As Senate Republicans sprinted to pass the so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill,” with their caucus strained over issues including staggering Medicaid cuts, clean energy, and cryptocurrency regulation, there was little debate over the billions of dollars the bill allocates for the nation’s cops and law enforcement.

The bill, which passed 51-50 on Tuesday, includes major giveaways to policing and security efforts designed to fuel President Donald Trump’s deportation and surveillance regime. The wins range from tax reforms to make police overtime more lucrative to new grants administered by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. (Some of the funding is also being set aside for security at Trump’s homes, including at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.)

While the legislative package has driven outcry from defenders of the social safety net and deficit hawks alike — it brings a projected $3.3 trillion bump to the national debt over the next decade — its push to ramp up police funding has met less opposition. Last month, Trump hosted leaders of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s biggest police union, at the White House to mark their endorsement of his signature spending package.

The FOP said it was endorsing Trump’s bill because of a provision that cuts federal taxes on overtime pay, which costs municipalities and their police departments millions of dollars in spending. Overtime usage tends to balloon as a result of increased policing and surveillance initiatives, especially in response to protests.

During his June 5 visit to the White House, national FOP President Patrick Yoes told Trump that police have faced problems recruiting and retaining officers because when they’re forced to work overtime, they can’t keep all of the money they earn (because, like almost all legal income, they’re required to pay taxes on it). 

“You’ve always been a steadfast supporter of the Fraternal Order of Police and law enforcement across this country,” Yoes said. “You made a promise that you were going to address overtime — a tax on overtime,” he said. “The one big new bill is certainly making good on that promise.”

The overtime deduction, which would apply to workers who collect overtime besides police, is projected to cost the government about $90 billion in total tax revenues over the next four years.

Similar tax cuts would apply by expanding the federal tax deductions people can claim based on their state and local taxes through a program known as SALT. The expansion makes it easier to deduct income taxes and, for homeowners, property taxes from a person’s federal filing. Praising the bill after the House of Representatives passed its version in early June, Yoes said the change appeals to his members because the current income cap “uniquely and unfairly” penalizes law enforcement officers who have to live in specific jurisdictions. 

Because they’re based on income and property taxes, SALT deductions disproportionately benefit wealthier taxpayers. While the Senate had expressed some skepticism of the SALT expansion, its version of the bill ultimately included an even greater boost to the tax deduction than the House version.

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In addition to easing the tax burden on police, the bill also includes billions of dollars for police to aid in surveillance and deportation efforts. It provides funding for state and local agencies to support operations by the Department of Homeland Security — which doesn’t stop at immigration enforcement. 

The text would also allow DHS to fund state, local, and tribal security “and other costs” for major sporting events like the FIFA World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles — setting aside $625 million for the former and $1 billion for the latter. Another subset of DHS grants for border security totals $10 billion. The bill also expands funding and grants — more than $3 billion each — under the Department of Justice for police to aid in Trump’s deportation machine.

Through the State Homeland Security Grant program, the bill authorizes $500 million for state and local efforts to “detect, identify, track, or monitor threats” from unmanned aircraft systems, or drones, and $450 million for Operation Stonegarden, a program under the Federal Emergency Management Agency which supports “enhanced cooperation and coordination” with Customs and Border Protection, Border Patrol, and police agencies “to improve overall border security.”

As the Senate rushed to vote on the bill, those provisions appeared in danger: The Senate parliamentarian ruled that the State Homeland Security Grant program provisions for border security, immigration, and major event security did not comply with the chamber’s rules and may be removed or changed. But according to the last version of the bill publicized just an hour before the vote, the DHS grants remained in the text.

“If these grants remain in the bill and it passes, you will start to see more local law enforcement participating in the kidnapping of innocent people off the street,” said Jessica Brand, founder of the Wren Collective, a group of former public defenders advising on criminal justice reform strategies. 

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To power the deportation regime, the bill appropriates $3.3 billion to do things like hire immigration judges, prosecute immigrants, and compensate states and localities for incarcerating people for immigration authorities. Part of that $3.3 billion also boosts funding for police through the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, or COPS, which has long faced criticism from advocates for criminal justice reform for adding billions to the country’s budget for mass incarceration. Another $3.5 billion allocated under the DOJ is set aside for the attorney general to administer as she sees fit under the
“Bridging Immigration-related Deficits Experienced Nationwide” fund, a reference to former President Joe Biden. 

It also adds $5 billion to the Bureau of Prisons over the next four years — and another $45 billion for immigrant detention. Another $1.17 billion would go to the Secret Service, including for performance, retention, and signing bonuses.

“We are already watching horror shows with teachers, mothers, neighbors — people we know and love — getting arrested and put in terrible detention centers and deported,” Brand said. “It’s only going to get worse. This money isn’t intended to make anyone safer. It’s intended to break us.”

The post Senate Passes Trump’s Big, Beautiful Boon for Police appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.

“New York Is Not a democracy,” read a headline from The Atlantic earlier this month lamenting the city’s ranked-choice voting system ahead of the upcoming mayoral primary election. The statement rankled some observers, but it was largely true — just not because of ranked-choice voting. 

A well-financed political machine is gearing up to topple New York Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani even if he beats former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for mayor. While Cuomo is heavily favored to win the election, a Mamdani victory appears closer than ever: The democratic socialist leads Cuomo in one of the latest polls ahead of the June 24 election.

While the outcome would be a major accomplishment for New York City’s progressives and socialists, it would be far from the end of the road. Even if Cuomo loses on Tuesday — despite the $24.9 million the city’s billionaires, real estate tycoons, and former leaders have poured into a super PAC backing him — the disgraced former governor, like current New York City Mayor Eric Adams, plans to run in the general election on a third-party ballot line. 

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That possibility sounds eerily familiar to those who watched what happened in Buffalo four years ago to socialist India Walton, who beat four-term incumbent Byron Brown in the city’s 2021 Democratic primary for mayor. Rather than concede, Brown ran a last-minute campaign backed by Republicans and real estate developers to get a ballot line and win the general election. He served as mayor until last year. 

“If Mamdani was to win the Democratic Party primary for mayor, New York City will probably repeat something similar to what happened in heavily Democratic Buffalo in 2021,” said John Kaehny of Reinvent Albany, a statewide watchdog group. “Deep-pocketed business interests and the Democratic Party incumbency was shocked by Walton’s win and poured money and support into Brown’s winning general election campaign.” 

The pool of money for an independent Cuomo campaign is indeed deep. Billionaire Israel fanatic Bill Ackman, hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg have poured $9.1 million into Fix the City, making up more than a third of the funding for the Cuomo-backing PAC. Many of Cuomo’s deep-pocketed supporters seem to feel particular political ire for Mamdani over his criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, triggering an entire news cycle about Mamdani’s thoughts on the protest cry “globalize the intifada.” Neither the Mamdani nor Cuomo campaigns immediately responded to requests for comment.

Mamdani, who if elected would be the city’s first Muslim mayor, has been the target of Islamophobic harassment and bomb threats during the campaign. His success on Tuesday would almost certainly guarantee a bigger and stronger backlash from his political opponents in the general election. 

