With just over four months until the midterm elections, the President of the United States got into a shouting match with senators from his own party over legislative priorities. Trump has refused to sign a major bipartisan bill on housing affordability, calling it “of minor importance,” demanding the GOP first pass the election-targeting “SAVE America Act.” Ali Velshi sees not a confident leader, but someone desperate and scared over an impending midterm defeat.
The SAVE act would require proof of citizenship and ID to vote, and severely restrict mail-in voting. This would put an undue burden on Americans to find or order birth certificates and passports, while married women who took their spouse’s name would also need new IDs if their documents don’t all match. Those who rely on mail-in voting because of inability to access voting locations because of distance or disability would also face hurdles to their right to vote.
For some reason, the bill also includes a ban on transgender surgery for children and a ban on transgender athletes in women’s sports.
The SAVE act does not have enough Republicans are on board to pass and no Democrats will sign it, while the housing bill was enthusiastically passed by a large margin. When asked by reporters about holding the housing bill hostage, his answer rambled about “dumbocrats” who are “pushing communists.” Trump is concerned about the midterms, which his party is polling poorly in, and not about housing, which is at least one issue Republicans could campaign on if they were to get this housing bill signed.
At the same time, Trump’s head of the U.S. Postal Service has announced that they will not deliver mail ballots in states that don’t hand in their voter data to the administration, and the new acting director of National Intelligence is directing his agency’s focus toward elections rather than security threats, raising fears of more bogus allegations and investigations following the midterms.
Velshi sits down with Angelo Carusone of Media Matters and MS NOW legal analyst Melissa Murray to break down the attempts by the Trump administration to undermine the upcoming midterm elections, and the forces within our democracy that have blocked their subversions. So far.
LISTEN: THE INTEGRITY OF THE MIDTERMS
WATCH: ATTACKS ON OUR CIVIC INSTITUTIONS
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