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WASHINGTON (CN) — President Donald Trump on Monday amped calls on Senate Republican leadership to take drastic measures to pass a long-stalled bill aimed at clamping down on U.S. elections, just days before lawmakers are expected to depart Washington for a month.
In a series of social media posts, the president repeated his demand that Senate Majority Leader John Thune terminate the filibuster, a legislative tradition that’s served as the primary impediment to getting the Save America Act across the finish line. And Trump said the Senate should forgo the its August recess to make it happen.
“John Thune should not allow the United States Senate to ‘leave town’ until it passes the Save America Act or, far better still, TERMINATES THE FILIBUSTER, where Republicans can then quickly pass everything they ever dreamed of, including a full and deep throated SAVE AMERICA ACT, the Budget, and the ever looming Debt Ceiling disaster, 1929!” Trump wrote in a Monday morning post on his social media platform Truth Social.
The president has for years claimed Democrats would eliminate the filibuster — a storied Senate tradition which requires legislation to accrue 60 votes in the upper chamber — on “day one” if they win the majority in November’s midterm elections.
Trump repeated that prediction on Monday, adding Democrats “can’t believe how lucky they got with Senate leadership” under Republicans. And in a follow-up post the president said the party that terminates the filibuster will be the one that “survives and thrives.”
Thune, for his part, has remained resistant to Trump’s repeated calls to eliminate the filibuster for the Save Act, a drastic move that would widely be viewed as a “nuclear option” for Senate Republicans and one that would surely invoke political retribution from Democrats.
Responding to comments from White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt last week that the president was “running out of patience” with the majority leader, Thune told reporters that she or someone else from the administration “ought to get on the phone and get the votes.”
“Instead of pointing the finger at Republicans, they might think about going after the people who are stopping it on the floor, which is the Democrats,” the top Senate Republican said. “If there are Republicans that they think are gettable, let’s get them to yes.”
Under the legislative filibuster’s 60-vote threshold, Republicans will need at least some Democratic votes to pass the Save Act. But the bill, which would require voters to provide proof of citizenship and effectively end mail-in voting, is a poison pill for Democrats.
If Republicans choose to do away with the filibuster, they would need to pass a separate measure by a simple majority vote to temporarily change Senate rules and allow them to approve the Save Act without Democratic support.
Though such a move is unpopular with most Senate Republicans, some in the upper chamber have agreed with Trump’s calls.
Utah Senator Mike Lee, who sponsored the Senate version of the Save Act, said Monday the president was right to call for a change to chamber rules. And he wrote in a post on X on Sunday that the voter ID legislation “should be one of the easiest” bills to pass.
“Getting behind it should require very little deliberation or hesitation on the part of any lawmaker,” said Lee. “It’s stunning to me that anyone considers it controversial.”
Critics of the Save America Act, including Democrats, have said the legislation — which Republicans argue is aimed at preventing people in the country illegally from voting — would in practice disenfranchise many American citizens, including a swath of legal voters who regularly vote by mail.
Though hopes of passing the Save Act, which passed the House earlier this year, appear slim in the Senate, Republicans have floated the idea of writing the legislation into a third budget reconciliation package. The GOP has already used the reconciliation process on two other occasions to pass measures on a simple majority vote.
Trump and his allies have for years claimed that U.S. elections are “rigged,” affected by foreign influence or otherwise compromised, and have demanded major reforms to voting systems across the country. The president earlier this month published a trove of documents he said proved unprecedented foreign interference in American elections.
The unveiled information, however, offered few new revelations about such meddling from abroad and did not provide conclusive evidence that foreign actors influenced the outcome of any national contest.
Still, Trump has said the documents drop is proof of the need for his Save Act and its significant restrictions on voting.
As of Monday morning, Senate leadership had not announced any plans to curtail August recess or eliminate the filibuster. The upper chamber is scheduled to leave Washington at the end of the week. The House, meanwhile, left town on Friday.
Congress will be out of session until September.
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