President Donald Trump on Friday erupted at members of his own party on social media as he declared his refusal to sign the bipartisan housing bill that’s been sitting on his desk for over a week and had been intended as a centerpiece of Republican efforts to address cost-of-living issues. His war with his own party is over the Senate’s failure to pass his restrictive voter ID legislation.
Because the legislation has been awaiting his signature for nine working days, it will become law at midnight on Friday despite his objections unless he formally vetoes it, but Trump nonetheless complained that Congress had not taken action to make it more complicated for Americans to vote ahead of this year’s midterms, which could put control of one or both houses of Congress in the hands of Democrats.
Writing on Truth Social, Trump said he would not sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act “in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, which is polling at 97% with the Republican Party, and very high with the non-politician Dumocrats.”
He described the anti-postal-voting and voter ID bill he has been unsuccessfully championing for much of his second term as one that would result in “NO MORE CROOKED, CORRUPT, & DESTABILIZING MAIL-IN BALLOTS” and called the lack of action on the bill “crazy and a serious threat to any politician who votes against it.”
“The Dumocrats will TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, if and when they ever get the chance to do so, in their very first hour - And I will no longer be able to call them Dumocrats again! The title of DUMB will revert to the Republicans who allowed this horrible calamity to happen to our Party, and our Nation, itself,” he wrote in blasting his own party’s leaders.
A version of the partisan voter ID legislation has passed the House but does not have enough support in the Senate to make it past the upper chamber’s filibuster threshold of 60 votes, and even then it’s unclear whether a majority of senators support the bill.
His refusal to sign or promote the affordable housing bill into law has rankled members of his own party who had planned to tout the new law as a feather in their cap and reason for voters to return them to Congress next year. But Trump hasn’t been much interested in the bipartisan bill, which he called “a big yawn” during an Oval Office event last month.
Trump has spent months obsessing over the voting restriction legislation and his complaints that it has not been sent to him by Congress have grown louder as his standing in the polls has fallen with the November midterm elections looming.
He continued his Friday morning Truth Social rant by demanding once again that senators end the chamber’s 60-vote threshold for most legislation to “and every other Bill that true Republicans have ever dreamt of” while claiming that Democrats would do the same if they are able to retake control of Washington.
Trump has spent years railing against mail-in voting dating back to the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden in part because Democratic-leaning voters cast ballots by mail, allowing Biden to overtake him in the vote count in multiple swing states.
His tacit admission that he would allow the housing bill to become law without his signature comes weeks after he cancelled a Capitol Hill signing ceremony for it in a fit of pique over Republican senators’ refusal to blow up their chamber’s rules to pass his voter ID bill.
At the time, he claimed to consider the voting restrictions legislation to be a “national emergency” and suggested that he would not sign any legislation sent to him until Congress makes it more difficult for Americans to vote.
The president’s tantrum is just the latest in a series of eruptions over his demand that Congress pass his desired anti-voting bill, which would impose onerous proof of citizenship requirements on voters seeking to register, ban postal balloting in most cases, and enact federal bans on permitting transgender women to play sports.
Last month, Trump declared his refusal to sign a reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act unless Congress attached the SAVE America Act to it even though doing so would tank the must-pass bill to ensure an important national security tool remained legal.
The authority for Section 702 expired last month and Congress has not renewed it amid Trump's demand for the SAVE Act and senators’ concerns over his appointment of Federal Housing Finance Administration head Bill Pulte as acting Director of National Intelligence.
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