Let me begin by putting all my cards face-up on the table. No one wishes the SAVE Act, requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo-ID in order to cast a ballot, to become law more than I. Currently, in my home state of California, it’s actually illegal here to both ask for ID at polling places and to show ID. Elections are held open for weeks until enough stray mail-in ballots, which for some reason break for Democrats every single time, flow in to swing a total that at one point showed promise of sanity in the Golden State.
The argument against the SAVE Act is one of the more absurd cases to make, and it has not resonated at all with the American public, regardless of political party. CNN’s Harry Enten polled it again and found that it’s still very much a popular idea across the entire electorate.
President Trump said yesterday on the White House lawn that the SAVE Act is probably the most popular piece of legislation he’s submitted to Congress, and he’s correct.
So what’s the hang-up? Why are online influencers on the right so ticked off that they are beginning to wish Vice-President J.D. Vance would step in and relieve Majority Leader John Thune of duty? That’s where it gets tricky.
‘It’s simple math,’ advocates for the talking filibuster path claim as a backdoor way to get the SAVE Act passed and on to Trump’s desk for signature. If it’s an 80-20 or maybe even a 90-10 issue, and Republicans control both houses of Congress, it seems it should be an easy lift. ‘Just do it,’ they say. I actually agree it’s simple math, but it’s the ones pushing this Rule XIX option for debate that don’t seem to be able to figure out the mathematical calculations.
Because only a third of the Senate is up for election every two years, it’s not like the House, where the entire body is up for grabs biannually. A revolving Senate means the rules for how the place operates, Constitutionally granted to the Senate to make for themselves, survive each election in perpetuity. They are standing rules which stay in force even if control of the upper chamber switches parties…unless the nuclear option is deployed, challenging the meaning of a rule, and the Parliamentarian’s interpretation is overruled by a majority vote. Then, the standing rules are amended.
Currently, Rule XXII, the only rule that deals with cloture, or the 60-vote rule providing for a silent filibuster, states that for legislative bills, there must be a cloture vote to move onto a bill unless the majority leader brings it to the floor as privileged legislation, only requiring a majority. Now that the bill is on the floor, debate takes place for however long the two sides agree to. Usually, there is an agreement to the length of debate, and another 60-vote cloture is taken to close off debate and move to final passage. If there’s no agreement between the two sides, the bill will die unless there are enough bipartisan sponsors of the bill to achieve cloture, or the majority has 60 votes.
In the House, the SAVE Act passed by the slimmest of majorities, because that’s how stuff happens in that chamber. If you have the numbers, even if only by one or two, you can move legislation through. In the Senate, you’ve got to have buy-in, unless you move it through reconciliation, which is tricky enough on its own.
Now enter the Box Canyon Gang, the online community that thinks they, along with Utah Senator Mike Lee, have this all figured out. I will be as fair as I can to objectively explain the strategy as has been explained to me.
The House sends a message to the Senate that the SAVE Act is passed and needs attention. Majority Leader Thune has the prerogative as majority leader to bring that message and the attached legislation to the floor for debate with a simple majority, which the Republicans have for the SAVE Act. So far, so good.
Under Rule XIX, which outlines the rules of standard debate, each senator may speak on the bill for as long as they wish, and can do so on two separate occasions. Once every Senator has stated their piece, however long it takes, provided that the Senate never adjourns in the course of this bill being open for debate on the floor, a senator from the majority party can then make a motion to move to final passage, which would only require a simple majority. Final cloture under Rule XXII is bypassed, and so long as Republicans are patient enough to wait Democrats out until they can’t talk any longer, the bill is passed.
Except…
There are amendments that can be offered for the underlying legislation. There are no limits on how many amendments may be offered, and each amendment is subject to its own floor time for debate under Rule XIX, with each member having another two bites at the speechifying apple to slow things down further.
