On a sunny Saturday afternoon in late October, Janelle Stelson, the Democratic candidate in Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District, entered Broad Street Market, a historic food hall in Harrisburg. “If I seem a little off,” she explained to me and another reporter, she had just come from a funeral. But now, grasping campaign signs in one hand, she was looking for breakfast among the Caribbean food stalls and Amish bakeries—and some voters.  

Stelson made her way through the market with relentless friendliness, calling out “hey sister!” with her free hand outstretched. After a decades-long career as a local television anchor, she was a familiar face to many. As Stelson greeted passersby, Richard Utley, a retired government employee, told me that he’s “known Janelle a long time,” both from the evening news and from politics. “She’s got the best chance to beat Scott Perry,” he said.

Stelson has tried to make this race a referendum on Scott Perry, the firebrand conservative and six-term incumbent. She argues that Perry has lost sight of his constituents’ needs and come to exemplify the dysfunction in Congress. “The fact that Washington is broken resonates with everyone,” Stelson told me. “They want somebody who’s going to attend to their basic needs.”

In the market, she talked to voters about issues ranging from the rising cost of living to the shortage of reproductive healthcare providers. As Stelson nimbly navigated conversations, I could see how television journalism could provide transferable skills for electoral politics. As an anchor, she reported on these same issues dozens of times. Stelson had also covered this story before: the story of a political challenger making a case for ousting the incumbent. In her black funeral wear, Stelson was warm and effusive, doling out good sound bites. She expertly framed shots for the news photographer, pivoting so her campaign signs always faced the camera as she cooed over babies, hugged the elderly, and examined cookies.  

Pennsylvania has emerged as the center of the political universe, as both presidential campaigns identified it as crucial to their Electoral College math. Doors are brimming with campaign literature, highways are crowded with competing billboards, and voters inundated with automated texts. In the state’s 10th district, Perry is facing his most difficult race yet, and one that may help to determine whether the GOP can hold onto its slim majority in Congress. 

A retired Pennsylvania Army National Guard brigadier general, Perry made a name for himself as a Trump loyalist and former chair of the far-right House Freedom Caucus. As my colleague David Corn wrote in 2021, a Senate Judiciary Committee report revealed that Perry played a crucial role in former president Donald Trump’s effort to recruit Justice Department officials to investigate and overturn 2020 election results. Though the FBI briefly seized his cell phone, Perry has maintained his innocence and insisted that he was never under investigation. Still, his involvement has been costly—FEC reports show that Perry has spent at least $300,000 from his campaign donations on legal fees. Undeterred, Perry has continued to sow doubts about the 2020 election, and, during his only debate with Stelson, repeated false claims that the post office had illegally shredded mail-in ballots. In response, Stelson reiterated that mail-in voting is a “tried and true method.” 

Perry also made national headlines as the Freedom Caucus made it increasingly difficult for the GOP to govern, threatening government shutdowns over spending bills and forcing Kevin McCarthy through 15 rounds of voting to become Speaker of the House—an ultimately short-lived tenure.    

Perry was initially elected in 2013 to the solidly Republican 4th Congressional District. In 2018, Pennsylvania’s congressional districts were completely redrawn by the state Supreme Court, making Perry’s new 10th district much more competitive, and he was reelected by less than three points. In 2022, the district lines were redrawn once again, though much less dramatically, condensing the district around Harrisburg and York. Perry fended off Democratic challengers in 2020 and 2022, both by around seven points. 

The district is fairly emblematic of the state at large: it is 70 percent white, with a median household income of $75,000 and about 35 percent of residents have at least a bachelor’s degree. Democrats say that the population is shifting in their favor. Cumberland and York counties, which are partially included in the district, are among the fastest growing counties in the state. “We’ve seen a lot of farmland convert to housing,” Matt Roan, chair of the Cumberland County Democratic Committee, said. “These people tend to be younger families with higher levels of education.”

Still, Republicans lead Democrats by almost 6 points in party registration, while 14 percent of registered voters are not affiliated with a political party. Trump won the district by 4 points in 2020, but Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro won the newly redrawn district by 12 points in 2022. That was likely in part because Shapiro’s opponent, Doug Mastriano, ran a chaotic and poorly funded campaign and, despite being a Trump stalwart, was largely abandoned by the national party. “I would not underestimate Scott Perry,” Berwood Yost, director of the Floyd Institute for Public Policy Analysis at Franklin & Marshall College, told me. “He is a polished political operator. He knows his district and knows how to talk to voters here.” 

“I would not underestimate Scott Perry. He is a polished political operator. He knows his district and knows how to talk to voters here.” 

Stelson has run a commanding race against Perry, having significantly outspent and outraised him. Campaign finance reports show that Stelson has raised almost $2.5 million this year to Perry’s $800,000. The Cook Political Report just shifted the race towards Democrats, calling it a “toss up,” and one recent poll had Stelson leading by nine points. National Republicans seem to be concerned. Earlier this month, House Speaker Mike Johnson appeared in the district to campaign on Perry’s behalf. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a Johnson-sponsored super-PAC, has spent more than $2 million on advertising for Perry ahead of Election Day, according to AdImpact. One of the group’s ads frames Stelson’s immigration stance as extreme, citing a candidate Q&A in which Stelson calls for fixing the asylum system and ensuring pathways to citizenship for Dreamers and “those who have been paying taxes for decades.” The ad’s voiceover declares, “Illegals get the invite, we foot the bill. That’s liberal Janelle Stelson.” 

Perry is the only Freedom Caucus member from the Northeast, and he is among the most vulnerable of the hardline Republicans up for reelection this year. Despite this, Perry has largely doubled down on his positions. “Should I just go along with Washington, DC, as most of my other colleagues did, just to moderate myself?” Perry said to the Associated Press for a recent story on the race. “No, I’m going to do the right thing every single time I have the opportunity.”

If Perry can be beat, Democrats are convinced they finally have the right candidate to do so. Stelson spent 26 years as a broadcast journalist at WGAL, an NBC affiliate based in Lancaster, where she became a mainstay on televisions across the Susquehanna Valley. Throughout the campaign, Stelson has leaned on her journalism experience, arguing that it has given her a unique vantage point on the problems afflicting the region. It also gave her a big boost in recognition: voters knew her name and face long before she announced her candidacy. Stelson won a crowded Democratic primary by twenty points, beating a former US Marine and the Democrats’ 2022 candidate, despite concerns that she lives a few miles outside of district lines. (She has promised to move if she wins the election.)

Stelson has attributed her decision to enter politics to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which she covered as the evening news anchor. “I had to look out into the camera and tell every woman watching that her rights have been rolled back 50 years,” Stelson told me as we sat at a picnic bench outside of the market. She ended up buying some cookies and a berry smoothie, which she periodically sipped while we spoke. She described Perry’s reaction to the Dobbs decision as “ecstatic”—he called it a “monumental victory for the unborn” on X—and pointed out that he has co-sponsored a restrictive abortion measure.

“I just realized at some point that I needed to move from the public service of telling about all our issues and concerns,” Stelson said, “to actually trying to do something about them.”

Stelson seems to relish coming off the sidelines and into the political arena. In an interview with Pod Save America’s Jon Lovett, Stelson said that, as a television anchor, she had moderated two of Perry’s previous debates. “I know where his soft underbelly is,” Stelson told Lovett, laughing. “Imma get him.” 

Stelson was a registered Republican until early 2023 and described her voting history to me as “independent”—she told the Washington Post that she had supported both John McCain and Mitt Romney’s presidential bids. This biographical detail has been helpful in convincing voters that she is a moderate Democrat. When I asked where she differed from the Biden administration, she said to me, “I think even in a really good marriage, you’re never going to agree with the other person all the time.” Stelson critiqued the president’s handling of the southern border, telling me that “we have to secure the border” and increase funding for law enforcement agents. 

As surveys show that Americans are increasingly exhausted by and skeptical about the federal government, both candidates have presented themselves as political outsiders. Stelson’s campaign website calls for fewer “career politicians,” and she says there are few better examples of this particular creature of Washington than her opponent, whom she argues has become more interested in “grandstanding” than addressing the needs of his district. She has pointed out that Perry voted against bills funding healthcare for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits and housing homeless veterans—he was the only member of the Pennsylvania delegation to vote against the housing bill. When asked about it during their debate, Perry noted that he had been deployed in Iraq and argued that the bills would have bankrupted the VA, saying, “If everybody’s going to jump off a cliff, are you going to jump off a cliff?”

Perry has long presented himself as a maverick, telling voters in a recent ad that he “didn’t go to Congress to make friends.” He has argued that he is willing to vote his conscience even when it means angering other Republicans. During their debate, Perry defended his history of voting against spending bills, arguing that uncurbed government spending is contributing to inflation. Perry recently told the Atlantic, “When the stuff that is unaffordable, unnecessary, unwanted, outweighs the stuff that we need, I’m going to vote the way I need to.” 

“When the public sees you as this firebrand, controversial figure, making a pitch that ultimately you are constituent-driven becomes challenging,”.

But when your political brand is built on opposition and obstruction, it’s not easy to point to concrete accomplishments. “When the public sees you as this firebrand, controversial figure, making a pitch that ultimately you are constituent-driven becomes challenging,” Christopher Borick, Director of Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion, told me. And Perry has alienated at least some of his Republican base, according to Craig Snyder, a Philadelphia-based consultant who is the director of Republicans Against Perry. The group is funded by the Welcome PAC, which supports moderate Democratic candidates. Snyder said that crossover Republicans will be motivated by a range of issues, from Perry’s election denialism and anti-abortion stance to his “constant support for shutting down the federal government.” 

In addition to appealing to independents, Stelson will need a number of these Republican voters to win. In the time we spent together in Harrisburg, a Democratic stronghold, Stelson encountered no Republican supporters. She likes to say that, “I’m a Republican, and I’m voting for you” are her “favorite words in the English language.” But I did get a sense of how the encounter would go when, outside of the food hall, Stelson met several older women in a tour group from Alabama. “I am running as a Democrat, but I used to be a Republican. So really I’m an American, is what I say,” Stelson told them. “I wish we’d stop this nonsense and work together and get something done.”

In a Southern drawl, one of the women said, “Amen.”

Paris Alexander had been in a destructive relationship for over a decade, learning to tolerate the intolerable even as the abuse progressed—first mental and emotional torment, then physical and sexual torture. Like many survivors, Alexander, who is nonbinary, stayed in the relationship hoping that it would improve. “We stick it out,” they said, “because we think that they’re going to change and come to their senses.” 

Then, one day in September 2020, Alexander’s male partner beat them up and dragged them outside their Providence, Rhode Island, home by their hair. Wandering their neighborhood, covered in blood and desperate to flee, Alexander felt haunted by the years of forced isolation: “I had nowhere to go, no one to turn to,” they recall. A Google search on their phone led them to Sojourner House, which runs the state’s only shelter specifically for LGBTQ victims of intimate partner violence. Almost miraculously, there was some space. Finally, Alexander had caught a break. 

At the shelter, known as RISE, Alexander focused on taking “baby steps” toward independence. They got a library card. They started individual therapy. They joined a weekly virtual LGBTQ support group, where they heard terms like “nonbinary,” “gender-queer,” and “gender fluid” for the first time. Back then, Alexander identified as a transgender woman and felt pressured to “look female as much as possible.” The support group taught them, “You don’t have to be [male or female]—you can just simply be who you are, and that’s okay.” 

RISE is one of three shelters operated by Sojourner House, named for the 19th-century slave-turned-abolitionist Sojourner Truth, who was also an ardent advocate for women’s rights. Since its founding in 1976, the organization has served more than 60,000 people—1,800 last year alone. A small but critical part of this past year’s $7.4 million budget comes from the federal Crime Victims Fund, a pot of money created by the 1984 Victims of Crime Act, also known as VOCA. Across the country, VOCA helps pay for the hotlines survivors call in crisis, the shelters they flee to, and the advocates who accompany them to court and help them heal.

VOCA-supported programs helped almost 8 million people in fiscal year 2022–2023, funding nearly 3 million shelter beds and 2.3 million crisis-hotline calls, according to the Department of Justice. Those services have become more critical since the pandemic, as rates of intimate partner violence have soared, a housing crisis has made it even harder for survivors to flee, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade has given abusers another way to threaten pregnant survivors. But even as the need is growing, VOCA funding has been plummeting—and Congress has failed to act on what many advocates say may be the best hope for a legislative fix.

The current funding crisis is rooted in changes in DOJ policy that date back years. The Crime Victims Fund gets most of its money from financial penalties levied in corporate criminal cases, according to the department. Those fees and fines have been falling as federal prosecutors have pursued more deferred and non-prosecution agreements, which allow defendants more time to pay up or avoid charges entirely if they cooperate with the government. As a result, deposits into the pot shrank from a high of $6.6 billion in 2017 to $1.39 billion in fiscal year 2023. (Because of congressional caps, the actual amount of money disbursed is even lower.) These declines have trickled down to state agencies—which receive VOCA funds based on their state’s population size—and then to eligible programs. Rhode Island, which has one of the smallest populations, has seen a 54 percent drop in VOCA funds since 2017, to $2.9 million in the last fiscal year. California, the most populous state, went from receiving $218.9 million in VOCA funds in 2017 to $87 million over the same period.

