President Donald Trump abruptly cancelled the signing of a bipartisan housing bill Wednesday, insisting that he would not make it law without his voter ID legislation, the SAVE America Act. But not everyone on Capitol Hill got the memo that the housing reform effort was a dud.
Arkansas Representative French Hill was already in a news conference when Trump axed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, unknowingly celebrating a dead proposal that Republicans had hoped would bolster their re-election efforts ahead of November.
Standing beside House Speaker Mike Johnson, Hill said it had been his “top goal” to lower the cost of housing.
“This bill does that, so I’m proud of the work that both chambers have struggled through,” Hill said Wednesday morning. “But it’s successful today, and I’m proud of the work of the House and Senate to get people to ‘yes’.”
LMAO -- GOP Rep. French Hill is literally right now during a news conference touting the bipartisan housing bill and the president's support for it, unaware that Trump moments ago angrily announced he won't sign it pic.twitter.com/NqizOMVDyR
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 24, 2026
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act was drafted to address the American housing crisis, which has suffered from bottlenecked supply, stalled family growth, and surged home and rental prices across the country. The bill would have funnelled resources towards increasing housing supply, streamlined environmental reviews, and forced the Department of Housing and Urban Development to address red-tape issues related to zoning and land-use that have historically posed barriers to housing development.
“This is a very rare occurrence to have successive bipartisan votes across both chambers on versions of this bill, and it finally seems to be reaching the finish line,” Francis Torres, housing and infrastructure director at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told TIME earlier this week. “This bill is the most serious that Congress has gotten about housing reforms in a generation.”
The House passed the bill by a vote of 358-32 on Tuesday. The day before, the Senate had passed it by a measure of 85-5. It only needed the president’s signature to become law—but that apparently won’t happen unless Congress caves to his unpopular voter ID demands.
The Save America Act sparked nationwide controversy earlier this year, particularly over a detail in the bill that would have made it more difficult for married women to vote. The backlash on Capitol Hill was grave, so much so that it gummed up efforts to fund Homeland Security for several months. Republicans eventually had to bail on the package to end the congressional gridlock.
The Save America Act suggests numerous amendments to the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, including line items that would abolish mail-in voting, require voters to bring proof of citizenship and proof of residency to register to vote, require voter ID, and mandate voter roll purges every 30 days, an enormous bureaucratic task that would place undue burdens on local election officials. The measure would also add a federal law to prevent men from competing in women’s sports, and a ban on “transgender mutilation surgery.”