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2. Ohio
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Donald Trump on Wednesday defended his decision not to sign a landmark housing bill that was overwhelmingly passed by the House and Senate, saying that he doesn’t want to lower housing costs because it would hurt people who have gotten rich off their home purchases. “You have to understand—I don’t want to hurt people that own houses, too,” Trump said in the Oval Office, where he was holding a media availability with the leader of NATO. “These people, for the first time in their lives, they have valuable houses. They become rich. I don’t want to hurt them either.” It’s the latest head-scratching comment he’s made that makes you wonder if he is trying to lose this fall’s midterm elections for his party. He is refusing to sign a bill to help more people afford homes, at a time when the median homeowner is 38 times richer than the median renter, according to a December 2024 CNN analysis. Voters are angry about the surging cost of living and are practically begging Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress to do something about it. It’s especially galling as the comment came hours before the government released the latest inflation report, which showed Trump’s Iran war spiked inflation to 4.1% in May. That’s the highest level since April 2023. Ultimately, inflation and high prices are far and away the most important issues for voters in the upcoming midterms, with 31% listing “inflation/prices” as their top issue, according to an Economist/YouGov poll released Tuesday. The second-place issue, with 16%, is “jobs and the economy,” which is intricately tied to inflation. That’s terrible news for the GOP given that Trump’s approval on the economy is at just 33%, according to the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. This dismal economic picture is why Republicans passed the bipartisan housing bill in the first place. They hoped their support for legislation that seeks to lower housing costs would help them with voters in November. The bipartisan bill would, among other things, ban private-equity investors from gobbling up the single-family home inventory—a phenomenon that has driven up costs for average Americans. However, Trump pulled the rug out from under congressional Republicans on Wednesday, canceling a bill-signing ceremony minutes before it was scheduled to start. Trump said that he won’t sign the bill until Congress passes the voter suppression SAVE America Act, an awful piece of legislation that has no shot of passage. However, his later admission that he didn’t sign the bill because he doesn’t want to hurt rich Americans may be the real reason he is holding up the bill. In fact, it’s not even the first time he’s made a comment like that. At a Cabinet meeting in January, Trump said this: “People that own their homes, we’re gonna keep them wealthy. We’re gonna keep those prices up. We’re not gonna destroy the value of their homes so that somebody who didn’t work very hard can buy a home. … I don’t want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up.”