Since Donald Trump’s second term as president began, the grand total of major bipartisan legislative breakthroughs has been zero. That is, until this week, when the Republican-led House easily passed a landmark housing bill on a 358-32 vote. The move followed a similarly lopsided 85-5 vote in the GOP-led Senate, sending the bill to the White House to become law.

The legislation, several months in the making, was poised to be the single greatest accomplishment of the current Congress. It’s not perfect, and it was nearly derailed several times by Republican infighting, but as Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, one of the principal co-authors of the bill, explained via social media, “I don’t say this often these days, but Congress actually passed something good. My bipartisan housing bill to build more housing, lower costs, and stop private equity’s housing grab is becoming law.”

White House officials told news organizations that the president would sign the bill into law on Wednesday afternoon, and I half-expected Trump to start trying to take credit for the breakthrough, despite the fact that he consistently told lawmakers for months not to bother working on the issue.

But that’s not what he did.

Just a few hours before the scheduled signing ceremony, Trump published an item to his social media platform downplaying the importance of the bill, which seemed like an odd thing to do: Instead of taking the win and giving his party a much-needed pre-midterm boost, the president was stepping on the only bipartisan success story of his term.

A half-hour later, he went considerably further, publishing this statement online:

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. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT

In other words, Trump was prepared to sign this important and worthwhile legislation into law, but at least for now, he’s changed his mind, instead directing Congress to pass an unrelated bill that would make it harder to vote and impose new restrictions on transgender Americans.

In an unfortunate twist, GOP members of Congress were celebrating their achievement with Capitol Hill press conferences on Wednesday morning, patting themselves on the back for a job well done, apparently unaware of the fact that their own party’s president had pulled the rug out from beneath them.

The developments come roughly four months after Trump vowed not to sign any major bills into law unless Congress first delivered his anti-voting, anti-trans bill to his desk.

The president’s relationship with congressional Republicans was already an intensifying mess. With a new and unexpected tantrum, it just got worse.

For his part, House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that he spoke to White House officials “about an hour” before the president’s announcement and made the case that the housing bill is worthwhile. Evidently, Trump ignored the Louisiana Republican’s wishes.

Despite the obvious fact that Trump blindsided his ostensible congressional allies, Johnson added that he “wouldn’t call it a blindside.”

Will Trump change his mind again? Will GOP leaders convince him that he’s hurting them for no reason? Will the president ever understand that the votes simply aren’t there to pass his poorly named SAVE America Act? Watch this space.

UPDATE (June 14, 2026, 11:34 p.m. ET): This piece has been added to include the quote from the House speaker.

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