Most states, including California, have managed to come up with some funding to offset the federal cuts, but the money is mostly temporary—lasting a year or two max. Fourteen states, including Rhode Island, did not appropriate any money in their most recent budgets to offset the VOCA cuts, I found in my reporting. This past spring, Rhode Island lawmakers proposed $2 million in supplemental funding, but the bill died in committee.

I’ve spent four months trying to understand how these extreme VOCA cuts are affecting domestic violence programs across the United States, doing more than two dozen interviews and tracking down budget data from every state. The picture that has emerged is deeply troubling: Lifesaving services for survivors are struggling to stay afloat, and experts fear what might happen if a long-term funding solution isn’t found.

Law enforcement groups are equally worried. “Without Congressional action, victim service providers will be forced to cut critical services, and many will be forced to close,” more than 700 prosecutors wrote in an open letter to lawmakers in February. “Millions of victims, including abused children and battered women, will be left without access to safety, justice and healing.” But with the November elections looming, Congress’ attention has been focused elsewhere.

The VOCA Fix Act, which President Biden signed into law in 2021, diverted revenue from deferred and non-prosecution agreements to the Crime Victims Fund—but this turned out to be inadequate. This term, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have proposed a bill to supplement VOCA with funds collected through the False Claims Act, which penalizes defrauding of the government. The legislation has attracted 170 bipartisan co-sponsors in the House but languished in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Durbin chairs. A spokesperson for Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the committee’s highest-ranking Republican, did not respond to questions about whether the bill will get a hearing. Congress has also punted on Biden’s proposal for a $7.3 billion infusion into the Crime Victims Fund for next year. (The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)

“Victims of crime, and specifically, victims of domestic and sexual violence, just are not priorities.”

At a virtual event this week commemorating the 40th anniversary of VOCA, the mood was less than celebratory. “I’m hearing about programs shutting down, positions being cut, victim services being impacted,” Claire Ponder Selib, executive director of the National Organization for Victim Advocacy, told more than 250 attendees. To Vanessa Volz, Sojourner House’s president and CEO, the funding crisis illuminates a harsh reality: “Victims of crime, and specifically, victims of domestic and sexual violence, just are not priorities.” 

Domestic violence hotlines like the one that led Paris Alexander to Sojourner House are among the most critical services that VOCA funds. Because hotlines are the point of entry to a support system that can mean the difference between life and death, slashed budgets can be especially disastrous. Rhode Island’s statewide 24/7 helpline has historically relied almost entirely on VOCA funding—about $118,000 last year, less than half what it received in 2019. More cuts would likely hit the helpline’s overnight shifts hardest. For people who are abused in the dead of night, or who have a small window to seek help while their abusers are sleeping or working, this could be catastrophic.

The Rhode Island helpline routinely gets calls from people in Massachusetts and Connecticut who can’t access services in their own areas—even though both of those states, unlike Rhode Island, have appropriated supplemental funds to offset VOCA cuts. Connecticut’s additional money came from the pandemic-era American Rescue Plan Act, which disappears at the end of this year. Without a new infusion of money, the statewide domestic violence hotline, Safe Connect—which is 100 percent funded by VOCA—will have to drastically cut services, lay off advocates, or even shut down, says Meghan Scanlon, president and CEO of the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence, which staffs the hotline. “The reality is, as much as we are advocates who don’t want to say ‘no,’ at some point, we’re gonna have to,” she laments. “And that doesn’t feel great.” 

Some of the greatest effects are likely to be felt in programs that serve transgender clients and undocumented immigrants, such as Sojourner House’s RISE shelter and THEIA Project, which supports victims of human trafficking. Hot-button politics around LGBTQ+ and immigrant clienteles make such programs especially difficult to fundraise for, Volz says.

Yet as Alexander’s story shows, immigrant survivors are particularly vulnerable to abuse from partners who exploit their status as another form of control. Despite their strong New England accent that makes them sound as if they had been born and raised in Boston, Alexander originally hails from São Miguel, a lush island in the Azores archipelago of Portugal. When they were 5 years old, they arrived in New Bedford, Massachusetts, with their parents—but without documentation. Their mother secured US citizenship when Alexander was a teenager—a process that automatically made them a citizen, too. But after getting kicked out of the house at 16, and no parental contact over the years, Alexander lacked both identification and proof of their citizenship status. “I became like a ghost,” they recall. In their 20s, they told me, essentially undocumented, they dropped out of cosmetology school and the regular labor force and drifted into sex work.

Sojourner House didn’t just get Alexander out of an abusive relationship. Its VOCA-funded team of immigration advocates helped Alexander secure identification, represented them in immigration proceedings, and prepped them for their citizenship test—a process that took over a year; in March 2022, Alexander was officially sworn in as a US citizen. “We’re really at risk of not being able to continue providing these services at the same level,” Volz notes.

In some places, cuts affecting VOCA-funded legal advocacy services have already been devastating. Judge Shelley Santry, a family court judge in Louisville, Kentucky, used to have advocates in her courtroom every Tuesday, the day she hears domestic violence cases involving people seeking emergency protective orders against their abusers. The advocates—employed by the statewide Center for Women and Families—would bring survivors into a private room after their hearing and explain a new set of risks: “Once the order is entered, it’s really the most dangerous time,” Santry told me. “The perpetrator is losing that control, and that’s when the lethality red flags are elevated.” Recently in Hardin County, 60 miles from Louisville, a man fatally shot his ex-girlfriend and her mother near the courthouse where they had a hearing about an emergency protective order against him. (He also killed himself.)

In Santry’s courtroom, the advocates would help survivors come up with practical strategies to safeguard themselves and their families: keep gas in their cars, charge up their phones, pack emergency bags in case they had to flee. Their in-person presence was essential, says Elizabeth Martin, the center’s president and CEO: “If you aren’t where people are, they’re not necessarily going to reach out to you.”

But over time, the number of advocates in Santry’s courtroom dwindled, and since August 2021, they’ve been completely gone. With VOCA funding for the center plummeting more than 60 percent since 2019, to just over $437,000 last year, Martin was forced to cut her domestic violence staff in half and remove advocates from courtrooms. Now, a court staffer hands out pamphlets and business cards to survivors bearing the center’s name, website, and phone number. Martin only sends an advocate if a survivor asks for one. “They don’t know what they don’t know,” Martin says. “The contact, that personal touch, that involvement has been watered down significantly.”

Lawmakers “need to understand this isn’t a personal problem, this isn’t a family problem—this is all of our problems, and we’ve got to work to eradicate it.” 

Domestic violence groups were grateful when Kentucky legislators allocated $7.1 million in their latest budget to offset VOCA cuts, but say the one-time grant isn’t enough. Without advocates to provide support, “the consequence may be death,” Santry says. In 2020, Kentucky ranked 10th in the nation for domestic violence homicides, according to the Violence Policy Center, with men murdering 46 women across the state. Lawmakers “need to understand this isn’t a personal problem,” Martin says, “this isn’t a family problem—this is all of our problems, and we’ve got to work to eradicate it.” 

California is another state where advocates say lawmakers haven’t done enough to address a steep decline in VOCA funds—down 60 percent since fiscal year 2017. Now domestic violence organizations there are facing a new crisis as they grapple with the repercussions of this summer’s decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, in which the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority essentially greenlit the criminalization of homelessness.

After a months-long advocacy campaign that drew the support of actress Angelina Jolie, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office scrounged up $103 million in June to supplement the $87 million in federal VOCA funds. That one-year reprieve helped to avert what could have been a catastrophe for VOCA-funded organizations. But then in July, Newsom ordered state agencies to clear out homeless encampments following the Grants Pass ruling. Advocates warned that the decision could be devastating for survivors of intimate partner violence, who struggle to access shelter and housing nationwide—and especially in California, which has the largest population of unhoused people in the United States.

“The reality before [Newsom’s] executive order was that there were not enough DV-specific shelter beds, and just in general, there’s not enough emergency shelter beds,” says Jennifer Willover, housing policy analyst at the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence. Since Newsom’s mandate, Willover adds, domestic violence programs across the state have reported increased calls to their hotlines requesting shelter. In some parts of the state, advocates report that they are spending more time visiting encampments and informing unhoused people of domestic violence-specific services they offer, Willover says. (Newsom’s Office of Emergency Services did not respond to requests for comment.)

Experts see the situation there as a harbinger of what’s to come nationwide: As the National Network to End Domestic Violence and other advocacy groups said after the Grants Pass ruling, “Gender-based violence is a cause and consequence of homelessness, and this ruling will further trap people who are homeless, including survivors, in cycles of poverty and housing insecurity.”

In a report about homelessness in the state published in January by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, nearly one-fifth of cisgender women surveyed said they had experienced intimate partner violence in the six months prior to homelessness, and 40 percent said violence was a reason for leaving their last housing. Many were homeless because of the far-reaching effects of domestic abuse: living in isolation from family and friends and unable to work, their financial resources controlled by their abusers, resulted in intractable poor credit and records of eviction. “There’s a lack of awareness, still, of the fact that there is that intersection of domestic violence and homelessness,” says Leticia Campos, chief programs officer at the Marjaree Mason Center, which serves victims of domestic violence in Fresno County, where the population tops 1 million and the poverty rate is well over the national average. 

Marjaree Mason—established in 1979 and named after a 36-year-old woman murdered by her ex-boyfriend, a sheriff’s deputy with the county—offers a case study of the problems facing VOCA-funded organizations in California post–Grants Pass. Fresno County has the highest number of calls to law enforcement for domestic violence per capita in California, and Marjaree Mason is the county’s only 24/7 domestic violence shelter and service provider. The Fresno City Council allocated $300,000 earlier this year to help the organization fend off the impacts of the years-long decline in VOCA funds, but staff members say they still struggle to meet the needs of survivors.

In June, I visited the VOCA-funded emergency shelter, which can accommodate 140 people. The rooms have bunk beds with colorful, patterned bedspreads, and televisions mounted on the walls, and outside there’s a playground shaded by palm trees. But even before the Supreme Court ruling, getting a bed there wasn’t easy. Empty beds are often filled within hours, Campos says; when I visited, the shelter had been at capacity for three weeks. Survivors who are turned away often have no choice but to return to their abusers. A spokesperson told me that last year, 80 percent of the organization’s clients had no income of their own, and of the ones who did, two-thirds made under $15,000. 

After Newsom issued his executive order, the Fresno County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved an ordinance making “unlawful camping” a misdemeanor punishable by a $500 fine and up to six months in jail. The city of Fresno passed a ban that was even more aggressive: a $1,000 fine and a year behind bars, which took effect in late September. The mayor has said that arrests will be limited to “habitual offenders” and that people will first be offered supportive services, though it’s unclear whether those include referrals for domestic violence treatment.

Staff at Marjaree Mason saw an impact within days of Newsom’s executive order, when the sheriff’s office dropped off an unhoused woman and two children at the drop-in center in the middle of the night after clearing an encampment, according to Joseph Hickman, the center’s interim crisis response manager. “It was very eye-opening to see that it happened that quickly,” Hickman says. “It definitely kind of lit a fire under us.”

The problem, as Campos says, is this: “What should we do when we’re at capacity? Where should we send victims of domestic violence?” Laura Moreno, program manager at the Fresno County Department of Social Services, says those questions point to a broader, county-wide issue. “We don’t have enough shelter beds, period, for the number of people we have on the streets,” she told me. A federally mandated one-day census in Fresno and neighboring Madera counties in January 2023 found nearly 4,500 unhoused people, up 7 percent from the year before. A county spokesperson said outreach teams provide homeless people with relevant resources, including information about Marjaree Mason’s services.

Helping survivors find assistance elsewhere when the shelter is full is a task left to Diana Hernandez, a former 911 dispatcher who joined Marjaree Mason’s staff in September 2021. In her previous job, she told me, she hated having to hang up on callers who were clearly in need but not in the throes of an emergency. Now, as a client navigator, she can talk to survivors who call the hotline for as long as they want, providing them with emotional support and resources. But she can’t always give them what they need most, which is usually a bed.

While we were chatting in her cubicle in June, she received a hotline call from a woman who said she’d been physically assaulted by her boyfriend. She had been living in a car, and needed a safe place to stay. Marjaree Mason’s shelter was full, so Hernandez offered to call homeless shelters in the area to see if they had room. But she also cautioned that those shelters wouldn’t offer advocacy support and legal services specifically for domestic violence victims. Nor would their locations be confidential, like domestic violence shelters’ are. Add to that, most likely they would require residents to leave during the day; Marjaree Mason lets them stay. 

Hernandez gave the woman phone numbers for other local organizations that could provide services, and suggested that she change her passwords on her email and social media accounts, make sure her phone’s location-sharing feature was turned off, and call back on the hotline at any time if she wanted to talk. In such instances, “I try to exhaust my resources,” Hernandez told me after the call ended, “so I know I did everything I could.”

