Two Republicans Cave to Trump and Flip to Kill War Powers Resolution

Republican senators proved yet again that their spines are made of pudding on Wednesday, rejecting a resolution to limit President Donald Trump’s war powers, the AP reported.

The flip-flop came after Trump blew up at GOP senators for voting “yes” on a similar bill just one day earlier. He got into a shouting match with Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, calling him a “lunatic” for voting with Democrats to pass the legislation.

Cassidy told reporters after the meeting that he had lost his temper. According to Cassidy, he berated Trump for not being clear with Congress, and with Americans, about what’s going on in Iran.

But it turns out Cassidy, who lost his primary election last month to a Trump-backed opponent, just needed a little hand holding. After the heated exchange, Cassidy was invited to a personal briefing at the White House from JD Vance and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, according to the AP. He then went back to Capitol Hill and promptly voted the other way on a nearly identical war powers bill.

“I want to thank Vice President Vance and Special Envoy Witkoff for the thorough briefing this afternoon on Iran. I appreciate the quick invitation to the White House to address many of my concerns,” Cassidy posted on X.

Republican Senator Rand Paul also switched his vote. Paul, who has voted multiple times with Democrats to block the war in Iran, voted “present” as “a way to give the President more space and leverage to negotiate a lasting peace,” he posted on X.

Trump celebrated the news on Truth Social, thanking Senators John Thune, Lindsey Graham, and Bernie Moreno, and noting that Cassidy and Paul had changed their votes.

“This vote puts Iran on notice!” he wrote.

Ultimately, the back-and-forth on the bill doesn’t change much: Both votes were largely symbolic, and neither resolution would have had the power to actually force Trump to change his actions in Iran.

But this vote symbolizes something we already knew: that even the Republicans who claim to have principles will gladly sacrifice them at the altar of Trump.

White House adviser Stephen Miller spent his Wednesday posting racist, anti-immigrant dog whistles on X as he coped with the election sweep for Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s endorsed progressive candidates in New York City the night before.

“In 2026, half of NYC residents speak a language other than English as their primary language and one-quarter of NYC residents lack English language proficiency,” Miller wrote Wednesday morning.

“Half of all college graduates in NYC are immigrants or from immigrant households,” Miller said in another post hours later. “So when observers say college grads in NYC are embracing communism this is not a home-grown phenomenon.”

“Change the voters, change the country,” he said in yet another post, alluding to kicking out legal immigrants to make his right-wing white nationalist agenda more tangible.

Miller’s posts was immediately lambasted by commenters noting that NYC is historically the hub of East Coast immigration—which Miller’s immediate ancestors were a part of.

“The guy’s great-grandfather was a Yiddish-speaking peddler who arrived at Ellis Island in 1903, and somehow New York endured his presence,” journalist David Klion wrote in response. “No one kidnapped him off the street or sent him to a concentration camp in El Salvador.”

“Every day a Republican on here tells me Zaid we only oppose illegal immigrants and every day on here Stephen Miller makes clear he hates all immigrants, legal or not,” journalist Zaid Jilani chimed in. “Pay attention to your own leaders!”

Miller—who is seemingly unfamiliar with the basic history of New York City—is once again making his biases loud and clear. Immigrants aren’t embracing communism—they’re voting for progressives and the Democratic Socialists of America because the cost of living is too high. Forcing people to speak English won’t change that.

President Donald Trump and outgoing Republican Senator Bill Cassidy got into a shouting match over the war in Iran at a GOP lunch Wednesday.

Cassidy told Morgan Rimmer of CNN that he “lost his temper.” One source said that Trump called Cassidy a “lunatic.”

Many suspected the lunch would center around discussion of the SAVE America Act that Trump is trying to push through the Senate, but instead the conversation turned to Iran. On Tuesday night, the Senate voted to limit Trump’s war powers, and remove U.S. military forces from the country.

Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy was one of four Republicans who voted with Democrats to pass the law. When Trump asked why these Republicans voted for the resolution, Cassidy reportedly responded, “Is that a rhetorical question, or do you really want to know the answer?”

Cassidy then berated the president for not being clear with Congress about his actions in Iran, and argued that until he got a fuller briefing of what was going on, he’d keep voting to limit Trump’s powers.

Trump raised his voice in response, and Cassidy did so as well. Cassidy reportedly called the war a “blunder,” according to Andrew Desiderio of Punchbowl News, and the president interrupted him. Cassidy joked to CNN that he shouldn’t have lost his temper but that it was “the Irish in him.” However, the senator had no regrets.

“I make no apologies for standing up to the president,” Cassidy told CBS. “I am sticking up for the American people, even if I’m speaking to the president.”

Donald Trump totally isn’t bitter about having his name removed from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Nevermind the fact that his administration put up a massive tarp obscuring the building’s facade after a judge made the president take his name down.

The white tarp attached to the front of the Kennedy Center blocks most of the building’s lettering. (The nameplate now confusingly reads “THE JOHN F. — ORMING ARTS.”) It was erected on June 13, along with some extra scaffolding, one day after the court deadline to remove Trump’s name from the prestigious theater.

Workers took down the letters spelling out Trump’s name in a “predawn operation,” reported Reuters, and installed the tarp immediately afterward. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper demanded the administration explain “the purpose and status of ​the tarp and scaffolding,” though he gave the White House a lengthy deadline, July 31, in which to do so.

Democratic Representative ​Joyce Beatty, a board member at the center, filed the initial lawsuit against Trump after he renamed the center after himself in December. Her lawyers have alleged that the tarp is the White House’s “effort to frustrate the ⁠restoration ​of the status quo as it ​existed prior to the renaming.”

Beatty herself called the new tarp an “act ​of petty defiance.”

The pettiness of this administration is indeed something to behold. Lest we forget, Trump also tried to close the Kennedy Center for two years for “renovations” after multiple artists canceled their performances in the public backlash to the name change. Cooper blocked the two-year closure, too, though the federal government has filed an appeal.

The national median price for a house is now three times higher than the median household income for Americans under 40—an obvious explanation for why nearly all young people say it’s harder for them to buy a home than it was for their parents.

A study from the Pew Research Center released Wednesday shows home prices spiking tremendously in the beginning of the 2010s, and median home value rose 30 percent (from $269,600 to $350,000) from 2019 to 2024. This surge occurred at almost three times the pace of median income, which has risen very slowly.

Pew also noted that a whopping 89 percent of Americans under 40 think their parents had an easier time buying property—and that 60 percent of metro areas in the U.S. were classified as “unaffordable.”

This comes as President Trump canceled the signing of the 21st Century Road to Housing Act on Wednesday—the largest bipartisan housing affordability bill in decades—to pressure Republicans into passing his anti-voting rights SAVE America Act. The housing affordability crisis seems to be on everyone’s list of priorities except the president’s.