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A former top MAGA influencer still blasts the MAGA cult and the operators that drive the movement from the top.

“The structure and the architecture of MAGA is very indistinguishable from a cult,” explained Ashley St. Clair, Elon Musk's ex-lover, former MAGA influencer and the mother of one of his children, in a podcast appearance with The Left Hook’s Wajahat Ali. Describing how she dropped out of college to be a full-time MAGA influencer while dating an older man who served MAGA under the name DC Drano, she described how “he was molding me. He was like, ‘Here's what you put on the sign outside of the ICE detention center,’ directing my content. ‘Here's how you monetize Instagram, here's how you do all this.’ So I was very much molded by that.”

Described by Ali as a former "dutiful MAGA bot" who once repeated "all the cliché talking points," St. Clair now says leaving the cult is one of the hardest things to do.

"[O]nce ... you're with this very controversial crowd online, you cannot just change your political views. Changing your political views means you're blowing up your whole life — your social community, the way you provide for your family, the roof over your head. It's not just like, ‘Oh, now I believe in less fiscal conservatism.’ It is really going against people who do not take kindly to people leaving their gang.”

St. Clair continued, “You're on the receiving end of a lot of smear campaigns, attacks, and harassment — things that frankly put your family in danger — to speak out and go against the grain. And not that it's an excuse — I don't want anyone to think that the things I'm saying right now are an excuse for the rhetoric I was involved in — but rather I'm trying to understand the pathology of how people get stuck in this, and feel like they don't have a way out.”

Later in the conversation, Ali returned to the subject of why so many people in the Trump movement stand by him. He found a potential motive in addition to it being a political cult.

“When I was a contributor at CNN — a contributor, rather, I should say — in the green room, this was right before COVID, nearly every single Trump supporter that I went on and debated with on a panel, pretty much across the board — I would say except two at the time, actually: Paris Denard and Geoffrey Lord — everyone in the green room said, ‘I can't stand Trump, he's so annoying, the MAGA movement is so stupid, look at these idiots.’”

Once the cameras started rolling, however, Ali said all he heard from them was “MAGA talking point, MAGA talking point, MAGA talking point.” He claimed he responded by telling them “‘You know, no one's putting a gun to your head. You could literally just join me and call them out.’ And they said, ‘Yeah, but this is where my bread is buttered. This is how you stay relevant.’”

St. Clair is not the only ex-Trumper to describe the MAGA movement as a cult. In February, former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) made the same point in a Substack post while describing Trump’s militant behavior toward Greenland, Venezuela and Iran.

“I thought you wanted him to end wars all over the world,” Walsh said. “You said you wanted him to end American entanglement in conflicts and wars around the world. America shouldn’t be involved in these wars, you said. That’s why you’re voting for Trump, you said.” Then, despite Trump’s actions against Denmark, Venezuela and Iran, they still support him.

Walsh continued, “You’ve got no argument against people calling you a cult. And if he takes us to war against Iran, and you clap and applaud and throw him flowers, Trump supporters, I will be at the front of the parade calling you a cult.”

According to one of President Donald Trump’s former advisers, the president suspects that Americans will not respect him once he is removed from power — and that is why he is obsessed with building monuments to himself now.

“He loves to build, that's his background,” Sarah Matthews, former Trump White House deputy press secretary, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday. “So I think he's looking at these little pet projects, and this is what excites him. This is what gets him jazzed up.”

She added, “He's probably bored talking about Iran. He doesn't want to talk about inflation and all of these things. We've seen him say, when it comes to affordability, that this is a hoax created by the Democrats — even though that's what the American people are actually focused on: the affordability crisis that he has only exacerbated with his choice to launch this attack on Iran and raise gas prices, and with his choice to put these asinine tariffs in place. So I think this is what he wants to be focused on, but it couldn't be more tone deaf.”

Former Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) elaborated on Matthews’ point, comparing Trump’s behavior to the “clown show” satirized on the famous animated sitcom The Boondocks.

“The Iran war is still going on,” Bowman said. “Lebanon is being bombed consistently. These ceasefires are not lasting. There's ethnic cleansing happening there. People can't afford to live. You're protecting child sex trafficking rapists, according to the majority of the American people. This whole presidency has been a disaster, and we have to live with it every day.”

