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Vance names the four Republicans he says are blocking the SAVE America Act

Photo: Emily J. Higgins / Public domain (source)

Vance Names the Four Republicans He Says Are Blocking the SAVE America Act

by
M.A. Rothman

By M.A. RothmanSeptember 30, 2026 · 4 min read
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Vice President JD Vance says he and President Trump have “war-gamed” a plan to take over the Senate floor, fire the parliamentarian and force through the SAVE America Act, and he named the four Republican senators he says would sink it: Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski. Vance made the comments in a 30-minute interview with Vince Coglianese, the Daily Caller’s editorial director and host of “VINCE” on the Bongino Report, that aired on Sept. 29, 2026.

Vance’s point was not that the plan would work. It was that it wouldn’t, and that the reason is not Senate procedure. It is Republicans.

“Could I assume the chair?”

Asked what could be done to get the election-integrity bill through, Vance laid out the scenario himself. “First of all, could I assume the chair of the Senate and fire the parliamentarian? Yes, I could. If you have to ask the question, what does that give you? So let’s just play this out,” he told Coglianese.

“Trust me, we have played it out internally with a lot of great people, including the president of the United States. So I take over the chair, I fire the parliamentarian, and what happens? Four or five Republicans, at least, and maybe 10 Republicans, they join the Democrats to then overrule the new chair, which is the Vice President of the United States,” Vance said.

He was blunt about where the problem lies: “The problem is not with who’s in the chair. The problem is that you have four or five Republicans, and we all know who they are, who are going to stand with Democrats.” He added that he had wanted to make the move “a few months ago” but that he and the president ultimately decided it “doesn’t make sense because it’s not going to go anywhere.”

The math, and the names

Vance said he and Trump have “obsessively thought through how to get Save America passed” and how to blow up the filibuster. Then he did the arithmetic out loud. There are 47 Democratic senators. If the vice president overrules the parliamentarian, opponents need four Republicans to overturn the chair, because at 50 votes the vice president breaks the tie and the ruling stands. Forty-seven Democrats plus four Republicans makes 51.

Then he named them: McConnell of Kentucky, Cornyn of Texas, Tillis of North Carolina and Murkowski of Alaska. “There’s your four. They overrule the vice president,” Vance said.

His conclusion was political, not procedural. “You have a fun little ceremonial battle that you lose. We’re actually interested in winning the battle, which means replacing mediocre Republican senators with good Republican senators.”

According to Breitbart’s account of the same interview, Vance also said: “There is no shortcut, I think our people want to think the parliamentarian is the problem … the parliamentarian is a bureaucrat … the problem is we have a number of Republican senators who vote more with Democrats than their own party, and that is the issue.”

What the SAVE America Act does

The House passed the SAVE America Act on Feb. 11, 2026, by a vote of 218-213, with one Democrat joining Republicans, ABC News reported. The bill would require documentary proof of citizenship to register for federal elections, rather than the current practice of attesting to citizenship under penalty of perjury, and would require voters to show photo identification. According to Votebeat, it would also require states to run their voter rolls through the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE database to check for noncitizens.

Breitbart describes the bill as also limiting mail-in voting, with exceptions for illness, disability, military service and travel; ABC News reported that Trump has separately called for limiting mail voting to those circumstances.

In the Senate, the bill has stalled for months. With Republicans holding 53 seats, it cannot clear a filibuster without Democratic votes, and Votebeat reported in February that Majority Leader John Thune was not encouraging efforts to force Democrats into a talking filibuster.

Not the first time names were named

Vance’s list overlaps with the one the president has already made public. In June, according to the Daily Caller, Trump traveled to Capitol Hill for a tense lunch with Senate Republicans over the legislation, and he posted on Truth Social: “…our five Republican Senate Holdouts, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, Bill Cassidy, and Mitch McConnell, must vote to SAVE OUR COUNTRY,” adding, “There can be no more excuses!”

McConnell, Tillis and Murkowski appear on both lists. Vance added Cornyn.

None of the four senators was quoted responding to Vance’s remarks in the coverage of the interview.

Why it matters

The idea that only citizens should vote in American elections, and that voters should prove who they are, should not be controversial. Yet the bill that would write those principles into federal law has sat in the Senate for most of the year. Vance has now said publicly what the White House has clearly concluded privately: the obstacle is not a rule, a bureaucrat or a procedural trick. It is a handful of Republican senators who are not willing to go along.

That is a challenge to voters as much as to the Senate. If the problem is personnel, the fix is elections.

The vice president says four Republicans stand between voters and the SAVE America Act, and now every voter knows their names.

Sources

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