Politics
Harris has been called 'soft' and 'tough' on crime. What does her record show?
At every step of her political career, Kamala Harris has faced the same question: What sort of prosecutor was she?
As a former San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, the vice president has been called both “soft” and “tough” on crime. She has been labeled a progressive and a moderate. At times, she and her supporters have added to the debate by leaning into one narrative or the other, depending on the office she sought.
Now, as Harris’ record as a prosecutor looms large in the presidential race, many voters say they don’t know what she stands for, and that her opponent, former President Trump — a convicted felon who talks tough on crime — seems more willing to go after criminals.
In a statement to The Times, Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Harris was “soft on murderers, gun criminals, and drug dealers” and “helped destroy California.”
According to more than a dozen people who knew Harris as a prosecutor — who hired her, worked alongside her, ran against her or worked for her — such claims are meritless.
They say defining her as a prosecutor is complicated because she never fit neatly into any political box, but that a handful of episodes from her earlier career showcase how she balanced a penchant for compassionate reforms with an innate seriousness and an instinct for accountability.
Early days
Harris got her first prosecutor job out of law school as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, where she worked for eight years.
She then joined the San Francisco district attorney’s office, where she served as chief of the Career Criminal Division, and the San Francisco city attorney’s office, where she ran the Family and Children’s Services Division. She took on and beat progressive San Francisco Dist. Atty. Terence Hallinan in 2003.
Critics have suggested Harris’ rise had more to do with political savvy — or her relationship in the mid-1990s with San Francisco political kingmaker Willie Brown — than talent or smarts. But supporters who knew her then tell a different story.
Though Harris was savvy and Brown certainly helped her, particularly with donors, she was hardworking and dedicated, they said, and rose through the ranks because she was good at her job.
San Francisco City Atty. David Chiu said that when he started as a deputy district attorney, colleagues urged him to watch Harris in court.
“I was told that if I wanted to learn the craft, I should go watch the closing arguments of a great prosecutor — and obviously it was her,” Chiu recalled. “I saw her brilliance, her toughness, her ability to scrap, but combined with a real warmth and compassion.”
Former San Francisco City Atty. Louise Renne said that same combination made Harris the perfect person to oversee child abuse cases in her office. “I was looking for somebody who could both be tough on the law — because you had to be tough — and yet was compassionate and recognized the emotional trauma involved,” she said.
Back on Track
Harris launched Back on Track, an anti-recidivism program for nonviolent, first-time offenders, soon after becoming district attorney.
To join the program, defendants had to plead guilty, which Harris touted as “accountability.” To graduate, they had to earn a GED, get a job, perform community service, pay off any outstanding child support and remain drug free. If they succeeded, the plea would be wiped from their record. If they failed, it would stick.
To run the program, Harris hired Lateefah Simon, a young woman who had overcome adversity to lead the local Center for Young Women’s Development. (Simon is now running for the House seat being vacated by Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee in Oakland.)
Simon said Harris believed deeply in its mission to interrupt cycles of crime by holding young people accountable and surrounding them with support and opportunities.
“It was the hardest program to get through, but it was designed by Black women — she and myself — who really understood why these young people were making these life- or-death decisions on the streets for a few dollars,” Simon said.
The program, which Harris replicated elsewhere in the state as attorney general, ran into criticism for admitting undocumented immigrants with no legal right to work. The problem was revealed after an undocumented program participant committed a violent crime.
Harris said the admission of undocumented defendants was a mistake, and promptly fixed. Simon said it was her “screwup,” as she had designed the program without a screening tool for work eligibility.
Simon said she offered to resign, but Harris tartly ordered her back to work. “There was an expletive in there, and she said, ‘Get back to the office, and update your program,’” Simon said.
Simon said Harris balances a strong instinct for reform with an innate sense of personal responsibility, which Simon said she recognized from her own childhood — where she was surrounded by Black women who knew their communities deserved better, but were ‘’tough as old bologna when it comes to order.”
“Kamala,” she said with a laugh, “is like every auntie that I have.”
Soft on crime?
One of the most frequent criticisms lobbed at Harris by Republicans — including Trump and the Heritage Foundation, the group behind Project 2025 — is that she is “soft on crime.” Heritage even called her “pro-crime.”
