House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) attempted an end-run strategy to pass President Donald Trump's anti-voting-rights SAVE America Act through Congress — only for a contingent of Republicans to block it and deal him a fresh humiliation. And MS NOW commenters were quick to react.
" Mike Johnson just tried to get the SAVE America Act through the House," said anchor Katy Tur, quoting Punchbowl News' Jake Sherman that it "went down in flames" and turning to reporter Mychael Schnell. "What exactly happened?"
For starters, said Schnell, Johnson attempted to force it through by attaching it to the annual defense budget bill, or NDAA, "a very core, important piece of must-pass legislation." It was a plan concocted by conservative hardliners, led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL).
"She has taken it upon herself, amid the President's pressure campaign, to pass this bill, to say that she would not pass any bills in the House unless the Senate acted on this legislation," said Schnell. "The Senate left town, so that opportunity was off the table" — but she said she would stop her protest if it were put to a vote in the House.
Meanwhile, Schnell said, "Speaker Johnson chose a different route, trying to combine the two during this procedural vote," only for 14 House Republicans to block it, leading to the failure of a routine procedural vote.
The bottom line, she continued, is that "it's a massive embarrassment and a blow to Speaker Johnson. It's never good when a rule vote fails. But the interesting thing here ... is that the left hand isn't really aware of what the right hand is doing when you talk about Republican leaders, because last week, President Trump had taken to Truth Social and said he did not want these Republicans in the House to be holding hostage these procedural rules in the NDAA in order to get the SAVE America bill passed," and Luna and Johnson still did it anyway.
As a consequence of all this, said Schnell, "the House floor is right now paralyzed" and "there is still no movement in the SAVE America Act." There's simply no path to get it passed, she said — "but conservatives and the president himself are not yet ready to accept that reality."
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