WASHINGTON – Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said the partial government shutdown would continue if a major voter registration bill known as the “SAVE Act” is included in government spending legislation. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) is leading an effort to have the measure added to the package.
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act would require states to obtain documentary proof of U.S. citizenship and identity to register to vote, a requirement already in place in a small number of states.
“I have said it before and I’ll say it again, the SAVE Act would impose Jim Crow-type laws to the entire country and is dead on arrival in the Senate,” Schumer said in a statement on Monday. “It is a poison pill that will kill any legislation that it is attached to. If House Republicans add the SAVE Act to the bipartisan appropriations package it will lead to another prolonged Trump government shutdown.”
“Let’s be clear, the SAVE Act is not about securing our elections,” he continued. “It is about suppressing voters. The SAVE Act seeks to disenfranchise millions of American citizens, seize control of our elections, and fan the flames of election skepticism and denialism,” adding that it is “reminiscent of Jim Crow era laws and would expand them to the whole of America.”
“Republicans want to restore Jim Crow and apply it from one end of this country to the other. It will not happen. Democrats will go all out to defeat the SAVE Act and defend free and fair elections.”
Luna responded to the reports of Schumer’s opposition by posting on X that “the SAVE Act is dead on arrival unless Thune removes the filibuster or Democrats break from Schumer to save their own billions of dollars in projects.”
The Senate sent five spending bills and a short-term Department of Homeland Security continuing resolution to the House under a deal between the White House and Schumer to split DHS funding from the other appropriations measures, allowing immigration negotiations to continue without a prolonged government shutdown.
The House had already passed six appropriations bills prior to the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, a leftist protester who was killed by federal immigration agents last month. If the House makes further changes to the spending package, it will have to return to the Senate. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he wants to see the shutdown end by Tuesday.
“Our intention is by Tuesday, all agencies of the federal government, except for that one, and then we’ll have two weeks of good faith negotiations, to figure it out,” Johnson told the NBC News program. “Republicans are going do the responsible thing and fund the government.”
The House Rules Committee is expected to meet at 4 p.m. to begin the procedural steps needed to bring the funding bills to the floor.
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