Being a U.S. senator doesn’t seem too awfully complicated, does it? Mostly, you talk and you vote, right?

Last week, though, Senate Majority Leader John Thune introduced two more activities into the senatorial mix: hemming and hawing. Specifically, the melancholy Dakotan seemed to be soliloquizing about what to do with perhaps the most important piece of legislation that Republicans have proposed in a generation — namely, the SAVE Act, which recently passed the House 218-213, with Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar providing a smidgen of bipartisan support.

In a republic, nothing is more critical than free, fair, honest, and trustworthy elections. Nothing. And the SAVE Act checks those boxes in spades: first, by requiring would-be voters to prove their citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections; and second, by requiring certain forms of photo ID in order to cast a ballot.

Which is why I wondered: Why does Thune seem weak-kneed about holding the Democrats’ feet to the fire on an issue that enjoys 95% support from Republicans and 71% support from Democrats? Indeed, I wondered like Gunnery Sergeant Hartman wondered: What is your major malfunction, John?

No, Thune doesn’t need to nuke the Senate’s filibuster, but he does need to force a vote and thereby force the Democrats to stake and continually defend their positions — between now and the midterms — against proof of citizenship and photo ID. And then he needs to force the Democrats into an honest-to-goodness talking filibuster, a traditional filibuster like the one former Klansman and longtime Democrat Robert Byrd used to block the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“Remember,” said Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee, “the talking filibuster is best understood as the filibuster. Historically, senators have been required to speak in order to filibuster. You shouldn’t be able to have the benefits of the filibuster without doing the work of the filibuster, and that means speaking.”

Hear, hear!

Talk about an awful hand. Here’s Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer trying to defend his position against a piece of drive-by journalism from CNN’s Jake Tapper, who pointed out, “About 83% of the American people, including a majority of Democrats, support voter ID laws.”

“Well, yeah, the voter ID laws that, uhh, first, each state can have its own voter ID laws, and some do, and some don’t. But secondly, what they are proposing in this so-called SAVE Act is like Jim Crow 2.0. They make it so hard to get any kind of voter ID that more than 20 million legitimate people, mainly poorer people and people of color, will not be able to vote under this law. We will not let it pass in the Senate. We are fighting it tooth and nail. It’s an outrageous proposal that is, you know, that shows the sort of political bias of the MAGA Right.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper tells Sen. Chuck Schumer that 83% of Americans support voter ID laws, and Schumer claims that “what [Republicans] are proposing in this so-called SAVE Act is like Jim Crow 2.0.” pic.twitter.com/cQcbotWrMc

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) February 15, 2026

Got that? The “MAGA Right” is politically biased toward honest elections.

If you think Joe Biden got all 81 million of those votes in 2020 on the up-and-up, and if you tend to tsk tsk about those 315,000 improperly cast ballots in Georgia’s Fulton County, then the SAVE Act probably isn’t your cup of meat. But if you think the Democrats have been cheating at elections since long before Republican Norm Coleman was cheated out of an ObamaCare-deciding Senate seat in 2008 by Felons for Franken, if you think the Democrats have been cheating since even before Lyndon Johnson stole his way to a Senate seat in 1948, then the SAVE Act is for you.

By the way, here’s a handy list of everyday “Jim Crow” activities that routinely call for a photo ID: getting on a plane, renting a car, checking into a hotel or motel, buying beer or booze or cigarettes or certain kinds of cough medicine, gaining access to most office buildings and government buildings, going to a bar, applying for Medicare or Medicaid or Social Security benefits, applying for unemployment benefits or food stamps, buying a gun, getting a hunting license or a fishing license, obtaining a marriage license, going to a casino, renting an apartment, taking out a mortgage, opening a bank account, buying a cellphone, picking up a prescription, donating blood, adopting a pet, picking up a package at the post office, and gaining admittance to an NAACP convention.

Thune thus has a golden opportunity to expose the Democrats once again, this time for their implausible and racist claims that black and brown people simply aren’t capable of obtaining a photo ID.

And the stakes couldn’t be higher. Free and fair elections are at stake, of course — specifically, the November midterms. If the Democrats flip just a few House seats, they’ll get the gavels, the purse, the legislative agenda, and the power to subpoena witnesses and hold impeachment hearings — just as they did during Trump’s first term. And if that happens, you can kiss the Trump agenda goodbye. Ergo, Thune’s handling of the SAVE Act will have a direct impact on the Trump agenda — which is the agenda that the American people voted for so resoundingly in 2024.

So if you appreciate a good economy, low inflation, high affordability, cheaper gas, more take-home pay, closed borders, safer streets, and a strong America, you’d better have a plan to vote, and so should every like-minded person you know. Because the final two years of Trump’s administration are most definitely on the ballot.

Happily, Thune seems to have come around, at least partly. “We will have a vote,” Thune said yesterday. “We will make sure that everybody’s on the record, and if they want to be against ensuring that only American citizens vote in our elections, they can defend that when they have to go out and campaign against Republicans this fall.”

Still, Thune so far seems reluctant to force the Democrats into a real filibuster. But were the tables turned, I can guarantee the Democrats wouldn’t be reluctant. They’re like rust. They never sleep. For example, let’s compare Thune’s lack of urgency to the Democrats’ recent electoral actions in Virginia, where they’re proposing to turn one of the nation’s most accurately representative congressional districting maps into a spectacularly imbalanced 10-to-1 advantage for Democrats.

Remember: Thune has never been a pro-Trump Republican, an America First Republican. He came up through the Republican ranks at the hip of Mitch McConnell, who’s the most ardently and reflexively anti-Trump Senate Republican this side of Lisa Murkowski. The American people, and especially the good people of South Dakota, need to hold Thune’s feet to the fire on the SAVE Act and force the Democrats to very publicly and very painfully deny the overwhelming will of the American people.

Thune claims that requiring the Democrats to conduct a legitimate filibuster to stop the SAVE Act might have unforeseen consequences, including the risk of an endless amendment process, which he says could force Republicans in vulnerable seats to make difficult votes.

Okay, I’ll bite: Name one single issue, Senator, that more than 70% of Republican voters support and that the Republican Senate conference is against. One single issue. I’ll wait.

The truth is, a forced filibuster is exactly the kind of political power move Mitch McConnell would have made back when he supported his party’s president rather than opposed him. Back when he wouldn’t let Barack Obama fill Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat with Merrick Garland or any other leftist.

At this moment, with President Trump’s second term and his entire agenda in the balance, we don’t need a go-along, get-along Senate majority leader. We don’t need a reluctant supporter of Donald Trump’s agenda.

We need more than a talker. We need a street fighter, a throat puncher.