Four Senate Republicans again unite with Dems to block Trump's SAVE America Act
close
Mike Lee slams Democrats for blocking the Save America Act
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Mike Lee discusses the importance of the SAVE Act, countering Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's filibuster comments and former Vice President Kamala Harris's claim that voter ID is a poll tax.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Four Senate Republicans broke ranks to kill another effort to pass President Donald Trump's marquee voter ID and election integrity legislation as the GOP marches to fund immigration enforcement.
Just like last time, Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Thom Tills, R-N.C., joined all Democrats to thwart the move.
It’s the second attempt by Republicans to attach the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act to their budget reconciliation package, and the second time that they’ve failed to get the legislation across the line months after launching a quasi-floor takeover to debate the bill.
DOZEN GOP REBELS FAIL TO PERMANENTLY KILL TRUMP'S CONTROVERSIAL $2B FUND
Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., joined Senate Democrats to kill a late-night attempt to attach the SAVE America Act to the GOP's immigration enforcement funding plan. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images; Photo by Li Ying/Xinhua via Getty Images; Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images; Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Trying to attach the bill to the nearly $70 billion budget reconciliation package geared toward funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol meant that the amendment from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., needed at least 60 votes to pass.
That threshold again proved too high a bar on Thursday night.
And it’s a result that further solidified the political reality in the upper chamber that the SAVE America Act has little chance of passing, given the unanimous Democratic resistance and lack of total buy-in among the Senate GOP, even if Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., launched the long sought after talking filibuster.
REPUBLICANS FAIL TO ATTACH SAVE AMERICA ACT TO PARTY-LINE FUNDING PACKAGE
Video
Still, Graham challenged Democrats to bat down the amendment, accusing them of being "probably into cheating" in elections for not supporting voter ID.
"There's no other reason to say you don't have to have an ID. It just makes cheating easier," Graham said. "Who wants a noncitizen voting in our election if you're against that, that makes me wonder."
"And biological males playing girls sports [is] not good for anybody, and a minor should not be allowed to transition their sex," he continued. "That's the biggest change you can make in your entire life. You shouldn't be allowed to do that as a minor. This is what we say. What do you say?"
DEMS BLOCK GOP AMENDMENT TYING VOTER ID BILL TO TRANSGENDER SPORTS BAN
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., speaks to reporters after a briefing by Trump administration officials on U.S. strikes on Iran at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on March 3, 2026. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu)
But Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., noted "that just over a month ago, a similar proposal was defeated on a bipartisan basis."
"Current safeguards are working," Padilla said. "And yes, it is already unlawful for non-citizens to vote in the United States. What this amendment does is mirrors earlier attempts to push through the president's priorities, to try to take over elections, to ban vote by mail."
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
"And while we're at it, while they're at it, attacking trans folks during pride month, that's pretty damn offensive," he continued.
Alex Miller is a writer for Fox News Digital covering the U.S. Senate.
European companies flee Cuba as US sanctions go into effect
As of Friday, EU-based businesses operating on the island risk having their assets frozen or getting locked out of the US financial system.
An old car drives past the Gran Hotel Bristol in Havana, one of the hotels affected by Spanish group Melia's exodus, on June 3, 2026. | Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images
June 5, 2026 4:00 am CET
By Jonas Loesel
European companies from Spanish hotels to German shipping lines are ending their Cuban operations as Washington on Friday moved to intensify its decades-old embargo, expanding its focus from the regime in Havana to EU business ties to the island.
Among the hardest hit are Spain’s Meliá and Iberostar hotel groups. For decades, the lush resorts they operated on Cuba’s most idyllic beaches were the crown jewels of their global portfolios. But over the past few weeks, the hospitality giants pulled their management and branding from dozens of properties on the island, with Meliá citing an “evolving geopolitical, social, legal, and economic environment.”
The Spanish hotel groups’ exodus came just ahead of Friday’s rollout of severe new U.S. penalties targeting foreign companies that do business with Cuban state entities — especially the military-run GAESA conglomerate.
Advertisement
Advertisement
The sanctions package is part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s broader campaign to topple Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s regime, but it risks dragging the EU — the island’s largest trading partner and its main source of foreign investment — into the drama. Faced with the risk of asset freezes and exclusion from the U.S. financial system, European companies active in sectors ranging from shipping and logistics to energy and agriculture are desperately offloading their interests on the island and rushing for the exits.
Last month, French shipping giant CMA CGM and Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd suspended operations to and from Cuba until further notice. The companies, which account for an estimated 60 percent of Cuba’s shipping traffic by volume, both cited the threat of U.S. sanctions as the reason for their decision.
According to Daniel Bernbeck, managing director of the German Delegation for the Promotion of Trade and Investment in Cuba, the new sanctions are of particular concern for medium-sized European companies operating on the island.
People queue outside a bank in Havana on June 3, 2026. Visa and Mastercard payments in Cuba will be suspended after US sanctions hit the financial sector. | Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images
“Smaller companies might be easily wiped off the map,” he told POLITICO. Bernbeck added that German groups involved in the country’s energy sector — which he declined to name, citing confidentiality concerns — might be at particular risk.
