The U.S. Senate approved $70 billion in additional funding for immigration enforcement in a predawn vote Friday, sending the legislation to the House while leaving embedded within it a $1.8 billion fund that a federal judge has already blocked, that the administration’s own acting attorney general told Congress was effectively dead, and that Donald Trump described to reporters this week as something he loves and considers important.
That contradiction is now the House’s problem to inherit.
The 52-47 vote fell entirely along party lines, with one exception: Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted against the bill, citing its circumvention of the Senate’s regular appropriations process and the failure to excise the fund. The legislation, which would finance Trump’s deportation operations over the next three years through additional resources for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol, now awaits House consideration, which is not expected before next week.
The “anti-weaponization” fund — labeled a slush fund by Democrats and an increasing liability by vulnerable Republican incumbents — dominated the final stretch of debate with an intensity that exposed fault lines inside the Senate Republican conference that party leadership visibly struggled to contain.
The fund is designed to compensate individuals who claim the federal government mistreated them, a pool of money critics argue would function as a direct financial instrument for rewarding Trump’s political allies.
Senate Republican leader John Thune declared the matter settled, pointing to testimony this week by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche before a House committee in which Blanche stated the Justice Department would not proceed with the fund. Democrats dismissed that assurance as insufficient. Trump then announced he intended to nominate Blanche to lead the Justice Department permanently — a nomination that would require Senate confirmation and that Thune conceded could face a difficult path.
The sequencing was hard to miss: the administration’s chief legal officer told Congress the fund was inoperative, and within days the president moved to reward him with a permanent appointment.
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Trump himself made the Republican leadership’s position harder to hold. Asked Wednesday whether the fund had been terminated, he declined to say it had. “I love it. I think it’s so important,” he told reporters — a statement delivered while his acting attorney general’s congressional assurances were being used as the primary justification for Senate Republicans to vote for a bill that left the fund untouched.
The political exposure was acute enough that several Republican senators attempted to legislate their way out of it. Democratic leader Chuck Schumer moved to kill the fund outright, a procedural gambit that stalled the session for hours after Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine crossed over to support it. She was joined by Republican Senators Jon Husted of Ohio and Dan Sullivan of Alaska. The motion ultimately failed 50-49, but the spectacle of three Republican incumbents breaking with leadership to vote with Democrats against a provision in their own party’s flagship legislation illustrated precisely how toxic the fund has become for members facing competitive November races.
Collins, Husted, and Sullivan are all on ballots this fall in states where Trump’s approval ratings have softened even among Republican-leaning voters.
Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina argued publicly that sending the bill to the House unamended would place an unfair burden on every Republican up for re-election who had to answer for a fund their own administration’s lawyer had told Congress was not going anywhere. He proposed an amendment to redirect the fund’s resources to fraud enforcement. It failed 84-15, drawing support from 12 Republicans. Tillis then voted for the underlying bill anyway.
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Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana went further. He proposed his own amendment to eliminate the fund, then joined Democratic Senator Cory Booker in a friend-of-the-court brief urging U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema to maintain the judicial block she imposed on the fund last week. Cassidy and Booker argued it poses what they called an immediate and dire threat to congressional authority and constitutional order. Cassidy’s amendment also failed. He too voted for the bill.
The episode added to a growing list of open Republican dissents from Trump’s agenda. Senators and House members have broken with the White House in recent weeks over a proposed $1 billion taxpayer outlay for a 90,000 square-foot White House ballroom, the nomination of political ally Bill Pulte as U.S. intelligence chief, and now the persistence of a compensation fund that a federal court has blocked, the administration’s own lawyer has disavowed before Congress, and the president has publicly declared his love for — all in the same week.
The $70 billion for deportation operations moves forward. The fund moves with it, blocked by a court, disowned by the Justice Department, and endorsed by the man who controls both.