Elizabeth Warren accuses Trump of showing ‘complete indifference’ to Americans’ struggles
Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, a co-sponsor of the housing bill, has told CNBC that Donald Trump cancelling its signing shows a “complete indifference to the costs Americans are facing”.
She also suggested that the president has failed to take into account that this bill is actually a win for him too.
He could be over here getting a victory lap … he really doesn’t care about American families.
Key events
Lunchtime summary
Donald Trump has derailed what should have been a major affordability win for the GOP by abruptly cancelling the signing of a landmark housing bill into law, in a bid to pressure his party to back his restrictive proof-of-citizenship voting bill – despite being told several times they don’t have the votes to get it through.
The president brashly declared the bipartisan bill, aimed at speeding up the construction and availability of more affordable housing, was “of minor importance compared to lower interest rates, and even FISA, pales in comparison to passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT”. It’s not the first time Trump has dismissed voters’ concerns about the cost-of-living and affordability crisis, and it will be all the more frustrating for his party as it tries desperately to reset to focus on those very issues ahead of November’s crucial midterms.
Indeed, Trump made the move ahead of a lunchtime meeting with GOP senators, which he had already made clear was going to be focused on lobbying them to pass the controversial voter ID bill. The meeting was already set to be tense, given they’ve repeatedly butted heads with the president over massive issues from scepticism over his war against Iran, to rejecting funding for his White House ballroom, to Trump blocking them from confirming his own nominee for DNI. Now he’s delaying a major piece of legislation the party is desperate to use as a selling point to show voters it is focused on making their lives better.
Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren even said of the president: “He could be over here getting a victory lap … he really doesn’t care about American families.” Cancelling its signing shows a “complete indifference to the costs Americans are facing”, she added.
If Trump fails to sign the housing bill into law within the 10-day window since it passed through the Senate yesterday, it automatically becomes law anyway. Unless he vetoes, but even then, support for the bill is so strong that Congress has the votes to override that.
His allies also seem to think he wouldn’t do that, including House speaker Mike Johnson who said he expected the president to sign the bill within the 10-day timeframe. Johnson, unsurprisingly, defended the president’s decision to hold up the housing bill as leverage for his voter ID legislation. But Senate majority leader John Thune, who has tried and said many times that the math isn’t there for the voting bill through or to scrap the filibuster in order to push it through, simply laughed and told reporters, “At this point I don’t have any observations about that.”
Now, House GOP leaders are having to deal with the fallout of the president blindsiding his party. We’ll bring you more as the day (and drama) goes on.
GOP representative French Hill was touting the bipartisan housing bill as “a real win” and the president’s support for it at the party leaders’ news conference earlier, unaware that Donald Trump had moments ago cancelled his signing it into law.
Hill, who spearheaded the bill, later said “I’m not disappointed” about Trump’s decision to pull the signing.
The president chose, for a reason known to him, about what’s going on in the Senate, chose to delay the signing while he meets with the Senate and works on some other priorities of his. That’s fully in his prerogative to do that. I don’t find that personally offensive.
This is from Meredith Lee Hill, who covers Congress for Politico, on X:
House GOP leaders are CANCELING the rule vote to tee up key bills set for 1:30pm today, per sources
GOP hardliners are threatening to tank it over the housing bill and others are now upset Trump canceled the bill signing
Leadership will recess and decide the way forward
And more on the Senate majority leader, John Thune, who laughed when reporters asked him about Donald Trump cancelling the signing of the major bipartisan housing legislation.
“I just heard that … I guess I would say at this point I don’t have any observations about that,” he said.
As has been increasingly the case over the last year, that’s a pretty stark contrast to House speaker Mike Johnson’s defence of the president using the housing bill as leverage to push through his voter ID legislation (see my earlier post).
Adding to the tension is Donald Trump’s increasingly distant relationship with Senate majority leader John Thune, who remains popular in his conference and cordial with the president, but has spent much of his time lately telling Trump what he doesn’t want to hear.
Thune said yesterday that while Trump and some in their conference want to see the voting bill pass, “it’s just not realistic.” He’s repeated several times that Republicans are simply “bound by arithmetic” and don’t have the votes.
But still, Trump continues to push the Senate to eliminate the filibuster and pass the legislation, which would create strict new requirements for voters to prove citizenship and show voter ID at the polls.
“John is a leader and hopefully he can get the votes,” Trump said yesterday in Pennsylvania, ramping up pressure on Thune.
For his part, Thune devoted weeks of floor time to the voting bill earlier this year and has said he supports it. But he has repeatedly said there aren’t enough votes to scrap the filibuster that triggers a 60-vote threshold to pass most bills in the 53-47 Senate. And Democrats are uniformly opposed to the bill.
“Those are just hard realities,” Thune said yesterday. “And I think people at some point have to come to grips with that.”
Thune added that he hoped the GOP Senate meeting with the president is about “sitting down as a family” and figuring out their agenda in the remaining time before the election.
With the Associated Press.
So, Donald Trump has chosen to ratchet up tensions with Senate Republicans by abruptly cancelling plans to sign a bipartisan bill that could help boost home construction and home-buying – and was meant to be a major affordability win for his party.
Indeed, Republicans had been hoping to use the housing bill as a selling point to voters ahead of critical November midterm elections. But the president declared that he now wants Congress to first pass a bill that would mandate stricter rules for voter identification in federal elections – even though it doesn’t have the votes to pass.
The fresh saga is revealing of the deepening split between Trump and the Senate, raising the possibility that a Capitol Hill which had largely been deferential to the White House could now become much harder for the president to navigate.
