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<\/p>\nVice President JD Vance says the Trump administration has explored an extraordinary Senate maneuver that could potentially help advance the SAVE America Act, but a small group of Republican senators remains an obstacle.<\/p>\n
Vance suggested that his constitutional role as president of the Senate could potentially put him at the center of the fight over President Donald Trump\u2019s election legislation.<\/p>\n
Speaking Thursday on Newsmax\u2019s \u201cCarl Higbie FRONTLINE,\u201d Vance said the administration has examined whether he could personally take control of the Senate chair and overrule the parliamentarian.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, we\u2019ve actually looked into this. As the president of the Senate under the U.S. Constitution, there are things that we can do,\u201d Vance said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can take over the Senate chair. I can occupy the chair. We can overrule the parliamentarian. Those things are very possible,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n
The problem, according to Vance, would then be securing enough Republican votes to sustain such a ruling.<\/p>\n
Vance said the obstacle would not necessarily be the 60 votes ordinarily needed to overcome a Democratic filibuster, but whether Republicans could muster sufficient support for the procedural maneuver.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf, for example, I took over the Senate chair, and I overruled the parliamentarian, we would need to sustain 50 senators plus me,\u201d Vance explained.<\/p>\n
He said Trump, administration officials and Republican lawmakers have been discussing whether enough senators could ultimately be persuaded to support such a move.<\/p>\n
Vance blamed what he described as \u201ca few holdouts\u201d who remain committed to traditional Senate procedures.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem is not the majority of GOP senators,\u201d Vance said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s that you\u2019ve got a few holdouts who just don\u2019t want to do that because they\u2019re so committed to these archaic rules.\u201d<\/p>\n
The House has already passed the SAVE America Act, which would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and photo identification to cast a ballot.<\/p>\n
The legislation would also impose new requirements on absentee voting and require states to regularly maintain voter rolls to identify and remove noncitizens.<\/p>\n
An effort to advance the legislation through budget reconciliation encountered a major roadblock in June when Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough determined that it did not comply with the Byrd Rule.<\/p>\n
The rule governs which provisions can be included in reconciliation legislation, which can advance through the Senate with a simple majority rather than the 60 votes generally required to overcome a filibuster.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Trump has subsequently called for eliminating the filibuster and criticized Senate Majority Leader John Thune over the impasse.<\/p>\n
Vance argued that Republicans who insist on preserving traditional Senate procedures are making a strategic mistake because he believes Democrats will eliminate those same protections whenever they next regain control of the chamber.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou still have some senators who are so committed to these ridiculous parliamentary rules, even though they know the Democrats aren\u2019t,\u201d Vance said.<\/p>\n
He described those Republicans as effectively \u201cunilaterally disarming\u201d while assuming Democrats would reciprocate by preserving the filibuster if they regain power.<\/p>\n
Vance pointed to former Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who resisted Democratic efforts to change filibuster rules during the Biden administration.<\/p>\n
He argued that their experiences demonstrated the political pressure senators can face when opposing their party\u2019s leadership on major procedural questions.<\/p>\n
He also argued that Democrats would eventually eliminate the filibuster to pursue priorities including statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., changes to the Supreme Court, and their own election legislation.<\/p>\n
For now, however, Vance acknowledged that Republicans do not appear to have secured the votes necessary to execute the maneuver the administration has explored.<\/p>\n
That leaves Trump and Vance attempting to persuade the remaining Republican holdouts as the White House searches for a path to move the SAVE America Act through the Senate, Newsmax reported.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to end the filibuster to save American elections,\u201d Vance said. \u201cIt\u2019s the smart and also the patriotic thing to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Vice President JD Vance says the Trump administration has explored an extraordinary Senate maneuver that could potentially help advance the SAVE America Act, but a small group of Republican senators remains an obstacle. Vance suggested that his constitutional role as president of the Senate could potentially put him at the center of the fight over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitolpulsed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitolpulsed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitolpulsed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitolpulsed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitolpulsed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=678"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/capitolpulsed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":680,"href":"https:\/\/capitolpulsed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678\/revisions\/680"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitolpulsed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitolpulsed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitolpulsed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitolpulsed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}