After seven months at RISE, Sojourner House’s LGBTQ shelter, Paris Alexander might have ended up like so many other survivors of intimate partner violence: homeless and back on the street. But because Alexander had been a victim of sex trafficking, they were eligible for assistance through another Sojourner House program offering transitional housing for survivors of human trafficking. The program paid the rent and utilities on a third-floor apartment where Alexander lived while they were sorting through their citizenship problems and unable to work. Without a Social Security number, they couldn’t apply for food stamps or government assistance. Every few weeks, Alexander recalls, a Sojourner House advocate showed up with some food—bread, peanut butter, canned beans. “And that was pretty much what I had to live off of.” 

Alexander finally secured their citizenship in March 2022 and was able to begin searching for permanent housing. Once more, Sojourner House provided vital support. Robin Greene, an advocate who had once been unhoused, also works with trafficking survivors through the organization’s THEIA Project, which includes a VOCA-funded shelter. Greene helped Alexander find an apartment and even convinced the landlord to renovate the space by replacing the floors and covering up cracks and holes in the walls. 

For Greene, ensuring her clients live in comfort is key to helping them stay on the road to recovery. Greene recalls spending time in homeless shelters that were “gross,” “vermin-ridden,” “humiliating,” and “degrading.” At the shelter for trafficking victims, she painted the walls and floors with pops of green, yellow, and purple and adorned the office space with house plants. She mows the front lawn herself. “I want it to look not like a shelter,” she told me when I visited. “I want it to look like a home.” 

Two years after Alexander moved in, their apartment—the same one that Greene helped secure—has become their “sanctuary,” where they live with their two cats, Bast and Isis. They painted the walls yellow, green, and blue; hung up their own artwork; and put some of the house plants Greene brought to life in front of the bay windows in their living room, a daily reminder of someone who helped transform their life.

According to Greene, Alexander represents “the epitome” of what Sojourner House and domestic violence organizations like it can do, if they have the vision, the people—and the funding to support survivors. “Paris was determined to just sit in their little apartment and never come out with their cats,” Greene told me, “but not now.” 

Today, Alexander volunteers with Sojourner House and spreads word of its services within the community. They also volunteer with a trans youth mentorship program, through which they meet weekly with a younger trans mentee, and they host events—including a recent makeup workshop, drawing on their cosmetology background—for trans and nonbinary young people. In November, they’ll host a virtual Friendsgiving hangout—meant to be “a safe and loving space during Thanksgiving,” they said, adding, “the holidays can be a tough time of the year for queer folks.”

Alexander knows firsthand the negative thoughts that can run rampant through survivors’ minds: “We feel like we’re not worthy. We feel like no one cares. We feel like no one understands. You don’t trust that there’s genuine empathy out there.” Empathy, though, tends to be abundant among people who support survivors of domestic violence; what’s in short supply is cash. This is partly why Alexander was eager to tell their story: They want lawmakers to know that VOCA funds have “the power and the ability” to save lives. “I wouldn’t be here today,” they told me, “if it weren’t for the Sojourner House program.”

If you or someone you care about is experiencing or at risk of domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline by texting “start” to 88788 or calling 800-799-SAFE (7233) or going to thehotline.org. The Department of Health and Human Services has also compiled a list of organizations by state.

This article was produced with the support of the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2024 Domestic Violence Impact Reporting Fund.

In an extraordinary monologue Tuesday at a Univision town hall, Donald Trump repeated the lie that the mob that attacked the Capitol on January 6—which he described using the pronoun “we”—was unarmed.

“There were no guns down there. We didn’t have guns. The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns,” Trump said. “That was a day of love.”

That is a lie. The latest evidence showing that Trump’s claim is false came in a guilty plea Wednesday by a Texas man named Roger Preacher. Preacher admitted to carrying a pistol on the grounds of the Capitol on January 6, though he knew that doing so was illegal.

Preacher said that he traveled to Washington with two other men who also brought “pistols and AR-style” rifles on the trip. They drove into Washington on January 6 from a Virginia hotel room with three rifles in a bag, the filing says. They left the bag in the car, but Preacher carried his pistol in “an inside-the-waistband holster “ to the lower West Terrace of the Capitol grounds where he remained for around an hour. Preacher said he believed the other two men “were also carrying firearms on their persons.”

Preacher’s admission adds to the heap of evidence that many people in the crowd outside the Capitol on January 6 had guns. Mother Jones compiled evidence of the many guns among January 6 perpetrators back in 2021, in a report based on public video footage, congressional testimony, and criminal cases.

Because police officers made few arrests on January 6 itself to limit violence, few of the attackers were caught with firearms on them. This has allowed the myth pushed by Trump and his allies that the crowd was unarmed to spread. But numerous cases since have revealed that some rioters carried weapons or, like members of the Oath Keepers militia, stashed arms nearby.

The House January 6 committee’s final report, released in 2022, cited police reports indicating that DC officers spotted numerous people descending on the National Mall that day who appeared to be carrying guns. Police stopped few of them, presumably because they feared being shot.

The committee’s report notes that many Trump supporters who arrived for his speech at the Ellipse that day were armed, and that White House officials, including Trump, knew that.

In testimony to the House committee detailed in its final report, Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as a top aide to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, said that Trump berated a top Secret Service official on January 6 because agents had placed magnetometers around the Ellipse, deterring some of his gun-toting fans from attending. “I don’t fucking care that they have weapons,” Trump said, according to Hutchinson. “They’re not here to hurt me.”

Preacher is one of around 1,500 people charged with crimes related to January 6, among them Trump himself. Special Counsel Jack Smith wrote in a filing on Tuesday that Trump was responsible for the attack. The former president, the filing said, “willfully caused his supporters to obstruct and attempt to obstruct the proceeding by summoning them to Washington, D.C.”

With the Federal Emergency Management Agency reeling from major staffing and funding shortages amid the impact of Hurricane Helene, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) refused on Sunday to commit to reconvening the House before Election Day to aid recovery efforts. In response to a letter from President Biden urging congressional leaders back to replenish federal disaster loan funding, Johnson said during a Fox News Sunday interview that he’d only do so after the election—all but ensuring the funds will run out.

The Small Business Administration’s disaster loan program offers low-interest loans to businesses as well as homeowners and renters in disaster areas, and is often the largest source of disaster recovery funds available to survivors. In the letter, Biden also reiterated the need for more disaster relief funds for FEMA, which he says will otherwise be forced to pause long-term recovery efforts related to previous disasters.

Earlier this year, FEMA was already forced to implement “immediate needs funding” restrictions, which paused funding for previous disasters. It’s very likely, without additional funding, that the agency would have to do so again, which would delay vital recovery projects and repairs that are essential for communities to rebuild and prepare for future crises.

Johnson pointed to the $20 billion Congress allocated for FEMA as part of a stopgap measure—then returned to his previously scheduled attacks on undocumented immigrants, who Johnson inexplicably blamed for the shortfall. While he did acknowledge that the streams of funding for FEMA’s disaster relief efforts are separate from those used to address immigration relief, he also attacked the Biden administration for supposedly “gleefully” reimbursing NGOs for transporting undocumented immigrants across the country. In reality, migrant relief efforts represent less than three percent of FEMA’s total annual budget—and the shortfall would still be there if these efforts stopped. 

In September of this year, as a response to FEMA implementing such restrictions, the National Association of Counties, along with nine other organizations, wrote a letter asking Congress to provide $6.1 billion in additional funding so FEMA could continue long-term recovery efforts. If every dollar spent in the last fiscal year on FEMA’s Shelter and Service Program—which provides migrant support—went to that end, it would still leave a gap of more than $5.3 billion for FEMA to restore its long-term recovery plans.

And while the $20 billion Johnson mentions did allow FEMA to do so, the stopgap measure was just that: the restrictions could easily come back into force as the total cost of Hurricane Helene continues to rise, and as Hurricane Milton—which is expected to be one of the most intense in history—makes landfall in Florida.      

With the Federal Emergency Management Agency reeling from major staffing and funding shortages amid the impact of Hurricane Helene, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) refused on Sunday to commit to reconvening the House before Election Day to aid recovery efforts. In response to a letter from President Biden urging congressional leaders back to replenish federal disaster loan funding, Johnson said during a Fox News Sunday interview that he’d only do so after the election—all but ensuring the funds will run out.

The Small Business Administration’s disaster loan program offers low-interest loans to businesses as well as homeowners and renters in disaster areas, and is often the largest source of disaster recovery funds available to survivors. In the letter, Biden also reiterated the need for more disaster relief funds for FEMA, which he says will otherwise be forced to pause long-term recovery efforts related to previous disasters.

Earlier this year, FEMA was already forced to implement “immediate needs funding” restrictions, which paused funding for previous disasters. It’s very likely, without additional funding, that the agency would have to do so again, which would delay vital recovery projects and repairs that are essential for communities to rebuild and prepare for future crises.

Johnson pointed to the $20 billion Congress allocated for FEMA as part of a stopgap measure—then returned to his previously scheduled attacks on undocumented immigrants, who Johnson inexplicably blamed for the shortfall. While he did acknowledge that the streams of funding for FEMA’s disaster relief efforts are separate from those used to address immigration relief, he also attacked the Biden administration for supposedly “gleefully” reimbursing NGOs for transporting undocumented immigrants across the country. In reality, migrant relief efforts represent less than three percent of FEMA’s total annual budget—and the shortfall would still be there if these efforts stopped. 

In September of this year, as a response to FEMA implementing such restrictions, the National Association of Counties, along with nine other organizations, wrote a letter asking Congress to provide $6.1 billion in additional funding so FEMA could continue long-term recovery efforts. If every dollar spent in the last fiscal year on FEMA’s Shelter and Service Program—which provides migrant support—went to that end, it would still leave a gap of more than $5.3 billion for FEMA to restore its long-term recovery plans.

And while the $20 billion Johnson mentions did allow FEMA to do so, the stopgap measure was just that: the restrictions could easily come back into force as the total cost of Hurricane Helene continues to rise, and as Hurricane Milton—which is expected to be one of the most intense in history—makes landfall in Florida.      

Republican leaders backing Donald Trump keep declining to say clearly that they will accept the results of the November election, regardless of who wins.

The latest to sow doubts about the outcome is House Speaker Mike Johnson, who appeared on Sunday on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Stephanopoulos posed a question that he noted Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, refused to answer in the vice presidential debate against Gov. Tim Walz: “Can you say unequivocally that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and Donald Trump lost?”

Johnson declined to answer the question and instead lambasted it as a “gotcha game.”

“You want us to litigate things that happened four years ago when we’re talking about the future,” he said. “We’re not going to talk about what happened in 2020, we’re going to talk about 2024 and how we’re going to solve the problems with the American people.”

House Speaker Johnson tells @GStephanopoulos that he’s not “going to litigate things that happened four years ago” when pressed about former Pres. Trump’s repeated 2020 election denialism.

“This is a gotcha game that's played, and I'm not playing it.” https://t.co/wJgtAze0B0 pic.twitter.com/M6qnVXNzpT

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 6, 2024

When Stephanopolous played some of Trump’s recent comments back to Johnson and asked if he, like Trump, believes that “the only way that Donald Trump loses is that the Democrats cheat,” Johnson’s non-answer spoke volumes: “Donald Trump’s going to win,” he said. (Trump still refuses to acknowledge his loss clearly and has alleged Democrats “cheat like hell”; his campaign filed more than 60 lawsuits contesting the 2020 election results, all of which were dismissed as having no merit.)

At other points in the interview, Johnson’s tortured responses almost seemed to acknowledge reality. At one point, for example, he said, “Joe Biden has been the president for almost four years. Everybody needs to get over this and move forward.” But he would not say openly and clearly that Donald Trump lost in 2020. (The fact that Johnson mentioned Trump’s “massive” crowds three times in the interview seemed to suggest that he believed the former president was watching, or would otherwise see the interview.)

Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, pulled a similar stunt Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.

“Is there any circumstance in which Donald Trump would accept a defeat and concede?” asked CNN host Dana Bash.

“Of course,” Lara Trump replied, emphasizing vibes over actual votes counted: “If he feels that this is a free, fair and transparent election—which, by the way is my number one goal at the RNC.”

She went on to lament Americans’ supposed “lost faith” in the electoral system—the very one she and other Trump acolytes have continued to undermine. “There were a lot of people after 2020 all across this country who felt like maybe they couldn’t trust that system,” she said. (That may have had something to do with her father-in-law and his GOP allies methodically inciting an insurrection.)

.@DanaBashCNN to @LaraLeaTrump: “Is there any circumstance in which Donald Trump would accept a defeat?” pic.twitter.com/5gYfjQatVJ

— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) October 6, 2024

“There was no evidence of widespread fraud” in 2020, Bash reminded viewers.

As Donald Trump and his top allies continue to sow false doubts about US elections, the former president said recently that, whether he wins or loses, this will be his last campaign. But as President Joe Biden just suggested, Trump’s messaging could mean that this one may also not end peacefully.

“This Jay Chen for American Congress, he’s perfect for China,” one agent told his colleague in a smoke-filled room at the “Chinese Communist Party Intelligence Division.” Chen, the agent said in stereotypically accented English, was “a socialist comrade” who supported Bernie Sanders “for supreme leader.”

