The Brief

President Donald Trump blew up what could have been a win for his party — and he did it to force lawmakers to pass an elections overhaul bill that has been all but doomed in the Senate.
On Wednesday, Trump abruptly canceled a scheduled signing of bipartisan legislation aimed at bringing down housing costs, saying he would only sign it after Congress approved the SAVE America Act.
This move wasn't entirely surprising because Trump has been saying for months that he won't sign any bill until the SAVE America Act is passed.
His obsession with the SAVE America Act has already scuttled the reauthorization of a surveillance tool and nearly ruined GOP efforts to increase immigration enforcement spending.
The SAVE America Act currently doesn't have the needed 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster – and Republican leaders are reluctant to get rid of the filibuster to pass the bill, as Trump has suggested.

A big reason Trump has been obsessed with getting the SAVE America Act sent to his desk for signature ahead of what could be a pretty bruising midterms for the GOP, is that he believes it would ensure that Republicans never lose another election for at least 50 years.
Much of this belief is based on false claims that Democrats only win elections because of noncitizen participation in elections, which according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, and many experts, is extremely rare.
But the president's case for the SAVE America Act is rooted in this misinformation. Here's what's in it:

1. It requires proof of citizenship to register to vote

The SAVE America Act specifically prohibits states from accepting and processing voter registration applications in a federal election "unless the applicant presents documentary proof of U.S. citizenship."

Citizenship is already required to register to vote in the U.S. and states have a system to make sure that noncitizens do not make it on to the voter rolls. And when the system fails, it fails in a very limited number of cases.
And the list of what is acceptable to prove citizenship under the SAVE America Act is fairly limited. It includes U.S. passports and birth certificates, as well as some state and tribal IDs. This documentation is prohibitive in some cases: 1 in 10 eligible voters, or 21.3 million people, said in a national survey conducted by a voting rights organization that they either "do not have or could not quickly find" proof of citizenship records.
Trump has tried to require proof of citizenship for anyone registering to vote via executive order, but that effort was permanently blocked by a federal court on Wednesday.

2. It requires photo ID to cast a ballot

The bill requires that voters show one of these valid forms of identification to cast a ballot in person. Notably, it also requires that people voting by mail provide "a copy of a valid photo identification" with their ballot.
If they can't do that, they have to provide the last four digits of their Social Security number and sign an affidavit from state officials that says they were unable to get an ID "after making reasonable efforts to obtain such a copy." Voter ID requirements are largely popular among voters. And most states require some form of ID to vote, already. However, voters aren't as supportive of a sweeping overhaul that would change various aspects of American elections.

3. It requires that state officials remove noncitizens from their voter rolls

States routinely check their voter registration list for people who shouldn't be there – whether it's people who passed away or who lost their voting rights due to legal trouble.
And that also includes those who were improperly registered. However, when states have tried to identify and purge alleged noncitizens from their rolls, their efforts have gone wrong in some cases.

4. It requires that states submit their complete voter rolls to the Trump administration

States would have to turn over complete, unredacted copies of their voter registration lists to the Department of Homeland Security through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system.

These voter lists contain sensitive voter data like driver's license numbers and partial Social Security numbers, which is why many states have refused to turn over this information when the Trump administration began asking for them last year.

The Department of Justice has since been suing states across the country to obtain these lists, but the courts have consistently blocked those efforts. A federal court also recently ruled that the Trump administration's expanded SAVE system is unlawful and cannot be used in its current form.

5. It creates new penalties against election officials

Lastly, the SAVE America Act creates a private right of action against an election official who registers someone who didn't provide proof of citizenship. It also establishes new criminal penalties against officials who register people without citizenship documents.

Copyright 2026 NPR

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

A fire at the Lineage cold storage facility in Boyle Heights was knocked down​ Wednesday evening, a week after solar panels on its roof ignited and blanketed the region in harmful smoke.

The Los Angeles Fire Department announced the fire was extinguished at 5:58 p.m., and said there were no active flames and no threat of fire spread.

“While the fire has been knocked down, debris within the structure continues to smolder as crews transition into the overhaul phase of operations,” LAFD posted on Instagram.

“The chief’s goal was to have us put this out today,” Milo Cope, a public information officer with the Los Angeles Fire Department, told Boyle Heights Beat on Wednesday morning.

“They’ll manage tearing this building apart and we can stand by for any small smoldering fires that need to be addressed,” Cope said. 

Firefighters will now begin handing over operations to the owners of the building. 

The fire at the cold storage facility began burning last Wednesday on a solar panel farm on the warehouse’s roof that later burned through the rubber insulation around the building. It reignited on Friday, with the city of Los Angeles and the governor’s office declaring an emergency the following day. 

Since the fire broke out, residents living closest to the facility have endured smoky conditions that they say have disrupted daily life, affected their health and limited their ability to work as firefighters continued battling the blaze.

