On Wednesday, President Donald Trump will meet with Senate Republicans in an attempt to press their support for his floundering legislative agenda. According to Punchbowl News, the meeting comes as Trump is at “his weakest point yet,” dragged down by controversy surrounding the war with Iran, his failed policy endeavors, his historically low polling, and infighting within his own party.
As Punchbowl explains, it’s not surprising that the temperamental president is angry at Senate Republicans as “they’re openly dismissing Trump’s legislative demands, expressing rare public anger over the Iran MOU, bucking his repeated calls to get rid of the filibuster and furious about his abrupt halting of the confirmation process for Jay Clayton, the nominee to be director of national intelligence.” Many also “see Trump’s fixation on the SAVE America Act as a strategic misstep that could cost them their majority by turning the MAGA base against GOP candidates and incumbents.”
At the same time, says Punchbowl, “Trump’s Senate allies... riled up the MAGA base online, prompting an onslaught against Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) in particular. Trump is slated to attend Wednesday’s Senate GOP Steering lunch, which is run by Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), a staunch Trump ally and one of the chief proponents of the SAVE America Act. Scott inviting Trump during this row with Thune is seen within the GOP Conference as a slight toward the South Dakota Republican.”
All of this is an effort to cajole support for SAVE, but Trump is likely to face his own slights from “free agent” GOP Senators who have been beaten by primary candidates endorsed by the president, placing them in a “nothing to lose” scenario where they can vote as they please without consequences.
This stalemate threatens not only Trump’s voter ID law, but the FISA Section 702 extension it has become linked to. For Democrats, attaching passage of the SAVE Act makes a FISA extension “a non-starter,” and Senate Republicans know it. According to Punchbowl, “Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger, lamented that Trump was ‘tying all of these together and then also saying, “You’ve got to pass the SAVE America Act,” which we know we don’t have the votes for.’ As a result, the ongoing lapse in 702 authority could last well into July.”
For many Senate Republicans, hesitancy to push for the SAVE Act comes down to simple numbers. They know they have the votes to pass a FISA extension if it's tied to SAVE, and they consider the former to be absolutely vital to national security. They therefore don’t want to imperil FISA by attaching it to legislation that will doom it automatically. But according to Punchbowl, “other Republicans worry Trump will use Republicans’ failure to pass the SAVE America Act to deflect blame if the GOP suffers big losses in the midterms or use it as a pretext to call the elections ‘rigged.’”
