Johnson moves to attach voter-citizenship bill to must-pass defense measure
Speaker Mike Johnson announced a plan to tie the SAVE America Act to the annual defense bill after hardline conservatives ground the House to a halt over the voter measure. The SAVE Act would require proof of citizenship to register for federal elections and a photo ID to cast a ballot.
Johnson unveiled the move Monday night as the House Rules Committee took up the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, with Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) threatening to sink the NDAA unless her voter-ID amendment was attached. The mechanism, sometimes called “MIRVing,” uses a procedural rule to package separately passed bills and send them to the Senate together. A House panel advanced the approach along party lines.
The maneuver eases Johnson’s immediate floor problem but does not solve the underlying one. The SAVE Act drew 53 Senate votes earlier — well short of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster — and bolting it onto the defense bill does nothing to change that count. The likeliest outcome is that the citizenship language gets stripped in the Senate, leaving the standoff to resurface.