Democrats are good at two things: Nothing and terrifying the American people. Their latest scare campaign concerns the Republican-sponsored SAVE Act. It would require Americans to prove that they are U.S. citizens to register to vote and show ID to cast their ballots in federal elections. (RELATED: Save the SAVE Act: Sunset the Filibuster)

The horror. The horror.

Democrats have spent months trying to make Americans quake in their boots over the SAVE Act.

“It’s been clear, when we fight for democracy, when we protect democracy, we’ve got to fight fire with fire,” Schumer told a Capitol Hill press conference last August. “We’re not going to let ’em revert to Jim Crow. And if you don’t think they want to revert to Jim Crow, just look what they did in the SAVE Act, which went back to Jim Crow for the whole nation…They said you need ID, and they made it so hard to show ID that probably half the people in America couldn’t vote.” (RELATED: The SAVE Act: Why Are Senate Republicans Dithering?)

Schumer added dishonestly: “They don’t want poor people to vote. They don’t want people of color to vote. They don’t want Democrats to vote.”

Schumer’s filthy lie is akin to saying that when the TSA asks Americans to show ID to board commercial jets, it’s because Republicans don’t want poor people to fly, people of color to fly, or Democrats to fly.

How eye-poppingly absurd. How jaw-droppingly demagogic. How stomach-turningly disgusting.

Schumer now calls the SAVE Act “Jim Crow 2.0.”

Shame on Schumer! It is sadistic for Schumer to compare a photo ID requirement at the polls to coercing Americans into using “separate but equal” bathrooms, hiding from the Ku Klux Klan, and burying their loved ones who succumbed to racist white killers.

Schumer’s baseless bombast trivializes the genuine suffering and even murder that black men, women, and children endured across the Jim Crow South before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s struggle for freedom and President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s signature on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (The Senate passed that landmark legislation only after Republicans derailed a filibuster by racist southern Democrats, including Tennessee’s Albert Gore Sr. and West Virginia’s notorious former KKK Exalted Cyclops and Klan recruiter, Robert Byrd.)

Every time Schumer mentions Jim Crow, he personally should apologize to the millions of black Americans who endured the excruciating pain of segregation. Remember: Bigoted Democrat legislators enacted every Jim Crow law that bigoted Democrat executives used to torment southern blacks. These enforcers included such Democrats as Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas, Governor George Wallace of Alabama, and Commissioner of Public Safety and Democrat National Committeeman Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor of Birmingham, Alabama.

It is uniquely revolting that Schumer has chosen Black History Month to whitewash his own Democrat Party’s holistic culpability in the crimes of Jim Crow 1.0.

The governor of California also dishonored himself on this issue.

“It’s not about voter ID. The SAVE Act’s not about that. It’s about registration. It’s about proving your citizenship with a passport. Not everyone has a passport. I don’t know where my birth certificate is,” Newsom whined. “I lost that at 7. I mean, I don’t even know where to begin to get it back.”

Newsom should consult the California Department of Public Health — one of the agencies that he supervises as governor! CDPH’s Vital Records unit maintains birth certificates from across the Golden State and will furnish them for $31, according to a 10-second Google query. (Has Newsom heard of Google? One wishes to be generous, but to assume makes an ass of you and me.)

Frankly, this Democrat scare tactic even frightened me. I pictured hundreds of thousands of Americans trying to register to vote, burrowing through their parents’ basements and grandmothers’ attics, only to find that their birth certificates vanished like lost family photos.

Thankfully, and yet again, the Internet has ridden to the rescue. The National Center for Health Statistics’ website shows each state’s contact for birth certificates. Requesting them by mail is the cheapest way to secure these vital records. California charges $29 for these documents.

State governments have authorized the private-sector VitalChek website to accept applications for birth records and other key papers. I ordered a copy of my Los Angeles County, California, birth certificate. The simple online form took just eight minutes to complete. Cost: $34 for the certificate, $10.75 for VitalChek’s fee, and $18.50 for shipping via UPS. Total: $63.25.

Because I now have a New York driver’s license, I must submit additional documents. Californians who stay put presumably would not have this problem.

Van Jones, a far-Left Democrat activist and CNN commentator, calls for a bipartisan “Grand Bargain“ on this question. As he puts it, “Voter ID is not crazy, but it is essential to make it easy for every citizen to get one.”

This has been the GOP’s position all along: Voters must show photo ID to vote. And those who lack photo IDs should get them for free. (Not just to vote, but to enjoy modern American life.)

This topic has flummoxed U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. “I don’t have my birth certificate,” the Vermont Socialist confessed to KTLA-TV. “God knows how I get it.”

Fortunately, Sanders and others who find this overwhelming can turn to a private, non-profit for help. “VoteRiders informs and helps citizens to secure their voter ID,” this group’s website explains. This is not just a handful of activists here and there. VoteRiders boasts ”an ever-growing community of 14,000 volunteers across the country.”

These are exactly the sorts of people who can lend their hands to those who might need them to secure birth certificates and register to vote under the SAVE Act. Democrats and Republicans at the grassroots have every incentive to help, too.

What about the cost?

Photo ID cards for voting should be free. Likewise, birth certificates needed to register to vote. The websites that charge for birth certificates should offer 100 percent-off coupon codes that government agencies, partisan groups, and nonprofits can share with new registrants.

Audacy Radio/YouTube host Annie Frey suggests that the 1040 Income Tax form include a box for voters to check if they spent money on birth certificates and related voter-registration expenses. This should be a tax credit against one’s total liability to the IRS. The federal revenue needed for this effort would be worthwhile if it prevented voting by the nine million illegal aliens who invaded America under Joe Biden and the 15 million or more illegals who already were here.

Meanwhile, those who are registered today can keep voting as usual, until and unless they relocate and re-register.

New York City Department of Sanitation application excerpt

Finally, to add a touch of Vaudeville to this serious matter, Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D-New York City) beclowned himself, as the Big Apple groaned beneath a 20-inch blizzard. Mamdani proudly calls himself a “Democratic Socialist” and belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America. The DSA hates electoral photo ID.

“Our candidates for office stand firm against racist voter ID laws and secret poll taxes like the ’SAVE America Act,’“ DSA stated on February 19. DSA decries the SAVE Act as “a sweeping voter-suppression bill” and a “threat to political participation and civic life.”

How hilarious, then, to see Mamdani recruit people to shovel snow from the sidewalks of New York. Starting pay: $19.14 per hour. To apply, New Yorkers must present not one, not two, but five forms of identification: Two photos, two other ID documents (plus copies of both), and the applicant’s Social Security card. Wow! That is five times as many IDs as Republicans ever wanted at the polls.

“This is Jim SNOW 2.0,” my Fox News colleague Jimmy Failla laughed via X. Another X subscriber dubbed dissidentwest cracked: ”Damn I didn’t realize Zohran Mamdani was such a huge racist.”

Democrat opposition to the SAVE Act has devolved from the repugnant to the pathetic to the farcical. Senate Republicans should use their majority to sunset the filibuster, pass the SAVE Act, and send it to President Donald J. Trump for signature. At long last, this would take the Democrats out of their misery.

READ MORE from Deroy Murdock:

Save the SAVE Act: Sunset the Filibuster

Mistaken Identity on the Right

Cautionary Tales: What Can November 2025 Teach the GOP About November 2026?

Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor.