The $70 billion immigration enforcement funding bill Republicans have been working to pass for months finally got President Donald Trump’s signature Wednesday afternoon. Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., was on hand at the White House for the signing, along with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and a smattering of other GOP senators and representatives.
Missing from the celebration despite having spearheaded the effort to get it passed: Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.
It may be a simple matter of scheduling that allowed Johnson to attend and not Thune. But the South Dakotan’s absence was notable given how often he’s lately been forced to play the uncomfortable role of the person who has to tell Trump “no.” And when it comes to Trump, even big wins like a bill funding one of his top priorities can easily be forgotten as his focus slips back toward more esoteric demands.
Trump’s relationship with Thune is best examined in contrast with the president’s interactions with Johnson. Punchbowl News framed the dynamic succinctly Wednesday morning: “Thune derives much of his power from his conference, not Trump. Johnson derives a good deal of his power from being close to the president.”
The two-vote majority Johnson controls in the House means both ends of the GOP’s contracted ideological spectrum can make demands that grind legislation to a halt. The Louisiana lawmaker’s at times tenuous grasp on the House and reliance on Trump to get his ducks in a row have been constant themes of this phase of his speakership. NOTUS recently reported that Trump has at least once declared in front of Johnson and other lawmakers: “I have two jobs: being president and being speaker.”
Johnson’s caucus first put him into the speakership in 2023 because there was nobody else who could win enough votes for the job, as several weeks of internal jostling proved. Almost three years later, there’s little appetite among House Republicans to go through the sort of internal fight to replace him without a clear alternative. But even without wanting to take Johnson out entirely, House Republicans have historically had few problems with pulling out the knives against their own leadership.
Ironically, the House speaker has much more direct control over his chamber’s workflow than the Senate majority leader does. A single senator can ruin the majority’s best-laid plans by denying the unanimous consent that keeps things flowing smoothly. In practice, Thune needs to persuade enough GOP senators to stick with him and contend with the filibuster’s limitations on what can make it through a tough vote.
Despite that, for the better part of Trump’s second term it’s been the Senate that’s been the more reliable chamber in terms of delivering on the White House’s legislative priorities. The final version of last year’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill first cleared the Senate, and it’s been the Senate that’s broken logjams over funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the federal government more broadly. It’s also been the Senate steadily confirming Trump’s nominees, giving him a more or less free hand to continue his war against Iran and supporting his crackdown on immigrants.
Thune has been most willing to push back on issues he knows he can’t get his members to support. He doesn’t have the votes to kill the filibuster and doesn’t seem like he would be inclined to do so even if he did. He has refused to fire the Senate parliamentarian for blocking security funding for Trump’s White House ballroom. And Thune has allowed his members to vent freely about the corruption on display from the slush fund Trump attempted to establish.
Unfortunately, those issues also tend to be the ones on which Trump has placed an outsize focus. The president doesn’t seem to understand any system that doesn’t allow its head to act as a despot. His decision to help remove members of the GOP caucus by backing primary challengers hasn’t made it any more likely that he’ll win over holdouts. And while he has succeeded in helping to bully House members into following Johnson’s lead, those tactics have been less effective against the more imperious senators in his crosshairs.
The resulting dynamic has forced Thune to plan around Trump’s shifting demands and take the heat when his members balk at the president’s whims. It’s an arrangement that so far has managed to work out despite itself. Trump has never called for Thune’s removal from atop the Senate GOP — and to be honest, Trump may not like the response he might receive if he ever does.
For now at least, the president may control the House, but the Senate still belongs to John Thune.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House.