This was the week when MAGA Republicans finally got what they’d been demanding for so long: A full Senate debate on the SAVE America Act, President Donald Trump’s monster voter suppression bill.
And Democracy Docket covered the spectacle from every angle.
Yunior Rivas highlighted the outrageously false claim from Sen.Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — aka “the most hated man in the Senate” — that Democrats oppose the measure because they want to encourage voting by noncitizens. Matt Cohen debunked some of the other nonsense Republicans have been spouting about the bill. And Jim Saksa noticed, hidden in the Senate’s arcane procedures, yet another sign that even the bill’s staunchest Senate backers aren’t pulling out all the stops for it.
In all, we produced 15 separate news stories on the SAVE America Act this week. We did that because we think the debate matters — even if the measure isn’t likely to overcome a Democratic filibuster. Above all else, it underscores just how central voter suppression, backed by false and misleading claims, has become to the modern GOP.
Of course, Trump’s assault on voting is multi-pronged, and we found time for plenty of other stories.
New testimony from Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, raises real questions on how much the president knew, and when he knew it, about the FBI’s recent raid of a Fulton County, Georgia elections building, as Democracy Docket’s Jacob Knutson reported. (Reminder: In a normal administration, the president wouldn’t know anything about a politically sensitive FBI investigation. But a normal administration wouldn’t be “investigating” a half-decade-old election based on zero evidence of wrong-doing.)
Meanwhile, Jen Rice detailed Missouri Republicans’ master plan to deny voters a chance to weigh in on their Trump-ordered gerrymander: delay, delay, and delay some more. Jen also provided an invaluable guide to where the nationwide fight over redistricting currently stands. (Short version: What happens next in Virginia and Florida will go a long way to determining the state of play heading into the midterms.)
Yunior has been closely following the spate of blunders coming from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) as it tries to grab states’ voter rolls — and this week he added a doozy: First, DOJ missed a key deadline to serve Washington’s chief election official in its lawsuit against the state. Then it offered several conflicting positions on the mishap.
Finally, the newest member of our growing reporting team, Brentin Mock, caught FBI director Kash Patel struggling to answer questions about the “threat” of noncitizen voting. Going forward, Brentin will be keeping us covered on the weekends, because, in the Trump era, voting and democracy news tends to come at all hours. And we’re committed to staying on top of it.
