Published June 30, 2026
This week, the Supreme Court held that Congress has deferred to the states with regard to what counts as Election Day — thereby allowing them to count absentee ballots that are received late — and that the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause does indeed confer birthright citizenship. Predictably, this has amplified the clamor to nuke the filibuster and pass the SAVE America Act.
The SAVE America Act, however, would not actually address these matters. Indeed, there’s a case to be made that Democrats should support it. Yes, its ban on mail-in voting would moot the late-ballot decision, but only after disrupting Republican get-out-the-vote operations in rural states while leaving such Democratic operations in place in their urban bases of support. Its citizenship voting requirements would likely suppress marginal Republican voters while having little effect on energized suburban Democrats. Its voter ID requirements would sow confusion and cut both ways, prohibiting such forms of ID as hunting licenses and concealed-carry permits. Of course, it would do nothing on birthright citizenship.
It’s a messaging bill. It’s vibes. You don’t destroy the Senate for vibes; you destroy it to win.
I’m against destroying the Senate, and there aren’t the votes for it anyway, but if you really wanted to do it, you shouldn’t do it for the memed-into-reality SAVE America Act. You need a new bill. Call it the Rectifying Electoral Anomalies and Left Liberal Yokes Subjugating All Valuable Enterprise in America (REALLY SAVE America) Act. Such a bill could:
- Retrocede the District of Columbia into Maryland to prevent future D.C. statehood.
- Establish Puerto Rican independence in free association with the U.S. to prevent Puerto Rican statehood.
- Require voter ID — including driver’s licenses, CDLs, hunting licenses, CCW permits, and workplace IDs — for federal elections.
- Require E-Verify for all workplaces.
- Establish a single Election Day.
- Criminalize ballot-harvesting.
- Establish the “English system” for litigation brought under or challenging federal election statutes to make the loser pay.
- Eliminate all campaign-contribution limits.
- Eliminate the “bail-in” provision of the Voting Rights Act.
- Require automatic voter registration for women who change their names in the Social Security Administration.
- Criminalize birth tourism.
- Permanently eliminate all visas for the parents of children who are born in the U.S. to illegally present parents.
- End chain migration.
- End the diversity visa lottery.
- Revoke all visas for public charges except for those covered by the Cuban Readjustment Act.
- Suspend habeas corpus for illegal aliens.
- Include all immigration laws named after a person.
- Add five seats to the D.C. Circuit and 15 to the D.C. District Court.
- Abolish the D.C. “local” courts and give their jurisdiction to the federal courts.
- Split the Ninth Circuit in two and add four seats to each resulting court.
- Ban collective bargaining for government employees.
- Enact universal school choice.
- Tax university endowments.
Go big or go home. Or at least have some articulable nexus between the desired policy and desired politics.
Michael A. Fragoso is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in the Constitution, the Courts, and the Culture Program, where he writes and speaks on issues relating to the law, the federal judiciary, and Congress. An attorney in private practice, he served in all three branches of the federal government, including most recently as chief counsel to the Senate Republican Leader, Mitch McConnell (R-KY). His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, National Review, The Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy: Per Curiam, and elsewhere.
