{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=5F1DDE58-C030-447E-A486-06778B7B172F", "Thune Joins America\u2019s Newsroom on Fox News", "2025-10-23", "2025", "2025-10", "Republican", "Senate", "SD", "John Thune", "T000250", "www.thune.senate.gov", "thune", "https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases", "scraper", "Clickhere to watch the video.\n\nWASHINGTON \u2014 U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today joined America\u2019s Newsroom on Fox News.\n\nOn Democrats prioritizing their far-left base:\n\n\u201cThe Democrats continue to play political games. They are afraid, just absolutely desperately afraid, of their base and that\u2019s why we\u2019re in the situation we\u2019re in. So it\u2019s going to take five Democrats, probably not going to come out of their leadership \u2026 they\u2019re a lost cause. I think it\u2019s going to have to be rank-and-file Democrats who end this.\u201d\n\n[\u2026]\n\n\u201c[Democrats] don\u2019t care if people suffer \u2026 this is a political game to them.\u201d\n\nOn the consequences of Democrats\u2019 government shutdown:\n\n\u201c[Y]ou\u2019ve got a whole lot of other programs out there, including the SNAP program that\u2019s available to people who really need food assistance in this country, is going to go away here soon, too. So we\u2019re getting to where the consequences of this are very real. \u201c\n\nOn Democrats\u2019 shutdown hypocrisy:\n\n\u201cThis is a routine thing, to continue to fund the government until we get the other appropriations bills done. This is a clean CR. It is nonpartisan, it is short-term, and it\u2019s passed the House. It\u2019s sitting at the desk at the Senate. We could pick it up, pass it today if we get five Democrats, put it on the president\u2019s desk, he signs it into law, and the government opens up again \u2026\u201d\n\n[\u2026]\n\n\u201cWe need to open up the government. The other things that they want to talk about, I've told them we\u2019re willing to do that, but [it] can\u2019t be done while the federal employees are being held hostage \u2026\n\n\u201c[The] night before last, the Democrats had this drone-a-thon that went on all night. We had one Democrat senator who read the same poem four times, [while] 335 federal employees in the Capitol had to sit there all night and not get paid \u2026 and listen to these Democrats drone on endlessly.\n\n\u201c[The government shutdown] \u2026 has to end \u2026 [I]t\u2019s in [the Democrats\u2019] hands right now. It\u2019s up to them to end it.\u201d\n\nOn Senator Johnson\u2019s Shutdown Fairness Act:\n\n\u201cI think this vote today is a really challenging one for the Democrats. It\u2019s very hard to defend voting against. Ron Johnson is offering a counter proposal \u2026 that \u2026 would pay everybody who\u2019s working \u2026\n\n\u201cThe Democrats are going to try and counter it with a political gimmick which would pay federal employees once, but then continue the shutdown. They\u2019re trying to have it both ways \u2026 this is all about politics for them.\n\n\u201cIf [Democrats] \u2026 open up the government, their left-wing base goes nuts. If they don\u2019t vote for Ron Johnson\u2019s [bill] or something else, then a lot of the federal employees are going to be without pay.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T19:32:54Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=5F1DDE58-C030-447E-A486-06778B7B172F"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 3.6783250980079174, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}