President Trump wants senators to work through a planned August recess, as lawmakers push to flee Washington to campaign back home.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has so far kept the door open to working through the recess.
"We're thinking about it. We want to get as many [nominations] through the pipeline as we can," he said Monday, blaming Democrats for rejecting optional procedural shortcuts that could winnow a pileup of pending confirmation votes for remaining Trump nominees at the six-month mark.
"Trying to get his team in place is something that we're very committed to and we're going to be looking at all the options in the next few weeks to try and get as many of those across the finish line as we can," Thune said.
Over in the House, bipartisan furor over calls on the administration to release Jeffrey Epstein investigatory files flared anew in the Rules Committee Monday night and GOP leaders are considering recessing the chamber as early as Wednesday.
Pressure from Democrats compelled the GOP to scrap plans for this week's slated sequence of floor votes. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the majority wanted to give the administration "space" to release Epstein materials sought in court by the Justice Department. A House nonbinding resolution calling for administration transparency will not get a floor vote before the August recess, Johnson said Monday.
House lawmakers have been planning to depart Thursday for a summer break that extends through Labor Day.
The Senate's focus on confirming Trump nominees is intended to heed a Trump request. He was able this year to confirm his Cabinet at the fastest pace seen in two decades, exceeding the tally of confirmations of three of the past four administrations in the first 100 days, including his own first term, according to the Brookings Institution.
In addition to nominations, Thune said government funding and the annual National Defense Authorization Act could top a to-do list if members remain in Washington into August. They are scheduled to recess July 31.
Al Weaver, who covers the upper chamber for The Hill, reminded Morning Report that the Senate in both 2017 and 2018 worked an additional week before summer recesses.
"I don't know how happy Republicans would be, but let me put it this way, I don't think they're losing all of their recess," Weaver said.
Beyond a week "is kind of a big ask of members," Weaver noted, because Republicans say they want to get home to sell the newly enacted One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and senators have spent many uninterrupted weeks in Washington wrangling over Trump's agenda, he added.
Senators "have spent more time here than they have in the past couple of years, and when members are here too long, they get cranky," he said.
Senate GOP leaders face a tough call on whether to heed Trump's demand to stay in town.
GOP senators, eyeing midterm contests next year, worry the mammoth "big, beautiful" law that includes Medicaid cuts and extended tax cuts for businesses and wealthy filers is unpopular. A large majority of adults in polls say Trump's policies have not helped them.
The tax and spending law is also estimated to raise the nation's debt by $3.4 trillion over a decade and leave 10 million people without health insurance, the Congressional Budget Office estimated in a report Monday.
Republican lawmakers see these data points and are itching to get home to market their work to potential midterm voters, pitching them on what GOP lawmakers view as the bill's more popular aspects.
Trump's approval when it comes to the economy, immigration, health care and government spending are underwater, surveys show. Voters recently interviewed by CNN, similar to Congress this month, sounded splintered.
The president, whose strategies this year showcase his executive muscle, faces little GOP opposition on Capitol Hill. Republican lawmakers who buck the White House are swiftly sidelined with biting social media taunts about primary challenges.
"Fear is a powerful motivation," Ross Baker, a Rutgers University political science professor, told The Hill.
Trump "cut out the intermediaries, the members of Congress, and he exercises his powers through his control of sections of the electorate and has made members of Congress fearful of their constituents," he added. "That enables Trump to use the weapon of a primary challenge with great power."
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