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Column: Is it time for California's Latino Legislative Caucus to let in Republicans?

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Column: Is it time for California's Latino Legislative Caucus to let in Republicans?

Over the phone, Lena Gonzalez’s voice had the patient but proud tone of a lawyer charged with defending the damned.

Her metaphorical client: The California Latino Legislative Caucus, which the Long Beach-area state senator heads.

At 38 members strong, it’s one of the largest groups of its kind in the United States and has long served as the tip of California’s progressive spear. Members helped transform the state within a generation from a place that birthed the notorious anti-immigrant Proposition 187 into one where undocumented people can apply for driver’s licenses, health insurance, get in-state college tuition and more.

Then the 2024 elections happened.

Latinos shifted toward Donald Trump nationwide in numbers that continue to make headlines and confound Democratic leaders. It happened in deep-blue California too. In the blue-collar, overwhelming Mexican Anaheim precinct where my father lives, support from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris dropped from 73% in 2020 to 60% this year. Trump nabbed 36% of the vote — though not from my father, who thinks he’s a “loco” — despite the former and future president’s promise to deport as many undocumented immigrants as he can.

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Eight Latino Republicans now serve in the state Legislature, doubling the former record set just two years ago. Their districts span California from the border to the Sierra, the Central Valley to Orange County, as do their life stories: children of immigrants, multiethnic, multigenerational.

They make up 18% of all California Latino legislators, in a state where a survey released this year by the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials — headed by a Downey Latina Republican council member — found 16% of Latinos are registered as Republicans.

This new reality is why I was calling Gonzalez.

Since it started in 1973, the Latino Legislative Caucus has excluded GOP members. The ban was easy to justify, I told Gonzalez, when there were only a few raza Republicans in Sacramento and they were seen as little better than vendidos — sellouts.

But given how Latino voters shifted this election day, is it time for the caucus to roll out the red carpet for their Republican colleagues?

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“That is a good question,” Gonzalez responded. “We’re obviously racking with this in our brains. This year is very different. We saw a flip in the Imperial Valley that we thought we’d get.”

Republican freshman Assemblymember Jeff Gonzalez, center, watches the Assembly’s organizational session in Sacramento in November.

(Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press)

She was talking about Assembly District 36, where newbie Jeff Gonzalez (no relation to Lena) triumphed over a candidate supported by the Coachella Valley Latino political machine that has dominated elected office out there for a generation.

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She also mentioned the Inland Empire’s 58th Assembly District, where first-time candidate Leticia Castillo beat Clarissa Cervantes, the sister of state senator and former Latino Legislative Caucus chair Sabrina Cervantes, by just 596 votes.

“I have to talk to our caucus,” Gonzalez continued. She said some members are considering admitting Latino Republicans, while “others have said, ‘Absolutely not.’”

It’s weird times for Latino politics in California, even as Democrats still hold a supermajority in both legislative chambers, one of our U.S. senators is Pacoima native Alex Padilla and Latino caucus members Robert Rivas and Gonzalez are, respectively, speaker of the Assembly and Senate majority leader. Pundits long predicted that the template Latino Democrats created in California in the wake of Proposition 187 for electoral success — align with labor, grow government and advocate for undocumented residents — would spread nationwide and secure the future of the Democratic Party as this nation turns more Latino.

Now, Gonzalez admits, Latino Dems can no longer shun their GOP cousins like the weirdo branch of the family at a carne asada.

“It may not be in the caucus,” she said, “but we’re going to have to work with them in other capacities, clearly.”

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For decades, Latino Republicans have lambasted the Latino caucus for not letting them in, sparking attempts to create their own group (it went nowhere) and a state investigation into whether a partisan ethnic caucus was even legal in the first place (it was).

Now, giddily thinking about what’s next for them, the Latino Republicans I talked to have adopted the old Groucho Marx adage of not wanting to belong to a club that would have them as a member.

Abel Maldonado, a former Santa Maria Assembly member and state senator who was one of the last Republicans to hold statewide office when he served as lieutenant governor in 2010, dismissed the Latino caucus as little better than a party crew.

