(AP) – Holiday gatherings and major life events have come with an empty seat. Certain dates on the calendar meant time at a cemetery, standing before granite stones.

They are a relatively small group of people, scattered across different states, but they share a common bond that stretches back decades: Each had a family member die violently in the struggle for voting and civil rights, victims on a long and difficult path marked by blood that ended when the country seemed to mature into the nation of its creed.

But 61 years later, and as the country approaches its 250th anniversary, those sacrifices are in question. In a series of decisions over the past dozen years, including one in April, the Supreme Court has effectively dismantled the law that their family members died to see enacted, the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“My mother’s blood is on that bill. We were always proud of that, and now it’s gone,” said Anthony Liuzzo, whose mother, Viola Liuzzo, died on an Alabama highway between Selma and Montgomery while driving marchers in 1965.

Critics of the law argue that times have changed, a point Chief Justice John Roberts made in a 2013 decision that was the first major step in rolling back the law.

Survivors of lost loved ones disagree, pointing to the speed with which Republican-led state legislatureseliminated majority-Black congressional districts after the court's April ruling, which severely weakened a section of the law that had protected voting rights for minority communities. They feel anger and sadness that a milestone political victory decades ago has been reversed, but they are committed to keep fighting.

"Why do you hate us so?"

Lisa McNair was born Sept. 19, 1964. Her older sister, Denise, died in the Sept 15, 1963, bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The church had been a central organizing point for civil rights protest.

The explosion killed Denise McNair, 11, Addie Mae Collins, 14, Carole Robertson, 14, and Cynthia Morris Wesley, 14. Nearly two dozen others were injured. Three Klansmen were convicted years later.

One of Lisa McNair's early memories of her sister was of the box that their grandmother kept from the funeral home. It included Denise McNair's shoes, a purse and a rock-sized piece of concrete that had been embedded in her skull.

The crime brought the civil rights struggle onto the national stage and outraged Democratic President John F. Kennedy.

The times were tumultuous, McNair said, but it seemed the nation was heading in the right direction. Most of her life, “I’ve seen advances” on television, in commercials, with interracial marriages, civil rights and voting rights, “a plethora of rights that we got over the greater part of my lifetime.” But that has changed, she said.

McNair, 61, said she is “physically sick” about the Supreme Court decision and subsequent actions by lower courts and legislatures.

“I am constantly working to pray my way through it, so I can get up and go to work in the morning and do what I need to do. But I just want to ask every white person I see, What more do you want?" she said. “Why do you hate us so?”

They left for Freedom Summer and never came home

Michael Schwerner, known as Mickey, came from a family in which human rights activism and challenging social norms were expected. He was in Mississippi in 1964 as part of Freedom Summer when he, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney vanished one day in June while investigating a bombing at a Black church.

Their bodies were found weeks later, buried in an earthen dam in a rural area of Neshoba County. Schwerner, 24, and Goodman, 20, were white; Chaney, 21, was Black.

Stephen Schwerner, who died earlier this year and was a social activist in his own right, told The Associated Press in a 2023 interview that as soon as the family heard his younger brother and the other men were missing, they knew they were dead.

“Our family was very out front in the media that the only reason there was international attention was two of the young men were white," said Stephen’s daughter, Cassie Schwerner. "Had all three of those young men been Black, they would have ended up absent from our history and our narrative.”

The executive director of Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility, Cassie Schwerner, said her family has followed voting rights through their ups and downs. That includes the 2013 Supreme Court decision that allowed states and counties with a history of discriminatory voting rules to make changes without prior approval from the Department of Justice.

The court's April decision, she said, brought rage “and a good deal of sadness — not for me and my family, but for this country.” There is, she said, work to be done on multiple fronts.

Rights that turned out to be fragile

Tamara Orange said among her many thoughts when she heard of the Supreme Court decision in this year's Voting Rights Act case, there was relief — "relief that my dad is not here to see that; that Jimmie Lee Jackson is not here to see it; that Viola Liuzzo is not here to see it,” she said. “I’m relieved for them because to me, it’s as though the sacrifices that were made were done in vain.”

Her father, James Orange, was working with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to organize voting rights protests in Marion and Perry County, Alabama, in 1965. When juveniles joined the effort, he was arrested for contributing to the delinquency of minors. Concern arose that Orange was going to be taken out of the jail and lynched.

A protest to intervene ended with Jackson, a 26-year-old Black church deacon, being shot in the stomach by a state trooper while Jackson tried to shield his mother and grandfather.

His death was the catalyst for what became the Selma to Montgomery march and “Bloody Sunday.”

Orange stayed in the movement all his life and died in 2008, Tamara Orange said. But even after the Voting Rights Act passed, "He would say, be careful or we're going to lose it.”

‘We got bad news for you’

Anthony Liuzzo had just turned 10 when his mother, 39, left their middle-class neighborhood in Michigan and headed for Selma, Alabama. She had cried as she watched scenes from “Bloody Sunday” on television.

Viola Liuzzo participated in a portion of the second march and then helped drive other civil rights protesters around the Black Belt region of the state. On March 25, 1965, she was driving one protester between Selma and Montgomery when a vehicle pulled alongside and fired into the car.

The phone call came around midnight. Anthony Liuzzo remembers the caller asking his dad, “Is your wife Viola? We got bad news for you. She’s been shot.” When his father asked whether she was all right, the caller said “No, she’s dead," and then hung up.

An informant for the FBI quickly identified members of the Ku Klux Klan as her killers. The three men charged would escape conviction on state charges but be convicted in federal court.

Anthony Liuzzo and his siblings lived with the lost birthdays and other missed milestones. His comfort was that the voting rights she had died for had become a reality. But the April ruling by the Supreme Court and the subsequent rush by Republican-led legislatures in several Southern states to eliminate congressional districts represented by Black lawmakers left him angry and distraught.

Even so, he said he is still proud his mother had the courage to go to Selma "when others sat in their pretty little houses.”

One morning, the Klan returned

The inscription at the bottom of Vernon Dahmer Sr.'s tombstone reads simply: "If you don't vote, you don't count.”

It is a message that embodies his life's work and the story behind his death.

Even after Democratic President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, not every state was eager to implement the new law. In Mississippi, it came with a “poll tax.” The amount was $2, but in a world where a farmworker's wages might only be $5 a day, that was substantial, said Dahmer's son, Dennis Dahmer Sr.

The elder Dahmer, 57 at the time of his death, was a successful businessman who owned a store, sawmill and farm near Hattiesburg. He also was a civil rights leader and NAACP president in Ford County. He offered to pay the $2 for Black residents who wanted to register to vote.

He had already been under scrutiny by the local Ku Klux Klan. There was harassment and there were threatening phone calls. The windows were shot out of his store, but no one challenged him directly because his sons were always present and armed.

That seemed to trail off after Johnson signed the law.

“The Klan quit calling," Dennis Dahmer said. "They quit shooting out the windows, so my family thought that all of this was behind us.”

That changed in the early hours of Jan. 10, 1966, when two carloads of Klansmen showed up. They firebombed the house and adjacent grocery store and began shooting at the house. The elder Dahmer shot back, using his ample arsenal to fight off the attack.

His wife and the three children who were home survived, but he suffered severe injuries from inhaling the smoke and fumes from the flames. He died later that day.

Dennis Dahmer was 12 as he stood next to his dad's hospital bed. He wondered why some people wanted his father dead just for trying to help Black people vote.

A former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Sam Bowers, was convicted in 1998 for the attack and sentenced to life.

Like the families of other survivors, Dennis Dahmer's family has witnessed the methodical dismantling of the Voting Rights Act.

"Finally, they basically turned it into a relic,” he said.

Deepen your worldview

with Monitor Highlights.

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His plan now is activism, to speak out and promote the need for a massive voter turnout. He also wants to remind people of the price that certain families paid for everyone to have the right to vote and be represented by someone of their choosing.

“We’re living in a time when America has a lot of the same characteristics of the 1960s that I grew up in,” he said. "People say, are we going back? Hell, we’re already there.” 

(AP) – Holiday gatherings and major life events have come with an empty seat. Certain dates on the calendar meant time at a cemetery, standing before granite stones.

They are a relatively small group of people, scattered across different states, but they share a common bond that stretches back decades: Each had a family member die violently in the struggle for voting and civil rights, victims on a long and difficult path marked by blood that ended when the country seemed to mature into the nation of its creed.

But 61 years later, and as the country approaches its 250th anniversary, those sacrifices are in question. In a series of decisions over the past dozen years, including one in April, the Supreme Court has effectively dismantled the law that their family members died to see enacted, the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“My mother’s blood is on that bill. We were always proud of that, and now it’s gone,” said Anthony Liuzzo, whose mother, Viola Liuzzo, died on an Alabama highway between Selma and Montgomery while driving marchers in 1965.

Critics of the law argue that times have changed, a point Chief Justice John Roberts made in a 2013 decision that was the first major step in rolling back the law.

Survivors of lost loved ones disagree, pointing to the speed with which Republican-led state legislatureseliminated majority-Black congressional districts after the court's April ruling, which severely weakened a section of the law that had protected voting rights for minority communities. They feel anger and sadness that a milestone political victory decades ago has been reversed, but they are committed to keep fighting.

"Why do you hate us so?"

Lisa McNair was born Sept. 19, 1964. Her older sister, Denise, died in the Sept 15, 1963, bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The church had been a central organizing point for civil rights protest.

The explosion killed Denise McNair, 11, Addie Mae Collins, 14, Carole Robertson, 14, and Cynthia Morris Wesley, 14. Nearly two dozen others were injured. Three Klansmen were convicted years later.

One of Lisa McNair's early memories of her sister was of the box that their grandmother kept from the funeral home. It included Denise McNair's shoes, a purse and a rock-sized piece of concrete that had been embedded in her skull.

The crime brought the civil rights struggle onto the national stage and outraged Democratic President John F. Kennedy.

The times were tumultuous, McNair said, but it seemed the nation was heading in the right direction. Most of her life, “I’ve seen advances” on television, in commercials, with interracial marriages, civil rights and voting rights, “a plethora of rights that we got over the greater part of my lifetime.” But that has changed, she said.

McNair, 61, said she is “physically sick” about the Supreme Court decision and subsequent actions by lower courts and legislatures.

“I am constantly working to pray my way through it, so I can get up and go to work in the morning and do what I need to do. But I just want to ask every white person I see, What more do you want?" she said. “Why do you hate us so?”

They left for Freedom Summer and never came home

Michael Schwerner, known as Mickey, came from a family in which human rights activism and challenging social norms were expected. He was in Mississippi in 1964 as part of Freedom Summer when he, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney vanished one day in June while investigating a bombing at a Black church.

Their bodies were found weeks later, buried in an earthen dam in a rural area of Neshoba County. Schwerner, 24, and Goodman, 20, were white; Chaney, 21, was Black.

Stephen Schwerner, who died earlier this year and was a social activist in his own right, told The Associated Press in a 2023 interview that as soon as the family heard his younger brother and the other men were missing, they knew they were dead.

“Our family was very out front in the media that the only reason there was international attention was two of the young men were white," said Stephen’s daughter, Cassie Schwerner. "Had all three of those young men been Black, they would have ended up absent from our history and our narrative.”

The executive director of Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility, Cassie Schwerner, said her family has followed voting rights through their ups and downs. That includes the 2013 Supreme Court decision that allowed states and counties with a history of discriminatory voting rules to make changes without prior approval from the Department of Justice.

The court's April decision, she said, brought rage “and a good deal of sadness — not for me and my family, but for this country.” There is, she said, work to be done on multiple fronts.

Rights that turned out to be fragile

Tamara Orange said among her many thoughts when she heard of the Supreme Court decision in this year's Voting Rights Act case, there was relief — "relief that my dad is not here to see that; that Jimmie Lee Jackson is not here to see it; that Viola Liuzzo is not here to see it,” she said. “I’m relieved for them because to me, it’s as though the sacrifices that were made were done in vain.”

Her father, James Orange, was working with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to organize voting rights protests in Marion and Perry County, Alabama, in 1965. When juveniles joined the effort, he was arrested for contributing to the delinquency of minors. Concern arose that Orange was going to be taken out of the jail and lynched.

A protest to intervene ended with Jackson, a 26-year-old Black church deacon, being shot in the stomach by a state trooper while Jackson tried to shield his mother and grandfather.

His death was the catalyst for what became the Selma to Montgomery march and “Bloody Sunday.”

Orange stayed in the movement all his life and died in 2008, Tamara Orange said. But even after the Voting Rights Act passed, "He would say, be careful or we're going to lose it.”

‘We got bad news for you’

Anthony Liuzzo had just turned 10 when his mother, 39, left their middle-class neighborhood in Michigan and headed for Selma, Alabama. She had cried as she watched scenes from “Bloody Sunday” on television.

Viola Liuzzo participated in a portion of the second march and then helped drive other civil rights protesters around the Black Belt region of the state. On March 25, 1965, she was driving one protester between Selma and Montgomery when a vehicle pulled alongside and fired into the car.

The phone call came around midnight. Anthony Liuzzo remembers the caller asking his dad, “Is your wife Viola? We got bad news for you. She’s been shot.” When his father asked whether she was all right, the caller said “No, she’s dead," and then hung up.

An informant for the FBI quickly identified members of the Ku Klux Klan as her killers. The three men charged would escape conviction on state charges but be convicted in federal court.

Anthony Liuzzo and his siblings lived with the lost birthdays and other missed milestones. His comfort was that the voting rights she had died for had become a reality. But the April ruling by the Supreme Court and the subsequent rush by Republican-led legislatures in several Southern states to eliminate congressional districts represented by Black lawmakers left him angry and distraught.

Even so, he said he is still proud his mother had the courage to go to Selma "when others sat in their pretty little houses.”

One morning, the Klan returned

The inscription at the bottom of Vernon Dahmer Sr.'s tombstone reads simply: "If you don't vote, you don't count.”

It is a message that embodies his life's work and the story behind his death.

Even after Democratic President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, not every state was eager to implement the new law. In Mississippi, it came with a “poll tax.” The amount was $2, but in a world where a farmworker's wages might only be $5 a day, that was substantial, said Dahmer's son, Dennis Dahmer Sr.

The elder Dahmer, 57 at the time of his death, was a successful businessman who owned a store, sawmill and farm near Hattiesburg. He also was a civil rights leader and NAACP president in Ford County. He offered to pay the $2 for Black residents who wanted to register to vote.

He had already been under scrutiny by the local Ku Klux Klan. There was harassment and there were threatening phone calls. The windows were shot out of his store, but no one challenged him directly because his sons were always present and armed.

That seemed to trail off after Johnson signed the law.

“The Klan quit calling," Dennis Dahmer said. "They quit shooting out the windows, so my family thought that all of this was behind us.”

That changed in the early hours of Jan. 10, 1966, when two carloads of Klansmen showed up. They firebombed the house and adjacent grocery store and began shooting at the house. The elder Dahmer shot back, using his ample arsenal to fight off the attack.

His wife and the three children who were home survived, but he suffered severe injuries from inhaling the smoke and fumes from the flames. He died later that day.

Dennis Dahmer was 12 as he stood next to his dad's hospital bed. He wondered why some people wanted his father dead just for trying to help Black people vote.

A former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Sam Bowers, was convicted in 1998 for the attack and sentenced to life.

Like the families of other survivors, Dennis Dahmer's family has witnessed the methodical dismantling of the Voting Rights Act.

"Finally, they basically turned it into a relic,” he said.

Deepen your worldview

with Monitor Highlights.

Already a subscriber? Log in to hide ads.

His plan now is activism, to speak out and promote the need for a massive voter turnout. He also wants to remind people of the price that certain families paid for everyone to have the right to vote and be represented by someone of their choosing.

“We’re living in a time when America has a lot of the same characteristics of the 1960s that I grew up in,” he said. "People say, are we going back? Hell, we’re already there.” 

Move over, left versus right. Welcome, rotisserie chicken versus Coca-Cola. A food fight over restrictions on government nutrition assistance is generating controversies and court battles, all while scrambling traditional political boundary lines. 

Legislators across the country, in states both red and blue, have spent the second Trump administration passing unprecedented restrictions and exceptions to the foods that lower-income Americans can buy with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the program formerly known as food stamps. Less than halfway through President Donald Trump’s second term, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees the SNAP program, has approved 23 states’ requests for “junk food” restrictions. 

These approved restrictions, known as “waivers,” grant states the authority to ban SNAP shoppers from purchasing soda or sweetened beverages, with several other states including other items such as candy or energy drinks. This helps “put real food back at the center of the program and empower states to lead the charge in protecting public health,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins signed some of the waivers into action last August. “This is how we Make America Healthy Again.”

Why We Wrote This

Both parties have been enacting state-level bans on using SNAP benefits for soda and candy. On Monday, a federal judge said the new rules violate federal laws governing the food program.

But one of MAHA’s major achievements faced a major setback on Monday, when a federal judge sided with food stamp recipients in five waiver states who sued to halt these bans on certain foods. In a 68-page decision, Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia agreed that these waivers violate federal laws guiding SNAP, writing that Ms. Rollins sought to waive “the very definition of ‘food’ as it was laid down by Congress.”

“The idea that taxpayer funds should not be used to purchase junk food should not be controversial,” the USDA tells the Monitor in a statement. “USDA will not be backing down from the fight to Make America Healthy Again, including for families and communities reliant on SNAP.” 

In its pending battle to reinstate these restrictions, the Trump administration might have some unlikely allies. Unlike other debates over the size of SNAP, which has been a target of Republican lawmakers, elected officials from both parties have recently focused on the nutritional side of SNAP.  

Along with the surge in soda and candy bans, the first of their kind, there is Congress’ Hot Rotisserie Chicken Act, which passed the House with broad bipartisan support and has gone to the Senate as part of the larger farm bill legislation, which includes SNAP. If signed into law, this bill would allow Americans to use SNAP funds for rotisserie chickens – a food product that would help time-stressed Americans put a healthy meal on the table, say congressional Republicans and Democrats alike – despite SNAP’s longstanding “no hot food” rule.  

Proponents say these changes ensure that America’s tax dollars are helping the country’s most vulnerable grocery shoppers prioritize nutritious foods while banning the unhealthy foods that President Trump’s MAHA cohort has rallied against. To others, there’s something immoral in dictating what SNAP shoppers can buy, and the challenges to implementing these new rules may prevent hungry Americans from using their benefits. 

“It happened in such rapid succession – the waivers being proposed and then accepted. We went from no states having any kind of waivers to now 23 states. We were all kind of shocked,” says Cindy Leung, a professor of public health nutrition at the Harvard T.C. Chan School of Public Health. “There is a lot of chaos trying to implement these policies, and that's trickling down to SNAP participants and affecting their program participation. ... It’s like the Wild West.”

The changing politics of food restrictions

This isn’t the first time localities have petitioned the USDA to implement SNAP restrictions. In 2004, Minnesota petitioned to implement a statewide ban on using benefits to buy soda or candy. A few years later, in 2010, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg requested a New York City ban on sugary drinks like soda. Both times, the USDA denied the requests, citing potential confusion and possible stigmatization – the same two reasons that many food policy experts cite in their criticism of the waivers today. 

In a sign of just how much the politics on this issue have been scrambled, Mr. Bloomberg’s soda ban at the time was held up by Republicans as an example of Democratic overreach. Former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin drew laughs at a conservative conference in 2013 when she sipped from a Big Gulp of soda on stage. 

“Oh, Bloomberg’s not around, our Big Gulp is safe,” joked Ms. Palin to the cheering crowd. 

Now, most of the approved waiver states are Republican-led, but Democrat-controlled Colorado, Hawaii, and Virginia all have soft drink restrictions set to be enacted later this year. At least four more states – Mississippi, Alabama, South Dakota, and Wisconsin – have waivers either submitted or in the process of being submitted, and more than a dozen other state legislatures have considered laws to bring about their own waivers. 

“This is pretty unprecedented both in terms of the number of states ... and the kinds of restrictions states are taking up,” says Ben Chrisinger, a professor who studies food access at Tufts University’s Department of Community Health. “It’s widespread.” 

Because of that, some food policy experts worry the waivers’ confusion could be widespread as well. 

Take Louisiana: Small chocolate candies are no longer eligible for SNAP funds, but chocolate chips for baking are allowed. Because Utah’s definition of “soft drink” is “any nonalcoholic beverage that is made with carbonated water,” carbonated lemonade is not allowed, but regular lemonade is allowed. Iowa’s waiver is particularly complex, with a slice of ready-to-eat cake potentially permitted depending on if a fork is provided in or out of the container. And in many states, super sweet drinks are allowed as long as they contain at least one drop of milk, and candy is allowed if it includes flour. 

“We're getting bogged down in how we define candy or processed food,” says Kate Bauer, director of the Institute for Food, Nutrition, and Health Policy at the University of Michigan. “The reality is that our general definitions of those things are OK, but the reason people aren't consuming the diets we would like for them to consume is food cost, scarcity, and stress, and we have done nothing to address those issues.”

Will some stores stop accepting SNAP cards?

To many like Dr. Bauer who study food security and nutrition, another worry is that new rules could curb access to nutrition assistance that is already being squeezed.  

Last year, Congress passed President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill that tightened the number of people eligible for SNAP by increasing work requirements for eligibility and making some noncitizens, such as refugees and asylees, ineligible. Since then, there have been SNAP participation declines in every state and a 10% drop nationally from the previous year. The USDA’s most recent SNAP participation numbers show just under 38 million people receive some level of SNAP benefits, which comes out to roughly 1 in 10 Americans – a decline from just about 1 in 8 Americans last year. 

Some experts worry that health wasn’t the true motivation behind the junk-food restrictions, but rather an effort to push participation rates down further. Americans may choose to forgo benefits that they qualify for because of confusion, and some retailers may rethink accepting SNAP benefits for the same reason. A September report from grocery and food industry groups suggests that these new restrictions could cost supermarkets hundreds of millions of dollars and convenience stores up to a billion in both upfront and ongoing costs, such as updating check-out technology to flag newly banned items. States will have their own SNAP rethinking to do, given that the OBBB has set up a cost-sharing system that will require states to pay a percentage of the program – for the first time ever – if their rate of improper SNAP payments is above 6%. 

Defending the waivers to the USDA, governors across the U.S. argue the SNAP program is intended to help Americans afford nutritious foods, not to subsidize unhealthy foods. 

“I think the program was always set up to tell Americans what to eat, which is healthy foods,” says Angela Rachidi, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has advocated for similar kinds of waivers for over a decade. “To me, it is a nutrition program.” 

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Though Dr. Leung agrees with the soda restrictions, she says restrictions alone likely won’t “move the needle on nutrition,” and would be more effective when paired with incentives. She points to the USDA’s SNAP Healthy Incentives Pilot in 2012, when SNAP users in county in southern Massachusetts received 30 extra cents in benefits for every SNAP dollar spent on fruits and vegetables and ended up buying far more of these foods than SNAP users outside this pilot program. Similarly, Dr. Bauer points to studies that showed how SNAP users bought healthier foods when SNAP benefits were expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“A key component of the program is that we treat SNAP shoppers like everyone else,” says Dr. Chrisinger. He notes that the SNAP Equal Treatment Rule requires retailers to treat SNAP shoppers the same prices and terms. “Adding these extra restrictions creates a risk of spotlighting people at checkout because of the choices they are making in a way that the rest of us just pass through.”

Move over, left versus right. Welcome, rotisserie chicken versus Coca-Cola. A food fight over restrictions on government nutrition assistance is generating controversies and court battles, all while scrambling traditional political boundary lines. 

Legislators across the country, in states both red and blue, have spent the second Trump administration passing unprecedented restrictions and exceptions to the foods that lower-income Americans can buy with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the program formerly known as food stamps. Less than halfway through President Donald Trump’s second term, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees the SNAP program, has approved 23 states’ requests for “junk food” restrictions. 

These approved restrictions, known as “waivers,” grant states the authority to ban SNAP shoppers from purchasing soda or sweetened beverages, with several other states including other items such as candy or energy drinks. This helps “put real food back at the center of the program and empower states to lead the charge in protecting public health,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins signed some of the waivers into action last August. “This is how we Make America Healthy Again.”

Why We Wrote This

Both parties have been enacting state-level bans on using SNAP benefits for soda and candy. On Monday, a federal judge said the new rules violate federal laws governing the food program.

But one of MAHA’s major achievements faced a major setback on Monday, when a federal judge sided with food stamp recipients in five waiver states who sued to halt these bans on certain foods. In a 68-page decision, Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia agreed that these waivers violate federal laws guiding SNAP, writing that Ms. Rollins sought to waive “the very definition of ‘food’ as it was laid down by Congress.”

“The idea that taxpayer funds should not be used to purchase junk food should not be controversial,” the USDA tells the Monitor in a statement. “USDA will not be backing down from the fight to Make America Healthy Again, including for families and communities reliant on SNAP.” 

In its pending battle to reinstate these restrictions, the Trump administration might have some unlikely allies. Unlike other debates over the size of SNAP, which has been a target of Republican lawmakers, elected officials from both parties have recently focused on the nutritional side of SNAP.  

Along with the surge in soda and candy bans, the first of their kind, there is Congress’ Hot Rotisserie Chicken Act, which passed the House with broad bipartisan support and has gone to the Senate as part of the larger farm bill legislation, which includes SNAP. If signed into law, this bill would allow Americans to use SNAP funds for rotisserie chickens – a food product that would help time-stressed Americans put a healthy meal on the table, say congressional Republicans and Democrats alike – despite SNAP’s longstanding “no hot food” rule.  

Proponents say these changes ensure that America’s tax dollars are helping the country’s most vulnerable grocery shoppers prioritize nutritious foods while banning the unhealthy foods that President Trump’s MAHA cohort has rallied against. To others, there’s something immoral in dictating what SNAP shoppers can buy, and the challenges to implementing these new rules may prevent hungry Americans from using their benefits. 

“It happened in such rapid succession – the waivers being proposed and then accepted. We went from no states having any kind of waivers to now 23 states. We were all kind of shocked,” says Cindy Leung, a professor of public health nutrition at the Harvard T.C. Chan School of Public Health. “There is a lot of chaos trying to implement these policies, and that's trickling down to SNAP participants and affecting their program participation. ... It’s like the Wild West.”

The changing politics of food restrictions

This isn’t the first time localities have petitioned the USDA to implement SNAP restrictions. In 2004, Minnesota petitioned to implement a statewide ban on using benefits to buy soda or candy. A few years later, in 2010, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg requested a New York City ban on sugary drinks like soda. Both times, the USDA denied the requests, citing potential confusion and possible stigmatization – the same two reasons that many food policy experts cite in their criticism of the waivers today. 

In a sign of just how much the politics on this issue have been scrambled, Mr. Bloomberg’s soda ban at the time was held up by Republicans as an example of Democratic overreach. Former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin drew laughs at a conservative conference in 2013 when she sipped from a Big Gulp of soda on stage. 

“Oh, Bloomberg’s not around, our Big Gulp is safe,” joked Ms. Palin to the cheering crowd. 

Now, most of the approved waiver states are Republican-led, but Democrat-controlled Colorado, Hawaii, and Virginia all have soft drink restrictions set to be enacted later this year. At least four more states – Mississippi, Alabama, South Dakota, and Wisconsin – have waivers either submitted or in the process of being submitted, and more than a dozen other state legislatures have considered laws to bring about their own waivers. 

“This is pretty unprecedented both in terms of the number of states ... and the kinds of restrictions states are taking up,” says Ben Chrisinger, a professor who studies food access at Tufts University’s Department of Community Health. “It’s widespread.” 

Because of that, some food policy experts worry the waivers’ confusion could be widespread as well. 

Take Louisiana: Small chocolate candies are no longer eligible for SNAP funds, but chocolate chips for baking are allowed. Because Utah’s definition of “soft drink” is “any nonalcoholic beverage that is made with carbonated water,” carbonated lemonade is not allowed, but regular lemonade is allowed. Iowa’s waiver is particularly complex, with a slice of ready-to-eat cake potentially permitted depending on if a fork is provided in or out of the container. And in many states, super sweet drinks are allowed as long as they contain at least one drop of milk, and candy is allowed if it includes flour. 

“We're getting bogged down in how we define candy or processed food,” says Kate Bauer, director of the Institute for Food, Nutrition, and Health Policy at the University of Michigan. “The reality is that our general definitions of those things are OK, but the reason people aren't consuming the diets we would like for them to consume is food cost, scarcity, and stress, and we have done nothing to address those issues.”

Will some stores stop accepting SNAP cards?

To many like Dr. Bauer who study food security and nutrition, another worry is that new rules could curb access to nutrition assistance that is already being squeezed.  

Last year, Congress passed President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill that tightened the number of people eligible for SNAP by increasing work requirements for eligibility and making some noncitizens, such as refugees and asylees, ineligible. Since then, there have been SNAP participation declines in every state and a 10% drop nationally from the previous year. The USDA’s most recent SNAP participation numbers show just under 38 million people receive some level of SNAP benefits, which comes out to roughly 1 in 10 Americans – a decline from just about 1 in 8 Americans last year. 

Some experts worry that health wasn’t the true motivation behind the junk-food restrictions, but rather an effort to push participation rates down further. Americans may choose to forgo benefits that they qualify for because of confusion, and some retailers may rethink accepting SNAP benefits for the same reason. A September report from grocery and food industry groups suggests that these new restrictions could cost supermarkets hundreds of millions of dollars and convenience stores up to a billion in both upfront and ongoing costs, such as updating check-out technology to flag newly banned items. States will have their own SNAP rethinking to do, given that the OBBB has set up a cost-sharing system that will require states to pay a percentage of the program – for the first time ever – if their rate of improper SNAP payments is above 6%. 

Defending the waivers to the USDA, governors across the U.S. argue the SNAP program is intended to help Americans afford nutritious foods, not to subsidize unhealthy foods. 

“I think the program was always set up to tell Americans what to eat, which is healthy foods,” says Angela Rachidi, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has advocated for similar kinds of waivers for over a decade. “To me, it is a nutrition program.” 

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Though Dr. Leung agrees with the soda restrictions, she says restrictions alone likely won’t “move the needle on nutrition,” and would be more effective when paired with incentives. She points to the USDA’s SNAP Healthy Incentives Pilot in 2012, when SNAP users in county in southern Massachusetts received 30 extra cents in benefits for every SNAP dollar spent on fruits and vegetables and ended up buying far more of these foods than SNAP users outside this pilot program. Similarly, Dr. Bauer points to studies that showed how SNAP users bought healthier foods when SNAP benefits were expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“A key component of the program is that we treat SNAP shoppers like everyone else,” says Dr. Chrisinger. He notes that the SNAP Equal Treatment Rule requires retailers to treat SNAP shoppers the same prices and terms. “Adding these extra restrictions creates a risk of spotlighting people at checkout because of the choices they are making in a way that the rest of us just pass through.”

Move over, left versus right. Welcome, rotisserie chicken versus Coca-Cola. A food fight over restrictions on government nutrition assistance is generating controversies and court battles, all while scrambling traditional political boundary lines. 

Legislators across the country, in states both red and blue, have spent the second Trump administration passing unprecedented restrictions and exceptions to the foods that lower-income Americans can buy with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the program formerly known as food stamps. Less than halfway through President Donald Trump’s second term, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees the SNAP program, has approved 23 states’ requests for “junk food” restrictions. 

These approved restrictions, known as “waivers,” grant states the authority to ban SNAP shoppers from purchasing soda or sweetened beverages, with several other states including other items such as candy or energy drinks. This helps “put real food back at the center of the program and empower states to lead the charge in protecting public health,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins signed some of the waivers into action last August. “This is how we Make America Healthy Again.”

Why We Wrote This

Both parties have been enacting state-level bans on using SNAP benefits for soda and candy. On Monday, a federal judge said the new rules violate federal laws governing the food program.

But one of MAHA’s major achievements faced a major setback on Monday, when a federal judge sided with food stamp recipients in five waiver states who sued to halt these bans on certain foods. In a 68-page decision, Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia agreed that these waivers violate federal laws guiding SNAP, writing that Ms. Rollins sought to waive “the very definition of ‘food’ as it was laid down by Congress.”

“The idea that taxpayer funds should not be used to purchase junk food should not be controversial,” the USDA tells the Monitor in a statement. “USDA will not be backing down from the fight to Make America Healthy Again, including for families and communities reliant on SNAP.” 

In its pending battle to reinstate these restrictions, the Trump administration might have some unlikely allies. Unlike other debates over the size of SNAP, which has been a target of Republican lawmakers, elected officials from both parties have recently focused on the nutritional side of SNAP.  

Along with the surge in soda and candy bans, the first of their kind, there is Congress’ Hot Rotisserie Chicken Act, which passed the House with broad bipartisan support and has gone to the Senate as part of the larger farm bill legislation, which includes SNAP. If signed into law, this bill would allow Americans to use SNAP funds for rotisserie chickens – a food product that would help time-stressed Americans put a healthy meal on the table, say congressional Republicans and Democrats alike – despite SNAP’s longstanding “no hot food” rule.  

Proponents say these changes ensure that America’s tax dollars are helping the country’s most vulnerable grocery shoppers prioritize nutritious foods while banning the unhealthy foods that President Trump’s MAHA cohort has rallied against. To others, there’s something immoral in dictating what SNAP shoppers can buy, and the challenges to implementing these new rules may prevent hungry Americans from using their benefits. 

“It happened in such rapid succession – the waivers being proposed and then accepted. We went from no states having any kind of waivers to now 23 states. We were all kind of shocked,” says Cindy Leung, a professor of public health nutrition at the Harvard T.C. Chan School of Public Health. “There is a lot of chaos trying to implement these policies, and that's trickling down to SNAP participants and affecting their program participation. ... It’s like the Wild West.”

The changing politics of food restrictions

This isn’t the first time localities have petitioned the USDA to implement SNAP restrictions. In 2004, Minnesota petitioned to implement a statewide ban on using benefits to buy soda or candy. A few years later, in 2010, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg requested a New York City ban on sugary drinks like soda. Both times, the USDA denied the requests, citing potential confusion and possible stigmatization – the same two reasons that many food policy experts cite in their criticism of the waivers today. 

In a sign of just how much the politics on this issue have been scrambled, Mr. Bloomberg’s soda ban at the time was held up by Republicans as an example of Democratic overreach. Former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin drew laughs at a conservative conference in 2013 when she sipped from a Big Gulp of soda on stage. 

“Oh, Bloomberg’s not around, our Big Gulp is safe,” joked Ms. Palin to the cheering crowd. 

Now, most of the approved waiver states are Republican-led, but Democrat-controlled Colorado, Hawaii, and Virginia all have soft drink restrictions set to be enacted later this year. At least four more states – Mississippi, Alabama, South Dakota, and Wisconsin – have waivers either submitted or in the process of being submitted, and more than a dozen other state legislatures have considered laws to bring about their own waivers. 

“This is pretty unprecedented both in terms of the number of states ... and the kinds of restrictions states are taking up,” says Ben Chrisinger, a professor who studies food access at Tufts University’s Department of Community Health. “It’s widespread.” 

Because of that, some food policy experts worry the waivers’ confusion could be widespread as well. 

Take Louisiana: Small chocolate candies are no longer eligible for SNAP funds, but chocolate chips for baking are allowed. Because Utah’s definition of “soft drink” is “any nonalcoholic beverage that is made with carbonated water,” carbonated lemonade is not allowed, but regular lemonade is allowed. Iowa’s waiver is particularly complex, with a slice of ready-to-eat cake potentially permitted depending on if a fork is provided in or out of the container. And in many states, super sweet drinks are allowed as long as they contain at least one drop of milk, and candy is allowed if it includes flour. 

“We're getting bogged down in how we define candy or processed food,” says Kate Bauer, director of the Institute for Food, Nutrition, and Health Policy at the University of Michigan. “The reality is that our general definitions of those things are OK, but the reason people aren't consuming the diets we would like for them to consume is food cost, scarcity, and stress, and we have done nothing to address those issues.”

Will some stores stop accepting SNAP cards?

To many like Dr. Bauer who study food security and nutrition, another worry is that new rules could curb access to nutrition assistance that is already being squeezed.  

Last year, Congress passed President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill that tightened the number of people eligible for SNAP by increasing work requirements for eligibility and making some noncitizens, such as refugees and asylees, ineligible. Since then, there have been SNAP participation declines in every state and a 10% drop nationally from the previous year. The USDA’s most recent SNAP participation numbers show just under 38 million people receive some level of SNAP benefits, which comes out to roughly 1 in 10 Americans – a decline from just about 1 in 8 Americans last year. 

Some experts worry that health wasn’t the true motivation behind the junk-food restrictions, but rather an effort to push participation rates down further. Americans may choose to forgo benefits that they qualify for because of confusion, and some retailers may rethink accepting SNAP benefits for the same reason. A September report from grocery and food industry groups suggests that these new restrictions could cost supermarkets hundreds of millions of dollars and convenience stores up to a billion in both upfront and ongoing costs, such as updating check-out technology to flag newly banned items. States will have their own SNAP rethinking to do, given that the OBBB has set up a cost-sharing system that will require states to pay a percentage of the program – for the first time ever – if their rate of improper SNAP payments is above 6%. 

Defending the waivers to the USDA, governors across the U.S. argue the SNAP program is intended to help Americans afford nutritious foods, not to subsidize unhealthy foods. 

“I think the program was always set up to tell Americans what to eat, which is healthy foods,” says Angela Rachidi, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has advocated for similar kinds of waivers for over a decade. “To me, it is a nutrition program.” 

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Though Dr. Leung agrees with the soda restrictions, she says restrictions alone likely won’t “move the needle on nutrition,” and would be more effective when paired with incentives. She points to the USDA’s SNAP Healthy Incentives Pilot in 2012, when SNAP users in county in southern Massachusetts received 30 extra cents in benefits for every SNAP dollar spent on fruits and vegetables and ended up buying far more of these foods than SNAP users outside this pilot program. Similarly, Dr. Bauer points to studies that showed how SNAP users bought healthier foods when SNAP benefits were expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“A key component of the program is that we treat SNAP shoppers like everyone else,” says Dr. Chrisinger. He notes that the SNAP Equal Treatment Rule requires retailers to treat SNAP shoppers the same prices and terms. “Adding these extra restrictions creates a risk of spotlighting people at checkout because of the choices they are making in a way that the rest of us just pass through.”

On a balmy Saturday morning, six volunteers for the Democratic Socialists of America gather at a Queens playground to knock on doors for congressional hopeful Claire Valdez. Before they spread out across South Ozone Park, Umit Muradi, one of the lead canvassers, cautions the group not to rap too loudly.

“Here are the rules. No cop knocks. We don’t want anyone thinking ICE is at their front door,” he says. “Persuasion is important, but this is also about getting out the vote.”

One year ago, a little-known Queens legislator and democratic socialist named Zohran Mamdani mobilized 50,000 volunteers across New York en route to one of the biggest political upsets in the city’s history. Now, six months into his term, Mayor Mamdani and his allies are looking to extend that winning streak and expand the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) agenda in Washington.

Why We Wrote This

Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory last year has aided the rise of far-left challengers in this week’s U.S. House primaries. With a potential House speaker also from New York City, the outcome could affect Democratic Party stances on key issues in Congress.

Ahead of Tuesday’s New York primary, Mr. Mamdani has endorsed three candidates for the U.S. House. They include Brad Lander, a former mayoral rival turned ally; Darializa Avila Chevalier, a community organizer and Ph.D. student from Harlem; and Ms. Valdez, a first-term state assemblymember from Queens. Mr. Lander, who is not a DSA member but has been embraced by progressives, and Ms. Chevalier are both trying to oust Democratic incumbents. Ms. Valdez is running for retiring 17-term Democratic congresswoman Nydia Velazquez’s seat; Ms. Velazquez has endorsed a different candidate in the race.

If they win – and if Democrats go on to retake control of the U.S. House – this trio of far-left candidates could help reshape the Democratic Party’s position on everything from taxes and housing to healthcare and foreign policy. Their success would reinforce a wider trend of such candidates gaining nationally in local and congressional elections. And it would also further raise the mayor’s profile as a national progressive leader and kingmaker.

Mr. Mamdani has been cutting television ads for his endorsees and making campaign appearances with them. He has also endorsed a number of DSA-aligned candidates for the State Legislature. At a get-out-the-vote rally for all three congressional candidates in Brooklyn on Thursday, alongside fellow democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Mr. Mamdani offered some blunt criticism of the Democratic establishment.

“For too long, our party has seen its job as managing decline rather than delivering for working people,” Mr. Mamdani said. “That old way of thinking will lose on Tuesday. ... The party of the past will not be what leads us into the future.”

Over the past year, the DSA has notched a string of major victories in America’s largest cities. Both New York and Seattle now have democratic socialist mayors, and Washington is poised to join them, after a democratic socialist won that city’s Democratic mayoral primary last week. In Los Angeles, the mayoral contest has come down to a two-person race between a relatively unpopular Democratic incumbent and a democratic socialist challenger.

Some strategists say the DSA’s urban takeover is just the beginning, and that Washington is the next logical target.

“Winning races in Congress is [part of] a national plan to create a real movement and take over the reins of governance both at the local and national level – and it’s working,” says Hank Sheinkopf, a New York-based political consultant. “Should they win New York seats, their influence will go up significantly since [Brooklyn Democrat and Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries could become speaker, and the pressure on him will be extreme.”

Mr. Jeffries has endorsed both House incumbents, and he made a campaign appearance in Manhattan earlier this month on behalf of veteran Rep. Adriano Espaillat. “The mayor and I have agreed to strongly disagree as it relates to these congressional races,” the Democratic leader said at a press conference.

Lander leads incumbent Goldman

Of the three Mamdani-backed challengers, Mr. Lander appears to have the best chance of winning. After serving as a New York City Council member for three terms and city comptroller for one term, he ran last year for mayor, ultimately finishing third in the primary. But his alliance and cross endorsement with Mr. Mamdani, which helped stymie former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in that race, earned goodwill from progressives across the city.

A month after Mr. Mamdani won, Mr. Lander pivoted to challenge Rep. Dan Goldman, a Manhattan Democrat who served as lead counsel in the first Trump impeachment inquiry. Even though Representative Goldman is an incumbent, Mr. Lander is well known in the Brooklyn part of the 10th Congressional District; a May Emerson College poll showed Mr. Lander leading in the district by 57% to 23%.

On many issues, the two men hold similar positions. Mr. Goldman has touted his visits to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center at 26 Federal Plaza and vowed to lead a new round of investigations into the Trump administration. Mr. Lander celebrated his not-guilty verdict after he was arrested last fall trying to visit the federal building’s holding cells, and he sued the Trump administration after the Federal Emergency Management Agency seized $80 million in city funds that were being used to house migrants.

A notable point of difference, however, is over Israel. Mr. Goldman, who was in Tel Aviv when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, has criticized Israel’s subsequent offensive in Gaza. But he avoids using terms like “genocide” and “apartheid,” marched in last month’s Israel Day parade, and has been endorsed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Mr. Lander, by contrast, accuses Israel of committing genocide in the Palestinian territory, skipped the parade, and has urged the United States to end aid for Israel’s defense systems.

“Solidarity reaches out across the world,” Mr. Lander said at the rally Thursday. “It reaches to Palestinian kids in Gaza who can’t go to school because our tax dollars paid for the bombs that destroyed them all.”

Contention between Chevalier, Espaillat

Israel is also a potent issue in the 13th Congressional District, where Ms. Chevalier has made Palestinian rights a centerpiece of her campaign. She has repeatedly condemned Israel as an apartheid state, and says she was spurred to run for office by frustration over Representative Espaillat’s inadequate response to Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil’s detainment last year.

The race has been unceasingly negative. Ms. Chevalier, a legal services investigator in Harlem, has ripped Mr. Espaillat over his support from AIPAC, whose super PAC has spent nearly $3 million on TV ads attacking her. She accuses him of putting corporate donors ahead of his voters.

“We deserve someone who will fight for us in the same way we fight for each other every single day,” she said at the Thursday rally. “You cannot take working people for granted, and you cannot outspend a movement whose time has come.”

Mr. Espaillat, who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, has cast Ms. Chevalier, a Columbia University graduate, and her DSA supporters as elitist gentrifiers trying “to impose their failed ideology” on a community of working-class people who don’t share their extreme beliefs. He and his allies have highlighted her participation in a rally in Times Square the day after Oct. 7, 2023, that appeared to celebrate the attack on Israel.

Ms. Chevalier has come under fire for social media posts in which she called for the abolition of prisons and police, and for the U.S. to “abolish the border,” declaring, “All deportation is wrong.” During a debate, she apologized for some posts, including one that used an expletive to attack former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Still, many voters appear to be in the mood for change. While the five-term congressman led Ms. Chevalier by 8 percentage points in a June Mercury Public Affairs poll, a Data for Progress internal poll showed her edging him by 4 points. Enrollment in the DSA’s Bronx and upper Manhattan chapters is up 179% since 2024, so the DSA might have the numbers to compete with Mr. Espaillat’s vaunted political machine.

A close race for Valdez

If there is one candidate the city’s democratic socialists seem most excited about, it is Ms. Valdez. The assemblymember and former union organizer had served less than a year in the State Legislature when Mr. Mamdani encouraged her to run.

Ms. Velazquez, the district’s retiring incumbent, has endorsed Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, pitting two progressive candidates against each other. (A third candidate, City Council member Julie Won, is considered a long shot.)

Few policy differences separate the top contenders. Ms. Valdez and Mr. Reynoso both call Israel’s assault against Palestinians a genocide. Both support the mayor’s proposal to redevelop Sunnyside Yards for affordable housing. Mr. Reynoso says he’d work with developers to build more market-rate and affordable units, while Ms. Valdez favors expanding government-run social housing and passing universal rent control.

Polls show a close race, with Ms. Valdez narrowly leading Mr. Reynoso, 23% to 21% with 43% undecided, in a May Emerson College poll. Ms. Valdez is being boosted by a super PAC run by Mamdani allies, which expects to spend $2 million on the contest, while Mr. Reynoso has the support of a political action committee funded by unions. In the final weekend, Mr. Mamdani accompanied Ms. Valdez to take selfies with voters and launch canvasses in several Brooklyn neighborhoods where he dominated at the polls last year.

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Ms. Valdez says the movement to fight for working New Yorkers is bigger than her own political ambitions.

“Whatever the outcome of these races are, we still have not won a dignified life for working people. That’s what we’re fighting for,” she says in an interview. “Winning this election won’t immediately abolish ICE; it won’t tax the rich; it won’t end the [Palestinian] genocide. But it will put people in place to actively organize towards that.”

On a balmy Saturday morning, six volunteers for the Democratic Socialists of America gather at a Queens playground to knock on doors for congressional hopeful Claire Valdez. Before they spread out across South Ozone Park, Umit Muradi, one of the lead canvassers, cautions the group not to rap too loudly.

“Here are the rules. No cop knocks. We don’t want anyone thinking ICE is at their front door,” he says. “Persuasion is important, but this is also about getting out the vote.”

One year ago, a little-known Queens legislator and democratic socialist named Zohran Mamdani mobilized 50,000 volunteers across New York en route to one of the biggest political upsets in the city’s history. Now, six months into his term, Mayor Mamdani and his allies are looking to extend that winning streak and expand the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) agenda in Washington.

Why We Wrote This

Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory last year has aided the rise of far-left challengers in this week’s U.S. House primaries. With a potential House speaker also from New York City, the outcome could affect Democratic Party stances on key issues in Congress.

Ahead of Tuesday’s New York primary, Mr. Mamdani has endorsed three candidates for the U.S. House. They include Brad Lander, a former mayoral rival turned ally; Darializa Avila Chevalier, a community organizer and Ph.D. student from Harlem; and Ms. Valdez, a first-term state assemblymember from Queens. Mr. Lander, who is not a DSA member but has been embraced by progressives, and Ms. Chevalier are both trying to oust Democratic incumbents. Ms. Valdez is running for retiring 17-term Democratic congresswoman Nydia Velazquez’s seat; Ms. Velazquez has endorsed a different candidate in the race.

If they win – and if Democrats go on to retake control of the U.S. House – this trio of far-left candidates could help reshape the Democratic Party’s position on everything from taxes and housing to healthcare and foreign policy. Their success would reinforce a wider trend of such candidates gaining nationally in local and congressional elections. And it would also further raise the mayor’s profile as a national progressive leader and kingmaker.

Mr. Mamdani has been cutting television ads for his endorsees and making campaign appearances with them. He has also endorsed a number of DSA-aligned candidates for the State Legislature. At a get-out-the-vote rally for all three congressional candidates in Brooklyn on Thursday, alongside fellow democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Mr. Mamdani offered some blunt criticism of the Democratic establishment.

“For too long, our party has seen its job as managing decline rather than delivering for working people,” Mr. Mamdani said. “That old way of thinking will lose on Tuesday. ... The party of the past will not be what leads us into the future.”

Over the past year, the DSA has notched a string of major victories in America’s largest cities. Both New York and Seattle now have democratic socialist mayors, and Washington is poised to join them, after a democratic socialist won that city’s Democratic mayoral primary last week. In Los Angeles, the mayoral contest has come down to a two-person race between a relatively unpopular Democratic incumbent and a democratic socialist challenger.

Some strategists say the DSA’s urban takeover is just the beginning, and that Washington is the next logical target.

“Winning races in Congress is [part of] a national plan to create a real movement and take over the reins of governance both at the local and national level – and it’s working,” says Hank Sheinkopf, a New York-based political consultant. “Should they win New York seats, their influence will go up significantly since [Brooklyn Democrat and Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries could become speaker, and the pressure on him will be extreme.”

Mr. Jeffries has endorsed both House incumbents, and he made a campaign appearance in Manhattan earlier this month on behalf of veteran Rep. Adriano Espaillat. “The mayor and I have agreed to strongly disagree as it relates to these congressional races,” the Democratic leader said at a press conference.

Lander leads incumbent Goldman

Of the three Mamdani-backed challengers, Mr. Lander appears to have the best chance of winning. After serving as a New York City Council member for three terms and city comptroller for one term, he ran last year for mayor, ultimately finishing third in the primary. But his alliance and cross endorsement with Mr. Mamdani, which helped stymie former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in that race, earned goodwill from progressives across the city.

A month after Mr. Mamdani won, Mr. Lander pivoted to challenge Rep. Dan Goldman, a Manhattan Democrat who served as lead counsel in the first Trump impeachment inquiry. Even though Representative Goldman is an incumbent, Mr. Lander is well known in the Brooklyn part of the 10th Congressional District; a May Emerson College poll showed Mr. Lander leading in the district by 57% to 23%.

On many issues, the two men hold similar positions. Mr. Goldman has touted his visits to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center at 26 Federal Plaza and vowed to lead a new round of investigations into the Trump administration. Mr. Lander celebrated his not-guilty verdict after he was arrested last fall trying to visit the federal building’s holding cells, and he sued the Trump administration after the Federal Emergency Management Agency seized $80 million in city funds that were being used to house migrants.

A notable point of difference, however, is over Israel. Mr. Goldman, who was in Tel Aviv when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, has criticized Israel’s subsequent offensive in Gaza. But he avoids using terms like “genocide” and “apartheid,” marched in last month’s Israel Day parade, and has been endorsed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Mr. Lander, by contrast, accuses Israel of committing genocide in the Palestinian territory, skipped the parade, and has urged the United States to end aid for Israel’s defense systems.

“Solidarity reaches out across the world,” Mr. Lander said at the rally Thursday. “It reaches to Palestinian kids in Gaza who can’t go to school because our tax dollars paid for the bombs that destroyed them all.”

Contention between Chevalier, Espaillat

Israel is also a potent issue in the 13th Congressional District, where Ms. Chevalier has made Palestinian rights a centerpiece of her campaign. She has repeatedly condemned Israel as an apartheid state, and says she was spurred to run for office by frustration over Representative Espaillat’s inadequate response to Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil’s detainment last year.

The race has been unceasingly negative. Ms. Chevalier, a legal services investigator in Harlem, has ripped Mr. Espaillat over his support from AIPAC, whose super PAC has spent nearly $3 million on TV ads attacking her. She accuses him of putting corporate donors ahead of his voters.

“We deserve someone who will fight for us in the same way we fight for each other every single day,” she said at the Thursday rally. “You cannot take working people for granted, and you cannot outspend a movement whose time has come.”

Mr. Espaillat, who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, has cast Ms. Chevalier, a Columbia University graduate, and her DSA supporters as elitist gentrifiers trying “to impose their failed ideology” on a community of working-class people who don’t share their extreme beliefs. He and his allies have highlighted her participation in a rally in Times Square the day after Oct. 7, 2023, that appeared to celebrate the attack on Israel.

Ms. Chevalier has come under fire for social media posts in which she called for the abolition of prisons and police, and for the U.S. to “abolish the border,” declaring, “All deportation is wrong.” During a debate, she apologized for some posts, including one that used an expletive to attack former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Still, many voters appear to be in the mood for change. While the five-term congressman led Ms. Chevalier by 8 percentage points in a June Mercury Public Affairs poll, a Data for Progress internal poll showed her edging him by 4 points. Enrollment in the DSA’s Bronx and upper Manhattan chapters is up 179% since 2024, so the DSA might have the numbers to compete with Mr. Espaillat’s vaunted political machine.

A close race for Valdez

If there is one candidate the city’s democratic socialists seem most excited about, it is Ms. Valdez. The assemblymember and former union organizer had served less than a year in the State Legislature when Mr. Mamdani encouraged her to run.

Ms. Velazquez, the district’s retiring incumbent, has endorsed Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, pitting two progressive candidates against each other. (A third candidate, City Council member Julie Won, is considered a long shot.)

