The NPR Politics Podcast - After Trump’s push, Senate debates the ‘SAVE America Act,’ but can it pass?

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

President Trump says he won’t sign any legislation until Congress passes the “SAVE America Act,” legislation that would require proof of citizenship to vote. The Senate narrowly voted Tuesday to allow debate on the bill. We discuss the measure’s prospects and why the president is digging in on this issue.This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, voting correspondent Miles Parks, and congressional correspondent Barbara Sprunt.This podcast was produced by Bria Suggs and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Barbara Sprint. I cover Congress. Today on the show, President Trump says he won't sign any legislation until Congress passes the Save America Act. The biggest thing coming up is a Save America Act in the Senate. That's voter ID and proof of citizenship and no mail-in ballots, you know, corrupt mail-in. Invales. Senate Republicans narrowly voted yesterday to start debate on the bill, but its prospects for actually passing aren't great. Before we get to that, though, Miles, remind us what is in this bill? It's really an overall Republican election overhaul. I mean, it would require photo ID for all voters across the country to vote. But the biggest thing is that it would mandate that voters who want to register to vote need to provide documentary. proof of citizenship, which may not sound like a big deal. The vast majority of Americans think only U.S. citizens should vote in American elections. But research has shown that millions of Americans

did not easily have access to the documents that this bill would require to register to vote, notably a passport or a birth certificate. And those things can be pretty expensive to acquire. And the president mentioned no mail-in ballots. This is a thing he talks about all the time. Also on his list for the bill is some stuff related to transgender athletes playing in sports and other issues related to the transgender community. Is that actually in the bill? It's not currently. It's something that he's been pushing for. There's a bunch of other provisions, I should say.

But in the version that was passed in the House of Representatives and is currently on schedule to be discussed by the Senate, it does not include any ban, nationwide ban on male voting or any of the transgender. under stuff he's mentioned. Barbara, what is the current state of this legislation? Well, the Senate is in its second day of debate on the Save America Act. And as you said yesterday, the chamber voted to take up the bill, bring it to debate. That only needed a simple majority. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined Democrats in voting against it. She has several concerns, including how to implement those ID requirements that Miles was talking about, particularly in rural communities. And there are things that we don't yet know about this process, like how long

debate will go, what exactly it will look like. But all signs point to a lot of it. Well, and that's on the rural part of this, I think that's been something that's been not really talked about that much is that one of the aspects of this bill, what it would do would mean that people who register to vote need to provide this proof of citizenship in person. So it would essentially mean no more registering to vote by mail or no more online voter registration. You would need to actually, even if you fill out the form online, you would need to go in person to provide that, which would be experts think it would really impact rural voters the most. Yeah. And as you said that, I was thinking about how for years there has been an effort at the state

level to make voting easier, to make access to voting easier in many different ways. This would make voting harder, though supporters say it would make voting safer. Absolutely. And I think that's kind of the balancing act that we're talking about here is if there was some sort of nationwide election fraud problem, a bill like this might make a lot more sense and might have Democratic support, might have universal Republican support, might have public support, but there's just never been shown to be anything more than a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of election fraud in American elections, specifically by non-citizens, which is kind of the target of this bill and something that President Trump has pushed over and over again, this idea that.

non-citizens are voting in mass and influencing American elections, there's just never been proof of that. So then when you think about the idea of disenfranchising or making voting even marginally harder for thousands or potentially millions of people versus the sort of handful of instances of election fraud that happen every cycle, I think experts kind of look at that as being a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist. Barbara, I mentioned at the top that the chances of this thing ultimately passing in the Senate aren't that great. can you explain why? I mean, this is a key agenda item of the President of the United States and his party controls the House and the Senate. Certainly. I mean, this is a top priority for the president. He's said that he doesn't want to sign most other bills unless this thing pass. But as you said, the chances of this passing are extremely slim. Democrats are opposed, as Miles alluded to, not every Republican supports it. And one thing that I think is interesting and worth noting in this is this is fairly atypical in the same. Senate to potentially spend a week or maybe more talking about a bill that is expected to fail isn't usually how the Senate operates. And the fact that that's what's happening now, I think, speaks to this larger pressure campaign from the White House and to some degree other parts of the Republican

