The Senate passed H.R. 5334, the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, 86-11, with 3 not voting, on Aug. 7, 2026 [3]. Its House companion was introduced Aug. 10, 2026 by Reps McCaul and Hoyer [4], with opposition growing to a provision that would newly authorize up to 100% tariffs on countries still buying Russian oil and gas [1][3]. It’s the latest episode of the ongoing tariff story I followed all year, investigating whether Congress might take back its Article I, Section 8 taxing powers in light of President Trump’s unconventional tariff usage.

What changed while the House was out on recess

Tariffs have monopolized the policy news during the summer recess. Trump reached for Section 338 — a provision of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Act so dusty it had literally never been used — and pointed it at Canada. Talks broke down on Aug. 21; the 50% tariff on about $20B of Canadian goods took effect the next day. Canada’s Mark Carney pulled his negotiating team and promised to retaliate dollar-for-dollar, product-by-product, effective Sept 8. [5] And negotiations continue to degrade. [6] Auto executives are openly skeptical of Trump’s latest threat to raise auto and steel tariffs an additional 50% starting Jan. 1, 2027. [7] Both chambers stroll back into Washington this month — House now, Senate Sept. 14 [8] — to a fight that's been building for weeks.

This is the fourth tariff key President Trump has tried, and it’s unlikely to tumble the lock open without friction, but for now the courts are quiet. Unlike IEEPA, Section 122, and Section 301 — all three of which got dragged into court within days — nobody has sued over Section 338 [9] According to one trade lawyer, it’s “a blank canvas because it’s never been litigated.” [9] Liberty Justice Center, the group that successfully contested using IEEPA as a tariff authority, is still hunting for someone to sue over this one. They know they need more than a strong argument. They also need an actual company, with an actual injury, willing to put its name on the dotted line.

Meanwhile, the case is building. Trade economists and legal scholars like Gary Hufbauer (Peterson Institute) and Peter Harrell (Georgetown Law) are arguing that Section 338 may have died and been buried decades ago by the 1962 and 1974 trade acts that neglected to repeal it [10]. The courts might yet check executive power, but it isn’t operating yet on this key. And even a strong legal case doesn’t matter if noone files it.

Where Congress stands now

Congress has introduced bills to reclaim its tariff powers, but they’re going nowhere fast. Rep. Schneider dropped the most pointed one just days after the Canada tariffs hit: the Banning Antiquated Duties and Delivering Equitable American Levies Act. Yes, the title spells BAD DEAL, and no, the acronym was not an accident. This proposal repeals Section 338, the exact authority Trump is now using, and requires a full refund of any collected fees [11]. Gillibrand and Welch plan a companion bill when the Senate returns in mid-September [11]. BAD DEAL joins an earlier family of similar bills (Kaine-Warnock’s H.R. 2459, Wyden’s Congressional Trade Powers Reform Act [12][13]). None of which have moved an inch since introduction.

Rep. Linda Sánchez isn't waiting around either. Back in April 2025, she introduced the Stopping a Rogue President on Trade Act (H.R. 2888) [14][15]. It is also stalled. But Sánchez isn’t quitting: at Monday’s closed-door House Democratic steering meeting, she excoriated colleagues backing the Graham Act, voicing strong opposition to its “expanded tariff authorities” [16] using language Punchbowl's reporters diplomatically declined to print in full. That’s one member fighting the same fight on two fronts, and she’s not alone.

Even Democratic leadership is stuck. Hakeem Jeffries says the Democratic caucus hasn’t settled on a position, [1] and anticipates “serious conversations” this week. Some Republicans are uneasy too, whether wary of voter backlash heading into the midterms or opposed to interfering in free markets [1].

What to Watch

After the stop-gap funding bill passed on Tuesday, watch for these three possible developments:

• Whether Liberty Justice Center finds a plaintiff

• Whether Jeffries’ “serious conversations” this week produce an actual position for House Democrats

• Whether Johnson keeps the House in Washington past this week or sends members home to campaign

Can Congress take its keys back, or stop cutting new ones?

Some members of Congress are so furious about how Trump is using tariff authorities that they’re cursing out colleagues behind closed doors. Others are concerned enough to file bill after bill that goes nowhere. But reclaiming the tariff authority requires more than a smattering of resistance voices. It requires votes.

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Sources

[1] Reuters (via Investing.com), Aug 31, 2026. "With US bill's fate in balance, Ukraine to lobby US on Russia sanctions." https://www.investing.com/news/commodities-news/with-us-bills-fate-in-balance-ukraine-to-lobby-us-on-russia-sanctions-4883325
[2] NPR, Aug 7, 2026. "Senate passes Russia sanctions bill that was long championed by Lindsey Graham." https://www.npr.org/2026/08/07/nx-s1-5924914/senate-passes-russia-sanctions-bill-that-was-long-championed-by-lindsey-graham
[3] Congress.gov. "H.R.5334 - Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026." Passed 86-11, 3 not voting, Aug. 7, 2026, 12:43 PM. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/5334
[4] Congress.gov. "H.R.10076 - Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026." Introduced Aug. 10, 2026. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/10076/all-actions
[5] Department of Finance Canada, Aug 25, 2026. "Canada announces targeted countermeasures and substantive support for workers and businesses in response to US tariffs." https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2026/08/canada-announces-targeted-countermeasures-and-substantive-support-for-workers-and-businesses-in-response-to-us-tariffs.html
[6] Politico, Aug 31, 2026. "Trade talks collapsed. Now Canada and the US are fighting over why." https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/31/canada-us-trade-janice-charette-01058079
[7] Reuters, Aug 24, 2026. "Trump threatens 50% tariffs on all cars and trucks amid Canada trade spat." https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-says-raise-tariffs-cars-135403937.html
[8] The Washington Post, Aug. 10, 2026. "Senate is on recess until mid-September." https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/08/10/senate-is-recess-until-mid-september/
[9] PBS NewsHour / AP, Aug 29, 2026. "Untested in court, Trump's new tariffs on Canada raise legal questions." https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/untested-in-court-trumps-new-tariffs-on-canada-raise-legal-questions
[10] Global News, Aug 2026. "What are Section 338 tariffs and how are they able to bypass CUSMA?" https://globalnews.ca/news/11974226/donald-trump-tariffs-section-338-cusma-explained/
[11] Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Aug 27, 2026. "Following 50% Tariff On Canada, Sens. Gillibrand And Welch, Rep. Schneider Announce Bill To Repeal And Refund President Trump's Tariffs." https://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/news/press/release/following-50-tariff-on-canada-sens-gillibrand-and-welch-rep-schneider-announce-bill-to-repeal-and-refund-president-trumps-tariffs/
[12] Congress.gov. "H.R.2459 - Reclaim Trade Powers Act." https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/2459
[13] Senate Finance Committee (Wyden), Jul 22, 2026. "Wyden Introduces Bill to Reassert Congressional Authority Over International Trade." https://www.finance.senate.gov/ranking-members-news/wyden-introduces-bill-to-reassert-congressional-authority-over-international-trade-to-put-workers-and-employers-first-not-presidential-cronies-and-politically-connected-special-interests
[14] Rep. Linda Sánchez, 2026. "Ways and Means Democrats introduce bill to end tariff chaos, reclaim Congress's trade authority." https://lindasanchez.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/ways-and-means-democrats-introduce-bill-end-tariff-chaos-reclaim
[15] Congress.gov. "H.R. 2888 - Stopping a Rogue President on Trade Act." Introduced April 10, 2025. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/2888
[16] Punchbowl News, Sept 1, 2026. "Should the House even stick around?" https://punchbowl.news/archive/9126-am/

Meanwhile, guess what this everyday item is?

Since then, I’ve been thinking about footnote 1 in my July post. It said,

The concept of a national desiderata stuck with me. Then I realized — we already have one, and I know all the words by heart. I can even sing them to the Schoolhouse Rock!/America Rock! tune I learned watching Saturday morning cartoons. I remembered my mother’s framed copy of Ehrmann’s poem, and realized I’d heard the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution so often I had stopped thinking about its meaning.

That national desiderata was written almost a dozen years after the Declaration of Independence whose 250th anniversary we celebrate this year. The Preamble is younger, and consists of a modest 52 words of text. It begins with “We the People” and ends just before “Article 1” begins.

Why did the founders write those words, and not something more descriptive or declarative? They actually started out quite differently.1 Back then, legal documents commonly began with some preliminary text that summarized their purpose. When the Framers met at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, there was little discussion of a preamble. Then, Virginia’s Edmund Randolph suggested including a brief statement explaining why the existing governing documents, the Articles of Confederation, needed replacing, and with what. A Committee of Detail drafted an initial preamble that was even shorter than Randolph’s proposal. It listed all 13 states and said little else. As the content of the draft Constitution was debated, the Preamble was basically ignored, untouched. Eventually, responsibility for writing was passed to a Committee of Style. That writing team, led by Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, reduced the Preamble’s list of individual states to “We the people of the United States,” and enumerated six broad goals. “A more perfect union,” justice, tranquility, defense, welfare, and liberty became the new country's desiderata.

This list of desired things established the motivation for crafting the Constitution. It was not declarative, stating that the time had come or that a milestone had been reached. It was aspirational, recognizing that the current situation was unsatisfactory and could be improved. Like Max Ehrmann’s poem, the list served as a guide to build the virtues needed for future success. The word desiderata describes this list perfectly, meaning things we long for or aspire to, and have not yet attained.23 The thread of hope for the future is an essential characteristic of the term’s meaning.

Recognizing the Preamble as our national desiderata is a comforting idea, but placing this against the backdrop of current policy and political events raises discomforting questions. Do “We the People” still share a commitment to the six broadly stated aspirations in the Preamble? Answers to that question can sting these days, when people interpret the world through opposing partisan lenses. How do we strive for justice, for example, if we hold different views of what justice means? Further, if the Preamble fails to serve as our national desiderata, our guiding principles of what is desired, can the Constitution that follows it still hold our democracy together?

