billion Republican budget resolution nicknamed Reconciliation 3.0. Representative Thomas Massie was the only Republican to oppose the procedural vote, a sign that Speaker Mike Johnson has largely quieted a hard-line rebellion that stalled floor business in recent weeks. The stopgap would fund the government through December 4, and House leaders merged it with the SAVE America Act voter identification bill before sending it to the Senate. ¹

Hegseth Tells Senate Iran War Has Cost $37.5 Billion

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Senate Appropriations Committee Tuesday that the ongoing conflict with Iran has cost $37.5 billion so far, as the administration seeks nearly $70 billion in supplemental war funding. Senator Patty Murray, the panel’s top Democrat, warned the request risks fueling “another forever war,” while several Republicans pressed Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine on troop losses and strategy. The hearing grew heated when Democratic Senator Gary Peters called the administration’s war strategy a failure, prompting a sharp exchange with Hegseth. ²

Fired Seattle Prosecutor Sues Trump Over Dismissal

Roger Rogoff, the federal prosecutor fired by President Trump less than an hour after Seattle’s federal judges swore him in as U.S. attorney, filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging his removal as unconstitutional. Rogoff argues that the president cannot fire U.S. attorneys who were appointed directly by district court judges rather than through the standard Senate confirmation process. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche placed blame on the judges for what he called an unusual appointment, while Senator Patty Murray accused the administration of seeking a loyalist in the role. ³

Judge Blocks Bid to Strip Immigrant Work Permits

A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration Tuesday from retroactively stripping work permits from tens of thousands of asylum seekers and Temporary Protected Status holders from El Salvador, Sudan, and Ukraine. Judge Nathaniel Gorton’s order halts new time limits and asylum-fee consequences that were set to take effect as soon as Wednesday, preserving work authorization while the underlying lawsuit proceeds. The stay remains in place until at least August 5, giving the affected immigrants continued ability to work in the meantime. ⁴

Senate Panel Advances Trump Spy Chief Pick

The Senate Intelligence Committee voted 9 to 8 along party lines Tuesday to advance Jay Clayton’s nomination to become Director of National Intelligence, clearing the way for a full Senate vote. Every Republican on the panel backed Clayton, while every Democrat opposed him, citing his refusal during a recent hearing to acknowledge Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has pushed to confirm Clayton before lawmakers leave for the August recess. ⁵

State Level

Trump Ally Biggs Wins Arizona GOP Primary

Representative Andy Biggs, a Trump-endorsed former chair of the House Freedom Caucus, won the Republican nomination for Arizona governor Tuesday, defeating fellow Congressman David Schweikert and setting up a fall matchup against Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs. Biggs, who supported Trump’s effort to block certification of his 2020 election loss, will face a governor who narrowly won her first term. State Senate President Warren Petersen also won the GOP nomination for attorney general, while state Representative Alexander Kolodin captured the nomination for secretary of state. ⁶

Whitmer Signs Final Michigan Budget as Governor

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed her last state budget as governor Tuesday, an $84 billion spending plan that closes a $1 billion revenue gap created partly by federal funding cuts. The plan raises per-pupil school funding by $250 and expands literacy programs, even as ten state departments will see reduced funding next year. Whitmer and legislative leaders from both parties said the deal reflects the difficulty of building a budget amid changes tied to the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act. ⁷

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Article Sources

1. The Fiscal Times, “House GOP Clears Procedural Hurdle as It Races to Pass Agenda,” July 21, 2026.

https://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2026/07/21/House-GOP-Clears-Procedural-Hurdle-It-Races-Pass-Agenda

2. The Boston Globe, “Hegseth estimates Iran war has cost $37.5 billion as he defends funding request to Congress,” July 21, 2026.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/21/nation/pete-hegseth-senate-iran-war/

3. Politico, “Fired federal prosecutor in Seattle sues Trump,” July 21, 2026.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/21/fired-federal-prosecutor-seattle-sues-trump-01006943

4. Reuters, “US judge blocks Trump administration from stripping immigrants of work permits,” July 21, 2026.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-judge-blocks-trump-administration-stripping-immigrants-work-permits-2026-07-21/

5. The New York Times, “Senate Panel Advances Jay Clayton as Next Spy Chief on Party-Line Vote,” July 21, 2026.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/21/us/politics/senate-panel-jay-clayton-spy-chief.html

6. The Boston Globe, “Andy Biggs wins Republican nomination to challenge Democrat Katie Hobbs for Arizona governor,” July 21, 2026.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/21/nation/arizona-primaries/

7. The Detroit News, “Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s final state budget includes some cuts, focus on state’s literacy crisis,” July 21, 2026.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2026/07/21/michigan-school-aid-budget-gretchen-whitmer/90990858007/

Federal Level

Trump Slaps 50% Tariff on Range of Canadian Goods

President Trump signed three proclamations Monday imposing an additional 50 percent tariff on a range of Canadian imports, including wine, dairy, automobiles, hockey sticks, and cement. The White House said the move responds to what it called discriminatory treatment of American alcohol, auto, and dairy exports by Canada. The tariffs, covering roughly five percent of Canadian exports to the United States, take effect in 30 days and do not exempt goods otherwise compliant with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Ottawa remains ready to intensify trade talks with Washington. ^{1, 2, 3}

House GOP Unveils Stopgap Bill Ahead of Recess Sprint

House Republican leaders are pushing this week to pass a clean stopgap funding bill that would keep the government running through December 4, hoping to avoid a third shutdown before the November midterms. Speaker Mike Johnson is betting that hard-line members, including Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, will let the measure pass without attaching the SAVE America Act elections overhaul. The bill will compete for floor time this week with the annual defense policy package and a Republican-authored ban on congressional stock trading, all before lawmakers leave for August recess. ⁴

House GOP Panel to Mark Up Border Bill Tuesday

The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a Tuesday markup of a sweeping immigration enforcement bill drawing on provisions from a prior Congress’s H.R. 2 legislation. The move fulfills a promise Speaker Johnson made to House hard-liners earlier this month after they froze floor business for weeks. Moderate and senior Republicans have cautioned that the bill, in its current form, lacks the votes to pass the full chamber, setting up another intraparty fight for GOP leadership this week. ⁴

Judges Split on DHS Voter Citizenship Database Access

Two federal judges have issued conflicting rulings on whether the Department of Homeland Security may give states expanded access to a citizenship-verification database for voter list maintenance. A District of Columbia judge blocked the expanded access in June, citing federal privacy law, while a Florida judge later ordered DHS to restore it for four states under a prior settlement. The two courts held a hearing Monday to work through the standoff, with DHS currently complying with both conflicting orders by limiting expanded access to only the four states covered by the Florida settlement. ⁵

State Level

Crowley Reenters Wisconsin Governor’s Race with Evers Backing

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley relaunched his campaign for Wisconsin governor Monday at a downtown Milwaukee rally, this time with the public endorsement of outgoing Governor Tony Evers. Crowley had suspended his bid on July 8 to back Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez, but reentered the race after Rodriguez dropped out Friday amid a campaign finance controversy. His return further scrambles a crowded Democratic field that already includes Mandela Barnes, Francesca Hong, Joel Brennan, and Kelda Roys ahead of the August 11 primary. ^{6, 7}

New Jersey Bans Landlord Rent-Setting Algorithms

Governor Mikie Sherrill signed the Forbidding the Algorithmic Inflation of Rent Act into law Monday in Newark, making New Jersey the fourth state to ban landlords from using algorithmic software to set rents. The law prohibits landlords from using tools that recommend rent prices based on nonpublic data shared by competing landlords, a practice officials say has let corporate landlords coordinate price increases. Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said her office already has ongoing litigation targeting algorithmic rent collusion by landlords and technology companies. The law empowers the attorney general to pursue civil penalties of up to $1,000 per violation. ⁸

Delaware Governor Signs Health Care Affordability Package

Governor Matt Meyer signed three bills into law Monday in Wilmington aimed at lowering health care costs and shielding Delaware hospitals from private equity ownership. The package caps hospital charges relative to Medicare rates, expands free and discounted charity care to a wider income band than any other state, and imposes a two-year moratorium on for-profit acquisitions of Delaware health systems. Meyer said the measures respond to what he called federal Republican cuts to health care coverage. ⁹

Arizona AG Race Finance Filings Reveal PAC Money Fight

New campaign finance filings released Monday show a mobile home park operator sued by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has funneled more than $600,000 into a political action committee backing Senate President Warren Petersen’s bid to replace her. The disclosures, covering activity through June 30, also show Petersen’s Republican primary rival, Rodney Glassman, outraising him directly, while Mayes, who faces no primary opponent, has stockpiled $2.3 million ahead of the general election. Arizona’s primary election takes place Tuesday. ¹⁰

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Article Sources

1. ABC News, “Trump slaps additional 50% tariff on certain Canadian goods,” July 20, 2026.

https://abcnews.com/Politics/trump-slaps-additional-50-tariff-canadian-goods/story?id=134929955

2. The Globe and Mail, “Trump announces 50% tariff on most Canadian goods over auto, alcohol and cheese disputes,” July 20, 2026.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/us-politics/article-trump-tariffs-canada-news-july-20/

3. NDTV, “Canada Says Ready To ‘Intensify’ Trade Talks As Trump Orders New Tariffs,” July 20, 2026.

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/canada-ready-to-intensify-trade-talks-as-trump-orders-new-tariffs-carney-11799068

4. Politico, “White House sends Congress stopgap exception wishlist,” July 20, 2026.

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/07/20/congress/white-house-outlines-anamolies-01005677

5. Ballotpedia, “Gov. Gavin Newsom signs bill overhauling California’s public school governance” (Daily Brew), July 20, 2026.

https://news.ballotpedia.org/2026/07/20/gov-gavin-newsom-signs-bill-overhauling-californias-public-school-governance/

6. Civic Media Today, “July 20, 2026: David Crowley returns to the Wisconsin governor’s race.”

7. Politico, “Sara Rodriguez suspends Wisconsin governor campaign amid campaign finance issues,” July 17, 2026.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/17/wisconsin-governor-race-sara-rodriguez-drops-out-01002957

8. NJ.gov, Office of the Governor, “Governor Sherrill Signs the Forbidding the Algorithmic Inflation of Rent (FAIR) Act into Law,” July 20, 2026.

https://www.nj.gov/governor/news/2026/approved/20260720a.shtml

9. WGMD, “Gov Meyer Signs Landmark Health Care Affordability Package,” July 20, 2026.

https://www.wgmd.com/gov-meyer-signs-landmark-health-care-affordability-package/

10. Arizona Capitol Times, “Campaign finance roundup: Firm sued by Arizona AG funnels $600K to PAC backing Petersen,” July 20, 2026.

https://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2026/07/20/campaign-finance-roundup-firm-sued-by-arizona-ag-funnels-600k-to-pac-backing-petersen/

Federal Level

Sen. Warner Warns of Election Interference Risk

Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner said Sunday on “Face the Nation” that President Trump “intends to interfere” in the 2026 midterm elections, pointing to the dismantling of federal election security offices and warning that immigration agents could be deployed near polling places. Warner, a Virginia Democrat, argued that Trump’s Thursday address on election integrity offered no new evidence of fraud and instead laid groundwork for federal intervention in state-run elections. The White House has not responded to Warner’s specific claims about ICE presence at the polls.¹

ICE Border Czar Backs Body Cameras After Deaths

White House border czar Tom Homan said Sunday that he supports requiring Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to wear body cameras during vehicle stops, following the fatal shootings of two men by federal agents in Houston and Maine within six days of each other. Homan acknowledged on “Face the Nation” that he had not personally reviewed publicly available footage from the Houston shooting but defended his agents’ conduct. Neither man shot was the intended target of the immigration operations, according to the Department of Homeland Security.^{2, 3}

State Level

Maine Senate Field Collapses Around Troy Jackson

Maine’s crowded Democratic Senate primary narrowed dramatically Sunday when Secretary of State Shenna Bellows withdrew her candidacy, followed hours later by physician Nirav Shah and former congressional aide Jordan Wood. Former state Senate President Troy Jackson’s supporters won 481 of the 500 delegate seats chosen over the weekend, making him the all but certain Democratic nominee to challenge Republican Senator Susan Collins. Jackson still must be formally nominated at next week’s state convention, but every major rival has now endorsed him.^{4, 5}

Arizona GOP Governor Primary Splits the Party

Arizona Republicans head into Tuesday’s gubernatorial primary with two starkly different visions for taking on Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs, widely seen as the most vulnerable Democratic governor in the country. Representative Andy Biggs, backed by President Trump and Turning Point Action, has built his career as an uncompromising conservative, while Representative David Schweikert has positioned himself as the more moderate choice capable of winning over independents. The outcome, reported Sunday by The Associated Press, will test whether Arizona Republicans repeat their 2022 losses with a hardline nominee or pursue a different path to the governor’s office.⁶

Wisconsin Governor’s Race Upended by Late Reentry

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley relaunched his campaign for Wisconsin governor on Sunday after securing the endorsement of outgoing Governor Tony Evers, scrambling the crowded Democratic primary field. Crowley’s reentry gives him institutional backing that rivals have lacked, though it remains unclear how the sudden shift will affect fundraising and organizing with the primary still months away. Evers, who is retiring after this term, had previously stayed neutral in the race before throwing his support behind Crowley.⁷

Hochul’s Data Center Freeze Sparks Business Backlash

New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced Sunday a one-year statewide moratorium on new hyperscale data center construction, requiring the facilities to generate their own power or pay a premium to draw from the state grid. The Partnership for New York City, the state’s most prominent business advocacy group, immediately criticized the policy, calling a one-year pause a mere “procrastination” that fails to address underlying energy capacity concerns. Hochul’s administration is also moving to eliminate sales-tax subsidies for large data centers as part of the broader plan.^{8, 9}

