Politics
Voters displaced. Polling stations destroyed. Will hurricanes depress voter turnout?
All day, the phone rang inside the tiny Avery County elections office. Voters from all over this disaster-ravaged corner of Appalachia had the same question: How, after the storm, could they vote?
The director of the board of elections, Sheila Ollis, picked up the phone cheerily, even though Hurricane Helene wiped out 14 out of 19 polling stations and upended much of her careful planning. Thousands of residents are displaced after muddy brown water flooded their homes or cut them off from the outside world by wiping out roads or totaling their cars.
But Ollis said she did not think the catastrophic flood damage and mud slides would dampen turnout in this strongly GOP county where more than three-quarters of voters backed Trump in 2020.
The Avery County Senior Center entrance is seen with a water mark several feet above the ground from flooding and debris. It was previously intended to be used as a polling site on election day, but now will be closed for renovations.
“We’ve got a plan and we’re working together,” Ollis said. “We are just mountain strong. People take voting seriously, because we are mostly Republicans up here.”
Three weeks after Hurricane Helene devastated huge swaths of North Carolina, Georgia and Florida, even a slight drop in turnout at polling stations in pivotal Southern swing states could determine which party controls the White House and Congress. Polling averages compiled by FiveThirtyEight.com show Trump ahead of Harris by just 0.9 of a percentage point in North Carolina and 2.1 percentage points in Georgia, within the margin of error. In Florida, which was hit first by Helene and then Milton, Trump has a more comfortable lead of 5.3 percentage points.
In North Carolina, 1.3 million registered voters live in the 25 counties designated FEMA disaster areas — about 17% of the state’s registered voters — and more of them are Republicans. About 38% of the voters of the devastated area of western North Carolina are registered as Republicans, 23% are Democrats and 38% are unaffiliated, according to Michael Bitzer, professor of politics at Catawba College in Salisbury, N.C.
A welcome sign for Newland, N.C., with utility trucks and an advertisement for guns and ammunition in the background.
But a drop in Republican turnout is not inevitable. Last week, North Carolina’s bipartisan State Board of Elections approved emergency measures to help hurricane victims vote in 13 counties where infrastructure, accessibility to voting sites, and postal services remain disrupted.
Trump 2024 campaign signs dot front yards, even if they are dwarfed by piles of sodden mattresses, sofas and cabinets. And many rural voters here — who have spent the last few weeks patching up roads and driveways, cutting up fallen trees and hauling plates of hot food to their neighbors — pride themselves on their resilience and can-do spirit.
“This is the mountains,” said Jeff Vance, a 60-year-old truck driver, as he hauled cans of corn and beef one day this week from a relief hub to his pickup truck. “If Trump’s in, I’m voting.”
Jeff Vance, right, donates supplies at Riverside Elementary School. “We always show up to vote,” said Vance, a Donald Trump supporter.
Vance said his home had survived with just a flooded basement, but he was taking care of his parents with dementia after the storm washed away their driveway and knocked out power, forcing them to rely on a generator. He probably wouldn’t vote until Nov. 5 as he planned to drive to Alabama for work, but if he heard of anyone who couldn’t make it out their driveway he would crank up his ATV and give them a ride to the polls.
“If someone needs to vote, I will drive them,” he said. “I want this country back to how it was.”
In a bid to make voting more accessible, Avery County added a second early voting location to make it easier for residents in particularly hard-hit communities.
But identifying new polling locations for election day was a challenge. Helene washed away polling sites up and down the North Toe River — including part of the cinder block foundation of the Green Valley Volunteer Fire Department and the brick walls of the Roaring Creek Freewill Baptist Church. Many churches and businesses that survived are now filled with cots or piled high with food and emergency supplies. But Ollis plans to have 11 polling stations open on Nov. 5.
Damage near Riverside Elementary School in Avery County, N.C. The school will be opened as a second early voting site.
“Everybody still wants to vote,” Ollis said. “They want to see changes made. And if they can’t vote, we can possibly even have… teams go out to them with ballots and bring the ballot back in sealed envelopes.”
But even as the vast majority of early voting sites in the state’s hardest-hit areas are up and running — the state had record turnout on the first day of early voting, with 353,166 people casting ballots — the question is whether voters will keep showing up. Nearly 100 people remain missing after the storm killed 125 people across the state and more than 500 roads remain blocked.
“Do voters have their house? Are they able to go to work? Can their kids go to school?” Bitzer said. “If those basic necessities aren’t available to them, where does voting and participating in the election fall on their priorities? I think it will be fairly low compared to everything else.”
Elections official Joseph Trivette sets up equipment to handle ballots during early voting at an aquatic center.
(Melissa Sue Gerrits / For The Times)
Many Republicans here were incensed earlier this month when Democratic analyst David Axelrod, who served as a senior advisor to former President Obama, suggested on his podcast that “upscale” liberal voters in Asheville would be more adept at navigating voting hurdles than rural Republicans.
“I’m not sure a bunch of these folks who’ve had their homes and lives destroyed elsewhere in western North Carolina, in the mountains there, are going to be as easy to wrangle for the Trump campaign,” Axelrod said.
Michele Woodhouse, the GOP chair of North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, was quick to defend rural Republicans.
“I assure you the God fearing, gun totting, MAGA mountain deplorables will crawl over Hurricane debris, down mountain sides, across roads that no longer exist to VOTE FOR TRUMP!!” Woodhouse posted on X.
