Republicans Scramble After Trump Refuses to Sign Landmark Housing Bill

Republicans can’t catch a break at the minute, and it’s all due to their mad, senile king.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump refused to sign a bipartisan housing bill, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which passed both the House and Senate with flying colors—catching members of his own party off guard.

The bill would create new homes and limit corporate investors’ ability to buy single-family residences. Members of the GOP have used it as an example of their concern for working people ahead of the November midterms.

The stage was quite literally set for the signing in the Capitol before Trump threw his hissy fit. With little over an hour before the public signing ceremony, the president said he wants to push through the SAVE Act, Republicans’ faulty voter ID bill, before doing anything about housing.

Republicans then rushed to remove the presidential seal from the podium, as Democrats began using the stage as a backdrop to highlight the president’s sudden flip-flop.

Following Trump’s public refusal, House Speaker Mike Johnson attempted some damage control in a press conference.

“The president, when we go through the details of the bill, he’s gonna understand that it’s a good product, and certainly something that fulfills his promises,” Johnson said.

The SAVE Act has passed in the House but does not currently have the votes to pass the Senate. Nor should it—the bill will make it tougher for anyone lacking a paper copy of their birth certificate or passport to vote.

“The SAVE Act will make it exceedingly and unacceptably difficult for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans, to be heard,” Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock told Politico. “If all the people in the election can’t be heard, who are eligible to vote, then that’s something other than democracy.”

“I don’t think the American public knows what is in store for them if [the SAVE ACT] passes,” Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono added. “Millions of people are going to need to re-register.”

Kyle Griffin of MS NOW said the legislation was “designed to help rig elections.”

Despite the president’s refusal to sign the housing bill, it could still become law in 10 days if Congress remains in session.

U.S. Representative LaMonica McIver could face up to 17 years in prison if the Justice Department gets its way.

McIver, 40, was charged with assaulting immigration agents outside the notorious Delaney Hall immigration detention center in New Jersey last May. On Wednesday, her case will be argued in a federal appellate court, and will be another test of the Trump administration’s power to go after political opponents, The New York Times reports.

Last year, McIver, who is now pregnant with her second child, was at the detention center with other Democratic leaders to conduct an oversight inspection. When agents attempted to arrest Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka for tresspassing, McIver was allegedly involved in a confrontation where she used her arms to “assault, resist, impede and intimidate” two federal agents, government attorneys say.

No one was injured in the altercation. McIver’s lawyers argue that the DOJ is coming after her because of her political views, citing the many pardons that the Trump administration gave to the January 6 protesters who actually did injure police officers in the 2021 riot.

However, U.S. District Court Judge Jamel K. Semper rejected those arguments in November. McIver appealed the case, and it will be argued before a panel of three appellate judges Wednesday.

A bipartisan group of former members of Congress wrote a letter in support of McIver, arguing that a win for the DOJ would mean that the executive branch would be able to “behave in a more chaotic and unsafe fashion, and create new, unprecedented tools to block legitimate oversight.”

If she is convicted, McIver could face up to 17 years in prison, and $1 million in legal fees. She is currently running for reelection, and her baby is due in the fall.

President Donald Trump abruptly canceled the signing of a bipartisan housing bill Wednesday, insisting that he would not make it law without his voter ID legislation, the SAVE America Act. But not everyone on Capitol Hill got the memo that the housing reform effort was a dud.

Arkansas Representative French Hill was already in a news conference when Trump axed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. Hill unknowingly celebrated a dead proposal that Republicans had hoped would bolster their reelection efforts ahead of November.

Standing beside House Speaker Mike Johnson, Hill said it had been his “top goal” to lower the cost of housing.

“This bill does that, so I’m proud of the work that both chambers have struggled through,” Hill said Wednesday morning. “But it’s successful today, and I’m proud of the work of the House and Senate to get people to ‘yes’.”

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act was drafted to address the U.S. housing crisis, which has entailed bottlenecked supply, stalled family growth, and surged home and rental prices across the country. The bill would have funneled resources toward increasing housing supply and streamlined environmental reviews, and would have forced the Department of Housing and Urban Development to address red-tape issues related to zoning and land-use that have historically posed barriers to housing development.

