President Donald Trump recently floated a controversial idea to make mortgages more affordable for families: a 50-year mortgage, which is two to more than three times the current options of 15 or 30 years.
The blowback from this idea was loud and instantaneous, and now officials in the administration are calling for the head of the man who suggested the idea to Trump, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte.
It was Saturday when Pulte floated the idea of the 50-year mortgage to Trump, using a poster board to bolster his defense of the plan.
Trump apparently went for it, since he mentioned it on Truth Social right afterward. But not surprisingly, a lot of people didn't go for the idea, which would dramatically increase the amount of interest paid and the length of time people would make payments before owning their homes.
Financially, it's just a bad idea, but to people priced out of the housing market by a few hundred dollars a month, it may be something they want to consider.
It may be more of a temporary fix until mortgage interest rates go down further, or until wages catch up with inflation.
All that to say, it may not be a completely terrible idea at a time when the cost of buying a home has virtually doubled in under 10 years.
This is probably what Trump thought, but the usual suspects, along with the fiscal hawks, jumped all over him the moment they saw the idea.
“The idea behind the 15- and 30-year mortgage is that you eventually own the home you live in, whereas the 50-year mortgage abandons this pretense altogether and fully embraces the idea of housing as a speculative asset. Not good, unless you’re a bank,” Manhattan Institute senior fellow Chris Rufo wrote on X.
“The 50-year mortgage proposal is basically: cut a few hundred off the monthly payment, spend hundreds of thousands more overall. If that sounds like a good deal to you, congratulations! You just rented from the bank for half a century,” podcaster Steven Crowder wrote on X.
Which leads to the reaction of Trump officials to the backlash.
“Anything that goes before POTUS needs to be vetted,” a person present for Pulte’s pitch said. “And a lot of times with Pulte they’re not. He just goes straight up to POTUS.”
Trump loves to say that the economy is booming, but in reality it is more like hanging on by a thread.
And while Trump can use any help he can get right now, 50-year mortgages seem more like a band-aid for inflation and a cautious Fed than a real solution to what may become a housing crisis soon.
FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi have released new files to Congress showing how the Clinton Foundation, run by Bill and Hillary Clinton, collected foreign and domestic donations from those seeking influence over the U.S. government, but were never investigated fully for influence peddling schemes.
The files are being called the "Clinton Corruption Files," and Patel and Bondi plan to make them public in the next week or two once some information related to the whistleblowers is removed.
The evidence will show that there was an effort “to obstruct legitimate inquiries into the Foundation by blocking real investigation by line-level FBI agents and DOJ field prosecutors and keeping them from following the money,” an official who has seen the files said.
The Clinton Foundation was started after Bill left office in 2000, but some of the contributions were received while Hillary served as Secretary of State under Barack Obama.
Whistleblowers in 2015 said that some of the documents and evidence was kept from investigators in Little Rock, Arkansas, where the pair lived before Bill Clinton became president.
The investigation was soon shut down by order of Obama Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, but if the evidence bears out, it appears that former President Joe Biden wasn't the first powerful executive branch figure to run a pay-to-play scheme out of the White House.
In fact, there were three separate investigations into the Clintons that were all shut down by Yates.
According to Trump officials, the documents show that lower-level FBI agents and prosecutors prevented evidence from getting to decision makers in the multiple investigations of the Clinton Foundation.
It's not at all surprising that damning evidence about the Clintons was buried so deeply that it never came to light.
Anyone familiar with the speculation surrounding the Clinton Foundation for years will not be surprised by the revelations by Patel and Bondi.
Republicans long thought that the foundation was a corrupt vehicle for influence peddling, but they never had any hard evidence until now.
Unfortunately, the statute of limitations on influence peddling is five years, so unless there is evidence of a crime without a statute of limitations, the Clintons will once again get off scot-free.
Other than propping up their legacies, I don't even know why they care anymore whether people know what they did.