The Preamble ends with “to ourselves and our Posterity,” recognizing the founders’ wish that these United States would persist for generations beyond their lifespans. As each succeeding generation has taken its turn, it has faced new challenges and found new solutions. So far, the Constitution has stood firm. So even in our turbulent times, I’m holding on to the same trust I wrote about last week: although the path is unclear, things are no doubt unfolding as they should.

That’s not an invitation to surrender to fate, however. Later, I’ll test that trust against the rest of the Constitution: the part that assumed people in power could not be trusted at all.

Which of the six goals do you think has the widest gap right now between what different people mean by it? Let me know; I read and respond to everyone.

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That Senate-passed bill is the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, one negotiated over more than a year, and renamed for Graham after his sudden death on July 11. Tucked inside this sanctions package is a new delegation of authority that gives the president discretion to tax imports. These tariffs can go as high as 100% and apply to the top five buyers of Russian oil and gas. An amendment to strip that tariff piece out was raised, and fell, 32 to 64 [1][2].

Why does Congress keep handing this Constitutionally-granted power away? That’s the question I had when I started this series, but I don’t think that question has a single answer. I found at least four candidate explanations, likely working in combination. So here’s a narrower question instead: has the moment actually arrived for Congress to reconsider this pattern?

Let’s run that question through the four big questions the Real-Time MSF Canvas asks: whether a public problem is defined, the political will exists, consensus on a solution has converged, and an entrepreneur is working to connect the streams. Paid subscribers get the full diagnostic using the Real-Time MSF Canvas, so read on!

Read more

Last week’s piece, “Congress Delegated Its Tariff Power. Did It Delegate Responsibility, Too?,” tracked the three tariff authorities the administration has actually put into effect this year. Each has struggled to maintain authority: IEEPA was struck down, Section 122 expired, and Section 301 is already being contested in court. Before last week’s article was even published, a fourth authority was already signed: Section 338 was invoked against Canada on July 20, and scheduled to take effect on August 19. With its effective date now two weeks away, here’s a closer look.

The White House invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 against Canada to add a 50% duty across 554 products, including autos, dairy, and alcohol. The choice to use this statute to impose tariffs is curious. Unlike Section 301, it requires no consultation with the country involved and carries no statutory deadline. But it’s never been used this way since the 1930s, and its last public mention was a 1949 telegram about China. What explains the sudden resurrection of this zombie authority?

It follows the same pattern as last week: when one authority closes, another opens. By executive action. And despite the Constitution giving Congress sole power of taxation, including through the use of tariffs.

What does it mean from the perspective of Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework when policy moves almost entirely outside the legislative process? That’s the deeper question I’ve been considering lately.

Stay tuned.

Tariffs cost the average American household about $1,000 last year. The Tax Foundation currently projects 2026 costs at $900. That’s lower than 2025, but only because the Supreme Court struck down the broadest of these tariffs in February. The tariffs still standing amount to the steepest tax increase, measured against the size of the economy, since 1993. [1]

That’s not the story coming out of Washington. On the campaign trail in 2024, the president promised tariffs would cost Americans nothing. The bill, he said, would go to “another country.” [2] He said much the same in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in January, insisting the burden had landed “overwhelmingly on foreign producers and middlemen.” [3] In February’s State of the Union, he suggested tariffs paid by foreign countries were on track to replace the income tax altogether. [4]

Whether that gap reflects deliberate misrepresentation, a sincerely held minority economic view, or something else entirely isn’t a question this piece can settle. What matters here is simpler: Congress handed over a real power on the assumption that whoever held it would use it in good faith, for the same reason you don’t hand your house key to someone you don’t trust to use it right.

The Power Congress Gave Away

Tariffs are taxes, and the Constitution is specific about who gets to impose them: “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.” Not the president. Only Congress, by name, alone. [5]

Congress can delegate its tariff powers to someone else, like the president. And it has, piece by piece, over the last century. Whether it can hand off the responsibility to use the tariff power for the public good it is a harder question, and it’s one that isn’t asked often enough.

Each delegation hands over a key. But every key doesn’t work everywhere, or all the time. Think of giving a neighbor your house key to feed the cat while you’re away. That key’s good for going in to feed the cat. It’s not good for having friends over to watch the game. It should cover emergencies, like letting themselves in if they see water pouring out of your basement window. But holding the key doesn’t mean anything goes.

The Four Authorities, At a Glance

Four locks, four keys, each opening a piece of the same taxing power. The first key tried was IEEPA. It needs a declared national emergency from a foreign threat, but the Supreme Court already ruled that key doesn’t open the tariff lock. Next came Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act needs a balance-of-payments problem, capped at 15%. That key only works for 150 days, and its time has expired. The third key tried was Section 301 of that same law, and it needs a formal finding (think of investigations, comment periods, and hearings) that another country trades unfairly. The fourth key is Section 338 of the 1930 Tariff Act, and it’s an old one that’s never been used. It needs a finding of discrimination, capped at 50%, and requires 30 days' notice before taking effect. [6]

Caught Picking the Lock, Twice

Handing over a tariff key is one thing. Using it properly is another. Twice now, courts have found the administration wasn’t really turning the key it claimed. It was picking the lock instead, going in for reasons the key was never cut for. For the emergency-powers law, the Supreme Court found there was no lock there to begin with; the statute never covered tariffs at all. [7] For the balance-of-payments key, the trade court found the specific condition, an actual payments crisis, attached to that key simply wasn’t met, though that ruling is now on appeal, and paused. [8] Two more attempts are being fought over right now, with nothing decided.

Picking a lock has a cost beyond handing back what was taken. The emergency-powers refund pool has grown to $166 billion, with more than half of it already repaid. [9] Returning that money isn’t really a new cost, it’s un-collecting a tax that was never lawfully owed. The interest on it, which the law requires, is the real new cost, and it’s the one every taxpayer covers, regardless of who actually filed suit.

The Third Key in Seventeen Months

Friday at midnight, the balance-of-payments key ran out. That’s the same key a court had already said didn’t fit. The administration didn’t wait to find out whether an appeals court would agree. It already had a new key cut: tariffs of 10% to 12.5% on 60 countries, this time turning on a claim of unfair trade practices, in effect the same minute the old one expired. [10] That key had been in the works since March, four months ahead of the deadline it was built to beat. [11]

This is the third key tried in seventeen months. What’s supposedly unlocking the door keeps changing: an emergency, then a payments gap, then a finding of unfair trade practices. What’s behind the door hasn’t moved at all.

None of that is improvisation. This isn’t a burglar fumbling with a credit card in a door frame. It’s someone showing up with a full locksmith’s kit of investigations, hearings, and comment periods filing a new key to spec, and finding out, twice now, that the door was never wired for this lock at all.

And when a court does say a key doesn’t fit, the tariff doesn’t necessarily stop. The trade court ruled against the balance-of-payments key in May. Collection continued anyway, all the way through the appeal. Only the three companies who’d actually sued got their money back. [8]

One of those three is Burlap & Barrel, a spice importer in New York. It sued over the balance-of-payments tariffs, won a narrow refund, and is now suing again. It’s a third lawsuit in five months, against a third different law, over what comes out to the same tax bill every time. Learning Resources, the toy company that beat the government at the Supreme Court in February, is right back in court on this one too. [12] Winning, so far, has meant getting to sue again.

What Congress Could Do Instead

Congress has options. Six bills are sitting there right now. Some would take a key away entirely: Sens. Tim Kaine and Raphael Warnock have one aimed at the balance-of-payments authority. [13] Others add a rule about when a key can be turned: Sen. Ron Wyden’s Congressional Trade Powers Reform Act, introduced last week, would require congressional approval before the president can use the three authorities still in active rotation. [14]

There’s a seventh option, and it’s the one actually in effect: do nothing, and let this sort itself out in court.

None of the six bills have passed. Burlap & Barrel is waiting on its next ruling. Congress hasn’t cast a single vote.

Next week: why Congress hasn’t moved, and whether Congress is even the branch that ends up deciding this.

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Sources

[1] Tax Foundation, updated as of Jul 24, 2026. “Tariff Tracker: 2026 Trump Tariffs & Trade War by the Numbers.” https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/trump-tariffs-trade-war/

[2] FactCheck.org, Nov 2024 (Updated as of Feb 3, 2025). “Trump’s Agenda: Tariffs.” (Quote from a September 2024 Wisconsin campaign rally.) https://www.factcheck.org/2024/11/trumps-agenda-tariffs/

[3] The Hill, Jan 30, 2026. “Trump defends tariffs in Wall Street Journal op-ed.” https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5716144-trump-defends-tariffs-us-economy/

[4] PBS NewsHour, Feb 24, 2026. “Watch: Trump says tariffs could replace income tax.” https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-trump-says-tariffs-could-replace-income-tax-2026-state-of-the-union

[5] U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 1. (Public domain.) Library of Congress: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8/clause-1/

[6] Congressional Research Service, Mar 24, 2026. “Section 301 Investigation—Forced Labor and Import Restrictions of U.S. Trading Partners.” https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IN/PDF/IN12672/IN12672.1.pdf

[7] Fischer, Nancy A and others, Feb 20, 2026. “Supreme Court Invalidates IEEPA Tariffs: Implications and Next Steps.” Pillsbury’s Global Trade and Sanctions Blog. https://www.globaltradeandsanctionslaw.com/supreme-court-invalidates-ieepa-tariffs/

[8] PwC Canada, May 22, 2026. “Tax Insights: US Court of International Trade Strikes Down Section 122 Tariffs.” https://www.pwc.com/ca/en/services/tax/publications/tax-insights/us-court-strike-down-section-122-tariffs-2026.html

[9] Snell & Wilmer, Jul 27, 2026. “Tariff Update: Refunds for Finally Liquidated Entries Under IEEPA.” https://www.swlaw.com/publication/tariff-update-refunds-for-finally-liquidated-entries-under-ieepa/

[10] New York Times, Jul 23, 2026. “New U.S. Tariffs Aimed at Over 80 Countries Go Into Effect.” https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/23/business/economy/trump-tariffs.html