Trump has blocked the Senate from confirming one of his own nominees, pressed them to fund security aspects of his White House ballroom project despite opposition and forced them to defend his war on Iran despite several being openly sceptical.
Now, by rejecting a public bill signing, Trump is also further indicating a level of indifference to the very real affordability issues that are a leading concern for voters going into November’s midterm elections (see my earlier post).
It’s also worth noting that Trump shot himself in the foot somewhat by whittling down his own support in the Senate after endorsing primary challengers to two GOP incumbents who were previously reliable votes for his agenda — Texas senator John Cornyn and Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy. Both men lost their primaries and have since become more critical of the president.
With the Associated Press.
House speaker Mike Johnson defends Trump’s decision to cancel housing bill signing
At a GOP leaders’ news conference a short while ago, House speaker Mike Johnson was asked for his reaction to the president’s cancelling a planned signing of bipartisan legislation aimed at speeding up the construction and availability of more affordable housing until his voter ID bill was passed.
He told reporters he had spoken to Donald Trump this morning about the so-called SAVE America Act and defended the president’s decision to hold up the housing bill as leverage.
He and I have talked about this a lot. He has expressed his priority and preference of the SAVE America Act. We share that.
He went on, referring to the controversial Voter ID bill: “We passed it three times in the House … It has been stuck in the Senate … He’s laser-focused on the SAVE America Act … you have to put it under reconciliation bill.”
A reminder that although Republicans control 53 of the Senate’s 100 seats, they lack the 60 votes needed to meet the chamber’s filibuster threshold for most bills, which accounts for five failed votes on the measure or its provisions since mid-March.
Republicans say they also do not have enough votes to meet Trump’s repeated demands to eliminate the filibuster and pass the bill with a simple majority. Some GOP lawmakers, conscious they face re-election battles soon, also feel their time and efforts could be better spent on other issues.
But not the president, evidently. Johnson reiterated that the GOP lunch later will be used by Trump to persuade senators to vote for the Voter ID bill.
And so he decided – and I didn’t announce it, I wanted him to announce it – but we’re delaying this. As you know, he has a window of time before he has to sign a bill. He’s going to use a little bit more of that window of time, and we’re going to go through this together now.
He added that the housing bill was “a great product” and said he was sure the president would see that it was “something that fulfils his promises to bring down costs”.
Asked if Trump was still planning to sign it at a later date, Johnson said: “Yes … My estimation is he’ll do it within that 10-day window.”
Elizabeth Warren accuses Trump of showing ‘complete indifference’ to Americans’ struggles
Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, a co-sponsor of the housing bill, has told CNBC that Donald Trump cancelling its signing shows a “complete indifference to the costs Americans are facing”.
She also suggested that the president has failed to take into account that this bill is actually a win for him too.
He could be over here getting a victory lap … he really doesn’t care about American families.
This is from Eleanor Mueller, White House reporter at Semafor, on X:
To be clear: Trump has no leverage here. If he doesn’t sign the housing bill within 10 days, it becomes law automatically. If, before then, he vetoes, Congress has the votes to override.
In a post on Truth Social right before he abruptly cancelled signing the major housing bill, Donald Trump once again diminished the very real economic concerns Americans have amid the cost-of-living crisis that has been exacerbated by his war against Iran.
He said the bill was “of minor importance compared to lower interest rates, and even FISA, pales in comparison to passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT”.
This will likely come back to bite the president, potentially taking a place among the greatest hits of Trump-not-reading-the-room-on-the-economy including “I love the inflation” and “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation … even a little bit”, as his party gears up for a very challenging midterm election period where affordability will be front and centre.
Trump cancels signing of bipartisan housing bill to pressure Congress to pass restrictive voting bill
And just like that, Donald Trump has said he’s cancelled the signing of the major bipartisan housing bill the Senate passed last night in a bid to further pressure Congress to pass his proof-of-citizenship voting bill – which GOP leaders have repeatedly said don’t have a chance of passing.
He just posted on Truth Social:
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.
Considering this bill was a chance for the Republican party to show voters it was making a shift towards a more affordability-focused agenda ahead of November’s crucial midterm elections, Trump abruptly cancelling its signing probably isn’t the best look for the president right now.
It’s also sure to make the Senate GOP lunch he’s due to attend at 1pm ET all the more tense. Trump said of the lunch yesterday: “We’re just going to talk about SAVE America. We have to pass the SAVE America Act. So we’re going to have to talk about that and many other things.”
Donald Trump is due to sign a major housing affordability bill at noon, aimed at boosting housing supply and home-buying, and cracking down on corporate landlords’ buying up single-family homes.
The House passed the bipartisan bill in a 358-32 vote last night, after clearing the Senate by a vote of 85-5 the day before.
After that he’s heading to Capitol Hill for a showdown with Republican senators who have grown increasingly frustrated with his efforts to divert their agenda ahead of November’s midterms.
The president has pressured senators to focus on his proof-of-citizenship voting bill (the so-called SAVE America Act) and eliminating the filibuster (despite majority leader John Thune consistently stating that they don’t have the votes), blocked them from confirming one of his own nominees (Jay Clayton for DNI) and forced them to defend his war against Iran even as they question the strategy and endgame.
Just yesterday, the Senate voted to curb military action in Iran, delivering the president a significant but symbolic rebuke over a conflict that has proven deeply unpopular with the American public. Trump lashed out at the four GOP “losers” who broke with their party to help advance it, claiming he has Iran “on the ropes”.
It should be interesting, to say the least. I’ll bring you any updates as we get them.