Donald Trump has once again demonstrated his determination to move forward at any cost with his controversial bill aimed at modifying electoral rules of the United States before the November midterm elections. The president once again imposed his will on the legislative branch and did not allow the Senate to confirm this Wednesday Jay Clayton as the new director of National Intelligence, despite the fact that he himself had nominated him for the position, without Congress first approving his controversial law. Trump broke the planned pattern by announcing in the morning on his Truth social network that he would keep his previous candidate, Bill Pulte, a loyal collaborator and head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, as acting director of Intelligence, replacing Tulsi Gabbard, who will leave her position this Friday.
Trump had chosen Jay Clayton, who served as federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, to fill the position after Pulte was rejected by both Republicans and Democrats for lacking experience in intelligence work. The president does not have the power to cancel a Senate hearing, but it was enough for him to order Clayton not to appear for his appointment on Wednesday afternoon in the Upper House to stop the process.
Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas and chairman of the Intelligence Committee, reported the delay in the appointment. “It is unfortunate that the president has instructed Jay Clayton not to appear at his confirmation hearing today,” he declared on social media.
In the morning, Trump demanded that, to move forward with Clayton’s nomination, his candidate Jamie McDonald, a lawyer in private practice, be approved to replace him as prosecutor in New York. In addition, he once again pressured with threats to approve the SAVE America Act, whose full name is Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (American Voter Eligibility Protection Act), and which introduces the requirement of proof of citizenship to be able to vote.
“To add a touch of intrigue, but for the good of the nation and the people of our country, I will not approve FISA if it is not accompanied by the SAVE Act,” Trump declared in a publication on social networks in the early hours of this Wednesday, while he was on the other side of the Atlantic. In addition to the vote to confirm Clayton’s nomination, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was at stake this Wednesday, which allows intelligence agencies to collect, without the need for a court order, the communications of foreigners who are outside the United States. FISA has been considered vital for obtaining intelligence information capable of thwarting terrorist attacks and espionage operations, although some lawmakers and civil liberties advocates have expressed concern about the government’s use of the information.
The program expired last Friday, for the first time since it began in 2008, and Democrats had declared they would not renew it until Trump withdrew Pulte’s candidacy. A court order issued last March certified that the program could continue for another 12 months, but telecommunications companies are expected to challenge the government’s authority to force them to cooperate and share data without congressional authorization.
‘We will never pass the SAVE Act’
“Trump once again threw a grenade into the negotiations by linking the FISA Act with the SAVE Act. He knows perfectly well that this will ensure that the FISA Act remains out of effect. And if he thinks he is going to save his SAVE Act by attaching it to the FISA, he is dead wrong. We will never pass the SAVE Act. Never. It is extremely damaging to our democracy,” declared Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
The SAVE Act introduces the obligation to justify US citizenship to vote, with a federal photo ID, such as a passport or a birth certificate. The rule has been widely criticized because it would deprive several groups of the right to vote. The new requirements would complicate the participation in the polls of millions of women who have adopted their husband’s last name when marrying, a widespread custom among Americans, so their identity does not match that of their birth certificate.
Likewise, the requirement would leave all citizens who do not have easy access to documents because they live in rural areas or lack a passport (only half of Americans have one) unable to exercise their right. People from the LGBTQ+ community will also have difficulties exercising the right to vote if the name on the birth certificate does not match the one they registered with. According to a study from the Brennan Center, dedicated to the defense of democracy, some 21 million Americans would have difficulty obtaining the documents necessary to vote.
The Government has justified the proposal as a way to end electoral fraud, preventing people who are not citizens of the United States from voting, but the risk is actually almost non-existent. Trump claims it with a view to the midterm elections to be held in November, where the Republicans risk the control of Congress that they now enjoy. His low popularity due to the war in Iran and the anti-immigration campaign, which the majority of citizens disapprove of, have set off alarm bells in his party.
The House of Representatives gave the green light to the SAVE Act last February, but it has met resistance in the Senate, even among some Republican lawmakers. Democrats have promised to block it on the floor, making it impossible to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a filibuster (called filibuster). Additionally, not all Republicans support the bill.
The last one is not the only threat that Trump has launched to get the law passed. In March, in one of his authoritarian outbursts, he warned that he would not sign any law until the electoral project was approved. He later tried unsuccessfully to include it in the budget law that provided $70 billion in new funding for anti-immigration operations. The president also linked the electoral reform to the law that will provide $350 billion to the Department of Defense.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, called Trump’s post Wednesday an “extraordinary display of dysfunction by a president who appears determined to turn America’s national security into a political bargaining chip.” “The biggest obstacle to solving these problems has not been the Democrats or the Republicans in the Senate,” Warner said. “It has been chaos and confusion coming from the White House itself,” he said.
