Republicans reject – A first legislative effort to fully end the Trump administration’s roughly $2 billion “anti-weaponization” fund fell short after a 50-49 vote, even as a dozen GOP senators crossed party lines and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche insisted the Department of
Senate Republicans arrived at the vote with a problem that doesn’t fit neatly inside party discipline: they wanted the “slush fund” for President Donald Trump’s political allies ended, but they couldn’t quite agree on how to finish the fight.
On Thursday. June 4. three Senate Republicans facing competitive midterm races crossed party lines to support fully ending what critics have called a roughly $2 billion “anti-weaponization” fund. The effort still failed, passing 50-49. For Democrats trying to keep pressure on the White House’s most controversial recent priority, the near miss mattered. For Senate Republicans. it exposed how exposed the issue has left them—especially with control of Congress after November hanging in the balance.
“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 legislative push came as acting Attorney General Todd Blanche tried to close off the controversy by telling lawmakers the DOJ would stop moving forward with the fund. “We are not moving forward with the fund, period,” Blanche told a committee in the House of Representatives.
The central dispute, though, wasn’t just whether the program would continue in the future. It was whether any remaining money could still be used—an anxiety lawmakers have carried since Trump announced the creation of the reserve. Many members from both parties have said they are uneasy about the possibility that the fund could compensate Jan. 6 rioters, even after a court order was issued to slow down or halt payouts from the cash reserve.
That backdrop is part of why the Senate’s first vote became a test of trust inside the GOP conference.
Sen. 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. The proposal, however, didn’t clear the margin needed to pass.
Even after Blanche’s assurance, the revolt didn’t settle.
Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy—who did not back Schumer’s provision—filed a virtually similar measure of his own that will also be voted on, keeping the pressure on the administration’s handling of the reserve.
Cassidy also teamed up with Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, in a court filing opposing the fund. In a June 3 amicus brief. the pair argued 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.”.
Senate Republicans who were not willing—or not able—to vote for full elimination still sought to restrict what the money could do.
Sen. Thom Tillis, a retiring North Carolina Republican and another fierce critic of the fund, offered an amendment aimed at halting any of the payouts. Instead of keeping the money in place as originally structured, Tillis proposed redirecting it 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,” Tillis said.
That effort failed by a wider margin—84 no and 17 yes—but a dozen Republicans backed it, a detail that underlined how many in the Senate GOP conference remain uncomfortable with the fund even if they weren’t aligned on the cleanest path to end it.
Democrats were also not uniform. Some approved Tillis’ approach, including Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire. Others argued it would simply repackage the same concern. Sen. Jeff Merkeley. D-Oregon. said: “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.”.
After the votes, Tillis made clear he wanted the issue handled within his party’s orbit. He later told reporters he preferred that any successful attempts to kill the fund or impose guardrails 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.”
The sequence of events left lawmakers with a single. uncomfortable takeaway: the acting attorney general’s promise that the DOJ will not move forward hasn’t made the political fight disappear. It has instead reshaped it into a contest over who controls the narrative and what counts as a real end—full elimination. redirection. or court-enforced restraint.
anti-weaponization fund slush fund Department of Justice Todd Blanche Chuck Schumer Bill Cassidy Cory Booker Thom Tillis Jan. 6 Senate vote Republicans