LEADER THUNE’S STUNT JUST BACKFIRED... PRESIDENT TRUMP SHOWS UP!
John Kennedy Says Senate Republicans Are Moving Too Slowly - But the SAVE America Act Shows the Limits of Trump's Agenda
The Louisiana senator wants John Thune to force more votes before the midterms. The harder question is whether Republicans actually have a path to pass their most contested priorities.
With the November midterm elections approaching, some Senate Republicans are arguing that the party is running out of time to turn President Donald Trump's priorities into law.
Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana is now making that case publicly.
In a July 26 appearance on CBS News' Face the Nation, Kennedy praised Senate Majority Leader John Thune personally while arguing that the South Dakota Republican has been "too cautious" about forcing major legislation onto the floor.
Kennedy's complaint is broader than one bill.
He wants Republicans to move a House budget package, additional defense and farm funding, cryptocurrency market-structure legislation, a Russia sanctions measure expanded to address Iran, and another attempt at President Trump's election legislation.
But the SAVE America Act has become the clearest test of Kennedy's argument.
Republicans strongly support the idea of tightening federal election rules.
They do not yet have a clear Senate path for doing it.
The timing makes the disagreement more urgent.
The Senate adjourned in the predawn hours of August 8 and is scheduled to return for regular business on September 14.
By then, the midterm campaign will be entering its final stretch.
That leaves Senate Republicans with a limited legislative window before lawmakers increasingly shift their attention from Washington to campaigning at home.
Kennedy argues that the answer is simple: put the bills on the floor and make senators vote.
"I love John Thune. He's my leader. He's got a big brain. He's better looking than me, but I think he's just being too cautious," Kennedy said.
He also argued that waiting for a broad agreement with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer could consume time Republicans no longer have.
Among Kennedy's priorities, the SAVE America Act carries the most political heat.
The House-passed legislation would require people registering to vote in federal elections to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship and would impose a federal photo-identification requirement for voting.
Citizenship is already required to vote in federal elections, and noncitizen voting is already illegal.
The dispute is over how eligibility should be verified and how much documentation eligible citizens should have to provide before registering or voting.
Supporters argue that documentary proof and photo ID would create a more reliable national verification system and strengthen public confidence.
Opponents argue that the requirements could make registration harder for lawful voters who do not have ready access to passports, birth certificates or other qualifying records.
Kennedy framed the issue as a matter of credibility for both parties.
"In my opinion, for both sides to have credibility in our elections, we need to do two things and only two things," he said.
He said voters should have to prove they are who they say they are and argued that election results should generally be known on Election Day or shortly afterward when races are close.
Kennedy said he believed Republicans could pass a version of the proposal, adding that they would not know unless they tried.
That last point gets to the disagreement between Kennedy and Thune.
Kennedy is focused on whether Republicans are trying aggressively enough.
Thune has to count votes.
Under ordinary Senate rules, most major legislation needs 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.
Republicans hold 53 Senate seats, which means they cannot move a bill opposed by nearly every Democrat unless they either attract Democratic votes, change Senate rules, use a special budget procedure where permitted, or substantially alter the legislation.
Trump and several conservative senators have urged the chamber to weaken or eliminate the filibuster for the election bill.
Thune and most senators have resisted that step.
The SAVE America Act has already demonstrated the problem.
In March, a cloture attempt on a Senate legislative vehicle for the proposal failed 53-47 - a majority, but seven votes short of the 60 normally needed to end debate.
Other attempts to attach versions of the policy through budget legislation have also run into procedural or political resistance.
And the obstacle is not accurately described as Democratic opposition alone.
Democrats have overwhelmingly opposed the measure, but some Republican senators have also raised concerns about the bill's scope, implementation and federal role in elections.
When the Senate left for recess on August 8, the Associated Press reported that the full SAVE America Act did not have enough support even within the Republican majority to pass in its current form.
Thune did try a narrower alternative before senators left town.
The Senate voted on cloture for a bill focused on requiring photo identification in federal elections.
It failed to advance on a largely party-line 50-47 vote.
That vote reinforces the problem Kennedy is trying to solve politically but cannot solve simply by demanding more floor time.
A vote can expose where senators stand.
It cannot manufacture the votes needed to pass a bill.
