‘Big, beautiful bill’ was top GOP achievement. Now it’s campaign fodder for Democrats.
About a year ago, the White House touted its One Big Beautiful Bill Act as the “biggest legislative win” of President Donald Trump’s second term.
The bill, commonly referred to as the OBBBA, which primarily combined an extension of the 2017 tax cuts and some new tax breaks with cuts to programs such as Medicaid and food stamps, is the most significant piece of legislation this administration has passed. As recently as June, a news release by Republican House Minority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota touted the bill as “the single-greatest victory for working families in history!”
The bill figures to play a key role in this fall’s pivotal contest to control Congress. But even some Republicans say what should have been the party’s major accomplishment is looking more like a liability ahead of November’s midterms. With Democrats predicted to win a majority in the House and possibly in the Senate, voters are hearing two very different descriptions of the legislation that’s affected millions of Americans. Democrats are hammering the healthcare cuts on the campaign trail. Republicans focus on the tax relief.
Why We Wrote This
Political parties usually tout major legislative wins as reasons why voters should stick with them at election time. This year, Republicans are fielding public skepticism about President Trump’s signature bill, and Democrats are using it to craft their own message.
Even there, the GOP might be losing the messaging war, as Democrats have been highlighting that the tax cuts were larger for high-income than for low-income households. Jay Townsend, a Republican consultant who worked in four presidential campaigns but is not involved in any midterm campaigns this cycle, hears people saying that the bill’s tax cuts “‘did not help me, it helped rich people.’”
Many of the bill’s most controversial provisions – such as work requirements for people receiving Medicaid – won’t go into effect until after the midterms. Democrats accused Republicans of delaying those changes to avoid the political fallout.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP/File
But there are signs that some of that political fallout is already happening. A Politico survey in July found that nearly 1 in 3 Americans say the law has made their financial situation worse, and a poll from the same month by the left-leaning Navigator Research found that nearly half say it is making their costs go up. The law is estimated to reduce federal Medicaid spending over the next decade by nearly $1 trillion, and a handful of rural clinics have already shut down, citing future cuts. Democrats say those closures, alongside spiking healthcare premiums, have given their candidates a strong issue to use against Republicans on the campaign trail.
“From what I can tell, nearly every Democratic challenger is using the [healthcare] cuts against Republican incumbents, and in most cases with significant effect,” says Geoff Garin, the president of Hart Research, a Democratic research and polling organization. “There’s very little [Republicans] can do at this point to mitigate the damage.”
Medicaid cuts sway voters
Republicans passed the bill in July 2025 without Democratic support. It extended tax cuts passed during Mr. Trump’s first term in 2017, and added temporary tax deductions for groups such as seniors and workers receiving tips. Republicans such as Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa called it a “recipe for economic success.”
On the campaign trail, many Republicans are touting the bill’s benefits – labeling Democrats as the party that rejected tax cuts. Sometimes, the candidates point to the bill; sometimes, to specific provisions within it. Rep. Darin LaHood of Illinois recently mentioned a barber who is benefiting from tax relief on tips – but he also credited the “tax bill” broadly with helping businesses across his district.
“The Republican Party has a very clear difference for America, and that is: Always lower taxes, always American workers first,” Rep. Brian Mast of Florida told CNBC earlier this month.
But even as Republicans paint them as would-be tax hikers, Democrats have fastened on to a different part of the bill: changes made to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The OBBBA set new work requirements for people to receive Medicaid, cut federal help for states that expanded the program, and ended eligibility for some legal immigrants. Meanwhile, SNAP enrollment dropped by 11% between July 2025 and April 2026 after the law narrowed exemptions and raised the work requirement age.
Americans can expect to see a lot of ads about the Medicaid cuts leading up to the midterms, says Mr. Garin.
“Medicaid? Gutted,” says a May video ad run by Democratic Rep. Greg Landsman of Ohio against his opponent Eric Conroy, who is not a member of Congress but has expressed support for the OBBBA.
Paul Weaver/Sipa USA/AP
Republicans are pushing back, saying the cuts are helping the nation’s fiscal position by eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse,” by tightening eligibility and closing what they call loopholes in how states share costs.
Still, the party’s messaging has downplayed the Medicaid provisions. Instead, Republicans emphasize the tax changes, which saved American taxpayers an average of just over $2,200 per filer, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. The Treasury Department says more than 53 million taxpayers claimed things like a new tips deduction and an enhanced deduction for seniors.
But Mr. Garin says that many voters are being hit by the loss of enhanced healthcare subsidies and fear losing their health insurance altogether. Those subsidies expired at the end of 2025 and are not directly related to the OBBBA, though Republicans could have used the bill to pass an extension. Democrats shut down the government last year over the issue, but eventually agreed to reopen it without winning any concessions.
Messaging challenges
The bill has been controversial from the start. At the time of the OBBBA’s passage, it faced widespread criticism from Democrats. A July 2025 Quinnipiac poll found that 44% of Americans thought the bill would hurt rather than help them personally.
The same month, longtime GOP strategist Karl Rove predicted on Fox News that the bill could pose problems for his party in the next round of elections.
“I think it'll have a huge impact on 2026, because, remember, as these changes, particularly the Medicaid changes, come into effect, they’re going to have, people are going to be losing their coverage,” said Mr. Rove.
Just weeks after the bill’s passage, President Trump and congressional Republicans tried to rebrand it, pivoting from the “great, big, beautiful” bill and instead calling it the “Working Families Tax Cuts Act.”
While voters might hold more negative than positive views of the legislation, failure to extend the tax cuts could have posed its own political challenge for Republicans. Polls also show widespread confusion about what’s actually in the bill. In the July Politico poll, about 2 in 5 voters said they had heard of the law but couldn’t explain its features.
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In a separate survey by Winning the Issues, part of the GOP-aligned Winston Group, almost half of U.S. voters did not think the bill prevented a tax increase on them and their families. That was a key part of Republican messaging as they campaigned to pass the bill last year.
“We’ve seen some Republicans run ads calling this essentially a tax cut, but that’s not how people feel,” says Julie Alderman Boudreau, the director of research at left-leaning Navigator Research. “This [bill] is a huge liability ... for any Republican on the ballot in 2026.”
‘Big, beautiful bill’ was top GOP achievement. Now it’s campaign fodder for Democrats.
About a year ago, the White House touted its One Big Beautiful Bill Act as the “biggest legislative win” of President Donald Trump’s second term.
The bill, commonly referred to as the OBBBA, which primarily combined an extension of the 2017 tax cuts and some new tax breaks with cuts to programs such as Medicaid and food stamps, is the most significant piece of legislation this administration has passed. As recently as June, a news release by Republican House Minority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota touted the bill as “the single-greatest victory for working families in history!”
The bill figures to play a key role in this fall’s pivotal contest to control Congress. But even some Republicans say what should have been the party’s major accomplishment is looking more like a liability ahead of November’s midterms. With Democrats predicted to win a majority in the House and possibly in the Senate, voters are hearing two very different descriptions of the legislation that’s affected millions of Americans. Democrats are hammering the healthcare cuts on the campaign trail. Republicans focus on the tax relief.
Why We Wrote This
Political parties usually tout major legislative wins as reasons why voters should stick with them at election time. This year, Republicans are fielding public skepticism about President Trump’s signature bill, and Democrats are using it to craft their own message.
Even there, the GOP might be losing the messaging war, as Democrats have been highlighting that the tax cuts were larger for high-income than for low-income households. Jay Townsend, a Republican consultant who worked in four presidential campaigns but is not involved in any midterm campaigns this cycle, hears people saying that the bill’s tax cuts “‘did not help me, it helped rich people.’”
Many of the bill’s most controversial provisions – such as work requirements for people receiving Medicaid – won’t go into effect until after the midterms. Democrats accused Republicans of delaying those changes to avoid the political fallout.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP/File
But there are signs that some of that political fallout is already happening. A Politico survey in July found that nearly 1 in 3 Americans say the law has made their financial situation worse, and a poll from the same month by the left-leaning Navigator Research found that nearly half say it is making their costs go up. The law is estimated to reduce federal Medicaid spending over the next decade by nearly $1 trillion, and a handful of rural clinics have already shut down, citing future cuts. Democrats say those closures, alongside spiking healthcare premiums, have given their candidates a strong issue to use against Republicans on the campaign trail.
“From what I can tell, nearly every Democratic challenger is using the [healthcare] cuts against Republican incumbents, and in most cases with significant effect,” says Geoff Garin, the president of Hart Research, a Democratic research and polling organization. “There’s very little [Republicans] can do at this point to mitigate the damage.”
Medicaid cuts sway voters
Republicans passed the bill in July 2025 without Democratic support. It extended tax cuts passed during Mr. Trump’s first term in 2017, and added temporary tax deductions for groups such as seniors and workers receiving tips. Republicans such as Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa called it a “recipe for economic success.”
On the campaign trail, many Republicans are touting the bill’s benefits – labeling Democrats as the party that rejected tax cuts. Sometimes, the candidates point to the bill; sometimes, to specific provisions within it. Rep. Darin LaHood of Illinois recently mentioned a barber who is benefiting from tax relief on tips – but he also credited the “tax bill” broadly with helping businesses across his district.
“The Republican Party has a very clear difference for America, and that is: Always lower taxes, always American workers first,” Rep. Brian Mast of Florida told CNBC earlier this month.
But even as Republicans paint them as would-be tax hikers, Democrats have fastened on to a different part of the bill: changes made to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The OBBBA set new work requirements for people to receive Medicaid, cut federal help for states that expanded the program, and ended eligibility for some legal immigrants. Meanwhile, SNAP enrollment dropped by 11% between July 2025 and April 2026 after the law narrowed exemptions and raised the work requirement age.
Americans can expect to see a lot of ads about the Medicaid cuts leading up to the midterms, says Mr. Garin.
“Medicaid? Gutted,” says a May video ad run by Democratic Rep. Greg Landsman of Ohio against his opponent Eric Conroy, who is not a member of Congress but has expressed support for the OBBBA.
Paul Weaver/Sipa USA/AP
Republicans are pushing back, saying the cuts are helping the nation’s fiscal position by eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse,” by tightening eligibility and closing what they call loopholes in how states share costs.
Still, the party’s messaging has downplayed the Medicaid provisions. Instead, Republicans emphasize the tax changes, which saved American taxpayers an average of just over $2,200 per filer, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. The Treasury Department says more than 53 million taxpayers claimed things like a new tips deduction and an enhanced deduction for seniors.
But Mr. Garin says that many voters are being hit by the loss of enhanced healthcare subsidies and fear losing their health insurance altogether. Those subsidies expired at the end of 2025 and are not directly related to the OBBBA, though Republicans could have used the bill to pass an extension. Democrats shut down the government last year over the issue, but eventually agreed to reopen it without winning any concessions.
Messaging challenges
The bill has been controversial from the start. At the time of the OBBBA’s passage, it faced widespread criticism from Democrats. A July 2025 Quinnipiac poll found that 44% of Americans thought the bill would hurt rather than help them personally.
The same month, longtime GOP strategist Karl Rove predicted on Fox News that the bill could pose problems for his party in the next round of elections.
“I think it'll have a huge impact on 2026, because, remember, as these changes, particularly the Medicaid changes, come into effect, they’re going to have, people are going to be losing their coverage,” said Mr. Rove.
Just weeks after the bill’s passage, President Trump and congressional Republicans tried to rebrand it, pivoting from the “great, big, beautiful” bill and instead calling it the “Working Families Tax Cuts Act.”
While voters might hold more negative than positive views of the legislation, failure to extend the tax cuts could have posed its own political challenge for Republicans. Polls also show widespread confusion about what’s actually in the bill. In the July Politico poll, about 2 in 5 voters said they had heard of the law but couldn’t explain its features.
Deepen your worldview
with Monitor Highlights.
Already a subscriber? Log in to hide ads.
In a separate survey by Winning the Issues, part of the GOP-aligned Winston Group, almost half of U.S. voters did not think the bill prevented a tax increase on them and their families. That was a key part of Republican messaging as they campaigned to pass the bill last year.
“We’ve seen some Republicans run ads calling this essentially a tax cut, but that’s not how people feel,” says Julie Alderman Boudreau, the director of research at left-leaning Navigator Research. “This [bill] is a huge liability ... for any Republican on the ballot in 2026.”
US government searches for migrant children as deportations mount
An alphabet soup of U.S. agencies is tracking down immigrant children who arrived in this country without a parent or guardian and were eventually released from government custody.
The Trump administration says it wants to fight fraudulent sponsors, protect vulnerable minors from abuse, and deport those who have committed crimes. Meanwhile, immigrant advocates say the government is complicating children’s access to lawyers as it steps up efforts to send many of them home.
