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Senate Republicans grow increasingly frustrated with Trump blindsiding them
WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump scrambles to wrap up his war with Iran, he’s escalating another one much closer to home, against members of his own party in Congress.
From the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit in France, Trump ordered the Senate on Wednesday to cancel an afternoon hearing for Jay Clayton, his nominee to be director of national intelligence, and threatened not to sign a reauthorization of a critical surveillance law unless the Senate passed a sweeping election bill that has already failed — repeatedly.
The hearing delay not only blindsided and frustrated Senate Republicans, but it also completely derailed Majority Leader John Thune’s carefully laid plans to fast-track the nomination in a bid to unlock Democratic votes for the now-expired spying program.
Asked why Trump would pull the rug out from under them, Thune, R-S.D., said, “Good question.”
The Clayton incident isn’t the first time in recent weeks Trump has made Thune’s life more difficult.
Asked whether Trump and Senate Republicans are on different pages, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, replied, “It may not be so much a different page, but he’s turning it ahead without telling us about it.”
The already fragile relationship is nearing a breaking point as Trump uses his clout to knock out senators in primaries, issue unachievable demands and repeatedly force the caucus into politically fraught positions. A number of Republican senators have expressed confusion, since his actions make it harder for them to push the White House’s own agenda forward.
“It’s undermining our ability to produce the very results he wants,” said retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. He called the Clayton postponement “a colossal mistake.”
GOP leaders pleaded with Trump to nominate a permanent national intelligence director after his acting pick, Bill Pulte, created a bipartisan firestorm on Capitol Hill over his lack of national security experience. Pulte is a close Trump ally and housing official who has pushed for mortgage fraud investigations into the president’s perceived enemies.
Once it became clear GOP leaders were looking to move Clayton’s nomination quickly — meaning Pulte would never step foot in the full-time role — Trump decided to throw a wrench into the process.
On Wednesday, after Trump instructed the Senate to stall his own nominee, some of his Republican allies said they’ve never seen anything like it before.
“No. I’ve only been in the Senate for 11 years, so no, I haven’t,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., who is running for re-election with Trump’s endorsement.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement: “The White House and President Trump have enjoyed working closely with Leader Thune and Senate Republicans to deliver on many important promises to the American people, including the largest tax cut for working Americans in history, and the Secure America Act that fully funds the President’s border security agenda. We look forward to continuing these close relationships and fulfilling President Trump’s priorities that Americans elected him to enact.”
Some rank-and-file Trump allies are trying to steer clear of the clashes.
“You could probably talk to other people around here. I don’t get caught up in, like, the palace intrigue,” Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., said when he was asked about Trump’s pushing to stall Clayton. “They tend to generally work themselves out.”
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., repeatedly declined to answer questions from reporters Wednesday but, in announcing he would postpone the Clayton hearing, called the delay “regrettable.”
Cotton’s Democratic counterpart on the committee, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said that “this is not a problem between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate,” placing the blame squarely on Trump.
“He threw a live hand grenade into this whole process,” Warner said.
It was just the latest instance in recent weeks of Trump’s timing disrupting his own agenda on Capitol Hill. His requests for $1 billion in ballroom security money delayed the ICE and Border Patrol funding bill. His administration’s announcement of a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund to compensate allies stalled it even further. And his choice of Pulte came days before the FISA Section 702 program expired, ending any hopes of a deal by last Friday’s deadline.
Adding to Republican frustration was Trump’s move to oust Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, with his endorsement of state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the primary. Not only is Cornyn well-liked among his colleagues, but GOP strategists also fear Paxton’s nomination will make it tougher to hold the seat this fall, boosting Democrats’ chances of winning control of the Senate.
“It’s not about sympathy; it’s about basically being able to function,” Cornyn said when he was asked whether he’s sympathetic to Thune’s situation. “I think part of the problem is not President Trump, it’s us making unrealistic promises, and then when they’re not attained, then criticizing one another.”
For Trump’s allies, the small slights are adding up. On Monday, when senators arrived at the Capitol for afternoon votes, they were flying blind in the face of questions about the emerging Iran deal. They weren’t given details, even as many of them have been asking to see the text of the memorandum of understanding. The White House sent them talking points later that evening, after they spent hours walking around the Capitol and addressing reporters.
