Trump and GOP lawmakers head toward tense negotiations over priorities | The Excerpt
Trump and GOP lawmakers head toward tense negotiations over priorities | The Excerpt
Dana Taylor, USA TODAYWed, June 24, 2026 at 1:25 PM UTC
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Trump and GOP lawmakers head toward tense negotiations over priorities | The Excerpt
On the Wednesday, June 24, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast: President Donald Trump is testing his own party's patience on Capitol Hill. Will they be able to find common ground while they still have the power to execute on Trump's agenda? USA TODAY Congressional Reporter Zach Schermele joins The Excerpt now to explain why Senate Republicans are scrambling and what it could mean for the party heading into the midterms.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
President Donald Trump is testing his own party's patience on Capitol Hill. Last week, he told Senate Republicans to cancel a major confirmation hearing complicating their effort to renew a key anti-terrorism law and adding to a growing list of frustrations for GOP lawmakers. Trump's approach has some Republicans warning that the President is undermining the very results he wants. Will they be able to find common ground while they still have the power to execute on Trump's agenda? Hello and welcome to USA TODAY's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, June 24th, 2026. USA Today Congressional Reporter Zach Schermele joins me now to explain why Senate Republicans are scrambling and what it could mean for the party heading into the midterms. Zach, thank you so much for being here.
Zach Schermele:
Thanks for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Zach, I know there's a big meeting planned on the Hill today with Trump. Let's start there. Who's going to be at the table and what do we know so far?
Zach Schermele:
Well, Senator Rick Scott, a Florida Republican invited the president to this meeting, this major tete-a-tete between Senate Republicans and the president after weeks of, I think it's fair to say, simmering frustrations between some of the more moderate sects of the conference and some of the folks who are more aligned with the president on some of his stated priorities.
It's going to be interesting to see the degree to which some of these tensions boil over and whether or not lawmakers who are not as optimistic about being able to pass some of the president's priorities, things like nuking the Senate's filibuster, that 60-vote threshold that has long been a big part of the upper chamber's procedures, firing the Senate parliamentarian, a nonpartisan ruleskeeper, as well as a number of other things passing the Save America Act, which is a voting restrictions bill that the president has acknowledged is very important to him. We're going to have to see whether or not some of those more moderate members of the Senate GOP Conference are able to convince the president of what Senate Majority Leader John Thune has called hard realities that there just aren't the votes to pass those things.
Dana Taylor:
Let's backtrack just a bit here. Catch us up on what happened while Trump was in France for the G7 Summit. There were some major upsets to the Senate's plans. What happened?
Zach Schermele:
Yeah. Well, the President was across the globe, but he threw what I called a logistical bomb into Senate Republican's plans and the Senate's plans more broadly when he announced that he wanted the Senate to drop prioritizing Jay Clayton, who is going to be his permanent nominee to be the nation's next top spy chief replacing Tulsi Gabbard to head the office, the Director of National Intelligence. And he said he wanted the Senate to instead prioritize a different nominee to replace Clayton as a U.S. attorney in Manhattan. And that really just threw a wrench in the Senate's plans. And I think often about something that Senate Majority Leader John Thune says a lot, which is that in the Senate and in Congress generally, the coin of the realm is floor time.
So we only have a matter of weeks now between now and November's midterm elections that could wrest Congress from full GOP control and really make it so that the rest of President Trump's legislative agenda is stalled for the remainder of his term. And so making a move like that that throws the logistics of the Capitol into tatters is something that I think Senate Republicans have been consistently frustrated with this president by he's never really fully understood or appreciated the machinations of Congress, at least relative to his predecessors in the Oval Office. And that is causing problems and rifts between him and Senate Republicans.
Dana Taylor:
And Zach, because the DNI confirmation hearing didn't happen, a critical piece of legislation that needed to be renewed wasn't. Can you tell me about that and are Americans actually less safe right now?
Zach Schermele:
So this is complicated, but it really does matter. And I think it's important that our listeners take stock of what actually is going on here with this critical government surveillance law called Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Basically what it does is it allows for the US government to collect surveillance on foreigners, communications, texts, emails, things like that. And it helps to keep Americans safe according to proponents of the law in Congress. It helped according to several lawmakers and government officials to prevent a terrorist attack on a Taylor Swift concert, for example, a couple of years ago. And because of all this back and forth in Congress right now and some of the more broader controversial aspects of the law, which many lawmakers have acknowledged needs reform and critics say that it allows the government to unfairly spy on Americans, that law has lapsed.
It wasn't renewed. And because of that, lawmakers say that there are some really critical national security implications and that American safety could be at risk. Now it's important to acknowledge that the certifications that allow for these warrantless surveillance certifications to go on, they're authorized by special courts. And so there's a little bit of a debate going on right now about the degree to which Americans' safety is going to be in danger depending on how these secretive courts rule about extending or renewing other certifications. So we're going to have to see, but the bigger picture here is that there's a critical mass of lawmakers on Capitol Hill who say that not renewing this authority, which by the way, makes up the majority of the president's daily intelligence briefing, that that is putting the safety of Americans at risk at a critical time before a lot of major events are happening this summer.
