President Donald Trump unexpectedly cancelled his own signing ceremony for the overwhelmingly bipartisan housing bill Wednesday morning due to his obsession with disenfranchising voters ahead of the midterms.
In a Truth Social post Wednesday morning Trump declared he would not be signing the bill into law until Congress passes “the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency.” He’s spoken in dire terms about the SAVE America Act before, but the “National Emergency” line set off alarm bells among voting rights advocates as Trump continues to threaten to take over elections.
Trump’s Truth Social announcement came just hours before the ceremony was scheduled to take place and in the middle of House Republican leadership’s weekly press conference — ironically while leadership was touting the passage of the housing bill in both chambers.
When asked about the unexpected cancellation of the bill signing, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, told reporters: “That’d be an example of what I think we shouldn’t be doing.”
“We thought that the president was behind it, and apparently maybe not, or maybe he’s not really speaking on the bill but just voicing his frustration about the SAVE Act,” Tillis continued as he made his way to the Senate floor. “But I don’t know why you’re holding a bill that’s ready for signature hostage over a bill that will never pass in this Congress. Makes no sense to me.”
The House-passed SAVE America Act — a far-right voter suppression bill that would require people to provide proof of citizenship and photo ID to be able to vote — is subject to the Senate filibuster and simply does not have the votes to pass in the upper chamber.
Yet, Trump and his MAGA allies have been relentlessly pushing for the bill’s passage, while torpedoing their own priorities in the meantime. The push from Trump and proponents of the bill that would disenfranchise millions of voters has involved talk of nuking the filibuster and holding the Senate floor hostage for an unforeseeable amount of time to deploy the “talking filibuster.”
Trump has made similar threats over the past couple of months, the most recent being his threat to not sign the a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Section 702 extension unless the SAVE America Act is attached to it. That led to his own Director of National Intelligence pick Jay Clayton’s confirmation hearing being cancelled in a similarly chaotic — and unproductive for Republicans — fashion last week.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) — whose own Senate career-ending saga involved SAVE Act drama — seemingly agreed with Tillis’ observation, telling reporters that he does not understand why some of his colleagues are in Trump’s ear telling him that it’s possible to pass the SAVE Act.
“I just don’t understand what they’re doing, what the point is,” Cornyn told reporters Wednesday.
Meanwhile other Republicans largely dismissed Trump’s announcement, downplaying the consequences it may have on the overwhelmingly bipartisan housing bill becoming law.
“The bill signing is canceled, and that’s one less meeting I have to go to that could have been an email,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), another member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, told reporters in the Senate basement.
When asked about the repercussions of the bill possibly not being signed into law, Kennedy said he would be “sad.”
“You would see a grown man cry,” Kennedy added. “We worked really hard on it. We’ve got a bipartisan bill. But look, the president doesn’t have to sign it. The president can veto it. I’ve read the Constitution once or twice — I’m rather fond of it. And he has the right to do what he’s doing.”
Kennedy continued: “I think the president really wants the SAVE Act. And I agree with him … I’ve said repeatedly that however you want to do it, I’m there. I tried to pass it during vote-a-rama, during reconciliation.”
Under the Constitution, a bill that passes both chambers of Congress and is presented to the president becomes law if he doesn’t sign or veto it within 10 days.
“He didn’t say he was going to veto it. He just said he said the bill signing was canceled,” Kennedy said, adding that from this one can “conclude that the president really really really wants the SAVE Act … I think eventually the bill will become law, but I could be wrong.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) also told reporters that he thinks the bill will eventually become law.
“He has a window of time before he has to sign a bill, and he’s going to use a little bit more of that window of time,” Johnson said. “He’ll do it within that 10-day window.”
Bravely
Excellent snark.
No one else knows either, including the perpetrator.
Trump sees bipartisan outcomes as wrong and to be avoided. Everthing is zero-sum and any win for the enemy (Democrats) is a loss for him even if the rest of ther Republcans see as a win.
Trump’s tactics bear a striking resemblance to terrorism… One of his favorite tactics is to instill fear in others.
Oh, boo fucking hoo. You who gave Trump a veto while not in office on the bipartisan immigration bill last year can cry real tears from leaping flames of hell before I give a flip over your fleeting faux consternation here.