Sen. John Cornyn threw his support behind scrapping the filibuster to pass a voting restrictions bill President Donald Trump has called his “No. 1 priority” in Congress, as the Texas Republican continues to seek the president’s endorsement and stave off a bruising primary runoff election.

Trump has held off on endorsing Cornyn, the pick of top Senate Republicans, over Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a bid to pressure leadership to lower the threshold of votes needed to pass the SAVE America Act, which would enact citizenship and photo ID restrictions in elections while also targeting transgender rights. Paxton has said he would suspend his bid if the bill passes.

Cornyn, long a supporter of the Senate filibuster, came out forcefully for repealing the rule in a Wednesday morning New York Post op-ed.

“After careful consideration, I support whatever changes to Senate rules that may prove necessary for us to get the SAVE America Act and homeland security funding past the Democrats’ obstruction, through the Senate, and on the president’s desk for his signature,” he wrote.

Trump called on Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act in a speech at his golf club in Doral, Florida, on Monday, arguing, “I don’t think we should approve anything until this is approved.”

“It will guarantee the midterms,” he said. “If you don’t get it, big trouble, my opinion.”

Asked Tuesday about the talking filibuster, Cornyn indicated to reporters he would support it to pass the SAVE America Act and teased he would be making a longer announcement Wednesday.

“On these critical issues, at this critical hour, the old procedures no longer align with the core American principles we must defend,” he wrote. “ It is time for our Senate Republican Conference, led by our strong and strategic Majority Leader John Thune, to retake the initiative, rebuild momentum and get results.”

Jordain Carney contributed to this report.

Congressional Republicans aren’t allowing President Donald Trump’s SAVE America Act ultimatum to uproot their legislative agenda ahead of the midterms.

Lawmakers made clear Tuesday they’re eager to wash their hands of the partisan elections legislation the day after Trump told lawmakers he needs that bill on his desk before he agrees to sign anything else.

House Republicans gathered for their retreat in Doral, Florida, quickly called this a Senate problem, then continued to talk about their policy ambitions for the remainder of 2026. Now Senate GOP leaders are moving fast to show Trump that passage of the SAVE America Act isn’t feasible — in hopes they, too, can move on to other things.

— Senate show vote: Senate Majority Leader John Thune is expected to bring the GOP election bill to the floor next week subject to the chamber’s 60-vote threshold — guaranteeing its eventual failure given united Democratic opposition.

He’ll do so despite an intensifying pressure campaign from the likes of Trump, fellow Senate Republicans and Elon Musk to force a “talking filibuster,” where Democrats would have to hold the floor continuously if they want to block the bill.

“The votes aren’t there for a talking filibuster,” Thune told reporters Tuesday. “I’m the one who has to be the clear-eyed realist about what we can achieve.”

The majority leader said senators will “continue to convey” the unsolvable math problem to the president and take the heat as it comes.

“It just kind of comes with the territory,” Thune told Blue Light News. “You just roll with it, you know. It’s the times in which we live.”

And in the end, Thune is hoping Trump will relent and agree to sign other legislation, including a bipartisan housing affordability package that 89 senators voted to advance Tuesday afternoon.

— House has its own plans: Meanwhile in Doral, House Republicans are on the final day of their annual policy summit hammering out their election-year legislative goals. An updated SAVE America Act, Trump’s “No. 1 priority,” isn’t at the top of that list.

Speaker Mike Johnson and other top GOP leaders refused to commit to passing the elections overhaul through the House a third time with the changes Trump wants, which include a near-total mail-voting ban many Republicans oppose. Instead, leaders outlined a series of targets that could advance with some Democratic support — like a reauthorization of key water projects, a highway infrastructure package and a slimmed-down farm bill.

House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) raised the need for a new version of the House GOP’s signature immigration bill with changes to the guest worker visa program. An earlier iteration of that package passed in 2023, when it was known colloquially as H.R. 2, but has been stalled since Republicans regained its governing trifecta last year.

Leaders also made clear they’re not ruling out passing a second megabill through the budget reconciliation process, but members are poised to head back to Washington with no consensus on what such a bill could include. Many Republicans remain convinced it would be a waste of time to pursue another party-line package given the House GOP’s threadbare, fractious majority.

What else we’re watching: 

— Key Epstein deposition: The House Oversight Committee will depose Jeffrey Epstein’s accountant Richard Kahn Wednesday as part of the congressional investigation into the late convicted sex offender. The panel is poised to grill Kahn, a co-executor of Epstein’s estate, on how Epstein accumulated his wealth.

— CBO director testifies: A Senate Finance subcommittee will hold a 3 p.m. hearing on the fiscal outlook for the next decade, featuring testimony from Congressional Budget Office Director Phillip Swagel.

Jordain Carney, Meredith Lee Hill, Mia McCarthy and Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.

Conservatives are putting John Thune in a political pressure cooker as they try to bypass the Senate filibuster and pass a controversial elections bill. The majority leader is making it clear he’s willing to take the heat.

Thune is at the center of a relentless pile-on from prominent figures in the GOP’s MAGA wing who want Senate Republicans to force a “talking filibuster” to smoke out and ultimately defeat Democratic opposition to the bill known as the SAVE America Act — a tactic Thune believes doesn’t have enough support from his members.

