Thune stalling Trump's Agenda

John Thune Sends Senate Home for 37 Days, Schedules 11 Sessions to Block Recess Appointments

The Senate is heading into a 37-day recess. But the chamber will not simply close its doors and stay away from Washington.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has scheduled 11 pro forma sessions during the break. These brief sessions are expected to involve no votes, debates, or meaningful legislative work. Instead, a lone senator periodically opens the chamber, gavels in, and gavels out.

The Senate had its first session on Monday, August 10, at 10 a.m. Regular Senate business is set to resume on September 14.

The schedule includes the following pro forma sessions:

Monday, August 10, at 10:00 a.m.
Thursday, August 13, at 8:00 a.m.
Monday, August 17, at 1:30 p.m.
Thursday, August 20, at 11:30 a.m.
Monday, August 24, at 12:30 p.m.
Thursday, August 27, at 8:00 a.m.
Monday, August 31, at 11:30 a.m.
Tuesday, September 1, at 12:30 p.m.
Friday, September 4, at 10:00 a.m.
Tuesday, September 8, at 1:15 p.m.
Thursday, September 10, at 3:00 p.m.

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The dates were confirmed by the official Senate floor schedule. On paper, the Senate is in recess. Procedurally, however, these brief meetings keep the chamber technically available to conduct business. Political parties use these brief meetings to stop the president from making temporary "recess appointments" to federal offices or judicial seats while Congress is away.

In other words, it's all bull and Trump views pro-forma blocks as a maneuver by the "swamp" to stall his agenda.

Senate Sanctons Russia and Iran

Senate Passes Bill to Impose New Sanctions on Russia and Iran

The bill must next go to a vote in the House of Representatives before the president can sign it into action.

The Senate on Aug. 7 overwhelmingly passed a bill to impose new sanctions against Russia and Iran.

In an 86–11 vote, the Senate passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act of 2026. The bill still needs to pass a vote in the House of Representatives before it can go to President Donald Trump for his signature.

The late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who died on July 11, had sponsored legislation to raise economic sanctions on Russia, as punishment for the ongoing war in Ukraine. The bill was revised and renamed in Graham’s honor following his death.

[The Epoch times]

Murkowski and Collins voted "no" on Todd Blanche

UPDATE: Last night, Todd Blanche was confirmed

Anti-Trumpers - RINOS

Murkowski announces opposition to Todd Blanche for attorney general, leaving confirmation on a razor's edge

Sen. Lisa Murkowski declared she will vote against confirming Todd Blanche as attorney general, joining Sen. Susan Collins and putting the nomination's fate in the hands of a single undecided Republican.

Murkowski, the Alaska Republican, posted her decision on X, acknowledging that Blanche had impressed her personally and made solid decisions as acting attorney general, then listing a series of concerns she said made confirmation impossible.

She praised his willingness to visit Alaska's rural communities and called him "decent and capable," but said the Justice Department's trajectory under the current administration left her without confidence that Blanche would serve as an independent check on executive power.

Her opposition lands at the worst possible moment for the White House. Collins, the Maine Republican, had already announced her own "no" vote. Sen. Mitch McConnell remains absent from the Senate.

NBC News reported that a third Republican defection would be enough to sink the nomination outright, given that Democrats are expected to vote as a bloc against Blanche.

Read about it...

CDC Director confirmed by Senate

Senate Confirms Trump Pick for CDC Director

Dr. Erica Schwartz will become the top official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Senate on Aug. 5 confirmed President Donald Trump’s latest nominee for director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC, a public health agency that aims to protect Americans from diseases, has about 12,000 employees.

Fifty-one senators voted to confirm Dr. Erica Schwartz to the position, compared to 43 who voted no.

All the yes votes came from Republicans apart from Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). All the no votes came from Democrats or Independents who caucus with Democrats. Six senators, including Sens. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), missed the vote.

Schwartz will become the second person Trump has nominated to serve as director of the CDC.

Read about Dr. Schwartz

Senate Resolution: Ghislane Maxwell will not get a pardon

Senate votes unanimously to oppose any pardon for convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell

Every senator on the floor backed a resolution opposing clemency for Ghislaine Maxwell, a rare bipartisan rebuke aimed squarely at the possibility that the convicted sex trafficker could walk free.

Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Nevada Democrat, brought the non-binding resolution to the Senate floor on Wednesday, and not a single senator objected. The measure passed by unanimous consent, putting the full chamber on record against any presidential pardon, commutation, or other form of executive clemency for Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.