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Article Sources

1. MEAWW, “Warner claims Trump ‘intends to interfere’ in 2026 election, warns ICE could be at polls,” July 19, 2026.

https://news.meaww.com/warner-claims-trump-intends-to-interfere-in-2026-election-warns-ice-could-be-at-polls

2. The Guardian, “ICE officers to use body cameras during vehicle stops, Trump ‘border czar’ says,” July 19, 2026.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/19/ice-record-vehicle-stops-body-camera-mandate-homan

3. MEAWW, “Tom Homan admits he hasn’t seen fatal Houston ICE shooting video as he defends agents,” July 19, 2026.

https://news.meaww.com/tom-homan-admits-he-hasnt-seen-fatal-houston-ice-shooting-video-as-he-defends-agents

4. NBC News, “Shenna Bellows drops out of Maine’s Senate race as Troy Jackson builds Democratic support,” July 19, 2026.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/shenna-bellows-drops-maines-senate-race-troy-jackson-builds-democratic-rcna588242

5. NOTUS, “Shenna Bellows Exits Senate Race in Maine,” July 19, 2026.

https://www.notus.org/2026-election/shenna-bellows-maine-senate-race

6. The Boston Globe (AP), “In Arizona, election is test for competing visions of the GOP,” July 19, 2026.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/19/nation/arizona-election-compete-republicans/

7. WTAQ, “Milwaukee County Exec David Crowley relaunches gubernatorial campaign, grabs Evers endorsement,” July 19, 2026.

https://wtaq.com/2026/07/19/milwaukee-county-exec-david-crowley-relaunches-gubernatorial-campaign-grabs-evers-endorsement/

8. New York Post, “Top NYC business group opposes Gov. Hochul’s one-year data center ban,” July 19, 2026.

https://nypost.com/2026/07/19/us-news/top-nyc-business-group-opposes-gov-hochuls-one-year-data-center-ban/

9. CBS News, “Transcript: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on ‘Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,’” July 19, 2026.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kathy-hochul-new-york-governor-face-the-nation-transcript-07-19-2026/

Federal Level

Rep. Ralph Norman Enters SC Senate Race

South Carolina Republican Congressman Ralph Norman announced Saturday that he will run for the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by the death of Senator Lindsey Graham, entering the race as one of the first major Republicans to do so. Norman said he wants to represent South Carolina in the Senate and pledged to support President Trump’s agenda while carrying on Graham’s legacy. The filing period for the Republican special primary begins Tuesday, July 21, and runs through July 28.1

Trump Orders New Iran Strikes After US Troop Deaths

President Trump on Saturday defended new U.S. airstrikes on Iran after an attack in Jordan killed two American service members and left another missing, calling the deaths “a very sad thing” while insisting the military campaign must continue. The U.S. Central Command said the strikes marked the eighth consecutive night of American action against Iran, aimed at degrading Tehran’s ability to disrupt oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s government said Saturday it is suspending its commitments under last month’s interim ceasefire framework with Washington.2

DOJ, DHS Launch Election Integrity Tracking Site

The Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security launched a joint website Saturday detailing federal election-integrity enforcement actions across all 50 states, including an interactive map of lawsuits and criminal cases. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said the Civil Rights Division has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., over voter roll maintenance, uncovering hundreds of thousands of dead people and noncitizens still registered to vote. The Justice Department will also deploy election monitors to a dozen jurisdictions ahead of upcoming primaries in Arizona, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Virginia.3

State Level

Maine Democrats Rally Behind Troy Jackson for Senate

Former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson built an overwhelming lead Saturday in the compressed race to replace Graham Platner and take on Republican Senator Susan Collins, winning about 300 of 319 delegate slots up for grabs in the first day of county-level voting. Eight counties selected delegates Saturday, with the remaining counties set to vote Sunday. Democrats view Maine as essential to any hope of retaking the Senate majority in November, and the nominating convention will be held July 25 in Bangor.⁴

Wisconsin Governor Race Upended by Late Reentry

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley reentered Wisconsin’s Democratic primary for governor on Saturday with a fresh endorsement from outgoing Governor Tony Evers, just ten days after Crowley had dropped out and backed Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez. Rodriguez ended her own campaign Friday amid a campaign finance scandal, throwing the race into chaos less than a month before the August 11 primary. Evers called Crowley “not just a candidate who can win in November” but “the right candidate for the people of Wisconsin.”⁵

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Article Sources

1. ABC News 4 (WCIV), “Rep. Ralph Norman launches bid to succeed late Lindsey Graham in Senate,” July 18, 2026.

https://abcnews4.com/news/local/rep-ralph-norman-launches-bid-succeed-lindsey-graham-in-senate

2. Audacy (AP), “US military launches new airstrikes to punish Iran for deaths of US troops,” July 18, 2026.

https://www.audacy.com/talk1370/news/news/world/iran-us-hormuz-strait-war-july-18-2026-5adfef67554652580963684d9a663af2-7635

3. Legal Insurrection, “DOJ, DHS Launch Nationwide Election Integrity Offensive,” July 18, 2026.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2026/07/doj-dhs-launch-nationwide-election-integrity-offensive/

4. Anadolu Agency, “Morning Briefing: July 18, 2026,” July 18, 2026.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/morning-briefing-july-18-2026/4001926

5. Urban Milwaukee, “Crowley Reenters Governor’s Race With Evers’ Endorsement,” July 18, 2026.

https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2026/07/18/crowley-reenters-governors-race-with-endorsement-from-evers/

6. Politico, “David Crowley reenters Wisconsin governor’s race with Evers endorsement,” July 18, 2026.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/18/david-crowley-reenters-wisconsin-governors-race-with-evers-endorsement-01004326

Federal Level

Trump Election Speech Sparks Fact-Check Firestorm

President Trump’s Thursday night primetime address alleging China accessed 220 million American voter files continued drawing scrutiny Friday, as election security experts and reporters found the declassified documents he cited did not support his broader fraud claims. Trump renewed his push for the stalled SAVE America Act, a voter ID measure, while critics noted repeated independent audits have found no evidence the 2020 vote count was altered. ^{1, 2}

House GOP Unveils Funding Bill, Skips Voter ID Fight

House Republican leaders released text Friday for a bill funding most of the federal government through December 4, deliberately leaving out Trump’s SAVE America Act voter ID measure to avoid a shutdown fight before the midterms. Speaker Mike Johnson said he plans a floor vote next week on the clean continuing resolution, which contains no additional policy riders. Some Democrats are expected to back the bill after enduring two lengthy shutdowns this year. ³

Epstein Survivor Blasts Blanche as ‘Abrasive’ After Meeting

Epstein survivor Annie Farmer said Friday that a Thursday meeting with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche left her more convinced the Senate should reject his confirmation, calling him “abrasive, condescending, and intentionally noncommittal.” Farmer said Blanche would not commit to investigating why her sister’s 1996 report on Epstein was ignored by the FBI. Blanche’s office said he is committed to prosecuting anyone who can be charged in connection with the Epstein case. ⁴

White House Suspends Aide Over Trump Speech Betting

The White House confirmed Thursday it suspended longtime presidential teleprompter operator Gabriel Perez amid a federal investigation into whether he used advance knowledge of Trump’s speeches to place winning bets on the prediction market Kalshi. Perez is alleged to have earned more than $90,000 wagering on so-called mention markets tied to the president’s remarks. The case has renewed questions about oversight gaps in prediction market regulation. ⁵

State Level

Wisconsin Democrat Drops Governor Bid in Shakeup

Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez withdrew Friday from the state’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, just days after reports revealed disarray inside her campaign operation. Her exit reshapes the race to succeed term-limited Governor Tony Evers and hands an advantage to rivals seeking the party’s nomination in one of the nation’s most closely watched swing states ahead of next year’s election. ⁶

Maryland AG Faces Off With DOJ in Four Live Court Fights

Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown’s office is now battling the Justice Department in four separate lawsuits, including a new Thursday filing challenging the state’s in-state tuition policy for immigrants without legal status. Maryland has already won a preliminary injunction blocking a planned immigration detention facility and successfully fought off a federal request for confidential voter data, though DOJ has appealed that ruling. ⁷

Paxton Campaign Pushes Back on Texas Voter Fraud Claim

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s U.S. Senate campaign said Friday it is refuting a formal complaint filed by the Collin County Democratic Party accusing him of illegally voting from a home he does not actually live in. The complaint, filed with the Texas secretary of state, followed a news investigation questioning where Paxton is registered to vote. Paxton, locked in a competitive GOP Senate primary, has not been charged with any crime. ⁸

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Article Sources

1. AP News, “Trump uses primetime address to raise doubts about US elections ahead of midterms,” July 17, 2026.

https://apnews.com/newsletter/morning-wire/july-17-2026

2. Al Jazeera, “Key takeaways from Donald Trump’s controversial speech on election security,” July 17, 2026.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/17/key-takeaways-from-donald-trumps-speech-on-election-security

3. Politico, “House GOP releases bill to fund government until after the midterm elections,” July 17, 2026.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/17/house-gop-releases-bill-to-fund-government-until-after-the-midterm-elections-01003295

4. Good Morning America / ABC News, “Epstein survivor says acting AG Blanche was ‘abrasive, condescending’ during meeting,” July 17, 2026.

https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/news/story/blanche-meet-epstein-victims-earn-confirmation-vote-sen-134823103

5. CNBC, “Trump suspends teleprompter operator over Kalshi bets allegations, White House says,” July 16, 2026.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/16/trump-kalshi-teleprompter-cftc-investigation.html

6. USA Today, “Democrat drops out of Wisconsin governor race amid financial disarray,” July 17, 2026.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2026/07/17/sara-rodriguez-wisconsin-governor-race/90960073007/

7. The Daily Record, “Maryland-Trump litigation: Where do AG Brown’s cases stand?,” July 17, 2026.

https://thedailyrecord.com/2026/07/17/maryland-trump-anthony-brown-doj/

8. Yahoo News / USA Today, “Paxton campaign refutes election complaint from Texas Democrats,” July 17, 2026.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/paxton-campaign-refutes-election-complaint-161117890.html

Federal Level

Trump Election Speech Revives 2020 Claims, No New Proof

President Trump delivered a 25-minute primetime address from the White House on Thursday night, declassifying intelligence documents he said exposed “shocking vulnerabilities” in American election systems. Trump alleged China acquired 220 million voter files and renewed unproven claims that the 2020 election was compromised, though the released documents did not support his broader assertions. Intelligence experts and Democratic lawmakers, including Senator Mark Warner, said no evidence has emerged that any vote count was altered. Trump used the address to press Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a stalled voter ID bill. ^{1, 2, 3}

Speaker Johnson Yanks Veterans Bill Amid GOP Revolt

House Speaker Mike Johnson pulled a major veterans benefits bill from the floor Thursday just minutes before a scheduled vote after more than a half-dozen Republican holdouts objected to proposed cuts affecting sleep apnea and tinnitus benefits. The setback marked another setback for Johnson’s legislative agenda amid rising anxiety within his party ahead of the November midterms. The bill’s failure leaves veterans’ groups and GOP leadership searching for a path forward before the House recesses. ^{4, 5}

Blanche Meets Epstein Survivors; Confirmation Vote Still Unclear

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche held a tense hour-long meeting Thursday with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein as he seeks to secure Senate votes for his confirmation as attorney general. Survivors, including Virginia Giuffre’s family, said Blanche made no firm commitments and described the meeting as disappointing. Republican Senators Thom Tillis and John Cornyn, whose votes are pivotal on the Judiciary Committee, have not said how they will vote following the session. ⁶

DOJ Sues Maryland Over In-State Tuition for Immigrants

The Justice Department filed suit against Maryland on Thursday, arguing that a state law granting in-state tuition and financial aid to immigrants without legal status discriminates against U.S. citizens living out of state. Officials said the policy costs Maryland taxpayers roughly $9 million a year and marks the 13th such lawsuit filed nationwide. Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown vowed to fight the suit in court, saying the state will continue supporting students who grew up there. ⁷

Fetterman Draws Israel ‘Red Line’ for Democratic Party

Senator John Fetterman said Thursday he would leave the Democratic Party if it formally adopted an anti-Israel position, calling it his personal “red line.” The comment followed a Wednesday House vote in which 103 Democrats, nearly half the caucus, backed a failed measure to cut $3.3 billion in military and humanitarian aid to Israel. The vote exposed a widening rift among Democrats, splitting party leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Katherine Clark. ^{8, 9}

State Level

Newsom Signs Water and Wildfire Bond Bill Package

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a series of bills Thursday, including AB 35, a bond measure directing funding toward safe drinking water, wildfire prevention, drought preparedness, and clean air programs. The signing continues Newsom’s push on infrastructure and climate resilience measures as he weighs a potential future run for national office. ¹⁰

States Sue to Block $110 Billion Paramount-Warner Deal

Twelve Democratic state attorneys general filed suit Thursday in federal court in California seeking to block Paramount Skydance’s proposed $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The move comes despite the Justice Department declining to challenge the merger, highlighting a growing trend of state officials stepping in as independent antitrust enforcers when federal regulators decline to act. ¹¹

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Article Sources

1. NPR, “Trump repeats claims, cites election ‘vulnerabilities’ in speech,” July 16, 2026.

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/16/nx-s1-5896448/trump-election-address

2. CNN, “Trump delivers primetime speech, claims declassified documents show election vulnerabilities,” July 16, 2026.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/16/politics/live-news/trump-speech-election

3. Al Jazeera, “Key takeaways from Donald Trump’s controversial speech on election security,” July 17, 2026.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/17/key-takeaways-from-donald-trumps-speech-on-election-security

4. CNN, “Speaker Johnson suffers humiliating political defeat, yanks veterans benefits bill,” July 16, 2026.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/16/politics/mike-johnson-veterans-bill

