Congress Stands Up to Trump... and Trump Stands Up to Congress

Republican senators are starting to stand up to Donald Trump on a few issues. One of the big ones is the "SAVE America Act," which makes it more difficult to vote in a variety of ways. Trump really, really wants this bill but Republican senators do not. Passing it would require abolishing the filibuster (which Trump wants), but it is doubtful that there are 51 Republican votes for the bill in the Senate at all, even if the filibuster is abolished.

Different Republicans have different objections to the bill. One thing they don't like is the federal database of eligible voters it would create. Many Republican senators are strong supporters of states' rights and don't want the feds mucking around with elections, which the Constitution says are to be run by the states.

A second objection is political, although few senators will talk about it. The bill requires voters to present proof of citizenship to register to vote, even after an in-state move. Driver's licenses do not prove citizenship, just residency (except in five northern states). That proof could be a passport or a current ID that matches the name on the voter's birth certificate. Most other documentation is disallowed. The "problem" is that people living in rural areas in interior red states rarely travel internationally and many do not have a passport. In contrast, urban, coastal voters are more likely to have a passport. Also, the vast majority of women in red states who get married change their name, so a current ID will not match their birth certificates. In blue states, many women who get married do not change their name. Consequently, in practice, this provision would probably disproportionately hurt Republicans. The senators understand this but Trump does not.

Trump thought he could pressure the Senate into passing the Act by yesterday morning announcing that he was going to refuse to sign the bipartisan housing bill that passed the House 358-32 and passed the Senate 85-5. Trump may not know this, but if he takes no action on the bill for 10 days, it automatically becomes law. If he vetoes it (which would be a gift to the Democrats) Congress can override it with a two-thirds vote in each chamber. Given the initial vote, the votes for overriding a veto are almost certainly there.

After the announcement, Trump stormed into the GOP Senate lunch to try to bully the senators. He vented at the senators for an hour. They vented right back, especially Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who stood up and loudly explained why he and three other Republican senators voted for a resolution ordering Trump to end the war in Iran. Much yelling occurred. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) called the meeting "spirited," "frank," and "candid." Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), a physician, described the meeting as "very much like a hospital board meeting, when a bunch of doctors are yelling at each other." Another senator said that Cassidy's anger was "out of body." It didn't work. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) said nobody changed their mind. The senators reminded Trump that they have taken votes on the SAVE Act five times this year and the votes simply are not there.

On the other hand, the Republican senators wanted to make sure Trump knew that despite Cassidy's outburst they were still world-class cowards. So in the evening, they walked back their earlier resolution to order Trump to either end the war in Iran or get Congress to authorize it. Cassidy switched sides and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) voted present. The vote was 47-50-1. The second vote changes nothing since Trump was not going to obey the first one, even if the House approved it, too. The main thing the second vote showed is that the Republican senators are like beaten dogs who cower and beg when their master raises his eyebrows.

Meanwhile, over in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is plotting a third reconciliation bill that would include the SAVE America Act in it. He announced this to placate Trump, who has probably forgotten that the last time he tried this, Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough made the Senate remove the SAVE Act stuff because reconciliation bills operate under special rules and only budget items are allowed. Trump wants Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) to fire MacDonough, but he has steadfastly refused because he knows if he replaces her with some flunky, next time the Democrats get the trifecta, they will replace his fluky with their flunky.

A second area where Congress is starting to stand up is a secret $500 million investment in the Trump family crypto company made by a group led by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al Nahyan, brother of the ruler of the United Arab Emirates. Four months after the investment, the U.A.E. got authorization to buy the best American AI chips, something the Biden administration had banned due to the U.A.E.'s close relationship with China. Coincidences do happen, of course. Here is Trump in the U.A.E. with Tahnoon:

The deal sold 49% of World Liberty Financial, a company formed by Trump's sons and supernegotiator Steve Witkoff, who got $31 million, to the Emirati group. So even if the crypto business collapses completely, Trump has made a few hundred million off it so far. Democrats smell something fishy here and wrote letters demanding an investigation to heads of the Senate Investigations, Banking, Homeland Security, Judiciary and Finance Committees asking for action. The letters were signed by the ranking members of these committees, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Gary Peters (D-MI), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Ron Wyden (D-OR), respectively.