Critics have pointed in particular to disputes over homicide cases. San Francisco police sometimes arrested homicide suspects that Harris’ prosecutors declined to charge, drawing allegations that she wasn’t willing to try difficult murder cases — possibly to keep her conviction rates high.
Harris’ supporters say such claims are preposterous — that no prosecutor would decline viable murder cases to improve conviction rates, and that Harris’ line prosecutors would have revolted if she’d tried.
They said the real reason prosecutors declined cases was because the police had done shoddy work or had insufficient evidence.
Others have accused Harris of going soft on criminals by approving lenient plea deals. Her supporters say her office pushed low-level offenders into diversion, yes, but struck sensible plea deals with others and aggressively prosecuted repeat and violent offenders.
“She was one of the first prosecutors that was very intentional about challenging what was ‘hard on crime’ or ‘soft on crime,’ looking at those aggregate consequences to say, ‘How can we do better?’,” said Paul Henderson, a former administrative chief in Harris’ office.
Death penalty
Less than four months into Harris’ time as district attorney, a San Francisco police officer named Isaac Espinoza was killed by a 21-year-old gunman named David Hill. Police, community members and local leaders called for the death penalty.
Harris, who had campaigned on her opposition to capital punishment, refused, announcing before Espinoza’s funeral that she would seek a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. At the funeral, the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein sharply criticized Harris’ decision, and officers began shunning her. Espinoza’s widow and other members of his family also condemned the decision.
Bill Fazio, a former homicide prosecutor who ran against Harris for D.A., said the episode made for a tense few months for Harris — but it was the right decision.
Fazio said he sought the death penalty nine times as a San Francisco homicide prosecutor and secured a death sentence verdict just once — and it was overturned on appeal. San Francisco juries don’t like the death penalty, he said, and even when it is handed down, it’s rarely carried out.
Pursuing such a sentence against Hill, who was “a relatively young defendant who really had no prior record to speak of,” would have made little sense, and the fact Harris understood that goes to her credit, Fazio said.
“This woman was a practicing prosecutor,” he said. “She wasn’t some phony-ass person who was appointed by some politician.”
Later, as attorney general, Harris drew criticism from the left when she defended the state’s death penalty after a judge determined it amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. Critics described Harris’ decision to defend the law as hypocritical given her stance in the Espinoza case, but she said it was her duty as attorney general.
Same-sex marriage
In 2008, California voters narrowly passed Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriages. The measure came after the state’s Supreme Court had approved such unions, and an estimated 18,000 same-sex couples had been wed in the state.
Marriage advocates challenged the proposition, and a federal judge ruled the ban was unconstitutional. Harris — a longtime supporter of LGBTQ+ rights who had previously officiated same-sex unions in San Francisco — was running for attorney general at the time, and promised not to challenge the judge’s decision if she won.
Critics of Harris today accuse her of playing politics — of failing to set aside her own beliefs and do her duty as attorney general, as she did with the death penalty. But those close to Harris said she agreed with the judge that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional.
Proponents of Proposition 8 challenged the decision all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 2013 found that they lacked standing to bring the case because they weren’t personally harmed by the measure’s overturning.
Harris cheered the decision, and promptly officiated another marriage in San Francisco.
Kalama Harris, then attorney general of California, officiates the same-sex wedding of Kris Perry, left, and Sandy Stier in San Francisco on June 28, 2013.
(Jeff Chiu / Associated Press)
Transnational gangs
In an election hyper-focused on immigration and border security, Harris has campaigned on her past efforts to dismantle transnational gangs along the U.S. and Mexico border — which her critics have challenged.
Steve Cooley, a former Los Angeles County district attorney and Harris’ opponent in the attorney general race, called her a progressive prosecutor who “made no effort whatsoever to fight” a decision by then-Gov. Jerry Brown to save money by shuttering a long-standing anti-gang unit in the attorney general’s office. “She just let it go,” Cooley said.
In fact, Harris publicly opposed the budget cuts, saying they would “cripple” the state’s anti-gang and drug trafficking work.
