A dozen GOP lawmakers also revealed how uneasy they are about the fund, which the acting attorney general has promised won't move forward anymore.Show Caption
Three Senate Republicans facing competitive midterm races crossed party lines on Thursday, June 4, to support fully ending what critics have called a "slush fund" for President Donald Trump's political allies.Though the legislative effort still failed in a 50-49 vote, it showed how one of the White House's most controversial recent priorities, a roughly $2 billion "anti-weaponization" fund, has put members of the president's own party – especially the ones crucial to retaining control of Congress after November – in a tough political bind."With the whole country watching, Republicans will have to choose: either support the slush fund or ban it," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, said on the Senate floor. "It's a yes or no."The fight isn't over yet, though: Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, who didn't back Schumer's provision, filed a virtually similar measure of his own that will also be voted on.Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Jon Husted of Ohio and Dan Sullivan of Alaska initially crossed party lines and joined with Democrats in hopes of officially killing the fund. Since Trump announced its creation, members of both parties have shown widespread unease about it. In particular, many have expressed alarm about its likelihood of compensating Jan. 6 rioters.Subscribe to On Politics: Stay ahead of the midterms with our daily politics newsletter.After a court order to pump the brakes on any payouts from the cash reserve, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche assured lawmakers this week that the Trump administration was putting a stop to it."We are not moving forward with the fund, period," Blanche told a committee in the House of Representatives.Yet he didn't fully quell a GOP revolt. Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy even teamed up with Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, in a court filing opposing the fund. The pair warn in a June 3 amicus brief that deploying taxpayer dollars to potentially compensate insurrectionists would be "to use the machinery of democratic government to subsidize an attack on that government’s most fundamental processes."Sen. Thom Tillis, a retiring North Carolina Republican and another fierce critic of the fund, also offered an amendment to halt any of the payouts. Instead, he proposed redirecting the money for anti-fraud purposes at the Justice Department."This is an opportunity for us to put it to bed, and to also fund the fraud division, which I believe is very important," he said.While that effort went down with a wider margin, 84 nos and 17 yeses, a dozen Republicans supported it, revealing the extent of unease over the issue within the Senate GOP conference. Some notable Democrats approved of it too, including Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire.Other Democrats suggested Tillis' idea would lead to the same problem rebranded."Taking one slush fund and eliminating it and then creating a new slush fund, still under the control of the attorney general, is not the way to go," said Sen. Jeff Merkeley, D-Oregon.Tillis later told reporters he preferred that any successful attempts to kill the fund or slap guardrails around it be led by Republicans.“I don't want to join with some Democratic initiative, I want this to be led by Republicans for Republicans,” he said. “We've got a sufficient number of Republicans who have been very clear that they've got concerns here.”Contributing: ReutersZachary Schermele is a congressional reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and Bluesky at @zachschermele.bsky.social.