conference to show that they're in this fight, as Miles was describing, you know, for election integrity as sort of a party platform agenda item. Oh, and there's kind of two parts of this. There's a debate over what the policy says about, you know, this documentary proof of citizenship or voter ID. But I think there's a bigger picture issue for a lot of Republicans, which is that this bill would nationalize elections in a way they just aren't currently nationalized. States generally control their own elections. I mean, University of Notre Dame law professor Derek Mueller wrote this week that if the Save America Act passed, it would be the broadest nationalization of elections in American history. And so that is something that traditionally Republicans. People like Mitch McConnell have been vehemently opposed to in the past.

So it's kind of like there's policy issues and then there's like these bigger macro questions that this bill presents. What do you mean when you say nationalize? And like why would that be a problem for some Republicans? I mean, the Constitution says that states and localities run their own elections with oversight from Congress. The Save America Act, if it were passed, would be probably almost certainly be considered legal. But I think it would be many Republicans based on what. what they've said in the past, it would be antithetical to what the Constitution envisioned for who should run voting in America. So, Barbara, let us talk about Senate procedure for a moment.

Oh, let us. Because President Trump has called on the Senate to overturn the filibuster so that this could pass without the 60 votes needed so that they could blow past Democratic opposition, which is unified. And then he's been talking about something called the talking filibuster. So what is this and is it going to happen? So many filibusters, right? Let's talk talking filibuster first. You know, at its core, the talking filibuster is a technique to try to wear down the opposition. In a talking filibuster, lawmakers opposed to a certain bill can bring in amendments,

each one with its own debate period. Essentially, this can just make it take forever. and if the party pushing the bill can basically wear out their opponents, theoretically it can move forward and pass on a simple majority. The Senate can't move forward on other business during this period, and there's other provisions that make it complicated for lawmakers. For example, it requires 51, in this case, Republican senators in or near the chamber at all times, whereas Democrats would just need one person to hold the floor to keep the filibuster going and then rotate off. And Senate Majority Leader Thune has repeatedly said that in this instance, Republicans just can't sustain that. The math isn't there

for a talking filibuster to succeed. They barely got 51 votes to get this thing started on debate. So that's the talking filibuster. What about the big one? What about the filibuster? Because like, people in both parties over time have been critical of the filibuster. Yes. I mean, the filibuster is a tool. it halts action on most bills until 60 senators vote to move it forward. And as you said, at times, it has prevented policy priorities from succeeding for both parties. Getting rid of it would allow, in this case, Republican victories with a narrow margin. So why do people oppose it? I mean, it goes around to this, you know, what goes around, comes around kind of idea.

It would dilute the power of the minority, which has for a long time been protected to a degree. within the Senate. And this is why when you hear people refer to it, they often call it like the nuclear option, because it really does blow things up. And we might remember that in 2013, then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, eliminated the filibuster requirement for all nominations except for candidates to the Supreme Court, something Mitch McConnell at the time said Democrats would regret, and I think that was a fairly prescient statement. I think they certainly did come to regret that. In 2017, Republicans voted to get rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, which allowed President Trump's pick of Neil Gorsuch to be confirmed. And then again, about four

years ago, Democrats tried to get rid of the filibuster to advance voting rights legislation. So it's sort of interesting and ironic that both parties are coming to this place over things like election and voting rights legislation. And in that case, they were thwarted by a few Democratic senators who said that the change would haunt them down the road when once again they inevitably come to be in the minority. Well, and Republicans can read the polls too, right? I mean, it's looking more and more likely that Democrats will have a really good shot at retaking the House and potentially even having a shot at retaking the Senate. And so I think many Republican lawmakers are probably looking at that and thinking maybe this isn't the best time to get rid of,

you know, the best tool for minority power that we have, which kind of brings up this other interesting point, Tam, I'm curious for your perspective on why President Trump has made this such a giant priority, considering it has always seemed like a very big long shot for it to have a real possibility of passing. So I would like to remind you that he has been talking about the idea of illegal voting. Since 2015, he's been talking about it. And then he won. And he said he would have won the popular vote if not for all the illegal voting. This is something he has come back to again and again. The same with absentee voting, which he doesn't like and has had a almost single-minded focus on just wanting to get rid of that in a broad way. And, you know, I did talk to a White House official about this. He said that this is a key part of the president's domestic policy agenda right now. and they believe that it is an issue that they can run on, that it's popular.

