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What can a new President Trump really do on Day One? A guide for the worried

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What can a new President Trump really do on Day One? A guide for the worried

President-elect Donald Trump made hundreds of promises during his campaign, including dozens he vowed to implement on “Day One” of his administration. At the top of the list: closing the U.S. border with Mexico, mass deportations, increased oil and gas production, and retribution against his political opponents.

Many of his proposals would hit California hard, and Gov. Gavin Newsom has already promised to wage war in the courts against the new administration.

There’s plenty on Trump’s wish list to worry about. But as I wrote when he was elected to his first term, you can’t hit all your panic buttons at the same time.

Here’s an attempt to sort the biggest concerns from lesser ones. Which Trump priorities are worth losing sleep over — and which will be hard for him to carry out?

His top priorities, some with complications

Deporting undocumented immigrants

“Closing the border” has been Trump’s shorthand for a draconian crackdown on illegal immigration. He has repeatedly promised to launch “the biggest domestic deportation campaign in American history.”

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A drive to expel every undocumented immigrant would deprive California of more than 7% of its workforce, potentially cripple agriculture and construction, divide families and disrupt communities.

It would also face a practical problem: The federal government doesn’t have enough immigration agents to round up 11 million people.

This is one promise Trump clearly intends to keep. But there may be a debate in the new administration over how fast and how sweeping the deportation drive should be.

“It’s not going to be a mass sweep of neighborhoods. It’s not going to be building concentration camps,” Tom Homan, a former acting director of ICE under Trump, said last month on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”

Polls show that most Americans want tougher enforcement of immigration laws — but they don’t support indiscriminate deportations, especially if they divide families. That’s how Trump’s first-term crackdown turned into a political disaster, forcing him to retreat.

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Environmental rollback

Trump has the plans and the power to roll back some environmental gains. On Day One, he is expected to open more federal lands and offshore waters to oil and gas drilling. He is also likely to ease restrictions on the oil industry’s emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and to revoke Biden’s pause on increasing liquid petroleum gas exports.

Trump also plans to roll back Biden’s efforts to encourage the adoption of electric vehicles and repeal federal subsidies for solar, wind and other renewable energy projects — important parts of California’s drive to wean itself from fossil fuels. But a full-scale repeal of Biden’s 2022 energy law could run into resistance from Republicans in Congress, because much of the program’s spending has flowed into GOP districts.

The new administration is also likely to slow permits for new offshore wind energy projects. Trump has been a vociferous opponent of wind energy ever since Scotland built a wind farm that spoiled the view from one of his golf resorts.

Tariffs

“To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff,” the president-elect said last month. He has proposed tariffs of at least 10% on goods from every other country and at least 60% on China — and as high as 200% on Mexico.

A president has wide authority to impose tariffs, and Trump has been so voluble about his love for the trade barriers that they appear inevitable. But tariffs — which are essentially taxes on imports — come with two problems. They raise prices on many of the goods Americans buy, pushing inflation upward, and they almost always prompt other countries to retaliate by imposing tariffs on U.S. exports.

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Amid Trump’s first-term trade war with China, Beijing aimed retaliatory tariffs at California farmers; economists calculated that California growers of almonds, the state’s most valuable export crop, lost about $875 million.

Retribution

Trump has threatened to order the Justice Department to prosecute a long list of his political opponents, including Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen.-elect Adam B. Schiff and former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney.

That’s not a new impulse on his part. During his first term, he publicly demanded that Atty. Gen. William Barr arrest Biden, former President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for what he claimed was a “treasonous plot” to spy on his 2016 campaign. (Barr ignored the order.)

If Trump appoints a more pliant attorney general this time, he has the power to order the Justice Department to investigate his critics, a GOP lawyer who is reportedly advising the president-elect wrote last week. The department’s independence from political meddling is a long-standing norm, but it isn’t protected by law.

