Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
This whole situation has gotten weird and complex, so to really understand it, we’re talking to the great voting rights reporter Ari Berman of Mother Jones. Ari, always good to have you on.
Sargent: So House Republicans just passed a massive $95 billion budget with new war funding, and it also contains $10 billion for provisions related to the SAVE Act, which is the big voter suppression legislation Trump wants. The idea is to pressure the Senate to then pass these things via the simple majority reconciliation process. Ari, before we talk about the Senate, can you just explain what these provisions are in the House budget resolution, and how would they work?
So if you look at the core provisions of the SAVE Act—if you’re going to incentivize states to pass those, it’s basically proof of citizenship to register to vote, voter ID to cast a ballot, and some kind of ban on mail voting. Those are the three big parts of the SAVE America Act.
Voter suppression mechanisms like ending vote by mail, requiring proof of citizenship. You’d do all these things through the states, and the House would try and incentivize that.
Sargent: Trump ratcheted up the pressure on John Thune, the Senate majority leader, to pass these provisions of the SAVE Act via reconciliation—again, we’re talking about the things that the House is basically on track to passing. Listen to this.
Sargent: So the White House blasted out video of that appearance, which is an unusual move since it pressures Republicans. And then on Thursday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said this.
Sargent: Ari, the idea seems to be that the Senate can pass these provisions of the SAVE Act—again, that would be in the House bill—via reconciliation, because by structuring them as appropriations to incentivize states to restrict voting, they think it might get past the parliamentarian. But we don’t even know if that’s at all likely, do we?
McConnell, wherever he is, says he’s against it. Cornyn, Cassidy—all of the people that Trump has basically pushed out of the party. They’re all skeptical of this. So even if you got rid of the filibuster, even if you tried to pass it through reconciliation, Thune keeps saying we don’t have the votes.
Berman: Yeah, because basically the only financial part of it is to incentivize states. What they’re actually doing is radically changing how people would vote in those states. And that has nothing to do with the budget reconciliation process. And there’s already a number of Republicans on record saying we don’t think we can do this through reconciliation. So the Senate parliamentarian isn’t going to have to look very far for a justification in terms of why this wouldn’t work.
He said this about the White House: “Instead of pointing the finger at Republicans, they might think about going after the people who are stopping it on the floor, the Democrats. And if there are Republicans that they think are gettable, get them a phone.”
Berman: Yeah, I mean, they’ve been wanting this to go away for months. I would urge everyone to watch this speech that Thom Tillis gave last week on the Senate floor. I mean, he just went nuts basically about this. They are so fed up that Trump keeps telling them to pass this bill. The votes, number one, are not there. And number two, this would not have the impact on the midterms that Trump thinks it would.
It also says you need a passport or a birth certificate to register to vote. Well, 146 million Americans—half of all Americans—don’t have passports. The top 10 states where people don’t have passports all voted for Trump, meaning that it’s Trump voters that don’t have these passport requirements.
So I do believe the SAVE America Act is a voter suppression bill. I also believe it’s a voter suppression bill that could suppress many Republicans. And if you talk to some Republicans privately, they will tell you this. They will tell you that this bill would not help the party nearly as much as Trump says it will, and it would hurt lots of Republicans.
Sargent: Yeah. It looks as if Donald Trump has just gotten it into his head that if he can get this passed, it saves the midterms for Republicans. He’s just simply not capable of grasping the situation at a very fundamental level, as he so often is not, right?
Secondly—and this is my real concern about all of this, Greg—is that I believe he’s using the SAVE America Act as a pretext to challenge the legitimacy of the midterms. So if it does not pass, which it won’t pass, he’s going to say, we don’t have the SAVE America Act, therefore the elections were rigged, therefore I have no choice but to challenge the legitimacy of the midterms. And he’s going to point to that crazy speech he gave and say, I laid out all the evidence—even though he laid out no evidence, but he’s going to say, I laid out all the evidence, the elections were rigged, the Congress didn’t act on this, therefore I have no choice but to issue a national emergency executive order, or seize voting machines, or take some kind of dramatic intervention to mess with the midterms.
Sargent: Yeah, it’s a pretty horrifying scenario. And I will point out that Republicans have privately said that they think they are being set up in exactly that way—that they think that Trump’s pressure here is really about being able to say later that Republicans are why they lost the midterms, in addition to kind of creating a pretext to do the absolute worst.
It gets worse. Democrats are favored on the economy over Republicans in the Fox poll by 54 to 45, nine points. And Democrats have now edged ahead of Republicans on immigration, 50 to 49. It’s just astounding stuff. For a Fox poll to find all that is an extremely serious blow to Republicans, I think. What do you think?
And so it’s not going to end with the SAVE Act. I think that’s the really important thing. Even if this fails before recess, or wherever it comes to a head—we don’t even know when it’s going to fully come to a head, because it’s already come to a head a number of times. But this is not ending. Let’s say the Senate has a definitive vote on the SAVE Act. Trump’s going to think about something else to do.
Sargent: Yeah. And my sense is that Democrats and a lot of Democratic-aligned lawyers and groups get this and are really gearing up, but we should really be using our imaginations to imagine the very worst right now. I just want to bring up a bit more polling that shows this deterioration. An Emerson poll puts Dems ahead in the generic House ballot matchup by eleven points, 53 to 42. A new Pew poll has Dems up six, 43 to 37.
Berman: Yeah. And people have been saying this. They’ve been saying that a lot of these polls are going to move from a registered voter to a likely voter model. And when you get to a likely voter model, Democrats are going to do better, because they have much more enthusiasm in terms of voting.
I do worry that if it’s close—this may not succeed, but I think you’re going to just see a tremendous amount of pressure from Trump for Republicans to try to mess with the mechanics of voting, either in terms of how votes are counted or ultimately how elections are certified and how members of Congress are seated.
So you’ve got major Senate races in places like Texas, Ohio, Alaska, which you brought up—you know, some states with some pretty large rural areas in them. And so I really wonder whether the Republican legislators in some of these states would actually take the money to do this. What do you think? Do you think it’s likely that they would do it, or might they not?
I’m sure some red states would take the money ultimately. I’m sure some red states would like to have these policies. Some red states already have these policies. And I’m sure that when we see state legislatures come into session next year, some of them are going to pass similar bills. But in terms of trying to save the midterms, quote-unquote, it’s too late for Republicans to do that.
I do not for a second rule out them trying this at all. But do you think that they might actually be able to go through with it to some degree? And then what would happen?
I hope that the courts would treat this differently, like they did in Fulton County. Because in Fulton County, a magistrate judge basically signed off on the affidavit—the affidavit that was used to initiate the FBI search and eventually the taking of those ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, we later learned was just totally based on recycled disinformation by election deniers. It was like they said, we’re looking for the evidence. Well, you’re supposed to have evidence to get a warrant in the first place, let alone take 700 boxes of ballots. But maybe the judge thought, OK, this has already been adjudicated, therefore there’s less risk in terms of them taking it.
But I do think that people are preparing for this. Election officials are preparing for this, lawyers are preparing for this, and they’re not going to be blindsided like they were by the raid in Fulton County, Georgia. So do I expect Trump to try it? Yes. Do I ultimately think Trump will succeed in stopping an election and overturning an election? I think the answer to that is most likely no.
But again, we need to use our imaginations to the fullest to think through what he might try, because he’s pretty desperate. Ari Berman, always great to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on.
Berman: Thanks so much, Greg. Great to talk to you again.
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