Bowman continued, “My prayer and hope is that in November, we pivot. But I worry, because it's not about serving the working class of the American people — it's about power. And that's not just Trump. His administration has been a problem, as have both parties, for a very long time.”

Matthews then pivoted back to the subject of Trump’s fixation on building monuments to himself.

“I think it's very striking that if you thought people wouldn't build monuments to you after you leave office, you wouldn't feel the need to do this,” Matthews said. “But Sen. Jon Ossoff [D-GA] brought up this point recently and made the case that Trump is doing this right now because he knows that when he's gone, people won't honor him — people won't want to. So I think Trump knows that, and feels it looking at his polling numbers, and he wants to build this legacy. That's also part of the reason why he's so focused on these little pet projects of his.”

Last month Windsor Mann, journalist from The Daily Beast, analyzed Trump’s mentality to explain his obsession with creating monuments to himself. In addition to worrying about his legacy, he argued that it is a way for Trump to assert ownership over the American people.

“Donald Trump’s two favorite things are himself and money,” Mann wrote. “Now he has decided to combine the two. Indeed, for the first time in history, the sitting president is adding his signature to our paper currency. Trump’s name will be on your money, which is his way of saying that he owns you.”

He summed his point up by saying, “After all, what if we built a statue of someone who turned out to be in the Epstein files or who, after losing an election, tried to overthrow our democracy? It would be costly and tedious to dismantle a statue of such a person after these revelations surfaced. Perhaps Trump realizes this, which is why he’s building not one monument to himself but scores of them.”

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President Donald Trump has slashed social programs for inner city minorities, low-income children, starving Americans and many other vulnerable groups. Yet one of the groups that has consistently supported him just got a major bailout.

“The lower chamber voted 213-210 to pass the agriculture, rural development, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and related agencies appropriations bill,” reported The Hill's Sudiksha Kochi on Thursday. “Five Republicans voted against the bill, while four Democrats voted in favor.”

Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) argued that the legislation is necessary to protect American farmers, who are struggling immensely due to Trump policies including his tariffs, his mass deportations and his war against Iran. Each of these policies have raised prices or depleted their workforce, and farmers have openly expressed distress over their declining quality of life even as they remain largely loyal to the president.

According to Cole, the $7.1 billion bill “delivers targeted investments to support farmers and ranchers, prioritize food and drug safety, and reinforces important research and innovation.” It also allocates money to the FDA to “keep foods, drugs and devices safe,” as well as $1.16 billion to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and to enhance the “tracking system of foreign-owned land.”

In April, an Economist/YouGov poll revealed that overwhelming majorities of American farmers remain staunchly pro-Trump, even though substantial numbers also realize his policies are hurting them.

“Twenty-seven percent of rural respondents said it would be ‘impossible’ to cover an unexpected $1,000 bill. It would be easy to blame Mr Trump for the downturn,” The Economist wrote. “After all, he campaigned on promises to bring down prices and revive the heartland. But rural America does not.”

The Economist reported how the owner of Illinois used-equipment house Kerr Auction “says in tough years more tractors come in from families of farmers who have taken their own lives. He now expects to see more.”

Democratic strategist Max Burns independently observed that “the suicide rate in rural communities is now 3.5 times the national average and climbing ... [as] farmers buckle under the financial strain of crippling agricultural tariffs, rising input costs and a president who didn’t bother to mention them once in his most recent State of the Union address."

Yet The Economist added that, in addition to standing behind Trump, the farmers hoped that he would soon eventually provide them with economic relief so that his tariffs, deportations and war will not continue to negatively impact their collective bottom line. Even still, it is unclear whether this new relief measure will do that.

A few weeks ago, the MAGA world took one look at actor Lupita Nyong’o playing the role of “Helen” in Christiopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and decided they hated it. But on Thursday, the Daily Beast reports movie audiences gave not a whit about MAGA preferences for white actresses.

“The movie MAGA crusaded against last month for its latest anti-woke campaign is only drawing huge demand despite the whining,” the Beast reports. “Variety reported that IMAX tickets for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey were in such high demand Thursday morning that theater chain AMC’s mobile application had to pause before it resumed operations. Moviegoers seeking Odyssey tickets on Fandango had a similar experience, with lags and long wait times as fans waited an hour to buy tickets, the site reported.”

