Senate Majority Leader John Thune said to expect the Senate to hold more “explosive” hearings on President Donald Trump’s use of executive powers.

Thune told CNN on Wednesday that Republican senators “have a responsibility as an independent, coequal branch of the government to make sure that we’re doing appropriate oversight of these decisions,” The Hill reported.

He noted the “explosive” Senate Finance Committee oversight hearing with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., earlier this month, predicting his GOP colleagues wouldn’t be timid about asking senior Trump administration officials tough questions at future hearings.

“There was a very, rather, I would say argumentative, explosive hearing a few weeks ago in front of the Senate Finance Committee,” Thune said. “I expect that will continue.”

CNN’s Dana Bash pressed Thune about Senate committee chairs not doing more to push back on Trump’s threats to revoke the broadcast licenses of TV networks that criticize him or the president saying that Attorney General Pam Bondi should prosecute his political opponents.

She noted Trump firing the heads and board members of the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve, as well as pressuring Bondi to prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) and former FBI Director James Comey. Bash asked whether Americans should interpret GOP senators’ “silence” as support for those actions.

Thune laughed slightly, saying, “There’s a lot of rhetoric,” but Republican senators will wait and see what actions Trump and his administration will take following his statements.

The South Dakota senator said that he has “every confidence” that Bondi “is going to make good decisions with respect to how she uses her prosecutorial powers,” and he pushed back on Trump’s attempts to pressure Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates.

“I think we ought to have an independent Fed. I’ve said that. I’ve made that abundantly clear,” Thune said.

“I’ve been around several administrations, several presidents. Every one of them tries to assert as much executive power as they possibly can. And sometimes that gets tested in courts, and obviously sometimes there’s oversight that happens through the Congress, through the power of the purse,” he added.

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