Donald Trump cancelled the signing of a bipartisan housing-cost bill on Wednesday 24 June, saying he would approve no legislation until Congress passes the SAVE Act (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act), which would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote1. The courts had closed his other two routes to the same goal that very day, striking down the voting executive order and rejecting the demand for detailed voter files. His executive-action route was already spent, The White House having signed no election-related orders since the spring.
The legislative route cannot deliver it either. The bill needs 60 votes in the Senate that it has never had, and Republican leaders will not scrap the filibuster to force it through. So the citizenship-proof requirement is now blocked at every door: rejected in the courts, short of votes in the Senate, and held over the rest of the agenda as leverage. Supporters say the Act only asks voters to prove citizenship; critics note that millions of eligible Americans lack the documents it would demand.
