GOP Hatches Scheme to Evade Filibuster and Pass Trump's Assault on Voting Rights
House Speaker Mike Johnson said that “this time we’re going to try to put it on a reconciliation bill,” which “prevents the necessity of 60 votes in the Senate.”
With Senate Republicans appearing unwilling to nuke the filibuster to pass President Donald Trump's SAVE America Act, House Republican leaders are trying a new tactic to pressure states to enact the bill's severe voting rights restrictions without actually passing the bill itself.
The SAVE America Act has already passed the House multiple times. Trump has tried to hold a bipartisan housing bill hostage in order to pressure Senate Republicans to pass the bill without support from Democrats, but failed to get enough GOP senators on board.
On Sunday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told Fox Business that "we're going to try to pass it again, and this time we're going to try to put it on a reconciliation bill," which "prevents the necessity of 60 votes in the Senate."
Punchbowl reported on Monday that GOP leadership had expressed interest in creating a $4 billion grant program in order to incentivize states to enact parts of the bill, including requirements that voters re-register to vote with documents proving their citizenship and provide voter ID at the polls while outlawing mail-in ballots in most cases.
Johnson's plan is an alternative to the approach taken by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), and a group of other staunch Trump allies, who have threatened to torpedo the National Defense Authorization Act unless the full SAVE America Act is attached in a bid to force the Senate to pass it.
Luna has said that if her amendments are ruled out of order, she and her far-right colleagues will vote against procedural rules on other House bills to essentially grind the chamber to a halt.
Trump and other supporters of the legislation have said these measures are necessary to prevent noncitizens from voting, which is already illegal.
Even data from the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which has authored much of Trump's second-term agenda, shows that noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare: It has identified just 77 instances of noncitizen voting between 1999 and 2023.
Federal law already requires that voters provide their driver's license or the last four digits of their Social Security number when registering to vote, which allows election officials to verify their citizenship status.
But Republicans are hoping to replace this system with one that is far more burdensome, requiring voters to provide original copies of personal documents to prove their citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate matching their legal name, and to present them in person at an election office, effectively banning online registration.
Critics have warned that millions of eligible voters could face cost burdens when attempting to exercise their right to vote as a result, as a passport costs $165 to acquire and tens of millions of Americans do not have access to the original copy of their birth certificate.
Many voters, especially in rural areas, also live several hours away from their election office, and around 69 million married women have different legal names than the ones on their birth certificates.
Only two states, Georgia and Arizona, have historically enforced laws requiring voters to prove their citizenship with documents. But according to the Center for American Progress, 12 more have enacted provisions similar to those in the SAVE America Act since 2024, though many cannot be applied to federal elections and some have been blocked by courts.
New Hampshire, Wyoming, South Dakota, Ohio, Utah, Louisiana, and Florida have enacted laws requiring voters to prove their citizenship using physical documentation. Kansas, Mississippi, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Indiana have enacted laws that can require certain voters flagged as potential noncitizens to present proof.
Following a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling on Monday in which two conservative justices joined the three liberals to rule that states can count mail ballots that arrive after Election Day as long as they are postmarked before, Trump put more pressure on Republican holdouts in the Senate.
"All Dumocrats, and our five Republican Senate Hold Outs, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, Bill Cassidy, and Mitch McConnell must vote to SAVE OUR COUNTRY," he wrote on Truth Social.
Cassidy (R-La.) wrote in response, "Mr. President, I don’t know which version of the SAVE America Act you’re referring to, but I am a cosponsor and support the latest version. I don’t know which staffer misled you, but thank you for your attention to this matter!!"
"Btw, it’s irresponsible to postpone signing the Housing bill due to the SAVE Act. We need to start delivering relief to people for the high cost of housing ASAP!!" the senator added.
In the Oval Office, Trump told reporters that all other bills, including the housing bill and the defense spending bill, were "a big yawn" in comparison to the SAVE America Act.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said that "as the midterm elections approach, Trump and his allies are working overtime to silence Americans’ votes" and vowed that "Senate Democrats will continue to do everything we can to protect free and fair elections, where everyone’s voice is heard.”
