Trump insists on pushing through his controversial voting overhaul
The U.S. president blocks confirmation of his own nominee Jay Clayton as director of intelligence to pressure the Senate to approve his bill, which requires proof of citizenship to vote
Donald Trump has once again shown his determination to push through at all costs his controversial bill to change U.S. voting rules before the midterm elections in November. The president once more imposed his will on the legislature and prevented the Senate from confirming Jay Clayton on Wednesday as the new director of intelligence, even though he had nominated him for the post himself, because Congress had not first approved his contentious bill. Trump upended the expected process by announcing that morning on his social network, Truth, that he would keep his previous pick, Bill Pulte, a loyal aide and head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, as interim intelligence director to replace Tulsi Gabbard, who will leave her post this Friday.
Trump selected Jay Clayton, who served as a federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, to fill the post after Pulte was rejected by both Republicans and Democrats for lacking intelligence experience. The president has no authority to cancel a Senate hearing, but he simply instructed Clayton not to show up for his Wednesday afternoon appearance before the upper chamber, effectively stalling the process.
Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas and chairman of the Intelligence Committee, announced the delay in the appointment. “It’s regrettable that the president has directed Jay Clayton not to appear at his confirmation hearing today,” he said on social media.
That morning Trump demanded that, to proceed with Clayton’s nomination, his pick Jamie McDonald, an attorney in private practice, be confirmed to replace Clayton as U.S. attorney in New York. He also again exerted pressure to secure passage of the SAVE America Act, formally titled the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, which would introduce a citizenship verification requirement for voting.
“To add a slight bit of intrigue but, for the Good of the Nation, and the People of our Country, I will not approve FISA without THE SAVE AMERICA ACT going along with it,” Trump wrote on social media in the early hours of Wednesday while he was across the Atlantic. In addition to the vote to confirm Clayton’s nomination, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was at stake that day; it allows intelligence agencies to collect, without a court order, the communications of non-U.S. persons located outside the United States. FISA has been considered vital for gathering intelligence that can thwart terrorist attacks and espionage operations, although some lawmakers and civil liberties advocates have raised concerns about how the government uses the information.
The program lapsed last Friday for the first time since it began in 2008, and Democrats had said they would not renew it until Trump withdrew Pulte’s nomination. A court order issued last March certified that the program could continue for another 12 months, but telecommunications companies are expected to challenge the government’s authority to compel them to cooperate and share data without Congress’s approval.
“We will never pass the SAVE Act”
“Trump threw another grenade into the negotiations, again, by tying FISA to the SAVE Act. He knows deliberately that that will make sure that FISA remains in lapse. And if he thinks that he is going to save his SAVE Act by attaching it to FISA, he’s got something to come. We will never pass the SAVE Act. Never. It is so damaging to our democracy,” said Senate Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer.
The SAVE Act would require voters to prove U.S. citizenship with a federal photo ID, such as a passport or a birth certificate. The measure has been heavily criticized for disenfranchising several groups. The new requirements would make it harder for millions of women who took their husband’s surname upon marriage — a widespread custom in the United States — because their current identity may not match their birth certificate.
Likewise, the requirement would bar many citizens who have difficulty accessing documents because they live in rural areas or lack a passport (only half of Americans have one) from exercising their right to vote. Members of the LGBTQ+ community would also face obstacles if the name on their birth certificate does not match the one they use. According to a study by the Brennan Center for Justice, which defends democratic institutions, about 21 million Americans would have trouble obtaining the documents needed to vote.
The government has defended the proposal as a way to eliminate voter fraud, preventing noncitizens from voting, but that risk is in fact almost nonexistent. Trump is pushing it with an eye to the midterm elections in November, where Republicans are fighting to keep control of Congress. His low approval ratings over the war in Iran and the anti-immigration campaign, which most citizens disapprove of, have set off alarms within his party.
The House approved the SAVE Act last February, but it has met resistance in the Senate, even from some Republican lawmakers. Democrats have vowed to block it on the floor, making it impossible to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a filibuster. In addition, not all Republicans back the bill.
This is not the only threat Trump has used to try to push the bill through. In March, in one of his authoritarian outbursts, he warned he would sign no bills at all until the electoral measure was approved. Later he tried unsuccessfully to attach it to the appropriations bill that provided $70 billion in new funds for immigration operations. The president also tied the voting overhaul to the legislation that will provide $350 billion to the Department of Defense.
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, called Trump’s Wednesday post an “an extraordinary display of dysfunction from a president who seems determined to turn America’s national security into a political bargaining chip [...] The president’s latest intervention only underscores a simple reality: the biggest obstacle to resolving these issues has not been Senate Democrats or Senate Republicans. It has been the chaos and confusion coming from the White House itself.”
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