'Major loss' for Trump as bill that could have put midterm in his hands halted: expert

A bill which Donald Trump had been pushing for Congress to pass will not likely make it through, putting the Republican Party at further risk in this election.

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, should it have been passed into law, would mean voters must prove they are US citizens when they register to vote. Valid photo identification would be necessary before they cast their ballots. Reformations to mail-in votes were also considered in the act, though it does not appear likely this will pass into law, former US attorney Joyce Vance says.

The president received a major blow, Vance says, over his chances of passing the bill into law. Vance, writing in her Substack, explained, "Trump wanted his party to enact the SAVE Act because it was supposed to make it more difficult for citizens he thinks are Democrats to vote: Its strict ID requirements would have impacted poor people, elderly people, students, married women, and others.

"Although Trump pushed hard for its passage, most recently during the State of the Union address, enough Senate Republicans defected to make passage a possibility too remote to pursue.

"Republicans attempted a 'talking filibuster' to get the bill across the finish line, but the procedural unity that would have required failed to materialize.

"Per Punchbowl News, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, Utah’s John Curtis, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, and possibly others who weren’t named broke ranks. It’s a major loss for the president."

While the bill would have been a crutch for the Republican Party in the upcoming midterms, Marc Novicoff for The Atlantic suggested that, should the bill have passed, it would be a hindrance to the GOP.

He wrote, "Making voting more difficult would most likely hurt Republicans' chances, yet they're pushing hard to make that happen; meanwhile, Democrats, who insist that Trump and a MAGA Congress are existential threats to American democracy, refuse on principle to help Republicans sabotage themselves."