Trump And Johnson’s Bid To Suppress The Vote, Shut Down The Government, And Stoke Panic Falls Apart

Last updated: 2024/09/11 at 10:54 PM

Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson are very proud of their plan to link a must-pass piece of government funding legislation to a bill that lays the groundwork for Trump to blame undocumented immigrants for his potential defeat in November. The only problem, we’re now learning, is that no one of any influence is on board with this plan besides the two of them.

Johnson hatched the plan at the beginning of the month, caving to pressure from members of the House Freedom Caucus (the Trumpy tail wagging House-Republican-conference dog) to attach the SAVE Act to any funding bills the House passes to keep the government open. The Act would outlaw non-citizen voting in federal elections, which is already illegal and statistically rarely happens, and require proof of citizenship in order to register to vote; experts say it is both unnecessary and would suppress the vote. For this reason, the bill could not pass the Democratic-controlled Senate, and so would risk a government shutdown.

Trump likes the SAVE Act, of course, because it helps boost the Great Replacement-adjacent conspiracy theory that undocumented immigrants, brought in by Democrats, will vote en masse for Democrats and steal his inevitable 2024 victory from him.

The problem is, in placating Trump and the House Freedom Caucus, Johnson has pissed off everyone — including the House Freedom Caucus.

As recently as yesterday, Johnson was confident enough that he had the votes for a stop-gap bill that would fund the government into March 2025 with the SAVE Act attached. He planned to bring the legislation to the House floor for a vote today. But that changed this afternoon when he announced he was delaying the vote to “build consensus” — treating the swelling opposition to the measure within his party as good, old fashioned, healthy debate rather than displeasure with another Trumpian hijacking of standard legislating, the sort of thing that has plagued his speakership and felled his predecessor.

“We are going to continue to work on this. The whip is going to do the hard work to build consensus and work on the weekend on that,” Johnson told Politico Wednesday, adding that they are having “family conversations” about the bill.

What those familial discussion will entail is unclear because every faction of his House majority is not happy with the bill:

Defense hawks in the conference are reportedly concerned about maintaining current spending levels for the Pentagon for six months.
While hardline members of the Freedom Caucus are supportive of the coupling — which, as TPM has reported, is merely an exercise in producing election denialism fodder for Trump if he loses in the fall — they really hate short term spending bills in general and are not on board with the can-kicking. That was one of ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) greatest sins, in their eyes, and part of why so many members of the Freedom Caucus got on board with the motion to vacate.
Moderate (aka vulnerable) Republicans are not thrilled about risking their reelection prospects for the sake of helping Trump get his Big Lie 2.0 locked and loaded before the election. Per reporting from The Hill (Fox News also highlighted a similar dynamic): “Still others saw the bill as a meaningless exercise, as it would have been dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate. Some moderates were also weary of the strategy, as worries rose about having a shutdown threat so close to Election Day.”

Johnson is expected to try to bring the bill to the floor for a vote again next week, after a weekend of his supposed “consensus building,” looking for a magic solution to a set of problems that this conference has not been able to overcome since it secured its meager majority two years ago.