February 24, 2026 • 14 mins
On the latest episode of Protecting America, John Fund, Columnist for National Review, joins Rita Cosby to discuss the voter ID bill now in Congress, known as the SAVE Act, and what it's possible passage would mean for much-needed voter integrity in our country. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
The Red Apple Media Podcast Network presents This is Protecting America.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Now.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Here's Emmy winning journalist Rita Cosby.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And welcome to another edition of Protecting America. I'm Rita Cosby.
So far, only one Democratic member of Congress has voted
in favor of the Save Act the voter ID bill,
So why are Democrats rallying against it? With even Senator
(00:34):
Chuck Schumer calling it Jim Crow two point zero? Well,
let's separate fact from fiction. And who better to do
it than the great columnist for the National Review, John Fund. John,
it's great to have you here.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Thanks. And by the way, Chuck Schumer is backtracking on
that original criticism because, let's just face it, he knows
that that went too far. So he has already said, well,
you know, it's still a restriction on voting. We're against it,
but I can't really compare it to what was done
(01:10):
in the South for decades.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Well, and you know, he got a lot of heat
obviously to your point, he's backtracking because a lot of
minorities if you look at some of the polls, and
we're going to definitely get into that. John tell us
first of all about the Save Act and why it's important.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Well, it comes in pretty much three parts. The first
part is it says, yes, states have the right and
should continue to conduct and run their own elections, but
in federal elections for president and Congress, the federal government
does have the right out of the Constitution to tell
the states you have to ask for a photo ID
(01:49):
at the polls so people can prove that they are
who they say they are. The second part is that
when you first register to vote, if you're registered now,
when future registrations, people have to produce something. It's a
government ID, it's a tribal card if you're an American Indian,
(02:12):
it's a passport, it's a birth certificate copy, it's whatever
it is that shows you were born a citizen. And
many countries of course require that when people registered to vote.
And the third thing is it says, look, all of
the states are getting grants for the federal government to
improve their election systems by new equipment, et cetera. If
(02:35):
you're going to do that, you have to clean up
your voter registration roles. And many states haven't done that.
And you know, the Pew Research cetera. A few years
ago estimated that fifteen percent of voter registrations were from
people who had moved out of state, had died, weren't eligible,
or were dead, or didn't even exist and never had existed.
(02:59):
So you're going to take that federal money, you have
to agree to clean up your voter registration roles. That's
pretty much the bill.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
You know, that's amazing what you just said. I want
to sort of pick up fifteen percent. That's an enormous amount.
I mean, especially in federal elections. We're talking a massive amount.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Well, no company would ever try to sell a product
or build a consumer mailing list using the voter registration
information because it's simply too inaccurate and too out of date.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Yeah, that's a great point, because how could you do
it if so many of them were either maybe never
even existed, not even out of date, but some of
them you have to wonder where did the names come from?
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Right, Well, let's just say that if you move out
of state and you don't contact your voter registration office saying,
you know, take my name off the roles I'm registering
somewhere else, they're not exactly in a hurry to catch
up with you and correct your record. So that means
that if you stay on the rolls, that means anybody
(04:04):
could go in theory to a polling place and the
New York City, they don't ask for ID then vote
in your place. And in fact, you know there was
the chair of the New York Board of Elections for
Manhattan County a few years ago, Alex Clinstein. He was
stopped at a party and indiscreetly was asked, is there
(04:27):
any voter fraud in the city, because he was a
Democratic chair of the Manhattan Board of Elections, and he said,
of course there is, and he went on to describe
how buses would pick up people, how they'd give the
homeless cigarettes and take them from polling place to polling place,
and he would go into quite some detail about how
much fraud there was. And this is when Bill de
Blasia was mayor about seven or eight years ago. And
(04:51):
sure enough he fired the guy immediately and said, well,
of course he was obviously drunk or deluded. He's and
I'm going to fire him. But never reputated his remarks.
And basically everybody in the business knew that what he
was saying was the truth. He just said the quiet
part out loud.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
So now as you're talking about. Obviously that's a big
concern because everybody needs to have faith. And when I
hear the steps of the Save Act, you think about John,
you go to rent a book at a library, you're
gonna need ID. You go on the plane, You're gonna
need ID. Isn't it really pretty astounding? I think people
listening to this, and if you look at the polls,
(05:32):
clearly people are in favor of voter ID because we
should feel good about who's electing. I mean, if you
have to be careful about voting picking a library book,
you sure as heck should be careful about voting.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Well, it goes even beyond that. You know. The argument
that some liberals make is, well, those things like getting
a library book are on constitutional rights. Well, actually they are.
