President Trump is obsessed with passing the SAVE America Act because his unpopular presidency is dragging down the Republican Party’s congressional ambitions ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Trump calls housing bill a ‘big yawn,’ ‘so unimportant’
President Donald Trump says he has not received the housing bill yet and calls it a “big yawn” and “so unimportant” while pushing the SAVE Act.
Here is what we’ve learned from two and a half years of Republican control of Congress and the White House:
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, will do anything he thinks will please President Donald Trump, no matter how doomed that performative appeasement may be.
And that will put U.S. Sen. John Thune, the Senate Republican leader from South Dakota, in a tight spot because his chamber’s parliamentary structures set up hurdles his caucus can’t always clear to accomplish what Trump wants.
And Trump, confronted with this intraparty dysfunction – one ally who will always bend to his every wish, jamming another who just can’t sometimes – will throw the same tantrum over and over again.
Which brings us back to the so-called SAVE America Act – a flagrantly unconstitutional attempt to federalize elections and Trump’s driving, second-term obsession.
Everybody knows the SAVE Act is dead, but Republicans love drama
Johnson recently announced that he would make yet another attempt to pass the SAVE America Act through both the House and Senate, inserting it into legislation authorizing a mammoth $350 billion in military funding.
Republicans are using a process called reconciliation for that budget bill, which allows them to pass it with a simple majority vote in both chambers.
Trump jumped right on board with the House speaker’s latest appeasement pitch, announcing in a July 7 social media post that he is “calling on House and Senate Leadership to make this their Number One Priority.”
The president is in the middle of a shooting war he started with Iran, which is tanking the American economy and impacting the price of gasoline in the middle of the summer vacation season. But he openly announces his number one priority is taking over elections.
Let’s see how that plays in November.
And Trump, because he’s seen this movie before, must know what comes next. If the House passes the military budget bill through reconciliation with the SAVE America Act included, it will collide with a hurdle when it gets to the Senate that has been so far insurmountable.
The Senate parliamentarian, who passes judgment on what can and cannot be included in legislation passed through reconciliation, ruled in June that the SAVE America Act could not be bundled into different legislation being pushed through reconciliation by Republicans to fund immigration enforcement efforts.
The Senate’s rules say reconciliation can be used for legislation that impacts taxes, spending or reductions in spending. The SAVE America Act ‒ or the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act” ‒ does not fit that bill.
But here we are, a month later, and Johnson is going to push Thune to the same failed conclusion, because Trump wants something he can’t have.
Trump’s plan for the SAVE Act in Congress will get foiled by rules
The SAVE America Act can’t pass in the Senate via a simple majority vote if that is blocked by the parliamentarian. And Thune does not have the votes in the Senate to overcome the 60-vote filibuster.
Thune has resisted Trump’s repeated demands that he fire the Senate parliamentarian for the temerity of enforcing the chamber’s rules. And there are not enough Republican votes to kill the filibuster.
Still, expect Trump to again call for firing the parliamentarian, the elimination of the filibuster, or both.
In all this, Johnson and Thune represent the significant differences between Trump’s first and second terms as president.
Thune’s approach calls back to the first term, when Trump’s administration was staffed with people eager to help him accomplish his goals but willing to advise him when his efforts ran afoul of the Constitution or established practices.
Johnson embodies Trump’s second term, where the government professionals have been ousted in favor of MAGA apparatchiks eager to enable his quest for autocratic rule.
Trump is obsessed with passing the SAVE America Act because his unpopular presidency is dragging down the Republican Party’s congressional ambitions ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Democrats, if they win control of the House or Senate, will spend the last two years of Trump’s second term scrutinizing everything he did in the first two years of that term. That terrifies Trump. And it should, based on what we know about how this term has become a freewheeling payday for him and his family.
So he’ll keep pushing Johnson and Thune to give him the power to run and regulate elections, hoping to use that to hold off Democratic control. And Johnson will keep appeasing Trump while jamming Thune.
That’s a dysfunctional government right there. And, for now, it’s the best we can hope for to keep Trump from meddling in our elections.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on Bluesky, @bychrisbrennan.bsky.social, and on X, @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here.
