Today's five.

The housing bill becomes law at midnight anyway — with or without Trump's signature — so this is protest as performance art. Trump announced on Truth Social he'd withhold his signature on the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act until the Senate passes the SAVE America Act, a voter ID bill that doesn't currently have the votes. BBC noted the housing bill is considered the most comprehensive Congressional action on housing costs this century. WOSU noted the snub complicates the GOP's midterm pitch on affordability. The leverage only works if people forget the clock is still running.

An oyster farmer accused of rape just torpedoed the Maine Democratic Senate primary, and now the party has until July 27 to pick someone new. Graham Platner filed the official withdrawal paperwork Friday — two days after announcing he'd quit, which was apparently long enough to make Democrats nervous he'd change his mind. His letter leaned hard into the movement-building language. Axios led with the strategic stakes for Senate control; NPR led with the accusation. The Maine Democratic Party now gets to choose his replacement, a process that's fast, unusual, and almost certainly chaotic.

Minnesota issued a pardon; the federal government issued a plane ticket anyway. Tou Lue Vang — convicted of repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl over four years — was deported after Secretary of State Rubio revoked his legal status following a full pardon granted by Governor Walz and the State Board of Pardons on June 10. Rubio announced the deportation on X. Every outlet covering this story was working from the same right flank, so the framing was uniform: Walz as villain, Rubio as finisher. What a state pardon can and can't override in immigration proceedings is a question none of the coverage actually answered.

A federal judge called Trump's version of January 6th "fiction," then signed the paperwork to dismiss the seditious conspiracy convictions against four Proud Boys leaders — because when the Justice Department asks to drop its own case, there aren't many levers left to pull. Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, made his reluctance clear in a seven-page memo before doing it anyway. The convictions against Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, and Dominic Pezzola were among the last Jan. 6 cases still standing after Trump's January pardons swept most of the rest away. The Guardian named the crimes. The Washington Examiner named the procedural move. Both are correct.

Florida's largest nursing home association is asking the federal government to carve out an exception for the people keeping its facilities running. About 175,000 Haitian nationals with Temporary Protected Status live in Florida, and the nursing home industry has apparently noticed they're a significant part of the workforce. The association is asking DHS to let TPS holders stay employed in long-term care and pursue legal residency pathways. There's one source covering this, so the framing is what it is — but the underlying math is simple: remove the workers, and someone has to explain what happens to the residents.