Senate GOP scrambling for a strategy to please Trump on SAVE America Act

Senate Republicans are scrambling for a strategy to pass the SAVE America Act, a sweeping election reform bill, along with $67 billion to $350 billion in defense spending after holding a contentious meeting with President Trump this week.

Trump told GOP senators in blunt terms during the meeting Wednesday in the Senate’s Mansfield Room to find a way to pass the SAVE America Act — his preferred version of the bill — and Trump brought along Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to press Republicans to also pass tens of billions of dollars in emergency funding for the Pentagon.

Trump’s full-court press on his top two agenda items gives Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) little time to get them past a Democratic filibuster in the four months left before Election Day.

Some GOP senators want Thune to attempt to jam the SAVE America Act — titled the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act — into a budget reconciliation bill that could pass the Senate with a simple majority, even though an effort to do so earlier this month failed when Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled it did not comply with the Byrd Rule.

The Byrd Rule governs what legislation is eligible to be included in a budget reconciliation bill, and MacDonough’s ruling infuriated Trump, who has repeatedly called on Thune to fire her.

“Just because the parliamentarian says no, you have to keep taking her feedback and massaging, and there are some really big legal brains out there in the world that can help us,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), who is urging Thune to use the reconciliation process to pass the SAVE America Act, even though the effort failed a few weeks ago.

Kennedy said trying to find a way to persuade the parliamentarian to allow the SAVE America Act, or at least key elements of it, to circumvent a filibuster “is our best route.”

The Louisiana senator said he’s also encouraged Thune to attach the SAVE America Act to an extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authorities that lapsed on........

© The Hill