John Thune has the gavel, the title, and a 53-seat Republican majority. What he doesn't seem to have is the appetite to use any of it. The Senate majority leader from South Dakota keeps describing the SAVE America Act as a fight worth having, then keeps sounding like a man explaining why the fight has already been lost.
The bill isn't hard to explain; the SAVE America Act would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register for federal elections and photo ID to vote. The House passed the amended S 1383 by 218-213 on Feb. 11. The White House is openly urging people to contact senators and push the bill forward.
A majority leader who believes in the bill should make every senator own a position on it. Instead, Thune has leaned on the vote count. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) forced a vote on key SAVE Act priorities during the reconciliation fight, and the amendment failed 48-50. From Fox News:
Four Senate Republicans broke ranks to kill another effort to pass President Donald Trump's marquee voter ID and election integrity legislation as the GOP marches to fund immigration enforcement.
Just like last time, Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Thom Tills, R-N.C., joined all Democrats to thwart the move.
It’s the second attempt by Republicans to attach the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act to their budget reconciliation package, and the second time that they’ve failed to get the legislation across the line months after launching a quasi-floor takeover to debate the bill.
Trying to attach the bill to the nearly $70 billion budget reconciliation package geared toward funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol meant that the amendment from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., needed at least 60 votes to pass.
That threshold again proved too high a bar on Thursday night.
And it’s a result that further solidified the political reality in the upper chamber that the SAVE America Act has little chance of passing, given the unanimous Democratic resistance and lack of total buy-in among the Senate GOP, even if Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., launched the long sought after talking filibuster.
Name them.
Fine.
Name them again.
Then name them yet again.
A Senate leader doesn't have to insult his members, but he does have to lead them. He has to make the cost of failure higher than the comfort of drifting.
Harry Reid did that for Senate Democrats. Nancy Pelosi did it for House Democrats. They pushed, twisted, rewarded, punished, and counted votes after they had worked the room, not before.
Thune can say the fillibuster is real. It is. He can say 60 votes remains a wall for final passage. They are. Yet politics doesn't end when the parliamentarian clears his throat. Pressure is part of the job, and so is public argument. Making vulnerable Democrats defend their votes back home is part of the job.
Georgia should be one stop.
Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) is on the November ballot, and Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga. -10) just won the Republican runoff to face him. President Donald Trump carried Georgia in 2024, and Ossoff is defending the only Democratic Senate seat in a state Trump won.
Why isn't Thune in Atlanta, Macon, Savannah, and Augusta asking Ossoff why won't he protect the integrity of our elections? Is it too much to ask of him?
President Trump hasn't dropped the issue; he's now tying the broader voting reform push to other major fights in Congress, including FISA. Whether that tactic works or not, it shows the White House is still trying to create leverage. Thune's job is to turn leverage into votes, not explain why leverage is inconvenient.
Republican voters are tired of hearing that Democrats are united and Republicans are complicated. We know the Senate has rules; we also know leadership means more than honoring the rules while your agenda politely dies.
If Thune can't move the bill, he can at least move the battlefield. Put Democrats on record. Hell, put weak Republicans on record! Put Ossoff on record in Georgia, where voters can hear his answer.
The SAVE America Act may still fail: maybe the 60-vote wall holds; maybe the four Republican holdouts never move; maybe Democrats continue to vote as a united bloc.
Maybe.
Yet none of that excuses a majority leader from fighting in public before defeat arrives. Counting 48 votes is basic math; finding the next five is leadership.
Right now, Thune is doing too much of the first and far too little of the second.
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