The fight over President Donald Trump's election reform agenda spilled into public view Monday, exposing a widening divide among Senate Republicans over whether lawmakers should cancel their August recess to keep working on the SAVE America Act.
Trump wants senators to stay in Washington until they pass the legislation, or eliminate the filibuster to make it possible with a simple majority. Senate Majority Leader John Thune says neither option has the votes.
That disagreement has turned what is usually a routine debate over the Senate's summer schedule into a political showdown inside the GOP.
"John Thune should not allow the United States Senate to 'leave town' until it passes The Save America Act or, far better still, TERMINATES THE FILIBUSTER, where Republicans can then quickly pass everything they ever dreamed of," Trump wrote Monday on Truth Social.
Thune wasn't convinced.
"If I thought there was a path to getting a result, I'm all for it," he told reporters as he walked into the Capitol. "We voted on it two, three, four, five times already, had it up on the floor for an extended period of time. Show me how this ends. What's the picture of victory at the end?"
He argued there is little value in keeping senators in Washington simply to repeat votes that have already failed.
"If we are going to be sitting here in endless quorum calls, I don't know if that's in anybody's best interest," Thune said.
He also pointed to the political calendar. Several Republican senators face competitive races this fall and need time back home campaigning, including Susan Collins of Maine, Jon Husted of Ohio and Dan Sullivan of Alaska.
Not everyone in the conference agrees.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee said he plans to object to any effort to send senators home before the SAVE America Act receives another vote.
"@LeaderJohnThune, I hereby object to any effort to put the Senate into recess in August — at least until such time as the Senate has passed the SAVE America Act," Lee posted on social media.
He later warned Thune not to "assume you have my consent" to adjourn the Senate.
Florida Sens. Rick Scott and Ashley Moody, along with Indiana Sen. Jim Banks, have also called for the Senate to remain in session through Labor Day if that's what it takes to continue debating the legislation.
But several Republicans say staying in Washington without enough votes to pass the bill would only hurt the party heading into the November elections.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn criticized conservatives pushing to cancel the recess, saying they risk raising expectations they can't meet.
Lee and others, he said, are putting vulnerable Republicans in a difficult position while "demoralizing our base of voters we're depending on in 99 days to elect Republicans."
"What possible rationale could there be for that other than self-aggrandizement?" Cornyn asked.
Then he added with a smile, "I hope you have a nice August. I'm going to be somewhere else."
North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis was equally blunt.
"I think it's snatching defeat from the jaws of victory," Tillis said.
"I think what we need to do is get out of here. Staying here longer and just assuming that because we're here we're going to bridge some profound differences between people is a catastrophic political miscalculation and shows that they're tone deaf to the fact that we have a real threat ahead of us with respect to losing the majority."
Tillis also dismissed what he called "the performative politics up here that people like Mike Lee want to do."
The dispute comes after several days of increasingly sharp exchanges between Trump and Thune.
At a Georgia rally last week, Trump complained that "it's like the Senate is a place you send things when you want them to die."
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt added fuel to the disagreement by saying the president's "patience is running out with Thune" and that the Senate "needs to do its job."
Thune responded by suggesting the White House focus on changing minds instead of criticizing Senate leadership.
"Maybe she or somebody else ought to get on the phone and get the votes. Right? It's 50 around here," he said.
On Monday, Thune revealed that Trump and his team had already tried to persuade Republican senators to eliminate the filibuster and failed.
"We have in the past suggested to he and his team to come up here and visit with some of my colleagues... they sat down with about 20 Republicans on getting rid of the legislative filibuster and getting rid of blue slips and there were 15 nos," Thune said.
"This is not an open question; it's just a fact and the facts don't change. Now, if he can change the facts and start moving some of those senators who are nos into yeses, then we have a different conversation."
The math remains the biggest obstacle.
Last month, Collins, Tillis, Lisa Murkowski and Mitch McConnell voted against attaching Trump's preferred version of the SAVE America Act to a $70 billion budget reconciliation package. That version of the bill also included provisions banning transgender athletes from women's sports and prohibiting gender reassignment surgery for minors.
Even if Republicans unified behind the legislation, Democrats have shown no willingness to support it, leaving the bill well short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.
"If we had the votes, it would make a lot more sense" to cancel the recess, West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said.
Capito also noted that senators have responsibilities back home, saying she had just returned from inspecting flood damage in West Virginia and emphasizing the importance of staying connected with constituents.
For now, Thune has left the door open to changing the Senate's schedule if legislation is ready to pass. But without the votes for the SAVE America Act or the votes to eliminate the filibuster, Republican leaders appear headed toward the August recess despite pressure from Trump and some of his closest allies.