[11] Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Mar 12, 2026. “USTR Initiates 60 Section 301 Investigations Relating to Failures to Take Action on Forced Labor.” https://ustr.gov/about/policy-offices/press-office/press-releases/2026/march/ustr-initiates-60-section-301-investigations-relating-failures-take-action-forced-labor

[12] U.S. News & World Report, Jul 25, 2026. “Small Businesses File Lawsuits Against Trump’s New Sweeping Tariffs.” https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2026-07-25/small-businesses-file-lawsuits-against-trumps-new-sweeping-tariffs

[13] Office of Sen. Tim Kaine, Mar 12, 2026. “Kaine & Warnock Introduce Legislation to Repeal Section 122 and End Trump’s Tariffs.” https://www.kaine.senate.gov/press-releases/kaine-and-warnock-introduce-legislation-to-repeal-section-122-and-end-trumps-tariffs

[14] Senate Finance Committee (Ranking Member’s Office), Jul 22, 2026. “Wyden Introduces Bill to Reassert Congressional Authority Over International Trade.” https://www.finance.senate.gov/ranking-members-news/wyden-introduces-bill-to-reassert-congressional-authority-over-international-trade-to-put-workers-and-employers-first-not-presidential-cronies-and-politically-connected-special-interests

The Problem Stream: Not Just Smoke

The stronger evidence for a ripe problem stream is quieter than Canadian smoke. This is the second time in three years that wildfire smoke has put more than 100 million Americans under alerts. It’s one indicator of a pattern of worsening fire seasons [1]. Feedback from wildfire researchers is that a century of fire-suppression policy built up the very fuels now burning, as a “debt that has come due” [4]. We can’t claim the thick haze over a World Cup match as a US-relevant focusing event, no matter how powerfully it photographs. Prior fires, like the LA firestorms of January 2025, have generated heartbreaking images of loss and destruction [4]. The emotional force of events like these may build over time, or may fade into a normal hazard.

The Policy Stream: A Viable Proposal

There’s a proposed fix, aptly named the Fix Our Forests Act (FOFA). The House has passed it twice — once in the previous Congress, when the Senate ran out of time before voting [5], and again in January 2025, by a 279-141 vote with 64 Democrats on board [6][7]. Last October, the Senate Agriculture Committee approved a companion bill, 18 to 5, with the chairman and ranking member both voting yes [8]. Such broadly bipartisan support is a proxy measure of proposal viability.

Checking each viability test complicates that picture. Technical feasibility is debated within the policy community: does thinning federal forests actually reduce community risks, or just remove trees? Value acceptability is also contested: the Senate committee struck the House text and substituted its own [3], and that renegotiation bought support from part of the relevant policy community — the Environmental Defense Fund and the Nature Conservancy back the Senate version [8] — though not all of it, since the John Muir Project and other conservation groups remain opposed [4]. Robustness to future constraints is more straightforward: if the Senate passes its version, the House and Senate then have to agree on one final text, and it's standard practice for companion bills.

The Political Stream: Government, Interests, and Mood

Shifts within government itself are the most concrete of the political stream’s three pieces. Senate Agriculture Chairman John Boozman says the votes are there; what’s missing, he told Politico in June, is “some floor time” [7]. But that glosses over important Senate divisions: Adam Schiff worries the bill represents an industry windfall [7], and some Democrats point to workforce cuts at the Forest Service as a reason to hold back [4]. Others object to the substance: thinning distant forests protects communities less than hardening homes against embers does [4].

New organized interests are engaging beyond the usual timber and conservation lobbies. In 2020, two groups disclosed lobbying on wildfire technology. Last year, at least 17 did, including drone and satellite companies that see FOFA’s public-private language as a business opportunity [7].

National mood is the hardest of the three to read, and no polling asks Americans about this specific bill. Attention to the smoke is about issue salience. That’s different from a public preference for more government involvement.

The Coupling Question: Ripe Streams, With Nowhere to Go?

The streams are ready: the problem stream is ripe enough, if imperfectly; the policy stream is about as ready as it will get; the political stream, while contested, isn’t obviously the holdup. What’s missing are the two remaining pieces of the coupling process.

One coupling strategy, hitching FOFA to this year’s must-pass defense authorization, never got off the ground. The House failed to adopt the rule to debate its own defense bill on June 30, and the Senate fell ten votes short of opening debate on its version on July 14 [9][10]. Nobody has stepped in with another strategy yet. Steering a bill through committee is about managing a markup, whereas coupling requires a policy entrepreneur: someone willing to spend their capital forcing a moment. Right now nobody visible is doing that.

The policy window hasn’t opened, and the calendar is working against it. Just Tuesday night, the House passed a clean stopgap funding bill through Dec. 4, 220-205, along party lines [11]. It heads to the Senate next, ahead of recess — and whatever floor time remains now belongs to that fight.

What to Watch

That’s the actual use of a rapid Canvas pass: it’s not about documenting every stream to exhaustion, but finding the piece that would tip the balance if it changed. Run this one on FOFA, and the missing piece is coupling itself: whether a window opens, who’s ready to seize it, and how. That window could open in the problem stream, as fire season worsens through August, or in the political stream when Congress returns. Either way, the streams keep moving whether Congress does or not — and that’s what to watch next.

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Sources

[1] NBC News, July 17, 2026. “Canada wildfire smoke map: health risks as poor air quality hits the Midwest and northern states.” https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/canada-wildfire-smoke-map-2026-us-states-air-quality-health-risks-rcna588051

[2] Al Jazeera, July 18, 2026. “World Cup final: all to know about Canadian wildfire smoke, NY weather.” https://www.aljazeera.com/sports/2026/7/18/all-to-know-about-canadian-wildfire-smoke-air-quality-and-world-cup-final

[3] Congress.gov. “S.1462 — Fix Our Forests Act, 119th Congress: Text as reported by committee.” https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/1462/text

[4] Inside Climate News, Feb 3, 2026. “Wildfire urgency unites Congress. The ‘Fix Our Forests’ Act does not.” https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03022026/congress-forests-act-wildfire/

[5] Rep. Eli Crane, Jan 27, 2025. “Crane-backed ‘Fix Our Forests Act’ passes House.” https://crane.house.gov/2025/01/27/crane-backed-fix-our-forests-act-passes-house-2

[6] House Committee on Natural Resources, Jan 23, 2025. “House passes Fix Our Forests Act with overwhelming bipartisan support.” https://naturalresources.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=416884

[7] Politico, July 15, 2026. “As fire season looms, tech startups come calling in DC.” https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/15/fire-tech-california-trump-washington-dc-technology-wildfires-00996949

[8] Office of Sen. John Hickenlooper, Oct 21, 2025. “Hickenlooper cheers committee passage of bipartisan Fix Our Forests Act.” https://www.hickenlooper.senate.gov/press_releases/hickenlooper-cheers-committee-passage-of-bipartisan-fix-our-forests-act/

[9] Congressional Research Service, July 2026. “FY2027 NDAA: Status of Legislative Activity.” https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IN12704

[10] U.S. Senate Daily Press, July 14, 2026. “Senate floor proceedings.” https://www.dailypress.senate.gov/tuesday-july-14-2026/

[11] Politico, July 21, 2026. “House passes stopgap funding bill, months before shutdown deadline.” https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/07/21/congress/house-passes-stopgap-funding-bill-months-before-shutdown-deadline-01007348

My mother had a version of “Desiderata” written in calligraphy, framed, hanging in her home. For many years I noticed it without reading it. The Wedgwood blue mat, the artful lettering, the rhythm of its lines. But as I entered my late teens, I started reading it, often, and thinking about its message. Those years were disruptive ones, as my parents were separating, I headed off to college, had my heart broken for the first time… and adjusted to each major shift.

When I settled into my first home, I bought a framed copy of my own and hung it in the bathroom, where I could read a line or two to break the boredom of brushing my teeth. It was the perfect spot: close enough to absorb in small doses, on ordinary days, whether or not you’re in the mood for wisdom.

I should say: I don’t typically read poetry, but this one is different. It’s a bit of philosophy, a bit of ethics, a bit of meditation, offered in doses small enough to carry through a day. Something like aphorisms, but less egocentric — less about being clever, more about moving through life, whatever it might bring, with grace. The poem’s title, Desiderata, is the Latin word for things desired or sought after, and not necessarily possessed.1

I gave each of my children a framed copy of their own when they settled into their first homes. Mine was cream with gold touches and a flowering vine; theirs were styled to match their owners: Celtic fonts and shamrocks for one, block text and geometric accents for another. They each followed my lead in hanging them near their toothbrushes.

I smile at the thought they’d read a few lines of it daily. Different lines sit with me in different seasons and days. Right now, it’s this one: “And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” It’s a line that has come up in conversations repeatedly lately, in the aftermath of a death in my immediate family. It’s not clear to me most days, but it gives me confidence that despite life unfolding in mysterious and often unwanted ways, we can successfully adapt to it. That’s my own addition, the clarification that we have agency within an unfolding universe beyond our control.

Here is the full poem. It was written in 1927 by Max Ehrmann, a poet and lawyer from Indiana, and it is now in the public domain. According to Sherrie Lovler’s research,2 Ehrmann said he wrote it for himself, to help him build those virtues he felt he needed most.

Read the whole thing slowly — or read one line and carry it with you today.

You may have your own version of this — a poem, a passage, an object that resurfaces at the right moments. I’d love to hear what yours is. Leave a comment or message me; I read and respond to all of them.

Leave a comment

The Multiple Streams Framework calls that someone a policy entrepreneur, and it answers this month’s question with a checklist: Are the streams aligned? Is a window open? Is someone skillfully working to connect the streams? [2] Let’s run these checks as of July 9.

Are the Streams Aligned? Three kinds of not ready

The problem stream is active but split. Three SNAP problem frames are competing — human hardship, state fiscal strain, and administration accountability — with none dominating. The policy stream is stocked: three families of proposals sit in the pantry, yet none pass all three viability tests. And the political stream is quiet on purpose, with both parties betting that a contained fight serves them better than a loud one, at least for now. None of the streams are ready for coupling.

