President Donald Trump has a habit of punishing Republicans who tell him no, and his standoff with his party's Senate majority leader may cost him the most.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, has delivered a string of unwelcome answers to the president — rejecting Trump's demands to fire the Senate parliamentarian, kill the legislative filibuster, and pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, a voter ID bill that lacks the votes to move forward.
On Wednesday, Trump escalated, posting on Truth Social at 3:54 a.m. to torpedo a bipartisan deal Thune had spent weeks building — linking reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to the voter ID bill that has already failed repeatedly in the chamber.
"Good question," Thune told reporters when asked why Trump would pull the rug out from under him.
Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate majority, but the filibuster requires 60 votes to advance most legislation — a threshold Trump's voter ID push has never come close to clearing. One Republican senator warned that moving against Thune publicly "would trigger a revolt from members" — the kind of rupture that could cost Trump Senate votes he cannot spare heading into the midterms.
Trump has been down this road before. He ousted five Indiana state senators who defied his redistricting push and endorsed primary challengers against Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana after they broke with him.
He also declared Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina "a loser" after Tillis threatened to oppose his next attorney general pick.
"The problem is the president doesn't like hearing that when it frustrates what he wants to do," Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said of Thune's approach.
It would not be the first time Trump trained his fire on Thune. In December 2020, after Thune said efforts to reject the election results "would go down like a shot dog," Trump branded him a "RINO" and threatened, "He will be primaried in 2022, political career over!!!" Thune won reelection that year with nearly 70% of the vote.
For now, Trump has kept his frustration private. But Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) offered a blunt assessment of where things stand on the voter ID bill at the center of the standoff.
"I mean, I want a Porsche for my birthday," Kennedy said. "I'm not going to get it."
