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A wave of Republican officials publicly broke with President Donald Trump after his primetime address alleging Chinese interference in the 2020 election, with several GOP lawmakers and state officials calling his claims unsubstantiated, politically damaging or false.
Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky wrote on X that Trump’s assertion about China obtaining voter files was baseless, noting that the type of voter data Trump referenced is already available in Kentucky for a small fee.
Appearing on Morning Joe, Massie said it made little sense for Republicans to focus on election fraud while controlling the House, Senate, White House and holding significant influence over the Supreme Court.
In a separate video posted to X, he said Republicans were squandering the opportunity voters had given them and warned the party would face an “absolute shellacking” in the November midterms if it failed to change course.
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told the Aspen Security Forum the day after Trump’s speech that he saw little new information in the president’s presentation and questioned the value of revisiting the 2020 election with 109 days remaining before the midterms.
Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who is not seeking reelection, told CNN that the 2020 election was not stolen and argued Trump lost in part because Republicans discouraged supporters from voting by mail. Bacon said Trump personally urged Republicans not to pursue mail voting and warned the president’s continued focus on election fraud could alienate swing voters.
Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg told CNN that no evidence had emerged to support Trump’s allegations and described the speech as “a bit of an own goal.” He also argued the administration’s cuts to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) undercut its claim that elections required stronger protections.
Stephen Richer, the former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, rejected Trump’s claims that voting machines were vulnerable or connected to the internet, writing on X that any manipulation would still be detected through post-election hand counts.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told CBS News the state had completed two rounds of citizenship verification and was conducting a third, defending Georgia’s voter-roll integrity.
Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said in a statement posted on X that Utah had received no information from the White House or intelligence agencies about specific threats to the 2026 elections and urged the federal government to restore election security funding it had cut.
The context behind Trump’s speech
Trump said he would immediately declassify intelligence that he claimed exposed severe vulnerabilities in U.S. election infrastructure. Trump alleged that beginning in 2020, China carried out what he described as the largest compromise of election data in history, obtaining 220 million U.S. voter files containing names, addresses, phone numbers and party affiliations.
Trump also claimed the “deep state” concealed the extent of China’s election interference and argued Beijing sought to prevent his reelection in 2020.
Those claims conflict with a declassified Intelligence Community Assessment released in March 2021, which concluded China considered but ultimately did not conduct influence operations aimed at changing the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and did not interfere with vote tabulation or the transmission of election results.
Trump also used the address to urge Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, short for Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, which would require documentary proof of citizenship to register for federal elections and mandate photo identification at polling places.
Calling the legislation essential to restoring public confidence in elections, Trump urged lawmakers to pass it without delay. The bill has cleared the House but remains stalled in the Senate, where Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said it lacks sufficient Republican support to advance.
What happens next
The future of Trump’s signature election proposal remains uncertain.
The SAVE America Act has repeatedly failed to advance in the Senate, including two unsuccessful floor votes and efforts to attach it to budget reconciliation legislation. Thune has privately acknowledged the votes are not there, while Sen. Bill Cassidy has said Republicans simply lack the numbers.
Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina has gone further, declaring the bill “dead” because there is not enough time to implement new election rules before the midterms, even if it eventually cleared the Senate. He called the continued effort “theater.”
Trump has increased pressure on Republicans by refusing to sign the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, despite its overwhelming 89-10 Senate approval, saying he would withhold his signature until Congress passes the SAVE Act, which he called a “national emergency.”
Because the housing bill passed with a veto-proof majority, however, it would still become law if Trump neither signs nor vetoes it within 10 days.
House Republicans continue searching for alternative paths. Speaker Mike Johnson has discussed attaching the SAVE Act to the fiscal 2027 State Department appropriations bill, while House conservatives recently ended a legislative blockade after receiving commitments to advance the measure.
Meanwhile, the issue continues to shift to the states. Twelve states have enacted SAVE Act-style laws since the 2024 election and voters in New Hampshire, Wyoming, South Dakota, Ohio and Utah will face proof-of-citizenship requirements in the 2026 midterms.
No Senate Democrats support the federal legislation. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has labeled it “Jim Crow 2.0.”
For now, the more immediate question is political rather than legislative: whether Trump’s continued focus on the 2020 election helps or hurts Republicans ahead of November. Cornyn questioned the value of revisiting a six-year-old election so close to the midterms, while Massie warned the party could face an electoral “shellacking” if it fails to change direction.
