CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — Lindsey Vonn was over the limit. Beyond it, really. Because of course she was.

There is only one speed for maybe the fiercest competitor to ever snap into a pair of skis and point them down the side of a mountain: as fast as she possibly can, for as long as she possibly can, as relentlessly as she possibly can.

For many days during Vonn’s nearly 25 years in the spotlight, that kind of relentlessness leads to glory.

Other times, like a sun-splashed Sunday in a place that’s long felt like a second home, at an event that has long served as her own personal stage, it ends in agony. This time, with a broken left leg.

Three gates into the women’s Olympic downhill in Cortina, the 41-year-old American and her surgically repaired and titanium-reinforced right knee and her waiting-to-be-surgically-repaired left knee were already in full-send territory.

If anything, Vonn was almost too perfect. Searching for every inch, every millisecond of an advantage, her right arm clipped the fourth gate. Her skis sailed out from under her. In a flash, the unlikely and stirring return that had captivated her sport was over. At least for now.

All that was left for the most decorated downhill racer — male or female — were tears, uncertainty and a helicopter lift to safety, a ride that included a sweeping turn above the grandstand at the finish, where the crowd that came to watch history instead let out an ovation neither side hopes doubled as a goodbye.

“Tragic,” International Ski and Snowboard president Johan Eliasch said moments later. “But it’s ski racing, right?”

It is. And perhaps no one is more familiar with how thin the line is between triumph and calamity than Vonn. It’s not a coincidence that her memoir is called “Rise, My Story.”

The thing that has long set Vonn apart from her peers — not that there are many left, not even on a stacked Team USA filled with women who were once little girls that grew up idolizing her — is a resiliency that borders on sheer defiance.

A history of falling … and getting back up
It’s been that way nearly from the start. She was just 22 when a sprained knee ended her World Cup season early. She became the first American woman to win the Olympic downhill, barreling to the top of the podium in Vancouver despite microfractures in her arm and a busted pinky.

The list goes on and on. There have been concussions, and the right knee seemingly impervious to staying healthy. She tore the ACL in it — twice — in 2013. A tibial plateau fracture just below the kneecap in 2016. After 2018, when she sustained a sprained left knee and a nerve injury, it became too much.

She retired the following year, saying her body was screaming at her to “STOP,” putting the words in all caps for emphasis on the Instagram post announcing her decision.

Yet that’s the thing about Vonn. Stopping is never an option. She stepped away for a while, the fire to compete a little dimmer but nowhere close to burning out.

Her decision to have knee replacement surgery in April 2024 was based on the need to help her live a pain-free life. It also created an unexpected and unprecedented opportunity.

Some laughed. Most who knew her didn’t. They weren’t surprised when she returned to competition at 40. They knew it wasn’t solely to have the victory lap her body wouldn’t let her enjoy in 2019, but to step into the starting gate and push herself — and her sport — forward.

A quest denied
All she’d done in the 14 months before she arrived in Cortina was burnish a legacy that hardly needed burnishing. In December, she became the oldest person to ever win a World Cup race. Then she did it again two weeks later. Her presence, doubled with her brilliance, turned the women’s downhill in Cortina into one of the most anticipated events of the Games.

And that was before she shredded the ACL in her left knee in late January, fewer than 10 days ago. Outsiders thought it was over. She insisted it wasn’t, then laid down a series of solid training runs late last week, looking every bit the threat to bookend the gold she won in Vancouver 16 years ago.

Vonn’s choice rattled some. Yet she insisted it wasn’t driven by vanity but in service to a higher purpose: to inspire others to not be burdened by anyone’s expectations but their own. It set the stage for what she called her “most dramatic” comeback of all.

And while this last chapter is an unqualified success, no matter what happens next, the storybook Olympic finish was not to be.

It lasted all of 13 seconds for the icon in the No. 13 bib. Down at the finish line, the crowd hushed. Up on top of the mountain, U.S. teammates Isabella Wright and Jacqueline Wiles watched in shock as a familiar scene to anyone who chooses to do this for a living played out below.

“She deserved a better ending than that,” Wright said.

Maybe she’ll get one. The initial reports from Team USA included cautious optimism that Vonn would be OK. When, however, is anyone’s guess.

Whether Vonn’s balky left knee played a role in her crash is anyone’s guess. Whether anyone outside of Vonn and her medical team needed to have had a say in whether she should have been out there is not, at least to those who have spent decades chasing her.

