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Hope they have Maalox and Pepto-Bismol on hand when President Donald Trump visits Capitol Hill to meet with Senate Republicans over lunch.
Senate GOP Steering Committee Chairman and Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., invited Trump for the luncheon Wednesday. Some Senate Republicans may wonder if they’re the ones on the menu. Both Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, are out after the president refused to endorse them and they lost their primaries. Trump has also sparred with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., exasperated that he can’t execute his legislative agenda.
Scott is a close ally of the president. He lost to Thune and Cornyn in the race to become majority leader in late 2024. In fact, Scott didn’t even request a blessing from the top Senate GOP leadership team to invite the president.
Scott’s teamed up with Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, advocating that the Senate approve the SAVE America Act. It requires proof of citizenship to vote. This advocacy is driving Thune and other members of the GOP brass batty since the bill failed twice. Scott and Lee want the Senate to get onto the SAVE America Act and stay on it until the measure passes. But few understand how exhaustion somehow conjures a majority of senators to suddenly support the bill.
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Moreover, the president demands that they eliminate the filibuster. If the SAVE America Act doesn’t have the necessary votes to pass, there’s no way it commands 60 yeas to break a filibuster.
Simple solution, right?
Not really. Thune has said repeatedly that there aren’t the votes to alter the filibuster, either.
It’s about the math.
So expect some intense discussions Wednesday over what the president wants the Senate to do. Thune has tried to tell the president repeatedly what the Senate is capable of, based on the various parliamentary equations.
And there’s fear among Republicans that the president may attempt to sow discord about the midterm election outcomes if Democrats flip the House and/or Senate — and Republicans never passed the SAVE America Act.
Trump sports plenty of supporters in the Senate, but he’s frustrated Senate Republicans by repeatedly yanking the legislative rug out from under his own party for weeks now.
The Senate was on the precipice of beginning a “vote-a-rama” to finally pass funding for ICE and Border Patrol in May. Then the administration announced its weaponization fund. A meeting between Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and GOP senators devolved into pointed conversations. Blanche continued to defend the fund. Some Republicans threatened their own amendments during the vote-a-rama to either block the fund or shield themselves from political fallout.
Thune pulled the bill from the floor and sent everyone home for more than a week.
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Then there was a carefully crafted bipartisan agreement to renew FISA Section 702, the nation’s most effective program to track terrorists. Its authorization ran out after the president sidetracked the nomination of Jay Clayton, his own pick to become Director of National Intelligence (DNI).
Republicans couldn’t pass the FISA authorization on their own, so they engineered a bipartisan compromise with Democrats. But Democrats withdrew their support for the bill once the president announced that housing czar Bill Pulte would take over as acting DNI for former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned. Democrats viewed Pulte as a partisan who had no experience in intelligence. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., quickly scheduled a confirmation hearing for Jay Clayton once Trump tapped him as the nominee.
It was believed that the Senate may be able to confirm Clayton within a matter of days after his confirmation hearing. That would limit time on the job by Pulte. So, once Clayton was in place, the Senate could prospectively return to the bipartisan FISA deal and pass it.
But Trump detonated all of that last week. He insisted that Senate Republicans cancel Clayton’s confirmation hearing and not advance his nomination until it has confirmed Jamie McDonald as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. That’s the position Clayton held. The president made those demands at 3:59 a.m. ET Wednesday — all without consulting Thune.
He then made his signature on the FISA renewal conditional on passage of the SAVE America Act.
“That tells me he’s not very serious about FISA or intelligence,” said one senior congressional Republican about Trump. “And Pulte is a big middle finger to the intelligence community.”
So Senate Republicans aren’t enamored with all of these demands. Some began to lose faith in the president once he ditched support for Cassidy and Cornyn. Now they believe he’s being unreasonable, jerking around Thune, moving the goalposts for critical national security legislation and expecting the impossible on the SAVE America Act and the filibuster.
For his part, Scott believes he and the president can change minds.
Trump has criticized Senate Republican leaders generally of late. But he’s tiptoed around potentially calling out Thune by name. Thune is well-liked by his GOP colleagues and, like most congressional leaders, has an impossible job. That is why former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., likened the job to that of “herding cats.”
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It’s clear that the president has better relations right now with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., compared to Thune. But turning on Thune by name would truly infuriate many of the president’s best allies in the Senate.
Trump routinely excoriated former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., for not ditching the filibuster. But it was McConnell who delivered Trump three of the most lasting legacies: Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
McConnell established a new Senate precedent for the method he used to confirm Gorsuch. Gorsuch would have faced an unprecedented filibuster for an associate justice on the High Court and never scored confirmation.
McConnell stuck by Kavanaugh during the raucous confirmation process to confirm Kavanaugh in the fall of 2018. And he rammed through Coney Barrett’s confirmation days before the 2020 election. Yet McConnell refused to hold a confirmation hearing for President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee and future Attorney General Merrick Garland for nearly 11 months — because it was an election year. Blocking confirmation of Garland held the seat open for Gorsuch. Yet Trump railed against McConnell at every turn.
Thune passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year. But through no fault of his own, Thune hasn’t delivered any wins as enduring as the Supreme Court for Trump yet. However, the president has extended some grace to the South Dakota Republican — despite his criticism of the Republican Senate.
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We’ll see if that continues after Wednesday’s luncheon.
The legislative contretemps between the president and Senate Republicans over the past few weeks has just been an appetizer. Anguish and frustration are on the bill of fare Wednesday. And if the meeting doesn’t go well, some Republicans may yell “Check, please!” to get out of there as fast as they can.
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