Mike Lee

Republican Senators John Cornyn and Mike Lee are continuing to bicker over President Donald Trump’s demanded voter ID bill, even as the chamber’s GOP leadership urges the party to focus on more relevant issues.

The pair of lawmakers recently began a social media scrap about the SAVE America Act, which contains voter verification provisions long desired by Trump. Lee has pushed his Republican colleagues to fight harder for the bill despite their insistence on the lack of required votes to pass it.

“I still don’t understand why they thought it was okay to say the SAVE America Act doesn’t have 50 votes,” Lee wrote in a Monday X post, attaching an image of a different version of the bill that achieved a plurality. “Or why they thought no one would notice.”

The version Lee referenced leaves out provisions demanded by Trump, including a ban on mail-in ballots used by millions of Americans. Any SAVE America Act will also need 60 votes to pass the Senate, which allows the minority party—in this case, the Democrats—to block legislation that has insufficient support.

“It is true that the House-passed version of the SAVE America Act got 50 votes in the Senate,” Cornyn wrote in reply to Lee, quoting a Punchbowl News explanation. “But that measure was limited to voter ID and citizenship proof. Trump has made clear he wants the ‘full version,’ which doesn’t have 50 votes and includes a restriction on mail-in ballots, an issue that divides Republicans.”

Despite the president’s insistence, Republicans have failed to unite around his version and scrape off some Democratic votes. Though liked by most Americans, GOP leadership has urged the party to shift focus away from the bill and toward legislation with a higher chance of passing, like that which addresses persistent affordability issues that have plagued both sides of the aisle.

Majority Leader John Thune, who has spoken religiously on the Senate floor about cost-of-living concerns, told Fox News last week his party can only hope to make the SAVE America Act's failure an attack against Democrats.

“I’m sympathetic to it. I’m for it. I voted for all that stuff. Most of my colleagues and Republican colleagues in the Senate are,” Thune said. “We haven’t gotten a—the Democrats have bloc-voted against it. They haven’t gotten a single Democrat vote, and that’s where I think you make this a campaign issue and you go after Democrats.”