House GOP agenda stalls over holdouts' insistence on SAVE America Act

Washington — Republican hardliners continue to hold up most legislation on the House floor as they dig in on their demands for the Senate to pass President Trump's voting regulations bill, the SAVE America Act. On Tuesday, the holdouts blocked Speaker Mike Johnson's plan to merge the SAVE America Act with the annual defense policy bill, known as the National Defense Authorization Act, before sending it over to the Senate. The conservative members sank a party-line procedural vote that would have set up final votes for the defense bill and other legislation. Fourteen Republicans, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, voted against moving forward. Scalise, from Louisiana, switched his vote in a procedural move so that leadership can bring up the measure again. "We'll work on that over the next day and a half, and we'll get everybody to a yes," Johnson told reporters. "It makes no sense for us to stop our very important progress forward from House Republicans because some Senate Democrats are refusing to do their job." Ahead of the vote, GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, who has been leading the charge, said she wants to pass an amendment to insert the voting regulations into the text of the defense policy bill. She called Johnson's plan "a procedural head fake," arguing it would be easier for the Senate to strip out the elections provisions. …