“Sanders loves Mao, Chen loves Sanders,” the other spy said, as the pair erupted in maniacal laughter.

The two men were actors in an advertisement for GOP Rep. Michelle Steel in her 2022 reelection fight against Chen in Southern California’s 45th Congressional District. Following a barrage of promotional material in this vein, groups from Asian American and Pacific Islander communities protested the tactics used by Steel, calling them “McCarthyist” and making signs reading “Stop Asian hate” and “Red-baiting is race-baiting.” 

Steel, who is Korean American, won the race, taking 52 percent of the vote and helping Republicans narrowly seize control of the US House.

Politicized battles over Asian American identity have become a recurring feature of campaigns in the 45th—a wrench-shaped swing district that spans more than a dozen cities in Orange and Los Angeles counties. It’s one of the country’s few majority-minority congressional districts represented by a Republican, and Democrats see it as one of their top pickup opportunities as they try to retake the House in November. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders make up 39 percent of the district’s voting-age residents—the second highest in the state. Approximately half of the district’s Asian population is Vietnamese.

Democrats hope their challenger this time around—Derek Tran—will fare better than Chen. A US Army veteran and the son of refugees, Tran is leaning heavily into his anti-communist bona fides. “Derek’s family fled a murderous communist regime in Vietnam,” his campaign website notes. “He knows firsthand the devastating impact of totalitarian governments and is committed to standing firm against Chinese Communist rule.”

In an interview with Mother Jones, Chen expressed optimism that Tran’s biography would be a powerful tool in fighting back against Steel’s “red scare” tactics. “The fact that Derek is Vietnamese American will help him counter a lot of these attacks,” Chen predicted.

Chen—who is Taiwanese American—recalled that, in his own race two years ago, Republicans posted campaign signs reading “China’s Choice Jay Chen” and “made them resemble the Chinese flag.” Similar rhetoric was deployed in Vietnamese and featured the colors of the flag of South Vietnam, the US-backed country that ceased to exist in 1975 after it was defeated by communist forces at the end of the Vietnam War. “The bulk of its focus is on the Vietnamese community, and the symbolism that [Steel] includes—the red and the yellow—are meant to trigger an immigrant population, many of whom were refugees who were very traumatized by communism,” Chen said.

That’s happening again. Steel’s team has installed large signs invoking the South Vietnamese flag around the area’s Little Saigon community—across from a Costco popular with Vietnamese shoppers and at the entrance to a plaza of Vietnamese shops. “Đả Đảo Cộng Sản,” they read: “Down With Communism.”

The signs have caused some controversy. “To us, Steel is misusing the flag for her own political gain—the flag we so revere,” said Christina Dao, a host and commentator for Nguoi Viet Daily News in Little Saigon. “We would never put any political slogans or anyone’s names on the flag. Michelle Steel is not really a part of its history.”

In our conversation, Dao pointed to a Wall Street Journal report from 2020 that documented how Steel’s husband, Shawn Steel, who has served as the Republican National Committee member from California since 2008, invited Chinese nationals to a 2017 GOP event where attendees allegedly talked through campaign strategy. (Steel told the Journal that it would be “false, defamatory, and offensive” to suggest he’d helped Chinese government efforts in any way. He did not respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones.)

All this convinced Dao and other Vietnamese Americans in Little Saigon to form an unofficial group, start a petition on Change.org, and organize an online press conference to criticize Michelle Steel. The congresswoman is “abusing” the flag “to satisfy her greed for power,” the petition says.

In 1984, following the GOP’s national convention, Ronald Reagan kicked off his presidential reelection campaign in Fountain Valley, part of today’s 45th District. “It’s nice to be in Orange County,” Reagan famously remarked, “where the good Republicans go to die.” At the time, the county was about 78 percent white and solidly conservative.

Since then, the region has grown in diversity and has slowly shifted toward the political center. A survey conducted earlier this year by the University of California, Irvine, concluded that the county is now “politically purple…almost evenly split among Republicans (32%), Democrats (33%), and Independents (35%).” Among Asian American respondents, the partisan divide is similar. 

The common narrative is that the influx of immigrant communities made the county more ethnically and economically heterogeneous. This, along with the backlash to Republican support for California’s Proposition 187 in 1994—which ordered health care institutions and school districts to deny services to undocumented people—led to a decades-long political drift away from GOP hegemony. In 2018, bolstered by opposition to Donald Trump, Democrats won a clean sweep of all seven congressional seats in the county.

Viewing Orange County as purple is “dangerous for Democrats.”

But there’s no reason to think these changes are permanent. Republicans—including Steel—recaptured two of those House seats in 2020. And Gustavo Arellano, an author and columnist at the Los Angeles Times, warned this year that viewing Orange County as purple is “dangerous for Democrats,” as the GOP still dominates local politics. Republicans, he noted, “hold every countywide elected position and all the seats on the Orange County Board of Education…A majority of city councils in the county lean GOP.” 

In 2018, Arellano credited the Republican Party as the “pioneer in diversifying O.C.’s politics,” listing notable Latino politicians who arrived in the region in the ’80s, including Tom Fuentes, a Mexican American who worked on Richard Nixon’s California gubernatorial campaign and later became the long-standing chair of the county GOP. 

Now that Asian American Republicans have become a force in Orange County politics, Arellano argued, the GOP was constructing “a new racial cold war” through appeals to immigrants across the country who “come with skills and ambitions and don’t want government handouts.” In his view, the Republican Party was now drawing on anti-Latino feelings among other immigrant groups, resulting in support for policies like stronger borders. 

“The countywide power held by [Republicans] reflects strong local mobilization efforts by the party,” said UC Irvine professor Long Bui, an expert on the politics of Vietnamese refugees, in an email interview. “Saying Orange County is increasingly Democratic due to a rise in immigrants overlooks nuances, especially when party affiliations among Vietnamese Americans split along generational, class, and educational lines.”

Survey data published last year shows that a narrow majority of Vietnamese Americans nationwide lean toward the Republican Party, a sharp contrast to other AAPI communities, which tend to heavily favor Democrats. According to Thu-Huong Nguyen-Vo, a professor of Asian American studies at UCLA, the political divides within the Vietnamese American community partly reflect several distinct groups of immigrants: refugees who left Vietnam at the end of the war in 1975; boat people who fled starting in the late ’70s; and later humanitarian and family reunification efforts. 

While Nguyen-Vo stresses that many differences exist among individual voters, in general, those who immigrated in 1975—in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Saigon—were mostly middle- and upper-class urban dwellers and tended to be more liberal than groups who arrived later. They opposed the communist regime, but they didn’t necessarily see anti-communism as incompatible with Democratic policies like progressive income tax rates and a more generous social safety net.

Vietnamese boat people and other groups who fled after 1975 are more “staunchly anti-communist and pro-American,” according to Nguyen-Vo. Before leaving Vietnam, she notes, these families lived through “extreme economic hardship, partly due to the American embargo and socialist reorganization…and outright repression including incarceration in prisons and reeducation camps.”

“Many died or disappeared due to boat wrecks, lack of fuel, food and water, and encounters with pirates,” explains Nguyen-Vo. “These folks languished in refugee camps for long years awaiting countries to grant asylum.” Once in the US, boat people often had a tougher time financially than earlier Vietnamese immigrants and may support policies like lowering taxes and restricting immigration, believing they will help them reach economic stability or advancement. “However, they tend to favor social programs like health care and social assistance, as many had depended on these programs at some point,” Nguyen-Vo suggested. “They may equate being anti-communist and conservative with the GOP and vote red, but they would still want their GOP representatives to support social programs.” 

Culture war issues have become a particular flashpoint. Lance Trover, a spokesperson for Steel, cited the Republican lawmaker’s work in introducing the Helping Applications Receive Valid and Reasonable Decisions (HARVARD) Act to “stop racial discrimination in university admissions that has been proven to specifically target Asian Americans”—the subject of last year’s Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action policies. 

Trover also noted Steel’s efforts to highlight “Vietnamese communist human rights abuses.” In a July 2024 interview with VietFaceTV, a Vietnamese-language television station based in the district, Steel voiced her concerns with the Vietnamese government’s treatment of prisoners of conscience. She also noted her support for a bipartisan bill that would prevent Vietnamese refugees who arrived in the United States prior to 1995 from being deported.

Both candidates have leaned heavily on their families’ immigration experiences. “To forge the American Dream in California,” Tran said over email, “I know that what this community wants more than anything is someone who will protect individual freedom, fight for economic opportunity, and address the affordability crisis that is hurting families.” In May, Tran sparked his own controversy when he told Punchbowl News that although Steel presents herself as a Korean refugee who fled communism, she actually moved to the US for “economic gain.”

“That’s not the same as losing one’s country after the fall of Saigon in ’75 and having no home,” he said.

“There are people in the community who are tired of this continued conversation about identity.”

Dozens of AAPI organizations and community leaders came to Steel’s defense, insisting that Tran apologize for his statement. “Mr. Tran, starting a new life and working to attain a better economic state is the American Dream that so many of us or our parents have done,” they wrote. “It’s why we are here, and why we love representing the diverse groups in our communities.”

Of course, Tran isn’t the only candidate trying to draw distinctions between different groups of immigrants. “You regularly see [Steel] and Young Kim [a Korean American Republican representing a neighboring congressional district] talking about how, Oh, I came here legally to pursue the American Dream. But it’s the undocumented who are making it worse for everyone,” said Chen.

Hao Phan, the Southeast Asia curator at Northern Illinois University, thinks that such rhetoric could resonate with voters. “Vietnamese Americans are concerned about the issue of illegal immigration,” he says. “Although Vietnamese are immigrants, they tend to see themselves as good immigrants in contrast to the bad immigrants.”

Some voters are growing frustrated with the increasingly bitter identity politics. “This new political dimension has created a painful rift within the community, which used to be united around the identity of a community of refugees…against the communist regime in Vietnam,” says Phan.

Jeanie Le, a board member with the Orange County Young Democrats, says she appreciates the importance of ethnic background and the history of AAPI identity. But, she adds, “there are people in the community who are tired of this continued conversation about identity…People who are here are worried about if their kid is going to school and how they’re going to pay rent.” She called out Steel’s red-baiting in particular: “A lot of Vietnamese people are really tired of it because it makes the community seem monolithic.”

Le sees the battles over AAPI identity as misguided distractions from the more immediate concrete problems facing the district, including the soaring cost of living. She praised Kim B. Nguyen-Penaloza—a Garden Grove City Council member who lost the March primary to Tran by a couple hundred votes—for her work leading the city’s mobile mental health program for the unhoused. She also highlighted Thai Viet Phan, a council member from nearby Santa Ana, for her support of a local law that limits rent increases to 3 percent per year.

“There’s so much happening in our community, and I just really want to make sure that when people write about this community, they reflect that,” Le told me. “It’s a lot more complex than a lot of people try to make it out to be.”

Update, October 4: This story previously noted that Le told Mother Jones that the OC Young Democrats weren’t fully backing a candidate in the California 45th congressional race. After that interview, but before this story was published, the group endorsed Tran.

Daniel Inouye wanted to serve the United States from a young age. Growing up in Hawaii, he was rattled by the attack on Pearl Harbor; in 1944, at the age of 19, Inouye deployed to Italy, then France, to fight the Nazis. War changes most soldiers’ lives, but Inouye, fighting in an all–Japanese American combat unit, also had to get his right arm amputated: A Nazi soldier struck him with a grenade launcher, partly destroying the arm and forcing him to pry the undetonated grenade out with his left hand. He threw it back at the Nazi—this time, it detonated.

After being rehabilitated, Inouye continued to serve the United States, first as one of Hawaii’s earliest delegates to the House of Representatives, then, in 1963, in the Senate, where he remained for nearly 50 years. Inouye supported civil rights, but he was not at the forefront of the disability rights movement; in fact, Inouye did not see himself as a disabled person, likely due to stigma at the time. By 2010, Inouye was president pro tempore of the Senate, making him the highest-ranking person of color with a disability in the presidential line of succession, ever.

“When he started in politics, to have a disability would have been a weakness.”

Inouye’s story is the subject of a new documentary, out October 8, in PBS’ Renegades series of five short films telling the stories of underrecognized disabled figures in US history, like Inouye and Black Panther Party member Brad Lomax.

Mother Jones spoke with Renegades series creator Day Al-Mohamed, who has worked on disability policy in the Biden-Harris administration, and Tammy Botkin, who directed the short on the late senator, on Inouye’s relationship to his disability and more.

As someone who worked in politics, Day, why was it important for you that a politician with a disability was featured?

Al-Mohamed: If you think about it, very much that shapes the the way the country operates, right? It actually, in some way, shapes the very look and feel of a country—that is, the politics and the policies and the laws. It would be remiss to not include a politician, and we specifically wanted Sen. Inouye to be a part of this because of his perspective on disability.

In your work in disability policy, even decades later, do you see similarities in how many veterans may not view themselves as part of the disability community—like Daniel Inouye didn’t?

Al-Mohamed: I still remember, as one veteran explained it to me, “I don’t have a disability. I’m just busted out.” It’s very much a way of thinking about that. Veterans are a community in and of themselves and [had] a job, in many ways, that is based on your your body, abilities and capacity.