On Tuesday, Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee listed a series of administration actions following the deal that benefited the U.A.E., including sale of 15% of TikTok's U.S. operations to MGX, a company led by Tahnoon, and the pardon of Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, which is partly owned by MGX. The Democrats called the Emiratis buying 49% of a worthless company for $500 million, followed by Trump giving the U.A.E. a number of valuable things the Emiratis wanted, corruption and self-dealing. If the Democrats capture either chamber of Congress, this is sure to be investigated. This kind of garden-variety corruption—a foreign leader giving the president a lot of money and then the president doing things that the foreign leader wants but which are against the interests of the United States—is something even ordinary voters understand.

However, pushing back is something that happens both ways. While Congress is starting to stand up to Trump, Trump is continuing to push back on Congress. Back when Elon Musk was running the country, he gutted the world's largest provider of foreign aid, USAID. Trump later wanted to finish the job and kill it completely, but Congress created it and only Congress can kill it. Trump asked Congress and it refused.

Worse yet, it has passed legislation to fund some USAID activities, including $9.4 billion to prevent and treat HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis and $5 billion in humanitarian aid. Congress also required regular detailed reports on the spending. Trump signed the bill and is "delaying" spending the funds it is required by law to spend. Administration officials are also refusing to answers queries from Congress about the matter. The president refusing to spend money appropriated by Congress is called impoundment. In Train v. City of New York, the Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional.

In practice, there is not much Congress can do about this now, but impoundment could rate an article in a future impeachment proceedings by the next House. It continues to be clear that Trump regards Congress as an annoying nuisance that he can ignore with impunity. (V)

Federal Judge Bars Trump from Implementing Proof of Citizenship by XO

Donald Trump is not doing well with his plan to require documentary proof of citizenship to vote. The Senate isn't playing ball and neither is the judiciary. Early on in Trump v2.0, Trump signed an XO requiring proof of citizenship to vote. That was flawed from the start, because XOs are orders to the federal bureaucracy about how to interpret federal law. Federal bureaucrats do not run elections so they don't have to interpret anything. States run elections, not federal bureaucrats. Multiple state AGs sued and a year ago, U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper, a Barack Obama appointee, issued a preliminary injunction putting the XO on hold until she ruled.

Yesterday, she ruled. And the ruling was crystal clear and permanent this time. She wrote that the Constitution "does not grant the President any specific powers over elections," so she ruled that the XO violated the Constitution. We do not understand why it took her a year. You can read the Constitution (including all 27 amendments) in under an hour. Make that 2 hours if you want to double check. Shouldn't take a year. Still, we now have a definitive ruling. Trump is not going to like being overruled by a Black woman who is also a graduate of the woke Harvard Law School. After all, he is president and she is not.

New York AG Letitia James, one of the AGs in the case, said she was grateful the court had blocked Trump's unconstitutional attempt to seize control of our elections. She also said: "Generations of Americans fought tirelessly for the right to vote, and we honor their legacy by protecting that right against anyone who tries to undermine it."

This was Trump's second loss on the issue of proof of citizenship this week. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, a Joe Biden appointee, blocked Trump's plan to create a centralize federal voter database.

But Trump keeps throwing stuff at the wall to see if anything sticks. In 2026, Trump signed another XO that would create an official federal list of voters and would curtail mail-in voting. That XO is already being fought in court, as noted in the previous paragraph. Yesterday, Trump got some more bad news on that front. A three-judge appeals court panel in Michigan ruled that MIchigan does not have to hand over its voting rolls to the Feds. The vote was 2-1, with Judge Andre Mathis, a Joe Biden appointee, and Judge R. Guy Cole Jr., a Bill Clinton appointee, voting for Michigan and Judge John Nalbandian, a Donald Trump appointee, voting for the Feds. The DoJ claimed that the Civil Rights Act gave them the power to demand the data. The first two judges checked the Act and couldn't find anything in there about it. The third judge probably didn't bother to check and just took the DoJ at its word.