We have freedom of speech, but they even if you
get me married, gay or straight, in any city in
the country, you have to show an ID. So voting
(06:07):
is a constitutional right. But people in several states, mostly
Blue New York especially, don't have to show ID. And
that means anything can happen behind the curtain.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, and that's the big question. Just like you said,
like New York and elsewhere, it's a major concern. So
why now only one Democrat so far, at least on
the House side, because that's where it went through. But
there was literally one Democrat who voted for it. Henry
Quayar of Texas. Explain why the rest of the Democrats
are saying this is a good idea.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Well, Henry Quaar comes from the Rio Grande Valley, which
is an area of Texas that has long had voter fraud,
so he knows something about it and he thinks it
should be stopped. Every other Democrat is pretty much in
thrall to the AOC Bernie Sanders Democratic Socialists of America Alliance,
and it's a no no to say that you know
(07:03):
there's voter fraud or voter regulars in the country. But
just to give you one more New York City anecdote,
one of the last acts that Michael Bloomberg had when
he left office in twenty twelve was he said, I'm
going to release a report from the New York City
Board Investigative Bureau. Those are the people who actually conduct
(07:24):
audits and other things for the city. And he said,
I'm going to have them vote in the primary elect
and sorry in the general election, and track and see
how much security there is at the ballot box. So
he had sixty three people go out and be investigators
and try to vote using somebody else's name, somebody else's identity,
(07:48):
and out of sixty three tries, sixty one succeeded. Wow,
they were able to vote for someone else. And by
the way, they mixed us up, so, for example, a
twenty one year old Puerto Rican investigator would say she
was a ninety two year old Polish woman and it
was absurd, but they would let them vote. Only two
(08:09):
cases where it didn't work. One was a guy showed
up he was told he was at the wrong precinct,
as precinct was next door, and the election officer walked
him out of the building, pointed him in the right direction,
and sent him on his way and he was able
to vote in that precinct. The only other failure was
a guy showed up in Brooklyn and said I'd like
to vote in the so and so's name, and the
(08:31):
woman at the desk looked up and says, I can't
let you do that, and he said why not. She said, well, look,
you know you're trying to vote in the name of
my son and he's in jail right now, and I
know he doesn't look anything like you, and I know
that he's in jail and you're not. So you can't
vote here.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
That's amazing. So it took someone happened to be at
the place where her son I mean, but that was
the criteria. Otherwise it was smooth sailing.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Absolutely, which meant anyone could have voted that wanted to.
And that's how lacks the security is in New York City.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
That's really frightening. So where is this headed? Give us
a sense, John Fund, where it's headed, because okay, it
goes through narrowly of course, in the House, then it
goes to the Senate. Explain some of the steps that
are about to happen and what the Senate, because we're
hearing from Democrats that they may just continue to go
(09:26):
on and on and on, and as you pointed out,
Schumer is sort of all over the place, but he's
clearly saying he will not support this.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Well, fifty Republicans have said they support the Save Act
that plus Vice President Vance would be enough to pass it.
Every Democrat, as far as I know, is opposed to it,
except perhaps John Fetterman. He hasn't declared yet. But the
problem is the Senate requires sixty votes to bring a
measure to the floor, and there're enough Democrats who say
(09:56):
they're not going to support it that so far it's
sort of stuck. So what the Republicans, I think are
going to do is they're going to say, we're going
to probably have to live and fight another day. But
let's take Let's get rid of the old fiddlebuster that
we use where people just declare that they are opposed
to a bill. Let's make them talk it out. Let's
make them stand up and talk until they drop arguing
(10:18):
against this bill. Because the more they argue with these
spacious arguments that it's Jim Crow two point zero, or
that somehow married women won't be allowed to vote if
they change their name, Let's have them talk it out
because their position is so ludicrous and will erode their
credibility and it will soften them up for the time
when we do have more senators and we can put
(10:39):
more pressure on them and actually get it passed through
the Senate.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
But regardless, it does not look like it's going to
get passed here. Yeah, which says a lot because it's
a big midterm year now, why do you think, why
do you think Schumer Do you think he just got
so much heat, Because if you look at some of
the polls, which you know all too well, John, a
lot of the polls show that Americans are overwhelmingly in
support of this, and I've even seen African Americans when
(11:03):
it's broken down by Democrats, African Americans overwhelming a they
want a voter ID, they want integrity in the voting process.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Well, Schumer was asked by Jake Capper of CNN over
the weekend, you know what about these polls that show
over seventy five percent of African Americans, Democrats, Latin Americans,
Asian Americans all supported what about that? He didn't even
answer the question. He just went on and talked about
something else. So they recognize their arguments rhetorically weak and
(11:34):
is a minority position. So I think that the real
issue here is this. Democrats are in danger of saying
to their local constituencies, including minority groups that support this,
we just think you're too stupid to vote because we're
saying that you can't properly register, that you'll be blocked
from voting. That's clearly not true, and it's a condescending,
(11:57):
patronizing attitude. So I don't think that they want to
make that argument as long as as a filibuster would.