Is a Window Open? A predictable opportunity is coming

The September 30 expiration of the farm bill is the predictable kind of window, the sort you can mark on a calendar years ahead. [2] Yet predictable doesn’t mean open, especially given Congress often cuts deals late. The window for SNAP would open at committee markup on the farm bill — a governmental event in the political stream. Nothing about SNAP’s condition created this occasion in the problem stream. So as of now, a stalled farm bill tells us very little.

Who’s Connecting? Now it gets interesting.

The third question is the one the coupling process turns on: is anyone actually working to join the streams? The answer isn’t “no” — several actors are moving, just not all in the same direction. Here’s the whole series on one Canvas graphic, and then let’s meet the people involved.

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Want to know who's positioning to put SNAP relief on the farm bill policy agenda? Paid subscribers can continue reading to see:

• The would-be policy entrepreneurs already rehearsing their coupling arguments

• The one actor pushing in the opposite direction — and why it's working

• Three signs that will tell you coupling has begun, before the news coverage catches it

Read more

The dinner bell has rung — Boozman released his farm bill draft June 23, with markup targeted for late July. [2] That’s real movement. But step back, and the rest of the political stream has gone quiet. The head chef is writing tonight’s menu behind closed doors, and something’s missing from it. Nobody’s fighting publicly over which recipe to cook. And nobody with real power is sending the dish back — standing up, refusing what’s on the table, and demanding something else.

That stillness is the puzzle.

National mood: Which way is it blowing?

Here’s the first of three reasons the political stream has stayed quiet: the national mood exhibits real discontent in the form of cost-of-living anxiety, but it has never resolved into pressure on the SNAP program itself. Officials read this mood off the broader climate, not any single poll, and right now that climate runs on cost-of-living anxiety — a theme gaining real traction in midterm primary speeches. Food assistance is exactly the kind of program this mood could attach to, but so far, that connection has yet to be argued. If the message is hardworking Americans need lower prices and lower inflation, not handouts, then the affordability narrative’s own language keeps SNAP recipients outside it.

Balance of interests: Who’s at the table?

Among organized political forces, Kingdon counts governments at other levels, and for SNAP, U.S. states are the loudest customers in the restaurant. Governors and budget officers from both parties have been lobbying Boozman for “some relief” on cost share changes (a new requirement that high-error-rate states start covering part of SNAP’s benefit costs) for states making good-faith efforts to meet the threshold of a 6% error rate. [3] Nationally, only nine states managed to clear that hurdle in fiscal 2025, while the average error rate was 10.62%. [4]

What they’re asking for isn’t a better meal for the people the program serves — it’s a smaller check for states covering the bill. And the unhappiest customers already got served: any state above 13.34 percent gets a two-year delay before owing anything, a threshold added to win Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s vote. Alaska clears it easily, at 23.15%, along with six others: Oregon, Illinois, Georgia, Delaware, New Mexico, and DC. [4] States facing additional budget expenses gained relief through one senator’s leverage. The recipient losing benefits has no equivalent protection.

Endorsements tell you which side organized — and which side didn’t. Boozman’s draft drew dozens of endorsements — commodity groups, Farm Bureaus, crop insurers, conservation coalitions — and not one from a hunger or anti-poverty group. [5] The loudest recipient-side voice belongs to the CBPP’s Ty Jones Cox, who called the inaction “unconscionable.” [6] Sixty farm groups against one research group: a fight already decided by who showed up.

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Want to understand which events in the government are moving SNAP’s political stream? Paid subscribers can continue reading to see:

• The word that never appears once across the bill’s floor statement, summary, or official webpage

• The vote math that’s still missing — and the one senator who’s already named the reason nothing’s moved

• The Canvas assessment of what’s actually ready if the window opened today

• Four developments to watch in the coming weeks that may signal change

Read more

That sequence — opening to possibilities, narrowing the alternatives, releasing a draft that picks sides — makes the policy stream’s development visible. Specialists develop alternatives, and champions — what Kingdon called policy entrepreneurs — look for ways to push them forward by adjusting them along the way. Whether any specific proposal makes it through depends on whether it can pass three tests Kingdon identified for solutions that survive long enough to be reached for when a window opens.

Previously, we examined three competing problem definitions for SNAP, none dominant. [5] This article shifts to the policy stream, where disagreement runs equally deep. Last year’s OBBBA set a new status quo for federal SNAP policy, laying a foundation that remains highly contested. This year’s question is “what gets done next?” and the policy community is busy stocking the pantry with proposals.

Stocking the pantry

In the MSF, the policy stream is where specialists develop, refine, and contest the ideas that may be available for coupling when a window opens. Think of it as a kitchen pantry — what’s stocked when the meal is ordered determines what can be cooked. Only viable ingredients count. Careful chefs will assess the ingredients before adding them to their recipe.

That’s true for policy ideas, too. Three tests determine which ideas remain viable, and they’re worth restating in plain terms: Can the idea actually be done? Will the relevant communities accept it? Will it hold up against upcoming challenges? [6]

What can be made from the pantry?

Three recipes are being developed in the SNAP benefits kitchen — each working from the same pantry, toward different ends.

Recipe 1: Build on OBBBA.
The American Enterprise Institute’s Angela Rachidi has anchored the case for keeping the OBBBA structure and extending it. [7] Rachidi argues that SNAP spending tripled relative to what unemployment alone would predict, that restoring congressional authority over benefit levels is overdue, and that state cost-sharing properly incentivizes administrative accountability. Allied work from the Alliance for Opportunity has gone further — proposing reforms to the “right-to-file” rule, revised merit guidance, and additional eligibility verification. [8] The proposals in this recipe build on OBBBA rather than reversing any of it.

Recipe 2: Reverse the cost-share.
The Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project, through Lauren Bauer and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, anchors the opposing direction. [9] Their argument is structural: when unemployment spikes, SNAP has historically expanded automatically to cushion the shock. This federal-funding structure was built up through decades of statutory choices. The OBBBA converts that “automatic stabilizer” into a program that may contract precisely when need grows, because states must balance budgets even as their revenues fall. Proposals in this recipe would restore full federal benefit funding, reverse the cost-share, and protect SNAP’s countercyclical role. Senator Amy Klobuchar, ranking member on Senate Ag, has put cost-share reversal at the top of her farm bill negotiation list. Her House counterpart Angie Craig is doing the same.

Recipe 3: Patch the worst effects.
Some states may not be able to continue in SNAP at all without congressional delay of the cost-shift, FRAC’s SNAP director Gina Plata-Nino and other advocates have warned. [10] State exit is more than an abstract administrative outcome; it means children in those states losing food assistance, school meal eligibility, and Summer EBT benefits, all at once. That cascade is what gives this recipe its analytical force. A third cluster — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Food Research and Action Center, and aligned voices — is developing targeted proposals to address the worst effects without reopening OBBBA wholesale: delay the cost-shift, restore SNAP-Ed funding, narrow the work requirement expansion, and protect the cascade effects into Summer EBT and school meals that the Congressional Research Service confirmed are now baked into how CBO scored OBBBA. [11] CBPP has been most direct about the perverse incentive examined previously, in the problem stream analysis: states with worst error rates get delayed implementation, while states that work to improve get penalized fastest. [12]

These aren't the only voices — Urban Institute, Heritage, the American Action Forum and others are also developing alternatives — but these three recipes capture the main lines of disagreement. The MAHA waiver track, the lawsuits in federal court, the state responses in Connecticut and Virginia and Arizona — these are also generating noise, but they’re not federal policy stream activity. They’re signals about how OBBBA is holding up in practice, feeding into the evolving problem stream to inform the next round of agenda activity.

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Want to understand which of these three recipes can actually survive the policy stream's viability tests? Paid subscribers can continue reading to see:

• How each recipe fares against technical feasibility, value acceptability, and robustness tests

• Why the cascade effects on children may matter most for which recipe gets reached for

• The Canvas assessment of what’s actually ready if the window opened today

• Five tripwires to watch in the coming weeks

Read more

Three distinct problem definitions are operating simultaneously right now. Each is supported by real evidence. Each implies a different solution. And each has institutional champions with the power to act, or to block action. The Multiple Streams Framework’s problem stream maps this competition, and tracks which definition is gaining ground. And that matters because not all solutions match up with every problem, at all times.

1. The Human Stakes Frame

Charisma Garcia, a 25-year-old mother of two in south Phoenix, spent weeks calling the Arizona Department of Economic Security only to get a recorded message. She woke before sunrise to wait in line at a DES office, until a security guard told her the agency wasn’t doing in-person interviews. So she gave up on securing SNAP benefits to feed her children, ages 3 and 6, and went to a food bank instead.

Garcia isn’t failing a work requirement. She is eligible. She simply cannot complete an application — because Arizona laid off 160 eligibility specialists, a 40% staff reduction, in direct response to cost pressures from last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) reconciliation law. Applications now sit in limbo for months. [1]

Last week’s intro post established the national baseline: 3.5 million people lost benefits in the past seven months, food insecurity is now worse than at the COVID peak, and Arizona’s 47% enrollment drop — including 180,000 children — is the leading indicator for every other state. [2] This week’s Canvas goes underneath those numbers to the mechanism generating much of the harm.

A cascade effect multiplies the enrollment figures in ways the headlines don’t capture. Children in SNAP households are automatically certified for free school meals, Summer EBT, and WIC. When a family loses SNAP, the child loses all three. The Congressional Budget Office estimates 96,000 children will lose school lunch subsidies through the cost-share mechanism alone — and 300,000 adults living with teenagers lose work-requirement exemptions under the OBBBA, a population the prior framework exempted precisely because caregiving responsibilities make 80-hour monthly work requirements unrealistic. [3]

The government has also dismantled its own ability to measure the damage — a feedback mechanism that no longer transmits. The Agriculture Department halted its own annual food insecurity research last year, saying the studies did “nothing more than fear monger.” [4] The federal government is simultaneously implementing the largest SNAP cuts in history and eliminating the primary measurement instrument that would document the results. Alternative data sources — the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s household survey, the CBPP tracker, food bank demand figures — are filling the gap. Whether they generate the same problem recognition that official government data would have is a question with no clean answer.

