The following is a lightly edited transcript of the July 24 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Donald Trump exploded at Senate GOP leader John Thune during a Wednesday rally, demanding that Republicans pass voter suppression legislation immediately. This prompted an angry response from Thune, which in turn triggered MAGA rage in response. It’s no accident that this comes amid new polls showing the GOP midterm position deteriorating, including in a major Fox News survey. Trump thinks voter suppression can save the party. This is all coming to a head because the House just passed something, and the pressure on the Senate is getting brutal.
This whole situation has gotten weird and complex, so to really understand it, we’re talking to the great voting rights reporter Ari Berman of Mother Jones. Ari, always good to have you on.
Ari Berman: Hey, Greg, great to talk to you again. Thank you.
Sargent: So House Republicans just passed a massive $95 billion budget with new war funding, and it also contains $10 billion for provisions related to the SAVE Act, which is the big voter suppression legislation Trump wants. The idea is to pressure the Senate to then pass these things via the simple majority reconciliation process. Ari, before we talk about the Senate, can you just explain what these provisions are in the House budget resolution, and how would they work?
Berman: Well, that’s a good question, Greg. And I can’t really answer it, because we don’t really know. All we know is that the House passed a resolution that says that states are going to get $10 billion in grants if they pass parts of the SAVE Act. But they didn’t release any more details, so we can only speculate on what they’re trying to do. But this seems to me a backdoor way to try to pass the SAVE America Act.
So if you look at the core provisions of the SAVE Act—if you’re going to incentivize states to pass those, it’s basically proof of citizenship to register to vote, voter ID to cast a ballot, and some kind of ban on mail voting. Those are the three big parts of the SAVE America Act.
Sargent: So basically, what this is starting to look like is the House is passing $10 billion to use to essentially try to get states to pass by themselves, in their state legislatures, these things in the SAVE Act.
Voter suppression mechanisms like ending vote by mail, requiring proof of citizenship. You’d do all these things through the states, and the House would try and incentivize that.
Berman: Yeah, they’re basically paying states to do voter suppression. That’s the simplest way I can explain what the House is doing.
Sargent: Trump ratcheted up the pressure on John Thune, the Senate majority leader, to pass these provisions of the SAVE Act via reconciliation—again, we’re talking about the things that the House is basically on track to passing. Listen to this.
Donald Trump (voiceover): Everybody call John Thune at the Senate. He’s the leader of the Republican Party, and tell him to get this stuff approved. So we’re fighting so that all voters must show voter ID. We’re fighting so that all voters must provide proof of citizenship, OK? And also the no mail-in ballots.
Sargent: So the White House blasted out video of that appearance, which is an unusual move since it pressures Republicans. And then on Thursday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said this.
Karoline Leavitt (voiceover): Look, the president spoke about this directly yesterday. His patience is running out. He wants to see as much of the SAVE America Act passed as possible by the August recess. He knows that’s what the American people want to see passed.
Sargent: Ari, the idea seems to be that the Senate can pass these provisions of the SAVE Act—again, that would be in the House bill—via reconciliation, because by structuring them as appropriations to incentivize states to restrict voting, they think it might get past the parliamentarian. But we don’t even know if that’s at all likely, do we?
Berman: Yeah, I think it’s a pretty big stretch that A, it would get past the parliamentarian, and B, there’s enough votes for it. Because Trump keeps talking about getting rid of the filibuster. But the fact is, there isn’t even a simple majority for the SAVE America Act at this point. You have Murkowski announced she’s against it, Tillis announced he’s against it in its current form going into effect before the midterms.
McConnell, wherever he is, says he’s against it. Cornyn, Cassidy—all of the people that Trump has basically pushed out of the party. They’re all skeptical of this. So even if you got rid of the filibuster, even if you tried to pass it through reconciliation, Thune keeps saying we don’t have the votes.
