Johnson: House will pass SAVE America Act once more in reconciliation bill

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) said on Sunday the House of Representatives will pass the SAVE America Act ‘one more time’ by attaching the legislation to a budget reconciliation bill in an attempt to move it through the Senate and to President Donald Trump’s desk.

While speaking to Fox News’s Shannon Bream, Johnson argued that including the measure in a reconciliation bill would be the most likely path to sending it through the upper chamber, which Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has said is unlikely given the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold. 

“I’m going to put it in a reconciliation bill, so that we can get it through the Senate,” Johnson said. “The problem is there’s only 53 Republicans in the Senate… there’s zero chance, Shannon, that seven Democrats are going to help us on election integrity.”

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) and 13 GOP hardliners took down a procedural rule vote last week that attached the measure to the $1.15 trillion defense spending bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, on the basis that the Senate would be unlikely to pass the act if the two pieces of legislation were merged. Luna’s coalition has pledged to vote against any procedural rule until the upper chamber passes the act, which the House has already done three times. Johnson sent members home for the Fourth of July recess following the vote.

The bill, which would impose stricter voting requirements, has emerged as a key legislative goal for Trump this summer ahead of November’s midterm elections. He referenced the act on Saturday night while delivering the keynote address at the America 250 celebration on the United States’s 250th Independence Day.

“America is back and we want to keep America great,” Trump said. “And we will do so by approving the Save America Act, which means all voters must show voter ID. All voters must provide a little thing called proof of citizenship. And there will be no mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, military deployment, or travel.”

Johnson also discussed the recent rise of communism during the interview, which Trump has called “the biggest threat facing America.” Republicans have consistently highlighted the topic after three members of the Democratic Socialists of America, who were endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, won congressional races in New York last month.

“We have to fight this,” Johnson said. “We’re no longer in just an election cycle – we were saying it was ‘common sense’ vs ‘crazy’ – now it’s common sense vs. communism, and everybody needs to wake up.”