Trump, Musk, House Republicans push for super-charged SAVE Act

President Donald Trump and his supporters are ramping up pressure on Senate Republicans to enact the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship (DPOC) in order to register. 

But Republicans may push instead for even more suppressive voting legislation.

Over the weekend, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told Fox News that his chamber was “looking at” sending a new version of the SAVE Act, which he called “the SAVE Act plus a picture ID requirement” to the Senate.

The SAVE Act, which passed the House in April, already would require voters to provide “valid, government-issued photo identification” to prove citizenship at registration in all cases. But Republicans and their supporters have also recently raised baseless concerns about states that don’t require photo ID from voters at the polls.

Scalise’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Following Scalise’s remarks, Trump repeatedly posted on social media to “DEMAND VOTER I.D.,” urging action on the bill and reiterating his debunked lies about the outcome of the 2020 election. Trump also repeated claims that 2020 was rigged against him at a White House press conference Tuesday and again at the Davos World Economic Forum Wednesday.

Elon Musk echoed those calls on X, the social media platform he owns, reposting Scalise’s interview with the comment, “[t]his is great.” 

“Pass the SAVE Act,” trended on X Tuesday afternoon.

Since resuming the presidency, Trump has periodically demanded action on the SAVE Act or photo ID voting requirements in general. In March, he issued an executive order purporting to direct states to require DPOC, but federal courts have blocked it as an unlawful overstep of executive authority. 

On Tuesday, Tea Party Patriots Action, one of the right wing advocacy groups that sponsored the “March to Save America,” that devolved into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, put out a call to its members to pressure the 17 Republican Senators who have not yet cosponsored the SAVE Act. The group launched a similar pressure campaign last year, holding a rally on the Hill that attracted tens of supporters. 

Back in September, the influential anti-voting activist Cleta Mitchell called on Congress to pass a ‘Super SAVE Act.”

It’s unclear whether Republicans could even pass a beefed-up SAVE Act out of the House right now, given that recent deaths and resignations have reduced their majority to just five seats over the Democrats. That buffer will soon drop to four, after the Jan. 31 special election to fill the seat of Sylvester Turner (D-Tex.), who died in March. GOP House leadership recently told members they should only miss votes for life-and-death matters due to the narrow margins. 

The House passed an earlier version of the bill, without the stricter photo ID requirements, in April by a 220-208 vote with four Democrats joining Republicans in support. Those Democrats — Reps. Ed Case of Hawaii, Henry Cuellar of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Glusenkamp Perez of Washington — did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Odds of passage look worse in the upper chamber, where Republicans would need seven other senators to join them to clear a filibuster. The improbability of that is what has driven Trump’s frequent demands to “TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER.” But as more strategic-minded Republicans have repeatedly noted before, doing that would allow Democrats, once they regain control of the Senate, to push their own, often more popular policies through without any concession to the GOP. 

Numerous reports suggest a strict DPOC registration requirement could disenfranchise voters and make it harder for millions to cast their ballots. A Brennan Center for Justice analysis estimated 21 million Americans wouldn’t have easy access to documents sufficient to prove citizenship under the SAVE Act. Another 2022 study from the Movement Advance Project found that nearly 30 million Americans lack a valid driver’s license, noting that this is more common in Black and Hispanic communities. 

Republicans claim DPOC is required to keep noncitizens from voting, even though there have been precious few examples of such incidents. A 2024 audit of Georgia’s voter registration records uncovered 20 noncitizens out of 8.2 million registered voters, while a similar review of Louisiana’s rolls found just 79 potential incidents of noncitizen voting out of the more than 70 million votes cast over the more than 40-year period reviewed. 

Meanwhile, overly aggressive efforts to purge registration rolls of ineligible voters have led to the removal of thousands of legit voters.