By
Ed Kilgore,
political columnist for Intelligencer since 2015
Senate Majority Leader John Thune really wanted to adjourn the Senate for five weeks of heavy pre-midterms campaigning this past weekend, but his plan looked doomed as Donald Trump went into serial tantrums about the need to keep working to advance his 2026 agenda.
Trump wanted a vote on his toxic Save America Act, and his ally Mike Lee had riled up MAGA activists to demand it. He wanted a crypto-regulation bill his fellow profiteers in that industry had helped design. He wanted a budget resolution to set up another party-line bill like last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act and this year’s ICE funding extravaganza with this one focused on Pentagon funding, bribes for unhappy farmers, and a measure to encourage proof-of-citizenship rules for voter registration. And near the very end of the week, Trump also demanded immediate Senate action to enact a long-stalled college-sports bill that would put a lid on player compensation.
