There is a routine every election cycle. As the date of the vote nears, I go online and check my voter registration status. For the past 45 years — when I've voted in Mifflinburg, a town of 3,500 in rural central Pennsylvania — I have taken this precaution not because I think I did anything wrong, but because I follow the news.
Last year, counties in California began purging 5 million voters from their rolls following a lawsuit from the conservative group Judicial Watch. It was one of numerous such efforts in recent years and, as we get close to four months from a critical presidential election in November, the group has turned its sights to my home state, suing to remove 800,000 voters.
Judicial Watch claims the three bellwether suburban Philadelphia counties in question — Delaware, Chester and Bucks — removed only 17 inactive voters in 2017 and 2018. Bucks County official say that's not true and that they removed 14,050 in 2018 alone. With all three having more registered Democrats than Republicans, this looks like a move more concerned with voter suppression than fraud.
The right to vote is a fundamental human right. As the president of a non-theistic congregation of ethics, I take that to heart. Attempts to limit or add barriers to the free exercise of that right can erode citizen confidence that their elected officials can represent and act upon the will of the people. When voices are silenced, our democracy perishes.
I am grateful that Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar seems ready to fight, but we as citizens must do whatever we can to protect the right to vote anywhere it is under attack.
To be sure, ensuring the safety and security of our elections is of paramount importance — and individuals who are erroneously registered should be removed. But too often, purges are used as a partisan weapon. Groups like Judicial Watch claim that when voters are removed, it's because they are either dead or no longer living in the state. Yet, in just the past three years, 870,000 people in Georgia have registered to vote again after being purged. If these voters were dead or lived somewhere else, how did they manage to get back on the rolls?
Delaware, Chester and Bucks are all majority-white counties. But, historically, people of color are the most frequent target of voter suppression. And that doesn't just include voter purges. There's a reason why states with high populations of Black people have tried to implement voter ID laws: 25 percent of Black Americans do not have a government-issued proof of identification. We shouldn't be stripping Black people of one of their basic rights, especially during a time of racial reckoning.
Fighting back against suppression starts with knowledge. In most cases, voters who are purged are not notified until it's too late. Campaigns like Reclaim Our Vote work to notify eligible voters in states with a history of suppression that they may have been removed. My congregation, and others under the umbrella of the American Ethical Union, are working with ROV to send postcards to people in six states where voters may have been purged. Last year, more than one in five postcards sent to residents of North Carolina's 3rd congressional district by ROV resulted in voter registrations.
I would encourage anyone concerned about this issue to volunteer through that group's website.
Yet perhaps the most important thing you can do is speak out against the misinformation that keeps our citizens complacent. Know someone concerned about voter fraud? Let them know that even one of the nation's preeminent conservative think tanks, t he Heritage Foundation, found that no election results were overturned in the states that currently vote primarily by mail.
Do they think the voter purges occurring across the country are legitimate? Let them know that many voters who are removed go on to register again, discrediting the argument they were inaccurately listed as eligible.
Knowledge is power and the more people know the truth, the more voices we have to combat voter suppression.
Regardless of the outcome of the suit in Pennsylvania, I will continue to check my registration status before elections. Your rights may not be under attack but countless others are. I urge all Pennsylvanians and Americans to speak out for their rights.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.