Speaker Johnson Leaves House Floor - Issues Major Announcement to the Country
The House Is Open for Business Again — and the SAVE America Act Is Going With the Bill That Unlocked It
After nearly a month of self-inflicted paralysis, House Republicans finally ended their procedural blockade Tuesday — and Speaker Mike Johnson had to make a deal to do it. The deal he made is exactly the right one.
The procedural vote passed 215-211, clearing the way for votes on the State Department appropriations bill, permanent Daylight Saving Time, and veterans’ benefits legislation. The price of unlocking the floor: Johnson agreed to pair the State Department funding bill directly with the SAVE America Act. Several conservative holdouts who had shut down the chamber over Senate inaction on voter ID flipped their votes the moment that pairing was confirmed.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna — the Florida Republican who organized the blockade and kept it going even after Johnson initially attached the SAVE America Act to the defense policy bill — voted yes and made clear exactly where the pressure now lands: “If John Thune strips it out in the Senate, that will be on him, and the entire country should be watching what he does.”
She’s right. And Thune knows it.
The House has now passed or attached the SAVE America Act multiple times through multiple vehicles. The Senate has received it, considered it, and watched John Thune declare there aren’t 60 votes to overcome the filibuster — while simultaneously declining to do anything about the filibuster threshold that is the only thing blocking it. Democrats have publicly announced they will kill the filibuster the moment they take back power. Republicans are preserving it to protect a rule their opponents have already promised to destroy.
The logic of that position gets harder to defend by the day.
Here’s the cold truth about where the SAVE America Act stands: popular doesn’t begin to cover it. Polling shows 4-to-1 support among the American public — across party lines, across demographics, across every group you can name. Requiring proof of citizenship to register and photo ID to vote is not a controversial position among actual voters. It is only controversial inside a Washington bubble populated by people whose electoral interests depend on keeping the system exactly as it is.
Chip Roy and the Freedom Caucus are right that the Permanent Trump Secure Border Act deserves a floor vote too. Codifying the end of catch-and-release, locking in border security measures, addressing birthright citizenship — these are legitimate legislative priorities that deserve to move. The House has work to do on multiple fronts simultaneously.
But if there’s one bill that has to cross the finish line before the 2026 midterms, it’s the SAVE America Act. Without election integrity, every other victory is built on sand. Democrats know it. That’s why they’ve fought it at every turn.
The House did its part. The Senate is watching. Thune needs 51 votes to change the filibuster threshold and pass the most important election security legislation in a generation.
Find them. The whole country is watching.
White House Privately Braces for 2027
The White House is quietly preparing for a Democratic takeover of the House by hiring lawyers to fend off a wave of legal challenges that could cripple the final two years of President Donald Trump’s time in office.
The preparations illustrate how the White House is privately preparing for the possibility that Democrats will regain at least one chamber of Congress in November, even as Republicans express confidence in public, according to people close to the administration.
A Democratic House next year could be reminiscent of 2018 fights that included impeachment inquiries of the president and multiple investigations into his inner circle.
Michael Williams, who served in White House roles in President Donald Trump’s first term and was deputy general counsel for the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee, said staff is already preparing for another impeachment push even as Trump sets a broader strategy for dealing with Democrats.
“They’re ready for that eventuality,” Williams told Bloomberg Government. “I don’t think they’re ready to concede that that’s the likely outcome, but they’re certainly prepared in that event.”
Emma Doyle, former chief of staff at the Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s first term who later worked in the West Wing, said the administration is already hiring experienced lawyers to help prepare officials for impeachment, as she did in the first term.
The return of advisers Jason Miller and Johnny DeStefano strengthens the White House for those fights, Doyle said, along with staff such as Mark Paoletta, the OMB general counsel who worked on impeachment defense in the first term.
Miller and DeStefano rejoined the White House last month to work on midterm strategy.
However, Democrats are facing their own problems.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) may find himself caught in the very blue wave he hopes to ride into power this November.
More and more Democratic candidates are telling Axios that they can’t promise to support his leadership.
It’s a big change from Jeffries’ once “untouchable” position in the Democratic Party just a few years ago. This could mean his path to the speakership will be harder than people thought.
Jeffries and his supporters say they aren’t worried at all about a mass defection. They point out that he hasn’t lost a Democratic vote in 20 speakers’ ballots, even though he is in the minority.
However, this group of new candidates could potentially be the first challenge to the previously unyielding support.
A group of viable candidates has made it clear that voting for Jeffries as speaker is not a given if the Democrats win the House.
Axios reported that more than 80 Democratic House candidates across the country were either not sure if they would support Jeffries’ leadership or were completely against it.
Since then, things have only gotten worse for him.
The tension was on display in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District. Democrat nominee Rebecca Bennett, who likely needs to beat Rep. Tom Kean (R-NJ) if Democrats have any shot at the majority, refused to commit to voting for Jeffries before her primary win.
Likewise, Iowa’s 1st congressional Democratic nominee Christina Bohannan is also noncommittal, merely responding “I don’t know yet. I haven’t made that decision,” when asked by Punchbowl News if she would support Jeffries.
“I want to get elected first,” she continued.
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has classified both Bohannan and Bennett’s districts as toss-ups.
Republicans currently hold both seats.
Montana’s 1st congressional Democratic nominee Sam Forstag echoed similar sentiments as Bohannan.
Forstag sits in a seat labeled “likely Republican,” but has no incumbent running.
Mai Vang, the leading progressive primary challenger to Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), previously said she would “support the person that my future colleagues elect as our leader.”
But in an unprompted statement last week, she told Axios: “The Democratic Party and its leadership—Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries—have failed to mobilize meaningful opposition to Trump’s illegal war and their silence as AIPAC and corporations flood Congressional primaries with millions of dollars is deafening.”
“I cannot support this kind of leadership,” Vang said. “If we want to defeat Trump and rebuild trust with working Americans, we need new leadership and a new direction.”
“Most Democrats agree that he’s been failing to meet the moment,” said Adam Hamawy, a candidate in New Jersey’s 12th district, saying he is “looking for someone that’s gonna stand up to the administration.”
When asked if she would support Jeffries’ leadership, Claire Valdez, a New York State Assembly member who is running to replace retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.), said in an interview with Axios that “there would need to be some conversations.”