The government has detained unaccompanied minors and sent them back to their countries at about three times the rate of the first Trump term, according to a recent ProPublica analysis.
Why We Wrote This
As the White House strips away lawful status from millions of immigrants, it’s preserved some humanitarian concern for kids it claims the last president lost. Still, the government has sought to deport many children, and to discourage others from arriving.
Since last year, multiple federal agencies have collaborated through a Washington “war room” to locate the children, according to documents and statements by officials. The government has also enlisted state and local agencies in the search.
Dario Lopez-Mills/AP/File
Knocking on doors at last known addresses has evolved into extensive data sharing and collaboration, modeling President Donald Trump’s broader whole-of-government crackdown on illegal immigration.
The administration has promoted its efforts as safeguarding vulnerable, “lost” children – and tackling claims of widespread immigration fraud. Immigrant advocates worry the goals are to intimidate children from participating in their immigration cases and to ramp up deportations.
Defining “lost”
Just how many of the minors are actually missing, and what that means, is disputed.
Thousands of unaccompanied minors crossed the southern border each month during the Biden presidency; hundreds still cross monthly.
Once border authorities stop an unaccompanied minor, the government has 72 hours to hand them over to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Numbers of those unaccounted for cited by the Trump administration appear to refer to children released from government care between 2019 and 2023, but who had not yet received immigration court dates – about 291,000, according to a 2024 Department of Homeland Security inspector general report. Poor communication between the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) – the agency charged with caring for minors while they are in custody – and Immigration and Customs Enforcement was a factor.
But federal agencies’ lack of awareness about a particular child’s whereabouts to notify them of a court date does not necessarily mean the child is missing.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
ORR says it has “located” more than 150,000 unaccompanied children. At a June news conference, Angie Salazar, the ORR’s acting director, said some were “sexually assaulted, others deceased, and some committing heinous crimes” after their release to unvetted sponsors.
“When the government lacks reliable contact information or an effective means of tracking children, that is a child welfare failure,” she said.
Jen Smyers, a former deputy director of ORR under President Joe Biden, says the Biden administration inherited a messy database of sponsor information that resulted in mistaken releases, but her team cleaned up the records system.
“The claim that children were released to unvetted sponsors is factually inaccurate,” says Ms. Smyers.
ORR is pursuing more coordination with law enforcement than it traditionally has, former federal officials say.
The space devoted to locating unaccompanied children at the ORR office in Washington is a “massive room with computers all around,” says John Fabbricatore, a longtime Immigration and Customs Enforcement official, like Ms. Salazar. He joined the Trump administration’s unaccompanied children effort as an HHS senior adviser last year.
ICE, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the FBI, the IRS, the Social Security Administration, and the Pentagon have all been involved, says Mr. Fabriccatore, whom the Monitor interviewed in June while he was temporarily not employed by the federal government.
“It was mostly fraud analysts that we were looking for,” in terms of help from collaborating agencies, he says.
None of the agencies confirmed its participation. An ORR official said in an email, “Law enforcement and intelligence agencies worked across departments to locate these children and ensure they were safe,” and that the effort continues. The official also said ORR had requested forensic auditors from the Pentagon to review invoices from a legal-services contract.
Eric Gay/AP/File
Beyond unaccompanied children who’ve become adults and are committing crimes, deportation isn’t the goal for everyone, says Mr. Fabbricatore. Still, information sharing between ICE and ORR has resulted in thousands of arrests, Reuters reports.
An undated ICE document says the agency collected data on unaccompanied children “from various sources” beginning a week after Mr. Trump’s inauguration last year. The document also says certain ICE officials have access to the HHS records system for unaccompanied children.
ORR says it has long shared data with DHS, which oversees ICE, on unaccompanied children and their sponsors.
An Oklahoma model
Last November, Homeland Security announced that ICE’s local and state law enforcement partners were involved in welfare checks of unaccompanied children.
In Oklahoma, state troopers accompanied ICE agents on a door-knocking campaign at first. But that approach didn’t succeed, says Tim Tipton, commissioner of the state’s Department of Public Safety.
“People just don’t answer the door,” he says.
Mr. Tipton says he pitched an alternative to ICE. Why not put personnel from the highway patrol’s Child Abduction Response Team on the case? After all, he says, those CART officers are trained to handle kids in sensitive situations.
ICE eventually shared the target list with the state, according to Mr. Tipton. Now, he says, CART officers locate sponsors on their own, generally avoiding door knocks. After calling or texting, troopers set up an appointment to interview the sponsor and to check on the child and their living conditions. Information is ultimately reported back to ICE, says Mr. Tipton.
Oklahoma has located a couple hundred children this way – or at least verified they’re no longer in the state, says the commissioner. His team isn’t pursuing immigration enforcement, he says, but ensuring that kids are all right.
“If we’re doing a welfare check on a kid and there’s signs and indicators of human trafficking, of sex trafficking, of child abuse, then we’re going to take immediate law enforcement action,” Mr. Tipton said in June.
So far, his team hasn’t removed any unaccompanied children from Oklahoma homes over signs of abuse, he says.
ICE did not respond to several questions, including about state and local involvement in welfare checks. The president’s pick to be the next ICE director, Lance Schroyer, is a retired major of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.
According to Lt. Mark Southall, a highway patrol spokesperson, Mr. Schroyer was “instrumental” in developing the CART plan to locate immigrant children.
Dario Lopez-Mills/AP/File
Children in limbo
As Health and Human Services works to locate more children, U.S. law requires the agency to secure legal aid for unaccompanied children “to the greatest extent practicable.”
Yet, amid a data-sharing dispute between children’s lawyers and the government, HHS withheld funding from a national network of legal groups. A federal judge in California this month made the government pay.
At the end of July, HHS had let a legal services contract lapse for the Acacia Center for Justice, affecting around 100 subcontractors. Acacia says the network has served more than 20,000 unaccompanied children since late last year.
Whiplash has followed. A Federal Register notice this month said that HHS intended to award up to $150 million to a Texas firm with ties to the Trump administration to provide legal services for children in government custody. On Tuesday, the firm said it “withdrew from consideration.”
Meanwhile, HHS awarded a $244 million no-bid contract to Our Rescue, an anti-trafficking nonprofit whose chief executive, Derek Benner, is a former ICE official. ORR says it tried unsuccessfully to competitively bid the contract. Though it’s unclear whether the nonprofit typically represents children in immigration proceedings, “We welcome this responsibility and are working on their behalf,” Mr. Benner said in an emailed statement.
In a Thursday court filing, the ORR says it awarded a separate agreement this month worth up to $20 million to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. That’s for legal services for children in government custody through at least December. The nonprofit did not respond to interview requests.
Kids stuck in custody
Meanwhile, kids are staying longer in federal custody before release to sponsors.
During the Biden administration, in fiscal year 2024, unaccompanied children stayed in ORR care an average of 30 days. This past spring, the monthly average crested at more than 200 days. Some children’s lawyers say those in custody are increasingly choosing to leave the United States rather than continue waiting for release.
“We are prioritizing child safety over placement speed,” Ms. Salazar, the ORR official, said at the June news conference.
Deepen your worldview
with Monitor Highlights.
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Still, prolonged custody of kids isn’t good, Mr. Fabbricatore said at a Heritage Foundation event the same day.
“The longer that they are in care, there’s more mental health issues that we’re dealing with,” he said. “We don’t want that. ... They should be home.”
US government searches for migrant children as deportations mount
An alphabet soup of U.S. agencies is tracking down immigrant children who arrived in this country without a parent or guardian and were eventually released from government custody.
The Trump administration says it wants to fight fraudulent sponsors, protect vulnerable minors from abuse, and deport those who have committed crimes. Meanwhile, immigrant advocates say the government is complicating children’s access to lawyers as it steps up efforts to send many of them home.
The government has detained unaccompanied minors and sent them back to their countries at about three times the rate of the first Trump term, according to a recent ProPublica analysis.
Why We Wrote This
As the White House strips away lawful status from millions of immigrants, it’s preserved some humanitarian concern for kids it claims the last president lost. Still, the government has sought to deport many children, and to discourage others from arriving.
Since last year, multiple federal agencies have collaborated through a Washington “war room” to locate the children, according to documents and statements by officials. The government has also enlisted state and local agencies in the search.
Dario Lopez-Mills/AP/File
Knocking on doors at last known addresses has evolved into extensive data sharing and collaboration, modeling President Donald Trump’s broader whole-of-government crackdown on illegal immigration.
The administration has promoted its efforts as safeguarding vulnerable, “lost” children – and tackling claims of widespread immigration fraud. Immigrant advocates worry the goals are to intimidate children from participating in their immigration cases and to ramp up deportations.
Defining “lost”
Just how many of the minors are actually missing, and what that means, is disputed.
Thousands of unaccompanied minors crossed the southern border each month during the Biden presidency; hundreds still cross monthly.
Once border authorities stop an unaccompanied minor, the government has 72 hours to hand them over to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Numbers of those unaccounted for cited by the Trump administration appear to refer to children released from government care between 2019 and 2023, but who had not yet received immigration court dates – about 291,000, according to a 2024 Department of Homeland Security inspector general report. Poor communication between the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) – the agency charged with caring for minors while they are in custody – and Immigration and Customs Enforcement was a factor.
But federal agencies’ lack of awareness about a particular child’s whereabouts to notify them of a court date does not necessarily mean the child is missing.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
ORR says it has “located” more than 150,000 unaccompanied children. At a June news conference, Angie Salazar, the ORR’s acting director, said some were “sexually assaulted, others deceased, and some committing heinous crimes” after their release to unvetted sponsors.
“When the government lacks reliable contact information or an effective means of tracking children, that is a child welfare failure,” she said.
Jen Smyers, a former deputy director of ORR under President Joe Biden, says the Biden administration inherited a messy database of sponsor information that resulted in mistaken releases, but her team cleaned up the records system.
“The claim that children were released to unvetted sponsors is factually inaccurate,” says Ms. Smyers.
ORR is pursuing more coordination with law enforcement than it traditionally has, former federal officials say.
The space devoted to locating unaccompanied children at the ORR office in Washington is a “massive room with computers all around,” says John Fabbricatore, a longtime Immigration and Customs Enforcement official, like Ms. Salazar. He joined the Trump administration’s unaccompanied children effort as an HHS senior adviser last year.
ICE, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the FBI, the IRS, the Social Security Administration, and the Pentagon have all been involved, says Mr. Fabriccatore, whom the Monitor interviewed in June while he was temporarily not employed by the federal government.
“It was mostly fraud analysts that we were looking for,” in terms of help from collaborating agencies, he says.
None of the agencies confirmed its participation. An ORR official said in an email, “Law enforcement and intelligence agencies worked across departments to locate these children and ensure they were safe,” and that the effort continues. The official also said ORR had requested forensic auditors from the Pentagon to review invoices from a legal-services contract.
Eric Gay/AP/File
Beyond unaccompanied children who’ve become adults and are committing crimes, deportation isn’t the goal for everyone, says Mr. Fabbricatore. Still, information sharing between ICE and ORR has resulted in thousands of arrests, Reuters reports.
An undated ICE document says the agency collected data on unaccompanied children “from various sources” beginning a week after Mr. Trump’s inauguration last year. The document also says certain ICE officials have access to the HHS records system for unaccompanied children.
ORR says it has long shared data with DHS, which oversees ICE, on unaccompanied children and their sponsors.
An Oklahoma model
Last November, Homeland Security announced that ICE’s local and state law enforcement partners were involved in welfare checks of unaccompanied children.
In Oklahoma, state troopers accompanied ICE agents on a door-knocking campaign at first. But that approach didn’t succeed, says Tim Tipton, commissioner of the state’s Department of Public Safety.
“People just don’t answer the door,” he says.
Mr. Tipton says he pitched an alternative to ICE. Why not put personnel from the highway patrol’s Child Abduction Response Team on the case? After all, he says, those CART officers are trained to handle kids in sensitive situations.
ICE eventually shared the target list with the state, according to Mr. Tipton. Now, he says, CART officers locate sponsors on their own, generally avoiding door knocks. After calling or texting, troopers set up an appointment to interview the sponsor and to check on the child and their living conditions. Information is ultimately reported back to ICE, says Mr. Tipton.
Oklahoma has located a couple hundred children this way – or at least verified they’re no longer in the state, says the commissioner. His team isn’t pursuing immigration enforcement, he says, but ensuring that kids are all right.
“If we’re doing a welfare check on a kid and there’s signs and indicators of human trafficking, of sex trafficking, of child abuse, then we’re going to take immediate law enforcement action,” Mr. Tipton said in June.
So far, his team hasn’t removed any unaccompanied children from Oklahoma homes over signs of abuse, he says.
