Hardline conservatives double down to save the SAVE Act

Senate Republicans face long odds in advancing voter ID legislation, but they’re not backing down.

Huddled behind closed doors on Tuesday, GOP lawmakers attempted to chart a path forward on the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, a revamped version of election integrity legislation that has long gathered dust in Congress.

A trio of hardliner conservatives — Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rick Scott of Florida — have championed the legislation and demanded it be considered in the upper chamber.

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Lee gave what lawmakers who attended the meeting described as an impassioned plea to move ahead with the bill, which would require voters to show identification, mandate in-person proof of citizenship when registering and direct states to remove noncitizens from voter rolls.

"Nothing in the Senate's an easy move," Lee said after the meeting. "This one's certainly not. But if we want to do this, this is how we have to go about it."

Indeed, Senate Democrats won’t support the legislation. That means the 60-vote filibuster threshold is, for now, an impossible barrier to breach.

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Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told Fox News Digital that Republicans would continue to press the voter ID issue as common sense, given how prevalent identification is across several aspects of daily life.

"To get on an airplane you need a photo ID. You want to buy a beer at a football game? You need a photo ID. Go to the library, you need a photo ID for just about everything," Barrasso said. "And now you see Democrats are demanding photo IDs to go to any meetings that they have, and we just saw that in Georgia."

But Democratic resistance and moderate GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski's rejection of the legislation leave two options, which Lee and others pitched to their colleagues — nuke the filibuster or turn to the standing, or talking, filibuster.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., immediately threw cold water on the former.

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"It's not just me not being willing to do it. There aren't anywhere close to the votes — not even close — to nuking the filibuster," Thune said. "And so that idea is something, although it continues to be put out there, is something that doesn't have a future.

"So is there another way of getting there? We'll see."

In lieu of nuking the filibuster, which Trump has asked Senate Republicans to do throughout his second term, the GOP is considering turning to the standing filibuster, which existed before the modern 60-vote threshold.

The modern filibuster is less strenuous than the standing filibuster, which requires lawmakers to debate on the floor. That route could paralyze the upper chamber for hundreds of hours.

Scott told Fox News Digital that during the meeting his colleagues were "starting to understand" the standing filibuster but noted that not everyone was on board yet.

"I think we ought to look at all of our options to get it passed, whether it's the talking filibuster or whatever it is, to make sure elections are secure," Scott said. "So, I'm not going to give up."