By hour 13 of Thursday’s Senate “vote-a-rama,” Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) was growing visibly frustrated.Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) had spent the day consulting with the parliamentarian on a way, any way, to block an “anti-weaponization” fund the Justice Department had announced weeks earlier, and he was busy shuttling to and from the Senate floor to inquire about new versions of legislative text.The matter was moot to Thune. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche declared the fund dead two days earlier in congressional testimony, helping calm a bipartisan uproar over its expected payouts to Jan. 6 defendants.
But Cassidy, politically liberated after his primary loss in Louisiana, would not let the issue drop, and he wanted that promise written into legislation funding deportation operations at the Department of Homeland Security.
“This would have been done several hours ago if we weren’t having to deal with some of the issues around the fund, which doesn’t exist, which is the point we’re making,” Thune told the Washington Examiner shortly before midnight.
“He’s redrafted it many, many times in the last 13 hours,” Thune said, “so we’re trying to push to get him to do something with it, and soon.”