ICE did not respond to several questions, including about state and local involvement in welfare checks. The president’s pick to be the next ICE director, Lance Schroyer, is a retired major of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.
According to Lt. Mark Southall, a highway patrol spokesperson, Mr. Schroyer was “instrumental” in developing the CART plan to locate immigrant children.
Dario Lopez-Mills/AP/File
Children in limbo
As Health and Human Services works to locate more children, U.S. law requires the agency to secure legal aid for unaccompanied children “to the greatest extent practicable.”
Yet, amid a data-sharing dispute between children’s lawyers and the government, HHS withheld funding from a national network of legal groups. A federal judge in California this month made the government pay.
At the end of July, HHS had let a legal services contract lapse for the Acacia Center for Justice, affecting around 100 subcontractors. Acacia says the network has served more than 20,000 unaccompanied children since late last year.
Whiplash has followed. A Federal Register notice this month said that HHS intended to award up to $150 million to a Texas firm with ties to the Trump administration to provide legal services for children in government custody. On Tuesday, the firm said it “withdrew from consideration.”
Meanwhile, HHS awarded a $244 million no-bid contract to Our Rescue, an anti-trafficking nonprofit whose chief executive, Derek Benner, is a former ICE official. ORR says it tried unsuccessfully to competitively bid the contract. Though it’s unclear whether the nonprofit typically represents children in immigration proceedings, “We welcome this responsibility and are working on their behalf,” Mr. Benner said in an emailed statement.
In a Thursday court filing, the ORR says it awarded a separate agreement this month worth up to $20 million to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. That’s for legal services for children in government custody through at least December. The nonprofit did not respond to interview requests.
Kids stuck in custody
Meanwhile, kids are staying longer in federal custody before release to sponsors.
During the Biden administration, in fiscal year 2024, unaccompanied children stayed in ORR care an average of 30 days. This past spring, the monthly average crested at more than 200 days. Some children’s lawyers say those in custody are increasingly choosing to leave the United States rather than continue waiting for release.
“We are prioritizing child safety over placement speed,” Ms. Salazar, the ORR official, said at the June news conference.
Deepen your worldview
with Monitor Highlights.
Already a subscriber? Log in to hide ads.
Still, prolonged custody of kids isn’t good, Mr. Fabbricatore said at a Heritage Foundation event the same day.
“The longer that they are in care, there’s more mental health issues that we’re dealing with,” he said. “We don’t want that. ... They should be home.”
Democrats’ socialist surge hits a roadblock in Wisconsin
Mainstream Democrats are heaving a sigh of relief.
The upset loss by Francesca Hong, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, in the Wisconsin Democratic primary for governor shows that the party’s left-wing insurgency may only go so far.
Polls heading into Tuesday’s primary showed Ms. Hong, a state assembly member, comfortably ahead of her top opponent, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley. But a large chunk of voters remained undecided until late in the campaign, and negative publicity over old tweets by Ms. Hong – including one calling for the cancellation of Thanksgiving – may well have swung the race.
Why We Wrote This
Despite a messy gubernatorial primary in which multiple candidates dropped out, polling front-runner and democratic socialist Francesca Hong was edged out by center-left candidate David Crowley.
After last week’s victory by progressive Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan primary for U.S. Senate, establishment Democrats worried that left-wing momentum could damage the party’s prospects nationally in the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
In Wisconsin, a battleground state in presidential races, the center-left Mr. Crowley staged an extraordinary comeback with a late surge in fundraising and the backing of outgoing Gov. Tony Evers. Just three weeks ago, Mr. Crowley had dropped out of the race, but Governor Evers encouraged him to get back in after another Democrat dropped out. He also won the support of major labor unions.
Kayla Wolf/AP
Ms. Hong had disavowed controversial old statements, including calls to defund the police and abolish prisons, and insisted to reporters that she “loves” Thanksgiving. But the damage may already have been done.
Mr. Crowley’s narrow victory also points to challenges in polling during primaries, when voter turnout is low and can be hard to predict, especially during the summer. In last week’s Michigan primary, Mr. El-Sayed barely won after polls showed him far ahead.
In nearby Minnesota, progressive Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan beat the more-centrist Rep. Angie Craig in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate on Tuesday, showing that the liberal wing of the party is hardly in retreat.
If Mr. Crowley wins in November, he will be the state’s first Black governor. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany easily won the Republican primary, setting up a showdown for leadership in a state that President Donald Trump won in 2024 by fewer than 30,000 votes.
Kerem Yücel/Minnesota Public Radio/AP
Progressive Democrats expressed frustration that their preferred candidate failed to win the Wisconsin nomination, and that Congress’s most prominent democratic socialists – Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York – did not endorse Ms. Hong.
“We cannot build progressive power while gatekeeping our own movement through the eyes of the establishment,” the progressive group Our Revolution said in a statement late Tuesday on X.
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Both Mr. Crowley and Ms. Hong focused on economic issues in their campaigns. But Ms. Hong’s now-deleted social media post from November 2020 denouncing Thanksgiving as “celebrating colonialism” may have been her undoing.
And even in backing away from past statements, Ms. Hong did not completely disavow them. As a chef, she told CNN on Aug. 3, she enjoys “bringing folks around the table.” But, she added, “Thanksgiving is also a time that’s incredibly painful for many people in our communities.”
In Utah canyons, a clash over federal lands – and the future of the West
There is a 20-mile stretch of Utah’s Scenic Byway 12, from the small town of Boulder to the other small town of Escalante, where the whole world appears made of sand-colored plateaus dotted with desert brush. In the stillness, birds swoop over slot canyons. The occasional car stops on a crumbling roadside shoulder, its passengers staring into the expanse of green valleys and orange cliffs.
This area of southern Utah is as old as it is sweeping, with pottery shards and campsites still scattered about from when the Ancestral Pueblo people farmed this dry land through the 12th century. Tens of millions of years before that, dinosaurs roamed a landscape that looked utterly different: a lush hothouse whose muddy flood plains have held some of the best-preserved dinosaur fossils in the world, including at least 15 species that have been found only here. This place has taught scientists more about the end of the dinosaur era than anywhere else in the world. All of this richness, from then and now, led President Bill Clinton to sit at a wooden desk on the edge of the nearby Grand Canyon in 1996 and establish roughly 1.7 million acres of public land here as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
But 75 million years after the dinosaurs, 900 years after the ancient farmers, and 30 years after Mr. Clinton’s designation, President Donald Trump has opened the door for possibly the greatest changes to this environment since rivers carved these canyons. In July, Mr. Trump signed orders cutting the size of Grand Staircase-Escalante and the neighboring Bears Ears National Monument by nearly 90%, removing nearly 3 million of the previously protected 3.5 million acres. While this swath of southern Utah remains public land under federal control, the loss of national-monument designation means this land will now be open to mining for coal, minerals, and uranium.
Why We Wrote This
The U.S. government is slashing two revered national monuments in Utah. What happens next could determine how vast public lands in the western U.S. are managed – or exploited.
“We’ve done something that was, I think, very desperately needed,” said Mr. Trump from behind the Resolute Desk in Washington, flanked by Utah’s smiling GOP congressional delegation and governor. “It was very unfair to the people of Utah. And now, fairness has been brought back.”
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
The question of “fairness” and public lands has animated the American West ever since its states were admitted to the Union, when swaths of federal land became, in many places, the price of acceptance. No state in the modern era has pushed back against this arrangement quite like Utah, whose Republican political leadership sees it as an affront to state autonomy, conservative ideals, and a vision of Wild West independence that endures today. And within Utah, no place has been more emblematic of the power of grassroots support of these places – or the power of dogged policymakers – than Grand Staircase-Escalante, which had been, until July 13, the largest national monument in the 48 contiguous United States. Now, this place – with its canyons and dinosaur bones, as well as its ATV trails and coal deposits – has become the face of not just the GOP’s fight against public lands, but also the future of how public lands could or should exist in the West.
Lands of “historic or scientific interest”
With a map several feet wide by several feet long unfolded atop the register’s counter in his outfitting shop on Escalante’s Main Street, Nate Waggoner uses his index finger to suggest a morning hike alongside the meandering Escalante River. But choose to drive down a dirt road several inches to the left on the map and, well, “You better pack some water and a sleeping bag,” he says. A few specks of rain could turn the red dirt to a hungry mud that will devour even the stoutest four-wheel drive pickup.
That’s what so many locals here, in the small towns dotting the edges of the monument, love about it: It’s unpredictable, difficult, and utterly wild. Compared with national parks, “which are a lot of groomed paths to an overlook” for an Instagram post, says Mr. Waggoner, national monuments such as Grand Staircase-Escalante take a certain kind of spirit. Visitors often check in with local outlets such as Mr. Waggoner’s Escalante Outfitters, which he opened two decades ago and has since expanded to include a popular pizza restaurant and cabin rentals.
“You turn off onto a dirt road, get out and walk for a couple of days, and then boom, you are in it,” he says. “It’s a different kind of wilderness experience.”
National parks might be what comes to mind for most Americans when they think of public land: Yosemite’s granite domes or Yellowstone’s roaming buffalo. But national parks managed by the National Park Service are only one slice of America’s roughly 640 million acres of federally owned land.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Of the four major agencies that manage federal land – including almost half the land of the West – the Bureau of Land Management oversees the most acreage, including Grand Staircase-Escalante. The U.S. Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service have their own allotments. National wildlife refuges, national forests, national monuments, and national parks all come with different rules about what’s allowed to happen within their boundaries and how they are supposed to be managed.
But of all the federal government’s land in the United States, which totals about 28% of the country’s land area, national monuments stand out to public-land opponents as the most problematic – and that’s largely because of how they are created.
In 1906, amid concerns that collectors were looting Native American artifacts, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a law that allowed presidents to unilaterally set aside public land as national monuments. The Antiquities Act, Roosevelt and other supporters said, would protect American landmarks or objects of “historic or scientific interest.” Since Roosevelt, every president (including Donald Trump) has used this power, except for three. Today, there are 168 national monuments, including marine areas.
From the beginning, opponents worried the Antiquities Act could lead to government overreach. That one person can determine the future of an area larger than the state of Delaware, with merely the stroke of a pen, feels like a personal affront to many conservatives. The national monuments in southern Utah, created or re-expanded by the three most recent Democratic presidents, stoked this debate as opponents argue these vast allotments go against the Antiquities Act’s instruction to reserve “the smallest area compatible” with protection.
“Large monuments are an abuse of the Antiquities Act, and these are two of the worst examples of that,” says Ben Burr, executive director of the BlueRibbon Coalition, a nonprofit that has challenged the legality of these monuments in court.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
That fight has been focused here in Utah for two big reasons.
For one, Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears are big. Proponents say their size allows for future and current scientific discoveries, such as the baby duck-billed dinosaur excavated at Grand Staircase-Escalante in June. Tribal nations have also long fought for the protection of these two areas of southern Utah. The entirety of Grand Staircase-Escalante is a cultural and spiritual landscape, says Autumn Gillard, coordinator for the Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition.
The second reason is ... Utah. The federal government owns almost half of the West, but it really owns Utah – about 63%, the greatest share of any state other than Nevada.
Like other Western states, Utah renounced claims to unappropriated land within its borders to join the Union in 1896, something Utah spelled out in its own state constitution. But constitution or not, Utah politicians have waged a “philosophical battle” over public lands almost ever since, says John Ruple, a law professor at the University of Utah and a former policy analyst in Gov. Jon Huntsman’s public-lands office. Experts have pointed to a number of overlapping reasons for this: the sheer amount of public land in Utah, the territoriality of longtime Utahns whose Mormon ancestors were outcast here, and the deep conservatism that controls all levels of government.
“In the West, in a place like Utah, an anti-government coalition looks at public lands because they are such a visible representation of federal power,” says James Skillen, a professor at Calvin University in Michigan who has authored several books on public land in the West. The fight against public land becomes about ideology, he says, rather than about economics or even about what local communities want.
During his first term, Mr. Trump instructed his Interior Department to review all national monuments larger than 100,000 acres. With the encouragement of Utah’s GOP leaders, he picked two to slash. He traveled to Utah in 2017 and signed orders shrinking Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears by about 50% and 85%, respectively. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) and other environmental nonprofits quickly sued. But before those cases could move forward, Joe Biden won the 2020 election, took office, and restored the monuments.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Utah politicians, however, neither started nor ended there. In 2012, the state legislature passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act to require the federal government to give the majority of federal land back to the state (it hasn’t), and in 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a lawsuit from Utah about the federal government’s “indefinite retention” of so much of the state’s land. Then-Rep. Jason Chaffetz proposed legislation in 2017 to sell 3.3 million acres of public land in the West but was forced to withdraw after backlash. Similarly, Sen. Mike Lee was forced last year to withdraw a federal land sell-off provision from Republicans’ tax-and-spending bill after bipartisan backlash from conservation groups and fellow Western lawmakers.
