Mostly Monday Reads: SAVE Shennanigans

“It’s incredible watching Donald The Prophet profiting.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

The headlines today are full of failed policies. Orange Caligula hasn’t quite found a distraction to take the voters’ minds off everything he’s done this term. We have a failed war and an economy choked by inflation. His main focus is on rigging the election and disenfranchising minority voters and women. He’s been after Senator John Thune to get his SAVE Act passed. However, the more people know about it, the less they like it. So, it’s time to start lighting up your Congressional Critters’ phones.

This is the headline from Politico‘s  Jordain Carney. “Trump tells Thune to keep Senate in session to pass SAVE America Act. The president also again urged the Senate GOP leader to nix the filibuster.” Republicans are always keen on the filibuster until it’s used against them.

President Donald Trump ramped up pressure Monday on Majority Leader John Thune, telling him to keep the Senate in session until a GOP election bill passes.

“John Thune should not allow the United States Senate to ‘leave town’ until it passes The Save America Act or, far better still, TERMINATES THE FILIBUSTER, where Republicans can then quickly pass everything they ever dreamed of,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Monday.

Democrats, he added, will nix the filibuster themselves when they regain power “and can’t believe how lucky they got with this Senate leadership. Remember, stupidity always brings LOSING & DEATH!”

Trump’s Truth Social post comes after he urged supporters last week to call Thune about the SAVE America Act, then said Friday that he wanted Senate Republicans to adopt a blueprint for a $95 billion party-line spending bill, which would include some election-related funding, before they leave town for the August recess as planned on Aug. 6.

Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said over the weekend that they believed the Senate should stay in town until the election bill is passed. Lee has previously called for the Senate to stay in session through prior recesses to pass the SAVE America Act but has not forced the issue on the floor.

Despite Trump’s pressure campaign, the elections bill doesn’t have the votes to pass the Senate and there isn’t enough support within the Senate Republican conference for nixing the filibuster, which requires 60 votes for most legislation to advance.

When Trump says he has a dream, it’s basically to ensure Black Americans can’t get to the polls. There’s no better time than this midterm to turn out and punch that voting machine selection with your middle finger. This analysis at The Hill has part of the explanation why Republican Senators can’t find their spines to buck the MAGA agenda. Alexander Bolten has the lede.

Senate conservatives, led by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), are calling on Senate Majority Leader John Thune 

(R-S.D.) to cancel the August recess so they can debate the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act, a sweeping election reform bill that President Trump has made his No. 1 legislative priority.

Lee warned in a social media post to Thune last week that he would “object to any effort to put the Senate into recess in August — at least until such time as the Senate has passed the SAVE America Act” and requested a roll call vote to adjourn the Senate for five weeks over most of August and early September.

Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.), who’s up for reelection in November, said she would prefer to stay in Washington in August instead of returning to her home state for an extended period to meet with constituents.

“I didn’t come to the United States Senate because I needed something to do. I’m serving because there are things we need to get done for the American People. The Senate needs to stay in session until we can get the SAVE America Act to the floor and passed,” Moody posted on X.

Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), another Trump ally, said he’s ready to cancel the five-week recess to debate the SAVE America Act, which has already failed several times on the Senate floor.

“I’m all for it. We don’t need a recess. Let’s pass the Save America Act. It’s more important than taking a break, taking a recess,” Banks told Fox News.

“I’m back in Indiana for the weekend, I head back to Washington tomorrow. I’ve heard from people everywhere I go, from the diner this morning to the grocery store, ‘Pass the SAVE America Act.’ We have to get it done,” he said.

The Senate has already spent several weeks of floor time debating the SAVE America Act, which would require people to show documented proof of citizenship when registering to vote and show photo identification when voting, and it would restrict mail-in ballots.

Down here in the yahoo state, we have Senator Kennedy to go all Hee-Haw on us. Samuel Chamberlin has this headline (deep breath) from the New York Post. “GOP Sen. John Kennedy warns John Thune is ‘being too cautious’ as Trump agenda hangs in the balance.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) needs to get to work on passing the rest of President Trump’s agenda with fewer than 100 days to go before the midterm elections, a key member of the GOP’s rank-and-file warned Sunday.

“Look, I mean no disrespect. I love John Thune. He’s my leader. He’s got a big brain. He’s better looking than me, but I think he’s just being too cautious,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” adding that the majority leader “wants to spend the rest of our time talking with [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer about shutting down government, and the Graham Platner wing of the [Democratic] party is, his party, is not going to let Schumer agree with us.

“They already want to give Schumer a bathrobe, a Popsicle, and an early bedtime, and have him retire. I don’t think Chuck can agree with us,” Kennedy predicted. “I think he’s going to shut down government.”

“We need to put the, the House budget resolution on the floor,” Kennedy told host Margaret Brennan. “It’s the only chance we have to get money to defense, the farmers, and to take another crack at the SAVE Act. We need to add Iran to the [Lindsey] Graham Russian sanctions bill and vote on it. We need to put the cryptocurrency market structure bill on the floor and vote on it.”

