The Senate officially rejected two of Donald Trump’s biggest priorities for the upcoming budget reconciliation bill on Wednesday as the chamber published the text of a bill to fund ICE and CBP.
With Senate Republicans retreating from negotiations with Democrats over ICE funding and turning to the filibuster-proof reconciliation process, Trump pressed the chamber to include a $1 billion funding item related to his construction of a ballroom on the White House grounds, as well as $1.776 billion to fund a “weaponization fund” meant to distribute payouts to people prosecuted by the Department of Justice under Democratic administrations. The latter was derided as a “slush fund” for Trump’s friends and political allies, including by some Senate Republicans.
Both of those items were stripped from the bill text published by the Senate GOP on Wednesday after a full-scale revolt in the chamber threatened the reconciliation bill’s path forward last month.
An explosive showdown between Senate Republicans and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche took place just before the Memorial Day holiday at a luncheon which was set to precede the beginning of markups on the reconciliation package. At that meeting, Republicans “screamed”, according to Sen. Ted Cruz, at Blanche over the fund and the administration’s lack of explanations surrounding a key issue for many congressional Republicans, even if the White House feels the opposite: The prospect of rewarding violent rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6.
Blanche and other administration officials refused to say whether January 6 rioters who were convicted of violent crimes and later pardoned by the president would be immune from payouts. That and other issues with the fund’s lack of guardrails led former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to describe it as an “utterly stupid” idea in a statement immediately following the meeting with Blanche.
Even as Blanche and other advisers claimed that the White House was backing down in the face of a court ruling, Trump himself remained adamant that the fund should be implemented, and said in a podcast interview last week after a court ruled against him that he hopes Congress will still put it into place. His rhetoric spooked Republicans, many of whom aren’t sure the president is truly over the issue.
“These were many great people, and I gave them pardons, and I’m very proud to have given them pardons. And I think they should be reimbursed for a crooked government,” Trump told the New York Post’s podcast, Pod Force One, seeming to suggest that his intention was to allow January 6 rioters to receive payouts.
On Wednesday, it was clear that the real reason for the White House’s retreat was the opposition it was facing within the Senate. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters that “most” of his caucus remained on board with the ICE funding bill if the “slush fund” was stripped out — meaning some holdouts remain. And senators continue to call openly for the chamber to take an even harder stance against the White House.
Thune, who previously said he was “not a big fan” of the president’s request, was more diplomatic on Wednesday: “I think the best way to get the reconciliation bill moving and across the finish line is to confine it to the issues we were addressing in the initial bill, which was CBP ICE and funding it for the next three years.”
But he will still have a tricky time keeping all sides of the GOP happy in the days ahead.
Thom Tillis, a retiring Republican senator and occasional foe of the White House, remained wary about the reconciliation package and warned that he wanted to see language restricting the White House from implementing it put into the legislation. The senator added that he’d file an amendment during the markup process to add it to the final package, and warned that he wouldn’t vote yes on a motion to proceed Wednesday afternoon without a committment from Senate Majority Leader John Thune and GOP leadership that it would get a vote.
“We’re actually doing nothing more than codifying the policy we heard from the acting AG yesterday,” Tillis told reporters. “It all depends on whether I can get assurances to get a vote…I wouldn’t support a bill that doesn’t have that in there.”
Sen. John Cornyn, another Republican who’d expressed his doubts about voting for the reconciliation package, said on Wednesday that he would vote for the motion to proceed on the bill but, like Tillis, wanted to see legislation tying the White House’s hands attached to it.
Republicans can afford only three defections on the bill’s final vote for it to pass, with the aid of Vice President JD Vance’s tiebreaker vote. Adding language to the bill to further prohibit funding from being used for the “slush fund” could be the key to winning over those final votes. All of the chamber’s Republicans remain supportive of continuing funding for ICE and CBP, despite their own voiced concerns about the agencies’ tactics and methods earlier in the year.
The remaining $72 billion package will boost funding for ICE and Customs and Border Protection through 2029.
