WASHINGTON — Lawmakers are scrambling after President Donald Trump abruptly canceled his signing of a major bipartisan housing bill Wednesday and demanded senators pass the SAVE America Act. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said passing the act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and an ID to cast a ballot, is “a national emergency.”

What You Need To Know

Lawmakers are scrambling after President Donald Trump abruptly canceled his signing of a major bipartisan housing bill Wednesday and demanded senators pass the SAVE America Act

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said passing the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and an ID to cast a ballot, is “a national emergency”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said at a news conference Wednesday that House Republicans share the president’s preference to prioritize the SAVE America Act

On Wednesday, Johnson said the only way to get seven Democrats in the Senate to join 53 Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act is to put it in another reconciliation bill

“He and I have talked about this a lot,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said at a news conference Wednesday, where he said House Republicans share the president’s preference to prioritize the SAVE America Act. “The president believes in election integrity. He talks about it all the time, and we do as well.”

While the House has passed the SAVE America Act three times, it has failed in the Senate, where it needs 60 votes to pass in a chamber where Republicans control 53 seats.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Tuesday that while Trump and some in their conference want to see the voting bill pass, “it’s just not realistic.”

Thune devoted weeks of floor time to the voting bill earlier this year and has said he supports it. He declined to comment early Wednesday when asked about Trump’s demands that it take precedent over the housing bill, saying he was just learning about what the president said.

On Wednesday, Johnson said the only way to get seven Democrats in the Senate to join 53 Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act is to put it in another reconciliation bill.

Championed by Trump and House Republicans, the expedited legislative process would bypass the Senate filibuster and require only a simple majority to pass. The reconciliation process can only be used to pass bills dealing with spending, revenue and the federal debt limit. 

A third reconciliation measure, which Republicans are calling “Reconciliation 3.0,” would follow the reconciliation bill Congress passed earlier this month that provided over $70 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.

“We believe that if you create a grant program that ties it to reconciling the budget and you allow blue states — if they come to their senses and they want to avail themselves of election integrity proposals and ideas and policies — they can draw down from a federal fund and use those funds,” he explained.

Johnson said the House GOP was “willing to invest heavily in that” and pledged to put together such a bill.

The speaker said he talked through the plan with the president in detail Wednesday morning. Trump said he wants to see progress on the idea, according to Johnson.

On Wednesday, Johnson said Democrats have repeatedly voted against the SAVE America Act “because it is the only way that the Marxists can win. They cannot win on their ideas.”

Democrats in the House and Senate have repeatedly voted against the SAVE America Act, saying it is not about election security but voter suppression.

“This is the truth: The SAVE Act is not a mainstream bill whatsoever,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor in February. “It’s a fringe piece of legislation that has now taken over the Republican Party, masquerading as election security when it’s really about laying the groundwork to meddle in the midterm elections and make it much harder for people to vote.”

Johnson’s support for the SAVE America Act and Reconciliation 3.0 comes one day after several candidates endorsed by New York City’s democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani won their primaries.

It also comes one day after Trump insisted during a rally at a Mack Trucks factory in Pennsylvania that the SAVE America Act needed to pass.

The president insisted on the bill’s passage after saying “all communists” were running in New York’s primaries and casting doubt on California’s election earlier in the month, when a slow vote count reversed an early lead for GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton and dropped Trump supporter and LA mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt out of the November election.

“They voted against voter ID,” Trump said of the Democrats’ refusal to support the SAVE America Act, adding without evidence: “You know why? There’s only one reason. They want to cheat.”

Trump also sought to require documentary proof of citizenship through executive orders he has signed. On Wednesday, a federal judge in Boston permanently barred the Trump administration from implementing most of a 2025 order on voting.

U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper rejected the administration’s argument that a lawsuit to block the changes brought by Democratic state attorneys general was premature because the rules had yet to be implemented. Instead, she agreed that the Constitution gives states and Congress the authority to regulate elections, and that Trump’s requirements violated the separation of powers.

Among other proposed changes, Trump’s order would have required people to provide documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote, prevented mail ballots from being counted if they arrive after Election Day, even if they were postmarked by then, and punished states that failed to comply by withholding certain federal money.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.