Still, if he targets his critics, his term will be dominated by legal firestorms — potentially getting in the way of the rest of his agenda. Last month, he claimed that he refrained from prosecuting Clinton during his first term because “it would look terrible” — an implicit bow to political constraints.

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Two actions Trump is virtually certain to take: He will order the Justice Department to drop the federal criminal proceedings against him, stemming from his attempt to overturn Biden’s election and his concealment of national security documents at his Florida estate. He has also promised to pardon most of the more than 1,000 people convicted of or indicted on charges of storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Yes, he can

Foreign policy

A president’s power to change direction in foreign policy is almost unfettered, and Trump has vowed to do exactly that. He has promised to negotiate an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine even before his inauguration — and his other statements suggest he would do so by demanding that Ukraine surrender chunks of its territory. (His running mate, Vice President-elect JD Vance, has called for an immediate end to military aid for Ukraine.)

Trump is also likely to renew his first-term drive to pull the United States out of the 75-year-old North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or at least to weaken the U.S. commitment to defend European countries against a Russian invasion.

Installing loyalists

Trump has promised to impose new rules on the federal civil service allowing him to fire bureaucrats more easily and replace them with loyalists. He imposed such a rule in the final months of his first term, but Biden revoked it.

He has also promised to fire senior military officers whose political views he dislikes and to purge the CIA and the FBI, accusing both agencies of “persecuting” conservatives.

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Those moves “would turn much of the civil service into an army of suck-ups,” Robert Shea, a former aide to President George W. Bush, told me this year.

Trump vs. political reality

Abortion

One issue on which Trump may hesitate to buck public opinion: Abortion. Polls show that most voters oppose harsher restrictions, and last week, voters in seven states — including conservative Missouri and Montana — approved abortion rights measures.

During the Republican primaries this year, Trump sought to take credit for nominating the conservative Supreme Court justices who enabled states to pass restrictive abortion laws. But once he was running in a general election campaign, he sought to avoid responsibility for the laws, arguing that he had left the question up to the states.

Some antiabortion activists want Congress to pass a national abortion ban, but Trump said during the campaign that he would not sign one into law. Trump has also indicated he does not intend to block access to mifepristone, the pill used for more than half of U.S. abortions. “The matter is settled,” his spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, said last month.

Activists expect the Trump administration to revoke a Biden directive that requires emergency rooms to provide abortions when necessary to stabilize a woman’s health, even in states with abortion bans.

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Obamacare

Conservative Republicans in Congress, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), have said they hope to repeal or weaken the Affordable Care Act, the health insurance law popularly known as Obamacare.

Trump has said he is open to changing the popular law, which he tried and failed to repeal in his first term. But he has not presented a proposal, and admitted in the debate that he had only “concepts of a plan.”

If the new Congress fails to renew Biden-era subsidies, as many as 20 million users — especially middle and high income families — will see their health insurance costs rise.

Not likely to happen

Some of Trump’s promises aren’t likely to survive the real world.

He pledged to exempt Social Security benefits, overtime wages and tips from taxation. Many Republicans in Congress say privately that those ideas are impractical, because they would cost trillions in lost revenue.

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Trump also promised that his pro-oil policies would cut energy prices by 50%. But energy prices are set by a global market; even if Trump stimulates a massive increase in oil production (which isn’t a sure thing), the effect on prices may not be dramatic.

Trump has also threatened to cancel television networks’ broadcast licenses. But the federal government grants licenses to individual stations, not networks — and it cannot cancel licenses because a president doesn’t like their news coverage.

Where are the restraints?

Trump, like all presidents, will hold vast power. But even a strongman may discover that there are limits to what he can do.

Courts can still overturn an administration’s actions — and Democrats, including California’s governor, are preparing to spend much of the next four years going to court.

The most important factor could be public opinion. Trump may have waged his last campaign, but Republicans in Congress face another election in two years. They know that voters often punish the party in power, especially if they believe the president has gone too far.

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So the 2026 congressional election may be the strongest restraint on what Trump can do — and that campaign is already underway.

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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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