Congress
Republicans sit tight as Trump pushes for mail voting crackdown
President Donald Trump is pushing Congress to end mail voting as Americans have come to know it. So far, Republican lawmakers aren’t heeding his calls.
Trump has long railed against the expansion of vote-by-mail, arguing despite scant evidence that it is rife with fraud and suggesting it was responsible in part for his 2020 election loss. Since retaking office, he has repeatedly called for action — most recently Monday night to reporters on Air Force One.
“Why would you want mail-in ballots if you know it’s corrupt?” Trump said. “It’s a corrupt system.”
But other Republicans don’t see it that way — many of their own voters have voted by mail consistently for decades. So far, the type of blanket ban on mail voting Trump wants has not gained traction on Capitol Hill as GOP lawmakers counsel for a more targeted approach.
“I support the use of mail-in voting,” said Rep. Mike Lawler, a New York Republican facing a tight reelection contest. “The idea that some states just mail out ballots without any requests is absurd, but the use of mail-in balloting, I do not have an objection.”
A sweeping elections bill the House passed last week, the SAVE America Act, included strict proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration and new photo-ID rules for casting ballots.
But it did not address voting by mail — even though Trump publicly called for a crackdown in a Truth Social post just three days before the vote: “NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS (EXCEPT FOR ILLNESS, DISABILITY, MILITARY, OR TRAVEL!)”
Behind the scenes, the White House pushed to include language in the bill that would prohibit mail-in voting, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss the issue. But that risked losing support from some Republicans and endangering the bill’s ability to pass the narrowly divided House, and it was ultimately left out.
A White House website touting the bill still lists “No Mail-in Ballots” as one of its features.
Asked about the discrepancy, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement that Trump “has repeatedly urged Congress to pass the SAVE Act and other legislative proposals that would establish a uniform standard of photo ID for voting, prohibit no-excuse mail-in voting, and end the practice of ballot harvesting to ensure the safety and security of our elections.”
Several House Republicans said in interviews over the past week they sympathized with Trump’s push to crack down on mailed ballots, but many couched their words carefully. A number hail from states like Florida that have a long history of expansive mail voting and little evidence that the practice has been abused.
Even as the president pushed to curtail mailed ballots, the RNC and state Republican parties worked to take advantage of the practice during the 2024 campaign to increase voter turnout — and they are planning to do much the same in 2026.
Instead, many congressional Republicans insist that Trump is really targeting states like California, Oregon and Utah that conduct their elections almost entirely by mail. Others emphasize the need for exceptions, as Trump has acknowledged, for cases of illness, military service and other reasons they view as legitimate, as well as the other election changes Trump is backing.
“We have to be very cautious about mail-in-ballot voting,” Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) said in an interview. “But I think that if we get the registration process correct, then that’ll fix a lot of this.”
GOP Rep. Byron Donalds, who is running for governor in Florida, said his state’s laws should serve as a model for the country. Florida voters have to request a mail-in ballot and include identification. But there is no limitation on who can request a mail ballot along the lines of what Trump is proposing.
“In Florida, we treat ballots like they’re evidence in a trial,” Donalds said. “Other states need to follow that. … I think that’s what the White House is referencing. You just can’t have ballots out there in the ether.”
Another elections bill moving through the House, the Make Elections Great Again Act, does include provisions dealing with mail voting — including language aimed at preventing “ballot harvesting” where third parties collect ballots on voters’ behalf. It would also ban “universal” vote-by-mail where ballots are sent to all registered voters — but would not narrow who could request a mailed ballot.
That policy appears to be more in keeping with what most GOP lawmakers envision for an elections overhaul — and they insist that is what Trump in fact supports.
“If you’re sick and you can’t get to the polling [place], he wants you to have a ballot. If you’re a military member, he wants you to have a ballot,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) said of the president. “Who he doesn’t want to have a ballot is the illegal alien that registered or even a lawful alien who got a driver’s license to be registered to vote and get a mail-in ballot.”
The MEGA Act is sponsored by House Administration Committee Chair Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) and was the subject of a recent hearing. But it has not yet moved through the panel or been scheduled for the House floor.
The SAVE America Act also appears likely to stall in the Senate, despite a conservative effort to utilize a so-called talking filibuster to skirt Democratic opposition there.
Trump appears to be recognizing the obstacles to his elections agenda on Capitol Hill.
In a Friday Truth Social post, he suggested he would take executive action to implement “Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not,” while also mentioning “No Mail-In Ballots, with exceptions for Military, Disability, Illness, or Travel.”
But to Republicans like Lawler, who voted for the SAVE America Act and is facing a tough reelection fight this year, the GOP’s efforts going forward would be best spent making sure “people get out and vote.”
“If they vote by mail, if they vote early, if they vote on Election Day, the objective is to get them out and vote,” he said.
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
The bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus launched a working group to address artificial intelligence and other evolving technologies, the group announced Thursday.
The working group comes as Congress grapples with public alarm over the growing capabilities of AI and claims it could doom humanity, and the need to advance the powerful technology faster than China.
The new group is meant to toe the line between safety and development.
The group will be co-chaired by Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), who also co-chairs Democrats’ AI commission.
“One thing is clear: getting AI policy right is critical to our future — to American children, families, our national security, and our global competitiveness,” Gottheimer said in a statement. “We can win the AI race — but we must do it in a smart way with commonsense guardrails and rules of the road.”
“Artificial intelligence is transforming our economy, workforce, and national security, and the United States must lead, not China,” Lawler added. “We need commonsense guardrails that protect Americans, empower workers and small businesses, and ensure AI remains secure, transparent, and trustworthy.”