This news follows the fact that last year’s IMAX pre-sale for the film sold out immediately, despite being a full year from release, said the Beast.

MAGA is known for its racist bent. But the castings of Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o and Elliot Page drew scrutiny from conservative media personalities and Trump billionaire friend Elon Musk, who claimed Nolan was ‘rewriting history’ by selecting a Black actress for Helen of Troy and a trans actor as Achilles, said the Beast.

Musk began knocking Nolan and his movie when rumors about N’yong’o’s role started circulating in January. The billionaire X owner made sure to amplify his complaints with his own social media platform when Nolan confirmed Nyong’o. Musk, according to the Beast, “went on a days-long posting and reposting spree denouncing the film and calling Nolan ‘racist’ for casting the her.

But then came Musk’s MAGA followers, heralded by Newsmax host Rob Finnerty, who dedicated a whole show’s segment to whining that woman of Kenyan descent do not deserve to be playing the role of Helen and “rewriting” history.

“A woman who was definitely white is going to be played by Lupita Nyong’o,” complained Finnerty. “Helen of Troy was not Black. That’s not me being mean. That’s me telling the truth.”

Right-wing influencer Matt Walsh popped in and claimed to speak for everybody on the planet by posting “not one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong’o is ‘the most beautiful woman in the world.’” He also called Nolan a “coward” for casting Nyong’o.

For her part, Nyong’o swatted the MAGA whining with barely a brush, reports the Beast.

“I’m not spending my time thinking of a defense. The criticism will exist whether I engage with it or not,” she told Elle, adding, “Our cast is representative of the world.”

Meanwhile, the Beast reports “MAGA’s efforts have done virtually nothing to incite outrage and lower demand for Nolan’s adaptation, which remains as high as it was when tickets sold out last year.”

Daily Mail writer Mark Halperin says nobody has a clear enough idea of just how thoroughly Republicans have ruined themselves with President Donald Trump — except perhaps Republicans.

“Unsolicited advice for the midterm curious: Push past the betting-market-friendly framing, low quality polling and wafting whiffs of scandal – and recognize that coast-to-coast elections are an opportunity for the nation's voters to express how they feel about Donald Trump, the Democrats, the economy, Iran and so much more,” said Halperin, claiming to have spoken with several fretting GOP strategists predicting a "wipeout ... worse than anyone thinks."

“Voters want candidates who will fight for them and stand up to powerful interests,” Halperin reports. “… Counterintuitively, voters also want competence. They want public officials who can actually make government work, who can deliver results, who seem capable of managing problems rather than merely talking about them. Americans may be angry, but they are not looking to hire more chaos if it doesn't lead to better performance.”

Trump’s economy, gas prices and a growing belief among swing voters that he has not delivered on some of his most important promises — including lowering inflation, which he has raised —is hitting voters hard, to the point where even party strategists are wringing their hands.

“Conversations I had this week with Republican strategists from different corners of the country sounded remarkably similar,” said Halperin. “For weeks, those strategists have been telling me the same thing: the Iran conflict needs to end and gas prices need to come down if Republicans hope to avoid a substantial Democratic wave.”

“And time is beginning to run short,” Halperin added.

“Republican consultants and candidates are also getting [furious] with the President. By and large, they don't think he particularly cares all that much about sticking to the messaging that will help them focus voter attention on GOP strengths,” Halperin pointed out.

This probably explains why a new Fox News poll from Ohio shows roughly a 20-point drop in Trump's favorability rating “from where he stood when he defeated Kamala Harris comfortably in the state less than two years ago,” said Halperin. And, sadly for Republicans, it’s a reversal “that’s consistent with what has happened to the President's standing in other red states, including Florida, Texas, Alaska and Iowa, all of which happen to feature Senate races that look considerably more competitive today than Republican strategists would have thought possible only a few months ago.”

The same Fox poll, added Halperin, shows Democratic Senate candidate Sherrod Brown leading Republican incumbent Jon Husted by eight points.

“The midterms are shaping up to be a national conversation about what kind of country Americans think they are living in – and what kind of country they want to live in next,” said Halperin. “Everything else is mostly scorekeeping.”