Before leaving for its August recess last week, the House of Representatives passed a stopgap measure that would fund the government until Dec. 4. Some Senate Republicans, including Kennedy, want to tack the Trump-endorsed SAVE America Act, which would require Americans to show proof of citizenship before registering to vote and provide photo identification before casting a ballot, onto the budget resolution.

Currently, a shutdown is set to begin at 11:59 p.m. ET Sept. 30.

It’s amazing how people with perfectly good educations and seemingly functional minds can go all bat shit crazy when they get themselves elected/appointed to anything within the Beltway. I’ve been around here long enough to remember when Foghorn Leghorn was a member of the Democratic Party. He switched parties in August 2007.

Meanwhile, we’ve finally uncovered a bit more truthiness from our human cost in Trump’s war against Fishing Boats. (Psst, have you sent the FBI to your sons, Orange Caligula, if you really want a successful coke bust? This is from the Washington Post.  “Deadly U.S. boat strikes have failed to curb cocaine supply, Pentagon and DEA officials say. The president says Operation Southern Spear has virtually ended drug trafficking by sea. Pentagon and DEA analysts have concluded otherwise.”

The Trump administration’s deadly military strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats have not reduced the amount of cocaine entering the United States, but they’re prompting criminal organizations to develop new strategies and tactics and undermining traditional investigative methods, according to a previously unreported assessment by the Drug Enforcement Administration, a closed-door congressional briefing and interviews with current and former U.S. and foreign officials.

In a recent assessment reviewed by The Washington Post, DEA analysts found the strikes had failed to affect the supply or price of cocaine in the United States and had led traffickers to diversify beyond go-fast boats and to avoid international waters, opting instead for larger boats and hemming close to coastlines, where U.S. forces are less likely to open fire. In a closed-door briefing last month, Pentagon officials told lawmakers the strikes in international waters off South and Central America had not reduced its purity.

Traffickers are also relying more on aircraft, which take off from clandestine airstrips along the Colombian-Venezuelan border and head east to Guyana and Suriname to avoid U.S. forces, according to the DEA assessment.

“When you squeeze the balloon on one side, it always expands on the other side,” one DEA official told The Post. “They always find the weak spots and exploit them.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

Meanwhile, giant corporations are getting rich at what they do best. As usual, they’re cutting costs by denying their workers a living wage, so those workers must rely on public assistance. This strategy is one of America’s worst legacies.  This is from Popular Information. Judd Legum has the story.

American taxpayers are spending billions every year providing Medicaid benefits to hundreds of thousands of employees of Amazon and Walmart, a new analysis by Popular Information reveals.

Amazon and Walmart are two of the largest and most profitable companies in the country — collectively generating $100 billion in profits in 2025 — but many of their employees still qualify for Medicaid because their take-home pay hovers around (or below) the poverty line.

As taxpayers keep their workers afloat, the wealth of the two companies’ largest shareholders is increasing exponentially. The Walton family, the largest shareholders of Walmart, saw their collective wealth increase from $238 billion in 2021 to $513 billion at the end of 2025. Meanwhile, Amazon founder and current executive chairman Jeff Bezos saw his net worth increase from $187 billion to $255 billion over roughly the same time period.

Popular Information calculated the public subsidy to Amazon and Walmart by cross-referencing several publicly available data sources. Last week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report examining the top 25 employers of Medicaid enrollees in six states: Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island. This provided state-level Medicaid enrollment for Amazon and Walmart workers in all six states, with the exception of Amazon in Maine.

Popular Information compared these figures to the total number of employees working for Walmart and Amazon in each state, sourced from company disclosures, to establish an average Medicaid enrollment rate for each company. The average Medicaid enrollment rate was then used to establish an estimated Medicaid enrollment for employees of each company in the remaining states.

Finally, the estimated number of employees receiving Medicaid in each state was multiplied by that state’s average annual cost of a non-elderly, non-disabled Medicaid enrollee, as published by the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC).https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/26/us-heat-wave-dome-weather

Using this methodology, Popular Information estimates that, nationwide, over 156,000 Walmart employees are enrolled in Medicaid at an annual cost to taxpayers of approximately $1.04 billion.

Of course, you can read more at the links. The weather all over the country continues to break records and be miserable. I hope you’re managing to avoid the worst of it. I’ve developed a keen fashion sense that includes cotton under shirts and cut-off jeans, accentuated by bare feet. I can’t make iced tea fast enough, nor can I keep the animals’ water bowls filled with water and a few ice cubes. This article from The Guardian shows the widespread phenomenon. JJ and I are under a “heatwave dome.” BB sent me her forecast, which really is wild.  “Super El Niño Could Combine With Rare Atlantic Niña: See MA Impacts.”

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?