Trump tells Senate to skip Easter, pass SAVE Act 'for Jesus'

Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News on Mar 23, 2026

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President Donald Trump Monday invoked the name of Jesus Christ in a call for lawmakers to scrap their Easter break and stay in Washington, D.C. to try to pass his package of new voting restrictions.

Speaking at a public safety roundtable in Memphis, Trump said the Republican-led Senate should only focus on passing his SAVE Act and shouldn’t leave town until they do so.

“Don’t worry about Easter, going home. In fact, make this one for Jesus, OK?” Trump said with a chuckle. “Make this one for Jesus, that’s what I tell them. It would be a damn good thing.”

The Senate was scheduled to be on a break extending through the week after Easter, which is the holiest day on the Christian calendar and marks the day Jesus is said to have resurrected.

Senate Republican leaders say they don’t have the 60 votes needed to pass the SAVE Act, which would ban voting by mail and require voters show a passport or certified birth certificate to register to vote, among other edicts.

Trump, who says the SAVE Act is needed to prevent undocumented immigrants from voting, has been pushing Senate Republicans to do whatever it might take to pass the measure, even if it means repealing the filibuster rule.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune says there isn’t Republican support for ending the filibuster, either.

Thune told Trump that Republicans want to end the Department of Homeland Security shutdown that has roiled air travel by cutting a deal with Democrats to fund all of DHS except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, then passing ICE funding separately.

Trump rejected the deal and told the GOP leader not to solve the airport crisis until the SAVE Act is passed. The president even warned that he will publicly trash Republican senators if they leave town for Easter without passing it.

“He’s got a view about connecting everything to the SAVE America Act,” Thune told reporters. “My view is we should deal with the immediate crisis in front of us.”

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