Majority Leader John Thune's 'old-fashioned' approach to the Senate has
kept Trump on board so far
[April 15, 2025]
By STEPHEN GROVES
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate, once again, was working into the early
morning hours Friday with its new majority leader, Republican John
Thune, setting the pace.
It wasn’t until just after 2 a.m. that the last of the senators had
straggled into the chamber to cast their vote on the confirmation of
retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine for chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. The vote capped a grinding start to the year for the
Senate that included several all-night floor sessions and — importantly
for Thune — the quickest top-level Cabinet confirmation process in the
past 20 years.
At the outset, however, such an outcome was far from assured. President
Donald Trump was making demands that the new Senate leader be ready to
put the chamber into recess so he could skip over the Senate
confirmation process altogether. Faced with that prospect, Thune, a
South Dakota Republican, said his message in conversations with the
president was, “Let us do this the old-fashioned way and just use the
clock and grind it out, and then we’ll see where we go from there.”
That approach has been successful at allowing Thune to show Trump the
Senate’s worth while also preserving its constitutional role in
installing a president’s Cabinet. But the decision to push forward on
even Trump's most unconventional Cabinet nominees has also come at a
cost.
Several Cabinet officials have been intimately involved in the early
controversies of Trump’s second term, from discussing military plans on
an unclassified Signal app chat to encouraging the Republican president
to follow through with steep tariffs on trading partners.
GOP senators, many of whom still hold traditional Republican ideas, have
often had to mount a response. The Republican chair of the Senate Armed
Services Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, last month
initiated an investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general into
whether classified information was shared on Signal by Defense Secretary
Pete Hegseth. And GOP senators more recently made a concerted effort to
encourage Trump to negotiate trade deals with other nations rather than
listen to advisers like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was
adamant that tariffs were there to stay.
In an interview with The Associated Press shortly after Trump announced
a pause on tariffs to most nations, Thune said the announcement showed
the president is “responding to the feedback he’s given.”
“I think everybody wants to see him succeed with this, wants to see the
country succeed and wants to make sure that we’re gauging and
calibrating — as some of these major policy shifts are being made — the
impacts that they have,” Thune added.
That balance — Thune's supportive yet still cautious approach — has
marked his early months working with a president with whom, until last
year, he had a fraught relationship. So far, Trump and Thune have stayed
on upbeat terms, but the stakes will only rise for Republicans in the
coming months as they try to lift through Congress a massive package of
tax breaks and spending cuts on party-line votes.
During Trump’s first term, it took barely a year — and some setbacks in
Congress — before Trump began openly feuding with then Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell.
Discussing the reconciliation package as he sat in McConnell’s old
leadership office, Thune stressed that for the GOP’s marquee legislation
to work, “Everybody’s got to be rolling in the same direction. It takes
a lot of teamwork.”
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Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., arrives to speak to
reporters following a closed-door Republican meeting, at the Capitol
in Washington, Tuesday, April 8, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
A check and balance
As Trump has entered office with practically total command of the
Republican Party and an agenda to upend the federal government and
its role in society, Thune acknowledged that Trump has been
aggressive in his use of executive power. But he argued that it was
no different from how previous presidents wanted to “take as much
power as they possibly can," pointing to President Joe Biden’s moves
to cancel student debt and boost government food assistance.
“Our job is to do what we can to support the president and his
agenda,” Thune said. “But, you know, be that important check and
balance, too, that the Founders intended.”
Still, as Trump has blazed through constitutional norms with
sweeping orders that endanger civil rights, government programs, the
federal workforce and America’s relationship with allies,
Republicans in Congress have stood by.
“We need Republicans to get off the sidelines, including the
majority leader, and say, ’This is unacceptable behavior by any
president,'” said Sen. Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat.
Kelly cited Trump’s disparagement of NATO and comments about taking
over countries like Canada and Greenland and the Panama Canal. “The
damage that Donald Trump is doing to our international reputation is
not something we easily recover from,” he said.
Still, Kelly added that Thune “deserves some credit” for making the
“mechanics of the Senate function well.”
Thune has been aggressive in trying to get the Senate to move faster
through its votes. He noted that he had allowed one recent vote
session to close before he had even had a chance to cast his vote
because he was at the White House for a meeting.
It’s an incremental change in the Senate’s timing, but one that
Thune, a former runner, hopes will contribute to the chamber
becoming more active and deliberative in shaping the law. He won the
leadership contest in part by pledging to allow individual senators
to have more of a say in crafting and amending legislation.
So far, the Senate has also gained bipartisan support to pass bills
that will increase prison penalties for fentanyl traffickers as well
as mandate the detainment of immigrants who are in the U.S.
illegally and are accused of theft and violent crimes.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Missouri Republican who has been vocal about
changes to the way legislation advances, said Thune has "done a
great job," although the Senate hasn't had much of a chance to work
on legislation.
“The truth of the matter," he added, “is we've been consumed by
confirmations.”
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