As Iran War escalates, Trump and allies focus on pushing SAVE America Act

President Donald Trump and his MAGA allies are not letting a little thing like a shooting war in the Middle East distract them from their social media campaign for passage of the SAVE America Act.

“America’s Elections are Rigged, Stolen, and a Laughingstock all over the World. We are either going to fix them, or we won’t have a Country any longer,” Trump posted on Truth Social Monday, as Iranian strikes brought the U.S. troop death toll to six. “I am asking all Republicans to fight for the following: SAVE AMERICA ACT!”

The proposal, which would force voters to show documentary proof of citizenship — like a U.S. passport or birth certificate — when they register and photo ID when they cast a ballot, passed the House last month. But it’s stalled in the Senate, where it would need Democratic support to clear the 60-vote threshold to end a filibuster. 

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), also kept beating the SAVE America drum on X, tweeting multiple times to urge his colleagues to end the “zombie” filibuster with a return to the talking filibuster.  

“We can preserve the filibuster while requiring filibustering senators to speak in connection with the SAVE America Act[.] We don’t have to choose between the two,” wrote Lee, a member of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, as U.S. embassies were closing across the Middle East without evacuation plans for American citizens trapped in the region after the U.S. initiated hostilities Saturday.

Under current practice, when there aren’t 60 votes for a cloture vote to end debate on a bill, the Senate moves on to other matters. Under the talking filibuster, there theoretically wouldn’t need to be a cloture vote to end debate — once all the opponents were done talking, the Senate would move onto a vote. But in practice that would allow a bill’s opponents — Democrats, here — to eat up months of floor time, letting them effectively block the entire GOP agenda, including judicial and executive branch nominations. 

After Trump highlighted the bill during the State of the Union, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) tried to tamp down the pressure to move quickly on it, noting there wasn’t support among GOP senators to replace the filibuster.  

But the online badgering has not let up, even as Iranian retaliatory attacks killed U.S. troops. As Punchbowl’s Andrew Desiderio noted, after Thune expressed his condolences to the families of the lost service members in a tweet, SAVE America Act supporters demanding an end to the filibuster flooded his replies.

In Trump’s post, he also seemed to imply that the SAVE America Act would prevent universal mail-in ballots, even though it doesn’t, writing: “NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS (EXCEPT FOR ILLNESS, DISABILITY, MILITARY, OR TRAVEL!).”

The White House reportedly wanted to have such a ban in the bill, but that provision was left out for fear of costing GOP support for the measure. 

In addition to the ID requirements, the SAVE America Act would also require states to turn over their voter registration records to the Department of Justice and conduct monthly purges of their rolls — moves advocates warn would lead to accidental removal of eligible voters. 

The Act’s backers say it’s needed to prevent noncitizens from voting, even though there is no evidence of noncitizens intentionally casting ballots in significant numbers. A series of lengthy reviews by GOP election officials recently confirmed that, showing it’s a virtually nonexistent problem. Utah officials found just one noncitizen who was accidentally registered out of more than 2 million voters, while Idaho administrators identified 36 “likely” noncitizens. 

The bill would, however, risk preventing millions of eligible voters from casting their ballots. A Brennan Center for Justice analysis estimates upwards of 21 million Americans don’t have easy access to a passport or birth certificate. 

And while support for the bill mainly falls down party lines, some observers have questioned whether Republicans might hurt their own electoral chances if they enact the SAVE America Act, noting that GOP supporters are less likely to have a passport and voter suppression policies often fire up progressives.