One Democrat Votes Against Landmark Housing Bill Even Republicans Back

The Senate passed a landmark housing bill Thursday with a rare show of bipartisan support, but one Democrat still voted “no.”

Brian Schatz of Hawaii was the lone Democrat to vote against the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which would create incentives to build new homes, launch a program to turn abandoned buildings into housing, and ban Wall Street from purchasing single-family homes, among other long overdue reforms.

Co-sponsored by Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren and Republican Tim Scott, it passed 89-10, with all of the “no” votes coming from Republicans except Schatz. Why? Schatz gave a clue that he wasn’t happy with the bill Wednesday, claiming on the Senate floor that “there is a problem” with the bill.

“It was written in such a way that it was trying to capture the hedge fund problem, but they wrote it wrong,” Schatz said, citing a provision in the bill that requires large institutional investors to sell their rental properties to families after seven years. He claimed that the legislation defines such investors as for-profit organizations that own ​​over 350 single-family homes, not just hedge funds.

Warren disagreed, and said Schatz was mischaracterizing the kind of businesses that own more than 350 homes, and that they could still build as much as they want.

“Private equity can build as many multi-family homes as they want, as many apartment buildings as they want, and as many single-family buildings as they want,” the Massachusetts senator told HuffPost. “They can suck up all of the tax benefits that they’re currently entitled to, with the one exception that after seven years of benefits, private equity has to take those single-family homes and make them available for families to buy.”

Evidently Schatz’s concerns were enough to get him to vote against the bill, which now heads to the House with its narrow Republican majority. The fact that so many Republicans supported it in the Senate is a good sign, but it still faces an uncertain future in the House and with President Trump, who reportedly told Speaker Mike Johnson that “no one gives a [bleep] about housing” earlier this week. But either way, Schatz appears to be in a very small minority allied with Wall Street, one even Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent isn’t a part of.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is demanding that ABC News retract reporting on a potential Iranian retaliatory attack on California because it was based on an “unverified” tip—even though the FBI alerted law enforcement to it in the first place.

“This post and story should be immediately retracted by ABC News for providing false information to intentionally alarm the American people,” Leavitt wrote on X on Thursday. “They wrote this based on one email that was sent to local law enforcement in California about a single, unverified tip. The email even states the tip was based on *unverified* intelligence. Yet ABC News left out this critical fact in their story! WHY? TO BE CLEAR: No such threat from Iran to our homeland exists, and it never did.”

But if the tip was as inconsequential and unreliable as Leavitt claims it to be, why did the FBI even pass it on in the first place?

“We recently acquired information that as of early February 2026, Iran allegedly aspired to conduct a surprise attack using unmanned aerial vehicles from an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United States Homeland, specifically against unspecified targets in California, in the event that the US conducted strikes against Iran,” the FBI’s announcement read. “We have no additional information on the timing, method, target, or perpetrators of this alleged attack.”

The White House is taking the current Middle East conflict very seriously.

Rather than write a formal address about the president’s decision to start a war with Iran, White House staffers spent time and resources crafting a Wii Sports–themed social media video about “Operation Epic Fury.”

The discordant 52-second project stitches together the 2006 Nintendo title with drone footage from the battlefield, turning real-world violence into a video game. The montage includes a clip of Wii Sport’s golf buttressed by a drone strike labeled “hole in one,” and a baseball sequence adjoined to an explosion in Iran that features the words “out of the park,” all while the game’s iconic soundtrack rings in the background.

So far, seven U.S. soldiers have been killed in the conflict, as have more than 20 Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. About 140 American soldiers have also been injured. More than 1,300 Iranian civilians have been killed, including dozens of children at a girls’ school in the country’s south—an attack that a U.S. assessment report found was “likely” the fault of American forces.

And yet the Wii Sports video is far from the first instance in which the White House has made an open mockery of the human death toll of the war, which was not approved by Congress, the sole government branch with the constitutional authority to do so.

The administration published another one of its disturbing jokes Wednesday evening, cobbling a bowling animation sequence out of recent footage of the war. In it, an AI-generated crowd of angry, gun-toting bowling pins hold up a sign reading, “We won’t stop making nuclear weapons.” They’re then placed on a bowling alley with a sign above them reading “Iranian Regime Officials.”

