Trump Withholds Signature From Largest Housing Bill In Decades In Protest That Congress Would Not First Make It Harder To Vote

WASHINGTON. Declining to attach his name to the most significant housing legislation in three decades, President Trump on Friday allowed the 21st Century Road to Housing Act to become law without his signature, resolving a long-standing concern that a wildly popular bipartisan bill might reach the American people without first being traded for a measure making it harder to vote.

The bill, which passed both chambers of Congress in June with broad bipartisan support and which the White House press secretary had called one of the most significant pieces of housing legislation in American history, had sat unsigned since June 24, when the President canceled a planned signing ceremony. In its place, he issued a single condition: he would put his name to the housing law only after the Senate passed the SAVE America Act, a separate bill requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register and photo identification to cast a ballot. That bill remains stalled in the Senate, short of the 60 votes required to advance.

"To me, compared to the SAVE America Act, just about everything is a big yawn," the President told reporters in June, dismissing as of minor importance a bill addressing a housing market in which a household earning $75,000 a year can now afford fewer than a quarter of the listings available. On the morning the ten-day clock was set to expire, he reaffirmed the position on Truth Social, announcing that he would not sign the housing bill "in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT."

Under a constitutional provision that permits a bill to become law without a president's signature if he neither signs nor vetoes it within ten days, the legislation took effect automatically at the stroke of midnight. Aides confirmed that the President had successfully avoided endorsing a law expanding the housing supply while preserving the ability to campaign against it, should it prove popular, and to disown it, should it prove otherwise.

The law itself moves forward largely intact, including a cap Trump had promoted on corporate purchases of single-family homes, though the ceiling applies only to firms already holding 350 houses or more, a threshold that leaves the market's largest investors substantial room to keep buying. House Republicans separately removed a provision that would have required certain rental developers to sell their properties after seven years.

At press time, the President was reported to be reviewing which additional pieces of broadly popular legislation might be withheld from Americans until the Senate agreed to reduce the number of them permitted to vote.