Sargent: These provisions of the SAVE Act probably won’t get past the parliamentarian, because the reconciliation process is really only supposed to be used on things that concern taxes and spending and fiscal matters. And as you said, bribing states to suppress the vote just doesn’t qualify for that. So we think the Senate parliamentarian would essentially rule those out of order, right?
Berman: Yeah, because basically the only financial part of it is to incentivize states. What they’re actually doing is radically changing how people would vote in those states. And that has nothing to do with the budget reconciliation process. And there’s already a number of Republicans on record saying we don’t think we can do this through reconciliation. So the Senate parliamentarian isn’t going to have to look very far for a justification in terms of why this wouldn’t work.
Sargent: So that’s one pretty big hurdle. And you brought up the fact that there probably aren’t even enough Republicans in the Senate to pass this thing with a simple majority via reconciliation. That’s what John Thune said in response to all this pressure. He responded by urging the White House to pressure Democrats and Republican holdouts.
He said this about the White House: “Instead of pointing the finger at Republicans, they might think about going after the people who are stopping it on the floor, the Democrats. And if there are Republicans that they think are gettable, get them a phone.”
I mean, there just aren’t 50 votes for these provisions of the SAVE Act at all, right? I mean, that could change. I’ve got to think these Republicans really would hope that the parliamentarian would throw all this stuff out, so they’re relieved of the pressure of having to pass it.
Berman: Yeah, I mean, they’ve been wanting this to go away for months. I would urge everyone to watch this speech that Thom Tillis gave last week on the Senate floor. I mean, he just went nuts basically about this. They are so fed up that Trump keeps telling them to pass this bill. The votes, number one, are not there. And number two, this would not have the impact on the midterms that Trump thinks it would.
I mean, a lot of these provisions—I’ve been arguing this for months now—would hurt Republicans as much as Democrats. I’ll just give you one example. The bill says you have to present your citizenship documents in person at an elections office. That means that if you live in a rural area, you could have to drive hours just to be able to register to vote.
It also says you need a passport or a birth certificate to register to vote. Well, 146 million Americans—half of all Americans—don’t have passports. The top 10 states where people don’t have passports all voted for Trump, meaning that it’s Trump voters that don’t have these passport requirements.
You look at the citizenship requirements. Sixty-nine million married women have changed their names, meaning that they could have a different name on their birth certificate than on their driver’s license, for example. Women who take their partners’ names are twice as likely to be Republicans than Democrats.
So I do believe the SAVE America Act is a voter suppression bill. I also believe it’s a voter suppression bill that could suppress many Republicans. And if you talk to some Republicans privately, they will tell you this. They will tell you that this bill would not help the party nearly as much as Trump says it will, and it would hurt lots of Republicans.
And that doesn’t even get into the whole thing with banning mail voting—which, ask Republican strategists in Alaska, in Arizona, in Florida if it’s a smart idea to outlaw mail voting four months before the midterms. They’ll tell you unequivocally, yes, this would hurt Democrats, but it would also hurt a lot of Republicans as well.
Sargent: Yeah. It looks as if Donald Trump has just gotten it into his head that if he can get this passed, it saves the midterms for Republicans. He’s just simply not capable of grasping the situation at a very fundamental level, as he so often is not, right?
Berman: Number one, every time that Trump is about to lose or on the verge of losing, he starts blaming the mechanics of voting for his loss. We saw this in 2020 with mail voting. We’re seeing it again now with the SAVE America Act.
Secondly—and this is my real concern about all of this, Greg—is that I believe he’s using the SAVE America Act as a pretext to challenge the legitimacy of the midterms. So if it does not pass, which it won’t pass, he’s going to say, we don’t have the SAVE America Act, therefore the elections were rigged, therefore I have no choice but to challenge the legitimacy of the midterms. And he’s going to point to that crazy speech he gave and say, I laid out all the evidence—even though he laid out no evidence, but he’s going to say, I laid out all the evidence, the elections were rigged, the Congress didn’t act on this, therefore I have no choice but to issue a national emergency executive order, or seize voting machines, or take some kind of dramatic intervention to mess with the midterms.
