Washington– Under pressure from President Donald Trump, Senate Republicans plan to launch a “full and vigorous debate” next week on the legislation to impose. Strict new requirements for proof of citizenshipan attempt to show Trump that they are serious about the bill even though it does not have enough support to pass it.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune plans to hold the conversation on the Senate floor for an unspecified period of time, although it will not officially be the “verbal filibuster” that Trump has proposed. Republicans intend to hold onto votes for days, if not weeks, to pressure Democrats.
“I can guarantee we will register Democrats,” Thune said on the Senate floor Thursday as he announced the plan to take up the bill, which has already passed the House.
Trump said He will not sign any other legislation Even the bill – otherwise known as Protecting the eligibility of American voters Or the Save America Act – passed. It faces united opposition from Democrats, meaning the Senate likely won’t be able to approve it unless Republicans change the rules and remove the ban. Disabled. Many GOP senators are unwilling to go that far.
Trump has made the bill a priority ahead of the midterm elections, arguing that Republicans need it to win — even as his party He won the presidency The majority in Congress in 2024 will be without it. Federal law already requires that voters in national elections affirm under oath, at risk of prosecution, that they are American citizens.
The bill also requires that voters present a photo ID when casting their ballot, as many states already require.
The president’s insistence on the bill, and an active push from the GOP base, put pressure on Thune. The GOP leader has repeatedly said they don’t have the votes to abolish the filibuster, which triggers the 60-vote threshold, or even to move to a talking filibuster that Trump has aggressively pressed them to deploy.
Even if they get the votes, stonewalling will not guarantee the law’s passage. Supporters of this approach say Democrats will eventually tire of talking or allow the legislation to pass. But Democrats would also be allowed to offer an unspecified number of amendments on any topic, forcing Republicans to take tough election-year votes and delaying the process even further.
“We can’t find legislation in history that has been passed this way,” Thune said this week.
Republican senators, caught between Trump and the Democratic opposition, came up with an alternative plan to hold the session themselves, depriving Democrats of the opportunity to speak for a week. This strategy avoids procedural risks, even if the process is likely to end in a failed vote. Republicans are also expected to consider several amendments to issues Trump has identified as priorities, including ending most mail-in ballots.
“Republicans are looking forward to this discussion,” Thune said.
However, as with filibuster talk, the plan carries risks — chief among them that it will not please Trump, who has demanded its passage and threatened to filibuster almost everything else in Congress.
Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, who led the effort with Trump to pass the Save America Act and pushed for the filibuster, said Thursday it’s not yet clear how things will play out.
“I think he understands that we need to make a strong effort here,” Lee said of Trump. “And a lot of that will have to be determined in real time as we do that.”
How satisfied Trump is with the process “will depend on whether we give it everything we have from his perspective,” Lee said.
Republican Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama said the goal is to figure out how to bring the issue up and “actually get a result.”
“We are working to understand what that means and what we need to be prepared to do,” Brett said.
Democrats uniformly oppose the legislation, arguing that it would disenfranchise about 20 million American voters who do not have birth certificates or other readily available documents.
Sen. Alex Padilla, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, said his side of the aisle is organizing “to get our arguments — and the facts — on the ground, too.”
He said it would be more accurate to call it the “Trump Rescue Act,” because the only way he said Republicans can try to hold on to power in the November election is to make it more difficult for eligible people to vote.
The Save America Act “is not a voter ID bill. It’s a voter suppression bill. It’s a voter purge bill,” Padilla said.