Washington — The House and Senate will both leave Washington for their Memorial Day recess without voting on a reconciliation package to fund federal immigration agencies, after the Justice Department’s new “anti-weaponization” fund earned strong pushback from Republican members.
The Senate had been prepared to take up a revised version of the $72 billion reconciliation bill on Thursday, with the House set to do the same on Friday. But the plans fell apart after a meeting between GOP senators and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who had been dispatched to the Hill to convince skeptical members about the DOJ fund.
The $1.776 billion fund was established as part of a settlement of a suit by President Trump against the IRS, which he controls. Pro-Trump allies, including those charged for their involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, have said they are eager to submit claims.
Democrats have criticized the arrangement as blatantly corrupt, with no meaningful congressional oversight of how the funds would be distributed or who would receive payouts. Several GOP senators also indicated they had reservations and would work to place guardrails around the use of the money in the reconciliation package. Democrats vowed to bring amendments targeting the fund.
Blanche met with senators for nearly two hours. Several emerged from the meeting without commenting, a signal that their concerns had not been adequately addressed. GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the top appropriator in the Senate who has expressed opposition to the DOJ fund, told CBS News that she did not feel better about the fund after the meeting.
In a statement, a Justice Department spokesperson said the meeting included “a healthy discussion on the settlement.”
“[Blanche] 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,” the spokesperson said. “We will continue to work with the Senate to get critical reconciliation funds approved.”
Soon after the meeting concluded, GOP senators said the Senate would adjourn after Thursday’s session without taking up the reconciliation package. House leaders quickly canceled their plans to remain in town after Thursday’s votes, and a meeting between Speaker Mike Johnson and the president was called off, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The developments mean lawmakers will all but certainly miss a deadline imposed by Mr. Trump to get the reconciliation bill on his desk by June 1. The legislation, which would fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol for three years, originated from the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year. Democratic opposition to funding the agencies prompted Republicans to pursue the bill via reconciliation, which doesn’t require Democratic votes in the Senate.
The plan had already hit a snag earlier in the week over the inclusion of $1 billion for Secret Service security funding, including for the president’s overhaul of the East Wing, which calls for the construction of a massive ballroom. The Senate’s parliamentarian ruled that including that funding violates the chamber’s rules for what can be in a reconciliation bill, and skeptical Republicans had been expecting the funding to be stripped in a revised version of the legislation. That new version has not yet been released.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the chamber “will pick up where we left off” when senators return from recess on June 1. Asked whether a resolution can be reached, he replied, “That’s what I’m counting on.”
Thune said the package was “something that was supposed to be very narrow, targeted, focused, clean, straightforward, and it got a little bit more complicated this week.” Asked whether he was frustrated that the funding plan was derailed by the new DOJ fund, Thune said “it makes everything way harder than it should be.”
One senior GOP Senate aide, who was granted anonymity to speak freely, laid the blame for the impasse at the administration’s door.
“The administration created this problem, and it’s up to them to fix it. The DOJ didn’t need to settle the case when they did, which means they didn’t need to announce this settlement,” the aide said. “Members rightly have questions that so far the DOJ has failed to answer. Senators are still focused on the core functions of funding ICE and Border Patrol.”
The breakdown in the Senate came against the backdrop of the president taking aim at sitting GOP senators. On Tuesday, he endorsed Ken Paxton in Texas’ GOP Senate primary, choosing him over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn. On Saturday, GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy failed to advance in a runoff for his seat after the president endorsed his Republican challenger.
Asked whether that dynamic played a role in Thursday’s scrapped plans, Thune said that “it’s hard to divorce anything that happens here from what’s happening in the political atmosphere around us.”
The majority leader said “it would have been nice” if the White House consulted Senate Republicans on the DOJ fund, but he called it “water under the bridge now.”
“You play the hand you’re dealt, and we’ll sort it out from here,” he said. “But, you know, obviously it became a more complicated and bumpy path than we had hoped for.”
The DOJ fund and ballroom money also ran into pushback in the House.
In a letter to Blanche on Wednesday, GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania expressed “urgent concern” about the anti-weaponization fund, saying it “represents a dangerous backsliding in the transparency of our institutions and our commitment to the American taxpayer.”
Fitzpatrick has also said he will not support funding for the ballroom.
Some House Republicans were already open to pushing a vote past the Memorial Day recess.
“If they drag their feet, there’s no reason we have to do it before the Memorial Day break. We can do it when we come back,” GOP Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, told reporters as he left Johnson’s office Thursday afternoon.
“There’s no emergency about moving it by June 1, except the president has thrown it out there,” Harris said.