WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate was unable to agree Thursday whether to require photo identification to vote in federal elections, as the chamber debated a larger bill that would make several changes to how Americans register and cast ballots. 

The 53-47 procedural vote rejected an amendment from Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted to the SAVE America Act, which President Donald Trump and some GOP lawmakers believe is an essential piece of legislation, but Democrats say will make it more difficult for Americans to vote. 

The bill already included a section that is very similar to the amendment, but the vote gave Republicans the opportunity to put Democrats on the record about whether they supported voter ID to cast a ballot. 

California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla urged lawmakers to oppose the amendment, saying the vote was an indication of “showmanship and theatrics” from Republicans.

Padilla said the effort would have prevented people from using student IDs or tribal IDs that don’t have an expiration date from participating “in our democracy even though you are eligible.”

The photo ID requirement to cast a ballot, he said, would also add an “additional and unnecessary obstacle” to the tens of millions of Americans who vote by mail. 

“In the 2024 election, 48 million voters chose to vote by mail,” he said. “And in case you missed the breaking news a couple days ago, President Trump once again voted by mail in the special election in Florida. So what is it, good enough for the president but not good enough for the rest of us? Secure enough for the president but not secure enough for the American people?”

Republicans defend photo ID

Husted said during floor debate on the proposal that his amendment is “clean, simple, straightforward.”

“States across our country have shown that you can simultaneously make it easy to vote and hard to cheat,” he said. “Georgia, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, all along with my home state of Ohio, all have photo ID requirements, just to name a few.”

Husted said it’s “common sense” for Americans to prove who they are when they vote. 

“Americans are required to show a photo ID when they rent a car, when they start a job, when they board a plane. This is something that people do every single day,” he said. 

New rules for mail-in ballots

The amendment would have required anyone voting in person to provide election workers with a valid photo identification, which would include a driver’s license, state-issued identification card, U.S. passport, military ID card issued by either the Defense Department or the Department of Veterans Affairs, or a tribal identification card that has an expiration date. 

Americans submitting a mail-in ballot would need to send a copy of their photo identification. If for some reason a voter was unable to do that, they could submit the last four digits of their Social Security number along with an affidavit that they couldn’t provide a copy of their ID.

The provision would have requested state or local election officials “to the extent practicable” ensure people have access to a digital scanner and printer to copy their photo IDs for their mail-in ballots. 

State election officials would have been required to notify people of the new photo ID requirement to cast a ballot when they registered to vote. 

The bill itself, which holds several other provisions, has no chance of advancing in the Senate amid Democratic opposition. Major legislation cannot move forward without the support of at least 60 senators, a procedural step known as the legislative filibuster. 

Republicans earlier this week floated the possibility of moving pieces of the package through the complicated budget reconciliation process, though several GOP senators conceded it will be difficult to move a policy proposal through a pathway designed for changes to federal tax, spending and debt limit issues. 

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate voted Monday evening to confirm Markwayne Mullin to lead the Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for carrying out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda. 

The 54-45 vote means that Mullin, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, will take over the department in the midst of a five-week shutdown. He will replace outgoing Secretary Kristi Noem, whom the president reassigned to another role in the administration.

Mullin voted for himself. Democratic Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico were the only Democrats to back Mullin’s confirmation.

Just before the Senate adjourned, Mullin submitted his resignation letter.

The department has been shut down since mid-February while Democrats have called for restraints on federal immigration agents after officers killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. On Jan. 7, Renee Good was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent and on Jan. 24, Alex Pretti was pinned down and killed by Customs and Border Protection officers.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, said on the Senate floor before the vote Monday that Mullin will be entering DHS at a difficult time. 

“It’s a tough assignment, made all the more challenging right now by Democrats having shut DHS down for five weeks,” Thune said. “We all know that Markwayne isn’t afraid of a challenge.”

Speaking to reporters early Monday, Trump said that Mullin is “gonna be fantastic” as DHS secretary. 

As an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, Mullin will be the first Indigenous DHS secretary. 

Shutdown effects

Though DHS is shuttered, ICE and CBP are still fully funded because the Republican-led Congress last year passed a separate funding stream of $175 billion for immigration enforcement. 

Trump over the weekend directed his administration to place ICE agents in several airports in an attempt to aid Transportation Security Administration agents, who are working without pay. ICE and TSA are both agencies within DHS.

Mullin does not have any experience on a committee that handles policy for Homeland Security and will be tasked with leading a department of 260,000 employees.

Some senators have raised concerns about Mullin’s temperament, citing a 2023 incident in which he physically challenged a witness before Congress. Mullin also expressed sympathy toward a man who attacked Sen. Rand Paul, breaking six of the Kentucky Republican’s ribs and damaging a lung. 

Paul, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, voted against advancing Mullin’s nomination to the Senate floor. Paul also voted against Mullin’s confirmation Monday night. 