Susanne Gratius, a researcher of EU-Latin American relations at the Autonomous University of Madrid, said the risks now outweigh the benefits of doing business in Cuba. The new status quo risked leaving the island, which is in the midst of a dire financial crisis, in an even more extreme “kind of real isolation.”
¡Adiós, acere!
Washington’s latest sanctions take aim at the partnerships that have long underpinned Cuba’s economic relationship with Europe.
Advertisement
Advertisement
The package singles out companies working with the Cuban military’s Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA) enterprise, a shadowy megaconglomerate estimated to control around 40 percent of the island’s economy, according to classified government ledgers obtained by the Miami Herald last year.
The state-controlled entity, whose finances are closely guarded, operates the country’s banking industry, gas stations, supermarkets and most of its tourism sector. The country’s hotels and resorts are not only drivers of the service sector that accounts for over 70 percent of the country’s economic output, but also a key source of the foreign currency the state uses to purchase basic necessities on the international market.
“GAESA virtually owns … the tourist sector,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during a Senate hearing on Tuesday.
Over half of the hotels in the country are owned by GAESA’s subsidiary, Gaviota, and nearly all are managed by foreign hospitality groups. Until this week, Spain’s Meliá and Iberostar were the dominant foreign players on the island, managing a portfolio of 52 properties that included an all-inclusive golf resort off Cuba’s iconic Varadero beach and four luxury hotels in Havana.
The fresh sanctions are hitting Cuba’s once-powerful tourism sector at a moment when it is already in dire straits. Foreign visitors have been spooked by the country’s economic woes and energy shortages, which have made rolling blackouts a routine occurrence on the island, and turned to other destinations.
As a result, Cuban tourism authorities reported a dramatic drop in annual tourist visits, from 4.7 million in 2018 to just 1.9 million last year. According to the Cuban government’s Office of National Statistics and Information, those numbers have continued to decline, with only 30,551 tourist arrivals recorded in April 2026.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Beyond tourism, European companies risk exposure to U.S. sanctions by way of their involvement in the production of one of Cuba’s most famous alcoholic exports.
Havana Club rum is produced through a joint venture between French drinks giant Pernod Ricard and the state-backed Cuba Ron company. The Paris-based spirits group has spent decades embroiled in a legal dispute over the ownership of the rum brand’s name, which is claimed by the exiled owners of the Bacardi drinks company. It’s unclear how it would be impacted by the fresh U.S. sanctions.
A worker checks quality on the production line of Havana Club rum at the San Jose de las Lajas distillery in Mayabeque province, Cuba, on Jan. 30, 2025. | Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images
Pernod Ricard did not respond to POLITICO’s requests for comment regarding its operations in Cuba or exposure to U.S. penalties.
No stomach for a fight
U.S. sanctions on Cuba are already having an impact on European companies’ bottom lines, but there’s little reaction from national authorities or EU institutions.
Even though Spain has extensive economic and historical ties with Cuba, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s left-leaning government in Madrid has avoided adopting a hard line on the issue.
Spain’s Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo said Wednesday the government was “closely monitoring” the situation in Cuba and working to “minimize the impact on our companies.”
Advertisement
Advertisement
Jaume Bauzá, the regional tourism minister of Spain’s Balearic Islands, where Iberostar and Meliá are headquartered, said this week that “it is a commercial issue, but if we can help in any way, we will.”
Similarly, French and German authorities have limited themselves to saying they’re “closely monitoring” or “following” developments on the island.
Bert Hoffmann, a German researcher on Cuban affairs, said European capitals are uninterested in entering into a direct clash with Washington over the issue. Authorities have effectively accepted “the U.S. will not let Europeans have a major role in the dealings with Cuba.”
He added that countries like Spain didn’t really have a choice in the matter.
“What should Spain threaten the U.S. with?” Hoffmann asked, emphasizing Europe’s lack of real power to counteract the U.S.’s moves.
A broader, EU-led response is also unlikely.
Advertisement
Advertisement
When the U.S. passed the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which allowed Americans to sue foreign companies using property nationalized after Fidel Castro’s revolution, the EU reacted aggressively.
European businesses were told to ignore the measure, and Brussels went on to pass a blocking statute which prohibits companies from complying with certain extraterritorial U.S. sanctions and allows them to recover damages arising from enforcement of those penalties in EU jurisdictions.
Spanish Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo, who said the government was working to “minimize the impact on our companies,” at a meeting in Brussels on May 4, 2026. | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images
But 30 years later, and with wars raging on the European continent and in the Middle East, there’s little appetite for a fight over Cuba in Brussels.
Responding to POLITICO’s inquiries as to its plans to address the matter, a European Commission spokesperson said the EU’s executive was encouraging a “constructive dialogue” between Washington and Havana.
That stance was criticized by European Parliament lawmakers like Spanish MEP Leire Pajín, a member of the center-left Socialists and Democrats group, who said more needed to be done to take on “the U.S. embargo, which has repeatedly been condemned by the U.N. General Assembly” and protect European interests on the island.
“The European Union must defend its strategic autonomy,” she said. “It must defend European companies.”
May you like
French MEP Leïla Chaibi, a member of The Left group, was even blunter in her assessment of Brussels’ response to the threat of sanctions against European companies.
“About Cuba, we are behaving with the U.S. like a little dog,” she said.
