A tide of ballot initiatives got endorsed last fall, as the nation turned toward direct democracy for changing public policy as never before.
Two-dozen states permit citizens to petition to get measures on the ballot that would amend state law or the state constitution. And in half of those states last November, voters approved a total of 24 different "democracy reform" ballot measures changing the rules of campaign finance, government ethics, ballot access, redistricting or voting rights. Many won with broad bipartisan majorities.
This most direct form of democracy is now under attack by lawmakers in an array of states, who are seeking to make it harder to repeat what happened in 2018.
"In 2019, we have already seen over 100 proposals introduced that would change the ballot measure process; this is more than the previous two years combined," Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, and Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, wrote in a USA Today op-ed published Tuesday.
They pointed to efforts in Florida, Michigan, North Dakota, Ohio and Missouri, for example, that would make it harder to collect signatures to get a measure on the ballot.
They also noted some states are attempting to undo ballot measures that have already passed.
In Missouri, for example, GOP Gov. Mike Parson toldThe Associated Press he supports a legislative effort to repeal the "Clean Missouri Act," a measure approved in November that limits lobbying gifts to lawmakers, expands open records law and creates a new nonpartisan redistricting commission. (Parson also said he thought "the bar should be a little higher" to get a voter initiative on the ballot.) In Florida, the Republican state legislature is advancing legislation that would limit the reach of a voter-approved proposal to restore voting rights to felons.
"Attempting to repeal an initiative that has already been approved by voters smacks of arrogance and is an affront to the democratic process and the countless hours spent by volunteers working to better their community," Flynn and Fields wrote.
Only Arkansas and Utah have so far enacted laws this year to change ballot measure processes, the authors note, but similar legislation is pending in dozens of states.
A view of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 25, 2026. President Donald Trump jolted Republicans during a fiery appearance at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, scrapping a housing bill signing ceremony and clashing behind closed doors with a party rebel who challenged him over the Iran war. Trump had been expected to sign the bipartisan housing.
Only Trump doesn’t care about housing
It was August 15, 2024. Then candidate Donald Trump stepped out of his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club’s columned clubhouse to a gaggle of reporters. He was flanked by tables of groceries and signs showing the rising cost of food. Also on one of the tables was a dollhouse, meant to represent the equally alarming rise in housing prices.
It was a speech about the economy, the single most important issue of the 2024 election cycle, full of promises that went right to the heart of Americans’ anxieties. While former President Joe Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris were contorting themselves to posture a good economy that just needed more time to recover from the pandemic, Trump was preying on voters’ very real fears of unaffordable gas, groceries, and homes. It was obviously a winning message.
In that speech, Trump promised, “We’re going to open up tracts of federal land for housing construction. We desperately need housing for people who can’t afford what’s going on now.”
As of mid-2023, there had been a housing shortage of nearly four million homes, according to the National Association of Realtors. Americans all over the country were either priced out of buying new homes due to low inventory, trapped in their existing homes by sky-high mortgage rates, or facing exorbitant rent hikes thanks to corporate investors buying up rental properties. Americans needed help, and Trump promised it.
Cut to March of 2026, when Trump reportedly told House Speaker Mike Johnson, “No one gives a sh*t about housing.”
That kind of thinking may explain why Trump this week suddenly announced he was canceling a signing ceremony for the bipartisan “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act,” a housing bill co-sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott that passed the House 358-32 and was approved in the Senate on Monday.
Trump instead demanded Congress pass the SAVE America Act, his controversial election grievance bill that doesn’t have enough Republican support to get passed in the Senate.
It’s just the latest in a line of policy self-owns where Trump has seemingly intentionally made life more difficult for Republicans hoping to keep their majority. Despite midterm elections occurring in the midst of a blistering economy and an unpopular war, they were surely hoping the housing bill would give them something — anything — to brag about when they returned home to their districts.
And very much to the contrary, Americans do give a sh*t about housing. According to a recent survey by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a whopping 79% say the cost of housing is extremely or very important to them. Eighty-three percent say Congress should take action on the issue — like it just did. Eighty-nine percent say the House and Senate need to work together to pass affordable housing legislation — like they just did. And 63% say they would be more likely to vote for a lawmaker if they helped pass legislation to build more affordable homes and lower housing costs — like they just did.
There aren’t many issues that unite Americans like housing does, and very few bipartisan policy wins Congress can point to, and yet, Trump is holding that bill hostage in order to get his pet project — which doesn’t even have the support of his own party — pushed through.
If you’re trying to make sense of something so nonsensical, as I’m sure many Republican lawmakers are, it’s certainly sad but not actually all that complicated. Trump said what he needed to get reelected and then promptly abandoned his promises in order to pursue his own self-interests, even if those interests are bad for Republicans and bad for voters.
That’s just the kind of guy he is.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.