Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) circulated a letter to fellow Senate Republicans Tuesday calling for a six-month legislative push to lock in voter ID requirements and permanently shut down Democrat-engineered government shutdowns before the midterm elections.
Fox News obtained the letter, which Scott plans to pitch directly to President Trump at the Senate Republican Steering Committee lunch Wednesday.
“We need to make a clear distinction as to who the good guys are and who the bad guys are,” Scott wrote. “We have to demonstrate what Republicans stand for and what Democrats stand for through action, not rhetoric.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) confirmed Trump is expected to attend Wednesday’s meeting but kept expectations measured on the agenda.
“I think it’ll be a lot of different things,” Thune said. “Hopefully, celebrating some of our successes, talking about the path forward, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the SAVE Act, the SAVE America Act, whichever version of it, might come up.”
The Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and mandate voter ID verification at the polls. A pared-down version of the bill reached 50 Senate votes earlier this month before stalling. Senate Democrats have voted in lockstep against it, while a small number of Republicans have declined to support measures to override the filibuster.
Trump has continued demanding passage, calling for the legislation to be attached to a foreign surveillance powers reauthorization or advanced through budget reconciliation.
Scott’s roadmap also calls for passing a government funding extension lasting at least through November 2026. The goal: strip Democrats of the ability to threaten a shutdown for political leverage during the election season. “Senate Democrats would likely again shut down the government ahead of the elections to gain a political edge,” Scott wrote, citing what he described as a record of Democrat-driven closures over the past year.
The anti-shutdown push includes two specific bills already circulating in the Senate. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) has introduced legislation requiring federal workers to continue receiving pay during any government closure. Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) has proposed an automatic short-term funding extension that would kick in whenever Congress fails to reach a spending agreement before a deadline.
Scott acknowledged a key obstacle on the filibuster. Republicans, he wrote, “are not united in eliminating the filibuster to pass Republican priorities.”
But he argued that forcing votes, even losing ones, is still worth doing. “We need to show voters that we are listening to them and will fight for their priorities whether any Democrats vote with us or not,” Scott wrote.
Wednesday’s Senate Republican lunch will be Trump’s latest face-to-face session with the conference as the administration works to consolidate support behind its legislative agenda. Republicans have faced internal friction in recent weeks over Trump’s Iran nuclear memorandum of understanding and several other administration decisions that have complicated their legislative calendar.
