By William Pascrell In July, at age 83, Rep. Bill Pascrell was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital in downtown Paterson, where doctors cracked open his chest and saved his life with bypass surgery. Three months later, Pascrell is not just back in action, but sounds like an excited teenager the night before the big game. Sure, give the doctors some credit. But what's got Pascrell dancing is the New York Times investigation detailing the sleazy stunts that President Trump used to avoid paying his fair share of taxes, to enrich himself and his family, and to build a myth of himself as a tycoon. That's just what Pascrell has been saying for years, while serving as point-man in the Democrats' effort to force Trump to release his returns. And now, he says, he has an even deeper worry: Trump's enormous personal debt of more than $400 million, to parties unknown. That could leave him vulnerable to blackmail and other pressure tactics. "How has he been compromised because of that debt?" Pascrell asks. "In Russia they have a term for it -- Kompromat," he says. "I'm going to be relentless about this. I'm going to use my chairmanship aggressively." Those personal loans are the most important part of this story, and it often escapes notice, because it's so infuriating and easy to understand that we have a president who would cheat on his taxes and use his office to enrich himself and his family. Bad as that is, it come as no surprise. Grifters are gonna grift, and even make baby grifters. The scary part is that $421 million in loans that Trump has personally guaranteed, $300 million which come due during a possible second term. The Times did not say who holds that debt, and Pascrell's office doesn't know either. Trump's biggest creditor is Deutsche Bank, but it's not clear if the bank is holding these particular loans. And a bank could act as a middleman in any case, while keeping the real source of the money secret. That's one reason that Pascrell is still pressing for release of Trump's full tax returns, which may offer some answers. "Can we figure out if this is money laundering?" said one source in Pascrell's office. To put it bluntly: Is Vladimir Putin holding this string? Does Trump cozy up to authoritarian rulers because one or more of them has a piece of this loan? David Ignatius, a foreign affairs columnist for the Washington Post, was told by "top former intelligence officials" that Trump would be unlikely to get security clearance if he weren't president, given the risk that foreign players could have powerful leverage over him. Voters, he argues, should ask themselves this question: "Is this man vulnerable to foreign pressure because of his large debts coming due over the next four years?" For Pascrell, getting Trump's tax returns has been an obsession since 2016. Pascrell's staff has assembled a list of 38 specific actions he's taken to force the issue, like writing letters, holding hearings, and passing resolutions. The Times investigation pushed open new doors after all this time, turbo-charging Pascrell's passions just as he takes over as chairman of the key subcommittee looking into this issue, the oversight subcommittee of the powerful Ways & Means committee. On Thursday, he sent out a tweet that sounds like he was shadow-boxing when he wrote it. "Pascrellian. Pas-krel-ien. Adjective. "Pugilistic in nature; suffers no fools and corrupt actors; irascible to disrespect, real and perceived." Synonym: New Jerseyan." He plans hearings within the next few weeks and has invited the head of the Internal Revenue Service, Charles Rettig, to testify. Fat chance that he'll show up and try to explain why the IRS has taken a decade to audit Trump's returns, giving him a fake excuse to hold them back. "Either the IRS is asleep at the wheel, or they don't have enough people to uncover the fraud," Pascrell says. "If I'm working out in Montana or something, I'd have to say I've been had, that this guy has taken me for four years and hasn't paid his share. What has the IRS done about this?" Good question, but he knows the answer. Republicans have gutted the IRS, slashing its enforcement budget by nearly 40 percent over the last decade, as the number of returns grew by 10 percent. The number of audits of people reporting incomes of $10 million or more has dropped by about three-fourths, according to IRS data. For rich grifters like Trump, it's party time. We may be in the final weeks of our torment with this impostor as our president. But you never know, as we found out in 2016. So, I'm glad Pascrell has lost none of his fire, even in his ninth decade, even with fresh scars on his chest. As long as we have a president like Trump, I'm beyond grateful for pit bulls like Pascrell.