Trump also wants the USPS to refuse to deliver absentee ballots to people on his not-yet-compiled voter list. That again is an attempt to assert federal authority over an issue the Constitution explicitly grants to the states. In sixth grade, Trump was probably shooting spitballs out of a straw at other kids and not paying attention when the teacher was explaining federalism.

Trump might get his way, though. Yesterday, Postmaster General David Steiner appeared before the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) asked him if he would indeed halt the delivery of mail-in ballots in states that refuse to turn over their voter files for inclusion in a national voter database. Steiner confirmed that indeed, he would not allow the USPS to deliver ballots in states that failed to obey Trump. However, he also said he would obey any court orders on the subject.

All these actions together give the impression that Trump is extremely worried about the midterms and knows that if they are fair, Democrats will very likely win the House and maybe even the Senate. He knows his only chance to prevent that—and one or more impeachments—is to prevent Democrats from voting, one way or another. He keeps trying different ways and keeps getting shot down. But he will not stop. It is too important to him. Keep reading. (V)

Trump Continues to Try to Rig the Midterm Election

With the SAVE America Act going nowhere and the courts constantly pushing back on Donald Trump's attempts to rig the elections, Trump (or, more likely, OMB Director Russell Vought) keeps thinking of new ways to try to rig the midterms. The most recent one is requiring states to check their voting rolls through a controversial federal citizenship verification database or lose a total of $1 billion in funding appropriated by Congress. Many states are wildly against the federal government telling them who can vote in their own state, not to mention that the federal database is undoubtedly rife with errors, not updated in real time, and can easily be manipulated to remove voters in "suspect" (i.e., Democratic) precincts or ZIP codes.

We have seen this movie before. Trump wants states to do something he has no power to order them to do and threatens to withhold lawfully appropriated funds if they refuse. This results in lawsuits and much of the time the states win because what Trump is doing is illegal. But this pattern doesn't deter him because it works with some states and makes him feel good bossing the states around. Many Republican senators who support states' rights are too cowardly to speak up. Congress has some limited power in the area of election rules (such as mandating a uniform national Election Day), but the Constitution does not grant the president any powers to interfere with elections.

One of the other things Trump is insisting on is getting rid of ballot-marking devices. About 30% of voters cast their ballots either using a touch screen attached to a computer than then prints out a paper ballot that is the actual vote (and which can be recounted in a close election) or which counts the votes electronically as they are cast. These devices are valuable to blind voters, since they can read the ballot out loud to the voter and to voters with poor vision, since they can display candidate names in a large font. They also avoid problems with voters who inadvertently vote for two candidates for the same race or otherwise invalidate their ballot. Locations that would be affected by the rules change include Delaware, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina and Los Angeles County.

The estimated costs for changing voting procedures is $2.7 billion. Some states and counties may simply refuse to comply (and sue) on financial grounds. The cost of compliance may exceed the loss of grant money and there is a good chance that after long court battles, the government will have to issue the funds anyway. (V)

Poll: Iran War Wasn't Worth It

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll ending Monday shows that only 23% of Americans think the U.S. is stronger after the war with Iran. Half think it was not worth it. The rest are unsure. Additionally, 63% do not think the Memorandum of Understanding Donald Trump (digitally) signed will lead to a lasting peace. In contrast, 18% (including 10% of Democrats and 34% of Republicans) think it will lead to a lasting peace. Will this affect voting behavior in November? If Iran is still in the news then, it could, especially among Trump voters who voted for him because he promised no more wars.

The poll also showed that Trump's overall net approval rating among adults is -30, down from +6 in the spring of 2025. That is a drop of 36 points. Here are the data.

