WASHINGTON—Even as a House rollcall produced party-line passage this week of the Republicans’ version of Jim Crow 3.0—the SAVE Act 2.0—progressives, the AFL-CIO, the Teachers/AFT and the Congressional Black Caucus were moving to kill it and save voting rights for millions of people nationwide—before the GOP can trash those rights in advance of this fall’s election.
It would require anyone seeking to register to vote to not only present positive proof of identification that they’re a U.S. citizen—such as a driver’s license, its equivalent, or a passport—but the proof must be identical in name to the name the person used when first registering.
And if they don’t have such proofs, they must go to extraordinary lengths to get them, or be barred from voting at all. And in cases of older voters, especially older voters of color, such proofs—like birth certificates—are unavailable. Women whose last names changed after marriage would be another group particularly hard hit.
And half of the U.S. people don’t have passports—which are not cheap, and take a long time to procure from the State Department.
The result is that analysts project anywhere between 20 million and 71 million people nationwide would lose the right to vote. Most of them would be working-class, poor, minority, and women voters, the majority of whom have trended Democratic for several decades.
Women, in particular, may have originally registered and never changed their registration, from their “maiden” last name to their current last name, whatever it is.
Under the SAVE Act, people who miss elections for one reason or another would be automatically purged from voting rolls. That would hit voters of color more heavily.
Foes of the Republican putsch already picked up a valuable ally: Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, whose state has a higher proportion of Native Americans than any of the continental 48 states, says she’ll oppose it. Native Americans would be very vulnerable to the bill.
The question now becomes if enough other Senate Republicans join her, all 45 Democrats, and both independents to try to deep-six the Senate version of the measure, S3752.
The point of the SAVE Act, a top goal of right-wing President Donald Trump, his white nationalist and nativist supporters, and the corporate campaign contributors who bankroll both, is to stifle and stop opposition to their agenda and to their control of the political process.
It’s all of a piece with Trump’s other efforts to rig the 2026 balloting and beyond. Those goals point back to his continuing lie the 2020 election was “stolen”—a lie Trump tried to turn into “truth” via the Jan. 6, 2021, Trumpite invasion of the U.S Capitol to prevent an electoral vote count for Joe Biden.
The voter repression measure’s lead congressional sponsors, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who fancies himself a constitutional scholar, justify their law by repeating Trump’s lie that under Democrat Biden, 10 million people crossed illegally into the U.S. from Mexico and the Democrats planned to register them to vote.
“The SAVE America Act makes our original SAVE Act better,” Roy and Lee said. President Trump rightly believes we should include Voter ID in this bill as we make a renewed push to secure our elections and protect the rights of American voters.
“By requiring Voter ID and proof-of-citizenship, the SAVE America Act will ensure that our federal elections are decided by U.S. citizens—and U.S. citizens alone.” Multibillionaire Elon Musk, a Trump pal, calls it “absolutely necessary.” Ironically, Musk, a pro-apartheid South African, first entered the U.S. by violating the terms of his student visa.
The retorts came fast from the AFL-CIO, the Teachers/AFT, the Brennan Center for Law and Justice, from Rep. Greg Landsman, D-Ohio, and from a meeting of top civil rights leaders with the Congressional Black Caucus.
“The SAVE America Act, a bill that would make it harder for working people who don’t have a passport to vote, passed the House yesterday,” the AFL-CIO tweeted. “This bill is an attack on our right to vote that the Senate must reject,” the federation declared.
“Every person in America deserves a voice and representation in our democracy,” tweeted AFT, whose union President, Randi Weingarten, is a New York City civics teacher with a law degree. “Republicans’ SAVE 2.0 legislation would silence people’s voices at the ballot box. Take action and tell Congress to reject Save 2.0.
“Don’t be fooled by different names. All these voter suppression bills have the same goal: Block millions of eligible Americans from voting. It’s a coordinated attack on our democracy while they ignore real problems,” AFT’s tweet adds.
The Black Caucus and civil rights leaders met on February 12 to start constructing a coordinated campaign to stop the SAVE Act and preserve voting rights, as well as to fight back against Trump’s cancellations of other civil liberties and protections for people of color.
“Over the past year, we have seen a concerted effort to roll back civil rights underlying voting access, dismantle social programs, and concentrate power in the hands of the wealthy and well-connected, at the expense of our community,” said caucus chair Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y.
But Clarke said the coalition has to sit down and build that effort. It hasn’t yet.
“We condemn in the strongest terms any threats to usurp elections. The call to nationalize elections and any proposals that would strip authority from the states to administer free and fair elections is a threat,” Maya Wiley, CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said in a statement even before the House floor vote.
Democratic Ohio Rep. Landsman’s critique was short and pointed. He called the Save 2.0 act “a terrible, un-American, undemocratic, honestly insane bill that the Senate should not take up.”
“For months, we have warned of a drive by President Trump and his administration to undermine the 2026 election. It is unprecedented, outlandish,” Brennan Center President Michael Waldman said. “It is a serious threat to voting rights.
“Now Trump himself is blaring his intent—and over the past week, the public issue has exploded. The fight for a free and fair vote is taking shape.”
Alaskan GOP Sen. Murkowski also said enacting the GOP’s measure “would threaten election integrity” as local officials, who run elections, wouldn’t have enough time to adjust and reprogram everything.
“When Democrats attempted to advance sweeping election reform legislation in 2021, Republicans were unanimous in opposition because it would have federalized elections, something we have long opposed. Now, I’m seeing proposals such as the SAVE Act and MEGA that would effectively do just that,” Murkowski posted on social media. “Once again, I do not support these efforts.”
The threat of the SAVE Act led a Democratic Party group, Demcast, to post a sample letter to lawmakers, with a stark warning about the law’s impact:
“This is our line in the sand moment. As a Democrat, we expect you to stand up for the fundamental right to vote that is the cornerstone of our democracy. The SAVE Act 2.0 is part of a coordinated effort to disenfranchise working-class Americans, older voters, women, and communities of color—groups that already face disproportionate barriers to voting.
“This legislation is not about election security. It’s about voter suppression.”
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