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Why is the problem stream highly active but not yet producing action? Paid subscribers can read on to see:

• Why the law’s design may be causing more harm than its eligibility changes — through a perverse incentive that states cannot easily escape

• The administration’s problem definition — and the one piece of data that directly challenges it on its own terms

• The complete Canvas assessment for the problem stream, including whether is suggests action is likely

• Four specific tripwires to watch in the weeks ahead

Read more

The Senate returned from recess on June 1st. A draft farm bill is expected in early June, with a committee markup later in the month. There is a hard deadline: the current extension expires September 30. [1] And there is a genuine puzzle worth understanding — the biggest changes to food assistance in a generation were made not in the farm bill, but in last year’s reconciliation law, before the farm bill debate even began.

That program is SNAP — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps. At its core, SNAP is about one thing: making sure people have enough to eat. It reaches working adults who can’t stretch their wages to cover groceries, children who would otherwise go hungry, elderly people on fixed incomes, people with disabilities, and immigrants and refugees who are legally in the country.

And SNAP is more than a grocery benefit. It serves as the gateway credential for a broader set of federal nutrition programs: children in SNAP households are automatically certified for free school meals, summer nutrition benefits, and WIC — so when a family loses SNAP, the downstream effects reach the school cafeteria and the pediatrician’s office too. [2]

The numbers are already moving since the start of the second Trump administration. USDA data show enrollment dropped from about 42.8 million in January 2025 to just under 38.6 million by January 2026, as new eligibility rules from last year’s reconciliation package, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), began taking effect. [3] More than 3.5 million people lost food assistance in the seven months after that law was enacted. [4] The Congressional Budget Office estimates the OBBBA will cut SNAP spending by $187 billion over ten years. [5]

Arizona offers a preview of where this is heading nationwide. Nearly half of the state’s SNAP participants have lost benefits since July — including approximately 180,000 children — the steepest decline in the nation by a wide margin. [6] “Arizona is just the alarm bell,” one policy analyst told ProPublica. “This is likely going to happen in every state.”

Republicans who support these changes argue that declining enrollment is evidence the law is working — that tightened eligibility rules and stronger state accountability are directing benefits to those who genuinely qualify.

At the same time, a Federal Reserve Bank of New York analysis released last week found that 10 percent of American households now report struggling to obtain enough food — up from 4 percent in 2020. Among nonwhite households, the figure is 19.1 percent. [7]

Fewer people in the program, and more people going hungry: that is the condition the Senate walked back into this morning. And that debate is shaped, in ways that aren’t obvious from headlines, by decisions about SNAP’s funding and eligibility rules that were made in the OBBBA — a different legislative vehicle entirely.

To understand how that happened — and what it means for the path forward — here is the analytical lens I’ll be using throughout this series. Political scientist John Kingdon developed the Multiple Streams Framework, or MSF, to explain why some policy issues get serious government attention and others don’t. His answer: three conditions have to come together at once. There has to be broad recognition that a condition requires action — that’s the problem stream. There has to be at least one workable solution available — that’s the policy stream. And the political conditions have to be favorable — that’s the political stream. But recognizing those three conditions isn’t enough on its own. A fourth process has to happen: the streams have to be actively connected, usually by a skilled actor seizing an opening at the right moment. That coupling process is what converts aligned conditions into actual policy change — and its absence is why some issues stall even when the need is obvious and the support is broad.

The Real-Time MSF Canvas is the structured tool I use to track those four processes as a policy debate unfolds. New to the newsletter? Your welcome email includes a download link for the Canvas guide — and the Start Here page has everything else you need. Over the next four weeks, I’ll apply the Canvas to SNAP — one process per week — and close the series with an assessment of whether the streams are close to aligning.

Those posts will be for paid subscribers, with generous previews for free subscribers. If you’ve been thinking about upgrading, this series is a good moment to try it out.

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Next week: the problem stream. What condition is actually requiring government action here — and is it the one you think it is?

What questions do you have about SNAP or the farm bill going into this series? Leave a comment or message me — I read and respond to all of them.

Leave a comment

Sources

[1] DTN/Progressive Farmer, May 21, 2026. “Senate Ag Committee farm bill expected in June; won’t include Prop 12 language.” https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/blogs/ag-policy-blog/blog-post/2026/05/21/senate-ag-committee-farm-bill-june

[2] Food Research & Action Center, January 2026. “Cuts to SNAP threaten the child nutrition programs.” 7-page policy memo. https://frac.org/wp-content/uploads/Cuts-SNAP-Threaten-Child-Nutrition-Programs.pdf

[3] Newsweek, April 30, 2026. “SNAP map shows states where most people have lost benefits.” https://www.newsweek.com/snap-map-states-most-people-lost-benefits-11896783

[4] Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, May 29, 2026. “SNAP tracker: People are losing food assistance as the Republican megabill is implemented.” https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/snap-tracker-people-are-losing-food-assistance-as-the-republican-megabill

[5] Congressional Budget Office, August 2025. “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.” Cost estimate for SNAP provisions of H.R. 1/P.L. 119-21 (OBBBA). https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2025-08/61367-SNAP.pdf

[6] ProPublica, April 8, 2026. “’The alarm bell’: Arizona’s drop in SNAP participation signals potential nationwide impact of Trump legislation.” https://www.propublica.org/article/arizona-snap-benefits-trump-legislation

[7] The Hill, May 27, 2026. “Food insecurity increase for many Americans ‘remarkable’: NY Fed.” https://thehill.com/business/personal-finance/5897598-food-insecurity-new-york-fed/

Please be patient with me while I work through some tough family health issues. I’m deeply touched by all the love and support from friends and family. I miss my normal writing routine and can’t wait to be back, hopefully next Tuesday.

Meanwhile, say hello to Seamus, sitting in his most polite waiting-for-a-bite-of-whatever-you’re-having pose.

None of these trades are necessarily illegal, and that’s exactly the problem. The STOCK Act was built on solving a specific problem: that members are using nonpublic information to trade stocks at a significant advantage over the general public. Fourteen years of feedback shows that this prescription of transparency through disclosure has failed to cure the problem. Disclosure didn’t prevent any of these trades. It just made them visible after the fact — sometimes 45 days or more after the fact, with a comparatively small $200 fine as the only consequence [5].

One Bill, One Frame

In April 2025, I wrote that a serious alternative had emerged from a slew of proposals. By September 2025, the policy community had gone further. The TRUST in Congress Act (H.R. 396) — requiring members to place holdings in a qualified blind trust managed independently, without their knowledge or input — had emerged as the frontrunner:

“The TRUST Act is the grownup in the room. With 65 bipartisan cosponsors and multiple iterations since its first introduction in June 2020... When I apply Kingdon’s criteria systematically, the TRUST Act clearly emerges as the most viable alternative.” [6]

The TRUST Act reframed the problem: stock ownership itself creates conflicts of interest, regardless of whether any particular trade used nonpublic information. Members had long deflected criticism by pointing to independent brokers, supposedly blind trusts, or family members' accounts. By September 2025, the policy community had concluded that blind trusts weren't sufficient — and the Restore Trust in Congress Act (H.R. 5106) went further: mandating full divestiture of individual stocks within 180 days, with no blind trust option. Policy change looked possible.

Consensus had formed around one problem frame, and one mature proposal. A bipartisan working group — Representatives Roy, Magaziner, Ocasio-Cortez, Fitzpatrick, Burchett, and Jayapal — had spent months building a unified coalition around H.R. 5106 [7]. Representative Luna filed a discharge petition in December 2025 for a related bill (H.R. 1908). This procedural move was designed to pressure leadership toward action on the broader ban effort, including the consensus bill [12]. By early 2026 it had 82 signatures — short of the 218 needed, but building genuine cross-aisle momentum [8].

Then the Consensus Broke

Then three new proposals arrived in quick succession, each solving a different problem.

In January 2026, Republican leadership introduced the Stop Insider Trading Act — a narrower, weaker bill than the TRUST Act that reform groups immediately criticized as inadequate [1]. SITA bans new stock purchases and shifts disclosure from after-the-fact to seven days before a sale, which is a genuine transparency improvement over the STOCK Act. But it leaves existing holdings intact and permits sales to continue with advance notice. A member with nonpublic knowledge of bad news could still sell; they’d just have to wait seven days after announcing the intent. The Campaign Legal Center noted SITA would not have stopped a member from selling over a million dollars in assets the week before COVID devastated markets — the very behavior that drove public outrage and the push for reform in the first place [1]. Eight major reform organizations — including CREW, POGO, and Common Cause — signed a joint letter urging Congress to reject it [9]. Reform groups are unanimous: a proposal that leaves selling, holding, and dividend reinvestment untouched cannot address the cases that have driven this debate. SITA defines the problem as buying, not owning. That is a fundamentally different diagnosis than the Restore Trust in Congress Act’s.

Democrats countered by extending the ban to the president and vice president (the Restore Trust in Government Act). It’s a legitimate policy goal, but one no Republican would accept given Trump's explicit opposition to any bill covering him [7]. Then in March, the PREDICT Act (H.R. 8076) arrived, redefining the problem again: not stock trading, but any financial transaction tied to political events, following suspected insider trading around U.S. military action in Iran [10].

Republicans said the problem is buying. Democrats said the problem extends to the White House. The PREDICT Act said the problem is bigger than stocks entirely.

The original consensus bill had done the difficult work of aligning one problem frame with one mature solution. Its displacement by three competing proposals — each with its own problem definition — didn’t just scatter attention across proposals. It also fragmented perceptions on what was happening, making it harder to say what the problem even is.