“Everyone is very laser-focused on tomorrow. But I think that everyone knows that even if we win tomorrow, the fight’s not over until November,” said state Sen. Jabari Brisport, who spoke to The Intercept on the way to a canvassing shift for Mamdani on Monday evening. Brisport, another socialist state legislator, endorsed Mamdani in March. Still, Mamdani supporters have something that Walton’s campaign didn’t, Brisport said. 

“I don’t think anybody on India Walton’s campaign expected that Byron Brown would launch a write-in campaign,” Brisport said. “Whereas we’ve known for some time that Andrew Cuomo was running in the general election, regardless of what happens.”

According to Jasmine Gripper, co-director of the New York State Working Families Party, Mamdani’s campaign infrastructure far exceeds Walton’s. 

“I think he’s redefining what’s possible in a large city,” she said. “And the apparatus is ready to engage and level up if they go into a general election.” 

She said her party views Tuesday’s contest as the first big race since President Donald Trump won in 2024. If Mamdani loses, there’s a possibility that he could run on the Working Families Party line in the general election — though Gripper said the New York WFP has not decided whether they’ll run a candidate on their line in the general election and will make a decision after the final primary results come in.

At that point, the groups backing Mamdani will take stock of the results, said Daniel Coates, political director at Make the Road Action, which endorsed Mamdani after New York City Comptroller Brad Lander.

“I don’t think anything is off the table in terms of strategies and actions that the Cuomo camp will play,” Coates said.

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“On the one hand, it’s scary and it’s true that Bill Ackman and DoorDash and organizations and companies that just want to have a mayor that just does their bidding — you could see them dropping a lot of money, and Cuomo’s already put his ballot line together,” he added. “But sometimes the weight of your own money can weigh you down. I don’t think voters like the idea of buying an election.”

Kaehny pointed to Bloomberg, Cuomo’s single largest donor. “Cuomo’s super wealthy contributors have signaled they will spend what it takes to defeat Mamdani in a general election rematch,” he said. “Like other Americans, New Yorkers can thank the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision for opening the floodgates of unlimited political spending and obliterating any concept of fairness in American democracy.”

Billionaires are used to having a mayor and politicians who work for them, said Gustavo Gordillo, co-chair of NYC Democratic Socialists of America. “We’re expecting them to fight us all the way. If he wins the primary, we’re not gonna rest or let up. We’re going to keep the fight on until the general. And if he wins the general, then we’re going to keep organizing and keep the struggle going well into his administration because that’s the only way that we can actually implement the agenda and change our politics.”

Unless one candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote on Tuesday, New Yorkers won’t know who won the Democratic primary for a week: The New York City Board of Elections will need to run its ranked-choice voting algorithm, and that process is scheduled for July 1.

If Mamdani makes it to the general election, centrists could potentially split four ways in the general between Cuomo, Adams, independent attorney Jim Walden, and Republican Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa. 

“The political establishment has totally failed the city,” Gordillo said. “Even though we expect a big onslaught of money spent against our movement, I think the fact that they have had no answers to the people of the city, that they’ve really failed to campaign on anything other than fear and the same old business, we’ll be able to defeat them.”

Democrats have spent more time fighting progressives on the left than on fighting Republicans, according to Gripper. But that’s not new. “A victory by Zohran in the Democratic primary would be a seismic shift in politics and the election and how campaigns are run and won. Not just in New York City but across the nation,” she said. 

“Even though it’s the mayor, it’s not really a local position. It’s a national position,” Gripper said. “We know that if Zohran wins, it will create a new narrative around what’s possible.” 

The post How Andrew Cuomo Could Become NYC Mayor — Even if Zohran Mamdani Wins appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.

Harvard Divinity School broke precedent by refusing to publish a video of its commencement speech after a speaker went off-script to call attention to the perilous conditions in Gaza, The Intercept has learned.

“There are no safe zones left in Gaza after 600 days and 77 years of genocide,” said Zehra Imam, who graduated from the Harvard Divinity School this spring and participated in the embattled Religion and Public Life program. Imam, who is Muslim, was speaking with two other students from Christian and Jewish faiths who had cleared a draft of their planned remarks with the school — and agreed that Imam should go off-script to address the ongoing genocide.

“I center Palestine today, not just because of its scale of atrocity but because of our complicity in it,” Imam said. “Class of 2025, Palestine is waiting for you to arrive. And you must be courageous enough to rise to the call because Palestine will keep showing up in your living rooms until you are ready to meet its gaze.”

Harvard did not publish a video of the speech on its website or YouTube page, as it did with commencement speeches in past years. When Imam and her co-speakers asked why, the school told them the decision was made due to “security concerns.” 

The decision runs counter to the public perception that Harvard is crusading against President Donald Trump’s threats to cut university funding to crush speech, according to seven Harvard Divinity School students and staff who spoke to The Intercept. While the university has been publicly praised for fighting back against Trump, its efforts to censor Imam’s speech and wipe out the civic engagement she took part in have raised concerns among students and staff that the school is actually capitulating to pressure from the White House.

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The school made a password-protected version of the speech temporarily available to people with a Harvard login, a Harvard spokesperson confirmed to The Intercept. But choosing not to release it publicly “feels to a lot of students suspicious and just contradictory,” said Perlei Toor, a second-year divinity school student. “That’s not what happened last year or the year before that.” 

Behind the scenes, the school has been quietly dismantling the Religion and Public Life program from which Imam graduated. Until recently led by the Divinity School’s only Palestinian staff member, the program has drawn Trump’s ire — and criticism from some alumni, campus leaders, and students. 

Imam ended her portion of the speech with a poem from a student in Gaza — one of several refugees to whom she offers poetry lessons via an organization she founded connecting U.S. students with students in refugee camps. She and her co-speakers received a standing ovation. 

“I had a dream / I went back home / slept in my bed / felt warmth again,” she read. “I had a dream / My eyes forgot the blood, the loss, the patience … My nose forgot the smoke smell, the deaths, the corpse rotten … My body skipped what I had lived.”

The suppression of Imam’s speech capped off a chaotic year for the Divinity School’s Religion and Public Life program. As of last month, Harvard had pushed out the program’s three leaders, canceled a class, suspended one of its initiatives, and cut most of its staff.

The program itself is still relatively new: Harvard launched Religion and Public Life in late 2020, following worldwide protests against police brutality to focus on “educating leaders to understand the civic consequences of religion, in service of building a just world at peace.” During a time of uncertainty, the program would “shape our character and trajectory both in the years to come as well as in our tumultuous present.”

After the October 7 attacks, the program’s troubled trajectory began to take shape. Program leaders, faculty, and staff sent a newsletter urging affiliates of the Divinity School to “challenge single story narratives” that justified retaliation against Palestinians. Harvard Divinity School Dean David F. Holland disavowed the statement, as the Harvard Crimson reported, saying it did not represent the school and described it as “unproductive.” 

