WASHINGTON — Republicans have abandoned plans to pass a bill funding immigration enforcement this week amid disagreements over President Donald Trump's ballroom and his $1.8 billion slush fund, a setback caused almost entirely by the president's desire for vanity projects and his endless quest for payback.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche came to Capitol Hill on Thursday to try to quell concerns about the 'Anti-Weaponization Fund' but Republican senators came out of the meeting looking upset and unwilling to speak to the press.
Then they canceled plans to vote, opting instead for an early start on their Memorial Day recess. Instead of heading back to their districts with a win and ending a months-long crisis over funding at the Department of Homeland Security, they left to stew over disagreements about two wildly unpopular presidential priorities. The struggle to pass party-line legislation may only increase in the coming weeks, as the president alienates incumbent senators and Election Day nears.
'We were ready to move this when we get our enforcement officers regularly funded, and unfortunately, some decisions were made that got that off the rails,' Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) told HuffPost. Asked what decisions he was referring to, Budd said: 'I'm done.'
Some Republican senators said it wasn't any one thing that caused them to give up on passing ICE funding before June, but they acknowledged the weaponization fund was a problem. 'That's one of the issues we're working on,' Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) told HuffPost. 'That's one that we want some help with.'
The two-hour meeting with Blanche apparently did not help. 'Republicans are in complete disarray,' Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said at a press conference. 'Republicans have tied themselves up in knots and torn themselves into shreds over Trump's brazen, corrupt slush fund for his billionaire cronies and Jan. 6 insurrectionists.'
A spokesperson for the Justice Department called the Blanche meeting 'a healthy discussion' and said the weaponization fund was a separate thing from the Senate's 'budget reconciliation' process. 'He made clear that the Anti-Weaponization Fund announced Monday has nothing to do with reconciliation; indeed, not a single dime from the money the President is seeking in reconciliation would go toward anything having to do with the Fund. We will continue to work with the Senate to get critical reconciliation funds approved.'
The fund could be Trump's most brazen effort ever to use the presidency for his own personal benefit and that of his political allies. The Justice Department announced the fund this week as the result of a 'settlement' of Trump's own personal lawsuit against the IRS. The settlement, which was not approved by a court, includes both the billion dollars for supposed victims of 'weaponization' during Joe Biden's presidency, plus the quashing of any IRS tax collection efforts against Trump, his family members or affiliated businesses. The president reportedly faced a tax bill of as much as $100 million.
Republicans had already been struggling over Trump's demand to add $1 billion for his White House ballroom to the ICE funding bill when the White House announced the slush fund this week. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told reporters the White House 'dropped a bomb in the middle of a pretty well planned out reconciliation bill to help deliver on one of President Trump's priorities.' The timing resulted from the Trump administration's desire to beat a hearing deadline set for this week by a federal judge demanding to know why it's constitutionally appropriate for the federal government to settle a private lawsuit with its own chief executive.
Before the meeting with Blanche, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters Republicans were considering ways of curtailing the settlement fund. 'Our members have very legitimate questions about it, and we've had some conversations about… how we might make sure that it's fenced in appropriately,' Thune told reporters. One frequently mentioned option would be to disallow Jan. 6 rioters convicted of attacking police officers from applying for payouts.
But Republicans are following a special budget process that sidesteps Democratic votes while still allowing Democrats to challenge provisions of the bill as extraneous. Democrats don't have much incentive to make small changes to a fund they view as fundamentally corrupt. They could potentially block any adjustments Republicans wanted to make.
'Any vote for conditions is, in effect, approval of the slush fund,' Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told HuffPost. Republicans apparently realized they were stuck, and they gave up.