Few policy differences separate the top contenders. Ms. Valdez and Mr. Reynoso both call Israel’s assault against Palestinians a genocide. Both support the mayor’s proposal to redevelop Sunnyside Yards for affordable housing. Mr. Reynoso says he’d work with developers to build more market-rate and affordable units, while Ms. Valdez favors expanding government-run social housing and passing universal rent control.

Polls show a close race, with Ms. Valdez narrowly leading Mr. Reynoso, 23% to 21% with 43% undecided, in a May Emerson College poll. Ms. Valdez is being boosted by a super PAC run by Mamdani allies, which expects to spend $2 million on the contest, while Mr. Reynoso has the support of a political action committee funded by unions. In the final weekend, Mr. Mamdani accompanied Ms. Valdez to take selfies with voters and launch canvasses in several Brooklyn neighborhoods where he dominated at the polls last year.

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Ms. Valdez says the movement to fight for working New Yorkers is bigger than her own political ambitions.

“Whatever the outcome of these races are, we still have not won a dignified life for working people. That’s what we’re fighting for,” she says in an interview. “Winning this election won’t immediately abolish ICE; it won’t tax the rich; it won’t end the [Palestinian] genocide. But it will put people in place to actively organize towards that.”

Worms in food. Aggressive guards. Healthcare out of reach. From Texas to New Jersey, allegations of poor detention conditions mount as a flood of funds to immigration enforcers arrives.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement scored a multibillion-dollar boost from Congress last week, ending a failed push for agency reforms by Democrats. The Secure America Act, signed into law on June 10, gives ICE funding for the rest of President Donald Trump’s term – more than $38 billion for costs such as personnel, transportation, and facility maintenance.

Those funds come after ICE received a historic windfall of $75 billion from Congress last year, with more than half that amount meant for detention. More than 60,000 people were held in ICE detention as of early April, the latest data available.

Why We Wrote This

As historically high funding flows to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, complaints about detention conditions are rising, too. Detainees, their advocates, and government watchdogs cite spoiled food, poor sanitation, and little access to healthcare.

Holding immigrants is key to the administration’s deportation push, but the agency says it isn’t meant as punishment. Federal officials say detention ensures noncitizens attend immigration court dates, and, if ordered deported, are easy to remove. Immigrant advocates counter that harsh conditions can coerce some detainees to choose deportation over a prolonged loss of freedom.

While independent federal investigators and detainee complaints continue to ring alarms throughout the country, a New Jersey facility, Delaney Hall, has become a flashpoint.

What’s happening at Delaney Hall?

The Trump administration reopened the Newark facility as an immigrant detention center last year. People protesting in solidarity with detainees have clashed with law enforcement outside the building, leading to more than 80 arrests over the last several weeks, The Associated Press reports.

The American Friends Service Committee, a social justice organization, has publicized allegations from detainees there who demand release. Those complaints include worm-ridden food, medical neglect, aggressive guards, and lack of necessities, such as toilet paper. A labor and hunger strike began in May.

Detainees “deserve to be heard and the public deserves answers,” Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill said in a statement last week after taking what she called a limited tour of the site. The New Jersey health commissioner has sued the facility’s operator in state court, accusing The GEO Group of barring full access for inspection.

The GEO Group, the for-profit company that operates the facility, did not respond to requests for comment. The current head of ICE is a former GEO Group executive.

Hunger-striking detainees can “go back to their country, get whatever food they want,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has previously said. “This isn’t Holiday Inn.”

As it denies claims of poor conditions at ICE sites nationally, the Trump administration has defended its use of Delaney Hall. Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, who toured the Newark facility on June 1, said he was impressed.

“Everything was clean. Everything was nice. Everything was safe,” the Republican congressman told NJ Spotlight News. He called the meals “nutritious.” A spokesperson for his office, Paxton Antonucci, said Mr. Van Drew notified authorities of his interest in visiting the day before he arrived.

Darius Reeves, a former ICE deportation officer in New York, recalls that Delaney Hall was the agency’s “worst facility” before it initially closed, with multiple problems that included “constant escapes” by detainees.

Some Democrats in Congress have called for Delaney Hall’s closure once again. Yet Mr. Reeves cautions that removing ICE facilities from cities that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement can mean more family separation across state lines. That’s because detainees are transferred to open beds farther away from home.

He saw that dynamic as an ICE field office director in Maryland, where state law bans state and local governments from immigrant detention contracts. Because of that law, “Our arrests were being sent out to Atlanta, New York, Pennsylvania,” says Mr. Reeves.

What have investigators found at other facilities?

Beyond Delaney Hall, reports released from federal watchdogs in June point to concerns at other ICE sites.

A Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General report from June 2 documents findings from an unannounced visit to a detention center in Louisiana. At the Winn Correctional Center, inspectors found lapses in sanitation, access to legal materials, and proper storage of perishable food. ICE concurred with the report’s recommendations, which included fixing leaking pipes, storing food at proper temperatures, and ensuring compliance with use-of-force standards.

Separately, the Government Accountability Office last week released an analysis of an ICE detention site in Texas that was an unusual collaboration with the U.S. Army. In addition to millions of wasted dollars because of poor planning last year, investigators found sanitation issues and lack of adequate healthcare at Camp East Montana near El Paso. And after a detainee died by use of force in January, the facility did not produce required reports to ICE, according to the GAO, and “evidence associated with the incident was missing or destroyed.”

ICE concurred with recommendations in the GAO report. The Pentagon agreed to identify lessons learned from its involvement at the site, but said its perspective was sidelined in the drafting of the report, claiming investigators relied too much on ICE’s perspective about the awarding of the contract.

Across 98 ICE facilities, use-of-force incidents by detention staff rose by 37% during Mr. Trump’s first year back in office, compared with the previous year, a Washington Post investigation found. A DHS spokesperson told the newspaper that ICE officers are “trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary” to de-escalate dangerous situations.

At least 18 detainees have died this year – on track to surpass the total from last year, AP reports. DHS counters that the death rate in custody is low, below 0.01%.

Meanwhile, ICE detention has lost a key oversight office.

What happened to an ICE detention watchdog?

In 2019, Congress created a watchdog within DHS to investigate misconduct and rights violations in immigrant detention. The Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman oversaw detention by ICE and by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The Trump administration has dismantled the office. DHS says Congress shut it down without renewing funding, though the department had also directed a reduction in workers.

“DHS remains committed to civil rights protections but must streamline oversight to remove roadblocks to enforcement,” an agency spokesperson said in an unsigned statement, adding that ombudsmen offices have “obstructed immigration enforcement” through bureaucracy.

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Immigrant advocates disagree. The closure of the detention oversight office has concerned Michelle Brané, who served as an ombudsman during the Biden administration.

There is a “purposeful deterioration of conditions under this administration ... to use as a pressure point for people to leave the country,” says Ms. Brané. “If you are depriving people of their liberty, we have a responsibility to keep them safe.”

Worms in food. Aggressive guards. Healthcare out of reach. From Texas to New Jersey, allegations of poor detention conditions mount as a flood of funds to immigration enforcers arrives.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement scored a multibillion-dollar boost from Congress last week, ending a failed push for agency reforms by Democrats. The Secure America Act, signed into law on June 10, gives ICE funding for the rest of President Donald Trump’s term – more than $38 billion for costs such as personnel, transportation, and facility maintenance.

Those funds come after ICE received a historic windfall of $75 billion from Congress last year, with more than half that amount meant for detention. More than 60,000 people were held in ICE detention as of early April, the latest data available.

Why We Wrote This

As historically high funding flows to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, complaints about detention conditions are rising, too. Detainees, their advocates, and government watchdogs cite spoiled food, poor sanitation, and little access to healthcare.

Holding immigrants is key to the administration’s deportation push, but the agency says it isn’t meant as punishment. Federal officials say detention ensures noncitizens attend immigration court dates, and, if ordered deported, are easy to remove. Immigrant advocates counter that harsh conditions can coerce some detainees to choose deportation over a prolonged loss of freedom.

While independent federal investigators and detainee complaints continue to ring alarms throughout the country, a New Jersey facility, Delaney Hall, has become a flashpoint.

What’s happening at Delaney Hall?

The Trump administration reopened the Newark facility as an immigrant detention center last year. People protesting in solidarity with detainees have clashed with law enforcement outside the building, leading to more than 80 arrests over the last several weeks, The Associated Press reports.

The American Friends Service Committee, a social justice organization, has publicized allegations from detainees there who demand release. Those complaints include worm-ridden food, medical neglect, aggressive guards, and lack of necessities, such as toilet paper. A labor and hunger strike began in May.

Detainees “deserve to be heard and the public deserves answers,” Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill said in a statement last week after taking what she called a limited tour of the site. The New Jersey health commissioner has sued the facility’s operator in state court, accusing The GEO Group of barring full access for inspection.

The GEO Group, the for-profit company that operates the facility, did not respond to requests for comment. The current head of ICE is a former GEO Group executive.

Hunger-striking detainees can “go back to their country, get whatever food they want,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has previously said. “This isn’t Holiday Inn.”

As it denies claims of poor conditions at ICE sites nationally, the Trump administration has defended its use of Delaney Hall. Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, who toured the Newark facility on June 1, said he was impressed.

“Everything was clean. Everything was nice. Everything was safe,” the Republican congressman told NJ Spotlight News. He called the meals “nutritious.” A spokesperson for his office, Paxton Antonucci, said Mr. Van Drew notified authorities of his interest in visiting the day before he arrived.

Darius Reeves, a former ICE deportation officer in New York, recalls that Delaney Hall was the agency’s “worst facility” before it initially closed, with multiple problems that included “constant escapes” by detainees.

Some Democrats in Congress have called for Delaney Hall’s closure once again. Yet Mr. Reeves cautions that removing ICE facilities from cities that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement can mean more family separation across state lines. That’s because detainees are transferred to open beds farther away from home.

He saw that dynamic as an ICE field office director in Maryland, where state law bans state and local governments from immigrant detention contracts. Because of that law, “Our arrests were being sent out to Atlanta, New York, Pennsylvania,” says Mr. Reeves.

What have investigators found at other facilities?

Beyond Delaney Hall, reports released from federal watchdogs in June point to concerns at other ICE sites.

A Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General report from June 2 documents findings from an unannounced visit to a detention center in Louisiana. At the Winn Correctional Center, inspectors found lapses in sanitation, access to legal materials, and proper storage of perishable food. ICE concurred with the report’s recommendations, which included fixing leaking pipes, storing food at proper temperatures, and ensuring compliance with use-of-force standards.

Separately, the Government Accountability Office last week released an analysis of an ICE detention site in Texas that was an unusual collaboration with the U.S. Army. In addition to millions of wasted dollars because of poor planning last year, investigators found sanitation issues and lack of adequate healthcare at Camp East Montana near El Paso. And after a detainee died by use of force in January, the facility did not produce required reports to ICE, according to the GAO, and “evidence associated with the incident was missing or destroyed.”

ICE concurred with recommendations in the GAO report. The Pentagon agreed to identify lessons learned from its involvement at the site, but said its perspective was sidelined in the drafting of the report, claiming investigators relied too much on ICE’s perspective about the awarding of the contract.

Across 98 ICE facilities, use-of-force incidents by detention staff rose by 37% during Mr. Trump’s first year back in office, compared with the previous year, a Washington Post investigation found. A DHS spokesperson told the newspaper that ICE officers are “trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary” to de-escalate dangerous situations.

At least 18 detainees have died this year – on track to surpass the total from last year, AP reports. DHS counters that the death rate in custody is low, below 0.01%.

Meanwhile, ICE detention has lost a key oversight office.

What happened to an ICE detention watchdog?

In 2019, Congress created a watchdog within DHS to investigate misconduct and rights violations in immigrant detention. The Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman oversaw detention by ICE and by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The Trump administration has dismantled the office. DHS says Congress shut it down without renewing funding, though the department had also directed a reduction in workers.

“DHS remains committed to civil rights protections but must streamline oversight to remove roadblocks to enforcement,” an agency spokesperson said in an unsigned statement, adding that ombudsmen offices have “obstructed immigration enforcement” through bureaucracy.

Deepen your worldview

with Monitor Highlights.

Already a subscriber? Log in to hide ads.

Immigrant advocates disagree. The closure of the detention oversight office has concerned Michelle Brané, who served as an ombudsman during the Biden administration.

There is a “purposeful deterioration of conditions under this administration ... to use as a pressure point for people to leave the country,” says Ms. Brané. “If you are depriving people of their liberty, we have a responsibility to keep them safe.”

You can’t call Coldwater a one-stoplight town because it doesn’t have one. But on Main Street after sunset, rows of headlights start to glow.

“Throw your hazards on, everybody!” a man yells in the dark to a gathering crowd in early June. Horns honk, lights blink, and the whooping and hollering start. Someone brings an American flag.

Joe Ceballos, a two-time mayor, is coming home after three weeks in detention several counties away. He is a Kansan in a town of ruby-red politics and amber waves of grain. But on paper, he is not American. That made it illegal for him to vote, as the state says he did many times.

Why We Wrote This

A former two-time Kansas mayor is facing deportation. Some supporters of President Donald Trump are wrestling with the implications of immigration enforcement that is broader, they say, than what they voted for or expected.

He pleaded guilty this spring to election-related state crimes and faced a fine but no jail – a relief to him and his supporters. Then things escalated: detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in May and the start of deportation proceedings.

Many locals defend the green-card holder from Mexico. They call his wrongful ballot-casting an honest mistake, outweighed by his hard work and heart. Barry Loveall, a retired pig farmer who came to greet “Joe,” says he wouldn’t care if his friend were from outer space.

