Politics
Can California change a dark culture at Chowchilla women's prison?
CHOWCHILLA, Calif. — Gazing across the crowd of women, fresh from county jail in their orange prison jumpsuits, Lena Coleman wishes she could save them all.
And it’s her job to try.
In July, after 20 years in prison for attempted murder and a gun enhancement, Coleman, 47, became one of three dozen prisoners at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla to graduate from a peer support specialist program.
California’s efforts to improve conditions at the women’s prison in Chowchilla are complicated by the deep level of trauma many female prisoners have experienced.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
The program is a part of the California Model, an ambitious effort Gov. Gavin Newsom launched in March 2023 to overhaul a prison system built on fear and retribution and replace it with opportunities for more normalized social interaction. The changes are modeled after prison operations in Norway and other Scandinavian countries, where incarceration is considered a tool for rehabilitation rather than harsh punishment.
At Chowchilla, a sprawling campus set in the farm fields of Madera County, the peer support specialists have become the backbone of that transformation.
Every day, they fan out across the prison, serving as something between a therapist and life coach to the roughly 2,100 women incarcerated at the facility, one of two women’s prisons in California.
Coleman works in Building 501, a reception yard that houses new prisoners before they transfer “over the wall” into the general population.
Prisoner Markeisha Dixon is among the trained peer support specialists working to instill a stronger sense of community for women incarcerated at the Chowchilla women’s prison.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Her job is often limited in scope: helping a new arrival find prison garb that fits, or working with the healthcare services team to remind patients to take their medicine or attend an upcoming medical appointment.
Other times, the work requires more intense intervention.
Staff might call a peer support specialist to help de-escalate violence or ease a behavioral crisis. As mandated reporters, they can be the difference between someone dying of suicide or accepting mental health services.
Mostly, Coleman is there for whenever someone needs to talk — or cry — with a trusted confidant.
“I tell them that prison is going to be what you make it,” she said. And then she offers them a piece of advice: “I’m just like you. I’ve been there, done that. Only difference is I have changed my ways.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom launched the California Model reform effort in 2023 at San Quentin, with an aim of expanding job training and rehabilitation programs.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Newsom chose San Quentin in Marin County, the state’s oldest prison, to jump-start the California Model last year. At San Quentin, prison officials are focused on improving relations between officers and prisoners, two historically warring factions in a violent system unaccustomed to change.
The California Model looks a bit different at Chowchilla — and it must.
A majority of incarcerated women in the U.S. endured some combination of physical, sexual and emotional abuse before committing the crime that sent them to prison, researchers have found. Often, that abuse was inflicted by a husband or boyfriend. Most are single moms of young children who have lost custody because of their crimes.
At the same time, women’s prisons often lack the mental health services and rehabilitative programming to help address deep trauma, said Alycia Welch, associate director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Prisons and jails, when they were built, were not built at all with women in mind,” Welch said.
Compared with male inmates, incarcerated women report higher rates of sexual assault in prison. In September, federal prosecutors announced a civil rights investigation into sexual abuse at both Chowchilla and the California Institution for Women in Chino, citing multiple reports of groping, inappropriate touching and rape by correctional workers.
Officer Josephine Solis opens a dorm room for a prisoner inside C Block at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Over the last two years, more than 100 formerly incarcerated women have brought lawsuits against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and current and former correctional officers, alleging graphic incidents of sexual abuse by prison staff dating back a decade.
Corrections officials have said they welcome the investigation. They said that recent reforms have made it easier for women to report misconduct and that staff are now required to wear body cameras at the two women’s prisons. Expanded training to help staff work with prisoners who have dealt with significant trauma is a key pillar of the California Model.
While Coleman appreciates the efforts by Newsom and others in Sacramento to overhaul the state’s dark prison culture, she thinks it’s important for prisoners themselves to help steer the changes. And she views her mission as a peer support specialist as central to that transformation: working to instill a sense of community inside prison walls that was often missing for these women on the outside.
“We all have untreated trauma that contributed to criminalization. So when we come in here, we share our lived experiences with each other,” Coleman said. “We’re more comfortable with each other than we would be with staff.”
Statewide, female inmates make up fewer than 5% of California’s 91,000 prisoners. Of the nearly 51,000 people serving time in state prisons who were convicted of violent crimes, fewer than 2,000 are women.
When women do commit violent offenses, researchers have found the episodes often are tied to self-defense or coercion by an abusive partner. “Sometimes women describe it as something just snapped, and they couldn’t take it anymore. And they acted out as their only means of protection,” Welch said.
Women attending a support group at the Chowchilla prison reflect on the role trauma has played in their lives — and how it helped put them behind bars.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
That makes it more crucial for women’s prisons to have the kind of robust rehabilitation and job training envisioned under the California Model, to better prepare them for release, she said.
The peer support specialists are part of that effort, said Affie Tamuno-Koko, chief nurse executive for the state prison system. In addition, providing formal training as certified peer support specialists gives the women who eventually will be released from prison a transferable job skill. The certification, combined with their on-the-job experience while incarcerated, ensures “they’re not coming out as entry level,” Tamuno-Koko said.
Beyond the employment possibilities, the role “has restored their value as people,” Tamuno-Koko said. “I think it’s a very selfless act, to not just care about yourself, but really want to spend your time genuinely helping someone.”
“You’re going to get on the train or get off,” Lt. Monique Williams says of California Model naysayers. “Because we’re moving.”
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Lt. Monique Williams, the prison’s public information officer, said the women doing peer support are making a tangible difference. The peer support specialists at Chowchilla have provided more than 10,000 one-on-one counseling sessions and 430 group sessions, according to the corrections department.
