Senate Majority Leader John Thune Riding High, for Now, Amid Cabinet Confirmation Spree

‘He’s definitely honored his promise to us that it’s going to be a far more collaborative conference,’ Senator Ron Johnson said.

M inutes before stepping on the Senate floor last Thursday to vote in favor of confirming Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, Senators Mike Lee (R., Utah) and Markwayne Mullin (R., Okla.) joined conservative podcaster and YouTuber Benny Johnson to talk shop on the cabinet confirmation process.

For Mullin, the swift speed of this year’s process largely comes down to one man: newly elected Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.). “A lot of people — that may even be listening to your show — [were] going to say he was Mitch 2.0,” Mullin said in reference to former Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), who announced the same day he will not seek an eighth term in 2026. “Yes!” Benny Johnson interjected. “I think he’s proven himself that he’s not Mitch 2.0,” Mullin said as Senator Lee nodded in agreement.

Shortly after winning a contested leadership race to succeed McConnell, Thune scheduled ten straight weeks of session, threatening weekend votes if Democrats obstructed the process. “Almost his very first floor speech, he said: ‘We can do this the hard way, or we can do this the easy way,” added Mullin, a longtime friend of Thune. From the minute President Donald Trump was confirmed, he continued, Senate Republicans have “had the clock going nonstop on confirmations.”

The Senate GOP’s robust floor schedule has indeed paid immense dividends for Thune at the start of his leadership term. Recent interviews with Senate Republicans suggest the South Dakotan leader enjoys high marks among his colleagues for now, with broad factions of the conference agreeing that he is a listening leader who is far more collaborative than his predecessor.

“He’s doing an amazing job. Of course, I have no frame of reference because I’m new,” Bernie Moreno, a freshman GOP senator from Ohio, said. But he suggested that “it’s night and day from the noise I heard from some of my colleagues that didn’t love the way this worked” under McConnell’s leadership. “I don’t know if they were right or wrong, but you heard a lot of noise, and that noise is almost virtually gone.”

As of last week, Senate Republicans have already confirmed 18 of Trump’s cabinet picks, marking the fastest confirmation pace for an incoming administration since George W. Bush in 2001.

“If you remember the handwringing about a month ago of people saying, ‘Oh, you’re not going to get every nominee, all these controversial picks, blah blah blah,’” Moreno recalled. Now, a month into the administration, “We’ve got almost the entire cabinet confirmed.” There are four outstanding nominees who are on track for confirmation in the coming days: Education Secretary-designate Linda McMahon, Labor Secretary-designate Lori Chavez-DeRemer, U.S. Trade Representative-designate Jamieson Greer, and Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick to serve as U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

Senate Republicans’ success in confirming Trump’s nominees — especially unconventional picks such as Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — has paid major dividends for Thune, who spent the months leading up to November’s Senate GOP leadership race repairing his relationship with Trump.

The former Senate GOP whip kicked off Trump’s first term by keeping expectations low on the cabinet confirmation front, opting against promising that any cabinet pick was guaranteed Senate confirmation while quietly engaging in crucial conversations with on-the-fence GOP senators behind the scenes. This expectations-setting tactic helped the famously genial and plainspoken leader from the Great Plains over-deliver when all three of Trump’s most controversial nominees got over the finish line.

“I don’t over-promise,” Thune told Semafor in January of his relationship with Trump, whom he criticized and declined to endorse in the 2024 GOP presidential primary (he supported his friend and former GOP presidential candidate Tim Scott (R., S.C.) instead). “And I like to keep expectations realistic. And I like to be straight with people.”

GOP senators and staffers say Thune’s collaborative leadership style was on display when the conference was ginning up support for the Laken Riley Act, legislation that requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain illegal immigrants accused of theft or violent crimes. In the weeks leading up to that vote, Thune empowered the bill’s co-sponsors, Senators Katie Britt (R., Ala.) and Ted Budd (R., N.C.), to lead the messaging strategy on the Senate floor and in news conferences. This marked a clear break from the style of his predecessor, McConnell, who spent his final years in leadership tightly controlling the floor process.

And yet those who like Thune’s leadership style thus far acknowledge that the honeymoon could come to an end when the legislative calendar heats up. “He’s definitely honored his promise to us that it’s going to be a far more collaborative conference,” said Ron Johnson (R., Wis.), a longtime critic of McConnell who supported Rick Scott’s leadership challenge in 2022.

“We’ve been primarily focusing on confirmations, so we haven’t really got heavily into legislation yet,” added Johnson, the Wisconsin senator. “We’ll see what happens on this reconciliation bill. But he’s definitely been far more collaborative, and I really appreciate that relationship.”

With every leader, chaos and pushback are inevitable. Cracks emerged last week, when Trump issued a fresh endorsement of House Republicans’ budget framework and reconciliation strategy, throwing a wrench in Senate Republicans’ own strategy and catching Thune by surprise. “Did not see that one coming,” the South Dakotan said in reaction to Trump’s social media post endorsing the House strategy.

Vice President JD Vance encouraged Senate Republicans in a private luncheon last week to barrel ahead with their own two-track reconciliation strategy as a fallback option, prompting Senate GOP leaders to hold a successful budget amendment vote last week. But earlier in that week, not every Senate Republican was thrilled by Senate GOP leadership’s decision to pursue a separate budget reconciliation process that differs from the Trump-preferred approach.

“I’m just a little baffled as to what we’re doing, to be honest with you,” Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) told reporters Wednesday, telling NR: “I hope that they’re on the same page as the White House. . . . It doesn’t sound like they are, but I’m not in those discussions.”

The continuing legislative standoff between House and Senate leaders over how to prioritize Trump’s agenda will indeed serve as a major test for Thune, who is learning every day how to work alongside a fractious House GOP majority and an unpredictable president with a track record of impatience with arcane Senate rules like the filibuster. An institutionalist at heart, Thune has pledged under his tenure to preserve the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for passing legislation, and has said he will oppose any efforts to overrule the Senate parliamentarian as the reconciliation process kicks off in earnest.

While he faces a tough road ahead, his GOP colleagues say he’s riding high for now.

“He showed a willingness to go out there and force the five-day-a-week issue, which has made us more productive,” Senator Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) told NR last week of the leader’s decision to keep the Senate in session on Fridays. “He’s going to probably do some things different in a positive way, he’s going to do some things where he’ll probably be instructed by Leader McConnell’s style,” said the longtime McConnell ally, “which I think was very well-regarded.”

North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer joked that maybe by the time Thune turns 104 years old he’ll be “worn out and won’t listen to us anymore.” But for now, Cramer said, Thune’s calm demeanor is striking. “Every day, every time he gets up and talks, I’m like, God, I’m glad he’s our leader,” the North Dakota senator told reporters last week. “You’re hearing this from a lot of people, including people who didn’t vote for him,” Cramer said.

“The biggest thing is how well he listens to people, how attentive he is to individual voices in the conference.”