Washington Examiner columnist Guy Benson raised questions about New Jersey Democratic congressional candidate Adam Hamawy and his ties to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Benson argued that Hamawy’s earlier legal and international work revelations could pose political problems for Democrats. In 1994, Hamawy volunteered in Bosnia with a Chicago-based nonprofit group called the “Benevolence International […]
In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here. The last time major legislation regulating college athletics was scheduled […]
Washington Examiner chief political correspondent Byron York argued the new face for the director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte, lacks qualifications for the position. “It seems like a pretty poor choice here,” York said on Fox News’s Special Report Tuesday. President Donald Trump tapped Pulte for the position after the previous director, Tulsi Gabbard, resigned […]
Ahead of the November midterm elections, President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have demanded Congress pass sweeping voting restrictions, including showing proof of citizenship to register — all in the name of election security.At the same time, the only federal agency dedicated solely to helping states and localities run smooth and secure elections operates on a meager budget. It provides grants for election security far smaller than in the past. And U.S. House Republicans have signaled they want sizable further cuts.The agency, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, sits at the center of a fight playing out in Congress over how to best ensure secure elections. The debate has thrown into sharp relief a yawning gap between GOP rhetoric over election tampering and actual congressional support for election security efforts.“If my colleagues truly cared about protecting our elections from foreign interference, they’d put the resources behind it,” Rep. Sanford Bishop, a Georgia Democrat, said at a House Appropriations Committee meeting this spring. “Instead, we get empty rhetoric, zero urgency, while putting the right of citizens to vote at risk.”Congressional support of the EAC’s election security grant program has fluctuated over time, but has generally trended downward.Congress has approved election security grant funding at much lower levels than the program’s early years. (Credit: U.S. Election Assistance Commission 2025 Annual Report)Lawmakers approved $380 million in 2018 and $425 million in 2020, along with an additional $400 million in election-related pandemic aid that year.Since then, grant funding has slowed to a trickle. Congress appropriated $75 million in 2022 and again in 2023. That was followed by $55 million in 2024 and $15 million in 2025.This year’s amount, $45 million, is an increase from the previous year — consistent with enhanced needs in an election year — but substantially lower than other recent years and a far cry from the program’s early years.Trump and many GOP lawmakers support the SAVE America Act, which would impose new restrictions on voting. It would require voters to show a photo ID at the polls, as well as require them to bring documents proving their citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, with them when they register to vote.The requirements are needed, the bill’s supporters say, to combat noncitizen voting, an extremely rare occurrence.“The cheating is rampant in our elections,” Trump asserted without evidence in his 2026 State of the Union address. He has called the SAVE America Act “commonsense, country-saving legislation.”The House passed the bill in February but it has floundered in the Senate amid opposition from Democrats and a handful of Republicans. Trump continues to seek new avenues to advance the measure, including urging lawmakers to attach it to housing legislation.President Donald Trump delivers his State of the Union address on Feb. 24, 2026. During the address, Trump claimed, without evidence, “cheating is rampant” in U.S. elections. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)Cuts to election security agencyThe Trump-led push for voting restrictions has largely ignored concrete election security needs in favor of chasing the phantom specter of noncitizen voting, Democrats and experts on election administration say. The result, they say, has been the possibility of sharp cuts at the EAC.The House Appropriations Committee in April approved a bill that would cut the EAC’s salaries and expenses from $23.86 million to $17 million. It would mark the first time in four years the agency’s budget has dropped below $20 million.The bill would also sharply cut the EAC’s election security grant program from $45 million to $15 million, the same as the last non-election year.Since 2018, the agency has distributed the grants to election officials for technology upgrades, including cybersecurity, physical security improvements at election sites and efforts to combat voter misinformation. Lawmakers created the election security grants in response to foreign interference in the 2016 election.U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, at a Democratic rally in 2022. (Photo by Danielle E. Gaines/Maryland Matters)“Republicans claim falsely that our elections are plagued by fraud and that more needs to be done to secure the vote,” Rep. Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, said in a statement to States Newsroom.“Yet, they have consistently undermined the security of our elections, including by proposing to cut election-security grants by two-thirds and the Election Assistance Commission’s (EAC) overall budget by almost 30% in Fiscal Year 2027,” Hoyer said.
Calls are growing for the interim U.S. attorney in Chicago, Andrew Boutros, to resign over his handling of the “Broadview 6” case — six individuals charged with federal crimes for protesting outside Chicago’s Broadview ICE jail in September. The remaining charges against four of the Broadview 6 were recently dismissed after the case collapsed in court due to widespread prosecutorial misconduct. “This DOJ has completely corrupted the grand jury process,” says attorney Chris Parente, who represented one of the Broadview 6. “When they decide that they want to get a political indictment through, they will do whatever it takes, even acting in an unethical way.”
Parente, himself a former federal prosecutor, says federal prosecutors heavily misrepresented the case and forced an indictment despite the grand jury initially voting against it. What’s “even worse,” he adds, is the U.S. attorney’s subsequent cover-up of the prosecutors’ conduct, refusing to release the grand jury transcripts for months and later redacting and withholding full pages from the judge who ordered their release. “As a former federal prosecutor, your job is not to win any case. It’s to do the right thing. And I’ve never seen a case like this, where from the jump they did the wrong thing at every single turn.”
The Trump administration has unveiled proposed tariffs of 10% or more on dozens of countries accused of failing to crack down on forced labor, including some of the U.S.'s largest trading partners.
