People on social media want Thune voted out of his position, but it can’t be done. There is no mechanism to demote a Senate majority leader before his term is up. People want him gone so we can pass the SAVE America Act.
Even if there were a procedure to replace him, we don’t have enough senators to support ending the filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act. Any Thune replacement would be another non-leader. Democrats don’t want the bill because they want illegal aliens to vote.
Nothing is going to change. There is no process to remove him.
The Republicans have the majority, we don’t need the democrats if we had a majority leader that isn’t controlled by the Democrats. Remove Thune from leadership https://t.co/mHWfSSA8O3
— CALISPORTSMAN (@ThompsonPB1) May 4, 2026
The SAVE America Act would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and mandate photo identification to cast a ballot. It has already passed the House, and polls show that voters across party lines, and even racial lines, support it. 76% of Black Americans want voter ID. Yet, our politicians won’t do it. Democrats refuse, and Republicans are held back by the filibuster.
“The votes aren’t there, one, to nuke the filibuster,” Thune said, presenting it as if he weren’t the leader. “I’m the person who has to deliver sometimes the not-so-good news that the math doesn’t add up, but those are the facts, and there’s no getting around it.”
Why doesn’t he pressure the membership? Does he ever have a strategy? Thune sits on the sidelines and calls shots. He’s no coach.
Democrats, by contrast, are fighting against the SAVE America Act. Even John Fetterman is standing against voter ID.
The senator from a state of only 935,000 people is calling the shots.
Senator Mike Lee explains the dilemma in light of the unfortunate facts.
In answer to the question about starting a process to remove Thune, Lee said, “Your question suggests five senators could oust him in the middle of his term as leader. That’s not true. In the House of Representatives, a tiny number of lawmakers can oust the speaker at any time. That feature is unique to the House.In the Senate GOP, we don’t even have a rule or procedure for replacing a leader in the middle of a two-year term.
It is true that under our rules, any five senators can call for a meeting of the entire conference at any time. But in practice, that kind of meeting tends not to materialize unless a solid majority of the conference wants it to happen.
Even if such a meeting were called and even if it actually materialized, it still wouldn’t end as you seem to assume. To pursue the outcome you’re suggesting, one would have to use that meeting to propose a new procedure for a mid-term leadership swap, and that—at a minimum—would require a majority of the conference to support it. For a whole host of reasons—including the fact that Senator Thune is beloved by colleagues and very popular within the conference—the odds of that happening are literally 0 in 100,000.
Unless Thune committed some crime we don’t know about, Thune is going nowhere and will accomplish nothing. Right now, Republicans are struggling to get funding cut off to the Taliban, and it’s questionable that Thune will ever bring it to the floor. He hasn’t codified Donald Trump’s executive orders. Thune is not going to change, and we can’t change him.