Over the weekend, President Donald Trump listed yet another demand for the United States Senate: pass the bill he wanted that would restrict voting or he would not sign any legislation.
On Sunday, Trump said he would refuse to sign anything until the Senate passed the SAVE America Act, requiring Americans to show proof of citizenship to register to vote, even though it is illegal for non-citizens to vote in presidential elections.
Democrats see this as a hostage tactic and the actual legislation as a means to disenfranchise voters in service of his belief that Democrats can only win if they cheat, which Trump has repeated alongside his lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
“Donald Trump is preparing to hold our government hostage unless we help him undermine our right to vote, our elections, our democracy,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on social media.
On top of that, Trump said on Monday that he also wanted to see a ban on mail-in voting except for specific circumstances and a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth, which he called “mutilization,” and no transgender youth in women’s sports.
“Donald Trump is trying to save his power,” Sen. Raphael Warnock told reporters Monday evening. “And so he’s going to ring all those familiar bells of division, because he’s running desperately in the end, it’s not gonna work.”
But doing so would require the Senate to overcome the filibuster, the 60-vote threshold most legislation must overcome to pass.
Conservative hardline organizations like Heritage Action, the political wing of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, say the way around this is a “talking filibuster,” which would require them to hold the Senate floor and talk for an unlimited amount of time until the opposing side gives up. This is more akin to the classic version of the filibuster in movies like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune essentially put the kibosh on this, though, telling reporters that Democrats tried doing the same thing when they controlled the Senate.
“And obviously, what people don’t realize, I think, is that it’s all unlimited debate, but also unlimited amendments,” he said, warning that Democrats could weaponize the talking filibuster.
Still, Trump pushed for it in a press conference on Monday, saying it would shore up Republicans in the midterms.
“I don’t think you can politically exist if you’re not going to do voter ID and these things,” he said. “I don’t think the people and not doing it for this reason at all. It’ll guarantee the midterms. It’ll guarantee the midterms.”
Unsurprisingly, there’s a campaign element to it. Last week, after no Republican candidate in Texas’s Senate race received a majority, triggering a runoff, Trump said he would make an endorsement soon and call on the other candidate to drop out.
In response, MAGA Attorney General Ken Paxton said he would drop his bid against incumbent Sen. John Cornyn if Republican Senate leadership removed the filibuster to pass the legislation. When The Independent asked Cornyn about it, he said simply, “I’ve long been a supporter of the SAVE Act.” But over the weekend, Cornyn expanded on it.
“Contrary to fake news in the twitterverse: I have supported the Save America Act from day one,” he said on social media, tagging Trump. “I will happily support the ‘talking filibuster’ if that’s what it takes to pass this into law.”
But the fact remains that many Republicans are on Thune’s side and simply do not want to resort to ditching the silent filibuster. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is not running for re-election and has occasionally criticized the Trump administration, said it could force Republicans who are up for re-election to cast votes that would make them look bad.
“It could be several weeks long, unending amendments, no telling how many bad votes for people in a cycle with no certainty of it being successful on the other side,” he told The Independent on Monday evening. “That doesn’t sound like a business proposition, and that’s exactly what we’re confronted with.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has become an enthusiastic backer of the president, seemed ambivalent on the idea of a talking filibuster for the SAVE America Act.
“We’ll talk about it,” he told The Independent. “It’s got some downsides. It’s got some upsides. But I’m ready to vote.”
But despite that unease, Trump will likely not relent until he bends the Senate to his will.
He’s already done so multiple times and has always found the Senate, with its staid nature and marriage to rules and procedure, more frustrating than the madcap House of Representatives.
This might be the moment where the body finally locks horns with the president and he might not be able to stop it.
