Mike Johnson forced to risk shutdown over Trump's election fraud 'delusions': columnist

Donald Trump's insistence on attaching a voter identification law onto a House funding bill is putting speaker Mike Johnson – and the Republican Party's election chances – into a risky position.

The Louisiana Republican finds himself under pressure from the GOP's right-wing flank and the former president to risk a government shutdown weeks before the election to get the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act signed into law, which would require individuals registering to vote to present documentary proof of citizenship that would not actually solve the supposed problem, wrote MSNBC's Hayes Brown.

"While Republicans have tried to frame the bill as a necessary safeguard to prevent noncitizens from voting in federal elections, that’s absolutely not the case," Brown wrote. "Despite what Johnson has claimed, Democrats are not opposing the SAVE Act because 'they want [undocumented immigrants] to vote in our elections.' Nor is there a mass voter fraud network, as Trump and his allies have insinuated. It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. It is, likewise, illegal to lie on the forms that states ... use requiring people registering to vote to affirm their U.S. citizenship.

Funding for the federal government ends Sept. 30, meaning all nonessential services shut down the next day, and Trump and his “chaos caucus” allies are insisting that Democrats accept the voter ID requirements along with the draconian spending cuts they always demand – and never get – as part of a stopgap funding measure.

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"As the highest-ranking elected Republican, and someone who won’t be speaker next year if Republicans don’t hold onto the House, Johnson should know how much of an utter disaster it would be to have the GOP be blamed for a government shutdown as the November election looms," Brown wrote. "But Trump says that’s what Republicans should do if they don’t get their way. 'I would shut down the government in a heartbeat if they don’t get it,' he said on the 'Monica Crowley Show' last week. 'It should be in the bill. And if it’s not in the bill, you want to close it up.'"

Johnson told his caucus that he'll bring a spending bill to the floor that would push the fiscal deadline back to March and attach the SAVE Act, which Brown called a "no-win scenario" that could be a "looming disaster" for GOP election chances.

"The best case for Johnson is that his united caucus votes for the combined package and passes it over Democratic objection ... [but] it would be likely then that the Senate, controlled by Democrats, would simply pass a clean CR with that date altered and send it to the House, putting the onus on Johnson to get the votes to see that it is approved," Brown wrote.

"At worst, Johnson refuses to bring a Senate bill to the floor without the SAVE Act attached as Trump would prefer, bringing the gears of government grinding to a halt while his members are out trying to convince voters to send them back to Washington," Brown added.

It's not clear Johnson has the GOP votes to extend the deadline, and being unable to pass even that basic legislation could hurt Republicans in November, but Brown said that's the spot Trump and his allies have left the speaker.

"This apparently is the only way forward for Johnson, hemmed in as he is by the delusions of Trump and his acolytes," Brown wrote. "The question is whether in doing so the fallout is confined to the halls of the Capitol or makes the Republicans’ failures impossible to ignore as people around the country suffer."