The Senate Has Stopped Checking the President

The most revealing episode of this Congress did not end with a vote. It ended with a shouting match, a private briefing, and two senators changing their positions — and in the process, it showed that the Senate's power to check the president now depends on whether the president can get individual senators into a room. On June 23, the Senate passed a war powers resolution to limit President Trump's military authority over Iran, 50-48. It was the first time since 1973 that both chambers had passed such a measure. Then Trump came to the Capitol. He had a shouting match with Senator Bill Cassidy, calling him a "lunatic." After Vice President Vance and envoy Steve Witkoff gave Cassidy a private briefing, Cassidy reversed his vote. Rand Paul switched to "present," saying the president needed more room to negotiate. The resolution was defeated 50-47-1. The Senate's check had been overridden not by debate or by a veto, but by direct presidential pressure on two members. ^[1] That episode is not an outlier. It is the pattern. In April, the Senate blocked a resolution limiting Trump's military authority over Cuba, 51-47. ^[2] In May, a House resolution on Iran tied 212-212 and a Senate version failed 50-49, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared the War Powers Act unconstitutional. ^[3] In June, another Iran resolution was rejected 48-47 — the ninth failed attempt — and Senator Tim Kaine vowed to force weekly votes. ^[4]

If we’re really in a period of maybe some stability here, let’s not just allow it to start up again without Congress being involved in that decision. — Tim Kaine

The executive branch was asserting the right to bypass Congress on war powers, and Congress was proving unable to override it. But the June 23 reversal was different: the Senate had actually exercised its check, and the president simply reversed it by confronting the senators directly. This is not a story about one president. It is a story about what the Senate now understands its role to be. Majority Leader John Thune has supplied, across months of public statements, as clear a description of that understanding as anyone could ask for.

We are just executing or trying to execute on what they had asked us to. — John Thune

I’ve never been asked to slow a nomination down before. — John Thune

Thune has also made a refrain of arithmetic.

It's about the votes. It's about the math. — John Thune

The math is real: the SAVE America Act, Trump's signature voting bill, failed 48-50 in June, with four Republicans joining all Democrats. ^[5] But Thune's framing treats the Senate's constraints as fixed physics rather than a question of institutional will — and that framing has consequences when the president applies pressure not to the math but to the rules that produce it. Trump has done exactly that, on two fronts. He demanded Senate Republicans eliminate the filibuster to pass the SAVE Act, calling them "stupid" for refusing. ^[6] Thune resisted, citing the vote count. Then Trump demanded Thune fire the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, after she ruled that parts of the SAVE Act violated the Byrd Rule. ^[7]

Senate Majority Leader John Thune should immediately fire the Parliamentarian, who treats Republicans, and everything that they stand for, horribly! — Donald Trump

Thune refused, describing MacDonough as a fair referee. ^[7] But the pressure did not stop at words. Trump refused to sign the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act — which had passed with veto-proof majorities, 85-5 in the Senate and 358-32 in the House — explicitly to force the Senate to change its rules. He called the housing bill "a yawn" compared to voter ID legislation and threatened Republicans with "the title of DUMB" if they did not eliminate the filibuster. ^[8][9] The veto threat was explicitly leverage to force the Senate into changing its internal rules — not to block legislation on its merits. He also canceled the confirmation hearing for his own DNI nominee, Jay Clayton, directing him not to testify, and threatened to veto FISA Section 702 reauthorization unless it was bundled with the SAVE Act. ^[10] The move drew a rare public rebuke from Senate Intelligence Chairman Tom Cotton, a Republican.

It’s regrettable that the president has directed Jay Clayton not to appear at his confirmation hearing today. — Tom Cotton

The House has its own version of the dynamic. Speaker Mike Johnson managed the longest DHS shutdown in history, passed bipartisan funding without ICE money, and faced a revolt from his right flank. ^[11] On war powers, he made the case against congressional authorization himself.

I don't think we have an active, kinetic military bombing, firing, or anything like that. Right now, we are trying to broker a peace. — Mike Johnson

The Senate still legislates. It passed the Farm Act, the fiscal 2026 budget, confirmed an ATF director, and extended FISA Section 702. ^[12] It unanimously banned members and staff from trading on prediction markets, after reports that 16 accounts had earned over $100,000 by betting on the February Iran strike. ^[13] The erosion is specific: the chamber can police itself and pass routine business, but it cannot or will not constrain the president's use of military force or resist his demands to dismantle its own procedural defenses. The check that the Senate has relinquished is migrating to the courts. Federal judges have blocked Trump's executive orders restricting mail-in voting and requiring proof-of-citizenship registration. Judge Denise Casper was unambiguous.

The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections. — Indira Talwani

But the judiciary is itself being reshaped. The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Trump v. Slaughter to overrule the 1935 Humphrey's Executor precedent, expanding the president's power to fire independent agency commissioners — removing a structural lever Congress once used to insulate agencies from presidential control. ^[14] The branch absorbing the check function is simultaneously being reconfigured to expand the power it is supposed to check. What makes this more than a midterm story is the map. CNN's Harry Enten projects Republicans may hold the Senate 51-49 even with a Democratic generic-ballot lead of five to six points. That lead is historically low for a midterm under a Republican president — it trailed 2006's 11-point lead and 2018's 8-point lead — and as Enten put it, a five-point lead is almost certainly not enough to flip the chamber. ^[15] The structural features that entrench the current dynamic — executive deference, failed war powers checks, a majority leader who describes his job as executing White House priorities — are likely to survive whatever the electorate says in November. Then there is the retirement. Mitch McConnell, the Senate's longest-serving Republican leader and its most committed institutionalist, announced he will step down in January 2027 after a month-long hospitalization following a fall and pneumonia. When asked about McConnell's condition, Trump said:

I have no idea how he’s doing. — Donald Trump

During McConnell's absence, Marjorie Taylor Greene called him a "vegetable" and demanded his resignation; Laura Loomer claimed he was brain dead, citing White House-adjacent sources. Thune and Senator John Barrasso scrambled to rebut the speculation by reporting phone calls with McConnell. ^[16] The episode illustrated how thin the Senate's institutional leadership has become: the absence of one member destabilized the chamber, and the executive branch expressed no concern. Kentucky has changed its Senate vacancy law twice in three years, creating procedural uncertainty about how to fill the seat if McConnell vacates early. ^[17] The special election filing deadline closes around August 3. But the larger point is not about one seat. It is about what McConnell's departure represents: the exit of the Senate's most powerful defender of its institutional prerogatives at the moment those prerogatives are under the most sustained assault in decades. The Senate can still pass a budget. It can confirm a nominee. It can ban its own members from trading on inside information. What it can no longer reliably do is say no to a president who has decided he does not need it — and the electoral math suggests it will not have to face voters who might demand otherwise.