In another, quieter attempt this year, Mr. Lee and U.S. Rep. Celeste Maloy in June failed to overturn a Biden-era management plan of Grand Staircase-Escalante using a filibuster-proof move under the Congressional Review Act.
“The common denominator is Utah politicians. ... They are clamoring for it,” says Steve Bloch, the SUWA’s legal director. “Utah envisions itself as the epicenter, as leading the charge against the system of federal lands.”
The economics of national monuments
When Grand Staircase-Escalante was established, it faced local pushback that mirrored elected officials’ complaints. Following Mr. Clinton’s proclamation, the southern Utah border city of Kanab flew flags at half-staff in protest, and schoolchildren released 50 black balloons as a warning to other states. Since then, however, sentiment on the ground has shifted.
Today, polls repeatedly show Utahns’ support for keeping Grand Staircase-Escalante’s and Bears Ears’ 1996 and 2016 boundaries intact. This transition from reviled to beloved is common for national monuments, many of which end up becoming national parks. Look no further than neighboring Arizona’s Grand Canyon, or the national parks near Grand Staircase-Escalante, such as Zion or Bryce Canyon.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
“The state government in Utah takes positions on these issues that are far outside the mainstream ... that fly in the face of what the public wants,” says Chris Winter, executive director of the University of Colorado’s Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment. “Federal public lands, especially in the West, are widely popular.”
And for locals, they can be transformative. Before the monument was established, Garfield County had the state’s highest unemployment rate – around 10%, three times higher than the state average. Since 2001, the population in the Grand Staircase-Escalante region has risen by 26%, and jobs have grown by 51%.
Blake Spalding, who moved to Boulder, Utah, in 2000, now employs roughly 60 people in the town of about 230 at her Hell’s Backbone Grill & Farm. She moved here because of the monument, and over the past two-plus decades, acclaim for both it and the restaurant have grown in parallel. She has since expanded her business to include a food truck and a hotel.
“I put everything I have into this because I believe we have the ability to open hearts and minds, and to help people fall back in love with the natural world,” she says.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
When President Trump signed an order shrinking the monument during his first term, Ms. Spalding joined a lawsuit challenging the move. When she learned of the administration’s renewed effort in July, she asked her young business partner, Nina Brownell, who first started working at the restaurant in college, whether it would be better if they let this whole thing go. Ms. Brownell responded that it was more important than ever that they keep going.
“Those of us who live here live here for a reason,” says Ms. Brownell. “We care about the bees, and we care about the mountain lions, and we care about the wildflowers. There’s really this deep frustration and anger for people who live far away and know nothing about this.”
“Move-ins” versus longtime locals
Garfield County, home to Escalante, Boulder, and up until July, nearly one-third of the monument, is larger than the state of Connecticut. Neighbors live hours away from one another. This remoteness is beloved by residents and visitors – and also allows for a deep divide among those who call it home.
“What Clinton did in ’96 has steamrolled into a catastrophe,” says Leland Pollock, chair of the three-member Garfield County Commission who has lived in the area his entire life and praised Mr. Trump’s July proclamation. “Our goal is to not get into coal mines and drilling and all that nonsense,” he says. Rather, he hopes the Bureau of Land Management will now face fewer restrictions in caring for the land, and be able to take steps such as removing the juniper and pinyon pine trees that have sucked up soil moisture and made life more difficult for those with grazing permits, including himself.
And while the tourism sector has replaced the sawmill jobs that left decades ago, and which had employed a few hundred people (“Which is like 100,000 people anywhere else,” says Mr. Pollock), it doesn’t replace what was lost, he says. While the unemployment rate during the summer now hovers in the low single digits, it can reach up to 16% during the winter.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
“Move-ins love it, longtime locals hate it,” as one woman outside the Escalante Post Office summed up the monument divide. She counts herself in the “love it” camp, but declined to give her name for fear of local backlash.
Locals, however, appeared largely united in disbelief in the hours after the Oval Office signing ceremony, after listening to the reasons given by their elected officials for slashing the size of these monuments. By establishing these monuments, Presidents Clinton, Barack Obama, and Biden “locked those acres up,” said Kate McGregor, the deputy secretary of the Interior. “For nobody to use,” added President Trump. “You can’t do anything. You can’t go hunting. You can’t go fishing. You can’t do anything. You can virtually not even walk on it.”
None of that is true, as even a visitor can attest. Hiking, hunting, and fishing are all permitted. As are motorized vehicles. “You could drive on dirt roads in the national monument for the rest of your life,” says Mr. Waggoner, of Escalante Outfitters. (Mr. Burr, with the BlueRibbon Coalition, argues that the Biden administration’s management plan limited off-road vehicle use and even though “the process hadn’t completely unfolded yet,” it was coming.) And documents reviewed by the New York Times show that the Trump administration was briefed on recreational opportunities inside Bears Ears at least one month before the Oval Office event. Another regularly repeated falsehood is that the monument stripped local ranchers of their grazing rights. To the contrary, livestock grazing was grandfathered into the monument’s management by the Bureau of Land Management, which operates under a “multi-use mandate.” Grazing is permitted on more than 90% of the monument.
The fact that officials are denying the very uses that are now propping up local economies – which were struggling before the monument’s designation – worries local business owners. Morgan Sjogren, who just obtained her BLM permit to guide in Grand Staircase-Escalante, has received calls from her first clients booked for this fall, asking whether their trip is canceled.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Ms. Brownell looks out to the foreign visitors perched at her restaurant’s picnic tables with cameras and burgers, and notes that the first thing they comment on is the accessibility of natural beauty in America.
“Please tell me who’s to benefit from this,” Ms. Brownell says of Mr. Trump’s order.
One answer to this might be the extractive industry. Documents from the first Trump administration, some made public by The New York Times, show that Utah politicians both encouraged the 2017 reductions and also structured the new monument boundaries to exclude potential energy and mineral deposits.
But many are skeptical of this explanation. There is already enough uranium mining in the West to meet America’s demand, says Professor Ruple of the University of Utah. He also points out that it doesn’t make financial sense for companies to mine for coal or drill for oil in such an unforgiving landscape, which lacks existing infrastructure such as pipelines, especially when it’s almost certain that companies will face constant litigation from monument advocates.
“If you were to find the mother lode of coal in the Grand Staircase, what are you going to do with it?” asks Professor Ruple.
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Environmental advocacy groups have vowed to file lawsuits over the national monuments’ reductions, and both sides of the debate say the courts might have to finally answer whether the Antiquities Act is a one-way street, or decide that presidents are allowed to rescind (in addition to establishing) preserved land. They will have to rule if this landscape as a whole – its layered staircase of rocks and stones, its tourism, its sites that inspired Indigenous songs – is worth it.
“This one particular geologic formation that we have here, it’s amazing, and it’s the perfect example of why we have the Antiquities Act because nobody knew,” says Mr. Waggoner. “We just set it aside until somebody finds it. And that’s pretty amazing.”
In Utah canyons, a clash over federal lands – and the future of the West
There is a 20-mile stretch of Utah’s Scenic Byway 12, from the small town of Boulder to the other small town of Escalante, where the whole world appears made of sand-colored plateaus dotted with desert brush. In the stillness, birds swoop over slot canyons. The occasional car stops on a crumbling roadside shoulder, its passengers staring into the expanse of green valleys and orange cliffs.
This area of southern Utah is as old as it is sweeping, with pottery shards and campsites still scattered about from when the Ancestral Pueblo people farmed this dry land through the 12th century. Tens of millions of years before that, dinosaurs roamed a landscape that looked utterly different: a lush hothouse whose muddy flood plains have held some of the best-preserved dinosaur fossils in the world, including at least 15 species that have been found only here. This place has taught scientists more about the end of the dinosaur era than anywhere else in the world. All of this richness, from then and now, led President Bill Clinton to sit at a wooden desk on the edge of the nearby Grand Canyon in 1996 and establish roughly 1.7 million acres of public land here as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
But 75 million years after the dinosaurs, 900 years after the ancient farmers, and 30 years after Mr. Clinton’s designation, President Donald Trump has opened the door for possibly the greatest changes to this environment since rivers carved these canyons. In July, Mr. Trump signed orders cutting the size of Grand Staircase-Escalante and the neighboring Bears Ears National Monument by nearly 90%, removing nearly 3 million of the previously protected 3.5 million acres. While this swath of southern Utah remains public land under federal control, the loss of national-monument designation means this land will now be open to mining for coal, minerals, and uranium.
Why We Wrote This
The U.S. government is slashing two revered national monuments in Utah. What happens next could determine how vast public lands in the western U.S. are managed – or exploited.
“We’ve done something that was, I think, very desperately needed,” said Mr. Trump from behind the Resolute Desk in Washington, flanked by Utah’s smiling GOP congressional delegation and governor. “It was very unfair to the people of Utah. And now, fairness has been brought back.”
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
The question of “fairness” and public lands has animated the American West ever since its states were admitted to the Union, when swaths of federal land became, in many places, the price of acceptance. No state in the modern era has pushed back against this arrangement quite like Utah, whose Republican political leadership sees it as an affront to state autonomy, conservative ideals, and a vision of Wild West independence that endures today. And within Utah, no place has been more emblematic of the power of grassroots support of these places – or the power of dogged policymakers – than Grand Staircase-Escalante, which had been, until July 13, the largest national monument in the 48 contiguous United States. Now, this place – with its canyons and dinosaur bones, as well as its ATV trails and coal deposits – has become the face of not just the GOP’s fight against public lands, but also the future of how public lands could or should exist in the West.
Lands of “historic or scientific interest”
With a map several feet wide by several feet long unfolded atop the register’s counter in his outfitting shop on Escalante’s Main Street, Nate Waggoner uses his index finger to suggest a morning hike alongside the meandering Escalante River. But choose to drive down a dirt road several inches to the left on the map and, well, “You better pack some water and a sleeping bag,” he says. A few specks of rain could turn the red dirt to a hungry mud that will devour even the stoutest four-wheel drive pickup.
That’s what so many locals here, in the small towns dotting the edges of the monument, love about it: It’s unpredictable, difficult, and utterly wild. Compared with national parks, “which are a lot of groomed paths to an overlook” for an Instagram post, says Mr. Waggoner, national monuments such as Grand Staircase-Escalante take a certain kind of spirit. Visitors often check in with local outlets such as Mr. Waggoner’s Escalante Outfitters, which he opened two decades ago and has since expanded to include a popular pizza restaurant and cabin rentals.
“You turn off onto a dirt road, get out and walk for a couple of days, and then boom, you are in it,” he says. “It’s a different kind of wilderness experience.”
National parks might be what comes to mind for most Americans when they think of public land: Yosemite’s granite domes or Yellowstone’s roaming buffalo. But national parks managed by the National Park Service are only one slice of America’s roughly 640 million acres of federally owned land.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Of the four major agencies that manage federal land – including almost half the land of the West – the Bureau of Land Management oversees the most acreage, including Grand Staircase-Escalante. The U.S. Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service have their own allotments. National wildlife refuges, national forests, national monuments, and national parks all come with different rules about what’s allowed to happen within their boundaries and how they are supposed to be managed.
But of all the federal government’s land in the United States, which totals about 28% of the country’s land area, national monuments stand out to public-land opponents as the most problematic – and that’s largely because of how they are created.
In 1906, amid concerns that collectors were looting Native American artifacts, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a law that allowed presidents to unilaterally set aside public land as national monuments. The Antiquities Act, Roosevelt and other supporters said, would protect American landmarks or objects of “historic or scientific interest.” Since Roosevelt, every president (including Donald Trump) has used this power, except for three. Today, there are 168 national monuments, including marine areas.
From the beginning, opponents worried the Antiquities Act could lead to government overreach. That one person can determine the future of an area larger than the state of Delaware, with merely the stroke of a pen, feels like a personal affront to many conservatives. The national monuments in southern Utah, created or re-expanded by the three most recent Democratic presidents, stoked this debate as opponents argue these vast allotments go against the Antiquities Act’s instruction to reserve “the smallest area compatible” with protection.
“Large monuments are an abuse of the Antiquities Act, and these are two of the worst examples of that,” says Ben Burr, executive director of the BlueRibbon Coalition, a nonprofit that has challenged the legality of these monuments in court.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
That fight has been focused here in Utah for two big reasons.
For one, Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears are big. Proponents say their size allows for future and current scientific discoveries, such as the baby duck-billed dinosaur excavated at Grand Staircase-Escalante in June. Tribal nations have also long fought for the protection of these two areas of southern Utah. The entirety of Grand Staircase-Escalante is a cultural and spiritual landscape, says Autumn Gillard, coordinator for the Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition.
