By Breitbart News Network | Created at 2026-06-17 23:09:39 | Updated at 2026-06-18 08:23:10
10 hours ago
Republican senators reportedly criticized Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) for pushing for the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act, with Republican senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and John Kennedy (R-LA) challenging “his strategy.”
In a post on X, Andrew Desiderio, a senior congressional reporter for Punchbowl News, shared that one source described the criticism of Lee’s push to pass the SAVE America Act as a “pile-on.” Desiderio also reported that Cornyn and Kennedy “complained” that President Donald Trump is “being led to believe it’s possible” to pass the SAVE America Act in the Senate.
“GOP senators went after Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) during the closed-door lunch meeting today over his push for the SAVE America Act, in what one source described as a ‘pile-on,'” Desiderio wrote.
Desiderio’s post continued: “Sens. Cornyn & Kennedy challenged Lee about his strategy and complained that Trump is being led to believe it’s possible for the Senate to pass it leading to Republicans attacking each other & Trump undermining his own agenda.”
In a post on X, Rachel Bovard, who serves as the vice president for the Conservative Partnership Institute, criticized the senators for using the “conference lunch to go after the one guy asking them” to pass the SAVE America Act.
“Using the conference lunch to go after the one guy asking them to please do something the country cares about, for a change, and then smugly leaking their outright contempt for the GOP base — and for the president! — to the campus regime scribes,” Bovard wrote.
Breitbart News reported that Cornyn had previously “shut down a proposal to force” the Senate to vote on the SAVE America Act.
In response to a post on X in which it was suggested that Republicans “force Democrats to hold a talking filibuster” and pass the SAVE America Act with Vice President JD Vance’s help, Cornyn wrote that it was “not gonna happen.”
Cornyn has also labeled conservative activist Scott Presler a “grifter” after Presler shared that he had spoken to Cornyn “at the airport” and “asked him to pass the SAVE America Act.”
