Trump Black History Message Pushes Bill Critics Say Disenfranchises Black Voters

By Chris Walker

This article was originally published by Truthout

The Trump administration has used an official Black History Month announcement to promote the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which would likely disenfranchise millions of Black voters throughout the United States if passed into law.

In its announcement, titled “President Trump Celebrates Black History Month: Advancing Opportunity and Prosperity for Every American,” the White House described the SAVE America Act as one of many “initiatives that deliver tangible benefits to black families.”

“President Trump’s historic push to pass the SAVE America Act will safeguard the voices of black Americans — and all Americans — by preventing illegal votes from disenfranchising any citizen,” the announcement stated. 

The bill, which has already passed the House of Representatives, contains many provisions that will likely disenfranchise people from marginalized communities, including Black voters, through the enactment of strict voter identification requirements. ID laws have always been inherently racist (as well as unnecessary and ineffective), as systemic obstacles make it harder for nonwhite voters to obtain the documents that are needed to get compliant identification. 

The list of IDs acceptable for voting would be narrowed under the provisions of the bill. Getting an ID card would also be difficult for millions of Americans, as an estimated 21 million people in the U.S. — including a disproportionate number of Black people — lack access to the documents the GOP-sponsored bill would require in order to register to vote, such as a passport and or a birth certificate.

Far from “safeguard[ing] the voices of black Americans,” as the Trump administration claims it would, the SAVE America Act will actually quell those voices at ballot boxes, critics have warned.

The bill “would disenfranchise Americans of all ages and races, but younger voters and voters of color would suffer disproportionately,” the Brennan Center for Justice pointed out, as would “millions of women whose married names aren’t on their birth certificates or passports would face extra steps just to make their voices heard.”

“It’s Jim Crow 2.0,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) recently said. “What they’re trying to do here is the same thing that was done in the South for decades to prevent people of color from voting.”

Demetria McCain, the director of policy at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, blasted the legislation.

“The SAVE America Act is not about protecting our elections — it’s about disguising voter suppression techniques aimed at disenfranchising Black voters as election security,” McCain said earlier this month. “It is disingenuous, it is discriminatory, and it is all based on a continuously disproven narrative of voter fraud propagated by an administration concerned not with voter protections but solely with the fear of letting people select their own leaders.”

The White House announcement comes just weeks after Trump shared on social media a racist video depicting Barack Obama, the country’s first Black president, and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes. The Trump administration has also undertaken numerous initiatives in recent months that seek to erase Black History, including the removal of language and displays from landmarks across the U.S. acknowledging the country’s sordid history of enslaving Black people and implementing racist policies after the enactment of the 13th Amendment.

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