The second reason is ... Utah. The federal government owns almost half of the West, but it really owns Utah – about 63%, the greatest share of any state other than Nevada.
Like other Western states, Utah renounced claims to unappropriated land within its borders to join the Union in 1896, something Utah spelled out in its own state constitution. But constitution or not, Utah politicians have waged a “philosophical battle” over public lands almost ever since, says John Ruple, a law professor at the University of Utah and a former policy analyst in Gov. Jon Huntsman’s public-lands office. Experts have pointed to a number of overlapping reasons for this: the sheer amount of public land in Utah, the territoriality of longtime Utahns whose Mormon ancestors were outcast here, and the deep conservatism that controls all levels of government.
“In the West, in a place like Utah, an anti-government coalition looks at public lands because they are such a visible representation of federal power,” says James Skillen, a professor at Calvin University in Michigan who has authored several books on public land in the West. The fight against public land becomes about ideology, he says, rather than about economics or even about what local communities want.
During his first term, Mr. Trump instructed his Interior Department to review all national monuments larger than 100,000 acres. With the encouragement of Utah’s GOP leaders, he picked two to slash. He traveled to Utah in 2017 and signed orders shrinking Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears by about 50% and 85%, respectively. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) and other environmental nonprofits quickly sued. But before those cases could move forward, Joe Biden won the 2020 election, took office, and restored the monuments.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Utah politicians, however, neither started nor ended there. In 2012, the state legislature passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act to require the federal government to give the majority of federal land back to the state (it hasn’t), and in 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a lawsuit from Utah about the federal government’s “indefinite retention” of so much of the state’s land. Then-Rep. Jason Chaffetz proposed legislation in 2017 to sell 3.3 million acres of public land in the West but was forced to withdraw after backlash. Similarly, Sen. Mike Lee was forced last year to withdraw a federal land sell-off provision from Republicans’ tax-and-spending bill after bipartisan backlash from conservation groups and fellow Western lawmakers.
In another, quieter attempt this year, Mr. Lee and U.S. Rep. Celeste Maloy in June failed to overturn a Biden-era management plan of Grand Staircase-Escalante using a filibuster-proof move under the Congressional Review Act.
“The common denominator is Utah politicians. ... They are clamoring for it,” says Steve Bloch, the SUWA’s legal director. “Utah envisions itself as the epicenter, as leading the charge against the system of federal lands.”
The economics of national monuments
When Grand Staircase-Escalante was established, it faced local pushback that mirrored elected officials’ complaints. Following Mr. Clinton’s proclamation, the southern Utah border city of Kanab flew flags at half-staff in protest, and schoolchildren released 50 black balloons as a warning to other states. Since then, however, sentiment on the ground has shifted.
Today, polls repeatedly show Utahns’ support for keeping Grand Staircase-Escalante’s and Bears Ears’ 1996 and 2016 boundaries intact. This transition from reviled to beloved is common for national monuments, many of which end up becoming national parks. Look no further than neighboring Arizona’s Grand Canyon, or the national parks near Grand Staircase-Escalante, such as Zion or Bryce Canyon.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
“The state government in Utah takes positions on these issues that are far outside the mainstream ... that fly in the face of what the public wants,” says Chris Winter, executive director of the University of Colorado’s Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment. “Federal public lands, especially in the West, are widely popular.”
And for locals, they can be transformative. Before the monument was established, Garfield County had the state’s highest unemployment rate – around 10%, three times higher than the state average. Since 2001, the population in the Grand Staircase-Escalante region has risen by 26%, and jobs have grown by 51%.
Blake Spalding, who moved to Boulder, Utah, in 2000, now employs roughly 60 people in the town of about 230 at her Hell’s Backbone Grill & Farm. She moved here because of the monument, and over the past two-plus decades, acclaim for both it and the restaurant have grown in parallel. She has since expanded her business to include a food truck and a hotel.
“I put everything I have into this because I believe we have the ability to open hearts and minds, and to help people fall back in love with the natural world,” she says.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
When President Trump signed an order shrinking the monument during his first term, Ms. Spalding joined a lawsuit challenging the move. When she learned of the administration’s renewed effort in July, she asked her young business partner, Nina Brownell, who first started working at the restaurant in college, whether it would be better if they let this whole thing go. Ms. Brownell responded that it was more important than ever that they keep going.
“Those of us who live here live here for a reason,” says Ms. Brownell. “We care about the bees, and we care about the mountain lions, and we care about the wildflowers. There’s really this deep frustration and anger for people who live far away and know nothing about this.”
“Move-ins” versus longtime locals
Garfield County, home to Escalante, Boulder, and up until July, nearly one-third of the monument, is larger than the state of Connecticut. Neighbors live hours away from one another. This remoteness is beloved by residents and visitors – and also allows for a deep divide among those who call it home.
“What Clinton did in ’96 has steamrolled into a catastrophe,” says Leland Pollock, chair of the three-member Garfield County Commission who has lived in the area his entire life and praised Mr. Trump’s July proclamation. “Our goal is to not get into coal mines and drilling and all that nonsense,” he says. Rather, he hopes the Bureau of Land Management will now face fewer restrictions in caring for the land, and be able to take steps such as removing the juniper and pinyon pine trees that have sucked up soil moisture and made life more difficult for those with grazing permits, including himself.
And while the tourism sector has replaced the sawmill jobs that left decades ago, and which had employed a few hundred people (“Which is like 100,000 people anywhere else,” says Mr. Pollock), it doesn’t replace what was lost, he says. While the unemployment rate during the summer now hovers in the low single digits, it can reach up to 16% during the winter.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
“Move-ins love it, longtime locals hate it,” as one woman outside the Escalante Post Office summed up the monument divide. She counts herself in the “love it” camp, but declined to give her name for fear of local backlash.
Locals, however, appeared largely united in disbelief in the hours after the Oval Office signing ceremony, after listening to the reasons given by their elected officials for slashing the size of these monuments. By establishing these monuments, Presidents Clinton, Barack Obama, and Biden “locked those acres up,” said Kate McGregor, the deputy secretary of the Interior. “For nobody to use,” added President Trump. “You can’t do anything. You can’t go hunting. You can’t go fishing. You can’t do anything. You can virtually not even walk on it.”
None of that is true, as even a visitor can attest. Hiking, hunting, and fishing are all permitted. As are motorized vehicles. “You could drive on dirt roads in the national monument for the rest of your life,” says Mr. Waggoner, of Escalante Outfitters. (Mr. Burr, with the BlueRibbon Coalition, argues that the Biden administration’s management plan limited off-road vehicle use and even though “the process hadn’t completely unfolded yet,” it was coming.) And documents reviewed by the New York Times show that the Trump administration was briefed on recreational opportunities inside Bears Ears at least one month before the Oval Office event. Another regularly repeated falsehood is that the monument stripped local ranchers of their grazing rights. To the contrary, livestock grazing was grandfathered into the monument’s management by the Bureau of Land Management, which operates under a “multi-use mandate.” Grazing is permitted on more than 90% of the monument.
The fact that officials are denying the very uses that are now propping up local economies – which were struggling before the monument’s designation – worries local business owners. Morgan Sjogren, who just obtained her BLM permit to guide in Grand Staircase-Escalante, has received calls from her first clients booked for this fall, asking whether their trip is canceled.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Ms. Brownell looks out to the foreign visitors perched at her restaurant’s picnic tables with cameras and burgers, and notes that the first thing they comment on is the accessibility of natural beauty in America.
“Please tell me who’s to benefit from this,” Ms. Brownell says of Mr. Trump’s order.
One answer to this might be the extractive industry. Documents from the first Trump administration, some made public by The New York Times, show that Utah politicians both encouraged the 2017 reductions and also structured the new monument boundaries to exclude potential energy and mineral deposits.
But many are skeptical of this explanation. There is already enough uranium mining in the West to meet America’s demand, says Professor Ruple of the University of Utah. He also points out that it doesn’t make financial sense for companies to mine for coal or drill for oil in such an unforgiving landscape, which lacks existing infrastructure such as pipelines, especially when it’s almost certain that companies will face constant litigation from monument advocates.
“If you were to find the mother lode of coal in the Grand Staircase, what are you going to do with it?” asks Professor Ruple.
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Environmental advocacy groups have vowed to file lawsuits over the national monuments’ reductions, and both sides of the debate say the courts might have to finally answer whether the Antiquities Act is a one-way street, or decide that presidents are allowed to rescind (in addition to establishing) preserved land. They will have to rule if this landscape as a whole – its layered staircase of rocks and stones, its tourism, its sites that inspired Indigenous songs – is worth it.
“This one particular geologic formation that we have here, it’s amazing, and it’s the perfect example of why we have the Antiquities Act because nobody knew,” says Mr. Waggoner. “We just set it aside until somebody finds it. And that’s pretty amazing.”
Project 2025: As midterms near, Trump’s window for action might be closing
During his 2024 campaign for president, Donald Trump famously disavowed Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for governing produced by the Heritage Foundation. “I don’t know anything about it, I don’t want to know anything about it,” he said, dismissing its agenda as “seriously extreme.”
Once back in office, however, President Trump pursued many of the proposals in Project 2025, as he and his administration sought to enact sweeping change over the federal government and broad swaths of American life.
To date, more than half of Project 2025’s policy recommendations have been enacted, according to a Heritage fundraising email from June 23, as well as several organizations tracking the administration’s actions. Many of those moves happened in the first few months of his second term: Mr. Trump signed a flurry of executive orders on everything from immigration to climate change, slashed staff at some federal agencies and all but eliminated others, and has refused to spend some money appropriated by Congress.
Why We Wrote This
President Donald Trump’s second administration started with a rapid series of actions that followed recommendations in Project 2025. With the midterms upcoming, and Democrats favored to win at least one chamber of Congress, some who support the document wonder whether more could have been done.
But the clock is ticking on the administration’s ability to complete much more of the Project 2025 agenda. If the fall midterm elections bring Democratic control of one or both chambers of Congress, it could slow or challenge the rest of Mr. Trump’s priorities.
Olga Fedorova/AP/File
Some of those involved with or supportive of Project 2025 say they’re pleased with what the administration has accomplished so far, while wondering if even more could have been achieved.
Most of the document’s goals were not new or exclusive to Heritage, which for decades has authored policy guides for GOP administrations; many have long been part of the conservative wish-list. A senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute says that Mr. Trump’s denunciation of the document on the campaign trail might have given it a notoriety beyond a “typical think tank pre-election policy book” that made it harder for the administration to execute some of its ideas.
The architects ultimately got some of what they wanted, says Tevi Troy, a presidential historian and former senior White House aide under President George W. Bush. But he adds, “I think the question within the leadership at Heritage has got to be, ‘What would it have been if this thing didn’t blow up and Trump didn’t denounce it?’”
A fast start
One of the things Project 2025’s architects understood was the need for speed.
James Goodwin, policy director for the Center for Progressive Reform, which has been tracking proposals completed by executive action, says that, in its early days, the administration produced the equivalent of one policy accomplishment per day.
Mr. Goodwin, whose organization calls Project 2025 a guide to weaken American democracy, says that the Trump administration has moved quickly in part by ignoring norms.
“It just doesn’t care about, is unconcerned about being perceived as cruel or operating in bad faith,” he says.
Gene J. Puskar/AP/File
Paul Dans, one of the architects of Project 2025 and the former director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project at Heritage, told NPR that watching Mr. Trump sign a flurry of executive orders based on the blueprint’s recommendations was momentous.
“Every day that President Trump rolls out another Project 2025 item, it’s really an endorsement of our work,” he said. A Heritage Foundation spokesperson tells the Monitor in a statement that the organization is “proud to continue developing and advancing common-sense policy solutions that improve the lives of Americans.”
Mandy Gunasekara, a lawyer who was chief of staff at the Environmental Protection Agency during Mr. Trump’s first term, penned Project 2025’s section on the EPA. In an interview with the Monitor, she said it was important that policies be moved forward in the first 100 days.
“Getting your major initiatives advanced in the first 100 days is key to their success,” says Ms. Gunasekara. “And that’s a lesson that we learned the hard way during the first Trump administration, and why things like Project 2025 ... had game plans, not just of policy goals, but staff training and personnel recommendations ready to go on Day 1.”
A notable success, she says, was the repeal of the 2009 Endangerment Finding. That was a scientific determination that deemed six major greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide and methane) to be a threat to public health, giving the EPA power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Democratic officials such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York criticized the reversal, saying the administration was putting the interests of fossil-fuel industries ahead of the American people.
