President Donald Trump has exactly two modes: unfocused and obsessed. Most things in this world activate the first mode. But there are a handful of exceptions that become deeply ingrained in his mind and nothing can shake them loose, no matter how many times he’s been denied, contradicted or proved wrong. You see it in Trump’s fixation on renovating and building monuments, his refusal to accept his 2020 election loss as anything but fraud, and, lately, the supposed necessity of passing the SAVE America Act.
Trump is championing a rewrite of election law that would make it significantly harder for Americans to register to vote, require voters to show ID in all federal elections and force states to submit their voter rolls to the federal government. The bill has been stalled out in the Senate for months with no path to passage, but the president is still demanding the SAVE America Act reach his desk. Until then, Trump and his allies in the House have shown they’d rather doom any pending legislation than accept defeat.
A major bipartisan housing bill became the first victim of this new round of legislative hostage taking. As his own administration finalized preparations for a signing ceremony to herald the win, Trump announced that he would be refusing to sign it. The boycott would continue, he said on social media, “until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency.”
Chaos ensued as GOP members tried to explain why their leader would hurt their party’s political fortunes.
“We saw glimpses of this during Trump’s first administration,” a senior GOP aide told MS NOW’s Lillie Boudreaux and Peggy Helman, “but never in my lifetime have I seen a president so deliberately attempt to lose majorities for his own party.”
Trump has pulled similar stunts before. He swore in March that he wouldn’t sign any bill that came to him without first getting the SAVE America Act over the finish line. In doing so, Trump undercut Republican talking points placing the blame for the then-ongoing Department of Homeland Security shutdown on Democrats. He caved on that front, but last month demanded that a renewal of a foreign surveillance authority must have the SAVE America Act attached. The ultimatum scuttled a potential deal to pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act renewal as Democrats balked and left even some Republicans reeling.
There’s still a chance the housing bill becomes law even without Trump’s signature, provided he doesn’t veto it entirely. But it’ll be easier for him to keep his pledge to sign no new legislation if no new legislation reaches his desk. At least, that seems to be the play from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., who has taken up Trump’s crusade with gusto in the House — capitalizing on the minuscule majority that Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., commands, to shut down the House’s work entirely.
The president’s obsession with the SAVE America Act has blinded him to political reality.
The chamber operates mostly based on so-called “special rules” that allow bills to proceed swiftly to the floor for a vote. Luna has promised to vote against any rule on any legislation until the Senate passes the SAVE America Act. Johnson had hoped to get Trump to sign-off on a pared-down version of the bill in exchange for helping to get things moving again in the House, but a visit to the White House failed to yield results.
It’s highly unusual that a member of the House is trying to affect the Senate’s behavior. It’s weirder still because there just aren’t enough votes to give Trump what he wants — and nothing Luna does can change that. There’s almost no appetite among the GOP caucus to ditch the filibuster, especially not for this bill. Even if the threshold to pass were lowered from the current 60 votes, there’s no guarantee that there are 50 Republicans who want to pass the version that came through the House.
Trump’s attempt to strongarm GOP senators into following his lead Wednesday during a lunch Wednesday went over like a lead balloon.
“The president came to the Capitol to do what he thinks Senate Republican leadership can’t do: flip votes on SAVE and nuking the filibuster,” a senior Senate GOP aide told Politico. “He left with the same number of votes that existed when he arrived — possibly fewer.”
The president’s obsession with the SAVE America Act has blinded him to political reality. He’s incorrectly spent weeks claiming that failure to pass the bill will be the GOP’s ruin come November. Now, rather than spending the next few weeks proving that they deserve to keep their majorities, Trump has left GOP lawmakers paralyzed. In doing so, he has helped transform his flawed prediction into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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