Senate Republicans are gearing up for a floor battle over Trump-backed voter ID legislation, but another GOP senator plans to oppose it.<\/p>\n
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., won\u2019t support the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, a decision that could throw a wrench into the GOP\u2019s plan to force Senate Democrats into tough vote after tough vote next week.<\/p>\n
“I’m a no,” Tillis said. “I’m going to do everything I can to prevent it from even moving forward.”<\/p>\n
SENATE GOP EYES BLAME GAME AS TRUMP-BACKED SAVE ACT HEADS FOR DEFEAT<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n He did offer an alternative, arguing that if Republicans were “serious” about voter ID, they\u2019d consider legislation that incentivized states to use the practice in exchange for federal funding. If not, the money would go toward ensuring “election integrity” oversight.<\/p>\n “Who could be against that? You know, and then rock on, California, if you want to enable ballot harvesting,”<\/a> Tillis said. “Make sure you do it on your nickels, because we’re going to spend the money to oversee the elections to make sure you did it legally.”<\/p>\n His resistance to the bill comes after President Donald Trump<\/a> demanded that Republicans ram the bill through Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Democrats\u2019 blockade with a talking filibuster.<\/p>\n TRUMP, THUNE CLASH ON VOTER ID ULTIMATUM AS GOP REMAINS DIVIDED ON PATH FORWARD<\/u><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Senate Majority Leader John Thune,<\/a> R-S.D., and Republicans landed on a plan to put the bill on the floor that doesn\u2019t take the route of a talking filibuster, given that there isn\u2019t enough unity among Republicans to block Democrats\u2019 amendments that could drastically change the bill.<\/p>\n However, that process is in the spirit of the talking filibuster and will allow Republicans to load up amendments on the floor for a marathon debate session.<\/a> Still, it won\u2019t lower the threshold to pass the bill with just a simple majority, something the talking filibuster would have done.<\/p>\n Republicans know it\u2019s destined to fail and are trying to shift blame to Schumer and Democrats with their floor strategy.<\/p>\n THUNE GUARANTEES VOTER ID BILL TO HIT THE SENATE DESPITE SCHUMER, DEM OPPOSITION: ‘WE WILL HAVE A VOTE’<\/u><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n But Tillis, who was a co-sponsor of the bill\u2019s predecessor called the SAVE Act, disagreed with the changes Trump proposed to the legislation, which included banning mail-in ballots with limited exceptions, halting men in women\u2019s sports and stopping transgender surgeries for minors.<\/p>\n “You know, taking the language from the White House without understanding the state-by-state implications,<\/a> politically and procedurally, just doesn’t sound like we’re letting the people at the tip of the spear \u2014 that’s these people running for re-election \u2014 define what we should be voting on next week,” Tillis said.<\/p>\n Tillis joins Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, in opposing the bill. Their defection, coupled with Sen. John Fetterman,<\/a> D-Pa., announcing on CBS\u2019 “The Takeout with Major Garrett” that he wouldn\u2019t support the legislation in its “current state” over Trump\u2019s criticism of mail-in balloting, gives the GOP a razor-thin margin of error in trying to even open debate on the bill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Senate Republicans are gearing up for a floor battle over Trump-backed voter ID legislation, but another GOP senator plans to oppose it. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., won\u2019t support the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, a decision that could throw a wrench into the GOP\u2019s plan to force Senate Democrats into tough vote after … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68905\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}