Trump's "Save America Act" explained

Click here for an article in The Guardian by Rachel Leingang, March 13, titled "What does Trump's restrictive voting bill include -- and does it have a chance of becoming law?" The subtitle is "Every voter would be affected by the Save America Act, as people would face more barriers to voting: 'It's a recipe for disaster.'"

Senate Republicans say they don't have enough votes, so the bill will fail -- but "While the fate of the legislation remains unclear, the damage may already be done. If it doesn’t pass, the talking points surrounding it will play into false election narratives for Trump and his allies, giving fodder for ongoing conspiracies about stolen elections."

Here's the problem:

Even if the bill doesn’t pass, talking points around it will animate the midterms. Trump is likely to use his bully pulpit to falsely claim noncitizens are voting en masse in US elections, and that Democrats and some Republicans stood in his way to prevent addressing the problem through the Save America act.

The bill is another way Trump has tried to assert more control over elections, which are run by state and local officials in manners set by state and local rules.  Trump has suggested that the US government should federalize elections. An executive order he issued that attempted to enact many of the Save act’s provisions has largely been blocked by the courts. In early February, he said on a podcast that Republicans should “take over” and “nationalize” elections in 15 states to protect the party from being voted out of office.

Voting rights advocates are concerned that he will claim election results are invalid in places that don’t require proof of citizenship, Bedekovics said. The bill relies on a false narrative of voter fraud by noncitizens, and the Save America act gives another way to revive that narrative and dispute results, Persad said.

“This is likely an attempt to sow the seeds of doubt about an election that the president appears to believe his party is going to lose,” Becker said.

The Republicans are trying to end democracy in the U.S. They want a North Korean-type state, where there is no dissent and everyone bows to The Dear Leader, and where Democrats can never win another election.