EXCLUSIVE — The narrow passage on Tuesday of President Donald Trump’s signature tax bill is offering a window into how Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) will handle other high-stakes battles on the horizon.
The Senate GOP leader, now halfway through his first year on the job and celebrating the One Big Beautiful Bill Act clearing the upper chamber, will soon have to navigate more turbulent political waters ahead with his slim, three-seat majority.
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In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Thune laid out what he described as an inclusive “business model” for deal-making, in which he leaned on his committee chairs and stressed months of member input.
“In a collegial body like this, there’s just a ton of socialization and making sure you have buy-in,” Thune said on Sunday, waiting for a marathon voting session on the tax bill to get underway. “That’s the business model we’ve attempted to use on this, and we’ll see if this ends well.”
Thune knocked on the large wooden table before him for good luck, capturing the uncertainty and moments of high drama surrounding the bill’s passage.
“If it doesn’t, you can blow all this up,” he added.
What followed over the next two days was a megabill on the brink of collapse as Thune attempted to preserve a delicate compromise between centrists and his right flank. The measure, which finally passed with the help of Vice President JD Vance’s tiebreaking vote, faces additional hurdles in the House, as congressional Republicans race to approve the sprawling tax, energy, and border legislation by Trump’s July 4 deadline.
Already, Thune is facing other pressing, and likely divisive, matters Congress will have to address upon returning from a shortened July 4 recess. Those include approving Trump’s request to codify into law DOGE-inspired spending cuts and crafting a multitrillion-dollar annual budget before a government funding cliff at the end of September.
Thune also previewed that a Russia sanctions bill that enjoys broad bipartisan support could be brought to the floor in July.
Thune intends to lean heavily on what he described as a “regular order process,” part of a promise he made to his conference when he was elected majority leader at the end of last year. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), his predecessor, had for years operated with a top-down leadership style, and the tax legislation served as an early test of whether Thune could share in the decision-making.
He relied on two committee chairmen in particular — Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID), the top tax writer, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the budget chief — to usher the One Big Beautiful Bill Act through the Senate.
In negotiations with the House, Thune deputized Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), a liaison on the Senate whip team, to negotiate a deal on the state and local tax deduction.
“I’m very comfortable with delegating,” he said. “I don’t need to be at the center of everything.”
Trump’s mounting frustration with the GOP holdouts to his bill threw Thune one of his biggest curveballs since taking over in January. The abrupt retirement announcement from Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), one of the chamber’s centrists, came in the hours after facing Trump’s public wrath for opposing its Medicaid cuts.
Thune said he spent days hearing out Tillis’s legislative concerns, mentioning an early morning phone call and 30-minute meeting in the Senate cloakroom this past week, before counseling Tillis in a text exchange the night before his retirement announcement to give the decision more time.
“I think that, on some of those decisions where the president comes down — again, none of us have any control or input into, in most cases, what he’s going to say on social media. But I feel like [Tillis] has made some decisions on policy matters, personnel matters … that have sort of gotten him sideways with the White House,” Thune said. “In this environment, that’s a hard place to be.”
In the tax negotiations, it also took days to get Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who complained the process had been rushed to meet Trump’s July 4 deadline, comfortable with a “yes” vote and ease the concerns of budget hawks who felt the spending cuts did not go far enough. Over the last week, Thune held rolling meetings in his office and on the Senate floor to figure out a delicate compromise.
His buy-in leadership style has carried Republicans through a number of early flashpoints in the Senate. Thune also pointed to the “inventive solution” he and his team orchestrated in May to undo California’s de facto ban on new gas-powered cars.
All Senate Republicans backed the repeal, but it took assuaging several senators concerned that the vote would be a precedent-setting move to overrule the Senate parliamentarian. Instead, Republicans took an indirect procedural vote that sidestepped the parliamentarian and affirmed their ability to undo the ban.
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With this year’s appropriations fight, Thune acknowledged the 12 annual bills may have to be ushered through the Senate in “three packs or four packs” but said he hopes to open them up for a somewhat “regular” order process that includes amendment votes.
“I really feel like, for the most part at least, the … feedback we get is people really appreciated the style that we brought and kind of the business model of how we get to an ultimate conclusion,” Thune said.