President Donald Trump cancelled a planned June 24 signing ceremony for the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act — which prohibits financial institutions from acquiring more than 350 properties, includes a $200 million innovation fund for municipalities that increase housing stock and a 5-year pilot program of grants and forgivable loans to repair safety compromised structures — until Congress passes the SAVE America Act that would require voter identification and proof of citizenship to register to vote.
In a June 24 Truth Social post, President Trump wrote, “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.”
Instead, President Trump had a meeting with Senate Republicans to discuss his legislative agenda that he said was “a really great meeting.”
If the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act is not vetoed, and if it is not signed, and Congress remains in session, after ten days excluding Sundays, it would become law on July 4 anyway owing to Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution that states “If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.”
Otherwise, the bill passed by essentially veto-proof margins in both chambers — 85 to 5 in the Senate and 358 to 32 in the House, with more than 90 percent of those voting in favor — and so, the President’s leverage to threaten a veto, which he did not do, would appear negligible.
In effect, members were simply denied the pomp and circumstance of a presidential signing ceremony as the President attempts to deliver on one of his signature legislative goals of voter identification and proof of citizenship to register to vote.
In a similar vein, on June 15 in a Truth Social post, President Trump has threatened to veto the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Section 702 reauthorization unless the SAVE America Act is included: “I’m against FISA if it doesn’t come with The Save America Act (Full version!) firmly attached to it.”
There, the President’s veto threat might actually stick. In April 2024, FISA reauthorization neither passed the House nor the Senate with veto-proof margins, instead passing in the House 273 to 147 (65 percent in favor) and the Senate 60 to 34 (63.8 percent in favor). Granted, that’s fairly close, and so only a few votes would need to be moved in order to get above the two-thirds threshold to overcome a potential veto.
But it does make the veto threat plausible — assuming Congress really believed the Section 702 program was essential to national security.
The main provisions of the SAVE America Act themselves are largely very popular. A March 13 through March 16 Economist-YouGov poll found 59 percent of Americans believe proof of citizenship should be required to vote, including 91 percent of Republicans, 52 percent of independents and 35 percent of Democrats. Only 3 percent of Republicans and 31 percent of independents were opposed, but 53 percent of Democrats were opposed.
Why oppose proof of citizenship to register to vote except to allow non-citizens to vote — which is illegal?
And an August 2025 poll by Pew found 83 percent of Americans believe voter identification should be required in order to vote, including 95 percent of Republicans, 83 percent of independents and 71 percent of Democrats. Hardly anyone is opposed there.
So, if anything, the proof of citizenship is the more controversial provision — Republicans and independents support it, but Democrats oppose it — but even when stripped down to just a voter identification requirement provision, Senate Democrats are still opposed with all 47 Senate Democrats voting in opposition when it came up in March, even though 71 percent of their own constituents support the provision.
Otherwise, Senate Republicans appear to lack 50 votes to either end the legislative filibuster — overriding a parliamentarian’s ruling that cloture had not been invoked at the 60-vote threshold — or to even extend the legislative day to keep a talking filibuster going, limiting every Senator to a couple of floor speeches in a legislative day, potentially making it impossible to get the SAVE America Act to a final vote.
As for budget reconciliation, the Senate parliamentarian wouldn’t even let $1 billion for the Secret Service to enhance White House security into a budget bill, let alone put the SAVE America Act into such legislation, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has rejected deposing the parliamentarian.
Such is the state of the Senate, lacking the votes to pass popular provisions like the SAVE America Act’s voter identification and proof of citizenship to register to vote, but having the votes for $2 trillion unpopular spending bills, financial bailouts, mass surveillance programs and so forth.
And so, President Trump is looking for leverage by either denying lawmakers access to the Oval Office or to veto the FISA reauthorization. One thing he is not doing is giving up. Stay tuned.
Robert Romano is the Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government.
