Congress

How the GOP took back the Senate — even while continuing to struggle in swing states

Published

2 years ago

November 12, 2024

Republicans celebrated as they took a decisive Senate majority last week: They’d finally figured out how to get past the candidate quality issues that had tanked them for two cycles.

But they still have a purple-state problem.

Even as President-elect Donald Trump swept every swing state, four of those battlegrounds are sending Democrats to the Senate. That’s the highest number of Senate-presidential ticket splits in 12 years, and a warning sign for Republicans as they try to protect and grow their ranks in 2026.

That 53-seat majority will be a boon to the GOP agenda next year. But three of Republicans’ wins were in solidly red seats in West Virginia, Ohio and Montana. They flipped a true swing state in Pennsylvania but suffered losses in Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona. That means they’ll fall well short of the 57 seats they might have had, thanks to undervoting, smaller Trump coattails and well-funded and disciplined Democratic opponents.

This was the fourth straight cycle in the Trump era that Senate Republicans struggled to win purple states. In theory, Trump could have pulled some of their top recruits over the finish line — he outperformed Senate GOP candidates in every single battleground state.

“Going into this there was a whole lot made out of the fact that Republican Senate candidates were running behind Trump,” said Steven Law, president of the GOP super PAC aligned with Senate leadership. “The easiest and clearest and most accurate explanation of that was that they were running against name brands who had huge advantages of incumbents.”

Both parties will heavily scrutinize the campaigns and their results — including Republicans’ ouster of incumbent Democratic Sen. Bob Casey in Pennsylvania — as they try to figure out how to compete during a second Trump administration. The good news, said Jason Thielman, executive director of the Senate GOP campaign arm, is Republicans will be better able to fully turn their attention to swing states now.

“Fast forward into future cycles, instead of having to spend so much money trying to unseat these Democrats in red states,” he said, “we’re now going to be able to focus all of our energy and resources on these purple, swing states.”

The midterms are historically difficult for the party of a sitting president. Controlling for candidate quality likely won Republicans the Senate this time, but it wasn’t enough to run the table. Heading into 2026, they will have to replicate their primary intervention strategy while also figuring out how to propel those candidates to victory in swingy states.

And Republicans had to scheme intensely against members of their own party to ensure victory in states that Trump won handily, underscoring the precarious position in which they find themselves. If left unchecked, their base will often elevate controversial candidates, like Kari Lake, who lost a second consecutive statewide run in Arizona.

Montana Sen. Steve Daines, who became chair of the Senate GOP campaign arm in 2022, decided to tackle that issue head-on.

“He focused on getting quality candidates, making sure they actually got the nomination, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday. “And as I said, to some criticism, candidate quality is absolutely essential.”

Avoiding messy primaries

Daines gathered his top aides in December 2022 for an hours-long strategy session on a crucial question: How could they avoid botching a third attempt in a row to capture the majority?

The past two cycles haunted them. In 2020, the GOP lost its majority. Two years later, tarnished Republican nominees flubbed winnable races from Arizona to Georgia to Pennsylvania. This year, they needed to net only two seats to guarantee the majority, and they had a clear path.

Huddled in the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s Capitol Hill headquarters, Daines’ team landed on a plan. They would aggressively intervene in primaries, recruiting strong contenders and clearing the field for them as much as possible.

Daines publicly spoke out against problematic candidates who were considering runs, such as Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke. And national Republicans moved to block others, including the 2018 candidates who lost to Sens. Joe Manchin in West Virginia and Jon Tester in Montana.

McConnell personally visited West Virginia to court Gov. Jim Justice, a popular Democrat-turned-Republican who the GOP believed would spook Manchin out of the race. And in the strategy session at the NRSC, Daines came up with a recruiting suggestion for his home state of Montana: former Navy Seal Tim Sheehy.

Daines also curried favor with Trump, becoming the first member of Senate GOP leadership to endorse his 2024 run. He lobbied Trump to back his preferred Senate picks, including Justice and Sheehy, giving them priceless currency in their primaries. Trump was crucial in clearing what could have been messy fields, including in Michigan, where a GOP primary candidate dropped out on stage at a Trump rally and endorsed the party pick.

The NRSC also needed to contend with other party groups — especially the anti-tax Club for Growth, a conservative organization known for antagonizing the party establishment in key primaries. Reps. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.) and Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) were two of their favorites and both were considering Senate runs.

