Senate Majority Leader John Thune is in unfamiliar territory — taking heat from all sides of his conference with no clear path out of the mess. It’s a precarious position for Thune, one that’s testing the limits of the leadership philosophy that helped him win the job.
Less than a year into his tenure as Senate Republican leader, Thune has been able to successfully steer Republicans through some of the most challenging moments of his career. From the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to Cabinet nominations to a record-breaking government shutdown and a high-profile rules change, Thune has allowed the GOP conference to reach a consensus on its own rather than dictating an outcome from above.
And Thune has done all of this without getting on the wrong side of President Donald Trump, a huge feat on its own.
But amid the year-end frenzy, the strategy that helped Thune score big wins earlier this year is failing to produce results on multiple fronts, angering several GOP factions simultaneously and reviving longstanding tensions within the conference.
Thune is getting heat from both conservatives and appropriators as he struggles to break the logjam on a FY2026 funding package. This threatens to derail his promise to return to regular order on appropriations bills.
Senate Republicans are flailing around on health care, unable to decide whether to offer their own plan to counter next week’s vote on Democrats’ Obamacare subsidy bill.
And the uproar over a Thune-backed provision allowing senators to sue the federal government if their phone records are obtained is still playing out.
There aren’t any Republican senators taking open shots at Thune. The affable South Dakota Republican faces nowhere near the internal heat that Speaker Mike Johnson has to deal with on a daily basis.
Yet it’s new terrain for Thune, who had a front-row seat to similar drama when he served as Mitch McConnell’s No. 2 prior to becoming leader.
Some Republicans are wondering whether Thune should go “full McConnell” if the current headaches persist — meaning governing with an iron fist. For the moment, Thune seems to be ruling that out.
“We’re trying to go through the concerns that our members have and hoping we can land something soon,” Thune told us on the funding situation. “We need to legislate and do appropriations bills the old-fashioned way under regular order.”
Thune’s Way. When Thune launched his bid to succeed McConnell as GOP leader, the veteran senator knew he needed to distance himself from the Kentucky Republican’s leadership style, which had become incredibly unpopular among Senate Republicans.
So Thune made a number of promises that marked an explicit departure from the McConnell era. This included making decisions based on the will of the Senate GOP conference and ending the practice of crafting “omnibus” spending bills in secret negotiations.
“He’s very good about giving everybody a chance to have their input,” Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) said. “He’s patient, works through everything diligently.”
Health care. Senate Republicans are having vigorous internal debates over health care and how to address their broader political problem of affordability. But ahead of next week’s planned Senate vote on Democrats’ bill to extend Obamacare subsidies, Republicans haven’t coalesced around a health care plan of their own.
As of Thursday, Thune hadn’t decided whether Republicans will even offer an alternative to the Democratic proposal. Some GOP senators think it’s political malpractice not to present a plan that would avert massive premium hikes in the new year. Others don’t see a reason to engage in what is essentially a political exercise for Democrats, especially since there isn’t anything concrete that unites Republicans.
Rank-and-file senators want Thune to be more proactive and make the tough decisions, especially with the White House disengaged.
“We’ve known about this cliff for a long time. Democrats spent the entire shutdown wringing our necks over it. And our leadership wasn’t ready with a response?” said a GOP senator granted anonymity to candidly assess the situation.
The irony is that many of the Republicans begging Thune to make these decisions criticized McConnell for doing the same.
Appropriations. Thune is trying to get all Republicans on board with a package of funding bills for floor consideration, but a group of fiscal hawks is standing in the way. The plan requires unanimous consent.
As we wrote in Thursday’s AM edition, some GOP appropriators have complained privately that Thune isn’t twisting enough arms. Appropriators spent all week pressing Thune to hold the first procedural vote on the effort as a way to ramp up pressure on the holdouts.
“Time is getting short, and we’re ready to go,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said. Thune needs to keep a lot of people happy — especially Collins, who’s up for reelection next year and is the only Republican who could win that seat.
Conservatives believe Thune is embracing a funding effort that abandons the party’s values, citing higher spending levels and billions of dollars in earmarks. Those same senators are also pushing Thune to do a second party-line reconciliation bill next year — another divisive issue in the conference.
So Thune is in a no-win situation. He hasn’t been able to persuade fiscal hawks to drop their holds, and he’s got appropriators breathing down his neck to get the ball rolling on funding with the Jan. 30 deadline right around the corner.