Maybe it would give away the Democrat playbook, although it seems like maybe it skipped a generation with Barack Obama.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama once again blasted the Trump administration for demolishing the East Wing of the White House, saying that it "denigrates" the traditional workspace of the first lady and by extension, her role.
“When we talk about the East Wing, it is the heart of the work” of a first lady, Obama stated. “And to denigrate it, to tear it down, to pretend like it doesn’t matter — it’s a reflection of how you think of that role.”
Obama claimed that her work as first lady and the “balanced image of the first family” it created got her husband "five extra approval points," according to the New York Times.
While former President Barack Obama's approval rating fluctuated, as most presidents' do, he left office fairly popular.
It wasn't Michelle Obama's first criticism of President Donald Trump's plan to build a massive ballroom where FLOTUS had worked.
She told Stephen Colbert during a recent taping that the East Wing was a lighthearted place that had children and puppies.
She was "confused" about the values of the country under Trump, and added, “I just feel like, what is important to us as a nation anymore? Because I’m lost.”
She's not the only one who has used the image of a wrecking ball at the White House as a metaphor for Trump's presidency.
Former President Joe Biden said during an appearance in Omaha last week that Trump would “take a wrecking ball to the country,” and he called the ballroom “a perfect symbol of his presidency.”
Similar comments were made by former Secretary of State and failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton; Clinton even used the construction to raise money (for what, we don't know).
On behalf of Trump, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that many presidents have undertaken renovation projects at the White House.
She asserted that a large indoor event space was needed in light of the fact that state dinners are currently held in rented tents on the South Lawn.
In defending his decision to demolish the East Wing, Trump said it had been renovated 20 other times, including adding a floor on the top, which he said looked awful.
For now, the first lady's offices have been relocated to other areas of the White House, and it was not immediately clear whether permanent replacement office space would be provided.
The Trump administration said on Monday that it would continue to seek a block of an order to pay full SNAP benefits for November in the midst of a federal government shutdown.
A Rhode Island court issued the order last week after President Donald Trump agreed to pay partial benefits to SNAP recipients using existing funding, but said that full benefits would not be paid because the funding was not yet approved by Congress.
A Boston appeals court twice ruled that it would not stay the lower court ruling while the Supreme Court considered the case.
Besides the issue of whether a court can rule that payments be made in the absence of funding by Congress, the Trump administration also argued that the ruling violated a SCOTUS decision about lower courts being able to issue nationwide injunctions.
The Supreme Court temporarily stayed the order while the White House decided whether to continue to seek a block on the lower court decision.
A supplemental brief is being filed today, and plaintiffs were ordered to respond by Tuesday morning.
Over the weekend, the Trump administration also sent a memo to states that unilaterally said they would pay the full SNAP benefit amount to recipients, telling them they had to "undo" the payments.
A judge in Massachusetts quickly blocked that memo, however.
To me, it seems like a lot of to-do over nothing. When the shutdown ends, which it looks like will happen this week, full benefits will be paid.
It seems like a lot of court activity over a few days of delay, and I'm not sure why that's a hill Trump wants to die on.
The Senate finally advanced a spending bill on Sunday after working through the weekend, and the terms seem pretty favorable to Republicans, which means it will likely pass in the House as well.
The bill funds the government through January, but funds SNAP benefits through most of 2026.
It also guarantees a vote on extending ACA subsidies for an additional year, but did not approve the subsidies yet.
The end of the shutdown also seems likely to alleviate shortages at food banks and other issues stemming from a lack of payments to lower-income individuals.
The Supreme Court is hearing a landmark case on President Trump's tariff powers, and it's entirely possible that justices appointed by Trump could prove to be a major problem.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Trump's use of an emergency law to enact his sweeping "Liberation Day" tariffs, which have been the source of major controversy and several serious lawsuits.
So far, justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett seem to be the most skeptical about Trump's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which is bad news for Trump.
The Supreme Court has a 6-4 conservative majority, which Trump is banking on to score easy victories. However, with two conservative justices seemingly wavering, this could lead to a decision that isn't in Trump's favor.
