I guess they couldn’t invalidate IDs and prevent people from voting on a national level, so they’re going to try and do it on the state level instead. That’s totally awesome./s

The Kris Kobach connection is worth noting. He’s the Kansas AG who championed SB 244, and he’s the same figure who spent years pushing the earlier Kansas proof-of-citizenship voter registration law that federal courts ultimately struck down for disenfranchising voters. He has a long track record of using ID requirements as a voter suppression tool.

It doesn’t matter whether there was a meeting where someone said “the SAVE Act is stalling, so let’s try this instead.” These efforts are all expressions of the same political project: identifying demographics likely to vote against you and engineering bureaucratic obstacles to prevent them from doing so. The anti-trans framing gives it cultural cover that a naked voter suppression bill wouldn’t have. You get to claim you’re “protecting women and girls” while quietly stripping voting access from a group that overwhelmingly votes Democratic.