President Donald Trump has picked Todd Blanche as his permanent attorney general, according to a top political scientist, because ex-Attorney General Pam Bondi was not corrupt enough for him.

“What everyone needs to understand is the danger here and what the Senate is concerned about. Todd Blanche — he's not a new bestie, he's a true bestie,” Morgan State University political scientist Dr. Jason Johnson told MS NOW’s Nicolle Wallace on Thursday. “He was Trump's lawyer. His entire reason for being in this job is to protect this president, because he agrees with him ideologically, because he sees a kindred spirit with him morally, and because he sees his job as not serving the country but serving Trump.”

He elaborated on how Blanche was accused by Bondi of playing a key role in covering up Trump’s relationship with convicted sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. He also mentioned that Blanche had a two-day sit-down meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell, seemingly for the purpose of finding out how she could protect the president.

“I wish that would be enough to keep him from being confirmed, but it may not be,” Johnson told Wallace. “It may be his position on the slush fund and January 6th that keeps this man from being in the position of the most important attorney in the United States of America.”

Regarding the slush fund, Johnson referred to Blanche’s well-documented role in settling a lawsuit Trump filed against the IRS for $10 billion. Trump sued his own agency because, during his first term, an independent contractor affiliated with them leaked his tax returns, proving that he had filed far less than most Americans in most years and had a number of undisclosed business failures. Because Trump controls both the IRS and the Department of Justice, which in theory would defend the IRS from litigation, critics claimed there was a conflict of interest and that any settlement would involve self-dealing.

When the presiding judge, concerned about those accusations, ordered all parties involved to appear before her bench, Blanche rushed through a settlement for $1.8 billion that would go to Trump-affiliated institutions and Trump supporters who claimed to have been victims of government weaponization.

“What do you think of the sort of one-sided politics here?” Wallace asked Johnson about the lack of Republican outrage over Blanche’s actions in terms of potential conflicts of interest. “Republicans made hay when Obama's attorney general Loretta Lynch had what appeared to be a spontaneous run-in with Bill Clinton ... And here, of course, the levels of this — the personal lawyer being the attorney general — it melts it all down as a farce.”

Johnson agreed with Wallace.

“This was Trump's personal attorney,” Johnson said. “He's doing podcasts with Sean Hannity. He's trying to create a slush fund for the president of the United States. He said, ‘Hey, we should send ICE agents to polls.’ He says that his job is to serve this president as opposed to the people. So there is no comparison. I think that's so important for people to understand — not anyone that Barack Obama had. We have never had an attorney, and possibly a full attorney general, who has made it so nakedly obvious that his goal was to be the personal lawyer of the president, as opposed to even serving the [Department of Justice].”

Earlier this month, reporter Asawin Suebsaeng's Zeteo newsletter revealed that Trump agreed to appoint Blanche because he hopes Blanche will succeed in prosecuting Trump’s perceived political enemies.

"Trump and his White House are coaxing with a very simple message: the boss will be monumentally livid at you if you don’t get very serious – very soon – about jailing his political enemies," Suebsaeng reported. He later added that an adviser told Zeteo that Trump’s instructions to Blanche were, “You cannot f—— up like Pam."

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If there is one lesson that has emerged from the 2026 midterm election primaries, it is that Democrats and Republicans react very differently to ultra-rich candidates.

“Tom Steyer ran for governor of California as a climate crusader endorsed by Bernie Sanders’ political organization, Our Revolution,” wrote MS NOW’s Armand Manoukian on Thursday. “He also spent at least $216 million of his own money on the race — and in the end, that was the only thing voters seemed to remember. With nearly 58 percent of the vote counted, he is running third.”

“The timing is unkind to the ultrawealthy,” Manoukian wrote. “In a March YouGov survey, 77 percent of adults said the wealthy have too much political power, and 52 percent said the government should try to reduce the share of wealth held by billionaires. More than half of adults told a May Politico poll that cost of living is the ‘worst they can remember.’ Against that backdrop, self-funding candidates — once a recruiter’s dream — have become a harder sell.”

Steyer is not alone in falling prey to this problem. In San Francisco, Saikat Chakrabarti fell short in seeking retiring speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi’s House seat. Former venture capitalist Eric Jones similarly fell short in California’s 4th congressional district. By contrast, Republicans still reward candidates with deep pockets.

