Inside John Thune’s August recess dilemma — and his new Trump-sized problem
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., was already racing toward the August recess with an overflowing legislative agenda: a Russia sanctions bill, a stopgap funding measure, some progress on the GOP’s third reconciliation bill, and a slate of nominees.
And then President Donald Trump made the to-do list even more complicated.
Unlike Thune’s priorities, Trump’s are next to impossible. On Monday, the president posted that the Senate shouldn’t leave Washington until Republicans eliminate the filibuster — or, at least, pass the SAVE America Act.
“John Thune should not allow the United States Senate to ‘leave town’ until it passes The Save America Act or, far better still, TERMINATES THE FILIBUSTER, where Republicans can then quickly pass everything they ever dreamed of, including a full and deep throated SAVE AMERICA ACT, the Budget, and the ever looming Debt Ceiling disaster, 1929!” he wrote on Truth Social. “The Dumocrats will do it on day one, and can’t believe how lucky they got with this Senate leadership.”
But Thune told reporters on Monday that Trump’s demands simply aren’t realistic. The majority leader noted that Republicans don’t want to get rid of the filibuster, and Democrats aren’t going to support Trump’s preferred voter ID measure.
“If the endgame is, we actually get an outcome or result, we could stay here until Christmas,” Thune said of postponing the August recess. “But Democrats aren’t voting for this, I’m just telling you. And the Republicans are not getting rid of the legislative filibuster.”
Inconveniently for Trump, Thune’s conference largely stands behind him.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told reporters on Monday that Trump may not realize how strongly Senate Republicans support the majority leader.
“If the president has a look at the reality, the majority of the Republican members support John Thune,” Tillis said Monday. “I don’t even think it’s close, to be honest with you.”
In another conversation with reporters, Tillis said Trump was “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.” He warned the strategy could negatively impact the party in the November midterm elections.
“What we need to do is get out of here,” said Tillis, who’s retiring at the end of the year. “Staying here longer and just assuming that because we’re here, we’re gonna bridge some profound differences between people is a catastrophic political miscalculation, and shows that they’re tone deaf to the fact that we have a real threat ahead of us with respect to losing the majority.”
Tillis added that he wanted Republicans back in their states campaigning, “not doing the performative politics up here that people like Mike Lee want to do.”
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger, said the Senate “can stay here ‘til the cows come home, and it’s not going to change anything.”
He also expressed concerns about the push blowing up in the GOP’s face.
“We keep over-promising and under-delivering, which is not a recipe for good morale or high voter participation in the midterm elections,” Cornyn said.
But it’s not just Trump’s Republican critics who are skeptical of the president’s push. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said it doesn’t matter how long Republicans keep the Senate in session.
“Unless we have Democrat votes, you won’t get to 60 and that’s what’s required,” he said.
“We simply don’t have the votes,” he added.
Still, some Senate Republicans are siding with Trump, including Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Rick Scott, R-Fla., Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., and Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.
Scott told MS NOW that Republicans should secure at least some sort of victory before leaving for recess, even if it falls short of the full SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship when registering to vote and photo ID at the polls.
“Let’s look at what we can do,” Scott said. “Can we pass just voter ID? So what can we do? Let’s see what we can do.”
Thune’s priorities are considerably more modest. In the final weeks before recess, he aims to confirm a slate of Trump administration nominees, pass a Russia sanctions bill, and make progress on a measure to avert an October government shutdown.
Supporters of a bipartisan Russia sanctions bill want to pass the measure this week. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is scheduled to meet with senators on Tuesday, as part of an aggressive push to get the measure over the finish line. But even that legislation won’t be simple, as some Democrats oppose the measure’s provisions granting new tariff authorities that they argue would give Trump more influence over trade policy.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who opposes the bill, told MS NOW he’ll “fight that all the way.” He said the tariff authority should be completely removed from the bill.
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“All you’ve got to do is strike the tariffs,” Wyden said. “Come in with a knife — boop, gone.”
A drawn-out debate on Russia sanctions could further complicate the rest of Thune’s agenda as floor time dwindles.
On Tuesday, the Senate is looking to confirm Clayton to be director of national intelligence, and on Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on advancing Todd Blanche’s nomination to be attorney general.
If Blanche advances out of committee — which is still an open question — GOP leaders will likely push to confirm him next week, consuming more floor time.
On Monday, Cornyn, a key member of the Judiciary Committee, told reporters he was still undecided on Blanche’s nomination, but he named his price: a signed document from Blanche affirming that the anti-weaponization fund is dead, and clarification that the IRS settlement doesn’t extend to parties beyond the lawsuit or to future actions by federal agencies other than the IRS.
“That’s what we’re trying to get them to agree to which is, again, what his sworn testimony was,” Cornyn said. “I don’t know why they’re so reluctant to do that.”
Tillis, another pivotal vote on the committee, said there’s been progress on the anti-weaponization fund, but he still has questions regarding an offer of immunity from audits that was part of Trump’s at least temporarily abandoned lawsuit settlement.
On government funding, top negotiators hope to strike a deal on a stopgap measure to keep agencies running from Oct. 1 until well after the November elections.
While senators may vote as soon as this week on a continuing resolution, they can only make limited progress. House members left Washington after passing a measure that would fund the government through Dec. 4 — a bill Democrats criticized for leaving the door open to providing more money for immigration enforcement agencies.
Senators, meanwhile, are negotiating their own measure, meaning it would still require approval from House members when they return in September.
House Republicans were hoping to force Thune’s hand — and to pressure Democrats to come to the table — by voting quickly on their own haphazard funding measure. House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., acknowledged that the House may have to alter its continuing resolution before a final vote, but he said members wanted to pass something quickly in order to pressure senators to follow suit.
“We’ll see what the Senate does,” Cole said last week. “I mean, they would prefer to jam us. I would prefer to jam them.”
Thune has tried to sidestep pressure from House members to take action on a partisan reconciliation bill to provide $95 billion in military and agriculture spending.
He told reporters last week that he’d prefer to wait until the Sept. 30 government funding deadline is addressed before acting on a House-adopted resolution setting up the reconciliation bill.
But on Monday he told reporters he wasn’t “ruling out the possibility” of a vote on the budget resolution.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who replaced the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., as Budget Committee chairman, urged GOP leaders not to drag their feet on the new budget blueprint. Voting on a continuing resolution shouldn’t take Thune’s focus away from reconciliation, he said.
“CRs are not complex, OK?” Johnson told MS NOW last week, adding that senators could vote on a CR next week and advance the budget next week before heading out of town.
Kevin Frey contributed to this report.
Jack Fitzpatrick covers Congress for MS NOW. He previously reported for Bloomberg Government, Morning Consult and National Journal. He has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Arizona State University.
