Newly sworn-in Sen. Darline Graham Nordone has quickly positioned herself as a Trump loyalist following speculation that she might be a GOP wildcard.
Graham co-sponsored the Senate version of MAGA’s doomed voter legislation, the SAVE America Act. In its current form, the act would require all states to mandate voters show ID and proof of citizenship to vote.
“The American people are demanding immediate action from Congress on election integrity. That’s why the SAVE America Act is the first bill I am cosponsoring in the Senate,” she said in a statement announcing her first big move.
U.S. citizenship is already a requirement to vote, and cases of noncitizen voting are very rare.
While there had been some questions about whether she would take a different approach than her late brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, whose seat she filled, it now appears that she is fully on board with President Donald Trump’s agenda, at least domestically.
Upon being sworn in, she had written that she was “not Lindsey” and had her “own way of doing things.” She also said she intended to focus on domestic issues, unlike her brother, who was zeroed in on foreign affairs, particularly in his ardent support for Ukraine and Israel.
The president has been fixated on the SAVE Act for months, but Senate Majority Leader John Thune has repeatedly said the legislation does not have the 60 votes needed in the Senate and has resisted calls from conservative hardliners and the president to dismantle the filibuster to pass the bill.
Still, MAGA has been fuming at Thune, going as far as to call him “traitorous” for stalling on bringing the act to a vote on the Senate floor.
The Senate version of the bill, which differs from the version that has already passed the House, does not include provisions that Trump has demanded, including a nationwide ban on mail-in ballots, and what he calls “NO MEN IN WOMEN’S SPORTS” and “NO TRANSGENDER MUTILIZATION [sic] FOR CHILDREN.”
Trump did notch a win as the Senate has given the SAVE Act the president’s preferred name, the SAVE America Act, as he had repeatedly raged on Truth Social about the bill being called simply the SAVE Act.
The president used his big speech last week, in which he again pushed theories of nonexistent voter fraud in the election he lost nearly six years ago, to push Republicans to pass the SAVE Act once again.
Since the speech, Republicans, in their growing desperation to get the bill to Trump’s desk, have now been citing Olive Garden’s Never-Ending Pasta Pass, which the restaurant says customers need to show an ID to use, as the latest reason that their legislation should be passed.
The new connection appears to stem from White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson, who cited it in an interview with the far-right Newsmax the morning after Trump’s speech.
“I thought, that’s weird,” Jackson proclaimed. “Olive Garden takes pasta pass security more seriously than Democrats are taking election security.”
Her comments have prompted a wave of Republicans to get on board with the new Olive Garden talking point.
House Republican Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, who worked at his hometown Olive Garden, declared online, “We are protecting our breadsticks more than our ballots.”
Democrats have criticized the new talking point as overly simplistic, given that people can still dine at an Olive Garden without showing identification.
“Voting is a constitutional right,” House Democrat Jim McGovern said. “It is not a lunch special. You have a constitutional right to vote; you don’t have a constitutional right to a breadstick or a bowl of pasta.”