5. UPI, “Vets bill shelved after backlash against sleep apnea, tinnitus cuts,” July 16, 2026.

https://www.newsbreak.com/upi-news-510013/4774726445534-vets-bill-shelved-after-backlash-against-sleep-apnea-tinnitus-cuts

6. CNN, “Todd Blanche holds tense meeting with Epstein survivors amid confirmation push,” July 16, 2026.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/16/politics/todd-blanche-senate-hearing-witnesses

7. Eastern Shore Undercover / State of Maryland, “DOJ Sues Maryland Over In-State Tuition Law,” July 16, 2026.

https://www.easternshoreundercover.com/article/doj-sues-maryland-over-in-state-tuition-law.htm

8. CNN, “Fetterman lays out ‘red line’ over leaving Democratic Party: Israel,” July 16, 2026.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/16/politics/fetterman-democratic-party-anti-israel

9. The Guardian, “John Fetterman says he would leave Democrats if they became ‘anti-Israel’,” July 16, 2026.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/16/john-fetterman-democrats-israel

10. Office of Governor Gavin Newsom, “Governor Newsom signs legislation 7.16.2026,” July 16, 2026.

https://www.gov.ca.gov/2026/07/16/governor-newsom-signs-legislation-7-16-2026/

11. Morgan Lewis, “State Attorneys General Expand Their Role as Independent Antitrust Enforcers,” July 16, 2026.

https://www.morganlewis.com/pubs/2026/07/state-attorneys-general-expand-their-role-as-independent-antitrust-enforcers

Federal Level

Trump Addresses Nation Tonight on Election Integrity

President Trump will deliver a primetime address to the nation tonight, Thursday, July 16, focused on election integrity. The White House says the address will include the release of newly declassified intelligence. Reports indicate Trump intends to use the speech to build pressure for the stalled SAVE America Act, his federal voting overhaul bill. Senior Republican operatives have privately expressed concern that relitigating 2020 election claims so close to the November midterms is not helpful to their candidates. ^{¹, ²}

Blanche Calls Himself ‘Trump’s Lawyer’ in AG Hearing Slip

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings opened on Wednesday, July 15, and continue today, Thursday, July 16. In a notable exchange on Wednesday, Blanche referred to himself as Trump’s lawyer in the present tense before correcting himself. Senator John Cornyn of Texas, whose vote is essential to confirmation, told CNN afterward he still has ‘concerns’ and has not made a decision. Senator Thom Tillis signaled he will likely support Blanche. The Epstein files and the $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund were also central points of contention. ^{³, ⁴}

Senate Blocks $1.15 Trillion Defense Bill Over Iran War

The Senate voted 50-46 on Tuesday, July 14, to block the fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, failing to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to advance debate. Democrats voted as a bloc against the bill, citing Congress’s lack of authorization for the ongoing war with Iran and concern that the defense budget increase is four times larger than any increase on the domestic side. Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker called the blockage a ‘new low,’ while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Republicans are ‘ignoring the nation’s most urgent national security crisis.’ ^{⁵, ⁶}

Trump Blasts Own DHS for Pausing ICE Vehicle Stops

President Trump publicly criticized his own Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday, July 15, after DHS directed ICE agents to pause most vehicle stops nationwide following two fatal shootings in Texas and Maine. Border czar Tom Homan had called the pause a ‘short-term review,’ but Trump’s public pushback signaled an internal rift. ICE agents in both incidents shot and killed men who were not the intended targets of their operations. Bipartisan calls for an independent investigation and faster deployment of body cameras for ICE agents are growing on Capitol Hill. ^{⁷, ⁸}

House Passes Bill to Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent

The House voted 308-117 on Tuesday, July 14, to pass the Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight saving time permanent across most of the United States and end the twice-yearly clock change. The bill has President Trump’s support and now moves to the Senate, where its prospects are uncertain. Critics have raised concerns about darker winter mornings if the measure becomes law. ^⁹

Musk Puts $5 Million Behind Ramaswamy’s Ohio Governor Bid

Elon Musk donated $5 million in the second quarter to a super PAC supporting Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign for Ohio governor, according to FEC filings disclosed on Wednesday, July 15. The donation comes despite a publicized falling out between the two men after Ramaswamy departed the Department of Government Efficiency. The Ohio race has been reclassified from ‘Likely Republican’ to ‘Toss-Up’ by the Cook Political Report. Ramaswamy faces Democrat Amy Acton in the November general election. ^¹⁰

State Level

Maine Senate Candidates Debate Tonight; ICE Shooting Looms Large

Eight Democratic candidates vying to replace Graham Platner on Maine’s Senate ballot debate tonight, Thursday, July 16, in Portland in their first major face-off before the July 25 nominating convention. The fatal ICE shooting in Biddeford on July 13 dominated the campaign, with candidates Jackson, Shah and Bellows calling for abolishing ICE or halting its operations in Maine. The winner of the convention will face Republican Senator Susan Collins, who is running for reelection in November. The race is considered critical to Democratic hopes of recapturing the Senate. ^{¹¹, ¹²}

SC Senate Primary Race Gains Momentum as New Entrant Joins

The Republican field for South Carolina’s August 11 special Senate primary is shaping up quickly, with multiple potential candidates sizing up the race to permanently fill the seat of the late Senator Lindsey Graham. Reports indicate that Congressman Ralph Norman and Lt. Governor Pamela Evette are formally considering their options. Former Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Wednesday, July 15, he will not enter the race. President Trump met with newly installed interim Senator Darline Graham Nordone in the Oval Office on Thursday morning. ^{¹³, ¹⁴}

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Article Sources

1. Politico, “Trump puts Republicans in a primetime bind,” July 15, 2026.

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2026/07/16/trump-puts-republicans-in-a-primetime-bind-01000513

2. Philadelphia Inquirer / phillyburbs.com, “What is Trump’s Thursday primetime speech to the nation about?” July 15, 2026.

https://www.phillyburbs.com/story/news/politics/2026/07/15/trump-thursday-july-16-primetime-speech-president-address-the-nation/

3. The Boston Globe, “Todd Blanche grilled on ICE shootings during Senate confirmation hearing,” July 15, 2026.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/15/nation/todd-blanche-senate-confirmation-hearing-live-updates/

4. NPR, “What happened during attorney general confirmation hearing takeaways,” July 15, 2026.

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/15/nx-s1-5895105/todd-blanche-senate-confirmation-attorney-general-takeaways

5. Breaking Defense, “Senate Democrats block NDAA amid concerns on Iran War, budget topline,” July 14, 2026.

https://breakingdefense.com/2026/07/senate-democrats-block-ndaa-amid-concerns-on-iran-war-budget-topline/

6. Al Jazeera, “US Senate Democrats block defence bill over Iran war, Israel provisions,” July 14, 2026.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/14/senate-democrats-block-defence-bill-over-iran-war-israel-provisions

7. Reuters, “ICE suspends traffic stops in wake of Maine fatal shooting, sources say,” July 14, 2026.

https://www.reuters.com/world/ice-suspends-vehicle-stops-us-immigration-enforcement-sources-say-2026-07-14/

8. Politico, “Trump blasts DHS decision to pause immigration traffic stops,” July 15, 2026.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/15/trump-blasts-dhs-decision-to-pause-immigration-traffic-stops-00998510

9. ABC News, “House passes bipartisan bill to make daylight saving time permanent,” July 14, 2026.

https://abcnews.com/US/house-passes-bipartisan-bill-make-daylight-saving-time/story?id=134769865

10. New York Times, “Elon Musk Funds Vivek Ramaswamy’s Bid for Ohio Governor,” July 15, 2026.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/15/us/politics/elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-ohio-governor-doge.html

11. Politico, “Maine Democrats will square off in Senate debate Thursday,” July 14, 2026.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/14/maine-democrats-senate-debate-platner-00997107

12. Washington Examiner, “Maine Democrats to debate on Thursday: What to know,” July 15, 2026.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/congressional/4648131/maine-democrat-candidates-senate-debate-what-to-know/

13. Politico Playbook, “Trump puts Republicans in a primetime bind” (Bessent SC reference),” July 15, 2026.

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2026/07/16/trump-puts-republicans-in-a-primetime-bind-01000513

14. Wikipedia, “2026 United States Senate election in South Carolina,” 2026.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_United_States_Senate_election_in_South_Carolina

Federal Level

Darline Graham Nordone Sworn In as SC’s First Woman Senator

Darline Graham Nordone was sworn into the U.S. Senate on Tuesday afternoon, July 14, by Senate President Pro Tempore Chuck Grassley, becoming South Carolina’s first woman senator. Her late brother Lindsey Graham raised her as a teenager after both their parents died within a short period of one another. Senate Majority Leader John Thune welcomed her on the Senate floor, saying he looked forward to serving with her. Nordone said she promised to “carry forward the efforts” of her brother but declined to comment on specific policy issues. ^{1, 2}

Blanche AG Hearing Opens Today; Key Senators Still Undecided

The Senate Judiciary Committee opens two days of confirmation hearings on Wednesday, July 15, for acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. Blanche spent Tuesday, July 14, meeting with undecided senators, and Republican insiders told Reuters he is on a “glide path” to confirmation before the August recess. Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas have not publicly committed their votes. Advocacy groups for Jeffrey Epstein survivors erected billboards in both states urging a no vote. More than 1,200 former Justice Department officials have also signed a letter opposing his confirmation. ^{3, 4}

House Floor Frozen as GOP Hard-Liners Demand Border Action

House Republican leaders were in late-night negotiations on Tuesday, July 14, with Freedom Caucus members who have blocked floor votes for weeks, demanding concrete border security legislation before allowing any votes to proceed. Speaker Mike Johnson said the House Budget Committee would hold a markup Wednesday on a third reconciliation bill. Senate Majority Leader Thune separately warned that the path to 51 Senate votes for such a bill “is going to be a bumpy one.” If passed, the bill would be the third major reconciliation package of Trump’s second term. ⁵

Trump Announces Primetime Address Thursday on Election Integrity

President Trump confirmed to reporters at the White House on Tuesday, July 14, that his primetime address to the nation on Thursday, July 16, will focus on election integrity. Administration officials told AP News that Trump is expected to discuss newly declassified intelligence about what the White House claims are risks related to voting machines. The address will also touch on the renewed conflict with Iran. Democrats immediately characterized the speech as an effort to undermine confidence in elections ahead of the November midterms. ^{6, 7}

Justices Barrett and Kagan Testify Before Congress on Security

In their first testimony before Congress since 2019, Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Elena Kagan appeared before two committees on Tuesday, July 14, presenting the court’s fiscal year 2027 budget request of $228 million. Barrett told lawmakers she now keeps a bulletproof vest at her home, and that her children have been directly affected by threats. The court is requesting six additional security agents per justice, citing a 57 percent increase in threats. Kagan also took a moment to pay tribute to the late Senator Lindsey Graham, who had supported her confirmation to the court. ⁸

Senate Democrats Set to Block Defense Bill Over Iran War

Senate Democrats signaled on Tuesday, July 14, that they plan to block the annual National Defense Authorization Act when the Senate votes Wednesday on whether to advance the bill. Democrats are opposing it in protest of the ongoing military conflict with Iran, which Congress has not formally authorized. The vote comes days after President Trump formally notified lawmakers that the United States is once again at war with Iran, starting a 60-day clock during which he can continue military operations without congressional approval. ⁵

State Level

Nikki Haley Flooded with Calls to Run for Graham’s Senate Seat

As Darline Graham Nordone was being sworn into the Senate on Tuesday, July 14, Republicans were already jockeying for the August 11 special primary to nominate a permanent senator from South Carolina. CBS News reported that former Governor and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley has been “flooded with calls” urging her to enter the race, though her spokesperson said she has no plans to run at this time. Congressman Ralph Norman told reporters Monday, July 13, he was formally considering a run. Lt. Governor Pamela Evette and Congressman Russell Fry are also closely weighing their options. ^{2, 9}

Peters Backs Haley Stevens in Tight Michigan Senate Primary

Outgoing Michigan Senator Gary Peters endorsed Representative Haley Stevens on Sunday, July 13, in the competitive Democratic primary to succeed him, calling her someone who “has won tough races and delivered for Michiganders.” Stevens is locked in a close race against progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed ahead of the August 4 primary. El-Sayed has the backing of Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, while the winner faces Republican Mike Rogers in November in what is expected to be one of the most competitive Senate races in the country. ^{10, 11}

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Article Sources

1. Townhall, “Sen. Darline Graham Nordone Officially Sworn In,” July 14, 2026.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/cameron-arcand/2026/07/14/sen-darline-graham-nordone-officially-sworn-in-n2679425

2. ABC Columbia (WOLO), “Darline Graham Nordone sworn in as SC interim U.S. senator,” July 14, 2026.

https://www.abccolumbia.com/2026/07/14/darline-graham-nordone-to-be-sworn-in-as-sc-interim-u-s-senator/

3. Reuters, “Blanche on glide path for US attorney general confirmation, Republican insiders say,” July 14, 2026.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/blanche-glide-path-us-attorney-general-confirmation-republican-insiders-say-2026-07-14/

4. CNN, “Todd Blanche has to win over skeptical Republicans. Democrats are laying lots of traps,” July 14, 2026.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/14/politics/todd-blanche-senate-judiciary-committee-hearing

5. Politico, “House Republicans home in on $80B reconciliation package,” July 14, 2026.

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/07/14/congress/house-republicans-80-billion-reconciliation-00997839

6. AP News, “Trump will speak on elections in primetime address after pushing debunked conspiracies,” July 14, 2026.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-speech-elections-integrity-ea69e086380898546e58663d8fc5c6dc

7. USA Today, “Trump says primetime address will focus on ‘free and fair elections,’” July 14, 2026.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/07/14/trump-primetime-address-speech-elections-voting/90916412007/

8. Townhall, “Two Supreme Court Justices Make a Rare Capitol Hill Appearance Amid Rising Security Threats,” July 14, 2026.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/dmitri-bolt/2026/07/14/two-supreme-court-justices-are-testifying-before-congress-n2679401

9. CBS News YouTube, “Republicans consider future of Lindsey Graham’s Senate seat as Darline Graham Nordone fills in,” July 14, 2026.

