House Speaker Mike Johnson delivered the SAVE Act to the House floor with likely passage Thursday, but the landmark voter ID bill faces an uncertain future in the Senate without its late champion, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Johnson, under intense pressure from President Trump, attached the SAVE Act to a third budget reconciliation package funding the Pentagon. The measure requires proof of citizenship and photo ID when registering to vote.
A House committee will Thursday put final touches on the bill in a markup session, with hopes of passing it before members leave Capitol Hill for the weekend.
But even before Johnson released the text of the $95 billion budget reconciliation package — which includes $10 billion in grants to states implementing the SAVE Act — Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville warned that Graham’s death adds major uncertainty to the bill’s Senate prospects.
“Lindsey’s smart. He understood it. He understood that we didn’t,” Tuberville said. “President Trump kind of leaned on Lindsey on this. ‘Say, Lindsey, you got to get this in. You’ve got to get into reconciliation. You got to push this.'”
Graham, who chaired the Senate Budget Committee and was responsible for structuring the legislative process Trump demanded Republicans use, was a strong supporter of the measure.
Trump says Graham told him hours before he died Saturday, “We’re all set” for the SAVE Act.
Tuberville said Graham would have kept the act attached to the budget reconciliation bill and pushed it through the upper chamber. While budget reconciliation allows certain bills to pass with a simple majority of 51 votes, the Senate parliamentarian decides whether the SAVE Act meets the so-called Byrd rule requirement that it’s a budget or spending bill.
Prior to his death, Graham had also introduced the Election Security Partnership Act to incentivize states with federal funding to remove non-citizens from their voter rolls.
Graham’s sister was sworn into the Senate Tuesday to serve the remainder of his term, ensuring Republicans won’t lose his vote. But Tuberville said Republicans will miss Graham’s unique ability to “go into the back rooms and work with the Democrats.”
“You know they dislike President Trump so much that they won’t even discuss any kind of bill we’re putting on the floor, but Lindsey could at least get them to talk, and he was kind of the person that would try to get people to go our way,” Tuberville said.
Tuberville argues the measure must pass because of illegal voting, claiming that “probably five, maybe six senators” from the 2020 elections are in office and “shouldn’t be here” because ballot boxes were “stuffed.”
To bolster his argument, Tuberville pointed to remarks this past weekend by New York Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who told a crowd of supporters that the act would make it “hard for any Democrat in any state to win any election.”
“She spoke the truth out loud for once,” Tuberville said. “They know that if they have to have an ID to vote, they’re going to lose a lot of seats.”
The SAVE Act also aims to prohibit mail-in voting, with only some exceptions. The bill has passed the House three times but has languished each time in the Senate.
Republicans have 53 members in the Senate, and most bills require 60 votes, forcing the GOP to get seven Democrat votes. The move to attach the act to the budget reconciliation bill allows passage with a simple majority of 51 votes.
Yet in June, 49 Republicans voted for the bill and four voted against the amendment to add the SAVE Act to the budget reconciliation package: Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
Among their concerns are banning mail-in voting, and that the measure would violate the Byrd rule and therefore wouldn’t be approved by the Senate parliamentarian.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has refused to amend the Senate’s rule to lower the legislative threshold and require bills to pass with a simple 51-vote majority, rather than 60 votes, though Trump has aggressively pushed for it, warning that Democrats would alter the rule once they took power.
Trump also refused to sign a bipartisan housing bill Congress sent to his desk as a protest to the Senate for failing to pass the SAVE Act.
Despite the heavy blow of Graham’s passing, Tuberville insisted Senate Republicans would regroup and push the bill forward. The former football coach noted that “there are no timeouts in life.”
“You know up here, you know we’ll continue to go,” he said. “You can’t stop things. Things are going to keep going no matter what happens. So we’ll regroup and try to continue on, but he’ll be desperately definitely missed.”
Trump on Meet the Press says Lindsey Graham called him last evening after he got back from Ukraine and said "we're all set for the SAVE America Act."
"He sounded a little tired," Trump added. "It could have been his last call." pic.twitter.com/hqFQuHZ9Fp
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 12, 2026
ELISSA SLOTKIN: "The SAVE [America] Act, which would literally allow this administration to rig our democracy so that it would be hard for any Democrat in any state to win any election."
Is Senator Slotkin admitting that Democrats win because of illegal voters? pic.twitter.com/6Wn3AUCTQD
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 14, 2026
