Republicans Must Not Surrender to Democrats on ICE & SAVE America Act

While some reports indicate that Senate Republicans are attempting to negotiate a “bipartisan” deal with Democrats to fund the majority of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ahead of their scheduled two-week recess, the potential for an agreement seems to be falling apart.

The reported deal would fund DHS components such as TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard, but it would not include funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It also would not include the “welding” of the SAVE America Act to the DHS funding bill, as President Trump has pushed for.

Senate Republicans have suggested that they would then attempt to secure ICE funding, and pass portions of the SAVE America Act, through the budget reconciliation process later this year.

While budget reconciliation was successfully used to secure ICE funding in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” using this mechanism to pass the SAVE America Act is, as Senator Mike Lee recently stated, doomed to fail.

And for some Republicans, especially those in leadership positions like Senate Majority Leader John Thune, that seems to be the point.

At first glance, using budget reconciliation seems like a great idea. Bills passed through this process need only 51 votes to pass, avoiding the 60-vote filibuster threshold.

But according to the Senate’s “Byrd Rule,” legislation passed through budget reconciliation must be related to the budget – which the SAVE America Act is not. As such, it is almost certain that the Senate parliamentarian would rule any election integrity-related measures as “out of order” and strip them out of the bill.

Republicans could simply overrule the parliamentarian and pass it anyway. But Majority Leader John Thune has also clearly said that Republicans will not do that.

In other words, the “don’t worry, we’ll pass it in budget reconciliation” line is just a deceptive procedural maneuver designed to placate the Republican base that would leave the SAVE America Act dead in the water. Republican leaders get to say, “Oh well, we tried,” knowing that they did everything but try.

By removing the parts of the DHS funding bill that Democrats object to, such as ICE and the SAVE America Act, the GOP leadership isn’t really negotiating at all but rather surrendering their leverage as the majority. They are trading the security of our elections and the enforcement of our immigration laws for the temporary comfort of a positive news cycle praising their efforts to reduce airport delays before they go on vacation.

At its core, a nation’s sovereignty is defined by its ability to control who enters its borders and who participates in its self-governance. By sidelining ICE funding and the SAVE America Act, the GOP would be effectively waving the white flag on both fronts.

Think of ICE and the SAVE America Act as two sides of the same coin: one protects the physical boundaries of our communities through interior immigration enforcement, and the other protects the political boundaries of the nation, namely the integrity of American elections.

Securing both requires courage, courage that GOP voters have demanded of their leaders.

So, what could be done instead of surrendering to Democrats in yet another “bipartisan” compromise and attempting an end-around through the budget reconciliation process?

There are two options, and both require the Senate to change its own rules and the GOP majority to have courage.

The first is restoring a genuine standing or “talking” filibuster. Contrary to the idealistic scenes in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” the Senate no longer debates using a talking filibuster.

Today, a senator can block a bill simply by signaling an intent to filibuster, which automatically triggers the 60‑vote cloture requirement to end debate. The “silent filibuster” isn’t some sacred institution – it’s only about 50 years old.

To bring back the old‑school version of the filibuster — where opposing senators must physically hold the floor and keep talking — the Senate would have to rewrite Rule XXII or adopt a new precedent redefining how debate is kept open.

In this scenario, you would still technically need 60 votes to end the debate. However, such a change would force Democrats to continue physically talking on the floor to block a bill from proceeding. When they stop talking, this rule change could finally allow for the passage of the SAVE America Act with 51 votes.

The other option is eliminating the 60‑vote threshold altogether – the so-called “nuclear option.”

With a simple majority, the Senate can overturn the presiding officer’s ruling and establish a new precedent that legislation passes with 51 votes. This is the most controversial route because it permanently alters how the Senate functions and hands the same power to future majorities.

It is important to note that Democrats have already “nuked” the filibuster for their own priorities in the past when it came to judicial nominees. During the Biden administration, they also came within two votes of abolishing the filibuster altogether – and the two Democrats who blocked that change are now gone. It seems entirely likely that nuking the filibuster will be a top priority for the next Democrat Senate.

So, why wouldn’t the GOP at least temporarily adjust the rules for something as fundamental as election integrity and ICE funding – especially when 83 percent of Americans are in favor of Voter ID? The GOP should force Democrats to stand up on the Senate floor and speak nonstop for days, weeks, or even months, and explain why they refuse to listen to a large supermajority of the American people and finally secure our elections.

And then, the GOP should pass the SAVE America Act anyway.

President Trump clearly recognizes that this is the best course forward and has been pushing it since the Democrats’ shutdown of DHS began. But thus far, it seems that a few recalcitrant GOP senators are determined to prevent this strategy from succeeding – more concerned as they are with preserving Senate “norms” than preserving their own nation.

What we’re witnessing now is precisely why the late Paleoconservative Sam Francis labeled the establishment GOP “Beautiful Losers.” He argued that Republicans are experts at losing, always adhering to procedural traditions while failing to stop the Left and the managerial class on both sides of the aisle from eroding the American way of life and the sacred values that the country was founded on – like the sanctity of the ballot box.

Today’s Republican leadership is once again proving Francis right. They would rather risk little and lose with their “principles” intact than wield the power Republican voters gave them to save the country.

If a political party is unwilling to use the power of its majority to ensure fair elections and the enforcement of our immigration laws, then what good is that majority? It exists in name only, and its commitments to voters aren’t worth the paper they were printed on.

The political earthquake that Trump’s emergence on the political scene a decade ago represented was fueled by conservative anger over this status quo. Finally, after decades of decline, Trump rebuilt the Republican Party to fight and win.

It is time for Republican leadership to decide: are they more committed to upholding the “traditions” of a broken Senate, or to the security and survival of our sovereign nation?

Republican voters – and indeed the country as a whole – can’t afford and don’t deserve any backsliding on this front. Protecting America’s borders and securing her elections are simply too important.

Adam Johnston is a writer whose work has been featured in The Federalist, The Blaze, and the Daily Caller. He is also the creator of the Substack publication “Conquest Theory” where he regularly writes about politics, history, philosophy, and technology. You can find him on X @adamkjohnston.