DORAL, Florida — President Donald Trump made his “biggest plea” to House Republicans on Monday: Pass the SAVE America Act, a GOP voter identification bill, even if it takes the rest of this year.
A little over 100 of the House GOP’s 218 members gathered in the ballroom of the Trump National Doral hotel in Florida to hear from Trump on Monday afternoon. The hourlong speech kicked off House Republicans’ three-day annual issues conference, where they are expected to plan out the rest of their agenda for the year before the November elections.
Trump, on Monday, made his opinion known for what should be at the forefront of that agenda: the SAVE America Act, which would require voter ID and proof of citizenship to register to vote.
“This is the No. 1 priority. It should be for the House,” Trump said during his speech to the gathered members.
A version of the legislation has already passed the House, but it is stalled in the Senate, where Republicans are hesitant to sidestep the 60-vote filibuster.
Trump said passing the legislation will “guarantee the midterms,” where Republicans are facing an uphill battle to reverse a historical trend in which the House flips to the party opposite the White House in an off-year election.
“If you don’t get it, big trouble, in my opinion,” the president added. “I’m for it if it takes you six months, I’m for not approving anything. … I don’t think we should approve anything until this is approved.”
Passing the SAVE America Act is already a tall ask, as Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has repeatedly cast doubt on its ability to get through the Senate. Under current Senate procedure, Republicans would need a bloc of Democrats to join them to break the 60-vote filibuster to advance the bill to a final vote. Only one Democrat voted for the SAVE America Act in the House.
Conservative influencers and a handful of GOP lawmakers in both chambers of Congress have called for sidestepping that threshold using a talking filibuster, an alternate approach that would allow the bill to pass at 50 votes after a Democrat-led speaking marathon. But Thune and other Senate Republicans have been cool to that idea, arguing that it is logistically impractical and could burn weeks or months of floor time.
The president’s request to add more provisions to the SAVE America Act would also likely make passage difficult. Trump told the gathered lawmakers he wants language that would end mail-in voting and target transgender operations for minors.
“If you could, if I could ask the people in this room, to go for the gold. We’re going for the gold. We’re not going for the bronze. We’re not going to sign a watered-down version like has been sent up there. Let’s go for the gold, and let’s just not accept anything else.”
Trump had previously threatened to refuse to sign bills that reached his desk unless the SAVE America Act was passed by Congress. The president himself dodged questions from reporters following his speech on whether he’d withhold his signature from legislation, but a White House official told the Washington Examiner earlier in the day that he will make an exception for a funding bill to end the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.
The president placed much of the pressure on Senate Republicans.
“You have four or five senators that are, I don’t know … you have to explain them to me, but we’re not going to get into that,” Trump said. “But we’re going to push them to get it done. Because I don’t think you can politically exist if you’re not going to do voter ID and these things.”
Back in Washington, D.C., Thune cast fresh doubt on passing the legislation even as he promised a floor vote. He said there was enough resistance to a talking filibuster that he cannot “guarantee” an outcome.
“Having studied it, researched it pretty thoroughly, you have to show me how, in the end, it prevails and succeeds,” Thune said. “Because I think what has been promised out there is that it would actually, in the end, get an outcome, and I find it very hard to see that based on actual past experience.”
Thune downplayed Trump’s threats not to sign any bills, arguing that even though the president is “passionate” about the bill, the majority leader was hoping for further exceptions.
The president’s push to devote the next six months to passing the SAVE America Act comes as a handful of House Republicans are calling for a second party-line spending bill to accompany the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the administration’s key legislative wins heading into the 2026 elections. Many had hoped that it would take center stage during this week’s issues conference.
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But Trump did not mention reconciliation, a budget process used to sidestep the filibuster, once during his hourlong speech, and House leadership has repeatedly said over the last few months that getting a reconciliation “2.0” is unlikely given the legwork that went into passing the first one last year.
Congress is on recess during the months of August and October, leaving roughly half a year to pass and sign as much of the Republican agenda as possible in case the trifecta is broken in the fall. Passing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act took seven months, starting from blueprint talks during the House GOP’s issues conference in Doral last year to Trump signing the bill into law on the Fourth of July.
Naomi Lim and David Sivak contributed to this report.
