US House passes affordable housing bill, sending it to Trump’s desk

WASHINGTON - The U.S. House of Representatives passed bipartisan legislation on Tuesday that aims to speed the construction and availability of more affordable housing, sending it to President Donald Trump to be signed into law.

The measure passed the Senate on Monday by a vote of 85-5.

“America is facing a housing supply shortage that’s been years in the making,” House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill of Arkansas, a Republican, said during House debate on the bill.

A majority of American consumers have said, for the first time since 2023, that they would prefer to buy a home rather than rent or move in with family members, according to a survey released on Tuesday.

Hill said the measure would “cut unnecessary barriers to new home construction” and modernize what he said were outdated banking regulations, to facilitate more home loans to lower-income people.

The House voted 358-32 to pass the bill.

Passage of such major legislation in the deeply divided Congress has been rare. Democratic Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut called the bill “a remarkable thing.”

There is an estimated shortage of millions of affordable homes in the United States, according to housing industry groups.

The combination of high mortgage rates, rising home prices and supply chain problems over the past several years has contributed to consumers’ difficulties.

The bill, which has been written and rewritten several times by House and Senate negotiators over the past year, gives Republicans and Democrats an accomplishment to tout on the campaign trail in the run-up to November congressional elections.

The high cost of living in the U.S., with the inflation rate rising significantly during Trump’s second term in office, is ranked as a top worry by voters in public opinion polls.

Among other main provisions of the bill are waiving or speeding up environmental reviews for home construction projects and placing a cap on the number of already constructed single-family homes that big Wall Street investors can own.

In other congressional news:

▪ Trump plans to spend a Wednesday excursion to the U.S. Capitol demanding divisive voter identification legislation. Frustrated Republican senators have other ideas.

Over lunch in a wood-paneled room on the Capitol’s second floor, several GOP senators plan to try to impress on Trump that his targeting of fellow Republicans, controversial diversions and refusal to focus on voters’ economic concerns threaten the party’s control of Congress.

“We’re not on the same page now, and I think that’s dangerous,” Texas Republican John Cornyn, whose long Senate career Trump effectively ended last month when he endorsed Cornyn’s GOP rival, said Tuesday.

The Wednesday lunch, Trump’s first trip to the Capitol in months, will pit two GOP factions — hard-liners firmly aligned with Trump and more traditional Republicans concerned about the president’s combative tactics — against each other in a high-stakes clash less than five months before the midterm elections.

The very invitation for the lunch underscores the simmering tensions within the party. Florida Sen. Rick Scott, a Republican hard-liner, reached out to Trump directly and only later told Majority Leader John Thune about it, a breach in Senate protocol.

Scott and Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee have urged Thune to focus on passing the president’s “Save America” bill, which would require voters to have photo IDs and proof of citizenship, among other provisions.

“My goal is to bring people together to get something done,” Scott told reporters on Tuesday. Trump, he added, is “the best chance we have of getting something accomplished.”

Others, however, see the voter ID legislation as a time-intensive endeavor popular mostly with Trump’s hard-core base. It risks turning off independent voters and tying up potentially months of floor time on something that can’t get the 60 votes required for Senate passage due to the chamber’s filibuster rule.

“It’s unproductive and has no chance of getting passed,” retiring Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina told reporters. “Generally speaking, I try to stay away from those endeavors.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska invoked her home state’s pastime of dog-sled racing to warn against the party working at cross-purposes heading into an election.

“You ever been on a dog team?” Murkowski said. “You can have as many as 14 dogs, but if everybody’s not pulling together, sled goes crazy.”

Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota said he expects Trump will lobby the Senate on the bill during Wednesday’s lunch, “but we can count, and arithmetic really does matter in the Senate.”

Indeed, Trump has publicly urged the Senate to do away with the filibuster entirely, a move Thune and other leaders oppose.

“Anybody who doesn’t want to Terminate the Filibuster is a FOOL, a very stupid one, at that!” Trump posted on social media last week.

An April poll by Politico found that only 37% of Americans said they support the SAVE America bill when asked about it by name, while 21% opposed it and 42% were undecided or unsure.

Several senators stressed that they would rather address affordability, the biggest issue for voters ahead of the midterms. That includes touting Trump’s tax cuts, as well as new efforts to address rising prices like the bipartisan housing package that passed the chamber on Monday.

Several, including Thune, dismissed Lee’s assertion that Republicans should tie up the floor until Democrats make an error that essentially lifts the 60-vote requirement.

“It’s never worked before,” Thune said. “Sometimes when something hasn’t been done in 100 years, there’s a reason for that.”

▪ Top Democratic appropriators are calling on the Government Accountability Office to probe the Trump administration’s release of nearly $400 million of taxpayer funds for a White House East Wing modernization project that includes a ballroom.

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, who is the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, and Sen. Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, requested an investigation in a letter to acting Comptroller General Orice Williams Brown.

They pointed to the recent apportionments of nearly $400 million in taxpayer funding to two Secret Service accounts earlier this month. The bulk of the funds went toward the agency’s procurement, construction and improvements account, while about $11 million was apportioned to a Secret Service operations and support account for the purpose of “White House Security Measures,” according to the Protect Democracy Project’s database, OpenOMB.org, which tracks apportionments made by the Office of Management and Budget.

The funding was then directed to the “White House Repair and Restoration” account belonging to the Executive Office of the President, which controls the East Wing modernization project, the administration confirmed.

