The Senate has the power to say no. Three of its most senior members show exactly what they choose instead.
In Arthur Conan Doyle’s story Silver Blaze, Sherlock Holmes solves the mystery not by what was heard, but by what wasn’t. A horse was stolen in the night. The dog never barked.
Holmes understood immediately what the silence meant.
The United States Senate has 100 members, a constitutional mandate to check executive power, and a 53-seat Republican majority that could, if three or four acted together, change the math on anything. For the past two years, the dog has not barked. Holmes would have understood exactly what that silence meant.
Three of the Senate’s most senior members help explain the silence.
Thune: The Man Who Controls the Clock
John Thune is the Senate Majority Leader. He controls the floor calendar - which means he decides what comes to a vote and what doesn’t. Every piece of oversight that doesn’t happen, every investigation that isn’t authorized, every hearing that never occurs - it runs through him.
After January 6, Thune called Trump’s conduct “indefensible.” That’s a specific word. It means there is no defense - that the speaker has already done the analysis and found no argument that would justify the conduct.
Then he voted “not guilty” in the impeachment trial. Then he ran for Majority Leader. Then he wrote an op-ed pledging to deliver on Trump’s priorities.
He has offered no account of what changed. He simply stopped saying what he knew to be true.
The most powerful quisling isn’t the loudest one. It’s the one who decides what the others are allowed to vote on.
Graham: “Count Me Out” - and Then Back In
Lindsey Graham’s reversal is one of the most thoroughly documented in modern Senate politics. It begins in 2015:
“He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for.”
Graham was a JAG officer - a military lawyer. His contempt was not casual. It was precise. He also said, on the same program: “You know how you make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.”
Six years later, on the Senate floor on the night of January 6, 2021, as the Capitol was still being cleared:
“Trump and I, we’ve had a hell of a journey. I hate it to end this way. Oh my God, I hate it… All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.”
Weeks later, Graham was at Mar-a-Lago, serving as an informal adviser to Trump’s impeachment defense team.
The journey, it turned out, had not ended. He had simply needed a few weeks to find his way back.
By 2025, Graham held the gavel of the Senate Judiciary Committee - the body with oversight authority over the entire Department of Justice. The man who called Trump a race-baiting bigot unfit for office, who said “count me out” on the floor of the Senate, now chairs the committee that could authorize investigations that might actually matter.
He does not use it that way.
He has never explained what changed. But he offered a clue in 2019:
“If you don’t want to get re-elected, you’re in the wrong business.”
Collins: Concern Without Consequence
Susan Collins of Maine has served in the Senate since 1997. She represents a blue state and has more political room to dissent than almost any Republican in the chamber.
Over the years she has developed a signature approach: express concern, hold meetings, issue careful statements - and then, when the decisive votes arrive, confirm.
She confirmed Neil Gorsuch. She confirmed Brett Kavanaugh after she said he told her privately that Roe v. Wade was “settled law.”
When the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturned Roe three years later - with both justices in the majority - Collins said the outcome was “completely inconsistent” with what she had been told.
Concern, followed by confirmation, followed by surprise.
At some point the question stops being what she was told, and becomes what she chooses to believe.
Three Flavors. One Result.
Thune controls the floor and keeps it quiet. Graham said “count me out” - and counted himself back in within weeks. Collins “worries,” but follows her caucus when the voting counts.
Hamilton wrote in Federalist 76 that the Senate’s advice-and-consent power would “tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters.” He expected the Senate to actually use it.
What he didn’t anticipate was a chamber that has the power, the information, and - if three or four members acted together rather than alone - the votes to matter, but chooses not to use them.
Holmes solved the mystery because the dog did not bark. The silence meant the dog recognized the thief.
The Senate recognizes the thief too.
It simply doesn’t bark.
If this resonated, share it with someone who still thinks the Senate is doing its job.