Desperate for the courts and Congress to get behind his sweeping proposals for federal control of elections, Donald Trump has suggested that he thinks Republican candidates would win every state if the Senate passes his nationwide voter ID proposal. The president shared a post on his Truth Social that showed a U.S. map showing every state turning “red” with the all-caps caption “THE WHOLE MAP WOULD BE BRIGHT RED IF THE SENATE PASSED VOTER ID LAWS,” a reference to the White House-backed SAVE America Act. The post, originally from X user @MAGAVOICE, follows the president’s demands for Senate Republicans to get behind his bill, which would mandate that every state accept only specific identifying documents to register to vote, including a U.S. passport or birth certificate.
The legislation also would require government-issued ID to cast a ballot and directs states to audit voter rolls and cross reference those names with a database compiled by the Department of Homeland Security. Trump’s legislation also would ban universal mail-in voting — a proposal the administration is also trying to push through the Supreme Court. Trump’s bill is at a deadlock in the Senate despite its passage in the Republican-dominated House.
The president is calling for Senate Republicans to blow up the filibuster to pass the legislation by simple majority vote to enact major changes to election administration — which is controlled by the states under the Constitution — in time for midterm elections, with the fate of his final years in office at stake. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has repeatedly expressed doubts about sacrificing the filibuster to pass a bill that could have enormous consequences for election rules with just weeks before final ballots are cast. The Senate agreed to a monthlong recess, without objection, earlier this month, leaving only a precious few weeks to debate and pass a bill before Election Day.
Still, Trump has tried to argue for its passage in increasingly desperate terms, including not ruling out the possibility of a national emergency to put the rules in place. His latest post — dangling an idea to members of his party that they’d never lose an election again — also follows a parallel legal battle to implement new rules for mail-in ballots. Trump is waiting for the Supreme Court to decide on whether to give his administration permission to implement new rules that could significantly roll back voters’ access to mail-in ballots this year.
Federal courts have blocked the U.S. Postal Service from further implementing Trump’s executive order that sought to create a national voter registration list that would be used to decide who is eligible to cast a ballot. If the Supreme Court doesn’t stop them, the judge’s rulings will “effectively run out the clock” on the administration’s attempts to implement the executive order before November’s elections, U.S.
John Sauer wrote to the high court earlier this month. On August 21, the Postal Service published its new rule that adds new certification requirements to all mail-in ballots, as per Trump’s order. Those changes cannot go into effect until federal courts lift an injunction against them.
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