Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) publicly aligned herself with President Donald Trump on Wednesday after he abruptly canceled a planned signing ceremony for a bipartisan housing affordability bill, using the moment to renew her long-running pressure campaign against the Senate over voter identification legislation and to criticize Republican senators who voted this week to curb the administration’s military authority over Iran.
Trump announced the cancellation in a Truth Social post Wednesday morning. “Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT,” he wrote at 9:26 a.m.
Less than half an hour later, Luna responded on X with a brief message of support. “Well done @POTUS. I am with you,” she wrote at 9:55 a.m.
Luna Turns Fire on the Senate
Five minutes later, Luna posted a longer statement that broadened the scope of her message beyond the housing bill itself, tying the cancellation directly to this week’s Senate vote on Iran and to her months-long campaign to force passage of the SAVE America Act. “The clowns in the Senate who are not a part of negotiations just tried to blow up Iran peace negotiations. NOT ONE piece of their legislation will go through the House. Do your damn job and get Voter ID done. We have a coalition that will not move until you do,” Luna wrote at 10:00 a.m.
The post came 1 day after Republican Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul and Bill Cassidy joined Senate Democrats in passing legislation to halt U.S. military action against Iran, a vote that also drew a sharp rebuke from Trump, who wrote on social media that the four senators “have just made my job more difficult.”
A Pattern of Pressure on Voter ID
Luna’s Wednesday posts extend a pressure campaign she has waged for months, placing voter identification legislation above nearly every other piece of must-pass business in Congress. In April, Luna told The Hill that a measure to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s surveillance authority was dead unless the SAVE America Act was attached to it. “I think FISA dies unless SAVE America is attached. Period,” she said.
Around the same time, Luna told Breitbart News that the bill represented a “line in the sand” for her support of any surveillance reauthorization. She argued that “voter ID is national security,” and said the only way she would consider voting for a FISA extension was if the SAVE America Act were attached, warning otherwise it would be “dead on arrival in the House.”
Luna has also taken her case to House leadership and to Senate Majority Leader John Thune directly. In an April interview with journalist Catherine Herridge, Luna said she believes voter identification is “the number one most important issue in the country right now,” and argued that if Republican leadership could not deliver on it, lawmakers “like John Thune do not deserve to come back to Congress.” She placed responsibility for the legislative stall squarely on Thune, saying he has the authority to change Senate procedures and arguing, “John Slowly Thune is a problem. He has every ability to embrace the standing filibuster or remove the filibuster.”
In February, Luna told Punchbowl News that voter ID legislation would likely need to be folded into a “must-pass” bill to survive the Senate, citing FISA as the most viable vehicle. “I do believe that the only way voter ID is going to pass is if it is attached to a must-pass piece of legislation. I think that that’s going to be FISA,” she said, adding that the Senate had “sat on this for over 300 days.”
Most recently, Luna escalated her tactics within the House itself. According to reporting Tuesday, she and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) threatened to oppose procedural rule votes in the House until the Senate passes the SAVE America Act, with Luna writing on X that “the House GOP is attempting to move a Senate Bill with NO VOTER ID and NO SAVE AMERICA ACT,” and warning she would “have to be a NO on rules for this week (and maybe even longer) if they don’t stop the games.” She added that she was “not the only one” frustrated with the situation and said other House members shared her concerns.
Luna had also previously called for Trump to veto the housing legislation now at the center of Wednesday’s cancellation unless voter ID provisions were attached. Reporting from earlier this week noted that Luna said she and 24 other House Republicans had signed a letter vowing to oppose any Senate bills until the SAVE America Act passes, and that she wrote on X, “The President should VETO the Senate ‘Housing’ Bill until they attach SAVE America if House GOP leadership tries to pull a fast one and remove all our House Rules in order to get it passed.”
Her Record on Iran
Luna’s Wednesday statement on Iran “peace negotiations” also builds on a consistent record of defending the administration’s handling of the conflict and its use of executive war powers. After the joint U.S.-Israel operation that killed Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei and much of the country’s senior leadership, Luna appeared on MS NOW and stated flatly that the administration would not pursue a ground invasion. “This admin is NOT putting boots on the ground. Period. Iran not only attempted to assassinate POTUS and he was STILL willing to negotiate,” she said, adding that “it is not the intent, or the position, or the directive of this administration to put boots on the ground in Iran as a result of these strikes.”
Luna has also defended the administration’s legal justification for acting without a congressional vote authorizing war. “Congress will not vote on the issue of going to war with Iran because that is not something that we support and that the administration supports,” she said in an MS NOW interview, citing the president’s constitutional authority to act if U.S. forces face an imminent threat. When pressed by anchor Ayman Mohyeldin on her claim that Iran was responsible for “thousands” of American deaths, Luna said she had not specified the deaths occurred on U.S. soil and pointed instead to Iran’s record of state-sponsored terrorism.
What Comes Next
Trump is scheduled to meet with Senate Republicans at a closed-door lunch Wednesday afternoon to press for passage of the SAVE America Act, which would require photo identification to vote in federal elections and proof of citizenship to register. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has signaled that Republicans do not have the votes to overcome a Democratic filibuster or to eliminate the filibuster outright, telling reporters, “Those are just hard realities. And I think people at some point have to come to grips with that.”
Luna’s posts suggest she intends to keep applying pressure on the House side regardless of the outcome of Wednesday’s Senate meeting, reiterating her warning that legislation originating in the Senate will continue to face resistance in the House until voter ID requirements are addressed.