Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, gas prices are nearing all time highs, the president has launched one of the most unpopular wars in modern American history, all while Democrats have been putting up big numbers even in deep red state races. Suffice it to say, the Republican Party is rather unpopular.
In response, Republicans seem to be trying to do what they have done for the last 10 years in an attempt to cling to power: use the law to suppress voters who aren’t likely to vote for them.
As Trump flails for a political angle to help pass this bill that he thinks he needs to keep control of Congress, the anti-transgender platform has been his fall-back.
This plan of action has guided the seemingly doomed Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, which President Donald Trump has been trying to pass with little luck.
As Trump flails for a political angle to help pass this bill that he thinks he needs to keep control of Congress, the anti-transgender platform has been his fall-back, evidenced when lawmakers proposed an amendment that would add a national ban on transgender girls playing girls sports, and a national ban on transgender youth receiving gender-affirming care to the bill.
But as we learned previously, transphobia won’t save Republican lawmakers, or the SAVE Act. That was confirmed on Saturday when the Senate voted down the amendment to ban transgender girls from playing girls sports, 49 to 41.
When it was first introduced last year, the act was seen by many as a transparent plan to suppress votes. It would require two forms of identification proving U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote, an ID at all polling places and would force states to check their registered voter rolls against a list of “ineligible voters” maintained by the Department of Homeland Security — and purge any voters on the DHS list from the rolls. The bill would also ban all mail-in voting, a popular practice in many states across the political spectrum.
Amongst the concerns from Democrats, who oppose the bill along party lines, is the citizenship check for registering to vote. Any discrepancies between information on IDs will result in rejection from registering to vote. So for example, a married woman with a driver’s license with her married name and a birth certificate with her maiden name would be rejected for registration to vote unless she could produce a U.S. passport, which only roughly half of Americans could produce.
This wouldn’t be an issue for the vast majority of men, who do not customarily change their surnames when they get married. It just so happens that women as a demographic historically tend to vote more often for Democrats than other parties.
Through early debate, even some moderate Republicans opposed the bill, and its prospects of passing the Senate are minuscule without killing the filibuster. Nevertheless, Trump has declared that passing the SAVE America Act is his number one domestic short-term priority.
The amendment on gender-affirming care was similar to a bill from Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene that would make it a Class C felony for a doctor or medical professional to provide gender-affirming care.
The transgender sports ban was rather redundant, since most sport governing bodies have already banned trans women from women’s sports and so has the NCAA. It would have just essentially banned blue state transgender kids from playing on their school sports teams with their friends.
The anti-transgender provisions of the bill were designed to force Democrats into a difficult vote over a very divisive wedge issue. The hope was that by forcing Democrats to vote against these provisions, it would make for easy attack ad fodder come this fall during critical midterm general elections.
But Democrats weren’t budging, as we saw in Saturday’s Senate vote. Transgender issues don’t poll particularly well for Democrats overall, as some on the liberal side of the aisle have taken great pains to point out. Every time a vote on one of these anti-transgender bills comes up, The New York Times pumps out another editorial chiding the left for supporting transgender people and calling for them to be abandoned.
Even if the current Democratic party stance is politically unpopular, transgender issues as a whole just aren’t salient for most voters.
Trump earlier last week called transgender issues an “80% issue” for Republicans. But in reality, even if the current Democratic party stance is politically unpopular, transgender issues as a whole just aren’t salient for most voters. It’s important for someone like me, because I am transgender, and my friends and family members also feel it is important. But the number of voters whose votes can be swayed to the Democratic side by abandoning transgender issues is miniscule.
In last fall’s off-year elections, transgender issues ranked near the bottom in importance to voters on multiple major exit polls. So there’s little political risk for Democrats to oppose the SAVE America Act, and now rthey’ve followed through on their threats to block it. Democratic opposition has even forced discussion of the idea that Republicans should kill the Senate filibuster to ensure the bill’s passage, an idea that has little support outside the extreme MAGA wing of the party. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., pointed out the other day that the filibuster is far more often a tool used to protect conservative priorities than liberal ones. So if adding the anti-transgender positions aren’t going to pressure Democrats to support the bill, why add them in the first place? Trump understands that the far right wing of the party, the folks who spend all day marinating in right wing media, are obsessed with transgender issues. This is not actually a tool to force Democrats into submission, but rather a pressure tool designed to get Republicans to support killing the filibuster. It is currently primary season for 2026, and across the country, Republican incumbents are facing challenges from candidates who are almost uniformly much more extreme. Any Republican on this year’s ballot (or even future primary ballots) seen as squishy on transgender issues will likely lose to a more extreme challenger. That would in part explain why Trump wants this bill passed now, with enough time to implement it before this year’s general elections. According to a recent NBC News article, however, it appears that Trump will not get his wish on the filibuster, and it appears as of right now that it will not reach the necessary 60-vote threshold to pass the Senate. All of us should take this as a sign that the centrist-liberal panic over Democratic Party support for transgender issues is probably overblown. Voters have much bigger concerns on their minds this year as they hit the ballot box. No one cares about transgender athletes when gas is hitting $6 or $7 a gallon.
Katelyn Burns is a freelance journalist based in New England. 
