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Sixty-one years ago this week, President Lyndon B. Johnson used the power of the bully pulpit to demand that every citizen be granted the equal right to vote.
He said, “There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right.” And he announced new legislation to guarantee the right to vote, asking Congress to join him in “working long hours,” even “nights and weekends,” to ensure the passage of what would be the Voting Rights Act.
Today, we have a president, speaking with similar tenacity and urgency, demanding that Congress pull back that very right.
Over the weekend, President Trump declared on Truth Social that he would not sign any bills until the SAVE Act is passed. It’s a stark escalation in the effort to pass the bill — the kind of energy presidents should put into expanding voting rights rather than restricting them. (It’s hard not to wonder what would have happened if Biden had made such a declaration when the Freedom to Vote Act was under consideration, for instance.)
Yesterday, Trump convened Republican lawmakers at one of his hotels. The bill attacking the freedom to vote should be Congress’s “number one priority.”
“It will guarantee the midterms,” he told them. “If you don’t get it, big trouble, my opinion.”
As many readers of this newsletter know, the SAVE Act would effectively require Americans to produce a passport or birth certificate to register to vote. Brennan Center research shows that 21 million people lack ready access to these documents. About half of all Americans don’t have a passport, and millions of married women who have changed their names might need to jump through extra hoops to vote.
The bill would now also require states to regularly hand over sensitive voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security — a troubling thought, especially as the administration is set to tap Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a notorious election denier, to replace Kristi Noem as DHS secretary.
In his social media post, Trump demanded that the bill go even further and “GO FOR THE GOLD,” including banning mail voting with few exceptions.
We expect a vote in the Senate to happen soon, perhaps even later this month. It will be on all of us to speak out against the bill once again. And it will be up to senators to block it. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has promisingly laid the groundwork: “If Trump is saying he won’t sign any bills until the SAVE Act is passed, then so be it: there will be total gridlock in the Senate.”
Some lawmakers echo the demand that Congress use a “talking filibuster,” which would force Democrats to physically hold the floor to prevent a final vote. Be careful what you wish for. Democrats could raise amendments on any topic, from health care to the Epstein files to war powers, overtaking the floor for an indefinite amount of time. Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune expressed skepticism, saying “I find it very hard to see” how the bill would succeed.
With the SAVE Act’s uncertain future, we expect Trump to turn to the states to pursue an anti-voter agenda. Recently, he called for “nationalizing” elections in at least 15 states. The New York Times has tracked the states where those efforts are in motion. Activists and state officials in Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania are engaging with new determination in a range of anti-voter activities, from re-investigating past elections to rewriting election rules.
The Justice Department is now being wielded to advance this nakedly partisan cause. Yesterday, it was reported that the Arizona State Senate received and responded to a federal grand jury subpoena seeking Maricopa County’s 2020 election records. Add that to the raid on the election offices in Fulton County, Georgia — a raid we now know was justified by debunked conspiracy theories.
Assume, too, that the White House will again try to exert unilateral personal control. It’s now a year since an executive order purported to overhaul elections. Federal courts have mostly blocked the order’s implementation, including in a suit brought by the Brennan Center and others. As one judge declared, “Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States — not the President — with the power to regulate federal elections.”
Presidents are often defined not by their promises, but by their priorities while in office. LBJ will be forever known for answering the call of those who dared to march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, and sacrifice their safety for the right to vote.
Amid an ongoing war in the Middle East and a brewing economic crisis, Trump has chosen to focus on restricting access to the ballot. He’s using maximum pressure to pass what would be the most restrictive federal voting law in American history. And he’s using the bully pulpit to undermine and meddle with our elections.
It’s important that we not let him.