The NRSC endeared itself to the Club when it intervened to reduce primary competition for GOP Rep. Jim Banks, whom the Club backed for an open Senate seat in deep-red Indiana.

Daines met with former Gov. Mitch Daniels, a centrist considering a run, and told him he would not endorse him in the primary, according to a person familiar with the meeting. Daniels decided to sit out the race.

“That probably was the early indication to us that we could work closely with him,” Club for Growth President David McIntosh said of Daines.

The group ultimately did not seem eager to oppose Daines’ picks. It committed $10 million to help Mooney in West Virginia but spent just a small portion of that. McIntosh said donors had second thoughts after it became clear that Mooney could not beat Justice.

In Montana, Rosendale spent months talking about running for Senate, worrying national Republicans who saw him flop in 2018.

McIntosh urged him to stay in the House. Daines had also tried to keep Rosendale at bay, and he sought Trump’s endorsement for Sheehy — which landed just hours after Rosendale launched his bid. Days later, Rosendale dropped out.

The result: no internecine brawls in either state, both of which they handily picked up last week.

Other pickups came in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Republican Dave McCormick, who had lost a Pennsylvania Senate primary in 2022, had no primary competition this time. Last week, he scored a shocking upset against Casey, who the Associated Press said was ousted by just a fraction of a percentage point.

A continued struggle in the battlegrounds

But McCormick’s battleground win was an anomaly.

Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) and Reps. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) won even as Trump swept their states.

Two major reasons: Trump voters splitting their tickets for Democratic Senate candidates or skipping the Senate races entirely.

In Arizona, Ruben Gallego campaigned at rodeos, barbeques and boxing gyms to pull in Latino voters who were supporting Trump.

Polls had shown for months that ticket-splitting could aid Democrats in tough races, and many of them ran campaigns to win over Trump voters. Democratic Senate candidates ended up running at least a bit ahead of Harris, while Republicans fell behind Trump.

“Rather than defining the terms of the race or our opponents around partisanship or anything related to the top of the ticket, we built a case against each Republican that was unique to them,” said Christie Roberts, the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

In Arizona, Gallego campaigned at rodeos, barbeques and boxing gyms to pull in Latino voters who were supporting Trump.

In Michigan, Slotkin, a Jewish ex-CIA analyst, won the heavily Arab-American cities of Dearborn and Dearborn Heights even as Harris lost them amid complaints over the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza. She also did better in the white working class areas.

“The Democrats were fractured, which is why Harris lost — between the Gaza issue and the UAW lack of full support for Harris,” former Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said, referring to the powerful United Auto Workers union. “Those were traditionally pretty hardcore Democrats and they voted for Trump, and then went back to their base and voted Democrat the rest of the way.”

The results also reveal another problem for Senate Republicans: Tens of thousands of Trump supporters across key states appeared to skip the Senate ballot.

It’s normal for Senate races to see fewer votes cast than at the presidential level, but Trump-won counties had larger gaps than counties won by Harris, a Blue Light News analysis found, suggesting it was Trump voters in Republican areas in particular who left the Senate contests blank.

“There’s something to be said for the uniqueness of Trump and his ability to bring people out that are truly loyal to him and only vote for him,” Scott Jennings, a longtime GOP strategist said. “You wish it had trickled down a little more.”

McCormick’s team conducted survey research on those voters in Pennsylvania and struggled to do so during the summer. They poured money into advertising during football games in the fall to court Trump-only voters.

“Getting to them was our No. 1 media-buying effort,” said Mark Harris, a top strategist for McCormick’s campaign. “Our ability to do well in ‘26 will somewhat be contingent on reaching these exact people and pulling them out to vote.”

Can Republicans replicate the results in Pennsylvania?

The six presidential swing states Trump flipped this year have seen 19 Senate races since his first election. Republicans won just two of them: Sen. Ron Johnson’s 2022 reelection in Wisconsin and, now, McCormick.

One big reason for McCormick’s swing-state success: money.

He is the former CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund, boasting both deep personal wealth and a network of connected donors. McCormick’s allies formed a super PAC that spent over $50 million on his behalf. National Republicans spent even more. The race received more GOP spending than any Senate race beyond Ohio.