What I Missed

When I assessed the reform landscape in May 2025, I was watching the wrong stream:

“The policy and political streams show unusual promise — bipartisan interest combined with ready-made solutions — but the problem stream still needs more intensive focusing events to create legislative urgency.” [11]

What actually happened? The feedback kept accumulating — the Mullin nomination [3], the shutdown trades, the Fetterman disclosure [2] — confirming that the STOCK Act continues to fail in plain sight. But none of these eyebrow-raising events consolidated attention around a single problem frame the way a powerful focusing event might.

Instead, a flurry of activity in the policy stream splintered the emerging consensus, pulling the problem stream in competing directions. What looks like a wave of reform proposals has made reform harder, not easier. Now the reform landscape is more crowded and less coherent than it was a year ago.

What to Watch

Congress is back after a 2-week recess, having missed its own Q1 deadline for a floor vote on SITA [8]. Representative Luna says she is still hearing the vote is “coming shortly.” Chairman Steil says leadership will make the call. Neither has a floor date [7].

Here's the question I can't answer yet: the problem stream has been accumulating evidence for years, and the policy stream now has more proposals than it knows what to do with. Does that explain the stall? I’d like to know what you think. Leave a comment or send me a message before next week, when I’ll share my own analysis.

Leave a comment

Sources

[1] Campaign Legal Center, Jan. 30, 2026. “How the Stop Insider Trading Act Fails to Solve the Congressional Stock Trading Problem.” https://campaignlegal.org/sites/default/files/2026-01/CLC%20Factsheet%20on%20the%20Stop%20Insider%20Trading%20Act%201-30-26.pdf

[2] Himmelsbach, Vawn. Moneywise, Apr. 11, 2026. “Sen. John Fetterman pushed to ban family stock trades. His family just bought Micron stock.” https://moneywise.com/news/top-stories/fetterman-stock-trading-micron

[3] Flavelle, Christopher, Madeleine Ngo, and Georgia Gee. New York Times, Mar. 15, 2026. “How Trump’s Homeland Security Pick, a Prolific Investor, Got a Lot Wealthier in Congress.” [Paywalled; full text held by author]

[4] Grayer, Annie, and Marshall Cohen. CNN, Feb. 9, 2026. “Senators’ stock trades directly overlapped with their committee work, CNN analysis finds.” https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/09/politics/senator-stock-trading-congress

[5] Congressional Research Service (Jacob R. Straus), Nov. 19, 2025. “Taking Stock of the STOCK Act.” TE10119. https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/TE10119.html

[6] Dolan, Dana. Apr. 23, 2025. “Ready When You Need It? Unpacking Congress’s Stock Trading Reform Options.” Views Through a Policy Prism. https://danadolan.substack.com/p/ready-when-you-need-it-unpacking

[7] Heller, Nina. Roll Call, Mar. 31, 2026. “Lawmakers said they wanted to rein in their own stock trading. What happened?” https://rollcall.com/2026/03/31/congress-stock-trading-ban-what-happened/

[8] Green, Lauren, and Hailey Bullis. Washington Examiner, Apr. 4, 2026. “Taking stock of the STOCK Act: What’s different this time around?” https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/in_focus/4515776/stock-act-anniversary-what-is-different/

[9] CREW and seven organizations, Feb. 12, 2026. Coalition letter opposing the Stop Insider Trading Act. https://www.citizensforethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Signed-Congressional-Stock-Ban-Coalition-Letter-Against-SITA.pdf

[10] Goodman, Jasper, Declan Harty, and Mia McCarthy. Politico, Apr. 1, 2026. “’The status quo is unsustainable’: Congressional scrutiny of Kalshi, Polymarket explodes.” https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/01/congress-kalshi-polymarket-regulation-00852370

[11] Dolan, Dana. May 31, 2025. “Policy Window Watch: Congressional Stock Trading Ban Inches Closer.” Views Through a Policy Prism. https://danadolan.substack.com/p/policy-window-watch-congressional

[12] Issue One, Dec. 2025. "Bipartisan Stock Trading Ban Discharge Petition." https://issueone.org/press/bipartisan-stock-trading-ban-discharge-petition/

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When 2025 began, I knew what was coming. The pace of norm-breaking, the accumulated pressure on governing institutions that most of us had taken for granted — was already overwhelming and likely to get worse.

But I had a way to navigate the chaos: John Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework, a proven theory of how policy decisions get made that I’d spent years applying and refining. It focused my attention on one important current at a time, in more depth than journalism typically offered. When I used it, the chaos subsided. The patterns became visible. The surface chop calmed.

Launching this newsletter was my weekly commitment to reading those currents in real time — to keep my balance, to document what was happening as it happened, and to share it with others trying to find their footing in the same waters.

If you feel frustrated with alarmist headlines and partisan opinions dressed up as expertise, and with a need to understand what’s happening in Washington at a deeper level, you’re in the right place. Maybe you work on or near Capitol Hill with its demanding and unpredictable schedule. Maybe you’re a policy researcher or teacher, navigating the storm of polarization, funding cuts, and AI disruption. Or you’re part of the civically obsessed crowd who wants to know what’s happening, and what to watch for next. Perhaps like me in my earlier career, you’ve long taken policy and political life for granted, yet now you feel the tides shifting into tidal waves that can’t be ignored.

Whatever brings you here, Welcome.

* * *

I’m a systems analyst—or I was, early in my career designing and implementing management decision systems for federal agencies. Along the way, I watched inexplicable decisions pile up without a vocabulary to explain them. Why did the least technically skilled person keep getting promoted? Why did procurement choose the big-name, limited-feature product every time? Why did agencies fund our twelve-person team for three years, pass an extensive independent evaluation with flying colors, then mothball the whole system? I knew there were hidden currents pulling decisions in directions that made no sense on the surface. I saw clues in boardrooms, in procurement offices, in agency hallways, but didn’t have the framework to make sense of them, until Kingdon gave me the vocabulary to name them.

I found that vocabulary — but not before watching it prove itself in the most clarifying way possible. As Director of Research at the Telework Consortium, I directed studies on technologies and practices to encourage remote work. When our executives briefed Congress in the mid-2000s, my studies became part of the Congressional Record. They showed what was possible already, and how remote work reduced traffic and pollution, how it supported families by reducing costs and commute times, and how it supported continuity of operations in the wake of 9/11 terrorist attacks and the anthrax scare. But real policy change didn't happen until Kingdon’s streams of problems, policies, and politics aligned during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Miss one current, and the window stays closed, no matter how good your solution is.

My public policy PhD dissertation put Kingdon’s framework at the center of my research — and it never left. I’d made enough in the IT heyday to follow my passion, and I discovered I loved qualitative research and teaching. DC was exactly where I wanted to be, where the policy currents run deep. In this environment, Kingdon’s framework acts like a deck prism, focusing sunlight from above the ship into its inner holds. It organizes an overwhelming array of information — news, data, competing claims — and directs your attention to the patterns that signal change, and the levers available to direct that change. On the surface, the ocean seems visible to everyone, but the currents running beneath it are not.

One of my graduate students, a Hill staffer who’d been using the framework at work, told me how the framework was saving him time and raising the quality of his work. “I wish I’d learned this years ago,” he told the whole class one day. That comment crystallized something I’d been circling for years: these tools belonged outside the classroom.

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This newsletter runs on a two-week cycle:

• Current Events posts (free): Real-time analysis applying the framework to breaking policy news — what happened, what the currents revealed, and what to watch next. All in plain language, with links to Congressional backgrounders where Hill jargon is useful.

• Canvas Briefs (for paid subscribers): Explains the analytical structure underneath the current events, so you can learn to read the currents yourself. See subscriber options here.

Most posts close with the most useful topic in policy work: here’s what to watch next. It doesn’t predict; it directs attention to keep you from being overwhelmed. That section is what keeps me on track: as the weeks pass, I can see what was most useful to notice and what was missed.

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New to the newsletter? Here’s a suggested path in.

• Step 1 — Get the tool: Subscribe, read your welcome email, and click the link to download your free Real-Time MSF Canvas guide. The Canvas is the navigational framework underlying everything published here. Keep it open while you read each week.

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• Step 2 — See it in action: The SAVE Act Series Capstone covers several two-week analytical cycles across six posts — what the currents revealed about a Senate floor fight that most media articles were missing.

• Step 3 — Watch one distinction do real work: Why Good’s Death Raised Attention, but Pretti’s Raised the Stakes is a free single-issue demonstration of how one analytical distinction explains something most coverage missed entirely.

• Step 4 — Understand why frameworks beat instinct: Why Policy News Feels Exhausting Right Now makes the case for reading the currents rather than riding them — and explains what changes once you have the tool.

• Step 5 — Build your Hill vocabulary: The Backgrounders index is a free, evergreen reference library for Capitol Hill jargon and legislative mechanics — built for readers who need quick answers, not a seminar, plus resources to dive deeper.

• Step 6 — Join the SPARC waitlist. For those who want to go deeper, my forthcoming course in Strategic Policy Analysis, Research, and Communication (SPARC) is in development for 2026. You’ll be among the first to know, so you can decide if it’s a fit before classes fill up.

Join the Waitlist

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Before you go, here’s what I tell every student who sits down with this framework for the first time: there is no one right answer, only better or worse paths to take from this point forward. Your aim is to make choices and justify them, so you can improve your skills over time. The currents are always moving and never predictable. The people navigating them deserve better tools than breaking news alerts and more information than final vote counts. Read the currents and you’ll know not just what happened, but where to look to see what’s coming.

This is where those tools live. Subscribe. Tuesdays, 7am. I’ll see you there.

If you have any questions, hit reply or message me and let me know. I’ll respond to every note personally.

The Whip Count was Never the Story.

Senate Republicans spent two weeks on the SAVE Act knowing they didn’t have 60 votes. Everyone in that chamber knew it. The outcome was predictable before the first floor speech.

But while Washington was watching the whip count, something else was happening — something the count couldn't see. The claim that noncitizen voting threatens American elections was false, and most people in that chamber knew it. What the whip count couldn't see was what the floor debate was doing with it anyway.

