Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said it is “undermining our ability to produce the very results he wants.”
President Trump says US will continue bombing Iran if deal is violated
President Donald Trump told reporters at the G7 summit that he would continue bombing Iran if it did not comply with the deal with the United States.
This week, Washington — thousands of miles — and a literal ocean — separated President Donald Trump from Senate Republicans.
But that didn’t stop him from carrying out their carefully laid plans.
The president posted a video of a meeting with world leaders in Europe on social media, ordered lawmakers to cancel massive confirmation hearings and dropped a logistical bomb around the world. The order, issued at midnight US time, indefinitely postpones President Trump’s nomination of Jay Clayton to be the next spy director.
Trump also derailed efforts by senators to quickly update a key anti-terrorism law that expired for the first time last week and could put Americans at risk, lawmakers said. And it sucked up a lot of time and energy in Congress at a critical moment, as senators near the finish line on a major housing affordability bill that is important to both Republicans and Democrats.
The president’s often confusing management style is well documented. It goes back not only to his first term in the White House, but also to his career in the private sector long before that.
Even Republicans in Congress have acknowledged in recent days that his approach to handling his own legislative challenges has been heavy-handed at best. At worst, as retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) put it, “it’s hurting our ability to produce the very results he wants.”
Frustration has plagued the White House’s final months as Democrats try to pass landmark legislation before they have a golden opportunity to take back Congress from full Republican control.
Part of the problem, Tillis believes, is that presidents need to start thinking of Congress as an equal branch of government.
“We are not the manufacturing arm of the Article II branch,” Tillis said. “We are the Board of Directors of the Article II Chapter. If you start treating us that way and coordinating with us that way, we won’t have these embarrassing setbacks. And we can get back to the good work that the president wants to accomplish.”
Asked for comment, a White House spokesperson told USA TODAY about Trump’s June 17 social media post about canceling Clayton’s hearing.
Trump ‘has his own mind’, says John Thune
Frustration between President Trump and Senate Republicans has been growing in recent months. There is a man in the middle.
The majority leader, Sen. John Thune, R-South Dakota, is primarily responsible for controlling Senate Republican priorities. From housing, farm and highway bills (not to mention the annual appropriations process), he hasn’t said publicly how much he has to do between now and November.
“Senator Thune has one of the most difficult jobs,” Sen. John Hoeven (R-North Dakota) told USA TODAY. “He keeps us moving toward the goal. But he knows it’s not a straight line.”
Whether that enormous workload has been helped or hindered by the president these days is debatable.
President Trump has persistently pushed for the Senate to do what Thune said was impossible. Among its demands are eliminating the 60-vote threshold known as the filibuster, removing the bipartisan Senate rules administrator and passing a sweeping voting restriction bill called the SAVE America Act.
Earlier this month, President Trump all but guaranteed the expiration of a key anti-terrorism statute known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) when he named controversial ally Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Regulator, as interim spy director. Democrats have refused to renew important (but controversial) wiretapping powers unless President Trump chooses someone more qualified.
After selecting Creighton, Trump only further muddied the situation by telling lawmakers in a Truth Social post from France to prioritize confirming nominees for other positions first. He also added another directive to immediately pass the SAVE America Act.
“The president has his own thoughts and makes his own decisions,” Thune later told reporters. “So are we.”
Sen. John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) said it is President Trump’s prerogative to advocate for the SAVE America Act, but that his claims do not change the fact that it would be “hard to pass” without Democrats. However, he said it was an open question whether a failure to reauthorize FISA could create a crisis large enough to undermine all other legislation the Senate is trying to pass by the fall.
“We don’t know what the ripple effects are going to be,” Kennedy told USA TODAY. “We know that the closer we get to the midterm elections, the more difficult it will be.”
Contributed by: Reuters
Zachary Schermele is USA TODAY’s Congressional Correspondent. You can email us at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and on Bluesky at @zachschermele.bsky.social..
