Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer vowed Sunday to block President Trump’s SAVE America Act in the Senate, warning the legislation would disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Mr. Schumer said the bill, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and a government-issued photo ID to cast a ballot, is Mr. Trump’s attempt to rewrite election laws to help the GOP in midterm elections.
“Bluntly, the SAVE Act makes it harder to vote and much easier to steal an election,” Mr. Schumer said on a press call. “Donald Trump believes he’s going to lose the election. He knows his numbers are in the gutter — and so he wants to cheat.
“The Save Act is not, not, not a voter ID bill,” the New York Democrat said. “It is a voter suppression bill.”
He added, “We will not let Donald Trump ram this bill through the Senate — not this week, not ever.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune plans to hold a vote on the SAVE Act this week. Republicans argue the bill must pass to restore election integrity and safeguard elections from noncitizen voting and other voter fraud. The bill needs 60 votes to clear the Senate filibuster, and Republicans hold only 53 seats.
Mr. Trump said he will not sign another piece of legislation until the bill passes Congress.
Speaking on the Senate floor Thursday, Mr. Thune said the SAVE America Act is a package of “the kind of commonsense policies that should get an automatic ’yes’ vote from literally every member of this body.”
“At the core of the SAVE America Act is the requirement that individuals provide proof of citizenship to register to vote, and then show an ID when they go to the polls,” Mr. Thune said. “In other words, it would require Americans to demonstrate that they are eligible to vote and that they are who they say they are when they go to do so.”
Republicans argue that if Americans must show a government-issued photo ID to board a plane, open a bank account or, in some places, get a library card, they should have to do the same to vote. The legislation would also require people to provide photocopies of their identification documents when submitting absentee mail ballots.
On Sunday, Mr. Schumer and Marc Elias, a prominent Democratic election attorney who is currently litigating more than 90 voting cases, sharply criticized the legislation. They argue it would crack down on a problem that barely exists, yet block millions of eligible Americans from the polls.
They said the bill would require voters to present a current passport — which they said fewer than 50% of Americans have — or an original or certified copy of their birth certificate to register to vote.
“Now most people don’t have a passport, and frankly, most people don’t have ready access to an original or a certified copy of a birth certificate,” Mr. Elias said.
Mr. Schumer said women who have married and changed their maiden name could find themselves purged from the voter rolls as well — because their birth certificate name would no longer match their current ID.
“It would make it easier to purchase an AR-15 than to cast a ballot,” he said.
Mr. Elias also said Republicans are trying to hide the fact that the bill eliminates the most common ways Americans register to vote — no more mail-in registration, no more registration in a church, on a college campus, or when people get a driver’s license or sign up for Social Security.
He said presenting a photo ID for mail-in voting is logistically impossible. “This photo ID requirement is not actually about ID. It’s about banning mail-in voting,” he said.
Mr. Schumer, meanwhile, warned that the proposal would require states to hand over their voter registration rolls to DHS for screening.
“That system they’ve put in is not about cleaning voter rolls, it’s about choosing who gets to vote, and they will purge tens of millions of people from the voter rolls,” he said.