“Here comes the hit from the USA,” sounds an announcer as a red, white, and blue bowling ball knocks them down.

The video then descends into a rapid-fire sequence of exploding buildings while a remix of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” plays.

Last week, the White House used footage from Call of Duty in another propagandistic piece about the Iran war, overlaying real clips of destroyed targets with the games’ HUD layout—and its XP gains. In one shot, real footage of a U.S. drone attack on a truck is labeled “+100.” That was apparently a step too far, even for the White House, which has since deleted the video.

A former Department of Homeland Security spokesperson was reportedly directly involved in awarding federal funds that ended up with her husband’s company, in the latest installment of the $220 million scandal that got Kristi Noem fired.

Tricia McLaughlin, who served as the public face for DHS’s brutal immigration crackdown, had significant involvement in the procurement process, and was included on email chains about vendor selection, a current DHS official told The Daily Wire.  

McLaughlin told the outlet that she had been among a group of officials who heard presentations in February from just three companies who were invited to bid. It’s not clear which companies presented bids. 

This reporting directly contradicts Noem’s testimony to Congress earlier this month, when she claimed the contract “went out to a competitive bid and career officials at the department chose who would do those advertising commercials.” It appears that’s just one of many lies Noem told under oath. 

Two companies were awarded massive federal contracts, including a $143 million contract to Safe America Media LLC, a company that had incorporated a little over a week earlier. McLaughlin told The Daily Wire that Safe America Media was selected because the men who ran it, veteran GOP media operative Mike McElwain and his top ad maker, Patrick McCarthy, were “some of the best in the business, they’ve had a storied, illustrious career.”

Safe America Media LLC then subcontracted Strategy Group, a media company headed by Benjamin Yoho, McLaughlin’s husband. His company received a total of $226,137 for five film shoots, 45 video, and six radio ad spots.

Strategy Group’s ties to Noem’s inner circle don’t stop there. The outgoing secretary was reportedly put in touch with the agency by her alleged paramour and chief adviser, Corey Lewandowski. And the company is now working on the congressional campaign of former ICE Deputy Director Madison Sheahan, the 28-year-old woman Noem handpicked to oversee ICE’s billion-dollar budget.

Earlier this week, Democratic lawmakers launched an investigation into how exactly the multimillion-dollar ad campaign contracts were awarded, and how that money ended up with an official’s spouse. 

Donald Trump issued a veiled threat to Iran Thursday, but not one directly related to the war: It concerns their men’s national soccer team.

“The Iran National Soccer Team is welcome to The World Cup, but I really don’t believe it is appropriate that they be there, for their own life and safety. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP,” the president wrote on Truth Social. The odious message comes after FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, met with Trump Wednesday and reportedly got his assurance that the Iranian team would be welcome.

Last year, Iran became the first team to qualify for this summer’s World Cup, which will be hosted by the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Tensions between Iran and the U.S. have been high since the start of the Islamic Republic in 1979, and Iran’s soccer team arriving in the U.S. was guaranteed to result in a charged atmosphere.

But after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran and ignited a war 13 days ago, the country’s participation in the World Cup was suddenly placed in doubt. How would Iran’s soccer team travel to a country it is at war with, let alone be able to train? The president of Iran’s soccer federation said early on in the war that “what is certain is that after this attack, we cannot be expected to look forward to the World Cup with hope.”

Trump responded with indifference. “I really don’t care” if Iran participates, he told Politico last week. “I think Iran is a very badly defeated country. They’re running on fumes.” Iran is also part of the Trump administration’s travel ban, preventing many of its citizens from coming to the U.S. and seeing them play, although there is a carve-out for the team and support personnel.

In December, the State Department didn’t grant visas for all of the Iranian officials who planned to attend the World Cup draw in Washington, D.C. Iran threatened to boycott the ceremony, prompting FIFA, the international soccer governing body, to step in. This time, though, Iran’s sports minister said Wednesday that the country would not be competing.

“Given that this corrupt government assassinated our leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei], there are no conditions which allow us to participate in the World Cup,” Ahmad Donyamali said on Iranian state television. If Iran follows through and doesn’t take part, it would face a heavy fine and possible ban from future international competitions.