The timing was deliberate. Rosen introduced the resolution one day before the Senate Judiciary Committee was scheduled to advance the nomination of Todd Blanche, the acting Attorney General whom President Trump has tapped to remain in the role permanently.

Blanche interviewed Maxwell for two days last summer and produced written testimony in which Maxwell stated she had never seen Trump engage in improper conduct.

Bipartisan agreement in the Senate is rare enough to be newsworthy on its own. Cross-party votes on resolutions tend to happen only when the alternative, being seen as the lone holdout, carries more risk than the vote itself.

On the question of pardoning a woman who helped traffic children, that calculation was apparently simple enough for every senator in the chamber.

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"Dear Diary" Fifth Amendment

Dr. Fauci Hearing Drama

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. jumped into the Anthony Fauci hearing drama with a short message and a meme that quickly got attention online.

Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and one of the most visible faces of the federal COVID response, appeared Wednesday morning under subpoena before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The hearing was titled “Testimony of Anthony Fauci” and was scheduled for 8:30 a.m. ET on July 29 in Room SD-342 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, according to the committee notice cited in the report.

Sen. Rand Paul has been one of Fauci’s fiercest critics for years. The hearing followed Paul’s release of what has been described as Fauci’s “Diary Package” over the weekend. Critics say the material shows Fauci’s concern with his public image during the pandemic era.

Once the hearing began, Fauci reportedly refused to answer questions and invoked the Fifth Amendment. That move immediately fueled fresh criticism from conservatives who have long argued that Fauci has never been fully held accountable for his role in COVID policy, government messaging, and the broader pandemic response.

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Bernie Moreno's testimony--

Rand Paul kicked out Fauci's attorney from Senate hearing

Capitol Police Remove Fauci Lawyer from Senate Hearing

Capitol Police escorted Dr. Anthony Fauci’s attorney out of a fiery Senate hearing Wednesday after Sen. Rand Paul accused him of repeatedly disrupting the proceedings.

The dramatic removal came as Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times and faced warnings that Congress could pursue contempt charges over his refusal to answer questions.

Defense attorney David Schertler sat beside Fauci throughout the nearly four-hour Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing. Schertler repeatedly attempted to intervene after Paul warned that Fauci could face consequences for refusing to testify.

Paul told the attorney several times that he was not authorized to speak during the hearing. When Schertler continued addressing the committee, Paul ordered Capitol Police to remove him.

“Security, please remove him from the room,” the Kentucky Republican declared.

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Senate about to take a 5 week break

We Have Until August 6th to Pass the SAVE America Act

Break from what?

President Donald Trump on Monday called on the U.S. Senate to cancel its five-week August break, keeping lawmakers in session to advance several of his priorities, despite not having the votes.

Trump wrote in a social media post that he wanted Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to keep the chamber open, preventing vulnerable Republicans facing reelection from the campaign trail, to pass a voter identification bill, among other measures.

“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, including a full and deep throated SAVE AMERICA ACT, the Budget, and the ever looming Debt Ceiling disaster, 1929!” Trump wrote. “The Dumocrats will do it on day one, and can’t believe how lucky they got with this Senate leadership.

Remember, stupidity always brings LOSING & DEATH!”

Trump followed up with another post about 15 minutes later, writing that whichever political party eliminates the rule that requires at least 60 senators vote to limit debate, known as the legislative filibuster, will hold an advantage in the Senate.

Read about it...

Cancel Senate August break and pass the Save Act

Trump demands Senate cancel August break until it passes stalled voting bill

President Donald Trump on Monday demanded that Senate Majority Leader John Thune cancel the chamber’s upcoming August break until senators pass a strict proof-of-citizenship voting bill, even as Republicans lack the votes to advance it.

Trump has repeatedly urged Thune to scrap the legislative filibuster, which effectively sets a 60-vote threshold for most legislation in the 100-member Senate, or find another workaround to pass the voting bill, known as the SAVE America Act.

But Republicans hold only a 53-47 majority, and Thune has consistently said they don’t have the votes to pass the bill or change the rules to get around the filibuster.

“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,” Trump wrote on social media.

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John Thune

Karoline Leavitt Returned in Full Force and John Thune Is Not Happy About Getting Taken to the Woodshed

Leavitt Confirms What Trump Voters Already Suspected

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stood behind the podium Thursday and delivered a line eight months of Senate inaction had been building toward.

"His patience is running out," Leavitt told reporters. She said Trump wants the SAVE America Act – the citizenship and voter ID law that would end the Democrat cheating machine for good – passed before the August recess.

