Politics
After high-profile clashes with Trump, Adam Schiff will soon have a new title: Freshman
Rep. Adam B. Schiff is a darling of the Democrats, a fighter and political veteran accustomed to the limelight on Sunday talk shows and on the House floor.
In the Senate, the Burbank Democrat will carry a new title: freshman.
Schiff easily won California’s U.S. Senate race on Nov. 5, and will be sworn in next month to serve out the remainder of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s term. He will start a six-year Senate term in January, the same month that his most powerful antagonist, President-elect Donald Trump, will move back into the White House.
Trump’s election puts Schiff in a unique position for a freshman senator. Trump has vowed to spend his second term pursuing his political enemies, including Schiff, whom he has variously described as a “liar,” “traitor,” “shifty,” “evil,” “pencil neck” and one of the country’s “enemies from within.”
Schiff will be navigating a new workplace for the first time since 2001, contending with nuts-and-bolts issues like committee assignments and office space, and trying to build relationships to pass laws that benefit California. He will have to do so while contending with the expectations that come with his national profile as a vociferous Trump critic.
“When he walks onto the Senate floor for the first time, Republican senators are going to look around and say, ‘So there he is,’ ” said Jim Manley, a former senior advisor to the late Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. “They’re going to try to size him up, because all they’ve read, all they’ve heard for the last few years, is the soon-to-be president demonizing the guy.”
Schiff declined to be interviewed for this story, but recently told Times columnist Mark Z. Barabak that he plans to focus on bringing down the cost of living for working- and middle-class families. He wants to rein in the rising costs of food, housing and child care and build more housing to address the state’s twin crises of high housing costs and homelessness.
“They’re the same issues, in part, that Republicans campaigned on and Trump campaigned on,” Schiff said. “Where they’re serious … they’ll find a willing ally.”
Despite that conciliatory tone, Schiff also has promised to stand firm against the incoming president if he threatens Californians. In a victory speech on election night, the senator-elect said that he was “committed to taking on the big fights to protect our freedoms and to protect our democracy.”
With Schiff’s election, California will have two male senators for the first time since the early 1990s, neither with much seniority. He’ll be the junior senator to Alex Padilla, who was appointed to the Senate in 2021 and elected to a full term in 2022.
Republicans will have a majority in the Senate next year, but Schiff will still wield a significant amount of power, said former California Sen. Barbara Boxer.
Republicans controlled the Senate for most of Boxer’s 24 years in the chamber, including several terms when they held 55 of 100 seats. Speaking from experience, she said, Democrats shouldn’t expect to control the discussion around bills, but there are other ways to make their points, including “taking to the floor, all night, overnight,” holding news conferences, and inviting expert speakers to their caucus meetings.
She said personal relationships and bipartisanship matter more in the Senate than in the House. She cited an old adage: The House of Representatives is the hot tea, and the Senate is the saucer where things cool down.
“I’m sure there are die-hard MAGA senators who aren’t going to be happy that Adam Schiff is showing up, but he’s a smart, thoughtful and reasonable person,” Boxer said. “The Senate is such a personal body. There’s more working across the aisle than it appears. That’s all built on relationships and trust and credibility.”
That atmosphere will help Schiff get beyond being pigeonholed as a Trump adversary, even if he continues to be on Trump’s list of enemies, said Democratic Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, who is retiring after 18 years in the Senate.
“The president-elect has a long list, and that list changes every day and it changes by the moment,” Cardin said. “It will not at all prevent senators from working with Adam Schiff.”
Schiff also worked to bolster his relationships with Senate Democrats before his election. He contributed $1 million from his campaign account to help Senate candidates across the country. He also campaigned alongside eight Democratic Senate candidates, including incumbent Sens. Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Sens.-elect Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Ruben Gallego of Arizona, all of whom won in close swing-state races.
How Schiff uses his voice will depend in part on his committee assignments. Freshmen senators typically get last pick, although Schiff could have a slight leg up considering his decades of experience, national stature and dedication to the party, and because serving out the last bit of Feinstein’s term gives him a sliver of seniority over his fellow freshmen, whose terms start in January.
