WASHINGTON ― House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is sending lawmakers home early for the July 4th holiday after totally failing to advance President Donald Trump’s proposed crackdown on imaginary voter fraud. More than a dozen House Republicans on Tuesday voted against Johnson’s scheme to make the Senate pass the “Save America Act” by attaching it to a defense bill.“We had a handful of Republicans who voted against advancing that. They also, as you know, by consequence, also voted against the Save America Act,” Johnson told reporters as he left the House floor. “This is life with a small margin, small majority, and we’ll work through it.” While it’s true having a small majority makes it harder for Republicans to win House votes, the real problem is Trump’s wildly unrealistic demand that Congress pass the Save America Act, a bill that would essentially federalize election procedures, require states to purge their voter rolls, require voters to prove citizenship when they register to vote and to show ID when they cast ballots. Tuesday’s debacle, and Johnson’s decision to cancel votes for the rest of the week, means House Republicans won’t pass priority legislation to give themselves something to talk about on the campaign trail ahead of an expected shellacking in the November midterms ― not that passing the bills would necessarily help them. This week they’re missing out on a chance to codify Trump’s renaming the Defense Department as the War Department and a resolution commemorating their tax cuts from last year. As for the Save America Act, the latest House version doesn’t even contain Trump’s proposed ban on mail-in voting or his ban on transgender women to keep them from playing college sports.Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) led the opposition to Johnson’s plan, but her objection was hard to understand. She said Tuesday she disliked how Johnson was attaching the Save America Act to the National Defense Authorization Act instead of inserting the text of the Save America Act directly into the bill through an amendment. “HOUSE GOP LEADERSHIP SHOULD allow an AMENDMENT to ATTACH VOTER ID + PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP or SAVE America to the ACTUAL TEXT of NDAA,” Luna said Tuesday on social media, claiming Johnson’s maneuver would make it too easy for senators to block the voting reforms. The thing is, it doesn’t really matter how the House passes the Save America Act — there’s practically no chance the Senate will accept it any which way. The upper chamber has already voted on versions of the bill twice, and it’s not come close to the 60 votes it needs to break a filibuster. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has repeatedly said there aren’t enough votes to pass the bill, which is obvious. Johnson met with Trump at the White House last week, prompting the president to ask House Republicans not to vote against procedural measures, but the message was apparently not convincing. The president himself, after all, still insists Thune ought to somehow force the Senate to accept the Save America Act despite the lack of support. “A small group of Republicans don’t want the Republican agenda to move forward,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) told HuffPost on Tuesday. “I don’t blame them for being upset at the Senate but their solution is to stop Republican bills from moving forward, which I think is not the right solution.” After the failed vote on Thursday, Johnson said he would try again, but hours later he canceled votes for the rest of the week, conceding defeat. RelatedMike Johnsonvoter fraudHouse Republicanssave america act