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Threats of terrorism in the U.S. are 'more diverse and difficult to counter'

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Threats of terrorism in the U.S. are 'more diverse and difficult to counter'

She wanted a rifle. He needed a soldier for his plan to overthrow the government.

Sarah Beth Clendaniel was a radical looking for a target when, authorities say, she plotted with Brandon Russell — a white supremacist who belongs to an organization known as Atomwaffen Division — to destroy the power grid around Baltimore. Clendaniel dressed in camouflage fatigues. Russell went by the alias “Raccoon” and, according to federal agents, kept a framed picture of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh on his dresser.

They communicated through encrypted messages, but the mission was foiled by authorities. Clendaniel pleaded guilty in May to conspiring to damage or destroy electrical stations in Maryland. Russell, who was charged earlier with possessing explosives, is awaiting trial. The case did not attract much attention outside Baltimore, but it was another reminder of the danger of terrorism in an unsettled nation.

The U.S. is facing security threats in a presidential election year coming from Islamic militants, far-right extremists, leftist radicals and an array of zealots disgruntled over the nation’s culture wars and our polarized society. Officials are increasingly worried about the deepening strands of left- and right-wing venom rooted in antiestablishment anger and amplified by social media that are testing the government’s ability to track militants like Clendaniel and Russell.

Timothy McVeigh’s hatred of the federal government led him to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April 1995, killing 186 people and injuring hundreds more. According to federal agents, Brandon Russell, who is accused of plotting to blow up the Baltimore power grid, kept a photo of McVeigh on his dresser.

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(Associated Press)

“The threat’s not more potent than it was around 9/11, but it’s certainly more diverse and difficult to counter,” said Colin P. Clarke, the director of research at the Soufan Group, an intelligence and security consulting firm in New York City. “We’re dealing with a more aggressive far-right, left-wing and what we call ‘salad bar people,’ who take a little bit of each ideology and thread them together. Incels. Q-Anon. The range of actors at play now is a lot broader than what we’re used to.”

The race between President Biden and Donald Trump underscores the prospects for unrest and violence. GOP senators have asked the Secret Service to keep demonstrators farther from the Republican National Convention at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee. Protesters are also expected to arrive en masse at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where in 1968, during an era of intense upheaval around the Vietnam War that some suggest parallels today’s political tremors, police beat and tear-gassed hundreds of marchers.

On a visit to Chicago this month, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle met with nearly 100 agents who will be protecting both conventions. She told CNN she was concerned about a number of threats, including “the lone gunman.”

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“You’ve got folks that are radicalized. You’ve got demonstrations that may pop up. And obviously, we hope they remain peaceful here, but they could turn violent,” she said.

Most of the violence and “other threat indicators [are] from groups that lean more conservative,” said Amy Cooter, a terrorism expert with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. What’s notable, she added, was that the extremist narratives, particularly accelerationist ones — like those espoused by Clendaniel that use violence to speed up social collapse — can appeal to radicals across the political spectrum.

“There’s potential for people who have very different underlying political beliefs,” said Cooter, “to join forces on issues they have common ground on.”

National militant organizations complicit in the Jan 6. riots, including the Proud Boys, remain a danger, Cooter said, despite arrests of its leaders and loss of a centralized online home since Facebook blocked extremist groups. Before the 2020 election, Trump told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” Reuters reported that after Trump was found guilty in May of falsifying business records, a Proud Boys chapter in Ohio promised “war” in a statement that read: “Fighting solves everything.”

Trump’s increasingly militant campaign speeches against immigrants and conspiracies about the “deep state” also resonate with other groups in the so-called patriot movement. The former president suggested in veiled language that his followers might rise up if he were sent to prison: “I’m not sure the public would stand for it,” he told Fox News. “You know, at a certain point, there’s a breaking point.”

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A close-up of a Secret Service agent in a black shirt and black vest.

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle told CNN she was concerned about a number of threats to the U.S.

(Julia Nikhinson / Associated Press)

“Not all militia members like Trump. Some think he’s too brash, too old,” said Cooter, who spent years interviewing and investigating militia groups in Michigan. “But they are very responsive to his rhetoric because he appeals to their worries about immigration or about changing culture in other ways. Even if they’re not going to vote for him, their urgency around these issues gets stirred up.”

