WASHINGTON — Thousands of miles — and a literal ocean — separated President Donald Trump from Senate Republicans this week.
But that didn’t stop him from waylaying their best-laid plans.
Posting on social media from a meeting in Europe with world leaders, the president lobbed a logistical bomb across the globe when he ordered lawmakers to cancel a major confirmation hearing. The instruction, which came in the middle of the night U.S. time, indefinitely delayed the nomination of Jay Clayton, Trump’s pick to become the nation’s next spy chief.
In turn, Trump also set back senators’ efforts to quickly renew a key antiterrorism law that lapsed for the first time last week, potentially endangering Americans, lawmakers said. And he sucked up a bunch of time and energy in Congress at a critical moment, as senators are nearing the finish line on a big housing affordability bill that’s important to both Republicans and Democrats.
The president’s often-chaotic management style has been well documented. It dates back not only to his first term in the White House but also to his career well before that, in the private sector.
Lately, even Republicans in Congress have acknowledged that his approach to handling his own legislative agenda has been, at best, heavy-handed. At worst, as retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, R-North Carolina, put it, it’s “undermining our ability to produce the very results he wants.”
The frustration is plaguing what could be the White House’s last monthslong stretch to pass landmark legislation before Democrats have a good shot at wresting Congress from full GOP control.
Part of the problem, in Tillis’ mind, is that the president needs to start thinking about Congress as a coequal branch of government.
“We are not the manufacturing department for the Article II branch,” Tillis said. “We are the board of directors for the Article II branch. You start treating us like that, coordinating with us like that, and we won’t have these embarrassing setbacks. And we can get back to the good work the president wants to accomplish.”
A White House spokesperson, asked to comment, referred USA TODAY to Trump’s June 17 social media post about Clayton’s canceled hearing.
Frustration between Trump and Senate Republicans has been building for months. There’s one man smack in the middle of it all.
South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune, the majority leader, is mainly responsible for controlling the Senate GOP’s priorities. From bills on housing, farming, and highways (not to mention the annual appropriations process), he’s made no secret of how much he needs to get done between now and November.
“Senator Thune’s got one of the hardest 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 hefty workload has been helped — or hindered — by the president as of late is a debatable question.
Trump has relentlessly insisted that the Senate do things Thune has said aren’t possible. Among those demands are abolishing the 60-vote threshold known as the filibuster, firing a nonpartisan Senate ruleskeeper and passing a sweeping voting restrictions bill called the SAVE America Act.
Earlier this month, when Trump nominated a controversial loyalist — federal housing regulator Bill Pulte — to become the nation’s interim spy chief, he all but guaranteed a lapse in a critical antiterrorism statute known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. Democrats refused to renew the important (but controversial) wiretapping power unless Trump picked someone more qualified.
After selecting Clayton, Trump only made the situation more confusing to lawmakers when he told them via a Truth Social post from France to prioritize confirming his nominee for another office first. He tacked on another directive, too: Pass the SAVE America Act immediately.
“The president has his own mind, makes his own decisions,” Thune later told reporters. “So do we.”
While it’s Trump’s prerogative to advocate for the SAVE America Act, his insistence doesn’t change the fact that it would be “hard to pass” without Democrats, said Sen. John Kennedy, R-Louisiana. In the meantime, he said it’s an open question whether failing to reauthorize FISA could create a crisis that detracts from all the other bills the Senate is trying to pass before the fall.
“I don’t know what the ripple effect will be,” Kennedy told USA TODAY. “I do know that the closer we get to the midterms, the more difficult it’s going to be.”
Contributing: Reuters
Zachary Schermele is the congressional correspondent for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and Bluesky at @zachschermele.bsky.social.
