Good evening! Tonight, we’re turning our attention to Capitol Hill, where the makings of a pre-election government shutdown may be brewing. Our chief Washington correspondent, Carl Hulse, is here to explain. Then we’ll spend a moment with an unusual photo by Doug Mills. — Jess Bidgood
Republicans across the country have spent months pushing the unsubstantiated idea that a swarm of undocumented immigrants is poised to vote illegally and swing the upcoming election to Democrats.
It’s a false narrative, aimed at scoring political points with Republicans’ hard-right base, but it could still create real chaos on Capitol Hill in the run-up to the election.
House Republicans are hoping to weaponize the idea in their fight with Democrats over funding the government by a Sept. 30 deadline.
Whether the maneuver will give those Republicans the political leverage they are seeking — and how far they are willing to go to try to gain it — is an open question. It may take a government shutdown to find out.
A shutdown showdown
There are plenty of precedents for the coming shutdown showdown, which usually go something like this: Republicans and Democrats reach a stalemate over spending and run out of time for a deal. Republicans demand concessions on a politically charged issue — in this case, addressing illegal voting by immigrants — as the price of agreeing to any more federal funding, gambling that Democrats will fear a voter backlash if they refuse. Democrats balk, gambling that the G.O.P. will shoulder the blame for forcing an unpopular shutdown.
That’s how things played out in 2018, when Senate Democrats rushed to resolve an immigration-related shutdown fight they worried would hurt them politically.
Speaker Mike Johnson, facing familiar demands from his right flank for a spending confrontation with Democrats, is hoping for a similar outcome this time. On Friday evening, Republicans released a bill he plans to bring up next week that extends spending for six months and includes legislation requiring people to prove their U.S. citizenship when they register to vote.
It is already against the law for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and there is no evidence of widespread illegal voting by noncitizens. Still, Johnson thinks the voting registration legislation, known as the SAVE Act, short for Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, is a political winner.
“Should Americans and Americans alone determine the outcome of American elections?” the speaker asked this year. “Or should we allow foreigners and illegal aliens to decide who sits in the White House and in the people’s House and in the Senate?”
‘A solution looking for a problem’
Forcing the government into a shutdown or bringing it to the brink of one just weeks before an election might not seem like the wisest political strategy, given the chaos House Republicans have fomented the past two years. And Republicans in battleground districts want to avoid any hint of a shutdown.
But it could come to that if top Republicans think they can profit enough politically from the false idea that noncitizens’ voting in elections is a real problem.
Democrats say it’s a phony issue that is part of a cynical strategy by Republicans to stoke anti-immigrant resentment and xenophobia among voters, while deterring potential Democratic supporters who are legally eligible to vote from registering.
“This is a solution looking for a problem,” Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, told reporters at the Capitol this week. “There is no evidence that undocumented immigrants vote. It is hard enough to get citizens to vote.”
He and other Democrats say the new proposal would only erect new obstacles by imposing requirements that are complicated and unnecessary.
But Republicans like the idea of forcing Democrats to explain why they would resist the measure, the complexities of which few voters understand. They would no doubt try to use any vote to oppose it against Democrats in tough races, such as Senators Jon Tester in Montana and Sherrod Brown in Ohio, accusing them of wanting to cheat in the election by allowing illegal voting.
“We have to make sure noncitizens don’t vote,” Senator Rick Scott, a Florida Republican who is on the ballot in November and is also running for Senate Republican leader, said in an interview on Fox Business.
He said if the government were to shut down over the dispute, the blame should fall on the opposing party, led by Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader. “If Chuck Schumer decides he doesn’t want to bring it,” Scott said of the spending package, “then Chuck Schumer will be deciding that he wants to shut down the government. It’s not us.”
A tricky path for Republicans
Schumer is not likely to be intimidated by such threats, even though he backed down after the three-day shutdown in 2018, worried that Democrats would be blamed. So far in more recent fiscal showdowns among the House, the Senate and the White House, Schumer has insisted on bipartisan solutions without poison pills. And he has prevailed in the past.
“As we have said each time we have had a C.R.,” Schumer said in a statement, referring to the continuing resolution to fund the government, “the only way to get things done is in a bipartisan way, and that is what has happened every time.”
Before any spending bill is able to put pressure on the Senate, it has to pass the House, and there is no certainty that the proposal that includes the SAVE Act can. Some right-wing Republicans will resist voting for the spending bill even with the voting legislation attached, since they are opposed to the funding itself and reflexively reject spending bills. And six months represents a significant stretch of spending at current levels.
Democrats are expected to be almost uniformly opposed, leaving Republicans little room for defections.
With more than three weeks until the funding deadline, the parties have some time for a little back and forth to try to score their political points. At the moment, Democrats aren’t too concerned that Republicans can pin the blame for any shutdown on them over an unrelated issue, and aren’t in the mood to give much ground. They want a clean interim spending bill.
And so far in these tests of wills, Johnson has shown a willingness to relent at the crucial moment and make a deal.
The Moment: Can you find Trump in this photo?
Our photographers follow presidential candidates all over the country. From time to time, we’ll highlight an image from the week that tells a bigger story. We’re starting with this unusual frame by Doug Mills, who has been traveling with former President Donald Trump.
This photograph is a little bit of a puzzle. Former President Donald Trump is not the figure closest to the center of the frame. But once you spot him, he is unmistakable.
This picture was taken on Wednesday in Harrisburg, Pa., as Trump was leaving the stage after a Fox News town hall. He is surrounded by his security team, but he’s the only figure with a hand outstretched to the crowd. He’s the only figure with truly open posture. And yes, you can just make out his red tie.
“You put him in a crowd of people, and you can pick him out right away,” Doug told me. “His hair, his upper body — he’s just easy to pick out.”
It’s not easy to make a picture like this, one that’s devoid of some of the usual stagecraft. Trump and his staff are extremely image-conscious, typically exerting great control over the settings in which Trump can be seen by voters and captured on film. It can be a challenge to capture an unexpected view of the candidate.
“Ninety-nine percent of the time, he’s beautifully lit. Here, he’s not,” Doug said. “You’re just hunting for something like this.”
The post A Fake Narrative Could Drive a Real Government Shutdown appeared first on New York Times.
