Republican leaders on Capitol Hill have high hopes they can use the dwindling pre-midterm legislative calendar to bolster their case for reelection.

First, they’ll have to put down a weekslong internal revolt that has ground the House floor to a halt.

Taking cues from President Donald Trump, hard-liners are falling in behind Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) and her crusade to press for passage of the SAVE America Act, the partisan elections bill that has stalled for months in the Senate.

Before the July 4 holiday break, she blocked votes on the annual defense policy bill in protest, frustrating GOP colleagues are now just wondering if she can be persuaded to stand down.

“Not one member can understand the thought behind it,” Rep. Craig Goldman (R-Texas) said in an interview last week. “The hope is that when we come back, we start moving legislation again.”

So far, it’s not looking good. Trump shows no signs of abandoning his drumbeat for the elections bill. In his latest gesture, he announced Friday he would not sign a widely supported bipartisan housing bill in protest of the Senate standstill.

That has inspired more House lawmakers to deliver ultimatums. Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas) announced Friday, for instance, that Republicans must add the SAVE America Act “to every piece of legislation until we secure our elections once and for all.”

On top of that, House GOP leaders are sparring with a separate group of ultraconservatives who are angry Speaker Mike Johnson hasn’t followed through on what they insist was a handshake deal to hold a vote on a tough immigration and border-security bill.

They’re threatening their own floor blockade, even as a separate group of more moderate lawmakers insist they cannot support the immigration legislation the hard-line Republicans are pushing.

House GOP leaders have asked the White House for help leaning on the Republican holdouts, according to two people granted anonymity to comment on internal discussions. To that end, Vice President JD Vance is set to visit a Tuesday conference meeting and encourage Republicans to reopen the floor and advance Trump’s agenda.

“At this point I’m pessimistic that it ever gets introduced or sees the light of day, because I think they just think these moderates aren’t going to vote for it,” said Michael Hough, co-president for federal relations at NumbersUSA, a think tank that advocates for more restrictive immigration policies.

Republican leaders have spent nearly two weeks strategizing after Johnson was forced to send lawmakers home early for the July 4 recess due to Luna’s blockade. Johnson did try to attach the elections overhaul to the defense bill before recess, but Luna blocked it anyway.

The GOP leadership team remains unsure of what, if anything, they will be able to move across the floor back in Washington this week. They have decided not to try to revive the must-pass Pentagon bill for now. Instead, they’re looking to call up a year-round daylight saving time bill on the floor this week — a priority for Florida lawmakers — as a way to entice Luna to allow legislative business to restart.

Johnson is also planning to again try to pass fiscal 2027 funding for the State Department and overseas programs — another casualty of the Luna-imposed meltdown. That would include a highly anticipated vote on an amendment from Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) that would slash aid to Israel — something GOP leaders expect will divide Democrats as Republicans seek to exploit the fierce divisions in the opposing party ahead of Election Day.

To appease the immigration hard-liners, GOP leaders have looked at potentially calling up narrower bills — such as a resolution critical of birthright citizenship following last month’s Supreme Court ruling upholding the practice or a bill cracking down on so-called sanctuary cities that do not comply with federal immigration enforcement agencies.

But with the issue weighed down with competing factional demands, Johnson’s leadership circle doesn’t believe any immigration measure can come to the floor at this point, according to four people granted anonymity to candidly describe the talks. Leaders have little to offer holdouts beyond a committee markup for a conservative border bill.

“Just do sanctuary [cities] — that’s like an 80-20 issue, especially among Republicans,” Hough said. “But they get four or five moderate members that say, ‘No, we’re not doing it,’ or, ‘We want what we want,’ and it’s kind of paralyzed them from doing anything.”

Also in a state of paralysis is the yearly appropriations process as a Sept. 30 funding deadline approaches. The House floor impasse has been part of that, but the more profound breakdown has been in the Senate, where a partisan stalemate over spending levels had left the Appropriations Committee unable to act — even before the weekslong absence of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and the sudden death Saturday of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

“It’s as dead as Woodrow Wilson,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said of the annual spending process.

The SAVE America Act is not expected to return to the Senate floor anytime soon, given that Majority Leader John Thune has repeatedly indicated it does not have the votes to move forward.

Instead, Thune is set to launch debate on the Senate’s version of the annual defense policy bill, stalled surveillance legislation and possibly cryptocurrency or college athletics legislation before heading home in August. He’s also set on confirming high-profile nominees like Trump’s attorney general pick, Todd Blanche, and his director of national intelligence designee, Jay Clayton.

The Senate GOP will also be watching as House Republicans try this week to compile a new partisan policy bill under the party-line budget reconciliation process. The White House wants any such package to include tens of billions of dollars in Iran war funding as well as other affordability-oriented items.

Some of the biggest supporters of the bill — referred to on Capitol Hill as “Reconciliation 3.0” in light of the two previous party-line bills Republicans have passed this Congress — initially hoped to move the measure before the summer recess.

That’s now looking unlikely for the House with only two weeks of session left, and Senate Republicans are more skeptical than ever — especially after struggling for weeks to pass a relatively narrow immigration enforcement proposal earlier this year through the filibuster-skirting reconciliation process.

“You saw how easy it was to pass Reconciliation 2.0, right? A very simple reconciliation, something we all supported, and that hit snags,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who is poised to take over the Senate Budget Committee after Graham’s death.

Johnson said Senate Republicans have not seen any of those details yet, and the House Budget Committee similarly has not produced any framework for the legislation — a key prerequisite for any reconciliation bill.

Still, Speaker Johnson is vowing to press forward in the House, and he is planning to huddle Monday with key GOP members to make a plan for the coming weeks.

House Budget Committee Republicans held a call Wednesday to sort out the way forward but didn’t come away with any breakthroughs or even a timeline as fiscal hawks demand spending cuts to offset any new war money or other expenditures, according to two people on the call who were granted anonymity to describe it.

Before members left town for the recess, Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) said in an interview that if there isn’t movement in the first couple of days back in session, reconciliation 2.0 is “real trouble.”

“I think the sense of urgency is known, and we want to get a win for this country,” he said.

But even as Republicans on both sides of the Capitol profess a desire to focus on affordability and to beef up their accomplishments heading into the midterms, a sense of resignation has taken hold.

Asked about the GOP agenda this summer, Sen. Johnson said, “I was going to say: What agenda?”

Myah Ward contributed to this report.

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