Mayor Karen Bass on Sunday said a mandatory evacuation “is not necessary;” state guidelines tie evacuation orders to immediate threats to life or property. For those who wish to voluntarily leave, “we have the facilities for you,” she said, pointing to the smoke relief shelter available. 

She and LAFD Fire Chief Jaime Moore have repeatedly advised residents sensitive to smoke or who have respiratory concerns to stay indoors, close their windows, wear masks when they do need to go outside and head to established shelters if they need more relief.

Councilmember Ysabel Jurado on Monday called for the public release of air quality and environmental testing results in English and Spanish and for a full report detailing the materials that burned at the facility. Boyle Heights residents, Jurado said, “deserve the very basic right to know what is in the air.” 

On Tuesday, Supervisor Hilda Solis urged agencies to be diligent in the cleanup process. “Some of our communities have become particularly alarmed about being the dumping ground for hazardous or toxic material…,” Solis said.

Poor air quality on Sunday led several schools hosting summer programs to announce they would move classes elsewhere on Monday as a precaution. The school relocation will last until Friday, said officials from LAUSD’s Region East.

Students from Dena Elementary and Dacotah Early Education Center were relocated to Sunrise Elementary, Eastman Early Education Center students moved to Humphreys Elementary, and Stevenson Middle School students were moved to Belvedere Middle School, according to the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday handed the Trump administration a tool that could make it far more difficult for asylum seekers to enter the United States.

Asylum is a form of legal protection available to people fleeing persecution in their home countries if they meet certain criteria. Under U.S. law, an asylum seeker who "arrives in" the U.S. is entitled to apply for asylum and generally cannot be removed from the country until their asylum application is processed. 

By a 6-3 vote, the high court ruled that federal law allows the government to stop asylum seekers from physically setting foot in the country, effectively keeping them from applying for asylum. 

The Obama administration was the first to try stemming the flow of asylum seekers that way. But the lower courts blocked the policy on grounds that it violated federal law by denying asylum to people who otherwise would have qualified for it, had they been permitted to literally put one foot over the border.

The Trump administration, however, sought to revive the policy, contending that the lower court's ruling "deprives the Executive Branch of a critical tool for addressing border surges and preventing overcrowding at ports of entry." And on Thursday, the Supreme Court agreed.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito ruled that because asylum seekers are not in the U.S. when they are turned away at the border, they did not "arrive in" the country. Therefore, he continued, the legal protections for asylum seekers have not kicked in.

Writing for the liberal dissenters, Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that Border Patrol agents speak with all immigrants at legal entry points and speaking with an agent is effectively the first step in "arriving in" the U.S.

Copyright 2026 NPR

The Supreme Court gave the Trump administration the green light to begin mass deportations of people who have been living and working legally in the United States for years, some even decades. By a 6-to-3 vote along ideological lines, the court's conservative majority ruled that the President has virtually unrestrained power to end the Temporary Protected Status program, known as TPS.

Congress enacted the TPS law in 1990 to allow fully vetted and eligible migrants to live and work legally in the U.S. if they cannot return safely to their home countries because of natural disasters, armed conflicts, and other extraordinary conditions. The Department of Homeland Security designates which foreign countries qualify for TPS.

Since the law's enactment, every President, Republican and Democrat, has embraced it, except Trump. He, in contrast, is trying to end the temporary protected status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants. And on Thursday, the high court gave him the tools to do it.

Writing for the court majority, Justice Samuel Alito that under the TPS law, the president has unreviewable authority to end the program, without intervention from the courts.

There are more than a dozen countries that have been designated with TPS, including the two in this case— Haiti, with 330,000 displaced persons living legally in the U.S., and Syria with roughly 3,800. The U.S. State Department currently warns Americans in the strongest terms not to go to these countries to these countries or because of the dangers of crime, terrorism, kidnapping, unrest, and limited health care. The court's decision means that the President can end the protected status of Haitians and Syrians without the possibility of judicial review. Migrants living legally in the U.S. from those countries will likely revert to illegal status, meaning they will lose their jobs and face deportation, with many of them forced to leave their American-born children behind.

The Trump administration had attempted to strip TPS from 13 of the 17 countries that had it before the second term began. As for the remaining four countries that still have TPS—El Salvador, Lebanon, Sudan, and Ukraine, they may well lose their TPS when they come up for renewal this fall.

Dissenting from today's decision were the court's three liberal justices.

Reaction to the decision was fast and furious among immigrant rights groups. "Revoking TPS protection is not just cruel; it is economic self-sabotage that will rip billions out of the U.S. economy and destabilize communities nationwide," said Todd SchulteFWD.us, a bipartisan group that advocates for immigration reform, said in a statement.

According to the group, 200,000 Haitian TPS holders are in the U.S. workforce, including 15,000 agricultural workers, 13,000 nursing assistants, and 8,000 caregivers. What's more, the group says, TPS holders generate an estimated $5.9 billion for the U.S. economy each year and annually pay a total of $1.5 billion in federal and state taxes.

Copyright 2026 NPR