Congress
These 3 Republican senators are giving John Thune headaches
As Senate Majority Leader John Thune rushed to advance a new funding package this month, he faced a familiar roadblock: a trio of conservatives from his conference’s right flank.
Republican Sens. Rick Scott of Florida, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Mike Lee of Utah banded together as they sought to advance key conservative priorities, including an end to spending earmarks — holding out for weeks as Thune strained to keep the 2026 funding process on track and avoid another costly government shutdown on Jan. 30.
The tensions between the fiscal hawks, who want to drastically slash spending, and more pragmatic corners of the Senate GOP, including members of leadership and the Appropriations Committee, are nothing new. But these hard-liners have now found a larger pool of allies as the conference’s center of gravity slowly shifts right. They also have new perches of authority that give each a powerful megaphone.
Thune ultimately wore the three Republicans down with some outside assistance from President Donald Trump, cutting deals to win their consent to advance the proposed trillion-dollar “minibus” funding package. Ultimately, it was Democratic objections that prevented the Senate from acting in the final legislative days of 2025.
But Lee, Johnson and Scott are unapologetic about using their power amid the growing perception among some of their colleagues that they are frequent thorns in Thune’s side.
“We’re actually trying to do important things,” Johnson said in an interview. “No matter what I would have done, Democrats would have held out until the very last minute, too. So, I mean, sorry about your frustrations, colleagues.”
Since January, the trio has chosen to exert their leverage during key moments where GOP leaders have sought party unity. As Thune worked to advance the party’s sprawling domestic policy bill over the summer, the three Republicans haggled repeatedly over the measure’s parameters — including during a procedural vote that was left open for hours as they negotiated. Last month, they briefly withheld support for the bill that ultimately ended the 43-day government shutdown, huddling with Thune before ultimately voting in favor.
Publicly, their colleagues are respectful and note that every senator has a right to use the legislative tools available to advance their own agenda.
Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), an appropriator and Thune ally, noted that Johnson, Scott and Lee “reflect a bigger share of the caucus” that is decidedly conservative, while “folks on the other end of the caucus” also use their leverage from time to time.
“That’s just how it works,” Hoeven said.
But behind the scenes, the hardball tactics have rankled Republican senators. As the spending standoff dragged on in recent weeks, some privately urged Thune to call the fiscal hawks’ bluff by putting the spending package on the floor, essentially daring Johnson or others to publicly object.
“He’s going to keep doing it until they call his hand,” one GOP senator said about Johnson, adding that Thune risked being “miserable” unless he asserted himself.
A second GOP senator, who was also granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal conference dynamics, added that the trio has been more “emboldened” this year than under prior GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The senator said that’s due to Thune’s “looser” leadership style and his determination to move funding bills individually rather than simply banking on a single omnibus deal.
“We haven’t done an appropriations process in a long time,” the senator added.
Those tensions have played out quietly behind the scenes in GOP lunches, with the conservative trio at times sparring with Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) and other members of the government funding panel who want to revise spending levels enacted under former President Joe Biden.
But the two GOP senators agreed that they did not think Lee, Scott and Johnson would be engaging in their current tactics were McConnell still in charge, or even under Collins’ predecessor as Appropriations chair, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.).
“Shelby would have taken away every one of their projects,” the first GOP senator said.
The shift in leadership style was by design. The same GOP senators kvetched that McConnell was too centralized, with Scott unsuccessfully challenging him in 2002. In his bid to take over as Republican leader two years later, Thune pledged to shift power back to individual senators and committee chairs — and the three conservative malcontents, once dismissed as outliers, are now more difficult to ignore.
Scott leads the Senate GOP’s Steering Committee, holding weekly meetings with the conservative-oriented group as well as hosting a weekly lunch for the larger conference. Lee chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, one of several one-time rebels who received gavels in January. And Johnson — long been willing to be a squeaky wheel — leads the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs panel’s investigative subcommittee in addition to having seats on the powerful Finance and Budget committees.
At the same time, the Senate GOP conference has undergone a subtle transformation in recent election cycles, inching toward the right as the most pragmatic Republican dealmakers are replaced by senators more closely aligned with the MAGA movement — giving Scott, Johnson and Lee a growing set of allies.
Thune has been dealing with the hard-liners one step at a time. Gaining their approval for the recent funding package, for instance, required promising several amendment votes as well as a path forward for a pet Johnson priority — a bill that would exempt some federal employees from furloughs during government shutdowns.
“He has more patience than any three of the rest of us do,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.).