The Senate advanced Mullin’s nomination in a 54-37 procedural vote Sunday. Two Democrats, Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman and New Mexico’s Martin Heinrich, joined all Republicans who voted Sunday. Paul did not vote on Sunday. 

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate voted Sunday to advance Oklahoma GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s nomination to lead the Department of Homeland Security.

The 54-37 procedural vote sets up a final vote on Mullin’s confirmation as early as Monday. Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted to advance Mullin, after backing him in committee as well. Also voting with Republicans was Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico.

If confirmed, Mullin will take over a department that has been shut down since Feb. 14 amid a stalemate over changes to immigration enforcement policy. 

Senate Democrats have declined to approve a funding bill for the department following the deaths of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis during a months-long immigrant enforcement operation. 

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs voted, 8-7, to move Mullin’s nomination forward Thursday. Mullin did not gain the support of the fellow Republican who chairs the committee, Rand Paul of Kentucky, but still received a favorable vote from the committee because Fetterman joined all other Republicans in voting in Mullin’s favor.

Paul did not vote on Sunday.

During Mullin’s confirmation hearing, Paul questioned whether Mullin could lead the DHS given his “anger issues.” He also confronted Mullin about his comments calling Paul a “freaking snake” and expressing sympathy for a neighbor who assaulted Paul in a 2017 attack that broke six of his ribs and damaged a lung.

Outgoing DHS Secretary Kristi Noem leaves the department, which has the primary responsibility of enforcing President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policy, with myriad problems, including a bottleneck in approving Federal Emergency Management Agency grants.

Noem, the former governor of South Dakota, also came under bipartisan criticism for describing the victims of the fatal Minneapolis shootings, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, as domestic terrorists without any evidence. 

Mullin made a similar comment the day of Pretti’s shooting, but said during his confirmation hearing that he regretted the statement, though he stopped short of apologizing to Pretti’s family.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans pressed forward Tuesday with a bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID to cast a ballot, despite long odds the legislation will ever become law amid bipartisan opposition. 

The 51-48 vote to formally begin debate on the measure, which GOP lawmakers have named the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or the SAVE America Act, only starts the process. Senators are expected to vote on several amendments in the days, or possibly weeks, ahead. 

But at least 60 lawmakers will be needed to end floor debate, a highly unlikely prospect with Democrats arguing the bill would disenfranchise millions of voters. 

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski was the only Republican to vote against starting debate. North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis didn’t vote. 

Murkowski wrote in a social media post last month the November midterm elections are “fast approaching” and that implementing “new federal requirements now, when states are deep into their preparations, would negatively impact election integrity by forcing election officials to scramble to adhere to new policies likely without the necessary resources. 

“Ensuring public trust in our elections is at the core of our democracy, but federal overreach is not how we achieve this.”

Trump threatens retaliation

President Donald Trump has made enacting nationwide changes to voting his top legislative priority ahead of the midterm elections, although Republicans swept unified control of government less than two years ago. 

He wrote in a social media post Tuesday morning that he plans to campaign against anyone who doesn’t support the legislation, which the House passed last month.

“Only sick, demented, or deranged people in the House or Senate could vote against THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” he wrote. “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!”

Dems predict millions kicked off voting rolls

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York, said during floor remarks the legislation would require Americans “to run through an obstacle course of red tape unlike anything we have ever seen in voter registration.”

The bill becoming law, he said, would lead to millions of Americans being kicked off voter rolls due to a requirement that states run their list of registered voters through a “deeply flawed” Department of Homeland Security database.

“If you’re kicked off the rolls, you may never be told,” he said. “There’s no requirement to let you know.”

Schumer argued the bill is less about ensuring only Americans vote in elections and more about Republican concerns they will lose at least one chamber of Congress later this year. 

“It’s funny. I don’t remember MAGA Republicans screaming about stolen elections and voter fraud after the 2024 election that they won,” he said. “Well, the same rules that governed the 2024 election are going to be the ones that govern the 2026 election. The only difference is that this time MAGA Republicans know they’re in trouble politically. So now they’re suddenly saying the system is compromised and broken and it needs to be changed. It’s all lies.”

77 instances of noncitizen voting 

It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections and anyone found guilty could face fines and up to a year in prison. There are limited instances of people not eligible to vote actually casting a ballot, according to analysis from the Bipartisan Policy Center of data compiled by the Heritage Foundation, an especially conservative think tank. 

BPC’s examination “found only 77 instances of noncitizens voting between 1999 and 2023” and that “there is no evidence that noncitizen voting has ever been significant enough to impact an election’s outcome.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., reiterated a few hours before the procedural step that “the votes aren’t there” to pass the bill via a talking filibuster, a path several of his members want him to take. 