We all have different perceptions of what it means to be disabled, and we can even see that within the non-veteran community as well. There’s this general mainstream perception that disability is a wheelchair user, or it’s somebody who is blinded. I think that that has done a disservice to many folks who don’t see the opportunity to take advantage of the policies and politics that protect them, which is also, in some ways, at the heart of the episode.

It does seem there’s a generational shift, where younger people are embracing that identity more than in the days when more people were being institutionalized.

Botkin: It’s definitely related to generational views of disability. It is also related to the Senator’s identity as a war veteran, who has seen many other friends who died and were maimed far worse than he. It also has to do with his identity as a Japanese American. Then, his need as a politician to show himself as strong—and when he started in politics, to have a disability would have been a weakness.

Why was it important to explore multiple aspects of Inouye’s identity—including how anti-Japanese sentiment made it difficult for Inouye to enlist, and led to his being called a communist?

Botkin: First off, the senator being smushed into 12 minutes feels like an aberration. How do you do that? He [had] such a massive, massive life, and he himself was such a prolific storyteller and framer of his experience and our collective experience.

There were so many facets to him that to really even begin to understand him as an individual, to leave any of those out is to not be able to really grasp who he is—that he belonged to many communities. He’s Japanese American, yes, but also Hawaiian. Yes, he’s military. He’s a politician. He’s a man from a certain generation of Americanism. He would fight for people with disabilities, but for him to take the lead on it would be self-serving. He wouldn’t do that, and that leans a lot into his Japanese American heritage. We worked with Japanese American consultants to nail this in.

When you’re telling somebody’s story, it’s terrifying because I personally feel like I have to get it right. Luckily, in this case, the Senator’s best friend, who’s in the film, Jeff Watanabe, was incredibly pleased with the representation, so I can breathe.

Al-Mohamed: If you watch the film, you can see [Tammy’s] pulling strands of different labels. As you even highlighted, the discussion around communism, discussion about being Japanese American, discussion about disability, discussion about veteran, those are all labels. At the heart, it’s about the ones you choose to embrace, the ones you don’t, the ones society puts on you, and the ones that you choose for yourself.

What does Inouye’s story reveal about about how people’s lived experiences can help them push for justice?

Botkin: As a person who was never diagnosed as a child with neurodivergence, it started dawning on me in my 30s. I’m like, “Huh, you might have this thing.” I’m terrified of the label, to be honest. That’s the kind of the stance that I feel like that the senator was taking, which was, I’m not going to claim it for me, but I’m going to fight for everybody else.

What is that inability within ourselves to accept it? I don’t know. That’s something that I actually felt like I had in common with the senator, and I think maybe it’s just the old programming that we haven’t been able to take care of.

Al-Mohamed: In many ways, your own lived experiences are what are going to shape your own policies, your views and your actions. It was very clear from the senator’s early life and the things that happened to him, there was very much a clear recognition of some of the inequities that existed. He was somebody who basically committed five decades of his life to addressing those inequities across a variety of arenas.

From a political standpoint, he didn’t have a box, [like] it’s just going to be veteran stuff. He actually ended up taking that way of looking at what is fair and what is right and putting it into a variety of arenas. Some stronger than others, but the fact is that they were there. I think that’s where you see Inouye using that personal experience and using it to push for positive change.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

In a debate-night surprise, climate science got near-top billing during the vice presidential face-off between Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. JD Vance in New York on Tuesday, as the sprawling impacts of Hurricane Helene, which killed at least 160 people, were still being felt across the Southeast.

Just after an opening that addressed the escalating crisis in the Middle East, CBS moderator Norah O’Donnell noted that climate change is only making storms like Helene worse and asked Vance if he agreed with Donald Trump’s assertion that climate change is a “hoax.” Vance, in a pattern that repeated across the night, couldn’t bring himself to contradict the former president.

Instead, he pointed a finger at his opponents. If Democrats “really believe that climate change is serious,” he argued, “what they would be doing is more manufacturing and more energy production in the United States of America.” That’s because, he said, America is the “cleanest economy in the entire world” in terms of “carbon emissions” per “unit of economic output.” He also pushed for investing in nuclear and natural gas.

It’s unclear what Vance meant by “unit of economic output.” But by most metrics, the US is not a clean economy. The US has among the highest carbon emissions per capita, one of the highest total annual emissions, a mediocre record on carbon emissions per dollar of GDP, and was most recently ranked 34th in the world in its Environmental Performance Index, a measure of a country’s environmental stewardship, including climate change mitigation.

Walz countered that the Biden-Harris administration has made “massive investments” in green technology—the “biggest in global history“—with the Inflation Reduction Act. The law, Walz said, has created 200,000 jobs across the country. (As CNN noted in its fact-check of the debate, some of those jobs may be promised, but not yet created; it’s difficult to come up with an exact figure of jobs sparked by the IRA.)

As for Hurricane Helene, both Vance and Walz shared their condolences with the victims of the flooding. As Vance said, “It’s an unbelievable, unspeakable human tragedy.”

In a debate-night surprise, climate science got near-top billing during the vice presidential face-off between Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. JD Vance in New York on Tuesday, as the sprawling impacts of Hurricane Helene, which killed at least 160 people, were still being felt across the Southeast.

Just after an opening that addressed the escalating crisis in the Middle East, CBS moderator Norah O’Donnell noted that climate change is only making storms like Helene worse and asked Vance if he agreed with Donald Trump’s assertion that climate change is a “hoax.” Vance, in a pattern that repeated across the night, couldn’t bring himself to contradict the former president.

Instead, he pointed a finger at his opponents. If Democrats “really believe that climate change is serious,” he argued, “what they would be doing is more manufacturing and more energy production in the United States of America.” That’s because, he said, America is the “cleanest economy in the entire world” in terms of “carbon emissions” per “unit of economic output.” He also pushed for investing in nuclear and natural gas.

It’s unclear what Vance meant by “unit of economic output.” But by most metrics, the US is not a clean economy. The US has among the highest carbon emissions per capita, one of the highest total annual emissions, a mediocre record on carbon emissions per dollar of GDP, and was most recently ranked 34th in the world in its Environmental Performance Index, a measure of a country’s environmental stewardship, including climate change mitigation.

Walz countered that the Biden-Harris administration has made “massive investments” in green technology—the “biggest in global history“—with the Inflation Reduction Act. The law, Walz said, has created 200,000 jobs across the country. (As CNN noted in its fact-check of the debate, some of those jobs may be promised, but not yet created; it’s difficult to come up with an exact figure of jobs sparked by the IRA.)

As for Hurricane Helene, both Vance and Walz shared their condolences with the victims of the flooding. As Vance said, “It’s an unbelievable, unspeakable human tragedy.”

There appears to be a bullet lodged in Tim Sheehy’s right forearm. That is not in dispute. But how and when it got there has become the subject of an ongoing mystery that has dogged the campaign of the former Navy SEAL challenging Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) in one of this election cycle’s most high-stakes races.

The question of how Sheehy was shot first came up last spring in a Washington Post exposé by Liz Goodwin who reported that Sheehy had said on the campaign trail he has a “bullet stuck” in his right arm from his time serving in Afghanistan. The problem was that Sheehy had told a National Park Service ranger in 2015 that the bullet wound in his right arm came from him accidentally shooting himself with a Colt .45 revolver while in Glacier National Park.

When confronted with these incompatible stories, Sheehy told the Post that his original story was a lie designed to protect former platoon-mates who may have shot him in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan in 2012. Sheehy said that, in reality, he’d ended up in the emergency room in 2015 after falling on a hike. A park ranger, in this version of the story, was summoned to the hospital because Sheehy told the staff there that he had a bullet in his arm.

Sheey’s account should be easy to substantiate. Medical records would presumably show whether he arrived at the hospital with a fresh bullet wound or an injury sustained from a fall. The medical professionals who treated him could potentially recall what happened. A family member who was with him that day could back up his story. But Sheehy has not released records or made available any witnesses of the 2015 incident who could backup his version of events.

Sheehy, 38, is a first-time candidate who, until recently, ran a wildfire firefighting company that is struggling financially. He has been endorsed by Donald Trump and was seen as a top recruit by Senate Republicans. His background as a millennial former SEAL, Purple Heart recipient, and wealthy businessman who was largely free of MAGA baggage was seen as perfect for taking on Tester, who was first elected in 2006. Polls now show him leading Tester in a race that is crucial for determining which party controls the Senate.

In terms of medical records, the Sheehy campaign only shared an X-ray with the Post that it provided on the condition that the image not be published. Doctors who reviewed it for the paper concluded that it does not provide strong support for Sheehy’s story that a “friendly ricochet bullet” hit him in Afghanistan:

The image probably depicts a bullet, but it is not possible to tell what type of weapon it came from nor the age of the wound, said Joseph V. Sakran, a trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, who reviewed the X-ray at the request of The Post. Thomas J. Esposito, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Peoria who has spent 30 years as a trauma surgeon, said that the X-ray looks like an injury from a low-velocity firearm, such as a handgun, and that he found it “doubtful” the bullet was the result of ricochet from an assault weapon because of the smoothness of its edges.

Sheehy’s campaign told the Post back in April that he had requested medical records from the hospital visit but had not yet been able to obtain them. Later that month, the campaign declined to comment about the status of that request and referred the paper to Sheehy’s lawyer, Daniel Watkins of Meier Watkins Phillips Pusch. The statement Watkins provided claimed that the “released reports corroborate the information we have provided, and they confirm Mr. Sheehy’s recollection of what took place.” The information provided—that is, the X-ray—does not confirm Sheehy’s account.

One piece of evidence in favor of Sheehy’s current story is that a weapons expert interviewed by the Post said it was “very unlikely” that the gun would have misfired after being dropped. The emergency room that Sheehy went to was about two hours away from where he initially said he shot himself. That, along with the fact that Sheehy appears to have been discharged from the hospital relatively quickly, could also support the claim that he did not arrive at the hospital with a fresh gunshot wound.

I reached out to Sheehy’s campaign on September 3 asking if they would be able to provide any more records to support the candidate’s account, or if they would make someone available to to defend Sheehy’s story on or off-the-record. The campaign did not respond to the email or a follow-up sent last week.

On Wednesday, I emailed Watkins, who, according to his official bio, is a “nationally ranked trial lawyer and reputation counselor specializing in high-stakes crisis and defamation cases.” Watkins confirmed that he is representing Sheehy, and asked to review the request I sent to the campaign. He did not respond after receiving it.

Another problem for Sheehy is the length he went to substantiate his original story in 2015. As the Post reported in its April follow-up, Sheehy hand wrote and signed a detailed statement that explains how he shot himself. “Upon finishing our hike at Logan’s Pass while reloading our vehicle, an improperly placed firearm kept in the vehicle for bear protection fell out and discharged into my right forearm,” he wrote. “We fully cooperated with Ranger [name redacted in document] after he called the ER and agreed to pay the $500.00 fine before leaving the hospital.” Sheehy (who was fined for discharging a firearm in a national park) went on to “request leniency with any charges related to this unfortunate accident” due to his “security clearance and involvement with national defense related contracts.”

Sheehy’s 2015 account fits with a statement of probable cause that the park ranger signed under penalty of perjury shortly after the incident. According to that statement, the ranger was already on the way to Logan Pass in response to the report of a gunshot when he learned that Sheehy was in the Kalispell hospital emergency room. That timeline is supported by a second statement from the park ranger that explained that he initially responded to the incident after a “park visitor called park dispatch” to report that a gun had been accidentally fired.

When interviewed by the Post on the condition of anonymity, the ranger, a Marine Corps veteran, said he was surprised to hear that Sheehy is now claiming to have lied to him in 2015. He recalled Sheehy showing him the weapon at the time and him seeing that it was fully loaded aside from one bullet. “I don’t in any way impugn the law enforcement officer,” Sheehy told the Post about the ranger’s written account. “Everything he says is true to the extent of his knowledge.”

As the Post noted, lying to a park ranger is a crime, although the statute of limitations has now expired. According to his current story, Sheehy lied out of a selfless desire to protect former platoon-mates from an investigation that experts say was highly unlikely to have been triggered by him saying he had been hit by friendly fire years before.

This doesn’t have to be this complicated. Sheehy just needs to release the medical records. He won’t. Which begs the question: Why not?

There appears to be a bullet lodged in Tim Sheehy’s right forearm. That is not in dispute. But how and when it got there has become the subject of an ongoing mystery that has dogged the campaign of the former Navy SEAL challenging Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) in one of this election cycle’s most high-stakes races.

The question of how Sheehy was shot first came up last spring in a Washington Post exposé by Liz Goodwin who reported that Sheehy had said on the campaign trail he has a “bullet stuck” in his right arm from his time serving in Afghanistan. The problem was that Sheehy had told a National Park Service ranger in 2015 that the bullet wound in his right arm came from him accidentally shooting himself with a Colt .45 revolver while in Glacier National Park.

When confronted with these incompatible stories, Sheehy told the Post that his original story was a lie designed to protect former platoon-mates who may have shot him in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan in 2012. Sheehy said that, in reality, he’d ended up in the emergency room in 2015 after falling on a hike. A park ranger, in this version of the story, was summoned to the hospital because Sheehy told the staff there that he had a bullet in his arm.