Jeffrey Tsai, a former special assistant attorney general, said Harris deserves a lot of credit for going after transnational gangs, in part by breaking long-standing norms and opening direct lines of communication between California and Mexico law enforcement — which began collaborating much more intensely on anti-trafficking measures.
“Her challenging that traditional notion of the role of a state … was not quaint. To me it was rather significant, because it symbolized a lot of where I think her head’s at in terms of policy,” Tsai said.
Tori Verber Salazar, a former Republican district attorney of San Joaquin County, said Harris also helped her county confront drug trafficking by strengthening the state’s relationship with U.S. federal law enforcement, which brought more resources to small counties for expensive investigative tools, such as wiretaps.
“She’s a bad ass,” Salazar said. “She gave us the tools and the weapons to do what we needed to do to go after the kingpins.”
Big banks
Shortly after becoming attorney general, Harris joined negotiations between various state attorneys general and large mortgage institutions over improper foreclosure practices during the housing market collapse, which had displaced families across the country.
Not long after, however, Harris pulled out, accusing the banks of offering far too little compensation to Californians.
Her decision was considered ill-advised by some, and she faced a lot of pressure to reverse course.
“It was a lonely place,” said one former senior advisor who asked to remain anonymous in order to speak candidly about private discussions. “She had had conversations with numerous other leaders all across the state, not all of whom were very supportive, some of whom were very skeptical that it was the right decision.”
But Harris, a “quantitative thinker” who had delved into the numbers, was characteristically unmoved, the advisor said.
“When she makes a decision, she moves forward with it. There’s not a lot of hand-wringing or second-guessing. She says, ‘I’ve looked at the data, I’ve made my decision.’”
Ultimately, the gambit paid off. The banks vastly increased their offer, from less than $4 billion to about $20 billion, Harris has said.
The deal wasn’t perfect. While intended to keep Californians in their homes, about half of the debt relief ended up covering short sales, in which banks accepted losses after allowing owners to sell homes for less than what they owed. Nonetheless, the deal became one of Harris’ signature accomplishments — and still wins her praise.
In 2011, Pamela Barrett and her late husband, John, were at risk of losing their home in Shandon, in San Luis Obispo County, after Barrett’s hair salon started losing clients amid the worsening economy. Barrett, now 72, said she tried to work with her lender, Bank of America, to find a path forward, but with no success.
Desperate, she and John — an artist on disability — began writing letters to anyone who might help, including elected officials. The only response came from Harris’ office, Barrett said, which told her to hang on.
Soon after, Barrett said she got a letter from Bank of America offering a loan modification that erased the interest on a large portion of their debt and allowed them to start making much smaller payments. Today, she said, she is retired and still living in her home — and gives Harris much of the credit.
Politics
Trump-aligned House holdouts accused of holding ‘life-saving’ veterans bill ‘hostage’ over SAVE America Act
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A sweeping veterans package supporters describe as the largest expansion of veterans’ health care and benefits in more than a decade is expected to return to the House floor when lawmakers come back from the July recess, but backers warn the legislation could once again become collateral damage in the Republican standoff over the SAVE America Act.
The Take Care of America’s Veterans Act rolls roughly 60 veterans bills into a package that would dramatically expand veterans’ health care and benefits. At its core, the legislation would cement veterans’ access to community care outside the VA while increasing benefits for combat-wounded veterans, caregivers and Gold Star families, expanding mental health services and enacting dozens of additional reforms.
House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., told Fox News Digital he intends to bring the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act back for a vote as soon as the House reconvenes next week.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – MARCH 17: Eugene Simpson, 29, from Dale City, Virginia goes through physical therapy at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington, D.C. with Michael Minor, a kinesiotherapist with the United States Department of Veterans Affairs on March 17, 2006 in Washington, D.C., USA. (Photo by Jeff Hutchens/Getty Images) (Jeff Hutchens/Getty Images)
HOUSE CONSERVATIVES DERAIL GOP AGENDA IN SAVE AMERICA ACT SHOWDOWN
The legislation was held up last month after a group of House Republicans joined Democrats to defeat a procedural vote, stopping the House from taking up the bill.
“I’m feeling good as long as my members stay with us on the rule,” Bost said. “Right now, there’s some politics being played, not about this bill, but just in general.”