Should the Supreme Court declare that the Trump administration's tariff policy is illegitimate, it will completely knock down a cornerstone of Trump's economic policy.
The International Emergency Economic Powers Act gives the president broad economic powers in the event of a national emergency tied to foreign threats. Trump has cited the trade deficit as such an emergency to impose tariffs via executive order earlier this year.
However, lawsuits filed by Democrats against Trump's declaration have claimed that since the words "tariffs" or "taxes" do not appear in the text of the IEEPA, Trump's actions are unlawful.
The Supreme Court is considering the power to "regulate importation" during a national emergency, which would certainly seem to include tariffs, which are essentially a fee on any imported goods.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett pressed U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer by asking, "Can you point to any other place in the code or any other time in history where that phrase — together with ‘regulate importation’ — has been used to confer tariff-imposing authority?"
Justice Neil Gorsuch also inquired, "What would prohibit Congress from abdicating all responsibility to regulate foreign commerce or declare war to the president?"
Of course, the Trump administration has been adamant that while tariffs may seem like taxes, they are legally separate concepts that should settle any concerns about the separation of powers.
The Supreme Court's leftist justices have already made it clear that they do not support Trump's interpretation of the IEEPA, which means that this will be a 6-4 decision, in the best-case scenario.
This means that the Trump administration must secure both Barrett's and Gorsuch's votes to avoid a devastating defeat that will undermine Trump's economic agenda.
Court observers have suggested that a Trump victory is still very much in play, but there is growing concern that Gorsuch or Barrett, both appointed by Trump in his 1st term, could flip and join the left. That would be an unparalleled disaster for Trump, who is in bad need of a win.
A magistrate judge overseeing the indictment against former FBI Director James Comey has been openly hostile to the Trump administration, and that signals serious trouble ahead.
The judge, William Fitzpatrick, accused Trump's Department of Justice of pursuing a “indict first, investigate later” strategy. It's an absurd claim considering that the Trump administration has been plotting to hold Comey accountable for years since his false testimony to Congress.
Judge Fitzpatrick also ordered the government to disclose a raft of documents from search warrants and grand jury proceedings in another move that suggests that he is skeptical of the case against Comey.
For Republicans, this news suggests that there is yet another exhausting court battle ahead for the Trump administration.
Comey has pleaded “not guilty” to charges that he made a false statement to Congress and obstructed justice, but now he has a chance of beating the case thanks to an activist judge who appears to have an anti-Trump bias.
The Department of Justice has hit back at Fitzpatrick in a filing stating that he had exceeded the "scope of the Magistrate Judge’s delegated authority and was entered without the necessary findings that the defendant has shown particularized and factually based grounds exist for disclosure and that the need for disclosure outweighs the long-established public interest in grand jury secrecy."
Fitzpatrick's order demands every document stretching back years, suggesting that Fitzpatrick believes the case is illegitimate and is searching for any technical flaws that could spring Comey free.
Comey's lawyers have also been attacking the case, with lead attorney Patrick Fitzgerald alleging that the prosecution is “vindictive” and “selective."
Comey's team also claims that acting United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan was appointed illegitimately as there supposedly cannot be two subsequent acting attorneys in a district.
The Department of Justice responded to this saying, "Even were Ms. Halligan’s appointment invalid, the motions to dismiss should be denied. While Defendants challenge Ms. Halligan’s appointment as interim US Attorney, the actions they challenge do not hinge on her validly holding that particular office."
This case has quickly devolved into a legal mess, and conservatives hoping to see Comey face justice quickly are going to be sorely disappointed.
Leftist bureaucrats like Comey have evaded justice for years, both thanks to former President Joe Biden and leftist judges who have fought any efforts to bring charges.
Another factor at play is the GOP in the Senate, which has refused to take measures to undermine Democratic obstruction efforts against Trump's nominees. The Senate GOP could settle any issues of Halligan's legitimacy if they made rule changes that would end the Democrat blockade.