“It’s her choice,” veteran skier Federica Brignone of Italy said. “If it’s your body, then you decide what to do, whether to race or not. It’s not up to others. Only you.”

So if Sunday really was it, maybe it was fitting in a way. Vonn wants to go out on her terms. Perhaps in a way she did, at least at these Games.

A story that transcends
Vonn’s story is the rare one that cuts through the noise in both sport and society that these days often drowns out what happens on the field of play. There was no agenda for Vonn other than pushing herself at an age where the pushing should have long since stopped.

It’s why the outpouring in the immediate aftermath was so widespread. Everyone from teammate Mikaela Shiffrin to tennis legend Rafael Nadal to basketball Hall of Famer Pau Gasol to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton voiced their support. All of them touched in some way by one woman’s ageless quest to find her limits and go beyond them.

Whatever reason Vonn and her coaches might land on as to why she left Cortina hanging from a helicopter instead of with a gold medal hanging around her neck, the one they can rule out is that it wasn’t because she was afraid to try.

Vonn tried. Vonn always tries. Even when things look bleak. Maybe especially when things look bleak.

They were bleak on Sunday. The tears shed, both by Vonn and those closest to her, were real.

“I mean the work that we put in, the careers, I think obviously my heart aches for her,” gold medalist and American teammate Breezy Johnson said. “It’s a tough road. It’s a tough sport. That’s the beauty and the madness of it, that it can hurt you so badly but you keep coming back for more.”

If this really was Vonn’s last stop on the Olympic stage, maybe the image to take with you isn’t the crash, but of her as she approached that fateful gate: all gas, no brakes.

And perhaps most importantly, no regrets.

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OF NOTE

Teri Jackson

Fredrikson, Minneapolis, announced that attorney Teri L. Jackson has joined its Tax Disputes & Litigation Group in the Minneapolis office. Jackson previously served as deputy area counsel for the IRS Office of Chief Counsel.

ARCHITECTURE/ENGINEERING

Pope Design Group, St. Paul, announced the promotion of Raphael Lister to principal and shareholder. Lister joined Pope Design Group in 2017 as a project manager and architect and became the firm’s director of education and an associate in 2024.

FINANCIAL SERVICES

Holmes Murphy, an Iowa-based insurance brokerage, announced that Clint Gemmill will join the brokerage as complex risk practice leader in Minneapolis. Gemmill most recently was with Marsh McLennan Agency as a senior vice president, national accounts practice leader. … SUI Group Holdings Limited, a Wayzata-based blockchain cryptocurrency trading platform, announced the appointment of Brian Quintenz as an independent director, effective Jan. 5. Quintenz succeeds Chief Financial Officer Joseph A. Geraci II, who transitions from director to board observer. Quintenz previously served as global head of policy for a16z crypto, and also served as a commissioner on the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission under Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump. … Piper Sandler Cos., a Minneapolis-based investment bank, announced it has named J.P. Peltier global co-head of investment banking and capital markets, serving alongside current global co-heads James Baker and Mike Dillahunt. Peltier most recently served as global head of healthcare investment banking. He joined the firm in 1994.

FOOD

Hormel Foods Corp., an Austin, Minn.-based provider of grocery store prepared food brands, announced the upcoming retirements of Mark Morey, vice president of operations for fresh pork, and Paul Peil, vice president of marketing for fresh and ready meats.

HEALTH CARE

Twin Cities Orthopedics, a Bloomington-based chain of physical therapy and rehabilitation clinics, announced the promotion of Dr. Christopher Meyer to chief executive officer. His appointment marks the first time a practicing physician has been named to the role. Meyer has served as president of TCO since 2023 and has held leadership roles within the organization for nearly two decades, including service on the board of directors and executive committee.

LAW

Maslon, Minneapolis, announced that financial services attorney Erin Snyder has been elected to the law firm’s partnership, effective Jan. 1. Snyder joined Maslon in 2018. … Merchant & Gould, Minneapolis, announced the opening of an office in Boston, its eighth location nationwide.

MANUFACTURING

Donaldson Co. Inc., a Bloomington-based maker of filtration systems for industry, announced planned promotion of Chief Operating Officer Richard Lewis as president and chief executive officer, effective March 2. He succeeds Tod Carpenter, who will transition to executive chairman. Lewis will also join the company’s board. … Apogee Enterprises, a Bloomington-based provider of architectural windows and related products for commercial construction, announced the resignation of Chief Financial Officer Matthew J. Osberg; Chief Accounting Officer Mark Augdahl has been appointed interim CFO. … Arctic Cat, a Thief River Falls-based snowmobile maker, announced the hire of Erik Nelson as vice president of sales.

