President Donald Trump’s attempts to strong-arm Republicans into gutting Senate rules to pass voter ID legislation will spill out onto the Senate floor this week, focusing political time and attention on a MAGA priority that appears certain to fail.
The debate on the Trump-backed legislation, which could span days or weeks and involve all-night talkathons, threatens to spotlight divisions within the party and muddy Republicans’ message in a midterm election cycle dominated by voters’ anxiety about the cost of living and, in recent weeks, the Iran war.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune and other GOP leaders have tried to keep the party focused on affordability. Yet Trump has argued that muscling through a partisan change in voting laws would secure wins for them in November.
The legislative push comes on the heels of a Trump-driven redistricting effort, the FBI’s seizure of 2020 ballots and voting records in Georgia, and Justice Department lawsuits against 24 states and Washington, DC, for refusing to turn over voter data.
“The Republicans MUST DO, with PASSION, and at the expense of everything else, THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” Trump said in one of his many recent social media posts on the legislation.
On Monday, Trump told reporters that voters want voter ID, proof of citizenship, an end to most mail-in ballots, tighter restrictions on who can compete in women’s sports and an end to transgender-related surgeries for children, all of which he wants to package into the same bill.
“I call it the best of Trump,” he said. “I think it hurts the Democrats to vote against it.”
Trump has tried to use the bill as a cudgel to get his party in line. He’s threatened to hold up other legislation until the Senate passes it, and he’s dangled the legislation’s advancement as a key consideration for his political support in a vicious and expensive Senate Republican primary.
GOP traditionalists have rejected Trump’s insistence that they do away with the Senate’s storied filibuster rule to pass the legislation with Republican-only support. Thune has also resisted calls from Trump, billionaire Elon Musk and Senate hardliners for an indefinite “talking filibuster” that is predicated on wearing out Democrats over months, with no clear endpoint.
But, under intensifying pressure from the White House, Thune ultimately agreed to at least give the bill some air time.
“It’ll give us a chance to air it out, draw contrast with the Democrats,” Thune said Thursday at the Capitol of his plans. “Then we’ll see where the votes are when it’s all done.”
The end result will almost certainly be a failed procedural vote with every Democrat opposed to the bill, in what some Republican hardliners have dismissed as “failure theater.” It all risks being a distraction — and one Democrats are eager to capitalize on.
“We should be debating the fact that this president dragged us to war and is costing people billions of dollars, while he at the same time is cutting Americans’ health care and making it more expensive,” Senator Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, said last week.
Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, warned millions of Americans could be purged from voter rolls without knowing it if the bill were to become law. “The Save Act is designed to make it harder to vote and easier to steal an election,” he charged.
Retiring North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, a moderate Republican who has sparred with Trump, also took issue with Thune’s strategy, likening it to a zombie from The Walking Dead TV show.
“I’ve never chosen to get into a fight that I knew I was going to lose,” he said last week.
It’s also doubtful Thune’s strategy will satisfy Trump.
The bill has become a totem of the MAGA movement and the president, who continues to claim without evidence that voter fraud is widespread and that he won the 2020 presidential election that he lost to Joe Biden.
Election Consequences
Texas Senator John Cornyn flip-flopped on his longtime support for the filibuster this past week under pressure from Trump, whose endorsement Cornyn is seeking in his May runoff against Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general. But Trump still hasn’t backed Cornyn.
Asked Saturday about his endorsement in the Texas race, Trump told NBC News he thinks he will endorse this week. “A lot has to do with the SAVE America Act. A lot is going to determine — Republicans have to get that passed, because that will secure voting in this country,” he said.
With the filibuster intact, Republicans would need at least seven Democrats — who are united against it — to pass the legislation.
Democrats have warned the bill would make it harder for millions of citizens to vote, especially those without passports or other documents like a birth certificate. The cost to get those documents, Democrats contend, amounts to a poll tax.
Senator Mike Lee, a conservative leading the effort to pass the bill, contends citizens in those circumstances could sign sworn affidavits attesting to their citizenship, which the states would then have to verify before counting their vote.
He is rallying like-minded senators to push Thune to keep the bill on the floor for an extended period.
“We want to keep this hanging for as long as possible,” Lee said in a video posted to X. “Make them stay for a long period of time, through weekends, perhaps threatening recesses.”
To force Democrats to debate at length, Republicans would likely need to keep a quorum of 51 senators on or near the floor, providing a TV-ready backdrop popularized by the 1939 Jimmy Stewart film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but almost never seen in the Senate chamber.
Democrats aren’t fazed by the prospect.
Booker, who set the record for longest Senate floor speech last year at more than 25 hours, said he’s prepared to speak as long as he’s able.
“I will do whatever it takes to kill a toxic, poisonous bill that hurts Americans, even stand on the floor for a very long time,” he said.
