When Congress returns in September, it faces a backlog of legislative priorities including major bills funding U.S. farms, road and water infrastructure, and the entire federal government.
But with midterm elections fast approaching, no issue is more pressing to Republicans closely aligned with the Trump administration than election security, in particular, passing the contentious SAVE America Act.
Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling temporarily maintains President Donald Trump’s executive order imposing stricter citizenship verification standards for mail-in voting.
The decision has galvanized SAVE America Act supporters, who are reiterating demands that Senate Republican leadership take extraordinary measures to force the House-passed bill through the upper chamber.
“Congress has to do its part. This does not take the place of, it cannot replicate the SAVE America Act. We need the SAVE America Act, and we need it passed right now,” U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, the most vocal supporter of the bill, said after the ruling.
“Sure, we don’t have 60 votes, but you know, we have a simple majority,” Lee added, referencing the Senate filibuster requirements for passage. “And if we reconvene the Senate and announce we’re going to debate the SAVE America Act until it passes – no going home, no recesses, no weekends until it passes – it would pass. It might pass with a couple of changes, but it would pass.”
Lee and a handful of other Republicans have already derailed or delayed progress on other legislation over demands that congressional Republican leadership get the SAVE America act passed, even if it means tweaking or eliminating the filibuster.
The bill would mandate that Americans display a valid ID to vote in federal elections, require people to present proof of citizenship when registering to vote, and necessitate in-person voter registration for federal elections. It also directs all states to remove all noncitizens from their voter rolls.
Under the legislation, people would not be able to register to vote with only their driver’s license, since noncitizens can obtain that. They would instead need to present documents proving U.S. citizenship, such as a birth certificate or U.S. passport.
Trump and the bill’s supporters believe that many states’ weak voter registration requirements could jeopardize Republicans’ chances of winning in the 2026 midterm elections.
Existing law for voter registration in federal elections does not require the state to verify citizenship attestations before votes are counted, which Republicans point out is an election security risk.
Trump himself believes that he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden due to mass voter fraud, although a new U.S. Census Bureau report finds this unlikely.
After comparing its data with records from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Social Security Administration, the IRS, and other agencies, the bureau concluded “with high confidence” that roughly 24,000 of the 128 million votes it analyzed were cast by noncitizens in 2020.
It still has 32 million votes left to analyze, but the preliminary results show that the amount of suspected fraudulent voting was not high enough in any state to influence the presidential election results.