The following year, the group Students Against Antisemitism sued Harvard over claims that the school had failed to stop antisemitism on campus. The suit criticized the Religion and Public Life program for hosting a screening of the film “Israelism,” which documents changing Jewish attitudes toward Israel, and took aim at the program’s flagship course, which took students on a trip to Israel and the West Bank. Harvard agreed to a confidential settlement in the suit last month. 

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Last May, the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance released a report on campus antisemitism that took further aim at the letter program faculty sent after the October 7 attacks. It also criticized the program’s Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative, which ran the flagship course and examines how religion can promote peace in situations of violent conflict and mass displacement. The initiative, the report claims, “appears to focus entirely on the Palestinians.” 

According to Toor, the second-year student, this framing is emblematic of misconceptions about the Religion and Public Life program. News stories and discourse about the program often miss “just how much Religion and Public Life does besides Palestine and Israel,” she told The Intercept.

The program provides opportunities for students to connect religious studies to the public sphere through tracks in government, journalism, and humanitarian aid, among other topics, and to take on related internships. It also plans more than half of the school’s programming and events.

Late last year, facing political pressure and security concerns, program leaders decided not to take students on the trip to Israel and the West Bank or offer the flagship course this spring. Shortly after, the departures of several program leaders were announced. In January, Assistant Dean Diane Moore, who built the program and taught the course, announced she would leave the program early. The next day, Assistant Dean Hussein Rashid announced he would leave the program at the end of the academic year because of what he described as the school’s anti-Muslim bias and a “hostile environment to Muslims and Arabs.” 

Moore did not respond to a request for comment. Rashid declined to comment on the record. 

According to Toor, the program has been a necessary home for people of all faiths.

“Because of the diversity of the staff and because of the range of topics that students were able to explore,” Toor said, “especially since the inauguration of Trump, [the program] has been a real space of ministerial comfort.” 

But in April, Harvard’s much-anticipated report on antisemitism presented a narrative closer to the one from the Jewish Alumni Alliance. Released just after the school said it would not comply with a letter with Trump’s demands, the April report was a result of the efforts of Trump’s antisemitism task force. The school had just pushed out leaders of its Center for Middle Eastern Studies and ended its partnership with Birzeit University in the West Bank. 

The new report identified the Religion and Public Life program as one of several offenders that contributed to the “frequency and intensity of treatment of Israel as an oppressor state and the Palestinians as an oppressed people in courses and public events throughout the campus.” This, according to the report, was “indicative of institutional bias and hostility.” 

”While the program was publicly launched with what seemed like a broad mandate to explore the intersection of religion and various aspects of public life, in practice, it focused heavily on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, presenting a perspective widely perceived as consistently anti-Israeli and aligned very narrowly with a strand of pro-Palestinian politics,” the report read. “This narrow focus on this exceptionally polarizing topic appears to have stemmed from the decision, made soon after RPL’s founding, to center its programming around a multi-year case study on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

The program focuses on a wide range of topics like the economy, democracy and voting rights, education, and humanitarian aid, said Toor. Topics related to Israel and Palestine are a fraction of the work it does on campus. 

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The program continued to shrink, this time with cuts. Shortly after the report was published, the school began notifying staff and other program leaders — including its only Israeli professor — that their contracts would not be renewed due to budget cuts. The school also announced it was pausing the program’s Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative. 

One of the staff cut was Hilary Rantisi, the program’s Palestinian American associate director who co-taught the flagship course.

“They terminated the only Palestinian employee that they had,” said Preston Iha, a first-year student in the Masters of Divinity program. “Which is, again, signaling and makes people wonder who is really welcome at a school that claims to welcome everybody.” 

Last month, the day after the commencement, the school notified program staff about additional cuts. Four staff members’ jobs were eliminated, and a fifth staffer was given a three-month extension of their contract, which is set to end June 30. A new program director, Terrence L. Johnson, will take over at the end of June — but students and staff told The Intercept it’s not clear what the program will consist of after its staff was gutted. 

“It seems like, yes, there could be budget cuts,” said Toor. “But for you to target one program so specifically, and for that program to also be heavily mentioned in the antisemitism report and the Islamophobia report, it seems like too much of a coincidence.”

Imam, the commencement speaker, was one of three students who told The Intercept the Religion and Public Life program was one of the major reasons she attended Harvard in the first place. 

“It’s very, very frustrating to see this censorship and attack on academic freedom,” Imam said. 

Shir Lovett-Graff, a Jewish spiritual leader who graduated from the Divinity School last year, said the attacks on the program were part of a long-running pattern at Harvard.

“Far before the Trump administration targeted Harvard and any university, far before Trump was elected into office for his second term, Harvard itself, internally, has a legacy of cracking down on pro-Palestine voices,” said Lovett-Graff, who helped found the student group Jews for Liberation, the largest Jewish student organization at Harvard Divinity School. 

“It is not out of the ordinary or unexpected in any way for Harvard to crack down on pro-Palestine or even Israel-critical spaces on campus. That is part of Harvard’s legacy,” Lovett-Graff said. They said they were grateful the program had been “a place of connection for Jewish students, staff, alumni and faculty who are not represented by the Jewish mainstream of Harvard and beyond.” 

Toor, the second-year student, told The Intercept she feared that with the program gutted, students would lose a comforting space on campus.

“Students have been flocking to the office just to hang out and vent and have a safe space where they could be a person of color, where they can be Muslim, where they can be an international student in times when that is really needed and has felt really limited,” Toor said. “This is a home that’s being lost for a lot of students.” 

“It’s definitely sending the wrong message for Harvard Divinity School,” said Iha, the first-year student, “which touts itself as being a moral center, to capitulate to these really immoral demands.“

Imam said given everything she’d seen Harvard do to gut the program and censor speech on Palestine, she was concerned that the school would not approve her speech if she showed them what she planned to say about Gaza. 

“Having seen everything in my time at Harvard Divinity School, I was worried that if I had shared those exact things in my speech and submitted that version, that I would not have been allowed to actually share what I wanted to,” Imam said. “I wanted Gaza to have the last word. I wanted to center Palestine.”

The post A Harvard Commencement Speaker Mentioned Gaza. The School Refused to Publish Her Speech. appeared first on The Intercept.

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It may come as little surprise that President Donald Trump’s administration is benefitting the wealthy. Trump’s plan to fund $5 trillion in tax cuts for corporations and the uber-rich relies on cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in services for working people, including Medicaid. 

But just how billionaires and corporate oligarchs stand to benefit from Trump’s policies — namely his deportation and surveillance regime — is outlined in detail in a new report from the Center for Popular Democracy Action, the campaign arm of the nonprofit advocacy group.

The usual characters won’t shock anyone: major Trump campaign donors like Elon Musk (whose recent rift with Trump may not last), Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, or Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel. Trump wants to deregulate sectors from artificial intelligence to the environment and labor, and cut corporate taxes for Bezos and other billionaires. But other corporate executives are already quietly enriching themselves on Trump’s policies.

“Trump’s ‘oligarchs’ are billionaires who are attempting to control political decisions in order to increase their wealth,” the report said.

