Jeanne Sheehan Zaino, Ph.D. is professor of Political Science. Follow her on Twitter @JeanneZaino or visit https://jeannesheehanzaino.net/ to learn more.
We hear a lot these days about the American government being in crisis. And it is, although not necessarily for the reasons the media is talking about. The crisis predates the events of Jan. 6, 2021, the 2020 presidential election and the issues that prompted the Biden administration to host the “Summit for Democracy” late last year.
The crisis goes back to the Founding and is rooted in something much more fundamental — the structure of the American state. The Madisonian system of government was built for “inaction and deadlock,” and it was designed that way for an important reason — to protect liberty.
Since the system has changed structurally very little since the late 18th century, it is still working largely the way it was designed. This reality has led to the crisis in the American state, an almost consistent inability on the part of the government to address the needs of its people and the crises of the day (i.e., immigration, gun violence, infrastructure, the high cost of pharmaceuticals, etc.). In those cases when it does finally act, it does so only after years of delay, obfuscation, stalemate, discussion and cries for help. Case in point:, health care reform, which was achieved after almost a century of calls and, even then, to the satisfaction of almost no one involved. We are often told this is the result of incompetent leadership, polarization, institutional disarray and the like. While all these things may be true, they miss the root cause of the problem — it’s the system.
President Biden has repeatedly said that if the United States is going to meet the key challenge of the 21st century, the battle between autocracy and democracy, we need to “prove that democracy can deliver.” That is not possible unless we follow the advice of people like Saul Alinsky, Irving Zola and the late great Rev. Desmond Tutu and “go upstream” to examine the root of the problems we are confronting: how the Framers designed the system, why they did it that way and what the ramifications are for us today. Only after we understand this can we have a much-needed and public conversation about whether the system should be modified and, if so, how.
This short video series by Jeanne Sheehan Zaino is designed to help move us in that direction.
Additional videos in the series will be published in The Fulcrum in the coming days.
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.