I’m not going to pull the Chevy Chase-as-Gerald Ford Saturday Night Live routine and say It was my understanding there would be no math, but here’s the kind of playbook the Democrats could run. Mind you, I know full well how excruciatingly important it is for electoral integrity to clamp down on rampant fraud in blue states. I know the stakes for Republicans’ chances in the future. And I also know full well that the Democrats realize what’s at stake, too. The SAVE Act, to Democrats, is their sweet meteor of death. But instead of embracing it to save themselves from suffering from the chaos, they will throw every nuke they can in the path to divert it from striking. They want to live, and they really want to be politically viable. There is no poll, nor any political pressure that can be applied to make Democrats cave on this. They will fight to the death to kill it. Here’s what that fight might look like.
Senator Thune goes to the floor to get the simple majority vote to bring the SAVE Act to the floor as privileged legislation. That question goes to the desk. Each Senator can now speak for as long as they wish, since there’s no cloture being filed. Let’s say that each Democratic senator speaks for four hours each. Personally, I think Cory “Spartacus” Booker and Chris Murphy have full day speeches still in their bag of tricks, but let’s go with four hours each. For Mazie Hirono, she’ll read Hawaiian crop yields or something.
Forty-six senators X 4 hours each = 184 hours. Now double it, because Rule XIX says they can speak twice on any question on the floor. Now you’re at 368 hours. I’m excluding John Fetterman, because even though he’s against the SAVE Act, I don’t think he’s got the stomach to participate in the circus with the same intensity. And this is just on the question of bringing the SAVE Act to the floor to begin debate. That’s two weeks, one day, and 8 hours on the Senate floor, assuming the chamber is in session 24/7. And that doesn’t include quorum calls, which will add several hours, or any Republicans speaking, which will be several more hours. So you’re creeping up to three weeks just to get onto the bill.
Now that you’ve cleared that hurdle, let’s assume that each senator offers two amendments each. Again, I think Booker and Murphy will dole them out like they are coming out of a Pez dispenser. 46 senators X 2 amendments each. That’s 92 amendments. And again, under Rule XIX, each amendment is its own question, meaning no time limits on speeches, and each senator gets another two bites at the apple. 92 amendments, with 46 senators speaking an average of four hours on two separate occasions on each amendment introduced, again without computing quorum call stalling tactics and any Republicans taking the floor, comes out to *carries the one* 33,856 hours. By the time Democrats would theoretically be finished with the amendment process alone, 3 years, 45 weeks, and 16 hours would have passed.
If that’s confusing for you, just the amendment part of considering the SAVE Act wouldn’t end until a year-and-a-half after the 2028 Presidential election cycle. And we haven’t even calculated the final two bites at the apple on the underlying vote by each Senator before motioning for final passage. And that motion for final passage, which only needs 51 votes, is itself another question. So add another couple of weeks before final passage.
Could the process be shortened by tabling amendments? Sure. But you’re still eating up week after week, possibly months, before you’d move to debate on the underlying bill, which is another month. I’ve been told by advocates for this Rule XIX strategy that offering an amendment counts as one of the two speeches allowed to each senator. That’s now what the rule says. The rule says no senator may speak more than twice in a legislative day. Speaking isn’t filing an amendment with the desk. And once that amendment is taken up, it is its own question, and subject to Rule XIX debate.
Of course, it won’t have to go that long before the bill dies a miserable death. Why? There’s no time. You can’t bend the space-time continuum and hit fast forward on the Senate remote control.
Waiting out the Democrats is simply not a coherent strategy. It’s a unicorn passing pixie dust gas. There’s a reason Rule XXII is there, and why the Senate is a chamber of compromise, because unless one side has 60 votes, or bites the bullet and changes the cloture rule on legislation, the minority can bottle things up forever.
Senator Mike Lee of Utah, whom I esteem greatly, all but gave the strategy game away this morning.
🚨 SEN. MIKE LEE JUST LAID OUT THE GAMEPLAN!
To pass the SAVE America Act: keep forcing Senate Democrats to debate it for DAYS on end.