“He’s not afraid to roll up his sleeves and jump in a ditch with you. ... He fixed my sewer pipe,” Mr. Loveall says. “Far as I’m concerned, best man I know.”

Since President Donald Trump returned to office, more and more Americans have learned that their neighbors are deportable. The government is rounding up far more than the murderers and rapists it said it would be targeting. Immigrants who have lived in the United States lawfully for years are among them.

Support for Mr. Trump here runs deep, in a county that he carried in 2024 with 83% of the vote. Many Trump supporters, including Mr. Ceballos, don’t necessarily see the former mayor’s case in conflict with their politics. No, this isn’t what they voted for, they say. Instead, those Republicans see Mr. Ceballos’ story as an exception to the rule and hope an immigration judge agrees.

Mr. Ceballos’ legal team is working to keep his green card and avoid deportation. Ironically, Kansas, a GOP stronghold, has led the charge against immigrants voting illegally, an effort earlier rebuked by federal courts. The Trump administration has amplified the real but statistically tiny concern. This month, the Department of Homeland Security called on ICE to pursue stiffer penalties – including deportation – because such voting “dilutes the votes of American citizens and undermines our democracy.”

So what happens when the “best man” you know is a rallying cry for your party’s base? And worse, could be expelled?

On Coldwater’s Main Street, a red pickup truck appears with Mr. Ceballos inside. A friend approaches with a “We Love You, Joe!!” sign as the horns and sirens swell.

A hand reaches out the truck window and waves.

Small town life

In the distance, wind turbines somersault in place. Closer in, pumpjacks nod at the earth, coaxing crude oil out. It’s been a bad year for wheat, thanks to fickle rain in south-central Kansas. A church marquee calls for harvest prayers. The loudest sound in Coldwater is the occasional grunt of semitrucks down U.S. 183, which splits the town of hundreds in half.

When the local paper was first printed in 1884, it called the county home to “some 1,000 honest, contented and happy people.”

In its inaugural edition, The Western Star wrote of “immigrants that daily flock” into Coldwater, “dusty and hungry looking.” The paper forecast their upward mobility, reckoning that those newcomers would, in a couple of years, own good farms. Then, their grandchildren would attend college and go on to “fill positions of honor and trust.”

As far as Mr. Ceballos can recall, he’s always been “Joe.”

Born José, he says his family brought him to the United States at age 4. His stepfather’s itinerant work meant a lot of moving around. In the 1980s, he says, a Texas ranching family that employed the teenage Mr. Ceballos brought him to Coldwater.

His senior photo still hangs in the high school, part of the class of 1991. His special ed teacher, Gail Boisseau, says he was placed in her class because of his gaps in formal learning, but quickly caught up. During one of her field trips to the county clerk’s office, an official encouraged him, then over 18, to register to vote. He says he did.

There’s a wrinkle to that story told around town. The current county clerk says her records show that the Republican first registered to vote several years later in April 1999. Regardless, Mr. Ceballos would have registered before a Kansas law, enacted in 2013, required proof of citizenship to register to vote. Federal courts later struck down that law after it halted more than 30,000 voter applications.

Mr. Ceballos has had a green card for 36 years, meaning he’s lived here lawfully all that time. He speaks with the regional twang and R’s that dip like wells.

In Coldwater, he became known for putting up American flags for Memorial Day. He also digs a huge hole in a field, fills it with mud, and lets trucks try – and fail – to traverse it. His “mud run” trophies from those events glint from a shelf in his garage.

Mr. Ceballos served on Coldwater’s city council and was elected mayor twice, the last time in 2025. The day after he won reelection, the Kansas attorney general announced felony charges against Mr. Ceballos: voting without being qualified and election perjury. In an affidavit, a state official alleged that, since 2006, Mr. Ceballos voted 25 times. He declined to comment on that accusation.

“At no point do I recall, when I got my green card, [anyone] giving me instructions on what I could or couldn’t do,” says Mr. Ceballos, who resigned last year. He says he believed that ID card gave him permission to vote. (Though he has previously said he voted more than once for Mr. Trump, he declined to comment on that for this story.)

Around the start of 2025, Mr. Ceballos had surgery after a fall and was told recovery could take months. With his green card up for renewal, he decided to apply for citizenship.

“Now that I have the time,” he recalls thinking. Permanent residents like him aren’t required to naturalize.

Asked during an official interview if he’d ever voted, Mr. Ceballos said yes.

Before a packed county courtroom in April, Mr. Ceballos pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of disorderly election conduct. He faced a $2,000 fine.

“The judge even clapped,” says his wife, Jayne Ceballos.

Relief was brief. After the close of his criminal case, immigration authorities called for Mr. Ceballos. He turned himself in to ICE in Wichita in May, then was transferred to a county jail.

It’s unclear how, if at all, Mr. Ceballos’ criminal history will factor into his case before federal immigration court. In the 1990s, Mr. Ceballos was convicted of two other state misdemeanors: battery and property damage, court records show. He declined to comment on those charges for this story.

Immigration judges weigh positive and negative factors when deciding whether people in Mr. Ceballos’ position should stay, says Paul Hunker, former chief counsel for ICE in Dallas.

Good behavior and community contributions can count, he says. The judge can also look at potential harm to family members and others if he’s removed.

“You don’t want to deport fine, upstanding people,” Mr. Hunker says. “That actually harms your community.”

Some Coldwater residents have offered donations and written letters of support for Mr. Ceballos, as they grapple with the local implications of their politics.

As Mr. Loveall, the former pig farmer, puts it: “I don’t know if they’re trying to make all Democrats out of us or what.”

A reckoning

Mr. Ceballos’ supporters say the man deserves administrative grace, as someone who embodies the American dream.

Waiting for his release from custody is hard for Ms. Ceballos. When they met in the 1990s, she recalls, he had probably just two pairs of jeans.

“He didn’t have anything. And now look at him,” she says with pride.

The retired nurse knew her husband had a green card; he had renewed it over time. Ms. Ceballos says she thought it was fine for him to vote because he had registered. She struggles to support what became an aggressive immigration crackdown over the past year.

“I think that ICE has gotten out of control,” says Ms. Ceballos in her living room. “I really do. Especially in the bigger cities. You know, shooting and beating people up, because they’re standing in their way.”

“I think those are extremes, though, that are really put out there in the media,” her son, Larry Woodrum, counters from across the room.

“I like the idea that they’re going to take criminals away ... not everyday people,” Ms. Ceballos says. “But it’s not how it works, I guess.”

As confidence in the president over immigration policy has dipped, the administration has scaled back high-profile street arrests. Yet while detentions and deportations have continued, Trump officials have hinted at exceptions that they’re willing to embrace, such as immigrants they say will benefit the nation economically or assimilate well.

Mr. Ceballos has “worked for everything he has,” says Paul Rickabaugh, a loan officer at a local bank. The former mayor sharpens Mr. Rickabaugh’s chainsaw.

“We all need to abide by our laws,” Mr. Rickabaugh says. “But I felt like Joe was a guy that didn’t understand that he was doing wrong.”

Everyone’s ignorant of something, says Mr. Woodrum, the rancher’s stepson. Offering himself as an example: He thought that, by Mr. Ceballos marrying his U.S. citizen mom, the man automatically became an American years ago.

A rare Democrat here, Ms. Boisseau, the former special ed teacher, says Mr. Ceballos’ saga has only entrenched her politics.

“I am not in favor of open borders, but I’m also not in favor of plucking people off the street,” she says. Not only is Mr. Ceballos here lawfully, but she adds, “He loves America more than most Americans.”

At the high school, Linda Basnett, a Republican, wrestles with envisioning what ideal immigration enforcement should be.

“You see these small children and these families come over here, because they want a better place to raise their kids, and I understand that,” says Ms. Basnett. “But I don’t know how much the United States can handle.”

As the school district’s secretary for four decades, Ms. Basnett has known Mr. Ceballos since he roamed her halls. “Maybe in this situation, it’s wrong to send him back.”

Mr. Ceballos is one of six electrical linemen locally employed. His absence has slowed operations, according to his boss, Michael Bushnell.

“I just figured Joe was one of us,” a U.S. citizen, says Mr. Bushnell. “In my mind, he is. But on paper, he’s not.”

Relief arrives

Some 200 miles away, Mr. Ceballos spent three weeks at the Chase County detention center as an ICE detainee. At one point, his housing unit held 30 other immigrants, he recalls. Some fellow detainees were glad to be deported, he says, “because they’ve been in there a while.”

Chase County has for years held immigrant detainees, who typically occupy the most beds. According to Mr. Ceballos, “the guards were awesome.”

Sheriff Jacob Welsh calls the treatment “Kansans taking care of your neighbor.” He’d rather that immigrants be held at his jail, he says, than shipped off to a “megafacility” where “they’re just a number.”

Mr. Ceballos’ legal saga has strained the family emotionally and financially. His wife says they sold a couple of trailers of cattle to pay for court costs.

Parker Woodrum, Mr. Woodrum’s son, took over feeding the cattle once his grandfather went to jail. The 15-year-old works for Mr. Ceballos, whom he likens to a best friend. Driving a truck, Parker rumbles toward the pasture with a hay bale in the back.

“I want to take over this ranch, if he ever passes it on,” says Parker, dark curls cushioning his cowboy hat. He also wants to become a lineman, “just like him.”

Parker says he didn’t know his grandfather was an immigrant until he saw a news story online. He thought “Joe” was short for Joseph.

With an old Folgers coffee jug, Parker scoops out grain for horses and whistles out to cows. Recent weeks have stressed the animals – even the dogs, Parker says. “They’re not used to being away from Joe.”

Relief comes in early June. An immigration judge approves Mr. Ceballos’ $3,000 bond. Three days later, he’s released.

Word gets out in Coldwater that night. Locals load up their trucks.

Homecoming

On Main Street, Mr. Ceballos wraps everyone he sees in hugs. Friends, neighbors, grandson Parker.

“I can’t believe it,” he says in a daze. His beard has grown thick. “All the people that are here to support me – it’s amazing.”

The next morning, down a dirt road on the edge of town, he’s catching up with family and friends inside his garage.

Mr. Ceballos, in a baseball cap, apologizes that he can’t answer all the questions, given his immigration case.

If he ever met President Trump, what would he say?

He pauses.

“I would definitely be respectful and shake his hand,” Mr. Ceballos says. “I don’t think I would confront him.”

In his view, the administration started off strong, “finding the bad guys.” Murderers, rapists, and drug dealers should be targeted, he says. But some actions have gotten out of hand.

“They’re actually detaining kids, detaining moms, and parents and stuff, and separating the families,” he says. “I really don’t agree with that.”

The thought of being sent to Mexico scares Mr. Ceballos. There, he wouldn’t know “what I can and can’t do.” Now in his 50s, the rancher says he has no family there. And his Spanish is rusty.

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“It’d be like sending an old man to Mars.”

For now, he sits in his garage, door open to a soft wind. Neighbors come for one more hug. A dog won’t leave his feet.

You can’t call Coldwater a one-stoplight town because it doesn’t have one. But on Main Street after sunset, rows of headlights start to glow.

“Throw your hazards on, everybody!” a man yells in the dark to a gathering crowd in early June. Horns honk, lights blink, and the whooping and hollering start. Someone brings an American flag.

Joe Ceballos, a two-time mayor, is coming home after three weeks in detention several counties away. He is a Kansan in a town of ruby-red politics and amber waves of grain. But on paper, he is not American. That made it illegal for him to vote, as the state says he did many times.

Why We Wrote This

A former two-time Kansas mayor is facing deportation. Some supporters of President Donald Trump are wrestling with the implications of immigration enforcement that is broader, they say, than what they voted for or expected.

He pleaded guilty this spring to election-related state crimes and faced a fine but no jail – a relief to him and his supporters. Then things escalated: detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in May and the start of deportation proceedings.

Many locals defend the green-card holder from Mexico. They call his wrongful ballot-casting an honest mistake, outweighed by his hard work and heart. Barry Loveall, a retired pig farmer who came to greet “Joe,” says he wouldn’t care if his friend were from outer space.

“He’s not afraid to roll up his sleeves and jump in a ditch with you. ... He fixed my sewer pipe,” Mr. Loveall says. “Far as I’m concerned, best man I know.”

Since President Donald Trump returned to office, more and more Americans have learned that their neighbors are deportable. The government is rounding up far more than the murderers and rapists it said it would be targeting. Immigrants who have lived in the United States lawfully for years are among them.

Support for Mr. Trump here runs deep, in a county that he carried in 2024 with 83% of the vote. Many Trump supporters, including Mr. Ceballos, don’t necessarily see the former mayor’s case in conflict with their politics. No, this isn’t what they voted for, they say. Instead, those Republicans see Mr. Ceballos’ story as an exception to the rule and hope an immigration judge agrees.

Mr. Ceballos’ legal team is working to keep his green card and avoid deportation. Ironically, Kansas, a GOP stronghold, has led the charge against immigrants voting illegally, an effort earlier rebuked by federal courts. The Trump administration has amplified the real but statistically tiny concern. This month, the Department of Homeland Security called on ICE to pursue stiffer penalties – including deportation – because such voting “dilutes the votes of American citizens and undermines our democracy.”

So what happens when the “best man” you know is a rallying cry for your party’s base? And worse, could be expelled?

On Coldwater’s Main Street, a red pickup truck appears with Mr. Ceballos inside. A friend approaches with a “We Love You, Joe!!” sign as the horns and sirens swell.

A hand reaches out the truck window and waves.