Reps. Hillary Scholten (D-Mich.) and Blake Moore (R-Utah) will serve as the group’s vice chairs, with Reps. David Joyce (R-Ohio), Susie Lee (D-Nev.), Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.), Steven Horsford (D-Nev.), Tom Kean (R-N.J.), Angie Craig (D-Minn.), Maria Salazar (R-Fla.) and Scott Peters (D-Calif.) rounding out the body.
Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) forcefully pushed back against President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda in a campaign ad released on Thursday, a rare rebuke of the White House’s aggressive immigration policy from inside the Republican Party.
“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” she told Trump in a straight-to-camera video that is airing on television in the Miami market, according to the ad tracking firm AdImpact.
The criticism from Salazar, who represents a red-leaning district based in Miami-Dade County, comes with Republicans increasingly worried that concerns over the economy and the president’s immigration crackdown will roll back gains the party made with Hispanic voters in the general election two years ago.
Trump’s strong rhetoric on immigration helped propel him to the White House in 2024. But he’s seen his standing on the issue drop massively in the wake of an ill-fated surge of immigration enforcement into Minneapolis last winter that resulted in the deaths of two American protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Even as the White House has sought to dampen public criticism of its mass deportation campaign, just a fourth of Trump’s 2024 voters told a POLITICO poll in August that the president’s push has been too aggressive, numbers that roughly matched totals from January and April polls.
“Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policy,” Salazar said in the ad. “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”
She also released a similar ad in Spanish.
Trump endorsed Salazar in February. But the three-term lawmaker, whose district is dominated by Latino voters, has not thrown her full support behind him on immigration. Still, Eliott Rodriguez, her Democratic opponent in the November election, has said she has failed to stand up to the president.
Salazar’s seat is not considered among the core battlegrounds in November; Trump won the district — which was only nominally reshaped during Florida’s recent gerrymander — by more than 14 points in 2024, according to calculations from The Downballot. But her Democratic challenger has recently circulated internal polling showing the race as a tossup.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Americans — and Congress — are divided on whether it’s acceptable to fall behind other countries in the race to develop advanced artificial intelligence.
And that fear of international competition is emerging as a key point of tension slowing down any path to AI safety legislation.
Even as almost two thirds of respondents in a new Blue Light News poll said there’s a real possibility that AI could destroy humanity, they’re split on whether it’s acceptable to slow down and potentially fall behind other countries like China in an AI arms race.
A plurality, 43 percent, say it is okay for the U.S. to fall behind if that means developing AI more responsibly and securely, while 37 percent take the opposite view. Voters who backed Donald Trump in 2024 favor the competition-first position by 50 percent compared to just 34 percent of Kamala Harris voters.
Republican Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie argued the U.S. cannot risk Chinese AI dominance, and that AI legislation is too complex to rush — even if that means pushing off until next year consideration of a measure by his panel.
“We absolutely can’t surrender,” he said Wednesday at Blue Light News’s Decoded Summit.
Meanwhile, the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said competition isn’t a reason to avoid guardrails.
“The AI race is not an arms race that you win,” Rep. Greg Casar said at the Decoded Summit.
Other lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are trying to strike a balance. Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, acknowledged lawmakers “do have a responsibility for public safety” while saying it was also important to “beat China when it comes to the AI race.”
Still, the emerging divisions spotlight a long road ahead for any consensus from Congress.
An attempt to quickly pass a bill requiring companies to build a “kill switch” into their AI models from Republican Sen. John Kennedy was blocked Wednesday by Sen. Rand Paul on the chamber’s floor.
And while Guthrie’s Senate counterpart, Commerce Chair Ted Cruz said Wednesday his hope was still to mark up this month a bipartisan AI safety bill from Majority Leader John Thune and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, lawmakers haven’t reached agreement to finalize the measure. Thune himself said Wednesday he was unsure it would happen before the midterms.
Cracks are also starting to show among the leading AI companies on what role they want Congress to play.
One example: Anthropic’s policy chief Sarah Heck declined at Blue Light News’s summit to endorse a proposal for congressionally mandated independent AI monitoring — a day after competitor OpenAI endorsed it. The proposal is a key provision in Reps. Jay Obernolte and Lori Trahan’s bipartisan AI safety measure.
The House’s early dismissal Wednesday only added to time pressure on lawmakers, who will return to a lame duck session with an already full calendar.
What else we’re watching:
— LEE BULLISH ON PERMITTING: Energy and Natural Resources Chair Mike Lee told fellow Republicans during a closed-door lunch Wednesday he is “guardedly optimistic” that negotiators will reach a long-sought deal on a bill to ease permitting approval for energy projects. “We were told today that the Democrats are going to agree to a permitting bill, and it’s going to be drafted and ready for us to vote on,” Kennedy said in an interview. Still, the top negotiators have yet to clinch an agreement, meaning the timeline could slip until after the midterms.
— SPY LAW TIMING UNCLEAR: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently warnedCongress that if it doesn’t vote on a controversial surveillance law by Nov. 20, the program could go dark, but it’s unclear congressional leadership can meet that deadline. Thune told reporters this week that there is an “interest” in trying to get Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reauthorized, but didn’t commit to getting a vote before the midterms. With the House gone, reauthorization will wait until at least mid-November, regardless.
Riley Rogerson, Mia McCarthy, Anna Wiederkehr, Jordain Carney, John Sakellariadis and Josh Siegel contributed to this report.
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