“In South Dakota, political newcomer Toby Doeden, a car dealership owner, steered $4 million into his own campaign and outpolled the sitting governor in the GOP gubernatorial primary,” Manoukian wrote. “In Georgia, Rick Jackson, a billionaire healthcare executive, jumped into the Republican gubernatorial primary as a political unknown, pledging to spend $50 million of his fortune, then spent closer to $80 million.”

Manoukian added, “Running on the slogan ‘From Foster Care to Billionaire,’ he blanketed local television and advanced to a June runoff, knocking out Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. He’ll face Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who has funded his own campaign to the tune of $17 million.”

MS NOW’s Ja’han Jones similarly reported on the waning influence of Big Tech executives on Wednesday.

“Multiple candidates backed heavily by Big Tech executives floundered in Tuesday’s primary elections, as concerns about the corrosive effects of new technologies such as artificial intelligence tools continue to mount,” Jones wrote. “The clearest examples came in California, where tech executives spent ungodly amounts of money attempting to make sure their chosen candidates emerged victorious.”

To illustrate his point, Jones listed California gubernatorial candidate San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who lost despite being funded by tech executives like Google co-founder Sergey Brin and pro-Trump Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, as well as Ethan Agarwal, a tech investor funded by pro-Trump Silicon Valley executive Marc Andreessen and who challenged Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) by opposing Khanna’s proposed one-time 5 percent wealth tax on billionaires.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is promoting what it calls “President Trump’s 500 Days of Wins” as farm bankruptcies have spiked.

On the social media platform X, a series of seven posts celebrates Trump administration programs such as “Make America Healthy Again” and “Farmers First,” while promoting the USDA’s efforts surrounding national security, rural prosperity, lawfare, forestry, and trade.

“Today we celebrate President Trump’s 500th day in office,” the post reads. “A historic period of progress for American agriculture and rural communities. We shattered export records, slashed burdensome regulations, rebuilt rural infrastructure, and unlocked energy independence so our farmers and ranchers can thrive. The work continues.”

The USDA added: “Delivered historic direct relief to farmers and ranchers through $12 billion in farmer bridge payments $10 billion in emergency economic assistance, $16 billion in supplemental disaster relief, and more than $2+ billion in livestock disaster assistance.”

NPR reported in December that the “Trump administration announced $12 billion in one-time payments to farmers in the wake of this year’s tariff hikes … primarily targeting farmers who grow crops such as soybeans and corn.”

According to the Farm Journal, farm bankruptcies spiked in April, and “recent Chapter 12 bankruptcy data shows a significant uptick in filings.”

Reporting that “there have been 62 Chapter 12 filings in April 2026 alone,” Farm Journal calls it “the highest monthly total since February 2020, and it’s a 130% increase from April 2025.”

President Trump’s Iran war has driven up the prices of diesel and fertilizer that farmers depend on, and his global tariff war has cut into exports to countries like China.

On the Instagram social media platform, some users were less than enthusiastic about the USDA’a post.

“Time to unfollow the USDA since it’s become a propaganda channel for the lunacy happening in the federal government under this administration,” wrote one user. Another wrote: “American agriculture is in shambles.” And a third said, “delete this.”

The Times of London reported that “farmers handed Trump his first loss of the midterms” this week.

“Unrest in America’s heartland over the impact of President Trump’s policies saw him suffer a rare primary setback in Iowa, and is leading Democrats to sense a revival in the former bellwether state,” The Times noted. “The mainly rural central state that voted for President Obama in 2008 and 2012 has become reliably Republican since the rise of Trump but analysts say that rising fuel and fertilizer prices and the Iran war make its races for governor, a US Senate seat and two of its four House seats increasingly hard to call.”

It's hard to keep up with the never-ending cascade of drama pouring out of the White House these days, but reporter David A. Fahrenthold tells Slate that one of President Donald Trump’s more recent grifts is more obvious and even easier to expose than some others. From the very start of Trump’s announcement of the “bluing” of the Lincoln memorial reflecting pool, there were questions — and plenty to be suspicious about.

“What was remarkable was that at every step, as you peeled back another layer, something wasn’t quite what it was supposed to be or what Trump had said it was. It seemed as if it should have been a simple job. But every step made it more interesting,” Fahrenthold told Slate writer Aymann Ismail.

