Republicans attach transgender issues to voter ID push

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump turbocharged a Republican push for a voter ID and election overhaul bill known as the SAVE America Act, sparking a high-profile debate over the future of elections, proof of citizenship and an end to many mail-in ballots.

At the same time, Trump tacked on completely unrelated legislation targeting transgender Americans.

The provisions combined two of Trump’s most frequent campaign topics: the spectre of illegal voting and hot-button social issues involving LGBTQ Americans. And Trump made it clear that control of Congress was a major part of the strategy.

“Only sick, demented, or deranged people in the House or Senate could vote against THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” Trump posted on social media. “If they do, each one of these points, separately, will be used against the user in his/her political campaign for office – A guaranteed loss!”

The second Trump administration has sought to roll back societal changes in favor of transgender Americans that Trump and other conservatives argued went too far. Now that is helping to consume Senate floor time and prompting discussion over whether it could hitch a ride on a filibuster-proof budget reconciliation bill to get around Democratic opposition.

Trump has at times threatened not to sign any other legislation until Congress passes the provisions.

The House earlier this year passed a bill containing some of the voting provisions. It was Trump who sought to add more, including the anti-transgender provisions as well as a ban on late-arriving ballots and voting by mail. Those provisions now live in an amendment from Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., as well as a series of amendments from other Republicans.

“No more delays — let’s get it done,” Schmitt said on social media.

Casey Burgat, legislative affairs program director at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management, said Republicans see adding the seemingly unrelated amendments targeting transgender Americans to the bill as a “win-win” for them.

“If it passes, great. They get everything they want. But if it doesn’t, then they get to pick and choose the ads they get to run against Democrats in vulnerable spots,” Burgat said.

Republicans have sought to tie Democrats’ opposition to portions of the bill to their party’s electoral peril. Before offering his own amendment on the issue for a vote last month, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., highlighted the trifecta Republicans won in the 2024 elections.

“I think you can look back at the election this past year, in 2024, one of the main issues that we’re in the majority here, the majority in the House and have control of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, it’s because for some reason my Democrat colleagues do not want to protect girls and women in sports,” Tuberville said.

The amendment did not gain enough support to advance, after receiving a party-line vote of 49-41. Tuberville has since withdrawn that specific amendment, though others are still pending on the bill. Several from Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., addressing gender-affirming care for minors have yet to receive a vote.

Democrats have called the bill a distraction from cost-of-living issues Americans face. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said the base election provisions are unconstitutional and unlikely to pass.

“As far as I’m concerned, the SAVE Act is dead, it just hasn’t been buried,” Blumenthal said. “To say they’re going to add these highly objectionable provisions to an already unconstitutional bill seems like nonsense.”

Tuberville said those measures will likely not gain enough Democratic support to pass as part of traditional legislation, and the main way Republicans may be able to move the provisions from the SAVE America Act would be through reconciliation.

“Joe Manchin voted for it, but he’s digging coal and in West Virginia,” Tuberville said, referring to different but similar provisions on girls’ sports last Congress.

Now the bill hangs in limbo as other topics, including a surveillance reauthorization, the war in Iran and a potential reconciliation bill to fund immigration enforcement have started to suck up oxygen on Capitol Hill. The voter ID bill remains on the legislative calendar, but multiple Republicans and Democrats said it does not have the votes to advance.

Schmitt himself noted that reconciliation will take up Senate floor time over his amendment when asked about when the chamber would return to the legislation.

“I don’t know. I mean, hopefully we spend a lot of time on it. I know that we’re going to be working through reconciliation to make sure Border Patrol and ICE is funded, and there’s nothing Democrats can do to stop it,” Schmitt said.

Trump agenda

Since the first days of his second administration, Trump has rolled back protections for LGBTQ Americans, including attempting to enact a nationwide ban on transgender girls participating in girls’ sports, expelling transgender servicemembers from the military and preventing transgender Americans from having their gender on their passport.

Some have been paused amid ongoing litigation, while others have been enacted as challenges work their way through the courts. Republicans in Congress have also sought to formalize several in legislation including a version of a bill similar to Tuberville’s amendment that did not receive enough votes to advance last year.

During a visit Monday from a DoorDash driver that focused on provisions in last year’s tax bill, Trump talked about his perception of the unpopularity of Democratic policies.

“They want to have open borders. They want to have men playing in women’s sports. Do you think men should play in women’s sports?” Trump asked the driver.

“I really don’t have an opinion about that,” the driver responded.

Jessica Clarke, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law who specializes in antidiscrimination law, said the Trump administration’s efforts are a result of “rank animus against transgender people” and said that the legislation dovetails with administration efforts and state laws intended to curb the rights of transgender Americans.

“This push to add sports and health care bans to the SAVE Act seems opportunistic,” Clarke said.

Clarke pointed out that since returning to office, Trump has taken numerous steps against transgender Americans, such as executive orders to enact a sports ban and changing long-standing passport gender marker policies.

“It is not just about sports, it is not just about passports, it is not just about health care for minors. This is part of a broad effort to purge transgender people from American public life,” Clarke said.

Caleb Smith, director of LGBTQI+ Policy at the Center for American Progress, said that base provisions of the bill would already disproportionately impact members of the LGBTQ community. It would mean that most Americans would need to use a birth certificate or passport to register to vote — documents which frequently do not match transgender Americans’ current names.

Smith also argued that Republicans have targeted LGBTQ Americans for political gain for years.

“I think that it is a common refrain that we see from the President and the administration that when they are losing or when they are doing something that is gaining unpopularity, it is getting less popular, that they try to attack trans folks as a way to regain their footing when it doesn’t work, and it’s really, I think, unlikely to work in this instance as well,” Smith said.

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