Take private prison executive and millionaire George Zoley, an immigrant from Greece who founded GEO Group, the nation’s biggest private prison and immigrant detention company. During an earnings call in November, Zoley, a registered Republican, said Trump’s policies presented an “unprecedented opportunity” for the company to double its services. The company has also massively expanded its work in surveillance technology to assist in deportations. 

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Zoley’s comments were prescient. GEO Group has doubled its stock value since Trump’s election. The company claims to be the largest contractor for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and was awarded a $1 billion contract by ICE in February to open the largest ICE detention center on the East Coast. The company runs the Louisiana immigration detention center where Mahmoud Khalil is currently being held. GEO Group is also poised to reap profits after Congress passed the Laken Riley Act. The company has received $9 million in state and local subsidies over the last 17 years. GEO Group did not respond to a request for comment.

GEO Group is just one of several companies profiting off of the Trump administration’s efforts to fast-track deportations and beef up surveillance capacities. Of course, companies like GEO Group, Palantir, and Amazon also saw major profits under former President Joe Biden, but Trump has opened new doors for the country’s corporate oligarchs.

“Trump’s presidency is a vehicle for billionaires to loot the government and line their own pockets, while working people bear the cost,” Popular Democracy co-executive directors Analilia Mejia and DaMareo Cooper said in a statement. “These cuts to Medicare, housing, SNAP benefits, and immigrant protections aren’t accidents — they’re part of a calculated scheme to turn public suffering into private profit.”

The administration has emboldened corporate executives to exert their already-strong political power. More than 10 billionaires have positions in the Trump administration, and his Cabinet is the richest in history. At least seven other ultra-wealthy Trump donors and corporate executives are pulling political levers, the report notes.

Blackstone co-founder and CEO Stephen Schwarzman, another major Trump donor, is pushing to ease regulations on corporations and gut protections for renters. Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks, who has fought efforts to allow Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices, is set to benefit from a Trump order to delay negotiations. Harold G. Hamm, founder and chair of the fossil fuel company Continental Resources, was part of Trump’s transition team and has worked to advance the interests of the oil and gas industry in the White House. He has also worked closely with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who is pushing to open public lands to drilling that would benefit Hamm’s company. 

“In a representative democracy, elected officials are supposed to respond to the priorities and interests of the people,” the report said. “Today, the U.S. is functioning as an oligarchy: a government where a small group of powerful, wealthy people are calling the shots.”

The post Meet the Billionaires Profiting the Most From Trump’s Draconian Policies appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.

The progressive group that helped elect the Squad is looking to rebuild after two members were taken out by $30 million in spending from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC.

On Monday, Justice Democrats endorsed Michigan state Rep. Donavan McKinney in the 2026 Democratic primary against Detroit’s Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Mich. — the group’s first primary challenge since AIPAC’s onslaught. 

Thanedar, first elected to Congress in 2022, is a multimillionaire with support from two of the biggest sources of outside spending on U.S. elections: pro-Israel lobby groups and the cryptocurrency industry. 

Three political action committees linked to the AIPAC spent $2.3 million against Thanedar’s challenger in the Democratic primary last year. AIPAC previously opposed Thanedar in 2022, but their relationship grew closer after he went on one of the group’s congressional junkets to Israel. 

As part of his campaign launch, McKinney has said he is running on bringing working-class representation to Congress, criticizing Thanedar for using taxpayer money to fund his campaign expenses and neglecting his constituents.

“I’m not running for Congress because I’m a millionaire or a billionaire. I’m running because I’m not,” the 32-year-old McKinney said in a press release announcing his campaign launch. “I’m running because our community deserves to have someone fighting back against the Trump-Musk administration who knows our struggles.”

In a campaign video accompanying the launch, McKinney said constituents in the 13th Congressional District deserved a Democratic Party that leads the fight against billionaire elites and corporate PACs. McKinney attacked Thanedar for buying his seat in Congress and “having more in common with Donald Trump and Elon Musk than people like us.” (Thanedar did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

The primary campaign is the first primary challenge against a party incumbent launched by Justice Democrats since 2021, and its first efforts since losing Reps. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., and Cori Bush, D-Mo., after AIPAC and other outside groups spent close to $50 million against the Squad members in last year’s election.

In a statement, Justice Democrats noted that support for Democrats in Congress is lagging while voters are looking for candidates who will fight harder than the people they see in office. 

“Last election cycle, Justice Democrats focused their resources on protecting our incumbents against the threat of AIPAC and other right-wing lobbies promising — and delivering — on spending $100 million in our elections,” spokesperson Usamah Andrabi said in the Monday press release. 

“As a result of their outsized spending, we lost two of the most working class members of Congress in the most expensive Democratic primaries ever, but out-organized and beat them in every other Squad seat,” he said. “Those losses have only fueled our mission to expand our bloc in Congress and elect more working class champions to Washington.”

The post Down Two Squad Members, Progressives Come for an AIPAC Democrat appeared first on The Intercept.

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When a bomb threat coincided with a pro-Palestine student protest at Barnard College last month, the New York City Police Department arrested nine demonstrators. By the next day, local and national media had picked up the story. Some outlets suggested that the protesters were responsible for the threat. “Several Barnard College protesters in custody after bomb threat made during sit-in,” read one headline. 

That headline, as well as statements from Barnard College and the NYPD, overlooked a key fact: The Palestine solidarity protesters were actually the targets of the bomb threat.

This revelation has alarmed faculty and students, who are now being interrogated by school officials about the threat during inquiries over alleged student code of conduct violations. Faculty and attorneys working with the protesters are also concerned that information from those interrogations could be shared with the government, as Barnard faces pressure to hand over information about students to Congress — where Republicans have repeatedly painted student protesters as terrorists — as part of its investigation into antisemitism on college campuses.

When asked by The Intercept whether the school had made public that the bomb threat targeted pro-Palestine students, a Barnard spokesperson pointed to a tweet from the NYPD.

“The NYPD is responding to a bomb threat at the Milstein Center at Barnard College and is evacuating the building. Anyone who refuses to leave the location is subject to arrest. Please stay away from the area,” the post on X states.

Barnard, which is Columbia University’s affiliated women’s college, did not respond to detailed questions about the timeline of when it called police onto campus, why students were being asked about the threat, what information it planned to share with Congress, or why it had not made public that protesters were the target of the threat.

“The fact that these students were targets does not seem to have been made clear,” said Homa Zarghamee, an economics professor at Barnard.

Zarghamee noted she has not seen the kind of support for students who were the target of a threat of violence that she would have expected from the administration “in this era of safety concerns.” 

“What we have never heard from the administration — this time, or truthfully any time in the past — is anything about the fact that this was a threat made to our students, who we need to remember, again and again, are being disciplined for peaceful protest against the Israeli war on Gaza,” said Thea Abu El-Haj, a professor of education at Barnard.

Though the school itself never explicitly blamed the bomb threat on students, Abu El-Haj said everyone she has spoken with outside of Barnard had assumed that the protesters were responsible. 