Republicans are therefore considering another route when the Senate returns.
GOP senators involved in the August standoff said they would try to include elements of the election agenda in a broader budget package that could also provide additional Pentagon funding connected to the Iran conflict.
Kennedy had already pointed toward that strategy in his CBS interview, saying the House budget resolution could provide another opportunity to take a crack at the SAVE Act.
Budget reconciliation can allow certain legislation to pass with a simple majority, but only provisions that comply with Senate budget rules can survive the so-called Byrd Rule.
Kennedy said he believes Republicans can craft an election-related provision that would survive that review.
Whether the Senate parliamentarian and enough Republicans agree remains unresolved.
Trump has added pressure by making election security a centerpiece of his midterm message.
During a July 16 prime-time address, the president released newly declassified material and argued that it showed serious foreign-election vulnerabilities, including Chinese activity involving U.S. voter data.
The administration has portrayed the material as evidence that China interfered in the 2020 election and that intelligence officials withheld important information.
That claim requires an important qualification.
A prior U.S. intelligence assessment concluded that China did not deploy interference efforts intended to change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Reuters and the Associated Press reported that the newly released documents do not establish that China altered votes or changed the election result.
Foreign collection of voter information and an operation that changes ballots or vote totals are not the same thing.
Trump also highlighted a Department of Homeland Security review that the White House says identified approximately 278,000 noncitizens on voter rolls in California, New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
That number has been repeated by Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Mike Lee, as an argument for passing the SAVE America Act.
But the figure has not been independently established as 278,000 confirmed ineligible federal voters.
DHS has not publicly disclosed a detailed methodology showing how the matches were produced, and election experts have warned that comparisons built from commercial or immigration data can produce false matches, particularly when records lack reliable unique identifiers.
The administration's own July release described the state totals as preliminary estimates of people who "may be" noncitizens on the rolls.
Being listed in a database also does not establish that a person cast an illegal ballot.
Studies and state reviews have generally found actual noncitizen voting in federal elections to be rare.
That does not make the underlying policy question irrelevant.
Republicans argue that even a small number of improperly registered voters can damage public trust and that the government should prevent ineligible registration before it occurs.
Democrats and voting-rights advocates counter that a nationwide documentary system could burden far more eligible citizens than the number of unlawful voters it prevents.
Those competing concerns are why the SAVE America Act has remained politically potent even as its Senate path remains uncertain.
The July intelligence release intensified the Republican push.
"It is more important than ever to crush foreign election interference. It is more important than ever to pass the SAVE AMERICA ACT," Lee wrote after Trump's address.
Hans von Spakovsky of Advancing American Freedom likewise told Fox News that Trump was correct to call for universal voter ID and proof of citizenship.
Von Spakovsky went further, arguing that officials who oppose the bill want to make cheating easier.
That is a political judgment, not an established fact about the motives of lawmakers who oppose the legislation.
Opponents have offered different stated reasons, including concerns about voter access, administrative cost, federalism and implementation close to an election.
The SAVE America Act is only one part of Kennedy's complaint about the Senate's pace.
On Face the Nation, he also called for action on defense funding, assistance for farmers, digital-asset market legislation and tougher sanctions involving Russia and Iran.
Some of those priorities have already moved since his interview.
Before recess, the Senate passed a major Russia sanctions package and advanced other administration priorities, including confirming Todd Blanche as attorney general and moving government funding legislation.
That complicates the argument that Senate leadership has simply done nothing.
The dispute is really about which remaining priorities deserve scarce floor time and how much procedural risk Republicans should accept to pursue them.
Kennedy's position is that Republicans should force the issue while they still control the calendar.
Thune's position, reflected in the Senate's actions so far, is that floor time does not eliminate the mathematical and procedural constraints facing legislation that lacks 60 votes.
Both arguments will become harder to separate from campaign politics after senators return on September 14.
By then, Election Day will be only weeks away.
So Kennedy's criticism settles one point: a significant bloc of Senate Republicans wants leadership to move faster and force more votes on Trump's unfinished agenda.
What it does not settle is whether speed can solve the central problem.
On the SAVE America Act in particular, Republicans still need a legislative vehicle that survives Senate rules and enough votes to carry it.
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The clock is getting shorter.
The vote count has not yet gotten easier.
