** 6/15/26 - Ed Kilgore - Trump’s SAVE Act Fantasy Is Paralyzing Congress........
Buzz Sawyer
Trump’s SAVE Act Fantasy Is Paralyzing Congress
Donald Trump’s latest version of the SAVE (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) America Act is a monstrously incoherent piece of legislation. Earlier iterations were relatively simple efforts to impose on the states a national photo-ID requirement for voting or voter registration. This, Trump repeatedly asserted, was necessary to address the (totally undocumented) scourge of noncitizen voting. Monday on Truth Social, Trump demanded that Congress pass what he called the “full version” of the legislation, which goes far beyond voter ID:
1. ALL VOTERS MUST SHOW PHOTO I.D. (IDENTIFICATION!).
2. ALL VOTERS MUST SHOW PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP.
3. NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS (EXCEPT FOR ILLNESS, DISABILITY, MILITARY, OR TRAVEL!).
4. NO MEN IN WOMEN’S SPORTS.
5. NO TRANSGENDER MUTILIZATION SURGERY FOR OUR CHILDREN.
Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Trump first announced this wildly expanded version of the SAVE America Act in March, making eyes roll all over Capitol Hill with his pledge to sign no legislation until this package of voter suppression and culture-war posturing was somehow enacted. Not a single congressional Democrat supported it. Even those open to new voter-ID provisions pointed out that implementing a proof-of-citizenship requirement in the middle of an election cycle would produce chaos and leave millions of citizens who don’t have the required documentation handy in danger of losing their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote. And obviously Trump’s demand that the bill include the abolition of no-excuse voting by mail and a hodgepodge of vicious transphobic measures was a nonstarter among Democrats. It’s a totally unnecessary national overhaul of the voting system nestled in a party-size bottle of poison pills.
Some Republicans — particularly those from states like Florida, where the GOP benefits from liberalized voting-by-mail systems — weren’t jazzed about it either. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has repeatedly said there aren’t enough votes for the SAVE America Act to reach the 60-vote threshold for ending a filibuster. Trump responded by demanding either an end to the filibuster or the inclusion of his legislative monstrosity in a party-line budget-reconciliation bill. Neither option is feasible. For a majority of Senate Republicans, keeping the filibuster is a matter of deep principle and self-preservation. Including the SAVE America Act in a reconciliation bill would violate the rules limiting such bills to budget-germane provisions, which is why Trump wants Thune to fire the Senate parliamentarian who polices the process.
Thwarted again and again by Thune, division in the GOP ranks, and simple arithmetic, Trump is once again threatening to go on strike if he doesn’t get his way. This time, the hostage is Republican-backed legislation to reauthorize a key provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, already complicated by Trump’s installation of the insanely unqualified Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence. It looks as if the president is painting himself and his party into a corner.
What many observers rightly fear is that Trump will use Congress’s failure to enact his pet bill as an excuse for executive-branch interference with the 2026 general election, as it will be conducted under rules he is treating as inherently fraudulent. Alternatively, Trump’s incessant if unsupported claims that Democrats are stealing elections via noncitizen voting and bogus mail ballots could become the basis for a January 6–style rebellion against an adverse election outcome — or if nothing else, a fresh grievance to fuel a Republican comeback in 2028.
Perhaps the president will once again relent and agree to do his job, particularly now that he’s on a bit of a high from his apparent success in more or less ending the war with Iran that he chose to begin. But his identification of his party with delusional and divisive election-denial theories will be a problem long after the 2026 midterms, much like his championship of 24/7 partisan gerrymandering. If a belief that Democrats win office only by cheating becomes a universal litmus test for Republicans, any sort of bipartisanship on policy issues will soon become impossible. The “full version” of the SAVE America Act may be Trump’s most important legacy. It’s a toxic mix of culture-war totems based on flat-out lies.