President Donald Trump declared Friday morning that he won't sign the sweeping bipartisan housing bill awaiting action on his desk in protest of the Senate's failure to pass his signature elections legislation. Unless the president issues an outright veto by midnight, however, the housing package will become law Saturday without his signature.
In a Friday morning Truth Social post, Trump said he was withholding his signature "in PROTEST" over the Senate's inability to pass the SAVE America Act, a comprehensive elections overhaul that would require photo identification to vote and proof of citizenship to register, and would bar most mail-in balloting, with exceptions for military service, disability, illness and travel.
The president asserted that the elections bill is "polling at 97% with the Republican Party" - a figure he offered without citing a source - and called its failure "a serious threat to any politician who votes against it." He renewed his demand that Senate Republicans "TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER," warning that Democrats would abolish the 60-vote rule "in their very first hour" back in power. Rendering "Democrats" throughout with a derisive misspelling, Trump added that the "title of DUMB" would revert to Republicans if the party allowed the stalemate to stand.
A Deadline, Not A Veto
This is of course performative unless Trump actually vetoes it. Under the Constitution, a bill becomes law automatically if the president neither signs nor vetoes it within 10 days, excluding Sundays, while Congress is in session. That clock on the housing measure - the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act - runs out at the end of Friday.
Because Congress has remained formally in session through the window, the "pocket veto" that would let the bill die quietly is widely viewed as unavailable. That leaves Trump two choices: veto the legislation outright, or let it lapse into law. His post on Friday, notably, promised only not to sign it.
A veto would face long odds. The Senate approved the package 85-5 on June 22, and the House passed it 358-32 - margins far beyond the two-thirds needed in each chamber to override. Congressional observers caution, though, that override votes can scramble such numbers, as some members retreat rather than be seen defying the president. Lawmakers overrode a Trump veto of a defense bill once before, in the final weeks of his first term.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., a close Trump ally, has already conceded the likely endgame. "If he doesn't, it's still law," Johnson said last week of the president's refusal to sign.
The Housing Bill
The bipartisan measure marks the most comprehensive federal housing legislation in decades. It aims to expand supply and lower costs by cutting regulatory barriers to construction, streamlining reviews, encouraging local zoning reform and restricting large institutional investors from buying up single-family homes, alongside pilot programs to expand access to smaller mortgages.
Republicans had planned to campaign on the law this fall. With the average 30-year fixed mortgage hovering near 6.5 percent, affordability consistently ranks as voters' top concern heading into November's midterm elections - and Trump's approval on housing has slipped since he began blocking the bill.
Trump upended the bill's rollout on June 24, canceling a Capitol signing ceremony roughly an hour before it was to begin - with the stage, desk and presidential seal already set in Statuary Hall - and declaring on social media that he would not sign until Congress passed the SAVE America Act, which he labeled "a National Emergency." He has since dismissed the housing package as being "of minor importance" and a "yawn" next to the elections bill.
The tactic is familiar: earlier this year, the president derailed a bipartisan deal on surveillance authorities to press the same demand.
The SAVE America Act has passed the House but failed five times on the Senate floor, where Democrats are unified against it and Republicans' 53 seats fall short of the 60 needed to break a filibuster. Four Republicans - Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky - have twice voted no.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-SD, has flatly refused to gut the filibuster, telling Fox News that Republicans are "bound by arithmetic." Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, the bill's most vocal Senate champion, has countered that the party is only "10 votes shy of cloture" and should force Democrats into a grinding floor fight. Roughly two dozen House conservatives, meanwhile, have vowed to block other legislation until the voting bill moves - a rebellion that stalled the annual defense bill and sent the House home early for its July Fourth recess.
Friday's post also appears to walk back a compromise Trump embraced only days ago. On Tuesday, he endorsed House GOP leaders' plan to pass pieces of the SAVE Act through the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process - a package Johnson has dubbed "reconciliation 3.0." The president's return to demanding the filibuster's termination suggests that détente may already be fraying.
And Of Course, Outrage Ensues
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, who helped steer the housing bill through the Senate, urged Trump in a video posted to X to "sign the damn bill." Sen. Mark Kelly, D-AZ, accused the president of holding the legislation "hostage."
Republican patience is thinning in public, too. Tillis, who is retiring, reduced his objection to a sentence: "It's quite simple: It's a math problem." Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas quipped that any colleague not at least a little frustrated by now should question their own sanity. Thune, asked about the canceled signing last month, would say only that the decision was the president's call to make.
Trump has shown no sign of relenting. He promoted the SAVE Act from the National Mall during his July Fourth address, and in a weekend post warned that without it, "I don't want to be the last Republican President!"