The Brief: Trump’s Fixation on the SAVE Act Has Become a Defining Force in American Politics

How to Think About the SAVE Act

The SAVE America Act is playing a few roles in our politics right now.

On the one hand, it is a sweeping voter suppression bill, and one prong of Trump’s multifaceted assault on elections. Should it become law, it would add new hurdles for a wide range of Americans to participate in democracy, including voter ID for casting a ballot and proof of citizenship to register to vote. Republican supporters of the bill seem to have the impression that these restrictions would overwhelmingly hurt Democrats, and they are likely right: Recent polling by G. Elliott Morris at Strength In Numbers shows a greater number of Democrats — and Black Americans in particular — are likely to have trouble producing the documents needed to prove their citizenship. The law would hit Republicans, too — more than its supporters seem to realize. Among other things, women who change their names when they get married, a group that certainly includes many white, American-born, Republican voters, may have to provide additional documents to prove their citizenship under their new name.

So thats’s the reality of the SAVE Act, if it passes. Quite significant.

At the same time, the more expansive versions of the SAVE Act, including versions with national mandates around voter ID and proof of citizenship, have never had a clear path through the Senate — even as Trump sporadically attempts to up the pressure on his fellow Republicans to make it happen.

That, despite the seriousness of the legislation at hand, has led to an almost comic dynamic where everything the Senate, and much that the House, tries to accomplish is derailed by new Trump demands related to the SAVE Act. It has blown up primaries, too; Ken Paxton was able to prevent a Trump endorsement of Sen. John Cornyn (R), and ultimately win it for himself, by painting Cornyn as an insufficiently dedicated supporter of the legislation.

So we cover all this keeping two things in our mind at once: Should Republicans find a way to maneuver the SAVE Act through Congress — including by finally agreeing to nuke the filibuster for it, as Trump has demanded — it would create a sweeping distortion of the franchise. In the meantime, however, it has been a force for chaos, with Trump’s monomaniacal fixation on it leading to a far less effective Republican trifecta than we might have predicted in the early days of his second term.

Trump Gets His New, Permanent DNI

Jay Clayton was confirmed last night, Khaya Himmelman reports for TPM, replacing Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte.

• His confirmation hearing was defined by his alarming refusal to state plainly that Trump lost the 2020 election.
• While that has become a kind of standard operating procedure for Trump nominees before the Senate, it is particularly troubling given what the DNI job has become under Trump: Former DNI Tulsi Gabbard participated in the FBI raid on Fulton County, Georgia’s election hub. Current, acting DNI Bill Pulte headed up a largely ineffectual, new effort to again undermine the 2020 election, culminating in Trump’s big primetime speech earlier this month.
• Fittingly, Politico reports this morning that Pulte is agitating to stay in his acting role a little longer, pushing Trump to delay Clayton’s swearing-in.

Tabs

• Former FBI Director James Comey’s lawyers are seeking grand jury transcripts related to his seashell-photo indictment, Lawfare’s Anna Bower notes — raising fresh questions about the Trump DOJ’s dealings with grand juries as it seeks to punish its enemies.
• Trump said on Truth Social earlier this month that he would ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling on birthright citizenship. The deadline to do so has passed, NBC reports, and he has not.
• Large majorities of Americans support term limits for members of Congress, greater restrictions on money in politics, and scrapping the Electoral College, new polling by Pew Research Center finds.

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