📷 First posted on Instagram
Senators Rick Scott of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah are pressing Senate Republican leaders to bring the Senate back into session and pass the SAVE America Act before the window closes, warning that Republicans have roughly two months left before Democrats take control of the chamber in January.
Scott put the demand in a post on X on Sunday, November 8: "I've been fighting for over two years to get the SAVE/SAVE America Act, passed in the Senate. We have two months to get it done. Every candidate for a leadership job must commit to passing it. Failure is not an option."
Lee, the bill's sponsor in the Senate, followed with his own formula, quote-posting Scott: put the SAVE America Act on the Senate floor; require filibustering senators to speak, calling the vote at a simple-majority threshold when they stop speaking; and announce that debate will continue until it passes.
Scott had set out the same message a day earlier, saying the most important thing for the Senate to do is to stay in session every day until Democrats take over — every judge and nominee confirmed, every priority done — with "NO DAYS OFF!" He has urged Republicans to work through Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's, warning: "We KNOW the Dems are gonna destroy the filibuster!"
The SAVE America Act would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and photo identification to cast a ballot. The House passed the bill 218-213 on February 11, and it has stalled in the Senate, where 60 votes are needed to break a filibuster.
That threshold is the obstacle. No Democrat has voted for the measure in the Senate, and a few Republicans — including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina — have also opposed it. Lee has said he can count 50 Republican votes behind the talking-filibuster approach. In June, Lee forced a vote on the House-passed version during a marathon session; it won a 50-49 majority but needed 60 votes to be adopted. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said he is for anything that can get the bill passed, but that staying in session will not change the fact that it lacks the Democratic support to clear a filibuster, and that there are not enough votes to end the filibuster itself.
The clock is the point of the demand. Democrats won control of the Senate in the November 3 midterm elections and take power in January. Republicans will choose their leader on Tuesday, November 10, with Thune running to stay on as minority leader. Scott, who ran against Thune for the leadership in 2024 and has said he does not intend to seek the post again, insists anyone seeking a leadership job must commit to passing the bill.
Lee's renewed push followed a Reuters investigation that found more than 30,000 people who identified themselves as noncitizens had been added to voter rolls across 11 states since 2000. The figure does not mean 30,000 noncitizens voted. Democrats and voting-rights groups oppose the bill, arguing documentary requirements could keep eligible citizens from registering if they lack ready access to a passport or birth certificate. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has called the bill a radical one.