It seems highly likely that this case will take some time to prosecute and will likely end up in a higher court where one activist judge can't skew things.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the Trump administration can enforce a policy requiring people to list their biological sex on passports, undoing a Biden-era rule that allowed people to self-select their gender or write X in the space where gender should be listed.
Americans will now have to select "male" or "female" on their passport application, corresponding to their sex assigned at birth.
Trump had made an emergency request to the court to stay a lower court order that would have allowed people to select their gender on a passport based on how they "identify."
“Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth—in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment,” the court said in its order.
Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated securing “our 24th victory at the Supreme Court’s emergency docket” in a post to X.
“Today’s stay allows the government to require citizens to list their biological sex on their passport,” she continued. “In other words: there are two sexes, and our attorneys will continue fighting for that simple truth.”
The vote was 6-3 on the ruling, with the court's liberal-leaning judges dissenting on the ruling.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote the dissent, saying in part, “This Court has once again paved the way for the immediate infliction of injury without adequate (or, really, any) justification. Because I cannot acquiesce to this pointless but painful perversion of our equitable discretion, I respectfully dissent.”
The case came about because President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office requiring in part that passports reflect biological sex.
In response, several transgender-identifying people sued to block the order, arguing that the rule violates their right to equal protection under the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, as well as a federal law called the Administrative Procedure Act.
A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled against Trump, and the appeals court declined to block the lower court ruling.
The Supreme Court said in its ruling that Trump was likely to succeed on the merits of the case, which was why they decided to block the lower court's order.
In addition, the Supreme Court said, “And the District Court’s grant of class-wide relief enjoins enforcement of an Executive Branch policy with foreign affairs implications concerning a Government document. In light of the foregoing, the Government will suffer a form of irreparable injury absent a stay."
Allowing people to choose a gender different from their biological sex could have national security implications and lead to confusion about people's identities. It's clear that this ruling was needed, and will hopefully remain the law of the land.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials said Wednesday that an Illinois lawmaker lied when he accused agents of targeting a preschool teacher and entering a daycare center to arrest her.
Rep. Mike Quigley (D) posted on X that the agents "abducted a preschool teacher without a warrant — in front of children."
But the Department of Homeland Security quickly called Quigley out and said that the situation was quite different than how Quigley and other officials portrayed it.
Congressman, you are deliberately misrepresenting the facts.
ICE law enforcement did NOT target a daycare and were only at this location because the female illegal alien fled inside.
Here is the real story:
Officers attempted to conduct a targeted traffic stop of this female… https://t.co/a5BdcbhnwC
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) November 5, 2025
"Congressman, you are deliberately misrepresenting the facts," the agency rebutted. "ICE law enforcement did NOT target a daycare and were only at this location because the female illegal alien fled inside."
The real story, DHS posted, was that agents tried to pull over a car containing a female illegal immigrant from Colombia, but the male driver would not stop.
After a chase, he drove the car into a shopping center and both the male and female fled into the daycare center, barricading themselves in the vestibule.
She was arrested in the vestibule, not inside the daycare center, DHS said. It was the Colombian immigrant who put the children and adults inside the daycare at risk, not the ICE agents.
But of course, the narrative put forth by Quigley dovetails exactly with what they want to believe about ICE's activities: that ICE agents are targeting innocent people and putting people at risk with their brutal and violent raids.
It seems like rumors abounded when passersby or shoppers saw the raid happen, and Quigley was quite content to spread the disinformation without bothering to verify any facts.
ICE further said that the woman who was arrested lied about her identity and claimed not to know the man driving her car during the traffic stop and chase.
According to her, she picked up a perfect stranger at the bus stop and let him drive her car. This scenario is highly unlikely, of course.
But the left is so desperate to make ICE the bad guys that the truth really doesn't matter at all.
This kind of hateful misinformation is going to get ICE agents killed, but that will only make partisans like Quigley even happier, I'm afraid.