10. Washington Examiner, “Gary Peters endorses Haley Stevens over Abdul El-Sayed to replace him in Michigan,” July 12-13, 2026.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/congressional/4645582/gary-peters-endorses-haley-stevens-michigan-senate-race/

11. AP News, “Michigan Sen. Gary Peters backs Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens in contentious race to succeed him,” July 13, 2026.

https://apnews.com/article/haley-stevens-endorsement-peters-michigan-senate-democrats-57b6f5dbd306093cbd5ea2e774da5bd5

Federal Level

Graham’s Sister Named to Fill His Senate Seat

South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster appointed Darline Graham Nordone, the late Senator Lindsey Graham’s only sibling, to fill his Senate seat on Monday, July 13. Nordone, 62, has spent her career working with people with disabilities and currently serves as commissioner of the South Carolina Commission for the Blind. She will be sworn in Wednesday, July 15, to serve through January. President Trump recommended her in a Truth Social post as ‘a fabulous tribute to Lindsey,’ and both Senator Tim Scott and Majority Leader John Thune endorsed the choice. ^{1, 2}

Senate Faces a Razor-Thin Margin on Critical Legislation

With Graham’s seat vacant and Senator Mitch McConnell hospitalized since mid-June, Republicans returned to Washington on Monday, July 13, effectively holding just a 51-vote majority. Majority Leader John Thune now faces a compressed summer calendar that includes the Russia sanctions bill, a lapsed FISA surveillance renewal, Todd Blanche’s attorney general confirmation, and a government funding deadline before October 1. McConnell released a statement Monday saying a June 14 fall left him briefly unconscious and that he later developed pneumonia, but that he is working to return. ^{3, 4}

Federal Judge Throws Out Trump’s $10B IRS Lawsuit

A federal judge ruled on Monday, July 13, that President Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS was an improper attempt to give ‘judicial legitimacy for a settlement that had no viable basis in law or fact.’ U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams said that because the president controls both the IRS and the Justice Department, ‘there was never a case or controversy.’ She also referred the attorney who filed the case to the Florida bar for potential disciplinary action. The original settlement had granted Trump and his family immunity from future tax audits. ⁵

Pentagon and DOJ Form Joint Task Force to Hunt Leakers

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Monday, July 13, that the Pentagon and the Justice Department have created a joint task force to identify and prosecute unauthorized disclosures of sensitive national security information to the news media. Hegseth said the Pentagon’s Office of General Counsel will have authority, effective immediately, to request all information about potential leaks and that requests must be addressed within 48 hours. The announcement came days after the DOJ issued subpoenas to four New York Times reporters over a story about President Trump’s Qatari-gifted Air Force One. ^{6, 7}

Trump HHS Drops Its Sweeping Medicare Trans Care Rule

The Trump administration confirmed on Monday, July 13, that it will not finalize a proposed rule that would have blocked all Medicaid and Medicare funding from hospitals providing gender-affirming care to minors. The Department of Health and Human Services quietly disclosed the decision in an internal document obtained by NPR after receiving more than 30,000 public comments. The American Medical Association and the Children’s Hospital Association both urged the agency to withdraw the rule. The administration said other regulatory tools targeting such care remain in place. ^{8, 9}

Blanche AG Confirmation Hearing Opens Wednesday in Senate

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to open two days of confirmation hearings for acting Attorney General Todd Blanche beginning Wednesday, July 15. Graham’s death complicates the process, since he held a seat on the committee that must recommend Blanche’s nomination to the full Senate. Blanche drew bipartisan criticism earlier this year for his role in promoting a now-defunct $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund. Some Republican senators remain publicly undecided on whether they will confirm him, though Reuters reported Monday he is on a ‘glide path’ toward confirmation. ^{10, 11}

State Level

SC Republicans Line Up to Run for Graham’s Senate Seat

Hours after Darline Graham Nordone was named interim senator on Monday, July 13, South Carolina Republicans began publicly positioning for the August 11 special primary to choose a nominee for the November election. Representatives Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman said they were strongly considering a run, while Lt. Governor Pamela Evette met with Governor McMaster about her options. Russell Fry is reportedly Trump’s preferred candidate for the special primary race. Candidate filing will open July 21 and close July 28, with a runoff on August 25 if no candidate wins outright. ^{1, 2}

ICE Shooting in Maine Kills Colombian Man; 10th This Year

An ICE officer fatally shot a 26-year-old Colombian man in Biddeford, Maine, on the morning of Monday, July 13, in what Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau described as the 10th death tied to an ICE encounter since the start of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign. Senator Angus King said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told him the man ‘weaponized’ his vehicle against pursuing officers. Immigrant rights groups said the man was authorized to work in the United States and called for an independent investigation. ^{12, 13}

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Article Sources

1. The Washington Times, “Lindsey Graham’s sister will replace him in the Senate after his sudden death,” July 13, 2026.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/jul/13/lindsey-grahams-sister-replace-senate-sudden-death/

2. KVCR / NPR, “South Carolina’s governor names Lindsey Graham’s sister to serve out his term,” July 13, 2026.

https://kvcr.org/news/npr-top-stories/2026-07-13/lindsey-graham-senate-seat-darline-graham

3. Journal Record / Reuters, “Graham death, McConnell absence hang over US Senate as Congress returns,” July 13, 2026.

https://journalrecord.com/2026/07/13/senate-challenges-after-graham-death-mcconnell-absence/

4. Townhall, “It’s Official: Lindsey Graham’s Sister Appointed to Serve the Remainder of His Term,” July 13, 2026.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2026/07/13/done-deal-heres-who-will-serve-out-the-rest-of-lindsey-grahams-term-n2679339

5. The Preamble, “The Daily Brief, July 13, 2026: Judge slams Trump’s IRS lawsuit,” July 13, 2026.

6. The Washington Times, “Hegseth: Pentagon, Justice Department working together to track down leakers,” July 13, 2026.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/jul/13/hegseth-pentagon-justice-department-working-together-track-leakers/

7. UPI, “Defense, Justice departments to target press leaks,” July 13, 2026.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2026/07/13/defense-justice-departments-to-investigate-press-leaks/8701783974816/

8. NPR / KDLL Public Radio, “Trump’s HHS abandons threat to withhold Medicare and Medicaid funding over trans care,” July 13, 2026.

https://www.kdll.org/npr-news/2026-07-13/trumps-hhs-abandons-threat-to-withhold-medicare-and-medicaid-funding-over-trans-care

9. Human Rights Campaign, “Breaking: After Massive Outrage from Public, HHS Backs Down Over Plan to Restrict Trans Youth Health Care,” July 13, 2026.

https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/breaking-after-massive-outrage-from-public-hhs-backs-down-over-plan-to-make-health-care-for-trans-youth

10. Reuters, “Blanche on glide path for US attorney general confirmation, Republican insiders say,” July 14, 2026.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/blanche-glide-path-us-attorney-general-confirmation-republican-insiders-say-2026-07-14/

11. AP News, “Blanche set for July confirmation hearings as GOP weighs support,” June 16, 2026.

https://apnews.com/article/blanche-attorney-general-hearings-trump-1e4301183691e001e269610e846a7a92

12. The Preamble, “The Daily Brief, July 13, 2026: Another ICE shooting in Biddeford, Maine,” July 13, 2026.

13. KVCR / NPR, “ICE officer fatally shoots man in Biddeford, Maine,” July 13, 2026.

https://kvcr.org/news/npr-top-stories/2026-07-13/lindsey-graham-senate-seat-darline-graham

This week, in a federal courtroom on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the police commissioner of a United States territory was sentenced to ten years in federal prison for selling his badge. The next day, the territory’s former budget director got seven years for helping him do it. Five months earlier, in the same courthouse, the territory’s former Sports, Parks, and Recreation commissioner was sentenced to five years for a parallel shakedown. His bagman got five years and eight months. Their contractor of choice, a man named David Whitaker who founded a company called Mon Ethos Pro Support, pleaded guilty in 2024 and turned state’s witness (U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice).

Six convicted public-corruption defendants in two parallel schemes inside one small territorial government. The money was federal disaster-relief money, sent down from Washington under the American Rescue Plan Act to help the Virgin Islands rebuild after hurricanes. The bribes that bought it were paid in cash, in private-school tuition, in luxury travel, and in restaurant equipment for the police commissioner’s personal restaurant project. And the very company paying the bribes was caught planting fourteen surveillance devices inside Virgin Islands government offices, then billing the government more than $130,000 to come back and “find” them (Exec Security TSCM, Virgin Islands News Online).

You did not read about this in the New York Times. You did not read about it in the Washington Post. You did not read about it in the Wall Street Journal. The people of the Virgin Islands are American citizens. The money was American taxpayer money. The convictions are federal. And the mainland press treated the story like a foreign country.

What the Centercratic Party Stands For

Three of our nine principles describe exactly what just happened in St. Croix.

“Safeguard Our Democratic System. Govern through compromise, not domination. Reject extreme tactics by special interests and defend the Constitution for everyone.” When the most senior law-enforcement officer in a territory is on the payroll of the contractor he is supposed to oversee, democracy is not being safeguarded. It is being inverted (U.S. Department of Justice).

“One Law for All. The law applies equally to all. Independent courts ensure fair process and protect basic rights.” Federal Judge Mark Kearney applied the law to a police commissioner, a budget director, a parks commissioner, a middleman, and a contractor. That is one law working as designed. The question is whether anyone above them, including the governor who appointed them, will face the same standard (U.S. Department of Justice).

“Govern with a Balanced Approach. Reject both government overreach and government absence. Provide essential services, measure results, end what fails, and enforce fiscal discipline.” The Virgin Islands Police Department paid Mon Ethos $3.31 million for CCTV services. The Department of Sports, Parks, and Recreation tried to steer the company another $1.43 million security-camera contract. The Office of Management and Budget pushed payments to the company forward in the queue. None of this was essential service delivery. It was a captured government writing checks to a captured contractor (Loop News).

The Sordid Details

The story begins with David Whitaker, founder of Mon Ethos Pro Support, a St. Thomas-based company that pitched itself as a one-stop shop for cybersecurity, surveillance, and digital services. By the early 2020s, Mon Ethos had embedded itself across multiple Virgin Islands government agencies. The Virgin Islands Police Department alone had paid Whitaker’s company $3.31 million for CCTV services. The Department of Sports, Parks, and Recreation had a $1.43 million security-camera contract in motion. And the Office of Management and Budget controlled the spigot of federal American Rescue Plan Act money that kept Mon Ethos paid (Loop News, Virgin Islands Free Press).

To keep that spigot open, Whitaker paid bribes. Lots of them.

Police Commissioner Ray Martinez took nearly $100,000 in benefits. According to evidence presented at his federal trial, the payments included cash, luxury travel, personal expenses, private-school tuition for a member of his family, and restaurant equipment for a personal restaurant project Martinez was building on the side. In exchange, Martinez approved Mon Ethos invoices and helped award the company a $1.4 million contract funded by federal disaster-recovery dollars. The federal jury convicted him in December 2025 on every count brought against him: honest services wire fraud, federal program bribery, money laundering conspiracy, and obstruction of justice. On June 9, 2026, Judge Mark Kearney sentenced him to ten years in federal prison, ordered him to forfeit $127,000, pay $77,250 in restitution, and a $5,000 fine (U.S. Department of Justice, Facebook post by Virgin Islands Source).

OMB Director Jenifer O’Neal helped move Mon Ethos invoices to the front of the territory’s payment line. She was convicted on every count alongside Martinez in December 2025 and on June 11, 2026, Judge Kearney sentenced her to seven years in federal prison (U.S. Department of Justice).

In a parallel scheme, Sports, Parks, and Recreation Commissioner Calvert White solicited a $16,000 bribe in exchange for steering the $1.43 million security-camera contract toward Mon Ethos. He successfully collected $5,000 of it. White and his middleman, Benjamin Hendricks, owner of A Clean Environment USVI, were convicted at a five-day jury trial in July 2025. On January 22, 2026, Judge Kearney sentenced White to five years in prison and Hendricks to five years and eight months. White was the son of a longtime Virgin Islands senator and was fitted with a GPS ankle monitor on his way out of the courthouse (U.S. Department of Justice, Virgin Islands Free Press).

Whitaker pleaded guilty in September 2024 to two counts of wire fraud and one count of bribery concerning federal programs. He cooperated. He testified against the commissioners. His sentencing was held on June 10, 2026, the day between Martinez and O’Neal, with prosecutors seeking a reduced 22-month term in light of his cooperation (WTJX).

And then there is the wiretap. In September 2024, court documents were unsealed showing that Mon Ethos had planted fourteen eavesdropping devices inside Virgin Islands government offices, including inside the Office of Management and Budget itself. The same company that was bribing the budget director was bugging her office. And the same company then turned around and billed the Virgin Islands government more than $130,000 for technical surveillance counter-measure services to detect and remove the very devices it had planted. The territory paid that bill (Exec Security TSCM, Virgin Islands News Online).

Six convicted defendants. Three sitting cabinet-level commissioners under one governor. Federal disaster money targeted. A contractor who bugged the offices of the officials he was bribing. This is what one-party government looks like when nobody is watching.

Both Parties Have Failed Us

The Virgin Islands is governed almost exclusively by Democrats. Governor Albert Bryan Jr. is a Democrat. He appointed Martinez. He appointed O’Neal. He appointed White. He has not been charged with any crime and the U.S. Attorney has not implicated him in the bribery schemes. But he requested the resignations of Martinez and O’Neal only after the FBI seized their cellphones, and he was reluctant even then to concede that his administration had erred in continuing to do business with a contractor whose founder was already a convicted felon (Virgin Islands Consortium, Loop News).

