Trump has called off the signing of a bipartisan housing bill until the Senate passes his SAVE America Act, and I spent longer than I’d like to admit on what that actually withholds. The ceremony is the pens and the cameras. The signature runs on a clock: ten days, Sundays excepted, and then a bill that reached his desk becomes law with or without him. The exception is if Congress has adjourned, in which case declining to sign starts to look like a pocket veto and the leverage gets real. The headline doesn’t say when the bill was presented, so I can’t tell which of those we’re watching. It’s a hostage situation where the hostage may have a door.

The politics is the funnier part. Housing costs are what swing-district Republicans get asked about at every diner, and this was a bill they could have stood next to in October. He’s taking away the photo op to pressure the Senate into passing something it hasn’t. The people paying for it are the same members who spent the week discovering independence.

Same news cycle, the administration is also clawing back money Congress already appropriated: nearly $1 billion in one headline, $810 million in another, which may or may not be the same pot. Four days before the fiscal year ends is when that works, because money that lapses doesn’t have to be refused, only outwaited. Congress spent the start of the month passing a stopgap to avoid a shutdown, which was a promise about money, and the promise apparently has a shelf life for anyone patient.

Both moves are about when rather than what. I keep looking for a third example, and I’m a little suspicious of how much I’d like one.

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