“It’s great to go have dinner with the caucus and have a glass of wine,” he said, half-serious and half-not. “I miss going with Fabian [Nuñez] and Antonio [Villaraigosa] and — en paz descanse [may he rest in peace] — Marco Firebaugh,” the late southeastern L.A. County Assembly member.

“It was fun to go out in nighttime,” Maldonado continued, “but during the day, their policies hurt Latinos. They’ll tell you they’re for the poor, but they fail to tell you they keep you poor.”

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His advice to Republican Latinos: “Don’t be part of this caucus that caused” California’s current problems.

They talk about a lot about diversity, but they’re not interested in diversity of thought, in differing political opinions.

— Assemblymember Josh Hoover on Latino Democratic legislators

Assemblymember Josh Hoover, who represents a Sacramento-area district, said his fellow Latino GOP legislators have a text thread on which they trade ideas and wonder whether they should start their own group. (That’s what Latino Republicans did in Congress, forming the Congressional Hispanic Conference in 2003 to distinguish themselves from the heavily Democratic Congressional Hispanic Caucus.)

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About a third of all California Republican legislators are now Latino. “That’s a big deal,” he said. “It shows that the Republican Party is not the party that has been painted by the left.”

Hoover said the caucus’ rejection of people like him showed “they talk about a lot about diversity, but they’re not interested in diversity of thought, in differing political opinions. That’s something that needs to change in California.”

Two people talk to each other.

State Sen. Robert Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys) talks with state Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh (R-Yucaipa) at the Capitol in Sacramento in 2022.

(Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press)

Inland Empire Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, the daughter of immigrants from the Mexican state of Yucatán, became California’s first Latina Republican state senator when she was elected in 2020; now, there are three. She remembered running into Latino Legislative Caucus members at a dinner her first year in office and initially being upset that she couldn’t join them.

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“Like in high school when you’re not part of a group — you know how you felt like the outsider, but you felt like you belonged?” Ochoa Bogh said. “Then I thought about it and felt it wasn’t right. I thought, ‘I’m more Latina than many of these folks!’”

She acknowledged that the caucus had a good reason to form 51 years ago “because they probably felt they didn’t have a voice then.” Now, Latinos make up a plurality of Californians — and Ochoa Bogh argued that an ethnic caucus makes no sense.

“I think California, as a whole in this election, really conveyed a strong message that they’re done with creating all of these segments instead of uniting us all together,” she said. “Besides, if the Latino population aren’t getting their needs met right now, it’s Latino Democrats in charge, not the Republicans.”

The odds of the Latino caucus reexamining its Democrats-only rules shrank dramatically, however, after the special session called by Gov. Gavin Newsom this month to prepare California for an expected onslaught of Trump legal actions against the state.

On the first day, Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil — a former caucus member who switched her party registration last year from Democrat to Republican — took to social media to call Gonzalez “the grand wizard of the Latino KLAUCUS” after Alvarado-Gil claimed Gonzalez tried to kick her out of a break room.

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Gonzalez declined to discuss the matter. “We have work to do, and I don’t want us to be distracted by what someone said to someone else,” said Gonzalez of Alvarado-Gil, whose office didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Democrats eventually passed a bill that would set aside a $25-million anti-Trump legal fund, including protecting undocumented residents.

“One thing that we [the Latino caucus] stand united for is against mass deportation,” said Gonzalez, who just introduced a bill that would establish a state agency to help immigrants and refugees. “Not one Republican supported the bill.” It’s hard to endorse caucus membership, she said, for those unwilling to support “a very basic value of the Latino caucus.”

When I pointed out that anti-immigrant sentiment among Latinos in California is higher than ever before and maybe her Latino Republican colleagues were onto something, Gonzalez cut right to the proverbial point.

“We’ve got a lot to work on ourselves, but we got to work on ourselves before letting them in.”

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Trump-aligned House holdouts accused of holding ‘life-saving’ veterans bill ‘hostage’ over SAVE America Act

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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)

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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.

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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.

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“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.”

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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.

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“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.

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Assassinations unleashed under Trump haunt Iran war endgame

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Assassinations unleashed under Trump haunt Iran war endgame

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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.”

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Trump takes unusual step, lets bipartisan housing bill become law unsigned amid SAVE pressure campaign

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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. 

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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.

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“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.”

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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

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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.

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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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