Asked Wednesday early afternoon about the memorandum of understanding with Iran, Schmitt replied, “The MOU that no one’s seen?”
Even Thune appears to have been left in the dark.
“We haven’t seen anything yet, so there’s nothing really at this point to react to,” he told reporters of the memorandum of understanding Tuesday morning, though Trump had announced the 60-day ceasefire Sunday.
A senior U.S. official provided NBC News with a copy of the memorandum of understanding Wednesday, saying the U.S. originally held back on releasing the text at the request of Iran.
Much of the tension stems from Trump’s inability to secure his top legislative priority of passing the SAVE America Act, a sweeping election law to impose voting limits in every state. Democrats vehemently oppose it, ensuring it can’t get the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate. And most GOP senators are resolute in their opposition to abolishing the filibuster — another persistent Trump demand — seeing it as a long-term protector of conservative priorities.
Trump has also tried — and failed — to get Republicans to fire the parliamentarian, essentially the Senate’s referee, who has determined that the bill is ineligible for a simple-majority vote under Senate rules. And in a clear rebuke to Trump, his allies’ attempts to add it to the ICE and Border Patrol funding bill this month couldn’t even get 50 votes, losing four Republicans and failing 48-50.
“The only way you could get there is to undo or get rid of the legislative filibuster, and there aren’t even close to the votes here in the United States Senate in order to achieve that,” Thune told reporters this month of the SAVE America Act. “It’s not something that we’re going to be able to get done absent having an election, electing some more Republicans.”
Asked Wednesday about the Trump-Thune tensions, Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., said that Thune speaks for the Republican conference and that nobody is vying to replace him. She said Thune is right to candidly tell Trump the votes aren’t there to pass the election bill.
“He should be as frank as he’s being,” Lummis said. “My favorite saying: Tell the truth; it’s easier to remember.”
After the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act in late April, Republican lawmakers across the South scrambled to redraw their states’ congressional maps.
The court’s decision allowed Republicans, who hold supermajorities in legislatures across the South, to go after more Democratic-held House districts, extending a lengthy tit-for-tat redistricting battle with Democrats that had seemed at an end. While Republicans said they were focused only on partisan advantage, not race, the changes effectively targeted areas where Black voters form the majority.
The effort angered many Black Democrats, who accused conservatives of intentionally undermining their voting power in a region with a painful history of discrimination. Voting remains racially polarized in the South, so Black voters have historically backed Democrats.
Here’s a look at how Louisiana, Alabama and Tennessee broke up majority-Black districts. At least one other Southern state, Georgia, aims to follow suit before the 2028 election.
Louisiana
Louisiana’s former congressional map was at the center of the case before the Supreme Court, which declared the map an illegal racial gerrymander. The new map targeted the Sixth Congressional District, a fairly new majority-Black seat that included the capital, Baton Rouge.
About a third of voters in Louisiana are Black.
Black outlines indicate majority-Black districts.
Distribution of Black voters in …
How Black voters were redistributed in Louisiana
During the debate over redistricting, the president of the State Senate, Cameron Henry, a Republican, told reporters, “If you’re taking the variables in place, such as incumbency, such as party, into some of the factors, you don’t have a lot of options.”
Where more Black or white people live
Where Trump orHarris got more votes
Most of the changes center on Black — and mostly Democratic — voters who live around Baton Rouge. The district lines, however, largely preserve the New Orleans-area majority-Black seat held by Representative Troy Carter, a Black Democrat.
Alabama
After the Supreme Court ruling, Alabama asked the courts to allow the state to use a map that the legislature approved in 2023 but that was later rejected by a federal court. The Birmingham-based federal court had ordered Alabama to draw a map with a second majority-Black district or something “close to it.”
More than one in four Alabama residents are Black.
Black outlines indicate majority-Black districts.
Distribution of Black voters in …
How Alabama dissolved one of its two Black voting strongholds
An independent special master drew a new district that stretched from the capital, Montgomery, through the region known as the Black Belt for its rich, loamy soil, to Mobile, a coastal city.