Other Republicans did not have that advantage. In Nevada and Wisconsin, the GOP was outspent in advertising by $20 to 25 million, according to the tracking firm AdImpact. In Arizona, it was $66 million.

Republicans put out a warning at the end of the summer that their candidates’ money disparity would cost them winnable seats if not quickly reversed.

To make up the gap, the NRSC exploited a loophole in campaign finance law, running ads through a joint fundraising committee to get the cheaper rate offered to candidates. Once the FEC declined to stop them, Republicans began using the strategy in earnest.

It made a massive difference. In Michigan, between Labor Day and Oct. 11, Democrats were collectively reaching a 33 percent larger broadcast audience than Republicans. But once Republicans took full advantage of their loophole, they took the lead from Oct. 11 to Election Day, reaching a roughly 10 percent bigger audience than Democrats, according to AdImpact.

Still, it came late in the cycle.

“The fact our candidates were so overwhelmed in September made these close races and knocking off incumbents just a little too steep of a hill,” Thielman said.

Republicans’ ability to crack the code to winning battlegrounds will determine the durability of their majority. The red-state Democrats and blue-state Republicans are largely extinct. With perhaps the exception of Republican Sen. Susan Collins in Maine, no party will have the kind of targets in 2026 like the GOP had in West Virginia, Montana and Ohio this year.

“Those are states that should have been gone in 2018 under better circumstances. This is just the end of the latest realignment. We’ve officially realigned,” said Jesse Hunt, a Republican operative who worked at the NRSC in the 2020 cycle. “Now we’re fighting over battlegrounds and Maine.”

Anthony Andragna and Jessica Piper contributed.

Congress

Capitol agenda: A grueling summer campaign begins

Published

7 hours ago

July 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Republicans are bracing for a potentially grueling campaign trail run in August.

Members left for their districts Thursday for five weeks face-to-face with voters ahead of the looming midterms. Many acknowledge they’re going to need to ease Americans’ worries about what is beginning to look like an endless war yielding high gas prices, as well as other major affordability concerns, Mia, Meredith and Riley report.

“All of these issues will come up. I mean, Iran will absolutely come up,” Majority Leader Steve Scalise acknowledged Thursday. “Cost of living comes up. Safety and security, border security comes up. All of them come up, you know, and that’s why it’s important to remind people that we’re addressing those issues.”

Others were more blunt.

“We have a hell of a lot of work to do, that’s clear,” one House Republican, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said on their way out of the chamber.

Some are trying to paint a rosy picture to bring home of recent wins: Speaker Mike Johnson shepherded his conference this week through funding the government through Dec. 4, adopting a budget blueprint for a $95 billion party-line package and passing the annual defense policy bill.

“We’ve got a plan going into the fall,” Rep. Mike Flood said in an interview. “If you would have told me on Sunday we could get all that done with low drama, I would have never believed you.”

But each of those House bills now head to the Senate, where they are expected to hit several hurdles — assuming any of them can move at all.

Rep. Marlin Stutzman said he believed there was a “50/50” chance Senate Republicans will adopt the budget resolution in the coming weeks, “and I’m not optimistic.”

The GOP push to promote the benefits of their “One, Big Beautiful Bill” has fallen flat among Americans, too. That and Republicans’ plans to green light billions in funding to cover the military conflict in Iran has Democrats projecting confidence in their own midterm message.

“Donald Trump and Republicans have failed the American people, which is why they clearly are on the run and are on the verge of losing control of the House of Representatives,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Thursday.

Jeffries is planning to launch a new affordability “effort” on Sunday while marking 100 days until the midterm elections. Some members are feeling buoyed by polling that shows mounting frustration with the Iran war and Democrats up on a generic ballot.

But the party is facing a rocky road in August in other ways.

A handful of Democratic incumbents are facing primary challenges that threaten to distract from the party’s sales pitch of unity. Democrat-on-Democrat infighting is taking place in contests involving Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz in Florida, Ed Case in Hawaii, Shri Thanedar in Michigan and John Larson in Connecticut.

“I have to confess, I’m a little more worried about some of the folks that have primaries,” Rep. Don Beyer said. “I just hate the idea of replacing people we know can win easily in November with people who could lose.”

