COLUMN: Matthew Foldi: John Thune is right to call Senate Democrats the “party of ‘no'”

Senate Democrats are stopping a series of broadly popular and bipartisan bills as lawmakers of both parties make the case that they should be sent back to Washington, D.C. for another six years, but voters should see through this obvious display of campaign theatrics that is more about the reelection campaigns of Sens. Jon Husted (R., Ohio), Pete Ricketts (R., Neb.), Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), and other Republicans than it is about anything resembling good government. 

Ironically, most of the clearly-identifiable targets of Schumer’s antics aren’t even in competitive races; Schumer is delaying and derailing popular legislation purely out of spite for voters across America.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) is calling his counterparts across the aisle the “party of ‘no’” as the Senate completes much of its legislative business before the midterm elections; Thune is completely correct to do so.

On issues ranging from popular tax cuts to a data center framework to crypto regulation, one or more Senate Democrats have thrown up hurdles to sidetrack — and in some cases, completely derail — bipartisan bills that are priorities of in-cycle Republicans — how convenient!  

In one recent instance, retiring Sen. Tina Smith (D., Minn.), whose seat Republicans are in contention to flip due to Michele Tafoya’s strong campaign against Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan (D., Minn.), admitted that Democrats don’t want to give Husted a win as he faces former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio), a longtime data center supporter turned skeptic. “It seems like it’s kind of a political bailout,” she said about a bill that virtually every House Democrat had just voted for.

“Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats want to stop us from lowering energy costs for working Americans,” Husted explained after the Democrats’ latest success in halting his Ratepayer Protection Act. “They aren’t serious about the issue of affordability.” Husted’s bill, introduced by Reps. Gabe Evans (R., Colo.) and Kathy Castor (D., Fla.) was supported by every New York Democrat in the House, including Schumer’s counterpart, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.), who called the legislation a “step forward.”

But Schumer called the bill a “fraud” on multiple occasions. 

But it’s not just the Ratepayer Protection Act that Thune is using to argue that Schumer and Senate Democrats are tanking for political convenience. The CLARITY Act’s failure is another high-profile instance of Senate Democrats tanking legislation that members of both parties spent much of 2026 working on; despite the vast majority of tens of millions of crypto owners wanting stronger crypto regulation, Democrats tanked the bipartisan legislation, calling its entire future into doubt. 

In this case, Schumer’s opposition isn’t going to harm any of the legislation’s Senate co-leads — Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R., Wyo.) is retiring and Sens. Tim Scott (R., S.C.) and John Boozman (R., Ark.) are not in cycle — but Reps. French Hill (R., Ark.) and Bryan Steil (R., Wis.) are in potentially competitive reelection bids.

While some of the Democrats’ antics can be chalked up to the election quickly approaching, they have long done everything they can to prevent vulnerable Republican incumbents like Husted from scoring wins. Husted, who spent years overseeing Ohio’s elections, had introduced legislation to require photo identification in order to vote, but Democrats have blocked it from advancing on numerous occasions throughout the year. 

Democrats have also been on the wrong side of votes to prevent men from playing in women’s sports, which was a priority of Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R., Ala.), who is a shoe-in to be Alabama’s next governor, but he is running against one of Schumer’s former colleagues, former Sen. Doug Jones (D., Ala.).

Schumer also forced Senate Democrats to walk the plank and oppose a congressional stock trading bill that many, including several 2028 contenders, had expressed support for. But the legislation is a Ricketts priority, and he is running slightly ahead of a pro-Schumer candidate, the ostensibly “independent” Dan Osborn, who has more ties to Schumer than can be documented, but the Washington Reporter has been doing so for months. 

Democrats also, most predictably, uniformly voted against the GOP’s historic tax cuts. The Treasury Department estimates that 97 percent of taxpayers received a tax cut via the GOP’s Working Families Tax Cuts (WFTC). 

The Democrats’ historic obstruction has also extended to President Donald Trump’s cabinet and judicial nominees, as the Reporter has previously covered, but it has also crossed over into areas that have been historically bipartisan, like the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and border security. 

The Senate Democrats’ NDAA delays affected provisions that would have cracked down on Russia’s shadow fleet, allowed FISA’s Section 702 to briefly expire for the first time ever, and shut down the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in a move that most voters likely have since forgotten about.

This Schumer ploy backfired, and allowed Cotton, the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, to work overtime to get Jay Clayton confirmed as Trump’s newest Director of the Office of National Intelligence (ODNI). 

Democrats badly overplayed their hand with their opposition to then-Acting ODNI Director Bill Pulte, and held Section 702 hostage. But sources involved with Clayton’s confirmation told the Reporter that Cotton “got to have his cake and eat it too” following Clayton’s confirmation; “the telecoms have complied to date so FISA 702 is still going, and he got someone [Pulte] to go in and axe big portions of ODNI,” which has long been a Cotton priority. 

Now, following Cotton’s stewardship, “Jay will be a great partner and get after further ODNI restructuring and FISA reauth[orization].”

While Schumer and Senate Democrats have successfully derailed several bipartisan bills, Thune’s caucus is comprised of clever legislators who have nevertheless gotten many of their policies and personnel over the finish line anyway.