John Thune

When Senate Republicans chose a new majority leader in 2024, South Dakota senator John Thune narrowly defeated Texas senator John Cornyn. Since then, Cornyn’s career has taken a turn for the worse, culminating in his shocking landslide defeat in last month’s Texas GOP primary runoff. But in retrosepct, Cornyn might have been the lucky one. Yes, the Texan had to suffer the humiliation of Donald Trump endorsing his opponent, Ken Paxton, even after he all but crawled on his knees to Mar-a-Lago to show his loyalty to the president. But it turns out Trump had a different hell in mind for Thune, as he has perpetually thwarted his efforts to manage the U.S. Senate.

Last year, we saw an enormous shift of power from Congress to the executive branch. Nearly all legislative activity was crammed into one bill shaped and directed by Trump and his minions (the ludicrous name, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, reflected its true authorship). Congressional oversight of federal agencies ended as first Elon Musk and then Russell Vought ravaged the “deep state.” Senate Republicans confirmed many unqualified Trump appointees, swallowing their objections. From the very start, the second Trump administration was a humiliating experience for Congress. But it had to be especially insulting to puffed-up senators used to thinking of themselves as toga-wearing sentinels of democracy who bend to no one’s will.

2026 has been even worse for John Thune and his GOP colleagues. Senate Republicans began the year absolutely secure in their majority, thanks to a very favorable landscape and insane amounts of money. Now that majority is in real peril. The congressional GOP is totally dependent on Trump, and he seems to be the one Republican in Washington who doesn’t understand that the party can’t win the midterms unless it addresses Americans’ cost-of-living concerns.

Rather than working with Thune to help Republicans keep their governing trifecta, Trump has been demanding that the Senate give up the last of its distinctive bipartisan traditions. These include the filibuster, the “blue slip” privilege of approving and disapproving judicial appointments from each senator’s state, and the nonpartisan professional parliamentarian who polices Senate rules. In addition, Trump seems determined to make it impossible for Thune to work with Democrats, even on the very few issues where the minority party’s cooperation is essential.

All these presidential indignities can be found in a single Truth Social post fired off at 3:54 a.m. on Wednesday:

First, Trump insisted that the Senate give up its “blue-slip” privileges and approve a new U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Trump has nominated Jay Clayton, the current U.S.A., as his permanent director of National Intelligence. That means the howlingly unqualified Bill Pulte will remain acting DNI until the Senate budges. Then Trump reiterated that he won’t renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act unless it’s attached to his precious SAVE America Act, a voter-ID bill wrapped in too many poison pills to count.

Trump’s temper tantrum over Pulte has brought Congress to a standstill at a time when Republicans really need to make their pitch to midterms voters. And as Thune has repeatedly made clear publicly and privately, the SAVE America Act has exactly zero chance of enactment without the abolition of the filibuster, or alternatively, the destruction of the congressional budget process, which would also require the firing of the Senate parliamentarian.

After all these years of bowing down before Trump, Thune and other Senate Republicans are signaling that these are red lines they are not willing to cross. So, of course, the president is determined to force them to submit, even if that means wrecking the remainder of the congressional session and probably dooming Republicans to a midterm drubbing — which he would certainly blame on them.

The other striking thing about today’s Truth Social post is that Trump seems to be returning to the sort of plague-on-both-your-houses “outsider” rhetoric he deployed regularly during his first presidential run in 2016. He says Republicans are complicit with “Dumocrats” in blocking the excellent Pulte; have “ridiculous” views on the blue-slip tradition; and “fell into a trap” by refusing to blow up every single precedent in order to enact the SAVE America Act.

So is Trump’s plan to keep publicly attacking his party for disloyalty and incompetence while demanding that they win the midterms? Thune must know that even if Republicans somehow maintain control of the Senate, Trump may depose him as majority leader anyway in favor of a new punching bag.

Yeah, Cornyn may be the lucky one.