The good news for Trump is that his approval has remained stable at 34-35% since April. The bad news is that net -30 is not a good place to be, even if it is stable for the moment. (V)

Trump Has Turned the Refugee Program into a Whites-Only Refugee Program

The United States has a long history of taking in refugees from wars, famines, dictatorships, persecution, natural disasters and other calamities. Emma Lazarus' famous poem on the Statue of Liberty contains the words: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Donald Trump has crossed that out and replaced it with a sign commonly found in Mississippi in 1950: "Whites only."

In particular, while Trump is actively tying to block most immigrants, there is one group he is actively encouraging to immigrate to the U.S.: white South Africans. Normally, getting refugee status can take years, but Trump has now streamlined the process for white Afrikaners to allow them entry within a few months of applying. Thousands have now done so. Tough luck for the huddled masses. New sheriff in town.

Trump has repeatedly said that he believes that civil rights-era laws and protections have resulted in white people being treated very badly. He is trying to fix the problem by admitting white South Africans, none of whom were harmed by U.S. laws passed in the 1960s. He sees it as a kind of group reparations to white people who he thinks were harmed by these laws. White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said (without any evidence that it is true): "President Trump has provided a lifeline for Afrikaners, who are being raped, maimed, killed and driven off their property across South Africa." It is true that there is a lot of crime in South Africa, but Black South Africans are the victims of the brunt of it. White South Africans are not being singled out. Jason Marks, a senior refugee officer who resigned last year in protest said of the administration: "They are rolling out the red carpet for this group with a clear racial and political agenda at the expense of everyone else."

The South Africans are being given a welcome packet when they arrive. It contains an Android tablet (most likely made in South Korea or Taiwan), an American flag (very likely made in China) and copies of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. They also get a Trump-approved history of the United States that criticizes racial equality and claims civil rights laws discriminate against white people. There is also a children's book from PragerU, a right-wing publisher, about a Black South African who must protect a white rugby teammate from a Black mob. Also in the packet is a report that downplays the role of slavery in the country's founding. Just exactly what new immigrants need to get started. When reporters asked how much the gifts cost and who was paying for them, there was no answer. It is very unusual for refugees to receive gifts from the government upon arrival. Although, you know who DID like that trick? Boss William Magear Tweed, whose people would stand on the NYC docks and hand out hams and turkeys to new arrivals. Good way to use some of that grafted money to lock in some voters. (V)

House Members Looking for Promotions Are Not Getting Them

As you can see from our retirements page, 29 members of the House are retiring to run for the Senate, governor, AG or some other office. Twenty-seven states have held their primaries to date and so far, it is not going well for the folks trying for a promotion. Of the 18 who have already faced election, only five have won the nomination they are going for, so they are batting a middling .278. The winners so far are all Republicans running for open Senate seats. They are Andy Barr (KY), Mike Collins (GA), Kevin Hern (OK), Ashley Hinson (IA), and Barry Moore (AL). Barr, Hern, and Moore are strong favorites in the general election. Collins is probably an underdog against Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), who is an incumbent and a fundraising machine and Hinson is in a toss-up race against state Sen. Josh Turek (D).

Here is how it has gone for the House members trying for other offices so far:

As you can see, the biggest group (50%) lost the primary outright and another batch (6%) lost in the runoff. This is a historically abysmal record. This year is shaping up to be a "throw the bums out" year. And people really hate Congress and congresscritters. Since 1990, we haven't had a year in which more than 50% of House strivers lost—until now. Usually 25-40% lose their races, not 67%. (V)

Pro-Life Republican Congresswoman Is Upset She Had Trouble Getting an Abortion

Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) is a fierce opponent of abortion and has strongly supported the Florida law that bans abortions in Florida in nearly all cases. In Congress she has consistently voted for bills that make abortions harder to get. She is proud of her position.