The funds were initially drawn from $1.17 billion allotted to the Secret Service as part of the 2025 reconciliation law.

Democrats called for the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, to provide “a legal decision on whether the administration’s use of these funds violates federal law,” noting that the reconciliation law says the money “may only be used for” measures such as personnel, training facilities, programming, technology, and performance, retention and signing bonuses for agents.

“The Trump Administration has confirmed to our staff and the press that it plans to tap Secret Service funding to support the ballroom, but there is no funding available for that purpose,” Democrats wrote. Trump had said the ballroom would cost $400 million and be fully paid for by private donations.

The administration has said the public funds would not be used for the White House’s ballroom construction project and that the Secret Service intends to put the cash toward security upgrades.

But Democrats say the recent disbursements raise “serious legal concerns,” while arguing that the funding could violate the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits agencies from spending funds except as prescribed by Congress.

▪ With Bill Pulte just days into his job as acting director of national intelligence, senators on both sides of the aisle are already expressing concern about his performance.

Pulte began on Friday, after weeks of criticism over his appointment. On Monday, he reportedly began firing intelligence officials and staff at the DNI en masse, causing issues with some lawmakers who say it’s not appropriate for an acting official, not confirmed by the Senate for that particular role, to do so.

Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, introduced legislation Tuesday that would lay out the hierarchy of the agency and bar presidents from installing acting directors.

The bill would require the principal deputy DNI — a Senate-confirmed position — to step in as acting head in future cases of vacancy.

“If there is an intelligence failure, a missed threat, or a national security crisis on Bill Pulte’s watch, Americans will pay the price, and President Trump will be to blame,” the Virginia Democrat said in a news release. “He made the deliberate choice to pass over qualified national security professionals and put an unqualified loyalist in charge.”

Warner and Himes, of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, wrote to Pulte on Monday “to express our expectation that you will not take actions while temporarily serving as the Acting Director of National Intelligence that are more appropriately left to a Senate-confirmed Director.”

Pulte has been the center of controversy on Capitol Hill since Trump earlier this month tapped him to replace the now-former DNI Tulsi Gabbard. Democrats have raised concerns about his lack of intelligence experience as well as his past referrals of some of Trump’s perceived foes to the Department of Justice for mortgage fraud allegations in his role as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“Given your lack of experience within the Intelligence Community, it is difficult to imagine that in such a short amount of time you have already developed fully informed views as to how to shrink ODNI without incurring risks to national security,” Warner and Himes wrote. “Making significant structural changes to ODNI, to include a reduction in force, is not an appropriate course of action for anyone in an acting capacity, let alone without consultation with Congress, and you should refrain from doing so.”

Pulte’s appointment was controversial enough to spur Democrats to walk away earlier this month from a bipartisan deal to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, an authority that Pulte would oversee in his role.

After a vote in the House fell short, that authority expired June 12. The next week, Trump directed Jay Clayton, his permanent pick to be DNI director, not to appear for his confirmation hearing, which had been scheduled for June 17. A timeline for his confirmation remains unclear.

Senate Intelligence Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., largely defended the firings on Tuesday. “ODNI has employees mostly from other intelligence agencies,” he said. “I think, in most cases, they would be better off doing real intelligence work at those agencies. That’s returning intelligence officers to their agencies.”

“The ODNI is too big and too bloated,” Cotton said.

But some Republicans are wary of Pulte’s actions during his first few days on the job.

North Carolina’s Tillis agreed Tuesday that if Pulte does proper analysis and “only eliminates the people whose jobs can either be automated or never should have been there, good.”

“But my guess is based on his past experience, it’s going to be another hot steaming pile of DOGE shit,” Tillis continued, referring to the Department of Government Efficiency.

“I think he’s an incompetent sycophant and not the right person to lead DNI and you’re undermining what the confirmed administrator should be doing,” said Tillis, who is retiring at the end of his term.

Clayton, Tillis said, is “going to inherit what I believe is going to be a mess left behind by Pulte.”

▪ UPI.com reported that U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he has subpoenaed Dr. Anthony Fauci after the former infectious diseases official backed out on an agreement to testify on the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Hill reported that this is the first subpoena issued by Paul as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

“Last week, Anthony Fauci notified us that he will not voluntarily testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, even though he had previously agreed to do so,” Paul wrote in a post on X on Tuesday. “Therefore, today we have issued a subpoena for him to publicly testify.”

The post on X included a photo of Rand appearing to sign the subpoena. 

Paul has repeatedly clashed with Fauci over policies and recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The senator accused Fauci of covering up U.S. research at a lab in Wuhan, China, which he said caused the coronavirus outbreak.

“We’ve been negotiating with him for material and for testimony,” Paul said in an appearance on CNBC on Tuesday. “This has gone on for some time. He slow-walked us and slow-walked us. Finally agreed to come in voluntarily ... then last week he says he’s not coming in.

“With this subpoena power, we will bring him in, unless he fights this in court.”

Fauci was the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during the COVID-19 outbreak until 2022. He was also a top medical adviser to Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden during the crisis.

A U.S. intelligence analysis initially found there was insufficient evidence to prove COVID-19 was leaked from a research lab in Wuhan. In 2025, the CIA adjusted its stance.

“CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin-based on the available body of reporting,” an unnamed CIA representative said in a statement in January 2025.

Bloomberg News and CQ-Roll Call contributed to this report.

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