The Dictatorship
Targeting elections, House GOP advances the SAVE America Act, a solution in search of a problem
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.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to end trade with Spainciting a lack of support over the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran and the European nation’s resistance to increasing its NATO spending.
“We’re going to cut off all trade with Spain,” Trump told reporters during an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. “We don’t want anything to do with Spain.”
The U.S. president’s comments came a day after Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said his country would not allow the U.S. to use jointly operated bases in southern Spain in any strikes not covered by the United Nations’ charter. Albares noted that the military bases in Spain were not used in the weekend attack on Iran.
Trump said despite Spain’s refusal “we could use their base if we want. We could just fly in and use it. Nobody’s going to tell us not to use it, but we don’t have to.”
It is unclear how Trump would cut off trade with Spain, given that Spain is under the umbrella of the European Union. The EU negotiates trade deals on behalf of all 27 member countries.
“If the U.S. administration wishes to review the trade agreement, it must do so respecting the autonomy of private companies, international law, and bilateral agreements between the European Union and the United States,” a spokesperson from Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s office said Tuesday.
The EU said it expects the Trump administration to honor a trade deal struck with the 27-nation bloc in Scotland last year after months of economic uncertainty over Trump’s tariff blitzkrieg.
“The Commission will always ensure that the interests of the European Union are fully protected,” said European Commission spokesperson Olof Gill.
It was just the latest instance of the president wielding the threat of tariffs or trade embargoes as a punishment and came on the heels of a Supreme Court decision that struck down Trump’s far-reaching global tariffs. While the court said that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize the president to unilaterally impose sweeping tariffs, Trump now maintains that the court allows him to instead impose full-scale embargoes on other nations of his choosing.
Trump also complained anew Tuesday about Spain’s decision last year to back out of NATO’s 5% defense spending target. At the time, Spain said it could reach its military capabilities by spending 2.1% of its GDP, a move that Trump roundly criticized and responded to with tariff threats as well.
Spain, Trump said, is “the only country that in NATO would not agree to go up to 5%” in NATO spending. “I don’t think they agreed to go up to anything. They wanted to keep it at 2% and they don’t pay the 2%.”
Merz noted that Trump was correct and said, “We are trying to convince them that this is a part of our common security, that we all have to comply with this.”
Spain defended its position Tuesday, saying it is “a key member of NATO, fulfilling its commitments and making a significant contribution to the defense of European territory,” the spokesperson in Sánchez’s office said.
During the Oval Office meeting, Trump turned to U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for his opinion on the president’s embargo authority.
Bessent said, “I agree that the Supreme Court reaffirmed your ability to implement an embargo.” Bessent added that the U.S. Trade Representative and Commerce Department would “begin investigations and we’ll move forward with those.”
A representative from the U.S. Treasury Department did not respond to a request from The Associated Press for additional comment.
Sánchez has been critical of the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran, calling it an “unjustifiable” and “dangerous” military intervention. His government has demanded an immediate de-escalation and dialogue and also condemned Iran’s strikes across the region.
Trump said, “Spain has absolutely nothing that we need other than great people. They have great people, but they don’t have great leadership.”
Spain’s position on the use of U.S. bases in its territory marks the latest flare-up in its relationship with the Trump administration. Under Sánchez, Europe’s last major progressive leader, Spain was also an outspoken critic of Israel’s war in Gaza.
___
Naishadham reported from Madrid. AP journalist Sam McNeil in Brussels contributed.
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President Donald Trump called the celebrations in the streets of Iran “fantastic” following the killing of the country’s supreme leaderAyatollah Ali Khamenei, during a brief phone call with MS NOW on Saturday night.
Trump told MS NOW that he’s seen the celebrations in Iran and in parts of America, after joint U.S.-Israel airstrikes killed Khamenei.
“I think it’s fantastic,” the president said of the celebrations. “I’ve seen them in Los Angeles, also — celebrations.”
“I’ve seen them in Los Angeles, celebrations, celebrations,” Trump said, accentuating the point.
The interview took place roughly 11 hours before the Pentagon announced the first U.S.military casualties of the war. U.S. Central Command said three American service members were killed in action, and five others had been seriously wounded.
Revelry broke out in Iran, the United States and across the globe on Saturday, with Iranians cheering the death of Khamenei, who led Iran with an iron fist for more than 30 years, cracking down on dissent at home and maintaining a hostile posture with the U.S. and Israel.
Asked how he was feeling after the strike on Khamenei, whose death was confirmed just a few hours earlier, Trump said it was a positive development for the United States.
“I think it was a great thing for our country,” he said.
The call — which lasted less than a minute — came after a marathon day, which began in the wee hours of the morning with strikes on Iran and continued with retaliatory ballistic missiles from Tehran targeting Israel and countries in the Middle East region that host U.S. military bases.
The day ended with few answers from the White House to increasing questions about the long-term future of Iran, how long the U.S. will continue operations there, and the metastasizing ramifications it could have on the world stage. In fact, the president has done little to convince the public to back his Iran operation, nor to explain why the country is at war without the authorization of Congress.
On perhaps the most consequential day of his second term, Trump did not give a formal address to the public, nor did he hold a press conference. Instead, he stayed out of public view at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Palm Beach, Florida, where he attended a $1 million-per-plate fundraising dinner on Saturday evening.
But throughout the day, Trump took calls from reporters at various new outlets, including from MS NOW at around 11 p.m. ET.
The strikes, known formally as “Operation Epic Fury,” came after months of talks over Iran’s nuclear program, and warnings from Trump that he would strike Tehran if they did not agree to his often shifting conditions.
At 2:30 a.m. ET on Saturday, Trump posted a video to social media announcing the operation, which he said was designed to “defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.”
“The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties. That often happens in war,” Trump said when he announced the strikes on Iran.
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.
Laura Barrón-López covers the White House for MS NOW.
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