There are legislative pressure campaigns and then there are legislative pressure campaigns that require explaining why you believe threatening your own chamber will change the math in someone else’s chamber. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida has frozen the House floor until the Senate passes the SAVE America Act, which includes voter ID requirements, and which the Senate has already declined to pass through three separate votes in the last several weeks.
According to Fox News, Luna told Fox News Digital: “There’s going to be no votes this week, and it’s going to be as long as it takes.” She said she has the votes to block nearly all House floor action, and that Republican leadership has already been forced to pull a series of scheduled votes as a result. “The president’s been very clear,” she added. “He’s not playing these games anymore, and I’m going to fully back him, and I have the votes to do it.” House Speaker Mike Johnson pulled the votes. He is expected to meet with Trump Thursday to try to resolve the standoff, which is the kind of meeting that occurs when the Speaker of the House needs the President of the United States to help him manage a handful of his own members.
The SAVE America Act has passed the House once. The Senate voted it down. Luna’s theory is that freezing House floor action will pressure the Senate to pass it again, which requires believing that Senators who voted no will change their votes because the House has stopped passing other things, which is not how the Senate works and which no Senate Republican has indicated they are prepared to do. Senator John Thune, the Majority Leader, described a previous pressure campaign on the same bill as “challenging.” He has not indicated it has become less challenging.
Johnson floated a compromise Wednesday: incorporating a narrow version of the SAVE Act into a third budget reconciliation package, creating a grant program encouraging states to require REAL IDs at the ballot box. According to Fox News, Luna described this as “an inadequate fix,” meaning the compromise that might actually pass the Senate is too small for the members whose opposition to the Senate is why the House is currently not voting on anything.
The House is now frozen. The Senate is unmoved. Johnson is meeting with Trump. Luna is holding.
When the strategy for passing a bill that the Senate voted down is to stop the House from passing other bills, what exactly does success look like?
Sources
Fox News: Anna Paulina Luna leads House blockade over Trump’s stalled voter ID push
