Congress
Thune tries to fend off Trump’s war on the Senate recess
President Donald Trump is intent on forcing an August breakthrough on his No. 1 Capitol Hill priority. John Thune has the unenviable task of trying to bring him back to reality.
Fixated on the GOP elections bill known as the SAVE America Act, Trump is ramping up pressure on the Senate majority leader and fellow GOP senators. He’s now going after one of Congress’ most sacrosanct elements of the congressional calendar — the August recess — to try to force Republicans’ hands.
But Trump’s demand to keep lawmakers in town, delivered in a Monday morning Truth Social post, immediately won a skeptical reception from Thune and other senators who argued that holding senators hostage in Washington wouldn’t actually deliver what Trump wants. Neither the elections bill nor his bid to end the 60-vote legislative filibuster to pass it can succeed, they said, despite the president’s frequent verbal sledgehammering.
“If I thought there was a path to getting a result, I’m all for it. … But I’m still, show me how this ends,” Thune told reporters Monday about Trump’s recess cancellation demand. “If we are going to be sitting here and in endless quorum calls, I don’t know if that’s in anybody’s best interest.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger earlier this year, argued the effect could be worse than simply wasting time — that it could backfire politically with only a few months before the midterms.
“Disappointing [Trump] but also our voters 99 days before the election strikes me as a bad idea,” Cornyn said. “If you promise [voters] the sun and the moon and the aurora borealis, then you can’t accomplish it, then they’re going to be disappointed and they’re going to be more focused on us than they are Democrats.”
The issue for Trump, conservative activists and their Hill allies is that there is a quiet majority of Senate Republicans who back the SAVE America Act but also oppose eliminating the filibuster and don’t want to invite a deluge of criticism from the party base by advertising their position.
Enough Senate Republicans voted to debate the elections bill earlier this year only after leaders privately offered reassurances that it wouldn’t turn into an attempt to undo the 60-vote threshold.
Republicans are expected to discuss Trump’s push to stay in session during closed-door meetings this week, as well as his separate demand that they adopt a budget blueprint before they leave town for a $95 billion party-line spending bill that would include some election-related spending.
Party leaders are eager to get their members back home, where they can spend time on the campaign trail, where the GOP is not only facing the usual midterm headwinds for the president’s party but also muddled messaging from the White House.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), a member of GOP leadership, predicted that it would be an “interesting” week.
Asked if she thought the math would change if the Senate stayed in town, Capito said, “I can’t predict that.”
But there’s no sign yet that either Trump or his closest allies on Capitol Hill are ready to accept that reality. Instead, they could force the Senate to hold a vote on whether or not to stay in session, which could give the party’s disgruntled base fresh ammunition to use against members of the party just months before Election Day.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said over the weekend he opposed leaving for the break, and a slew of conservative colleagues have since piled on.
“I stand ready to stay in Washington through the August recess — as long as it takes — to get the SAVE America Act passed,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) posted on X.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) added that “now is the time to dig in, eliminate the manufactured filibuster, and start a new Senate tradition of actually getting things done for the Constitution and the American people.”
The SAVE America fight has weighed even more directly on Thune as pressure builds on him personally.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters last week that “patience is running out” with the Senate GOP leader. The president also urged supporters during a rally last week to call Thune directly to tell him to pass the elections bill as he revived his call to nix the filibuster.
Thune pushed back Monday, saying the Trump administration has known for months that there aren’t the votes to get rid of the 60-vote hurdle. White House officials, he said, met with about 20 GOP senators earlier this year to discuss the issue. Fifteen of the 20, he estimated, opposed moving to simple-majority passage akin to the House.
“This is not an open question,” Thune said. “It’s just a fact. And the facts don’t change. Now, if he can change the facts and start moving some of those senators who are ‘nos’ into ‘yeses’ then we have a different conversation. But that’s just the reality.”
Staff for the Senate Republican Conference, which is chaired by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), circulated internal talking points to Republican offices Monday that were obtained by Blue Light News. They encouraged senators to emphasize that they would support staying into the August recess if it would change the outcome, but it won’t.