Sheey’s account should be easy to substantiate. Medical records would presumably show whether he arrived at the hospital with a fresh bullet wound or an injury sustained from a fall. The medical professionals who treated him could potentially recall what happened. A family member who was with him that day could back up his story. But Sheehy has not released records or made available any witnesses of the 2015 incident who could backup his version of events.

Sheehy, 38, is a first-time candidate who, until recently, ran a wildfire firefighting company that is struggling financially. He has been endorsed by Donald Trump and was seen as a top recruit by Senate Republicans. His background as a millennial former SEAL, Purple Heart recipient, and wealthy businessman who was largely free of MAGA baggage was seen as perfect for taking on Tester, who was first elected in 2006. Polls now show him leading Tester in a race that is crucial for determining which party controls the Senate.

In terms of medical records, the Sheehy campaign only shared an X-ray with the Post that it provided on the condition that the image not be published. Doctors who reviewed it for the paper concluded that it does not provide strong support for Sheehy’s story that a “friendly ricochet bullet” hit him in Afghanistan:

The image probably depicts a bullet, but it is not possible to tell what type of weapon it came from nor the age of the wound, said Joseph V. Sakran, a trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, who reviewed the X-ray at the request of The Post. Thomas J. Esposito, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Peoria who has spent 30 years as a trauma surgeon, said that the X-ray looks like an injury from a low-velocity firearm, such as a handgun, and that he found it “doubtful” the bullet was the result of ricochet from an assault weapon because of the smoothness of its edges.

Sheehy’s campaign told the Post back in April that he had requested medical records from the hospital visit but had not yet been able to obtain them. Later that month, the campaign declined to comment about the status of that request and referred the paper to Sheehy’s lawyer, Daniel Watkins of Meier Watkins Phillips Pusch. The statement Watkins provided claimed that the “released reports corroborate the information we have provided, and they confirm Mr. Sheehy’s recollection of what took place.” The information provided—that is, the X-ray—does not confirm Sheehy’s account.

One piece of evidence in favor of Sheehy’s current story is that a weapons expert interviewed by the Post said it was “very unlikely” that the gun would have misfired after being dropped. The emergency room that Sheehy went to was about two hours away from where he initially said he shot himself. That, along with the fact that Sheehy appears to have been discharged from the hospital relatively quickly, could also support the claim that he did not arrive at the hospital with a fresh gunshot wound.

I reached out to Sheehy’s campaign on September 3 asking if they would be able to provide any more records to support the candidate’s account, or if they would make someone available to to defend Sheehy’s story on or off-the-record. The campaign did not respond to the email or a follow-up sent last week.

On Wednesday, I emailed Watkins, who, according to his official bio, is a “nationally ranked trial lawyer and reputation counselor specializing in high-stakes crisis and defamation cases.” Watkins confirmed that he is representing Sheehy, and asked to review the request I sent to the campaign. He did not respond after receiving it.

Another problem for Sheehy is the length he went to substantiate his original story in 2015. As the Post reported in its April follow-up, Sheehy hand wrote and signed a detailed statement that explains how he shot himself. “Upon finishing our hike at Logan’s Pass while reloading our vehicle, an improperly placed firearm kept in the vehicle for bear protection fell out and discharged into my right forearm,” he wrote. “We fully cooperated with Ranger [name redacted in document] after he called the ER and agreed to pay the $500.00 fine before leaving the hospital.” Sheehy (who was fined for discharging a firearm in a national park) went on to “request leniency with any charges related to this unfortunate accident” due to his “security clearance and involvement with national defense related contracts.”

Sheehy’s 2015 account fits with a statement of probable cause that the park ranger signed under penalty of perjury shortly after the incident. According to that statement, the ranger was already on the way to Logan Pass in response to the report of a gunshot when he learned that Sheehy was in the Kalispell hospital emergency room. That timeline is supported by a second statement from the park ranger that explained that he initially responded to the incident after a “park visitor called park dispatch” to report that a gun had been accidentally fired.

When interviewed by the Post on the condition of anonymity, the ranger, a Marine Corps veteran, said he was surprised to hear that Sheehy is now claiming to have lied to him in 2015. He recalled Sheehy showing him the weapon at the time and him seeing that it was fully loaded aside from one bullet. “I don’t in any way impugn the law enforcement officer,” Sheehy told the Post about the ranger’s written account. “Everything he says is true to the extent of his knowledge.”

As the Post noted, lying to a park ranger is a crime, although the statute of limitations has now expired. According to his current story, Sheehy lied out of a selfless desire to protect former platoon-mates from an investigation that experts say was highly unlikely to have been triggered by him saying he had been hit by friendly fire years before.

This doesn’t have to be this complicated. Sheehy just needs to release the medical records. He won’t. Which begs the question: Why not?

On Friday, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) will introduce a potentially groundbreaking piece of federal legislation in the House of Representatives—one allocating $10 billion in funding to fight Long Covid, the increasingly widespread, chronic condition that follows many Covid infections. The Long Covid Research Moonshot Act is a companion bill to one that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced in the Senate in August.

“Long Covid is a silent health crisis impacting over twenty-three million Americans, including one million children,” Omar said in a statement to Mother Jones. (Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., is the co-lead on the legislation.) “I’m proud to lead this effort in the House to recognize Long Covid as the public health emergency that it is and invest in countering the effects of this terrible disease.”

“Long Covid is a silent health crisis impacting over twenty-three million Americans, including one million children,” Rep. Omar said.

Long Covid symptoms often include debilitating fatigue, and many people found to have it have also been diagnosed with conditions like myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. ME/CFS, which is characterized by post-exertional malaise, is known to be associated with other infectious diseases—the CDC states that about 1 in 10 people infected by the Epstein-Barr virus (which 95 percent of adults get) experience ME/CFS-like symptoms. And research shows that repeated Covid infections increase people’s risk of developing Long Covid.

The Long Covid Research Moonshot Act would establish a new research program within the National Institutes of Health to better understand the condition (and others, like ME/CFS and POTS) with its own database, advisory board, and a new grant process to accelerate clinical trials. It would fund public health education and comprehensive care clinics dedicated to Long Covid, especially in underserved, disproportionately affected communities—and would require any new treatments developed through the act to be reasonably priced and accessible to more patients.

“We know that the only path forward out of this generational crisis is to fund research that builds on our expertise about infection-associated chronic conditions like ME/CFS, and that is accountable to the patient community for delivering results, including clinical trials,” said Laurie Jones, executive director of patient advocacy group #MEAction. “The Long Covid Research Moonshot Act lays out a comprehensive plan for doing just that.”

Megan Carmilani, the president of Long Covid Families, believes the bill would fund vital research into how Long Covid presents in young people, a focus of her organization, and called on Congress “to prioritize the health and wellbeing of our nation’s children by supporting this bill as well.”

The Long Covid Research Moonshot Act is not Congress’ first attempt to fund such treatment. In December 2020, Congress allocated $1 billion to NIH to study the long-term impacts of Covid, and boosted that funding by more than $500 million this year.

But a 2022 attempt, Pressley’s TREAT Long Covid Act, did not make it out of committee—despite having 41 co-sponsors, including Rep. Omar. That act, also unsuccessfully reintroduced in 2023, would have made direct grants to clinics that treat Long Covid and associated conditions.

Communities of color and disabled people have been disproportionately harmed by Long Covid. Black and Latino people, for instance, are more likely to develop Long Covid symptoms than white people. Disabled people are twice as likely to do so as non-disabled people. A February 2023 analysis published by JAMA Network found that people with Long Covid symptoms, which can include severe fatigue and issues with cognitive function, are more likely to be unemployed. The only way not to get Long Covid is to avoid Covid infections, underscoring the importance of mask-wearing and high-quality air filtration.

“We must take bold action to help Americans suffering from Long Covid,” Omar said in her statement.

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Buried deep within the minutiae of federal regulation is a seemingly tiny policy switch that, if flicked, would dramatically raise the energy efficiency standard for new homes. Such a move would save homeowners thousands of dollars on their energy bills and nudge the country toward its climate goals. But, after months of waiting to see whether the government would indeed flip it, eight Democratic Senators have grown impatient and, on Monday, implored regulators to act. 

“We urge you to move quickly to adopt modern energy standards for new homes,” read a letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency that was provided exclusively to Grist. The little-known independent entity oversees Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the country’s two largest backers of mortgages, and has the authority to mandate minimum energy standards for those programs—which cover hundreds of thousands of new home purchases each year. This breadth means that any FHFA benchmark would effectively become a de facto national standard.

Currently, though, the agency has no efficiency standard at all, and the senators—including Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts—want that to change. Instituting minimum requirements, they said, “will support a stable, efficient housing market by reducing wasted energy, improving health outcomes, and lowering costs for both renters and homeowners across the country.” Establishing guidelines will also reduce planet-warming emissions and, they note, help protect families from the impacts of extreme weather. 

Advocates contend that many new homes are less energy-efficient than they could be, which leads to higher utility bills that hit low-income households particularly hard. This, they say, is because only a handful of states require that new homes are built to the current International Energy Conservation Code (IECC), which was last updated in 2021. Most adhere to outdated versions of the code, and some states have no requirements at all.

“Too many American families are stretched thin by the high costs of their energy bills,” Van Hollen told Grist. “Improving home energy efficiency will help lower those bills, and the FHFA can play a key role in saving both homeowners and renters money by adopting a minimum energy standard for new properties built using Enterprise-backed mortgages. I appreciate FHFA’s earlier commitments to taking this action, and now it’s time for them to follow through so we can pave the way for more cost-effective and energy efficient housing across this country.”

“It doesn’t make sense to keep building new buildings that lock in higher utility bills and guarantee that people have to pay more than they should on energy.” 

The IECC dates to the late 1990s and, despite its name, is predominantly used in the US. The code governs energy conservation factors such as insulation, window efficiency, and air-sealing. It is revised every three years, and the 2021 version represents an improvement of approximately 40 percent in energy efficiency compared to the 2006 edition. The IECC also serves as the basis for more stringent standards, such as the federal Energy Star program.

“This is not aggressive green building,” said Lowell Ungar, director of federal policy for the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, which is pushing the FHFA for change. “This is intended as a baseline that builders across the country can do.”

The Federal Housing Finance Agency declined Grist’s request for an on-the-record interview, and did not answer questions about if, and when, it would adopt energy efficiency standards for its mortgage programs. 

This spring, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the Department of Agriculture (USDA), finalized a long-delayed update to minimums for its mortgage programs, which was based on the latest international standard. Around the same time, the FHFA told Congress that it was considering a similar step and that a decision was expected by the end of the second quarter—a deadline that passed months ago.

According to HUD and USDA estimates, the changes to its codes would come with an average upfront cost of about $7,200 per home, but save $950 in annual utility costs and around $15,000 over the course of a 30-year mortgage. An FHFA change would have a similar effect but with far wider reach, since Fannie and Freddie back well over half of the mortgages on more than 1 million new homes built each year.

“Energy poverty is a real problem,” said Alys Cohen, a senior attorney with the National Consumer Law Center. “It doesn’t make sense to keep building new buildings that lock in higher utility bills and guarantee that people have to pay more than they should on energy.” 

The climate impact of an up-to-date FHFA standard could be enormous because it could reduce a home’s energy consumption by an average of one-third.  

“It’s a big deal,” Ungar said, adding that, over time, as new homes become a larger part of the housing stock, the climate and financial benefits of more stringent FHFA efficiency standards will only grow. His organization estimates that, by 2050, the move to the latest international standard would save some 194 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions—or the equivalent of consuming nearly 22 billion gallons of gasoline. 

Some, however, oppose the FHFA adopting a standard.

The National Association of Home Builders, which is one of the largest trade associations in the US, has argued that a “rush” to require new homes to meet the 2021 IECC will cause an unreasonable increase in up-front costs that will exacerbate the affordable housing crisis. The organization declined Grist’s interview request, but in a press release from May its representative, Sean Woods, said that mandating the latest standard “will act as a drag on housing production and this will have a domino effect on the rest of the economy, with fewer jobs and housing options, higher housing costs, and a lower tax base.”

What, if any, steps the FHFA ends up taking on the issue remains unclear, as do more granular details such as how long builders might have to adapt to new requirements or how future iterations of the International Energy Conservation Code might be handled. Advocates and opponents alike eagerly await answers from FHFA director Sandra Thompson, whose five-year term leading the independent agency ends in 2027.

”It would be a huge lost opportunity if it didn’t happen,” said Cohen, of FHFA standards. “The buildings being built now are the buildings lower income people move into later.”

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Buried deep within the minutiae of federal regulation is a seemingly tiny policy switch that, if flicked, would dramatically raise the energy efficiency standard for new homes. Such a move would save homeowners thousands of dollars on their energy bills and nudge the country toward its climate goals. But, after months of waiting to see whether the government would indeed flip it, eight Democratic Senators have grown impatient and, on Monday, implored regulators to act. 