Iran was drawn in Group G in the tournament, and is scheduled to play New Zealand on June 15 and Belgium on June 21 in Inglewood, California, not far from Los Angeles’s massive Iranian diaspora community, nicknamed “Tehrangeles.” But the odds are narrowing that they would get to see the team play live.

Aside from the Iran question (and the badly planned war), the Trump administration has badly managed preparations for the World Cup. Host cities haven’t received hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for security, leading to a cancellation of public fan fests across the country. Vice President JD Vance and White House adviser Stephen Miller have threatened to deploy ICE agents to World Cup stadiums, raising the possibility of protests, violence, and mass arrests. Is that the threat to the Iranian national team’s “life and safety” that Trump is referring to?

Iran has systematically destroyed U.S. missile defense systems across the Middle East over the last 13 days, opting to surgically dismantle the eyes and ears of America’s regional defense systems rather than go toe-to-toe with the country’s raw firepower.

The Pentagon confirmed that Iran’s military hit Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, wrecking a radar system valued at $300 million.

“The AN-TPY/2 radar is essentially the heart of the THAAD battery, enabling the launch of interceptor missiles and contributing to a networked air defense picture,” munitions specialist N.R. Jenzen-Jones told CNN last week. “It also happens to be an incredibly expensive piece of kit.”

THAAD is short for terminal high-altitude area defense. Paired with an AN-TPY/2 radar, the tech is capable of locating incoming missiles and translating an interception point to American rockets. Destroying the radars removes America’s ability to detect and interpret the flight path of an incoming missile, leaving the military’s missile defense systems useless.

“The loss of even a single radar of this type would be an operationally significant event,” Jenzen-Jones said. “It is probable that a replacement unit would have to be redeployed from elsewhere, which will take time and effort.”

The rapid depletion of missiles has been a growing problem since Israel and the U.S. opened fire on Iran on February 28.

U.S. military officials have stressed that fighting Iran has drastically depleted America’s missile defense systems. In a closed-door meeting with lawmakers on March 3, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine reportedly said that Iran’s Shahed attack drones had proved a more difficult problem than initially predicted.

In the days since, EU defense officials have warned that the U.S. is no longer capable of supplying missiles to its allies amid its war with Iran, stressing that the continent would need to develop its own missile manufacturing sector in order to adequately fill their supply without Washington’s help.

One source told CNN last week that the U.S. has been “burning” through long-range precision-guided missiles in order to fend off the drones.

Earlier this week, it became clear that the White House had months earlier been offered the opportunity to buy tech that would have given U.S. forces a dramatic advantage against Iran. The offer was extended by Ukraine, and the the intel was battle-proven: Ukraine has more experience fighting Shaheds than practically any other country, downing the same design under Russia’s flag (Russia rebranded the military tech as “Geran drones”).

The decision to snub the offer has since been discussed as one of the biggest miscalculations thus far in the Iran war.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp thinks his AI technology will lessen the power of “highly educated, often female voters, who vote mostly Democrat” while increasing the power of working-class men.

“This technology disrupts humanities-trained—largely Democratic—voters, and makes their economic power less. And increases the economic power of vocationally trained, working-class, often male, working-class voters,” Karp said in a CNBC interview Thursday. “And so these disruptions are gonna disrupt every aspect of our society. And to make this work, we have to come to an agreement of what it is we’re going to do with the technology; how are we gonna explain to people who are likely gonna have less good, and less interesting jobs.”

This sounds like a direct, long-term pitch to the GOP from a CEO whose tech firm already has numerous government contracts and is deeply embedded in the Pentagon. Karp’s message is loud and clear: My technology will take political capital away from one of your greatest enemies—liberal women with degrees—and give one of your favorite demographics to patronize—working-class men—more political power to transfer to you. He’s aligning his technology with both GOP political strategy and the larger male-centered culture war that the right has been waging for the better part of a decade now. And how exactly would his technology only hurt Democrat women?

Karp also made a Patriot Act–era argument, justifying his admittedly “dangerous” technology by claiming that Palantir will allow us to “be American” in the future.

“These technologies are dangerous societally,” Karp continued. “The only justification you could possibly have would be that if we don’t do it, our adversaries will do it. And we will be subject to their rule of law.… Why is it that we’re absorbing the risk of disrupting the very fabric of our society, including the most powerful parts of our society, if it’s not because it’s about maintaining our ability to be American in the near term and long term?”

