Republicans lack the votes to disenfranchise married women
The SAVE America Act is dead in the water, and MAGA is melting down.
On Sunday, International Women’s Day, President Donald Trump declared that he won’t sign any new legislation into law until Congress passes the SAVE America Act, a voter suppression bill that he believes would lock in election wins for Republicans “for 50 years” by disenfranchising millions of people—mainly married women, low-income people, and people of color.
“Great Job by hard working Scott Pressler on Fox & Friends talking about using the Filibuster, or Talking Filibuster, in order to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, an 88% issue with ALL VOTERS. It supersedes everything else,” he wrote on Truth Social. “MUST GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE. I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed, AND NOT THE WATERED DOWN VERSION - GO FOR THE GOLD.”
For months, Republicans have been appearing on Fox News and CNN trying to spin the SAVE America Act, which the House has already passed, as a very moderate and basic voter ID bill that just requires you to show a driver’s license to vote just as you would to get on a plane or buy a drink. This is blatantly untrue, and these lawmakers should be asking themselves why it would be necessary to lie about what a bill like this actually does in order to get the public behind it.
What the bill actually does is ban mail-in voting with narrow exceptions for the military and disabled people, require proof of citizenship to vote (not just an ID, but an original birth certificate or passport, which half the country does not have), and force states to hand over their voter rolls to the Trump administration. Married women who have changed their names would be forced to re-register to vote with a birth certificate in hand and sign an affidavit confirming their marital status, which is designed to be a big enough burden to make many women stay home. Queer and trans folks who have changed their names would face similar burdens under the new law, as well as those who can’t afford passports.
Trump believes that passing this bill is the only way he’ll win the midterm elections with tanking approval ratings and that it would make the United States a one-party country for the next half a century. In other words, it would fix the elections for Republicans by suppressing kinds of voters who already don’t like them. (Married women broke for Trump in 2024, ironically, while single women broke for Harris, so I’m not convinced that this bill would be the slam dunk for himself that he thinks it would. But voter suppression is unequivocally bad.)
I’ve been watching this bill closely for months, as the pressure ramps up for Republicans to pass it. Senate Republicans would need 60 votes to pass it outright, which they don’t have, even with John Fetterman (D-Pa.) switching sides1. So Trump and paid MAGA influencers have been trying to convince Senate Majority Leader John Thune to deploy the talking filibuster to pass it, meaning senators can only filibuster the bill for as long as they’re willing to stand up and talk old-school style on the Senate floor, which would allow the bill to pass by a basic majority. Unfortunately, Republicans really have to have their shit together in order to pull off that gimmick, because it places the burden on the majority party to maintain quorum, whereas Democrats would be able to introduce as many amendments as they want for weeks and months to wear down the GOP. Per NBC:
A talking filibuster under current rules would require 51 GOP senators in or near the chamber at all times, while Democrats would need just one member to hold the floor to sustain the filibuster, and would have the luxury of rotating among themselves. If the number of Republicans dips below a majority, or a “quorum,” a single Democrat could move to adjourn.
Thune basically said today that Republicans do not have the votes or the discipline to make this work, so the bill will go to a regular doomed vote in the Senate. “We don’t have the votes, either to proceed [to] a talking filibuster nor to sustain one if we got on one,” Thune said at a leadership press conference Tuesday. “That’s just a function of math. There isn’t anything I can do about that.”
That means Trump and Republicans will be unable to fix the November midterms harder than they are already trying to fix them via gerrymandering, ICE intimidation, and other kinds of election fuckery. (See Texas last week.) They’ll have to face their deep unpopularity head on.
MAGA influencers on X, naturally, are having a meltdown.
Trump has not weighed in yet on Thune’s press conference, but I imagine he won’t react very well to being told no. That his fate is written. And I guess I’m really excited about all the legislation he won’t be signing.
The mistake of Fetterman isn't up for correction this year, right?