SAVE America … From What?
Trump Diaries #134, 11 March 2026
In and among the news about Trump’s war on Iran, there are occasional snippets of news about the so-called SAVE America Act. When Trump originally proposed it, it caught my attention and I wrote an essay about it… and then another… It was about voting, and had three major parts: universal voter ID, proof of citizenship to vote, and no mail-in ballots. It was subtle, at least as Trump goes: each of those items, were it to be implemented, would lend a slight advantage to Republican candidates.
Seems like it wasn’t going over very well, because now there is a new version, which has the voting stuff and two very high-profile anti-trans provisions (no men in women’s bathrooms, no “mutilation” of children). The current House version of the bill (H.R. 22) has only the voting-related provisions. The two anti-trans items are certainly “out there” in the universe of Trump rhetoric… a 5 February 2025 executive order was titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” and a 28 January 2025 executive order was titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on March 6 that Trump had “added on some priorities to the SAVE America Act in recent days,” which of course were those anti-trans provisions. Leavitt then added “The president putting all of these priorities together speaks to how common sense they are.”
Trump himself has been talking this up. A 5 March 2026 TruthSocial post had this:
The Republicans MUST DO, with PASSION, and at the expense of everything else, THE SAVE AMERICA ACT - And not the watered down version. This is a Country Defining fight for the Soul of our Nation!
So what it comes down to is that Trump has a couple of high-profile social-conservative issues that he is going to wave over his changes to the voting system. I am not sure that Trump much cares, but those issues are really useful to add in, such that no Republican can oppose the SAVE Act. Any such Republication would, of course, be reviled as a RINO or a traitor.
So we have the “perfect storm” combination of (1) Trump will do anything possible to pervert and bias the U.S. voting system in his favor, and (2) the Republicans as a broader community are weak-spined and manipulable by Trump. So, expect this one to get through the House, and maybe get stalled in the Senate by a Democrat filibuster. But Trump is doing anything he can to push it through.
It’s not about democracy… it’s about Trump’s side winning.
