'Who I Am Meant To Be'

Good morning!

The first six months of this year in Trenton were marked in part by the transgender community and their allies pushing for a long-stalled healthcare protections bill.

Our own Anne-Marie Caruso has spent much of the last year documenting this fight for a video documentary series that debuted yesterday, and she’ll have more videos every Monday throughout the fall that explore this community and why they’ve become such a target.

Watch the first installment here.

Election 2026: Dana DiFilippo talked to a bunch of candidates hoping to be elected or reelected to Congress next month about a key issue they all agree is a major affordability problem: housing. Some of the proposals they offered: ramping up financial assistance for first-time homebuyers, freezing federal taxes for those folks, getting rid of the SALT deduction cap, and mortgage portability.

Minnesota: The feds raided Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home Monday, leading to howls of protest from Democrats and cackles from Republicans. It’s unclear what is going on, though Fox News cited two unnamed sources saying Omar’s immigration paperwork is at the heart of the raid (Omar came to the U.S. from Somalia at age 12). Among Omar’s supporters is, not surprisingly, our own Rep. LaMonica McIver, who herself is being prosecuted by the Trump administration over claims she assaulted agents at Newark’s migrant jail last year. On Monday, McIver said the president uses the federal government “as weapons to go after the people standing up to him” and called the raid “the kind of overreach that should scare every single American.” She added, “I stand with Ilhan. We will never be intimidated into silence.”

Trump: A fascinating story from Anatoly Kurmanaev and Tyler Pager at the New York Times on the new marriage between Alina Habba, who was for a time our chief federal prosecutor, and Turhan Mildon, a Turkish businessman who once had ties to Nicolás Maduro, the leader of Venezuela captured by the U.S. in January. The Times reports that Trump aides very recently had some concerns that Mildon was trying to build ties between a key Maduro confidant and Trump allies. Now Mildon is married to one of Trump’s most vocal defenders.