
Under pressure from President Donald Trump, Senate Republicans appear ready to shoot their shot at passing a version of the SAVE America Act that includes bans on gender-affirming care for minors and on trans women and girls’ participation in women’s sports.
On Tuesday, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) announced his intention to introduce a substitute amendment to replace the version of the bill the Senate is currently debating with one that includes the president’s anti-trans priorities.
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The amendment, first obtained by Punchbowl News earlier this week, includes three sections. Along with the current bill’s strict voter-ID requirements and restrictions on mail-in ballots, Schmitt’s version includes a section banning recipients of federal funds from allowing “a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls,” defining “sex” as “based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”
A third section establishes federal criminal penalties, including up to 10 years’ imprisonment, for providing gender-affirming care — including puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and gender affirmation surgeries — to minors.
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House Republicans passed the current version of the SAVE America Act last month, and Senate Republicans voted to open debate on the bill on Tuesday. But with Senate Democrats united in opposition, it is unlikely to overcome the 60-vote threshold needed to pass. Schmitt’s substitute amendment would also require 60 votes to advance.
Critics of the current version of the SAVE America Act have characterized it as an effort to disenfranchise voters and rig future elections in Republicans’ favor. The law would mandate that every U.S. voter present a birth certificate or a U.S. passport as proof of citizenship when registering to vote. An estimated 146 million Americans don’t have a passport, while many others — transgender people, married women, and same-sex couples among them — do not have a birth certificate that reflects their current name. The SAVE America Act would also make it harder to cast a ballot by requiring voters to show a valid photo ID at polling places and imposing limits on mail-in ballots.
In his Tuesday press release, Schmitt said he’d “worked closely with President Trump and the White House” to introduce the substitute amendment. The president has described the SAVE America Act as his No. 1 priority and has said he will not sign any other legislation until it reaches his desk. He has also recently started demanding that Republican lawmakers add the unrelated anti-trans provisions to the bill. During a press conference at his Doral golf resort in Florida earlier this month, Trump seemed to suggest that adding the anti-trans provisions would force Senate Democrats to vote for the bill.
But as The 19th notes, few of the anti-trans laws passed by the House this session have made it through the Senate. Advocates for Trans Equality senior policy analyst Caius Willingham told the outlet that there is simply not enough support in the upper chamber for anti-trans measures like those Trump is demanding.
“It seems as if he believes that attaching these anti-trans riders to the SAVE America Act would improve its chances in the Senate,” Willingham said. “Putting those riders into the SAVE America Act would actually turn off more senators than it would inspire them.”
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