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Trump Responds to Housing Question With Rant About Communist Takeover

The president is going nuts over Tuesday’s election results in New York.

John Thune, left, in a navy suit and dark tie, holds his ear while Donald Trump speaks while wearing a blue suit and red tie.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
President Trump, right, with Senate Majority Leader John Thune

President Donald Trump is evidently still reeling from the results of last night’s congressional primaries, especially in New York, where multiple democratic socialists won their races.

After posting on Truth Social Wednesday that he was refusing to sign a bipartisan housing bill until the Senate passed his unpopular voting reform bill, the SAVE America Act, the president spoke to reporters on Capitol Hill before a lunch with Senate Republicans—and quickly veered off topic.

One reporter asked, “Buying a home is unattainable for so many Americans. Is this election legislation more important to you than resolving the housing crisis?”

“Every election is important, we’re doing very well,” Trump responded. “They want a lot of Communists to come in.… The people that they’re pushing are Communists, and this country is not going to have Communists.”

Trump went on a posting spree Wednesday morning, writing, “America the Beautiful will NEVER be a Communist Country!!!” and “history has conclusively shown that the downtrodden States that [the Communists] will soon be running will ONLY GET WORSE.”

Meanwhile, his decision not to sign this housing bill has sent his own party into a tailspin. As the midterms approach, Republicans are in dire need of a victory to show voters, and this housing package would demonstrate their commitment to making life more affordable for their constituents.

But Trump does not seem to take the housing crisis seriously. He said on Truth Social the bill was “of minor importance” and that it “pales in comparison” to his SAVE Act, which would limit mail-in voting and require voters to show a passport or birth certificate in order to register to vote. As of now, it just doesn’t have the votes to pass.

MAGA Congresswoman Caught Using AI to Write National Security Bill

Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna is relying on artificial intelligence to do her job.

Representative Anna Paulina Luna
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Representative Anna Paulina Luna was caught using Claude to do her job—and she doesn’t care.

A description of Luna’s National Defense Authorization Act amendment that appeared on the House Rules Committee website Wednesday was filed with a tell-tale indicator of the artificial intelligence assistant.

Squeezed in the middle of the text: “11:25 AM????Claude responded.” The language of Luna’s amendment description has since been revised.

X screenshot NewsWire @NewsWire_US Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) Used Anthropic’s Claude AI Chatbot to Draft Amendment to Defense Bill (screnshot of amendment text)

Luna was quick to respond to the controversy on X, writing that her staff had used AI to “spell/grammar check the amendment SUMMARY, not the actual amendment text itself.

“Not a shocker. Most staff use it. I have told them to make sure they are double checking and more thorough,” she continued. “What dork planted this story?”

Luna added that she loves Claude, but Grok is “way more savage.” Elon Musk’s AI chatbot alternative has been riddled with a number of scandals, including instances in which it unquestioningly created nude images of underage girls and espoused Nazi beliefs.

In a separate post, Luna clarified that “NO legislation is ever drafted with AI.”

“All bill text from the House comes from the House Legislative Council which is prohibited from using AI,” she wrote. “The screenshot you’re referencing is an AI summary of the bill that’s also used for spellcheck, c’mon man.”

Nonetheless, it’s important to keep public officials honest about the issue. Federal and state officials alike have been caught leaning on artificial intelligence. In October, federal judges were accused of using AI to write court orders, resulting in serious factual inaccuracies. The year before, a Republican Arizona state representative was found to have used AI software to draft deepfake legislation that was later signed into law.

U.S. Postal Service Bends the Knee to Trump on Vote by Mail

Postmaster General David Steiner says the USPS won’t deliver ballots if states don’t hand over their voter lists to Trump.

USPS mail truck
Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images

In an already alarming moment for voting rights, the U.S. Postal Service wants to make things so much worse.

In response to a March executive order by President Donald Trump—which directed USPS to only provide mail-in ballots to voters on a federal list—the theoretically nonpartisan postal service is planning to implement a new rule forcing states to provide the Trump administration with a list of anyone who has requested an absentee or mail-in ballot. If the states refuse, their citizens wouldn’t receive their ballots.

Postmaster General David Steiner made the admission in a Senate hearing on Wednesday following questioning from Democratic Senator Gary Peters.

“If a state refuses to turn their absentee voter list over to the federal government, will the Postal Service still mail their ballots under this proposal?” Peters asked.

“Under our proposed regulation, no,” Steiner replied.

“This is basically a back-door way for the federal government to get voting information that states control under the U.S. Constitution,” Peters said later. “You’re telling the states, ‘Give the federal government this information—trust the federal government, trust the Trump administration, we’ll take good care of these—and if you don’t do it, you can’t mail absentee ballots.’”

Senator Margaret Hassan, another Democrat, said the USPS should “immediately” bin the new rule, labeling it “blatantly illegal.” Many postal workers have similarly spoken out against the idea, according to Democracy Docket.

Thankfully, the new rule can still be blocked in courts, and multiple lawsuits have been filed in order to do so. One Massachusetts lawsuit was allowed to proceed last week, after District Judge Indira Talwani stated the rule would hurt states’ constitutional right to run elections.

Steiner said the USPS would abide by whatever the courts rule. But it’s frightening to see, after years of trying to meddle with elections, that MAGA still isn’t done.