So you may even see there's an outside chance and
enough Democrats say, you know, we're eventually going to lose
this battle, let's try to cut the best deal we can.
So I still say the Safe Act doesn't pass this year,
(12:17):
but I think his prospects will be enhanced by the
debate that's being conducted.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yeah, I do too. And finally, also John vun President
Trump is sort of floating some sort of executive order
if it stalls in the Senate. Talk about how that
could happen and what he could or couldn't do well.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
I think one of the complicating things in this whole
issue is that President Trump says a lot of things,
and for example, after the twenty twenty election, he said
some things about the election that didn't quite track with
what I saw and that wrote the books that I
wrote about. He's also, I think, sometimes exaggerated. I think
the problem that he identifies as real, but he's not
(12:57):
always the most helpful supporter. When Trump says I will
sign an executive order and impose voter ID requirements. I
don't think he has the power to do that now.
That hasn't stopped him from trying that in the past
and testing the courts. But I think there are limits
to what a president can do by executive order, and
Donald Trump once again wants to test them to the max.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Yeah, no doubt, which he often does, right, So we'll
see where this goes. Everybody be sure to subscribe and
share to this podcast. John Fund, you are terrific and
thank you for bringing us up to speed on a
really important issue affecting American voters and the integrity of
the process which we all need to have. John, thank
you very much, Thank you, pleasure, Rita and everybody. I'll
(13:42):
be back soon with another great addition of protecting America,
and of course you can catch me every weeknight ten
pm to midnight on the legendary WABC Radio. This is
Rita Cosby and thanks for all you do to protect America.
The Red Apple Media Podcast Network presents This is Protecting America.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Now.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Here's Emmy winning journalist Rita Cosby.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And welcome to another edition of Protecting America. I'm Rita Cosby.
So far, only one Democratic member of Congress has voted
in favor of the Save Act the voter ID bill,
So why are Democrats rallying against it? With even Senator
(00:34):
Chuck Schumer calling it Jim Crow two point zero? Well,
let's separate fact from fiction. And who better to do
it than the great columnist for the National Review, John Fund. John,
it's great to have you here.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Thanks. And by the way, Chuck Schumer is backtracking on
that original criticism because, let's just face it, he knows
that that went too far. So he has already said, well,
you know, it's still a restriction on voting. We're against it,
but I can't really compare it to what was done
(01:10):
in the South for decades.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Well, and you know, he got a lot of heat
obviously to your point, he's backtracking because a lot of
minorities if you look at some of the polls, and
we're going to definitely get into that. John tell us
first of all about the Save Act and why it's important.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Well, it comes in pretty much three parts. The first
part is it says, yes, states have the right and
should continue to conduct and run their own elections, but
in federal elections for president and Congress, the federal government
does have the right out of the Constitution to tell
the states you have to ask for a photo ID
(01:49):
at the polls so people can prove that they are
who they say they are. The second part is that
when you first register to vote, if you're registered now,
when future registrations, people have to produce something. It's a
government ID, it's a tribal card if you're an American Indian,
(02:12):
it's a passport, it's a birth certificate copy, it's whatever
it is that shows you were born a citizen. And
many countries of course require that when people registered to vote.
And the third thing is it says, look, all of
the states are getting grants for the federal government to
improve their election systems by new equipment, et cetera. If
(02:35):
you're going to do that, you have to clean up
your voter registration roles. And many states haven't done that.
And you know, the Pew Research cetera. A few years
ago estimated that fifteen percent of voter registrations were from
people who had moved out of state, had died, weren't eligible,
or were dead, or didn't even exist and never had existed.
(02:59):
So you're going to take that federal money, you have
to agree to clean up your voter registration roles. That's
pretty much the bill.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
You know, that's amazing what you just said. I want
to sort of pick up fifteen percent. That's an enormous amount.