Then one fine day about 2 years ago, after getting pregnant, her pregnancy was discovered to be problematic. She went to a hospital and the doctors said she needed an abortion to survive. She was amazed that instead of calling the operating room staff to get it ready for her abortion, they called the hospital lawyers to have a long discussion about whether giving her an abortion would be legal and the likely consequences for themselves and for the hospital and which course of action would be safest for them. She pulled up the text of the law on her phone and showed it to the doctors but they were not swayed. They estimated her to be roughly 5 weeks pregnant, in which case an abortion would be legal, but if they were a bit off and it was 6 weeks, they could lose their medical licenses and be fined for performing an abortion. Maybe the abortion would be legal, maybe not, and the lawyers were urging caution.

The discussions were taking too long for her taste, so Cammack did what any woman in danger of her life would do: She called the governor for help. Unfortunately, she couldn't get through to him. Eventually her condition became so serious that the doctors decided that the "life of the mother" exemption would cover them. But they could easily have decided that she had to get even closer to death for them to be safe.

Recently, Cammack asked journalist Tara Palmeri if she could come on Palmeri's show to talk about her work dealing with sexual harassment in Congress. Cammack personally requested the interview, knew it was on the record, for publication, and with no conditions. Palmeri agreed. After discussing harassment issues, Palmeri asked about Cammack's history of opposing abortions and then begging for one when she needed one. Cammack became very emotional.

Palmeri had to think long and hard about whether to cut the part about the abortion. In the end, she said that Cammack is a public official who asked to be interviewed on the record for publication. Cammack talked about a major public policy issue of national importance (abortion), so Palmeri didn't edit the interview. Here is the full interview, of which the first two minutes is Palmeri explaining why she aired the full interview. The bit about abortion starts around 40:45, but watch the first 2 minutes first:

The viewer comments on the interview on various platforms are deadly. The vast majority of them called Cammack a hypocrite and worse. Many say she effectively pulled rank and got a life-saving treatment in a borderline case that a woman who was not in Congress might not have gotten and would have died and that would be the fault of people like Cammack. In response, Cammack blamed everyone and their uncle—except the Republicans like herself that want such laws, except they don't want the laws to apply to themselves. (V)

Tucker Carlson Claims He Will No Longer Support the Republican Party

On a recent podcast, Tucker Carlson said "there's no chance I would support the Republican Party." We'll believe it on Nov. 4 if he sticks to it. As a Swanson frozen foods trust baby and lifelong Republican, we can't imagine Carlson supporting any Democrat. So is he going to tell people not to vote? We doubt it. He could tell them to vote for the Libertarian Party candidate. If LP candidates suddenly got a lot of votes, that would send a message while also hurting the Republicans. He has apologized for telling people to vote for Donald Trump in 2024, though.

Carlson has gone on criticizing the war in Iran and also Republicans in general. He says they make decisions based on what's best for some company, what's best for Israel, and what's best for the donors. He called that unacceptable, treasonous, and immoral.

Carlson could conceivably run for president in 2028, but getting on the ballot as an independent in all the states is tough. Very tough. He could run in the Republican primaries, which would be easy, or he could ask for the Libertarian Party nomination, which would be very easy. He denies having any presidential ambitions, but they all say that until they say: "I didn't want to run, but so many people told me I had to run that I decided to follow the will of the people."

He already stated his non-platform. He said: "[The system] is not producing impressive people. And every empire is the same in this one regard. When its system fails to produce a leadership class capable of running this huge thing that the ancestors built, then it collapses. And so we need to fix that, like immediately. And the first thing to do is stop discriminating against white men. They built all of this in the first place. They have a pretty good track record. So knock it off. Give them a fair shot." So he will be the white men's grievance candidate. That probably wouldn't be enough to get the Republican nomination, but as an independent candidate or LP candidate, he could pull enough votes from the Republican ticket to doom it. (V)

Never Forget: Folsom Prison Blues

Today's memory comes to us from reader T.A. in San Francisco, CA:

I'm a long-time reader of your excellent site and all the recent stories about fathers has moved me to write you and tell some of the story of my father.