The House has already done its job, passing versions of the bill more than once this year. The Senate has done nothing but stall.

Leavitt made the obvious point that Trump voters put Republicans in charge of both chambers of Congress, not just the Oval Office.

That is not a talking point.

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Socialist Troy Jackson

Democrats Pick Troy Jackson to Challenge Sen. Collins in Maine Senate Race

Jackson, a former state Senate president, is the Democrats’ replacement nominee after Graham Platner dropped out following sexual assault allegations.

He has been a registered Republican, Independent and now a Democrat. 

Despite being a progressive Democrat, Jackson began his political career as a Republican. Following the blockade, he unsuccessfully ran in 2000 as a Republican for the Maine House of Representatives. At the time, he was opposed to abortion, a position he has since reversed.

Jackson ran again in 2002, this time as an Independent, and won, beating the candidate he lost to two years prior. He changed his affiliation to Democrat in 2004 and has remained in the party since.

Jackson served as a delegate at the 2016 Democratic National Convention and was part of a small number of delegates who voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who lost to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton went on to lose the election to President Donald Trump.

Jackson unsuccessfully ran for governor this year, losing to Hannah Pingree

Epoch times

Powerful speech by Senator Sheehy

United States Naval academy graduate and U.S. Senator Tim Sheehy spoke on the U.S. Senate floor casting his vote against the Iran War Powers Resolution.

The Senate voted 47–49, failing to advance a legally binding joint resolution sponsored by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). Senator John Fetterman (D-Pa.) was the sole Democrat to vote against it, while Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) voted with Democrats. Key Republicans like Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) were absent or voted present, preventing the measure from clearing the chamber.

Iran War Powers Resolution

Senate reverses course on Iran war powers resolution after Trump rallies Republican holdouts

The U.S. Senate handed President Trump a clear win late Wednesday, rejecting a Democratic war powers resolution that would have directed him to withdraw American forces from hostilities with Iran unless Congress authorized the mission.

The procedural motion failed 47-50-1, a sharp reversal from just one day earlier, when four Republican senators had defected to help pass a nearly identical measure.

The turnaround came after Trump met with GOP senators in a closed-door session that multiple outlets described as heated. Within hours, two key Republican holdouts, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, changed their positions, collapsing the bipartisan coalition that had briefly embarrassed the White House.

The result killed Sen. Tim Kaine's resolution, which would have ordered Trump to "remove the United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against Iran" without congressional authorization.

Had it cleared both chambers, Trump would have needed to veto it. Instead, the measure never got that far.

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A Senate Report no one will touch

Fox News and legacy media refuse to publish Ron Johnson's op-ed on COVID vaccine safety findings

Sen. Ron Johnson says every major media outlet in the country, including Fox News, either declined or ignored his request to publish an op-ed laying out what a Senate investigation found about federal officials allegedly concealing COVID-19 vaccine safety signals. So the Wisconsin Republican posted it himself.

Johnson self-published the piece on his X account and his Senate website on June 18, titling it "The story the media, and the government, don't want you to hear." The op-ed draws on a Majority Staff Interim Report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which Johnson chairs, dated April 29, 2026.

That report, as the Daily Caller News Foundation reported, details how Biden-era health officials allegedly "purposely turned a blind eye toward COVID-19 vaccine safety signals."

The senator named names, not just the left-leaning outlets you'd expect, but Fox Digital and The Wall Street Journal alongside The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA TODAY. All five, Johnson stated, "declined or ignored requests to publish this op-ed."

The subcommittee's interim report centers on the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, the FDA division responsible for approving vaccines and monitoring their safety after they reach the public. 

Johnson alleges the CBER team received data "for over three months" pointing to dangers associated with COVID-19 vaccines, and that officials shut the analysis down.

His account is specific. Johnson claims Peter Marks, the former CBER director, was briefed that an algorithm used to analyze Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System data would "mask" or cover up adverse events.

When a data analyst flagged the problem, Johnson alleges, officials "ordered the data analyst to 'cease and desist' and then lied to the American public that 'they weren't seeing safety signals.'"

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Senate Parliamentarian

John Thune Told Trump No and Now the SAVE America Act Is Dead in the Senate

Democrats have been stealing elections for years – and Republicans finally had a bill to stop it.

Now one Senate Republican is standing between Trump and the only law that could fix it.

Thune just went on Fox Business and told the country why proving you're a citizen before you vote will never become law – and he aimed the blame everywhere except the mirror.

