President Donald Trump has made it crystal clear that passing the SAVE Act is his top priority. President Donald Trump has made it crystal clear that passing the SAVE Act is his top priority. But even after he threatened not to sign any new legislation unless the SAVE Act was signed first, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said that changing Senate rules to pass the legislation is still off the table. But there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. Possibly.
“We want to get to the SAVE Act,” Thune said last month. However, he said there isn’t enough unity in the GOP conference to make it happen.
“The talking filibuster issue is one on which there is not, certainly, a unified Republican conference, and there would have to be,” he explained after a Senate GOP meeting. “If you go down that path, you’re talking about the need to table what are going to be numerous amendments and an ability to keep 50 Republicans unified, pretty much on every single vote. And there’s just not, there isn’t support for doing that at this point.”
The frustrating thing about this is that the SAVE Act itself is straightforward common sense. It requires documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, plus a government-issued photo ID to actually vote. States would also be required to scrub non-citizens from voter rolls. It’s not just common sense, but also popular. Various polls peg support for these policies anywhere between 70% and 80% of Americans, including majorities of Democrats and minorities. The bill passed the House last month and has over 50 Senate co-sponsors. The only thing preventing it from becoming law is the 60-vote threshold to end debate in the Senate.
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So, is there hope? Well, according to lead sponsor Sen. Mike Lee, there is. In a video update, he sounded guardedly optimistic, claiming talks with Thune's team had "turned kind of a corner." They're cooking up a "hybrid version of the talking filibuster"—not the full Monty, but enough extended debate to put Democrats on the spot before filing cloture. "We've been working closely with Leader Thune and his staff, and they've been great to work with," Lee said. "We're going to bring it to the floor. We're going to debate it for an extended period of time before filing cloture./.. This bill needs to remain on the Senate floor... for as long as it takes to get it done." Thune confirmed the floor time starts next week, promising a "full and robust debate" to expose Democrat extremism.
🚨Important Status Update Regarding the SAVE America Act 🚨
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) March 13, 2026
We’re making serious progress @LeaderJohnThune and his team have been working closely with us pic.twitter.com/2Nzt1HaZLO
Lee has zero incentive to hype this if it's dead. As the bill's lead sponsor, he wants to see it pass as much as we do, and false hope would torch his credibility with the base. But let's not pop champagne yet. The key to this strategy is the idea that Democrats will cave to political pressure. That’s a wonderful thing to believe in, but Democrats view SAVE as an existential threat to their power. They wouldn’t be shouting “Jim Crow 2.0” if they didn’t. The party leadership is already on record opposing the SAVE Act, so why should we believe that Democrats being forced to openly defend their opposition will suddenly realize that they are wrong? I want to believe Mike Lee’s right, but Democrats know what’s at stake if commonsense election integrity legislation passes, and they will never relent.