John was born in 1910 in the Iron Range in northern Minnesota and while he grew up during the Great Depression, he was lucky enough to get to go to the Univeristy of Minnesota. When he graduated in 1933, he put his new wife June—a fellow U of M student—in the front seat of his old car, along with everything else he owned, and drove west to California, where he'd heard there were jobs. He wasn't technically an "Okie" because he didn't come from that state, but many of the old pictures he and Mom took on that trip looked like a lot of Dorothea Lange photographs. They stayed in camps in the Central Valley of California. To the day they died, they hated the term "Okie."

My brother, John Jr., was born in 1940 and when World War II began, Dad went into the Merchant Marine. He made a number of the "run to Murmansk" trips, where Navy destroyers would escort large convoys of various goods from the U.S. east coast, up around Scandinavia, to the only ice-free port in Russia. As you know, the U.S. was a lifeline to Russia during that time. The 2020 Tom Hanks movie Greyhound was about those convoys. I've got a picture of dad on his ship, where he is manning a gun crew on the bow, on the lookout both for ice floes and U-boats. Behind him in the picture are icicles hanging from the gun barrel and the chains on the edges of the deck. It must have been very, very cold.

In 1945, he, like thousands of other men in uniform, was sailing around the western Pacific Ocean, waiting for the invasion of Japan to begin. He passed away in 1979 and Mom passed in 1981, and after she died, we found a batch of letters from him, tied with a red ribbon and tucked away in the back of a dresser drawer. Dad wrote about how everyone on the ship listened to the Armed Forces Radio news every day, and his letter from Aug. 6 talked about the news report of a "new type of bomb" that had been dropped on Japan. No more information was given, but rumors on the ship began that the war with Japan might end. And 3 days later, there was another "new type of bomb" dropped and all their prayers were answered.

While Dad was at war, Mom did her job on the home front. She moved to Los Angeles, where she got a job in the Douglas aircraft plant, and since she was only 5'1", short even by the female standards of the day, she became a literal Rosie the Riveter. It was her job to crawl up in the planes' tail section with a rivet gun and make sure everything was buttoned down and ready to go.

After the war, Dad went to work for the California prison system. He didn't particularly like it, but—as a child of the Depression—he used to say it was a safe job, that we'd always need prisons, which is true, of course.

Dad worked most of his career at Folsom State Prison outside Sacramento; It was the state's only maximum security prison for most of his 20+ years there. He became a senior figure at the prison and traveled to a lot of other prisons, where he met, and interacted with, a number of California's most notorious criminals—Charles Manson, Juan Corona, Sirhan Sirhan, amd Caryl Chessman, among others. He also dealt with Robert Stroud, the famous "Birdman of Alcatraz," a number of times. He thought the 1962 movie with Burt Lancaster portrayed Stroud way too kindly. I remember him telling me, "Prison is full a lot of the most awful people but of them all, Bob Stroud was the worst by far. He was the most awful, cruel, utterly mean human being I ever meant."

A couple of other movie notes. Folsom was a popular spot for movie shots, at least on the outside, because it looks like what it is—a hulking, dark prison. Dad was an extra in a number of movies, including the 1954 movie Riot in Cell Block 11.

And while he had long since passed away when the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line came out, he did "play" a small role in it. As the movie opens, Joaquin Phoenix (Cash) is getting ready for his famous 1968 concert at the prison and inmates can be heard in the background. The opening shows Phoenix talking with a couple of prison officials and signing some legal documents, including a "hold harmless" agreement for the prison and the state, because he's in a potentially dangerous situation and could be injured or taken hostage. One of those officials was my dad.

P.S.: My brother, John Jr., was an early graduate of the Air Force Academy and became a fighter pilot who flew many missions in Vietnam during the war. He came home, only to be killed in 1976 during a training flight at Nellis AFB in Nevada. What an utter waste—surviving a year in combat only to die in a training accident.

Thanks, T.A. (Z)

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