DELAY the 60-vote cloture requirement as long as possible. Make them feel the heat until we get 60 🔥
This KEEPS Democrats in the news cycle… pic.twitter.com/lB7KosyfnX
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) March 12, 2026
Even Senator Lee doesn’t seem to be thinking that the Rule XIX strategy to its natural conclusion, won’t work. His plan is to force Democrats to filibuster at length for weeks on end until the pressure and backlash builds, causing at least 10 of them to yield and fall on their rhetorical sword, consenting to the 60-vote cloture under Rule XXII. I do not for a second believe Democrats will yield. Not on this bill. No way.
And, so long as we’re gaming this out, while you’re onto the SAVE Act on the floor, other legislation cannot be addressed. If you’ll recall, the Democrats currently have the Department of Homeland Security shut down in another stunt. It’s a political loser for them, and the longer it plays out and lines get longer at TSA because agents who cannot get paid quit to find other employement, and the Coast Guard begins to lose people for the same reason while we’re hearing threats about possible drone strikes on the West Coast from Iran, Democrats are putting themselves in further political jeopardy…unless Republicans pull their own stunt that bails them out.
Not only can we not force the Democrats’ hand to reopen government if we’re in the middle of the floor exercise for the SAVE Act, Republicans actually give Democrats talking points to wallpaper over their stunt and turn it against the GOP. Imagine seeing these headlines and interviews in Resistance media.
“We Democrats are totally ready to negotiate in good faith to reopen the government, but Republicans will not take yes for an answer. They are hellbent on throwing millions of Americans off the voting rolls in a naked attempt to cheat in the midterm elections.”
Democrats really are not that smart when it comes to political tactics. They’re very predictable. It’s not hard to see how they will play this. And yet we will find ourselves stuck in a quagmire eerily similar to the one Democrats created twice in the past six months – a stunt driven by their activist base that is not thought through, and one that has no viable way forward. It’s a box canyon.
John Thune is not an establishment RINO. That’s absurd. He went to BIOLA, the Bible Institute of Los Angeles in college, for crying out loud. He’s an actual man of faith, not like that weirdo running for Senate in Texas. He is also wicked smart. He is pretty good at math. If the votes were there, he’d lead the charge. Knowing the votes are not there, he’s doing everything he can to not trap his members in quicksand.
The cold, hard truth is that Republicans know they could easily be in the minority in 2027. Convincing members to give up one of their most prized arrows in the quiver, the filibuster, along with blue slips for district court nominees, is not an enticing option for any of them. The same Democrats who couldn’t wait to get rid of the filibuster until Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema blocked them love the filibuster now. So much so, they’ll engage in it non-stop until the election, if need be, to stop the SAVE Act.
If you want the SAVE Act passed, quantity is a quality all of its own. Purging Republicans you believe to be RINOs gets you further away from the number you’re looking for, not closer to it. Donald Trump was elected to a four-year term. Every one of us on the right knew full well that the problems facing this country were much greater than could be fixed in one four-year term. Amazingly, and for which I am very grateful, Trump has exceeded all expectations for acting with speed and urgency on all sorts of necessary repairs to the republic. But even the best performance for the first year and a half of an administration in my lifetime was never meant to be a one-and-done exercise by people on the right in 2024.
Turning the country around was always a multi-election project. Now is not the time to turn your back and walk away. If you want to know who the true obstructionists to the SAVE ACT are, look for the senators with a D after their name. They’re the ones needing replacements. Start there. Once you get to 75 Republicans in the Senate, be my guest. Purge away all the say down to 60. That’s the magic number, just like it has been for 51 years and counting.
Editor’s note: We now have the room to run outside commentary by some of our favorite and most provocative thinkers on the Right. That only happens because of the support of our readers, who ensure that we have the resources to keep providing an independent platform and independent voices in a sea of Protection Racket Media domination.
Help us maintain that fight! Join Hot Air VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership.
