{"id":21628,"date":"2026-07-30T04:05:39","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T23:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=21628"},"modified":"2026-07-30T04:05:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T23:05:39","slug":"john-thune-isnt-bowing-to-trumps-pressure-show-me-how-this-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=21628","title":{"rendered":"John Thune Isn\u2019t Bowing to Trump\u2019s Pressure: \u2018Show Me How This Ends\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<section>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.time.com\/v3\/assets\/bltea6093859af6183b\/blta3183d403168185f\/6a6a6d80aad9554848846cd7\/thune-trump-senate-republicans-save-america-act.jpg?branch=production\" \/><figcaption>Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) speaks following a policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on July 21, 2026. \u2014Finn Gomez\u2014Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/section>\n<section>\n<p>There\u2019s an inherent tension between any President and the Senate Majority Leader. George W. Bush and his team did everything they could in 2004 to make Tom Daschle the first party leader in the Senate to lose re-election since 1952. Barack Obama, who hired Daschle\u2019s top aide as his own when he won a seat in the the Senate that same year, had a respectful but strained relationship with Harry Reid, who praised him as a &#8220;light-skinned African-American&#8221; with &#8220;no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.\u201d Donald Trump insulted Mitch McConnell as \u201cOld Crow.\u201d And Chuck Schumer drove out to Joe Biden\u2019s beach house in Delaware after a calamitous debate performance against Trump to tell his former Senate colleague that he had to end his re-election bid for the good of the party.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Trump\u2019s dynamic with his current counterpart John Thune is now rapidly climbing that pressure scale.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s too bad for him and too bad for the Republican Party. He\u2019s got the votes. He should get it done,\u201d Trump told reporters of Thune in the Oval Office on Wednesday when asked about a restrictive voting measure that is, at least for now, D.O.A. in the upper chamber.<\/p>\n<p>It was mild ding by Trump\u2019s standards, for sure. But it speaks to the frayed relationship between the two Republicans, who are in a standoff over Trump\u2019s latest fixation, a <a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/article\/2026\/07\/08\/we-re-conservative-republicans-the-save-act-is-a-mistake\/\">bill<\/a> that would remake how Americans vote. Thune has been clear that the proposed legislation, which has cleared the House, lacks the votes it needs in the Senate and there is no appetite for changing the rules to ease its passage. Put plainly: Thune knows the headcount and isn\u2019t wasting the time on something that is doomed, and Trump does not much care for that.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If I thought there was a path to getting a result, I&#8217;m all for it,&#8221; Thune told reporters this week.<\/p>\n<p>The Senate is racing toward an August recess with a packed to-do list that seems doable: a sanctions bill targeting Russia, a stopgap funding measure to keep the government open through Election Day, movement on a catch-all reconciliation bill, and a bunch of nominees, including one that on Wednesday seemed to inch closer to giving Trump an up-or-down on his imperiled pick for Attorney General. But Trump says the upper chamber should not leave town until it gives him the SAVE America Act, his voting bill. He also wants the Senate to change its threshold for moving most legislation from 60 votes to 51 votes, ending the delay machine of the filibuster.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJohn Thune should not allow the United States Senate to \u2018leave town\u2019 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!\u201d the President wrote on his social media platform. \u201cThe Dumocrats will do it on day one, and can\u2019t believe how lucky they got with this Senate leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In response to which Thune had a polite brush-off.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf the endgame is, we actually get an outcome or result, we could stay here until Christmas,\u201d Thune said. \u201cBut Democrats aren\u2019t voting for this, I\u2019m just telling you. And the Republicans are not getting rid of the legislative filibuster.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The situation has left nerves raw at the Capitol, with the typically staid Thune showing signs of frustration. &#8220;Show me how this ends. What&#8217;s the picture of victory at the end?&#8221; Thune said.<\/p>\n<p>The White House has already summoned close to two dozen Republican Senators to pressure them directly to end the filibuster. According to a senior Republican aide on the Hill, 15 of the 20 who took the meetings told the White House staff directly that they were a hard <em>no<\/em> on the shift when it comes to the sacrosanct tool of obstruction.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is not an open question. It\u2019s just a fact, and the facts don\u2019t change,\u201d Thune said.<\/p>\n<p>That doesn\u2019t mean the White House accepts it. Last week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt ominously told reporters that Trump\u2019s \u201cpatience is running out\u201d when it comes to the Senate passing the SAVE America Act.<\/p>\n<p>But that fuse has flames racing from both ends.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Unlike House Speaker Mike Johnson, the GOP in the Senate is largely of the same mind that Trumpism will ultimately be only an era. Also, unlike the election to pick the chief of the House, Senate leadership elections are conducted by private ballot, so there\u2019s less risk of running afoul of Trump\u2019s whims. And added to that, Senators are elected to six-year terms, meaning they have a little more padding against any one vote.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s also just seen as bad politics in an environment that could give Democrats the Senate majority if the GOP base stays home. \u201cDisappointing [the President] but also our voters 99 days before the election strikes me as a bad idea,\u201d said Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican who once was a contender for Thune\u2019s role and lost his primary this year to a Trump-backed candidate.<\/p>\n<p>As a result, Senate Republicans are more hardened against Trump\u2019s pressure than their House colleagues\u2014and the understood reality is that Thune himself is nowhere near risk, even as the current storm between the Senate Majority leader and the President builds.<\/p>\n<p>Cornyn was blunt in his assessment of the situation: the Senate \u201ccan stay here \u2018til the cows come home, and it\u2019s not going to change anything.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The conservative Senate Republican Conference has been circulating a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/f\/?id=0000019f-a4c3-dd42-ab9f-e4c7270e0000\">memo<\/a> to members telling them that staying in Washington for August would make sense if it could move the needle\u2014but it won\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think staying in session will make more votes appear. \u2026 And we have work to do at home to make sure that we beat the Democrats in November,\u201d the memo advises lawmakers to say.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>That said, Trump has gotten some lawmakers on side in publicly backing his desire for the upper chamber to spend a sticky August casting votes for legislation that would likely not make much of a difference in this year\u2019s midterms in any case. They include Mike Lee of Utah, Rick Scott and Ashley Moody of Florida, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Jim Banks of Indiana, Darlene Graham of South Carolina and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee\u2014all red-state Republicans whose seats are generally seen as safe holds.<\/p>\n<p>But even if the Senate were to stay in town, the math is not mathing. \u201cWe simply don\u2019t have the votes,\u201d Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>That doesn\u2019t mean Trump will stop pushing for them.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) speaks following a policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on July 21, 2026. \u2014Finn Gomez\u2014Getty Images There\u2019s an inherent tension between any President and the Senate Majority Leader. George W. Bush and his team did everything they could in 2004 to make Tom Daschle the first&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static.time.com\/v3\/assets\/bltea6093859af6183b\/blta3183d403168185f\/6a6a6d80aad9554848846cd7\/thune-trump-senate-republicans-save-america-act.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pics-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}