President Donald Trump unleashed a late-night barrage on Truth Social just before 1 a.m. ET, demanding that Congress treat a proposed third major spending package — dubbed “Reconciliation 3.0” — as its top legislative priority, even as senior Republicans have already declared the idea dead on arrival.
The 80-year-old president posted at 12:58 a.m. ET, trumpeting the condition of the US military while calling on the House and Senate to pair a $350 billion defense spending injection with his stalled SAVE America Act, the election-overhaul legislation that has repeatedly failed to clear Congress. Trump issued the demand while traveling to Ankara, Turkey, for a NATO summit — a detail that underscored the unusual spectacle of a sitting president lobbying Congress in the dead of night from abroad.
Trump declared the military had never been stronger and invoked the nation’s 250th Independence Day celebration. He urged lawmakers to make the funding package and election bill the top priority upon their return to session.
A Third Reconciliation Bill Nobody Asked For
The proposed Reconciliation 3.0 would be Trump’s third sweeping funding package of his second term. His first, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, was signed into law in June 2025. A second package — a $70 billion immigration and border security measure — followed, though Senate Republicans forced Trump to strip a separate $1 billion allocation tied to a White House ballroom renovation before it could pass.
The resistance is pointed. At a June 9 hearing, Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins warned that pursuing another major reconciliation package would be a “terrible risk.” During that same hearing, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, who leads the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, was even more direct, saying it was “safe to conclude there will not be another reconciliation bill.” McConnell made those remarks shortly before he was hospitalized and required CPR after being found unconscious at his Washington, D.C., home — a health crisis that has further complicated the political calculus on Capitol Hill.
The SAVE America Act’s Dim Prospects
Alongside the defense spending push, Trump renewed pressure for Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, legislation that would require proof of citizenship for voter registration and largely ban mail-in balloting. The bill has not attracted sufficient support in Congress to advance, and critics have argued that Trump’s persistent advocacy for it reflects an interest in reshaping election rules ahead of November’s midterm elections, where Republicans are widely expected to face significant losses.
A Pattern of Late-Night Posting Sprees
The early-morning post fits a well-established pattern of nocturnal social media activity from Trump. On May 12, in the hours preceding a critical diplomatic visit to China where he would meet with President Xi Jinping, Trump posted more than 50 times in three hours, targeting former President Barack Obama, former President Joe Biden, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, among others. That session also included attacks on Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, both of whom Trump appointed and who had voted against his tariff agenda.
On June 2, Trump published 47 posts during a half-hour period in the evening, at one point boasting about a personal scorecard of political and media enemies he claimed to have neutralized, referencing the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” on May 21 and the primary defeat of Republican congressman Thomas Massie.
The late-night habits extend back further. In November 2025, Trump used Truth Social to demand that Democratic lawmakers who appeared in a video urging military commanders to refuse unlawful orders be prosecuted for sedition. Michigan Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin, one of the Democrats Trump named, pushed back during an appearance on ABC’s "This Week," suggesting the outbursts were designed to pull attention away from the Epstein files and economic pressures rather than reflect a genuine legal argument.
Congress Faces Pressure With Little Room to Move
Whether the latest demand carries more weight than its predecessors remains doubtful. McConnell’s health situation has left a leadership vacuum on the Senate defense appropriations front at precisely the moment Trump needs a champion for Reconciliation 3.0. Collins’s public warning against a third bill signals that even the chamber’s spending gatekeepers have little appetite for another bruising fight. And with midterm elections approaching, vulnerable Republican incumbents may calculate that attaching themselves to another sweeping and contested spending package carries more electoral risk than reward.
For now, the president’s wishes remain a late-night post rather than a legislative reality — one more entry in a long scroll of demands issued while much of Washington slept.