The bill became entangled in a broader House Republican fight over the SAVE America Act, legislation championed by President Donald Trump that would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.
On June 30, the House voted on H. Res. 1398, the procedural rule governing floor consideration of several bills, including the National Defense Authorization Act and the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act. The rule failed after 14 Republicans joined Democrats in opposition, preventing the House from taking up the veterans package and bringing floor business to a standstill. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., claimed to have voted against the rules vote in protest against House leadership’s handling of the SAVE America Act. As a result, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson sent the members home early.
Bost accused the holdouts of effectively putting veterans legislation on hold.
The US Department of Veterans Affairs building is seen in Washington, DC, on July 22, 2019. (Photo by Alastair Pike / AFP) (Photo credit should read ALASTAIR PIKE/AFP via Getty Images) (Photo credit should read ALASTAIR PIKE/AFP via Getty Image)
‘IT’S A MESS’: GOP TURNS ON HOUSE CONSERVATIVES AS VOTER ID BLOCKADE STALLS TRUMP’S AGENDA
“They’re holding all bills hostage,” Bost said. “They’re not voting for any rule. Any bill that has to pass a rule before it comes to the floor—which this bill does because of its size—can’t move.”
Although Bost said he supports the SAVE America Act and has voted for it three times, he argued the Senate’s failure to act should not stop the House from advancing unrelated legislation.
“I agree with that bill,” Bost said. “But the Senate still has to do their work. We don’t stop our work because the Senate isn’t doing it.”
With 23 legislative days left in the Congressional session, Concerned Veterans for America Strategic Director John Byrnes, a supporter of the bill, said time is of the essence.
“There are lots and lots of things that have to get done,” Byrnes told Fox News Digital. “There’s also the National Defense Authorization Act, which is a must pass every year, so these things eat up time. There’s requirements to have debate on these, which eat up session time.”
Byrnes argued that every procedural delay pushes other legislation further down the calendar.
“This bill will save lives in 2027,” Byrnes said. “If we lose veterans because they could have had faster, better access to health care, we’re never going to get those veterans back.”
Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill. ( )
TRUMP’S SAVE AMERICA ACT SHOWS SIGNS OF LIFE IN THE SENATE DESPITE REPUBLICAN REVOLT
But Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who also voted no on the procedural vote, told Fox News Digital that he has concerns about how the bill is financed.
“I appreciate what the chairman’s trying to do in some respects, but there’s a few issues,” Roy said.
Among them, Roy pointed to provisions offsetting new spending through changes affecting other veterans.
“You’re taxing certain veterans to provide some sort of benefits and changes to other veterans,” Roy said. “There are concerns about some of the pay-fors.”
Veterans of Foreign Wars has also taken issue with Section 108 of the bill, warning that it would codify changes to future disability ratings for tinnitus and sleep apnea to help finance other veterans priorities.
But Bost said this is inaccurate.
“No veteran is going to have their benefits reduced,” Bost said. “If you’re receiving a benefit right now, that’s not going to be reduced at all.”
Roy, who previously served two years on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said he supported a lot of what the bill was seeking to accomplish; but said other pieces of legislation are priorities, too.
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“There is a block of us for whom border security, the SAVE Act and demonstrating our leadership on major issues is critical,” Roy said. “Some of these other bills may or may not get hung up based on a desire of many in the conference to see movement on other things.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Luna’s office and the White House for comment.
WASHINGTON — Shortly before President Trump ended a ceasefire with Iran this week, Israeli officials presented his team with intelligence indicating Tehran was hatching new plots to kill him.
It was not the first such warning. U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies have tracked evidence for years of Iranian efforts to target the president, with signals only increasing since the start of the war.
Their desire to target Trump and his top aides began six years ago, just outside Baghdad International Airport, when the president ordered a drone strike that killed Iran’s most powerful general. The assassination of Qassem Suleimani brought the two countries to the brink of war.
Yet even as full-scale war was averted, top Iranian officials vowed revenge for the strike, authorizing attempts on the lives not just of the president, but of his secretary of State and national security advisor, among others, even after they had left office.
Now, calls for revenge have reached a sharper pitch in Tehran, after a joint U.S.-Israeli operation killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at the start of the war in February.