This is the pattern of one-party rule everywhere it takes root. Where the party in power faces no real opposition, the people inside the government stop fearing the voters and start fearing only the federal prosecutors. The Virgin Islands have a Democratic monopoly. Other places have Republican monopolies. Ohio just produced one of the largest utility-bribery cases in American history under Republican one-party rule in Columbus. Newark, New Jersey just produced a duffel-bag-cash deputy mayor under Democratic one-party rule. The party label changes. The structure does not. One-party dominance plus federal dollars plus weak local press equals exactly this kind of scandal, in cycle after cycle, in jurisdiction after jurisdiction.

And the national press has failed every one of these stories. The Virgin Islands case checks every box that should make it national news. American citizens. Federal money. A sitting police commissioner convicted. A sitting budget director convicted. A sitting parks commissioner convicted. A contractor planting listening devices inside government offices, then billing the government to find them. And yet the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal have produced essentially nothing on it. What coverage exists has come almost entirely from territorial reporters at WTJX, the Virgin Islands Consortium, the Virgin Islands Free Press, Virgin Islands News Online, the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation, Loop News, and one DOJ press release picked up nowhere else. That is not journalism failure as an accident. That is a structural blind spot in how the mainland press decides whose corruption matters (WTJX).

The Virgin Islanders who paid for this scandal cannot meaningfully vote for the president of the United States who appoints the U.S. Attorney that prosecuted it. They cannot send a voting member to the Congress that allocated the disaster money that was stolen. They have an inspector general, a territorial DOJ, and the FBI. That is what stood between them and total impunity, and only just barely.

We do not have time left to keep tolerating this. A democracy in which territorial citizens fund a captured government, federal money buys a contractor who bugs the very officials he is bribing, the local press carries the story alone, and the mainland press cannot find the territory on a map, is a democracy already failing the people inside it. The Centercratic Party exists to insist on the alternative: term limits that break the political machines, one law that actually applies to commissioners and contractors and governors, transparent procurement that makes bug-the-budget-director schemes impossible, and a politics where federal disaster money goes to rebuild communities instead of to building police commissioners’ restaurants.

We must save our democracy before it is too late.

That is the wave.

The CenterWave is published by CenterVoter, the home of the Centercratic Party. Visit centercratic.party | centervoter.com

Welcome to Friday Vision where we expose the depth of our institutional
decay and present the blueprints required for long-term solutions.

Almost everyone agrees that America’s immigration system is broken. That may be the only thing almost everyone agrees on. Past that point, the conversation falls apart into slogans. Build the wall. Abolish ICE. Mass deportation. Open borders. Each side treats the other as the problem, and every couple of years we get a fresh round of promises that go nowhere.

The story underneath all of that noise is this. The system has been broken in much the same ways for about forty years, and it keeps getting worse. Not because the problem cannot be solved, but because hardly anyone in Washington has been willing to define it clearly before reaching for a microphone. Solutions get announced before the problem is understood. Enforcement gets ramped up before the courts are funded. Legal doors get shut before anyone builds new ones.

The result is a system that serves no one. It does not serve American workers, or American employers, or the millions of people living in legal limbo, or the taxpayers who pay for all of it. It does not even serve the politicians, who keep promising to fix it and failing.

This article walks through the whole story in no more than a 5–10 minute read. How immigration used to work. The moments when it broke. What the system looks like today. And how we can realistically get it back on track. It is a short version of two longer research reports we have published, which are there for you whenever you have the time.

How Immigration Used to Work

For most of American history, immigration simply worked. It did not work because someone designed it cleverly. It worked because it matched a basic reality. A young country with enormous land and a constant shortage of labor needed people, and people came.

The founders understood this. One of the grievances in the Declaration of Independence was that King George had been “obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners.” Immigration was treated as a national strength, not a threat. For most of the nineteenth century there were no visa systems, no numerical limits, and no quotas. Between 1815 and 1930, the country took in more than thirty million immigrants from Europe alone.

That open era did not last. Beginning with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Congress started closing the doors, often along plainly racial lines. The major turning point came in 1921 and 1924, when Congress set the first comprehensive numerical quotas in the nation’s history. They were written to favor Northern and Western Europeans and to shut out arrivals from Southern and Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa. Total immigration fell from more than 800,000 a year to around 150,000.

Then came two laws that still shape everything today.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 gathered the scattered rules into one master statute. It finally removed race as an outright bar to citizenship, but it kept the national-origin quotas in place. That 1952 law is still the foundation of American immigration law today. It has been amended many times, but never replaced.

The larger change came in 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Hart-Celler Act at the foot of the Statue of Liberty. It abolished the national-origin quotas and built a new system around family reunification. Its sponsors promised it would barely change the makeup of the country. Senator Ted Kennedy assured the nation that “the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset.” They were wrong, and the reason still matters.

The family reunification system let immigrants sponsor relatives, and those relatives could sponsor relatives of their own. Over the decades, that chain shifted American immigration away from Europe and toward Asia and Latin America. But the 1965 law did something else that almost no one noticed at the time. For the first time, it placed a cap on immigration from the Western Hemisphere, which included Mexico.

For generations, people had moved back and forth across the southern border freely, following the work. Now there were limits that had nothing to do with the deep economic ties between the two countries. When the legal door closes but the work on the other side does not go away, people do not stop coming. They come another way. Unauthorized immigration from Mexico and Central America became all but inevitable the moment that cap was set, and that dynamic has never been fixed.

The Four Moments That Broke the System

If 1965 set the trap, four later decisions sprang it. Each made the same basic mistake. Each pushed hard on one side of the system while leaving the other side alone.

1986: A Grand Bargain That Backfired

By the 1980s the unauthorized population had grown large. Congress responded with the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which President Reagan signed in a rare bipartisan moment. It was meant to be a grand bargain. Legalize the people already here, and crack down on the illegal hiring that drew the next wave.

The first half worked. About four million people, including roughly 1.3 million farmworkers, received legal status.

The second half did not work at all. Employers were now required to check their workers’ documents, but they only had to confirm that the papers “reasonably appeared” genuine. They did not have to verify that the documents were real. Within four years, the government’s own auditors reported that this loophole had made employer enforcement close to meaningless. An employer could knowingly accept fake papers and still comply with the law.

So the country legalized millions of people while leaving in place a reliable way to hire the next several million. Between 1986 and 2000, the unauthorized population grew from about three million to about eight million. The grand bargain delivered neither order nor enforcement.

1990: The Caps That Were Frozen in Place

The Immigration Act of 1990 was the last time Congress meaningfully set the levels for legal immigration. It created the H-1B visa for skilled workers, and it set the numerical caps that we still use, in essence, today.

Those caps were built for the economy of 1990, the year before the World Wide Web came online. The workforce has changed since then. The economy has changed. The country has changed. The caps have not.

The results are hard to believe. Employment-based green cards are capped at roughly 140,000 a year, and no single country is allowed more than seven percent of the total. India, with 1.4 billion people and an enormous professional class, gets the same allocation as Iceland. So a skilled worker from India in certain categories now faces a wait measured not in years but in lifetimes. The Migration Policy Institute has noted that some applicants are effectively scheduled to wait 223 years, an impossibility written into law and left untouched since the first President Bush. We bring talented students into our universities, train them in our graduate programs, and then push many of them out. Canada, Australia, and Germany are glad to take them, because they built systems that respond to real demand. We did not.

1996: More Enforcement, No New Doors

In 1996, President Clinton signed a law that sharply expanded enforcement. More detention. More grounds for deportation. Faster removals. What it did not do was open a single new legal pathway. This is the central imbalance of the last thirty years. Enforcement keeps expanding, while legal immigration stays frozen at the levels set in 1990.

The 1996 law also backfired badly. It created three-year and ten-year bans on re-entry for anyone who had been in the country illegally and then left. Before this, a great many Mexican workers came for the season and then went home to their families. The new bans made leaving dangerous. Step out of the country, and you might be locked out for a decade. So people stopped leaving. A law meant to push unauthorized immigrants out instead trapped them inside, turning a seasonal, back-and-forth pattern into permanent settlement.

After 9/11: A System Divided Against Itself

The attacks of 2001 set off the largest reorganization of the immigration agencies in the nation’s history. The old Immigration and Naturalization Service was broken into three pieces inside the new Department of Homeland Security: USCIS for applications and benefits, Customs and Border Protection for the border, and ICE for enforcement inside the country. Meanwhile, the immigration courts were left in an entirely different department, the Department of Justice. So a single system is now run by four agencies across two cabinet departments, each with its own budget, leadership, and culture. When these pieces fail to coordinate, it is not an accident. It is built into the design.

There is one more piece to this, and it did the most damage. After 9/11, enforcement funding grew enormously. Border Patrol staffing doubled. ICE detention budgets swelled. But the courts that were supposed to decide the cases that enforcement produced barely grew at all. We built a powerful machine for catching people and a small, starved one for judging them. The backlog that followed was entirely predictable.

What the System Actually Looks Like Today

Set the politics aside and look at the machinery itself. It is in worse shape than most people realize.

Only three narrow doors

There are exactly three legal ways to immigrate permanently. Through family. Through an employer. Or through humanitarian protection, such as asylum. For most of the world, all three are closed.

Family-based immigration is the largest category, but outside of the immediate relatives of citizens, the waits are staggering. Filipino brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens who applied in 1998 are only now becoming eligible. Employment-based immigration, as we have seen, is capped and limited by country to the point where it no longer makes sense. And there is no general skilled-worker visa, no points system, for a person who has valuable skills but no employer to sponsor them and no family already here. If you do not fit through one of the three narrow doors, there is no legal way in.

A court system that has collapsed

The clearest measure of failure is the immigration court backlog. As of April 2026, it stands at more than 3.2 million active cases. In 2015 it was about 475,000. It has grown roughly eightfold in a single decade.

The average case now waits more than four years. During that time, people cannot get any certainty about their future. They often cannot work legally, and they cannot reunite with family. And they frequently face all of this alone, because only about thirty percent of people in deportation proceedings have a lawyer.

One number settles the argument. Fewer than two percent of new immigration court cases involve any allegation of criminal activity beyond the crossing itself. The courts are not clogged with dangerous criminals. They are clogged with people who overstayed a visa, or crossed without papers, or are seeking asylum, all moving through a court system that was never designed to carry this kind of weight.

People who followed the rules are stuck too

Separate from the courts is the backlog at USCIS, the agency that processes legal applications. It has more than tripled in a decade, to more than ten million pending cases. These are not people who crossed the border. These are people who did everything the right way, who filed the forms, paid the fees, and submitted the paperwork, and now wait years for an answer. When the legal system punishes the people who follow the rules, it has stopped working.

An asylum system built for another world

The asylum system was created in 1980, for the world of the Cold War. It was designed to handle a small number of individuals fleeing political persecution, one case at a time. That world is gone. Worldwide, the number of displaced people now exceeds 120 million. And the forces driving people out of Central America today, gang violence, the failure of crops in a changing climate, economic collapse, and governments too corrupt to protect their own citizens, do not fit neatly inside the narrow 1980 definition of a refugee. The result is that more than half of asylum claims are eventually denied on the merits, but only after the applicants have waited years for a decision. That does not mean the claims are frauds. It means the legal standard no longer matches the real reasons people are fleeing.

The border numbers swing, but the pressure stays

The number of people arriving at the border is highly volatile. It peaked at nearly 250,000 in a single month in late 2023, then fell below 10,000 a month by early 2025. That swing tells us enforcement and policy do affect migration, and the border can be managed when there is political will to manage it. But it does not touch the deeper problem. As long as the legal pathways stay broken and the work on the other side keeps drawing people north, the pressure toward unauthorized migration never goes away. It only waits.

The Part Neither Party Likes to Say Out Loud

Any serious look at immigration has to deal with two facts neither party is comfortable saying in public.

The first is that immigrants, including those here without authorization, are central to the American economy. Foreign-born workers make up about 18.6 percent of the labor force, roughly twenty-nine million people. They are about seventy-three percent of farmworkers and about a quarter of construction workers. Unauthorized workers in particular paid an estimated 11.7 billion dollars in Social Security taxes and three billion dollars in Medicare taxes in a single year, paying into programs they are not even allowed to draw from. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the recent surge in immigration would add roughly 8.9 trillion dollars to the economy over a decade. These are not talking points. They are measured facts.

This is why enforcement-only approaches keep failing. When an industry has a real, structural need for workers that the legal system refuses to supply, unauthorized employment continues no matter how tough the border becomes. We can deport people, but we cannot deport the economic demand that draws them here.

The second fact is that America is growing older. Our birth rate has been below the replacement level since the early 1970s. The baby boomers are retiring, and the number of workers supporting each Social Security and Medicare beneficiary keeps shrinking. For most of our history, immigration is the main thing that has kept the working-age population growing. This is not a matter of opinion. It is arithmetic. Without immigration, the funding problems facing Social Security and Medicare get structurally worse, and neither party has been willing to say so plainly.

There is a deeper cause that sits entirely outside our borders. People leave Mexico and Central America mainly because of poverty, violence, corruption, and, more and more, the failure of crops in a changing climate. A farmer in Guatemala whose harvest has failed three years running, who faces extortion from a gang the government cannot stop, is not studying American visa law before he decides to leave. He is trying to survive. A policy that deals only with what happens at our border, while ignoring why people leave home, treats the symptom and calls it a cure.

How We Get Back on Track

There is good news buried under all of this. The problem can be solved. Not easily, and not without cost, but it can be solved. The failures of the last forty years were not random. They share a single root mistake, and once that mistake is clear, the path forward becomes clear with it.