“Trump is making a radical move that will send shockwaves across the economy – uncertainty for manufacturers, states, regulators everywhere. And it flies in the face, of course, of basic science,” Mr. Schumer said on the Senate floor in February, calling the move “a corrupt giveaway to Big Oil, plain and simple.”
Antranik Tavitian/Reuters
David R. Burton, a senior research fellow at Advancing American Freedom, a conservative advocacy and policy organization, wrote recommendations in Project 2025 regarding the Securities and Exchange Commission and other financial regulators. That section suggested, for example, the reduction of “regulatory impediments” on entrepreneurs that affect their capital gains. He suggests that there is still work to be done.
Some predict the administration will be motivated to try to get as much done as possible in the remaining months before the fall midterms. Mr. Trump and Republicans are facing significant headwinds going into the elections, with public opinion on the president’s overall job performance at or near 60% disapproval.
“There definitely is going to be a push before this election in the event that one or both of the houses flip,” says Ms. Gunasekara.
Yet, if the administration makes a push to enact more items from the Project 2025 wish list, one expert says, it could actually make the midterms even more challenging for the GOP.
“I find that the more that [a] president achieves their policy goals in Congress, the worse they do in the subsequent midterm elections, because when you move the ball visibly in one ideological direction, public opinion tends to move in the other direction,” says Matt Grossmann, the director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
Unfinished business
Many policies in Project 2025 have not been put in place.
On the topic of abortion, the policy blueprint calls for nationwide restrictions. Though 13 states now have complete abortion bans, and others have imposed strict limitations, there are no nationwide restrictions. Project 2025 also proposed defunding Planned Parenthood, which faced a one-year ban on funding from Medicaid but has seen that funding restored since July 5.
Another goal of Project 2025 was for the Department of Education to be shut down. Heritage has long argued that educational choices should be made by states and parents, not the federal government.
Last March, President Trump cut nearly half of the department’s staff and ordered its closure through executive action. But shuttering a federal agency requires congressional approval. In mid-July, the House Education and Workforce Committee advanced a 10-bill package that would dismantle the Education Department and allocate some of its mandate to other federal agencies. Congress has yet to act on it.
On immigration, Project 2025 proposals to mandate a nationwide E-Verify system for all private employers, and for the repeal of Temporary Protected Status as a program, are also waiting on congressional action.
But the Trump administration has worked around congressional approval to move forward on other Project 2025 items.
Mattie Neretin/Sipa USA/Reuters/File
Upon taking office, President Trump signed executive orders to end diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; to enforce a transgender military ban; to increase White House oversight in agencies such as the Justice Department; to reclassify many federal workers to be subject to executive branch supervision instead of being apolitical appointees; to ramp up deportations of unauthorized immigrants; and to close the country’s southern border.
More broadly, Mr. Trump and his administration have pursued another goal of Project 2025: expanding presidential authority over the executive branch.
Mr. Trump was handed a victory by the U.S. Supreme Court in June in Trump v. Slaughter. Rebecca Slaughter, a commissioner with the Federal Trade Commission, had challenged Mr. Trump’s decision to fire her. The court’s decision allows a president to fire heads of agencies that were created by Congress to be independent of the White House.
The Slaughter ruling will stand after Mr. Trump leaves office. However, policies enacted through executive orders rather than legislation passed by Congress might not last. That pattern has gone on for 35 years, says William Yeatman, director of the George Washington University’s Regulatory Studies Center.
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“Anything one president can do, another president can undo,” says Mr. Yeatman.
Staff writer Caitlin Babcock contributed reporting for this story.
Project 2025: As midterms near, Trump’s window for action might be closing
During his 2024 campaign for president, Donald Trump famously disavowed Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for governing produced by the Heritage Foundation. “I don’t know anything about it, I don’t want to know anything about it,” he said, dismissing its agenda as “seriously extreme.”
Once back in office, however, President Trump pursued many of the proposals in Project 2025, as he and his administration sought to enact sweeping change over the federal government and broad swaths of American life.
To date, more than half of Project 2025’s policy recommendations have been enacted, according to a Heritage fundraising email from June 23, as well as several organizations tracking the administration’s actions. Many of those moves happened in the first few months of his second term: Mr. Trump signed a flurry of executive orders on everything from immigration to climate change, slashed staff at some federal agencies and all but eliminated others, and has refused to spend some money appropriated by Congress.
Why We Wrote This
President Donald Trump’s second administration started with a rapid series of actions that followed recommendations in Project 2025. With the midterms upcoming, and Democrats favored to win at least one chamber of Congress, some who support the document wonder whether more could have been done.
But the clock is ticking on the administration’s ability to complete much more of the Project 2025 agenda. If the fall midterm elections bring Democratic control of one or both chambers of Congress, it could slow or challenge the rest of Mr. Trump’s priorities.
Olga Fedorova/AP/File
Some of those involved with or supportive of Project 2025 say they’re pleased with what the administration has accomplished so far, while wondering if even more could have been achieved.
Most of the document’s goals were not new or exclusive to Heritage, which for decades has authored policy guides for GOP administrations; many have long been part of the conservative wish-list. A senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute says that Mr. Trump’s denunciation of the document on the campaign trail might have given it a notoriety beyond a “typical think tank pre-election policy book” that made it harder for the administration to execute some of its ideas.
The architects ultimately got some of what they wanted, says Tevi Troy, a presidential historian and former senior White House aide under President George W. Bush. But he adds, “I think the question within the leadership at Heritage has got to be, ‘What would it have been if this thing didn’t blow up and Trump didn’t denounce it?’”
A fast start
One of the things Project 2025’s architects understood was the need for speed.
James Goodwin, policy director for the Center for Progressive Reform, which has been tracking proposals completed by executive action, says that, in its early days, the administration produced the equivalent of one policy accomplishment per day.
Mr. Goodwin, whose organization calls Project 2025 a guide to weaken American democracy, says that the Trump administration has moved quickly in part by ignoring norms.
“It just doesn’t care about, is unconcerned about being perceived as cruel or operating in bad faith,” he says.
Gene J. Puskar/AP/File
Paul Dans, one of the architects of Project 2025 and the former director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project at Heritage, told NPR that watching Mr. Trump sign a flurry of executive orders based on the blueprint’s recommendations was momentous.
“Every day that President Trump rolls out another Project 2025 item, it’s really an endorsement of our work,” he said. A Heritage Foundation spokesperson tells the Monitor in a statement that the organization is “proud to continue developing and advancing common-sense policy solutions that improve the lives of Americans.”
Mandy Gunasekara, a lawyer who was chief of staff at the Environmental Protection Agency during Mr. Trump’s first term, penned Project 2025’s section on the EPA. In an interview with the Monitor, she said it was important that policies be moved forward in the first 100 days.
“Getting your major initiatives advanced in the first 100 days is key to their success,” says Ms. Gunasekara. “And that’s a lesson that we learned the hard way during the first Trump administration, and why things like Project 2025 ... had game plans, not just of policy goals, but staff training and personnel recommendations ready to go on Day 1.”
A notable success, she says, was the repeal of the 2009 Endangerment Finding. That was a scientific determination that deemed six major greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide and methane) to be a threat to public health, giving the EPA power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Democratic officials such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York criticized the reversal, saying the administration was putting the interests of fossil-fuel industries ahead of the American people.
“Trump is making a radical move that will send shockwaves across the economy – uncertainty for manufacturers, states, regulators everywhere. And it flies in the face, of course, of basic science,” Mr. Schumer said on the Senate floor in February, calling the move “a corrupt giveaway to Big Oil, plain and simple.”
Antranik Tavitian/Reuters
David R. Burton, a senior research fellow at Advancing American Freedom, a conservative advocacy and policy organization, wrote recommendations in Project 2025 regarding the Securities and Exchange Commission and other financial regulators. That section suggested, for example, the reduction of “regulatory impediments” on entrepreneurs that affect their capital gains. He suggests that there is still work to be done.
Some predict the administration will be motivated to try to get as much done as possible in the remaining months before the fall midterms. Mr. Trump and Republicans are facing significant headwinds going into the elections, with public opinion on the president’s overall job performance at or near 60% disapproval.
“There definitely is going to be a push before this election in the event that one or both of the houses flip,” says Ms. Gunasekara.
Yet, if the administration makes a push to enact more items from the Project 2025 wish list, one expert says, it could actually make the midterms even more challenging for the GOP.
“I find that the more that [a] president achieves their policy goals in Congress, the worse they do in the subsequent midterm elections, because when you move the ball visibly in one ideological direction, public opinion tends to move in the other direction,” says Matt Grossmann, the director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
Unfinished business
Many policies in Project 2025 have not been put in place.
On the topic of abortion, the policy blueprint calls for nationwide restrictions. Though 13 states now have complete abortion bans, and others have imposed strict limitations, there are no nationwide restrictions. Project 2025 also proposed defunding Planned Parenthood, which faced a one-year ban on funding from Medicaid but has seen that funding restored since July 5.
Another goal of Project 2025 was for the Department of Education to be shut down. Heritage has long argued that educational choices should be made by states and parents, not the federal government.
Last March, President Trump cut nearly half of the department’s staff and ordered its closure through executive action. But shuttering a federal agency requires congressional approval. In mid-July, the House Education and Workforce Committee advanced a 10-bill package that would dismantle the Education Department and allocate some of its mandate to other federal agencies. Congress has yet to act on it.
On immigration, Project 2025 proposals to mandate a nationwide E-Verify system for all private employers, and for the repeal of Temporary Protected Status as a program, are also waiting on congressional action.
But the Trump administration has worked around congressional approval to move forward on other Project 2025 items.
Mattie Neretin/Sipa USA/Reuters/File
Upon taking office, President Trump signed executive orders to end diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; to enforce a transgender military ban; to increase White House oversight in agencies such as the Justice Department; to reclassify many federal workers to be subject to executive branch supervision instead of being apolitical appointees; to ramp up deportations of unauthorized immigrants; and to close the country’s southern border.
More broadly, Mr. Trump and his administration have pursued another goal of Project 2025: expanding presidential authority over the executive branch.
Mr. Trump was handed a victory by the U.S. Supreme Court in June in Trump v. Slaughter. Rebecca Slaughter, a commissioner with the Federal Trade Commission, had challenged Mr. Trump’s decision to fire her. The court’s decision allows a president to fire heads of agencies that were created by Congress to be independent of the White House.
The Slaughter ruling will stand after Mr. Trump leaves office. However, policies enacted through executive orders rather than legislation passed by Congress might not last. That pattern has gone on for 35 years, says William Yeatman, director of the George Washington University’s Regulatory Studies Center.
Deepen your worldview
with Monitor Highlights.
Already a subscriber? Log in to hide ads.
“Anything one president can do, another president can undo,” says Mr. Yeatman.
Staff writer Caitlin Babcock contributed reporting for this story.
Why Lindsey Graham’s sister isn’t a lock to hold on to his Senate seat
Just a month ago, Darline Graham was a private citizen, with a career in vocational training for disabled people.
Today, she’s the junior United States senator from South Carolina, a political newcomer appointed to serve the remaining months of the term of her late brother, Lindsey Graham. And she’s running for a full six-year term in her own right.
But the new Senator Graham is no shoo-in for the Republican nomination in next Tuesday’s special primary – despite the enthusiastic backing of President Donald Trump. In a crowded field, she is polling at or near the top, but far from the majority needed to avoid a runoff, which would take place Aug. 25.
Why We Wrote This
President Donald Trump has endorsed South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham in next Tuesday’s special primary for her late brother’s seat. But it’s a crowded field in a state where voters are, as one analyst puts it, “so Trumpy, they’re not sure they trust Trump.”
The snap GOP primary will, in some ways, render a verdict on President Trump himself, who faces a restive midterm electorate. National polls show Republican support for the U.S. war with Iran declining and economic concerns growing, as voters grapple with the price of gas, groceries, and housing.
Mike McCarn/AP
In solidly Republican South Carolina, where the GOP nominee is almost certain to win in November, the question is, Who will Republican primary voters nominate – the Trump-endorsed Ms. Graham or a more experienced politician?
“This race is going to be a realization around whether people still believe the direction and the promises of Donald Trump,” Mark McBride, one of 10 Republicans on Tuesday’s ballot, told the Monitor last weekend before a candidate forum in suburban Lexington, South Carolina.
“It’s a turning point right now,” he says.
Mr. McBride, a retired restaurateur and former mayor of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, didn’t make the cut for either of this week’s candidate debates. But his views tracked with those of some event attendees.
Mr. Trump’s endorsement doesn’t mean much to Annie, a retiree from Lexington who didn’t share her last name for privacy reasons. She said she came to the event hoping to find some clarity about whom to support, but found the opposite.
“I mean it, I’m confused,” she says. “The socialism, communism that’s coming into the country, the illegals, the Senate not getting anything done – it’s a mess.”
