House Republicans came back to Washington on Monday with little time left and one more fight already in view: Speaker Mike Johnson said they would try again to move the SAVE America Act through the third reconciliation package route. The House has eight remaining days in session before lawmakers leave for a five-week recess, and Johnson is treating the calendar as the last real opening to act.
The timing matters because President Trump has kept pressing Congress to deliver the voting regulations bill before the recess, even as leaders know it does not have enough GOP support in the Senate. That leaves Johnson trying to thread a narrow path in the House while the clock runs down and the party’s own ranks remain split.
Johnson has already tried to widen the bill’s prospects once. He proposed merging the SAVE America Act with the annual defense policy bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, but hardliners voted against moving ahead with that plan. Those same hardliners, led by Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, helped freeze most legislation late last month and forced Johnson to send the House home early for the Fourth of July recess.
Now Johnson is turning back to budget reconciliation, the process that allows a spending measure to advance without Democratic votes. He told News that Trump understands the mail ballot prohibition “is a bigger reach,” but still said the House would “try one more time” to approve the measure. Trump, for his part, wants Congress to pass a spending bill through reconciliation with $350 billion in defense funding and the SAVE America Act attached.
That push has become more than a fight over one bill. Trump’s focus on the SAVE America Act has already crowded out unrelated Republican priorities in both chambers, and the House cannot afford another miss with only days left before recess. The Senate is expected to remain in Washington through the first week of August, which leaves Johnson with a House-side deadline and no guarantee that a final vote will end any differently than the last one.
House Republicans are expected to meet on Tuesday as they decide whether Johnson’s one more attempt can hold. If it fails, the party leaves Washington with the same blockade still in place and less room than ever to break it.
