Senior Republican senators vented their frustrations at the White House on Thursday after Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called on the Senate to “do its job” at her second press briefing since returning from maternity leave.
The press secretary’s rebuke of the upper chamber of Congress came in response to a reporter’s question regarding whether President Donald Trump was losing his patience with Senate Majority Leader John Thune as the days ticked down to the August recess with no signs of progress being made towards the passage of the SAVE America Act, Trump’s signature piece of voter ID legislation.
The Senate is due to leave town next week and, as it stands, has no plans to put the SAVE America Act on the floor — it lacks the support of a handful of Republican members, and would require six Democrats to break ranks for it to withstand a filibuster. The Democratic caucus is unified against the legislation.
Leavitt told reporters on Thursday that Trump’s “patience is running out” as it pertains to voter ID’s path to becoming law on the Hill, adding: “The House did its job; the Senate needs to do its job, too.” Her remarks were retweeted by the White House’s rapid response X account.
Thune fired back shortly afterwards in a gaggle with reporters on Capitol Hill: “She or somebody else ought to get on the phone and get the votes, right?”
“Instead of pointing the finger at Republicans, they might think about going after the people who are stopping it on the floor, which is the Democrats. And if there are Republicans that they think are gettable, get on the phone,” said the majority leader. “Let’s get them to yes.”
Other senators were just as frank in their assessments of why the legislation was not moving forward on Thurdsay.
John Cornyn echoed Thune’s response to Leavitt, telling reporters: “We just don’t have the votes…there’s nothing that Senator Thune can do to change that.”
Another senator in the Republican caucus who has called the SAVE America Act and its various other iterations “fundamentally flawed” argued that the White House was misplacing its anger altogether.
“He’s not responsible for the SAVE Act not passing. People like me are,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, according to Punchbowl. “But he gets criticized for it. And you can see some opportunistic Republican candidate using that to build a wedge. So I think he’s just showing some wisdom.”
“There’s no way on God’s green earth it can be implemented by this election.”
But the White House is showing no signs of letting up the pressure on Thune, who they clearly believe has the power to unify his caucus around a push to scrap the legislative filibuster and pass the SAVE America Act on a party-line vote. The president pushed for the act’s passage during a primetime speech from the White House last week, and on Wednesday he took aim at the Senate directly.
“It’s like the Senate is where you send things you want them to die,” said Trump as he campaigned for a right-winger, Mike Collins in the Georgia Senate race.
“Mike Johnson and Congress have done a great job, but we’re having a hard time in the Senate,” the president added. “The senate, what they’re doing, it’s just not right.”
It’s unclear how far Trump will take his war of words with Senate leadership if Thune, as expected, allows Trump’s arbitrary deadline of the August recess next week pass without significant progress on the voter ID bill. The Senate is already talking about pushing a planned third reconciliation package past the November election, making that an exceedingly unlikely vehicle for its passage and one Trump would likely oppose given his desire to see the act begin to take effect before the midterms.
The president has already played chicken with Congress once over the bill, refusing to sign a housing affordability bill that became law without his signature regardless. There are few other pieces of legislation the president could theoretically hold hostage until his desired voter ID bill makes it to his desk.
More than likely the president’s next course of action will be more of the same: namely, rhetoric and actions that make the Senate GOP leadership’s job of holding together its slim majority an even tougher prospect this fall.