The one principle that changes everything

Every major reform since 1986 expanded enforcement without expanding either the legal pathways or the capacity of the courts. The lesson of that history is plain. Enforcement and legal pathways have to grow together. Push hard on enforcement while keeping the legal doors shut, and the unauthorized population does not shrink. It grows. That is exactly what happened in 1986, and again after 1996.

So the answer is not enforcement first, and it is not pathways first. It is both, designed and built as one connected system. The full reform plan organizes the work into six tracks.

1. Modernize legal immigration

Replace the frozen 1990 caps with a system that responds to real demand. Canada’s Express Entry system processes skilled-worker applications in about six months, using a points-based ranking, and Australia runs something similar. America can do the same. Set employment-based visas at a sensible floor, at least 200,000 a year, and adjust the numbers regularly based on real labor-market data. Scrap the per-country caps that produce century-long waits, and rank applicants on skills and experience. Speed up the family categories for spouses and young children. And clear the ten-million-case USCIS backlog on a defined ten-year schedule, so that following the rules actually works again.

2. Make employer verification real

The loophole from 1986 is still open. The fix is mandatory, nationwide E-Verify, the electronic system that checks work authorization in real time, phased in over five years and beginning with large employers and federal contractors. States that adopted it saw unauthorized employment fall significantly. But there is a condition that cannot be skipped. Mandatory verification only works if the legal pathways expand at the same time. If they do not, the work simply moves further underground. So the plan pairs E-Verify with strong protections for legal workers who get wrongly flagged.

3. Rebuild the courts

Take the immigration courts out of the Department of Justice and make them genuinely independent, as an Article I court system with judges who serve fixed terms and are free from political pressure. A bill to do exactly that, the Real Courts, Rule of Law Act, was introduced in 2026. Then fund the courts to clear the backlog, with roughly 1,500 judges added over five years, along with the support staff and legal representation the work requires. The financial case is simple. Holding a person in detention costs about 150 dollars a day, and resolving cases in months instead of years saves far more than the judges cost.

4. Modernize asylum

Update the 1980 definition of a refugee so that it reflects the forces actually driving migration today, such as the collapse of a government’s ability to protect its people from widespread violence, or a genuine environmental catastrophe. Add fast, professional screening at the ports of entry, handled by trained asylum officers rather than Border Patrol, that can sort credible claims from weak ones within thirty days. And create a temporary protected category for people fleeing real danger who do not quite meet the asylum standard, rather than leaving them in a permanent shadow.

5. Resolve the long-term unauthorized population

About ten to fourteen million people live here without authorization, and roughly sixty percent of them have been here for a decade or more. They have homes, businesses, and American-born children. No serious plan exists to deport all of them, and every economic study says that trying would be devastating. The plan, modeled on the bipartisan Dignity Act of 2025, offers a structured status it calls Earned Presence. It is a ten-year legal status for people who have been here since before 2021, who pass a background check, who have no serious criminal record, and who pay fees and restitution. It is not amnesty, and it is not an automatic path to citizenship. After ten years, a person can apply through the normal channels, the same as anyone else. And all of it is tied directly to the verification and court reforms happening at the same time. The mistake of 1986, legalizing people without fixing the system around them, must not be repeated.

6. Address the root causes

Finally, invest in the countries people are leaving, through a long-term Regional Development Compact with Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, built on the logic of the Marshall Plan rather than on short-term aid. The arrangement is straightforward. Sustained investment over fifteen years, in exchange for verifiable reforms in governance, the rule of law, the fight against corruption, and agriculture. Most of the money flows through private-sector projects under independent oversight, not blank checks to governments. This is not charity. It is a calculation about our own national security. The cost of endless enforcement at the border is far greater than the cost of reducing the pressure at its source. But the plan is honest about the timeline. This kind of development pays off over a generation, not over a news cycle.

Building a system that lasts

There is a reason past reforms keep failing, and it is not only that the policies were flawed. It is that the system has no way to keep itself up to date. The 1990 caps stayed frozen for thirty-five years because nothing ever forced anyone to revisit them.

So the plan adds two safeguards. The first is an independent Immigration Policy Commission, modeled on the Federal Reserve, which would monitor the system, set demand-based visa levels using real data, and report to the public on whether the reforms are working. The second is a required review of immigration law every ten years, with binding recommendations that Congress must vote on. It cannot force Congress to agree, but it can force it to act, so that the system never again drifts for decades while everyone looks the other way.

Why It Has Not Happened, and Why It Still Can

If the path is this clear, the obvious question is why no one has walked it. The honest answer is uncomfortable. A broken immigration system is useful to the people who are supposed to fix it. As we have written before, an unsolved problem raises money, turns out the base, and gives each side someone to blame. A solved problem is yesterday’s news. For forty years, the incentives have quietly favored leaving it broken.

But that is a choice, not a law of nature. The system cannot be fixed by enforcement alone, or by legalization alone, or by any single slogan. It can be fixed by a clear-eyed, evidence-based plan that repairs all of the broken pieces at the same time. A legal system that matches reality. Courts funded as seriously as enforcement. An asylum framework built for this century. An honest resolution for the people already here. And real investment in the reasons people leave home.

None of this is painless, and none of it is free. But the alternative is the path we are already on, a system that keeps deteriorating, a backlog that keeps growing, millions of people in limbo, and an economy that quietly depends on a workforce we refuse to acknowledge. That is not a stable arrangement. It is a slow failure we have gotten used to. We do not have to keep doing this. We only have to define the problem plainly and then fix it on purpose. That is what serious governing has always looked like.

Want the Full Story?

This article is the short version. If you want the complete history, the underlying data, and the detailed plan, the Centercratic Party has published two in-depth research reports.

• America’s Immigration Crisis: What Is Broken and Why It Matters. The full diagnosis, tracing the entire history of American immigration and laying out every dimension of today’s crisis, with the data and sources behind it.

• America’s Immigration Reform Plan: A Practical Path Forward. The complete solution, covering all six reform tracks, the institutional safeguards, a fifteen-year timeline, and the benchmarks for measuring progress.

Both are available at centercratic.party and centervoter.com.

Prepared by the Centercratic Party Research and Policy Division centercratic.party | centervoter.com

This document is the second step in the Centercratic Party’s comprehensive immigration policy initiative. Part One, America’s Immigration Crisis: What Is Broken and Why It Matters, defined the full scope of the problem: its historical roots, its structural causes, and its current dimensions. It concluded by identifying six structural conditions that any serious reform effort must address. This document takes the next step. It presents the solutions.

The discipline of separating diagnosis from prescription is essential, because every failed immigration reform effort in the last forty years has skipped the diagnostic step and jumped straight to politics. The result is what we have today: a system that serves no one. That discipline was honored in Part One. It is honored here by ensuring that every solution proposed in this document is grounded in a specific structural failure documented in Part One, and that no solution is presented without the implementation architecture, the evidence base, and the measurement framework needed to evaluate whether it would actually work.

The framework used to develop these solutions is the six-stage policy cycle and the three disciplines of serious governance introduced in America’s Biggest Problems Keep Getting Worse (June 2, 2026).¹ In that framework, Part One completed Stage 1 (Problem Identification). This document carries that work through Stage 3 (Policy Formulation), with direct attention to Stage 4 (Policy Adoption), Stage 5 (Policy Implementation), and Stage 6 (Policy Evaluation). The three disciplines, which start with root causes rather than surface symptoms, let evidence lead rather than ideology, and prioritize by impact rather than political convenience, govern every recommendation that follows.

The solutions presented in this document are designed to be durable. The goal is not a reform that survives one administration or one congressional cycle. The goal is a structural overhaul of the American immigration system capable of managing the nation’s immigration needs for the next fifty to one hundred years. That means the framework must be built on evidence rather than politics, on institutions rather than executive orders, and on legal pathways that match the real economic and demographic demands of 21st-century America rather than the assumptions of 1990.

What follows is the prescription.

Part I: The Foundational Principle: Enforcement and Pathways Must Scale Together

The Core Structural Error of the Past Forty Years

Every major immigration reform effort since 1986 has shared a fundamental structural flaw: enforcement capacity has been expanded without a commensurate expansion of legal pathways or adjudication capacity. Part One documented this pattern in precise terms. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act legalized approximately 4 million people but built a defective employer sanctions system that the General Accounting Office documented as largely unenforceable within four years of its passage.² The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act dramatically expanded enforcement authorities, mandatory detention, and grounds for deportation while freezing legal immigration levels at their 1990 caps.³ The result was structurally predictable: enforcement pressure increased, legal options did not expand, and the unauthorized population continued to grow.

The 1996 three- and ten-year bars on re-entry produced a particularly perverse outcome. Before 1996, many unauthorized migrants from Mexico engaged in circular migration, working in the United States seasonally and returning home to their families. The bars made this circular pattern too risky, because leaving the country meant being barred from legal re-entry for years. The rational response was to stop leaving. Researchers have documented that the 1996 bars effectively converted a circular migration pattern into a permanent settlement pattern, increasing the long-term unauthorized population precisely because the cost of departing had become too high.⁴

This history leads to the foundational principle of any durable reform framework: enforcement and legal pathways must be designed as a single integrated system and must scale together. Expanding enforcement without expanding pathways does not reduce the unauthorized population. It increases it.

Every specific recommendation in this document flows from this principle. The framework is not enforcement-first or pathways-first. It is both, together, designed as a coherent system with the same goal: a legal immigration system that is functional, fair, and capable of managing the nation’s actual immigration needs for the next fifty to one hundred years.

Part II: Six Structural Reform Tracks

The solutions presented here are organized into six structural reform tracks, each addressing one or more of the core structural failures identified in Part One. Each track specifies the problem it tackles, the structural solution proposed, the implementation architecture, the evidence base, and the measurement framework.

Track One: Modernize the Legal Immigration System

The Problem

The foundational architecture of the U.S. legal immigration system was last comprehensively updated in 1990, a year before the World Wide Web went online, eight years before Google was founded, and decades before the demographic and economic conditions of the 2020s could have been anticipated.⁵ The system provides three principal pathways, namely family-based immigration, employment-based immigration, and humanitarian protection, all of which are operating under structural constraints that make them inadequate to meet 21st-century demand.

Employment-based immigration is capped at approximately 140,000 visas annually, a number calibrated to the economic conditions of 1990. The per-country cap of 7 percent means that a worker from India applying in the EB-2 or EB-3 category faces a wait time extending beyond one hundred years. The Migration Policy Institute has documented that some workers in the employment-based green card queue are effectively scheduled to wait 223 years.⁶ This is not a backlog. It is a statutory impossibility that has been permitted to exist for more than three decades.

The USCIS administrative backlog for lawful immigration benefits has more than tripled over the last decade, from approximately 3.5 million cases to over 10 million cases pending as of early 2026.⁷ These are not unauthorized immigrants or asylum seekers. These are people who followed the rules, paid the fees, and submitted the documentation. The system cannot process their applications within a human career lifespan.

The Solution

Reform One: Establish a Demand-Responsive Legal Immigration Framework

The central structural reform to legal immigration is the replacement of fixed numerical caps with a demand-responsive framework that adjusts annually based on labor market data, demographic projections, and national security assessments. Canada’s Express Entry system, introduced in 2015, demonstrated that a points-based, labor-market-responsive immigration system can process skilled worker applications within six months, compared to the years or decades required by the American system.⁸ Australia’s General Skilled Migration program similarly uses a points-based ranking system that allows numerical allocations to track actual occupational demand.⁹

The proposed American framework would retain the three existing pathways (family-based, employment-based, and humanitarian) while making the following structural changes:

Employment-based immigration: Total annual employment-based visa allocations would be set through a biennial review conducted jointly by the Department of Labor, the Department of Homeland Security, and an independent Congressional Budget Office analysis of labor market conditions. Base allocations would be set no lower than 200,000 annually, with upward adjustments tied to documented labor shortfalls in critical sectors. The per-country cap of 7 percent would be eliminated and replaced with individual per-country allocations set through the biennial review process, calibrated to actual application volume and labor market need. A points-based ranking system, modeled on Canada’s Comprehensive Ranking System, would be used to prioritize employment-based applications on the basis of education, work experience, English language proficiency, age, and adaptability. The system would maintain a rolling pool of applicants ranked by score, with invitations to apply issued through regular rounds, allowing the system to respond dynamically to changing labor market conditions without requiring new legislation every time economic circumstances change.

Family-based immigration: Immediate relative immigration, covering spouses, children under 21, and parents of U.S. citizens, would remain numerically unlimited. Preference category family immigration would be restructured to reduce processing times for the highest-priority relationships, specifically spouses and minor children of lawful permanent residents, from the current multi-year waits to a target of eighteen months. Existing family preference backlogs, some of which extend to cases filed in the 1990s and early 2000s, would be addressed through a multi-year backlog reduction program with dedicated annual funding and a ten-year clearance target.

Diversity Visa program: The Diversity Visa lottery, which provides 50,000 annual visas to nationals of countries with historically low immigration to the United States, would be retained but reformed to incorporate a points-based skills assessment as a secondary selection criterion among lottery winners. This preserves the program’s geographic diversity function while improving the economic integration outcomes of its beneficiaries.

