Risking It All for the Bill That Won’t Pass 🥲
A House Republican has convinced enough of her colleagues to join her in shutting down the House’s legislative work to put their plan into action. They hope to somehow convince the Senate to come back from recess and pass a bill that top Senate Republicans have repeatedly insisted will not pass in the Senate.
If that sounds convoluted and like a useless hostage-taking exercise, that’s because it is. But Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) is just taking a page out of President Trump’s strategy book for self-sabotaging demands and half-assed negotiations.
In a social media post on Wednesday evening, Luna announced that she had enough other House Republicans who also want to suck up to Trump on her side to shut down the House floor — meaning blocking the procedural votes necessary for Republican leadership to run floor debate and prepare for final votes on major bills. Why exactly shutting down all operations in the House — and imperiling legislation she claims to support, like the defense bill — will convince the Senate to come back early is unclear.
“I will not be voting to re-open the floor until the Senate gets back to Washington,” she tweeted. “The Senate is literally running and not ONE senator objected to going on vacation before 4th of July. John Thune is running and hiding because he doesn’t want to get voter ID across the finish line.”
As TPM has reported, it’s not really about what Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) wants or does not want when it comes to the SAVE America Act, the sweeping documentary proof of citizenship and voter ID bill that Trump wants passed to suppress voter turnout ahead of the midterms. The bill is expected to disenfranchise millions if it is ever passed, including married women who have changed their last names, a group that certainly includes many Republicans.
Not only is there not enough support for the legislation in its House-passed form within the Senate Republican conference, the legislation is subject to the filibuster, meaning it would need at least 60 votes to pass the upper chamber. That is not going to happen because Democrats are, of course, not going to help Trump use his 2020 election delusions to suppress voting this fall. There was talk, at one point this spring, of trying to shove the SAVE America Act into a must-pass reconciliation bill, but the Senate Parliamentarian shut that down. Thune, for his part, has been firm in his unwillingness to nuke the filibuster for the sake of the bill that some in his conference take issue with.
“This is the No. 1 most important issue in the country,” Luna said of the SAVE America Act in a video responding to critics of her scheme, who have argued she is undermining House Republicans’ ability to head into the midterms with some legislative victories to campaign on. “The American people want it, and we’re not budging until we get it.”
Luna is simply following Trump’s lead. In the last few weeks alone, the president has blown up his party’s efforts to pass its priorities — and sometimes his own — in attempts to pressure Senate Republicans to pass the SAVE Act when, per Thune, it simply cannot. He sabotaged the confirmation hearing for his own nominee for Director of National Intelligence to try to get Senate Republicans to take up the bill. He canceled his own signing ceremony for a bipartisan and extremely popular affordable housing bill that passed both chambers yesterday to bully Republicans to pass it. He mucked up the extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — the warrantless spy program that typically has some level of bipartisan support — by insisting that the SAVE Act be attached to it.
Luna’s House wreckage is no different. And some House Republicans are reportedly losing patience.
Rep. Nick LaLota (R-NY) put it delicately when discussing his colleagues’ antics with Politico: it’s “like beating your dog because your neighbor won’t cut his grass.”
Divine Intervention for Voter Suppression!
There are lots of unhinged moments coming out of the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual Road to Majority Conference in Washington this week, but this one might be my favorite so far. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) suggested that Trump has been saved by god several times to complete the work that is set before him (protecting Jeffrey Epstein, throwing people in prison for dissent, destroying democracy, etc.) — an apparent prophecy that, per Emmer, Trump himself knows to be true.
Charlie Kirk’s work was all done though, he says.
It’s my favorite blend of twisted biblical prophecy, sycophantic delusion and sacrilege that the GOP so often embodies now that they’ve somehow convinced the evangelical masses (and themselves) of Trump’s messianic qualities.
The Top Billionaires Buying Our Politics
Related reading for the curious! (First in TPM, too.): Taxing Billionaires Is the Easiest Way Democrats Could Gain Voter Trust
Other Smart TPM Pieces You Should Read Today
Kate Riga has the details on today’s district court ruling striking down part of Trump’s second executive order on voting (which paved the way for the USPS postmaster general to announce yesterday that the postal service would not send mail-in ballots to voters in states unless they hand over their voter rolls to the Trump administration): Judge Blocks Key Portions of Trump’s Attempt to Take Over Mail-In Voting for Half the States
Josh Marshall expands on that: Anti-Constitution, Extortion and Trump’s Vote-Rigging Schemes
Khaya Himmelman has a new edition of The Franchise, TPM’s voting rights newsletter, out this afternoon in which she explains what is going on with the database that the Trump admin is trying to force states to use to purge voter rolls: What’s This Database DHS Is Trying to Use to Purge Voter Rolls?
More from TPM today:
Trump Is Spiraling Out of Control and GOP Senators Are Still Coddling His Feelings
SCOTUS Lets Trump End Protected Status for Endangered Syrian and Haitian Refugees
Paxton, the DOJ, and a Friendly Judge Took Five Hours to Box in Future Presidents
Click
The most read story on TPM yesterday: At SCOTUS, Once Again, Religious Rights Are Only for Conservative Christians
What I’m Reading
Texas Public School Students May Soon Be Required to Read the Bible
Trump 250 Gala Takes Humiliating New Turn as More States Pull Out
RFK Jr. urged Iowa candidate to make deal to help GOP win House seat, per audio recording
“I will not be voting to re-open the floor until the Senate gets back to Washington,” she tweeted. “The Senate is literally running and not ONE senator objected to going on vacation before 4th of July. John Thune is running and hiding because he doesn’t want to get voter ID across the finish line.”
Extortion is now apparently all the rage in the GQP.
Every also ran now wants to give it a whirl.
A couple of thoughts….
Does Luna really think that her one vote to not open the floor will matter?
Didn’t Johnson call a vacation when a bill was coming up for a vote and he didn’t want the members to vote on it? And didn’t he do that more than once this term? I guess Luna thinks that Johnson can do it but Thune can not.
More than a dozen extra days this year, plus an extra 52-days during the shutdown. There were other random days both years, I think.
More than once!
John Fetterman: “Hold my Yuengling.”
Or just mayhaps this is Mikie’s way of trying to help TSF with his simulated pocket veto - if they do nothing, that must include not sending a signed bill over to the UFC stadium (errr, “White House”?
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