House cuts work short for second week as rebels freeze floor

House Republican leaders are set to send the chamber home early for the second week in a row amid mounting tensions after GOP rebels on Tuesday again blocked action on the House floor.

Leaders will send the chamber home after votes at 5:15 pm on Tuesday, two GOP sources confirmed, after rebels earlier in the day sank a procedural vote that would have teed up action on the annual defense authorization bill.

The blockade also delayed leaders’ plans to advance a bill funding the State Department and national security, and a messaging resolution commemorating the one-year passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that extended Trump’s tax cuts.

Votes had been scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday. The chamber already had a scheduled recess next week and will return July 13.

Frustration is building on both sides of the impasse, which centers on voting reforms and other gripes about the House’s priorities.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) voiced his discontent with members blocking procedural votes over the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, a bill pushed by President Trump that would require voter ID to cast a ballot and proof of citizenship for voter registration. The House has passed that bill multiple times but it is stalled in the Senate.

“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,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday after the procedural vote on the defense bill and SAVE America Act.

Most major legislation in the Senate requires 60 votes to advance, requiring support from some Democrats. Trump and other Republicans have called on Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to upend Senate traditions and practices to muscle the legislation through the upper chamber and to the president’s desk but Thune has said there is not enough support in the GOP to do that.

Those dynamics have infuriated the most ardent Trump allies in the House, who are now eying any piece of must-pass legislation as leverage to try to force the Senate to swallow the SAVE America Act.

Last week, they blocked action on two regular funding bills, causing leaders to send the chamber home early. This week, they blocked the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and one funding bill.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), the most vocal of those calling for action on the SAVE America Act, had proposed an amendment to the NDAA that would have folded in the voting reform bill.

Johnson said an amendment wasn’t necessary, and instead backed an usual procedural mechanism to essentially merge the NDAA with the SAVE America Act as it is sent to the Senate.

That wasn’t good enough for Luna, though, who argued that adding the voting measures to the base text would result in a better chance of jamming the Senate.

“I know procedure. I’m not stupid. I’m going to fight on behalf of the American people,” Luna said after the vote.

The Senate, though, is likely to change the House version of the NDAA no matter what. It typically passes its own version of the defense bill, and then leaders resolve the differences.

While Trump last week had mounted his own protest over the SAVE America Act by canceling a scheduled signing of a housing bill, after meeting with Johnson, he made a post on social media urging House Republicans to stop “grandstanding” and unify — specifically calling on them to not vote down rules.

The rebels, though, aren’t taking that direction — and don’t see themselves in conflict with the president.

“I think that we are exactly in lockstep with the president, and I share his same frustrations,” Luna said on Monday.

“We’re in contact with the White House,” added Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who also voted against the rule. “Lockstep through all of this.”

The SAVE America Act isn’t the only issue causing the rebellion.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said his Tuesday vote against the rule was less about the SAVE America Act and more about pressuring GOP leadership to bring up border security legislation.

Roy was among a group of Republicans in the House Freedom Caucus who earlier in the month said that GOP leaders committed to bring up a border security bill by Independence Day as a condition of advancing a bill to fund immigration enforcement and border security. Such a bill, though was not scheduled for this week.

Those issues, Roy argued, were particularly important in light of the Supreme Court decision announced earlier in the day upholding birthright citizenship.

“We need to be on offense, and we’re not,’ Roy said. “We ought to be codifying what the president’s doing.”

Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) said his “no” vote was over an unrelated issue, but declined to elaborate.

“Sometimes you got challenges inside the family, and you got to work those things out,” Fine said.

Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), meanwhile, had aimed to use the NDAA as a vehicle to address an Ohio issue: Restoring terminated pensions for workers at the former General Motors auto parts company Delphi. Johnson said that Turner’s amendment was rejected in par because “it was appropriating on an authorizing measure.”