At Khamenei’s funeral ceremonies this week, red flags of vengeance flew throughout the capital as protesters explicitly called on their government to “kill Trump.” His son, Mojtaba, the new supreme leader, was absent from the commemorations, fearing assassination himself.
Mourners hold an anti-President Trump banner at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosque during mass funeral prayers for Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his family in Tehran on Sunday.
(Morteza Nikoubazl / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The prospect of foreign assassination plots targeting U.S. leaders puts the United States in dangerous new territory, where its embrace of political killings could ultimately place its own officials at unprecedented risk. And experts fear the existential threat of assassination has pushed peace further out of reach: When both sides believe their survival is at stake, the trust required for diplomacy becomes far harder to achieve.
Israeli news organizations have reported that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, cited Iranian attempts to kill Trump in recent years as part of his case to go to war in the first place.
A U.S. official told The Times that a range of serious threats exist against the president, including from Iran, but that Israel’s intelligence pointed to a more specific plot. The official did not provide further details. Israeli officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has said in recent months that the government sees vengeance against U.S. officials as “its legitimate duty and right,” and “will fulfill this great responsibility and duty with all its might.”
“The Suleimani killing accelerated a lifting of restraints on foreign assassinations — and the taboo on targeting and killing foreign leaders, with U.S. military assets, has been more or less lifted,” said Matt Dallek, a political professor at George Washington University.
“If the United States sets the example of how to conduct international relations, and it is using assassination of foreign leaders as a political weapon, it’s only logical that other countries will be more inclined to also engage in assassinations,” Dallek added. “It does seem likely that Trump will have a bigger target on his back.”
Returning from a NATO summit in Turkey on Wednesday, Trump was forced to switch back to an old model of Air Force One — equipped with specialized defensive technologies — from a new plane given as a gift by Qatar, after the Secret Service warned of potential threats to the aircraft from Iran.
“They want to take out the U.S. leader — me,” Trump told reporters aboard the plane. “I’m on whatever list. I saw this morning I’m on every single one of their lists. And so far, I guess I’ve been a bit lucky, but maybe that doesn’t last very long.”
The threat has remained on his mind in the days since. In an interview with the New York Post, Trump told the reporter, “I hope you’ll miss me,” adding that he has “been on their list for a long time.” And in a subsequent social media post Friday night, he warned of a catastrophic response he instructed the administration to pursue in the event Tehran succeeds.
“1000 Missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he wrote, “with thousands of more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat, pronounced in many corners of the Globe, to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate, the sitting President of the United States of America, in this case, ME!”
The United States had a decades-old prohibition against assassinating foreign leaders before Trump’s presidency, codified in an executive order signed by President Ford in 1976 over concerns of a CIA plot to kill Fidel Castro.
The policy was only strengthened further by subsequent administrations, fearing a new international standard for targeted killings could result in unintended consequences in the halls of Washington.
Other administrations have been accused of targeting foreign leaders before. Under the Obama administration, an international coalition targeting the Libyan regime of Moammar Kadafi during the country’s 2011 civil war struck his fleeing convoy, leading to his capture and killing by rebel fighters.
But experts say Trump’s explicit targeting of Suleimani and Khamenei — and his public celebration of their deaths — marks a new paradigm.
“Through words and actions, President Trump has done more to normalize political violence than any other U.S. president, certainly in modern times,” said Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago and author of “Our Own Worst Enemies: America in the Age of Violent Populism.”
“On the international front alone, the president routinely brags about killing Iranian leaders and seizing the leader of Venezuela, among others,” he added, “to the point that assassination is becoming the new normal in international politics.”
Politics
Trump takes unusual step, lets bipartisan housing bill become law unsigned amid SAVE pressure campaign
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A bipartisan housing bill became law Saturday at midnight after President Donald Trump declined to sign it, capping a weeks-long saga over whether the president would veto the measure amid frustrations with Congress over his stalled agenda.
Trump refused to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act — legislation aimed at expanding the nation’s housing stock and lowering costs — in an attempt to pressure Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, despite the housing bill clearing both chambers with overwhelming majorities.
