The Supreme Court and the Republican-controlled Senate have erected guardrails that limit President Donald Trump’s ability to make it harder for citizens to vote, and he’s not happy about that.Limited time: Save 25% on NBC News subscriptionGet exclusive reporting, live Q&As and ad-free reading.In a 5-4 decision handed down Monday, Chief Justice John Roberts, who was appointed by Republican President George W.Bush, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was appointed by Trump, joined the court’s three liberals in ruling against the Republican National Committee’s challenge to a Mississippi law that allows certain ballots to be tallied if they are received after Election Day.Civil rights groups hailed the decision as a protection for voters.“Our democracy is stronger when more people, not less, can participate,” Robert Weiner, the Voting Rights Project director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement.But Trump, who has contended contrary to the evidence that Democrats “rigged” his loss in the 2020 election, said Monday that the majority decision is “very detrimental to honest elections” and claimed that it “gives people more time to vote illegally.”He used the courtroom defeat to redirect attention to the Senate, where his effort to rewrite voter-eligibility laws is stuck.
Republicans do not have enough votes to either pass the so-called SAVE America Act or kill the chamber’s rule requiring 60 senators to overcome a filibuster.That legislation is “even more important” as a result of the ballot decision, Trump said.
Earlier in the day, in a Truth Social post, he sought to apply more pressure to Senate Republicans to act on his bill, which would require multiple forms of identification to register to vote and photo ID to cast a ballot.“In a time when there is a powerful Communist Movement taking place in our Country, one more dangerous than World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or September 11th, ...