Aside from this being an expensive no-bid contract, Trump had announced that: “I found this contractor myself. He worked on the pool at my golf club.”

Only he didn’t. The president’s pool guy was not renovating the Reflecting Pool, said Fahrenthold.

“Once we started reporting, we found all these ways in which his account didn’t seem to square with reality. We realized, ‘Wait, it’s not actually a pool guy.’ And then all these other things the president had said about it turned out not to be true.

“First, he’s not Trump’s pool guy,” said Fahrenthold. “He’s not anybody’s pool guy. It’s a company that, as far as I can tell, doesn’t do swimming pools. They coat highway culverts. They work on fuel tanks and roofs and things like that, but they are not a swimming pool company at all. And as far as I can tell, they have never worked for any of Trump’s pool companies.”

And it’s not like anybody was saying this needed to happen. The slabs at the bottom of the pool are 8 inches of concrete, said Fahrenthold.

“If water is leaking through 8 inches of concrete, it’s not very much. Nobody had ever said that this was the problem that needed fixing. But all of a sudden, the Trump administration decided, 'This is something we need to do, and we need to spend millions of dollars to do it,'” Fahrenthold said.

So Trump’s people chose a company with no experience with sealing pools. Fahrenthold says they’re disregarding expert opinions. The administration is locking other, potentially cheaper and better bidders out of the process, and they’re jumping right in to finish the project in a rush to July 4.

Fahrenthold says if they’re this sloppy for a reflecting pool, how does the administration manage even bigger projects, like a war in Iran? Or a press to upset global trade with a blanket of painful tariffs?

“If the Reflecting Pool contract goes bad, what happens? The pool leaks a little bit. There’s algae. It’s not that different from the status quo Trump inherited. But you can tell, in that situation, how they got themselves into this easily avoidable problem,” Fahrenthold told Ismail . “And you can see their decision-making approach to a million other things that are much more important.”

A House Republican is drafting legislation to try to bypass Senate rules and advance President Donald Trump’s push to require enhanced voter identification. The bill would cost taxpayers $250 million over five years.

According to Politico, U.S. Rep. Julie Fedorchak (R-ND) is working on the “SAVE America Through REAL ID Act,” which would provide funds for lower-income voters to obtain a REAL ID, while encouraging states to require a REAL ID to vote.

“In order to address that one issue, we’ve created this grant program for states to use to help people who meet the income qualifications … to be able to get a free REAL ID,” Fedorchak told Politico.

Fedorchak hopes the $250 million price tag will make the legislation eligible to pass in the Senate under the reconciliation process, which requires only a simple majority — thus potentially bypassing the need for any Democratic votes.

Fedorchak’s bill would be “an alternative to the proof-of-citizenship and voter-ID mandates in the original SAVE America Act that would likely be excluded from a party-line bill by the Senate parliamentarian,” Politico reports.

Politico’s Meredith Lee Hill reported that House GOP leaders were “scrambling to find ways to squeeze pieces of the SAVE America Act into their next party-line bill.” That would include “using funding carrots instead of policy mandates to clear the Senate parliamentarian.”

Despite repeated pressure from President Trump, as recently as Thursday afternoon, the SAVE America Act has stalled in the Senate. Trump wants that legislation to require all voters to show voter ID and proof of citizenship, while sharply narrowing the use of mail-in ballots. Trump is also pressing for the bill to ban “men in women’s sports,” and “transgender mutilization [sic] surgery for our children.”

Back in February the president vowed the SAVE America Act would pass into law, “one way or another.” Critics see the controversial bill as voter suppression legislation.

Democrats oppose the bill in part because it requires a passport or birth certificate to register to vote — something tens of millions of Americans do not currently have, according to voting rights groups. It also narrows generally accepted forms of photo ID to vote.

Others oppose it because it requires states to run their voter rolls through federal immigration databases, which reportedly have a high error rate. Critics also say that it creates a large unfunded administrative burden for states.

In April, Trump told Republicans that enacting the SAVE Act would “guarantee the midterms” — while claiming that was not the reason he was pushing the bill. “I don’t think you can politically exist if you’re not going to do voter ID and these things.”