Thune Joins America’s Newsroom on Fox News

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WASHINGTON - U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today joined America's Newsroom on Fox News.

On Democrats' DHS shutdown:

"Every single day [Democrats] move the goalposts. And remember how we got here. They agreed to a bicameral, bipartisan, Democrat and Republican deal to open up and fund DHS. And then they walked away from it. They wanted to talk about reforms. The administration sat down, they talked reforms, they had agreed to some things. Democrats kept moving the goalposts. Then they said, 'We don't want to fund ICE.' And now they're saying, 'We don't want to fund ICE, and we want reforms.'

"I mean … they're talking in circles … I think there's a lot of chaos. I think they're really confused. I think they've got a crisis of leadership in the Democrat conference right now, and they've got all these different people, as you've seen them, going out in different directions, saying different things. So we're trying to narrow it in and home in on a deal that we can strike here in the next, hopefully in the very near future."

On Democrats' preposterous shutdown politics:

"For [Democrats], it's all about politics, and it always has been. You go back to the fall shutdown, the Democrats shut … the whole government down for [43] days last fall. And if you remember Chuck Schumer's statement that 'every day gets better for us.' And then you have Brian Schatz, a member of the Democrat leadership, in this shutdown saying, 'we are very serene.'

"I think they're just playing politics with this, have been from the beginning. They think it's really good with their base. Their left-wing base won't take … yes for an answer. And so the Democrats are having a hard time taking yes for an answer. But they're going to have to, because at some point, people are realizing that it is the Democrats who are blockading, and have been blockading, funding the Department of Homeland Security now, literally for [41] days.

"This has got to stop. It needs to stop now. I think [Democrats are] going to come to their senses. I hope they do, because if they don't … it's going to get really ugly out there."

On voter ID:

"We're on [the SAVE America Act] right now on the floor. If we get a deal on DHS, we will pivot to that, but we will come back to the SAVE America Act. We are going to have a vote on [voter ID] later today … This is one of the key tenets and principles of the SAVE America Act … that people ought to have to show a photo when they go vote. That … particular amendment is going to be voted on today on the floor of the United States Senate. So we'll put the Democrats on the record, because they're all out there saying, 'Oh, we support photo ID.' They're going to get a chance to really answer the American people on whether they do or they don't."

[…]

"The whole SAVE America Act does include proving citizenship to register - which, frankly, is common sense too, and I think an overwhelming majority of Americans support that - but the vote we're going to have on the floor today is a narrow one. It's on photo ID. Should you, when you have to go in and vote, should you have to produce an ID that basically [says] you are who you say you are … I think that is a huge winner with the American people. Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, [are] going to get a chance to … put their money where their mouth is today."

Permalink: https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2026/3/thune-joins-america-s-newsroom-on-fox-news