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Newly elected Senate Majority Leader John Thune has his work cut out for him. Within hours of securing the Senate's top job, tensions within his party were evident already. NPR's Susan Davis reports on what's ahead for the new leader.
SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: Shortly after his victory in the race to become the next majority leader, Senator John Thune delivered a unifying message on behalf of his party.
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JOHN THUNE: We're excited to reclaim the majority and to get to work with our colleagues in the House to enact President Trump's agenda.
DAVIS: It won't be so easy. Thune is not a Trump loyalist, but he needs to work with Senate Republicans who are and who want to change how things are done in this new Trump-led, Republican-controlled Washington.
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RON JOHNSON: We need a change here in terms of how Congress operates. This has been grotesquely dysfunctional. We have to return some function to this.
DAVIS: That's Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson, who backed one of Thune's opponents in the leaders' race and who's advocating for swift Senate approval of all of Trump's nominees. Johnson's also an enthusiastic supporter of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a divisive figure in the 2024 campaign and now Trump's pick for Health and Human Services secretary.
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JOHNSON: I think Bobby Kennedy can do more to - you know, working with President Trump to advance America's health than anybody really in history.
THUNE: Thune will have to balance that kind of all-in MAGA enthusiasm with party centrists like Maine's Susan Collins, a critical swing vote and moderating force. Senators like her are already throwing up roadblocks to Trump nominees like former Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, who Trump tapped to serve as attorney general, despite a short legal resume and a long list of provocations and scandals. Collins told reporters she was shocked by the nomination.
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SUSAN COLLINS: Obviously, the president has the right to nominate whomever he wishes, but this is why the Senate's advice and consent process is so important.
DAVIS: Trump is already pressuring Thune to consider allowing recess appointments to quickly approve his cabinet. Thune has not ruled it out, but that would require the majority leader to willfully cede the Senate's constitutional prerogative to confirm or reject a president's cabinet in favor of loyalty to the President.
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THUNE: We're going to look at - explore all options to make sure that they get moved and that they get moved quickly.
DAVIS: Thune might find relationships across the aisle easier to manage for now. Affable and well-liked, his elevation to leader was largely cheered by Senate Democrats like Mark Warner of Virginia.
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MARK WARNER: He's going to have a role as a partisan leader, but I think he's a very decent guy.
DAVIS: Democrats are clear-eyed by the pressures Thune will face to change things like the legislative filibuster - one of the last firewalls in Washington that allows the Senate minority to put the brakes on legislation. Thune offered an unequivocal yes when asked this week if he will protect the filibuster, like Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell did before him. Democrats tried and failed to scrap it during the Biden administration. And Democrats like Pennsylvania's John Fetterman noted that Trump has advocated for scrapping it in the past and likely will again, if the filibuster is the only thing stopping his legislative agenda from becoming law.
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JOHN FETTERMAN: I would be surprised if Trump immediately doesn't call for that. It's like, that's got to go.
DAVIS: But Thune, like McConnell before him, sees himself as an institutionalist. Philip Wallach, a congressional scholar at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, noted that Thune, who is 63, likely intends to serve past Trump's second term.
PHILIP WALLACH: So the Trump 2 presidency is an episode in his career, not the be-all and end-all for him.
DAVIS: And Thune says he wants to preserve the chamber's role and power in government.
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THUNE: We will do the job that the founders intended us to do in the United States Senate and that the American people intend us to do.
DAVIS: One early indication of Thune's quiet strength - he beat out Florida Senator Rick Scott for the leader job in a secret ballot, despite Scott's closer ties to Trump. In the first test of power in this Congress, the old-school institutionalist won out.
Susan Davis, NPR News, the Capitol.
(SOUNDBITE OF BEHANI SONG, "COMFORTABLE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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