SERVICES

DevryBV Sustainable Strategies, an Excelsior-based business sustainability consultant, announced its name change to Stewardverse Strategies.

TECHNOLOGY

FORTÉ, formerly AVI Systems, an Eden Prairie-based provider of audio-visual systems for businesses and schools, announced the following promotions to executive vice president roles: Michael Safranski, technical operations; Keith Yandell, innovation; Matt Winger, finance; Craig Gudorf, marketing and Joy Todd, human resources. … Table Trac, a Minnetonka-based global provider of software and services to the gaming industry, announced the promotion of Chief Financial Officer Randy Gilbert to chief executive officer; he succeeds Chad Hoehne, who will continue as president and chief technology officer. … Concord, a St. Louis Park-based provider of technology and digital transformation services to health care, technology, manufacturing and financial services, announced the appointment of Chris Baker as executive chairman. Baker most recently, he served as chief executive officer of SoftServe, a technology services firm. … Solifi, a Minneapolis-based provider of finance software for business, announced the appointment of Sarah Glass as chief customer officer.

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EMAIL ITEMS to businessnews@pioneerpress.com.

Family members and attorneys for patients hospitalized after being detained by federal immigration officials said they are facing extreme difficulty trying to locate patients, get information about their well-being, and provide them emotional and legal support. (Oona Zenda//KFF Health News/TNS)

By Claudia Boyd-Barrett, Oona Zenda, KFF Health News

Lydia Romero strained to hear her husband’s feeble voice through the phone.

A week earlier, immigration agents had grabbed Julio César Peña from his front yard in Glendale, California. Now, he was in a hospital after suffering a ministroke. He was shackled to the bed by his hand and foot, he told Romero, and agents were in the room, listening to the call. He was scared he would die and wanted his wife there.

“What hospital are you at?” Romero asked.

“I can’t tell you,” he replied.

Viridiana Chabolla, Peña’s attorney, couldn’t get an answer to that question, either. Peña’s deportation officer and the medical contractor at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center refused to tell her. Exasperated, she tried calling a nearby hospital, Providence St. Mary Medical Center.

“They said even if they had a person in ICE custody under their care, they wouldn’t be able to confirm whether he’s there or not, that only ICE can give me the information,” Chabolla said. The hospital confirmed this policy to KFF Health News.

Julio Cesar Peña, who has terminal kidney disease, sits on his bike in the backyard of his home in Glendale, California. (Peña family/Peña family/TNS)

Family members and attorneys for patients hospitalized after being detained by federal immigration officials said they are facing extreme difficulty trying to locate patients, get information about their well-being, and provide them emotional and legal support. They say many hospitals refuse to provide information or allow contact with these patients. Instead, hospitals allow immigration officers to call the shots on how much — if any — contact is allowed, which can deprive patients of their constitutional right to seek legal advice and leave them vulnerable to abuse, attorneys said.

Hospitals say they are trying to protect the safety and privacy of patients, staff, and law enforcement officials, even while hospital employees in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Portland, Oregon, cities where Immigration and Customs Enforcement has conducted immigration raids, say it’s made their jobs difficult. Hospitals have used what are sometimes called blackout procedures, which can include registering a patient under a pseudonym, removing their name from the hospital directory, or prohibiting staff from even confirming that a patient is in the hospital.

“We’ve heard incidences of this blackout process being used at multiple hospitals across the state, and it’s very concerning,” said Shiu-Ming Cheer, the deputy director of immigrant and racial justice at the California Immigrant Policy Center, an advocacy group.

Some Democratic-led states, including California, Colorado, and Maryland, have enacted legislation that seeks to protect patients from immigration enforcement in hospitals. However, those policies do not address protections for people already in ICE custody.

Julio Peña Jr. hugs his stepmother, Lydia Romero, outside an immigration detention facility in downtown Los Angeles as they try to get information about his father, Julio Cesar Peña, who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in front of his Glendale, California, home in December. (Immigrant Defenders Law Center/Immigrant Defenders Law Center/TNS)

More detainees hospitalized

Peña is among more than 350,000 people arrested by federal immigration authorities since President Donald Trump returned to the White House. As arrests and detentions have climbed, so too have reports of people taken to hospitals by immigration agents because of illness or injury — due to preexisting conditions or problems stemming from their arrest or detention.

