50501 FRIDAY BRIEFING | JUNE 26, 2026
Housing became leverage and the Supreme Court stripped protections, but courts and voters drew the line, one week before the 250th.
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President Trump canceled the signing of a landmark bipartisan housing bill and said he wouldn’t approve it until Congress passed his proof-of-citizenship voting bill, turning the cost of a home into a bargaining chip for a restrictive elections agenda.
On Thursday the Supreme Court handed the administration two immigration wins, clearing the way to end Temporary Protected Status for more than 350,000 Haitians and several thousand Syrians and reviving a policy that lets border officials turn away asylum seekers. And the Senate’s historic Iran war-powers rebuke on Tuesday was followed, less than two days later, by a walk-back after the president pressured the Republicans who crossed him.
Three separate federal judges blocked major pieces of the drive to put federal control over elections, including a permanent ban on the proof-of-citizenship order and a ruling voiding the plan to route mail ballots only to a federally approved voter list.
Voters in New York City delivered a progressive sweep that unseated two sitting members of Congress. And tomorrow, on June 27, organizers in Washington and communities across the country mark the run-up to the nation’s 250th with a day of action built around the history this anniversary is being used to erase.
Trump held housing relief hostage to force a vote on the SAVE America Act
Congress passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act with rare bipartisan force, 85 to 5 in the Senate and 358 to 32 in the House, one of the most far-reaching housing reform bills in decades. It would limit large institutional investors from buying up single-family homes, ease construction rules to expand supply, and update outdated federal housing programs. Trump was scheduled to sign at the Capitol on Wednesday, then canceled about an hour before the ceremony, posting that he would not act until lawmakers passed the SAVE America Act.
Once the housing bill formally gets presented to him, it becomes law without a signature after ten days, Sundays excluded, as long as Congress stays in session and he doesn’t veto it, and Speaker Mike Johnson said Trump will ultimately sign it.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who co-led the bill, said the president’s policies have driven costs up and holding the relief back shows indifference to the squeeze on American families.
The Supreme Court cleared the way to end protected status for Haitians and Syrians
In a 6 to 3 ruling along ideological lines on Thursday, the Court held that the law governing Temporary Protected Status bars judges from reviewing the Homeland Security secretary’s decision to end it.
The decision lets the administration strip protection from more than 350,000 Haitians and several thousand Syrians who have lived and worked in the country legally, some for more than a decade, and advocates warned that the same reasoning now endangers the roughly 1.3 million people covered by TPS designations for more than a dozen countries. The State Department warns Americans against traveling to either Haiti or Syria, citing violence and instability.
In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan pointed to Trump’s own statements about Haitians, which she called “so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print.” Hours earlier the Court handed the administration a second immigration win, restoring its authority to turn away asylum seekers at overburdened crossings on the southern border. Krish O’Mara Vignarajah of Global Refuge noted that roughly a third of the affected Haitians work in health care, as caregivers, nurses, and doctors, which is part of why the protections once drew bipartisan support.
Congress rebuked Trump on Iran, then walked it back two days later
On Tuesday the Senate adopted a resolution directing the president to remove U.S. forces from hostilities with Iran, 50 to 48, the first time a war-powers measure cleared both chambers of Congress.
Four Republicans, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Rand Paul, joined nearly every Democrat, while Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman was the lone Democrat opposed. The measure was a concurrent resolution, which means it never goes to the president’s desk and carries no force of law.
The following night the Senate blocked a separate, binding resolution led by Sen. Tim Kaine from advancing, 50 to 47, after the president spent the day leaning on the Republicans who had defied him.
Trump called Cassidy a “lunatic” in a closed-door lunch and by evening Cassidy voted no and Paul voted present, leaving only Collins and Murkowski. The rebuke and the retreat read best together, together they map how far congressional pressure reaches and the place it still gives way.
Albania’s “Flamingo Revolution” kept the streets full over a Trump-family resort
For more than three weeks, demonstrators across Albania have rallied against a multibillion-dollar luxury resort linked to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, planned for the island of Sazan and the protected Vjosa-Narta lagoon, one of the Mediterranean’s largest flamingo habitats. Protesters carry pink flamingo cutouts, which gave the movement its name, and what began as an environmental fight has grown into a broader revolt against corruption and the government of Prime Minister Edi Rama, drawing thousands and, by some local counts, tens of thousands into the capital.
The objection organizers keep returning to is not just the wildlife or the coastline but the secrecy, the permits and public consultations that residents say never happened before the bulldozers arrived. It’s a question that carries well past the Adriatic, about who gets to decide the future of a shared place, the people who live there or the powerful few who can afford to buy in.
The Good News:
Three federal judges drew hard lines around the effort to take federal control of elections, and they did it inside a single week.
On Monday, Judge Sparkle Sooknanan in Washington blocked the use of a revamped immigration database, stitched together from Social Security numbers and citizenship data that advocates called unreliable, to scrub state voter rolls.
On Wednesday, Judge Denise Casper in Boston permanently barred the proof-of-citizenship registration order, writing that the Constitution gives the president no specific power over elections.
And on Thursday, Judge Indira Talwani voided the core of the March mail-voting order, the one that would have used the Postal Service to limit mail-ballot delivery to a federally approved voter list and would have built that national list in the first place.
Roughly two dozen states joined these suits, and the guardrails held this week because people went to court and made them hold.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s endorsed slate swept the city’s congressional primaries, unseating two sitting House members.
Brad Lander defeated Rep. Dan Goldman, Darializa Avila Chevalier edged five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat in one of the biggest New York upsets in years, and Claire Valdez won the open Brooklyn and Queens seat.
In the suburbs, Cait Conley took the Democratic primary in the battleground 17th District and will challenge Rep. Mike Lawler in November.
Tomorrow (Saturday 6/27) is All of U.S. 250:
A national day of action on June 27 built by a coalition that includes 50501 and the Women’s March.
As the country approaches its 250th anniversary, the organizers reject a sanitized “Freedom 250” telling of the founding and march instead for the fuller history, the part where people had to fight, organize, and bleed for decades to make the founding’s promises reach them.
There’s a main mobilization in Washington and local actions in communities across the country, along with a companion project called Letters to America for anyone who can’t march but wants their words on the record.
Find an event at allofus250.org!
Catch up on this week’s posts
Why Disability Rights Advocates Are Alarmed by the DOJ’s Olmstead Memo
All of U.S. 250, June 27th National Day of Action
Murderers