Zaidane is the president and CEO of Millennial Action Project.
February is Black History Month — a time where we celebrate the accomplishments and triumphs of the Black community throughout American history. It is also a call to action, asking all Americans to be a part of the conversation about the pursuit of freedom and racial equity. These conversations can be challenging — as we know, in the United States, partisan and racial divides are complex.
However, bridging these divides is the only way to achieve meaningful and sustainable progress.
Take it from one of our young leaders in Arkansas:
“I’m the youngest African-American female elected in the General Arkansas Assembly. I have to work across the partisan and racial lines to get things done. … It’s my mission every year to see who I have nothing in common with. … I work on a bill with them, and [the bill] is going to be something meaningful.” — Rep. Jamie Scott
In December, Scott was the recipient of the Millennial Action Project’s Rising Star Award, presented each year to two young state legislators who demonstrate outstanding achievements in building bridges within their legislature. Scott, a Democrat in a super-majority Republican General Assembly, was nominated by Republican Rep. Aaron Pilkington for her tenacious approach to inclusive proble- solving. Together, Scott and Pilkington lead the Arkansas Future Caucus, which convenes young legislators to find consensus and take action on issues that disproportionately impact younger generations.
Too often in policymaking, it can seem like a win-or-lose situation, yet it's this “scarcity mindset” that often leads to winner-take-all results.
Scott, through her tremendous leadership, has modeled a new style of politics — one that rejects the scarcity mindset and embraces a mindset of abundance. In practice, Scott centers communities of color in her solutions, and works with people across racial and partisan divides to ensure that they can cocreate better outcomes for all. What a diversity of leaders within the MAP network, like Scott, have shown us is that collaborative policymaking can be a win-win.
Scott’s attitude demonstrates that by working with unlikely allies — even members with whom you seemingly have nothing in common — you can create winning strategies to benefit all communities. This type of bridge-building gives other legislators a framework for more inclusive policymaking as well. It sets the example that there should be no fear in working together; rather, there are shared wins that come with collaboration.
Watch this in action:
The Millennial Action Project's Rising Star Awards (2021)www.youtube.com
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.