Vance and the boss game-planned a Senate takeover.
Photo: Kent Nishimura/Getty Images

For much of 2026, Donald Trump has intermittently demanded that the Senate enact the SAVE America Act despite Majority Leader John Thune repeatedly saying he cannot muster the votes to do as the president wishes. This dead end so vexed Trump and the White House that they “war-gamed” pretty drastic measures to bypass the Senate, according to Vice-President J.D. Vance.

The whole march to pass this legislation has been a slog. It hasn’t helped that Trump keeps coming up with new versions of the already poisonously controversial bill that have even less bipartisan support than the preceding ones. The bills passed three times by the House focused on imposing very specific and onerous national proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration. But what Trump called the “final version” of the legislation in February would also bar no-excuse voting by mail (currently offered by 37 states) and ban transgender participation in women’s sports and gender-affirming care for transgender minors, a demagogic non sequitur, to say the least.

Now, obviously, Senate Democrats had the power and willingness to filibuster any such bill, making it a nonstarter. So Team Trump began thinking about including it in budget-reconciliation legislation, which cannot be filibustered; one such bill was under development all spring as Republicans sought to give ICE long-term assured funding. But then, in May, Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, a nonpartisan professional who has been in that position since 2012, blocked a Trump bid to include money for his White House ballroom project in pursuance of her responsibility to keep non-germane legislation out of budget bills. Trump demanded Thune fire her and replace her with someone more pliant. The president even correctly anticipated MacDonough would next rule the SAVE America Act could not be included in a budget-reconciliation bill either (as she did in June, sparking another White House demand for her firing). So his rage at MacDonough, and at Thune for refusing to fire her, burned unquenched for months.

What both Thune and Trump recognized is that letting any old legislation be included in a budget-reconciliation bill would functionally abolish the Senate filibuster itself, and there is stout resistance to taking that step in the Senate Republican Conference. To put it simply, a good number of Republican senators want to preserve that dilatory method for future occasions (perhaps as early as next year) when they are the Senate minority. This created a chronic source of friction between Trump and his supposed chief ally in the Senate, made worse when MAGA demagogues (notably Utah senator Mike Lee) began demanding that Thune bring up the SAVE America Act and keep it on the floor, however long it took to wear down the opposition. But Thune hung tough, and Trump is still grumbling about it to this very day.

But now there’s a new wrinkle in the story. In an interview with a conservative journalist released this week, Vance revealed that he and Trump had “obsessively” discussed how to push Thune aside, fire MacDonough, and blow up the filibuster, all in one wild maneuver:

“First of all, could I assume the chair of the Senate and fire the parliamentarian? Yes, I could …

“Trust me, we have played it out internally with a lot of great people, including the president of the United States. So I take over the chair, I fire the parliamentarian, and what happens? Four or five Republicans, at least, and maybe 10 Republicans, they join the Democrats to then overrule the new chair, which is the Vice President of the United States,” Vance said …

“47 Democrats plus four Republicans: Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, Tom Tillis, Lisa Murkowski. There’s your four. They overrule the vice president,” Vance said.

“You have a fun little ceremonial battle that you lose. We’re actually interested in winning the battle, which means replacing mediocre Republican senators with good Republican senators,” he concluded.

Vance seems to be hinting that if Republicans maintain control of the Senate in November while getting rid of some “mediocre Republican senators” (Mitch McConnell and Thom Tillis are retiring, and John Cornyn lost his seat in a primary), maybe his power grab could work next year. But for now, all he’s doing is confirming Thune’s endless objections that there aren’t enough Republican votes to fire the parliamentarian, blow up the filibuster, and pass the SAVE America Act. Maybe Vance was hoping Natalie Harp would read about the interview and clip it for the president, causing him to finally see the light about the futility of his crusade to bend the Senate to his will.

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