“So what we are doing is we are having a fulsome debate on the floor of the United States Senate, which is something that I think the Senate has done in the past, and probably should do a lot more of,” he said. “But we’ll have it up. Everybody will have their say. At some point, we’ll have votes.  And we’ll see where the votes are.”

A talking filibuster would require Democratic senators to give a series of floor speeches in order to delay or prevent final passage. That process could tie up the Senate floor for months.

Thune said he wasn’t sure when votes on amendments would begin, but that he expects the process to last “for the foreseeable future.”

“I think at least for right now, there’ll be some flexibility to see where the road leads,” he said. 

Mail-in voting, gender-affirming surgeries, sports

Trump has asked GOP senators to add several provisions to the legislation, including new restrictions on mail-in voting, a federal prohibition on gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth and a new law barring transgender women from participating in women’s sports. 

West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, Policy Committee chair, said she doesn’t believe the federal government should tell states how to manage mail-in ballots. 

“A lot of states, red states and blue, have more than a majority of the votes that are mail-in ballots,” she said. “So I think we’ve got to be careful there.”

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson said that once debate on the SAVE America Act has concluded, he wants GOP leaders to hold a floor vote on whether to keep the rule that requires at least 60 senators vote to limit debate on bills, known as the legislative filibuster. 

“I think the days of the minority preventing legislation from passing is over. Because Democrat voters, they want their members to end it. Republican voters want us to end it,” he said. “So in the end, it’ll be that public pressure that I think will eventually end the filibuster. And I’d just rather beat them to the punch so we can pass things like SAVE America Act.”

Thune said during an afternoon press conference he believes the 60-vote procedural hurdle should remain in place because “throughout history it’s protected Republicans and conservative priorities and principles a lot more often than it’s protected Democrats.”

Photo ID

The bill would require local election officials to ensure anyone registering to vote proves they are an American, likely by showing a passport or a birth certificate. Then, when people go to cast a ballot by mail, during early voting, or on Election Day, they would need to show a valid photo ID, like a driver’s license or military identification card. 

The legislation would require state governments to submit their voter rolls to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security so its officials can run them through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system to check if anyone already registered isn’t a U.S. citizen. 

The legislation doesn’t provide state or local governments with any extra money or time to implement the changes, if it were to become law. 

The Bipartisan Policy Center writes in a brief about the legislation that the organization “recommends that policymakers avoid making major changes in an election year given the likelihood that they result in administrative errors and create confusion for voters.”

The three BPC experts who analyzed the bill said it “prioritizes expediency over precision.” 

“The act becomes effective on the date of enactment, giving states no time to adjust processes,” they wrote. “It also requires that the U.S. Election Assistance Commission offer implementation guidance to states within just 10 days of enactment.”

Lawsuits

The legislation would give private citizens the ability to sue election officials who register someone without evidence of U.S. citizenship.

Jeffrey Thorsby, legislative director at the National Association of Counties, wrote in a post about the legislation’s impacts that the “liability provisions could discourage election workers and volunteers from serving at a time when many counties already face recruitment challenges.” 

“Currently, the onus on a non-citizen who registers or votes is on the illegal voter,” he wrote. “SAVE America Act proposes a radical change in how we punish fraudulent voting.”

The voting overhaul measure that the U.S. Senate began debating Tuesday would cause major headaches for underfunded state and local election officials, without meaningfully stopping fraud, according to a collection of voting rights advocates and elections officers.

The so-called SAVE America Act, which President Donald Trump is relentlessly pushing, would create chaos for state and local elections administrators by immediately imposing several new requirements without adding funding, former North Carolina elections chief Karen Brinson Bell said on a press call Tuesday organized by Washington U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell.

“I cannot emphasize enough the Herculean effort that the SAVE America Act would present for election officials across this country,” Brinson Bell, who now advises election officials as a co-founder of the group Advance Elections, said. “Please do not set our country or these public servants up for failure. Bring us to the table. Develop this legislation properly and provide adequate funding and resources so we can all succeed.”

No new money

The bill would initially add $35 million in costs for Washington state to administer this year’s midterm elections, Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey said. The measure would cost an estimated additional $12 million annually in presidential election years for the state’s elections administrators, he added.

But it would not provide federal funding for states and localities to meet the new costs.

“When I looked at the SAVE America Act to understand how it would affect election administration, I did a control-F for the dollar sign, and I did not see a single dollar, much less the hundreds of millions needed to implement these changes,” Brinson Bell said.

The bill, which Trump and other proponents say is necessary to stop immigrants from voting, would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. They would also have to provide a photo ID at polling places.

But the measure “is the very definition of a solution in search of a problem,” Kimsey said on Tuesday’s call. Noncitizens voting in federal elections is exceedingly rare.

Barriers for voting by mail

Overall, the bill would make voting more difficult, especially for people who have changed their names, tribal citizens and people without photo ID, participants on the call said. That counters the goal of elections officials: to make voting easier.

