WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans walked into a lunch with the president on Wednesday looking for ways to unify, but they left the closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill as fractured as ever about policy goals. 

President Donald Trump said after the huddle that he was “very proud of the party” but didn’t offer any concrete steps forward amid deep divisions on a nationwide voter identification law or other issues that don’t yet have enough GOP support to reach his desk. 

“For the most part we have a really well-unified party,” Trump said. “And I said it very strongly, we have the hottest country anywhere in the world.”

Republican senators said during hallway interviews after the meeting ended that it wasn’t entirely productive and didn’t create much, if any, goodwill. 

Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy somewhat jokingly said the meeting went “swimmingly” before detailing a confrontation he had with Trump over the lack of information on the Iran war. Senators have repeatedly asked for a classified briefing from administration officials, but haven’t yet received one. 

Cassidy, who lost his May primary after Trump endorsed an opponent, said the exchange began when Trump asked why four Republican senators voted with Democrats to approve a War Powers Resolution earlier this week. Along with Cassidy, they were Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine.

“I said, ‘Well, we’ve not been briefed on how it’s going, that the stated objectives don’t appear to be achieved, and it appears as if … it’s not going as well as we’re being told,’” Cassidy recalled. “At which point I think the president said something negative about me. I perceived it as attempting to bully me from asking a question that I think the American people need to know. 

“And I’m not going to be bullied when I feel like I’m asking a question the American people need to know. And so at that point it began to escalate. And at some point it de-escalated.”

Trump declined to directly answer a question before the meeting began about whether he believes the voter identification law he advocates, which doesn’t have the votes necessary to advance in the Senate, is more important than a broadly bipartisan housing bill. The housing package would have given Republicans a legislative victory on the campaign trail roughly four months before the midterm elections.

The president was scheduled to sign that housing measure just before he met with Senate Republicans, but he canceled to press for the election bill, called the SAVE America Act.  

The bill would overhaul how Americans register to vote and cast ballots in federal elections, such as requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and requiring a government-issued photo identification at polling locations. 

“Every election is important. We’re doing very well,” Trump said. 

“They want a lot of communists to come in,” he said, referring to Democrats. “I’m saying it a little bit differently but the people that they’re pushing are communists. And this country is not going to have communists.” 

Trump ‘mad as a murder hornet’ about Iran vote

Florida Sen. Rick Scott said he hoped the meeting would help Republicans build consensus, though he acknowledged it led to tension. 

“You’ve been around the president, he was pretty forceful about what he cares about,” Scott said, later adding his goal in organizing the meeting was “to try to bring people together.”

Scott said Senate Republicans didn’t talk with Trump about using the complex budget reconciliation process to establish grants for states that implement certain voter identification requirements. House Speaker Mike Johnson put the idea forward earlier in the day as one way to promote elements of the SAVE America Act. 

Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy said he appreciated the president’s “candor” during the meeting before saying Trump was “mad as a murder hornet about the war powers vote.”

“And I don’t blame him,” Kennedy said. “Put yourself in his shoes, he’s right in the middle of delicate negotiations and the Senate votes to get out of Iran. And it upset him.”

Kennedy said the president also pressed for the SAVE America Act, though he somewhat dismissed Johnson’s proposal to provide grants to states instead of enacting the entire bill.

“I don’t think that’s going to satisfy the president,” Kennedy said. 

‘Like a hospital board meeting,’ with yelling

West Virginia Sen. Jim Justice said both Trump and Cassidy “expressed their feelings and didn’t hold back, but at the same time, it ended up respectful.” 

“It was, I wouldn’t say super combative, but very passionate — very passionate,” he said. 

Justice noted that “very, very few questions” were asked at the lunch.

Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall described Trump and Cassidy’s exchange as “very much like a hospital board meeting when a bunch of doctors are yelling at each other. But at the end of the day, we’ll figure out a way to get along.” 

Trump, he said, was “very disappointed” by the four GOP senators voting this week to try to limit any additional military action against Iran. 

“They’re trying to negotiate that and they feel like that vote from Republicans chopped their legs out from under them,” Marshall said. “And they’re making such incredible progress on this deal. So it’s hard for them to negotiate it when there’s two messages coming out of Washington.”

Pressed on the confrontation between Cassidy and Trump, Sen. Tommy Tuberville said the two “just had some differences of opinion about Iran.” 

The Alabama Republican said “it was very cordial — it wasn’t over the top.”

Not many questions

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis acknowledged there was some contention in the meeting over the voter identification bill.

“I know there’s frustration over the SAVE America Act passage, but we simply don’t have the votes because we’re not gonna nuke the filibuster, so it’s more a matter of how do we move forward,” he said. “Not all of the meeting was contentious, but there’s a general consensus that we on Capitol Hill have to start getting in lockstep.” 

When it comes to the bipartisan housing bill, Tillis said it being signed into law is “up to the president, we’ve done our work.”

South Dakota’s Mike Rounds declined to give details about the meeting but said that Republicans “had a good talking to,” and that senators did not ask the president many questions. 

Rounds said while Trump pushed for the SAVE America Act, there was little acknowledgment that the Senate lacks the votes to pass the bill. 

Texas Sen. John Cornyn said there “wasn’t really a lot of opportunity” to ask questions during the meeting. He said Trump spoke for one hour and 15 minutes. 

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said the president repeated some of the comments he posted on social media earlier in the day when he said he would refuse to sign the housing affordability package until Congress approves the election bill. 

“He’s here to talk about whatever it is he wants to talk about,” Hawley said. “And without speaking for him, I think it’s safe to say that what he posted this morning is what he talked about.”