The feeling that elections aren’t secure — amplified on the Senate floor, repeated in Truth Social posts, measured in polls, fed back as indicators — was being treated as evidence that the problem exists. In politics, a polled feeling becomes a problem indicator. And six weeks of floor debate is a very efficient way to generate polled feelings.

That’s not legislating. That’s problem definition. And it’s the real work the floor fight was doing.

The Real-Time MSF Canvas caught it — not because it was designed to, but because watching what each stream was accomplishing made it visible.

That’s what this series found. Here’s how it unfolded:

• Feb 17: The SAVE Act Cleared Its First Hurdle. The Next Ones Have Different Rules.

• Feb 24: What You Still Need to Know About the SAVE America Act ✦

• Mar 10: UPDATE: What You Still Need to Know About the SAVE Act ✦

• Mar 17: For Trump, Passing the SAVE Act Is a Bonus

• Mar 18: Stop Fighting Voter ID. Start Defining It. (Op-Ed in The Fulcrum)

• Mar 24: The SAVE Act Debate Was Designed to Fail — Just Not Like This. ✦

✦ Canvas Brief — free preview, paid full access

What the Streams Were Actually Doing

None of the three policy process streams were developing toward legislation.

The problem stream rested on a claim the evidence doesn’t support. Trump’s own 2017 election integrity commission dissolved without findings. State audits consistently found near-zero instances of non-citizen voting. When Democrats noted on the floor that federal law already prohibits it, Republicans continued without engagement. Feedback entered the record. It was set aside. That pattern is documented in my Feb 24 post.

The policy stream was bypassed almost entirely. The bill’s provisions are unacceptable to most Americans who learn what they actually are, including its mandated use of a verification database that regularly misidentifies naturalized citizens as noncitizens, and will immediately face legal challenge under existing Supreme Court precedent. The floor debate treated those provisions as nonexistent. The viability analysis is in my Feb 17 post and Feb 24 Canvas Brief.

The political stream showed coercion, not coalition-building: Primary threats. Endorsement withholding. Elon Musk posting about SAVE more than 100 times, calling Thune’s inaction “an act of high treason.” Attention was sustained through presidential pressure that couldn’t earn the 60 votes it needed. The full political stream analysis is in my March 17 post.

The streams weren’t developing toward legislation. They were developing toward something else.

What the Floor Fight Actually Produced

Not a law or even a vote, but a context for future arguments. That context included a hardened problem frame, now circulating in venues where the evidence can’t easily follow it. Plus political costs imposed on every Democratic senator who voted against “election security.” And a concrete institutional consequence that extends well beyond the SAVE Act.

That consequence has a face: Sen. John Cornyn, after 24 years in the Senate defending the filibuster as essential, saying explicitly that changing it would “take a wrecking ball to the United States Senate itself.” In March, locked in a Texas runoff with Trump’s endorsement in the balance, he reversed that position in a New York Post op-ed titled “Why the SAVE Act Matters More Than the Filibuster.” When NBC News asked him directly about his prior wrecking ball statement, he said “I said I’d be open to reforms,” put his hand in front of the camera, and said “Go away.” [4]

If a 24-year institutionalist folds on the filibuster, the 60-vote threshold — the last structural check on simple-majority governance, the guardrail on every issue where the majority doesn’t have the votes — is softer than it was six weeks ago. Not broken, but weakened. That’s what the floor fight produced.

Sen. Thom Tillis saw it clearly. Asked whether retirement had freed him to speak more openly, he said: “No shit, Sherlock.” The constraint was always structural. Retirement just removed the threat’s reach.

The full analysis of how coercive pressure moved people but not institutions is in my March 24 Canvas Brief.

Where the Context Is Traveling

The SAVE Act’s failure as standalone legislation doesn’t end the pressure campaign. It redistributes it to other venues.

• House Administration Chair Bryan Steil is circulating provisions for a planned reconciliation bill that would tie federal election grants to voter ID compliance and proof-of-citizenship requirements. [1] That vehicle only needs 51 votes, not 60, if it survives the parliamentarian's Byrd rule review.

• The Supreme Court is expected to rule this week on the Voting Rights Act’s reach, and this summer on mail ballot grace periods in 14 states — neither requires congressional action. [2]

• The administration’s deputy assistant secretary for election integrity used a routine briefing with more than 100 state election officials to pitch running voter files through a federal citizenship database and raise hand-counting of ballots. [3] Some jurisdictions will tighten procedures voluntarily, without a law requiring them to.

• The threat of ICE at polling locations remains officially denied and operationally ambiguous — by design. DHS says no. Incoming Secretary Mullin says only for a “specific threat,” a standard defined entirely within executive discretion. Steve Bannon called the ICE deployment to airports during the TSA shutdown a “test run” for November. Uncertainty about who might be watching is itself a form of pressure.

Each venue has different rules. The defense that held on the Senate floor doesn’t travel to a parliamentarian’s ruling or a county election administrator’s inbox.

What Floor Fights Are Actually For

A floor debate designed to lose can still win — if winning means building a receptive context for policy change beyond legislation. Harden the problem frame. Impose political costs. Activate parallel venues. The legislative arena is one context inside a larger set of contexts: judicial, executive, state-level, administrative. Actors who understand that can use a floor fight to build conditions for change across all of them simultaneously.

The Canvas made that visible in real time. Watching what each stream was accomplishing — not counting votes — is what revealed the floor debate’s actual purpose from the start.

The SAVE Act debate is over. For now.

Every Tuesday at 7am ET: Free posts like this one track the current events layer. Canvas Briefs go deeper — applying the Multiple Streams Framework in real time, showing the analytical structure underneath, so you can see what the whip count is missing before the next debate begins.

The Canvas Brief on the SAVE Act floor debate shows what that looks like in practice. The full series lives in the Voting & Elections archive.

Sources

[1] Politico, Mar 24, 2026. “These House GOP election proposals could end up in a reconciliation bill.” https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/03/24/congress/bryan-steil-elections-reconciliation-menu-00841575

[2] The Hill, Mar 23, 2026. “Supreme Court seems wary of states counting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day.” https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5793767-supreme-court-mail-in-voting/amp/

[3] PBS NewsHour, Feb 27, 2026. “Trump says he’s not mulling a draft executive order to seize control over elections.” https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-says-hes-not-mulling-a-draft-executive-order-to-seize-control-over-elections-heres-what-we-know

[4] NBC News, Mar 11, 2026. “Sen. John Cornyn flips on the filibuster to pass SAVE America Act as Trump weighs endorsement.” https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/john-cornyn-save-america-act-filibuster-trump-texas-senate-rcna262927

Here's what happened this week, in brief:

• Tuesday: The Senate voted to begin debating the SAVE America Act. [1]

• Wednesday, a senator was circulating a colleague’s social media posts threatening to primary Republicans who didn’t fall in line. [2]

• Thursday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune was giving Fox News an interview about leaders who define reality. [3]

• Friday, Sen. Mike Lee was warning of political suicide. [2]

• Sunday, President Trump posted a late-night Truth Social demand to kill the filibuster, hold DHS funding hostage, and have Thune publicly name the Republicans “voting against America.” [4]

• Monday morning, Chuck Schumer published a New York Times op-ed framing week two before Republicans had a chance to set the terms. [5]

The debate was supposed to be about Democratic obstruction. It became about Republicans.

Republicans spent the floor week repeating a line so often it became a mantra: you need ID to buy a beer, so you should need ID to vote. It's a resonant comparison. Everyone knows what it means to be carded.

But the SAVE Act isn’t a bouncer checking your driver’s license at the door. Here’s what it would actually look like if we applied its full logic to buying a beer.

Grandpa Frank is 69 and just moved into a retirement community in rural Montana. He’s voted in every presidential election since 1968. After a long day unpacking boxes, he walks down to the community bar for a beer.

Frank hasn’t been carded for a drink since he was about 35. No bartender has needed proof that a white-haired man with grandchildren is over 21. But under the new system, appearances aren’t enough.

The bartender asks Frank for documentary proof that he’s old enough to drink. A driver’s license won’t do. He needs an original birth certificate, passport, or certificate of naturalization. Frank just moved last week. His birth certificate is somewhere in the forty-two boxes stacked in his condo.

When he finally finds it, another problem appears. His birth certificate says Francis A. Donnelly. His driver’s license says Frank Donnelly. The records don’t match exactly, so the bartender can’t accept them.

Frank now has to bring the documents in person to the Beverage Eligibility Clerk at the county office, 35 miles away. The clerk scans the paperwork and submits Frank’s information to the federal Beverage Eligibility Database. If the system flags him for review — and its trial runs have produced large numbers of false matches [5, 6] — Frank may not know until the next time he tries to order a beer and the bartender turns him away. There’s no requirement to notify him in advance. To fix that problem, Frank has to appear again with additional documents proving the records belong to the same person.

The bartender is sympathetic, but he’s careful. Under the new rules, serving someone whose eligibility hasn’t been verified could cost him his license and thousands of dollars in penalties.

The bar has never had an underage drinking problem. In fact, the youngest resident in the retirement community is sixty-two. But the system applies regardless — burdening the people least likely to be the problem it was designed to solve.

Like underage drinking in a retirement community, noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare. Utah's examination of about two million voter registrations found zero instances. [6] That's not like showing your ID to buy a beer. It's like proving you were born before you can order one.

What the Streams Show

The Multiple Streams Framework asks whether the problem, policy, and political streams are ripe enough for coupling — and whether a skilled entrepreneur is connecting them toward a policy outcome. Here’s where the SAVE Act stands.

Problem stream: Not ripe. The documented problem is near-zero. A DHS screening trial in Boone County, Missouri flagged more than half of reviewed voters as ineligible when they were in fact eligible citizens — and removed them from the rolls anyway. [5, 6] Republican senators couldn’t agree on what condition required intervention: the mail-in ballot fight exposed competing problem definitions within the same coalition.

