President Donald Trump is again demanding Congress pass a sweeping set of voting restrictions and refuses to rule out sending troops to the polls, as Democrats and voting rights groups assemble a sprawling effort to guard against federal election interference.

The fight over election security is intensifying in Washington, D.C., as the White House and its allies seek to rewrite rules around voter registration and mail-in ballots ahead of the November midterm elections. The stakes of the contests are massive — control of Congress and the future of Trump’s legislative agenda.

Trump wants lawmakers to attach the SAVE America Act to unrelated housing and surveillance legislation after it stalled in the U.S. Senate. The SAVE bill would require individuals to show documents, such as a passport or birth certificate, proving their citizenship to register to vote. It would also mandate voters show photo ID to cast a ballot.

“Voter I.D., and Proof of Citizenship, must be approved, NOW,” Trump wrote Saturday on Truth Social, his social media platform. On Wednesday, he took to social media again to call for the firing of the Senate parliamentarian and suggested she’s an impediment to passage of the bill.

“We need THE SAVE AMERICA ACT passed, and NOW,” Trump wrote.

Democrats and voting rights advocates say the measure would cause chaos if passed this close to the election. They warn it would disenfranchise voters and create additional obstacles to voting for married women and others who have changed their names.

Vote possible soon

The Senate may hold another vote as early as this week on adding the SAVE America Act to a budget reconciliation bill. Senators rejected a prior effort to advance the legislation in a 48-50 vote in April, but  Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, has vowed to try again. 

The SAVE America Act is popular among Republicans in the U.S. House, which passed the bill in February. But a handful of Senate Republicans have joined Democrats in opposing the proposal, which doesn’t have enough support to overcome a filibuster.

“It is voter suppression with a suit and tie,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said Tuesday in a speech at a progressive conference.

Some House Republicans have kept up pressure on the Senate to act. During a House Administration Subcommittee on Elections hearing Wednesday, Rep. Mary Miller, an Illinois Republican, called for the passage of the bill multiple times.

“American citizens deserve secure elections and to know that their votes are guaranteed,” Miller said.

Thune blames Democrats

Senators spent several weeks this spring debating the legislation before moving on to other business. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, on Monday said the chamber held a “robust debate” but indicated senators were unlikely to return to the legislation.

Speaking about the bill in the past tense, Thune cast the measure as a political cudgel that Republicans would use against Democrats in November.

“Democrats are on the record against all of it,” Thune said on the Senate floor. “And we’ll be sure the American people know that Democrats are blocking commonsense policies that have broad support from the American people.”

Democrats, fearing that Trump may try to assert unilateral control over elections regardless of whether the legislation advances, have begun outlining how they plan to combat any attempted election takeover. 

Schumer on Tuesday said Senate Democrats are launching an election protection task force. The group, which will include 11 senators and election experts, will be prepared to mount “lawsuit after lawsuit” throughout the election process.

“Let me be very clear: local officials run elections. Voters decide elections. Donald Trump does not,” Schumer said.

Troops at polling places

In describing their concerns, Schumer and others point to Trump’s refusal earlier this month to close the door on deploying troops to polling places. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also recently dismissed the possibility as a “gotcha hypothetical” without actually ruling it out. 

Federal law prohibits federal troops and agents at election sites in nearly all circumstances.

“I’d do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections,” Trump told reporters when asked about sending troops of immigration agents to the polls.

Trump’s critics also emphasize his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and his continuing portrayal of the contest as stolen. He has pardoned rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, disrupting Congress’ certification of the election. 

On Monday, the Justice Department announced the creation of a $1.776 billion fund to compensate Trump allies who say they were victims of past administrations.

“This is pure fraud and highway robbery,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, said in a statement.

Executive orders

Preparations for possible interference in the midterms come amid a series of steps by the Trump administration over the past year aimed at giving the White House greater authority over elections — though the U.S. Constitution says they are administered by the states.

Trump signed an executive order last year that sought to mandate proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, but the measure was blocked in court. He signed another order in March restricting the sending of ballots through the mail; a federal judge is expected to rule soon on a request to halt its enforcement.

Trump this week attacked Maryland officials over a mistake that caused voters to receive incorrect mail-in ballots for the state’s June primary. Maryland election officials have faulted a vendor for the error and are resending the ballots, but the president has called for a Justice Department investigation.

“You want to have proof of citizenship, you want to have voter ID, you want to have all these things. But to me, maybe the worst of all is the mail-in ballots,” Trump told reporters on Monday.

DOJ battles states

For months, the Department of Justice has demanded states turn over sensitive personal data on voters, such as driver’s license numbers, partial Social Security numbers and dates of birth. 

It has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for the information, which it plans to run through a computer program called SAVE at the Department of Homeland Security to identify possible noncitizens.

Federal judges have so far ruled against the Justice Department. Several voting rights groups have also sued to block the DOJ effort, alleging the Trump administration wants to build an illegal national voter database.

Anthony Nel, a Texas resident and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said in a statement that his voter registration was canceled a month after SAVE wrongly identified him as a possible noncitizen.

“The DOJ should not be building a national database out of our most sensitive, personal information when it can’t even get this right,” Nel said.

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson wants to make changes to a Senate-passed bill that would end the shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security, a move that will further delay funding and prolong the stalemate that began in mid-February. 

The holdup could again interrupt paychecks for workers at the Transportation Security Administration and Federal Emergency Management Agency, both of which are part of DHS. Huge backups in airline security lines resulted in March when TSA officers went without pay for weeks until the administration scrambled to reprogram funds.