President Donald Trump derailed a housing overhaul that he was set to sign into law Wednesday, canceling a signing ceremony for the broadly popular bipartisan bill until Congress passes an election security measure.

Trump had been scheduled to sign the bill, which passed the Senate Monday and House Tuesday with wide margins, during a Capitol ceremony.

But in a pair of social media posts prior to the event, he derided the overhaul aimed at lowering housing costs as “minor” before refusing to sign it entirely.

“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,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.

The controversial SAVE America Act, a top priority for Trump, addresses the extremely rare phenomenon of noncitizen voting. Republican senators have told Trump there are not enough votes in the chamber for it to pass.

The housing bill’s Senate sponsors, Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott and ranking Democrat Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, sought to lower the costs of housing construction by removing regulatory barriers, expanding the uses of federal housing grants and banning institutional investors from buying single-family homes.

Scott, a South Carolina Republican, lauded the bill Tuesday as not only bipartisan, but nonpartisan, addressing universal needs.

Republican leaders framed the measure as addressing affordability, which is expected to be a key issue in November’s midterm elections amid stubborn inflation.

The measure, which combined elements of proposals in each chamber, appeared on a fast track to becoming law after the Senate approved it 85-5 Monday and the House voted 358-32 Tuesday. The White House had said Trump supported the bill.

The House opponents were virtually all from a group of conservatives, led by Florida’s Anna Paulina Luna, who said she would oppose all legislation from the Senate, and even some House rules resolutions, until the Senate passed Trump’s elections security measure.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said during a Wednesday morning press conference that he spoke with the president earlier in the day and that he is going to delay signing the housing bill until Congress approves a grant program for elections through the complex budget reconciliation process. That’s the same procedure the GOP used to enact its “big, beautiful” law and $70 billion for immigration enforcement.

“You have to put it on a reconciliation bill,” he said. “We believe that if you create a grant program that ties it to reconciling the budget and you allow blue states, if they come to their senses and they want to avail themselves of election integrity proposals and ideas and policies, they can draw down from a federal fund and use those funds. We’re willing to invest heavily in that.”

Johnson said he told Trump that Republicans in Congress can enact that policy if they “stand together.”

“As you know he has a window of time before he has to sign a bill and he’s going to use a bit more of that window of time,” Johnson said. “And we’re going to go through this together.”

Johnson said he expects Trump to sign the housing bill within the 10-day window.

The U.S. House cleared a bipartisan housing policy overhaul Tuesday, aiming to lower the cost of homeownership as members of both parties attempt to focus on affordability issues ahead of November’s midterm elections.

The House passed the bill, 358-32, sending it to President Donald Trump’s desk a day after the Senate’s 85-5 vote. The White House has said the administration supports the measure and Trump’s aides would advise he sign it.

The bill would reduce some regulatory hurdles, including environmental reviews, to home construction and expand the possible uses of federal housing funds. It includes a high-profile provision to ban private equity firms from buying single-family homes.

The bill would allow money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant program to be used for construction of new affordable housing. It would also tie the amount some cities and states receive from the $3.3 billion grant program to their rates of affordable housing construction.

Increasing worries over cost of living

The action from Congress this week reflects a bipartisan focus on affordability, as both parties have sought to address voters’ increasing concerns with the cost of living that has been consistently rising since the start of the decade.

Margaret Spellings, the president and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center, said at a housing policy conference hosted by the Washington, D.C., think tank that the rising cost of housing was due to a lack of supply.

“During the past two decades, the U.S. has simply not built enough housing to meet demand,” she said. “This supply-demand imbalance has led to soaring prices and rents in communities across the nation, with millions of households struggling to make their payments and unable to achieve the American dream of home ownership.”

She added that the issue had animated policymakers at the national, state and local levels.

“Housing is now a top-tier issue here in Washington and in state capitols and city halls all across our country,” she said.

Broad consensus

The measure includes provisions from earlier proposals in both chambers, reflecting a consensus not only between the two major parties but between the two chambers of Congress that often cannot agree on how to approach even broadly supported legislation.

Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican who chairs the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, lauded the measure’s broad appeal in a pre-recorded message to the BPC conference.

The bill was nonpartisan, reflecting “advocacy on behalf of common sense,” he said.

“But it does take a bipartisan coalition who puts America first,” he said. “Your work encouraging all of us to put the country first, to put first-time homebuyers first, has resulted in legislation passed through the Senate yet again, and this time is on a path straight to the president’s desk.”

The committee’s ranking Democrat, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, called it a “BIG WIN to build more housing” in a post to social media Tuesday.

“I’ve worked on this bill for over a year,” she wrote. “It’s still possible to find bipartisan, common ground on legislation that actually helps the American people.”

Conservatives revolt 

Despite the bill’s broad appeal, a bloc of House conservatives frustrated with the Senate’s inability to pass a Trump-supported bill to require photo ID at polling places and other measures they say are important to secure elections, mounted a last-minute objection to the housing bill.

Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna was the most vocal member of the opposition Tuesday, pledging to vote against other bills and House rules resolutions until the Senate passed the elections security measure, titled the SAVE America Act, whose proponents have noted would restrict noncitizen voting, which is already illegal and extremely rare.

“I will be voting no and oppose other bills AND rules until we fight for SAVE America Act,” Luna wrote on social media Tuesday afternoon, well after the bill had been scheduled for a floor vote. “That means if House GOP leadership chooses today to move the SENATE HOUSING BILL under suspension (getting rid of our house rules) I will vote to shut the floor down. I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE.”