Senators Used to Barely Be in Washington. Now They’re Coping With Never Leaving.

When the U.S. Senate suddenly breaks through a scheduling problem so that lawmakers can leave town on a Thursday, the usual joke is that senators could “smell the jet fumes.”

For years, 2:00 p.m. on Thursday seemed to be a hard deadline in the Senate, facilitating time agreements and legislative deals that would allow senators to get off C-SPAN 2 and get onto an airplane.

The phenomenon was so common that it became more of an accepted explanation than a joke.

But these days, senators are lucky to leave on Friday or Saturday — if they ever leave Washington at all.

Ever since Majority Leader John Thune took the chamber’s reins, he’s upped the metabolism of the typically sluggish Senate. Since this Congress started on Jan. 3, the Senate has taken 87 votes, confirmed 18 of Trump’s cabinet picks and completed a 10-hour overnight vote series known as a vote-a-rama. Thune has also opened the year with a 10-week stretch in session, the likes of which hadn’t been seen in the upper chamber in at least a decade.

That’s a far cry from the more typical senatorial routine of, at least, one week at home for every three weeks in Washington.

“There are no two ways about it, 2025 will be intense,” Thune said in December of his self-described “aggressive” schedule.

Senators acknowledged to NOTUS that “aggressive” was an understatement, with some complaining that the busy Washington schedule was coming at the expense of meeting with constituents back home.

Sen. Mark Kelly, for instance, used to fly around his state on Fridays. He would rent a small plane and meet with voters in different corners of Arizona.

He’s barely flown on that plane this year.

“Unless I want to do it on the weekend,” Kelly told NOTUS. “And that’s if I get back on the weekend.”

Although Kelly suggested every senator’s priority is being in D.C., his lament about a lengthy legislative schedule has become a consistent refrain in Congress’ upper chamber.

Only a few months ago, it wasn’t unusual for senators to arrive on a Monday or Tuesday night and, having completed a solid 36 hours in Washington, leave town on Wednesday or Thursday — those jet fumes hanging in the air.

Initially, many lawmakers doubted Thune would follow through on the jam-packed calendar, facing pushback from an aging conference that’s often eager to get back home.

But Thune has delivered on his promises. Friday sessions are the norm, with a Saturday vote often likelier than a Thursday reprieve.

So, as Thune ushers the Senate into its ninth consecutive week in Washington, some senators would like a break.

“We’ve always had a busy in-state schedule,” Sen. John Hoeven told NOTUS. “It’s productive work, connecting with people. That I’ve missed and I look forward to getting back opportunities to do it. But we have work to do here, and so that’s fine.”

“But sure,” he said. “I miss it.”

Sen. John Hickenlooper called the current schedule “arduous.”

And Sen. Mike Rounds said he’s missed out on meetings with South Dakota’s “movers and shakers.”

“Not getting a chance to share with them what you’re doing up in D.C., but then also not getting a chance to hear from them what they’re seeing as issues coming up,” Rounds said, “that takes something away from your ability to do your job up here.”

The debate over how much time senators should spend in Washington is quite literally as old as the chamber itself, when the founding fathers complained of tedious, extended stints in the swamp.

Even with transportation dramatically improved since the horse and buggy, many senators — like Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — still face long journeys home, making the extended stays in Washington a logistical challenge.

But Donald Trump’s frenetic executive actions have only exacerbated the political challenge, with senators struggling to soothe the concerns of their constituents.

For Murkowski, at least, opportunities to meet face-to-face with voters back home have been replaced with virtual events.

“It’s harder for me. I went back home last weekend for the first weekend since the first of January,” Murkowski told NOTUS last week. “And I had exactly two days on the ground, and one of them happened to be my son’s birthday.”

“So that’s hard,” she said.

Even when senators said they were a fan of Thune’s grind mentality — Sen. John Kennedy told NOTUS that the majority leader was simply “cracking the whip” — Kennedy confessed he’s heard his colleagues privately grousing about the extended sessions in D.C.

“We all know who they are,” Kennedy said of the complainers, without elaborating.

“They like to go home,” he said.

Of course, every senator NOTUS talked to seemed to acknowledge the immense privilege of serving in the Senate. No one would mistake the Senate chamber for a factory floor, and it’s easy to call for a lunch pail mentality when teams of staffers are fetching your Cava bowl.

Sen. John Cornyn laughed when NOTUS suggested the Senate had been working hard.

“You call that work?” Cornyn asked. “As my dad always used to say, don’t mistake activity for progress.”

Rather than acknowledge the effect of the Friday roll calls week after week, many senators said the change was long overdue.

Sen. Josh Hawley told NOTUS that all he’s heard from constituents is that “they love the pace of everything Trump is doing and they want his cabinet confirmed.”

Other senators pointed to the difficulties of their jobs when they have to travel back home.

“I work so damn hard when I go home that, you know, taking 10-minute naps at my desk here is like a gift. I don’t have six grandchildren here,” Sen. Kevin Cramer said, though he quickly added that he does “miss ‘em.”

“This morning it was 24 below zero in Sheridan, Wyoming,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis said on Wednesday. “So, in all honesty, I’m OK that I’m not out there doing town hall meetings when it’s 20-something below zero.”

While Alabama winters are slightly less severe, Sen. Tommy Tuberville said he’d still rather spend his weekends working in D.C.

The former college football coach suggested Saturdays were otherwise for golf, and even in Alabama, it’s hard to hit the links in February.

“Unless you go way south,” Tuberville said.

Perhaps the senator most critical of Thune’s scheduling was the most expected. The 91-year-old president pro tempore of the Senate, Chuck Grassley, took umbrage with the rigorous routine. But his reasoning is hardly of the my-old-bones-can’t-take-it variety.

His problem? It’s too easy.

“I see the ending of some weeks on Thursday at 2 o’clock as slipping back into the Schumer schedule, and we can’t let that happen,” said Grassley, who still runs multiple miles at 4 a.m. most days of the week. “We’ve got to have five-day working weeks in order to get legislation done.”

“You can see your constituents on Saturday and Sunday,” Grassley said.

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Ben T.N. Mause is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Riley Rogerson is a reporter at NOTUS.