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) added that Thune wants “to the maximum degree possible to make sure that people in his conference are heard and respected” — even if, she said, he “has a lot of frogs that keep hopping around.”
Asked about his message to the holdouts, Thune pitched the funding package as being in “everybody’s best interest” and better than the alternatives — a new shutdown, another short-term stopgap or a mammoth omnibus loathed by conservatives. Thune also helped facilitate a potential path toward enactment for Johnson’s shutdown bill, connecting him with Speaker Mike Johnson.
“I think you always have to keep the perspective in this job … that the most important vote isn’t the last vote, it’s the next vote,” Thune said about his broader approach to leadership this past year.
The conservative trio is looking ahead to the next fight, as well. Even after Scott cut a deal to advance the funding bill, he rekindled the earmarks fight, accusing Democrats in an X post of “packing the latest appropriations package with taxpayer-funded earmarks” and trying to “undermine Pres. Trump’s agenda.”
Republicans, Scott said, must “stand strong.”
A top pollster for President Donald Trump is pushing back on recent public polling showing Republican Mike Rogers trailing progressive Abdul El-Sayed in the marquee Michigan Senate race.
Tony Fabrizio, who is conducting polling for Rogers, says the polls released this month are over-sampling Democratic-leaning voters, specifically college-educated and Black voters, according to an internal memo obtained by Blue Light News. A Susquehanna poll released this month showed El-Sayed leading by seven points and a TIPP poll showed him leading by four points.
El-Sayed’s lead in those polls is a “fake narrative,” Fabrizio wrote. His polling for AARP — conducted alongside Democratic firm Impact Research — showed the race essentially tied.
The warning follows huge polling misses in the Democratic primaries in the Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida, which he wrote were “some of the most egregious examples of public polling failures in recent memory.” It’s also a sign that Republicans are wary of the string of bad polling numbers for Rogers in the race, which is crucial for determining control of the chamber.
Jim Lee, CEO of Susquehanna Polling and Research, told Blue Light News that the firm did not oversample any demographics. “I think their head is in the sand,” Lee said, noting in part what he said was a gap in enthusiasm between Democratic and Republican voters this cycle.
TIPP didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Fabrizio, in the memo, argued on the Susquehanna poll: “50% of the sample in this survey is college-educated – making them massively overrepresented to what they should be. We took a look at 2022 and 2024 Exit Polls and VoteCast data and, as shown below, there is no indication that the Michigan electorate will be anywhere near 50% college-educated. In fact, it is unlikely they will be even 40% college-educated.”
He also noted “a huge gap” between college-educated and non-college educated voters.
“This was the driving issue of the public polling misses for President Trump in 2016 and 2024, especially in the Upper Midwest states of Michigan and Wisconsin,” Fabrizio added. “By increasing college-educated voters by 10+ points, and thus decreasing non-college educated voters by the same, we can pretty much guarantee this poll is significantly overestimating El-Sayed’s vote share.”
President Donald Trump and hemp industry lobbyists are hoping to win a final vote on Capitol Hill next week to skirt a ban on intoxicating products — with shutdown politics as leverage.
Nine months ago, Congress cleared a bill to close a loophole created in 2018 that allowed the sale of some hemp-derived products containing types of THC colloquially known as “diet weed.” That ban is supposed to take effect in mid-November, or roughly 11 weeks, to limit overall THC levels in hemp products that can get people high — including gummies, canned drinks, pills and vapes.
But Trump and industry leaders successfully lobbied Senate leaders to add language to a government funding patch earlier this month to delay the ban until mid-December, with the administration promising instead to finalize regulations cracking down on how the products are made and sold.
Now House Republican leaders are aiming to clear that bill for Trump’s signature early next week, according to three people granted anonymity to disclose private discussions. And many GOP lawmakers are not pleased at the prospect of being rolled.
Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.) told reporters last week that he expected House lawmakers would “iron out” some “sticking points” with the Senate-passed funding bill, “particularly the hemp issue,” rather than pass the legislation without changes — which appears to be GOP leadership’s current plan.
Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) was more blunt: “it is morally reprehensible to threaten a shutdown over a loophole Congress agreed to close to less than a year ago,” he said in a statement Thursday.
Yet despite fierce pushback from lawmakers warning that the intoxicating products are harming Americans, hemp industry leaders are preparing for a victory, betting members of Congress ultimately care more about swiftly passing legislation to avert a Sept. 30 government shutdown before the midterms.
