Donald Trump has found a way to soothe Democratic fears that Republicans in Congress will continue to savage the poor, funnel money to the rich, and make the nation safe for corporate dominion. He’s effectively shut down Congress until it passes an unpassable bill.

Trump is demanding that the SAVE America Act—a voter suppression bill he thinks will save his hide in the midterms—reach his desk first before he’ll take care of any other congressional business. First it was Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the warrantless spying program that the intelligence hawks were poised to ram through again until Trump said SAVE had to be attached. Then a signing ceremony for the ROAD to Housing Act, a bipartisan agreement that passed with over 90 percent of Congress in both chambers, was abruptly canceled Wednesday because Trump asked for SAVE first. (That will likely become law anyway, as I’ll explain.)

More from David Dayen

Now this controlled burn is going to set fire to the last chance for Republicans to do anything else meaningful before the midterms. The SAVE Act has poisoned this process entirely, and there’s really no path for it to happen.

Remarkably enough, there are other potentially worthy bipartisan deals under discussion, for a $35 monthly co-pay for all insulin prescriptions and for child online safety rules, to name two. None of them will get done as long as this SAVE thing hangs over the proceedings.

Why is Trump destroying a Republican Congress’s ability to affirm his priorities? First, he really does think he can rig the elections in his favor and avoid accountability. But second and perhaps more important, Trump and his loyal sentry Russ Vought are running the government to their satisfaction without congressional input, defying legislative spending prerogatives and unilaterally budgeting government operations. So who cares if Congress can’t pass a law? Laws are not being followed anyway. The core of the constitutional system, Congress’s control of federal spending, has been effectively suspended.

WHAT IS THE SAVE AMERICA ACT? Its supporters claim it would simply make sure that only American citizens vote in federal elections. But that’s what the law already says now, and there are no reports of more than a tiny handful of violations in the last 30 years since it became a federal crime, and many of those were accidents. Stealing an election by convincing thousands of people to commit a felony in person is a highly implausible strategy.

Under the bill, all voter registration would have to be done in person with documentation like a passport, certified birth certificate with photo ID, or a naturalization certificate. A driver’s license alone wouldn’t count. This would be mandatory for any voter registration update, like after a move. Any married woman would have to certify their name change in order to register. Any rural voter would have to drive to their election office, which could be hundreds of miles. Low-income, minority, and student voters—plus even military members stationed overseas—would have trouble accessing the ballot. It would be a total mess.

And it isn’t going to become law. There aren’t anything close to 60 votes for it in the Senate, and there aren’t anything close to 50 Republican votes to overturn the filibuster that would lower that threshold. There may not even be 50 votes for SAVE if there were no filibuster; there were exactly 50 during a procedural vote earlier this month, and several of those votes are shaky if they actually meant the bill would pass. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has said that Trump is living in an “alternative universe” on the matter.

But some congressional Republicans populate the same universe, like Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and members of the House Freedom Caucus. They believe they can shut Congress down until it acts on SAVE. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) led a rebellion to sink the House’s work for the week, and the leadership had to cancel a vote yesterday. It was Luna’s idea to stop the housing bill signing until SAVE passes, and Trump dutifully agreed.

The Prospect in your inbox

Subscribe for analysis that goes beyond the noise.

(Incidentally, there’s now a claim that House Speaker Mike Johnson didn’t present the bill to the president, so he can’t sign it. This is a bullshit cover story; the signing ceremony was abruptly killed—of course everything was put in place for that signing. Johnson is now pretending he didn’t present it—or just staying mum about it—to spare Trump the embarrassment from the Constitutional mandate that any unsigned bill becomes law after ten days. Nothing can be done in Washington if Trump doesn’t agree to it, therefore the lie.)

The effort inside Congress to mirror Trump’s demands will close the House; just like when the House closed for weeks because Johnson didn’t want to allow a vote to release the Epstein files, it’s closed again because of SAVE. Johnson is attempting to bargain with the alternate-universe crowd by saying he will put SAVE in a third reconciliation bill, which has been in the planning stages for weeks.

The idea was to add $350 billion for the Pentagon—much of it to cover the disastrous war in Iran—to match Trump’s target of $1.5 trillion in military funding, and to add so-called “anti-fraud” measures to offset the cost. Tax cuts are likely too, you know, because it’s a Republican bill.

But House moderates are wary of agreeing to even more heavy cuts, doubling down on the unpopular Big Beautiful Bill approach that has devastated the poor so billionaires can get richer. The Senate doesn’t want to deal with a third reconciliation bill at all, because it would require another “vote-a-rama” opportunity where Democrats can force tough votes on issues that matter to the election. And the SAVE Act, which has no primary budgetary component, wouldn’t survive the reconciliation process anyway.

Trump’s demand for SAVE, then, dooms the only party-line vehicle available, and could doom his Pentagon budget plan. The White House has asked for an emergency $87 billion supplemental to cover war costs and agricultural aid , but that comes on the heels of bipartisan majorities in both houses voting to end the Iran war; its unpopularity means a spending bill effectively approving it is a heavy lift. And even though Trump’s administration asked for the supplemental, his zeal for SAVE, the subject of a contentious Senate Republican caucus lunch with the president on Wednesday, would surely get in the way of signing that bill into law as well, if it can even get through.

YET PART OF ME WONDERS whether Russ Vought is quietly whispering in Trump’s ear about the SAVE Act so he can continue his work of commandeering the budget process from the branch of government that’s supposed to have the constitutional authority for it.

Just this week, ProPublica reported that the Trump administration is violating specific appropriations guidelines for foreign aid. Despite clearly stating where money was supposed to go and for what purpose, Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, just isn’t doing it. Vought and Trump have also asserted the power to cancel any grant that doesn’t meet with the president’s agenda.

Last week, at a confirmation hearing for Hal Duncan to become Vought’s top deputy, the nominee refused to commit to avoiding “pocket rescissions” at the end of this fiscal year. Last year, Trump canceled $4.9 billion in foreign aid through a rescission message less than 45 days before the end of the fiscal year. There are rules in place for Congress to deal with rescissions, but if the fiscal year ends before the 45-day window they have to do that, Vought has decreed that they can just cancel the funding unilaterally. The Supreme Court blessed that last year, and Duncan was signaling that the administration will just keep doing it.

Federal judges keep telling Trump that he’s unlawfully canceling programs and violating Congress’s power of the purse. But that hasn’t stopped Trump and Vought from unilaterally dictating spending decisions, sometimes with the Supreme Court assisting down the road, in a way that simply transfers the power of the purse by extra-constitutional means.

Congress has the tools to fight back; they’ve threatened to freeze Pete Hegseth’s travel budget if he doesn’t give them more details about the Caribbean boat strikes. But if Congress is functionally inert, they won’t have much say in the matter. So shutting down Congress has a dual purpose: It gives Trump room to yell about the SAVE Act, but it also makes it easier to defy Congress’s wishes on appropriations and take over the budget process.

Trump can be a doddering, conspiracy-addled fool and still have people burrowed in his deep state who are strategic. That’s what’s going on.

Before you go.

I hope that you found this article interesting and thought-provoking. The reason we’re able to publish stories like this — free of programmatic ads and never behind a paywall — is because readers like you step up to support our work. 

The Prospect doesn't answer to advertisers or billionaire owners. We answer to you and to our commitment to pursuing the truth, wherever that leads us. 

Independent, reader-supported journalism is critical at a time when the free press is under assault. 

If you believe this kind of reporting should exist and remain free to read, we hope you'll consider chipping in. Every contribution, however modest, makes a real difference.

David Dayen
Executive Editor