Trump Tells Republicans to Shut Down the Government Over Election Fraud B.S.
The August recess has ended, and Congress has less than a month to pass legislation to fund the federal government or plunge the nation into a shutdown. It’s already getting ugly.
On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump demanded that “If Republicans in the House, and Senate, don’t get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET.”
For days now, the former president — who falsely maintains that the 2020 election was stolen from him — has been promoting unsourced claims of election fraud in 2024 early voting on his social media.
Earlier this week, Trump promoted unsubstantiated claims that Arizona, a key 2024 battleground state, is allowing non-citizens to remain on the state’s voter rolls. He also repeated meritless claims that “20% of the Mail-In Ballots in Pennsylvania are fraudulent.”
“Here we go again!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Where is the U.S. Attorney General and FBI to INVESTIGATE? Where is the Pennsylvania Republican Party? We will WIN Pennsylvania by a lot, unless the Dems are allowed to CHEAT. THE RNC MUST ACTIVATE, NOW!!!”
Amid his preemptive efforts to sow doubt about the election, Trump is demanding that Republicans secure passage of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act), or shut down the federal government. The SAVE Act, which passed a vote in the House in July but has not been taken up by the Senate, would require Americans to provide documented proof of citizenship — such as a passport or birth certificate — in order to register to vote.
The law would create a massive hurdle for voters, who in many states are already required to jump through a slew of bureaucratic hoops in order to maintain their voter registrations active. The law would likely result in a decrease in voter registration and election participation, as millions of Americans do not have the required documents proving citizenship proposed by the law on hand, and attaining them typically requires time and money.
There are already laws that prevent non-citizens from voting in elections, and a small number of municipalities allow non-citizens to vote in local elections. States take measures — such as cross-referencing voter data with Social Security information — to ensure that those who register to vote are actually eligible. The notion that non-citizens are influencing elections by illegally voting is a myth, one that even conservative think tanks like the CATO Institute have debunked through analysis of voter data.
In the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is already finding himself at odds with his own party over the impending funding battle. The speaker has indicated he’s willing to tie the continuing resolution to the SAVE Act, and has “no fallback position.”
But on Tuesday morning, Johnson told Punchbowl News that he doesn’t think a shutdown “behooves the country.”
“I don’t think anybody desires that, and we have an obligation to try to prevent that from happening,” Johnson said. “So that’s what I’m working on.”
Hours later, following Trump’s demand that Republicans hold the government hostage over his voting conspiracies, Johnson was on the air attacking Democrats for not supporting a plan to attach the SAVE act to the House’s funding resolution.
In a touchy interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Johnson complained that “Democrats have no explanation for why they won’t support the SAVE Act.” Tapper countered that it’s “ it’s already against the law for undocumented immigrants to vote,” and that noncitizens rarely even attempt to vote in elections. Johnson countered that voting should be treated the same way as underage Americans attempting to buy alcohol.
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1833603841217990708
Some Republicans in the House are livid that Johnson is even entertaining a funding extension, even with the SAVE Act attached, while others feel that the image of the GOP forcing a government shutdown weeks before the November election would be a boon to Democrats.
“The 6 month continuing resolution with the SAVE Act attached is an insult to Americans’ intelligence,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) wrote on Monday. “The CR doesn’t cut spending, and the shiny object attached to it will be dropped like a hot potato before passage.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) wrote on X that “Speaker Johnson is setting up a fake fight for the Save Act, which we already passed in July, to vote to extend the Biden/Harris budget.”
“The American people are tired of being lied to,” she added.
“Shutting down the government is always a bad idea, no matter what time of year it is,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters on Tuesday.
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