WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic senators plan to force a vote this week on President Donald Trump’s new $1.776 billion settlement fund to compensate political allies, testing Republican unity as Trump lashes out at lawmakers in his own party.
Republicans are expected to vote on a roughly $72 billion bill to restore funding to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol after Democrats blocked the money for months.
But the straightforward
legislation became more complicated after Republicans added $1 billion in security money for the White House campus and Trump’s new ballroom — and as some GOP senators have grown increasingly frustrated with the president. Republicans have criticized the settlement fund, and many were upset by Trump's endorsement Tuesday of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the party primary runoff next week against Sen. John Cornyn.
“It’s been a hell of a bad week for Donald Trump and his Republicans,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said on the Senate floor. “And it’s only Wednesday.”
Democrats have an opening to force a vote on the settlement fund because Republicans are trying to pass the immigration enforcement bill through a complicated budget process that requires a long series of amendment votes. Democrats are considering multiple amendments on the settlement fund, potentially to block it outright or to ban any payments to Trump supporters who beat law enforcement officers in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Those amendments, along with others, potentially could pass as a growing number of Republicans speak out against the fund and other parts of Trump’s agenda.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Tuesday he was “not a big fan” of the new fund, which the administration announced as a part of a settlement that resolves the president’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, who lost his seat in Saturday's primary election in Louisiana to a Trump-endorsed candidate, called it a “slush fund” and said “you can’t just make up things.”
Hanging over the growing GOP rift is Trump’s surprise endorsement of Paxton, an intervention that has Republican senators privately fuming that it could cost them their majority in November as they view the incumbent as the better candidate in the November general election.
“There’s always a consequence with taking on United States senators,” Thune said Wednesday. Trump "obviously has his favorites and people he wants to endorse and that’s his prerogative. But what we have to deal with up here is moving the agenda, and obviously that can become slightly more complicated.”
As Republicans challenged parts of his agenda, Trump unloaded on the Senate in a social media post.
He urged Republicans to fire the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, who has said that parts of the $1 billion security proposal cannot remain in the ICE and Border Patrol bill. Trump also renewed his long-standing calls for the Senate to pass the SAVE Act, a Republican bill that would require all voters to prove U.S. citizenship, and to end the Senate filibuster.
“Republicans play a very soft game compared to the Dumocrats,” he wrote. “It is their single biggest disadvantage in politics.”
Trump added that Democrats will eliminate the filibuster “on the First Day” if they ever get full power in Washington again and that Republicans need to “get smart and tough” or “you’ll all be looking for a job much sooner than you thought possible!”
Republicans have been loyal to Trump on most issues, but they have resisted his repeated calls — even in his first term — to kill the filibuster, which triggers a 60-vote threshold in the Senate.
While some Republicans have said they are supportive of the administration’s settlement fund, several have questioned it. Senators grilled acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on it at a hearing Tuesday, where he described the fund as “unusual” but not unprecedented.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said that he thinks it is a “real risk” that some of the rioters charged — and later pardoned by Trump — in the Jan. 6 attack could get compensation through the fund. He said that would be “absurd.”
On Wednesday, two police officers who helped defend the Capitol in the 2021 assault sued to block the payouts. Blanche, a personal attorney for Trump before joining the Department of Justice in Trump's second term, would not rule out the possibility that rioters who assaulted police on Jan. 6 would be eligible for compensation.
Republican leaders are still revising the $1 billion security provision after the parliamentarian said it was too complex for the budget bill. The money could be scaled back or dropped from the bill.
Thune acknowledged “ongoing vote issues,” as leaders try to measure Republican support, and “ongoing parliamentarian issues,” as they try to figure out what will be allowed in the bill under Senate rules.
Democrats and some Republicans have questioned whether Congress should approve money for the White House ballroom when voters are concerned about affordability issues. Under the Secret Service request, about $220 million would pay for security improvements related to the ballroom and the rest would go for a new screening center for visitors, training and other security measures.
Tillis said the bill should not have included the other security improvements “because it’s just giving everybody the ‘billion dollar ballroom,’ and it’s just a bad idea.”
He said he does not think there is enough support among Republicans for the full $1 billion in funding or even the $220 million request.
“I still want private donations to pay for it, they need to explain to me why we need this,” Tillis said, noting that Trump had originally said that the project would be fully paid for with private money.
