It hasn’t gotten much attention of late — what with Trump and Vance attacking a small city for accepting immigrants and the explosion of sex scandals among GOP officeholders — but the U.S. federal government just barely avoided a Republican-induced shutdown. Again.
With only days to spare, the House and Senate agreed on a continuing resolution (spending package) to keep the government funded until December 20, pushing potential disaster beyond the November 5 election and saving Republicans in tough races from having to explain why they cut off major lifelines to their communities during peak campaign season.
It was a “clean” resolution, meaning that no new legislation or riders unrelated to funding the government were attached. That wasn’t the first plan Speaker Mike Johnson had in mind though. He — and the rest of his unhinged caucus — had tried to burden the basic spending agreement with legislation that would force every voter to prove citizenship before voting, suppressing millions of legitimate voters for details as small as missing paperwork or a name change. After months of failing to get it taken up by the Democratic-run Senate, Republicans figured they would leverage the operations of the sprawling federal apparatus to coerce the opposition into destroying voting rights for huge swathes of the population.
Had the extremists in the GOP gotten their way, millions of Americans would have watched federal resources dry up for the sake of attempting to force this draconian voter suppression bill — the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act — through a hostile Senate to be vetoed by an even less impressed President Biden. It was a recipe for self-destruction; not only would the Democrats never have allowed the SAVE Act to pass, the attempt would have sparked outrage among voters, who would rightly blame Republicans for results like halting environmental reviews and food inspection, slowing SNAP benefits and air travel, and closing any “non-essential” government operations like all of the national parks. And the entire disaster would have unfolded with five weeks of absentee and in-person voting for November.
But even though the legislative whackos in the House Republicans didn’t get what they wanted, the oppressive SAVE Act might destroy the party anyway — with backlash from the right. Because the push to suppress voters wasn’t just an internal party priority; it was an order from the presidential nominee Donald Trump. And up to the last minute, he was trying to get Republicans to either pass the SAVE Act or kill the government in the attempt.
The failed effort could deepen fault lines in the fragile GOP coalition, pitting the pragmatic Mike Johnson and his slim majority against the effective dictator of the party. Like his attempts to overturn the election in 2020, Donald Trump wanted bureaucratic and legislative cover for his actions — in this case, trying to prevent clear and unambiguous majorities from voting against him so he could claim that the massive drop in turnout was the product of stopping non-citizens from voting (a thing that does not happen in any meaningful way). Denied a victory in substance and for show, Trump may publicly feud with his chosen Speaker and push Republican legislators and candidates to pick sides. Even if Trump doesn’t air his grievances for all and sundry, some in his inner circle (like unapologetic racist Laura Loomer) have already sharpened their knives to call insufficiently dedicated vote suppressors “RINOs” for their inability or unwillingness to blow up the entire Republican Party’s electoral chances for the sake of something that was doomed to fail.
The SAVE Act is likely dead for the foreseeable future; the government is funded well past the election, and voters can register and turn out without the threat of new and onerous laws hampering their fundamental rights.
By meeting Democrats’ terms, Speaker Mike Johnson and the obedient side of his caucus dodged a legislative bullet they were intent upon shooting at their own feet. But they might have put themselves in the path of something worse with their willingness to strike a deal. While they’ve done the right thing for the government and the public, Donald Trump is sure they’ve done wrong by him. And in Trump’s Republican Party, his rights are the only ones that matter.
