The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act is “dead,” according to Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who put the chances of the vital voter identification bill passing before the midterms as nil.
The clock has run out on being able to implement the legislation, with the elections now only four months away, according to the Tar Heel State lawmaker who is among the handful of GOP senators who have been a thorn in President Donald J. Trump’s side.
“Unless they do the work to get to the 60 votes, they know it’s dead, and so all this is theater,” Tillis told the Raleigh-based News & Observer. He is also putting the blame for the entire mess on Trump and his advisers.
Tillis: SAVE America Act is ‘dead’ as time has run out to implement new voting ruleshttps://t.co/ost404Y7ek
— The Hill (@thehill) July 2, 2026
The SAVE America Act has been stalled in the Senate for months, after being passed by the House, where it has failed to get the 60 votes necessary to move on to Trump’s desk, a delay that MAGA conservatives have blamed on Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), who has failed to do the necessary arm-twisting to get the holdouts on board.
“And honestly, here in North Carolina, or in virtually any state, the ability, if we go back to when we implemented voter ID in North Carolina, it took a year to get everything in place with adequate funding,” Tillis added.
Tillis also said that at this point, it would be impossible to implement the new rules without a major disruption to early voting.
“Let’s assume you only allow early voting in the month of October,” he told the News & Observer. “Then do you honestly believe that we can have this thing up in 50 states? There’s no funding. There’s no specific implementation instructions … it’s become a joke, in my mind for somebody that’s actually implemented voter ID law, how anybody can look the American voters in the eye and suggest that it could be implemented in time without just causing a huge impact on the elections, and ironically undermine the confidence of it.”
Trump has repeatedly demanded action on the SAVE America Act, which would be a bulwark against Democrat cheating.
The president is so adamant about the bill’s passage that he recently refused to sign off on a bipartisan housing bill that would give Republicans cover on affordability, abruptly calling off a signing ceremony last week until the voter ID bill was passed, depriving the GOP of a win that lawmakers could tout heading into the midterms.
BREAKING: President Trump cancels his housing news conference and signing event scheduled for today “until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT,” which the president says he considers a national emergency. pic.twitter.com/WcrPbEx2eS
— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 24, 2026
“Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency,” Trump said in a post to Truth Social, pulling the rug out from under Republicans in a move that has drawn criticism.
This week, Trump was dismissive of the housing bill’s importance, calling it a “yawn” compared to voter ID.
“It’s so unimportant compared to the SAVE America Act,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. “When I look at the bill, it’s a bill. When I look at the SAVE America Act, it’s about saving America.”
“It’s a yawn,” he added. “To me, compared to the SAVE America Act, just about everything is a big yawn.”
The retiring Tillis has locked horns with Trump but has refrained from publicly criticizing him, until now.
“I look at it this way,” Tillis told McClatchy, according to the News & Observer, “if the president is making snap decisions — because I’ve said before there are two ways … the president gets … bad advice: one is giving it to him. The other one is failing to give him an idea of the second or third order of consequences to some of the things he wants to do. I’d like to think that he got that; if he didn’t, then clearly it’s on him. On the one hand, if he didn’t, it is also on whoever is around him who should be protecting him.”
Trump again stressed the need to pass the SAVE America Act after this week’s Supreme Court decision allowing states to continue to count mail-in ballots received after the election.
“In light of the tremendous loss in the Supreme Court today concerning Voter’s Rights, and the fact that ‘people’s’ votes are allowed to be counted LONG AFTER an Election is over, it is more important than ever to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” he wrote on Truth Social after the ruling was announced.
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