“I don’t think staying in session will make more votes appear. … And we have work to do at home to make sure that we beat the Democrats in November,” the memo reads.
Underscoring how Trump’s tiff is threatening to overshadow the GOP’s legislative agenda ahead of the recess, the guidance also encouraged Republican senators to “reject the false choice between the President and Senate leaders: express support for both.”
It also recommended GOP senators say that Trump and Thune “are united and doing an excellent job delivering safety and prosperity for Americans, despite unprecedented Democrat obstruction.”
The ranking Democrat on the House Oversight committee is demanding the White House answer questions related to President Donald Trump’s decision to ban BLN, MS NOW and Blue Light News from the White House, calling it the president’s “most blatant, assault on press freedom.”
In a letter sent Monday to White House Communications Director Steven Cheung, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) requested that Cheung provide by Oct. 5 a detailed account of when and how he was informed of the ban, how he responded, who was consulted before the decision, the legal justification for it, the facts the White House relied on and whether the outlets had any opportunity to respond.
“The First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press, not freedom from criticism,” wrote Garcia. “The American people need to understand what consideration—if any—the White House gave to this serious and unprecedented decision to protect the President’s ego.”
Garcia also asked for all White House staff documents and communications about the ban and for any other relevant materials to be preserved.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump on Friday announced that he was seeking to block journalists from Blue Light News, MS NOW and BLN from the White House, complaining about “constant ‘reporting’” of what he called “FICTION and LIES.” The Trump administration first denied the media outlets entry into the White House grounds on Saturday morning.
The three news organizations are now jointly suing Trump, Cheung and two other top advisers in a bid to immediately restore access for their reporters, calling the ban a “direct assault on the First Amendment.”
Daniel Lippman contributed to this report.
Michigan Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers said Monday that the war with Iran “needs to end” to bring prices down, making him the second Republican to break with the White House on the issue that day.
“The war with Iran needs to end, and end quickly,” Rogers said in a video published Monday to social media.
“Michigan families can’t afford to wait,” he added. “Here’s what we can do now: place a temporary embargo on Diesel exports. American energy should provide relief to American families first.”
Earlier Monday, Rep. Ashley Hinson, a Republican Senate candidate in Iowa, expressed similar frustrations about the war’s impact on Iowans’ pocketbooks. Both Rogers and Hinson called for a suspension of the state and federal gas tax in their statements.
Ahead of the midterms, GOP candidates have expressed concern about the war in the Middle East, saying it has made it difficult for them to run on affordability. The war with Iran, which began in February, has led to marked increases in gas and diesel prices. On Monday, regular gas was just over $4.45 per gallon, according to AAA; diesel prices hit a record of $6.50 per gallon.
Rogers, a former representative, is facing Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in the race for a Senate seat in battleground Michigan.
Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins warned Monday that President Donald Trump would be defying Congress if he moves forward with empowering top political appointees to decide who gets grant funding for health research.
“Any attempt to politicize grantmaking … is contrary to congressional intent,” the Maine Republican said in a statement.
Trump wants to issue an executive order to seat White House budget director Russ Vought and National Institutes of Health director Jay Bhattacharya on a board that would decide which grants the NIH should fund, according to two administration officials granted anonymity to describe a private meeting in the Oval Office last Friday.
Following reports of that meeting, Collins noted Monday that the stopgap funding patch Congress cleared this summer bars the White House from finalizing a separate proposed rule to put political appointees in charge of approving federal grants, or “any substantially similar” plan.
The Office of Management and Budget “should not be involved in agency decisions on the awards of grants,” Collins said, adding that “imposing a political review … undermines the long-standing principle that the government funds awards based on scientific need and merit, rather than political ideology.”
Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the House’s top Democratic appropriator, called the White House’s latest idea an attempt to “take control over federal funding, so they can use it to punish their perceived enemies and reward their friends.”
Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the Senate’s top Democratic appropriator, warned that the move would mean “a single political appointee could kill a cancer study or an Alzheimer’s trial with no scientific reason at all.”
A spokesperson for House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole did not return a request for comment regarding the Oklahoma Republican’s position.
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