Senate Democrats on Saturday blocked a Republican-backed amendment that would have prohibited transgender girls and women from participating in girls’ school sports, blocking an effort to attach the bill to the GOP’s SAVE America Act in a tense and meandering weekend debate with little sign of resolution.
Stay up to date on LGBTQ+ news and politics. Sign up for The Advocate’s email newsletter.
The amendment was rejected 49-41. The Senate remains deadlocked over the sweeping bill, with a Trump-backed overhaul of federal election law stalled under unified Democratic opposition and the 60-vote threshold needed to advance.
The SAVE America Act, which has already passed the House, would impose stricter voter identification and citizenship verification requirements. Republicans say the bill is necessary to protect election integrity. Democrats and voting rights advocates have warned that this will disenfranchise millions of voters, especially those who don’t have easy access to documents.
related: Senators must reject President Trump’s anti-trans policies expanded by SAVE America Act, advocates warn
related: Senate Republicans’ last-minute SAVE Act amendment includes anti-transgender provisions
The underlying premise of this bill is based on a problem that, according to the right’s accounting, hardly exists. The Heritage Foundation’s Voter Fraud Database is the most frequently cited conservative repository for such incidents. Less than 70 instances identified It is the number of non-citizens who have voted in American elections over 40 years, and is a statistical trace of the more than 1 billion votes cast.
But as debate stretched into the weekend, the bill expanded further.
as defender reported that the bill has increasingly served as a vehicle for pro-Trump lawmakers to include provisions targeting transgender people, including proposals that would affect sports participation, access to health care, and legal recognition. The failed amendment was one of several attempts to incorporate a broader conservative cultural agenda into what was ostensibly a voting bill.
For Democrats and LGBTQ+ advocates, this shift has turned the debate into a legislative process that has repeatedly made transgender Americans, especially young people, the subject of political theater in fights that have little to do with their lives.
“Things have gotten really insane in the United States Senate and in this administration,” said David Stacy, vice president of government affairs at the Human Rights Campaign. “Despite the many crises happening at home and abroad, they are spending the weekend trying to pass this already extremely unnecessary and harmful bill, the so-called SAVE Act, and packing it with attacks on transgender people.”
related: How the SAVE Act will make it harder for transgender people, married women and some men to vote
Stacey called the bill “a dystopian nightmare designed to undermine our democracy and steal elections for generations to come,” adding, “The Senate has once again rejected another attempt to attack transgender youth.”
“In the interest of all Americans, especially transgender people, the Senate should stop wasting the nation’s time and repeal this disgraceful bill once and for all,” he said.
More than 30 LGBTQ+ and civil rights organizations, including HRC, American Civil Liberties Union, and Lambda Legal, sent a letter to senators last week urging them to reject the bill outright, warning that it would restrict access to the ballot and facilitate a broader federal push for transgender people.
The coalition called the bill “a blatant attempt to steal basic voting rights” and warned that “in the name of addressing a non-existent problem of voter fraud,” it would impose sweeping new barriers to participation, including requirements that could disproportionately impact transgender people and people whose ID documents do not match their current identity.
Despite their narrow majority, Republicans do not have the votes to overcome the Democratic filibuster. In its current form, the SAVE Act has no clear path to passage.
Source: Advocate.com – www.advocate.com
