US Politics
Controversy over Trump ballroom and $1.8B ‘slush fund’ sends Senate running from the Hill in GOP revolt
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President Donald Trump was hit by a GOP revolt Thursday as normally loyal Republican senators, infuriated by his $1.8 billion “slush fund” and demands for $1 billion for his ballroom, left D.C. without voting on ICE funding.
Senators who spoke to The Independent coming out of a GOP luncheon on Thursday confirmed that plans for a “vote-a-rama” overnight session were being spiked until after the Memorial Day holiday, and lawmakers quickly began filing out of the Capitol after the news.
Even a desperate, last-minute visit on Thursday from Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to drum up support among the Senate Republican caucus appeared to net few results. Blanche announced Monday that the Justice Department would provide $1.776 billion for “victims” of the Department of Justice’s prosecutions during the Biden administration, which the White House wants to see tacked on to the upcoming bill to fund ICE. The president’s team also hopes to secure funding for his new ballroom project through the same bill, though the Senate parliamentarian ruled that it could not be part of the filibuster-proof reconciliation package this week. Critics have said the fund is little more than a way of funneling taxpayers’ money to Trump allies.
The Republican indignation was summed up in a statement by former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell late Tuesday afternoon. McConnell remains a close ally of Senate leadership as he prepares to retire at the end of the year.
“So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong – Take your pick,” the former GOP leader said.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski departed the meeting and told reporters that skepticism to the “slush fund,” as critics have labeled the DOJ settlement with Trump, remained high. “Let’s just say it was a very fulsome, important discussion with the White House — and nobody held back,” the Alaska senator said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, meanwhile, had little to say to reporters as he hurried out of that meeting on Thursday, but seemingly confirmed that the demand for the inclusion of the president’s weaponization fund was the main reason for the holdup.
“It’s a big issue,” Thune said of the “weaponization“ fund.
Thune, who has been under fire from Trump, also said he hadn’t spoken with the president as the Senate prepared to skip town.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer blasted Republicans for their dysfunction during a press conference shortly before members flew out.
“Republicans are in complete disarray, they’re at each other’s throats and the American are suffering for it,” he said. “Republicans have tied themselves up in knots and torn each other to shreds over Trump’s brazenly corrupt slush fund for his billionaire cronies and January 6 insurrectionists.”
As lawmakers fled the Senate, their colleagues in the House unveiled a bipartisan amendment aimed at killing the fund that they plan to tack on to the reconciliation bill.
Sen. Thom Tillis lambasted the fund on Wednesday, and Thune had previously indicated his own lukewarm feelings — indicating that the White House may be fighting a losing battle.
Many lawmakers complained openly about the lack of concrete guardrails around the fund, which was unveiled by Blanche at the Department of Justice as a means of compensating people “unfairly” targeted for prosecution by the Biden Justice Department.
The fund would use taxpayer money, and critics say it could be used to benefit the scores of now-pardoned January 6 rioters around the country. Congress must authorize that money for the DOJ to be able to use it, and the only hope for its survival is passage through the reconciliation package thanks to the Senate rules allowing strictly budgetary measures to bypass the 60-vote filibuster threshold. Republicans used the same process last year to shoehorn in as many of the White House’s priorities as possible into the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” championed by Trump.
But many Republicans see the fund as a complication that will hinder the bill’s passage — and even Trump’s most staunch supporters, like Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), told reporters on Thursday that the fund was a “curveball” that had put delays on the Senate’s plans.
“We want to make sure we get it right. We don’t want to go in there with [senators] not knowing what they’re going to do,” said Tuberville. “Got to have everybody’s vote.”
Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota confirmed that as of yet, Senate Republican leadership didn’t have the 51 votes necessary to pass a reconcilation package given the disagreements over both the weaponziation fund and other issues.
“We’re still trying to figure out the path to 51”, he said.
Murkowski, speaking to a small gaggle as she left the luncheon, said that the lack of guardrails was her main concern. She pointed to Blanche’s inability to say, repeatedly, that people convicted of fighting with police on Jan. 6, 2021 and seeking to harm lawmakers wouldn’t be eligible for compensation under the Trump settlement.
Tillis, a day before, teed off on the idea.
“Imagine that a fund that is set up to compensate people who assaulted Capitol police officers and other responding agencies, right” Tillis said.
“People that had pled guilty to physical acts against the president may actually be able to get compensated. How absurd does that sound coming out of my mouth?”
Minutes after the news broke of the Senate’s plans to punt the issue, the House cancelled its own plans to hold votes on Friday, effectively signaling that the matter was concluded for the week.
Further complicating the issue for the White House is the administration’s ask for funding to begin the construction of Trump’s planned White House ballroom, which despite the president’s repeated promises that the $400 million project is self-funded comes with another $1 billion taxpayer price tag for security through Congress.
Republicans are still debating a path forward on that aspect of the reconciliation bill after the Senate parliamentarian — who so often vexed the Biden White House — stripped the language from the draft legislation altogether.