“They’re needed,” Williams said. “Women understand women.”
Lynne Acosta, a former prisoner, said she can see the transition unfolding. Acosta was incarcerated for more than 20 years for conspiracy to commit first-degree murder before her 2018 release from Chowchilla. Now she’s back inside on a regular basis running group sessions as a life coach working for the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, a nonprofit that provides reentry and support services for former prisoners.
Huddled in a circle in a drab prison classroom in the middle of June, she led a group of two dozen women who were reflecting on the role trauma had played in their lives — and how it helped put them behind bars.
The women gathered had been locked up for charges including drug and firearms possession, robbery and murder. Nearly half were serving life sentences.
“Emotionally, physically, sexually, we are retraumatized, revictimized everyday in here,” said prisoner Kandice Ortega, a peer support specialist at the Chowchilla women’s prison. “That needs to change.”
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
“How many of you in here, regardless of your sentence, it’s your first time ever in trouble?” Acosta asked. Almost everyone raised a hand.
How many were survivors of domestic violence? About half.
And how many think they might have avoided their crimes if they had received support for addiction, domestic violence, sexual assault or other traumas? Everyone.
Acosta remembers the years when such support groups were uncommon, and how badly she needed them.
“Women aren’t supposed to commit violent crimes,” was the common notion, Acosta said. Women were “demonized and dehumanized,” as though because of their gender, they should be doubly punished for ending up in prison.
Lynne Acosta, a former prisoner who is now a life coach, pushes a condemned prisoner out of her dorm unit at the Central California Women’s Facility.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Acosta now lives nearby in the Central Valley and visits the prison almost every day to lead sessions. She’s optimistic that the state’s reform efforts are creating opportunities that might make things a little better for her friends who are still inside.
They include Elizabeth Lozano.
Lozano, 49, grew up in a violent neighborhood in Long Beach, where she said she experienced sexual abuse by a family member. She was sentenced to life without parole for her involvement, at age 16, in a 1992 gang shooting that killed a 13-year-old girl. Lozano was convicted of murder, although her boyfriend said he pulled the trigger.
In prison, Lozano received her associate’s degree in behavioral and social sciences, and co-founded an organization for juvenile offenders, along with another group that brings victims, law enforcement officers and prisoners together for discussions.
This year, Lozano became a peer support specialist as another way to make amends, she said. She works with fellow prisoners on coping skills and anger management, and helps them set goals for their time in prison or look up legal cases in the law library. After losing a loved one in prison in 2016 to an apparent suicide, Lozano also counsels women experiencing mental health crises.
Recent changes to state law make it easier for offenders who were imprisoned as youths to be released. Lozano’s next parole hearing is in May.
“I can’t undo the great harm that I have caused,” Lozano said. “I feel like the only thing that I can do is give from the best part of me and help others in their recovery.”
The majority of incarcerated women endured some combination of physical, sexual and emotional abuse before committing the crime that sent them to prison, according to researchers.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Adding to the challenges of overhauling an entire correctional system are the traumas that happen within prison walls.
The allegations of widespread sexual abuse and serial rapes at the Chowchilla and Chino facilities that are the basis for the federal civil rights investigation may have come as a jolt to state corrections officials, but not to the women who came to see it as part of prison life.
“Emotionally, physically, sexually, we are retraumatized, revictimized everyday in here,” said Kandice Ortega, 38, a peer support specialist who has served 15 years for second-degree murder. “That needs to change.”
Williams, the public information officer, said she hopes — and believes — that change is underway.
Williams has worked for the corrections department for 23 years, rising through the ranks to become a lieutenant. She worked for several years in the unit that housed California’s death row for women before the state’s recent efforts to transition condemned prisoners into the general population.
Fellow staffers, as well as prisoners interviewed, said Williams embodied the spirit of the California Model before it had a name. She spends her days in a swirl of energetic motion, defying stereotypes of cold, bullying guards. She addresses prisoners with candor and kindness, stopping frequently to ask about their lives.
Williams has visited Norway twice to learn about prison practices she could bring back to Chowchilla. She’s coordinated barbecues and parties for staff and prisoners to improve relations. During a Juneteenth celebration, she took the stage and sang gospel music for the prisoners.
“You’re going to get on the train or get off,” she said of California Model naysayers. “Because we’re moving.”
Coleman, the peer support specialist, also chooses to believe that progress is possible. Either things can continue as usual, leaving incarcerated women to deteriorate in their isolation and trauma. Or they can grow and heal so they are better citizens when they leave prison — and strengthen the sense of community for those left behind.
“We have each other, we have the peer support specialist program, and we do have some staff that do care,” Coleman said. “Is this going to be make it a perfect setting? … No. Not even the world outside these gates is.”
On a Friday at the end of October, Coleman was working her way through a stack of paper with the names of dozens of women she was supposed to counsel that week. She called one woman over for a check-in.
Brandi Collins was back in prison.
For more than half her life, Collins, 43, has struggled with addiction to crystal meth and crack cocaine. Prison records show she has been incarcerated nearly a dozen times.
“I have a criminal thinking,” Collins said. “This is my home.”
But this time, she has Coleman, someone she can trust and confide in.
“I felt bad about my dang self. So maybe the first week I was here, I said, ‘Can I talk to you?’” Collins said.
“Do we judge you for returning?” Coleman asked.
“No, she didn’t judge. I know they’ve seen me on this yard a thousand times,” Collins responded.
“I want to forgive myself, and I want to change, and I don’t know what it takes,” she said. Then, turning to Coleman, she said, “I look at you and you give me hope.”
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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