“The language from the administration seems to consistently be about the protesters as threatening. And it seems very much addressed to a broader public audience,” she said. “I can say for myself, but also for the students I teach, they are really upset that no one is expressing concern for them and for the threats that have been brought against them.” 

According to a screenshot of the bomb threat obtained by The Intercept, the sender emailed school administrators at 4:01 p.m. on March 5 saying they had placed a bomb “in the Barnard College library.” The sender, who used the email address, pardonderek@mail2tor.com, wrote that they intended to attack the “anti-white faggot terrorists/communists that are protesting.” 

In an email sent that evening to the coalition of protesters Columbia University Apartheid Divest, Barnard President Laura Ann Rosenbury said students, faculty, and staff had been ordered to clear the building so the NYPD and its bomb squad could assess the threat. She added that the school had asked police not to arrest protesters. An NYPD spokesperson told The Intercept that it dispatched its Emergency Services and K-9 units. The spokesperson did not respond to a question clarifying whether the NYPD Bomb Squad, a separate unit, had also been dispatched. 

Later that night, the college addressed the bomb threat in an email to the broader school community. Rosenbury said the bomb threat was no longer a danger and went on to describe the “disturbing and unacceptable events” that took place in Milstein prior to the threat. She said staff tried to get protesters to leave the building throughout the afternoon and that the “unauthorized protest” had disrupted classes and studies. She blamed protesters for putting the entire school community at risk by not following evacuation orders after the threat was received.

“Our staff, at risk to their own personal safety, remained in the Milstein lobby, urging the masked disruptors to take the threat seriously,” Rosebury wrote. “Even when the College activated the fire alarm, the masked protesters put our entire campus at risk by refusing to leave.” 

At the time of the incident, school administrators and the New York Police Department gave no indication that the threat had been made against pro-Palestine protesters. That information was not shared by school administrators or police with the broader school community or the public. 

“We heard news of a bomb threat and the lobby was evacuated very quickly thereafter but I do not recall being told the bomb threat was made toward those in the sit-in,” said Barnard theatre professor Shayoni Mitra.

Various reports have introduced differing timelines of police response — and different reasons the NYPD was called to the scene.

The day after the protest, an NYPD spokesperson told the Columbia Spectator that police had responded to the protest around 1:50 p.m. to an “unscheduled demonstration,” and said it had no information about a bomb threat.

Three days later, another NYPD spokesperson told the Spectator something else: that police had indeed responded to the protest because of the bomb threat. The spokesperson also said that students who were arrested on charges including governmental obstruction and trespass were taken into custody during the police evacuation in response to the threat. Barnard told the Spectator that it called police in response to the threat, not because the demonstration was unauthorized. 

Mitra said she taught a class on the first floor of the building that houses the library on the day of the sit-in and heard three shelter-in-place orders announced over the public address system between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. A photo shared with The Intercept shows a handful of police officers standing on the street outside Milstein at 3:25 p.m. — 36 minutes before the bomb threat email reviewed by The Intercept arrived in the school president’s inbox.

A later message from Rosenbury mentioned threats “via multiple email messages on March 5, 2025” — further muddying the timeline as to when police were first called to campus and why.

“Barnard lied when it said it called the police because of the bomb threat — timestamps show the threat came after the call,” said attorney Remy Green, partner at the law firm Cohen&Green and counsel for several students at Barnard. “Rather than address and protect its students from a violent, racist, misogynistic, and homophobic person who threatened to murder them, Barnard saw an opportunity to deceive the public into thinking the students were connected to the threat. By doing this, Barnard has made this campus less safe and less free.” 

According to three people who were in the library when police arrived, dozens of NYPD officers from the Strategic Response Group — a specialized team often deployed to protests — entered the library shortly after 4 p.m. An NYPD spokesperson later told the Columbia Spectator that police responded at 4:22 p.m.

The NYPD did not respond to The Intercept’s questions asking the department to clarify what time police first responded on campus that day. 

Sources who spoke to The Intercept said that the NYPD kettled some protesters on the lawn outside the building. Photos reviewed by The Intercept show students who were arrested in zip-ties lined up against the outer wall of the building. Police then escorted the people they arrested through the building that was the target of an active bomb threat. 

“They took the students that they had arrested and put them up first up against the building that was ostensibly about to explode,” said Abu El-Haj after reviewing footage and photos taken by students.

Some members of the faculty learned that the threat was directed at student protesters the next day at a meeting of the Barnard and Columbia chapters of the American Association of University Professors. According to sources with knowledge of the meeting, faculty members read aloud the text of the bomb threat to colleagues, shared with a few professors internally by an administrator.

In a joint statement released following the meeting, Barnard and Columbia faculty condemned the arrests of students and blamed them on Rosenbury, as the school had summoned police to campus. They called for an independent investigation into the incident and the school’s response to another sit-in at Barnard’s Milbank Hall on February 26. 

Students themselves are now being interrogated about the threat. Columbia’s head of public safety — ex-NYPD officer Gary Maroni — is questioning student protesters about that threat in mandatory fact-finding meetings, according to emails reviewed by The Intercept and accounts from faculty and attorneys working with pro-Palestine students on campus. Faculty worry that these interrogations — which students were originally told they had to attend without any witnesses or legal representation — could be turned over to Congress. 

“I have deep concerns about students walking into those meetings without lawyers because of the way that Barnard is in the midst of a discovery process with Congress, as I understand it,” said Abu El-Haj. “I am worried about either congressional subpoenas, or if there’s any attempt on the part of the criminal justice system to bring any kind of criminal cases against students, that those records might be subpoenable.”

Barnard is one of several schools that put in place new disciplinary processes and campus speech policies as part of efforts to curb speech on campus since the height of Gaza protest encampments. 

In an email to faculty last month, Rosenbury outlined some of those changes, including new rules governing the “time, place, and manner” of events and demonstrations. She said the school would make “every effort” to deescalate disruptions internally. But if they persisted and prevented members of the school community from learning, studying, or working, administrators would “continue to rely on the NYPD when specialized skills are required, as was the case when the College received bomb threats.” 

Rosenbury wrote in the email that the school had paused disciplinary actions related to activities that occurred after February 26 while enacting new disciplinary policies in response to the war on Gaza. (All student conduct processes for incidents prior to February 26, the date of another campus demonstration, had been completed by late March.) Rosenbury said, however, that fact-finding related to disciplinary investigations would continue. Part of the process, she wrote, could be an “inquiry meeting” that would not include witnesses or legal representation. Faculty managed to push back on this stipulation and attended some of the meetings. If charges were recommended after inquiry, Rosenbury wrote, she would consult with administrators about whether the school was close enough to adopting its new policies to hear new cases. 

At least 27 students have been called into such inquiry meetings for protests last month. One student was called into a conduct meeting for two actions: a Jews Say No to ICE protest last month, and another action earlier this month. They are being charged with disruptive behavior, failure to comply, failure to maintain public order, and obstruction of access. 

It’s not clear what if any information from the inquiry meetings the school plans to share with congressional officials. Either way, protesters must reckon with potentially life-altering charges from the school, said Abu El-Haj. 