I’m not saying that’s going to succeed, because I think the president ultimately would not succeed. But I believe that he’s going to blame the failure of the SAVE Act as a reason why he needs to do some kind of more dramatic intervention in the midterms—to really mess with how people vote, or how votes are counted, or how elections are certified.
Sargent: Yeah, it’s a pretty horrifying scenario. And I will point out that Republicans have privately said that they think they are being set up in exactly that way—that they think that Trump’s pressure here is really about being able to say later that Republicans are why they lost the midterms, in addition to kind of creating a pretext to do the absolute worst.
I want to bring up some of the polling now. All this comes amid very clear signs that the Republican position in the midterms might suddenly be deteriorating. Again, the new Fox News poll finds Democrats leading the House generic ballot matchup by seven points, 53 to 46. And get this: that 53 percent for Democrats is the highest percentage either party has gotten in the House generic ballot matchup in Fox News polling going back twenty years.
It gets worse. Democrats are favored on the economy over Republicans in the Fox poll by 54 to 45, nine points. And Democrats have now edged ahead of Republicans on immigration, 50 to 49. It’s just astounding stuff. For a Fox poll to find all that is an extremely serious blow to Republicans, I think. What do you think?
Berman: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s a worst-case scenario for Trump, because the Iran war is flaring up again. Gas prices are rising again. And what is Trump talking about? Intelligence from China in the 2020 election. I mean, he’s not even remotely close to being on topic here. And I think we should fully expect that as the poll numbers continue to deteriorate, the White House is going to consider more dramatic interventions in the midterms as a response—meaning the more unpopular Trump becomes, the more desperate they’re going to be.
And so it’s not going to end with the SAVE Act. I think that’s the really important thing. Even if this fails before recess, or wherever it comes to a head—we don’t even know when it’s going to fully come to a head, because it’s already come to a head a number of times. But this is not ending. Let’s say the Senate has a definitive vote on the SAVE Act. Trump’s going to think about something else to do.
And I believe that something else is going to be pressuring law enforcement somehow to take some kind of incredibly drastic, unconstitutional action in the midterms. And that’s the next phase of what I’m watching. And I think that’s what we should all prepare for. And that’s why the demise, or whatever we want to call it, of the SAVE Act, while a victory, it only gets you so far—because I do believe that the failure of the SAVE Act is really only the beginning of what is going to be a much broader fight over the legitimacy of the midterms.
Sargent: Yeah. And my sense is that Democrats and a lot of Democratic-aligned lawyers and groups get this and are really gearing up, but we should really be using our imaginations to imagine the very worst right now. I just want to bring up a bit more polling that shows this deterioration. An Emerson poll puts Dems ahead in the generic House ballot matchup by eleven points, 53 to 42. A new Pew poll has Dems up six, 43 to 37.
Between those and the Fox poll having it at seven, I think it’s very possible the Democratic lead is starting to grow a bit, because the generic House ballot averages have been around five points, and we now have three polls showing it bigger than that—including a Fox poll and including an Emerson one that’s even bigger. So I think we may be seeing the start of some significant deterioration. Do you think that’s possible?
Berman: Yeah. And people have been saying this. They’ve been saying that a lot of these polls are going to move from a registered voter to a likely voter model. And when you get to a likely voter model, Democrats are going to do better, because they have much more enthusiasm in terms of voting.
And I think it needs to be a landslide, quite frankly. I think it needs to be a huge-margin type of situation, so they can’t contest the results. If it’s really close, that’s where I worry about, for example, the GOP’s lead on gerrymandering mattering. That’s where I worry about Trump pressuring Mike Johnson not to seat Democratic members of Congress. That’s where I worry about state-level challenges, and governors’ races or other close state races. If the margin is overwhelming—if Democrats win by 20 seats in the House, for example—then it’s really hard to challenge the election. And so that to me is the best-case scenario here, of it being closer to a landslide.
