A Senate Republican just dropped a bombshell: President Trump’s SAVE America Act is dead on arrival — and even if it passed, there wouldn’t be enough time to implement it before the midterm elections.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told the Raleigh News & Observer that the flagship election integrity bill lacks both the votes and the clock to make a difference in November.
“Unless they do the 60 votes, they know it’s dead, and so all this is theater,” Tillis said.
“Unless they do the work to get to the 60 votes, they know it’s dead, and so all this is theater.”
The Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act has become a flashpoint among congressional Republicans. Trump has repeatedly demanded the Senate pass it by any means necessary — even floating nuking the filibuster or attaching it to must-pass legislation.
But Republicans aren’t unified. Democrats unanimously oppose it. And Tillis — one of four Senate Republicans who voted against attaching the bill to an immigration enforcement funding measure last month — says the whole push is a fantasy.
Tillis knows voter ID. As North Carolina House speaker, he championed the state’s voter ID law. But implementing it took serious time and money, he argued — resources the SAVE America Act doesn’t allocate.
“Honestly, here in North Carolina, or in virtually any state, the ability, if we go back to when we implemented voter ID in North Carolina, it took a year to get everything in place with adequate funding,” Tillis said.
The current version of the SAVE America Act provides no direct funding to states for implementation. That’s partly why the bill wouldn’t work under budget reconciliation — the process Trump and House Republicans are considering — which requires provisions to have direct budgetary impact, not just policy goals.
Tillis sketched out a nightmare scenario: even if everything went perfectly, the rollout would collide with early voting periods or wipe them out entirely.
“Let’s assume you only allow early voting in the month of October,” Tillis said. “Then do you honestly believe that we can have this thing up in 50 states? There’s no funding. There’s no specific implementation instructions.”
“It’s become a joke, in my mind, for somebody that’s actually implemented voter ID law, how anybody can look the American voters in the eye and suggest that it could be implemented in time without just causing a huge impact on the elections and ironically undermine the confidence of it.”
Despite Tillis’s warnings, a vocal group of congressional Republicans — including Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla. — continue demanding Senate action on the bill.
Trump isn’t backing down. He’s threatened to nuke the filibuster, attach the SAVE America Act to other legislation, or fire the Senate parliamentarian if that’s what it takes.
After the Supreme Court ruled that mail-in ballots can be counted after Election Day, Trump doubled down on Truth Social: “In light of the tremendous loss in the Supreme Court today concerning Voter’s Rights, and the fact that ‘people’s’ votes are allowed to be counted LONG AFTER an Election is over, it is more important than ever to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT.”
The fracture over the SAVE America Act exposes deep Republican divisions just months before the midterms — with Trump pushing hard for a bill his own party can’t agree on, and one senator calling the whole effort political theater.