Policy stream: Not ripe. Multiple competing versions, no proposal passing all three viability tests. The constraints test failed publicly — rural-state Republicans objected to the mail provisions, Tillis declared himself a no, Kennedy floated a reconciliation repackaging with no coalition behind it. [7]

Political stream: Not ripe. Presidential pressure sustained attention on the issue but could not generate durable coalition support. The national mood is polarized, organized interests are muted and misaligned, and the governmental shifts that would signal genuine political will — a unified Republican conference, a credible path to 60 votes — are not there.

Coupling process: No genuine attempt made. Thune confirmed it: “I can’t guarantee an outcome on this legislation. I can guarantee you that we are going to put Democrats on the record.” [8, 9]

Policy output: Pending; Failure anticipated.

The Goal Was Never the Vote

The floor week was not a failed attempt to pass legislation. It was a deliberate effort to amplify a problem definition [10]. The strategy was straightforward: flood the zone with the phrase "noncitizen voting" — Republican accusations, Democratic denials, Senate floor speeches, Truth Social posts — until the threat felt real regardless of the evidence.

Sen. Ron Johnson stated the logic without apology: “At a minimum, we’ve got to show our supporters we’re willing to fight for this. The worst possible outcome is that when Democrats refuse to engage on election security, Republicans get blamed for not being able to pass it.” [9] The floor debate was the strategy. The vote was incidental.

The message came out wrong. The whole point was to make Democrats the villain in this story. Three days in, Republican infighting was the central storyline — a circular firing squad, as Tillis put it, [2] with House conservatives branding Thune the next McConnell [11] and five anonymous Republican senators telling Politico that Lee was “hurting us.” [12]

Thune named it on Thursday: “There are a lot of folks out there who are over-promising and creating false expectations about what we can get done here. The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.” [3]

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You’ve seen what happened this week. The MSF explains why it was expected, and what it means for the week ahead. Paid subscribers can continue reading to see:

• Why Senate rules held against Trump's pressure campaign, for now, and why that's not an accident

• What the Tillis and Murkowski evidence reveals about how the threat mechanism actually works

• Why the Cornyn flip is the number to watch going forward

• A detailed analysis of the Canvas’s coupling process with full analysis and all sources

Read more

The Debate Is the Product

The SAVE America Act — requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote — passed the House 218-213 last month. As I analyzed then, the Senate’s 60-vote threshold was always the most likely failure point, and Majority Leader Thune doesn’t have the votes. Sen. Thom Tillis has already declared there is “no path for success,” adding: “I was a no on the talking filibuster path and this one’s going to produce the same result.” [1] Sens. McConnell and Murkowski are also expected to be hard nos. The bill is, as Politico put it this morning, “likely doomed thanks to bipartisan opposition and the GOP conference’s desire to protect the filibuster.” [1]

A failed vote, though, isn’t a defeat for Trump. Every day of Senate floor proceedings generates exactly what he needs heading into midterms: accusations, clips, and headlines that keep noncitizen voting fear alive as a political issue — and stoke the anti-immigrant narrative that has been central to his political identity for decades. Despite systematic evidence to the contrary, like Utah’s comprehensive review of 2 million voters found zero instances of noncitizen voting, the floor debate manufactures and amplifies the threat regardless. Trump may genuinely want the bill. But he doesn’t need it to win this week.

The strategy is no longer subtext. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) stated it plainly: “At a minimum, we’ve got to show our supporters we’re willing to fight for this. The worst possible outcome is that when Democrats refuse to engage on election security, Republicans get blamed for not being able to pass it.” [2] Johnson isn’t arguing for a policy solution. He’s arguing that performing the fight — and pinning the accusation that Democrats blocked election security — is itself the goal. A Republican strategist confirmed the mechanics to The Hill: “The point of this is exhausting Democrats, the point of it is pain, the point of it is forcing a public and political process and seeing what comes out of it.” [3] Repeated loudly enough, often enough, close enough to November, the manufactured fear of noncitizen voting becomes what voters remember. Not the failed vote. The fear.

Political scientist Åsa Knaggård calls this “problem brokering”: a political actor who selects, frames, and amplifies problem definitions [4], sometimes to serve strategic ends, regardless of empirical accuracy. The Senate chamber this week is a problem brokering operation. Thune himself confirmed it on the Senate floor last week: “I can’t guarantee an outcome on this legislation. I can guarantee you that we are going to put Democrats on the record.” [5] The majority leader is running a messaging campaign, not a legislative one.

If you want to understand the gap between what members said on the House floor and what the bill actually requires — including mandatory sharing of complete state voter rolls with the Department of Homeland Security and criminal penalties for local election officials — see my deeper analysis of the House debate.

Two Prizes Hiding Behind the Vote Count

The bill’s failure is only one possible outcome worth tracking. Two others matter more.

The first is passage. If the bill somehow cleared the Senate, it wouldn’t resolve anything. The Senate version includes amendments the House never passed — a mail-in ballot ban, transgender provisions — meaning it couldn’t go straight to the president without returning to the House or going to conference. A president focused primarily on legislative victory would be demanding the Senate pass the House version exactly. Trump isn’t. And if a clean version passed, court challenges would begin immediately under Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council (2013), which established that states cannot require documentary proof beyond what federal law mandates. [6] The fight moves venues, it doesn’t end.

The second prize is the one that keeps Thune up at night: cracking the filibuster — the rule requiring 60 votes to advance most legislation, and currently one of the few remaining structural checks on simple-majority governance. If it goes, the Senate that emerges looks nothing like the one we have now. The pressure to crack it is visibly moving votes. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), a 24-year Senate veteran who spent years defending the filibuster as essential, reversed his position this week in a New York Post op-ed titled “Why the SAVE Act Matters More Than the Filibuster.” He now supports “whatever changes to Senate rules that may prove necessary.” [7a] Sen. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska has signaled support for a talking filibuster — more floor time, more fear-stoking content. [8] The mechanism is documented: withhold an endorsement, extract a position change. When NBC News asked Cornyn about his past statement that changing the filibuster would “take a wrecking ball to the United States Senate itself,” he replied: “I said I’d be open to reforms” — and put his hand in front of the camera. [7b]

Four Things Worth Watching

The vote count might be the least interesting number this week.

Watch whether additional Republican senators move on the filibuster. Cornyn and Ricketts have already shifted. Each new convert changes the math Thune is managing — and signals that the endorsement-for-position mechanism is replicable across other primaries, in other states, on other issues.

Watch what the debate produces in media coverage. The problem brokering operation succeeds or fails based on which story dominates: the noncitizen voting fear frame, or the spectacle of a majority party staging its own defeat. Those generate very different political environments heading into November.

Watch the Iran war powers vote. Democrats plan to force at least one war powers resolution onto the floor this week as a privileged motion — interrupting the SAVE Act proceedings mid-debate. [1] Whether that collision produces its own headlines, or gets swallowed by the SAVE Act proceedings, tells you something about how much bandwidth the media and the public have for parallel constitutional crises. I’ve been tracking the war powers fight separately.

Watch Trump’s response the moment the vote fails — and listen for what Sen. Murkowski is already warning about. She put it starkly last week: “If you’re suggesting now — this is March — that if my bill doesn’t pass, somehow elections are rigged? I think we saw this in 2020.” [9] Sen. Tillis sees the same electoral danger from a different angle, warning of parallels to 2018 when Democrats flipped the House, and arguing Republicans need answers on affordability — not election security theater. [10] The senators who know they’re on the ballot are watching a different set of numbers than Trump is. And some House Republicans are already signaling they’ll block Senate legislation outside of DHS funding if SAVE fails — escalating the pressure campaign beyond the Senate floor regardless of outcome. [1]

The Pattern Worth Remembering

When the debate itself is the product, legislative failure is a feature, not a flaw. The wrecking ball doesn’t stop because the wall didn’t fall on the first swing. Each failed vote justifies the next swing.

Sen. Cornyn used to say that changing the filibuster would take a wrecking ball to the United States Senate itself [7a]. This week, he decided that was fine.

Sources

[1] Politico, Mar 16, 2026. “SAVE America Act — Thune Senate vote debate.” https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/03/16/congress/save-america-act-thune-senate-vote-debate-00829442

[2] Punchbowl News, Mar 13, 2026. “Thune and Trump hit the skids.” https://punchbowl.news/archive/31326-am/

[3] The Hill, Mar 16, 2026. “Trump allies plan Senate floor takeover to pass SAVE America Act.” https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5783688-senate-floor-takeover-save-america-act/

[4] Knaggård, Å., 2015. “The multiple streams framework and the problem broker.” European Journal of Political Research, 54(3), pp.450–465.

[5] Thune press release, Mar 13, 2026. “Thune to bring SAVE America Act to the Senate floor.” https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=73B0D51D-70EB-4765-A2B4-9DA7F9DEF66D

[6] Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, 570 U.S. 1 (2013).

[7a] Cornyn, John. Mar 11, 2026. "Why the SAVE Act matters more than the filibuster." New York Post / Cornyn Senate Office. https://www.cornyn.senate.gov/news/cornyn-op-ed-why-the-save-act-matters-more-than-the-filibuster/

[7b] NBC News, Mar 11, 2026. “Sen. John Cornyn flips on the filibuster to pass SAVE America Act as Trump weighs endorsement.” https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/john-cornyn-save-america-act-filibuster-trump-texas-senate-rcna262927

[8] Nebraska Examiner, Mar 11, 2026. “Nebraska’s U.S. senators might split on changing Senate filibuster for SAVE America Act.” https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2026/03/11/nebraskas-u-s-senators-might-split-on-changing-senate-filibuster-for-save-america-act/

[9] NBC News, Mar 14, 2026. “Some Republicans warn Trump’s SAVE America Act is doomed to fail as Senate tees up a vote.” https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/republicans-warn-trumps-save-america-act-elections-fail-rcna263250

[10] Politico, Mar 14, 2026. “Senate Republicans worry about midterms.” https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/14/senate-republicans-trump-midterms-00829181