Though she’s a longtime Lindsey Graham voter, Annie says she’s not likely to vote for his sister. “Yeah, that’s a tough one. Lindsey was a good man. I don’t know if she’s strong enough. We need a fighter.”
In her debate appearance Monday night, Ms. Graham sought to establish her bona fides as a U.S. senator, sticking mostly with the positions of her brother and Mr. Trump. When the candidates were asked if they would prioritize the president’s agenda or the needs of South Carolina voters, should they differ, Ms. Graham was unequivocal.
Meg Kinnard/AP
“I completely support the president’s agenda,” she said.
Ms. Graham even sided with Mr. Trump over her brother on getting rid of the filibuster, the Senate procedure requiring a 60-vote supermajority to pass some legislation. She has also sought to portray herself as an everywoman, living frugally as part of “that 60%” of South Carolinians who would not be able to cover three months of living expenses in an emergency.
“I am a hard worker who knows your struggles because I live them, too,” Ms. Graham said at last Saturday’s forum in Lexington. “Trust me, I’m not an expert on Congress. I don’t claim to be one. I’m an expert on the problems facing families in South Carolina.”
Following the event, 265 attendees participated in a straw poll. Ms. Graham narrowly edged out Rep. Russell Fry – 25% versus 23% – with Rep. Ralph Norman taking 20%. Subsequent polling has also shown those three at the top, though in varying orders.
The memory of Mr. Graham, who died suddenly on July 11, looms large over the race for what would have been his fifth Senate term. After he and Mr. Trump clashed in the 2016 presidential primary, the two eventually became fast friends – earning Mr. Graham the nickname of “Trump whisperer” for his ability to help the president win Senate votes.
Alyssa Pointer/Reuters
But in South Carolina, Mr. Graham’s legacy is mixed. In the June Senate primary, as an incumbent, he won with just 57% of the vote, to businessman Mark Lynch’s 29%. The late senator faced pushback over his support for Mr. Trump’s wars, particularly with Iran, as a violation of the MAGA principle of “America First.”
Many GOP chairmanships in major South Carolina counties have been taken over by people who are “Trump cubed,” says Jim Guth, a political scientist at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. “They’re so Trumpy, they’re not sure they trust Trump.”
That does not bode well for Ms. Graham, who is relying heavily on the president’s backing, as well as the Graham name. She’s not just Mr. Graham’s sister; she’s also his adopted daughter, after the death of their parents when she was a young teen. Mr. Graham, who was nine years older than his sister, initially became her legal guardian and then formally adopted her so she would be eligible to receive his military benefits.
But here’s the rub: South Carolina can at times be famously independent. In May, the state Senate rejected a Trump initiative to redistrict the state’s congressional districts, in an effort to squeeze out powerful Democratic Rep. James Clyburn.
South Carolinians also at times look askance at candidates who might be seeking to benefit from the family name. Carroll Campbell III, son of the late former Gov. Carroll Campbell Jr., lost a congressional primary in 2010. Two sons of the late, legendary Sen. Strom Thurmond served in public office, but never reached their father’s heights.
In Ms. Graham’s case, the issue is that she’s so new to office, she’s a bit of a cipher.
“I think [South Carolinians] are worried about what she really believes because they don’t know her,” says David Woodard, an emeritus political scientist at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina, and a retired GOP political consultant who ran Mr. Graham’s first two congressional campaigns.
Aside from Representatives Fry and Norman, Ms. Graham’s top primary challengers include Mr. Lynch, the businessman, and former Gov. Mark Sanford. The latter, who made headlines in 2009 when he ran off with his mistress while claiming to be hiking the Appalachian Trail, went on to serve in Congress and ran for president in 2016. After Mr. Trump won the election, Mr. Sanford became a prominent critic and advocate for fiscal responsibility.
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But it’s Ms. Graham who’s getting the most attention, as the heir apparent to her brother’s political brand. Mr. Trump had looked set to endorse Mr. Fry, a two-term member of Congress and Trump loyalist, but then veered toward calling on Ms. Graham to run. If she wins the nomination and a full term, she will owe Mr. Trump her loyalty.
Linda Feldmann reported from Washington, and Patrik Jonsson reported from Lexington, South Carolina.
Why Lindsey Graham’s sister isn’t a lock to hold on to his Senate seat
Just a month ago, Darline Graham was a private citizen, with a career in vocational training for disabled people.
Today, she’s the junior United States senator from South Carolina, a political newcomer appointed to serve the remaining months of the term of her late brother, Lindsey Graham. And she’s running for a full six-year term in her own right.
But the new Senator Graham is no shoo-in for the Republican nomination in next Tuesday’s special primary – despite the enthusiastic backing of President Donald Trump. In a crowded field, she is polling at or near the top, but far from the majority needed to avoid a runoff, which would take place Aug. 25.
Why We Wrote This
President Donald Trump has endorsed South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham in next Tuesday’s special primary for her late brother’s seat. But it’s a crowded field in a state where voters are, as one analyst puts it, “so Trumpy, they’re not sure they trust Trump.”
The snap GOP primary will, in some ways, render a verdict on President Trump himself, who faces a restive midterm electorate. National polls show Republican support for the U.S. war with Iran declining and economic concerns growing, as voters grapple with the price of gas, groceries, and housing.
Mike McCarn/AP
In solidly Republican South Carolina, where the GOP nominee is almost certain to win in November, the question is, Who will Republican primary voters nominate – the Trump-endorsed Ms. Graham or a more experienced politician?
“This race is going to be a realization around whether people still believe the direction and the promises of Donald Trump,” Mark McBride, one of 10 Republicans on Tuesday’s ballot, told the Monitor last weekend before a candidate forum in suburban Lexington, South Carolina.
“It’s a turning point right now,” he says.
Mr. McBride, a retired restaurateur and former mayor of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, didn’t make the cut for either of this week’s candidate debates. But his views tracked with those of some event attendees.
Mr. Trump’s endorsement doesn’t mean much to Annie, a retiree from Lexington who didn’t share her last name for privacy reasons. She said she came to the event hoping to find some clarity about whom to support, but found the opposite.
“I mean it, I’m confused,” she says. “The socialism, communism that’s coming into the country, the illegals, the Senate not getting anything done – it’s a mess.”
Though she’s a longtime Lindsey Graham voter, Annie says she’s not likely to vote for his sister. “Yeah, that’s a tough one. Lindsey was a good man. I don’t know if she’s strong enough. We need a fighter.”
In her debate appearance Monday night, Ms. Graham sought to establish her bona fides as a U.S. senator, sticking mostly with the positions of her brother and Mr. Trump. When the candidates were asked if they would prioritize the president’s agenda or the needs of South Carolina voters, should they differ, Ms. Graham was unequivocal.
Meg Kinnard/AP
“I completely support the president’s agenda,” she said.
Ms. Graham even sided with Mr. Trump over her brother on getting rid of the filibuster, the Senate procedure requiring a 60-vote supermajority to pass some legislation. She has also sought to portray herself as an everywoman, living frugally as part of “that 60%” of South Carolinians who would not be able to cover three months of living expenses in an emergency.
“I am a hard worker who knows your struggles because I live them, too,” Ms. Graham said at last Saturday’s forum in Lexington. “Trust me, I’m not an expert on Congress. I don’t claim to be one. I’m an expert on the problems facing families in South Carolina.”
Following the event, 265 attendees participated in a straw poll. Ms. Graham narrowly edged out Rep. Russell Fry – 25% versus 23% – with Rep. Ralph Norman taking 20%. Subsequent polling has also shown those three at the top, though in varying orders.
The memory of Mr. Graham, who died suddenly on July 11, looms large over the race for what would have been his fifth Senate term. After he and Mr. Trump clashed in the 2016 presidential primary, the two eventually became fast friends – earning Mr. Graham the nickname of “Trump whisperer” for his ability to help the president win Senate votes.
Alyssa Pointer/Reuters
But in South Carolina, Mr. Graham’s legacy is mixed. In the June Senate primary, as an incumbent, he won with just 57% of the vote, to businessman Mark Lynch’s 29%. The late senator faced pushback over his support for Mr. Trump’s wars, particularly with Iran, as a violation of the MAGA principle of “America First.”
Many GOP chairmanships in major South Carolina counties have been taken over by people who are “Trump cubed,” says Jim Guth, a political scientist at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. “They’re so Trumpy, they’re not sure they trust Trump.”
That does not bode well for Ms. Graham, who is relying heavily on the president’s backing, as well as the Graham name. She’s not just Mr. Graham’s sister; she’s also his adopted daughter, after the death of their parents when she was a young teen. Mr. Graham, who was nine years older than his sister, initially became her legal guardian and then formally adopted her so she would be eligible to receive his military benefits.
But here’s the rub: South Carolina can at times be famously independent. In May, the state Senate rejected a Trump initiative to redistrict the state’s congressional districts, in an effort to squeeze out powerful Democratic Rep. James Clyburn.
South Carolinians also at times look askance at candidates who might be seeking to benefit from the family name. Carroll Campbell III, son of the late former Gov. Carroll Campbell Jr., lost a congressional primary in 2010. Two sons of the late, legendary Sen. Strom Thurmond served in public office, but never reached their father’s heights.
In Ms. Graham’s case, the issue is that she’s so new to office, she’s a bit of a cipher.
“I think [South Carolinians] are worried about what she really believes because they don’t know her,” says David Woodard, an emeritus political scientist at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina, and a retired GOP political consultant who ran Mr. Graham’s first two congressional campaigns.
Aside from Representatives Fry and Norman, Ms. Graham’s top primary challengers include Mr. Lynch, the businessman, and former Gov. Mark Sanford. The latter, who made headlines in 2009 when he ran off with his mistress while claiming to be hiking the Appalachian Trail, went on to serve in Congress and ran for president in 2016. After Mr. Trump won the election, Mr. Sanford became a prominent critic and advocate for fiscal responsibility.
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But it’s Ms. Graham who’s getting the most attention, as the heir apparent to her brother’s political brand. Mr. Trump had looked set to endorse Mr. Fry, a two-term member of Congress and Trump loyalist, but then veered toward calling on Ms. Graham to run. If she wins the nomination and a full term, she will owe Mr. Trump her loyalty.
Linda Feldmann reported from Washington, and Patrik Jonsson reported from Lexington, South Carolina.
Together, these Republicans and Democrats are vouching for election security
As President Donald Trump addressed Americans on July 16 about elections, Jason Shepherd was “prepared for anything.”
The Georgia Republican and his team thought the president, who in 2021 pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes to declare Mr. Trump the winner of the 2020 election, might claim their state’s elections were illegitimate. They had drafted public statements to release as fact checks.
They never sent those statements. Mr. Trump focused instead on misleading claims about China interfering in U.S. elections and unproven assertions that the electoral system is insecure.
Why We Wrote This
Examples of America's political polarization are easy to find. Instances of cooperation across party lines might be more elusive, but they are happening – including, across the country, networks of Republicans and Democrats working together on the vital issue of elections.
But as a co-lead of the Georgia Democracy Resilience Network, Mr. Shepherd is part of a network of Republicans and Democrats working together in six states to counter just the kind of rhetoric the president laid out that night. The work is funded by the nonprofit Carter Center, which has started bringing lessons learned from supporting democracy abroad back to the United States, like having a bipartisan group of trusted messengers ready to publicly stand up for facts. The center, founded by former President Jimmy Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter, declined to say how much money it’s giving these networks, but said it’s “helping to establish” them and hopes they become “locally owned and operated.”
Groups are active in almost every battleground state: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. They’re doing things such as offering tours of vote processing centers and hosting cross-partisan conversations. Several in this network say they’re motivated in part by their firsthand experience with political violence.
The U.S. has seen a recent rise in threats against election workers and in political violence among both parties, though it is more concentrated on the right. Notably, Trump supporters – believing the president’s false claims about a stolen election – attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, beat police officers and for a time disrupted the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in modern U.S. history.
The American voting system isn’t perfect; election administration is often underfunded, and fraud, while rare, does happen. These networks say they recognize those issues, but work to separate problem-solving from rhetoric that can lead to violence.
Mr. Shepherd, a Republican, has received violent threats for backing the 2020 election result.
Ron Barber, a Democrat who co-leads Arizona’s resilience network, was shot while working for then-Rep. Gabby Giffords.
And Don Henninger, an Arizona Republican who works alongside Barber, testified in support of the 2020 election result in front of contentious crowds. But he’s encouraged by what his work has shown him.
“Far more people agree on things, including the values that make our communities special, than disagree,” says Mr. Henninger. “And that is a solid ground of hope for us.”