What else we’re watching:

— SENATE GOP DEFENDS THUNE IN TRUMP TIFF: Trump’s patience with Senate Majority Leader John Thune is wearing thin. But other Senate Republicans say the president’s still not likely to get what he wants. Trump is again pressing Thune to muscle his top legislative priority — the SAVE America Act — through the Senate, and his frustration has grown heated in recent days. But Thune has repeatedly said he doesn’t have the votes to do so, even with House Republicans handing him a fresh opportunity by passing their party-line budget plan this week that includes portions of the elections bill. Many Republicans on Thursday came to their leader’s defense, acknowledging an unwinnable standoff between the president and their 53-seat majority.

— SENATE EYES RUSSIA-IRAN SANCTIONS PASSAGE: Thune is eyeing putting legislation on the Senate floor next week to impose sanctions on Russia and Iran. The core of the measure would be Russia-focused legislation unveiled last week by Sen. Darline Graham in honor of her late brother, with Iran provisions added at the request of Trump. “I’ve been having conversations with Democrats and folks on our side, and I think we’re I think we’re homing in on it,” Thune told reporters Thursday, adding he was pushing for an agreement to expedite the process.

Mia McCarthy, Meredith Lee Hill Riley Rogerson, Sophia Cai, Jordain Carney, Alex Gangitano and Megan Messerly contributed to this report.

Congress

House members stare down a grueling summer on the campaign trail

Published

10 hours ago

July 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Iran war’s increasing unpopularity, including inside the MAGA base, is weighing on House Republicans as they head back to their districts for a five-week recess to face voters ahead of the looming midterms.

They know they need to ease Americans’ worries about what many of them fear is beginning to look like an endless war yielding higher gas prices and other major affordability concerns.

It didn’t help that GOP lawmakers left Washington after four of their own broke ranks Thursday morning to help advance a Democrat-led war powers resolution rebuking President Donald Trump’s military operation in Iran.

The timing of the war powers vote right as members were leaving town — where among the four Republicans defecting was Rep. Tom Barrett, a vulnerable incumbent fighting to hold onto his competitive Michigan seat — had an unsettling effect among some House GOP lawmakers already spooked by poll numbers appearing to favor Democrats for a takeover in 2027.

“We have a hell of a lot of work to do, that’s clear,” one House Republican, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said as the chamber headed out this week.

Amid the political pressure around the war, National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Richard Hudson and other party leaders are trying to draw a contrast between the GOP and a Democratic Party facing down an rising insurgent left flank.

“We’ve passed some really good policies that are actually working. And so we’ve got a great story to tell to the voters,” the North Carolina Republican told reporters Thursday. “This election’s a choice between Donald Trump’s vision and Mamdani’s vision, and the voters are going to be with us.”

He was referencing Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist mayor of New York City who has become a GOP stand-in for the party following a string of progressive Democrats’ primary wins.

Some House Republicans tried to paint a rosy picture of their own achievements, having spent the past few days successfully pushing through major pieces of legislation that were seen as being in risk of failure at several points. Those anxieties were compounded by recent internal party meltdowns that forced Speaker Mike Johnson to lose control of the House floor for weeks.

Johnson’s wins this week include an annual defense policy bill, a measure to fund the government through Dec. 4 and a budget blueprint for a $95 billion party-line package. That package includes a massive cash infusion for the Iran war, plus farm aid and funding for the voter ID and citizenship components of the GOP election overhaul bill known as the SAVE America Act — Trump’s top legislative priority.

“If you would have told me on Sunday we could get all that done with low drama, I would have never believed you,” Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.) said in an interview. “We’ve got a plan going into the fall. We are committed to making sure the government continues to operate.”

But each of those House bills now head to the Senate, where they are expected to hit several hurdles — assuming any of them can move at all. Senators’ own version of the National Defense Authorization Act has stalled, while Senate appropriators are hoping to negotiate their own stopgap funding plan.

And Senate Majority Leader John Thune won’t commit to a timeline for moving the budget resolution, underscoring Thursday it does not have the votes at this point. It’s more likely than not that even if GOP leadership does decide to take up the fiscal blueprint, it won’t be before the Senate starts its own August recess, complicating the message for House Republicans during theirs.

Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) said he believed there was a “50/50” chance that Senate Republicans will adopt the budget resolution in the coming weeks, “and I’m not optimistic.”