CNN lefty Van Jones is among those raising alarm about Zohran Mamdani's "instant character switch" after winning the New York City mayoral race, as evidenced by his angry victory speech Tuesday night.
“New York, tonight you have delivered a mandate for change, a mandate for a new kind of politics, a mandate for a city that we can afford and a mandate for a government that delivers exactly that,” he started out.
He quickly devolved into taunting President Donald Trump and claiming to have accomplished something momentous, rather than being yet another "Democrat" (or at least posing as one) to win a race in the most liberal city in America.
“So Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up,” Mamdani said.
“My friends, we have toppled a political dynasty,” he continued.
Van Jones said of the speech, “I think he missed an opportunity. I think the Mamdani that we saw in the campaign trail, who was a lot more calm, who was a lot warmer, who was a lot more embracing, was not present in that speech."
“I think his tone was sharp. I think he was using the microphone in a way that he was almost yelling. That’s not the Mamdani that we’ve seen on Tiktok and the great interviews and stuff like that," he went on. “I felt like it was a little bit of a character switch here."
Mamdani will be NYC's first Muslim, first South Asian and first socialist mayor--all at the young age of 34.
He actually carried 50.4% of the vote, so even if all of Republican Curtis Sliwa's votes had gone to independent challenger Andrew Cuomo, it would not have been enough.
“I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in his private life but that [will be] the final time I utter his name," Mamdani said.
Over 2 million New Yorkers voted in the election, the highest turnout since 1969.
Trump has threatened to withhold funds from New York if Mamdani won the election, saying that it would be a "waste" of money because socialism would fail.
"…AND SO IT BEGINS!” Trump posted on Truth Social as the speech went on.
The Trump Organization still does a lot of business in New York City, so it remains to be seen what will happen with Trump Tower and other buildings there.
He long ago moved his base of operations to Florida where the weather is better and taxes much lower.
The city already taxes business owners onerously for every single day they do business there, and a reported $100 million-plus in real estate is in the process of moving out as people grow fearful of Mamdani's policies.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday on CNBC's "Squawk Box" that even a Supreme Court loss of the tariff case before it doesn't mean the end of tariffs for President Donald Trump.
Oral arguments are scheduled for Wednesday, and the case has been fast-tracked because of the urgency surrounding the situation.
Bessent said he was confident Trump will prevail in the case, which challenges his authority to impose tariffs without an act of Congress.
But even if Trump loses, Bessent said, there are still lots of options for using other authorities to get the job done.
“There are lots of other authorities that can be used, but IEEPA is by far the cleanest, and it gives the U.S. and the president the most negotiating authority,” he said. “The others are more cumbersome, but they can be effective.”
Bessent went on to detail some of the options.
Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 uses national security to justify tariffs, while Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 regulates unfair trading practices.
Both of these options would only allow the president to impose tariffs during a state of emergency, however. While Trump has declared a state of emergency over the border and crime in some cities, I don't see how these would translate to the tariff situation.
Trump is somehow convinced that income from tariffs is going to pay off our national debt and make us solvent again, but I really don't see this happening either. He called the case "life or death" for the U.S. on Tuesday just ahead of the arguments in the case.
Bessent believes that the Supreme Court will be reluctant to "interfere" with tariffs when they are told the policy is a "signature" one for the president.
“This is very important tomorrow, and SCOTUS is going to hear this,” Bessent said. “This is a signature policy for the president, and traditionally, SCOTUS has been loath to interfere with these signature policies.”
This could be true, but if the law states it isn't under Trump's purview to impose tariffs, it probably won't matter whether it's a "signature" policy or not.
Trump has used tariffs and the threat of tariffs to get more favorable terms with U.S. trading partners after years of the U.S. letting other nations take advantage of its relative wealth and status.
But that wealth and status are more in doubt than ever with $38 trillion in debt hanging over our heads. If Trump can somehow turn that around, he will be one of the greatest presidents in history.