Elizabeth MacDonough has been the Senate parliamentarian since 2012 – appointed by Harry Reid, kept in place by Mitch McConnell, and still ruling against Republicans today.

Trump called her a "Radical Left Lunatic" this week and posted on Truth Social demanding Thune fire her immediately.

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

He's not wrong.

MacDonough spent the past year picking apart Trump's agenda piece by piece.

Read more about it...

Platner calls Fetterman an A-hole

Maine Democratic Senate candidate calls Fetterman a profanity at town hall as party infighting escalates

Graham Platner, the progressive Democrat in Maine's Senate primary, stood before supporters in Portland on Sunday night and called Sen. John Fetterman "an a**hole", out loud, on camera, two days before voters headed to the polls.

The remark, delivered in response to a supporter's question about whom Platner would work with in Washington if elected, captured the raw state of a Democratic Party increasingly at war with itself. Platner wasn't talking about a Republican. He was talking about a fellow Democrat, one who has spent recent weeks publicly challenging Platner's fitness for office.

The exchange is the latest in a feud that has grown personal, profane, and impossible for Democratic leaders to ignore.

What Platner said, and why--

At the town hall in southern Maine, a supporter asked Platner which senators he looked forward to working with in Washington. Platner framed the Senate as a place built on relationships and said he didn't want to go to the capital and "simply be nonfunctional."

Then he went further.

"I mean, as you can all probably tell, we got a lot of criticisms about the way this government functions. But in order for us to make it functional, we're going to have to do stuff. And you can't just go down there and be John Fetterman and just and just kind of just sort of be an a**hole."

Read more about Mr. Charming

Republican bill moves forward

Senate Republicans advance $72 billion immigration bill after scrapping White House ballroom funds

Senate Republicans voted Wednesday to move forward with a massive reconciliation package funding the Department of Homeland Security's immigration agencies, clearing a key procedural hurdle on a 53-to-46 party-line vote after weeks of intraparty friction over a controversial Justice Department fund and a billion-dollar Secret Service line item that included money for a White House ballroom renovation.

The vote sets up a marathon amendment session, the dreaded "vote-a-rama", that could stretch into Thursday, with Democrats vowing to force Republicans into difficult votes on the DOJ fund and other provisions they oppose.

But the real story is what Republicans had to strip out of the bill to get here, and what remains unresolved even after the acting attorney general told Congress the disputed fund is dead.

A revised version of one section of the package, released Wednesday, dropped language that would have provided $1 billion in security funding for the Secret Service. That line item had drawn scrutiny because it included money for President Trump's planned East Wing renovation, where he intends to build a large ballroom.

The original $72 billion package, unveiled last month by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, funds DHS immigration agencies through fiscal year 2029. Republicans have moved it through the budget reconciliation process, which sidesteps the 60-vote threshold required to advance most legislation in the Senate.

That procedural path is the only realistic route for a Republican-only bill in a chamber where Democrats have spent months opposing funding for immigration enforcement agencies.

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Ken Paxton wins by a Landslide

Cornyn wanting to be Senator for life told Paxton that 'Judgment day' was coming

It did yesterday. Paxton slaughtered him at the polls

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday cruised to victory in the high-profile Republican runoff for the U.S. Senate seat from Texas over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn.

Paxton was projected the winner by the Associated Press an hour after polls closed with 62.5% of the vote, compared to 37.5% with 45% of ballots counted.

Cornyn has been in office for 23 years and quickly conceded defeat alongside his family, reflecting on 40 years and 18 consecutive elections, now capping his career in public office.

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The Ball and Chain - 60 votes--breaking the Filibuster

Trump endorsed candidate in KY wins Primary

Andy Barr wins Kentucky GOP Senate primary

This sets up the November fight for McConnell's seat

Rep. Andy Barr fought his way through an 11-candidate Republican primary in Kentucky to claim the party's nomination for U.S. Senate, a victory that positions the seven-term congressman to replace the longest-serving Republican leader in Senate history.

The seat belongs to retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell. Come November, Barr will face a Democratic opponent for the right to fill it. And the man who helped clear his path through a bruising primary was President Donald Trump, whose late endorsement earlier this month reshaped a race that had no clear frontrunner.

The Kentucky Republican Senate primary drew one of the largest fields of any GOP contest in the country. Barr emerged from the pack, beating former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron and nine other candidates.

The win hands Trump an ally in a chamber where his legislative agenda, including the stalled SAVE America Act, has run into resistance from members of his own party.

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