House GOP leaders also keep pressing their members to highlight some of the benefits of Republicans’ “One, Big Beautiful Bill,” over the upcoming recess. But that message has largely fallen flat among Americans.

It has Democrats projecting confidence in their own midterm message and seizing on what they see as a series of political blunders by the GOP — including that the House Republican budget plan would greenlight billions in funding to cover the Trump administration’s exploits in Iran, which has driven up inflation.

Democrats are also feeling good about affordability and accountability-oriented legislative efforts they say are translating to promising polls and fundraising hauls. And while they have yet to fully outline how they would attempt to lower costs legislatively if they take the majority, Jeffries teased he will launch a new affordability “effort” on Sunday to mark 100 days until the midterm elections.

The party is also touting polling that shows mounting voter frustration with the Iran war — including among Republicans. A Wednesday Fox News poll shows voters saying Democrats can better handle income inequality by 22 percentage points, health care by 21 points, inflation by 10 points and immigration — Republicans’ top 2024 campaign issue — by one point.

On a generic ballot, Democrats are up by 11 points, according to an Emerson College poll.

“The cost of living goes up under Donald Trump and his war of choice,” the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, Greg Meeks of New York, said in an interview. “And so that’s the messaging that we will continue to have to pour out to the American people, along with some of the crazy ethical problems that this administration has.”

Republicans have downplayed the polling so far. While Hudson acknowledged that midterm elections often benefit the party not in power in the White House, he believes this time around “that’s not the case,” pointing out that Republicans are trying to flip many House seats that Trump won.

“I’m polling in about 35 districts, and that’s going to decide the election,” Hudson said. “And in those polls, we’re leading in most, and we’re in the fight in the rest because we have better candidates. We actually have solutions to make people’s lives better, and thankfully we’ve got more resources, so we can tell that story.”

A handful of Democratic incumbents are also facing primary challenges that threaten to distract from the party’s salespitch of unity to contrast with their narrative about Republican disarray; Democrat-on-Democrat infighting is taking place in contests involving Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz in Florida, Ed Case in Hawaii, Shri Thanedar in Michigan and John Larson in Connecticut.

“I have to confess, I’m a little more worried about some of the folks that have primaries,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said. “I just hate the idea of replacing people we know can win easily in November with people who could lose.”

Democrats aren’t taking anything for granted: “There’s only two ways to run: scared or unopposed,” Rep. Tom Suozzi, a vulnerable Democrat from New York, said in an interview. “You just got to keep on fighting.”

Calen Razor contributed to this report.

Congress

‘A circular firing squad’: Senate GOP pushes back on Trump’s tiff with Thune

Published

19 hours ago

July 23, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump is escalating his war of words against Senate Majority Leader John Thune. He’s still not likely to get what he wants.

Trump on Wednesday told rally-goers in Georgia to “call John Thune” over the Senate GOP’s inability to pass a partisan election bill, known as the SAVE America Act, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday said the president’s patience with the South Dakota Republican is “running out.”

But if Trump’s rhetoric is meant to drive Republican voters to the polls this fall -– and some allies believe it will only increase ahead of November — it does little to change the reality in the Senate, where the SAVE America Act still doesn’t have the votes to pass. Instead, many Republicans on Thursday came to their leader’s defense, acknowledging an unwinnable standoff between the president and their 53-seat majority.

“This idea that he can just command members of the Republican conference to get in line is just a fantasy. So I think it’s unfair,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who ran against Thune for majority leader in 2024 and then lost his primary to a Trump-endorsed challenger earlier this year. “I don’t know who it was that sold the president on this idea, that this was obtainable, but it’s creating a circular firing squad for Republicans.”

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) added: “John can’t put a gun to people’s head and make them vote a particular way.”

It marks the latest turbulent moment between the president and Senate Republicans, after Trump last month ranted at GOP senators in a closed-door lunch. They, in turn, have fumed several times this year about a lack of coordination from the White House.

For months, Thune and other Republicans have privately tried to tell Trump, and allies in the White House, that the votes aren’t there to pass the SAVE America Act — whether with the 60-vote threshold required for most legislation to advance or even if senators did away with the filibuster, which doesn’t have the votes, either.

Senate Republicans have also stewed for months that Trump remains fixated on attacking Republicans over the election bill rather than training his fury on Democrats who won’t allow movement on other items in the president’s legislative agenda.