“I will not sign the Housing Bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House, in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, which is polling at 97% with the Republican Party, and very high with the non-politician Dumocrats,” he declared on Truth Social Friday morning.
The Trump-backed election measure, which would require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections and impose voter ID requirements, has struggled to overcome the Senate’s 60-vote threshold.
Meanwhile, the House has not passed a version of the bill that includes the president’s proposed crackdown on mail-in voting and banning men from women’s sports.
President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, June 3, 2026, in Washington. (Alex Brandon/AP)
HOUSE CONSERVATIVES DERAIL GOP AGENDA IN SAVE AMERICA ACT SHOWDOWN
Under the U.S. Constitution, Trump had 10 days, not including Sundays, to sign or veto the housing measure after the House formally transmitted the legislation to the White House in late June. The president ultimately chose neither option, allowing the measure to become law without his signature.
Though Trump declined to veto the legislation, he sharply criticized elements of the bill and argued it should not have been a legislative priority in recent weeks.
“It’s so unimportant … compared to the SAVE America Act,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office in late June. “I think the SAVE America Act is exactly what it says. It’s saving America from crooked elections.”
Trump went on to call the housing bill “a yawn,” adding, “compared to the SAVE America Act, just about everything is a big yawn.”
It would have taken a two-thirds majority in both chambers to override a veto — a margin the House and Senate exceeded when they passed the legislation. However, it remains unclear whether so many Republicans would have defied the president had he vetoed the bill.
Trump also appeared to criticize the bill over a provision restricting Wall Street investors from purchasing single-family homes — a policy he first proposed during his January State of the Union address and later urged Congress to pass. Trump previously argued the investor ban would give individual homebuyers a leg up against private equity firms in the housing market.
“I don’t want to hurt people that own houses, too,” Trump later told reporters, appearing to reference the provision. “These people, for the first time in their lives, they have valuable houses. They’ve become rich. I don’t want to hurt them either. What you want to do is what’s good for everyone, get the interest rates down.”
The law also aims to boost housing supply by streamlining federal environmental reviews, loosening rules around the construction of factory-built homes, and incentivizing local governments to modify their zoning laws to allow more housing, among roughly 60 provisions.
Trump’s souring on the legislation created headaches for Republicans, who touted the bill as an affordability win as voters grapple with high housing costs.
“It’s irresponsible to postpone signing the Housing bill due to the SAVE Act,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a retiring lawmaker who lost re-election to a Trump-backed challenger, wrote on social media. “We need to start delivering relief to people for the high cost of housing ASAP!!”
Construction workers stand on the roof of homes under construction at a new housing development on June 24, 2026, in Valencia, Calif. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
WARREN TELLS TRUMP TO ‘SIGN THE DAMN BILL’ AS BIPARTISAN HOUSING PACKAGE REMAINS STALLED IN WASHINGTON
Trump abruptly canceled a signing ceremony for the legislation at the U.S. Capitol in June with GOP leaders. The stage had already been set, with at least one senior Republican arriving unaware the president had called off the event shortly before it was scheduled to begin.
The president then declared he would not sign the legislation until Congress passed the SAVE America Act, despite Senate GOP leaders insisting the votes do not exist to advance the measure.
Trump has also expressed frustration with the Republican-controlled Senate for declining to weaken the legislative filibuster, which requires 60 votes to advance most legislation in the upper chamber.
“GET SMART REPUBLICANS, IF YOU DON’T, YOU WON’T BE IN OFFICE FOR LONG!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Sunday.
Before Trump came out against the bill, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called it “one of the most significant pieces of housing affordability legislation in American history” and said it included an array of policies “long championed” by Trump.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 15, 2025. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Meanwhile, Trump political operative James Blair touted the legislation for including the president’s Wall Street investor ban, which he referred to as a “signature commitment.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has argued that Republicans will still promote the landmark housing bill ahead of November.
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“We’ll still celebrate it, but he’s trying to make a point, and I think he’s making it very effectively,” the speaker recently told reporters, referring to Trump. “And the fact that you all ask me every three steps down the hallway illustrates that he has achieved the desired objective, and that is to make SAVE America the number one thing, because if we don’t get that right, everybody’s concerned about what happens next.”
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