Good morning, you’ll notice things look a little different this week. Let us know what you think. Here’s what’s in this edition:

The SAVE America Act is unlikely to pass in the Senate. Executive action could be next.
Top Arizona officials urge counties to withhold voter data from federal agencies looking to relitigate the state’s elections.
How a punching bag is connected to 37 uncounted ballots in Michigan.

After months of yammering — during which it appeared everyone on the internet was a newly-minted expert in Senate procedure — the long-running drama over the SAVE America Act may finally hit the chamber’s floor next week. It will likely run headlong into a wall. But that won’t end Republicans’ push to tighten voter eligibility requirements before this year’s midterm elections.

President Donald Trump has said the bill — which would create new requirements for voter ID and proof of citizenship, among other things — is his top legislative priority. He’s been running a steady pressure campaign on his own party, vowing not to sign other legislation until the SAVE America Act passes.

“The Republicans MUST DO, with PASSION, and at the expense of everything else, THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” Trump posted on social media earlier this month, calling it “a Country Defining fight for the Soul of our Nation!”

Passion is all very well and good, of course, but in the Senate, arithmetic matters. Senate Majority Leader John Thune is signaling the numbers simply aren’t there, and he can’t be a romantic about it.

“For better or worse, I’m the one who has to be the cleareyed realist about what we can achieve here,” he told reporters.

Thune needs one of two things: 60 votes to advance the bill — which he lacks because Democrats are uniformly opposed — or 50 Republicans willing to blow up the filibuster, which he also has repeatedly said he doesn’t have. Proponents have also pushed for leadership to force Democrats into a so-called “talking filibuster,” meaning they’d have to actually talk continuously in order to hold the floor and stall the bill; Thune says that won’t work either.

In the short term, the high-profile pressure campaign has Republican senators signaling they will have at least some extended debate on the bill, potentially stretching over multiple days or overnight.

But that debate will set up a charged vote that party leaders expect to lose.

So where does that leave us, besides mired in the wishful thinking and tedious arguments over Senate procedure that Thune can’t seem to escape?

Trump is already looking beyond Congress

It’s increasingly apparent that Trump is unlikely to get what he wants out of Congress. The U.S. House has already passed the current version of the SAVE America Act. Trump now wants lawmakers to add additional provisions to it, including sharp limitations on the use of mail ballots and two provisions unrelated to voting — restrictions on transgender athletes in women’s sports and gender-affirming surgery for minors.

There appears to be little appetite for that in either chamber. Many Republicans, for example, think the mail-voting restrictions will hurt their own voters.

Conventional wisdom is that Republicans could fare poorly in the midterm elections because voters are concerned about the economy, ongoing military action in Iran, and a host of other things, and because Trump’s own approval ratings have dropped.

But Trump has framed the election legislation as existential, arguing it will determine the outcome of the midterm elections — and setting up an opportunity to once again blame how the election was conducted if his party loses power.

Passing the version of the SAVE America Act that he wants “will guarantee the midterms,” Trump told lawmakers, warning, “If you don’t get it, big trouble, my opinion.”

Trump has no constitutional authority over elections, and federal judges have so far blocked key provisions of an executive order he issued last year on elections on that basis. He has promised to find a way to put at least some of his preferred policies in force for the midterm elections this year, anyway.

“There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!” he posted on social media last month, also saying he had “searched the depths of Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted on this subject, and will be presenting an irrefutable one in the very near future.”

Federal judges, of course, tend to prefer that arguments be articulated, and whether the arguments are in fact irrefutable will inevitably be determined in court.

Regardless of the merits of his eventual argument, any election official will tell you the November election is fast approaching, and lawmakers cannot flip a switch and reinvent voter identification standards nationwide. If new federal mandates emerge late — through legislation, executive action, or aggressive litigation — it could create operational chaos.

And that, more than a failed Senate vote, is where the real uncertainty lies.