Trump Hit With Republican Rebellion in Chaotic All-Night Showdown
The Republicans faced an uprising within their own ranks.
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Donald Trump’s $70 billion immigration enforcement bill survived an all-night Republican revolt to clear the Senate early Friday.
The chamber passed the measure 52-47 and sent it to the House, which is expected to act quickly. The package funds the Department of Homeland Security’s ICE and CBP agencies until the end of Trump’s second term, shielding both from future shutdowns.
The mutiny, which Republicans eventually succeeded in quelling, centered on a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” Trump has tried to set up for political allies claiming unjust prosecution under the Biden administration. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski remained the lone GOP member to cross the aisle and vote “no” on the final round.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune complained the session could have been over hours earlier if his party had just kept in line.
Anadolu/Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images
Many Republicans joined Democrats in their concerns that the money could flow to participants in the Jan. 6 riots at the tail end of Trump’s first administration. The president has pardoned more than 1,500 people who took part, including hundreds who committed violence against law enforcement.
Lawmakers in both parties tried and failed to attach language to the bill that would kill the fund for good. “America has never seen a more clear-cut case of corruption than Donald Trump’s slush fund,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the floor Thursday, the New York Times reported.
Trump's acting AG Todd Blanche had voraciously defended the fund.
Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
The arm-twisting dragged across an 18-hour voting marathon that ran into the small hours of Friday. Republican leaders were also dogged by Democratic amendments designed to force them into defending Trump’s other unpopular moves—from his construction of a tacky new ballroom at the White House to his choice of housing chief Bill Pulte as the nation’s new Director of National Intelligence.
Senator Bill Cassidy, who lost his primary earlier this year to a Trump-backed challenger, pushed his own amendment to carve off the “anti-weaponization fund” so that only officers who defended against rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6 could be paid.
Five other Republicans joined him, but the party eventually sank it. “This would have been done several hours ago if we weren’t having to deal with some of the issues around the fund, which doesn’t exist,” Majority Leader John Thune said as the session approached midnight, according to PunchBowl.
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