SAVE America Act Designed to Doom Americans
A nasty piece of legislation that failed to pass last year has been reborn, nastier than before, and the president really wants it to pass.
Opinion, by Aly Gibbs
Have you heard of the “SAVE America Act”?
It’s the equally unpopular sequel to H.R.22/S.128 (just “The SAVE Act”), a bill proposed last year that would have demanded American voters present an aggressively narrow range of documents that prove their citizenship when registering to vote. This bill would have acted as voter suppression against groups such as tribal natives, married women who have changed their last name, and the children of military personnel born overseas while their parents were stationed outside of the United States. Many Americans do not have ready access to the documents demanded as proof of citizenship. Fortunately, the bill died a quiet and ignominious death in the Senate last year, where it was received but never voted on.
Unfortunately, The SAVE Act has been resurrected as H.R.7296, the SAVE America Act, which passed the House of Representatives in February… and still hasn’t been brought up for a vote in the Senate, per reporting from The 19th. In a bizarre turn of events, Donald Trump is now insisting that he won’t pass any other legislation sent to him by the Senate until they pass the SAVE America Act, which he would also like them to rewrite to include bans on transgender girls and women participating in sports, and gender-affirming care for minors. The latter he misconstrues as the “mutilization” [sic] of trans youth, a fictitious and intentionally inflammatory framing that ignores the incredible rareness of surgeries among trans youth. These changes, he said, would be “the easiest thing to get passed that you’ve ever had. Each one, it’s ‘best of,’ best of Trump.”
Few agree. The bill, already highly polarized for the blatant and needless harm it would do to many Americans, won’t necessarily be easier for Senate Democrats to vote for should a bunch of anti-trans gibberish be tacked onto it to further the president’s unhinged and obsessive culture war against a group that represents, at most, 1% of the American population. Furthermore, the House, who would have to rewrite the act and pass it a second time, is currently on recess and won’t return to work until the 16th.
The act would also severely limit mail-in voting, which is the only kind of voting available in eight states and Washington DC, and demands that states put in a tremendous amount of work to ensure that everybody who votes is a US citizen. It is already illegal for non-citizens to vote, and there is no strong evidence that non-citizens voting has ever impacted an election, but states routinely investigate and prosecute non-citizen voting when it does happen. The SAVE America Act would stress our electoral system to an incredible degree, while providing no new funds for states to enact these changes, and no grace period in which they may do so.
Democrat Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader, spoke unequivocally against Democrats’ support of the SAVE America Act.
“The SAVE Act is nothing more than Jim Crow 2.0,” Schumer said Monday on the Senate floor. “It is a voter suppression bill. It takes away vote by mail. It makes it harder for people to register, and would require states to hand over voter rolls to election deniers at the Department of Justice … and now Donald Trump says he will not sign any bill to lower costs, lower rent, lower groceries, until Congress passes this bill taking away tens of millions of citizens’ right to vote … there will be total gridlock in Congress. On the other hand, if the SAVE Act does pass, democracy will be in very serious danger … Democrats will make sure that never happens.”
It’s nice to hear Schumer stand firm on something, even if he has to ramble on about the price of gas while the de-personification of trans Americans is well underway. Under most circumstances I am reluctant to trust in the soft, pudding-like spine of Chuck Schumer, but in this case, I believe denying the SAVE America Act is an easy layup for Senate Democrats to prove they give a shit about something besides their stock portfolio.
It’s probably gonna be a weird one. If the president refuses to sign a bill that Congress has passed, it becomes law 10 days later. If he vetoes that bill, Congress can override his veto with a two-thirds majority. Given the lack of political unity in Congress these days, it might be challenging for either party to muster 60 votes on any serious piece of legislation.
So, why is Trump being so insistent about all of this? Well, two obvious reasons, I think: He recognizes that he and Republicans are wildly unpopular and unlikely to win bids for election or reelection in many districts, and even the presidency. Instituting widespread voter suppression now, while they retain broad power in the government, would be ideal if the goal is to maintain authoritarianism for the foreseeable future.
The other reason is, of course, simply that he despises trans people. Like many of Jeffrey Epstein’s close personal friends, Donald Trump would like to see trans people legislated out of existence, or at best reduced to perpetual poverty that forces us into sex work for his and his friends’ gratification.
So fuck Donald Trump, fuck Republicans, and fuck any Democrats who even consider giving ground on this in the weeks and months to come.
Aly Gibbs (She/They) is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.