“Any effort to try to shut down the government — over a one-month delay on a hemp issue — I don’t think is going to fly well with most members of Congress,” Jonathan Miller, a top lawyer for the U.S. Hemp Roundtable advocacy group, said in an interview this week.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about its plans for imposing new rules on hemp products in the coming months. But the Trump administration is expected to need more time than mid-December to finalize regulations, so hemp industry representatives are discussing a “regulatory bridge” that would impose temporary rules while continuing to avoid a full ban, according to Miller.
That could include restricting purchase to adults age 21 and older, blocking imports from China, mandating certain manufacturing practices, cracking down on copycat products that look like popular candy or potato chips and requiring transparency in product labeling.
While lawmakers have been back home over their summer break, hemp industry leaders have fanned out across the country to make their case for this plan. “The hemp industry does not have an August recess,” Christopher Lackner, head of the Hemp Beverage Alliance, said in an interview this month of the group’s work to facilitate passage of the Senate-passed funding bill.
Trump administration officials have also been telling reluctant lawmakers they will use the one-month delay to work on regulations. “The White House has committed to me that they’re committed to regulate the industry,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said in an interview this month.
Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), who fought in the Senate to retain the ban as originally intended, said White House officials have said “they don’t want another extension, and I agree with that.”
In a statement, Ricketts said that “manufactured high-THC products like gummies and drinks are putting our kids in the hospital” and need to be taken “off our shelves.”
Some supporters of the ban say the White House and industry are just employing delay tactics to get to December, when lawmakers will face another pressure campaign to delay the ban while they are motivated to avert a shutdown before leaving town for the holidays.
“What they’re really after is to try to jam this on some must-pass, end-of-the-year funding,” Budd told reporters earlier this month. “That’s really what this is about.”
Budd fought to block the delay in the Senate as part of the government funding measure, but his amendment to that end was shot down 61-32 before the chamberpassed the legislation, sending it on for House action.
Trump personally called Budd after the senator filed the amendment and talked about creating federal regulations for hemp products, according to a Senate aide granted anonymity to describe the private discussion.
Days later, Budd demanded a vote on the amendment anyway and continues to slam the hemp industry.
“It is clear that businesses that sell unregulated, intoxicating products will stop at nothing to protect their bottom line, even at the expense of children’s health and safety,” he said in a statement this week.
Besides lawmakers fighting to ban intoxicating hemp products, others are pushing alongside the White House and industry for federal regulations.
Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-W.Va.) has crafted legislation that would direct the Food and Drug Administration to create federal rules for intoxicating hemp products and wants to see mandates for third-party testing, as well as new THC limits per serving.
Griffith told reporters Thursday the “deadline push” in the Senate-passed government funding measure “is not long enough” to finalize necessary regulations.
Since state limits for THC vary widely throughout the country and the federal government has taken years to step in since the hemp loophole was created in 2018, Griffith argued it makes more sense to regulate the intoxicating products than to enact a federal ban.
“That horse is out of the barn,” he said. “What we need to do is corral it.”
Kelsey Brugger, Amanda Friedman and Rachel Shin contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump’s $400-million super PAC is taking its first steps into the general election: hosting a public event in battleground Michigan, headlined by Vice President JD Vance.
Battleground Republicans have been clamoring for Trump’s MAGA Inc. to spend in competitive races. The Michigan event is an early indicator of how the massive group might seek to use its funds to help the party keep control of Washington.
Vance will be joined in Sterling, Michigan, on Monday by GOP Senate nominee Mike Rogers, 10th District nominee Mike Bouchard Jr. and gubernatorial nominee John James, along with several other Michigan Republicans, according to an event advisory from MAGA Inc.
The GOP sees Michigan’s open seat as its best Senate pickup target this fall as Rogers faces former public health leader and progressive Abdul El-Sayed, who emerged from a grueling primary earlier this month.
“MAGA Inc. will be hosting events throughout the nation to ensure that Republicans retain control of Congress in order to finish cleaning up the mess the Biden-Harris-Pelosi-Schumer Democrats left,” said Alex Pfeiffer, spokesperson for MAGA Inc. “We’re not going back to their record inflation, open borders, and surging crime.”
MAGA Inc. is sitting on more funds than any other super PAC, and Republican donors and battleground candidates have been hoping it will unleash that money to help the party keep control of the House and Senate.
So far, the group has only spent only a few million dollars out of its massive fundraising haul, and its funds have largely gone to competitive Republican primaries. Most recently, it spent $827,000 on phone calls and text messages to boost Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.) in the state’s special primary.
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