That message, however, appears to have fallen on deaf ears inside the Oval Office.

“The Senate is a place you send things when you want them to die,” Trump said at the Georgia rally. “We’re not going to take this any longer, we’re not going to take it. I’m trying to be nice.”

A normally even-keeled Thune immediately pushed back when asked about Leavitt’s comments, suggesting that the White House should “get on the phone” to lock in the needed votes instead of pointing fingers.

“It’s 50 around here, and so instead of, you know, pointing the finger at Republicans, they might think about going after the people who are stopping it on the floor, which is the Democrats. And if there are Republicans that they think are gettable, get on the phone,” Thune said.

But Thune and Trump also need each other. Losing the Senate majority would be a catastrophic blow for Trump, with the House majority already in grave peril. At the same time, if Trump were to go nuclear on Thune, it would be a huge political headache for GOP senators, who would face pressure to pick sides and risk only further alienating base voters who they need.

Shortly after his initial comments, Thune moved to lower the tension, saying he did not “read a lot” into Leavitt’s comment.

“I think it was a question she got, and she was responding to it,” he said, adding that he and Trump have a “fairly regular conversation” but acknowledged it’s “more on an as-needed basis.”

The White House referred to Leavitt’s and the president’s latest comments in response to senators’ saying they don’t have the votes on SAVE America, despite Trump’s pressure.

But the volleys traded between the two ends of Pennsylvania Avenue this week underscore how much of a sore point the election bill has become between the two men.

Privately, some Senate Republicans believe Trump is lashing out at Thune because, unlike in the House where the president is able to muscle through just about anything with enough pressure, he is unable to get the Senate Republican Conference to bend to his every whim.

That posture has been most prominent when it comes to protecting institutional norms against Trump’s wrath, like the legislative filibuster and the blue slip precedent that allows the minority to block a lower-court judicial nominee from their home states.

“How often has the House called in Trump to twist arms on votes? When he does it, he takes credit. The fact that Trump can’t do it in the Senate is why they’re blaming Thune,” said one Senate GOP aide, granted anonymity to speak candidly.

A second Senate GOP aide, also granted anonymity to discuss party dynamics, said Trump’s pressure on Thune about the SAVE America Act is “just exhausting” for Republicans.

“What leverage does he have over the Senate? He’s not spending the war chest because he’s saving it for when the House impeaches him. Trump doesn’t care about Congress at all,” the aide said, referring to the $400 million sitting unspent in the MAGA Inc. super PAC.

Behind-the-scenes, Trump is enraged, with some allies believing he will only ramp up the pressure on Thune after the August recess. How far he goes, however, could depend on the outcome of the midterms.

Thune is intending to run for GOP leader again in November and no Senate Republican has backed a challenge to him. Many Senate Republicans believe Thune is secure in his position, but some have questioned if the president could go after him after the November elections — especially if Republicans lose the majority, according to two people granted anonymity to speak candidly.

“Trump is legitimately pissed at Thune over the SAVE America Act. And the president hates the war powers votes, which just add insult to injury,” said a person close to the White House granted anonymity to speak freely.

Kennedy, however, acknowledged that “when you’re the majority leader you take a lot of spears and arrows,” but “to my knowledge, there’s no effort to replace anybody.”

White House aides have long argued that the president was elected on the promise of election integrity, and that Senate Republicans should carry out the will of the voters by advancing the bill. Some people close to the White House have even suggested that failure to pass the SAVE America Act could depress turnout among core elements of the MAGA base who are more responsive to red-meat issues at the ballot box, though GOP senators believe it’s the months of infighting that would come back to bite them, not the failure to pass the bill.

A second person close to the White House said the president is “growing tired of the excuses and lack of effort” when it comes to Thune.

Thune and his allies, however, say it’s not a lack of effort. The Senate spent weeks debating the SAVE America Act and held votes related to it as part of debate around an immigration enforcement bill as well.

Even some of Thune’s right flank declined to pile on the White House’s remarks Thursday.

“I don’t know what else I can add to it,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), while Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who some GOP senators suspect might like to mount another leadership bid against Thune, acknowledged that the current majority leader has a “hard job.”

Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.), said he agreed with Trump on the SAVE America Act but returned to Thune’s concern about the votes.