Small town life

In the distance, wind turbines somersault in place. Closer in, pumpjacks nod at the earth, coaxing crude oil out. It’s been a bad year for wheat, thanks to fickle rain in south-central Kansas. A church marquee calls for harvest prayers. The loudest sound in Coldwater is the occasional grunt of semitrucks down U.S. 183, which splits the town of hundreds in half.

When the local paper was first printed in 1884, it called the county home to “some 1,000 honest, contented and happy people.”

In its inaugural edition, The Western Star wrote of “immigrants that daily flock” into Coldwater, “dusty and hungry looking.” The paper forecast their upward mobility, reckoning that those newcomers would, in a couple of years, own good farms. Then, their grandchildren would attend college and go on to “fill positions of honor and trust.”

As far as Mr. Ceballos can recall, he’s always been “Joe.”

Born José, he says his family brought him to the United States at age 4. His stepfather’s itinerant work meant a lot of moving around. In the 1980s, he says, a Texas ranching family that employed the teenage Mr. Ceballos brought him to Coldwater.

His senior photo still hangs in the high school, part of the class of 1991. His special ed teacher, Gail Boisseau, says he was placed in her class because of his gaps in formal learning, but quickly caught up. During one of her field trips to the county clerk’s office, an official encouraged him, then over 18, to register to vote. He says he did.

There’s a wrinkle to that story told around town. The current county clerk says her records show that the Republican first registered to vote several years later in April 1999. Regardless, Mr. Ceballos would have registered before a Kansas law, enacted in 2013, required proof of citizenship to register to vote. Federal courts later struck down that law after it halted more than 30,000 voter applications.

Mr. Ceballos has had a green card for 36 years, meaning he’s lived here lawfully all that time. He speaks with the regional twang and R’s that dip like wells.

In Coldwater, he became known for putting up American flags for Memorial Day. He also digs a huge hole in a field, fills it with mud, and lets trucks try – and fail – to traverse it. His “mud run” trophies from those events glint from a shelf in his garage.

Mr. Ceballos served on Coldwater’s city council and was elected mayor twice, the last time in 2025. The day after he won reelection, the Kansas attorney general announced felony charges against Mr. Ceballos: voting without being qualified and election perjury. In an affidavit, a state official alleged that, since 2006, Mr. Ceballos voted 25 times. He declined to comment on that accusation.

“At no point do I recall, when I got my green card, [anyone] giving me instructions on what I could or couldn’t do,” says Mr. Ceballos, who resigned last year. He says he believed that ID card gave him permission to vote. (Though he has previously said he voted more than once for Mr. Trump, he declined to comment on that for this story.)

Around the start of 2025, Mr. Ceballos had surgery after a fall and was told recovery could take months. With his green card up for renewal, he decided to apply for citizenship.

“Now that I have the time,” he recalls thinking. Permanent residents like him aren’t required to naturalize.

Asked during an official interview if he’d ever voted, Mr. Ceballos said yes.

Before a packed county courtroom in April, Mr. Ceballos pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of disorderly election conduct. He faced a $2,000 fine.

“The judge even clapped,” says his wife, Jayne Ceballos.

Relief was brief. After the close of his criminal case, immigration authorities called for Mr. Ceballos. He turned himself in to ICE in Wichita in May, then was transferred to a county jail.

It’s unclear how, if at all, Mr. Ceballos’ criminal history will factor into his case before federal immigration court. In the 1990s, Mr. Ceballos was convicted of two other state misdemeanors: battery and property damage, court records show. He declined to comment on those charges for this story.

Immigration judges weigh positive and negative factors when deciding whether people in Mr. Ceballos’ position should stay, says Paul Hunker, former chief counsel for ICE in Dallas.

Good behavior and community contributions can count, he says. The judge can also look at potential harm to family members and others if he’s removed.

“You don’t want to deport fine, upstanding people,” Mr. Hunker says. “That actually harms your community.”

Some Coldwater residents have offered donations and written letters of support for Mr. Ceballos, as they grapple with the local implications of their politics.

As Mr. Loveall, the former pig farmer, puts it: “I don’t know if they’re trying to make all Democrats out of us or what.”

A reckoning

Mr. Ceballos’ supporters say the man deserves administrative grace, as someone who embodies the American dream.

Waiting for his release from custody is hard for Ms. Ceballos. When they met in the 1990s, she recalls, he had probably just two pairs of jeans.

“He didn’t have anything. And now look at him,” she says with pride.

The retired nurse knew her husband had a green card; he had renewed it over time. Ms. Ceballos says she thought it was fine for him to vote because he had registered. She struggles to support what became an aggressive immigration crackdown over the past year.

“I think that ICE has gotten out of control,” says Ms. Ceballos in her living room. “I really do. Especially in the bigger cities. You know, shooting and beating people up, because they’re standing in their way.”

“I think those are extremes, though, that are really put out there in the media,” her son, Larry Woodrum, counters from across the room.

“I like the idea that they’re going to take criminals away ... not everyday people,” Ms. Ceballos says. “But it’s not how it works, I guess.”

As confidence in the president over immigration policy has dipped, the administration has scaled back high-profile street arrests. Yet while detentions and deportations have continued, Trump officials have hinted at exceptions that they’re willing to embrace, such as immigrants they say will benefit the nation economically or assimilate well.

Mr. Ceballos has “worked for everything he has,” says Paul Rickabaugh, a loan officer at a local bank. The former mayor sharpens Mr. Rickabaugh’s chainsaw.

“We all need to abide by our laws,” Mr. Rickabaugh says. “But I felt like Joe was a guy that didn’t understand that he was doing wrong.”

Everyone’s ignorant of something, says Mr. Woodrum, the rancher’s stepson. Offering himself as an example: He thought that, by Mr. Ceballos marrying his U.S. citizen mom, the man automatically became an American years ago.

A rare Democrat here, Ms. Boisseau, the former special ed teacher, says Mr. Ceballos’ saga has only entrenched her politics.

“I am not in favor of open borders, but I’m also not in favor of plucking people off the street,” she says. Not only is Mr. Ceballos here lawfully, but she adds, “He loves America more than most Americans.”

At the high school, Linda Basnett, a Republican, wrestles with envisioning what ideal immigration enforcement should be.

“You see these small children and these families come over here, because they want a better place to raise their kids, and I understand that,” says Ms. Basnett. “But I don’t know how much the United States can handle.”

As the school district’s secretary for four decades, Ms. Basnett has known Mr. Ceballos since he roamed her halls. “Maybe in this situation, it’s wrong to send him back.”

Mr. Ceballos is one of six electrical linemen locally employed. His absence has slowed operations, according to his boss, Michael Bushnell.

“I just figured Joe was one of us,” a U.S. citizen, says Mr. Bushnell. “In my mind, he is. But on paper, he’s not.”

Relief arrives

Some 200 miles away, Mr. Ceballos spent three weeks at the Chase County detention center as an ICE detainee. At one point, his housing unit held 30 other immigrants, he recalls. Some fellow detainees were glad to be deported, he says, “because they’ve been in there a while.”

Chase County has for years held immigrant detainees, who typically occupy the most beds. According to Mr. Ceballos, “the guards were awesome.”

Sheriff Jacob Welsh calls the treatment “Kansans taking care of your neighbor.” He’d rather that immigrants be held at his jail, he says, than shipped off to a “megafacility” where “they’re just a number.”

Mr. Ceballos’ legal saga has strained the family emotionally and financially. His wife says they sold a couple of trailers of cattle to pay for court costs.

Parker Woodrum, Mr. Woodrum’s son, took over feeding the cattle once his grandfather went to jail. The 15-year-old works for Mr. Ceballos, whom he likens to a best friend. Driving a truck, Parker rumbles toward the pasture with a hay bale in the back.

“I want to take over this ranch, if he ever passes it on,” says Parker, dark curls cushioning his cowboy hat. He also wants to become a lineman, “just like him.”

Parker says he didn’t know his grandfather was an immigrant until he saw a news story online. He thought “Joe” was short for Joseph.

With an old Folgers coffee jug, Parker scoops out grain for horses and whistles out to cows. Recent weeks have stressed the animals – even the dogs, Parker says. “They’re not used to being away from Joe.”

Relief comes in early June. An immigration judge approves Mr. Ceballos’ $3,000 bond. Three days later, he’s released.

Word gets out in Coldwater that night. Locals load up their trucks.

Homecoming

On Main Street, Mr. Ceballos wraps everyone he sees in hugs. Friends, neighbors, grandson Parker.

“I can’t believe it,” he says in a daze. His beard has grown thick. “All the people that are here to support me – it’s amazing.”

The next morning, down a dirt road on the edge of town, he’s catching up with family and friends inside his garage.

Mr. Ceballos, in a baseball cap, apologizes that he can’t answer all the questions, given his immigration case.

If he ever met President Trump, what would he say?

He pauses.

“I would definitely be respectful and shake his hand,” Mr. Ceballos says. “I don’t think I would confront him.”

In his view, the administration started off strong, “finding the bad guys.” Murderers, rapists, and drug dealers should be targeted, he says. But some actions have gotten out of hand.

“They’re actually detaining kids, detaining moms, and parents and stuff, and separating the families,” he says. “I really don’t agree with that.”

The thought of being sent to Mexico scares Mr. Ceballos. There, he wouldn’t know “what I can and can’t do.” Now in his 50s, the rancher says he has no family there. And his Spanish is rusty.

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“It’d be like sending an old man to Mars.”

For now, he sits in his garage, door open to a soft wind. Neighbors come for one more hug. A dog won’t leave his feet.

Preparations to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America’s independence, from small-town parades to museum exhibitions and oral-history projects, have been in the works for years. But to many Americans tuning in now, the impression is of a last-minute scramble to mount a semiquincentennial stamped by the showmanship and preferences of President Donald Trump.

In recent weeks, a Trump-backed group has announced, then canceled, a series of concerts on the National Mall after several artists dropped out. Contractors are building booths for a fair on the Mall that is supposed to invoke the grandeur of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair but has yet to generate buzz.

The most visible symbol of a major celebration in Washington is a giant circular lighting rig erected on the South Lawn of the White House. On Sunday, which is Flag Day and Mr. Trump’s 80th birthday, it will illuminate an eight-sided cage for a scheduled night of bouts organized by the Ultimate Fighting Championship before an invited audience of mostly military personnel.

Why We Wrote This

On Sunday, the White House will host mixed martial arts fights – one in a series of 250th anniversary events that so far haven’t generated broad excitement or unity. Some Americans are already seeing the U.S. semiquincentennial as a missed opportunity.

UFC has built a loyal and profitable audience for mixed martial arts. But a recent Reuters-Ipsos poll found only 16% of adults considered it appropriate to hold UFC fights at the White House. Even among Republicans, only 31% said it was appropriate.

Many celebratory events this summer could still prove unifying. Many states and localities will be hosting their own events to bring people together. There’s also the men’s soccer World Cup that the United States is jointly hosting with Mexico and Canada over the next month, which will offer a largely politics-free diversion. And against a backdrop of partisan rancor, economic uncertainty, and war in the Middle East, celebrating America’s 250th in a way that pleased everyone was perhaps always a tall order.

Standing outside the Smithsonian Metro station near the National Mall, Georgia resident Pete Nelson says he hadn’t been thinking about the 250th anniversary until just a few days ago, while on a trip to Manhattan with his 12-year-old son, Dale. The two of them visited the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, which was America’s most active immigration station in the early 1900s.

“To see what all the immigrants went through coming into this country originally, and then listening to what we kind of complain about today – like, it’s slightly irrelevant,” he says. The best way to celebrate the 250th, he offers, is to “try to learn as much of the history as you can.”

A flotilla of ships

When the U.S. celebrated its bicentennial in 1976, the signature event was a flotilla of tall ships that sailed into New York Harbor, passing a newly refurbished Statue of Liberty. Operation Sail featured ships from 34 countries, including an Italian Navy sailboat – the Amerigo Vespucci – named for the explorer from whose name America is derived. An estimated 6 million people watched the maritime parade. (The same nonprofit organizers are mounting another flotilla of military ships next month in New York and New Jersey.)

Back then, the nation also felt fractious, stressed, and war-weary, says Marc Stein, a historian at San Francisco State University and author of “Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s.” Crime was up. Energy prices were high. New York City, the flotilla’s host, had become a byword for urban dysfunction and debt. Some questioned whether it was even safe for Operation Sail.

President Gerald Ford, who had assumed office in 1974 after Richard Nixon resigned over Watergate, was among those who “hoped to use the bicentennial to ‘turn the page’ and ‘begin a new chapter’ with a patriotic and unifying celebration,” says Professor Stein via email. They largely succeeded, and many still remember the parties and parades held across the country.

This year, Charleston, South Carolina, is pulling out all the stops for the 250th: a peninsula-wide fireworks display on the Fourth of July will cap an evening of music, speeches, and cultural performances. It’s one of five host cities for “America’s Block Party,” a coast-to-coast celebration that kicks off in New York on the night of July 3. South Carolina has even issued a new license plate that proclaims “Where the Revolutionary War Was Won.”

Tom Bolling, a retired tech executive who lives in Charleston, remembers the spirit of 1976. He was studying in Paris, where he attended a bicentennial concert by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. As he reflects on that memory and the global image of America today, he starts to choke up.

“The rest of the world at that time looked at this 200-year-old republic and said what a wonder it was,” he says. “That’s not the sentiment today. Now, it’s a big bully.”