Reform Two: Eliminate the Legal Immigration Backlog on a Ten-Year Schedule

The USCIS administrative backlog of over 10 million pending cases represents a fundamental failure of the legal immigration system’s basic operational capacity. Clearing this backlog requires a sustained multi-year investment in USCIS staffing, technology infrastructure, and processing capacity. The proposed framework calls for a dedicated backlog reduction program structured around the following elements:

1. A ten-year clearance target for all pending cases, with annual benchmarks established and publicly reported

2. A USCIS fee structure reform that separates application fee revenue from operational funding, ensuring that USCIS does not face the perverse incentive of slowing processing to extend the fee revenue stream

3. A technology modernization initiative to replace paper-based processing systems with digitized, case-management systems capable of real-time tracking and automated workflows

4. Dedicated congressional appropriations for backlog reduction staffing, separate from USCIS’s baseline operating budget, for the duration of the ten-year program

The cost of this investment is measurable and has a documented return. The $1.2 trillion in projected federal revenue from the immigration surge of 2021–2026 demonstrates the fiscal value of a functional legal immigration system.¹⁰ A backlog that prevents workers from obtaining legal status delays that fiscal contribution and, in many cases, drives those workers to leave the United States for countries with more functional immigration systems. Canada, Australia, and Germany have all implemented points-based systems specifically because they recognized that the competition for skilled workers is global and that processing speed is itself a competitive advantage.¹¹

Track Two: Build a Functional Employer Verification System

The Problem

As Part One documented in detail, the employer sanctions system established by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was structurally defective from the moment of its enactment.² Employers were required only to review documents that appeared genuine on their face, without any obligation to verify their authenticity. The General Accounting Office documented within four years that this flaw had rendered employer sanctions largely unenforceable. The result was a workforce enforcement system that created the appearance of accountability without the substance.

The voluntary E-Verify system, introduced in 1996, represented a significant improvement in principle: an electronic database check against Social Security and DHS records that can verify work authorization in real time. However, as of 2026, only approximately 30 percent of new hires are run through E-Verify, leaving the demand side of unauthorized employment effectively unaddressed.¹²

Research on the effect of mandatory E-Verify mandates in states that have implemented them shows significant results. A 2016 study by economists Pia Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny found that state-level mandatory E-Verify laws reduced the likely unauthorized immigrant population from Mexico and Central America by meaningful margins, with newly arrived immigrants most likely to seek unauthorized employment falling by nearly 50 percent in states with mandatory E-Verify laws.¹³ In five of seven states with universal E-Verify mandates, the unauthorized workforce was substantially lower than the projected counterfactual.¹⁴

The Solution

Reform Three: Mandatory National E-Verify with Robust Due Process Protections

The proposed framework calls for a phased implementation of mandatory national E-Verify for all employers, structured as follows:

1. Phase One (Year One through Year Two): Mandatory E-Verify for all federal contractors and subcontractors, employers with 500 or more employees, and agricultural employers in the H-2A visa program. Compliance infrastructure, employee training, and an enhanced error resolution system would be established during this phase.

2. Phase Two (Year Three through Year Four): Mandatory E-Verify extended to all employers with 50 or more employees. Continued investment in error resolution capacity and employer compliance support.

3. Phase Three (Year Five): Universal mandatory E-Verify for all employers of record in the United States.

Critical to the framework is the parallel development of a next-generation employment verification system that addresses E-Verify’s documented weaknesses. The current E-Verify system can verify that a document is consistent with government records, but it cannot authenticate identity. This vulnerability to identity fraud, where unauthorized workers use stolen Social Security numbers or other fraudulent documents, is E-Verify’s primary known weakness.¹⁵ The Migration Policy Institute’s research on next-generation verification systems has identified biometric identity authentication as the most promising path to closing this gap. The proposed framework therefore pairs universal mandatory E-Verify with a biometric identity authentication pilot program that would be tested in volunteer employer communities during Phase One and Phase Two, with the goal of replacing document-based verification with biometric-based verification by Year Eight of full implementation.

Mandatory E-Verify without parallel expansion of legal pathways would simply divert labor demand from legal employers to underground employment arrangements, driving wages down and working conditions below enforceable standards. This document’s recommendation for mandatory E-Verify is therefore explicitly conditioned on the simultaneous implementation of Track One’s legal pathway reforms. The two tracks are not alternatives. They are complements.

Due process protections in the mandatory E-Verify system are non-negotiable components of this framework. The proposed framework requires:

1. An employer obligation to provide any employee with a tentative non-confirmation a minimum of ten business days to contest the result before any adverse action is taken

2. A dedicated USCIS error resolution office with a 72-hour initial response target for contested cases

3. An independent appeals mechanism for employees whose E-Verify results are challenged, separate from the employer’s reporting chain

4. Annual public reporting on E-Verify error rates, broken down by worker national origin, to ensure that the system’s known disparate error patterns are monitored and corrected

Track Three: Rebuild the Immigration Court System

The Problem

Part One documented the immigration court collapse in precise terms. As of April 2026, the backlog stands at 3,267,302 active cases, with 2,322,467 individuals having already filed formal asylum applications and waiting for hearings or decisions.¹⁶ The average case has been pending for more than four years. In fiscal year 2024, there were 735 immigration judges, the highest number in a decade, but the Trump administration’s dismissal of approximately 100 judges in early 2025 and subsequent departures have reduced that number to approximately 685 as of mid-2025.¹⁷ A new hiring class of 42 judges was announced in March 2026, a number that represents a fraction of what is needed to clear the backlog on any reasonable timeline.

Only 29.6 percent of immigrants facing removal proceedings as of April 2026 had legal representation. Research consistently demonstrates that unrepresented individuals face substantially worse outcomes and create substantially greater court inefficiency than represented individuals, because unrepresented parties are less able to present their cases clearly, require more judicial time to manage, and are more likely to have cases continued for procedural deficiencies.¹⁶

The structural independence problem is equally significant. Immigration judges are not Article I or Article III judges. They are attorneys in the Department of Justice, supervised by an Attorney General who is a political appointee and who has the legal authority to issue binding precedent decisions that constrain how immigration judges apply the law.¹⁸ This structure compromises the integrity and independence of the adjudicatory process and has been criticized by the Harvard Law Review as producing a system that functions as “courts in name only.”¹⁸

The immigration court backlog is not primarily a product of excessive migration. It is a product of four decades of failure to fund the adjudication system in proportion to the enforcement system. As the Bipartisan Policy Center documented as early as 2018, adding 238 additional immigration judges would cost approximately $259 million (8.6 percent of a single year’s ICE custody operations budget) and would significantly reduce the backlog by 2030.¹⁹ The court system has not received that investment.

The Solution

Reform Four: Transform the Immigration Court into an Independent Article I Court

The most important structural reform to the immigration court system is the conversion of the Executive Office for Immigration Review from an agency of the Department of Justice into an independent Article I court, a court created by Congress with judges appointed to fixed terms, insulated from executive branch political pressure, and operating under the procedural standards and due process requirements that apply to other Article I courts. The Real Courts, Rule of Law Act, introduced in the House in March 2026, would accomplish this conversion.²⁰ The proposed framework endorses this approach as the foundational institutional reform from which all other court improvements follow.

An independent Article I immigration court would:

1. Establish immigration judges as judicial officers appointed through a merit-based selection process, serving fixed terms of ten years with reappointment subject to performance review

2. Remove the Attorney General’s authority to issue binding precedent decisions that override immigration judge rulings

3. Create a standardized case management system across all immigration courts nationally, replacing the current patchwork of local practices

4. Establish mandatory recusal standards and conflict-of-interest rules consistent with federal judicial ethics requirements

Reform Five: Eliminate the Backlog on a Five-Year Schedule

Converting the court to Article I status addresses the structural integrity problem. Eliminating the backlog requires a separate, sustained resource commitment. Based on research published by the Center for Migration Studies, eliminating the current backlog of more than 3 million cases over a five-year period would require expanding the immigration judiciary to approximately 1,500 immigration judges, supported by proportionate increases in support staff, hearing facilities, and case management infrastructure.²¹ The proposed framework calls for:

1. Congressional appropriation of funding sufficient to build the immigration judiciary to 1,500 judges over five years, with a hiring plan of approximately 160 additional judges per year

2. A proportionate increase in immigration court interpreter services, court administration staff, and technology infrastructure

3. A dedicated backlog reduction docket separate from the ongoing case management docket, staffed by judges specifically assigned to adjudicate the oldest pending cases on an expedited basis

4. A Legal Representation Initiative that expands access to legal representation for unrepresented respondents, with the goal of achieving 70 percent representation rates by Year Five

The financial case for this investment is straightforward. Detention costs for a single individual held in ICE detention average approximately $150 per day. Cases that could be adjudicated and resolved in months instead drag on for years, accumulating detention costs that far exceed the cost of the judicial infrastructure needed to resolve them. The Bipartisan Policy Center estimated in 2018 that adding 238 judges would save $823 million in detention costs while costing $259 million in new judicial salaries, a net return of $564 million.¹⁹ At the scale proposed here, the financial returns are proportionately larger.

Track Four: Reform the Humanitarian Protection System

The Problem

The American asylum system was designed in 1980 to process a relatively small number of individually persecuted people in a Cold War geopolitical context. As Part One documented, the world for which that system was designed no longer exists.²² Global displacement has exceeded 120 million people. The primary drivers of migration from Central and South America, namely gang violence, generalized poverty, climate-driven agricultural failure, and institutional corruption, do not fit neatly within the legal definition of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group that the 1980 Refugee Act established. The result is a system that is asked to apply a narrow legal standard to a massive and growing population whose circumstances are genuine but whose legal eligibility under the existing framework is frequently uncertain.

More than 50 percent of asylum claims filed at the border in recent years have been denied when adjudicated on the merits.²³ This does not mean those claims were fraudulent. It means the legal standard does not capture the actual circumstances that are driving migration. A system designed around that standard will continue to generate enormous backlogs and inconsistent outcomes until the standard is modernized.

The Solution

Reform Six: Modernize the Asylum and Humanitarian Protection Framework

The proposed framework calls for three parallel reforms to the humanitarian protection system:

Restructure the asylum eligibility standard. The legal definition of “refugee” under the 1980 Refugee Act would be updated to add a sixth protected ground, “serious harm caused by inability of home country government to provide basic protection from pervasive violence, environmental disaster, or systematic economic failure,” that captures the primary circumstances driving contemporary asylum claims from Central America and other high-migration origin regions. This change would allow immigration judges to adjudicate claims on their merits rather than forcing applicants to contort their circumstances into inadequate existing categories.

Establish an Expedited Pre-Screening System at Ports of Entry. The most effective mechanism for managing asylum claim volume at the border is a rapid, professional pre-screening process conducted at ports of entry that distinguishes, within 30 days, between claims with prima facie merit and claims that do not meet threshold eligibility criteria. Pre-screening would be conducted by trained USCIS asylum officers (not Border Patrol agents) using a standardized written assessment protocol with a brief structured interview. Applicants who pass pre-screening would be placed on an expedited court docket with a mandatory 90-day hearing timeline. Applicants who do not pass pre-screening would have the right to a one-time administrative appeal before an immigration judge on an expedited basis, with a final determination within 60 days.

Establish a Climate and Hardship Temporary Protection Category. For individuals displaced by conditions that do not meet the threshold for asylum but who face genuine harm if returned to their country of origin, specifically individuals from countries experiencing severe climate-driven food insecurity, epidemic-level gang violence, or governmental collapse, a new Temporary Protection Category (TPC) would be established. TPC status would provide five-year renewable work authorization, access to federal health and safety standards, and a defined pathway to a formal legal status determination. TPC would not be a pathway to permanent residence or citizenship by itself, but TPC holders who meet legal immigration criteria during the TPC period would be able to apply through the standard family-based or employment-based pathways.

Track Five: Address the Long-Term Unauthorized Population

The Problem

Part One documented that between 10 and 14 million people currently reside in the United States without legal authorization, and that approximately 60 percent have been here for a decade or more.²⁴ Many have been here for 20 or 25 years. They have built lives, started businesses, raised families, and paid taxes. Unauthorized workers paid an estimated $11.7 billion in Social Security taxes and $3 billion in Medicare taxes in 2022 alone, contributing to programs for which they are ineligible to receive benefits.²⁵

No enforcement-only approach has ever produced a credible operational plan for removing this population, and every independent economic analysis has concluded that attempting mass deportation of the long-term unauthorized population would cause severe economic disruption across the industries, namely agriculture, construction, food service, and domestic services, that have structural dependencies on this workforce.¹⁰ The solutions to the long-term unauthorized population must be honest about what they are. A legalization program is a legalization program. It should not be presented as anything else. The question is whether the conditions attached to it are serious enough to warrant the benefits extended, and whether the accompanying enforcement reforms are credible enough to prevent the recurrence of another multi-decade unauthorized population buildup.

The Solution

Reform Seven: A Structured Legal Status Program for Long-Term Residents

The proposed framework calls for a structured program modeled on the broad outlines of the bipartisan Dignity Act of 2025, which was reintroduced in Congress in July 2025 with bipartisan support.²⁶ The core structure of the proposed program is as follows:

Eligibility: Individuals who have been continuously present in the United States since before January 1, 2021, who have no disqualifying criminal history (defined as any felony conviction or three or more misdemeanor convictions), who pass a background check, and who pay a processing fee and restitution contribution toward border security and court infrastructure.

Status granted: A ten-year Earned Presence status, which provides work authorization, the ability to travel outside the United States and return, and access to state-level services on the same basis as lawful permanent residents. Earned Presence status is not permanent residence and is not a direct pathway to citizenship, but it is renewable and provides a stable, defined legal status.

Pathway to permanent residence: After completing the ten-year Earned Presence period without disqualifying criminal activity, an individual may apply for lawful permanent residence through the standard employment-based or family-based pathways, subject to the same criteria and waiting periods that apply to other applicants. This is not a separate fast-track pathway. It is access to the standard legal immigration system from which these individuals were previously excluded.

DACA and long-term residents under 25: Individuals who were brought to the United States as children and have lived here for the majority of their lives present a specific case that warrants a more direct resolution. The proposed framework calls for a statutory pathway to permanent residence for individuals who arrived before age 16, have been continuously present for at least ten years, have no disqualifying criminal history, and meet an education or military service requirement.

Conditionality: The Earned Presence program described above is explicitly conditioned on the simultaneous enactment of Tracks One, Two, and Three of this framework. A legalization program without a functioning legal immigration system, mandatory employer verification, and a rebuilt court system will reproduce, within a generation, the conditions that created the current unauthorized population. The lesson of 1986 must not be repeated.