Outside the South, “there’s not that history of racial animus and racial discrimination towards blocking or minimizing your vote,” said Representative Shomari Figures, a Black Democrat who won the new majority-Black seat in 2024 only to see it redrawn to favor Republicans in 2026.
Where more Black or white people live
Where Trump orHarris got more votes
Republicans said the 2023 map would ensure representation for the Gulf Coast region of the state because it did not split Mobile from the rest of Mobile County. This month, the Supreme Court said Alabama could use it.
That leaves the state with one majority-Black district, which includes the city of Selma. That seat is held by Representative Terri Sewell, a Black Democrat.
Tennessee
After the Supreme Court ruling, Tennessee was the first state to draft and approve a new congressional map that went after its one majority-Black seat, the Ninth Congressional District.
That district included the city of Memphis, where more than half of the state’s Black population lives. The new map split the Memphis area into three districts.
Black outlines indicate majority-Black districts.
Distribution of Black voters in …
How Tennessee broke up its only majority-Black district
The Ninth was one of the few majority-Black districts represented by a white lawmaker, Representative Steve Cohen. Mr. Cohen, a Democrat who had retained significant support among Black voters since his first election in 2006, said he would not seek re-election.
Where more Black or white people live
Where Trump orHarris got more votes
There is no longer a single majority-Black district in Tennessee.
Clayton will appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday for a confirmation hearing to be Director of National Intelligence. Above, Clayton testifies before the Senate Banking Committee during his confirmation hearing to be chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 23, 2017.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
President Trump says he is delaying the nomination of Jay Clayton to be the next director of national intelligence and disrupting approval of a surveillance tool at the center of the U.S. intelligence apparatus in order to pressure the Senate to advance another nominee and approve a long-stalled voting bill.
Trump’s attempt to derail the confirmation came as a surprise social media post in the middle of the night less than 12 hours before Clayton is scheduled to appear before a Senate committee. Trump issued his demands in a post just before 4 a.m. eastern on Truth Social. Trump is currently at the G7 Summit in France.
In the post, Trump said the plan to quickly approve Clayton was part of a deal with Democrats to derail his previous, temporary pick, Bill Pulte, who has no intelligence experience and has been criticized as a political attack dog for the president. He went on to say he is demanding that reauthorization of the surveillance tool known as FISA Section 702 must be tied to an unrelated package of voting restrictions that has previously failed to advance in the Senate.
“Regarding the approval of our Great Patriot, Jay Clayton, we are cancelling the Senate Hearing RE: DNI today, and will not be going forward until Jamie McDonald is approved to be U.S. Attorney. In the meantime, Bill Pulte will remain as the Acting Director of National Intelligence. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump concluded.
It is a dramatic reversal for a nomination that had the potential to speed through the Senate, possibly with bipartisan support.
Who is Jay Clayton?
Clayton currently serves as a federal prosecutor, in charge of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. In that role, he’s overseen a number of high-profile cases including the indictment and arrest of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. He was previously confirmed by the Senate to serve as the head of the Securities and Exchange commission during President Trump’s first term.
The director of national intelligence leads the intelligence community across 18 agencies and organizations and advises the president on national security issues, including through drafting and delivering the President’s Daily Brief.
Senate lawmakers hoped for a speedy confirmation for Clayton, aiming to have him sworn in by June 19, the date that President Trump has said that his controversial pick for acting director, Bill Pulte, will step into the role on a temporary basis.
Controversy over Bill Pulte, Trump’s interim pick
Pulte’s appointment earlier this month was met with dismay on Capitol Hill. He currently serves as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and would enter the job with no national intelligence experience.
He has used his current sub-cabinet level role to assail the president’s perceived foes. He was a cheerleader for Trump’s pressure campaign that sought to push then-Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell to resign. Pulte has also used his social media following to broadcast accusations that several of the president’s perceived enemies had committed mortgage fraud, including Fed official Lisa Cook, New York’s Democratic Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. Each has denied wrongdoing.