The Pentagon estimates that it spent more than $11.3 billion in the first week of Donald Trump’s illegal war in Iran. And every cent of that was spent without congressional approval.

During a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Pentagon officials told lawmakers that the cost of the first six days of America’s aerial bombing campaign exceeded $11.3 billion—not including the cost of the buildup ahead of the strikes, multiple outlets reported.

The Pentagon previously estimated it spent $5.6 billion on munitions alone during the first two days of the war—significantly dwarfing the Pentagon’s preliminary cost estimate of $1 billion per day. Some GOP lawmakers said they’d received estimates that were closer to $2 billion per day.

Elaine McCusker, who served as deputy undersecretary of defense during the first Trump administration, estimated that it cost an additional $630 million to assemble the largest force of U.S. military assets to the Middle East in decades before the first shot was even fired.

Meanwhile, Tomahawk cruise missiles, like the one the U.S. military reportedly used in a deadly strike on an Iranian girls’ primary school, cost $2.2 million each. It may be worth keeping these figures in mind as the Trump administration argues it doesn’t have enough money to make health care more affordable.

This exorbitant spending on a military campaign the American people do not support and their representatives did not authorize cancels out billions supposedly saved by sweeping cost-cutting measures. In order to fund his war, Trump has laid waste to federal programs.

Let’s do some quick math: The $1.1 billion Trump rescinded from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the $7 billion from foreign aid, added to the $2.7 billion gutted from medical research and the $500 million slashed from food banks, is roughly equivalent to the $11.3 billion the Trump administration has spent bombing Iran.

Or to put it more simply: In his first year back in office, Trump disrupted at least $12 billion toward K-12 education. Rather than fund schools, the U.S. bombed them.

Donald Trump is trying to spin skyrocketing oil prices caused by the war in Iran as good for the U.S.

“The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Thursday morning, suggesting that Americans would see economic benefits as gas prices shoot up.

That may be true for American gas and oil companies, but Americans who don’t work in that industry aren’t likely to see any of those companies’ profits. In fact, they will likely get sticker shock when they go to fill up their cars, with gas prices already exceeding $5 a gallon in California.

But on some level, Trump knows that high oil prices aren’t good for the U.S., at least from a political standpoint. On Wednesday, Trump said he would open the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve and release 172 million barrels of oil to help bring prices down.

“We’ll do that, and then we’ll fill it up,” Trump told a local Cincinnati TV station. “I filled it up once, and I’ll fill it up again. But right now, we’ll reduce it a little bit, and that brings the prices down.”

Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the releases will begin next week and take about 120 days. The reserve is about 59 percent full, with the Trump administration replenishing only small amounts of oil. The last time it was tapped was by President Biden in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Iran has taken control of the Strait of Hormuz and blocked all ships, including oil tankers, from entering or leaving. The country is actually exporting more of its own oil than it was before the war, making a tidy profit itself.

Right now, the 20 million barrels of crude oil that usually traverse through the strait are stuck thanks to an Iranian blockade reinforced by sea mines. The U.S. typically consumes a similar amount of crude oil each day. If the strait doesn’t reopen soon, the stocks of American oil producers might gain value, but the average American will end up having to spend a massive chunk of their paycheck on gas, causing a ripple effect that will further hurt the economy.

FBI Director Kash Patel announced on Wednesday that his agents will be training with UFC fighters, further solidifying the sport’s connection to the right wing and raising more questions as to what exactly Patel does all day.

“I’m thrilled to announce this historic seminar between the FBI and the UFC at Quantico,” Patel said in a statement. “This is a tremendous opportunity for our FBI agents to learn and train with some of the greatest athletes on earth—helping the world’s premier law enforcement agency be even better prepared to protect the American people.”

The training will occur this weekend at the FBI Academy in Quantico, after Patel proposed the collaboration last year. UFC CEO Dana White has also been a vocal supporter of President Trump, and there is set to be a UFC event on the White House lawn this summer.

The news follows a rough news cycle for Patel, in which he came under scrutiny for downing beer with the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team while the FBI was in the middle of the missing persons search for Savannah Guthrie. This UFC training session, his frequent jet flights on the taxpayers’ dime, his jacket meltdown, and his girlfriend’s security detail all suggest that Patel is more concerned with the perks of the job than the actual job.