Good afternoon from Capitol Hill.
We are so (almost) back. The House and Senate return to session on September 9th for that time honored tradition of fighting over government funding, which expires on September 30.
At the time of this writing, it appears that Speaker Mike Johnson will align himself with conservatives in putting forward a short-term Continuing Resolution into early 2025, and combine it with passage of the SAVE Act – legislation that passed the House in July and which requires proof of citizenship before registering to vote.
Washington’s establishment mouthpieces at Punchbowl news are already tut-tutting the plan, noting that the Senate’s Democratic majority and President Biden will disapprove. The horror! Of course, a disagreement between chambers could very well set up a government shutdown, the possibility of which gives establishment commentators a bad case of heartburn and a pathological need to spout tired pablum like “the right always loses shutdown fights.”
As sharper minds will note, not only is that empirically untrue (after the GOP-led 2013 shutdown, the right actually gained 13 House seats a year later), it completely disregards the substance and power of the message. That is, if there is a government shutdown, it will be because the left doesn’t want to prevent illegal aliens from voting in federal elections. In other words, they will hold government funding hostage to make sure they can cheat.
Voting by illegal aliens is a real and significant problem. And turning illegal immigrants into voters is, for the left, a priority. In an interview with Bill Maher on Friday, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke approvingly of new benefits to illegal aliens and stated her wish to “move them to documented” residents. In 2018, then-Georgia governor candidate Stacy Abrams declared that a “blue wave” would get her elected. “That blue wave,” she said, “is undocumented.”
The left and their media sycophants love to haughtily claim that “voting as a noncitizen is already illegal.” Well, so is crossing the border at a non-port of entry, but that hasn’t stopped the nearly 8 million people who have done so under the Biden administration. Moreover, it ignores the fact that there is no confirmation of citizenship at the time of registration. Put another way: there is no verification of status for people who have already broken one law by coming here illegally to prevent them from breaking another.
As Sen. Mike Lee pointed out recently, “Yes, it’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote. It’s also already illegal to sell alcohol to minors. And yet we require people buying alcohol to prove they’re at least 21. Why shouldn’t the same logic apply to requiring voters to prove they’re citizens?”
All of this is to say that the left is working very hard to prevent key measures from being enacted that would prevent people from cheating in federal elections.
In politics, it is sometimes the arc of the fight that matters more than the outcome. Even if conservatives don’t get the SAVE Act in the end, the fight for it will be immensely clarifying. If, on the other hand, the left realizes how toxic their position is and agrees to the SAVE Act, so much the better. Either way, it’s a fight worth having.
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One More Thing…
Become a CPI fellow! Applications for our Magnus, Intrepidus, and Veritas fellowships for conservatives are now open.