“Outside of the context of whether this gets subpoenaed anywhere or goes to Congress, students are facing quite serious consequences,” she said. “Expulsion and or suspension can carry significant financial consequences for students.” 

Related

Trump Administration Texted College Professors’ Personal Phones to Ask If They’re Jewish

Barnard College was dropped last month from the lawsuit over the government’s efforts to access disciplinary records for student protesters, including those of recent Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order last month blocking Columbia and Barnard from turning over information to Congress; Barnard is not currently subject to the order after being dropped from the suit. Earlier this month, the judge ruled that Columbia must give Khalil and other students 30 days notice before turning over additional information to Congress.

At least 50 faculty members sent a letter to Barnard administrators on Thursday asking for an update on the new deadline and what information the school plans to share with Congress. Faculty who spoke to The Intercept said they have not yet received answers from the school. In a meeting on April 11, Rosenbury told faculty that the school had received an extension on its deadline to turn over information to Congress but did not specify the new deadline.

The Trump administration has used the president’s executive order on antisemitism to attack, abduct, and deport student protesters that Trump and his Republican colleagues have repeatedly, with no evidence, conflated with terrorists.

The post A Bomb Threat Targeted Student Protesters. So Why Did They Get Blamed for It? appeared first on The Intercept.

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Close to 100 people have requested their money back from the campaign of Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa. 

Refund requests can be routine part of campaigns, either because donors decide for some reason that they want a refund or they accidentally donated over the legal limit for contributions.

In Fetterman’s case, though, several donors have indicated that they asked the campaign for their money back or planned to do so because of his hard-right turn toward Israel and Republican-aligned policies. The bulk of the refund requests to Fetterman’s campaign since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza have been from small-dollar donors. 

Darwin Leuba, the vice-chair of the O’Hara Township Democratic Committee and the elected auditor of the township since 2017 in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, requested a refund of his $5 contribution last month.

“It seems silly, right? It’s just five bucks, but it serves as a proof of concept for those who gave much more,” Leuba told The Intercept, noting that he only spoke for himself. “Our rights are being stripped away, and we need representatives who care enough to fight for us.”

“Fetterman’s either fighting for our rights, or he’s not. And if he’s not, then we need to push back,” Leuba said, “even if it’s five bucks at a time.”

The Fetterman campaign has issued more than 1,700 refund requests since 2021 from more than 1,000 donors, totaling more than $780,800, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. That includes more than 200 refunds last cycle. At least seven political action committees also received refunds. (Fetterman’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)

Most of the refunds the campaign issued last cycle after October 7 went to small-dollar donors: More than 80 percent of the total number of refunds the campaign issued in 2024 went to donors who gave less than $100 — up 8 percent from 2023.

In all of 2024, the campaign issued more than 120 refunds totaling $17,400, compared to 96 refunds in 2023 totaling $17,600.

Still, the refunds represent a small portion of Fetterman’s campaign haul. Sixty-two donors received refunds after the October 7 attacks, totaling $20,300 across 139 contributions, less than 1 percent of the campaign’s total individual contributions that cycle. That figure does not include donors like Leuba who requested their refunds last month, or anytime since December; requests after December will be reflected in an upcoming filing.

The period since October 7 reflects about two-thirds of the total time Fetterman has been in office, making it natural for more requests for refunds to pile up since the Hamas attacks.

“Totally Defrauded by Fetterman”

Fetterman’s supporters have been vocal about their disappointment with his rightward turn since taking office.

Small-dollar donors have increasingly voiced their dismay with Fetterman since October 7, 2023, and his subsequent support for GOP efforts like the Laken Riley Act and the confirmation of Attorney General Pam Bondi. 

At the same time, Republican donors ramped up their contributions to the Democratic senator after October 7, The Intercept previously reported.

“It’s been clear for a while that he’s been moving further to the right, which is why I quietly requested a refund months ago,” Leuba said. “I posted it publicly because he didn’t fight back on the government funding bill and was attacking other Democrats for voting against it. That came off as selfish and counterproductive.” 

Some Reddit users posted comments on a thread about Leuba’s refund request and said they planned to do the same. “I just emailed in my refund request. I don’t expect anything to come of it, but $40 is $40,” one user wrote last month. 

“I just sent in my request,” another user replied. “Not expecting any response but it’s a good way to make it clear Pennsylvania is not behind this NewCon turn. I’m not sure if he was always a fraud, it was the stroke or he’s just trying to keep [his wife] Gisele out of an ICE raid. Regardless he’s not who he said he was.”

Rabbi David Mivasair, a member of the rabbinic council of Jewish Voice for Peace and a Pennsylvania voter, wrote in a Twitter post last month that he wanted to request a refund from Fetterman’s campaign because of the senator’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza. “I must request a refund from John Fetterman, who I gave regular donations to, not knowing what a deeply perverse, genocidal monster he is. I’ll do it to clear my karma a bit and will double and donate every penny to desperate families in #Gaza,” Mivasair wrote. He added a link to donate to families in Gaza.

“I feel totally defrauded by Fetterman,” Mivasair told The Intercept, noting that he had not yet requested the refund. “I actively supported him in the Democratic primary for Senate with both advocacy and donations. If I had only known what he would end up doing in the Senate, I never would have done that.”

“I feel that way specifically because of his genocidal support for Israel. He has no regard for justice or human life when it comes to Palestinians,” he added. “I think John Fetterman is entirely irrational in his unstinting, total support for Israel as it commits genocide in full view of the world.” 

Other senators also have large numbers of refund requests. The campaign for Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., had more than 5,000 refund requests since 2021 from more than 2,000 people and eight PACs, totaling more than $2 million.

Other senators see far fewer such requests: The campaign for Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., has issued 275 refunds to more than 140 people since 2021, totaling $151,000. Former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., issued just under 30 refunds last cycle, including several for excessive contributions.

One of the biggest outliers in campaign refund requests is President Donald Trump, whose campaign issued more than $120 million in refunds to donors in 2020 — more than 10 percent of what the campaign raised that cycle.

Cozy With the Right

Last month, Fetterman was scheduled to appear alongside Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa., who he previously attacked. During McCormick’s 2022 and 2024 campaigns, Fetterman had railed against the Republican. Now, the two would be appearing together at an event on youth mentorship — their first joint appearance. The event was canceled after protesters demonstrated against it.

Related

Fetterman Staff Quit Amid Frustration Over “Just Working on Israel All the Time”

Staffers have left Fetterman’s office en masse since 2023. Last spring, three of his top communications staffers resigned in the course of a month. His office has had three different communications directors in the span of just over two years. The office has not hired a new communications director since the departure of Charlie Hills in February, according to LegiStorm. Fetterman’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

In total, six staffers have left the office since 2023, The Intercept previously reported, including several people who left over Fetterman’s singular focus on Israel.

Fetterman campaigned on being a champion of the working class, fighting to protect immigrants, and reforming the criminal justice system. Since the October 7 attacks and his increasingly cozy relationship with both the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the bulk of his office’s activity has drifted away from the promises of his 2022 campaign, according to people familiar with the office’s work. 