Woodhouse said Republicans across western North Carolina were even more motivated to vote after the storm, incensed by what they perceived as a slow federal response. She repeated the false claims that FEMA — which has approved more than $100 million so far in individual assistance for North Carolina households — was giving only $750 to disaster survivors to support their recovery.
“If the federal government can release $157 million [in humanitarian aid] to Lebanon,” she said, “they can release $157 million to the people of western North Carolina who are sitting with no water, no power.”
Last week, Woodhouse said, two men walked into her county GOP office and told her they were so disheartened by the FEMA response they had changed their affiliation from Democrat to Republican. Volunteers had also flooded her office offering to do whatever it takes — pitching in with all-terrain vehicles or money for radio campaign ads — to help people get to the polls.
Early voting began Thursday in Avery County, N.C.
“Neighbors are helping neighbors to make sure people can get out and vote, because they know how important this election is,” she said. “The enthusiasm to help get them to polls is at an unbelievable level.”
Yet not everyone was thinking about the election.
Morgan Byrd, a 25-year-old stay-at-home mom, said voting was the last thing on her mind as she picked up diapers and wipes for her baby from a food distribution hub.
Byrd’s home in the tiny town of Crossnore had roof damage, with water come through her ceiling, and she was waiting to hear if insurance would cover it. The storm had put her husband, who mows lawns, out of work, so he was hauling gravel with his dump truck. But she said nobody had money to pay him.
Deer graze outside of a home with debris piled up at the street corner as flood-damaged items are removed and await pick up.
“I don’t mean to be ugly, but we’re trying to get back to normal,” she said. “We’re not thinking about voting.”
As residents focus on recovery, Helene halted almost all political campaigning across western North Carolina.
Erin Buchanan, chair of the Avery County Republican Party, played a leading role in county relief efforts, working with her husband to convert their Spear Country Store into a hub offering hot meals, WiFi, fresh milk, laundry services, hot showers, even free haircuts.
Her husband formed crews to pitch in to repair the county’s roads and drive side by side utility vehicles to conduct wellness checks on dozens of homes and carry food, generators and oxygen to families in need.
Frank Hughes, chair of the Avery County Democratic Party and a candidate for the North Carolina state Senate, was cut off without power or phone service at his home near Linville Falls for two weeks. He abandoned campaigning, not even mentioning he was running for office when he met a local judge as he volunteered with the First Baptist Church.
Frank Hughes, right, with members of the Avery County Democratic Party before a meeting at the Newland Town Hall.
“It pretty much arrested my campaign,” Hughes said of the hurricane, noting that until Helene he had spent Saturdays and Sundays canvassing around the county with a dedicated crew of supporters.
The night before early voting started Thursday, Democrats were not in frenetic campaign mode when they met for their monthly meeting at Newland Town Hall. It was the first time they had seen each other since the storm. They hugged, they shared news of new polling stations and they tried to figure out their game plan for weeks before Nov. 5.
Hughes told them he planned to focus on volunteering at donation hubs on weekends instead of fanning out across the district to campaign like he did before the storm.
“Right now, it’s basically impossible to canvas door to door,” Branch Richter, the Avery County Democratic Party’s second vice chair, told the volunteers. “Until further notice, we’re moving all of our operations into virtual phone banking.”
But virtual phone banking required internet and not everyone was connected. After Helene, phone banking scripts would be tweaked.
“Make sure that they’re safe, that they’ve got resources they need,” Richter said. “There will be resources provided in the script, places we can direct them if they need things: pharmaceuticals, food, water, things like that. And then if they’re still willing to continue the conversation after that, we can talk to them about voting.”
Hughes stressed that they should remind people on their call list that if they wanted federal aid and recovery to continue, they should vote Democratic.
“Project 25 calls for gutting FEMA and National Weather Service,” Hughes said.
Rose Tatum, 45, a nonprofit worker who set up a local chapter of NC Women for Harris this summer, said her group had built lots of momentum until the storm, mailing out 2,500 postcards, making calls, knocking on doors, and placing sticky notes in women’s bathroom stalls.
Suzanne Fischer, left, and Tiffany Weitzen greet each other with a hug before a meeting of the Avery County Democratic Party.
But as Helene stalled political campaigning and the hurricane response turned into a political issue — with misinformation so widespread that FEMA published a fact sheet to debunk rumors and lies around disaster funding — Tatum worried the storm could hurt Democrats across western North Carolina.
“There’s so many rumors and misinformation floating around,” Tatum said. “People who were maybe on the fence are shifting.”
Some voters admitted Helene had slightly changed their views on the election.
After mudslides from the storm washed away roads that led 2½ miles up to her home atop Rebwin Mountain, Nichelle De Souza, a 32-year-old teacher of deaf students, had no power and could only get up and down from her home with her husband and four kids by cramming into a neighbor’s tiny ATV. On Wednesday, she set up a GoFundMe appealing for help.
An independent voter, De Souza said she voted for President Biden in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. But she admitted the hurricane response was affecting her thinking on the election. Government aid had been too slow, she said, and her family had relied 100% on the community for help.
“I think everybody expected government aid quicker,” she said as she stopped by a food distribution hub this week to pick up diapers and winter clothes for her kid.
Nichelle found herself leaning toward voting for Trump. Even though Vitor, a Brazilian citizen who can’t vote, questioned whether the party in power determined the response on the ground.
“If the community wasn’t as responsive, what would it look like here?” she said. “The government took so long.”
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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