“The problem isn’t that the wrong people are voting,” Kimsey said. “The problem is that not enough people are voting.”

The bill would also create barriers for vote-by-mail, which Washington and other states have used for decades. 

The system has increased voter participation and is widely popular across party lines. 

“The state of Washington’s vote-by-mail system is such a strong system,” Cantwell said. “The whole country should be moving more towards that and not away from it.”

Voting integrity

The bill’s backers, including most Republicans in Congress, say it would erect commonsense safeguards to protect U.S. elections.

In a Tuesday floor speech setting up debate on the measure, U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune called it “essential.”

“If there’s anything essential to the integrity of elections, it’s ensuring that those who are registered to vote are eligible to vote – and that those who show up to vote at polling places are … who they say they are,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said.

The way to do that, he added, was to require proof of citizenship and photo identification.

Photo IDs, though, aren’t as universal as commonly thought, League of Women Voters of Maine Executive Director Chrissy Hart said.

Eighteen percent of citizens older than 65 lack a photo ID, as well as 16% of Latino voters, 25% of Black voters and 15% of low-income Americans, Hart said.

Election denial

Kimsey, who identified as a Republican during his first run for office in 1998 and became an independent after the pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol following the 2020 election, was asked if the measure was a continuation of Trump’s efforts to undermine U.S. elections.

He answered that what he deemed the “election denial movement” lost momentum after Trump’s 2024 victory, but that it seemed to be reappearing ahead of the midterms.

“In my view, this is nothing more than a very clumsy — and I hope not effective — but a very clumsy attempt to create chaos in this year’s midterm elections,” he said.

WASHINGTON — A U.S. Senate panel on Tuesday added to the fierce debate over compensation for student-athletes, with senators and experts agreeing the current system wasn’t working but with different ideas for a path forward.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican and chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, hosted a roundtable of experts, leaders and former college and professional athletes to discuss “fixing college sports.”

Cassidy said the “current system is actually hurting the student-athlete.”

“Our effort will be, what do we do to protect the student-athlete?” he continued, adding that approach would also protect universities.

Two of the five panelists Cassidy brought in hailed from Louisiana State University, including Collis Temple Jr., a member of the LSU Board of Supervisors and former basketball star at the university, along with Julie Cromer, executive deputy athletic director and chief operating officer for LSU Athletics. 

The event came on the heels of a White House roundtable last week, where President Donald Trump pledged to imminently deliver an executive order aimed at reshaping college sports. 

Debate over athletes as employees

The college sports world continues to grapple with the fallout from the NCAA’s 2021 guidelines, which allowed student-athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness. 

A federal judge in June 2025 approved the terms of a nearly $2.8 billion antitrust settlement that paved the way for schools to directly pay athletes.

The rules for name, image and likeness deals vary from state to state.

The college sports landscape is also wrestling with gender inequity in NIL deals and the NCAA’s controversial transfer portal, among other issues.

A bipartisan bill on pause in the U.S. House aims to create a national framework for college athletes’ compensation. It would also prohibit college athletes from being classified as employees while providing broad antitrust immunity to the NCAA and college sports conferences.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, expressed optimism over the bill’s fate during the White House roundtable, saying “we’re right on the verge of passage in the House and we now think we have the votes to do that.” 

But the bill would face a dismal path in the Senate, where Senate Democrats have pushed back against it.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan proposal from GOP Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state would provide “a new antitrust exemption allowing college football institutions to jointly sell media rights” and make it “optional for conferences and schools to pool their media rights together.”

Conversation between schools and athletes needed

Jim Carr, president and CEO of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, said “the implications of student-athletes becoming employees, or a lot of these court decisions that are making it difficult to enforce our rules around what we call education-based athletics, is really — I don’t think it’s an overstatement or being too dramatic to say — critical to not only the NAIA but each of our institutions being able to stay in business on a long-term basis.” 

Carr, whose association includes roughly 250 institutions, said at an average NAIA school, 36% of the students are also athletes.

Sen. Chris Murphy called for collective bargaining, where athletes can “speak for themselves,” noting that Congress should not “micromanage” the relationship between colleges and college athletes. 

“We should just empower the colleges or the conferences and the athletes to have a conversation between themselves,” the Connecticut Democrat said. 

Bernard Dennis III, principal at Jackson Lewis P.C. and an employment and sports law expert, said that if students are classified as employees, “they then become subject to several statutory schemes, not the least of which would be the (Fair Labor Standards Act), which would allow them to be compensated for their work time, for overtime and then it becomes a challenge in what constitutes that.”

He added that “under the law, it would be anything that is required for their work, and so when you have eligibility rules about maintaining a certain GPA, things like that, it becomes not only your time on the field, but does going to class become compensable work time? How do you track that?”