FEC records reflect campaign refunds through December 2024. The next round of campaign finance filings are due later this month.

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As protests arise and First Amendment questions mount surrounding the immigration detention of Mahmoud Khalil, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. penned and circulated a letter demanding the immediate release of the recent Columbia University graduate. 

It found little support among Tlaib’s colleagues in Washington, with a mere 14 Democrats signing their names on the letter condemning Khalil’s detention as an “illegal abduction.” 

Instead, statements from prominent Democrats suggest much of the party is taking the Trump administration’s targeting of Khalil in good faith.

Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., who counts Khalil as one of his constituents, did not sign the letter. When contacted by The Intercept about the case, Espaillat said he expects the Trump administration – which has explicitly flouted and sought to circumscribe federal legal protections for civil liberties – to adhere to the rule of law.

“Regarding the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a constituent who lives in my district, my office has been following this case closely and as a former green card holder, I expect the Department of Justice to work within the confines of the law and that due process is guaranteed to him and his family,” Espaillat said in a statement Tuesday morning. “The rule of law must be respected.” 

In a statement on Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., condemned Khalil’s activism and “antisemitic actions at Columbia,” without providing examples of those actions. He said that the administration should release Khalil if it could determine he had not broken any laws. 

The Trump administration itself has admitted the case against Khalil does not hinge on allegations that he broke the law and told a conservative news outlet that it will these proceedings as a blueprint to target other students.

Tlaib’s letter specifically calls out the Trump administration’s campaign for pushing to expel Khalil despite the fact he “has not been charged or convicted of any crime.”

Related

If Trump Can Deport Mahmoud Khalil, Freedom of Speech Is Dead

“As the Trump administration proudly admits, he was targeted solely for his activism and organizing as a student leader and negotiator for the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on Columbia University campus, protesting the Israeli government’s brutal assault on the Palestinian people in Gaza and his university’s complicity in this oppression,” the letter said. “This illegal justification has been stated clearly by figures throughout the administration, including the president himself.”

In a bid to find additional backers, the letter was distributed among all 100 House members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Monday evening with a 10 a.m. deadline, according to a source familiar with the letter. Less than 15 percent of CPC members signed onto the letter, which was published Tuesday morning.

Signatories of the letter include: Andre Carson, D-Ind., Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, Al Green, D-Texas, Summer Lee, D-Penn., Jim McGovern, D-Mass., Gwen Moore, D-Wisc., Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Reps. Mark Pocan, D-Wisc., Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., Lateefah Simon, D-Calif., Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y. and Nikema Williams, D-Ga. 

At least one Democrat reportedly consulted about Khalil prior to his arrest. According to Jewish Insider, which was first to report on Tlaib’s letter prior to its release, an aide for Sen. John Fetterman, D-Penn., discussed Khalil’s situation with a former operative for the Zionist group Betar. The group has taken credit for sending a list of students it wanted deported to the White House. Betar named Khalil, misspelling his first name, in a tweet in January.

In response to a tweet on Monday from the Senate Judiciary Democrats calling to free Khalil, Fetterman replied: “Free all the hostages who have been tortured, starved, raped, beaten and STILL in tunnels in Gaza by Hamas since October 7th, 2023.” Fetterman’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The post Dems for Some Reason Expect Trump to Follow the Law on Detention of Mahmoud Khalil appeared first on The Intercept.

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During his joint address to Congress on Tuesday night, President Donald Trump laid out his vision for the next four years and carefully revised the legacy of his first seven weeks in office. 

Amid a slew of actions to chill speech and root out political opponents from federal agencies, Trump claimed that his administration had “stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America.” Earlier on Tuesday, Trump threatened to cut funding from schools that allow “illegal” protests.

“Our country will be woke no longer,” Trump said to applause after he celebrated orders making English the official language of the U.S. and renaming the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America. He cheered the Supreme Court’s ending of affirmative action and his administration’s efforts to “remove the poison of critical race theory from our public schools” and make it the official policy of the U.S. “that there are only two genders.” 

In practice, Trump has accomplished those tasks by ending federal environmental protections for minority communities, making it easier for employers to discriminate based on race, stripping money from schools that teach about racial inequality and threatening to upend programs that provide mental health support for homeless children. 

Since taking office, Trump has signed executive orders to threaten to deport students who take part in pro-Palestine and anti-genocide protests and announced a list of schools that will receive visits from the Department of Justice over their handling of campus protests. He has also eliminated civil rights work and diversity and equity initiatives across federal agencies, and made plans to defund schools that teach “discriminatory equity ideology,” which includes teaching basic facts about racism in U.S. history like the idea that “the United States is fundamentally racist, sexist, or otherwise discriminatory.” 

“You can’t claim to stand for free speech while threatening schools’ funding to silence anti-war students,” said Tariq Habash, a former staffer in president Joe Biden’s Department of Education who resigned over Biden’s handling of the war on Gaza. Habash is now cofounder and director of the advocacy group A New Policy. “These efforts are not just antidemocratic, they’re illegal and a direct attack on academia, students, and faculty.”

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Police Raid Pro-Palestine Students’ Home in FBI-Led Graffiti Investigation

Self-described liberals at universities around the country opened the door for Trump’s attacks on civil rights by making exceptions for freedom of speech on Palestine, said Democratic National Committee delegate Nadia Ahmad. “University leaders across the country are more than happy to carry out Trump’s anti-Palestinian deportation orders while publicly lamenting his attacks on DEI initiatives,” said Ahmad. 

“They condemn him in rhetoric, yet eagerly enforce his agenda by silencing and expelling students. Their complicity reveals how shallow institutional commitments to human rights really are. The administration and university leaders, particularly the legal elite, have weaponized civility to declare certain human rights conversations off-limits,” said Ahman, who in August was struck in the head by Biden supporters wielding signs that read “We Love Joe” after she held up a banner at the Democratic National Convention calling on the president to stop arming Israel. “Freedom of speech at universities now only extends as far as supporting the political status quo allows.”

Trump touted his administration’s “swift and unrelenting action” in its first days, during which he moved to dismantle federal agencies and installed his political allies in positions of immense power. 

Democrats, facing criticism from supporters for not doing more to block Trump’s agenda, wore pink to draw attention to Trump’s attacks on women’s rights. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., ordered the Sergeant at Arms to remove Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, from the chamber after he interrupted Trump’s remarks about his electoral win. 

Shortly before Trump’s address on Tuesday night, news broke of the next phase of Trump’s gutting of the federal work force. The Internal Revenue Service is expected to lay off as much as half of its 90,000-employee staff. The news came after reports that Elon Musk, the billionaire Trump acolyte and advisor who attended the address on Tuesday, is pushing to access personal tax information held by the agency.

Less than two hours after the news of the pending IRS layoffs, Trump told his audience: “America is back.”

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Now that Republicans have won control of government in Washington, they’re shifting their sights to a progressive enclave in Pennsylvania.