I do worry that if it’s close—this may not succeed, but I think you’re going to just see a tremendous amount of pressure from Trump for Republicans to try to mess with the mechanics of voting, either in terms of how votes are counted or ultimately how elections are certified and how members of Congress are seated.
Sargent: Absolutely. It’s going to get really hairy. One other question about the SAVE Act, if I could. Let’s say somehow the House passed these provisions by which there’s congressional appropriation used to essentially incentivize or bribe states to pass voter suppression. Let’s say somehow it got past the Senate. Would any states actually do it? And that’s sort of a pretty key question, isn’t it?
So you’ve got major Senate races in places like Texas, Ohio, Alaska, which you brought up—you know, some states with some pretty large rural areas in them. And so I really wonder whether the Republican legislators in some of these states would actually take the money to do this. What do you think? Do you think it’s likely that they would do it, or might they not?
Berman: I don’t think they would do it before November. I mean, it’s too late to do anything. Florida passed kind of a mini SAVE Act months ago that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. And they put it in effect after the midterms to avoid this whole question. So states are out of time to make major changes before the election.
I’m sure some red states would take the money ultimately. I’m sure some red states would like to have these policies. Some red states already have these policies. And I’m sure that when we see state legislatures come into session next year, some of them are going to pass similar bills. But in terms of trying to save the midterms, quote-unquote, it’s too late for Republicans to do that.
Sargent: Do you think that there’s a plausible scenario in which Donald Trump has law enforcement seize ballot boxes? We’re seeing a bit of a test run for that in Fulton County already. The FBI has already seized ballot boxes, but these pertain to a previous election. I think it’s a little hard to see how they would seize ballot boxes which contain votes that need to be counted.
I do not for a second rule out them trying this at all. But do you think that they might actually be able to go through with it to some degree? And then what would happen?
Berman: Well, I agree with you that they’re going to try. I absolutely think they view the Fulton County ballot seizure as a test run. And I think they’re in Georgia right now, quote-unquote, investigating with 260 FBI agents, because they’re trying to lay the groundwork to challenge the legitimacy of the results in November.
I hope that the courts would treat this differently, like they did in Fulton County. Because in Fulton County, a magistrate judge basically signed off on the affidavit—the affidavit that was used to initiate the FBI search and eventually the taking of those ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, we later learned was just totally based on recycled disinformation by election deniers. It was like they said, we’re looking for the evidence. Well, you’re supposed to have evidence to get a warrant in the first place, let alone take 700 boxes of ballots. But maybe the judge thought, OK, this has already been adjudicated, therefore there’s less risk in terms of them taking it.
I would hope that there would be a very high bar for a court to sign off on taking machines or taking ballots before votes are actually counted. The fact that we’re even talking about this is so insane, just to step back for a second. I mean, just the fact that we’re talking about the federal government seizing ballots in an election—this is so dictatorial. This is so authoritarian. The fact that we’re even talking about it, to me, is crazy, let alone the fact that we both agree that this is a likelihood in terms of happening.
But I do think that people are preparing for this. Election officials are preparing for this, lawyers are preparing for this, and they’re not going to be blindsided like they were by the raid in Fulton County, Georgia. So do I expect Trump to try it? Yes. Do I ultimately think Trump will succeed in stopping an election and overturning an election? I think the answer to that is most likely no.
Sargent: I agree a hundred percent. I have picked up plenty of signs from some of these officials and some of these states that they’re taking this extremely seriously and preparing. So I don’t think Trump’s going to get away with it.
But again, we need to use our imaginations to the fullest to think through what he might try, because he’s pretty desperate. Ari Berman, always great to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on.
Berman: Thanks so much, Greg. Great to talk to you again.