Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
We think it’s premature to rule out the possibility of Republicans actually passing this thing. It’s a high-stakes moment that’s passing largely under the radar. So we’re talking to congressional scholar Norm Ornstein, one of our go-to people for decoding the congressional GOP. Norm, nice to see you.
Sargent: So Donald Trump and MAGA are pressuring Republicans to pass the SAVE Act, which is this disgusting piece of voter suppression legislation. It can’t pass the Senate, so Trump is demanding that Republicans end the filibuster to pass it, which they don’t want to do or can’t do.
Ornstein: So first let me note, Greg, that John Thune has been as loyal a leader to a president, and certainly to Donald Trump, as anyone could have wished. And now he’s taking all of this abuse. But for Mike Johnson—many of his members, and they’re of course in very real danger of losing the House—they’re talking, and he’s talking to Trump, about using every voter suppression measure possible.
But he needs something, and the SAVE Act includes a whole series of measures that would limit votes, suppress votes, make it difficult for people to vote at a time when Republicans are worried about a surge in voting—requiring that everybody provide proof of citizenship.
Sargent: The SAVE Act, as Trump wants it to pass, would include both the proof of citizenship requirement and also basically an end to mail voting, among a bunch of other stuff as well.
Ornstein: Exactly so, Greg. And let’s note here that Mike Johnson has a couple of reasons for wanting to do this. He is desperate to get something done. The fact is, many of his own members—and it’s particularly true of Mike Lee in the Senate and a couple of the others—are agitating publicly for this over and over again. There is a fear on the part of Johnson and other House Republicans that if they don’t pass something that has the name “the SAVE Act” attached to it, it will demoralize a portion of their base, who will say, you’re not doing what you need to do. That’s one reason.
Sargent: Right. And so Mike Johnson thinks that he can essentially have slightly more of a chance of passing a SAVE Act that doesn’t have the mail voting piece. So in this context, at 12:58 a.m., Trump unleashes a tirade on Truth Social, calling our military “the strongest and the hottest in the world” and so forth—never mind the Iran fiasco, which is ongoing.
Norm, let’s break this up into two pieces. What exactly does Trump want here? It seems that he wants Republicans to attach as much of the SAVE Act as they can to defense funding and pass the entire thing via reconciliation, which would then be able to pass the Senate on a simple majority due to that process, correct?
They’ve already done two. It’s unprecedented, or close to it, to have a third one. But it’s basically blowing up norms and rules to try and jam this through, even though the rules make it clear that it’s not allowable.
Ornstein: Look, one part of it is a belief that if they do this first, then Democrats are going to take advantage of it if and when they end up with majorities in the House and Senate and a president, and they will dismantle everything that Republicans have done—not just during the Trump era, but going back to previous Republican presidents.
Ornstein: They could with a majority. But there’s another deeper reason why some Republicans don’t want to do this. They know that there are lots of things that would be deadly for them and the country, devastating, that they don’t want to do—crazy radical stuff, stuff that moves us even more towards a police state, stuff that could blow up their own economies and their own workforces.
Sargent: Norm, let me underscore that just so people really get it. Republicans know that if the filibuster were done away with, all of a sudden they’d be able to pass whatever Trump and MAGA want with a simple majority in the Senate. And they don’t want that state of affairs, because that would fuck the country and fuck the Republican Party in essence. So keeping the filibuster for them is kind of like a way to crazy-proof themselves against Trump and MAGA, more or less, right?
Sargent: If Mike Johnson were to send some version of the SAVE Act over to the Senate, can they pass it with reconciliation, or would the Senate parliamentarian kick that out?
However, the way they’ve relaxed their rules in the past is through this kind of maneuver. The parliamentarian rules that this is out of order. Somebody appeals the ruling of the chair. A simple majority can overrule the chair.
It would be wrong. It would be illegal under the Senate rules. What would stop it from being signed by the president? Nothing. What would stop it in the courts? There’s no way the courts would intervene.
Sargent: And then overrule the chair. Well, I just want to move on to another thing. NBC had this really striking report on what’s going on inside the Republican Senate caucus. The report says, “Some Republican strategists worry the party’s chances of holding the Senate are dwindling.”
One GOP operative says, “Poll after poll shows affordability is the top issue, but his mind is elsewhere.” Norm, you’ve been around a long time. Have you ever seen a GOP Senate caucus quite this angry with a Republican president?
Now, they may not do it in this case, because it cuts too close to home. But two things are involved here. They’re pissed because he’s putting pressure on them to do something they don’t want to do, and it’s a distraction, and it undermines their standing at home, because some of their own base voters are going to say these guys are disloyal—because they’re cultist voters. At the same time, they’re right that what people care about is first and foremost their own lives and affordability.
And when they were able to pass a bipartisan housing bill to deal with a key component of affordability, he said, I’m not going to sign it—after promising that he would. The bait and switch. So he’s undermining them at every front. But it’s still a cult, Greg, and we cannot rule out that when he pushes hard, they’ll go along, because they’re afraid.
The senator adds: “He likes to dominate people, and he’s a bully, and he’s fucked things up as fast as he can, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
Ornstein: I think there’s frustration. And part of the frustration is that they’ve come to realize that the rash acts that he’s taken—this insane war with Iran and the way it’s playing out, the tariffs in and out and up and down, the inability to deal with major problems facing the country. The fact that—because he’s not just blown up green energy, he’s paying billions of taxpayer money to stop wind projects that are almost completed.
You know, at the same time, they are unwilling to push back on the horrible things that ICE and the Border Patrol are doing. And what they’re realizing in states, including like Texas, is that the Hispanic votes that went to Republicans in 2024 are leaving them in substantial numbers, because of the policies that Trump is pursuing and their unwillingness to try and put a brake on any of them.
There are several stages here where this could kind of fall apart, on liberals really. Number one, they could just end the filibuster—Republicans could end the filibuster and pass the SAVE Act. Number two, they could try to pass it via reconciliation, and if the parliamentarian throws it out, they could take the steps you outlined to overrule the parliamentarian. So is one of those things going to happen? Are they going to pass the SAVE Act, Norm?
Now, there’s one caveat I would offer out there. The Constitution has banned poll taxes. This goes back to the Jim Crow era, where Southern segregationists blocked African American votes—blocked poor people’s votes—by putting a poll tax. You had to pay to vote. And the Constitution says you can’t do that in federal elections. Law says you can’t do it in state and local elections.
Sargent: Right. And that’s critical, because it looks like the mail piece won’t pass—the banning of vote by mail won’t pass, because Republicans want to keep that. Just to really clarify this: you think there’s a 40 percent chance that Republicans either end the filibuster or overrule the parliamentarian to pass the SAVE Act?
Sargent: Well, if that happens, Norm, all bets are off—but I really just don’t know whether that actually helps them. It could potentially help Democrats more. Norm Ornstein, thanks so much for coming on. That was a really, really great roadmap for us. We really appreciate it.
Ornstein: Always happy to do it with you, Greg.
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