President Donald Trump declared the bill his “No. 1 priority” going into the midterms Monday, and House Republicans are vowing to gum up their own chamber in a bid to squeeze the Senate GOP. An intense online campaign reached a crescendo this week with tech mogul Elon Musk joining online calls to remove Thune as leader.

Thune, confident of his support from fellow Republican senators, brushed off the criticism in an interview Tuesday.

“It just kind of comes with the territory,” he said. “You just roll with it, you know. It’s the times in which we live.”

Thune spoke just hours after announcing plans to call up the bill next week in a bid to bring an unusually acrimonious stretch for his conference to an end. It will not include a talking filibuster gambit that would skirt the usual 60-vote threshold by instead forcing Democrats to hold the floor if they want to block the bill.

The pressure has frustrated GOP senators who believe the increasingly public infighting has transformed an issue that polls well for them — preventing noncitizens from voting in federal elections — into a messy internal brawl.

Fed up with a crowd of conservative social media influencers flooding their online accounts with messages about a talking filibuster — many of them egged on by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) — a few are growing more blunt about those frustrations.

“Spare me the insights,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who is retiring. “They’re worse than Democrats because they’re so-called Republicans that are trying to undermine Republicans.”

Another GOP senator, granted anonymity to speak candidly, described the online rhetoric as “bullshit.” A third senator, granted anonymity for similar reasons, summed up the feeling within the conference: “A lot of us are done.”

Four Republicans granted anonymity described Thune as privately exasperated by the social media rhetoric, believing that it ignores the mathematical reality in the Senate that the talking filibuster as proposed can’t deliver what its proponents want — passage of the SAVE America Act — and could tie up the chamber for months in the meantime.

While Thune has remained publicly even-keeled, he has spoken in increasingly sharp terms about the matter — believing that his job as majority leader is to be honest about the legislative realities at play, even if they frustrate some in the party. No Republican senator, including Lee, has called for Thune’s removal as leader.

“Those votes aren’t there for a talking filibuster,” he told reporters Tuesday. “I’m the person who has to deliver sometimes the not-so-good news that the math doesn’t add up.”

The headaches for Senate Republicans go beyond the wave of online criticism. Trump, who has the loudest megaphone in the party, is not only backing the talking filibuster effort but appears to be holding off on a crucial endorsement of Texas Sen. John Cornyn ahead of a costly primary runoff in a bid to force action on it.

Thune said senators have “conveyed” to Trump there isn’t support inside the GOP ranks to successfully deploy a talking filibuster — something the president appeared to acknowledge during a news conference Monday.

Doing so would require the majority party to maintain attendance and control of the floor on a constant basis for weeks on end. Not only would the underlying bill be subject to extended debate, but Democrats could offer endless amendments and procedural motions that Republicans would have to constantly vote down. No bill in modern Senate history has been passed in that manner.

Lee and his allies argue that the focused public attention on the issue of noncitizen voting will ultimately cause Democrats to fold after a lengthy fight. Some have compared it to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which passed after a two-month filibuster — though only after senators voted 71-29 to close debate.

The party’s internal fight comes to a head next week when Thune is expected to bring the SAVE America Act to the floor subject to the 60-vote legislative filibuster. The weeks of infighting and skepticism from a few GOP senators about the substance of the bill has Republicans questioning if they even have the 50 votes needed to launch debate, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

Lee and other hard-right members of the House and Senate are showing no signs of backing down, seemingly ready to drive the intraparty fight down to the wire.

“Americans want the SAVE America Act. The Senate should do everything it can in an effort to pass it.,” Lee said in one of several tweets about the bill Tuesday. “While passage isn’t guaranteed, we can be certain that failure will be the outcome if we don’t try.”

Some GOP senators have grown increasingly frustrated with Lee as he’s pushed for a talking filibuster, even though the idea has never had a clear path toward getting enough support within the conference.

One Republican senator granted anonymity said in a recent interview that colleagues feel like Lee is fundraising off the issue. A second on Tuesday said Lee had negatively impacted his own relationships within the conference, though they questioned whether the Utah Republican cared.

Lee has supporters within the Senate, not to mention the backing of the president. Thune also touched a nerve with Lee and conservative activists this week when he publicly attributed some of the online pressure to a “paid influencer ecosystem.”

In a video posted to X Monday, Lee didn’t directly mention Thune but urged his supporters to redouble their efforts and “make clear this is not the product of paid influencers.”

Asked about the online backlash, Thune clarified his comments Tuesday. He drew a distinction between “passion across the country … at the grassroots level” and “others in the social media world.”

Compounding the internal skepticism about the talking filibuster strategy is that a number of GOP senators, including Thune, oppose changing Senate rules to eliminate or weaken the 60-vote legislative filibuster.

Lee and his allies argue that the talking filibuster would avoid the need for a rules change. But a number of GOP senators believe it would still in practice weaken the filibuster and pave the way for Democrats to pass far-reaching legislation of their own when they regain power.

Others have raised concerns that a talking filibuster, without rules changes that enforce limits on the debate, could stifle the majority party’s agenda at a crucial moment ahead of the midterms. It could also give Democrats the chance to try to hijack the elections bill by seeking to amend it with their own priorities — at the very least forcing GOP incumbents to take politically damaging votes.

Talking filibuster advocates “have no earthly idea how unlikely it is we’ll be successful at the end of the day,” Tillis said. “And yet they want to pressure me into exposing some of our candidates to votes that make no sense, that are not going to succeed.”