I mean, especially in federal elections. We're talking a massive amount.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Well, no company would ever try to sell a product
or build a consumer mailing list using the voter registration
information because it's simply too inaccurate and too out of date.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Yeah, that's a great point, because how could you do
it if so many of them were either maybe never
even existed, not even out of date, but some of
them you have to wonder where did the names come from?
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Right, Well, let's just say that if you move out
of state and you don't contact your voter registration office saying,
you know, take my name off the roles I'm registering
somewhere else, they're not exactly in a hurry to catch
up with you and correct your record. So that means
that if you stay on the rolls, that means anybody
(04:04):
could go in theory to a polling place and the
New York City, they don't ask for ID then vote
in your place. And in fact, you know there was
the chair of the New York Board of Elections for
Manhattan County a few years ago, Alex Clinstein. He was
stopped at a party and indiscreetly was asked, is there
(04:27):
any voter fraud in the city, because he was a
Democratic chair of the Manhattan Board of Elections, and he said,
of course there is, and he went on to describe
how buses would pick up people, how they'd give the
homeless cigarettes and take them from polling place to polling place,
and he would go into quite some detail about how
much fraud there was. And this is when Bill de
Blasia was mayor about seven or eight years ago. And
(04:51):
sure enough he fired the guy immediately and said, well,
of course he was obviously drunk or deluded. He's and
I'm going to fire him. But never reputated his remarks.
And basically everybody in the business knew that what he
was saying was the truth. He just said the quiet
part out loud.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
So now as you're talking about. Obviously that's a big
concern because everybody needs to have faith. And when I
hear the steps of the Save Act, you think about John,
you go to rent a book at a library, you're
gonna need ID. You go on the plane, You're gonna
need ID. Isn't it really pretty astounding? I think people
listening to this, and if you look at the polls,
(05:32):
clearly people are in favor of voter ID because we
should feel good about who's electing. I mean, if you
have to be careful about voting picking a library book,
you sure as heck should be careful about voting.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Well, it goes even beyond that. You know. The argument
that some liberals make is, well, those things like getting
a library book are on constitutional rights. Well, actually they are.
We have freedom of speech, but they even if you
get me married, gay or straight, in any city in
the country, you have to show an ID. So voting
(06:07):
is a constitutional right. But people in several states, mostly
Blue New York especially, don't have to show ID. And
that means anything can happen behind the curtain.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, and that's the big question. Just like you said,
like New York and elsewhere, it's a major concern. So
why now only one Democrat so far, at least on
the House side, because that's where it went through. But
there was literally one Democrat who voted for it. Henry
Quayar of Texas. Explain why the rest of the Democrats
are saying this is a good idea.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Well, Henry Quaar comes from the Rio Grande Valley, which
is an area of Texas that has long had voter fraud,
so he knows something about it and he thinks it
should be stopped. Every other Democrat is pretty much in
thrall to the AOC Bernie Sanders Democratic Socialists of America Alliance,
and it's a no no to say that you know
(07:03):
there's voter fraud or voter regulars in the country. But
just to give you one more New York City anecdote,
one of the last acts that Michael Bloomberg had when
he left office in twenty twelve was he said, I'm
going to release a report from the New York City
Board Investigative Bureau. Those are the people who actually conduct
(07:24):
audits and other things for the city. And he said,
I'm going to have them vote in the primary elect
and sorry in the general election, and track and see
how much security there is at the ballot box. So
he had sixty three people go out and be investigators
and try to vote using somebody else's name, somebody else's identity,
(07:48):
and out of sixty three tries, sixty one succeeded. Wow,
they were able to vote for someone else. And by
the way, they mixed us up, so, for example, a
twenty one year old Puerto Rican investigator would say she
was a ninety two year old Polish woman and it
was absurd, but they would let them vote. Only two
(08:09):
cases where it didn't work. One was a guy showed
up he was told he was at the wrong precinct,
as precinct was next door, and the election officer walked
him out of the building, pointed him in the right direction,
and sent him on his way and he was able
to vote in that precinct. The only other failure was
a guy showed up in Brooklyn and said I'd like
to vote in the so and so's name, and the
(08:31):
woman at the desk looked up and says, I can't
let you do that, and he said why not. She said, well, look,
you know you're trying to vote in the name of
my son and he's in jail right now, and I
know he doesn't look anything like you, and I know
that he's in jail and you're not. So you can't
vote here.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
That's amazing. So it took someone happened to be at
the place where her son I mean, but that was
the criteria. Otherwise it was smooth sailing.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Absolutely, which meant anyone could have voted that wanted to.
