In 2024, voters handed the Republican Party a trifecta in Washington - the White House, the House, the Senate - and yet one of the most broadly popular pieces of election-integrity legislation in recent memory is collecting dust in the upper chamber.
The SAVE America Act would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and mandate photo identification to cast a ballot. It has already passed the House, and polls show that voters across party lines, and even racial lines, support it. It reportedly has the votes to pass in the Senate, but it can’t break the 60-vote threshold to end the filibuster. Republicans have called for nuking the filibuster to get it passed, but even that won’t happen because Senate Majority Leader John Thune won’t pick a fight.
Thune’s position on the issue is rather passive. “The votes aren’t there, one, to nuke the filibuster,” Thune said, presenting the math as immovable fact rather than a leadership challenge. “I’m the person who has to deliver sometimes the not-so-good news that the math doesn’t add up, but those are the facts and there’s no getting around it.” Even if true, he hasn’t mounted any visible pressure campaign on fence-sitters. No arm-twisting. No caucus discipline. No public strategy to persuade reluctant senators.
Democrats, by contrast, are marching in lockstep against the SAVE America Act. Even John Fetterman-who’s broken with his party on Israel, immigration, and the war in Iran-has fallen in line here. That kind of discipline doesn’t happen by accident. Democratic leadership knows how to hold its caucus together, and when it decides to oppose something, it makes sure everyone sticks to the script.
Thune, by contrast, seems content to wave the flight of surrender on the SAVE America Act. For a majority leader with a mandate from both the White House and the voters, that posture is increasingly difficult to defend.
The frustration on the right is real and growing. Unified Republican control of Washington was supposed to break the logjam on issues exactly like this one - legislation that is popular, straightforward, and central to election integrity. Instead, grassroots conservatives are watching their agenda strangled by Democrat obstruction and Republican spinelessness.
That raises a serious question: Should Thune be replaced with a more effective Republican as Majority Leader? Replacing leaders isn’t unheard of. In fact, former Rep. Matt Gaetz pulled off exactly this in the House in 2023 - filing a motion to vacate and forcing a floor vote that ended Kevin McCarthy’s speakership in a matter of days.
One member, one motion, and the speaker was gone.
But the Senate doesn’t work that way. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who has been among Thune’s more pointed critics, explained to a user on X that the Senate doesn’t have the same mechanism for removing leadership as the House does. “In the House of Representatives, a tiny number of lawmakers can oust the speaker - at any time. That feature is unique to the House. In the Senate GOP, we don’t even have a rule or procedure for replacing a leader in the middle of a two-year term.”
Lee acknowledged that any five senators can technically force a conference meeting, but quickly threw cold water on the idea that this amounts to any meaningful action. “It is true that under our rules, any five senators can call for a meeting of the entire conference at any time. But in practice, that kind of meeting tends not to materialize unless a solid majority of the conference wants it to happen,” he explained. And even if such a meeting were called and actually held, the obstacles would multiply from there. “To pursue the outcome you’re suggesting, one would have to use that meeting to propose a new procedure for a mid-term leadership swap, and that - at a minimum - would require a majority of the conference to support it. For a whole host of reasons - including the fact that Senator Thune is beloved by colleagues and very popular within the conference - the odds of that happening are literally 0 in 100,000,” Lee concluded.
Thune isn’t going anywhere, and the SAVE America Act remains stuck in limbo. All the while, the clock on the 119th Congress keeps ticking.