4 Sneaky Ways GOP Senators Will Try To Block SAVE Act

The Republican-controlled Senate began debate Tuesday on the SAVE America Act, legislation that would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo ID to cast a ballot. Provisions included in the bill, which has already passed the House, have widespread national support among Republicans, Independents, and Democrats.

Getting the legislation to pass the Senate is a feat — but not because it’s impossible. Rather because Senate Majority Leader John Thune appears ready to “go out of his way to set up a 60-vote obstacle which will doom the bill to failure but allow puke Republicans to pretend to support it since they know it’s dead anyway,” as The Federalist co-founder and CEO Sean Davis explained in a post on X.

Here’s how Republican senators could try to block the critical legislation.

Avoid The Talking Filibuster

One way Republican leadership could avoid passing the legislation is by avoiding the use of a talking filibuster, which would require any opposing senators to talk on the floor continuously in order to delay a vote. Once Democrats (and perhaps a few RINO’s) run out of their two-speech limit and exhaust themselves, the SAVE America Act would go to a simple majority vote.

But declining to use that option means the only way to break a filibuster would be to use cloture, which means the Senate would need to get 60 votes to end the filibuster.

Senior Legal Fellow at the Conservative Partnership Institute Cleta Mitchell warned against that approach in a post on X: “We do not want a CLOTURE vote. If [John Thune] does, he will have DELIBERATELY killed the SAVE America Act. We will hold him responsible. We want a full debate. Make the Democrats talk. And then we can pass the bill by simple majority. We are holding the GOP Senators ESPECIALLY [Thune] accountable for using the Senate rules to pass the bill. No fake filibuster. No cloture vote.”

But Davis suggested one reason Thune would not move to a talking filibuster or any other provision that might trigger a simple majority vote is because “Thune knows a public vote where Republicans get less than 50 votes — with people like Tillis and Curtis and McConnell and Murkowski voting against IT — is electoral poison. He doesn’t want it to pass, but he also can’t have it die at the hands of his own puke colleagues.”

Falsely Claiming A Rules Change Is Required

Along the same lines of the talking filibuster, Thune has conveniently adopted the same posture of some of the propaganda press, that is, falsely claiming a rules change would be required to invoke a talking filibuster and therefore hinting a talking filibuster would not be used.

Thune was asked by ABC News whether (as described by the outlet) “Senate rules requiring 60 votes to advance most legislative matters could be altered in light of Trump’s new pressure campaign to pass the SAVE America Act.”

“The president clearly is very interested in getting the SAVE America bill up and voted on, although he wants a modified version of it, and so we’ll do our best to do that,” Thune responded. “But the one thing I’ve said all along is, and I’ve told him and others, that I can’t guarantee an outcome. I can’t guarantee a result. If the result is only achieved by nuking the legislative filibuster, we don’t have the votes to do that and so that’s not a — that’s just not a realistic option.”

But as Rachel Bovard, vice president of programs at Conservative Partnership Institute, told The Federalist, existing Senate rules allow for a talking filibuster (that would lead to a simple majority vote) without “nuking the legislative filibuster.”

“Everything in the Senate prior to cloture being filed on it is at simple majority,” Bovard told The Federalist. “What a filibuster is, is you’re forcing them to actually come physically delay the vote.”

Bovard explained that in order to end the filibuster, you either file cloture, which requires 60 votes under Senate Rule 22, or you keep forcing senators in the minority to hold the floor continuously and keep talking. When the talking stops, a simple majority vote naturally proceeds — no “changes” needed.

Refusing To Corral The Votes Needed

Davis also questioned whether Thune will allow the bill to stall by simply failing to unite Republicans in support of the legislation.

“It only takes 50 votes to proceed to the SAVE America Act Message from the House, which has been sitting and waiting for Senate action weeks. If John Thune and John Cornyn can’t find 50 votes for voter I.D., what exactly is the point of them?” Davis said in a post on X.

As The Federalist’s Chris Bray pointed out, however, the role of Thune is precisely to corral votes when they’re missing.

Bray says Thune, like other Republicans, are pretending that Congress works by asking “every member what they feel like doing, and then the members all say how they want to vote, and then leadership accepts their decision and the conversation ends.”

But that’s not the case. In fact, when President Lyndon B. Johnson wanted his legislative priorities passed, he would wake members of Congress in the middle of the night threatening a revocation of federal funding for critical priorities like highways.

In other words, there’s always a way when there’s a will.

In fact, another way to corral the needed simple majority votes is to keep bringing the legislation to a vote, Bovard told The Federalist.

“At some point Thune will file cloture and that will likely fail. That’s fine — that’s a data point about where the votes are,” Bovard explained, adding while Thune can move on to other timely measures like funding DHS, he can commit to coming back to the SAVE America Act.

“The Senate leans in on bills they want to pass. Sometimes it takes multiple failed cloture votes to do it. Passing major legislation is a process that can take months, sometimes even years, but the Senate makes time for what it prioritizes,” Bovard said. “They cut deals with Democrats, they work on negotiation, they try to find compromise — either on the Senate floor, via amendments, or off the floor through negotiation — and then they bring the bill back up and try again.”

Bovard cited a 2019 attempt by Mitch McConnell to pass the Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East that was eventually passed after Democrats filibustered it.

“It is highly unlikely that the SAVE America Act passes after a week of floor time,” Bovard said. “It will need repeated efforts from Thune and Senate Republicans, on and off the floor.”

Letting Senators Go Home

Another way Thune could let the legislation fail is by allowing senators to leave Washington instead of forcing an extended debate which could help keep the pressure on senators to pass it.

Mitchell suggested that Thune force senators to stay in D.C. until the legislation is passed in response to a post by Thune in which he suggested Democrats use government shutdowns anytime they do not get what they want.

“So why are you letting them get away with it? Why don’t you say TODAY ‘cancel your flights out of DC tomorrow as no one is leaving the Senate … we are going to stay here until we get DHS funded and we are going to start talking on the SAVE America Act.’ Try that,” Mitchell said.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2