Political violence
When Mr. Shepherd worked for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, he joked that staffers would take turns opening unknown packages sent to the office. In 2021, while he was chair of the Cobb County Republican Party, someone threatened to “shoot up” the group’s headquarters.
After refusing to say the 2020 election was stolen, Mr. Shepherd faced threats from people he agreed with politically. It’s part of what drives him to model how people can disagree while emphasizing their humanity.
“If you dehumanize someone enough, then acting on violence is not an issue because you’re not going up against another human being,” he says. “You’re going against the label.”
Mr. Shepherd speaks on political panels with members of other parties and encourages civil disagreement on college campuses. He also uses his platform to challenge election misinformation – for example, defending election results to his nearly 3,700 followers on X and on a conservative political blog forum.
“Democracy’s hard part”
Mr. Barber was Ms. Giffords’ district director in 2011 when a gunman opened fire at a public event in Tucson, wounding them both and leaving six others dead.
A year later, as she was preparing to step down, Ms. Giffords gathered staff to discuss her replacement. Mr. Barber, who saw himself in a behind-the-scenes role, had a list of potential candidates.
Ms. Giffords, whose injuries from the shooting had impacted her speech, looked at him and said, “You, me.”
He wasn’t sure whether he had understood. But she was asking him to run. And, he says, “When Gabby asks you to do something, it’s kind of hard to say no.”
Mr. Barber won the seat and served until 2015. Since 2022, as co-leader of Arizona’s resilience network, he has fought voter intimidation at local polls – once successfully taking legal action against armed men standing near ballot boxes – and works to line up public interviews between people who disagree politically.
He collaborates with his Republican co-lead, Mr. Henninger, who describes the two as “united at the core” in the democratic values they agree on.
During the 2022 midterms, Mr. Henninger testified in support of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors certifying the election. Allies of Mr. Trump had criticized the board for voting-equipment failures they said disenfranchised Republicans. An independent investigation found the issues were not intentional. He spoke in an “unruly” room and was grateful no violence broke out.
“My brief taste of that certainly gave me cause for concern about everyday election workers, who oftentimes are facing the same kinds of intimidation,” he says.
As they prepare for this year’s midterm elections, Mr. Henninger and others in these networks are unsure what to expect.
But they believe their efforts can bolster public confidence in elections.
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with Monitor Highlights.
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Rashad Richey, a Democrat who works with Mr. Shepherd in Georgia, was encouraged by a recent discussion with a tea party Republican. They agreed about the professionalism of county-level election administrators.
“Democracy’s hard part isn’t winning – it’s losing and staying in the room for the discussion,” he says. “This is the part that makes it work.”
Together, these Republicans and Democrats are vouching for election security
As President Donald Trump addressed Americans on July 16 about elections, Jason Shepherd was “prepared for anything.”
The Georgia Republican and his team thought the president, who in 2021 pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes to declare Mr. Trump the winner of the 2020 election, might claim their state’s elections were illegitimate. They had drafted public statements to release as fact checks.
They never sent those statements. Mr. Trump focused instead on misleading claims about China interfering in U.S. elections and unproven assertions that the electoral system is insecure.
Why We Wrote This
Examples of America's political polarization are easy to find. Instances of cooperation across party lines might be more elusive, but they are happening – including, across the country, networks of Republicans and Democrats working together on the vital issue of elections.
But as a co-lead of the Georgia Democracy Resilience Network, Mr. Shepherd is part of a network of Republicans and Democrats working together in six states to counter just the kind of rhetoric the president laid out that night. The work is funded by the nonprofit Carter Center, which has started bringing lessons learned from supporting democracy abroad back to the United States, like having a bipartisan group of trusted messengers ready to publicly stand up for facts. The center, founded by former President Jimmy Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter, declined to say how much money it’s giving these networks, but said it’s “helping to establish” them and hopes they become “locally owned and operated.”
Groups are active in almost every battleground state: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. They’re doing things such as offering tours of vote processing centers and hosting cross-partisan conversations. Several in this network say they’re motivated in part by their firsthand experience with political violence.
The U.S. has seen a recent rise in threats against election workers and in political violence among both parties, though it is more concentrated on the right. Notably, Trump supporters – believing the president’s false claims about a stolen election – attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, beat police officers and for a time disrupted the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in modern U.S. history.
The American voting system isn’t perfect; election administration is often underfunded, and fraud, while rare, does happen. These networks say they recognize those issues, but work to separate problem-solving from rhetoric that can lead to violence.
Mr. Shepherd, a Republican, has received violent threats for backing the 2020 election result.
Ron Barber, a Democrat who co-leads Arizona’s resilience network, was shot while working for then-Rep. Gabby Giffords.
And Don Henninger, an Arizona Republican who works alongside Barber, testified in support of the 2020 election result in front of contentious crowds. But he’s encouraged by what his work has shown him.
“Far more people agree on things, including the values that make our communities special, than disagree,” says Mr. Henninger. “And that is a solid ground of hope for us.”
Political violence
When Mr. Shepherd worked for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, he joked that staffers would take turns opening unknown packages sent to the office. In 2021, while he was chair of the Cobb County Republican Party, someone threatened to “shoot up” the group’s headquarters.
After refusing to say the 2020 election was stolen, Mr. Shepherd faced threats from people he agreed with politically. It’s part of what drives him to model how people can disagree while emphasizing their humanity.
“If you dehumanize someone enough, then acting on violence is not an issue because you’re not going up against another human being,” he says. “You’re going against the label.”
Mr. Shepherd speaks on political panels with members of other parties and encourages civil disagreement on college campuses. He also uses his platform to challenge election misinformation – for example, defending election results to his nearly 3,700 followers on X and on a conservative political blog forum.
“Democracy’s hard part”
Mr. Barber was Ms. Giffords’ district director in 2011 when a gunman opened fire at a public event in Tucson, wounding them both and leaving six others dead.
A year later, as she was preparing to step down, Ms. Giffords gathered staff to discuss her replacement. Mr. Barber, who saw himself in a behind-the-scenes role, had a list of potential candidates.
Ms. Giffords, whose injuries from the shooting had impacted her speech, looked at him and said, “You, me.”
He wasn’t sure whether he had understood. But she was asking him to run. And, he says, “When Gabby asks you to do something, it’s kind of hard to say no.”
Mr. Barber won the seat and served until 2015. Since 2022, as co-leader of Arizona’s resilience network, he has fought voter intimidation at local polls – once successfully taking legal action against armed men standing near ballot boxes – and works to line up public interviews between people who disagree politically.
He collaborates with his Republican co-lead, Mr. Henninger, who describes the two as “united at the core” in the democratic values they agree on.
During the 2022 midterms, Mr. Henninger testified in support of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors certifying the election. Allies of Mr. Trump had criticized the board for voting-equipment failures they said disenfranchised Republicans. An independent investigation found the issues were not intentional. He spoke in an “unruly” room and was grateful no violence broke out.
“My brief taste of that certainly gave me cause for concern about everyday election workers, who oftentimes are facing the same kinds of intimidation,” he says.
As they prepare for this year’s midterm elections, Mr. Henninger and others in these networks are unsure what to expect.
But they believe their efforts can bolster public confidence in elections.
Deepen your worldview
with Monitor Highlights.
Already a subscriber? Log in to hide ads.
Rashad Richey, a Democrat who works with Mr. Shepherd in Georgia, was encouraged by a recent discussion with a tea party Republican. They agreed about the professionalism of county-level election administrators.
“Democracy’s hard part isn’t winning – it’s losing and staying in the room for the discussion,” he says. “This is the part that makes it work.”
War and peace: Ukraine’s ambassador in Washington joins our table
The timing Thursday could not have been better for our first – and likely last – Monitor event with the outgoing Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, Olga Stefanishyna.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had just met with President Donald Trump in the White House two days earlier, after attending the memorial service for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham. Over the past year, the Trump-Zelenskyy relationship has transformed amid a remarkable warming of President Trump’s views of the embattled Ukrainian leader.
MAGA influencer Laura Loomer also recently met with President Zelenskyy, in Kyiv, and reversed her opinion of him. Now, like Mr. Trump, she speaks positively of him – calling him a “wartime leader” and an “essential ally.” Ms. Loomer and Mr. Trump speak frequently.
Why We Wrote This
Ukrainian Ambassador Olga Stefanishyna met reporters at a Monitor Breakfast, in the wake of a Trump-Zelenskyy White House meeting and headlines about Ukraine bombing an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea.
In another eye-popping moment, last weekend, Ukraine bombed an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea, raising the possibility that the world’s two biggest international conflicts – centered on Iran and Ukraine – could merge into one. But at our event, part of the Monitor Breakfast newsmaker series, Ambassador Stefanishyna said the bombing of the cargo ship was “unintentional.”
“We are in a position where we defend ourselves against aggression,” Ms. Stefanishyna said, speaking of Russia. “This is the only intention we have.”
But perhaps most remarkable about our session with the ambassador is that she’s already heading back to Ukraine, after less than a year on the job. In a country with a long-standing problem with corruption, and two independent institutions tackling it, she herself faces allegations including embezzlement of government funds. There are also questions around an apartment registered to her parents in Kyiv. Ms. Stefanishyna maintains her innocence, and is going home to fight the allegations.
She says resigning was her decision, not a request from Mr. Zelensky. “In fact, he doesn’t want me to resign,” she said.
The ambassador has an impressive résumé, including stints as former deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration and former minister of Justice.
And she’s from a country that has had many women in high-profile positions – including her predecessor as ambassador to the U.S., Oksana Markarova. Until July 16, Ukraine’s prime minister was Yulia Svyrydenko, who resigned amid a wider reshuffle of the government.
About video adsStill, Ms. Stefanishyna says that she feels excluded from the Ukrainian leadership because of her gender.
“You know, I wasn’t participating in all the meetings because this is a men’s club, right?” she told the assembled reporters.
At the end of our session, Ms. Stefanishyna came back to this topic.
“I’m writing a book about that,” she said. And, she added, she’s looking for an agent, if anyone has any suggestions.
Read more about the breakfast: “Kyiv’s ambassador on how Ukraine revived vital ties with US,” by Monitor staff writer Howard LaFranchi.
War and peace: Ukraine’s ambassador in Washington joins our table
The timing Thursday could not have been better for our first – and likely last – Monitor event with the outgoing Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, Olga Stefanishyna.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had just met with President Donald Trump in the White House two days earlier, after attending the memorial service for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham. Over the past year, the Trump-Zelenskyy relationship has transformed amid a remarkable warming of President Trump’s views of the embattled Ukrainian leader.
MAGA influencer Laura Loomer also recently met with President Zelenskyy, in Kyiv, and reversed her opinion of him. Now, like Mr. Trump, she speaks positively of him – calling him a “wartime leader” and an “essential ally.” Ms. Loomer and Mr. Trump speak frequently.
Why We Wrote This
Ukrainian Ambassador Olga Stefanishyna met reporters at a Monitor Breakfast, in the wake of a Trump-Zelenskyy White House meeting and headlines about Ukraine bombing an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea.
In another eye-popping moment, last weekend, Ukraine bombed an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea, raising the possibility that the world’s two biggest international conflicts – centered on Iran and Ukraine – could merge into one. But at our event, part of the Monitor Breakfast newsmaker series, Ambassador Stefanishyna said the bombing of the cargo ship was “unintentional.”
“We are in a position where we defend ourselves against aggression,” Ms. Stefanishyna said, speaking of Russia. “This is the only intention we have.”
But perhaps most remarkable about our session with the ambassador is that she’s already heading back to Ukraine, after less than a year on the job. In a country with a long-standing problem with corruption, and two independent institutions tackling it, she herself faces allegations including embezzlement of government funds. There are also questions around an apartment registered to her parents in Kyiv. Ms. Stefanishyna maintains her innocence, and is going home to fight the allegations.
She says resigning was her decision, not a request from Mr. Zelensky. “In fact, he doesn’t want me to resign,” she said.
The ambassador has an impressive résumé, including stints as former deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration and former minister of Justice.
And she’s from a country that has had many women in high-profile positions – including her predecessor as ambassador to the U.S., Oksana Markarova. Until July 16, Ukraine’s prime minister was Yulia Svyrydenko, who resigned amid a wider reshuffle of the government.
About video adsStill, Ms. Stefanishyna says that she feels excluded from the Ukrainian leadership because of her gender.
“You know, I wasn’t participating in all the meetings because this is a men’s club, right?” she told the assembled reporters.
At the end of our session, Ms. Stefanishyna came back to this topic.
“I’m writing a book about that,” she said. And, she added, she’s looking for an agent, if anyone has any suggestions.
Read more about the breakfast: “Kyiv’s ambassador on how Ukraine revived vital ties with US,” by Monitor staff writer Howard LaFranchi.