Mitch McConnell Might Try To Smother SAVE Act To Spite Trump

Old glitching Mitch appears to be glitching again. Is his Trump hate showing? 

As Sen. Mitch McConnell prepares to ride off into the congressional sunset, the Kentucky Republican is said to be sticking it to President Donald Trump one more time. And the sticking this time, not surprisingly, involves one of Trump’s most urgent concerns: election integrity. 

“Oh, yeah, that’s what McConnell is doing. Personally speaking, I think it still stems from Jan. 6 (2021 Capitol riots),” a top congressional aide told The Federalist on Thursday afternoon, as the battle over the SAVE Act ground down to trench warfare.

“Of course, Trump hasn’t had nice things to say about McConnell, and vice versa, but I think it’s personal, no matter what (McConnell) says,” the aide added. 

The 83-year-old Majority Leader’s latest trip to the hospital this week for “flu-like” symptoms has slowed the pace even more so on whatever version of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act(SAVE Act) the listless GOP majority believes can squeak through. But McConnell’s intransigence on a bill that humbly asks for proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in U.S. elections has been felt over the nearly 300 days since the Republican-controlled House passed the measure.

To say House Republicans have had it, doesn’t quite say enough. 

“I just sent a letter to Mitch McConnell asking his committee to stop stalling the SAVE Act,” Texas Rep. Brandon Gill wrote on X earlier this week. “The House did its job. The Senate needs to do theirs.”

The letter, signed by Republican Study Committee members, reminds McConnell, chairman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, that he has “unique authority to add this critical legislation to the markup calendar and advance it to the Senate floor for a vote.”

“As the 2026 midterm elections are swiftly approaching, Congress cannot afford to delay the consideration of critical legislation that will assure the trustworthiness of our elections,” Gill warned. The Texas congressman notes that 48 of McConnell’s Republican Senate colleagues — a super majority of the Republican Senate Conference — have cosponsored the legislation. The Kentucky Republican is not one of them. 

‘Thune Must Bring It’

Dealing with what Lincoln called “a case of the slows”, The authors of the SAVE Act have introduced the SAVE America Act, which adds a voter identification requirement to the original measure. Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., last week said the provision requiring voters present an eligible photo ID before casting their ballots would come to the floor “at some point.” 

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who co-authored the SAVE America Act with Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, said the House will take up the “improved version” of the bill next week. 

“Once the bill passes the House, Leader Thune must bring it to the Senate floor and force Democrats to explain why they oppose securing our elections,” Roy said in a statement. 

As proponents note, Americans overwhelmingly support voter ID and proof of citizenship to vote in U.S. elections. More than four-fifths of American voters favor citizenship vetting, according to a 2024 Gallup poll. And 84 percent support photo ID in elections.

So what’s the hold up? Democrats. And Republicans. And the stately and slower-than-molasses body known as the U.S. Senate. 

‘Everything We Can’

Democrats didn’t want anything to do with the SAVE Act, and they don’t want anything to do with the SAVE America Act. Not surprising. They don’t want anything to do with election integrity. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, who has so often behaved abominably, called it “an abomination” and “Jim Crow 2.0.” Democrats  claim that photo ID and documentary proof of citizenship would disenfranchise “millions of voters.” It doesn’t. It wouldn’t.

“We are going to do everything we can to stop it,” Schumer declared. 

That kind of passionate opposition to election integrity tells you everything you need to know about the Democratic Party of 2026. To fight this hard against a bill that would make it absolutely clear that foreign nationals cannot vote in federal elections? Why? Because they want foreign nationals to vote in federal elections. 

And, yes, noncitizens do vote in U.S. elections, and thousands of ineligible voters have been found on state voter rolls across the country. 

‘Nationalizing’ Elections

Democrats in recent days have seized on what they believe is a winning message to sink the election-integrity efforts that most Americans say they want. Appearing Monday on former FBI deputy director Dan Bongino’s podcast, Trump expressed his long-held frustration about the swing states that were central to 2020’s rigged presidential election. The president said Republicans should “nationalize the voting” in state’s notorious for election shenanigans. 

He didn’t back away from his comments on Tuesday at a signing ceremony in the Oval Office. Prominent Republicans stood behind Trump at the event as he took questions from the media. 

“I want to see elections be honest, and if a state can’t run an election, I think the people behind me should do something about it,” the president said referring to the Republican lawmakers. The people behind him, for instance, could write and pass laws that truly make it “easy to vote, but hard to cheat.”

Democrats pounded their chests, insisting that the guy they’ve labeled the biggest “threat to democracy” wanted to rip out the constitution’s election clause and take away the states’ authority to administer elections. 

It seems they have forgotten how they tried to “nationalize” elections when they were in power. 

The first bill that then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi rolled out in 2021 was HR 1, a 900-page behemoth that would have the federal government take over federal elections. The “For the People Act,” as the legislation was banally dubbed, would have banned voter ID across the country. It would have barred states from routinely cleaning their voter rolls and, laughably enough, the People Act would have ended “partisan gerrymandering to prevent politicians from picking their voters” — you know, like California just did. 

‘A Constitutional Issue’

But the same people lecturing Trump about the Constitution clearly haven’t read it. The Elections Clause states, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”

Congress has passed laws making or altering the regulations. 

Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom, said the SAVE Act simply fixes a flawed section of a national election law — National Voter Registration Act of 1993 bars states from requiring documentary proof of U.S. citizenship up registering to vote. Instead, state have to accept a glorified honor system.

“The bill [the SAVE Act] isn’t invading the province of the state, it’s fixing this problem,” von Spakovsky said Thursday in an interview with The Federalist. Requiring proof of citizenship affects aliens, the election law expert said, and the constitution gives Congress 100 percent authority over aliens and naturalization.

Then there is the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1971, another nationalizing of election administration, if you will. The law bans foreign nationals from making contributions “in connection with any federal, state or local election.” 

Yet, congressional Republicans shrunk into the shadows like George Costanza in the pool when pressed on Trump’s comments. 

“I’m not in favor of federalizing elections, no. I think that’s a constitutional issue,” Thune told reporters. Is he in favor of a federal election law that keeps noncitizens from voting in federal elections? 

‘Make Them Work for It’

If any version of the SAVE Act makes it to the Senate floor, Democrats would kill it through cloture. Standing alone, the bill would need 60 votes to survive final Senate action. Republicans have 53. 

But there might just be a way to get around the filibuster threat. The majority could bypass the so-called “silent filibuster” and make Democrats into a “talking filibuster,” the old-school mechanism to grind a bill to a halt to avoid a simple-majority vote. If done right, proponents of the strategy say, Democrats would eventually run out of time should they pull a “Spartacus” (aka Sen. Cory Booker) stunt and drone on for a day straight. With 47 Senate Democrats, the “talking filibuster” could take a mighty long time, without restrictions.  

“Force them to do that rather than the current procedure,” von Spakovsky said. “Make them work for it, make them justify to the American people why they are against this.”  

Which leads us back to the clincher. The SAVE Act won’t have a chance if it’s killed in the cradle, if McConnell decides to sit on it. 

“There is ZERO excuse for blocking the SAVE Act.,” Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., wrote on X. “Mitch McConnell — let it out of committee and get it DONE.”

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.