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Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) on Sunday said ensuring the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE America) Act gets passed in the Senate is an “impossible task.”
“You know, I have people telling me I need to implement the SAVE Act immediately in North Carolina, in a state that has voter ID,” Tillis told CNN’s Jake Tapper during an interview on “State of the Union.”
He then asked why “do I, over the next four months, have to try to pursue the impossible task of implementing a bill that simply can’t be imlemented in that timeframe?”
“Why are we doing more things that undermine our confidence in elections rather than getting the strong message out that will win for Republicans this year?” the North Carolina Republican added.
Tillis argued that Republicans should accept how current election laws operate and win by them, as well as telling voters about the “rise of the Democratic Socialists of America,” referring to recent wins by candidates supported by the left-wing organization in New York.
“Win by the good results that Republicans have produced and stop undermining the confidence in the elections,” said Tillis. “This is a bedrock of our 250-year history of success as the democracy that changed the world. Let’s not mess with that between now and November.”
Tillis previously co-sponsored a version of the SAVE America Act, but disagreed with President Trump’s push to pass the bill by abolishing the filibuster.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) made similar remarks about the SAVE America Act on Sunday. He told “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan on CBS News on Sunday that he met with Trump last week and that he could not “tell you what his priorities are beyond the SAVE Act.”
“We’ve done it in Louisiana,” he told Brennan. “There’s been no disenfranchisement at all, but we had a reputation for corrupt elections, and now everybody acknowledges our elections are pretty straightforward. We’ve shed that reputation from, you know, three decades or four decades ago. So, I don’t think it’s –– I think it’s reasonable to require an ID.”
But Cassidy later said “there are not the votes” to pass the SAVE America Act, agreeing with Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s (R-S.D.) public comments about any attempt to pass the bill in the Senate with or without the filibuster.
Trump has set out to make the SAVE America Act his top legislative priority. The bill would require prospective voters to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote and would require voters to show ID before casting their ballot.
Last week, Trump refused to sign a bipartisan bill on housing ahead of a meeting with Senate Republicans and urged them to pass the SAVE America Act, which I consider to be a National Emergency,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
Add as preferred source on Google Tags Bill Cassidy Donald Trump Jake Tapper John Thune Margaret Brennan Thom TillisCopyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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