ICE has faced criticism for using aggressive and deadly tactics, as well as for reports of mistreatment and inadequate medical care at its facilities. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told reporters at a Jan. 20 news conference outside a detention center he visited in California City that he spoke to a diabetic woman held there who had not received treatment in two months.

While there are no publicly available statistics on the number of people sick or injured in ICE detention, the agency’s news releases point to 32 people who died in immigration custody in 2025. Six more have died this year.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not respond to a request for information about its policies or Peña’s case.

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According to ICE’s guidelines, people in custody should be given access to a telephone, visits from family and friends, and private consultation with legal counsel. The agency can make administrative decisions, including about visitation, when a patient is in the hospital, but should defer to hospital policies on contacting next of kin when a patient is seriously ill, the guidelines state.

Asked in detail about hospital practices related to patients in immigration custody and whether there are best practices that hospitals should follow, Ben Teicher, a spokesperson for the American Hospital Association, declined to comment.

David Simon, a spokesperson for the California Hospital Association, said that “there are times when hospitals will — at the request of law enforcement — maintain confidentiality of patients’ names and other identifying characteristics.”

Although policies vary, members of the public can typically call a hospital and ask for a patient by name to find out whether they’re there, and often be transferred to the patient’s room, said William Weber, an emergency physician in Minneapolis and medical director for the Medical Justice Alliance, which advocates for the medical needs of people in law enforcement custody. Family members and others authorized by the patient can visit. And medical staff routinely call relatives to let them know a loved one is in the hospital, or to ask for information that could help with their care.

But when a patient is in law enforcement custody, hospitals frequently agree to restrict this kind of information sharing and access, Weber said. The rationale is that these measures prevent unauthorized outsiders from threatening the patient or law enforcement personnel, given that hospitals lack the security infrastructure of a prison or detention center. High-profile patients such as celebrities sometimes also request this type of protection.

Several attorneys and health care providers questioned the need for such restrictions. Immigration detention is civil, not criminal, detention. The Trump administration says it’s focused on arresting and deporting criminals, yet most of those arrested have no criminal conviction, according to data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse and several news outlets.

Taken outside his home

According to Peña’s wife, Romero, he has no criminal record. Peña came to the United States from Mexico in sixth grade and has an adult son in the U.S. military. The 43-year-old has terminal kidney disease and survived a heart attack in November. He has trouble walking and is partially blind, his wife said. He was detained Dec. 8 while resting outside after coming home from dialysis treatment.

Initially, Romero was able to find her husband through the ICE Online Detainee Locator System. She visited him at a temporary holding facility in downtown Los Angeles, bringing him his medicines and a sweater. She then saw he’d been moved to the Adelanto detention center. But the locator did not show where he was after he was hospitalized.

When she and other relatives drove to the detention facility to find him, they were turned away, she said. Romero received occasional calls from her husband in the hospital but said they were less than 10 minutes long and took place under ICE surveillance. She wanted to know where he was so she could be at the hospital to hold his hand, make sure he was well cared for, and encourage him to stay strong, she said.

Shackling him and preventing him from seeing his family was unfair and unnecessary, she said.

“He’s weak,” Romero said. “It’s not like he’s going to run away.”

ICE guidelines say contact and visits from family and friends should be allowed “within security and operational constraints.” Detainees have a constitutional right to speak confidentially with an attorney. Weber said immigration authorities should tell attorneys where their clients are and allow them to talk in person or use an unmonitored phone line.

Hospitals, though, fall into a gray area on enforcing these rights, since they are primarily focused on treating medical needs, Weber said. Still, he added, hospitals should ensure their policies align with the law.

Family denied access

Numerous immigration attorneys have spent weeks trying to locate clients detained by ICE, with their efforts sometimes thwarted by hospitals.

Nicolas Thompson-Lleras, a Los Angeles attorney who counsels immigrants facing deportation, said two of his clients were registered under aliases at different hospitals in Los Angeles County last year. Initially, the hospitals denied the clients were there and refused to let Thompson-Lleras meet with them, he said. Family members were also denied access, he said.

One of his clients was Bayron Rovidio Marin, a car wash worker injured during a raid in August. Immigration agents surveilled him for over a month at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, a county-run facility, without charging him.

In November, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to curb the use of blackout policies for patients under civil immigration custody at county-run hospitals. In a statement, Arun Patel, the chief patient safety and clinical risk management officer for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, said the policies are designed to reduce safety risks for patients, doctors, nurses, and custody officers.

