Now there are 20 states on record saying they would ratify an amendment to the Constitution allowing limits on campaign spending, the most ambitious and emphatic response possible to the oceans of money sloshing through the political system.
The Democratic Senate in New Hampshire voted 14-10 on Thursday, nearly along party lines, to call on Congress to propose a constitutional amendment that would effectively negate the Supreme Court's Citizens United v. FEC decision, by declaring that political giving is not a form of speech covered by the First Amendment.
The vote in Concord means the nascent 28th Amendment now has the support of comfortably more than half the states needed for ratification. It's also important symbolically because almost all the other states are deeply Democratic blue while New Hampshire is very competitive between the parties.
"The unflagging work of so many citizens has paid off," said Jeff Clements, the president of American Promise, a leading advocacy group for the constitutional amendment approach to campaign finance regulation. "New Hampshire's stand adds big momentum to the drive for a 28th Amendment to secure free speech and representation for all Americans, not just the few."
But the process of producing the language on Capitol Hill has barely gotten off the ground, with only a relative handful of lawmakers intensely promoting the idea and two-third majorities in the House and Senate required – a clear impossibility at a time of closely divided government when essentially every Republican lawmaker is standing behind the landmark 2010 decision.
"I hear from Republican candidates concerned about anonymous ads from groups funded by Soros, Bloomberg, Steyer and others. This is the first step in protecting those candidates – all candidates – from nasty anonymous ads," said John Pudner of Take Back Our Republic, a conservative group in favor of tighter campaign finance regulation. "A constitutional amendment is in everyone's best interests. It's good for voters, it's good for candidates, and it's good for elected officials who want to be able to focus on their constituents rather than Big Money donors."
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.