Mr. Big Brain made an appearance on Project 2025’s Monica Crowley’s podcast this Friday, and pushed for Republicans to shut down the government over the so-called SAVE Act, which would require proof of citizenship to vote.
The bill was summed up here by the League of Women Voters, which opposes it:
The House and Senate introduced the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require citizenship documentation to register to vote, even though voters in every state are already required to affirm or verify their citizenship status when registering to vote. It is already illegal for noncitizens to register and vote in federal or state elections. The bill’s requirement of a document to prove American citizenship to register to vote in federal elections is unnecessary and seeks to divide us. It also creates another barrier to voting.
Americans do not need MORE obstacles to vote. Instead of moving this legislation forward, Congress should protect voters in this critical election year by strengthening protections against discrimination in voting and expanding access to the ballot.
Xenophobia Has No Place in Our Elections. Tell your members of Congress to oppose the SAVE Act.
More voter suppression, so of course Trump and his MAGA enablers in the House are all for it:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office has been working behind the scenes to get House conservatives to drop their demands that a short-term funding bill include an immigrant voting crackdown, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: A GOP showdown is brewing ahead of the Oct. 1 government funding deadline. Conservatives have shown a willingness to flirt with shutdowns to push their priorities, which McConnell’s team wants to avoid.
- In a recent meeting with other GOP offices about a short-term spending bill strategy, top McConnell staffers argued that adding a non-citizen voting bill would backfire.
- One fear is such a move would open the door for Democrats to tack on their own voting-related legislation, two GOP aides familiar with the conversation told Axios.
- The John Lewis Voting Rights Act, a Democrat priority that seeks to restore parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, was specifically discussed as a possibility.
The big picture: McConnell staffers have urged conservatives in the Senate and the House to keep the precedent of passing clean short-term-funding bills and argued that using a potential shutdown to try to score political points is dangerous before the election, sources said.
- Even if Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) could get a spending bill that includes the immigrant voting crackdown through the House, the measure almost certainly would be dead-on-arrival in the Democrat-controlled Senate and President Biden has said he “strongly opposes” it.
- That reality helps explain the pushback from McConnell’s team.
- Their involvement in this latest push shows he’s not taking a back seat in high-level negotiations even though he plans to step down as leader after the election.
Now they’ve got Trump pushing for a shutdown as well:
Speaking on Monica Crowley’s podcast on Friday, former President Donald Trump went on a long rant about election integrity in the United States, which he once again claimed was rife with fraud.
During his tirade, Trump demanded that House Republicans pass the so-called “SAVE Act” that’s aimed at curtailing illegal voting — and he said the GOP should “shut down the government” if the Senate wouldn’t go along.
“I would shut down the government in a heartbeat if they don’t get it and they don’t get it in the bill,” Trump claimed about voting restrictions being put in the budget bill.
“So you are calling today on the senator — are you calling on Sen. [Mitch] McConnell then and all Senate Republicans and House Republicans too make sure this SAVE Act is in the spending bill?” Crowley asked.
“Well, it should be in the bill,” Trump said. “For some reason they don’t do it. They don’t do things that could really help our nation. It should be in the bill and if its not in the bill you should close it up.”
Brilliant. Let’s have the Republicans and Trump own a government shutdown on October 1st, right in the middle of early voting and a month ahead of the election. We’ll see how that works out for you, since it’s worked so well in the past.