“In some situations, there may be concerns about threats to the patient, attempts to interfere with medical care, unauthorized visitors, or the introduction of contraband,” Patel said. “Our goal is not to restrict care but to allow care to happen safely and without disruption.”

Leaving patients vulnerable

Thompson-Lleras said he’s concerned that hospitals are cooperating with federal immigration authorities at the expense of patients and their families and leaving patients vulnerable to abuse.

“It allows people to be treated suboptimally,” Thompson-Lleras said. “It allows people to be treated on abbreviated timelines, without supervision, without family intervention or advocacy. These people are alone, disoriented, being interrogated, at least in Bayron’s case, under pain and influence of medication.”

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Such incidents are alarming to hospital workers. In Los Angeles, two health care professionals who asked not to be identified by KFF Health News, out of concern for their livelihoods, said that ICE and hospital administrators, at public and private hospitals, frequently block staff from contacting family members for people in custody, even to find out about their health conditions or what medications they’re on. That violates medical ethics, they said.

Blackout procedures are another concern.

“They help facilitate, whether intentionally or not, the disappearance of patients,” said one worker, a physician for the county’s Department of Health Services and part of a coalition of concerned health workers from across the region.

At Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in Portland, nurses publicly expressed outrage over what they saw as hospital cooperation with ICE and the flouting of patient rights. Legacy Health has sent a cease and desist letter to the nurses’ union, accusing it of making “false or misleading statements.”

“I was really disgusted,” said Blaire Glennon, a nurse who quit her job at the hospital in December. She said numerous patients were brought to the hospital by ICE with serious injuries they sustained while being detained. “I felt like Legacy was doing massive human rights violations.”

Handcuffed while unconscious

Two days before Christmas, Chabolla, Peña’s attorney, received a call from ICE with the answer she and Romero had been waiting for. Peña was at Victor Valley Global Medical Center, about 10 miles from Adelanto, and about to be released.

Excited, Romero and her family made the two-hour-plus drive from Glendale to the hospital to take him home.

When they got there, they found Peña intubated and unconscious, his arm and leg still handcuffed to the hospital bed. He’d had a severe seizure on Dec. 20, but no one had told his family or legal team, his attorney said.

Tim Lineberger, a spokesperson for Victor Valley Global Medical Center’s parent company, KPC Health, said he could not comment on specific patient cases, because of privacy protections. He said the hospital’s policies on patient information disclosure comply with state and federal law.

Peña was finally cleared to go home on Jan. 5. No court date has been set, and his family is filing a petition to adjust his legal status based on his son’s military service. For now, he still faces deportation proceedings.

©2026 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Gavin J. Quinton, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s promises on affordability in 2024 helped propel him to a second term in the White House.

Since then, Trump says, the problem has been solved: He now calls affordability a hoax perpetrated by Democrats. Yet the high cost of living, especially housing, continues to weigh heavily on voters, and has dragged down the president’s approval ratings.

In a poll conducted this month by the New York Times and Siena University, 58% of respondents said they disapprove of the way the president is handling the economy.

How the economy fares in the coming months will play an outsize role in determining whether the Democrats can build on their electoral success in 2025 and seize control of one or both chambers of Congress.

With housing costs so central to voters’ perceptions about the economy, both parties have put forward proposals in recent weeks targeting affordability. Here is a closer look at their competing plans for expanding housing and reining in costs:

How bad is the affordability crisis?

Nationwide, wages have barely crept up over the last decade — rising by 21.24% between 2014 and 2024, according to the Federal Reserve. Over the same period, rent and home sale prices more than doubled, and healthcare and grocery costs rose 71.5% and 37.35%, respectively, according to the Fed.

National home price-to-income ratios are at an all-time high, and coastal states like California and Hawaii are the most extreme examples.

Housing costs in California are about twice the national average, according to the state Legislative Analyst’s Office, which said prices have increased at “historically rapid rates” in recent years. The median California home sold for $877,285 in 2024, according to the California Assn. of Realtors, compared with about $420,000 nationwide, per Federal Reserve economic data.

California needs to add 180,000 housing units annually to keep up with demand, according to the state Department of Housing. So far, California has fallen short of those goals and has just begun to see success in reducing its homeless population, which sat at 116,000 unsheltered people in 2025.

What do the polls say?

More than two-thirds of Americans surveyed in a Gallup poll last month said they felt the economy was getting worse, and 36% expressed approval for the president — the lowest total since his second term began.

