Trump Turns Up Heat On Thune Over SAVE Act

Trump wants Thune to move on the SAVE Act, and he's not being subtle about it. Flooding a majority leader's phone lines is the kind of pressure campaign that usually gets aimed at the other party, not your own Senate leadership. That tells you something about how urgent this feels to the president, and honestly, it should feel urgent to everyone else too.

Voter ID and proof of citizenship for federal elections are not radical asks. Most Americans already show ID to buy a beer or board a plane. The fact that a bill requiring documentation to vote in American elections needs a public pressure campaign just to get floor time says a lot about where the Senate's priorities sit right now. Thune has a majority. He has a House that already passed something. What he doesn't have, apparently, is the appetite to spend political capital on it before the clock runs out.

That's the part worth sitting with. Election integrity legislation dies more often from inertia than from actual opposition. Nobody stands up and says proof of citizenship is a bad idea. Instead it just quietly slides down the calendar until it's somebody else's problem next session. Trump forcing the issue publicly, however blunt the method, at least drags it back into daylight where voters can see who's stalling and why.

Whether the pressure works is a separate question from whether it's justified. Right now it looks justified. If Senate Republicans can't pass a bill affirming that only citizens vote in American elections, with unified control of Washington, that's not a messaging problem. That's a will problem, and Thune is the one being asked to explain it.