Republicans clash with Trump over payouts tied to ‘weaponization’ claims
The Senate on Thursday called a statute of limitations on a $72 billion immigration enforcement spending bill that has become a battleground over “gunfight” funding after many Republican senators demanded he be either killed or barricaded.
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Democrats, meanwhile, have vowed to use the immigration bill to attack the fund.
Just a day earlier, Senate Majority Leader John Thune blocked $1 billion in federal funding for the ostentatious White House ballroom that Trump had begun building. He said he had no Republican votes.
On Friday, Trump fired back.
“I am helping others who have been so badly abused by the evil, corrupt and weaponized Biden administration finally get JUSTICE!” The president wrote on the social media platform. This battle of wills between the president and his party, fueled by recent primary victories by Trump-backed rivals over incumbent lawmakers, threatens to intensify when Congress returns from recess next month and could spill over into the November midterm elections.
“The American people are going to reject this right away,” Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said of the anti-proliferation fund, whose beneficiaries could include people convicted in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
While many Republican senators emerged from Thursday’s meeting on the spending bill uncharacteristically quiet, Tillis and others were clear about how politically unacceptable the president’s demands have become.
“Can (the fund) potentially compensate someone who assaulted a police officer, pleaded guilty, was convicted, was pardoned, and now we’re going to pay them for it?” Tillis, who is not running for re-election, said in an interview with Spectrum News on Thursday. he said.
MPs’ MANEUVER AGAINST THE ‘ANTIARMAMENT’ FUND
Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, who faces a tough re-election fight this fall, has teamed up with Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York on legislation that would ban payment of any claims submitted to the fund.
Retiring Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said ballroom and anti-gun funds in the immigration spending bill have become “poison pills” for House Republicans facing tough reelection campaigns.
With Republicans holding a slim majority in both houses of Congress, only a handful of opposition lawmakers would be needed to reject Trump’s proposals.
But suspicions have deepened that congressional Republicans, who until recently remained loyal to the president on issues ranging from tariffs to spending cuts to the Iran war, are ready to break ranks.
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“We’ve been hearing this talk about the insurgency and the cracks in the coalition for 10 years. It never happened,” said Doug Heye, a longtime Republican strategist.
He said Republicans “consistently caved” on issues important to Trump and that any rebellion would be “light years” away.
Many of Trump’s supporters in Congress, including Republican Reps. Abraham Hamadeh of Arizona and John Rose of Tennessee, have moved to defend him.
“Not a single Republican in Congress was elected not to oppose President Trump,” Hamadeh said on X, adding: “Yet a rebellion is already brewing in the Senate.” “Stop putting the brakes on the America First agenda.”
Peter Ticktin, an attorney representing more than 400 defendants on Jan. 6, said he was confident his clients would receive payment despite congressional objections.
“They’re fools if they think this is going to work,” Ticktin said of Senate Republicans who oppose the funding. “It will still continue, and those who oppose the fund will suffer in the next election.”
DEMOCRATS WILL HARDLY VOTE IN CONGRESS
Democrats, meanwhile, though largely powerless as the minority party in both houses of Congress, are embracing what they see as the president’s politically tone-deaf proposals.
They compared the plight of U.S. consumers struggling amid inflation to pay their bills to Trump’s lavish ballroom plans and the vast amounts of government money he could direct to Jan. 6 rioters or other allies.
“Is it possible that Republicans will finally find an ethical bridge on May 21, 2026?” Sen. Dick Durbin, the second-ranking member of Democrats’ Senate leadership, said at a news conference Thursday.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday portrayed Republicans in the throes of a ballroom “meltdown” and what they called Trump’s “secret fund.”
One possibility for congressional Republicans after returning from recess on June 1 is to seek some kind of middle ground.
A source familiar with the maneuvers who requested anonymity said there were discussions about proposed guardrails for the fund, such as who would serve on a commission overseeing it or standards for judicial review of the fund.
At the very least, Democrats will do their best to force their opponents to cast politically difficult votes on changes to the spending bill.
Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware told reporters this week that he has drafted 13 such amendments. One of them would ban payments to rioters who attacked law enforcement at the Capitol on Jan. 6, while the others would ban using taxpayer money to pay and require all payments to be made public if the fund survives, the senator’s spokesman said.
