WASHINGTON — Republicans are on the brink of an internal clash over the SAVE Act, a high priority for President Donald Trump that would overhaul election laws nationwide and require proof of citizenship to vote.
The legislation has passed the House but faces a 60-vote threshold in the Senate, which the 53-seat Republican majority has no hope of achieving due to fierce Democratic opposition.
So some Republicans are pushing Senate leadership to find a way to sidestep the filibuster. They recognize they don’t have the votes to abolish it, despite Trump’s wishes. But they believe they have another path: using existing rules to force Senate Democrats to engage in a “talking filibuster” on the floor, tire them out until they submit, and proceed to a vote on the bill at a simple-majority threshold.
“Return to Senate tradition. Require filibustering senators to (gasp) actually speak,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, a vocal proponent of the idea and chief sponsor of the legislation, said on X. “Using existing Senate rules. Pass the SAVE America Act.”
But it’s easier said than done, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Tuesday when asked by NBC News whether he believes the tactic can succeed to pass the SAVE Act.
It would eat up a huge amount of floor time and put other priorities on ice, he warned, “and we have a lot of things we have to do,” including a housing bill, a market structure bill, potentially “permitting reform,” a farm bill and a highway bill, as well as sanctions on Russia.
And there’s no guarantee of success.
“We will vote on the SAVE Act,” Thune said. “But exercising or triggering a talking filibuster has ramifications, implications that I think everybody needs to be aware of. So we will have those discussions. But that obviously ties the floor up for an indefinite amount of time, with not only unlimited debate, but also unlimited amendments, all of which can reset the clock.”
Previous Senate majorities have weighed the idea and junked it, concluding that there’s no realistic chance of it working.
“It’s going to take something that can entail a tremendous amount of effort, work and cooperation, and at the expense of the other things we might be doing in the Senate,” Thune added, while promising that he will “have a discussion about it” with Republican senators “and see where our conference is.”
Holding the floor and talking used to be necessary to block legislation. But changes to Senate rules and procedures in the 1970s reduced the “cloture” threshold to end debate to 60 votes, while giving rise to the “silent filibuster” where senators could block legislation with minimal effort. As a result, the rules are stacked in favor of a filibustering minority, making it very difficult for a majority to trump them.
And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is very determined to block the legislation, describing it as a nefarious attempt at voter suppression as Trump calls to “nationalize” elections and makes false claims about widespread fraud.
“The SAVE Act is an abomination,” Schumer told reporters on Tuesday. “It’s Jim Crow 2.0 across the country. We are going to do everything we can to stop it.”
The bill would require all voters to show proof of citizenship to register and vote in federal elections. Democrats note that non-citizen voting is already illegal and rare — voting requires a person to testify to U.S. citizenship and face criminal penalties if caught lying. While Republicans call voter ID an important safeguard against illegal voting, Democrats argue it’s designed to disenfranchise American citizens who don’t have up-to-date identification.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., who briefly threatened to keep the government shut down this week unless Senate Republicans passed the SAVE Act, said they have to use the tools at their disposal when asked how they could get around the filibuster.
“Well, I’m not in the Senate, and I don’t make excuses for why other people fail. But if you don’t try, I think you’re part of the problem,” she said. “If you look at a Republican now versus a Republican 10 years ago, MAGA is definitely alive. And you’re seeing a very aggressive House, maybe not so much an aggressive Senate."
She suggested the House could add the SAVE Act to other legislation going forward. "At a certain point, when we stick it on certain vehicles, they won’t be able to stop it forever," she said.
Trump, meanwhile, has been clear on his demand: “The Republicans must ‘blow up’ the filibuster,” he wrote in all caps in a recent social media post, insisting that he is “making progress with the Republicans on terminating the filibuster.”
He has called for abolishing the 60-vote threshold for various priorities, including on health care. “And you know how you get it through?” the president said Tuesday at the White House. “The filibuster. Get rid of the filibuster and start voting.”
Trump’s calls have been rejected by numerous Republicans, who believe the filibuster protects conservatives in the long run, knowing they'll be in the minority again in the years to come. That includes Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, who said this week regarding the SAVE Act push: “I also oppose skirting around the filibuster. We need to pass our conservative agenda, but not at the expense of our institutions.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who is retiring at the end of the year, has said he would immediately resign from the Senate if his colleagues nixed the filibuster.
Thune, for his part, has utilized loopholes and at times created new precedents to pass Republican priorities without triggering the “nuclear option” to pierce the filibuster for legislation. Democrats tried and failed to abolish silent filibusters in 2022, and Thune has maintained ever since he was elected majority leader in November 2024 that the legislative filibuster will remain unchanged on his watch. He reiterated that stance this week.
“With respect to the filibuster, I think we all know where the votes are on that,” Thune told reporters.
In response to Thune’s comments, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement, “President Trump cares deeply about the safety and security of our elections — that’s why he’s urged Congress to pass the SAVE Act and other legislative proposals that would establish a uniform standard of photo ID for voting, prohibit no-excuse mail-in voting, and end the practice of ballot harvesting.”
