“Change the voters, change the country,” top Trump aide Stephen Miller wrote on Twitter Wednesday.
The stark message from a senior White House aide came after President Trump held a contentious meeting with Senate Republicans on Wednesday, at which his central demand was to pass legislation to restrict the ability to vote, known as the Save America Act. The House passed the White House-backed bill, which would require American citizens to show a passport or birth certificate to register to vote, purge voter rolls every 30 days, and restrict mail-in voting, but it has stalled in the Senate.
Trump on Wednesday abruptly refused to sign housing legislation that passed with broad bipartisan support until Senate Republicans passed the voter suppression measure, which would prevent millions of Americans who do not have a passport or access to their paper birth certificate from voting and inject chaos into America’s elections.
“The President had one …clear message: Save America Act, Save America Act, Save America Act,” Trump ally Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) told NBC News after the meeting. “What he said is that the Save America Act is exponentially more important than the housing bill.”
But on Thursday, Trump appeared to relent, or see another path forward for the voter restriction bill ahead of the midterm elections this November. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) told reporters he was transmitting the housing bill to the White House after meeting with Trump at the White House. And Trump urged House Republican allies who had been blocking House rules votes until the Save Act passed to stand down.
The sign of a breakthrough came after Johnson said Republicans would try to use reconciliation to ram the Save Act through, bypassing normal procedure for a Senate vote.
Johnson “repeatedly said Wednesday that Republicans must rely on the partisan reconciliation process to address the SAVE Act because it would allow them to pass it in the Senate with only a simple majority in a chamber where they have a 53-47 advantage,” NBC News reported.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Florida) said she would try to attach the Save Act to the annual defense bill, Axios reported.
The Save Act “proposals would inject chaos into election administration,” an analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice warns:
In every form, the SAVE Act would require American citizens to show documents like a passport or birth certificate to register to vote. Our research shows that more than 21 million Americans lack ready access to those documents. Roughly half of Americans don’t even have a passport. Millions lack access to a paper copy of their birth certificate. The SAVE Act would disenfranchise Americans of all ages and races, but younger voters and voters of color would suffer disproportionately. Likewise, millions of women whose married names aren’t on their birth certificates or passports would face extra steps just to make their voices heard.
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