And that's how lacks the security is in New York City.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
That's really frightening. So where is this headed? Give us
a sense, John Fund, where it's headed, because okay, it
goes through narrowly of course, in the House, then it
goes to the Senate. Explain some of the steps that
are about to happen and what the Senate, because we're
hearing from Democrats that they may just continue to go
(09:26):
on and on and on, and as you pointed out,
Schumer is sort of all over the place, but he's
clearly saying he will not support this.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Well, fifty Republicans have said they support the Save Act
that plus Vice President Vance would be enough to pass it.
Every Democrat, as far as I know, is opposed to it,
except perhaps John Fetterman. He hasn't declared yet. But the
problem is the Senate requires sixty votes to bring a
measure to the floor, and there're enough Democrats who say
(09:56):
they're not going to support it that so far it's
sort of stuck. So what the Republicans, I think are
going to do is they're going to say, we're going
to probably have to live and fight another day. But
let's take Let's get rid of the old fiddlebuster that
we use where people just declare that they are opposed
to a bill. Let's make them talk it out. Let's
make them stand up and talk until they drop arguing
(10:18):
against this bill. Because the more they argue with these
spacious arguments that it's Jim Crow two point zero, or
that somehow married women won't be allowed to vote if
they change their name, Let's have them talk it out
because their position is so ludicrous and will erode their
credibility and it will soften them up for the time
when we do have more senators and we can put
(10:39):
more pressure on them and actually get it passed through
the Senate.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
But regardless, it does not look like it's going to
get passed here. Yeah, which says a lot because it's
a big midterm year now, why do you think, why
do you think Schumer Do you think he just got
so much heat, Because if you look at some of
the polls, which you know all too well, John, a
lot of the polls show that Americans are overwhelmingly in
support of this, and I've even seen African Americans when
(11:03):
it's broken down by Democrats, African Americans overwhelming a they
want a voter ID, they want integrity in the voting process.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Well, Schumer was asked by Jake Capper of CNN over
the weekend, you know what about these polls that show
over seventy five percent of African Americans, Democrats, Latin Americans,
Asian Americans all supported what about that? He didn't even
answer the question. He just went on and talked about
something else. So they recognize their arguments rhetorically weak and
(11:34):
is a minority position. So I think that the real
issue here is this. Democrats are in danger of saying
to their local constituencies, including minority groups that support this,
we just think you're too stupid to vote because we're
saying that you can't properly register, that you'll be blocked
from voting. That's clearly not true, and it's a condescending,
(11:57):
patronizing attitude. So I don't think that they want to
make that argument as long as as a filibuster would.
So you may even see there's an outside chance and
enough Democrats say, you know, we're eventually going to lose
this battle, let's try to cut the best deal we can.
So I still say the Safe Act doesn't pass this year,
(12:17):
but I think his prospects will be enhanced by the
debate that's being conducted.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yeah, I do too. And finally, also John vun President
Trump is sort of floating some sort of executive order
if it stalls in the Senate. Talk about how that
could happen and what he could or couldn't do well.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
I think one of the complicating things in this whole
issue is that President Trump says a lot of things,
and for example, after the twenty twenty election, he said
some things about the election that didn't quite track with
what I saw and that wrote the books that I
wrote about. He's also, I think, sometimes exaggerated. I think
the problem that he identifies as real, but he's not
(12:57):
always the most helpful supporter. When Trump says I will
sign an executive order and impose voter ID requirements. I
don't think he has the power to do that now.
That hasn't stopped him from trying that in the past
and testing the courts. But I think there are limits
to what a president can do by executive order, and
Donald Trump once again wants to test them to the max.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Yeah, no doubt, which he often does, right, So we'll
see where this goes. Everybody be sure to subscribe and
share to this podcast. John Fund, you are terrific and
thank you for bringing us up to speed on a
really important issue affecting American voters and the integrity of
the process which we all need to have. John, thank
you very much, Thank you, pleasure, Rita and everybody. I'll
(13:42):
be back soon with another great addition of protecting America,
and of course you can catch me every weeknight ten
pm to midnight on the legendary WABC Radio. This is
Rita Cosby and thanks for all you do to protect America.
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Hey Jonas! The official Jonas Brothers podcast. Hosted by Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas. It’s the Jonas Brothers you know... musicians, actors, and well, yes, brothers. Now, they’re sharing another side of themselves in the playful, intimate, and irreverent way only they can. Spend time with the Jonas Brothers here and stay a little bit longer for deep conversations like never before.
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Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.