Dueling commemorative committees

Some fault Mr. Trump both for politicizing the anniversary and creating confusion by setting up an organization, Freedom 250, that is operating separately from the bipartisan commission Congress created in 2016 to oversee the commemorations. The congressionally appointed entity, known as the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, had fallen into disarray and bickering even before Mr. Trump’s return to the White House – reflecting the broader challenge of finding common ground in a divided country, whose citizens have grown distrustful of one another. Overcoming that distrust to retell a national story that ties the revolutionary spirit of 1776 to the present and future would challenge any political leader.

Throughout his career in politics, Mr. Trump has evinced relatively little interest either in historical narratives or lofty unifying rhetoric, in contrast to previous presidents who leaned into set-piece oratory. Mr. Trump has “a nonchalant and shifting relation” to the past, writes Yale historian Samuel Moyn. “He is a nationalist with little romantic investment in those who first launched the nation; to the extent that he’s nostalgic, it seems to be for the 1950s or the 1890s – not the 1770s.”

Mina Dixon hadn’t followed the 250th buildup in Washington, which she visited this week as a tourist, though she plans to attend some concerts in her home city of Philadelphia. But when she tried to take a photograph of the White House, the UFC arena on the South Lawn got in the way, much to her irritation. “I think it’s a waste of money,” she says. “We’re in Iran, and we’ve got a fight at the White House.” (According to organizers, the UFC is covering the $60 million-plus cost to stage the event.)

In addition to the UFC event, Freedom 250 is organizing a Grand Prix race in Washington in August. Initiatives outside the Beltway include the deployment of six mobile museums, or “Freedom Trucks,” that are crossing the country with a patriotic version of the nation’s founding that emphasizes its “Judeo-Christian” roots. The museums are a collaboration with a conservative media organization and Hillsdale College, whose leadership is close to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump has criticized the Smithsonian Institution and other cultural organizations that, in his telling, downplay America’s triumphs while magnifying negative chapters of its history. Over the past year, his administration has ordered national parks to remove offending exhibits, including a display at George Washington’s former residence in Philadelphia about the lives of Black people he enslaved. A federal court ordered the restoration of the exhibit; the administration is appealing.

On the National Mall, tall fences and gates currently direct visitors away from the central grassy strip where the Great American State Fair is under construction. All 50 states and several overseas territories have been allocated space to build temporary booths, though several mostly Democratic-run states have already declined to participate, citing costs and logistics. Piles of wood and massive boxes are stacked high. On a nearby building, a large banner proclaims “250 years of freedom,” flanked by images of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

Mark and Allison Karnes, who are checking out the activity on the Mall while visiting their daughter in Washington, say they’ll be back home barbecuing in Muskegon, Michigan, on the Fourth of July. To them, the Trump presidency has made the 250th anniversary feel anything but uplifting.

“It’s so political instead of just a celebration of joy,” says Ms. Karnes. “We need to be celebrating our country and not a political agenda.”

Trust in the system

While dark clouds hovered over 1976’s bicentennial, one key difference is that the public back then was upbeat about its ability to weather the storm, says Kevin Boyle, a historian at Northwestern University. Instead of feeling defeated by the country’s setbacks, including its retreat from Vietnam and the revelations about the Nixon presidency, many believed that America was uniquely capable of overcoming them.

In a Gallup poll taken in 1976, 4 out of 5 respondents said they had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the U.S. system to handle its political, social, and economic problems. Another poll found that 77% thought America had lived up to the ideals of the Founding Fathers. This confidence made the divisions of 1976 seem less insurmountable, because voters felt that “the system actually worked in a way they just don’t feel anymore,” says Professor Boyle.

It wasn’t all clear sailing: The official bicentennial was protested by left-leaning groups who organized their own marches and rallies. Many Americans “were painfully aware of the gaps between the ideals [of freedom] that were being celebrated ... and the realities of the past and present,” says Professor Stein.

Similar gaps loom today for Joan Davis-Wright, a Black veteran and retired high school history teacher who was on the National Mall this week. She doesn’t feel like celebrating the 250th anniversary under a president who she says is undermining the Constitution by weakening voting rights, pushing partisan redistricting, and removing memorials “to people of color that have fought in every war since we started as a nation.”

“We’re supposed to come together and love everybody [for the 250th],” she says, “and he’s just not showing love. I think it’s all about him.”

At Charleston Harbor’s Battery, where cannons still point seaward, Ray Wright, a road builder, has three rods in the water, baited with shrimp. “Birthday?” he asks when quizzed about America’s 250th. “What birthday?”

He hasn’t paid attention to the anniversary, mostly because U.S. history doesn’t interest him. But also because “It feels like that’s someone else’s history,” says Mr. Wright, who is Black.

Deepen your worldview

with Monitor Highlights.

Already a subscriber? Log in to hide ads.

He’ll likely be on hand for the fireworks on the Fourth, though, if only because they’ll light up the night above his fishing spot at the Battery.

Simon Montlake reported from Boston, Caitlin Babcock from Washington, and Patrik Jonsson from Charleston, South Carolina.

Preparations to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America’s independence, from small-town parades to museum exhibitions and oral-history projects, have been in the works for years. But to many Americans tuning in now, the impression is of a last-minute scramble to mount a semiquincentennial stamped by the showmanship and preferences of President Donald Trump.

In recent weeks, a Trump-backed group has announced, then canceled, a series of concerts on the National Mall after several artists dropped out. Contractors are building booths for a fair on the Mall that is supposed to invoke the grandeur of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair but has yet to generate buzz.

The most visible symbol of a major celebration in Washington is a giant circular lighting rig erected on the South Lawn of the White House. On Sunday, which is Flag Day and Mr. Trump’s 80th birthday, it will illuminate an eight-sided cage for a scheduled night of bouts organized by the Ultimate Fighting Championship before an invited audience of mostly military personnel.

Why We Wrote This

On Sunday, the White House will host mixed martial arts fights – one in a series of 250th anniversary events that so far haven’t generated broad excitement or unity. Some Americans are already seeing the U.S. semiquincentennial as a missed opportunity.

UFC has built a loyal and profitable audience for mixed martial arts. But a recent Reuters-Ipsos poll found only 16% of adults considered it appropriate to hold UFC fights at the White House. Even among Republicans, only 31% said it was appropriate.

Many celebratory events this summer could still prove unifying. Many states and localities will be hosting their own events to bring people together. There’s also the men’s soccer World Cup that the United States is jointly hosting with Mexico and Canada over the next month, which will offer a largely politics-free diversion. And against a backdrop of partisan rancor, economic uncertainty, and war in the Middle East, celebrating America’s 250th in a way that pleased everyone was perhaps always a tall order.

Standing outside the Smithsonian Metro station near the National Mall, Georgia resident Pete Nelson says he hadn’t been thinking about the 250th anniversary until just a few days ago, while on a trip to Manhattan with his 12-year-old son, Dale. The two of them visited the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, which was America’s most active immigration station in the early 1900s.

“To see what all the immigrants went through coming into this country originally, and then listening to what we kind of complain about today – like, it’s slightly irrelevant,” he says. The best way to celebrate the 250th, he offers, is to “try to learn as much of the history as you can.”

A flotilla of ships

When the U.S. celebrated its bicentennial in 1976, the signature event was a flotilla of tall ships that sailed into New York Harbor, passing a newly refurbished Statue of Liberty. Operation Sail featured ships from 34 countries, including an Italian Navy sailboat – the Amerigo Vespucci – named for the explorer from whose name America is derived. An estimated 6 million people watched the maritime parade. (The same nonprofit organizers are mounting another flotilla of military ships next month in New York and New Jersey.)

Back then, the nation also felt fractious, stressed, and war-weary, says Marc Stein, a historian at San Francisco State University and author of “Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s.” Crime was up. Energy prices were high. New York City, the flotilla’s host, had become a byword for urban dysfunction and debt. Some questioned whether it was even safe for Operation Sail.

President Gerald Ford, who had assumed office in 1974 after Richard Nixon resigned over Watergate, was among those who “hoped to use the bicentennial to ‘turn the page’ and ‘begin a new chapter’ with a patriotic and unifying celebration,” says Professor Stein via email. They largely succeeded, and many still remember the parties and parades held across the country.

This year, Charleston, South Carolina, is pulling out all the stops for the 250th: a peninsula-wide fireworks display on the Fourth of July will cap an evening of music, speeches, and cultural performances. It’s one of five host cities for “America’s Block Party,” a coast-to-coast celebration that kicks off in New York on the night of July 3. South Carolina has even issued a new license plate that proclaims “Where the Revolutionary War Was Won.”

Tom Bolling, a retired tech executive who lives in Charleston, remembers the spirit of 1976. He was studying in Paris, where he attended a bicentennial concert by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. As he reflects on that memory and the global image of America today, he starts to choke up.

“The rest of the world at that time looked at this 200-year-old republic and said what a wonder it was,” he says. “That’s not the sentiment today. Now, it’s a big bully.”

Dueling commemorative committees

Some fault Mr. Trump both for politicizing the anniversary and creating confusion by setting up an organization, Freedom 250, that is operating separately from the bipartisan commission Congress created in 2016 to oversee the commemorations. The congressionally appointed entity, known as the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, had fallen into disarray and bickering even before Mr. Trump’s return to the White House – reflecting the broader challenge of finding common ground in a divided country, whose citizens have grown distrustful of one another. Overcoming that distrust to retell a national story that ties the revolutionary spirit of 1776 to the present and future would challenge any political leader.

Throughout his career in politics, Mr. Trump has evinced relatively little interest either in historical narratives or lofty unifying rhetoric, in contrast to previous presidents who leaned into set-piece oratory. Mr. Trump has “a nonchalant and shifting relation” to the past, writes Yale historian Samuel Moyn. “He is a nationalist with little romantic investment in those who first launched the nation; to the extent that he’s nostalgic, it seems to be for the 1950s or the 1890s – not the 1770s.”

Mina Dixon hadn’t followed the 250th buildup in Washington, which she visited this week as a tourist, though she plans to attend some concerts in her home city of Philadelphia. But when she tried to take a photograph of the White House, the UFC arena on the South Lawn got in the way, much to her irritation. “I think it’s a waste of money,” she says. “We’re in Iran, and we’ve got a fight at the White House.” (According to organizers, the UFC is covering the $60 million-plus cost to stage the event.)

In addition to the UFC event, Freedom 250 is organizing a Grand Prix race in Washington in August. Initiatives outside the Beltway include the deployment of six mobile museums, or “Freedom Trucks,” that are crossing the country with a patriotic version of the nation’s founding that emphasizes its “Judeo-Christian” roots. The museums are a collaboration with a conservative media organization and Hillsdale College, whose leadership is close to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump has criticized the Smithsonian Institution and other cultural organizations that, in his telling, downplay America’s triumphs while magnifying negative chapters of its history. Over the past year, his administration has ordered national parks to remove offending exhibits, including a display at George Washington’s former residence in Philadelphia about the lives of Black people he enslaved. A federal court ordered the restoration of the exhibit; the administration is appealing.

On the National Mall, tall fences and gates currently direct visitors away from the central grassy strip where the Great American State Fair is under construction. All 50 states and several overseas territories have been allocated space to build temporary booths, though several mostly Democratic-run states have already declined to participate, citing costs and logistics. Piles of wood and massive boxes are stacked high. On a nearby building, a large banner proclaims “250 years of freedom,” flanked by images of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

Mark and Allison Karnes, who are checking out the activity on the Mall while visiting their daughter in Washington, say they’ll be back home barbecuing in Muskegon, Michigan, on the Fourth of July. To them, the Trump presidency has made the 250th anniversary feel anything but uplifting.

“It’s so political instead of just a celebration of joy,” says Ms. Karnes. “We need to be celebrating our country and not a political agenda.”

Trust in the system

While dark clouds hovered over 1976’s bicentennial, one key difference is that the public back then was upbeat about its ability to weather the storm, says Kevin Boyle, a historian at Northwestern University. Instead of feeling defeated by the country’s setbacks, including its retreat from Vietnam and the revelations about the Nixon presidency, many believed that America was uniquely capable of overcoming them.

In a Gallup poll taken in 1976, 4 out of 5 respondents said they had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the U.S. system to handle its political, social, and economic problems. Another poll found that 77% thought America had lived up to the ideals of the Founding Fathers. This confidence made the divisions of 1976 seem less insurmountable, because voters felt that “the system actually worked in a way they just don’t feel anymore,” says Professor Boyle.

It wasn’t all clear sailing: The official bicentennial was protested by left-leaning groups who organized their own marches and rallies. Many Americans “were painfully aware of the gaps between the ideals [of freedom] that were being celebrated ... and the realities of the past and present,” says Professor Stein.

Similar gaps loom today for Joan Davis-Wright, a Black veteran and retired high school history teacher who was on the National Mall this week. She doesn’t feel like celebrating the 250th anniversary under a president who she says is undermining the Constitution by weakening voting rights, pushing partisan redistricting, and removing memorials “to people of color that have fought in every war since we started as a nation.”

“We’re supposed to come together and love everybody [for the 250th],” she says, “and he’s just not showing love. I think it’s all about him.”

At Charleston Harbor’s Battery, where cannons still point seaward, Ray Wright, a road builder, has three rods in the water, baited with shrimp. “Birthday?” he asks when quizzed about America’s 250th. “What birthday?”

He hasn’t paid attention to the anniversary, mostly because U.S. history doesn’t interest him. But also because “It feels like that’s someone else’s history,” says Mr. Wright, who is Black.

Deepen your worldview

with Monitor Highlights.

Already a subscriber? Log in to hide ads.

He’ll likely be on hand for the fireworks on the Fourth, though, if only because they’ll light up the night above his fishing spot at the Battery.

Simon Montlake reported from Boston, Caitlin Babcock from Washington, and Patrik Jonsson from Charleston, South Carolina.