Soldiers Accuse Pentagon of Downplaying Iran War Injuries

Traumatic brain injuries and multiple shrapnel wounds apparently don’t qualify as serious.

Pete Hegseth standing in the Oval Office wearing a navy suit, blue and white shirt, and blue tie.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth

Soldiers wounded in the deadliest attack of the war on Iran have accused the Pentagon of minimizing their injuries, according to CBS News.

Chief Warrant Officer Rodney Bearman and Sergeant First Class Cory Hicks were both pierced with multiple pieces of shrapnel from the March 1 Iranian drone strike on their work station in Kuwait. Medical records show Bearman suffered a concussion, hearing and vision loss, and damage to his lungs. The Army has classified his condition as “not seriously injured,” even though he needed serious medical attention and days in the hospital.

Hicks suffered a traumatic brain injury, and his injuries were also listed as “minor,” even though he required multiple surgeries.

“That assessment is unacceptable,” Bearman’s wife, Amy, told CBS. “They told me that my husband’s injuries were classified as NSI, and they described that, or they defined that, as ‘not seriously injured.’ … He was treated and released back to duty.

“I could just hear him breathing and then he finally said, ‘I’m going to be OK.’ I waited a few moments and then asked if he returned to duty. It seemed like forever before he answered me, and then he said, ‘I can’t go back.’”

Doctors preferred that Bearman stay in the Kuwaiti hospital for a longer period of time, but that was denied by the Pentagon for “security concerns.” Being “cleared for duty” in this case means being cleared to begin recovering from injuries outside of a hospital, not that a soldier is prepared to return to active duty. Bearman returned to the U.S. on March 18 with shrapnel still in his body.

Hicks required multiple emergency surgeries in a Kuwaiti hospital after the strike. Even still, the Pentagon classified his injuries as “minor.”

“They said your husband was injured, he has a minor jaw injury, and he’s going to be returned to duty,” Hicks said his wife was told. Hicks told CBS News that he “absolutely” thinks the Pentagon has been downplaying the impact of the attack.

Hicks was still in Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland at the time of this writing, almost four months after the attack, with a “pretty severe” traumatic brain injury. That is in no way minor.

The Army defended its classifications of Bearman and Hicks, saying that only someone at the risk of dying within 72 hours qualifies for a “seriously injured” or “very seriously injured” designation.

“The care and well-being of our Soldiers is of the highest priority. Any assertion that the Army seeks to downplay a soldier’s injuries is simply not true,” an Army spokesperson told CBS in a statement.

“Our hope for the investigation is that an honest assessment by the Army will prevent this from happening again to other service members,” Amy Bearman said.

“Reprehensible from any administration,” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote on X about the CBS report. “Truly beyond the pale from the President who faked ‘bone spurs’ to avoid serving and combat.”

Six soldiers were killed in the March 1 attack, and Bearman and Hicks were among 20 others wounded. The attack and the subsequent treatment of these soldiers’ injuries is even more bleak when considering that the military accomplished virtually nothing of the Trump administration’s stated mission: The president eventually capitulated on a memorandum of understanding that allows Iran to maintain its missile arsenal and nuclear power program.

Federal Judge Blocks Trump Attempt to Make Voting Harder Than Ever

A federal judge has banned Trump’s executive order requiring proof of citizenship and changing the rules on mail-in voting.

Voters cast their ballots in New York’s election
John Lamparski/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Voters cast their ballots in New York’s election, on June 23

A federal judge has killed most of President Donald Trump’s first executive order changing election rules.

U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper permanently banned the administration Wednesday from implementing most components of the president’s 2025 order, which required individuals to provide “documentary proof of U.S. citizenship” before they registered to vote. In addition to lifting that requirement, the ruling also bans the president from requiring all mail ballots to be received by Election Day, even if they were postmarked by then.

Under Trump’s order, states that refused to comply would have been punished by having their federal funding withheld.

The government had argued that Democratic challenges to Trump’s executive order were premature and therefore illegitimate since the changes had not yet been implemented—but the Boston-based judge wasn’t having it. Instead, she noted that Trump’s office had effectively violated the necessary separation of powers, as only states and Congress are permitted to regulate elections.

The Constitution “does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” Casper wrote.

Trump officials responded quickly to Casper’s decision, hinting online that the ruling would be appealed.

“I hope the Chief Justice understands the path these rogue judges have charted for the judiciary,” deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller wrote on X.

Meanwhile, Trump has worked overtime to force his unpopular election reform proposals through the legislature, throwing confirmation hearings and bipartisan bill signings to the wayside while demanding Republicans prioritize passing the SAVE America Act.

The backlash to the bill—which was introduced months ago on Capitol Hill—has been grave, so much so that it gummed up efforts to fund Homeland Security for several months. Republicans eventually had to bail on the package to end the congressional gridlock.

Since he lost the 2020 election, Trump and his allies have amped up their base over contrived claims of voter fraud, a statistical nonissue in U.S. elections. For instance, a statewide audit out of Georgia, the epicenter of Trump’s baseless theory, revealed in 2024 that just 20 non-citizens out of 8.2 million residents existed on the state’s voter roll, just 0.00024 percent of the state’s voting population. Out of those 20, only nine participated in elections years ago, before ID was required as a part of the voter verification process. The other 11 individuals were registered but never actually voted, according to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

This story has been updated.