Track Six: Address the Root Causes of Migration

The Problem

Part One documented in detail that the root causes of unauthorized migration from Central America and other high-migration origin regions are structural conditions in origin countries, namely poverty, endemic violence, institutional corruption, and increasingly, climate-driven agricultural failure, combined with persistent American employer demand for labor that the legal immigration system was never designed to accommodate.²⁷

A policy framework that addresses only what happens at the border and in the interior of the United States, without any attention to the structural conditions generating the migration impulse, is not a durable solution. It is a containment strategy that must be sustained indefinitely at enormous cost, with results that are inherently temporary, because the underlying pressure does not diminish.

Evidence on the effectiveness of foreign aid in addressing root causes of migration is mixed. Research published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research in 2024 found that aid can temporarily reduce irregular migration but may lead to increased regular migration as conditions improve over time, because improved economic conditions give people the resources to finance planned migration.²⁸ Development aid is not a short-term migration deterrent. It is a long-term economic development investment whose migration effects may not be measurable for a generation.

The Solution

Reform Eight: A Long-Term Regional Development and Security Investment Compact

The proposed framework calls for a Regional Development Compact with Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, the countries of origin for the majority of unauthorized migration to the United States, modeled on the logic of the Marshall Plan rather than the logic of conditional foreign aid.

The distinction is important. Conditional aid, meaning funding contingent on measurable migration reductions, has been tried repeatedly and has failed, because the conditions it requires governments to meet are not within those governments’ immediate control, and because the funding levels have been insufficient to produce the structural changes needed.²⁹ A compact modeled on the Marshall Plan commits to sustained, substantial investment over a defined multi-year period (fifteen years is proposed here) in exchange for verifiable structural reforms in governance, rule of law, and economic development.

Specific commitments from participating countries would include:

1. Audited anti-corruption programs with measurable benchmarks, monitored by an independent body with U.S. and partner-country representation

2. Legal system reform programs, including judicial independence, legal aid infrastructure, and public defender systems

3. Agricultural development investments specifically targeting small-holder farming communities affected by climate-driven crop failure, with technical assistance from U.S. Department of Agriculture programs

4. Violence reduction programs in high-emigration municipalities, modeled on evidence-based community violence intervention models

U.S. investments under the compact would be channeled primarily through private sector partnerships, targeted to industries, namely agricultural technology, renewable energy, and infrastructure construction, that generate sustainable employment in origin communities. Direct cash transfers to governments would be minimized in favor of project-specific funding with independent oversight.

This investment is not charity. It is a national security and economic security calculation. The cost of sustained border enforcement, detention operations, and court backlog management under a no-investment-in-origin-countries scenario is measurable in tens of billions of dollars annually. A fifteen-year development compact that produces even a 20 percent reduction in unauthorized migration pressure from Central America would generate fiscal savings that dwarf its cost.

The framework acknowledges the academic research establishing that development aid’s effects on migration are long-term rather than immediate. The compact is therefore presented as a generation-long commitment, not a short-term migration management tool. It is one component of a comprehensive framework, not a substitute for the legal pathway and enforcement reforms of Tracks One through Five.

Part III: Institutional Governance: Building a System That Lasts

The Lesson of Four Decades of Failed Reform

Part One documented that every major immigration reform effort since 1986 has failed to produce a durable solution. The IRCA grand bargain of 1986 legalized millions and failed to enforce. The 1990 caps became outdated within a decade and were never updated. The 1996 enforcement expansion made the unauthorized population larger, not smaller. The comprehensive reform efforts of 2007 and 2013 collapsed before reaching a vote.

The reasons for these failures are structural, not personal. They are rooted in the six-stage policy cycle’s systematic underfunding of Stages 3 through 6, namely policy formulation, adoption, implementation, and evaluation, in favor of the perpetual Stage 2 loop of agenda-setting and political performance documented in America’s Biggest Problems Keep Getting Worse.¹ Solutions are proposed before problems are fully defined. Enforcement is expanded before courts are funded. Pathways are narrowed before alternatives are created.

A reform framework designed to last fifty to one hundred years must include institutional structures specifically designed to prevent the recurrence of this failure pattern. The following institutional mechanisms are integral components of the proposed framework.

An Independent Immigration Policy Commission

The proposed framework calls for the establishment of a permanent, independent Immigration Policy Commission, an independent federal body modeled on the Federal Reserve’s structure of professional governance insulated from short-term political pressure, with the following authorities:

1. Conduct and publish the biennial labor market and demographic review that sets legal immigration allocations under the demand-responsive framework of Track One

2. Monitor and publicly report on implementation progress across all six tracks of the reform framework, with annual reports to Congress

3. Trigger mandatory congressional review procedures when implementation benchmarks are not met, creating accountability mechanisms for Stage 5 failures

4. Conduct the Stage 6 policy evaluation function: measuring outcomes across the legal immigration system, the employer verification system, the immigration courts, and the humanitarian protection system against defined benchmarks, and publishing findings publicly on a two-year cycle

Commission members would be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate to staggered six-year terms. The Commission would have no enforcement authority. Its function is research, monitoring, evaluation, and public reporting, the institutional equivalent of a financial auditor for the immigration system as a whole.

A Statutory Ten-Year Review Mechanism

The immigration system must have a built-in mechanism for updating its legal framework as conditions change. The core failure documented in Part One, that immigration caps set in 1990 remained in place for thirty-five years despite being profoundly misaligned with economic reality, must not be permitted to recur.

The proposed framework includes a statutory requirement for a comprehensive decennial review of the entire Immigration and Nationality Act, conducted by the Immigration Policy Commission in consultation with Congress, with binding recommendations to Congress requiring a floor vote within twelve months of submission. This mechanism does not require Congress to adopt the recommendations. It requires Congress to vote on them. The combination of a professional evaluation and a mandatory floor vote creates both the evidence base and the political accountability mechanism needed to keep the system updated over time.

Consolidated Interagency Coordination

Part One documented the institutional fragmentation created by the post-9/11 reorganization of federal immigration agencies: USCIS, CBP, and ICE operate under DHS, while the immigration courts (EOIR) operate under DOJ.³⁰ This split-department structure produces coordination failures that are not exceptional events but structural features of the current design.

The proposed framework calls for the consolidation of USCIS and EOIR under a single Department of Homeland Security umbrella, with a dedicated Deputy Secretary for Immigration Policy responsible for coordinating policy across all four immigration agencies. This does not require the elimination or reorganization of any agency. It requires a unified chain of authority and coordination mechanism that currently does not exist.

Part IV: Implementation Architecture and Timeline

The reforms described in this document are complex, interdependent, and long-term in their effects. Their successful implementation requires a phased timeline that sequences reforms in the right order, invests in institutional capacity before expanding requirements, and establishes clear accountability benchmarks at each stage. The proposed implementation architecture is organized around a fifteen-year timeline with three five-year phases.

Phase One: Foundation (Years One Through Five)

1. Enact the Immigration Policy Commission and establish its governance structure

2. Enact the Article I Immigration Court conversion and begin the judicial hiring program

3. Enact the legal pathway modernization legislation and initiate the demand-responsive visa framework

4. Implement Phase One of mandatory E-Verify for large employers and federal contractors

5. Launch the USCIS backlog reduction program

6. Initiate negotiations on the Regional Development Compact with Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries

7. Establish the humanitarian protection pre-screening system at ports of entry

8. Launch the Earned Presence program for long-term unauthorized residents concurrent with the above enforcement and pathway reforms

Measurement benchmarks at Year Five:

1. Immigration court backlog reduced by at least 40 percent from the 2026 baseline

2. USCIS administrative backlog reduced by at least 30 percent

3. E-Verify coverage expanded to all large employers and federal contractors

4. Legal immigration processing times for employment-based applicants reduced to an average of 24 months or less

5. Earned Presence applications received and processed with a 90-day target determination window

Phase Two: Scaling (Years Six Through Ten)

1. Expand mandatory E-Verify to all employers with 50 or more employees

2. Complete Article I immigration court conversion and reach 1,200 immigration judges

3. Initiate biometric identity authentication pilot for next-generation E-Verify

4. Complete first biennial labor market review under the demand-responsive framework and adjust visa allocations accordingly

5. Implement first Regional Development Compact investment cycle with measurable outputs

6. Conduct first decennial review of the Immigration and Nationality Act

Measurement benchmarks at Year Ten:

1. Immigration court backlog reduced by at least 75 percent from the 2026 baseline

2. Average time from asylum application to final determination: 18 months or less

3. E-Verify coverage at 80 percent of all new hires nationally

4. Legal immigration processing times for employment-based applicants: 18 months or less for most categories

5. Unauthorized border encounters trending downward compared to Year One baseline

Phase Three: Stabilization (Years Eleven Through Fifteen)

1. Universal mandatory E-Verify fully implemented

2. Biometric identity authentication system deployed nationally

3. Immigration court backlog at manageable sustainable levels, with ongoing case completion rates exceeding new case intake

4. First comprehensive Earned Presence cohort eligible for permanent residence pathway applications

5. Second decennial review of the Immigration and Nationality Act incorporating lessons from Phase One and Phase Two

6. Regional Development Compact first five-year evaluation with evidence-based course corrections

Measurement benchmarks at Year Fifteen:

1. Immigration court backlog at or below 500,000 cases, a level consistent with a functioning court system under normal intake conditions

2. USCIS administrative backlog at or below 2 million cases

3. Unauthorized workforce as a share of total employment reduced by at least 50 percent from the 2026 baseline

4. Legal immigration system processing an annual volume of immigrants calibrated to documented labor market demand, without multi-decade wait queues for any category

Part V: What a Functional System Looks Like

The goal of this framework is not simply to fix what is broken. The goal is to build what has never existed: an American immigration system that is functional, fair, predictable, and durable. A description of what that system looks like in practice serves as the closing standard against which this framework should be judged.

For an employer: Federal law is clear, consistently enforced, and operationally straightforward. E-Verify provides a reliable, fast determination of work authorization that protects employers from legal liability and ensures that their workforce is legally employed. The employment-based immigration system provides realistic, predictable pathways for recruiting skilled workers at timelines measured in months rather than decades.

For a legal immigrant: The system processes applications on a timeline that is consistent with human career planning and family formation. A skilled worker from any country in the world can receive a determination within 24 months. A family member sponsored by a U.S. citizen has a realistic expectation of resolution within a defined timeframe. A person following the rules experiences a system that functions and responds.

For a person seeking asylum: The system has a professional, humane pre-screening process that evaluates claims against a modernized legal standard within 30 days. People with credible claims have a defined pathway to a hearing within 90 days. People whose claims do not meet the threshold have a swift, due-process-protected determination and a prompt, dignified return.

For the American economy: The legal immigration system supplies labor at the volumes and skill levels that the economy actually needs, calibrated through a biennial evidence-based review rather than fixed by statute in 1990. The demographic pipeline for Social Security and Medicare is stable. Industries that depend on foreign-born workers have legal pathways that eliminate the structural incentive for unauthorized employment.

For the American taxpayer: Enforcement spending is matched by adjudication capacity, so that money spent on border operations produces actual case resolutions rather than growing backlogs. Court cases are resolved in months rather than years, reducing the detention costs that accumulate during indefinite legal limbo. The system is measured against public benchmarks, evaluated against actual outcomes, and updated through a defined institutional process rather than left to deteriorate for decades between reform crises.

That is the immigration system this framework is designed to build. It is not the system we have today. But it is the system that the structural analysis in Part One demonstrates is achievable, and the solutions in this document describe how to get there.

Conclusion: The Complexity That Demands Action

The immigration problem has resisted solution for forty years not because it is too complex to solve, but because the political incentives have consistently favored keeping it broken. As America’s Biggest Problems Keep Getting Worse established plainly: an unsolved problem raises money, turns out a base, and gives the other side something to be blamed for. A solved problem is yesterday’s news.¹

This framework is built on the opposite conviction. The immigration system is solvable. It is not solvable with enforcement alone. It is not solvable with legalization alone. It is not solvable with any single-lever approach that addresses one structural failure while ignoring the others. It is solvable with an integrated, sequenced, evidence-based framework that treats the problem as what Part One demonstrated it to be: a legal system misaligned with economic reality, an adjudication system starved of resources, a humanitarian framework built for a different century, and a workforce dependency that requires legal channels rather than underground ones.

The solutions presented here are not painless. A functional legal immigration system requires sustained investment in institutional capacity. A credible employer verification system requires requirements that carry real consequences. A rebuilt immigration court requires the judicial staffing and independence that have been withheld for decades. A resolved unauthorized population requires a legal status program that is honest about what it is. An addressed root cause problem requires a generation-long investment commitment.

These are not small things. They are also not optional. The alternative, the current trajectory, is a system that continues to deteriorate, a backlog that continues to grow, an unauthorized population that continues to exist in legal limbo, and a workforce dependency that continues to be met through underground channels rather than legal ones.

The framework in this document is designed to last fifty to one hundred years. It will require updating. The decennial review mechanism is designed for exactly that purpose. But the structural logic, which is to enforce and expand pathways together, invest in adjudication as heavily as enforcement, modernize the humanitarian framework for contemporary realities, resolve the long-term unauthorized population on honest and conditional terms, and address root causes with the patience and investment they actually require, is not a framework that will need to be rebuilt from scratch in twenty years. It is a framework that can be maintained, calibrated, and improved over time.

That is what serious governance looks like.

This document is Part Two of the Centercratic Party’s comprehensive immigration policy initiative. Part One, America’s Immigration Crisis: What Is Broken and Why It Matters, is available at centercratic.party and centervoter.com.

Prepared by the Centercratic Party Research and Policy Division centercratic.party | centervoter.com

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