Karoline Leavitt walked into Thursday’s briefing with two things: the New Jersey voter roll scandal as Exhibit A, and a message from the President of the United States that John Thune needs to hear clearly.
“His patience is running out.”
Trump wants the SAVE America Act passed before the August recess. The House did its job — passing the budget resolution Wednesday with SAVE America Act provisions embedded in it — and now the Senate is the only thing standing between the most popular election security legislation in a generation and the President’s desk. Leavitt didn’t mince words about where the responsibility lies: “The people elected overwhelmingly Republicans to lead. Not just this White House, but also the House and the Senate. The House did its job. The Senate needs to do its job too.”
Then came New Jersey — and the perfect real-time demonstration of exactly why this legislation can’t be delayed another month.
Governor Mikie Sherrill’s sudden admission that 6,600 noncitizens had been registered to vote in her state — with nearly 400 actually casting ballots — did not arrive in a political vacuum. It arrived days after DHS Secretary Mullin sent letters to multiple states demanding noncitizen voter registration data, days after Trump’s primetime address revealed 270,000 noncitizens on voter rolls in just four states, and days after the DOJ launched a federal probe into New Jersey’s election rolls.
.@PressSec: President Trump's patience is running out. He wants to see as much of the SAVE America Act passed as possible by the August recess. He knows that's what the American people want. The House did its job; the Senate needs to do its job, too. pic.twitter.com/Re3BBINUUx
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 23, 2026
Leavitt connected those dots precisely: “The fact that she, all of a sudden, decided to put out this press release saying President Trump and Republicans have been right about noncitizens on the voting rolls is not a coincidence. I think this governor is saying this because she realizes that this administration is serious about getting to the bottom of illegal aliens voting.”
She then said what the White House clearly believes about the real scope: “She says it’s 6,600. We suspect it’s a heck of a lot more — not just in New Jersey, but states across the country.”
.@PressSec: It's completely unacceptable to have noncitizens on American voter rolls voting in U.S. elections. She says it's 6,600. We suspect it's a heck of a lot more. @POTUS is hellbent on getting to the bottom of this, and it's also why we need to pass the SAVE America Act! https://t.co/eWQXnRxlKK pic.twitter.com/QqUw3wiswH
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 23, 2026
That suspicion is well-founded. New Jersey is actively fighting federal requests for its voter roll data in court while simultaneously admitting noncitizens were registered for over a year before anyone caught it. The software company that was supposed to take the blame for the error has already contradicted that narrative — pointing back to state election officials who manually approved the registrations. The DOJ probe launched by Harmeet Dhillon has a five-business-day deadline for responses.
Here’s where all of this lands: New Jersey just proved the SAVE America Act is not a theoretical solution to a hypothetical problem. It is an urgent fix to a documented, real, ongoing vulnerability in American elections that multiple states have demonstrated they cannot or will not fix on their own.
Trump’s patience is gone. The evidence is in. The House did its job.
John Thune has until the August recess to do his.