The poll found that 47% of U.S. adults now describe current economic conditions as “poor,” up from 40% just a month prior and the highest since Trump took office. Just 21% said economic conditions were either “excellent” or “good,” while 31% described them as “only fair.”

An Associated Press poll found that only 16% of Republicans think Trump has helped “a lot” in fixing cost of living problems.

What have the Democrats proposed?

The party is pushing measures to expand the supply of housing, and cut down on what they call “restrictive” single-family zoning in favor of denser development.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Democrats plan to “supercharge” construction through bills like California Sen. Adam Schiff’s Housing BOOM Act, which he introduced in December.

Schiff said the bill would lower prices by stimulating the development of “millions of affordable homes.” The proposal would expand low-income housing tax credits, set aside funds for rental assistance and homelessness, and provide $10 billion in housing subsidies for “middle-income” workers such as teachers, police officers and firefighters.

The measure has not been heard in committee, and faces long odds in the Republican-controlled body, though Schiff said inaction on the proposal could be used against opponents.

And the Republicans?

A group of 190 House Republicans this month unveiled a successor proposal to the “Big Beautiful Bill,” the sprawling tax and spending plan approved and signed into law by Trump in July.

The Republican Study Committee described the proposal as an affordability package aimed at lowering down payments, enacting mortgage reforms and creating more tax breaks.

Leaders of the group said it would reduce the budget deficit by $1 trillion and could pass with a simple majority.

“This blueprint … locks in President Trump’s deregulatory agenda through the only process Democrats can’t block: reconciliation,” said Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, who chairs the group. “We have 11 months of guaranteed majorities. We’re not wasting a single day.”

Though the proposal has not yet been introduced as legislation, Republicans said it would include a mechanism to revoke funding from blue states over rent control and immigration policy, which they calculated would save $48 billion.

President Trump has endorsed a $200-billion mortgage bond stimulus, which he said would drive down mortgage rates and monthly payments. And the White House, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — the two enterprises that back most U.S. mortgages — continues to push the idea of portable and assumable mortgages.

Trump said the move would allow buyers to keep their existing mortgage rate or enable new homeowners to assume a previous owner’s mortgage.

The Department of Justice, meanwhile, has launched a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over the Fed’s renovation costs, as Trump bashed him over “his never ending quest to keep interest rates high.”

The president also vowed to revoke federal funding to states over a wealth of issues such as child care and immigration policy.

“This is not about any particular policy that they think is harmful,” California Democratic Rep. Laura Friedman said. “This is about Trump’s always trying to find a way to punish blue states.”

Is there any alignment?

The two parties are cooperating on companion measures in the House and Senate.

The bipartisan ROAD to Housing Act seeks to expand housing supply by easing regulatory barriers. It passed the Senate unanimously and has support from the White House, but House Republicans have balked, and it has yet to receive a floor vote.

A bipartisan proposal — the Housing in the 21st Century Act — was approved by the House Financial Services Committee by a 50-1 vote in December. It also has yet to receive a floor vote.

The bill is similar to its twin in the Senate, with Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.) working across the aisle with Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles). If approved, it would cut permitting times, support manufactured-housing development and expand financing tools for low-income housing developers.

There was also a recent moment of unusual alignment between the president and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who both promised to crack down on corporate home buying.

What do the experts say?

Housing experts recoiled at GOP proposals to bar housing dollars from sanctuary jurisdictions and cities that impose rent control.

“Any conditioning on HUD funding that sets up rules that explicitly carve out blue cities is going to be really catastrophic for California’s larger urban areas,” said David Garcia, deputy director of policy at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation.

More than 35 cities in California have rent control policies, according to the California Apartment Assn. The state passed its own rent stabilization law in 2019, and lawmakers approved a California sanctuary law in 2017 that prohibits state resources from aiding federal immigration enforcement.

The agenda comes on the heels of a series of HUD spending cuts, including a 30% cap on permanent housing investments and the end of a federal emergency housing voucher program that local homelessness officials estimate would put 14,500 people on the streets.

In Los Angeles County, HUD dollars make up about 28% of homelessness funding.

“It would undermine a lot of the bipartisan efforts that are happening in the House and the Senate to move evidence-backed policy to increase housing supply and stabilize rents and home prices,” Garcia said.

The president’s mortgage directives also prompted skepticism from some experts.

“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were pressed to get into the riskier parts of the mortgage market back in the housing bubble and that was a part of the problem,” said Eric McGhee, a researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California.

©2026 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.