Major donors to President Donald Trump are pouring money into the race to unseat Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, lining up behind his Democratic primary opponent, Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor.

Three months ahead of the primary, the GOP donors have already funneled more than $130,000 into the race, constituting more than 20 percent of O’Connor’s January haul. At least five Trump and Republican donors have maxed out to O’Connor’s campaign, helping him to outraise Gainey last month with $464,000 to Gainey’s $23,600, according to January campaign finance reports.

While Gainey has taken outspoken progressive stances on issues from housing to immigration, the right-leaning donors see O’Connor as more of a blank slate, said Tanisha Long, a Gainey supporter and an Allegheny County political director for Straight Ahead, a criminal justice project of the Abolitionist Law Center.

“A lot of the Republicans,” said Long, referring to the donors, “are running with the fact that Corey doesn’t really take hard stances on things.”

She said O’Connor is being politically delicate but appears willing to take the cash: “He won’t outright embrace those people, but he will very happily accept checks.”

In small communities like Pittsburgh, the relatively small donor pool and a weak Republican Party means it’s common for Republican donors to get involved in Democratic races. The influx of GOP money in a primary, however, is unusual for Pittsburgh, Long said.

Democratic Pittsburgh City Councilmember Barb Warwick, who represents O’Connor’s old city council district and is backing Gainey, found the GOP money in the mayor’s race particularly disconcerting. Trump’s current approach — fostering a developer and tech plutocracy — has already been a feature of right-wing Pittsburgh politics, she said.

“It makes sense that they are putting money toward getting rid of him,” Warwick said of the donors and Gainey. “It doesn’t surprise me that the same folks who are trying to overstep what’s good for regular people on the ground at the national level are also trying to push aside a mayor who is really focused on what’s good for the people living here in Pittsburgh today.”

A spokesperson for O’Connor’s campaign said the challenger took progressive stances. 

“Corey has delivered for workers by challenging wealthy corporate interests, stood alongside community members against developers, and took a stand against the powerful gun lobby,” said the spokesperson, Ben Forstate. “The fights that he has undertaken for Pittsburgh residents show that he cannot and will not be bought by anyone.”

The next campaign finance reports in the mayor’s race are expected later this month. O’Connor has outraised Gainey in both small and large-dollar contributions. His campaign reported more than contributions over $250 from more than 250 people, totaling more than $450,000. Gainey’s campaign reported contributions over $250 from 15 people totaling $14,725.

O’Connor’s campaign touted its small-dollar support.

“The fact that we’ve raised more than our opponent in small contributions from more individual small-dollar donors,” said Forstate, “shows Pittsburghers from all walks of life — whether they’re laborers, teachers, service workers, paramedics, or retirees — are behind Corey.”

Trump, GOP Donations

In addition to donors, other figures from Trump-world and the Republican Party have become involved with O’Connor’s campaign.

Trump consultant and pollster Kent Gates, whose firm took a six-figure payment from Trump’s 2024 campaign, appeared at an event with O’Connor earlier this month. The event, a roundtable meeting with local business leaders, was organized with help from Republican operative Jeff Kendall, a close ally and surrogate of billionaire and controversial GOP megadonor Jeffrey Yass. (Gates and Kendall did not respond to a request for comment.)

Forstate, the O’Connor spokesperson, said the campaign would not accept money from Yass, was not aware that Gates and Kendall had helped organize the event, and that O’Connor gave his standard stump speech.

“He did not request donations, and this was not an event planned, organized, or produced by the O’Connor campaign,” Forstate said. “We’ve taken zero dollars from Gates or Kendall. We were not aware that the event was organized by those individuals.”

Some Trump donors, however, have given. Clifford Forrest, who owns a Pennsylvania mining firm and donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee in 2016, gave O’Connor $3,300 in January. (Forrest did not respond to a request for comment.)

The O’Connor campaign pointed to donations from Republicans to Gainey, the bulk of which came during his 2021 general election effort. “Our campaign took our lead on fundraising from the mayor,” Forstate said in a statement to The Intercept, citing a Forrest contribution to Gainey in 2021. “Over the last four years Mayor Gainey took over $82,000 from Trump and GOP donors.”

In 2021, Gainey raised $55,600 — five percent of the money he took in that cycle — from Trump donors, and registered Republicans. (Several of the registered Republicans are regular Democratic donors with no history of giving to the GOP.) In 2021, Gainey also took $5,000 from the O’Connor donor Forrest and his wife. (In response to questions about the contribution, Gainey’s campaign said it was an oversight and that a refund would be issued.)

The money O’Connor has raised from Trump and GOP donors in January alone — more than 20 percent of his total haul that month — dwarfs GOP donor support for Gainey over the last four years.

GOP megadonor Herb Shear, who has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to groups supporting Trump, maxed out his contribution to O’Connor’s campaign last month. Other GOP donors who maxed out to O’Connor’s campaign include Kent McElhattan, John Staley IV, and Thomas Grealish. Forstate said O’Connor’s campaign returned a contribution from one GOP donor. (None of the Republican O’Connor donors responded to a request for comment.)

Progressive Wave

Republican donors see a threat rising in Pittsburgh, where progressives have found success amid broader Democratic failures.

Gainey has been an instrumental part of the movement to build a progressive bench in Western Pennsylvania, even as Democrats continue to erode support. He’s also been vocal in opposing Trump’s efforts to track down and remove undocumented immigrants. In January, Gainey said his office would not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and that Pittsburgh, a city made of immigrants, would “always be welcoming of everybody.”

Gainey has worked closely with Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., and his 2021 election boosted her 2022 congressional campaign. Gainey and Lee’s wins also helped pave the way for progressive Sara Innamorato’s 2023 election as Allegheny County executive, one of the most powerful offices in the western part of the state.

O’Connor himself has been part of that progressive surge. He is the son of former Pittsburgh Mayor Bob O’Connor and was a city councilmember from 2012 to 2022, when he was first appointed as Allegheny County controller by then-Gov. Tom Wolf.

O’Connor elected to a full term as controller in 2023. He has used his position to address criminal justice issues and shine a light on how the county jail destabilizes families. O’Connor also refused an invitation from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to challenge Lee in Congress, The Intercept reported.

In the mayoral race, however, O’Connor attracted money from real estate interests. Developers including Walnut Capital executives Gregg Perelman and Todd Reidbord maxed out to O’Connor’s campaign in December, as did one of their employees. One of the company’s properties is hosting an event for O’Connor next month with tickets ranging from $100 to $1,000. The Walnut Capital donors and O’Connor’s campaign did not respond to questions about the contributions or the event.

Gainey has been a vocal advocate for affordable housing and pushed zoning reforms that drew the ire of real estate interests.

O’Connor supported affordable housing measures during his time on city council and says he wants to expand affordable housing in Pittsburgh. He has also said he doesn’t believe inclusionary zoning should be required in every neighborhood and said he’s open to waiving certain fees to boost development.

“It’s easy to say that you’re for the people,” said Warwick, the councilmember. “It’s a much different thing to actually step forward and put your foot down.”

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