By Bill Pascrell President Donald Trump's reported desecration of American soldiers who fell in World War I may rank among the worst slurs he has uttered in office. But Trump's hostility toward troops and veterans is not new. Trump has compiled a record in word and deed that is derisive to the health of service members, especially those who have suffered some of the worst wounds in action. Despite Trump's avowed affection, his administration has repeatedly attempted to slash benefits for veterans. Under current law, veterans are eligible to receive generous disability compensation the day after being discharged or released from the hospital or rehabilitation. Importantly, when disabilities worsen, veterans have wide leeway to apply for increased financial support. In each of its last three Veterans Affairs Department budgets, the administration has tried to narrow veterans' ability to apply for disability benefits. Under these proposals, eligibility would be limited only to cases of injury occurring during combat or training, lessening the time veterans have to obtain disability assistance. Similarly, Trump's attempts to gut Medicaid are devastating to veterans. Trump's latest proposed budget trimmed Medicaid by $1.5 trillion over 10 years, an approximate one-quarter cut. Today, nearly one in 10 U.S. veterans -- almost two million in total -- receive Medicaid. While the Democratic House has blocked these changes from being realized, that they are even contemplated is a stunning betrayal. These cuts risk the health of the most in-need veterans, including those who require constant care for traumatic brain injuries, musculoskeletal disorders, and other chronic maladies. Not only has Trump sought to slash benefits, but he has presided over a withering of the VA. As of this spring, the department had 50,000 vacancies, a stunning figure that dwarfs the total number of employees in the departments of Education, Energy, Labor, HUD, and State combined. A 2019 VA Inspector General's report found that 96% of VA clinics studied "reported at least one severe occupational shortage" and nearly 40% had 20 severe staffing shortages. These are 50,000 missing doctors, nurses, practitioners, and administrators to serve more than nine million veterans who rely on VA care. Failure to fill these positions has led to the closing of internal, PTSD, ENT and clinics across the country. Even a veteran's woodshop program just outside my own district was shuttered. While the VA's enfeeblement predates Trump, its continued atrophy is by design, as VA Secretary Robert Wilkie all but acknowledged last year when he testified that "I would not be honest with you if I told you that my focus would be filling [department] vacancies." Administration appointees have made existing problems worse by targeting employee benefits and labor protections and pulverizing agency morale with an inexorable push toward privatization, to say nothing of Trump's catastrophic pandemic mismanagement and U.S. Postal Service sabotage that especially hurt veterans. These cuts and systematic inattention fit a tragic pattern, as Trump's remarks in France mirror the contempt he showed for troops injured in Iraq this past January when 100 U.S. troops suffered concussion symptoms following an Iranian airstrike on Al-Asad Air Base in Baghdad. Asked to comment on that attack, Trump dismissed their injuries as headaches and said "No, I don't consider them very serious injuries." In 1998, I co-founded the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force to bring attention to the hidden affliction of traumatic brain injury, or TBI. TBI is a serious injury, and no mere headache. TBI is also a signature injury among service members, putting them at increased risk of long-term health issues including depression, dementia, seizures and problems with social functioning. Nearly 414,000 U.S. service members were diagnosed with TBIs between 2000 and 2019 and more than 185,000 veterans who use VA for their care have been diagnosed with at least one TBI. Congress created the Assisted Living Pilot Program for Veterans with Traumatic Brain Injury to help TBI sufferers. After declaring it a success, the Trump administration ended the program in 2017. Following Trump's remarks after the Iranian airstrike, our task force wrote to the Defense Department demanding answers on how many soldiers suffered brain injury. The Inspector General notified us that it would investigate but has provided no more information or follow-up on the extent of soldiers' wounds. Cooperation with this administration, even to aid vets, does not exist. Fixing veteran care is a titanic mission. Congress must provide more support, such as paid family leave. Planning for future and not prior needs is critical where the over-75 veterans' population will double this decade. If we can fund the Defense Department, we can do the same to care for the women and men who bear the wounds of service. That Trump called American soldiers who gave their lives in the cause of freedom "losers" and "suckers" is abhorrent. But his attempts to shrink or steal health benefits from women and injured in service to America may be worse. A veteran himself, Rep. Pascrell has led the advancement of brain injury policy on Capitol Hill to support members of America's armed forces suffering from traumatic brain injuries. Pascrell co-founded the Congressional Traumatic Brain Injury Task Force in 1998 and has served as task force co-chair since its inception. In a previous and widely-circulated op-ed, Rep. Pascrell argued that no one in America has done more to "defund" the police than Donald Trump himself. Today's op-ed highlights a similar hypocrisy of Trump's given his propensity to use the military as a political prop while privately degrading servicemembers and their sacrifices.