Leaders from both major parties still have to negotiate how many senators from their caucuses will serve on each committee, and decide leadership roles for senior senators. Only then will open seats go to freshmen.
Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer of New York declined to answer questions about what roles Schiff might play in the Senate, but said he will be a “great addition” to the caucus.
The Senate can confirm or block high-level appointments by the president with a simple majority vote, meaning Trump’s Cabinet picks could be appointed without any support from Democrats.
But Trump has already signaled that he will try to bypass the Senate. On Sunday, he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social that the Senate’s next Republican majority leader “must agree” to empower him to make critical appointments unilaterally while the chamber is in recess. Without that power, Trump wrote, “we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner.”
Schiff has challenged that idea — writing on X that Trump’s nominee for attorney general, MAGA devotee and former Rep. Matt Gaetz, “must be rejected” by the Senate.
Beyond committees, the minority party often looks to the court of public opinion to get its message out.
When Republicans held all three branches of government in the early 2000s, Boxer began holding weekly news conferences to talk about President George W. Bush’s actions that posed environmental risks, recalled Rose Kapolczynski, who ran all four of Boxer’s Senate campaigns.
Boxer’s staff began taping together the papers listing the administration’s problematic moves on the environment. By the end, Kapolczynski said, Boxer was unfurling a 32-foot scroll for the cameras, and Democrats were armed with a to-do list on environmental issues when they retook the Senate in 2008.
Boxer said that Schiff will learn that he still has significant power, even in the minority party.
A UC Berkeley poll co-sponsored by the L.A. Times in September indicated that if Trump were elected again, nearly 6 in 10 likely California voters would want Schiff to prioritize “protecting California’s interests and opposing federal legislation that would undercut existing state laws and policies.”
Half of likely California voters surveyed said Schiff should focus on passing bipartisan legislation. Just under half said he should prioritize “standing up to the president and challenging his executive orders.”
Schiff’s contentious relationship with Trump — and Trump’s disdain for him — stem directly from Schiff’s work in the House to hold the Republican accountable before and during his first term in office.
Schiff, a former federal prosecutor, helped lead the House investigation into the Trump campaign’s dealings with Russia in the lead-up to and aftermath of the 2016 election. During that time, top Trump campaign officials met with a Russian asset in Trump Tower, Trump’s campaign manager shared internal polling data with another Russian asset, and Trump himself called on Russia to hack Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton’s emails.
House Republicans ultimately censured Schiff for saying publicly that there was “significant” and “compelling” evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III found that Russia had intervened on the Trump campaign’s behalf, and that the campaign had welcomed the help, but did not recommend that the Justice Department charge any Americans. Schiff has maintained that there was evidence of collusion, even if it did not lead to criminal charges.
Schiff was the lead manager of the trial in which the House voted to impeach Trump for asking Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden, his expected 2020 Democratic presidential rival, while withholding military aid to the country.
The Burbank Democrat also helped investigate Trump’s role in inciting the U.S. Capitol insurrection that tried to block Congress’ certification of Biden’s election on Jan. 6, 2021, leading to Trump’s second impeachment.
The Senate acquitted Trump after both House impeachments, but he hasn’t forgotten the investigations, calling them “witch hunts” and painting Schiff as an immoral Democratic operator who was obsessed with toppling him from the White House.
In September, when Schiff was still hoping Vice President Kamala Harris would win the presidential election, he told The Times that Trump being returned to power would “elevate the personal risk” to himself.
He said Trump would be “more unshackled than ever, more threatening than ever, of his political enemies” since the recent Supreme Court ruling that sitting presidents have sweeping criminal immunity for actions taken in their official capacity.
“But I’m determined to do my job,” Schiff said.
Times staff writer Noah Bierman contributed to this report.
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.
Politics
Assassinations unleashed under Trump haunt Iran war endgame
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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