Johnson, R-La., has chosen not to negotiate potential tweaks in the funding bill with Senate Democrats, who will be needed to advance it if the House makes alterations.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said during a Tuesday afternoon press conference the bill that’s stalled in the House doesn’t “need tweaks.” 

“They’re just stuck. So they come up with, ‘We need some technical changes,’” he said. “Hold up national security for technical changes? It’s absurd. They can pass the bill right now.” 

Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, said during a brief interview she was “flabbergasted” by Johnson’s comments.

She added during the press conference she has “no idea what technical changes they’re looking at.”

House hasn’t voted on DHS funding

The Senate unanimously passed a bill to fund the vast majority of the Department of Homeland Security in late March and again in early April. Johnson hasn’t put it to the House floor for a vote, blocking it from becoming law. 

The legislation doesn’t include funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Border Patrol, a compromise negotiated after Republicans and Democrats were unable to broker agreement on guardrails for immigration enforcement operations. 

Republicans plan to provide upwards of $70 billion in additional spending for ICE and Border Patrol in a party-line budget reconciliation bill they hope to pass in the coming weeks. 

Johnson said last week he believes the “sequencing is important” on when each of the two bills becomes law. But time is running out for the tens of thousands of federal workers, who are about to miss out on their paychecks once again. 

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement the executive order President Donald Trump signed earlier this month to pay all DHS employees despite the funding lapse can only stretch so far. 

“That money is dried up if I continue down this path the first week of May,” Mullin said. “My pay roll through DHS is just over 1.6 billion dollars every 2 weeks so the money is going extremely fast and once that happens there is no emergency funds after that.”

‘We’ve got to get these agencies funded’

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he’s working with House GOP leaders to “massage” the DHS funding bill in hopes it will become law sometime soon. 

“I’m very sympathetic,” he said. “We talked last night and he’s got to manage his challenges there. We have to manage our challenges here. But one way or the other, we’ve got to get these agencies funded.”

The disconnect between House Republicans and their Senate GOP counterparts on when to fund DHS is just one of several challenges party leaders are attempting to address this week. 

“We’re trying as best we can to coordinate strategy with the House. But, you know, it’s a unique situation. We’ve got very narrow margins and people with real strong opinions,” Thune said. “So it’s going to take, obviously, I think, the heavy involvement of the White House to bust some of these things loose. But we’re trying as best we can to ensure that we can get all of these issues across the finish line and ultimately on the president’s desk.”

Republican leaders will need the support of their own members as well as at least some Democrats in order to get major legislation, including the DHS funding bill, to Trump. 

But as of midday Tuesday, it didn’t appear they’d looped in key negotiators on possible changes to the Senate-passed spending bill. 

Recess next week

Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt, chairwoman of the subcommittee in charge of funding DHS, said she didn’t know what changes House GOP leaders wanted to make. 

“I am not aware. I just know that we need to find a pathway forward,” she said. “And nobody should be leaving here, or certainly flying off to (congressional delegation trips), until we do.” 

Both chambers of Congress are scheduled to leave on Thursday for a week-long break. 

Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, ranking member on the DHS funding panel, said House Republicans hadn’t reached out to him or his staff. 

“I don’t know why he’s making this more complicated than it needs to be,” he said. “Our bill, which passed the Senate 100 to zero, would pass the House easily.”

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Tuesday he plans to use the complex reconciliation process to fund immigration enforcement for the next three years, though it wasn’t immediately clear if House Republicans were on the exact same page.

The plan to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol with only Republican votes could end the two-month shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security when combined with the regular funding bill for that department, which the Senate already approved but is stalled in the House. 

Thune, R-S.D., said during an afternoon press conference that House GOP leaders “could” add additional provisions to the reconciliation bill, but said he would like it to remain narrow. 

“My hope would be that if we can execute on getting that done here in the Senate, the House would be able to follow through,” he said. 

Thune said the Senate could vote as soon as next week on a budget resolution with reconciliation instructions. That is the first step of the complicated process. But the House must vote to adopt that budget resolution before Republicans can pass the funding bill for ICE and the Border Patrol.  

Speaker Mike Johnson’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Homeland Security shuttered

The Department of Homeland Security has been shut down since Feb. 14, after Democrats insisted on new guardrails for immigration enforcement following the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis by federal immigration officers.

Without any bipartisan consensus on how to do that, Republicans have instead decided to use the same reconciliation process they used last year to enact their “big, beautiful” law to approve funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. 

The House would then likely pass DHS’ spending bill without those two line items, which the Senate has already approved. That would provide funding for the other agencies within the department, including the Coast Guard, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Secret Service and Transportation Security Administration.

Safeguards demanded

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said during a separate press conference that Democrats have repeatedly asked for “common sense” safeguards that would require immigration agents to show identification, prevent them from wearing masks and require judicial warrants to enter someone’s home. 

“The bottom line is these are simple. These are common sense,” he said. “They’re what every police department uses and when you ask the American people, they’re on our side. It’s the intransigence, particularly of the hard right, who seem to like what ICE is doing.”

Schumer said Democrats would use the marathon amendment voting session on both the budget resolution and the later reconciliation bill to hold Republicans’ “feet to the fire on DHS, on the war, on so many other issues.”

Thune said he has been “trying to figure out exactly” what Democrats have gotten out of the DHS shutdown, especially considering that immigration enforcement operations haven’t been affected since there was funding for that in last year’s reconciliation bill, exempting those programs from the funding lapse. 

“All of the things that the Democrats made this about, which was supposed to be reforms to the way that ICE and CBP operate. They got none of that. Zero,” he said, referring to Customs and Border Protection, the larger agency that includes the Border Patrol. “And now we’re going to fund those agencies for three years into the future.”