Dana Taylor:
You touched on this, Zach. Trump wants the Senate to pass the Save America Act and move his nominees forward, but Senate majority leader John Thune has to deal with the votes he actually has, not the ones he wishes he had. Where is Trump's pressure campaign running into the limits of Senate math?
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Zach Schermele:
You have these more moderate members in the Senate GOP conference that just aren't on board in the same way as others. People like Mike Lee, Republican Senator of Utah are very passionate about wanting to pass the Save America Act and wanting to get it passed before the general midterm elections in November. And it's part of a number of legislative priorities that the president has just repeatedly laid out, particularly on social media that folks in the Senate and the Senate Republican Conference are not supportive of. And I think it's possible that if Republicans tried to retool this priority for the President, this is something they could bring up with him at the lunch and they could say, "Democrats are supportive of voter ID laws." Just a simple reform that people like Chuck Schumer have said they could get behind. Senate Republicans could actually pass something like that a much more watered down version of the Save America Act and that could pass potentially, but that's not something that the President has indicated up until now that he is open to.
Dana Taylor:
Thune responded to Trump's demands by saying the President has his own mind but added, "So do we." Zach, is that a sign Senate Republicans are trying to draw a line with the President?
Zach Schermele:
Leader Thune has a really difficult job. There are a number of lawmakers in the Senate GOP conference. They do not fall along the same ideological spectrum. There are people who have really wildly differing views and lawmakers that are facing key election races in November that have to think about how they're going to appeal to their more moderate base or people who've just always been a little bit more moderate relative to other Senate Republicans.
And Leader Thune is one of those leaders in Congress who prides his management style on hearing from everyone, taking into account everyone and not trying to bulldoze his members in any way, listening to them, taking into account their views on particular subjects, pushing to the degree that he can, and then going to the White House and saying, "Listen, this is the math. This is the arithmetic." as he's put it several times that I am working with and these are the realities. And President Trump is someone who doesn't like hearing no, especially from folks on Capitol Hill about priorities that he has, but Thune has just continued to repeat this point over and over and over again that the votes aren't there to pass the Save Act in its current form.
Dana Taylor:
Aside from the Save America Act and FISA, there are also major bipartisan priorities on the table. These include everything from farming to highway funding. How much harder is Trump's approach making it for Congress to move on these other issues?
Zach Schermele:
I mean, you think about the FISA debacle and the Senate lost arguably a week in terms of floor time that could have been used to move some other things. I say things like this and leaders in Congress often respond with and members themselves. They'll say, "We can walk and chew gum at the same time." But I think that it's pretty evident every day up here on Capitol Hill that when there are big controversial issues that are sucking up all of the oxygen here, that really it detracts from some of the other priorities that legislative leaders have. That being said, the Senate passed bipartisan housing affordability bill that's going to try and keep Wall Street landlords out of home buying or particular forms of home buying. And a lot of lawmakers, but Republicans and Democrats have said that that is a big win going into an election year and you're going to hear a lot of candidates, particularly incumbent candidates trying to tout that win.
But there are a number of other things that Leader Thune and others have said that they want to check off the calendar heading into the midterms after which the makeup of Congress and what it's able to do over the rest of President Trump's second term could be a lot different, but they're trying to pass a highway bill, they're trying to pass a farm bill, they're trying to get through the rest of the appropriations process, which is really the bread and butter of what Congress has to do every year. And they've already said that talks there have broke down. So when you have these other big controversial issues that are taking up a lot of lawmakers' time, that certainly doesn't help them focus on those other more bipartisan priorities.
Dana Taylor:
Looking ahead, is this just a messy stretch for Senate Republicans or could this become a bigger governing problem for the party?
Zach Schermele:
I'm going to really be fascinated to see what lawmakers are saying coming out of this meeting with the president. He has struggled, as I said, throughout the course of his first term and in his second to just personally really care and take stock of the ways in which the sausage making process works on Capitol Hill relative to other presidents. And that has had some pretty major implications in terms of him being able to get pretty big legislative accomplishments across the finish line. But I think part of the reality here is that the president already passed one major piece of legislation and that was the so called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, what Republicans have now called the Working Families Tax Cuts Act last year and that is probably going to make up the bulk of what Republican lawmakers are selling to their constituents during the November elections and leading up to the elections.
But I think also something that all of this is indicative of is that Congress over the course of the last year has really struggled with the basics of legislating and governing. We have seen several record-breaking government shutdowns. We have seen the appropriations process breakdown several times. Congress is struggling to reauthorize this key government surveillance law that has not lapsed before in history. These are the basics of what Capitol Hill has to get done. So if they're struggling with that now, I think that raises major questions about what Congress could potentially get done over the course of the next couple of years if Democrats take control of either chamber. And I think more importantly, what crises we could see if President Trump is contending with leadership in Congress that's going to be a lot less friendly to him.
Dana Taylor:
Zach Schermele is a congressional reporter for USA Today. Zach, it's always good to speak with you.
Zach Schermele:
Thanks so much.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks for listening to USA TODAY's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. If The Excerpt helps you start your day tap follow or subscribe so it's here every weekday morning.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump presses his agenda; Congress pushes back | The Excerpt
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