Empty chairs as Trump cancels event, holds housing bill hostage over voter ID

Washington: In his State of the Union address earlier this year, Donald Trump promised a crackdown on Wall Street investors snapping up thousands of single-family homes. “We want homes for people, not for corporations,” the president said to applause.

Congress has now done just that. On Tuesday (US time), it passed a bipartisan housing affordability bill widely described as the biggest such bill in decades. It limits the number of homes institutional investors can buy, and encourages state and local governments to relax zoning restrictions, among other measures.

The bill was a rare example of successful co-operation in Congress, and passed both chambers comfortably. Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt called it “one of the most significant pieces of housing affordability legislation in American history”. Another senior aide, James Blair, said it made good on one of the president’s signature commitments.

But Trump is now refusing to sign the bill into law. On Wednesday, 90 minutes before he was due to appear on Capitol Hill for a televised signing ceremony, he cancelled the event. Republican leaders were holding a news conference touting the bill when Trump announced the decision on social media.

Why? Trump wants to hold the housing bill hostage until Senate Republicans pass another piece of legislation, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. That bill – along with the White House ballroom and Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool – is now his clear domestic priority.

The SAVE Act (or Save America Act, as Trump calls it) would require all voters in federal elections to present documentary proof of American citizenship, in-person, when registering to vote, and to show photo ID at the polling booth. Currently, voter ID requirements differ from state to state.

Those measures are broadly popular – a Politico poll in May found 52 per cent of Americans were in favour of requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, including 42 per cent of Kamala Harris voters.

Critics, however, say the changes are unnecessary and would disenfranchise Americans who don’t have easy access to citizenship documents, or who use online and mail registration methods rather than face-to-face.

“There is no evidence that attempts at voting by noncitizens have ever been significant enough to impact any election’s outcome,” says the Bipartisan Policy Centre, a Washington-based think tank. “In fact, there is ample evidence to indicate that registration and voting by noncitizens is few and far between.”

Trump has been pressuring Senate Republicans to pass the bill for months, with November’s midterm elections edging closer by the day.

He has recently dialled up his false claims about fraud in American elections, including a claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him, and fresh claims about voter fraud in California.

Earlier this month, he walked out of a television interview with NBC’s Meet the Press after being pressed for evidence on his sensational assertion that American elections were rigged “like a Third World country”.

That incident was extraordinary even by Trump’s standards; he was visibly agitated when challenged on one of the central tenets of his presidency – that he is the victim of a rigged game.

As the Iran war recedes and the midterms approach, Trump’s interests are clearly shifting towards matters of legacy. His false claim that the 2020 election was rigged has long motivated a desire for vengeance, while his drive to remake the White House and Washington DC has been clear since the start of his second term.

But that is an unlikely strategy for electoral success in November, when the economy will, as ever, be central. Polls indicate most Americans disapprove of Trump’s performance on the economy, and his overall approval ratings are at or near record lows.

On those numbers, Republicans stand to lose their slim majority in the House of Representatives, and may be vulnerable in the Senate, though that is less likely.

Trump’s decision to cancel the signing and hold the housing bill hostage underlines his determination to force election laws through Congress before November’s poll. But it immediately sparked foreseeable criticism from Democrats that he does not care about the cost-of-living.

Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, a co-sponsor of the housing bill, told CNBC television Trump had shown “complete indifference” to the squeeze facing Americans.

“He could be over here trying to claim a victory lap, and instead he’s saying ‘no, no’, he doesn’t anything to do with it,” she said. “It’s because he really doesn’t care about American families.”

Asked on Wednesday whether voter ID laws were more important to him than fixing the housing crisis, Trump said all elections were important and the Democrats wanted to elect communists. “This country is not going to have communists,” he said.

Trump has also threatened not to sign key national security legislation – a law renewing US powers to spy on foreigners abroad without a warrant – unless the SAVE Act is attached.

The four holdout Republican senators are former party leader Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and the retiring North Carolina senator Thom Tillis.

Collins and Murkowski were also among four Republican senators who voted on Tuesday for a resolution that instructs Trump not to resume the war against Iran without congressional approval. The measure was largely symbolic, but Trump still lashed out, accusing the defectors of aiding and abetting America’s enemy.

There are now more Republicans in Congress willing to defy the president. Every incumbent he thwarted in a preselection battle – and there are several – is now free to cross him without worrying about his wrath.

The House of Representatives passed the SAVE Act in February. Speaker Mike Johnson, who was holding a news conference when the president cancelled Wednesday’s bill signing, defended Trump’s position.

“The president believes in election integrity,” he said. “That is the top priority because if you don’t have safe elections … you don’t have anything.”

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