Given his record, Democrats and even some Republicans worry he will weaponize the key national security role. The uproar over Pulte contributed to the expiration on Friday of a nearly two decade-old spy law that underpins a great deal of U.S. intelligence gathering.
The president has suggested that Pulte will serve in the role for some amount of time. Trump told the Wall Street Journal he hopes to see Pulte declassify documents related to the 2020 election and downsize the agency.
Pressure to move quickly
Senators appeared highly motivated to move Clayton quickly through the process before Trump’s sudden intervention. They had hoped to prevent or minimize Pulte’s time in the job. Clayton’s confirmation hearing date was set within hours of his nomination to the post.
If confirmed, Clayton would succeed outgoing director Tulsi Gabbard, who announced her resignation last month citing her husband’s cancer diagnosis.
During her brief tenure, Gabbard had been a controversial director. A former Democrat, she was nominated to the role despite her lack of experience in U.S. intelligence and remarks supporting autocratic leaders in Syria and Russia. She was ultimately confirmed in a near-party line vote.
While serving as director of national intelligence, charged with presenting an objective view of the U.S. intelligence community’s assessments to policymakers including the president, Gabbard attended an FBI raid on a Georgia election office that has been at the heart of Trump’s baseless election fraud conspiracy theories.
Rep. Barry Moore won the Republican primary runoff in the Alabama Senate race, NBC News projects, making him the heavy favorite in the general election to succeed Sen. Tommy Tuberville this fall.
Moore, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump, defeated former Navy SEAL Jared Hudson for the GOP nomination. The two candidates were forced into a runoff after no one secured more than 50% of the vote in a crowded May 19 primary field.
Alabama’s Senate seat opened up after Tuberville launched his run for governor last year. He easily won the GOP nomination in the race last month.
In a victory speech Tuesday, Moore pointed to his relationship with Trump.
“When I call [Trump], he takes my calls, and we can work together with the senators, that delegation and certainly the president of the United States to make sure that Alabama has an opportunity to bring the jobs back here that we need,” Moore said.
Trump held a tele-rally with Moore last week and reiterated his endorsement Monday on Truth Social, calling Moore “an America First Patriot who has been with me from the very beginning.” Moore’s campaign featured Trump’s endorsements in multiple advertisements.
Moore, a former state lawmaker who was first elected to Congress in 2020, has pushed against allowing transgender women and girls to play in women’s sports and criticized “lawless Democrat sanctuary” cities while positioning himself as a staunch pro-gun advocate.
Hudson, who is the CEO of groups that work with law enforcement to combat child trafficking and focus on firearms instruction, tried to run as a political outsider. He ran unsuccessfully for Jefferson County sheriff in 2022.
And while Moore won Trump’s backing, Hudson campaigned as a “warrior for President Trump’s America First Agenda.”
“I will deploy to the Senate to defend President Trump with the same ethos they taught us in SEAL training: I am never out of the fight and I will not fail,” Hudson said on his website.
The runoff campaign turned negative. An outside group aligned with Hudson accused Moore, who served in the Alabama National Guard and Army Reserve, of “stolen valor.” In a 2024 letter to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed by dozens of GOP lawmakers, the Republicans accused Walz, then the Democratic vice presidential nominee, of misrepresenting his military service. Moore is listed as a signer, which marked him as having served as a “staff sergeant.”
Records shared by Moore’s campaign, though, indicated Moore was discharged with a rank of cadet.
Moore’s campaign released further information, saying his pay grade was “E-6 Staff Sergeant,” adding that “Barry has never called himself a retired Staff Sergeant, or even a Staff Sergeant nor did he retire from service — he was honorably discharged.”
Moore’s campaign also defended the title discrepancy on the Walz letter in a release on his website.
“That was a coalition letter signed by a lot of people, and the Staff Sergeant and retired title line was supplied by its organizers,” the website said. “He has never used that title and never affirmed it.”
Moore also faced questions about a 2020 ad in which he said he has “been in those combat boots,” though he did not serve overseas or in combat.
“Members of the National Guard wear combat boots to train. Here is a link to the shoe,” Moore’s website said, responding to questions about the ad.
Moore also said in a video on social media that he was “never in combat, and I never claimed to be.”
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