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.
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.”asked about high housing costs and why he won't sign the housing bill, Trump immediately pivots to ranting about "communists" and says, "this country is not going to have communists" (in other words, rigging elections for Republicans with the SAVE Act is more important to him… pic.twitter.com/bVKphElGBF— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 24, 2026Trump 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.
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.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.
Leaked documents reveal how military contractors linked to Israeli intelligence secretly trained a special operations strike force in mineral-rich eastern Congo.