But, Miles, there is a very real concern that this could just be part of an effort to undermine faith in elections. I mean, that's how it feels to a lot of people. I think election officials I've talked to over the last couple of years have never realistically thought that the Save America Act was going to be law. It would go into effect immediately. it would throw chaos into the midterms, just to be very clear, election officials' lives would be turned upside down, like tomorrow, if it passed. They've never really thought that seemed likely. President Trump, I mean, he said it at the state of the union. He said it out loud that Democrats cannot win elections unless they cheat and that the only reason they oppose these sorts of policies is because they want to cheat.

What they read from that is that if Republicans lose in the midterms, that the president will point. back to this moment as saying this is proof that the reason they oppose these sorts of protections is because they wanted to cheat and look at the outcome. So I think there just seems to be a pretty clear line for a lot of the people I talk to of what's coming down the pike in the next six months. Yeah. And the White House official I talked to, I asked about that. He insisted, no, this is not them laying the groundwork for an excuse later if they lose. But it's just hard to look at the things the president has said after every single other past election, especially 2020, and not see this as part of that pattern.

Exactly. All right, we're going to take a quick break and we'll have more in a moment. And we're back. And President Trump frequently suggests these changes would benefit Republican candidates. Miles, does that align with what experts are telling you? This is where we get into the good stuff. I feel like this is not being talked about enough. I've been talking to experts about this a lot, really,

since President Trump won the 2024 election, he won that election by winning over lower educated, lower income voters. These are voters who are considered lower propensity voters, people who don't vote in every single local special election, but they come out and they came out for him in the presidential election. Research has found that restrictive voting policies affect these voters the most. That's what I was talking about recently with Paul Grunkey, a political scientist at Reed College. Some of these efforts, to restrict eligibility and make it more difficult to get to the polling place may actually hurt Republicans more than Democrats. A well-educated, higher-income voter can overcome a lot of hurdles.

And it's like the political leaders haven't learned that yet. So Gronke expressed some optimism that basically, at some point, many Republicans are going to feel like it's no longer in their interest to try to put up new restrictions to voting. That doesn't seem to be happening right now. even at the state level, we're seeing a number of Republican-controlled states put forward their own versions of the Save America Act. But over time, he's optimistic that this kind of changing in demographics could change the incentive structure, too. Democrats are overwhelmingly opposed to this, though what you're saying is, in theory, they could benefit from it.

I mean, I think. I don't know. Maybe we don't follow it. Exactly. No, that's basically, that's kind of what I asked, Gronki. And he was like, I don't want to go down that path. I don't want anyone to get excited about restricting. access to the vote in the way that it could help them. Also, it's hard to extrapolate based on one

election. I will also note that, that you can't just base all of your political wisdom based on the results of the 2024 election. I think all that I'm saying is that as demographics shift, it just becomes a little less clear who these sort of policies advantage or whether there is a partisan advantage at all. And Miles, what I think is so interesting about what you're saying is that this is about the Save America Act, but it's also about other elements within the Trump administration and the policies and politics that they are pushing because the Trump campaign made historic inroads with the Latino community, a support that's like eroding, which we've seen in polling over the last few months in large part because of, you know, the policies of the administration.

But in some ways, this idea of like the lessons learned and who is within the tent of the Republican Party, it almost feels counterproductive. to what they're hoping to sort of replicate in the midterms. You know, they've had Republican members talk about how the U.S. is not a pluralistic society, but, you know, experts point out that Republicans have made such inroads in large part because they are trying to expand the tent. And so this does seem a little ironic. Miles, how popular are the provisions in the Save America Act? Because to hear President Trump describe it, they are extremely.