“This is a very rare occurrence to have successive bipartisan votes across both chambers on versions of this bill, and it finally seems to be reaching the finish line,” Francis Torres, housing and infrastructure director at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told TIME earlier this week. “This bill is the most serious that Congress has gotten about housing reforms in a generation.”

The House passed the bill by a vote of 358–32 on Tuesday. The day before, the Senate had passed it by a measure of 85–5. It only needed the president’s signature to become law—but that apparently won’t happen unless Congress caves to his unpopular voter ID demands.

The Save America Act sparked nationwide controversy earlier this year, particularly over a detail in the bill that would have made it more difficult for married women to vote. The backlash on Capitol Hill was grave, so much so that it gummed up efforts to fund Homeland Security for several months. Republicans eventually had to bail on the package to end the congressional gridlock.

The Save America Act suggests numerous amendments to the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, including line items that would abolish mail-in voting, require voters to bring proof of citizenship and proof of residency to register to vote, require voter ID, and mandate voter roll purges every 30 days, an enormous bureaucratic task that would place undue burdens on local election officials. The measure would also add a federal law to prevent men from competing in women’s sports and a ban on “transgender mutilation surgery.”

State and national Republican groups have developed a new midterm strategy after the left’s big wins in New York City on Tuesday: fearmongering about communism and the death of the nuclear family. (Oh, wait, that’s actually not a new strategy at all.)

The chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, Representative Richard Hudson, reportedly compared the primary wins to “a Bolshevik revolution” on Wednesday, in a meeting with GOP House members. The NRCC also made a slightly cringy X post referring to the progressive winners as “America-hating Socialists.”

A few MAGA House members spoke out individually against the election results, including Randy Fine and Anna Paulina Luna of Florida.

“What is happening in New York tonight should scare every American,” Fine, who is no stranger to promoting hateful rhetoric, said. “The Democrat Party there no longer seeks to make America prosper. It seeks to destroy it.”

The fearmongering comes after New York’s democratic socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, proved his November victory was no fluke on Tuesday. The three progressives Mamdani endorsed all won their primaries, knocking off establishment Dems and sometimes other progressives.

Former City Comptroller Brad Lander knocked off incumbent Representative Dan Goldman in New York’s 10th district; Democratic socialist Claire Valdez, an artist and assemblywoman, defeated Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso in the 7th; and in possibly the biggest upset of the night, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a little-known democratic socialist, bested incumbent Representative Adriano Espaillat in the 13th.

“New York Democrats just elected three socialists in primaries,” raged the New York state GOP on X. “Their party has been taken over by radicals who support Islamic terrorism and want to dismantle the nuclear family.”

Centrist Democrats also felt a sense of foreboding on Wednesday upon seeing the success of leftists.

“Republicans will very quickly seek to elevate, as they always do, the most radical voices in the Democratic Party,” Howard Wolfson, a Democratic strategist and adviser to former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, told The New York Times. “And after tonight, they will have more radical Democrats to choose from.”

Representative Greg Meeks, who chairs the Queens Democratic Party, was a bit more diplomatic. “It was a tough night,” he said.

President Trump has canceled the signing of the largest housing affordability bill in decades unless Congress passes his voter-suppressing SAVE Act.

“Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump wrote on Wednesday.

This is a very last-minute cancellation, as the signing presentation was set to happen Wednesday, an hour after his post.

“So.… Looks like they’re going to have to dissemble this stage here at Statuary Hall in the Capitol,” Scott MacFarlane of Meidas Touch wrote on X. “Trump has cancelled his signing of a housing bill … which truly jams up his fellow Republicans who wanted to campaign on it.”

The 21st Century Road to Housing bill, sponsored by Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. The legislation aims to make housing easier to build and more affordable by blocking corporate entities from buying up single-family homes, among other methods. Trump, a former slumlord, has also downplayed the significance of this bill.

“The Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren centric housing bill, which is of minor importance compared to lower interest rates, and even FISA, pales in comparison to passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT. That is what Americans, both Dumocrats, Republicans, and everyone else, care about,” Trump wrote, shortly before canceling his signing of the bill. “Get the bad Republicans to approve it or, better yet, Terminate the Filibuster and approve it, AND EVERYTHING ELSE REPUBLICANS HAVE EVER DREAMED OF.”

Potentially killing a massive housing bill in the midst of an affordability crisis to make it harder for Democrats to vote is a good example of where Trump’s priorities lie.

This story has been updated.