The passing of my friend Congressman John Lewis has been a terrible blow. His death at this moment crystalizes the imperative of what was perhaps John's most important life's work: protecting your right to vote. Because there is no question that your sacred right is under grave threat. Almost daily, Donald Trump uses his pulpit to target election officials. He spews conspiracy theories that undermine our elections. And Trump's false claims that millions of Americans vote illegally targets the legitimacy of our entire democracy. Trump's attacks are an extension of the cavalier shouts of "voter fraud" Republicans have been making for ages. Their assertions aren't simply overplayed but made up whole cloth: voter fraud is virtually nonexistent in the United States. (Ironically, perhaps the two most prominent cases of voter fraud in recent years were by a Republican running for Congress in North Carolina, and one of my current GOP colleagues from Kansas who was just indicted.) Trump's attacks on voting come at a precarious moment. This year, Americans in states including Georgia, Kentucky, Texas and Wisconsin have had to wait in line for hours to cast their ballots. Tragically, those images of lines snaking for blocks are not been one-off aberrations, but ones we see year after year. That is because they are not an accident but a product of deliberate design. Across America, local Republican officials routinely close polling stations in urban areas and communities of color. Their purpose is nefarious: to make the process so difficult that people just throw up their hands and don't vote. Republicans have found a partner in their war on voting in the five justicees who form the right-wing bloc of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Robert Court's 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder gutting the Voting Rights Act remains perhaps the most damaging decision in generations. One of the greatest laws Congress has ever enacted, the Voting Rights Act ensured that Black Americans would finally enjoy the right to vote, fulfilling the promise of the Fifteenth Amendment a century after its ratification. John Lewis would say many times that the Voting Rights Act was maybe the proudest achievement of the civil rights movement of which he was an integral part. By preposterously asserting that racial discrimination is a relic of the past, the Supreme Court gave the greenlight to scores of voter restrictions. Indeed, just this month, the justices blocked a landmark ballot initiative in Florida restoring voting rights to released felons that has been held up by a poll tax passed by the Florida legislature. This matters as the COVID-19 pandemic poses unprecedented challenges for voting. In our state, we just held our first-ever primary conducted almost entirely by mail. For an endeavor involving millions of voters put together on the fly, the results have been mostly positive and voters engaged. In my hometown of Paterson the state Attorney General has uncovered evidence of fraud attempts in a municipal election that I don't dismiss, but it is my firm belief that this is an isolated incident and is not reflective of the safety or reliability of mail-in voting. So there are obviously kinks to be fixed, especially if we are forced to do all-mail voting in November. The same applies for the other 49 states facing similar decisions. This is why Trump's attacks on the United States Postal Service are so dangerous. Trump has made a poisonous target of voting by mail, claiming repeatedly (without evidence) that it is ripe for ballot fraud. Worse yet, while the U.S. Postal Service has worked bravely during the pandemic, Trump has rejected any support for the public service even as managers say without help the postal service may shutter in September. Trump is even openly sabotaging the postal service, forcing out career leaders from its leadership and installing political hacks. In an incredible scandal just revealed, Trump's handpicked new postal service head is ordering employees to deliberately delay deliveries. The electoral implications for the destruction of the postal service are momentous. If it is forced to curtail its service, our ability to hold a national election could be obliterated. If there is a silver lining to this crisis, the solutions to protect voting are straightforward and Congress has acted on them. First, in May, the House passed a $25 billion lifeline to keep the post office alive (as well as $3 billion to states to strengthen mail voting infrastructure). The New Jersey delegation has been especially engaged in working with the postal service. In June, I led a call between our membership and postal officials to make sure the agency has the tools it needs to conduct expanded vote-by-mail in New Jersey. Similarly, in February the House overwhelmingly passed legislation to free the postal service from the prefunding of employee health care plans that has financially savaged the post office. Second, we have focused on saving the Voting Rights Act. Now 235 days ago, the House passed H.R. 4 to restore the Voting Rights Act and to undo the court's decision in Shelby County. Back in 2006, the Voting Rights Act was renewed by massive margins. Its passage this year with virtually no Republican support speaks to the GOP's tragic growing hostility to democracy. Nonetheless, our reauthorization of the legislation is one of the most important actions Congress has taken this session. These bills would go a long way to protecting our elections and your right to vote. Trump and Mitch McConnell are blocking all of them. While I am not fully optimistic that we can clear these measures in this current Congress, we won't stop pushing until all of them become law. In New Jersey, county clerks and Boards of Election must have mail ballots printed and ready and begin finetuning their capability to count expeditiously on Election Day. And the state must undertake a massive promotion effort to build public awareness of vote-by-mail. We need an early start now. But even if Trump is defeated in November and replaced in January, he has exposed the tenuous weakness of our pillar institutions. If Americans lose faith in the legitimacy and fairness of our elections, democracy itself will be unsustainable. Protecting democracy must be one of our absolute top priorities in 2021. We could enact no better monument to John Lewis's life than that.