How Midterms season is playing out in Congress

**Brigid Bergen** (0:05)
This is Brian Lehrer's Daily Politics Podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Monday, June 29th.
I'm Brigid Bergen, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamous newsroom, filling in for Brian today. The House is supposed to get back to work in Washington, DC today. It comes after last week's primary wins for Mayor Mamdani and the DSA-aligned Democratic congressional candidates who are set to remake the Empire State's congressional delegation. They're also likely to bring challenges to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who's poised to become the first black speaker of the House of Representatives should Democrats take majority control in November. But for now, lawmakers are stuck in the same old, same old partisan gridlock with Republican infighting creating ongoing headaches for House Speaker Mike Johnson. We'll get an update on the fight over a voter ID law backed by President Trump that's standing in the way of an unusually bipartisan measure. Plus a preview of the Democrats' playbook for 2029
Nicholas Wu is a congressional reporter at Semafor who covers all these topics and more. He joins me now. Nick, welcome back to WNYC. Thanks for being with us this morning.

**Nicholas Wu** (1:20)
Good morning and thanks so much for having me.

**Brigid Bergen** (1:23)
So the House is supposed to be in session through Thursday before that July 4th recess. But let's start where things ended last week. There was a big bipartisan housing bill that was headed for President Trump's desk but didn't quite make it.
That's because President Trump's singular focus on another piece of legislation. So Nick, tell us first about that bipartisan housing bill and what it was set to do.

**Nicholas Wu** (1:49)
So this was a piece of legislation that had been in the works for months and months and was a very rare bipartisan compromise on Capitol Hill for an issue that's on the minds of a lot of people, the cost of housing. And so this is the kind of legislation where you have a rare convergence between folks like Elizabeth Warren and conservative Republicans, because among other provisions, this bill would basically place curbs on the buying of single-family houses by institutional investors as one way of trying to tackle the price of housing.
But of course, this was something that ran a foul of President Trump when he decided to make a protest over the progress on the SAVE Act, the elections legislation that he's been pushing for months.

**Brigid Bergen** (2:36)
Nick, I mean, I feel like I have been talking to folks like you and other reporters about the SAVE Act for at least a year, right? Let's talk for those of you who have not been following as closely as I know you have been, what would the SAVE Act do and why has this become President Trump's priority?

**Nicholas Wu** (2:56)
The SAVE Act has become a fixation of President Trump's.
Basically, ever since the start of his presidency, he saw this as something as a way to right the wrongs of the 2020 election, which he still believes was stolen from him on the basis of mail-in voting and voter ID. So what the SAVE Act would do is basically address a lot of those issues. It would require much stricter voter ID. It would clamp down on mail-in voting. This is something that a lot of advocates are saying would be hugely disruptive to an election, not even five months away. And for that matter, it just doesn't have the votes in the Senate. There's not 60 votes to clear a filibuster there. And it's not clear there's even majority Republican support for that.

**Brigid Bergen** (3:46)
The House Speaker, Mike Johnson, was on Fox News this week and saying, he spent time talking with President Trump in the Oval Office, and he is sending the housing bill for him to sign today. Here's what Johnson said yesterday.

**Mike Johnson** (4:01)
We made a lot of promises to the voters, and we're fulfilling those every single day of this Congress. And this is a big part of that because it will increase the availability, the access to more housing, bring down cost, cut regulations, do the things that we know are very important for that market.
The President, I talked about that at length. Of course he wants to do all those things. I'm going to send the bill over to him. It's passed by both chambers. I'm sending it to him on Monday, and it will become law. I certainly want him to take the biggest, boldest marker that he has, and do that big Trump signature proudly on that legislation, because we're delivering for the people, and that's what he wants to do.

**Brigid Bergen** (4:38)