Congressional leaders are closing up shop for the week without voting on their long-sought immigration budget bill, as Senate Republicans struggled to agree on legislative text amid an 11th-hour fight over a new Justice Department “anti-weaponization” fund.
While Republican leaders had hoped to push the bill through both chambers on strictly party-line votes before leaving Friday for the Memorial Day recess, that timetable evaporated amid a growing GOP backlash toward presidential funding priorities.
Senators had already been considering ditching a $1 billion security funding provision for the Secret Service connected partly to plans for a White House ballroom, which was causing consternation at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
But the announcement this week of the administration’s new $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund further muddied the waters, sealing the fate of floor votes in the Senate on the reconciliation package for this week.
GOP senators leaving a meeting with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to discuss potential restrictions on the fund — which began at 11 a.m. — said they were getting ready to go home without taking up the bill, which will now have to wait until June.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., who is usually loath to criticize President Donald Trump, faulted the administration for not keeping lawmakers apprised of the plan for the new fund and doing more to explain it.
“It would be nice if they had consulted, and I think they probably would have gotten plenty of advice from lots of folks about it,” Thune said.
DOJ talking points distributed to GOP lawmakers ahead of the meeting said the fund would be open to anyone deemed “victims of lawfare and weaponization,” ranging from parents denied a chance to speak at school board meetings to senators whose phone records were searched by the government without notification.
Trump and his family would be barred from any remuneration from the new fund, which would be open to Americans of all political leanings. “There is no partisan restriction,” the memo said. “Democrats can submit claims, too.”
But the talking points and in-person follow-up from Blanche weren’t sufficient to get enough GOP senators on board.
“The Senate wants to measure twice and cut once, and we’re not quite ready to cut yet, so we got to take this good deal and make it better somehow,” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., said after the meeting. He said he didn’t think “it’s that simple” to come up with restrictions that could be placed on the fund to resolve ethical concerns.
House GOP antsy
The lack of movement in the Senate already had House GOP leaders getting antsy with Memorial Day weekend around the corner and members already leaving Washington. There were 10 House Republicans missing from Wednesday’s last vote of the day, twice the number of absent Democrats.
“I do have to ask the Senate about the timetable,” Speaker Mike Johnson said before it became clear senators were heading home. “We’re waiting on the Senate action right now. That’s all I can tell you.”
Once the Senate abandoned a vote Thursday, Johnson canceled a planned meeting with Trump on the bill and canceled all House votes scheduled for Friday.
GOP leaders will need nearly every Republican vote they can get on the bill, which would provide nearly $70 billion for Immigration and Customs and Enforcement and the Border Patrol, which have been without regular appropriations since mid-February. Democrats have refused to back that funding without new restrictions on federal immigration agents.
A punt on a final vote until June would also underscore the difficulty of passing yet another filibuster-proof reconciliation bill with razor-thin GOP majorities.
Democrats have mounted a vocal offensive against the new DOJ initiative, which they say amounts to a slush fund for Trump’s allies and supporters. They were preparing to attack the reconciliation bill from all sides as part of this week’s “vote-a-rama,” which now will have to wait until June.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said Democrats would be charging that “Republicans are actively helping Trump steal from the American people to fund his ballroom and his multi-billion dollar MAGA slush fund.”
“In the coming debate, the contrast between Democrats and Republicans will be on full display,” Schumer said. “We will show Democrats are fighting for lower costs for health care, for energy, for groceries, for gasoline, for child care. Trump and Republicans are making costs skyrocket.”
Schumer said on the Senate floor Thursday that the first amendment he would offer during the vote-a-rama would block the Justice Department fund.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said Democrats also would push against the immigration enforcement funding included in the bill.
“Immigration enforcement in this country should be fair, it should be just, and it should be humane,” he said. “But that’s not what is happening in America right now. ICE remains out of control, and we are committed to reining them in.”
Aidan Quigley contributed to this report.
