Today’s edition of quick hits.

* The latest on the devastating mass shooting in British Columbia, Canada: “Police say eight people were killed and 27 more were injured after a mass shooting in the community of Tumbler Ridge, B.C., on Tuesday. The sole suspect was also found dead inside the school from ‘a self-inflicted injury,’ according to police. On Wednesday, police clarified that the death toll, including the suspect, stood at nine — and not 10, as previously reported.”

* An overdue withdrawal: “The Trump administration’s controversial deployment of National Guard troops to several cities led by Democrats ended in January, marking a muted retreat by President Donald Trump, who claimed the federal troops were needed to fight immigration-related crime. The withdrawal of the National Guard from Chicago; Los Angeles; and Portland, Oregon, began on Jan. 6 and ended Jan. 21, according to U.S. Northern Command.”

* A bizarre story out of Texas: “Federal Aviation Administration officials were forced to close El Paso’s airspace late Tuesday after the Defense Department decided to try out new anti-drone technology without giving aviation officials ample time to assess the risks to commercial airlines, according to four people briefed on the situation.

* An apparent reversal: “The National Governors Association said governors from both parties would be able to meet with President Donald Trump later this month after the White House initially extended invitations to a business meeting only to Republicans. ‘We’re pleased the president will welcome governors from all 55 states and territories to the White House,’ Brandon Tatum, the group’s chief executive, said Wednesday. It’s still unclear whether every governor will participate in the full White House event.”

* The right call: “The state government of Michigan was within its rights to refuse a request from the Trump administration to hand over personal information from state voter rolls, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday. In a 23-page opinion, Judge Hala Y. Jarbou of the Federal District Court for the Western District of Michigan rejected the administration’s arguments that it was entitled to know Michigan voters’ personal information to ‘prevent the inclusion of ineligible voters’ and to combat what it called ‘voter fraud.’

* An unexpected deployment: “The U.S. is sending 200 troops to Nigeria to train the country’s military to fight Islamist militants, weeks after President Trump accused the West African government of failing to protect Christians from terrorist attacks, an American military official said Tuesday.”

* I wish this were more surprising: “Shortly after a Border Patrol agent shot a 30-year-old Chicago woman five times, Gregory Bovino, who was leading the federal government’s immigration raids across the city, reached out to offer his congratulations.”

* The White House sure does appear to have a social media problem: “Vice President JD Vance’s office deleted a social media post on Tuesday that broke with administration policy in acknowledging the Armenian genocide after Mr. Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, visited a memorial to the estimated 1.5 million Armenians killed by Ottoman Turks over a century ago.”

See you tomorrow.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

A couple of years ago, House Speaker Mike Johnson made a pilgrimage of sorts to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Donald Trump’s ring and hold a joint news conference with the then-former president. It was not, however, a simple photo-op: The Republicans unveiled a proposal they appeared to be rather proud of.

The GOP duo pitched legislation that would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. The absurdity of watching two notorious election deniers pretend to be deeply concerned with the integrity of elections was a detail the political world was apparently supposed to overlook.

Soon after, House Republicans followed through, introducing the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act, a version of which passed the GOP-led chamber last year.

In time, however, Trump and his party decided their own plan wasn’t quite far enough to the right. So they overhauled it, made it worse and gave it a new name: the SAVE America Act.

Trump doesn’t have much of a legislative agenda, but he insisted that House Republicans pass this bill. And as is too often the case, GOP lawmakers did as the White House instructed.

The final vote was 218-213, with Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas being the only Democrat to vote for passage.

The original SAVE Act was an indefensible step backward, and the revised version is worse:

• All Americans would be required to prove their U.S. citizenship when registering to vote.
• Voters would be required under federal law to present identification when casting ballots in person or by mail, even in states that do not have voter ID laws.
• Republicans are eyeing new restrictions on Americans who want to vote by mail.

The proposal is a classic example of a solution in search of a problem. Republicans have spent years desperately searching for evidence of systemic fraud in vote-by-mail systems, for example, and they’ve come up empty. The same is true about the supposed need for voter ID laws: In reality, there is simply no national scourge of people trying to cast ballots while pretending to be someone else.

As for the idea of creating a federal law to prevent noncitizens from registering to vote, the proposal is redundant: There are literally zero locations in the United States where noncitizens can vote in federal elections. What’s more, GOP officials have searched far and wide for evidence of noncitizens casting ballots in significant numbers — and they have found effectively nothing.

Some on the right have argued that the legislation is worthwhile anyway, even if there’s no evidence to support its goals, in part because it might make the Republicans’ base feel better — these voters’ confidence in the system has apparently been shaken by years’ worth of baseless partisan conspiracy theories — and in part because it’ll create safeguards against future hypothetical mischief.

Except that’s wrong, too. Policymakers are not supposed to add new and entirely unnecessary hurdles for Americans who want to participate in their own country’s elections, likely disenfranchising millions, simply because of hypothetical threats and conspiracy theorists’ feelings.

What’s more, as The Associated Press reportedstate elections officials — from both parties — have expressed practical concerns about how these costly proposed procedures would be implemented and paid for. The same article added: “Voting rights groups have said married women who have changed their name could have trouble registering under the SAVE Act because their birth certificate lists their maiden name.”

Despite all of this, the bill passed the House anyway.

The proposal now heads to the Republican-led Senate, where it will need to overcome a 60-vote threshold, which seems exceedingly unlikely. That said, Politico reported this week that GOP leaders are so desperate to fundamentally alter how Americans vote that they’re exploring potential procedural changes that would make it possible to pass the regressive legislation, despite existing cloture rules.

Watch this space.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”