When Congress won't do the thing, you do the thing yourself. That appears to be the White House philosophy right now, as President Trump has decided that waiting around for Senate Republicans to pass the SAVE Act is about as productive as waiting for your cat to apologize. As Trending Views reported, the administration has mapped out a sprawling alternative strategy using executive and administrative authority to reshape how Americans register and vote, touching nearly every corner of the federal government.
The SAVE Act, for those keeping score, would require documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections. Sounds simple enough, but Republican holdouts and the Senate's beloved filibuster rules have kept the bill stuck on Capitol Hill like a piece of gum on a school desk. So the administration started pulling every other lever it could find.
The Justice Department has been sending letters to states demanding voter registration records for federal review and politely reminding officials that letting noncitizens vote could result in prosecution. More than a dozen courts have previously pushed back on attempts to compel states to hand over those records, but the DOJ is apparently not great at taking hints.
The Department of Homeland Security is taking a different approach: the financial stick. States have reportedly been warned that federal election security funding could be at risk if they refuse to use a federal citizenship verification system. Nothing motivates compliance quite like the threat of losing money.
Then there is the Election Assistance Commission, which most Americans have never heard of but which provides cybersecurity and administrative support to state and local election offices. Trump recently moved to sharply reduce it, a decision that has Democratic officials sounding every alarm they can find.
Barb Byrum, the Democratic clerk of Ingham County, Michigan, did not mince words. "This is a concerted effort of death by a thousand cuts," she said. "Every day is another battle, but the war that we're fighting is to maintain our democracy." Ann Jacobs, a Democratic member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, was equally direct. "Do I think this is part of the pattern and intentionality of undermining confidence in elections? Yes, yes, I do," she said. "The constant drumbeat since 2020 has been specifically designed to do that, and it's distressing."
As if all of that were not enough, Trump added a whole new layer during a Thursday night White House address. He announced the release of declassified intelligence about alleged Chinese interference in American elections, stating that China carried out "what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history" beginning during the 2020 election cycle. According to Trump, the breach resulted in "China's illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files," including names, addresses, phone numbers, and political party preferences. He called it "an unprecedented election security nightmare" and said the declassified materials would be released in phases.
So to recap: the DOJ is writing letters, DHS is threatening wallets, the Election Assistance Commission is getting downsized, and now we have a Chinese data breach the size of a small country's population. Whether Congress ever gets around to passing the SAVE Act is starting to feel like an afterthought. The administration's pressure campaign is already running at full speed, and it does not appear to have a brake pedal.
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