Donald Trump with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) and Melania Trump on January 8, 2025 (Office of Senator John Thune/Wikimedia Commons)
President Donald Trump is facing opposition from some prominent Republicans over his hardline voter ID bill.
The controversial SAVE America Act barely scraped by in the House of Representatives and has languished in the Senate for weeks, but President Trump is pressuring Republicans not only to pass it — he has added demands that would make it even harder for Republicans and Democrats to support the legislation.
Trump wants the bill to curtail mail-in voting and has called for anti-transgender language to be added to it.
Now, as House Republicans convene for a three-day meeting at his Doral Golf Resort in Florida, he’s urging GOP leaders to act immediately.
On Monday, Trump told House Republicans in a televised speech that they must pass the SAVE Act because if they do, Democrats “probably won’t win an election for 50 years, and maybe longer.”
He also threatened to sign no other legislation until the SAVE Act comes to his desk — a proposition some Democratic lawmakers did not find objectionable.
“GOP leaders now have to drum up support from members reluctant to dive into the culture war of transgender politics when they’d prefer to focus on affordability,” Politico reports. “And the mail voting provision was left off the package last time for a reason.”
Over in the Senate, several Republicans “signaled Monday they aren’t behind the president’s call to significantly limit mail-in ballots, touting the success of the practice in their own states.”
“I don’t want the federal government telling me that I can’t have mail-in voting or absentee ballot voting,” Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) told reporters. “There’s nothing wrong with mail-in voting if you have the right standards in place.”
Trump is also continuing to pressure Senate Republican Majority Leader John Thune to commit to a talking filibuster to pass the bill — a move Thune strenuously opposes.
Leader Thune “delivered a public reality check on the ‘complicated and risky’ idea Monday,'” Politico noted.
“Having studied it and researched it pretty thoroughly, you have to show me how, in the end, it prevails and succeeds,” Thune told reporters on Monday, as NBC News reported. “Because I think what has been promised out there is that it would actually, in the end, get an outcome. And I find it very hard to see that based on actual past experience.”
“We can’t find a piece of legislation in history that’s been passed that way,” he added.
Seeking to avoid “a bruising internal filibuster fight,” Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) “floated passing the SAVE America Act through reconciliation Monday, despite the lack of a clear budget connection.”
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