As part of the escalating assault on democratic rights, President Donald Trump told a meeting of Republican House members Monday that he would not sign any legislation of any kind into law until Congress passes the “Save America Act.”

The bill, initially dubbed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (or SAVE Act), rebaptized by Trump as the Save America Act, combines a series of anti-democratic ultra-right measures, mainly aimed at suppressing voter turnout in the elections, with provisions attacking transgendered youth added to appeal to anti-gay religious bigots and fascists.

The main provisions of the bill, which passed the House of Representatives last month, would mandate states to implement voter ID requirements and other restrictions on voting. There would be twofold sets of ID requirements. 

Anyone who registers to vote would have to provide proof of citizenship, either in the form of a passport or a birth certificate. Millions of Americans, disproportionately poor and minority, do not have birth certificates, and half the population has never applied for a passport or lacks a current one. Tens of millions of married women who took their husbands’ last names would need additional ID since their birth certificates are in their maiden names.

Once registered, a voter would still have to present a photo ID at the polls on Election Day. 

Additional restrictions would include a virtual ban on mail-in voting, except for the military, business travelers and those too ill or frail to go to the polls. This would most drastically affect the states that have gone to universal mail balloting, including California, Oregon and Washington, but it would also disrupt voting practices in nearly every other state.

Last-minute additions to the bill, before it passed the House, were to ban transgender athletes competing as females and to restrict gender-affirming care for youth under 18. These have nothing to do with voting but were added to fuel attack ads against Democrats, who vote against the legislation.

The Save America Act is now before the Senate, but Majority Leader John Thune has not brought it to the floor because he does not have the 60-vote majority required to overcome a Democratic filibuster. He may not even have a 50-vote majority for final passage, although that is more likely.

Trump has repeatedly demanded that Thune scrap the filibuster rule, in effect for more than a century, but Thune and other Republican Senate leaders have balked. The filibuster has been a principal weapon of right-wing minorities in the Senate to block legislation, used most notoriously by Southern segregationist Democrats to block civil rights legislation in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Republicans made heavy use of the filibuster to block judicial and executive branch nominations under the Obama administration, and the Democrats changed the rules to bar filibusters for nominations, except for the U.S. Supreme Court. Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell extended the ban on filibusters to Supreme Court nominations as well, in order to push through Trump’s three nominees, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

But neither party moved to restrict filibusters of legislation, desirous of retaining an instrument for keeping the Senate even less democratic than the House.

Trump called out Thune during his State of the Union speech, appealing to “John” to push through the Save America Act regardless of opposition. He increased the pressure in subsequent discussions and then declared in a social media post Sunday, “I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed, AND NOT THE WATERED DOWN VERSION – GO FOR THE GOLD: MUST SHOW VOTER I.D. & PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP: NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS EXCEPT FOR MILITARY – ILLNESS, DISABILITY…” 

He continued: “It must be done immediately. It supersedes everything else. MUST GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE.”

Trump then repeated this threat in his speech Monday to a meeting of House Republicans, held at his country club in Doral, Florida. He reiterated his claims that the Democrats opposed voter ID because they wanted to “cheat,” while declaring for the millionth time that he actually won the 2020 election but that it was stolen from him.

He said that Republicans would never win another election if they failed to pass the legislation, while warning darkly that the Democrats would not win another election “for many decades” if the bill was passed.

While Trump depicts a Democratic victory in the midterms in apocalyptic terms, his real fear is not the alternate corporate-controlled party of American imperialism but the working class. This is a fear that the Democratic Party leaders themselves share: that a widespread repudiation of Trump and the Republicans at the polls in November could encourage mass opposition to the agenda of austerity, social reaction and imperialist war which is shared by both big business parties.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded to Trump’s online threats with a statement characterizing the Save America Act in purely racial terms, calling it “Jim Crow 2.0.” He added, “If Trump is saying he won’t sign any bills until the SAVE Act is passed, then so be it: There will be total gridlock in the Senate.”

Neither Schumer nor House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has publicly drawn the connection between the Save America Act and Trump’s mobilization of tens of thousands of federal agents into immigrant neighborhoods in major cities, or to his suggestion that the mid-term election should be conducted under the control of the US military. This would overturn the U.S. Constitution, which assigns responsibility to the states and the Congress, giving the executive branch no role.

The Trump administration and the Republican Party have already encouraged local voter suppression initiatives in closely contested states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And the federal Department of Justice is suing many states to obtain their voter rolls, which would provide ammunition for challenging voters’ eligibility when they go to the polls.