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‘A Joke’: Trump’s Possible National Housing Emergency Sparks Fierce Backlash
Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent says President Donald Trump may declare a National Housing Emergency this fall, amid a challenging environment for homebuyers.
“Bessent said housing affordability would be a critical leg of Republicans’ 2026 midterm election platform,” Bloomberg News reports. “Bessent declined to list any specific actions the president may take, but he suggested that administration officials are directly studying ways to standardize local building and zoning codes and decrease closing costs.”
Bloomberg also notes, “Housing affordability was a top issue in former Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign against Trump in 2024. She promised tax credits for builders that construct starter homes and $25,000 in down payment assistance for certain buyers.”
Over the weekend, the Associated Press reported that “Trump wants to axe an affordable housing grant that’s a lifeline for many rural communities.”
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“The program has helped build or repair more than 1.3 million affordable homes in the last three decades, of which at least 540,000 were in congressional districts that are rural or significantly rural, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data.”
Some critics question Trump’s focus.
Asked if the housing crisis is so severe Trump should be turning to an emergency declaration, House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters on Tuesday (video below), “It’s not clear to me what emergency powers Donald Trump seeks to utilize or what his solution would be in terms of dealing with the housing and affordability issue that is plaguing far too many Americans across the country.”
“Donald Trump promised that he would lower housing costs on day one. Here’s a suggestion for the Trump administration. Try to legislate. And maybe we can find common ground in order to get something done on behalf of the American people. The notion that Donald Trump and the administration would use emergency powers to address a housing crisis that has existed in this country since day one of his administration, and he’s done nothing about is a joke.”
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Leader Jeffries went on to warn that, “like many of the other efforts at utilizing emergency power, including most recently, the effort to use a so called emergency to justify the Trump tariffs, which are hurting everyday Americans, it will ultimately be struck down in court.”
Wall Street investment banker Evaristus Odinikaeze responded, saying that “Trump’s ‘day one’ promise on housing turned into a day-one disaster. He hasn’t introduced a single serious housing bill. No rent relief. No expansion of affordable housing. No mortgage protection. Just empty tweets, tariff tantrums, and more crony giveaways. Leader Jeffries is right that he should try legislating instead of litigating, retaliating, and dominating. That’s how we fix housing, not by blaming cities while inflating real estate bubbles with failed policies.”
Indeed, some say Trump has no power to unilaterally declare housing standards.
Georgetown University Professor of Law Victoria Nourse, one of the nation’s leading scholars of Congress, the separation of powers, and statutory interpretation, according to her bio, remarked: “POTUS has no constitutional authority to impose uniform building codes on the states.”
Some critics say the current housing crisis is actually being made worse by Trump’s own actions.
The Atlantic’s James Surowiecki, author of “The Wisdom of Crowds,” remarked, “Trump jacked up tariffs on lumber and steel, raising the cost of home construction. Now he’s thinking about declaring a national emergency to remedy a problem he’s exacerbated.”
Media Matters’ Matthew Gertz framed it this way:
“1. Increase cost of materials through tariffs on steel and lumber. 2. Increase cost of labor through immigration enforcement. 3. ‘Declare a national housing emergency.'”
Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, asked, “Is ‘national emergency’ some sort of magical incantation that negates all laws and the Constitution?”
Watch the video below or at this link.
Hakeem Jeffries: “Donald Trump promised that he would lower housing costs on day one. Here’s a suggestion for the Trump administration: try to legislate, and maybe we can find common ground in order to get something done for the American people.” pic.twitter.com/fl0B1msMUF
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 2, 2025
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Image via Reuters
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
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