Hours ahead of a crucial floor vote, hard-right House Republicans threatened to continue blocking legislative business Tuesday in a bid to force action on a stalled GOP elections bill backed by President Donald Trump.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) and allied hard-liners derailed last week’s planned House business, and they said Tuesday morning that Speaker Mike Johnson’s efforts to meet their demands to force Senate passage of the SAVE America Act have fallen short.
Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), chair of the House Freedom Caucus, said a crucial procedural measure scheduled for an early-afternoon vote “is going to have problems the way it is currently structured.” Harris argued he needs “more than a commitment” from Johnson to hold a vote on border security issues, which the speaker promised hard-liners several weeks ago as part of a deal to pass a separate measure.
“I don’t know if the leadership is going to change it in order to give it a better chance of passage, but we’ll see,” Harris said.
GOP leaders want the House to vote this week on the annual defense policy bill, fiscal 2027 funding for the State Department and other agencies, as well other measures. Johnson moved Monday to attach the House-passed SAVE America Act to the Pentagon bill, as Luna and her allies had demanded. But after the House Rules Committee acted on the plan, Luna said the plan was insufficient.
In a closed-door meeting of House Republicans Tuesday, Johnson urged his members to fall in line on the procedural vote. But very few of the biggest potential holdouts were in the room, according to four people in the room who were granted anonymity to describe the private meeting.
House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) sounded off on the “stupid” blockade threat in an interview Tuesday morning.
“The idea you’re going to make the Senate do something by doing nothing in the House is ridiculous,” Cole said. “You make the Senate move by putting pressure on them by passing [bills], not by having a self-inflicted shutdown.”
Cole added of Luna: “If she wants to be a senator, she should run for the Senate,” he said. “Trying to use the House in that way just makes us ineffective — as ineffective as they are.”
Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters separately he doesn’t plan to further modify the procedural measure to placate holdouts.
“There’s always lingering issues, and we’re going to work through them today,” he said.
In a small boost to Johnson, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), who previously advocated to shut down the House floor unless the Senate passes the SAVE America Act, said in an interview Tuesday that he plans to support the procedural vote.
“Whether it’ll pass or not, I’m not sure,” he said.
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