“We urge you to move quickly to adopt modern energy standards for new homes,” read a letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency that was provided exclusively to Grist. The little-known independent entity oversees Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the country’s two largest backers of mortgages, and has the authority to mandate minimum energy standards for those programs—which cover hundreds of thousands of new home purchases each year. This breadth means that any FHFA benchmark would effectively become a de facto national standard.

Currently, though, the agency has no efficiency standard at all, and the senators—including Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts—want that to change. Instituting minimum requirements, they said, “will support a stable, efficient housing market by reducing wasted energy, improving health outcomes, and lowering costs for both renters and homeowners across the country.” Establishing guidelines will also reduce planet-warming emissions and, they note, help protect families from the impacts of extreme weather. 

Advocates contend that many new homes are less energy-efficient than they could be, which leads to higher utility bills that hit low-income households particularly hard. This, they say, is because only a handful of states require that new homes are built to the current International Energy Conservation Code (IECC), which was last updated in 2021. Most adhere to outdated versions of the code, and some states have no requirements at all.

“Too many American families are stretched thin by the high costs of their energy bills,” Van Hollen told Grist. “Improving home energy efficiency will help lower those bills, and the FHFA can play a key role in saving both homeowners and renters money by adopting a minimum energy standard for new properties built using Enterprise-backed mortgages. I appreciate FHFA’s earlier commitments to taking this action, and now it’s time for them to follow through so we can pave the way for more cost-effective and energy efficient housing across this country.”

“It doesn’t make sense to keep building new buildings that lock in higher utility bills and guarantee that people have to pay more than they should on energy.” 

The IECC dates to the late 1990s and, despite its name, is predominantly used in the US. The code governs energy conservation factors such as insulation, window efficiency, and air-sealing. It is revised every three years, and the 2021 version represents an improvement of approximately 40 percent in energy efficiency compared to the 2006 edition. The IECC also serves as the basis for more stringent standards, such as the federal Energy Star program.

“This is not aggressive green building,” said Lowell Ungar, director of federal policy for the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, which is pushing the FHFA for change. “This is intended as a baseline that builders across the country can do.”

The Federal Housing Finance Agency declined Grist’s request for an on-the-record interview, and did not answer questions about if, and when, it would adopt energy efficiency standards for its mortgage programs. 

This spring, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the Department of Agriculture (USDA), finalized a long-delayed update to minimums for its mortgage programs, which was based on the latest international standard. Around the same time, the FHFA told Congress that it was considering a similar step and that a decision was expected by the end of the second quarter—a deadline that passed months ago.

According to HUD and USDA estimates, the changes to its codes would come with an average upfront cost of about $7,200 per home, but save $950 in annual utility costs and around $15,000 over the course of a 30-year mortgage. An FHFA change would have a similar effect but with far wider reach, since Fannie and Freddie back well over half of the mortgages on more than 1 million new homes built each year.

“Energy poverty is a real problem,” said Alys Cohen, a senior attorney with the National Consumer Law Center. “It doesn’t make sense to keep building new buildings that lock in higher utility bills and guarantee that people have to pay more than they should on energy.” 

The climate impact of an up-to-date FHFA standard could be enormous because it could reduce a home’s energy consumption by an average of one-third.  

“It’s a big deal,” Ungar said, adding that, over time, as new homes become a larger part of the housing stock, the climate and financial benefits of more stringent FHFA efficiency standards will only grow. His organization estimates that, by 2050, the move to the latest international standard would save some 194 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions—or the equivalent of consuming nearly 22 billion gallons of gasoline. 

Some, however, oppose the FHFA adopting a standard.

The National Association of Home Builders, which is one of the largest trade associations in the US, has argued that a “rush” to require new homes to meet the 2021 IECC will cause an unreasonable increase in up-front costs that will exacerbate the affordable housing crisis. The organization declined Grist’s interview request, but in a press release from May its representative, Sean Woods, said that mandating the latest standard “will act as a drag on housing production and this will have a domino effect on the rest of the economy, with fewer jobs and housing options, higher housing costs, and a lower tax base.”

What, if any, steps the FHFA ends up taking on the issue remains unclear, as do more granular details such as how long builders might have to adapt to new requirements or how future iterations of the International Energy Conservation Code might be handled. Advocates and opponents alike eagerly await answers from FHFA director Sandra Thompson, whose five-year term leading the independent agency ends in 2027.

”It would be a huge lost opportunity if it didn’t happen,” said Cohen, of FHFA standards. “The buildings being built now are the buildings lower income people move into later.”

A few months ago, a man crawling along a rooftop in Pennsylvania tried to murder Donald Trump at a campaign rally. Hours later, press releases started to circulate, from analysts, think tanks, politicians, and pundits, all offering to cut through the swell of confusion and misinformation. 

One of the people who washed up in my inbox was Ben Swann, whom a New York–based PR team presented as a journalist, and a source “to separate the conspiracy theories from the facts behind Trump’s assassination attempt.” 

This was curious for several reasons, the main being that Swann is himself an energetic conspiracy theorist, who first attracted notice in 2017 by touting Pizza­gate, a lurid conspiracy about child trafficking, while working for Atlanta’s CBS affiliate. Swann was ultimately fired, but quickly launched a new career as a star of the most conspiracy-addled corner of the online universe, posting to his website Truth in Media. He also began accepting millions of dollars in funding from a Kremlin-backed broadcaster to produce pro-Russian propaganda, according to disclosure forms he filed with the federal government when registering as a foreign agent. 

While Swann has prospered by confidently and cynically presenting himself as a force for truth, legitimate researchers of disinformation—the kind he’s spread for much of his professional life—are struggling. Over the last several years, the field has undergone a broadscale attack from politicians, right-wing media, and tech industry giants. As a result, research has been curtailed, people have been laid off, and academics working in the space even fear talking to one another, lest it leave them open to charges of “conspiring” by their adversaries.

Who is trying to kill their industry and why are their attacks working so well?

The timing of the crisis could hardly be worse. In January, the World Economic Forum highlighted dis- and misinformation as a top global threat over the next few years, citing concerns about increasingly sophisticated AI and the ways that disinformation could be used to destabilize consequential elections—including here in the United States, but also in the UK, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Mexico, and India. With our campaign season in full swing, the political implications of the battle over disinformation are obvious: Identifying fake news and misleading narratives is both a core part of the researchers’ work and routinely attacked as a political project.

The question that has begun to bedevil these disinformation researchers—used to recognizing patterns and ferreting out the source of influence operations—is, who is trying to kill their industry and why are their attacks working so well? Some see strong similarities to corporate-backed assaults on climate scientists in the 1990s, where oil and gas groups teamed up with conservative politicians to push back against the scientific consensus that human beings were causing climate change. Others see echoes of Cold War paranoia.

“The Red Scare came for academia also,” one researcher said recently, with exasperation. “How do we not see the historical parallels?”

There are, to be clear, still some cops on the beat. At the University of Washington, for instance, the Center for an Informed Public does rapid response on electoral rumors. Other academic institutions like Clemson University and the Shorenstein Center at Harvard continue to publish peer-reviewed research, like Shorenstein’s Misinformation Review, which looks at global misinformation. But no one disputes that the environment for doing this work has gotten much, much worse.

Led by Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the Trump loyalist who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, Republicans in Congress have mounted an onslaught of harassing investigations and legislative attacks, accusing the field of colluding with the Biden administration to silence conservatives. Jordan and his committee investigators have grilled disinformation researchers from both Clemson and the University of Washington, where Dr. Kate Starbird, co-founder of the Center for an Informed Public, has been under sustained attack. The Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), which spent the last five years studying misinformation and misuse of social media platforms, has been gravely weakened after lawsuits brought by conservative pundits and anti-vaccine activists alleging it was promoting censorship. One was filed by America First Legal, the organization run by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who bragged it was “striking at the heart of the censorship-­industrial complex.” 

Stanford has denied that SIO is ending its work, saying it is simply facing “funding challenges.” But its founder, former Facebook executive Alex Stamos, has left, as has its star researcher Renée DiResta, who warned in a June New York Times op-ed that her field was “being dismantled.” Disinformation scholar Joan Donovan recently filed a whistleblower complaint against Harvard, alleging the university dismissed her to “protect the interests of high-value donors with obvious and direct ties to Meta.” (Harvard said her departure was due to her research lacking a faculty sponsor, and insisted “donors have no influence” over its work.)

The conservative legislative onslaught against disinformation shows very little sign of slowing. In May, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky introduced a bill that would ban federal funding for “disinformation research grants, and for other purposes.” The right-wing Cato Institute applauded and praised Massie for fighting back against “censorship.”

Arguments over truth, and the role of the government and academia in safeguarding it, aren’t new.

Some blows have been self-inflicted. The industry had become, as researchers Chico Q. Camargo and Felix M. Simon put it in a 2022 paper, “too big to fail” without reckoning with its rapid growth or establishing enough “methodological rigor.” In a passage that inadvertently echoes conservative attacks, the paper, sponsored by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, cautions against the field’s “unique position,” given that whatever it determines “counts as mis-/disinformation will likely be regulated as such.”

Arguments over the nature of truth, and the role of the government and academia in safeguarding it, aren’t new. Before misinformation, disinformation, and fake news became phrases in America’s political lexicon, a similar storm wracked climate science. Beginning in the 1990s, climate researchers faced attacks from politicians and private groups alike, who contested their widely accepted finding that human activity was causing climate change. Fossil fuel–funded organizations like the Heartland Institute began loudly promoting scientists willing to attack the consensus while hosting a series of lavish conferences devoted to promoting alternative climate facts. In 2009, a hacker stole emails between climate researchers, helping launch a scandal, known as Climategate, sustained by false claims that the messages documented scientific misconduct.

One target of the hack, and of climate change deniers throughout this period, was Dr. Michael Mann, a University of Pennsylvania climatologist best known for his 1998 “hockey stick” graph, which showed sharply rising temperatures over the past century. Mann told me he sees “parallels between the politically and ideologically motivated attacks on climate scientists, public health scientists, and now disinformation researchers…including common actors (e.g. plutocrats and Republican politicians).” Mann ultimately sued some of his most strident critics for defamation, two conservative authors who published pieces for National Review and the libertarian think tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute; one called Mann’s research “fraudulent,” while the other wrote that he “could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except for instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data.” After more than a decade of delay, this winter a jury awarded Mann a $1 million judgment. 

“The only solution to the larger problem of ideologically motivated antiscience is to go after the bad actors behind it,” Mann says, not just through such lawsuits, but by voting out Republican politicians involved in the attacks. In 2022, GOP state officials filed a suit against the Biden administration that alleged the government’s requests that social platforms take down Covid misinformation were unconstitutional. The case, thanks to the arch-conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, made it to the Supreme Court, where it was dismissed for a lack of standing, but not before contributing to the chill cast over the broader anti-disinformation field.

At the same time fighting disinformation has become a political battleground, it has also shown to be a problem on which Big Tech has been all too eager to throw in the towel. After Elon Musk bought Twitter, it stopped policing Covid misinformation in November 2022. Since then the site and Musk in particular have energetically amplified disinformation; one calculation found that his posts sharing election and immigration disinformation have been seen more than 1 billion times. Mass layoffs at companies like Meta have made it harder to set and establish standards around misinformation, including election fraud or dangerous pseudomedical advice. On the whole, the platforms have prioritized gathering eyeballs and profit over safeguarding an informed public.

So, for industrious conspiracy peddlers, conditions are a dream: confused, acrid, and with the powers that be seemingly convinced that combating disinformation is more expensive or more trouble than it’s worth. From now on, if you need help, you might be on your own.

In the aftermath of the bloodshed on Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, state authorities arrested Colin Gray, whose 14-year-old son, Colt Gray, allegedly shot four people to death and injured nine others before surrendering to police. The father is charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, eight counts of cruelty to children—and, most significantly, two counts of second-degree murder.

The murder charges are unprecedented, the most severe ever filed against the parent of a school shooter. Late Thursday, the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said at a news conference that the charges against Colin Gray are “directly connected with the actions of his son” and that the father “knowingly allowed him to possess the weapon.”

Authorities have not provided further details about evidence they may have, but according to news reports, Colin Gray owned the type of AR-15 that his son allegedly used in the attack. And Colt Gray had been “begging for months” for mental health help but had received none, according to an aunt of his who spoke to the Washington Post. (Colt Gray has been charged with four counts of murder and will be tried as an adult, authorities said.)

For more than a decade, I’ve studied and reported on the American epidemic of mass shootings. Over the past several years, and particularly since early 2024, a dramatic shift has taken shape: a reckoning for the parents of school shooters. Today, with more than 400 million guns and a lack of political will to regulate them more effectively nationwide, it may be that America has begun to find another route—a legal end-run of sorts—to bring accountability for these events of catastrophic gun violence.

The arrest of the school shooter’s father in Georgia comes just seven months after James and Jennifer Crumbley, the parents of a 15-year-old school shooter in Michigan, were convicted of involuntary manslaughter—also a first. What is publicly alleged so far about the role of Colin Gray appears to echo the case of the Crumbleys, who were found to have ignored their son’s mental health crisis and supplied him with the gun he used to commit his attack at Oxford High School, where four died and seven were injured.

The prevailing theme has long been that no one can see the violence coming, the parents included. But that theme no longer holds.

It is a near certainty that in the days and weeks ahead, more details will emerge about warning signs given off by the school shooter in Georgia, one of 20 states now requiring plans for violence prevention in public schools. School shootings are almost always preceded by such warning signs. Significant questions also loom about what may have been done regarding concerns about Colt Gray by law enforcement or the school district, after anonymous tips about threats posted online put him on the radar of the FBI and local authorities in 2023.

Another parental role—starkly different—came into public view this spring, when we published my two-year investigation, “Lessons From a Mass Shooter’s Mother,” in Mother Jones and aired a companion audio investigation on our radio show Reveal. These chronicle the experience of Chin Rodger, whose son Elliot Rodger committed mass murder in the California college town of Isla Vista in 2014. Chin Rodger hadn’t been able to recognize her deeply troubled son’s suicidal and homicidal warning behaviors, but she had gone to great lengths to get him help and care before his attack. Years later she began working with violence prevention experts at the FBI and beyond, sharing myriad details about her son’s life with them—and eventually with the public—in hopes of raising awareness about warning signs and helping avert future violence.

As I wrote in the story: “The public rarely hears from parents of mass shooters apart from brief statements of sorrow in the aftermath. The prevailing theme has long been that no one can see the violence coming, the parents included. But that theme no longer holds, especially in light of a recent tragedy that could remake the legal landscape.”

There I was referring to the new criminal precedent established with the Crumbleys—one with the potential to expand, it now appears, with the case in Georgia. The recurring mass murder of school kids and their teachers drives intense public calls for finding culpability among parents (and others), which may well be warranted in some cases. But this nascent trend of criminalizing parents is not without possible pitfalls, including, legal experts have said, for mothers and fathers of minority children exposed disproportionately to gun violence.

Another notable development in the past several years has been a trend of civil liability for gun manufacturers who market their AR-15s and other firearms aggressively to America’s youth. In early 2022, Remington, the company that made the AR-15 used in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, agreed to a landmark $73 million civil settlement with victims’ families. In late 2022, the family of a 10-year-old victim in Uvalde, Texas, filed suit against Daniel Defense, the maker of the AR-15 used in the massacre at Robb Elementary School, accusing the company of using militaristic marketing appeals to target “young male consumers.”

The devastation in Georgia this week is far from the first to involve a shockingly young perpetrator. The shooter at Oxford High School in 2021 was only one year older, just 15 at the time. Other cases going back in time, documented in our mass shootings database and in my book on prevention, Trigger Points, have involved shooters as young as 13 and 11 years old.

In January 2023, a 6-year-old child brought a pistol to school in Virginia and shot his first grade teacher—a case in which the mother was later imprisoned for gun-related federal crimes. (The child used the mother’s unsecured firearm; her prosecution involved drug use and lying related to the gun purchase.)

What happened in Georgia this week serves as a particularly stark reminder: In America, a teenager can easily get his hands on a military-grade rifle and use it to gun down his classmates and teachers. Why we have this problem—and tens of millions of AR-15s in civilian hands—is complicated and arises from a recent history that many Americans know relatively little about.

Another reminder about this problem worth repeating is that, despite popular opinion, it is not an unsolvable one. Now, deterrence for gun-owning parents may be a growing part of a broader solution.

Just hours after the assassination attempt against Donald Trump on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, high-profile allies of the ex-president began promoting unfounded conspiracy theories and blaming President Joe Biden and Democrats, without evidence, for causing the horrific attack. Trump and his surrogates have continued nonstop ever since with this coordinated messaging, which security experts have told me could provoke retaliatory violence from pro-Trump extremists. In late August, backers of Project 2025 joined the effort pushing this dangerous propaganda.

On Aug. 29, podcast host Monica Crowley interviewed Trump and proposed without evidence that he may have been targeted for murder from within the Biden administration.

“The more we see what happened that day, the more suspicious it all looks,” said Crowley, a former Trump administration spokesperson and a credited contributor on the Project 2025 policy tome detailing a hard-right agenda for a second Trump presidency. “Does it look increasingly to you like this was a suspicious—maybe even inside job?”

“Well, it’s strange,” Trump replied. Then he speculated about the deceased gunman’s father hiring “the most expensive lawyer” and suggested a partisan conspiracy involving former Justice Department prosecutor Andrew Weissmann and Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias. Weissmann quickly denounced Trump’s comments as false on social media. A spokesperson for Elias Law Group told me that no one from the firm has had any involvement in any aspect of the case.

Trump further claimed in the podcast interview, first reported by Media Matters for America, that the FBI had failed to gather evidence from the gunman’s cellphone. That’s untrue: FBI Director Christopher Wray and other FBI officials have spoken publicly about the bureau’s extensive investigation into the gunman’s background and activity, including his various digital communications.

Trump and Crowley then riffed about the JFK assassination, with Crowley reiterating the baseless conspiracy theory about the attack on Trump: “You were shot five or six weeks ago, and the imperial media, the regime, they’ve all buried it. They don’t want anybody talking about it, which also lends credence to this idea that this is very suspicious and could have been an inside job.”

“Yeah, true,” Trump interjected. “They don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Of course not,” she said.

“Tells you bad things,” Trump said, starting to draw a connection with the broader conspiracy theory at the core of his campaign.

“It raises big suspicions,” Crowley agreed.

“Well they didn’t want to talk about the election of 2020 either,” Trump said. “They just don’t want to talk about it because they know they’re guilty as hell. And the only way you can stop it—it’s amazing. People that want to have a fair election are indicted. The people that cheated on the election are allowed to keep cheating.”

Three days prior, on Aug. 26, the Heritage Foundation—home of Project 2025—hosted the “J 13 Forum,” a faux congressional hearing on the assassination attempt. Billed as an “independent” investigation, it was led by Reps. Cory Mills of Florida and Eli Crane of Arizona and framed as a necessary circumvention of ongoing federal investigations, including a bipartisan congressional task force on the shooting convened by Republican Speaker Mike Johnson. In his opening remarks, Mills stated that he and his MAGA colleagues from the House were certain to uncover not just “criminal gross negligence” but “purposeful intent” attributable to the Biden administration.

“I think everyone’s heard me say before, ‘DEI equals DIE.’”

Participants in the testimony-style interviews included former Secret Service agent and right-wing media personality Dan Bongino, and former Blackwater CEO and Trump political operative Erik Prince. Attacks on DEI policy and its alleged role in the catastrophic security failure on July 13 were a focal point, also teed up by Mills from the outset. The hearing at Heritage, he said, “is a message to all of Congress, that if we are not selecting people based on meritocracy, that independent investigations such as this will continue to move forward.”

Project 2025 includes detailed plans to purge the US government of DEI policies. Midway through the hearing, Bongino went off on DEI as having supposedly led to unqualified agents working for the Secret Service. Citing unnamed whistleblower sources, he claimed that deficient personnel included trainees who had failed shooting tests and had filed “nuisance” employment complaints—and who were then given high-stakes jobs. “Many are out on protective assignments now,” Bongino said, without providing any evidence to support his claims.

“So what you’re saying is that DEI plays a major role, not meritocracy with regards to the current culture,” Mills said.

“No, the major role,” Bongino emphasized. “The Secret Service right now is dominated by DEI.”

Mills replied: “I think everyone’s heard me say before, ‘DEI equals DIE.’”

Project 2025 also calls for the mission of the Secret Service to be narrowed to protective operations only, and to have all of its criminal financial investigations moved under other law enforcement agencies—an argument Bongino also made in his remarks. Agents should be able to focus on protective work, Bongino said, “without running out cheap $20 counterfeit notes at Seven Eleven on a Friday night while the president is getting shot in the head.”

At the closing, Mills reiterated his takeaways, including on federal hiring policy. “Again, I think that we’re understanding that we’ve investigated the culture of the Secret Service and what needs to change, and why DEI is not healthy for our military, for our security services or otherwise.”

In his own closing remarks, Rep. Crane thanked the “witnesses” for participating, including a SWAT operator who had offered what he described as “secondhand” information about some of the tactical failures on July 13. “Any time you’re in law enforcement and you take the risk to come and testify before Congress,” Crane said to the small audience in the Heritage Foundation conference room, “it takes a lot of courage.”

Just hours after the assassination attempt against Donald Trump on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, high-profile allies of the ex-president began promoting unfounded conspiracy theories and blaming President Joe Biden and Democrats, without evidence, for causing the horrific attack. Trump and his surrogates have continued nonstop ever since with this coordinated messaging, which security experts have told me could provoke retaliatory violence from pro-Trump extremists. In late August, backers of Project 2025 joined the effort pushing this dangerous propaganda.

On Aug. 29, podcast host Monica Crowley interviewed Trump and proposed without evidence that he may have been targeted for murder from within the Biden administration.

“The more we see what happened that day, the more suspicious it all looks,” said Crowley, a former Trump administration spokesperson and a credited contributor on the Project 2025 policy tome detailing a hard-right agenda for a second Trump presidency. “Does it look increasingly to you like this was a suspicious—maybe even inside job?”

“Well, it’s strange,” Trump replied. Then he speculated about the deceased gunman’s father hiring “the most expensive lawyer” and suggested a partisan conspiracy involving former Justice Department prosecutor Andrew Weissmann and Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias. Weissmann quickly denounced Trump’s comments as false on social media. A spokesperson for Elias Law Group told me that no one from the firm has had any involvement in any aspect of the case.

Trump further claimed in the podcast interview, first reported by Media Matters for America, that the FBI had failed to gather evidence from the gunman’s cellphone. That’s untrue: FBI Director Christopher Wray and other FBI officials have spoken publicly about the bureau’s extensive investigation into the gunman’s background and activity, including his various digital communications.

Trump and Crowley then riffed about the JFK assassination, with Crowley reiterating the baseless conspiracy theory about the attack on Trump: “You were shot five or six weeks ago, and the imperial media, the regime, they’ve all buried it. They don’t want anybody talking about it, which also lends credence to this idea that this is very suspicious and could have been an inside job.”

“Yeah, true,” Trump interjected. “They don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Of course not,” she said.

“Tells you bad things,” Trump said, starting to draw a connection with the broader conspiracy theory at the core of his campaign.

“It raises big suspicions,” Crowley agreed.

“Well they didn’t want to talk about the election of 2020 either,” Trump said. “They just don’t want to talk about it because they know they’re guilty as hell. And the only way you can stop it—it’s amazing. People that want to have a fair election are indicted. The people that cheated on the election are allowed to keep cheating.”

Three days prior, on Aug. 26, the Heritage Foundation—home of Project 2025—hosted the “J 13 Forum,” a faux congressional hearing on the assassination attempt. Billed as an “independent” investigation, it was led by Reps. Cory Mills of Florida and Eli Crane of Arizona and framed as a necessary circumvention of ongoing federal investigations, including a bipartisan congressional task force on the shooting convened by Republican Speaker Mike Johnson. In his opening remarks, Mills stated that he and his MAGA colleagues from the House were certain to uncover not just “criminal gross negligence” but “purposeful intent” attributable to the Biden administration.

“I think everyone’s heard me say before, ‘DEI equals DIE.’”

Participants in the testimony-style interviews included former Secret Service agent and right-wing media personality Dan Bongino, and former Blackwater CEO and Trump political operative Erik Prince. Attacks on DEI policy and its alleged role in the catastrophic security failure on July 13 were a focal point, also teed up by Mills from the outset. The hearing at Heritage, he said, “is a message to all of Congress, that if we are not selecting people based on meritocracy, that independent investigations such as this will continue to move forward.”

Project 2025 includes detailed plans to purge the US government of DEI policies. Midway through the hearing, Bongino went off on DEI as having supposedly led to unqualified agents working for the Secret Service. Citing unnamed whistleblower sources, he claimed that deficient personnel included trainees who had failed shooting tests and had filed “nuisance” employment complaints—and who were then given high-stakes jobs. “Many are out on protective assignments now,” Bongino said, without providing any evidence to support his claims.

“So what you’re saying is that DEI plays a major role, not meritocracy with regards to the current culture,” Mills said.

“No, the major role,” Bongino emphasized. “The Secret Service right now is dominated by DEI.”

Mills replied: “I think everyone’s heard me say before, ‘DEI equals DIE.’”

Project 2025 also calls for the mission of the Secret Service to be narrowed to protective operations only, and to have all of its criminal financial investigations moved under other law enforcement agencies—an argument Bongino also made in his remarks. Agents should be able to focus on protective work, Bongino said, “without running out cheap $20 counterfeit notes at Seven Eleven on a Friday night while the president is getting shot in the head.”

At the closing, Mills reiterated his takeaways, including on federal hiring policy. “Again, I think that we’re understanding that we’ve investigated the culture of the Secret Service and what needs to change, and why DEI is not healthy for our military, for our security services or otherwise.”

In his own closing remarks, Rep. Crane thanked the “witnesses” for participating, including a SWAT operator who had offered what he described as “secondhand” information about some of the tactical failures on July 13. “Any time you’re in law enforcement and you take the risk to come and testify before Congress,” Crane said to the small audience in the Heritage Foundation conference room, “it takes a lot of courage.”