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Republicans are steadfastly advocating for a new voting requirements bill, the SAVE America Act, in response to Democratic calls for changes in immigration enforcement policies.
However, they are encountering significant internal disagreements on how to successfully navigate the bill through both houses of Congress.
The House is slated to vote next week on the SAVE America Act, which proposes that citizens must provide proof of citizenship to register to vote and show identification to cast their ballots.
House conservatives are pushing for modifications to Senate filibuster rules as a means to circumvent Democratic resistance, yet they are likely to face considerable challenges in persuading the Senate.
The proposed legislation enjoys widespread Republican backing and has received enthusiastic support from President Trump, who recently urged Republicans to “take over” and “nationalize” elections.
“America’s Elections are Rigged, Stolen, and a Laughingstock all over the World. We are either going to fix them, or we won’t have a Country any longer,” Trump said on Truth Social Thursday, adding he was “asking all Republicans to fight for” the SAVE Act.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) had thrust the legislation into the middle of the latest funding storm.
Democrats, outraged by immigration officers killing two American citizens in Minneapolis in January, demanded that funding for the Department of Homeland Security be extended only temporarily as they negotiated with the White House on reforms to immigration enforcement policies. Those demands resulted in a four-day partial government shutdown, with DHS funding at risk of lapsing again after Feb. 13.
Luna argued that as a response to the Democratic demands, Republicans should attach voter ID and registration requirements bill to the funding package and send it back to the Senate — daring them to reject it and extend the shutdown. She ultimately backed down after meeting with Trump.
Luna told reporters after that she was confident that the Senate would utilize what is called a standing filibuster — or talking filibuster — to consider the SAVE Act. Under that tactic, rather than requiring 60 votes to invoke cloture and end debate, Republicans would force Democrats to hold the Senate floor, continuously speaking, until they wore down and allowed a final vote.
That would not technically change Senate rules, but it would change precedent for how the Senate has long operated — as well as be incredibly time consuming, requiring steep commitment from Republicans to wear out Democrats trying to filibuster the legislation.
Many Republican senators dismissed that tactic as impractical, and a dangerous step to eliminating the 60-vote threshold altogether. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said that while Senate Republicans would have a “conversation” about the tactic, he has not committed to using it.
Luna acknowledged the Senate’s reluctance to change its procedures for the bill.
“I think I probably went public with some information I shouldn’t have,” Luna said in an interview on Punchbowl News’s “Fly Out Day” on Thursday.
Still, hardline conservatives in the House are prodding the Senate to try the talking filibuster move.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), the lead sponsor of the SAVE America Act, in a House floor speech on Thursday also advocated for the Senate forcing a traditional filibuster, saying that passing the legislation in the House “will allow the Senate to be able to move that legislation if the Senate will do what it can do, which is force those who are saying they’ll filibuster to actually take to the floor of the Senate and filibuster.”
Roy and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced the updated version of the legislation that added a voter ID at the polls requirement in January. The House Rules Committee meets Tuesday afternoon to tee up the legislation for a floor vote.
“Let Democrats go to the floor of the Senate. Let them take the floor,” Roy said, rattling off polling figures showing board support for measures contained in the bill. “If Senate Republicans put this on the floor in the Senate, then we can force action and force Democrats to stand up on the Senate floor and oppose the will of over three-quarters of the American people. I want to see them try. I think if we do it, I think we’ll win.”
Luna, meanwhile, said that she is already looking at other tactics to advance the bill — floating trying to get the SAVE America Act attached to reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Reauthorization Act (FISA). Section 702 of FISA expires on April 20.
“If the SENATE does NOT do the right thing and embrace the talking filibuster, it will likely be placed on a must-pass like FISA,” Luna said on X.
FISA, a must-pass piece of legislation, has historically gotten opposition from conservatives pushing for stricter warrant requirements for surveillance that picks up the data of Americans. Luna pitched the idea of the SAVE America Act being a sweetener for those members.
Luna was confronted in the Punchbowl News interview, though, with the likely scenario of intelligence-focused lawmakers who craft the complex bill objecting to muddling it further with unrelated policy fights, endangering the legislation’s passage before its authorization date.
“I understand. And I also understand they’re going to have a hard time in a slim majority getting the votes for that. So, they better play ball,” Luna said in response.
It would not be the first time that Republicans attempted to use a must-pass bill as leverage for their voting requirements wish-list.
In 2024, the SAVE Act became a key point of a funding battle ahead of a shutdown deadline when Republicans, acting in line with calls from then-candidate Trump, added the SAVE Act to a funding stopgap in a long-shot attempt to press the Democratic-controlled Senate and then-President Biden into accepting it. Republicans later backed down, passing another stopgap without the voting measures.
What Republicans like won’t need to worry about is getting enough GOP support to pass it through the lower chamber, even though the party has a razor-thin majority.
The SAVE Act, the previous version of the bill, passed in the House last year with unanimous support from Republicans — and from four moderate Democrats: Rep. Ed Case (Hawaii), Rep. Henry Cuellar (Texas), Rep. Jared Golden (Maine), and Rep. Marie Glusenkamp Perez (Wash.). In 2024, it got support from five Democrats and all Republicans.