Popular. Voter ID is extremely popular. There is no if and and butts about it. And so that's one of the political interesting things about this debate right now is if Republicans had put forward just that issue. I think Senate Democrats would have felt a lot of pressure to support it, even though they still have misgivings about the people that that could exclude. There are still people who do not have access to government issued photo IDs, but the vast majority of Americans feel like it should be mandated. The other issue that has mass appeal is that only American citizens should vote in federal elections. It's a little harder to get data on people have polled on the proof of citizenship question, for instance. And the majority of people do feel like people should have to provide proof of citizenship. In the polling I've seen, they never explain exactly what that means. They just ask, do you think people should have to prove their citizenship? My sense, and when I talk to experts, is that the average person may think a driver's license qualifies as that when, in fact, it does not. And so I think if you tell people birth certificate or passport, you know, roughly half of Americans don't have a passport.

So I think you would see those numbers drop off. It's a little bit less clear there. Yeah. I actually asked this White House official I was talking to about whether like, hey, would you be willing to compromise? Maybe get rid of the passport. Yeah. Proof of citizenship requirement. But require photo ID. Would you be open to changing this bill to try to get it passed? And the answer was no. I mean, Tam, I'm curious. It seems like the president is kind of actively making it harder for Republicans who may have gotten on board with a more narrow version of this.

Do you have a sense of his thinking there? Their thinking is he wants his five points, take it or leave it. Well, he doesn't want them to leave it. He wants them to take it. And this is essentially how the president has approached his relationship with Congress since returning. to office, which is most of the time, he doesn't even feel like he needs Congress at all. And if he does, then he demands that they do exactly what he wants and the way that he wants it. And in a couple of key cases, he has gotten what he wants. This is a little different. He does have a lot of

outside backing. People like Scott Pressler, who's an activist on the Republican side, very involved in voting-related issues. And Senator Mike Lee from U.S. Utah is one of the biggest proponents of this in the Senate. And he has said that he has just gotten bombarded with people who really passionately support this in a way that he has not experienced with other issues. So the president has some active and loud element of the MAGA base pushing this. And the president has really described this in existential terms by rebranding it as the Save America Act. This isn't just save an acronym for something related to voting. It is now about saving the Republic. But it's only becoming more and more clear. I feel like that he has an evidence problem because he controls the Department of Justice. He controls the Department of Homeland Security. Republicans control numerous state houses that have spent a lot of resources, a lot of money and time and energy looking for non-citizens voting. And no one has been able to find this mass of

non-citizen illegal voting that he's been promising for 10 years. And I guess I just wonder ahead of this year's midterms, considering all of the resources he has at his disposal, are voters going to start asking if this is the case, why haven't we seen more than a handful here, a couple dozen here, as opposed to being able to come up with these millions of people you've been promising us? I think there's actually a large political risk for the president and his party, which is, it seems pretty likely this isn't going to pass. This isn't going to be in place in time for the terms. I will remind you that after he lost in 2020, he went around saying that the election had been rigged, in particular that it had been rigged in Georgia, where there was a runoff election for two Senate

seats, U.S. Senate seats. And Republicans in the state said that all of his talk of it being rigged really suppressed the vote among the people who could have helped Republicans win. And in fact, Republicans lost. And so there is a risk of depressing your own voters if you take a stand on this thing and then say, well, then it's going to be rigged. This is a fascinating situation because rather than backing down or giving the Senate an exit ramp or taking the advice of Leader Thune, who Trump supporters online are absolutely targeting as weak and standing in his way, but Instead of looking for an exit ramp, the president is sort of demanding this public fight that could very easily, most likely be a public failure. Yeah, but the failure is not at his doorstep, right?

I mean, it's always something that he can then point to Senate Republicans as the reason something didn't get done where the same thing is with his executive action on elections. I mean, he tried to pass an executive order mandating proof of citizenship last March. The court stopped it. He can now point to and say, well, the courts didn't let me do this. Senate Republicans couldn't get it done. I tried to get this done. And that to his supporters, I think they probably buy it. Yeah. All right. Well, we're going to leave it there for today. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Berbers Front. I cover Congress. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.