It’s not just Congress that’s trying to clamp down on voting with the SAVE Act. Welcome to Ohio, where our good friend David Pepper has been keeping tabs on SB 153, which he calls the “SAVE Act on Steroids” — that Republicans dropped right before Memorial Day.
It’s a trend we’ve seen in lots of red states, which David calls “Laboratories of Autocracy.” That’s where many of the worst anti-democracy laws are born and make their way into law.
This particular bill seeks to solve a problem that really doesn’t exist: non-citizen voting. There were just 9 cases of that in 10 years in the Buckeye State — all of which were likely accidental. But this bill will impact millions of people and make it harder to vote, like married women who took their husbands’ names, people of color, and new citizens.
Oh, and the Republican-controlled legislature is also weighing legislation that would ban legal residents from “enemy nations” from owning property near broadly defined “infrastructure” like railways, farms, and utilities. It’s been compared to the Alien Land Laws and Chinese Exclusion Act.
David and Lincoln Square’s Susan J. Demas also discussed how Trump has already backed off his tough talk (sort of) against Putin on Ukraine and how he’s the perfect mark for the dictator. And David should know — he met Putin in the 1990s and got a firsthand look at how the former KGB head operates.
And finally, Elon Musk is high-tailing it out of D.C. (allegedly). The good news is that the Tesla Takedown protests and boycotts clearly had an impact. But the bad news is that Elon and his friends probably swiped some pretty sensitive government data about all of us.
So what can we do next? Get involved in our communities. There are local and special elections going on right now. We don’t have to wait until 2026 … and indeed, we can’t afford to.
Thank you
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Read more from David on the Ohio bills here:
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