About an hour before he was due at the Capitol to sign it, President Trump canceled the June 24, 2026 signing of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bipartisan measure that passed both chambers with broad support and was described as the largest housing-affordability bill in a generation. The bill aims to expand housing supply, improve affordability, and cap how many single-family homes private-equity firms can buy.
Trump conditioned the signing on Congress first passing the SAVE Act, a measure that would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and that the Senate lacks the votes to pass. On Truth Social: “Today's Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency.” It was the second time in a week he blocked a Republican congressional priority to force action on the voting bill.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said the move showed “a complete indifference to the cost squeeze on American families.” Speaker Mike Johnson said he expected Trump would still sign within the 10-day window before the bill becomes law automatically. Holding a popular, bipartisan housing law hostage to a voter-restriction bill ties a kitchen-table economic priority to the administration's midterm election push. The dismissiveness was not new: Punchbowl News reported in March 2026 that Trump had told Speaker Mike Johnson “no one gives a [bleep] about housing,” a remark Johnson relayed to GOP leadership while arguing the SAVE Act should take priority (see The Administration Tied Homeland Security Grants to States Adopting Its Election Changes, and a Judge Threw Out the Conditions).
He never signed it. On July 10, 2026, Trump posted that he would not: “I will not sign the Housing Bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House, in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT.” He stopped short of a veto. Under the Constitution, a bill the president neither signs nor returns within ten days becomes law regardless, so the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act took effect without his signature.
A veto would have been futile anyway. The bill had cleared the Senate 85 to 5 and the House 358 to 32, comfortably past override strength. The protest cost the housing law nothing and won the SAVE Act nothing.