Trump cancels housing bill signing, demands US voter ID law first

The affordable housing bill had been passed by bipartisan support, a rare move in a deeply divided US Congress.

United States President Donald Trump has cancelled a planned signing of bipartisan affordable housing legislation in an effort to pressure his fellow Republicans to pass a long-stalled package of US national voting restrictions that has aggravated party fissures and shown the limits of his power.

“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,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, referring to a federal bill that requires voters to provide documentary proof of US citizenship and strict photo identification to vote in federal elections.

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Trump has said he will join US Senate Republicans at a closed-door lunch on Wednesday afternoon to lobby them to pass the voting measure called the SAVE America Act, his top legislative priority.

Some Republicans indicated it may be a largely symbolic gesture: the bill can become law anyway if the president has not signed within 10 days, and lawmakers believe they have enough votes to overcome a presidential veto.

The affordable housing bill was passed by the US House of Representatives on Tuesday in a 358-32 vote, after being passed by the Senate on Monday by a vote of 85-5. Passage of such major legislation in the deeply divided Congress has been rare.

The move comes as the high cost of living in the US, with the inflation rate rising significantly during Trump’s second term in office, is ranked as a top worry by voters in public opinion polls.

Among the main provisions of the bill are waiving or speeding up environmental reviews for home construction projects and placing a cap on the number of already constructed single-family homes that big Wall Street investors can own.

There is an estimated shortage of millions of affordable homes in the US, according to housing industry groups.

The combination of high mortgage rates, rising home prices and supply chain problems over the past several years has contributed to consumers’ difficulties.

According to a survey released on Tuesday, a majority of American consumers have said, for the first time since 2023, that they would prefer to buy a home rather than rent or move in with family members.

With less than five months until a November midterm election that threatens to end their majority, Senate Republicans have begun to resist Trump on several fronts: They forced him to abandon a $1.8bn “anti-weaponization” fund, and expressed outrage over his pick of an ally with no intelligence background as the top US intelligence official.

And on Tuesday, Republican Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul and Bill Cassidy joined Democrats to pass legislation to halt US military action against Iran.