Today’s turmoil has yet to reach the magnitude of the late 1960s or the 1970s, when far-left domestic terror groups like the Weather Underground and Symbionese Liberation Army orchestrated scores of bombings. Many of the threats these days come from varied agendas, including Payton Gendron, who wrote a 180-page racist screed before killing 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., in 2022, and James Hodgkinson, a left-wing radical who in 2017 shot and wounded at least four people at a softball practice for Republican congressmen in Alexandria, Va.

In April, Kyran Caples, who police say was radicalized while at Fresno State and joined an obscure antigovernment group known as the Moorish sovereign citizens, shot and critically wounded two police officers in Florida. Caples was killed by police. In the plot to destroy the Baltimore power grid, the Justice Department quoted Clendaniel, once photographed heavily armed and wearing camouflage fatigues, a headscarf and a skull mask, as saying an attack “would probably permanently completely lay this city to waste.”

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The country has been shaken by anger and unrest in recent years around the COVID-19 pandemic, mass shootings, George Floyd protests, an insurrection at the Capitol and pro-Palestinian rallies on college campuses. Those domestic ruptures have coincided with a rejuvenated branch of ISIS that is recruiting militants beyond its base in Afghanistan and this year carried out attacks in Russia and Iran that killed at least 220 people.

FBI Director Christopher A. Wray recently told cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point that his agency was concerned about “a rogues’ gallery” of foreign organizations calling for violence against Americans. But he suggested that the more pressing danger comes from individuals and small groups in the U.S. who “draw twisted inspiration from the events in the Middle East to carry out attacks here at home.” The agency, he said, has been “running down thousands of reported threats.”

Former extremist leader Henry "Enrique" Tarrio smokes while wearing a tactical vest and hat that reads "The War Boys"
National militant organizations complicit in the Jan 6. riots, including the Proud Boys, remain a danger, according to Amy Cooter, a terrorism expert with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Above, former Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio in September 2020.

(Allison Dinner / Associated Press)

He added that tensions around the Israel-Hamas war “will feed a pipeline of radicalization and mobilization for years to come.” In April, Wray, describing what he called a heightened threat environment, told the House Appropriations Committee that the agency’s 2024 fiscal year budget was nearly $500 million below what it needed. “This could not come at a worse time,” he said. “We need people…. Now is not the time to cut back.”

That threat landscape — radiating through a wide prism of anger and ideologies — has shaped America’s discourse and sharpened its divisions. The battles playing out in Congress have run parallel to social and political fervor around antisemitism, Gaza, abortion, immigration and gun rights unfolding on college campuses, state houses, podcasts, rallies and talk shows.

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“The powerful emotions that have been unleashed aren’t fading,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert and professor at Georgetown University. “Terrorism never occurs in a vacuum. It always leverages off of the divisions, contentiousness and controversies that are in the political arena and that will lead to a very small fringe to conclude that violence is the only way” to overthrow a corrupt system.

The radicalization of the young is rooted in the generation that came of age during the isolation of the pandemic and has since seen governments as either powerless or indifferent to climate change, wealth gaps and stopping wars in Ukraine and Gaza. “This seeds a bed of frustration and mistrust,” said Hoffman, co-author of “God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America.” “They’re looking to be entertained and stimulated rather than informed and confident that they’re getting accurate information. TikTok is feeding them what they want.”

People kneel beside a sidewalk memorial of flowers near a tree and yellow police tape

People pay their respects outside the scene of a shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., on May 15, 2022. Payton Gendron wrote a 180-page racist screed before killing 10 Black people at the market.

(Matt Rourke / Associated Press)

When he was testifying testified before the House Appropriations Committee, Wray outlined the threats the U.S. faces from terrorism, cartels trafficking fentanyl, and cyberattacks on business and infrastructure.

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“As I look back over my career in law enforcement,” he said, “I would be hard-pressed to think of a time where so many threats to our public safety and national security were so elevated all at once.”

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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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