{"id":529280,"date":"2026-03-17T18:57:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T18:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/529280\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T18:57:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T18:57:12","slug":"republicans-launch-voting-bill-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/529280\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans launch voting bill debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Republicans are launching an unprecedented effort on Tuesday to hold the Senate floor and talk for days about a bill<\/a> that they know won\u2019t pass \u2014 an attempt to capture public attention on legislation requiring stricter voter registration rules<\/a> as President Donald Trump pressures Congress to act before November\u2019s midterm elections. <\/p>\n

The talkathon<\/a> could last a week or longer, potentially through the weekend, as Senate Majority Leader John Thune tries to navigate Trump\u2019s insistence on the issue<\/a> and Democrats\u2019 united opposition. Trump has urged Thune to scrap the legislative filibuster<\/a>, which triggers a 60-vote threshold in the 100-member Senate, or find another workaround to pass the bill, but Thune has repeatedly said he doesn\u2019t have the votes to do that.<\/p>\n

Instead, Republicans intend to make a long, noisy show of support for the legislation, which would require Americans to prove they are U.S. citizens before they register to vote and to show identification at the polls, among other things. It\u2019s a risky strategy, with no guarantee it will be enough for Trump, who has said he won\u2019t sign other bills until the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act<\/a> \u2014 also known as the SAVE America Act or the SAVE Act \u2014 is passed. <\/p>\n

The floor debate is expected to eventually end with a failed vote. Republicans need 60 votes to advance the bill to a final vote, but they hold 53 seats, and all 45 Democrats and both independents, who caucus with the Democrats, oppose it. <\/p>\n

Still, the debate will \u201cput Democrats on the record,\u201d Thune said last week. <\/p>\n

In a social media post on Tuesday morning, Trump issued a warning to any Republican who doesn\u2019t vote for the bill: \u201cI WILL NEVER (EVER!) ENDORSE ANYONE WHO VOTES AGAINST \u2018SAVE AMERICA!!!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Creating strict voter registration rules <\/p>\n

Trump says, without evidence, that Democrats can only win in the midterms if they cheat and explicitly said Republicans need the SAVE America Act to win in November. The House passed the legislation earlier this year, but the Senate turned to other issues as it became clear that Republicans didn\u2019t have the votes to pass it. <\/p>\n

But Trump made clear he wasn\u2019t satisfied and pushed the Senate to act. The Republican president has said he won\u2019t sign other legislation, including a bipartisan housing bill backed by the White House, until the voting bill passes. <\/p>\n

The bill contains a slew of provisions that Trump and his most loyal supporters have pushed as part of a broad effort to assert federal control over elections. It would require voters nationwide to provide proof of citizenship when they register and to show accepted voter identification when casting a ballot.<\/p>\n

It would also create new penalties for election workers who register voters without proof of citizenship and require states to hand voter data over to the Department of Homeland Security so federal officials could screen for voters who are in the country illegally. <\/p>\n

Trump also wants new provisions added to the bill, including a ban on most mail-in ballots. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019ll guarantee the midterms,\u201d Trump said of the bill last week. \u201cIf you don\u2019t get it, big trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democratic opposition to the bill is firm<\/p>\n

Democrats and many groups that champion voter access say there is little evidence of noncitizens voting and say the bill would disenfranchise millions of voters \u2014 including Republicans \u2014 by creating new burdens to prove citizenship. <\/p>\n

It is already illegal to vote if you are not a U.S. citizen, but the bill would lay out strict new rules for paperwork that people would have to present to register to vote. Opponents of the measure say those documents are not always readily available for many people. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no new problem to solve here,\u201d said Janai Nelson, president and director-counsel of the Legal Defense Fund, a civil rights law advocacy group. \u201cThere is an apparatus already to ensure that elections are safe and secure and that only eligible voters are casting ballots in our elections.\u201d <\/p>\n

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said that Democrats are not opposed to voter identification but \u201cthis is about purging the voter rolls in a massive way, so you never even get the chance to show a voter ID when you showed up to vote because you\u2019d be knocked off the rolls.\u201d <\/p>\n

Expect a show on the Senate floor <\/p>\n

Trump, backed by Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, has pushed for a talking filibuster, which would force Democrats to talk for days or weeks to delay passage of the bill. But Thune and the larger GOP conference rejected that idea, arguing that it would end in failure after giving Democrats a stage and the opportunity to offer endless amendments, potentially adding their priorities to the bill. <\/p>\n

Republicans are instead taking over the floor with their own speeches, proceeding under regular order but operating outside the normal time limits that are customary when debating legislation. Democrats are expected to answer with their own procedural hijinks, potentially forcing Republicans to come to the floor at all hours for votes, meaning they will need to stay close to the Senate for the duration. <\/p>\n

Lee said last week that it\u2019s unclear how it will all play out. He said he thinks Trump \u201cunderstands that we need to put in an aggressive effort here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd a lot of that,\u201d he said, \u201cis going to have to be determined in real time as we go about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The extent of Trump\u2019s satisfaction with the process, Lee said, \u201cwill depend on whether, in his view, we gave it everything we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Monday night, Lee was rallying Trump\u2019s base voters on X. <\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we\u2019re on this bill,\u201d he wrote, \u201cwe must stay on it until it\u2019s passed into law.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Republicans are launching an unprecedented effort on Tuesday to hold the Senate floor and talk…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[164749,23,1927,9286,1340,3506,3505,12,1070,793,3138,9283,2077,11812,3,111,8638,795,3438,21,9291,19,22,20,25,24,8647,130183,800],"class_list":["post-529280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-2026-elections","tag-america","tag-ap-top-news","tag-charles-schumer","tag-congress","tag-dc-wire","tag-district-of-columbia","tag-donald-trump","tag-elections","tag-general-news","tag-government-and-politics","tag-john-thune","tag-legislation","tag-mike-lee","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-u-s-democratic-party","tag-u-s-news","tag-u-s-republican-party","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-house-of-representatives","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-voting","tag-voting-rights","tag-washington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}