John Thune

As August begins, Senate Majority Leader John Thune would very much like to pass a stopgap spending bill to head off a potential government shutdown, confirm some Donald Trump appointees, and then send his troops home for a month or so of campaigning (for the 22 Republican senators whose terms are up this year) and/or getting in touch with constituents. Trump, his boss, wants a lot of other things to happen, most notably the debate and passage of the SAVE America Act and massive new Pentagon funding. Knowing Democrats may be able to block both these measures, Trump is especially agitated about the need for a budget resolution that would set up a party-line reconciliation bill paying some Iran war bills and incentivizing state SAVE America Act–style proof-of-citizenship requirements. The House has done all these things and already entered its own August recess. The big question now is whether Trump will let his Senate people go, too, and furthermore, allow Thune to keep open the federal government despite all the partisan battles that could shut it down.

Thune has teed up a stopgap spending measure to head off any shutdown until after the midterms. It’s bipartisan, of course, since Democrats can and will filibuster any party-line appropriations bill (House Republicans didn’t have that problem and thus excluded Democrats from their own stopgap spending bill negotiations). There are at least three major aspects of the Senate bill that could potentially send Trump into a hate rage that would blow it all up: (1) It includes no new money for immigration enforcement (that having been richly provided by the last budget-reconciliation bill enacted in June) at a time when MAGA activists are nervous that the Department of Homeland Security isn’t being vicious enough; (2) it provides relatively little new Pentagon money, meaning Pete Hegseth will continue to have to rattle the cup for some sort of separate supplemental appropriations bill; and (3) it puts a temporary hold on Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought’s proposal for a new panel of political commissars who would have the power to kill grants to blue states that displease the administration.

With the flick of a Truth Social post, Trump could instantly generate enough Senate Republican opposition to Thune’s bill to derail its immediate passage. Even a malevolent silence could ensure that, sooner or later, House Republicans would declare the Senate bill DOA. Or, in Trump’s inscrutable wisdom, he could decide not to take the federal government hostage and conduct his fights with Dumocrats and alleged RINOs on other ground, such as the budget resolution Thune is slow-walking. If that happens, it could represent a bipartisan recognition that a pre-November government shutdown would be bad for incumbents from both parties — and for the White House too.

But if instead Trump begins making demands regarding the content of the stopgap spending bill, the fragile bipartisan agreement would unravel very quickly. Vought’s new grant-review process is an absolute red line for Democrats. So is any major new infusion of cash for the Pentagon. And so, too, more likely than not, is any new Immigration and Customs Enforcement money, which would make already-restive Democratic progressives (many of whom are now ICE abolitionists) threaten Chuck Schumer’s grip on the Senate Democratic Conference.

Probably as a scare tactic aimed at Democrats, Thune has talked of funding the entire federal government through another budget-reconciliation bill if he can’t get a stopgap spending measure enacted. This would deal a near-death blow to the hallowed bipartisan appropriations system and might thrill MAGA diehards, who would would prefer to operate the federal government as a one-party dictatorship where another Democratic vote would never be needed. But it’s unlikely Thune is serious about it, given his general hostility to the budget-reconciliation process with its multiple all-night “vote-a-ramas,” where Senate Democrats are given the opportunity to offer unlimited amendments, putting Republicans on record in various politically dangerous ways.

So once again, the ball is in the court of an increasingly erratic president who rejects the very premise that Republicans are heading toward the midterms with a deeply unpopular record, agenda, and message, as he reminded the world on Truth Social this morning:

My REAL Polling Numbers, not those made up by the Fake News Media, are the best they have ever been, and why wouldn’t they be with the biggest tax cuts and employment numbers EVER, the biggest outside Investment in America in World history, a totally secure Border, a giant Victory in Venezuela, the Denuclearization of Iran, unparalleled respect and success throughout the World, and much more? Don’t believe the Radical Left’s Fake Poll numbers. They are Crooked and Corrupt, just like the Country Destroying Dumocrats are Crooked and Corrupt. VOTE REPUBLICAN FOR GREATNESS IN AMERICA! Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT

This doesn’t sound like a man ready to sign off on a bipartisan spending bill to address a potential political calamity — unless the whole topic is just beneath his lofty gaze and he just doesn’t care.